Petals in the Ashes (14 page)

Once we were close by to the river banks we could see people running along Fish Hill and Thames Street, some of them pushing their furniture on carts, or carrying chairs atop of their heads. Two or three churches were alight, too, their steeples standing black like witches' hats with the flames rushing up them, and even old Dyers Hall was afire with orange and gold flames reaching towards the sky. As I looked in wonderment and fear at this mighty building, the roof fell in with a terrible crash and a great cloud of dust and golden sparks lifted into the sky. A gust of wind wafted these across to a row of houses in Black Raven Alley, and I saw some thatched roofs catch and then a man running along the street with his clothes alight.

I clasped Tom's arm tightly, for I was much afraid, and it looked for a while as if we would not be able to land at all. In a few moments, however, the boatman put us out a little downriver at Broken Wharf Steps, his boat being immediately taken by two men who were intent on getting away and did not care where. I heard the boatman demand from them the sum of five shillings, and I did not doubt that he would get it, for the men seemed in a passion of fear.

As we reached the top of the steps I looked back to the river. Dense smoke was now hanging over the water like a fog, and sparks and fragments of burning wood and cloth were falling into it, hissing and spluttering. The rising moon showed a family standing by the waterside throwing all their possessions into a wherry: table, chairs, clothes, bedding – all went in. The moon then gleamed crimson and a moment later vanished under billowing clouds of smoke, and the
family disappeared into the dark so that I did not see what happened to them.

Tom and I stood speechless, hardly knowing where to go or what to do.

In the streets running alongside the river, all was chaos and noise and stink – for the glue-makers were by this wharf and there was an acrid smell of burning bones and animal fat here. Fires roared to the right of us, windows shattered, barrels exploded and stones of buildings fragmented and fell. The street was thronged with people bent double under the weight of the goods they bore on their backs, or pushing hand carts with furniture atop. I saw a sick man lying on a pallet, moaning as he was carried along, and a whole family of ten or so children sitting on a farm cart, crying with fear.

An old woman was standing outside the door of her house looking around her in wonder, and Tom stopped to speak to her.

‘What's happening here now?' he asked. ‘Is anyone fighting the fire?'

‘Oh, 'tis all in fair order,' she nodded, ‘for the king is now come to fight it with his brother the Duke. They have ordered the pulling down of all houses in its path.' She cocked her head to one side. ‘If you listen you can hear the crashes.'

‘But where did the fire start?'

‘Over east a way – Pudding Lane. In a baker's shop, so I've heard.'

‘But you must leave here!' I said to her. ‘The wind's blowing the fire in this direction.'

‘I'll go just as soon as I've seen the king and spoken to him,' said the old woman.

‘But he may not have time to speak to everyone! You must shift for yourself and go now!'

‘There's plenty of time,' she said comfortably. ‘Yon fire is more than two streets away.'

It seemed useless to argue with her, and Tom pulled at my hand. ‘Come, Hannah,' he said. ‘We must get back and see what danger there is for your shop. And for Anne.'

We were nigh exhausted by the time we reached the shop, for the streets near the river had been teeming with people, carts and horses trying to get away, and we'd sometimes had to employ our hands and elbows to fight our way through. Strangely, though, as we left the river behind, the smoke and roaring and smell all receded, as did the reverse-pealing bells, so that by the time we reached Crown and King Place and I saw our dear shop sign, all was calm and quiet, with no indication anywhere that there was a fire raging elsewhere in the City.

I hammered on the door. ‘Are you all right?' I asked Anne, as she opened the door. ‘Is all well here?'

‘Of course,' she said, and I saw her eyes fall on the silver locket and widen. ‘Why?'

‘The fire!'

‘What fire?' she asked.

Tom laughed. ‘See. All's well. It will likely be put out tonight and tomorrow they will start rebuilding. 'Tis always the way.'

He took my hand and kissed it. I'd rather he had kissed me on the lips but as Anne was watching us, had to be content. ‘But when will I see you?' I asked.

‘I'll come tomorrow. In the evening when the fair
closes,' he said, and he blew me another kiss and ran off.

I watched him go. ‘He stays on the fair site at Smithfield,' I said to Anne, a trifle anxiously. ‘'Tis a way outside the City walls, so he should be safe.'

‘Why shouldn't he be?'

‘Don't you listen? Because of the fire raging!'

‘But you heard what he said …' Her eyes fell upon the locket again and sparked with interest. ‘Now let me look at that silver heart, and tell me straight what he said as he gave it to you and if he declared love, for I cannot wait a moment longer to know.'

‘Met my Lord Mayor in Canning Street, and he cried like a fainting woman, “Lord what can I do? I am spent! People will not obey me. I have been pulling down houses but the fire overtakes us faster than we can work.”'

No crier came to wake us the next morning, but I was awake at first light anyway, wondering if the fire was still burning and if it was, where it was heading. We were at the western corner of the City and a goodly way from the last point I had seen flames, but anything could have happened by now. Tom, however, had seemed sure that it would have been put out overnight, and I prayed that this would be so.

Tom.
I felt for the locket around my neck, held it tightly between my fingers and wished on it that he would come to no harm. This thought of him led me to musing on his kisses, and I was about to begin going over them precisely, moment by moment, when there was a knock – nay, a hammering – on the shop door. Leaving Anne still dozing, I slid out of bed,
pulled a shawl around myself and went to open it.

Mr Newbery stood there, fully dressed in his Sunday clothes of ribbon-edged breeches, doublet and cloak, with plumed hat over his periwig.

‘Fire!' he pronounced gravely. ‘A very desperate fire.'

I nodded. ‘I saw it last night by the river.'

‘And spreading north and like to engulf us all!'

‘It will surely not spread as far as us,' I said. ‘For isn't the king himself working to fight it now?'

‘The king!' Mr Newbery said scornfully. ‘This fire is a condemnation of that very man. It has been long said that this year has the number of the Beast and will contain a judgement against him and his depraved court!'

I didn't say anything to this but put on my listening face, for I knew a discourse was coming.

‘The court did not change their ways so the Lord brought down a plague and a pestilence. And now he brings a fire to cleanse their souls.' He paused and added in a more general tone, ‘What's more, the king has now acknowledged another royal bastard. That makes six of 'em that we know about!'

I stepped out on to the cobbles to look into the sky, which was white and milky with smoke and contained a pale and ineffective sun. There was a strong stench of burning in the air and, as I stood there, a flurry of paper, charred at the edges, dropped out of the sky around us.

‘So it burns still!' I said.

‘That is just what I've been saying,' he retorted. ‘And I must rouse all our neighbours that haven't yet heard of it.'

Two lads passed us in a great hurry, and Mr Newbery hailed them and asked where they went.

‘To Whitehall,' one of them called. ‘The people are making a deputation for His Majesty to use greater measures to save them from the fire.'

‘What can
he
do?' Mr Newbery asked scornfully. ‘He is only one man.'

‘He is the anointed king!' they said, as if this were enough in itself to preserve us all.

‘And 'tis his fault we're stricken in the first place,' Mr Newbery muttered as they went on.

Anne had now stirred herself and came to stand beside me in the doorway. ‘Oh! How big is the fire now?' she asked, looking up at the sky. ‘Do we still open the shop this morning?'

I shrugged, looking at Mr Newbery for advice. ‘I don't know.'

‘People still have to eat,' he said. ‘But I doubt if they will be eating sweetmeats. I myself intend to go to the market to buy some good cheese and some pies, in case the food markets are all closed tomorrow. And then I will pack the rest of my clothes and my possessions lest I have to flee.'

‘Then we must do the same,' I said to Anne.

Mr Newbery licked his finger and held it high for a moment. ‘The wind is changing,' he announced. ‘It now blows towards the west of the City.'

‘Where is the west?' Anne asked.

‘Where we are, my good child!'

‘But it's a way off yet, isn't it?' I said. ‘It may yet be halted – or the wind may change again.'

‘Or it may not,' Mr Newbery said.

I looked at him helplessly. ‘Is there nothing more
that people can do to help themselves?' I asked.

He shrugged. ‘If we had fire squirts we could dowse our houses – but there are none to be had.'

‘What else?'

‘The booksellers and stationers around St Paul's have taken their stocks and put them into the crypt,' he went on, ‘and people are burying their treasured possessions in their gardens so that if the fire comes it will pass over them – indeed I passed a man burying his Parmesan cheese in his garden only yesterday. I myself am taking some of my best things to St Dominic's, so that they may lay safe within its walls.'

‘But I saw churches on fire …' I said, speaking slowly, for it had just occurred to me that if this fire was a judgement from God, why was He also burning His own churches?

Mr Newbery shrugged. ‘Goods will be safer there, stacked tight, than in our flimsy shops,' he said, and then went on his way to warn and befright our other neighbours. And indeed perhaps this was a good thing.

Anne and I got dressed quickly, hardly bothering to wash ourselves, for such was the smoke and smut in the air that to do so seemed a waste of time. I put on my old grey linen dress, which I cared for least, and carefully folded the others in case I should need to flee with them. I then made Anne do the same. After this we took a box and put in it the few things we valued: our kitchen equipment, chafing dishes, pans and bowls. We also took our canvas travelling bags, putting in them those hair combs, fans, favourite gloves, perfumes and odds and ends that are precious to those of the female sex.

Going out for provisions (for I could already see that there were very few bakers or milkmaids around), I decided we should head for Green Place, which was north of the City and just within the walls, rather than go towards the river where the fire seemed to be worst.

Although only one hour or so had passed since my conversation at the door with Mr Newbery, already the air outside was thicker. People seemed unsure of what they should do or where they should go, and several of our neighbours were standing around in little groups talking, glancing often down towards the City, where sometimes could be heard the dead-pealing of bells or a thudding gunpowder-bang where a house had been blown up to try and create a fire break.

We'd not taken more than a few steps when I suddenly remembered Kitty, who'd been curled asleep in a drawer.

‘Shall we take her out with us in the basket?' Anne asked eagerly.

I shook my head. ‘But we must go and close our back door and keep her inside,' I said. ‘We can't risk her straying.'

Anne went back in to make her safe and at that moment a gang of men came running along the lane, some ten or twelve of them, carrying staves and sticks.

‘The Frenchman!' I heard one shout. ‘Where is he?'

I made to slip back inside our door, for I could see they meant business, but one of them saw me.

‘The Frenchman – where does he live?' a heavy-set man shouted at me.

‘I don't know of any Frenchman living down here,'
I said, shrinking back.

‘There are no foreigners about!' Mr Gilbert, one of our neighbours, called over.

‘Yes there is! Maurice is his name,' said the heavy-set man.

I shook my head again and tried to go inside again, but he took my arm. ‘If you see him, tell him he'll hang for this.'

‘We'll hang him ourselves!' another cried. ‘And draw and quarter him as well.'

‘What has he done?' Mr Gilbert asked.

‘Fired our city. Put an incendiary through a window and set London alight!'

There was an angry murmur from our neighbours at this. ‘There's a lodging house at the corner. Over the milliner's shop,' one said. ‘He may be there.'

As the men ran off Mr Gilbert called to me that it wasn't safe to be a foreigner in London now, for gangs were seeking out any French and Dutch and accusing them of starting the fire. ‘They even seized on an Italian washerwoman and threw her into the river!' he added.

Anne and I made our purchases without difficulty, for Green Place was where the country housewives came to sell their garden produce and their baking, and there were many more there that day who had not been willing to venture further into the City.

We stayed some time gossiping, for some folk there had already been made homeless by the fire and had tales to tell, and there were also those whose houses and shops were now in direct line with the fire and so were on their way out of the City. As in the plague, I
saw that it was the poor who suffered most, for they had no carriages or carts to convey their goods or themselves away, nor place to go, and so these newly homeless were making their way to Moore Fields or London Fields to lie until the fire was brought under control.