Death's Bright Angel

by Death's Bright Angel (retail) (epub)

  At Ravensden House, all was confusion. That much, at least, was apparent from the scene in the entrance hall behind Phineas Musk: paintings, boxes and sacks piled up, ready to be moved; Youngest Barcock and Cornelia’s maid scurrying hither and thither.

  ‘She’s packing,’ said Musk. ‘Like it’s for an expedition to the Indies, and she has half a year to prepare for it.’

  ‘And the Earl?’

  ‘Won’t move. Says there’s plenty of time, and where would he go? If he was still as ill as he was, we could move him and he’d barely notice. But he’s well enough to be a true Quinton.’

  ‘That being?’

  ‘Stubborn beyond measure, Sir Matthew. Begging pardon.’

  I found my wife in our bedchamber, attempting, unaided, to manhandle the portrait of my father from the wall. I rushed forward and took the weight.

  ‘Matthew!’ she said, surprised, and took hold of my waist affectionately. I lifted the bandage around her head to examine the wound on her forehead: a vicious bruise was developing around the gash.

  ‘You should not be doing this,’ I said. ‘You should have called for Musk, or Youngest Barcock.’

  She ignored my words, stepped away, and just stared at me. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror by the side of our bed, and realised why. My skin and hair were blackened and burnt, my arm heavily bandaged. I looked as though I had been in a ten-hour fight with an Algerine corsair.

  ‘And you should not be doing that, husband,’ she said, coming back to me and taking me in her arms. ‘You cannot save all of London as you saved me, Matthew Quinton. London would not be worth the losing of you.’

  I wept then, long and hard. Wept for the fallen city and all that had perished in the flames, wept for my guilt and my sin, wept for our unborn child, wept for the dear, precious, fragile creature who was my wife.

  * * *

  At length, after many endearments, I left Cornelia and went to the Earl’s chamber. My brother was propped up on his bed, evidently conversing in French with Captain Ollivier.

  ‘My Lord,’ I said. ‘Captain.’

  The Breton bowed his head.

  ‘You will have much to discuss,’ he said. ‘I will leave you.’

  ‘My thanks, Captain,’ I said. ‘I pray you, sir, assist Reverend Gale in watching over Lady Quinton. Make certain she does not overtask herself.’

  ‘I will do my utmost, Sir Matthew, but your wife has a strong will. If she wishes to overtask herself, I fear there will be very little I or anyone else can do to prevent it.’

  With that, he left Charles and I alone.

  ‘More than fifty livery halls gone, Musk tells me,’ said the Earl of Ravensden. ‘Perhaps eighty churches or more, Saint Paul’s set to follow them in short order. Countless thousands of homes burned, and heaven knows what a loss to the Exchequer. If it was the Horsemen, Matt, they could hardly have galloped more rampantly, or to better effect.’

  ‘It could not have been…’ I began, but I knew I could not even convince myself of the argument.

  We had destroyed the Horsemen aboard the Milkmaid. But had we only come upon them after they undertook their business in Pudding Lane?

  ‘It does not matter whether they did or not. Even here, up so high and behind shutters, I can hear the shouts in the street. As far as the common sort are concerned, Papists began the fire, and I doubt if anything will shift them from that belief – not even in the lifetime of your child-to-be, I suspect. Whereas you and I know that, if it was begun deliberately, but the Horsemen had no part in it, then it is much more likely to have been by a Dutchman, enraged by what you did to them.’ This was discoimfiting. It came too close to the guilty thoughts of my own sin that I had harboured since we burned the Vlie. I turned my eyes to the floor. ‘The people will want a scapegoat, and they will want a sacrifice. Cornelia and Captain Ollivier might have fitted the bill, had not you and My Lord Craven intervened. Perhaps, for all we know, they’ve already strung up a few poor French or Dutch. But Parliament will want an enquiry, have no doubt. I imagine Venner will be hot on the matter.’ Our brother-in-law, Sir Venner Garvey, Member of Parliament for Rievaulx, was a former Roundhead of the most serpentine kind. ‘And the people won’t be silent until they’ve had a hanging or two – or, better still, a hanging, drawing and quartering for treason. Nothing like the sight of entrails to satisfy a mob’s lust for vengeance.’

  Charles paused, and took a series of long but broken breaths. I stepped toward him, to see if I could somehow make him more comfortable, but he raised his hand and continued.

  ‘Which, of course, is as it should be. Better that than the alternative.’

  ‘Alternative, brother?’

  ‘If it festers, with no enquiry and no guilty party, or at least no scapegoat – then the people will do what they always do in such cases. They will blame the government. Half of England is convinced that the Duke of York is a secret Papist, the other half that the King is, too. And Kings and the City of London have rarely seen eye to eye, certainly in my lifetime. So we don’t want a new-born phoenix of civil war rising out of the ashes of London, Matt. This fire must be proved beyond doubt to have been an accident, or be proved beyond doubt to be the work of someone who cannot possibly cast suspicion upon the King and the Duke.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘I had not realised I was again in the presence of Lord Percival.’ He smiled, then coughed long and hard. ‘But before the noble lord considers such matters of state, he should ponder the more urgent matter in hand. Which is to say, the means of getting you out of this house before the fire consumes you.’

  * * *

  Francis Gale returned that afternoon, having spent long hours ministering to the thousands of fearful souls packed into Smithfield. Together with Musk, we strapped my brother onto a narrow pallet, manhandled him to the head of the stairs, and realised at once that it would be impossible to get him down the narrow stairway, with its many sharp turns. My grandfather had once considered a scheme to rebuild this end of the house, and to put in a broad, open staircase; but as with so many of his grand projects, it had never come to fruition.

  ‘Leave me,’ said Charles. ‘I may be dead next week in any case, or next month. It will be no great loss if I leave the world a little early, consumed by flame.’

  ‘By God’s divine providence, very few seem to have died in this calamity,’ said Francis. ‘How will history make sense of it, if one of the only casualties of this great fire was the tenth Earl of Ravensden?’

  ‘None will die here,’ I said, ‘least of all you, My Lord. Be thankful that your brother found himself a captain in the Navy Royal.’

  I sent for the seamen I had despatched to defend Ravensden House, realising with some astonishment that I had done so only a day earlier. Time played strange tricks during the fire of London: each hour was at once a century and a minute, each day an eternity and a moment.

  I told the men what I had in mind. They understood at once, and went off to search the kitchen, stables and other outbuildings. Within a half-hour they were back with an assortment of timbers and ropes, even an entire block from a ship’s rigging, which somehow must have found its way to the house in my grandfather’s day. By the end of a further half-hour, the window of the Earl’s bedroom had been taken out, and a respectable, if miniature, pair of sheerlegs protruded from Ravensden House. We tested the device by lowering my sea-chest, which was significantly heavier than my brother; it reached the ground in the Strand without any mishap.

  ‘I concede the point you have often made to me,’ said Charles, as we attached the ropes to his pallet, ‘that the English seaman is a fellow of infinite resource. And by that, brother, I include yourself.’

  Musk and I went down to the street, and I barked orders as the Earl of Ravensden was swung out of the window, then lowered gently toward the ground.

  ‘Steady, there! Give – give – give – hold! Too fast, men! Slower! Now – give – give – belay!’

  Even with the flam
es burning well beyond the Fleet Conduit, and the road jammed with carts heading west, quite a crowd of onlookers formed around us to witness the curious spectacle of a peer of the realm being treated in such an undignified, but effective, manner.

  Finally the pallet nestled comfortably on the cart that Phineas Musk had somehow obtained earlier that afternoon. I did not enquire how, exactly, he had managed to do so, for carts were more valuable than the jewels in the coronation crown, that day in London.

  Charles Quinton looked a little pale, but otherwise none the worse for wear.

  ‘I have flown,’ he said. ‘Tristram will be infinitely jealous.’

  Cornelia emerged from the house, attended by her maid, and came over to me.

  ‘You’ll take no more risks, husband?’ she said.

  I do not know why she asked; she knew that was a promise I could never give.

  ‘I will do my utmost to save the house,’ I said. ‘This is where you will give birth to our child, my love.’

  ‘A child may be born in a ditch, just as well as in an Earl’s house. Or in a manger in a stable, as the case of Our Lord proved. What the child needs most is its father.’

  I kissed her, and again wondered how I had ever been tempted to endanger this – to endanger us – for the charms of Aphra Behn.

  As I moved away from Cornelia, I realised that Charles was staring at me: to be precise, giving me the look that only a very much older sibling can bestow upon a very much younger one.

  ‘This talk of saving the house, Matt. Have you become a Bedlam-man, brother?’

  ‘Crave pardon, brother?’

  ‘Perhaps your wits have been unhinged by the roar of one too many broadsides?’

  ‘My Lord – Charles – what do you…?’

  ‘The house, Matt. Let us both pray to God in His heaven that the fire consumes this foul abomination, this putrid hovel that disgraces the name and honour of the Quintons. Let the flames devour it, and allow us to build a fine new townhouse, a fitting London home for your child. Don’t waste your efforts – or your powder – on saving Ravensden House, brother.’

  ‘But…’

  I was astonished. Charles Quinton, the most guarded, the most uncommunicative of men, never betrayed the passions that lay within his gaunt, damaged frame. And he had always seemed so content within the strange, rambling warren we were now abandoning.

  ‘Every Quinton hates it,’ he said. ‘Those who came before us have hated it. All of us, except Grandfather and, for some unaccountable reason, yourself. But let it go, Matt. Take your powder where it might do some good, where it might save some decent houses of honest folk, or a fine church, or something else worth saving. But not this, brother. If this is the last command I ever give you as your Earl, let it be this.’

  I stared at him, dumbfounded, but finally nodded my assent.

  Then, guarded by Frostick and Gover, and under the somewhat dubious command of Phineas Musk, the cart set off for the quarters that a generous monarch had agreed to provide for the fugitive Quintons within Whitehall Palace. How long they might stay there remained to be seen: that depended upon whether the great fire stopped before Ravensden House, contrary to my brother’s unambiguous wishes, or continued onward to threaten the palace.

  * * *

  Evening.

  Francis Gale and I stood in the great hole where my brother’s window had been, looking out upon the terrible spectacle. We could see clear down the Strand and Fleet Street, which now burned nearly as far as Shoe Lane, to the city walls and Ludgate Hill. There, at the top, was Saint Paul’s, but now the roof of the east end and the entire Choir were ablaze, the flames pushing west, toward the tower. Everwhere, mighty sheets of fire turned the night sky into a hellish new day.

  ‘Truly,’ said Francis, at my side, ‘we are beyond Genesis Nineteen now. Far beyond Sodom and Gomorrah. Alas, my friend, we have lived to witness the truth of Revelation Twenty.’

  ‘The lake of fire,’ I said. ‘Is this the day of judgement, then, Francis?’

  He did not answer me. We watched, spellbound and aghast, as the flames enveloped the cathedral, bursting out on the roof of the tower and the windows, spilling out into the transepts, finally overwhelming the west front, built only thirty years before. The roof collapsed, and parts of the aisle walls with it. I later heard, from those who witnessed it, that the lead on the roof had melted, flowing away in rivers down Ludgate Hill; great gargoyles and other stone ornaments were blown clear like cannonballs.

  Then there came the strangest sound I ever heard in my life. A distant, discordant roar, like some giant beast of legend roaring at the enemies who sought to destroy it. A roar that turned, somehow, into a great chord of music, a requiem for old London, a te deum for a new. I realised that what I was hearing could only be the bells, shifted by – what? The movement of the beams from which they hung, or the falling of masonry against them? It was impossible to tell. But however it happened, they rang out the death toll of old Saint Paul’s. Another bell, nearby: that of Saint Dunstan in the West, our own parish church, sounding nine o’clock. I realised with astonishment that it had taken little more than an hour for fire to consume the great cathedral that had stood for a thousand years.

  Numbed by the sight before me, I almost missed the thing I should have noticed at once: the first thing any true seaman would have noted. I was not a true seaman; not yet, at any rate. But at last, a firedrop landing on the floor of the bedroom, where Francis hastily stamped upon it, dragged the seaman within me from his hiding place.

  ‘The wind,’ I said. ‘It’s veering southerly. It’s easing. The wind’s lessening, Francis.’

  But it was lessening almost imperceptibly. Only a man who had stood upon many a quarterdeck trying to gauge whether there was, perhaps, just the faintest breath of fresh breeze to fill his sails, would have noticed it at all. The fire was still licking at the precincts of the Temple, and advancing along the north side of Fleet Street. Perhaps the change in the wind would save Whitehall and Westminster, but it still looked set fair to destroy Ravensden. Part of me yet wished to defy my brother, and do everything in my power to save the dear, ramshackle pile in which I stood. But honour and duty directed me otherwise. The Earl of Ravensden had commanded me to save something worthwhile; and, by God, that was exactly what I proposed to do.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Shortly after dawn, we laid our first barrels of gunpowder in the houses huddled directly under the city walls, just north of Newgate and Holborn Conduit. The powder had arrived in the small hours aboard a cart under the command of Carvell, brought from the Tower by way of Moorfields and Long Lane. This was guarded by a dozen heavily armed Sceptres. In the chaos of the fire, who could say that malevolent men would not regard the sudden availability in London of dozens of barrels of powder as an opportunity not to be missed?

  I laid several trails myself, propping barrels against the wall or corner where it was likely to have the most effect, then pouring snaking lines of powder onto the hard, dry ground, before retiring to what the Sceptres considered a safe distance, lighting the fuse, watching the flame make its way – and then the explosion.

  The irony was not lost on me: that I, who had done my utmost to prevent the Horsemen blowing up London, should now be responsible for blasting whole swathes of it to kingdom come.

  Each house died differently. Most collapsed in on themselves; others blew up like miniature volcanoes, fireballs blasting from their roofs, their wooden beams blowing outward in all directions. A moment after each blast, Sceptres ran into the smoking piles of rubble in order to stamp out any minor fires caused by the explosions. And so we proceeded down entire rows of houses, east towards Aldersgate, determined to preserve from the flames the precious prize that stood just to the north of us: Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital, and all the poor, sick folk it contained. Among them, Macferran, Treninnick, and fifteen more of the crew of the Royal Sceptre.

  The sounds of other explosions, further away to the e
ast, told their own story. All along the northern flank of the great fire, houses were being blown up to the scheme originally proposed by the seamen, notably Julian Carvell. It was a stratagem that did not depend solely on the judicious deployment of barrels of gunpowder: for now one of the greatest strengths of the English mariner became apparent. Barely had the smoke, dust, and wreckage settled at every blown-up house than the Sceptres were leaping into the ruins, stamping out embers, grabbing hold of shattered timbers and any other flammable materials, and dragging them away at once, well beyond the reach of the flames. Then on to the next building to lay the next barrel and repeat the process.

  Thus was demonstrated yet again a truth I had witnessed countless times during my service in King Charles’s Navy: there is no goodwife anywhere in the kingdom who is as fastidiously – no, as obsessively – tidy as a naval seaman.

  Carvell had explained it to me in simple terms, when we first discussed it.

  ‘Problem is, Sir Matthew, the London men, they’re just tearing down the houses and leaving the piles of wood where they lie, so the fire carries on regardless. What we should be doing is blowing up buildings, several at a time – that’s the only way to build a firebreak big enough, quickly enough. But clear away at once. Get rid of the wreckage, especially the wood. Leave empty ground, a wasteland the fire can’t cross. Only way, Sir Matthew. Only way.’

  And that, God be thanked, was the policy that the King had finally approved, regardless of what Sir Thomas Bloodworth, the Common Council, and the outraged property owners of London thought about it.