Fire Catcher

by C. S. Quinn

  Tarot, Charlie thought, as the images settled into place. These are tarot cards.

  Charlie made out frankincense on the air and some other burned smell. Then he saw the cutlers’ livery and weapons. They were hung ceremonially on the far wall.

  He’d been right about the expensive swords. There were seven, each exquisitely crafted in fine metals and jewels. They must be the works of the master cutler, thought Charlie. Kept secret and safe to show initiates what they might one day aspire to.

  Quickly Charlie seized on them.

  Charlie was halfway to the door when he saw the tapestry. It depicted a tree. A tree with symbols. ‘The Tree of Life,’ said Charlie, pausing to stare with the swords locked in his arms. What was it doing in the Cutlers’ Guild? It occurred to him that Lily might know.

  He didn’t have time to dwell. Shouts from the street suggested the watchmen were moving in on the others. Quickly Charlie broke on to the landing and threw the priceless swords on to the soft mud of the street.

  Waverly looked up at Charlie. Then across to the swords. Temptation glimmered in his eyes.

  ‘If you take a sword,’ shouted Charlie. ‘The cutlers will hunt you for the rest of your days. Let the watchmen bear that burden and go to your wife.’

  Waverly stood as the watchman moved towards the glistening treasure. Then Waverly pulled back, gesturing his men to follow him.

  Charlie raced back down the stair. On the street watchmen closed on the swords. Charlie switched back into the city streets, leaving them to their treasure. Guild artefacts were a poisoned chalice. They couldn’t be sold or fenced.

  Charlie headed for Bridewell wondering if he’d be paid to find the cutlers’ swords again when the fire was burned out.

  Chapter 81

  The priest stood, blinking against the candlelight, tattered clothes hanging from his muscular chest. He reminded Blackstone of a mangy bear, chained and alert as the dogs readied to strike.

  Blackstone had made a makeshift church in the back room of his house. The boys had been amazed to find a raggedy priest there, ready to give them Holy Communion.

  One by one the boys approached him. The priest lifted his heavy manacles, tipped wine, offered bread. Incense poured up from a smoking tankard by his feet.

  ‘Body of Christ,’ he intoned. ‘Blood of Christ.’

  The priest turned to Blackstone and there was the look again. Horror. Disgust. They’d known each other during the war. And though the priest was not a man easily shaken, Blackstone’s transformation openly shocked him.

  ‘You don’t take the Eucharist?’ he said to Blackstone as the boys retreated, chewing.

  Blackstone shook his head. ‘Will you hear my confession?’ he asked.

  The priest tipped up the jug of blessed wine and drank it to the dregs. ‘You wish to confess to a heretic priest?’

  ‘I have no other.’

  ‘Very well.’ The priest licked his lips. ‘In here?’

  Blackstone nodded. He waved the boys away.

  ‘You’re still bound by the laws of the Catholic church?’ Blackstone asked the priest. ‘Despite that?’

  He was pointing to a tattoo just visible beneath the priest’s ragged shirt. Its lines had bled and faded greenish over the years. But the shape was still clear. The Tree of Life. Its circles scattered the priest’s chest, marred with deep scars.

  The priest smiled.

  ‘Thomas,’ he said, ‘I’m bound by priesthood. The same as I always was.’ He tapped his chest. ‘This is a different understanding,’ he said. ‘A meditation on life on earth. I’m still a Catholic.’

  ‘Mystics and sorcery,’ said Blackstone. ‘That’s what ruined us, Torr. That’s what drove us apart.’

  ‘No,’ said Torr. ‘You drove us apart.’ His eyes flashed. ‘You may keep me here, Thomas. You may force me to minister to your boys and take your confession. But you know these chains won’t hold me.’

  ‘They will,’ said Blackstone. ‘Consider them the price of your heresy.’

  ‘My heresy created your cursed treasure,’ said Torr. ‘The treasure you stole. The papers you lost.’

  His eyes met Blackstone’s.

  ‘What happened to you, Thomas?’

  Blackstone looked back steadily. ‘That man you knew is gone. Don’t try to look for him.’ His eyes were dead ice.

  Torr shook his head.

  ‘Conjuror’s tricks,’ said Blackstone dismissively. ‘That’s all you learned in Holland. Your interests brought you nothing.’

  ‘They’ve brought me peace,’ said Torr. ‘Shouldn’t you like that?’

  ‘Then hear my confession,’ demanded Blackstone gruffly, ‘Let me be at peace for a while at least.’

  ‘As you wish.’ Torr made the sign of the cross.

  ‘I have seen Teresa.’ Blackstone’s eyes were closed.

  ‘You said Teresa was dead,’ said Torr carefully.

  ‘She came to me in a dream.’

  Torr let out a breath. He had feared Blackstone had finally lost his mind.

  ‘She told me . . .’ Blackstone was speaking with difficulty. He stared at Torr. ‘Teresa told me she was in hell.’

  Torr opened his mouth to reply, but Blackstone continued.

  ‘Her face was burned,’ he said. ‘And her long hair scorched away. She said . . . she said that demons bound her to a wheel. That they did things to her. Dreadful things.’

  His face was expressionless.

  ‘Teresa told me . . .’ he continued stonily, ‘that they make her confess. To signing the marriage certificate. They make her confess it over and over.’

  ‘Tell me,’ he whispered, ‘that they can’t hurt her in death as they did in life.’

  ‘You’re certain she took her own life?’ asked Torr.

  Blackstone shook his head.

  ‘My memories are scattered. Plague took things. I can’t be sure. Of anything. Most of that year is . . . nothing.’

  But there was something. Even as Blackstone said the words he knew. Memories just at the edge of his grasping. A missing key.

  ‘Thoughts come to me,’ added Blackstone. ‘Things I don’t know . . . I don’t know if they’re real.’ He was shaking his head, eyes closed tight in pain. ‘My father and my sister. I think she wanted to marry. He was angry. Thought her disobedient. I remember . . . There’s a picture in my head. Of him hurting her. Worse than anything he did to me.’

  Blackstone’s scarred fists were balled tightly.

  ‘He can’t have done what I think he did. My father was devout. Family was sacred to him.’

  ‘From what I heard of your father,’ said Torr, ‘he was very strict with his household. Your mother and sister weren’t allowed off the family estate.’

  ‘Women must be strictly governed,’ said Blackstone. ‘Or they fall to base ways. You need only look to my poor wife,’ he added.

  ‘Teresa was responsible for her own life before God,’ said Torr. ‘She was obliged to preserve it for her own salvation. If, in her arrogance, she committed violence against God’s gift, then she could not be allowed into heaven.’

  ‘And if she wasn’t a suicide? If I’m mistaken? Can she not be buried decently?’

  Torr shook his head.

  Blackstone took in a great gasp of air.

  ‘She made spells,’ said Torr. ‘Witchcraft, Thomas.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Then tell me what can be done.’ Blackstone’s voice came louder than he meant. He looked around and dropped it to a whisper. ‘Tell me what can be done, Torr. For the Brotherhood. For the love we once bore each other. Tell me what can be done.’

  Torr looked at his manacles, his dirty shirt.

  ‘Teresa was a witch,’ he said. His eyes lifted to meet Blackstone’s. ‘So you must make a holy sacrifice for her soul. Then you must burn her.’

  Chapter 82

  Prisoners were pelting out of the gates as Charlie neared Bridewell. Some stumbled on ulcerated legs. Others carried sk
in and bone children. Fire was already cresting the east side of the prison. Charlie could hear the screams of the Bedlam maniacs in the north quarter.

  His breathing quickened. Bridewell was an enormous ranging sort of prison. Some cells were half a mile apart. He might not be too late.

  The thick wooden door leading inside was ajar as Charlie approached. The prison was an ex-palace of Henry VIII with the thick walls and fortressing of a bygone military monarchy. So there was no heavy gatehouse. No portcullis.

  Streams of prisoners were thinning now. The older and more infirm were hobbling. But Charlie still could hear howls of many more in the endless rooms beyond.

  There were no gaolers and at first he assumed they’d fled. Bridewell was an open prison like the Fleet. It housed disorderly paupers, children and religious fundamentalists. But there were no officials by the benches where prisoners sat to be memorised.

  Charlie moved into the deeper prison, his breathing quickening. Likely gaolers were roaming inside trying to restore order. In the chaos they might mistake him for a prisoner. But if he could find people still confined, he could release them in return for information. Better yet, he might find Lily.

  Charlie passed into the first large room where prisoners could meet visitors. It was large, airy, built for a King. The floor was covered with lice-infested straw and a corner was stained in a high arc of urine and mounded with excrement.

  He heard shouts from the courtyard beyond. Then another clutch of prisoners burst forth, stampeding through the visitor room towards the gate. Charlie flattened himself against the piss-soaked wall and watched them run. Then he moved into the large courtyard. It was slung with the deserted works of hard labour. Hempen ropes abandoned. Rope-beating hammers were ominously absent.

  Charlie sucked at his scarred lip. He didn’t like this. Somewhere in the prison someone wielded those hammers. And a desperate pauper was more dangerous than a gaoler.

  Bridewell comprised two enormous courtyards bordered by a thick brick fortress building. It was five storeys high in places, elaborate and seemingly never-ending. To the side of the courtyard were Bridewell’s long corridors and rooms. Charlie stepped inside. It was darker in here. Thick walls to protect a King and many rooms leading off. There were no candles or braziers, only slim patches of dim light from small high windows.

  The row of doors were all open. He walked along, glancing quickly inside each large room. They were ranged with straw-filled cot beds, piled with filth and empty of people. The prisoners had all broken out. No guards to be seen. Something wasn’t right. There was a scrabbling sound and Charlie froze. Then a chicken strutted from one of the cells, cocked an eye at the long corridor and began pecking at a stray pile of straw.

  There was another movement out of the corner of his eye and Charlie dodged just in time. A burly man came hurtling from behind an open door. He held a thick-handled whip and a cudgel in his meaty hands. A gaoler, Charlie realised. And he was headed towards him with murder in his eyes.

  Chapter 83

  The map lay unrolled over Somerset House’s largest table top. The King paced then turned in an angry movement.

  ‘Why is there no recent map?’ he demanded.

  Clarence bowed uneasily and began toying with the hem of his doublet. ‘The new maps are kept by Parliament, Your Majesty. For military reasons.’

  ‘Military reasons?’

  ‘Parliament decreed that Your Majesty’s troops don’t have maps of London,’ he said carefully. ‘A large body of armed militia . . .’ his voice quavered. ‘Soldiers might seize power. During Your Majesty’s absence such a thing happened in Scotland . . .’

  The King cut him off with an agitated wave.

  ‘I know what happened in Scotland. Do not speak to me as though I were a child. Scotland is not why Parliament take maps from my Naval Office. It is my power they fear, not that of my army.’

  He sat down, resting his hand on his forehead.

  ‘Amesbury thinks this is a war,’ he said, looking up. ‘He recognises the hand of a general in the spread of the fire.’

  Clarence looked shocked.

  ‘It’s a pincer movement,’ said Amesbury, pointing to the map. ‘Fire comes in strangely from the north and south. The Candlemakers’ Guild burned, but it was nowhere near the main flame. Same with the Saddlers’ Hall.’

  Amesbury marked them out with his finger. ‘It forces us to guard the flanks,’ he concluded, ‘whilst the fire turns west. To the Palace.’

  ‘Amesbury fears for the Palace,’ said Charles. ‘But there’s a lot of brick and stone between the Strand and Westminster.’ He shook his head.

  ‘Every day we’re hounded by commoners claiming a plot on my crown,’ he decided. ‘I won’t act by fear of plot. It’s a simple fire, Amesbury. I won’t doubt my people any longer.’

  He stared at the map.

  ‘Do you still think I should keep my troops from the city?’ he demanded of Clarence.

  ‘It’s a fire,’ said Clarence carefully. ‘Not a military matter. Parliament law is quite clear that His Majesty’s troops may only be deployed . . .’

  ‘By God, Clarence!’ Amesbury’s fist slammed into the heavy table. ‘Citizens are freely looting. Foreigners and Catholics are being lynched in the streets. Every gatehouse is a chaos of fists and escaping carts. If this isn’t a military matter I don’t know what is. Civil order is gone. Entirely gone!’

  ‘London is burning,’ agreed the King. ‘It’s time to act.’ He put a hand to his forehead. ‘Where is my brother?’ he demanded. ‘James was summoned hours ago. I need his knowledge of the city and the naval troops.’

  ‘A letter was sent,’ said Amesbury. ‘He isn’t in his apartments. I imagine he’s with a girl.’

  Charles shook his head. ‘You misjudge my brother,’ he said. ‘James may seem feckless at court. But he’s a seafaring man. No sailor doubts his leadership.’

  ‘There’s not a man in your navy who wouldn’t give his life for the Duke of York,’ agreed Amesbury. ‘But we have a city on fire, not a ship under cannon fire.’

  ‘James performs best in a crisis,’ said Charles. ‘He’ll surprise you.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Call Monmouth,’ he said. ‘My son should learn of these things. He can take a battle post.’

  Amesbury nodded but his mouth was set in a grim line. Charles was relying on a fifteen-year-old boy and the biggest lecher in court for his defences. This couldn’t end well.

  Chapter 84

  Charlie dodged left as the gaoler struck. He took in his opponent. Beady eyes sunk deep in a well-fed face. Thick forearms. Sturdy legs.

  The whip flailed towards Charlie’s exposed shins. He jumped aside.

  ‘Back!’ commanded the gaoler. ‘In the cells, dog!’

  Charlie was too experienced to fight armed men willingly. Surgery was costly and uncertain. He could dodge until the outsized gaoler tired, land a few good blows. But he could sense uncertainty in the other man. So he tried for a trick.

  ‘You strike at a King’s man!’ Charlie shouted, loading his voice with affront and entitlement.

  The gaoler looked at Charlie’s bare feet, then at his passably fashionable leather coat. Confusion rippled his heavy features.

  Seizing the moment, Charlie pulled out the empty marriage papers he’d taken from Torr’s cellar.

  ‘I come from court,’ he said, taking his chances the gaoler couldn’t read. The frozen expression of panic told him he’d guessed correctly. ‘King’s orders,’ he continued, waving the official-looking papers. ‘I come to inform his gaolers of the fire.’

  The gaoler lowered his whip uncertainly. He was still eyeing Charlie’s feet.

  ‘And I’ll relay to His Majesty of the squalid conditions you keep,’ continued Charlie. ‘To avoid treading in shit from your prisoners I was forced to remove my shoes.’

  The gaoler hesitated. ‘They keep animals,’ he said apologetically. ‘It’s mostly pig and chicken shit, you see. The prisoners make th
eir leavings in the Fleet.’

  The gaoler made a clumsy bow.

  ‘Does His Majesty say we shall be paid for the prisoners?’ he asked. His little eyes were shifting about. ‘There is already fire on the north side,’ he added. ‘But we know not whether to release them. Does His Majesty say we’ll still earn our shilling?’

  Charlie nodded. ‘Release them and you’ll still be paid,’ he said. ‘You have the word of the King.’

  The prospect of information on Lily occurred to him.

  ‘A girl came here,’ said Charlie. ‘One of the King’s favourites,’ he improvised. ‘Gypsy in looks. Dark-haired. Red dress . . .’

  ‘The Catholic?’ the gaoler cut him off. ‘Catholic girl?’

  Charlie hesitated. ‘How would you know she was Catholic?’

  ‘We searched her,’ said the gaoler in a tone which suggested he had every right. ‘Pretty girl,’ he added. ‘We always search ’em well. The nice ones. Searched her and found a rosary.’

  ‘Did she have a key?’ asked Charlie. ‘A foreign-looking one? Double sided?’

  The gaoler nodded. Charlie felt relief flood through him. She still had the key.

  ‘Did she ask about some prisoners here?’ asked Charlie. ‘From long ago. On a ship?’

  The gaoler nodded and rearranged his testicles.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Asking about prisoners. You say she’s a favourite with the King?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘Did you tell her what she wanted to know?’

  The gaoler coughed out a sort of laugh and shook his head.

  ‘No religious prisoners in Bridewell from so long ago. Cromwell made us set them free fifteen years back. Old Ironsides believed in freedom of worship,’ he added, as though he disagreed strongly with this.

  ‘How long ago was the girl here?’ asked Charlie, ignoring his disappointment at the dead end. More important was finding his key.

  ‘She’s still here,’ said the gaoler, as though this should be obvious.

  Charlie’s heart pounded.

  ‘She’s still here? Where?’

  ‘She was a Catholic,’ repeated the gaoler slowly, as though Charlie were slow of understanding. ‘They’re all over London starting fires.’