Fire Catcher

by C. S. Quinn

  The expensive jewellery shops of Bishops Gate were husks. The Royal Exchange a sooty ruin. Scraps of burned things danced on the breeze. And in the distance, the great mighty roar and flames of the fire still burned westwards.

  ‘The sun sets,’ said Charlie, looking to the blood-red sun. ‘You’d hardly know it. Fire lights the city bright as day.’

  ‘And heats the air,’ said Lily, sweating. It was desert dry, and warmth poured from the ashes and burned rubble.

  Charlie saw a run of exposed cellars where the road had collapsed. Burned wine barrels, rolls of silk and linen turned to ash, butter and cheeses split and scorched.

  ‘There’s not enough money in England,’ murmured Lily, ‘to pay back these goods.’

  London Wall lay bare and desolate when they arrived. Its tangle of tall buildings cowed and humbled to ash. In the centre of it all, the London Stone stood alone glowing faintly.

  ‘It’s like a lone survivor,’ said Lily, eyeing the luminescent stone. ‘Looking at everything it’s lost.’

  ‘At least the stone survived,’ said Charlie. ‘A bad omen should it have cracked.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t believe in omens.’

  ‘The London Stone is different.’

  ‘It hasn’t done much good so far,’ said Lily.

  Charlie was taking in the ugly devastation. As an orphan he’d grown up floating between the close family structures and social ranks that tie Londoners to the clay earth. So he’d made his own ancestry in the dense buildings and dirt alleys of London. He’d woven his soul into labyrinthine streets and crowded taverns. Now all was burned and he felt suddenly adrift.

  ‘Looters are already here,’ noted Charlie, looking at a man and a boy picking through the debris. They were working the edges of the burned buildings, coughing as smoke plumed from the spongy ash.

  ‘Have a care for the smoulder,’ called Charlie to the boy. ‘Where there is smoke is fire.’

  The young looter wore a tatter of flour sacking for a shirt, torn to show ribs under paper-thin skin. He nodded uncertainly, but his pencil-thin limbs continued stalking the hot remains.

  The older man wiped a line of sweat from his brow. ‘Still does dreadful warm here,’ he commented, looking to Charlie. ‘Think you it smoulders?’

  Charlie nodded. There was something on the warm air. A whispered promise of unfinished business.

  ‘Don’t go inside the buildings,’ advised Charlie. ‘Smoke can choke a man quickly.’

  The man took off the dog-eared wedge of material that served for his hat and waved it in front of his face. ‘Perhaps,’ he said suspiciously. ‘But I think if it flares again the flames will be small and we’ll have a goodly time to escape.’

  They moved towards the shell of a burned-out cottage, the man using a stick to poke around the fire’s leavings and the boy plunging his hands into the charred embers, cursing occasionally as they met with a burning fragment.

  Charlie frowned at them and turned back to Lily.

  ‘On their own heads,’ he muttered.

  Lily was looking at the gutted remains.

  ‘Can you tell from the rubble?’ she asked, prodding a chunk of smoking wood, ‘where the pawn shop was?’

  Charlie was taking in the shapes of the burned-out carnage.

  ‘We’re standing in Fen Church,’ he said. ‘So over there.’

  Lily was shaking her head.

  ‘This was some noble’s house, Charlie. Look at the burned things. That’s a piece of plate. And some parts of linens were there.’ She knelt and eased free the remains of a burned box. Inside was a blackened ribbon, scorched where it had held hair. The rest was fine ash that fell through her fingers.

  ‘It’s not a noble house,’ said Charlie. ‘It was a church. Commoners tried to protect what they had here. That’s why you see domestic things.’ He pointed.

  ‘People use the churches to protect their things from fire,’ continued Charlie. ‘Thick stone,’ he added, slapping a standing fragment of wall and causing scorched bricks to fall. ‘Those who can’t afford carts or boats rely on God’s protection.’

  ‘They lost it all,’ said Lily sadly. ‘And they didn’t have much to begin with.’ She was looking at a scorched sack of grain. ‘What of those with expensive goods?’ she added. ‘Jewellers, fur trades?’

  ‘Those are guild trades,’ said Charlie distractedly, leading her over the debris. ‘They have the Guildhall to store their fine things. It has a vault buried twenty feet underground with walls two feet thick.’

  He paused to take in the angle of the sun and the shape of the ruins.

  ‘The pawn shop is over there.’ He pointed at a crowd of men digging at some shrubs. ‘Likely he’ll be with those other shopkeepers unearthing their goods.’

  Lily hesitated as they passed a charred corpse. Some unlucky Londoner had tried to rescue their possessions from the flames.

  ‘They’ll say that no one died,’ she added sadly. ‘That’s how nobles will tell it. No one will record the commoners who burned.’

  ‘This way,’ said Charlie.

  As they crunched over the burned ground a gentle breeze whispered through the piles of decimated buildings and possessions. It stirred a malevolent glow in the embers, watching them through a hundred red eyes.

  Chapter 103

  Charlie and Lily found a clutch of sweating men digging purposefully by a patch of skeleton-black bushes. For a moment Charlie thought the pawnbroker wasn’t among them. And then he saw him, leaning on his shovel looking mournfully to the smoke above. A pile of muddy goods lay by his feet.

  ‘Brookes!’ Charlie approached him warmly. The pawnbroker’s far-away look was replaced by surprise then pleasure. He was a silver-haired man who’d moulded into the fabric of his shop over the years. Outside his small shop he looked lost and strange.

  Brookes clapped Charlie on the shoulder. Then his eyes rested on Lily.

  ‘This is Lily,’ said Charlie. ‘A friend.’

  Brookes raised his white eyebrows.

  ‘You need not fear, I do not come to sell,’ said Lily.

  ‘You know each other?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘She’s come to pawn things before,’ mumbled Brookes, in a tone which suggested the transaction hadn’t been a pleasant one.

  Lily smiled innocently.

  ‘You saved your goods?’ asked Charlie, pointing to the beginnings of an open pit. Inside was a dense packed trove of possessions. The first layer revealed blackened cooking pots, bone-handled knives, fusty wigs and linen bed sheets.

  ‘My goods, yes,’ said Brookes, stooping to heave out a skillet. He dusted away soil and dropped it to one side. ‘But I have nowhere to house them. The shop is all burned. The fire still rages. My shop boy goes to Watford where we have a cousin with a donkey.’

  Charlie knelt to help him, pulling free some cheap bolts of cloth.

  ‘People say the fire will reach the Palace,’ continued Brooks. ‘Perhaps there’ll be nothing to come back for. If Whitehall burns people will doubt the Crown.’

  They both stared up at the red-black clouds covering the sky. The bloody maw of the flames crashed a great crescendo in the distance. The air was parched.

  ‘All here was vanquished,’ continued Brookes. ‘It was like civil war all over again. The fire had laid up its wide army all around then attacked us mercilessly.’

  He shook his head sadly.

  ‘Many poor people thought the church would save them. No flames could breach the walls. But the roof. The roof of St Swithins was wooden shingle. Flaming ashes dropped down.’ Brookes mimed the action with a palm of ash scooped from the ground. ‘I saw myself when flames had exploded through the tall windows,’ he added. ‘It tore the weeping face from the Virgin Mary and showered the street in stained glass. Like jewels. Until the looters came.’

  ‘Didn’t they fight the fire on Cannon Street?’ asked Charlie.

  Brookes shook his head and heaved out a small, sturdy chest. Charlie hel
ped him brush away soil and set it right.

  ‘It came like a stealth attack,’ said Brookes. ‘The people were distracted trying to save the church. The heat had skulked along St Swithin’s Lane, warming the dry timbers of the homes, readying them for the next wave of force. Then came a blast of gale wind. It drove smoke into our faces and suddenly all the houses were alight.’

  Brookes paused.

  ‘But you don’t come for news of the fire,’ he decided.

  Charlie shook his head. ‘I’m looking for a Royalist who pawned a set of guns. Seventeen years ago.’

  They’d unearthed a new layer of pawned possessions now. Piles of dresses, underclothes, breeches and stockings lay exposed. Hose, belts, coats, and boxes brimming with buttons and buckles.

  ‘A set of guns?’ Brookes pulled free a bundle of shoes. ‘They’ll be in my records. But they’re all in St Paul’s Cathedral.’

  ‘St Paul’s?’

  ‘Safest place in the city for paper,’ said Brookes. ‘The stationers and booksellers of Paternoster Row began it,’ he added. ‘St Paul’s will never burn.’

  ‘Could we get your records out?’ asked Charlie with a rising sense of hopelessness.

  Brookes shook his head.

  ‘The vaults at St Paul’s are sealed up so tight not the tiniest spark can get inside. Fire rages that way. Those with papers in the vault are determined it will not burn. Ah!’ he added, ‘my sledge.’

  They turned to see a beleaguered-looking donkey led by a frightened boy. Both animal and herder were looking this way and that at the burned city.

  ‘You can see the flame from Watford,’ said the boy. ‘The people all say it’s a curse. On the King and his godless ways.’

  ‘Never mind the King,’ said Brookes, pointing to the pit. ‘Load the sledge.’

  A clutch of tools had been revealed under the clothing. Handsaws and hammers. The boy worked to pull free a scythe and began heaping the sledge at impressive speed. Charlie helped Brookes heave up a set of hoes.

  ‘Perhaps you remember the man,’ tried Charlie, aware time was running out. ‘Thomas Blackstone. Tall. Dark hair, blue eyes. Very large. Grossly so.’

  Brookes shook his head and didn’t stop loading.

  ‘He came after the war,’ pressed Charlie. ‘Few Royalists pawned guns at such a time.’

  ‘More than you might imagine,’ said Brookes, straightening. But he looked as though he might be remembering something. He looked distractedly to Lily. She was dipping her hand into a rescued button box and letting the contents fall through her fingers.

  ‘He has a smell of death about him, this Blackstone,’ supplied Lily. ‘Dangerous. A general during the war. Docked from a ship called the Mermaid.’

  This seemed to prompt a memory.

  ‘There was a general,’ said Brookes slowly. ‘Now you say of a ship it puts me in mind of him.’

  Chapter 104

  Monmouth was adjusting the seed pearls on his black doublet. He pulled at the reins on his horse, coughing at the smoke. His long lashes blinked against the smuts and cinders.

  ‘You’ve found me a bad horse, Clarence,’ he accused, twisting in an effort to regain control. ‘She nearly had me off when we fled from that mob.’

  ‘She has the best temperament in the Royal Stables,’ said Clarence, giving his own steed a soothing pat. ‘She behaved valiantly. But the smoke frightens her.’

  They looked to the General Post Office. It was a fine brick building with long windows in new glass.

  ‘We’ll defend it with our lives,’ said Monmouth grandly, still wrestling the horse. ‘Where are the men?’

  ‘These are what we have,’ said Clarence, gesturing to the thirty palace guards. ‘We must press commoners to make one hundred.’

  Monmouth blanched a little. ‘Very good,’ he muttered. His horse jerked her head and Monmouth gave her a spiteful kick. Cries went up in the distance. Mobs were on full attack now, battering Catholics and lynching foreigners.

  ‘Common people,’ muttered Monmouth. ‘If I were King I’d have them hanged for looking so disagreeable.’ He glanced at Clarence irritably.

  ‘Do you really think it’s true?’ asked Monmouth. ‘That Parliament would have me as King?’

  ‘The Queen births no children,’ said Clarence carefully. ‘The Duke of York has Catholic sympathies. I can imagine it said, that a good Protestant should rule.’

  Monmouth seemed to swell.

  ‘I would look very fine with a crown,’ he said. ‘Royal jewels ornamenting me. I have the bearing for it, that’s what people say.’

  Clarence’s eyes flashing a warning. Monmouth’s ambition was troubling him. The boy seemed increasingly deluded of late.

  ‘Why are you twisting like that, Clarence?’ asked Monmouth. ‘Do lice trouble you?’

  ‘A few possessions,’ admitted Clarence, ‘inside my doublet. And I wear extra clothes too. My house will burn within the hour,’ he added, looking steadily to the enormous Post Office.

  Monmouth raised his eyebrows. ‘They couldn’t get you a cart?’

  ‘They did, but I sent it to the Naval Office,’ said Clarence. ‘Important paperwork there. There’s rumours the Dutch could attack whilst England is weak. We need our defences in place.’

  He moved a fat white hand inside his doublet and brought forth a little miniature. A portrait of a plain-looking girl.

  ‘It’s strange,’ said Clarence, ‘I always thought I’d protect my fine furnishings. In the end I only wanted a few items.’

  Monmouth peered at the miniature.

  ‘Your wife?’ he suggested.

  ‘My daughter,’ said Clarence thoughtfully. ‘She died in child-birth, recently, but I hadn’t seen her for years. I didn’t approve of her marriage and wouldn’t pay her dowry. My daughter never forgave me,’ said Clarence, tucking the miniature back in his doublet.

  ‘The sins of Eve,’ said Monmouth, ‘are borne by women.’

  ‘She died alone,’ said Clarence, hardly listening. ‘There was no money for a live-in nurse. By the time her husband came back with the midwife it was too late. And now all burns, I realise that I lost everything long ago.’

  Clarence looked to the assembled soldiers.

  ‘Fire comes, Your Grace,’ he said. ‘We should begin pressing men.’

  ‘It looks a good deal in the distance,’ said Monmouth uncertainly. He leaned down and refastened a ribbon that had untied on his breeches. ‘Once the people see us fine men on horses, they’ll rush to our aid. No need to endanger ourselves unduly.’

  A guard was approaching.

  ‘High tide comes,’ said Clarence, looking hopefully to the Thames. ‘Pipes in the west will fill with water again. Perhaps there is a chance . . .’

  ‘The Fleet River is blocked with debris,’ said the guard, shaking his head. ‘The only way to clear it is gunpowder. We have no long fuses.’

  ‘Have we no brave men?’ asked Monmouth. He glanced at the King’s guard. ‘None who’ll risk themselves for the city?’

  The guard looked at Monmouth, high on his horse in his spotless clothing.

  ‘None under this command,’ he said.

  There was a long silence. Then Clarence began sliding from his horse.

  ‘I’ll go,’ he said.

  Monmouth turned to him in shock.

  ‘You could lose a hand!’ he said. ‘It’s a commoner’s job.’

  Clarence was removing his snowy wig.

  ‘Better an old man lose a hand than a young one,’ he said. ‘Have men roll the gunpowder by the blockage. I’ll light the fuse.’

  The guard was looking dubiously at Clarence. The fat old man might lose more than a hand. He didn’t look fast on his feet. But a slim chance was better than none, he reasoned.

  ‘Bring the gunpowder!’ called the guard.

  Chapter 105

  Brookes was frowning in thought. ‘A Royalist who’d come back from Holland,’ he said. ‘I have a memory he pawned something valuable
. Might have been guns, though I couldn’t say for certain.’

  ‘Do you remember anything else about him?’ asked Charlie.

  Brookes shook his head. ‘It was a long time ago,’ he said.

  ‘You would have taken his residence,’ said Charlie. ‘If he pawned guns.’

  ‘I would have,’ said Brookes. ‘It would be written in my records.’

  ‘The records we can’t get to?’ said Lily, turning out a weasel-skin coat and a pair of leather stays.

  Brookes looked at her and then back to the boy loading.

  ‘You’re sure you remember nothing of his guns?’ pressed Charlie.

  Brookes shook his head slowly. ‘Couldn’t even say for sure that’s what he pawned. Many guns, Charlie. Many guns in seventeen years.’ He turned to the boy. ‘We can’t fit the larger tools,’ he decided. ‘Leave them. Take the buttons and buckles.’

  ‘What of his reasons for pawning?’ asked Charlie. ‘If it was something valuable you must have asked the reason?’

  The boy had almost fully loaded the sledge and Brookes was looking sadly at the possessions he’d have to leave to looters.

  Brookes hesitated. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I do have some recollection of that.’ He frowned trying to urge the memory. ‘This man had sailed back from Holland and I asked of our exiled King,’ said Brookes. ‘And he said . . . He said something of putting his faith in new giants. Those who warded for breed not birth.’ Brookes looked at his goods. ‘I remember it,’ he said, ‘because my wife was growing beans at the time and she made some joke. Jack and the beanstalk or some such.’

  Lily and Charlie looked at one another. Lily mouthed the words to herself.

  New giants.

  ‘Do you know what he meant?’ asked Charlie finally. Brookes shrugged. ‘A family motto?’ he suggested. ‘I was more interested that he’d met the exiled King.’

  ‘A strange kind of motto, breeding over birth’ said Charlie, but Brookes was focused on wedging extra goods on to the sledge.