What effect the seamen’s efforts were having, God knew; but it was certain that, as Wednesday morning passed, the wind was continuing to blow only from the south, and to fall off. I stole an occasional glance toward the west. The sheets of flame were still roaring, but no longer seemed to be advancing. Had Ravensden House and the Temple been spared after all?
I had little time for such thoughts. We were out of powder, and pulling down houses in the old way, grappling with firehooks. At last, it seemed as though there was some reward for our efforts.
‘It ain’t gaining northward, Sir Matthew,’ said Carvell. ‘Flames ain’t so high, all around. Bart’s and our men – they’ll be safe enough, God willing.’
I had no breath with which to reply, but it was true. What had been a vast, unbroken curtain of flame, enveloping the whole of London, now had large gaps in it. And with every hour that passed, the wind died down a little more.
News began to come in, shouted along the lanes and streets by running urchins. The fire had not got beyond Cripplegate. It was halted at the foot of Seething Lane, so the Navy Office was safe. Leadenhall and the Tower still stood. And in the west, the flames had licked the walls of the Temple, but not consumed it. There was no longer any danger to Whitehall or Westminster.
A little after noon, the Duke of York strode up. Begrimed and sweating, clad in a torn shirt and dirty breeches, the heir to three kingdoms looked like the meanest pauper. He was accompanied only by two Life Guards.
‘The worst is over, Sir Matthew, God willing,’ he said. ‘All over the city, the fire’s advance is halted. And you have stopped it reaching Bartholomew’s.’
‘I pray so, Highness.’
‘It is time to abandon your firehooks, men,’ he said, addressing the Sceptres around me. ‘Take up swords, and muskets. You still have your commission in my Marine regiment to give you authority, Sir Matthew.’
‘Highness?’
‘Control – that is what is needed in London now. People are still proclaiming that the French and Dutch are at the gates. Foreigners by the score are being assaulted, and the guards and trained bands are having to rescue them from the noose all over the City. Now, when we are vulnerable, is when the disaffected are most likely to strike. So we need good, loyal, armed men on the streets.’
‘As you say, Your Highness. And you, Sir? What of you?’
‘I go to join my brother, at Pye Corner. The flames are quite extinguished there, and all the way down to Holborn Bridge. We will inspect the area, then give thanks to God for the deliverance of what is left of London. I think it is time at last for prayers of thanksgiving.’
With that, the Duke left us, striding across the still smouldering rubble from the houses beneath the city wall. He was ever more religious than his brother, despite being, if anything, even less monogamous, which was something of a feat; and we were still a few years short of that most dreadful calamity for England, when the intensity of the Duke’s faith, allied to his capacity for blind stupidity, led him to the conclusion that the only true channel for that unbending, black-and-white spirituality of his led inexorably towards Rome.
Carvell was already standing by the cart that had brought the gunpowder. He lifted out a large canvas bag that contained a formidable array of weapons.
‘You seem eager to be a-soldiering, Mister Carvell,’ I said.
‘Better to be annoying rebels and dissenting scum, Sir Matthew, than blowing up the homes of honest Londoners. That’s how I see it, at any rate.’
I took hold of a cutlass in my left hand, my right being still hampered by the knife wound I had taken from the looter. Fortunately, I had been trained to use a sword by my uncle Tristram, a left-handed man, and thus felt nearly as comfortable with this less familiar dispensation. I waved and slashed several times to get the feel for the weapon’s weight.
‘I think I concur with you, Mister Carvell. Better by far.’
* * *
We were moving down Cock Lane toward Holborn Conduit, hunting for looters in the unburned eastern half of the street and working towards the Earl of Craven and his soldiers, advancing from the other end, when I heard my name being called.
‘Sir Matthew!’
I turned, and found myself looking at Aphra Behn, clad in man’s garb once again, attended by Marker and two other of my brother’s men.
‘Mistress Behn? What brings you here?’
I had not seen her since the night aboard the Milkmaid, the night when the fire broke out in Pudding Lane. Sunday morning, in other words, and it was now Wednesday afternoon. But it felt as though an eternity had passed, and for most of the intervening time, I had not given a thought to the Lady Astraea, and the dire, conflicting thoughts she inspired.
‘And joy of the afternoon to you too, Sir Matthew,’ she said, smiling. I made no reply. ‘Ah… business, then, if you insist. Mene Tekel – Shadrach Goodman. After he escaped from the ship, I reasoned he was likely to remain in London, to exploit the chaos caused by the fire. So I set some of our informers among the conventiclers to be alert for any talk of him – those we could find, who had not run from the City. But in a way, the fire helped. People were moving hither and thither across London, and moving rapidly. Word could spread very quickly.’
‘You found him?’
‘We had intelligence of him – leading the mob pursuing the King’s French firework maker, then inciting homeless men in Moorfields to kill the Lord Mayor. It was said he was hiding out in Alsatia or Sharp Island, in those lawless alleys south of Fleet Street. Not too far from your house, come to that. I finally caught sight of him from a distance, this very morning, just behind us in Smithfield, but there was such a throng of people that we could not get to him… Matthew? What’s the matter? You look as though you’ve seen a dead man walking.’
I had. One thought repeated itself in my head, over and over again. My brother’s words. If their associates succeed in killing the King, and perhaps the Duke of York too, at the same time…
‘My Lord Craven!’ I shouted.
‘Sir Matthew?’ He glanced quizzically at Aphra, but there was no time to waste on introductions.
‘My Lord, where is the King? And his brother, the Duke?’
‘Gone together to Great Bartholomew’s, at the Duke’s insistence, to pray privately and offer up thanks to God for the ending of the great fire.’
No time for explanations. I turned on my heel and began to run.
* * *
Through Smithfield, leaping over families sitting on the ground, brushing past the makeshift tents. Running toward Cloth Fair and the gatehouse that led into the churchyard of Great Saint Bartholomew’s. A group of Life Guards idling by the gate, lifted their weapons as they caught sight of me.
‘Sir Matthew Quinton!’ I cried.
An officer recognised me, and ordered the men to lower their arms. He shouted something after me as I ran past.
Into the church, its vast tiers of Norman arches stretching toward heaven, blood-red light streaming through the high clerestory windows in the east end, casting strange, flickering crimson shapes onto the walls. It took a moment for my eyes to become accustomed to the near darkness. But there, at the high altar, knelt two men, deep in prayer and oblivious to the third figure, stepping out of the shadows toward them, a pistol in each of his hands.
‘Sic semper tyrannis,’ said Shadrach Goodman. The King and Duke of York stood at once, and turned to face Mene Tekel. ‘In the name of the godly people of England, and the wronged innocents of Terschelling island, I sentence you, Charles Stuart, and you, James Stuart, to death.’
He raised his pistols, levelling them at the royal brothers.
‘Goodman!’ I shouted.
His head turned sharply towards me, but he kept the pistols steady.
‘You,’ he said. ‘Lord Percival himself.’
‘You’re finished, man!’ I said.
‘Undoubtedly. But in a few moments, I will be singing alleluias with all my godly brethren i
n Heaven, these two whoremasters will be burning in Hell, and England will be set fair to become a Godfearing Commonwealth once again.’
I stepped forward. But I had no firearm, only a cutlass, and would never reach Goodman before he fired. Nor would the dozen or so Life Guards who had formed up behind me. Even those who had muskets levelled and primed dared not fire at Goodman for fear of hitting the King or the Duke, almost directly behind him.
Aphra stepped out from the north transept. There must be another way into the church, somewhere on that side. She had a small pistol in her hand, which she raised and fired.
And missed.
Goodman spun round to face her, but before he could fire, the King reached into his left sleeve, took out something that glinted momentarily in the red firelight, and flung it at Goodman, striking him hard in his right shoulder. I ran forward. The Horseman staggered, but he still held his pistols, and now he turned, trying to level them once again at the royal brothers. Charles Stuart broke to his right, James to his left. Goodman fired the pistol in his left hand, but the ball found only the reredos behind the altar. Before he could aim again, I was upon him, sweeping my cutlass down, with my left hand, into the side of his head, driving deep into his skull. Blood poured down the lifeless body of Mene Tekel, onto my arm, and down onto the floor of the church. The blood-red firelight streaming down from the windows high above swathed him in the scarlet of death.
The King and Duke of York walked over and inspected the corpse, the Duke reciting aloud the words of the second Book of Samuel.
‘The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; The God of my rock; in him will I trust: he is my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my refuge, my saviour; thou savest me from violence…’
The King, meanwhile, turned to me.
‘Well, Matt Quinton,’ said Charles Stuart, ‘I have quite lost track of the balance in the mutual debt of honour between my family and yours. But the King will not forget this service.’
He stooped, and pulled his small, thin blade from Goodman’s shoulder, while the Duke of York continued to recite the words of the Bible.
‘An old trick taught me by a Sicilian mercenary I encountered in the civil wars,’ said the King, nonchalantly. ‘In a nutshell, that one should always have something up your sleeve. Quite literally. Let us be thankful that the fanatics cannot resist speechifying. He could have come up behind us and shot us in the backs of our heads as we knelt at the altar – that is certainly what I would have done. But oh no, he has to deliver his little sermon, and thus undoes himself.’
Charles Stuart’s voice was steady, but I could see that his hands were trembling. The Duke of York, his prayer finished, laid a hand upon his brother’s arm.
‘Now,’ said the King, ignoring him, ‘who is this fearless Amazon, pray?’
Charles and James Stuart both turned toward Aphra, who curtsied deeply. As she rose, the light of the flames through the clerestory windows illuminated her face, making it even more striking. I knew at once that the royal brothers were smitten; and, as I introduced her, so, too, was I.
Again.
Chapter Twenty-Three
That evening I went to Moorfields, hoping to find Francis. That noble soul had gone there to minister to the displaced, of whom there were countless more than at Smithfield. The huge, open space was filled with makeshift shelters, which stretched away up the roads toward Highgate, further than the eye could see. Everywhere, babies were crying, women weeping, and increasingly drunk men railing ever more loudly against the French, Dutch and Papists. The stench was overwhelming.
‘That London has come to this,’ said Carvell.
‘Amen,’ I said, for I could think of nothing else to say.
We found Francis in the south-eastern corner of the fields, hard under the tower of Allhallows-in-the-Wall, which had been saved from the fire by the ancient City defence immediately behind it. He was closing the eyes of an old man, newly dead.
‘A jeweller of Hatton Garden,’ he said. ‘Proud of supplying emeralds to Anne of Denmark, back in King James’ time.’ Francis stood, and sighed. ‘The mortality returns will say he died of old age. But his heart was broken, so it was the fire that killed him, right enough.’
We spoke a little of what we had both done during the day, but I thought it neither the time nor the place to tell Francis of the attempted killing of the King, nor my part in preventing it. There would be ample opportunity for the exchange of further confidences in the fullness of time.
The great confusion began about ten. First there were shouts in the distance, then a drunken fellow ran through the crowd of exhausted, desperate people, down one of the tortuous paths between the tents and shelters.
‘The Temple’s ablaze again! The fire’s been started anew by the Papists! The French army’s in the City, fifty thousand strong! There’s a regiment of them at the foot of Coleman Street, marching for the Moorgate!’
From all around came similar shouts. The French were literally yards away. They would kill the men, rape the women, and plunder the precious possessions of both.
Then the screams started. A great wail of terror, the sound rising to heaven like the lamentations of the Israelites.
‘This is madness,’ I said to Francis. ‘A French army can’t materialise out of thin air. There’s been no intelligence of a landing!’
‘Hysteria,’ said the Reverend Gale, buckling on his markedly unclerical sword. ‘I saw many a case of it during the civil wars. Men swearing blind they’d seen entire armies of Irish papists slaughtering honest folk in the next town up the road. Many a town was abandoned or burned due to panic and false rumours.’
There was no time to give any real thought to the notion that a new fire had indeed broken out at the Temple, perhaps threatening Ravensden House. For the shouts and rumours racing through the thousands packed into Moorfields were having their effect. People were picking up their sacks and infants and fleeing northward, trampling down the shelters of others, not caring if anyone was underfoot. A great mass of humanity pressed toward the exits from the fields, especially northward toward the new burying-ground in Bunhill Fen, screaming that the enemy was at hand.
‘Dear Lord,’ said Francis, ‘hundreds will be crushed – thousands!’
Yet there was a second tide of people, too, moving in precisely the opposite direction. The flood moving northward consisted principally of women, children and the old, but the one that marched purposefully toward London Wall and the Moorgate contained only men. Young men. Angry men.
‘Arm! Arm!’ was their cry. ‘Avenge London! Save our womenfolk from ravishment! Fuck the Frogs and the Butterboxes!’
Fights were breaking out among the crowd. It was turning into a riot.
‘Sceptres!’ I cried. Julian Carvell and the other dozen men of my ship looked at me expectantly. ‘Form line!’
The men fanned out, blocking the way from that corner of the fields toward Moorgate. There are few sights more terrifying than that of a body of English seamen intent on a fight, and the men advancing to do battle with an imaginary French army – or to slaughter every innocent foreigner they came across – halted abruptly, the men at the back careering into those at the front.
‘We are men of the King’s ship Royal Sceptre,’ I shouted. ‘We have fought the French. We have captured a great French ship, the Jeanne d’Arc, which even now lies as a prize in the Medway river.’ There was murmuring now. Many would have heard of our battle, which had been reported in the Gazette and plagiarised in bad woodcuts aimed at the illiterate. ‘If a French or Dutch army had landed, my friends, we would know of it!’
‘He lies! The French are here! Look now, toward Moorgate!’
Angry shouts of defiance mingled with the sounds of men running, as several of the brave fellows of a few minutes earlier fled at the sight of what they assumed to be King Louis’ musketeers, filing out into Moorfields through the Tudor gatehouse, intent upon rape, plunder and murder.
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The terror lasted only for a moment; the moment it took for the many lanterns and blazing torches illuminating the fields to reveal the familiar red uniforms of troops from the London Trained Bands and the royal Life Guards.
* * *
It took hours to quell the riot completely. There were new rumours and new shouts all through the night. There were the diehards who were convinced that the Trained Bands were actually French dragoons in disguise, wearing English uniforms to lull their victims. There were the fanatics who proclaimed that it did not matter if these really were English troops: they were the instruments of the Duke of York and thus of Popery and arbitrary government, sent to enslave or murder God-fearing people. Fights broke out at the slightest provocation, the Sceptres and I intervening to break up at least a half dozen of them. Slowly, though, order returned, and in whole swathes of the fields, tired, desperate people lay down and tried to find some sleep. Miraculously, few, if any, seemed to have died, although there were countless cases of broken limbs and other injuries.
With daylight, hungover men looked sheepishly at each other. Shamefaced youths, who had been all for fighting the French a few hours before, slunk back to their mothers. Francis disappeared into the crowd, intent on providing reassurance to those who still feared. The Sceptres and I went back into the City, through the Moorgate, and devoured a breakfast of bread, ale and mutton at a tavern close by Armourers’ Hall, which had just avoided the flames and the fate of so many other livery halls. I had just ordered the men to return to the ship at Woolwich when I heard cheering at the end of the lane, went to investigate, and saw a familiar figure upon horseback, flanked by red-coated guards.
Carvell and I followed the King back into Moorfields. Thus I was close behind him when he halted in the middle of that great space, a vast but quiet and respectful crowd forming all around him. So I heard the speech that Charles the Second addressed to his people.
‘My friends,’ he began. ‘Good subjects all. First, so that there should be no repetition of what happened here last night, I assure you that the enemy has not landed. Prince Rupert keeps command of the sea, and not one French or Dutch soldier stands upon English soil.’ The King scanned the thousands of dirty, frightened people before him – although how many actually heard him was quite another matter. ‘My heart bleeds for the loss you have suffered – the loss we have all suffered. For make no mistake, I have suffered too. London has been dear to England’s kings since the days of the Confessor. It is the jewel in our crown. So if God has seen fit to destroy London, then it is a judgement upon England, and upon England’s King.’ I noticed a few smirks; even in the solemnity of the occasion, not a few – myself included – were thinking of Charles Stuart’s notorious whoring. ‘But we will rebuild it. I give you my word upon that – the word of the King. Legal obstacles will be swept aside. You will have new houses, better houses, better and wider streets. There will be a new Guildhall and a new Royal Exchange, greater and better than those the fire has consumed. We will build the churches anew. Above all, we will rebuild Saint Paul’s into a fitting monument to God’s glory.’ There were cheers now, and applause. ‘So, yes, you will have to sleep under the stars for days, even weeks. But long before winter comes, you will be safe again – safe in the new, rising London, of which we will all be proud. So for now, be of good comfort, dear people, and know that you have the love of your King.’
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