The Ashes of London

by Andrew Taylor

  The cold made her tremble like Master Hakesby. It made her limbs heavy and uncertain, and filled her mind with grey mist. Is this, she wondered, what it is like to be old?

  Marwood held the lantern high so she could share its light. Every dozen steps or so, he would stop and turn to look at her.

  ‘Mistress …?’

  He had stopped again. She blinked at him, thinking how she hated this place, a stone tomb for dead prayers and ruined ghosts.

  ‘Master Hakesby is below. Or he should be.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘At the … triforium, is it? That’s where I left him.’ Marwood was speaking in a whisper, just loud enough for her to hear. ‘We came to find you. He’ll shelter you. If that’s what you want. Or we can take you to your Aunt Alderley, not tonight but later, when all this has settled.’

  That name took her by surprise. ‘You know her? You’ve talked to her.’

  He nodded. ‘She wishes you well. I – I think she knows very little of what her husband was.’

  ‘What are you, sir?’ she said wearily. ‘Why should I trust you?’

  He turned away without answering, and they went on, down the endless stairs towards the darkness below.

  Master Hakesby was not in the triforium above the north transept but they saw his lantern moving about under the crossing. Without a word, Cat followed Marwood along the walkway to the archway that led to the last staircase. A few minutes later, they reached the floor of St Paul’s.

  Hakesby was waiting at the bottom of the steps. ‘Thank God,’ he said. ‘Thank God. I heard the falls and I thought – well, you can imagine what I thought.’ He patted Cat’s arm, clumsily, as if she were a dog that might possibly bite. ‘Poor child. I’m sorry for your father. And your uncle.’

  ‘I want to see him,’ Cat said, pushing Hakesby’s hand away. ‘My father.’

  They walked in a file to the crossing. She glanced up. The inside of the tower rose above them, funnelling the darkness towards the paler dark of the sky. She made out one star, then another.

  Marwood and Hakesby directed the beams of their lanterns to the crumpled heaps of clothing on the floor. Her father and Alderley lay in a pool of light enclosed by shadows. They were joined in death, with her uncle’s head and shoulders resting on her father’s legs. Her father’s hair had come loose. Strands of grey lay among the ashes that still coated the floor.

  ‘I’m afraid they are …’

  Hakesby’s voice trailed away. I’m afraid they are dead. That was what he meant to say. Of course they were dead. What else could they be?

  ‘Who will come first here in the morning?’ Marwood said. ‘After it’s light, I mean. The watchmen?’

  ‘I doubt it.’ Hakesby sounded relieved at the change of subject. ‘They are such idle devils. More probably it will be the first labourers and their foremen – pray don’t step there, sir, there is a – a stickiness on the ground …’

  ‘Blood,’ Cat said. ‘Blood.’

  ‘Mistress Lovett,’ Marwood said. ‘We should search the bodies before we go.’

  ‘You must do as you like, sir,’ she said.

  She crouched on the flagstones near her father’s body and took one of his hands. It was large, rough-skinned. It still held some warmth. The nails needed trimming. There was a dark halo around the head. More blood.

  Her father was lying on his front, with his face turned away from Cat. She watched Marwood lifting aside her father’s cloak. He was searching him. What did it matter now?

  She closed her eyes and stroked the hand. She didn’t want to see her father’s face. She heard the chink of coins and Marwood saying something to Hakesby. She was also aware of something scratching and rustling, a long way away. Rats, probably. They had fled from the Fire. But they had returned to St Paul’s to see what they could find among the ashes. The rats always returned.

  There would be more things in her father’s pockets or about his person, Cat thought – letters, perhaps, and other documents. Would Marwood hand them to his masters at Whitehall? But perhaps he wasn’t a government spy after all. He had not acted like one tonight, and Master Hakesby trusted him.

  On the other hand, people were messy: they were capable of being more than one thing, she supposed; her father had loved her devotedly as his only child, but he had also been a ruthless adherent of the invisible King Jesus.

  ‘Very well,’ she heard Marwood say. ‘We must go. Mistress, there was a purse of gold in your father’s pocket. Shall Master Hakesby hold it for you?’

  The words rustled in her ears, as empty of meaning as falling leaves. She raised her father’s hand and kissed it.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  MASTER HAKESBY AND I sat drinking wine in his chamber at Mistress Noxon’s.

  ‘Two men dead,’ I said after a long silence.

  ‘They’ll find them at dawn.’ He cupped the glass in both hands, trying to stop it shaking. ‘The watchmen will say we were in St Paul’s.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘They only know that we went into the yard, into the shed. They don’t know we went into the cathedral.’

  ‘Surely they will put two and two together?’

  ‘Why? There’s nothing to make them think we stirred from the shed. Besides, they don’t know when Lovett and Alderley died. It could have been in the middle of the night, when we were long gone. Do the watchmen ever go into the church itself? During the night, I mean?’

  ‘Not if they can help it.’

  ‘Well then.’ I looked at him. The candlelight filled the cracks on his forehead with shadows. He looked fearful, old and very tired. ‘So?’ I said. ‘What is it?’

  Hakesby shrugged. ‘I don’t know what you want.’

  ‘A quiet life, for one thing. This is not our quarrel.’

  ‘I know hardly anything about you.’

  ‘We know we are allies in this, sir, whether we like it or not.’

  He said nothing, but sipped his wine, glancing at me over the brim of the glass. I took that for agreement, or even a sort of toast.

  ‘Then what do we do?’ he burst out. ‘Her father and her uncle. A Regicide and one of the richest men in the country. Both dead, and we are in this up to our necks.’

  ‘We tell the truth, I think,’ I said.

  ‘You cannot mean that.’

  ‘We leave out the parts that do not quite suit, sir. Because we don’t know where this will go from here. We shall let it be thought that the watchmen or the labourers were the first to find the bodies. But I must confide that you and I found them first to one person, and one only. You must trust me in this, sir – he will keep it close. I will say to him that we found them dead when you showed me into the church. We went there because I asked you to help me search the ruins for Master Lovett, on behalf of the government. So there will be no question about where your loyalties lie.’

  ‘And her?’ He turned his head towards the door of his closet, where Mistress Lovett lay sleeping in his bed. ‘What in God’s name do we do with her?’

  ‘What does she want? Do you know?’

  He raised his glass but did not drink from it. His hand was still trembling but less now. He stared at the wine as if the answer to the question lay there. ‘I think,’ he said slowly, ‘she would like to design buildings.’

  ‘What?’ I thought I must have misheard him. Then I remembered. ‘Yes – I heard she had a taste for such things. Curious, indeed.’

  ‘It’s a strange taste, I grant you, for a woman, let alone a young gentlewoman. But she has an aptitude. I think someone encouraged her. She said as much to me.’

  I remembered the library at Coldridge, full of the unread books that Henry Alderley had sold to Master Howgego, along with the house and the estate. ‘She had an aunt and uncle with an interest in architecture, sir.’

  They designed imaginary cities together, Master Howgego had told me, when they would have been better employed in studying their Bibles …

  ‘I’m establishing a drawing o
ffice in Henrietta Street,’ Hakesby said. ‘Before this happened, I told her I might employ her there. I mentioned this to you earlier. I intended her to work as a maid, but also perhaps occasionally at a drawing board herself, making copies and so on. There will be a great quantity of work in the next few years.’

  ‘You knew who she really was? Even then?’

  ‘I knew what she was, but not who. Safer for everyone.’

  I understood what Hakesby didn’t say as much as what he did. Since the King’s Restoration, there were many who did not find it convenient to live as they had before, or even to use their own names, and there were others who would help them survive in peaceable, unobtrusive ways, and encourage their friends to do the same.

  ‘Mistress Noxon gave me a hint of it,’ he continued. ‘Besides, it was obvious that Mistress Lovett had lived in a gentleman’s house before she came to Three Cocks Yard. But I didn’t know she was an heiress.’

  ‘I’m not sure she is now. Master Alderley saw to that. She may have a claim on his estate. But it’s another matter whether she would want to press for restitution. Even if she did, she might not get anything.’

  ‘Then what do we do with her?’ he said again.

  ‘No one knows that Mistress Lovett was at St Paul’s today,’ I said. ‘Except ourselves.’

  ‘And John. The servant here, who brought her to me at St Paul’s.’

  ‘Can you answer for his silence?’

  ‘No one can do that for another man.’ Hakesby sniffed. ‘But he is … attached to her. I believe if we approach him aright, he will keep his mouth shut. For her sake.’

  ‘What about the watchmen?’ I asked.

  ‘She said that they did not see her when she went in with John. And you concealed her under your cloak when we left this evening. Anyway, the light was so bad in Convocation House Yard, they could hardly see a foot beyond their shed.’

  ‘Good. No one else has seen her since her father took her from the coffee house last week, or no one who will want to say so. So perhaps it would be best if she stayed lost until this business is sorted out.’

  Hakesby nodded. ‘If she’s agreeable. And in a while, when we all know more, we can decide what’s best for her.’

  ‘I think it may be she who decides, sir,’ I said. ‘From what little I know of her.’

  The two of us talked until the first cocks began to crow in the back yards of London. Then we went downstairs. The maid came creeping down as Hakesby was unbarring the front door. She stared wide-eyed at us.

  ‘What are you gawping at, Margery?’ Hakesby snapped. ‘Light the kitchen fire, and set water to boil as soon as you can. I’m as cold as charity, and I must have a caudle to warm me.’

  When the maid had gone, he said in an undertone, ‘How can I find you if I need to?’

  ‘I lodge at Newcomb the printer’s in the Savoy, sir. But it would be better not to call there. Send word instead.’

  He gave me a lantern and let me out of the house. ‘Fare you well,’ he whispered.

  Three Cocks Yard was as dark as a tomb. There was no sign of dawn yet. It was very cold. I had drunk a good deal of wine in the last few hours but I did not feel drunk. But there was a hollowness deep in my belly that might have been hunger. More probably it was fear.

  I picked my way down the alley to the Strand. There were lights here, and also a few of the early wagons bringing produce into the city. I went into the Savoy. The Newcombs’ lodgings were still barred and shuttered at this hour. But the door to the kitchen yard was unbolted. This was Thursday, and Margaret came early to help the maid with scrubbing out the scullery and working in the laundry.

  The kitchen windows were unshuttered, and smoke was wisping from the chimneys. I tapped on the back door. Margaret herself opened it. I had not seen her since Sam’s release on Monday evening, and I was unsure of my welcome. But she smiled when she saw me, curtsied and let me in.

  ‘Thank you for your kindness to Samuel, sir,’ she said as she closed the door. She lowered her voice so the maid at the other end of the kitchen wouldn’t hear. ‘I don’t know when I last had a piece of gold in my hand.’

  I shrugged, embarrassed by gratitude that I so ill deserved. ‘Is anyone astir?’

  She shook her head. ‘Mistress will be down soon, though.’

  I had no wish to encounter the sharp eyes of Mistress Newcomb. I took a candle and went up the back stairs to the rooms I shared with my father.

  He was still asleep. The curtains were drawn around his bed but I heard his snoring.

  I reached into my cloak and took out the portfolio I had found in Lovett’s pocket when I searched his body. It was made of pigskin and there was now a reddish stain covering most of one side of it. It was still damp.

  I tiptoed to the table, set down the candle and spread out the contents of the portfolio. There were three letters and a bill of credit addressed to a goldsmith in Norwich.

  The bill of credit was not negotiable, and so could have no value to Lovett’s daughter. That left the letters. Two were written in a cipher or shorthand consisting of characters of the alphabet, numbers and symbols. I knew them as letters only because they were both addressed to Giles Coldridge.

  The third letter was clearly older than the others, for the paper was yellowing and brittle to the touch; one corner had crumbled away. This letter was the only one in plain English.

  To Master Alderley,

  of Leadenhall: London,

  31 January 1648/9

  Sir, You did this country a great service yesterday, when Thos Lovett fell ill, by taking his part. For all his skill with an axe, Brandon is a mean and cowardly fellow. Yesterday’s affair could not have been dispatched without a man of resolution beside him to keep him up to the mark. You cannot receive the public thanks you merit but be assured of my private gratitude. The Lord has directed all to His glory. I rest,

  Sir,

  Your servant,

  Oliver Cromwell

  The snoring behind me changed its rhythm. I had a headache. Why in God’s name this, on top of everything else? I desperately wanted time to think through the implications of what I had found. How had the letter come into Lovett’s possession?

  The obvious answer leapt out of the dark at me: Jem Brockhurst. Jem had been loyal to the Lovetts. He had been living at Barnabas Place, so lowly in the household hierarchy that he must have crept about almost unnoticed.

  Had Jem been Lovett’s spy as well as his messenger boy and his daughter’s guardian? I had no proof, but the facts and the possibilities clustered around the speculation, clinging like a cluster of iron nails to a magnet. Suppose Jem had ferreted out the letter and—

  But why in God’s name had Alderley taken the risk of keeping such a letter, which was as good as a death warrant for him if it fell into the wrong hands? Because he was a prudent man, I thought, and also an arrogant one. Perhaps he had not ruled out the possibility that one day the King would lose his throne and the Commonwealth return. In that case a man with such a letter might turn a profit by it.

  Suppose—

  The snoring stopped.

  I carried the candle and the papers to the fireplace. Suppose that was the reason, the trigger, for Lovett’s return to England now, after all these years – the knowledge that he had in his possession the means utterly to ruin Alderley and his family. Suppose Jem had handed over the letter – too precious to be trusted to a third party – on the night before St Paul’s burned down. Suppose that was when Lovett had told Jem to send his daughter out to meet him. Suppose—

  One by one, I burned the papers – the bill of credit and the two cipher letters. The secrets darkened and disintegrated into fragments on the hearth. I ground them to ash with the poker.

  But I kept back Cromwell’s letter. Suppose I gave it to Chiffinch and asked him to show it to the King. What would it mean for all of us – for Mistress Lovett, for Edward Alderley, for Olivia Alderley, and most of all for my father and me?

  Or
suppose I burned the letter with the rest?

  My father broke wind. I heard the rattle of curtain rings behind me. I folded Cromwell’s letter and pushed it into a crack in the side of the press that held our clothes.

  ‘Who’s there?’ My father’s voice sounded tremulous and full of fear. He broke wind again. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s James, sir, your son.’

  ‘I was dreaming. I was young again, and you were a little child. I dreamed I was carrying you on my shoulders.’

  ‘I remember, sir. I remember it well. But it’s early yet, still dark. Sleep on.’

  As I closed the bed curtains again, I held up the candle so the light fell for a moment on my father’s face. His eyes were already closed and he was smiling.

  Before I left, I threw the bloodstained portfolio on the kitchen fire. Margaret gave me one of this morning’s rolls and a mug of small beer. Afterwards, she came with me to the door.

  ‘You’re troubled, sir,’ she said, in the casual voice of someone commenting on the weather.

  ‘These are troubling times. Tell Samuel I asked after him.’

  I took the familiar road to Charing Cross, and down to Whitehall. The Banqueting House rose before me, its windows already alight.

  Ashes and blood. How I disliked that slab of stone and glass. It made me a child again, with a child’s terrors, sitting on my father’s shoulders and watching them kill a king on a stage. Blood and ashes.

  Early though it still was, the palace was stirring. There was to be a ball for the Queen’s birthday in the evening. The Great Court was seething with servants and tradesmen. There was a sound of hammering from the Great Hall.

  At Master Chiffinch’s private lodgings, I knocked long and hard until at last a sleepy servant opened the door. I begged him to wake his master and give him a message from me. The knave was puffed up and obstinate, like so many Whitehall servants, and he refused, saying I must wait outside until the house was astir and call again at a more Christian hour. I argued with him, and he threatened to have me beaten about the ears and thrown into the street.