Then I caught the infection and began to pursue my own inquiries, for I knew many men that had dealings with PS, for we now reversed the initials that we might throw the hounds off the scent (George Cocke was CG).
What are you doing? What are all these letters you send and receive? Nan became jealous and wanted to know my business, but I chose to keep it a mystery.
I cannot tell you now, but it is business that will do great credit to the General when it is revealed.
This was true, for I had cogitated upon the matter thus: my fate was bound up with the General’s and he had shown favour to me; if he fell, we were all undone; so if we could demonstrate to Parliament that he had been betrayed by dishonest underlings in the Navy Office and that stout fighting men had been starved of ships and powder and sent to watery graves while the clerks were heaping up their gold, then Parliament and the Court would continue to worship the General (the common people never ceased from worshipping him) and Pepys would be sunk or grounded as fast as one of the General’s ships.
So on it went: ‘Clerk in CG’s office will swear that PS importuned his master for a share in the goods but bound him to secrecy for he knew it was illegal’ . . . ‘receipt for calico made out in PS’s name then scratched out and CG’s put in its stead’ . . . ‘silversmith’s apprentice says CG had half a dozen silver plates made for PS in April but will not swear to it unless paid. Quaere: connected with prize goods, or is there another parcel of hemp in the wind?’
By the end of August, I had a mass of papers that almost filled my old sea-chest (apart from the gold that was yet in it), and my blood was up. Nor were my feelings those of revenge alone, for I saw the old General stumbling about the flowerbeds at New Hall grunting to himself and I could not abide that he should be brought so low by little men.
I beat ’em, I could hear him say as he passed by my laboratory where I now conducted my researches into the mysteries of human not chemical affairs. I beat ’em off and I’ll beat ’em again if I can get the officers. The King believes in me, I brought him in, he needs me.
It was a low muttering noise that he made, like a scuffling of rats behind the wainscoting. He seemed to be speaking to his own soul. Nan would try to cheer him by saying those same things that he said to himself, but when she said them he stood mute and looked at the ground and only grunted.
But it was not for the old man’s sake alone that I conspired, nor yet because I was so envious of Pepys, though that was the principal reason, but the truth is, I loved the chase and opened each note from Will or bent my ear to his messenger with a keen expectancy.
Tonight – his note said – come to the foot of Seething Lane at ten o’clock and we shall have him, for I have infallible intelligence. Bring pen and ink. Daniel. (For the purpose of our conspiracy, he called himself Daniel, while I was to be Toby.)
Will’s intelligence was hitherto anything but infallible and I did not like that we should meet so close to Pepys’s, but I was in too deep to draw back.
It was a hot night – we might have been in Spain with my lord Sandwich – and the people were still taking the air by the river and along the parapet of the moat. But it was not difficult to spy out Will, for he alone was muffled to his eyes like a bumble-bee.
Hist, Toby, our prey is almost in the snare.
Can’t you speak plain English? What are you talking about?
PS is to meet with CG and another (and here he spoke very low so that I had to burrow my ear into his cloak to hear him), I mean the Commissioner of the Navy.
Sir William Penn? But he sees him every day at the Office.
This is to be a private confabulation for one secret purpose, viz. to cover up what they did in the matter of the prize-money. And we shall take a record of it. I’ve my new fountain pen which carries its own ink, and it is well charged. See, like a dagger: shall we not stab PS to the heart with it?
His silver pen shone in the moonlight very like a dagger. I had never seen such a device and wanted to inquire into its mechanism but there was no time for any such diversion.
Now come, Sir Toby. And he led me up a small alley and into a narrow winding stair that the nightsoil men must have used when they emptied the house of office, for it stank though it was open to the sky. Up, up we went until we were upon the leads and I recovered my bearings for I could see the Tower and the bridge beyond it and the bend of the river.
Now, Toby, he whispered. They will be but ten yards from us here and we shall hear every word.
We crouched like fieldmice behind the chimneystack and settled to wait. Will whiled the tedium with a flask of sack which he passed to me but infrequently.
Are you sure they will come?
Penn’s man swore to me that this would be the place. They could be certain of their privacy here. Penn’s man mislikes his master and his master’s friend and he is on the qui vive for another place which I have told him I will help him to.
It was not above half an hour before we heard the noise of someone climbing another stair a little beyond the stack. Then I heard Pepys’s voice calling down encouragement:
I’m sorry for the climb, but it’s not far now.
But a minute later to our astonishment we heard women’s voices, and there came to our nostrils some delicate scent, not lavender but bergamot or the like.
Oh that was a pretty thought, it will be airy up here.
It was the voice of my dear Elizabeth, and my heart throbbed to think of her so close and yet so far.
We often come up here, Sir William, to sing and play. Husband, have you fetched your viol?
No, I don’t like to bring it up that stair. I have the flageolet.
The flageolet makes thin music. Mary, go fetch the master’s viol.
No, no, Mary, don’t trouble yourself, but sing to us. Will you sing my song?
What song is that? Is it one from the play? Penn’s voice was drowsy like a bee’s buzzing.
Sing, Mary, sing my song. Pepys’s voice was drowsy too. Sing, Mercer.
And a woman’s voice began to sing, carelessly, not troubling to be true to every note, yet with a sweetness and fluency that I never heard equalled.
Beauty retire, thou dost my pity move,
Believe my pity and then trust my love,
At first I thought her by our prophet sent
As a reward for valour’s toils
– but here I lost the song, for the words were carried away from us by the wind, then came back to us at the verse’s end, thus:
I break the hearts of half the world
And she breaks mine.
Well sung, Mercer. That’s a fair song.
It’s my own, Sir William.
Is it by God, Pepys? It’s a fair song.
Mercer, fetch us some wine.
Never have I known such beauty and such torment. To listen to that nightingale on the rooftop on that sweet summer’s night and to hear my beloved speak to the nightingale as a servant, and me not able to say a word.
Shall I sing now, Sir William, while Mercer is downstairs?
It will break the spell. My wife sings well, Sir William, but she has not Mercer’s voice.
Let her sing, Mr Pepys.
No I shall not, for my husband thinks nothing of my singing. Sing, my dearest, if you will.
So she sang the next verse but with an ill grace, and in truth her voice was not so strong, but I loved to hear her sing and to think of what might have been if the fates had been kinder.
Shall we go down to the garden? It’s not so warm up here as it was.
And so they clattered back down the stair.
What do we do now? I whispered: We can’t hear what they say in the garden if we stay here.
We wait, Will said. They’ll come back up for the serious business.
Thus we waited an hour and then another, until we heard doors shut below us and a cry of good-night from one of the ladies. The city was silent below us and now we had finished Will’s flask.
Th
ey will not come.
They will, I swear it. The clock has not yet struck midnight.
I began to get a cramp in my hams and I laid myself out along the leads to ease it. Then Will did the same and laid himself beside me, and soon we fell fast asleep side by side like dead men in a graveyard while the city slept below us. We must have slept two or three hours, in which I dreamed that Mrs Pepys and I were in a boat together and we floated down the river and out to sea where we passed the Dutch fleet grounded on a sandbank and all the sailors pressed along the gunwales to see us for we were quite naked . . .
And then I woke with a start and a strange smell came to my nostrils. I was at first too drowsy to determine what it was: Then I began to cough, and I knew. Smoke. Fire? Fire.
We stood up and I felt that east wind cool at my back ruffling my shirt. Ahead of us plumes of smoke were rolling over the rooftops, black and foul as the rivers of Hell. The smoke was thickest above the bridge but already it had crept up Fish Street Hill and Watling Street so that we could scarce see the tops of old St Paul’s. And though the wind was carrying the stench from us, yet the scent of destruction was so strong that it came back to us. But Lord what a sight it was, so black and foul, yet the sky all around was bright and blue and the dew glistening on the chimneys and the hills of Surrey exceeding blue and the sun just coming up on the river and gilding the wharves so that they looked like the palaces of Venice and not the filthy docks they were in truth.
Then we began to hear the fire, for the air was still (it was barely half past five in the morning). That noise will never escape the memory of those who heard it, for there was never a worse noise in the world. It was a low harsh grinding cackle, as though a giant were cracking walnuts in the next chamber.
My God, we shall all perish, Will said.
Down below, the cries and shouts began, yet the people could not like us see how far and wide the fire had already spread.
We scampered down the back-stairs and along the alley. As we came to the street, a thought struck me like a lightning bolt.
My timber!
You’ve no cause to fret, Will said, you told me it was in store at Wapping, and the wind is from the east.
So it is, but we had best make sure.
I ran like a stag with Will lumbering 200 yards behind me. As we came past the Tower, we had to dodge between the people who were already coming to see the fire with pale eager faces.
At the Wapping yards, men were already astir, some barricading the gates with stones and iron bars against the fire, while others were loading their timber into boats to float it downriver, for the wind might change and a single spark could destroy all.
Where’s Dering? I inquired of a man, but the noise of timber being hauled on the boats was so great that he could not hear and I had to cry louder. Where’s Dering? But the man would say nothing save point upriver, towards the fire.
Why is he there?
The man cupped his hand to his mouth and shouted: He moved half the timber there last week, to Botolph’s Wharf, we had so many fires here.
Botolph’s?
But even as I repeated that terrible word after him, I was sure my fate was sealed, for Botolph’s was just below the bridge where the fire was worst.
Come on, said Will, there’s time yet, we’ll take a boat and bring the wood off.
A boat? said the old wharfman. There’s no boats left here, even the skiffs have been taken, you should have been here an hour ago.
There must be a boat.
Well, there’s my old bucket, she’s sprung a leak but if you hammer a plank across her bottom, she’ll hold, but I’ve given the oars away.
We’ll row with these staves, Will said.
I could not speak, for a strange paralysis had seized me, and I stood shivering in the cold morning air, as insubstantial as a ghost, so that Will had to shake me before I would help him carry the filthy old hulk down to the slipway. Evil-smelling water swirled about her bottom and dripped through the leak on to our heads. At the water’s edge, we hammered a plank across the hole. I cared little if we made yet another hole in the hammering. In truth, I did not care if we drowned and said so to Will.
Come on, Jem, there’s life in us yet.
But even he must have doubted as we struggled up the river, rowing with our sticks like castaways in the South Seas. As we came up past the Tower, there were already boats laden with families fleeing the fire with their children in their arms and their dearest possessions weighing down each vessel so that it could scarce float. There was an old woman carrying a parrot in a cage and weeping as though her heart had broken. And when we came close to Botolph’s Wharf, the heat of the fire was very great and we could hear the hiss of the lead melting on the church roof, and the wharf itself and the mast-store behind was one continuous sheet of flame so bright that the eye could not bear to look at it.
We could go no closer and rested upon our makeshift oars to watch the wreck of all my hopes.
Is Dering in there, do you think? Will asked, but I was past caring and hung my head in the miserable boat and blubbered like a baby.
My head was so low that I did not see a black man wave at me from the boat alongside.
Gone, he cried, all gone, yours too, and it was only from his voice that I knew him. Dering the red fox was as filthy as a chimney-sweep.
Well, said Will, after he had allowed me a period of mourning for my timber. Your tears won’t put out the fire. The Bear at the Southwark end of the bridge opens early for the hopmen. Do you fancy –
Thus we rowed away from the fire, the heat of it burning down ever more fiercely upon our backs. Now and then we rested upon our oars and looked back to see the foul plumes twist and belch all along the river, then we turned away and rowed on.
My feet were wet but I thought little of it for there had been water in the boat when we boarded her, but now I felt the water lap at my calves and looked down and saw that she was filling fast and within a minute more the water was up to the thwart.
She’s sinking, Jem, we must get out.
We dived overboard like a pair of ducks bobbing. I thought to swim, but we were at the edge of Southwark spit, so that the water was barely a yard deep and my face and knees were cut by the stones in the foreshore.
It was an awkward business, but we found our feet and slipped and slithered across the mud – a loathsome substance which contained half the ordure of the parish and covered us from head to toe and mingled with the blood from the cuts. At the top of the bank we halted to catch our breath and let the water stream off our clothes.
Thus we stood, smeared with shit and blood, the scum of the river dripping off us, while across the river the flames fulminated as though Hell had broken loose from its moorings. By now the smoke was billowing over the whole city from the outer gate of the Tower to the apse of St Paul’s (from the bridge-foot where we stood I could now see the towers of that ancient church).
We must be the only two men in London who are shivering, Will said and he put his arm upon my shoulder to console me in my loss. Yet I saw upon his shining face a delight in the conflagration which he could ill conceal, for he had nothing to lose by it, and men do love a great fire.
We drank all that day at the Bear, and we were not alone. Many a poor wretch came with blackened face across the bridge bearing only light baggage and a heavy tale of woe. Some had no money and old Abraham Browne the vintner who was a fair rogue let them drink for free and we drank along with them, so that by the day’s end as the stench of the burning blew across the bridge we were almost insensible to it and lay across one another on the benches outside the tavern (for it was still warm) with the ashes falling gently like thistledown on us, and after we slept we woke to find ourselves as grey as ghosts.
For many months after that day, my spirits would not buoy, I cared little for the world.
It was a June morning that we sat in the garden at the Cockpit, the General shading his eyes against the sun while I read to him
his narration of the Four Days Fight which was to be an apology for his conduct in dividing the fleet.
Good, very good, he mumbled as I read, for he liked to hear his own words, but he was drowsy now. Doubtless it was his sickness (the dropsy) that made him fall asleep after dinner or when the sun beat down upon his greasy old head.
That passage again now, read it again, he said – but at that minute came the sound of feet running upon the flags and here was a messenger falling over himself into the box hedge as he told the General that the King had sent for him, for the Dutch were come up as high as the Nore and there were eighty sail of them.
Monck was up as quick as a boy, his eyes very sharp like a crocodile’s that did but seem to sleep to deceive his prey.
The General sent messengers on by horse to warn of his coming. And behind the messengers rode the most absurd army I ever saw, for every gallant and feathered fool that was at Court was resolved not to miss the spectacle. I saw them go off on their mincing steeds across Lambeth Marsh with their plumes nodding in the wind and their hats cocked back (as was then the fashion with the blades) so that they looked like a gaggle of silly cockerels crowing to the heavens. And they had women riding with them (but only as far as Greenwich where they dined) which made them crow the more and twirl their pistols like heroes. I thought I saw the Duke of Monmouth there as we now named him in public (though amongst ourselves we still called him Crofts) and many another bufflehead and windfucker.
I was glad that I was not among them but rode in the Swift with the General.
By nightfall we had come to Gravesend and the General in a rage, for there was not a man in the batteries and not an ounce of shot or a barrel of powder anywhere.
Jem (and Sam) Page 22