Fire Catcher

by C. S. Quinn

  The gaoler scratched nervously at a flea bite. He often brokered black-market goods, but was regretting agreeing to this transaction. Something was very wrong with this dead-eyed man.

  ‘It’s hard to think of you . . . that way.’ He managed.

  ‘Cromwell took revenge on the King’s generals,’ said Blackstone. ‘We were crammed in here. Starved, tortured.’

  His eyes clouded slightly. They rested on a sharp-looking iron implement.

  ‘Then,’ he continued, ‘I was employed to extract secrets from Royalists. My . . . experiences you see.’ He smiled sadly at the pincers in his hand. ‘They made me better qualified.’

  ‘Do you have the cauldrons ready?’ he asked.

  ‘We have two,’ said the gaoler carefully. ‘We had a problem finding lead.’

  Blackstone picked up a wickedly toothed wooden vice.

  ‘You’ve made some improvements,’ he noted. His eyes were cold.

  The gaoler nodded. Sweat had broken out on his forehead, though the cell was cool.

  ‘Torture is a wicked business,’ said Blackstone.

  The gaoler nodded uncertainly.

  Blackstone lifted the vice and eyed it against the candle flame.

  ‘New?’ he suggested. ‘There’s no blood.’

  The gaoler nodded. ‘We’ve better tools than any other gaol,’ he said. ‘There’s no man in twenty years the Clink hasn’t broken under torture.’

  ‘No man?’

  ‘There was one,’ the gaoler corrected himself. ‘A nobleman.’ The gaoler sniffed. ‘’S one of those legends,’ he says. ‘I don’t believe it. The story is they used every tool on him for two years. He never gave any names.’ The gaoler gave a scoff of derision. ‘I’ve never met a man lasted more than two weeks.’

  Blackstone replaced the vice. ‘He was real,’ he said. ‘They called him The Unbreakable. Torturers tried each device in the Clink and even fashioned some new ones. The man never uttered a word.’

  ‘You were one of the torturers?’ asked the gaoler, sounding interested.

  ‘I am the man they couldn’t break,’ replied Blackstone.

  The gaoler’s eyes widened.

  ‘I’m a different man now,’ added Blackstone. ‘I’m a father. Of a kind.’

  ‘Children are a blessing,’ offered the gaoler uncertainly.

  Blackstone nodded. ‘And we must protect them.’ In a sudden movement he grabbed the gaoler’s throat. The gaoler twisted helplessly under Blackstone’s grip. But his skinny frame was no match for the enormous man.

  Deliberately, Blackstone forced him back into a leather chair. The gaoler struggled in horror as leather straps were fastened over his wrists. Blackstone scooped up the iron pincer.

  ‘You hurt one of my boys,’ said Blackstone, wielding the pincers. He raised a hand as the gaoler made to protest. ‘You came to his house and took his brother. For being Catholic.’

  ‘Many boys,’ said the gaoler, his voice quavering. ‘Parliament makes us . . . Catholics must be kept in line.’

  Blackstone gave him a cold smile. His eyes were burning. ‘Catholic women and children too? I hear all.’ He tapped his head.

  The gaoler shrank back. ‘I can give you . . . information,’ he gibbered. ‘Of interest.’

  ‘I know everything in the prisons,’ said Blackstone carelessly, his eyes ranging the array of tools. He selected a sharp-edged hammer.

  ‘Amesbury is looking for you,’ blurted the gaoler. ‘He suspects you build an army against His Majesty.’

  Blackstone’s face darkened. Amesbury was one of the turncoats. He hadn’t thought about that in a long time. They’d fought together for the King. Blackstone, Amesbury and Torr had been Brothers of the Sealed Knot. Sworn to return the King to the throne. Before Blackstone made the unholy marriage and all the darkness descended.

  ‘Why does Amesbury suspect I plot against the King?’ he demanded.

  The gaoler was shaking his head. ‘I ask no questions,’ he said, looking helplessly at the cuffs. ‘I just supply lead. Tell me nothing, I beg you. I will never hurt another Catholic.’

  ‘After the war I had just enough money to buy a guild place,’ continued Blackstone, ignoring him. ‘They taught me a craft. Gave me permission to trade. I worked my way up to the Mayor’s office.’ His eyes dulled. ‘But that is not where true power lay. Not for a Catholic.’

  Blackstone pulled off his hat. The gaoler recoiled. Shiny wheals and scars had eaten away half the skin on his scalp.

  ‘I burned with plague,’ he said. ‘I cannot be killed. Now I build my army of fallen angels. We will drag the King down to hell.’

  ‘I will not tell . . .’ began the gaoler.

  ‘You?’ laughed Blackstone. ‘A Protestant gaoler, who’ll help a Catholic plotter for the right price? You’ll keep my secret?’

  The gaoler’s face said it all. He knew too much.

  ‘We have a kinship, you and I,’ said Blackstone, gesturing to the prison cell. ‘We understand things other men cannot. Or should not,’ he corrected himself. ‘We know great secrets.’

  Blackstone moved back.

  ‘I find the most terrible thing is the shame,’ he said. ‘Not yours. You become the monster all too easily.’

  His blue eyes looked thoughtful.

  ‘But their shame,’ he said. ‘The men you hurt. That’s what chills the soul. Pissing themselves and crying for their mothers. You carry it always. Do you find that?’

  The gaoler nodded but Blackstone could see in his eyes it was a lie.

  ‘Then after a time,’ said Blackstone. ‘You come to need it.’

  Thoughtfully he picked up the wooden vice.

  Blackstone attached the vice to the gaoler’s knuckle.

  ‘Broken bones are painful,’ he said. ‘But it’s the joints. The tendons. That’s where agony really lies.’

  The man began shaking his head, sweating.

  ‘Knuckles make a noise,’ continued Blackstone. ‘You never forget it.’

  The gaoler’s gaze dropped to Blackstone’s hands. Two of his large knuckles were a flattened mess of scars. He looked back up at Blackstone’s face.

  ‘Please . . .’ he said, ‘I’ve been nothing but loyal.’

  ‘Tell me what you know of Amesbury,’ said Blackstone.

  ‘We imprisoned a young boy for thieving,’ said the gaoler, the words coming out in a rush. ‘This afternoon. We only showed him the tools and he told us everything.’

  ‘Everything?’

  ‘He worked for the Earl of Amesbury. As an informant. He was trying to find Torr. To get to you.’

  Blackstone’s mind ticked over this, turning it this way and that. If Torr were found, could it be a problem? He pictured his old ally, marked with mystic tattoos, alchemy tools in his strong hands.

  ‘If you should need someone to kill Torr . . .’ began the gaoler.

  Blackstone laughed.

  ‘You are not the man,’ he said.

  He moved back and the gaoler’s body relaxed slightly. He tugged hopefully at the leather cuffs. Blackstone looked at them and then raised a hand for the gaoler to be patient.

  Blackstone nodded. ‘Do you tell yourself stories?’ he said, ‘of the men you torture?’

  ‘I don’t know . . .’

  ‘We all have ways of squaring it with ourselves,’ continued Blackstone. ‘Let me tell you my way.’

  Chapter 14

  There was a pause as the boy visibly assessed his options. He looked at Charlie then to the wider meat market.

  ‘I deliver things to her,’ he said finally. ‘She pays me.’

  ‘What kind of things?’ Charlie demanded.

  ‘Information.’

  ‘About?’ Charlie tightened his hold on the boy.

  ‘A brotherhood!’ yelped the boy. ‘She’s looking for a brotherhood.’

  ‘What kind of brotherhood?’ prompted Charlie.

  ‘Alchemists,’ said the boy. ‘She says they’re powerful.’ The boy swallowe
d. ‘They have a secret which could change the world.’

  ‘And how are you helping Lily to discover this brotherhood?’

  The boy hesitated, and his eyes shifted almost imperceptibly to his chest. Thief taking had honed Charlie’s attention to small gestures. In an instant his hand was at the boy’s shirt, pulling free a paper hidden there.

  ‘What is this?’ he demanded.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the boy, ‘I can’t read.’

  Charlie eyed the paper, careful not to loosen his grip on the boy. He didn’t want to admit he couldn’t read well himself.

  At first glance he saw words arranged in a circle. Names, perhaps.

  ‘This is for Lily Boswell?’ asked Charlie. ‘This is the information she wanted?’

  The boy nodded mutely.

  ‘Where did you get it?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘One of the rebel factions. They meet by the Thames.’

  ‘A rebel faction?’

  ‘Catholics,’ clarified the boy. ‘They are mostly poor boys. From Whitechapel, near the tanneries. But they have a leader who is a noble. They say he is a ghost. A ghost who can’t be killed.’

  Charlie was piecing things together.

  ‘Does the group use this symbol?’ He held up his key, tightening his other arm on the boy.

  The boy’s eyes widened and he nodded.

  ‘They have it burned on to them. Here.’ The boy gestured with his forearm.

  Charlie’s face darkened.

  ‘When were you to give this to Lily?’ He waved the paper.

  ‘Today at noon. She’ll take a carriage to the Palace, I’m to meet her there,’ he admitted.

  ‘The Palace?’ In his surprise Charlie released his grip slightly. Lily must be joining the parade of women hoping to catch King Charles’s eye. It made sense that a girl as attractive as Lily would try her luck. But it seemed beneath her.

  Sensing his distraction, the boy made a sudden twist, slipping free of the carcass. Charlie made a grab, but the boy, slick with entrails, slipped from his grip. He skidded across the bloody floor and fled into the market. Charlie watched him go, deciding he had extracted all he needed. He moved his attention to the paper.

  His eyes travelled over the ring of words. It was a round robin. Of the kind sailors write so as no one man is held culprit for challenging the captain. A round of names circled a short paragraph of script and a number four.

  But the number was different to how it was usually written. The four had a kind of curly tail. Like a symbol.

  Charlie sucked at his scarred upper lip and began slowly making out the names. These were surnames he was familiar with – Smith, Cutler, Skinner. Commoner’s names. Men who worked for a living. This fitted with what the boy had told him. Poor Catholics. But the paper did not. What impoverished Catholic boy could write?

  Charlie’s gaze fell to the longer script, which was written in the shaky hand of a semi-literate. He read it carefully, trying not to move his lips as he read. Charlie froze.

  ‘The Sealed Knot ask their Grand Master Blackstone,’ said the writing, ‘not to use alchymy to fire the city.’

  Blackstone.

  His gaze went back to the document. He licked his finger, dabbed at the ink and tasted it. A cheap kind made from burned tar and honey, which flaked within weeks of drying. This writing was not old.

  He turned it back and re-read carefully. Alchymy.

  Charlie assessed what he knew.

  Blackstone had contracted plague and vanished last summer. Charlie had assumed him dead and buried, his possessions burned.

  He’d made an uneasy promise to Maria that he wouldn’t pursue the mystery. But his thief-taker instincts had always gnawed away at him. Eventually they’d driven a split between them.

  What if Blackstone lived?

  The paper seemed to suggest he’d not only survived the plague, but had built a following of Catholic boys.

  Fire swirled in Charlie’s mind. If Blackstone lived, then the chest his key opened could still be somewhere in London. Charlie thought of the growing fire, and his stomach turned.

  Flames were sweeping through the city. He needed to get to the Palace.

  Chapter 15

  The moment Charlie arrived at Whitehall he knew he’d been misinformed. The flag at Barbara Castlemaine’s grand apartments was raised. The King’s most famous mistress allowed no parades of women. There was no other way a commoner like Lily could get inside the Palace.

  Charlie eyed the hotch-potch of Palace buildings, thinking. His eye idly rested on some anti-Royalist graffiti. A naked image of the Queen, graphically suggesting she was barren because of the Pope’s illicit attentions.

  Something had always seemed amiss about Lily going to the Palace. Charlie replayed his conversation with the boy. The informant told the truth. Charlie was sure of it. He took out the round robin and studied it. It wasn’t yet noon. Charlie decided he had time to pursue another line of enquiry.

  Expensive shops with colourful carved-wood frontages were ranged opposite Whitehall. An apothecary sign swung outside one. It was the only shop whose diamond-pane windows were black with soot. As he neared, thick yellow-green smoke curled from the doorjamb.

  Charlie knocked, and when no answer came, opened the door to a fug of choking fumes. He squinted through the eye-watering haze. After a moment his eyes adjusted to the gloom, and he made out the tall shape of Sebastian Longbody.

  ‘Charlie Tuesday!’ A twitching mouth was the closest thing Sebastian did to smiling. Facial expressions were bothersome with so many ideas raging. ‘Only this week I used those herbs you returned to me.’

  ‘It was one of my most interesting cases,’ said Charlie.

  Sebastian tilted his head and squinted through the smoke. His huge eyes were yellowed and staring. A tall black hat and white collar marked him of the Quaker religion and his jet cloak was pocked with round burn holes. A shock of wild brown hair gave his skeletal frame a scarecrow air. He stood in front of a large table scarred with the burns and stains. Behind him were ranged flasks of every size and colour.

  ‘A moment.’ Sebastian held up his hand. Then he tipped a flask, dissipating the curling yellow smoke.

  Charlie approached the table. A crucible burned with embers. Smoke seized at his chest and his head swam.

  ‘Opium,’ explained Sebastian. ‘Smugglers are bringing huge bales from India. It is a good painkiller mixed with wine. Burning makes it better still. Don’t stand too close,’ he added, waving Charlie away. ‘It addles the mind if you aren’t used to it.’

  Charlie took a judicious step backwards.

  ‘Your potions are still keeping you in favour with the King?’ he asked, eyeing the colourful flasks.

  ‘How else does a Quaker keep a shop?’ said Sebastian. ‘London is not known for religious tolerance. People say Catholics are throwing fireballs.’

  ‘Catholics are blamed for the fire?’ asked Charlie.

  Sebastian twitched his strange smile. ‘If not the Catholics then us Quakers,’ he said, ‘and if not Quakers then the foreigners. Is that not how it is with Londoners? We must all be Protestant or burn.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Things are changing in England,’ he said, tapping his black hat. ‘Cromwell split religion apart.’

  Charlie took the round robin out of his pocket. ‘How much do you know of alchemists?’ he asked. ‘Might their arts be used to fire the city?’

  Sebastian tilted his head at the paper.

  ‘You wish me to discern something from this?’

  Charlie nodded and Sebastian peered.

  ‘Why are the names arranged in a circle?’

  ‘It’s a round robin,’ said Charlie. ‘A sailor’s tool. They write their names in a circle so none can be held ringleader.’

  Sebastian blinked his yellowed eyes slowly at the paper.

  ‘Common names all,’ he said. ‘No nobles. Men who work a trade.’ He frowned at the writing. ‘The Sealed Knot ask
their Grand Master Blackstone,’ he read, ‘not to use alchymy to fire the city.’

  He looked up at Charlie.

  ‘Treason?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ admitted Charlie. ‘But I think they may use some alchemic means. There’s a number four. Here. Could it mean something?’ He pointed.

  Sebastian raised the page and mouthed silently.

  ‘That’s no number,’ he said eventually. ‘It’s a symbol. For lye.’

  ‘An alchemist symbol?’ asked Charlie.

  Sebastian’s brow furrowed. ‘Yes. But lye is no alchemist thing. Every laundress in the city has a barrel for whitening linen.’

  ‘Could it be used to cause a fire?’

  Sebastian considered this.

  ‘Not to my knowledge,’ he said. ‘Lye is made from soot. But you can’t set it alight. In chymic law lye is named as a common substance. Along with wood and potash. And I don’t believe an alchemist would use it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m an apothecary, not an alchemist,’ said Sebastian. ‘We are sciences which collide. I supply them. They supply me. But from my dealings with them, they are haughty in using higher metals. The only low thing an alchemist mixes is sulphur.’

  Charlie considered this, trying to make sense of it.

  ‘An alchemist would never use lye?’

  ‘You’d have to ask an alchemist,’ said Sebastian. ‘It is possible some rogue chymist would attempt his own creations. But those I have encountered are a close-knit community. True alchemists are obsessed with rare ingredients. They believe only the purest will reveal the universal marriage.’

  ‘Marriage?’ repeated Charlie.

  ‘Some alchemist belief,’ said Sebastian with a shrug. ‘I am not certain what it means. Only that alchemists talk of the universal marriage a great deal.’

  ‘Could they mean an actual marriage?’ asked Charlie, thinking of Blackstone’s papers.

  ‘I have no idea,’ said Sebastian.

  ‘What of the Magnus Opus?’ asked Charlie. ‘That’s an alchemist pursuit isn’t it?’

  Sebastian looked confused. ‘I assumed you know all about it.’