Fire Catcher (32 page)

Chapter 101

‘Whitehall will burn,’ said Amesbury. ‘Within the hour.’

King Charles put down his wine glass with shaking hands. Safe within the luxurious walls of Somerset House, he’d been able to talk strategy from a distance. Now what he held dear would burn.

He glanced at the Duke of York. His brother James had arrived from Whitehall just in time to witness the kingdom slip away.

‘The children?’ The King’s voice trembled.

‘Headed to safety,’ assured Amesbury. ‘I saw with my own eyes. They’ll be halfway to Oxford by this evening.’

‘The Palace has been cleared? The Queen?’

Amesbury nodded. ‘She’s also to Oxford. They packed much of your apartments. The tapestries and furnishings in the Great Hall will burn. It can’t be helped. There weren’t enough carts.’

Charles took a breath. He felt strangely calm.

‘Then this is the end,’ he said with a weak smile.

‘It’s not over,’ said the Duke of York angrily. ‘You are King.’

‘A plague and a burned Palace,’ said Charles. ‘A Catholic Queen who cannot birth a child. I can never recover from this.’

‘You can stay at Oxford for the winter,’ said James. ‘Rebuild . . .’

But Charles shook his head. ‘Amesbury knows it, James. Look at his face. A Palace isn’t a house. It’s a symbol.’

Charles stood. He walked to the map. A courtier caught him mid-stumble and he steadied himself. Charles picked up his wine and took a deep draft.

‘It’s our family tradition,’ he said, smiling, ‘losing the throne.’

The Duke of York stood.

‘Our tradition is not losing the throne,’ he said. ‘It’s fighting without enough men.’ He gestured to the wider city. ‘We have not enough men now,’ he said. ‘Will you stand and fight?’

Charles looked at him with tired eyes. ‘I’m getting old,’ he said. ‘I’ve no fight left.’

The Duke of York eased the wine from Charles’s hand.

‘Remember Holland?’ he said.

‘Holland.’ The King gave a smile. ‘They were good days.’

‘We did what we pleased,’ said James. ‘No expectations we’d marry a sour foreign princess. No duties of state.’

‘I truly thought,’ said Charles, ‘I’d buy a French farm and live with a pretty girl and a clutch of bonny children. Perhaps I’d have been happier.’

‘But then Barbara arrived,’ said James. ‘And brought you to your senses. And here we all are. Back in England, just as she said, with you as King.’

‘London is in ruins,’ said Charles. ‘A King needs something to rule over.’

‘I say we can still save Whitehall,’ said the Duke of York. ‘This isn’t a fire, Charles. It’s a war.’ His eyes flashed. ‘You and I have much experience at war.’ He cast a quick look at Amesbury. ‘Despite how we may appear nowadays.’

Charles looked to Amesbury. His face said it all. It was a fool’s mission.

‘Something is happening to the weather,’ said Amesbury. ‘The firestorm which the alchemist warned us of. It is very dangerous even to be on the streets.’

‘You think it’s hopeless to defend the Palace?’ asked Charles.

‘Hopeless and foolish,’ said Amesbury.

‘Lead from the front,’ insisted James. ‘As in battle. We can win this.’

Charles considered. He and his brother had never won a battle yet.

‘You always pick the winning side,’ he said to Amesbury. ‘If it’s truly hopeless why are you still here?’

‘Perhaps I’m getting old too,’ said Amesbury. ‘Disloyalty is a young man’s luxury.’

Charles smiled. He stood. ‘One last stand then,’ he said. ‘Stuarts may lose battles, but we are pig-headed enough to go out and dirty ourselves in the fight.’

‘You are the general,’ said the Duke of York. ‘Where are your orders?’

‘How many men do we have?’ asked Charles.

‘Not enough,’ said Amesbury.

‘Less than a hundred,’ said James. ‘But perhaps we can band some sailors together.’

Charles eyed the map.

‘St Paul’s is a powerful landmark,’ he said.

‘St Paul’s won’t burn,’ said James.

‘The spire is scaffolded,’ Amesbury pointed out.

‘I had forgotten the scaffold,’ said Charles. ‘The architects came to blows, didn’t they, over who should be chosen to redesign the cathedral.’

James frowned at the memory. ‘Young Christopher Wren. Suggested some soaring cupola. We chose Roger Pratt’s practical straight spire. Less costly.’

Charles thought for a moment.

‘If it’s a war,’ he said slowly, ‘we’ll need battle stations.’ The idea seemed to galvanise his thoughts. He stared at the map.

‘We defend the west,’ he said, stabbing a finger. ‘Here, at Temple Bar. This is where Westminster begins.’

‘Where the lawyers are,’ agreed Amesbury. ‘If fire breaches Temple, it’s a straight gallop to Whitehall.’

Charles nodded.

‘Fire can reach Temple, from both the south and the north.’ He pointed. ‘James, you’ll defend the north, by the Fleet River. You’ll make our strongest defence. Clarence and Monmouth will defend the south. The Post Office.’

‘Monmouth and Clarence?’ Amesbury looked appalled. ‘Clarence might be cunning, I suppose. But he’s never fought in a war. And Monmouth is a boy. The Post Office is a vital part of England’s commerce.’

‘Monmouth is feckless and vain,’ agreed Charles. ‘But so was I at his age. War made me a man. It will him too. And you underestimate Clarence,’ he added. ‘He’ll do the right thing, when it comes to it.’

Charles turned back to the map. ‘Amesbury,’ he said, ‘you and I defend Temple.’

There was an authority in his voice Amesbury hadn’t heard before. As though the King had been sleeping all these years and was now waking up.

‘Three stations then,’ agreed James. ‘Temple Bar, Fetter Lane and Holborn. Thirty troops on each with orders to press a hundred more men.’

Charles nodded. ‘A good thought, to press men,’ he agreed. ‘Your naval experience serves us well.’

He looked at Amesbury.

‘My purse can give five pounds per station,’ he said. ‘Three shillings a man. Will it serve?’

‘Better food,’ said Amesbury. ‘If you press common men, offer food. Ale, bread.’

Charles nodded. ‘Very well then. Rally the troops with the loudest voices. I want word shouted from every station. Any commoner that stands to fight the fire shall have a pound of cheese, a good loaf and ten pints of ale to sustain him through the night. And two extra shillings per man besides.’

The King thought for a moment. ‘Monmouth can hold a post with Clarence,’ he said to James. ‘Amesbury, go to the alchemist. Find out what you can about the firestorm.’ He paused. ‘If you truly think there’s a plot,’ he added, ‘we must try to strategise around that as well.’

Amesbury nodded.

The King turned to his brother. ‘You and I then,’ he said. ‘From the front.’

James put a hand on his shoulder.

‘From the front.’

Chapter 102

Charlie and Lily raced away from Bedlam and on to the burned-out Strand. Back towards Bedlam the faint sounds of gunshots had died.

‘The soldiers have run out of shot,’ said Charlie. ‘I think a good few lunatics got out whilst they tried to kill us.’

‘I hope so,’ said Lily with feeling. She turned to Charlie.

‘So a man who looked like you was on the Mermaid? With Blackstone and Torr. Your father?’

Charlie nodded.

‘It seems that way,’ he agreed. ‘I know nothing about my father. Only that he died when I was small.’

‘How did he die?’ asked Lily.

Charlie considered. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if I ever knew. It was more a feeling I carried with me. I suppose my mother must have told us. I think my brother may have known more about my father. He didn’t speak of it. Now Rowan is gone too.’

‘Perhaps he was a supplicant for the King,’ said Lily. ‘Maybe he was one of the Sealed Knot. What does it matter? We still know nothing about Blackstone.’

‘We know everything about Blackstone,’ said Charlie. ‘You forget. I’m a thief taker. Tracking property is my skill. The Baptist told us Blackstone sold a set of guns.’

‘You think we can find Blackstone’s guns? After seventeen years?’

‘Better,’ said Charlie. ‘We can find Blackstone’s address.’

‘How?’

‘There is a network of sold goods and contraband in the city,’ said Charlie. ‘Pawn shops. Taverns where you buy smuggled wares, or goods stolen to order. I know all of them.’ Charlie rubbed his bent nose. ‘There are only two pawn shops who take guns,’ he continued. ‘Only one who would deal with a Royalist after the civil war.’

‘And the pawn shop could tell us something?’

Charlie nodded. ‘Guns are very expensive. And you cannot easily fence arms in London since the war. Thieves always come unstuck,’ he added. ‘Pawn shops take details from the gun-maker.’

‘So where is this pawn shop?’

‘Near All Hallows church,’ said Charlie.

Lily’s face fell.

‘But there is all burned,’ she protested. ‘All have fled with their goods.’

‘Pawnbrokers aren’t guildsmen or nobility,’ said Charlie. ‘By the time All Hallows burned all the carts and boats had gone to rich people. They’d have no option but to bury their goods.’

‘Which means?’

‘Unless our pawnbroker wants to be looted, he’ll be back already, digging them up.’

They made south, over the burned and broken path that the fire had already ravaged and followed the riverfront for safety from the flames. There were no coaches and carts anymore. Just a mournful multitude tramping on foot, their arms and shoulders weighed down with belongings.

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.