by Megan Rix
Woofer woke Annie with a slobbery lick on her face.
‘Yeuwk!’ Annie said, rubbing at her cheek. ‘What did you do that for?’
Tiger Lily gave a frightened yap.
But Annie had seen the fire and was already scrambling to her feet. The pile of wood beside the oven, placed there ready for the next morning, was ablaze.
‘Teagh!’ Annie screamed as she grabbed the almost-empty pail of water and threw it at the flames. ‘Teagh!’
There wasn’t enough water in the bucket to make any difference. The wood was so dry that it caught like a match.
‘Teagh!’ Annie screamed again and at last she heard movement upstairs. ‘Fire!’
Teagh ran down the stairs but was prevented from coming into the bakery by the fire. The room was quickly filling with black smoke.
‘Get out!’ he shouted as he dashed back upstairs to warn his employer.
Annie grabbed the sack of dog biscuits and ran out of the bakery door on to the street, followed by Woofer and Tiger Lily.
Seconds later the bakery was an inferno. If the dogs hadn’t been there she didn’t know if any of them would have woken up in time. She clutched the biscuits to her as she looked up at the first-floor window.
In the street, above the sound of the flames, Annie could hear Teagh shouting and pounding at the sleeping Farriners’ doors. She coughed because the smoke from the building was growing thicker by the second.
Tiger Lily trembled as she and Woofer stayed close to Annie. The smoke made the spaniel’s large brown eyes stream. The crackling sound sent waves of fear through her. All she wanted to do was run far, far away from this terrible place but she stayed because Woofer didn’t run.
A few moments later Mr Farriner climbed out of a window at the top of the house and on to the roof. Annie put her hand to her mouth as she watched him rest a foot on the gutter and reach back for Hannah. Teagh followed her.
Mr Farriner, Hannah and Teagh crawled along the roof to the garret window of the neighbour’s house. Mr Farriner banged on the leaded glass but no one came. Annie ran to the front door of the house they were trying to get into and started pounding on it.
‘Fire!’ she cried. ‘Fire!’
The door and garret window opened at the same time and Mr Farriner, Hannah and Teagh were able to climb inside.
Hannah was crying now that they were safe – great noisy sobs interspersed with coughing – and the neighbours were getting ready to leave their house, taking whatever they could with them.
‘How did it start?’ Hannah croaked. ‘How could it have happened? Our home. Everything gone. You weren’t doing more of your silly cooking experiments, were you, Annie?’
Annie shook her head as tears streamed down her hot sooty face. She didn’t know why the fire had started – Mr Farriner was always so particular about checking it was extinguished before he went to bed.
They went outside and gazed as the roof that they’d been able to escape along blazed.
Tiger Lily watched and whimpered. A man with a leather bucket of water almost tripped over her small body. ‘Get out of it, you stupid dog!’ he yelled at her.
Tiger Lily had never been shouted at before today and this was the final straw. She turned and ran and ran and ran. Woofer saw her racing off towards Fish Street Hill and charged after his friend but Tiger Lily had longer legs and was much quicker than him.
She wanted to be back home with people she knew who were kind to her, where there was a soft bed and tasty food. But she didn’t know the way back to the palace and in her panic she ran further and further away from it.
They hadn’t gone far up Fish Street Hill when George smelt smoke and saw flames.
‘No!’ he gasped, when they turned into Pudding Lane. The bakery was ablaze. Had Woofer and Tiger Lily come here? Were the dogs still inside?
He ran towards the fire, and Teeth and Claws ran after him. They were hampered by the furniture, beds, boxes, trading stock and belongings from other houses along the lane that had been put there to save them if the fire spread.
All around were cries of ‘Fire! Fire!’ as people woke up their sleeping neighbours. The church bells of Fish Street Hill were ringing in reverse to warn everyone. A thunder of drums called people to come and help fight the blaze.
‘Annie!’ George yelled to the people rushing about and trying to put out the flames. ‘Have you seen a girl called Annie? She works in there!’
But no one had seen her and they didn’t have time for questions as they passed along buckets and bowls and chamber pots filled with water and mud and earth and anything else that might help dampen the flames.
‘Did everyone get out safely?’ George asked desperately.
‘Not sure.’
‘Don’t know,’ passers-by told him.
‘What about Annie? Did you see Annie?’ George asked the elderly candlemaker, who lived a few doors along.
‘She wasn’t with the baker and his daughter and manservant when they climbed out of that window,’ the candlemaker told him as he pointed up at a window that was now in flames.
George gave a hacking cough. It was getting harder to breathe.
‘The baker’s gone to get the fire squirts,’ someone said.
George, Teeth and Claws ran to Butchers’ Hill where the brass fire squirts were stored.
‘Did you see two dogs?’ he asked the men coming back with them.
‘Why are you talking about dogs at a time like this?’ they shouted.
‘Baker doesn’t have a dog,’ one man told him as George helped to carry the heavy fire-fighting equipment back down the hill. Each fire squirt took three people to work it – two to hold the handles and one to push the plunger.
‘One of them’s a spaniel and the other a Wicklow terrier,’ George shouted to a woman collecting water from a thin stream made by a burst water pipe. It was hard to make himself heard above the chaos and uproar all around him.
‘No!’ she shouted back as someone cried for help.
George ran to help with the fire squirt as one of the men holding the handles stumbled on the now hot and slippery cobbles.
‘I saw a dog. Almost tripped over the silly thing. A spaniel. Sent it on its way,’ the man pressing the plunger told him.
‘Had another one, funny-looking short-legged thing, running after it,’ said the man who’d stumbled, as he took back his place from George.
George breathed a huge sigh of relief. Someone had seen them and not long ago. But where were they? Was Annie with them? And was she OK?
The house next to the baker’s was now engulfed in flames and the one after that was smouldering. It was difficult to breathe because of all the smoke.
‘Which way did they go?’ George asked.
The man pointed him in the direction he’d seen the dogs heading, so George turned and ran, with Teeth and Claws right behind him.
CHAPTER 10
Sunday 2 September 1666
At dawn Woofer found Tiger Lily curled up on the steps leading to a grand house in Gracechurch Street at the top of Fish Street Hill. She was panting, trembling with fear and utterly miserable. Her coat not only smelt of slops now but of smoke too.
Woofer went to his friend and lay down beside her. Tiger Lily pressed herself close to him and gradually her trembling ceased and the two dogs fell asleep, only to be woken by three men almost trampling them as they ran up the steps and thumped on the front door.
‘Sir Thomas! Sir Thomas! We have an emergency!’ they told the man in his nightclothes who opened the door.
‘What sort of an emergency?’ Sir Thomas asked as he rubbed his sleepy eyes.
‘The fire, sir …’
Sir Thomas frowned. ‘I’ve already been to see the fire during the night and it’s nothing to worry about. It’ll soon burn itself out. Now let me get back to bed.’
‘No, Mr Bloodworth, sir, I mean, Your Worshipfulness,’ one of the men said, taking off his cap and wringing it in his hands. ‘The fire�
�s spread.’
‘It’s not going to burn itself out now,’ said the second man.
‘We have to do something, Lord Mayor …’ insisted the third man. ‘It’s burning everything before it.’
‘We could pull down houses in the fire’s path,’ suggested the first man.
‘Yes – and who’ll pay for them to be rebuilt!’ the lord mayor replied as he emerged from the house, pulling the door closed behind him. The law said that any man destroying another man’s home had to pay for it to be rebuilt. He couldn’t afford that.
‘Get out of the way, dogs!’ the lord mayor ordered as he passed them.
Tiger Lily cowered from him and he didn’t notice her long tail.
As the men and Sir Thomas strode off down the street she and Woofer trotted after them as the cobblestones grew hotter beneath their paws.
Fish Street Hill was ablaze and the flames were now heading towards London Bridge. Showers of sparks leapt across to Thames Street
Suddenly there was a massive explosion on the waterfront as one of the warehouses that was filled with pitch and oil exploded. People looked on, horrified.
‘It’s too late!’ they cried.
‘We’re all doomed!’
‘It’s God’s wrath!’
The explosion knocked Tiger Lily and Woofer to the ground as it shuddered through them with a bang so loud it left their ears ringing. They scrambled up and raced away from the blast but the fire followed them as two long arms of flames spread down Thames Street.
Tiger Lily ran and ran as Woofer panted his way after her, his tongue lolling out and his throat raw. The cobblestones grew cooler beneath their sore paws the further away from the fire they got and finally the smoke cleared a little, although the scent of it was everywhere.
Ahead of them was a horse trough and they both stood on their hind legs to have a long drink. Tiger Lily’s tail wagged as her thirst was quenched.
A seven-year-old boy was looking out of an upstairs window in the house opposite and saw the dogs drinking.
‘It’s her,’ he said to his mother, pointing at Tiger Lily and Woofer.
His mother didn’t have time to ask him what he was talking about. She was stuffing as many of their belongings as she could into sacks for them to carry. The flames were soaring up into the sky nearby and they had to get as far away from the fire as they could. The smell of smoke was everywhere and the sun shone like blood.
‘The dog in the proclamation. The king’s missing dog,’ the boy said.
Finally his mum looked over at the bedraggled spaniel and the terrier that was with her.
‘Maybe,’ she said doubtfully.
‘It is. I know it is,’ her son insisted. ‘Look at her tail.’
Now that Woofer’s thirst was quenched his hunger returned and when a rat scuttled past, his heart started thumping fast with excitement. He’d seen Teeth and Claws catch rats in the palace kitchen but he’d never actually caught one himself. He’d never been hungry enough to do so before. But now he was.
Tiger Lily’s pink tongue came out and she licked her lips. She was very hungry too.
When Woofer saw a second rat, he raced after it but this one was too quick for him and it scuttled into the small muddy gap beneath the water trough.
Tiger Lily crouched down and peered into the dark space. She could see the rat’s black eyes staring back at her.
Woofer lay down on the other side of the trough. Now all they had to do was wait. Woofer’s tummy rumbled.
‘Did it say there’d be a reward?’ the boy’s mother asked him.
‘Bound to be,’ said the boy. ‘The king’s got lots of money.’
His mother handed him one of the sacks she’d been packing their belongings into. They could buy new things with the reward money.
She smiled for the first time that day as they made their way down the stairs and over to the horse trough.
The rat beneath the trough seemed in no hurry to come out and get eaten.
Woofer put his head close to the ground and growled at it to get a move on. Tiger Lily lay on her side and stretched a paw into the narrow space beneath the trough.
Both of them were far too busy to pay any attention to the boy and his mother who were creeping towards them.
Suddenly something black and burnt landed on top of Woofer and he spun round in surprise and grabbed it in his teeth. The rat took the opportunity to race past him into a hole in the wall as Tiger Lily gave a yap of annoyance and Woofer realized he’d got food in his mouth – a roasted pigeon that had fallen out of the sky.
Woofer wagged his tail-stub as he trotted back to Tiger Lily with his prize, just as the boy and his mother reached the little spaniel.
‘Quick! Catch her,’ the boy’s mother said, and the boy brought down the sack on top of Tiger Lily’s head as she gave a surprised yelp. Woofer barked and dropped the pigeon.
‘That’s it,’ the boy’s mother said as Tiger Lily twisted and turned and tried desperately, but unsuccessfully, to scratch her way out of the sack.
‘Get out of it, dog!’ the boy said, pushing Woofer away with his foot when the terrier tried to help his friend.
‘Put her on the handcart. We’ll take her to the palace in that. It’ll be easier than struggling through the streets with her,’ said the boy’s mother.
Woofer tried to stop them from taking his friend away by running in front of the three-wheeled cart but the boy just shoved it into him. Woofer yelped as it went over his paw.
The boy and his mother pushed the handcart down the street with the royal spaniel in a sack on top of their belongings and a small terrier with a sore paw running after them.
Inside the sack Tiger Lily tried to bite her way out, but the sacking was heavy and it was hard to get a grip on it with her teeth.
She didn’t know where they were going but she could hear Woofer barking every now and again and knew that he was close behind.
‘He’ll soon give up and stop following us,’ the boy’s mother said. But Woofer didn’t stop. He followed them through the crowds of people pushing and shoving their way down the streets as they tried to escape from the fire.
‘Get out of the way, dog!’
Luckily Woofer could hear Tiger Lily whining and barking every now and again, although he couldn’t always see her.
‘What’ve you got in there?’ a man asked the boy’s mother, nodding at the wriggling bundle that was Tiger Lily.
‘Nothing.’
‘I can see it’s something.’
The woman wasn’t going to say any more but her son had been thinking about what he was going to spend the money on.
‘It’s the king’s dog. We’re going to return it to the palace and get a big reward.’
‘I see,’ the man said. ‘That’s very interesting indeed.’ And the next moment he’d grabbed the sack that had Tiger Lily in it and was running off, barging his way through the crowds.
‘Stop! Come back!’ the boy and his mother cried.
The boy ran after the man while his mother stayed with their cart. They didn’t want to lose that as well as the royal dog.
Woofer pushed his way past boots and shoes to catch up with the cart but he could sense something was wrong. Tiger Lily wasn’t there and he didn’t know where she’d gone.
‘I lost them,’ the boy said as he returned to his mother, shaking his head.
Woofer looked up at them and barked.
‘We could take this one back to the king instead.’
‘Don’t be silly. He wouldn’t want a dock-tailed dog, would he?’
Woofer tried to get a scent of Tiger Lily amid the thousands of people and animals that were moving down the streets. But there were too many smells. He tried for hours and hours with no luck.
It was the middle of the night by now but the sky was still bright because of the fire.
Woofer threw back his head and howled in despair.
The sounds of the fire and the throng all around him
almost drowned out the noise but two turnspit dogs heard it. Teeth and Claws looked at each other and immediately made off in the direction of the howling.
George coughed as he followed them. There was no way to avoid the smoke that filled the air. It stung his eyes until they felt red-raw.
He’d lost Gran and Scraps and probably his friend Annie. He didn’t know if Tiger Lily and Woofer were still alive or if they’d been caught by the fire. When he’d turned back into Black Raven Alley and seen his gran’s house burnt to a cinder, like all the other houses in the street, the full force of it had swept over him and he’d sunk to his knees and wept.
Teeth and Claws had done their best to comfort him by whining and pushing their heads under his hand to be stroked.
George was glad Gran wasn’t there to see her home destroyed.
‘You’d have liked her and you’d have liked her soup,’ he’d told Teeth and Claws, and his voice cracked as the dogs looked at him with their heads tilted to one side as if they were really listening. ‘And she’d have loved you.’
No one was going to taste Gran’s ever-bubbling pottage again.
The heat and acrid smoke meant his eyes still streamed long after he’d stopped weeping. There was no point in crying any longer. He knew he had to carry on to find Tiger Lily and Woofer, if they were still alive. No, he wouldn’t even consider that. They had to be alive.
He followed Teeth and Claws as they headed down one street and up another.
Thames Street was in flames and impossible to get through so they had to double back to get round it. London Bridge was on fire too and the watermill beneath it was alight. With a great crash it tore free and floated off down the river, narrowly missing one of the hundreds of small boats piled high with people and their belongings trying to escape the fire’s path.
Teeth and Claws stopped. They were at the spot where Woofer had howled up at the moon but the terrier had gone.
CHAPTER 11
Monday 3 September 1666
Tiger Lily was bumped and bruised inside the sack as her captor ran down one alleyway and up another, breathing heavily.