The Ashes of London (37 page)

In the evening, the men returned. It was clear from their manner that they were elated.

But there was no conversation worth hearing after supper, only more prayers and an interminable reading, this time from the Book of Micah.

Cat went to bed first. She was almost asleep when she heard the creak of her father’s steps on the stairs.

The door opened. She kept her eyes closed and listened to the slow tread of his feet across the floor. He kicked off his shoes with a clatter. She heard him draping his coat and breeches over the stool. He gave a sigh as he sat down on the mattress. He blew out the candle.

‘Catherine?’ he whispered. ‘Are you awake?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Listen to me. I must go away tomorrow.’

‘When will you return?’

‘I don’t know.’ His breath came and went in the darkness. ‘It depends on many things. I have changed my plans. You will not come with me when I leave London. But after I’m settled, wherever that may be, I shall send for you or come for you. In the meantime, you will stay here instead.’

‘Here? You mean in this house?’

‘Yes. The Davys walk in the ways of the Lord. I shall place them in authority over you. They will treat you as their own daughter.’

‘But, sir—’

‘That’s all. You will do as they command until we are together again. Let us say a prayer and then we shall sleep.’

Master Lovett knelt down. She extracted herself from the warmth of the bed and knelt beside him. He whispered a prayer into the darkness. Cat murmured amen when it was time to do so.

Afterwards, she listened to him settle himself to sleep. His breathing slowed and grew regular. In a while he began to snore, quietly at first and then ever more loudly. The sound mingled with other snores from the neighbouring chamber, where the Davys lay with their children.

She wept silently in the darkness.

I
WAS FORCED
to spend Monday morning at Whitehall, copying letters and correcting proofs for the
Gazette
. I had been so little in the office that my work for Williamson had steadily accumulated over the last few days.

I worked mechanically, even carelessly. Most of my attention was elsewhere. I was trying to find a way of linking the three appearances of my grey cloak in a way that did not suggest to an outside observer – Master Chiffinch, say, or Mistress Alderley or even the King himself – that I was a complete lunatic.

If I could argue them away, I would. But I couldn’t. The cloak’s three appearances were facts, each of them in its own way as unassailable as the mounting block outside my window in Scotland Yard or Master Williamson’s habitual ill-temper.

First, my own torn grey summer cloak, which the boy–girl had stolen from me by Ludgate more than two months ago on the night that St Paul’s burned.

Second, and six weeks later, that same cloak, hanging on a nail in Convocation House Yard. When I had tried to take it, a respectable-looking draughtsman prevented me, saying that it belonged to someone else. Whether he had meant himself or some other person, however, it had still been my cloak, with the slash in the lining made by a cutpurse’s knife the summer before last.

Third, on Saturday, my cloak again – caught in a hedge on Primrose Hill, a few yards from a man stabbed and left to bleed to death. Not a nameless man, either, but the betrothed husband of Catherine Lovett, Sir Denzil Croughton, whom I had first glimpsed through a window at Barnabas Place.

In the middle of the morning, a servant brought me a note, a few pencilled words from Master Chiffinch. He commanded me to call on him at six o’clock in the evening.

At midday I walked back to the Savoy and dined with the Newcombs and my father.

Margaret was in the kitchen that day, and I noticed she was hanging out sheets on the line in the back yard. After dinner, when I was leaving with the grey cloak wrapped in a bundle, the gate to the yard opened, and she beckoned me towards her.

‘There’s been men asking about him, sir,’ she whispered loudly, her face even redder than usual.

‘Who? Where?’

‘Master Coldridge. Two men were in the Blood-Bowl Tavern yesterday evening.’

‘They came into Alsatia?’

She nodded. ‘They weren’t bailiffs or anything like that. Free-spending. Big men. Carrying swords.’

‘They asked for Coldridge by name?’

‘Yes. Sam said they were talking to Rock and Captain Boyd about him.’

I felt suddenly nauseous, with Mistress Newcomb’s dinner heavy on my stomach. ‘Did they talk to Sam as well?’

‘No. But I thought you should know.’

I thanked her and gave her something for her trouble. So here was something else to think about, a formless threat. The trouble was, looking for traces of Coldridge in Alsatia might lead the men to my father.

I took up the bundle, walked up to the Strand and turned east towards the City. Williamson could do without me for a few hours.

As winter approached, the battered hulk of St Paul’s looked even more forlorn than it had at the end of the summer. Rain had smeared soot and ash on every surface. Under a heavy grey sky, seagulls circled the central tower and patrolled the emptiness where there had once been roofs.

Even in ruin, the cathedral attracted people. Perhaps they marvelled at it in decay more than they had done before the Fire. I joined the group of men filing through the gate into Convocation House Yard.

The men immediately in front of me were going to inspect what was left of Bishop Braybrooke and the other bodies that had survived the Fire, though time and the weather was steadily decreasing any resemblance they had to human beings. But they were still proving an astonishingly popular spectacle. My neighbour told me excitedly that the Duke of York himself had come to inspect the dead bishop this very morning. Royal patronage increased the bishop’s value still further.

Two men on the gate, the cathedral watchmen, were taking money in the guise of charity for admitting sightseers to this carnival of the dead. The watchmen’s dog was chained up outside the hut where they spent much of their time. I touched one of them on the sleeve and showed him the general pass that Williamson had given me, the one I had used to gain entry on my previous visit. It vouched for me as a clerk attached to Lord Arlington’s office and included an imposing seal.

‘You remember me,’ I said. ‘I was here last month on the King’s business to see the Chapter Clerk’ – I groped in my memory for the man’s name – ‘Master Frewin.’

He nodded slowly, his eyes on the seal, swaying slightly on his feet. He was probably illiterate as well as tipsy. He jerked his thumb at the inner enclosure within Convocation House Yard, in the corner by the cloister, the place where I had seen the cloak. ‘You’re out of luck, sir. Master Frewin’s not here today. But if you’d like to see Bishop Braybrooke instead, I—’

‘I don’t want Master Frewin this time.’

‘Just as well, sir.’ He chuckled at my expense. ‘Seeing that he’s in Derbyshire at his mother’s deathbed.’

I took out my purse. ‘I met a draughtsman when I was last here. I need his name. He’s a tall grey man, thin, middle-aged.’

The man stopped laughing. He blinked with the intellectual effort of this sudden change of subject. ‘You mean Master Hakesby, sir? Who works with Dr Wren? Not in today either.’

‘That’s the man,’ I said, hoping it was. ‘Where can I find him?’

The watchman paused until I had dropped a shilling into his palm. ‘Off the Strand, sir. Three Cocks Yard. Obliged to you, sir.’

I stared at him and blinked. ‘Where?’

‘Three Cocks Yard. It’s where he lodges. It’s off the—’

‘I know where it is. Which house?’

He shrugged.

‘Thank you,’ I said, and turned away, with the bundle under my arm.

I had not expected this connection between my missing cloak and a quite different part of this opaque and unsettling affair. As I trudged down Ludgate Hill to Fleet Street, I played out the links of the chain in my mind. Hakesby, the man who stopped me taking the cloak, lived in Three Cocks Yard. I had been there before, when I had followed the servant trundling Jem’s box through the streets from Barnabas Place. I had lost sight of the man in the Strand, but possibly he had gone up the alley leading to Three Cocks Yard. I remembered the new houses, brick-built and quietly prosperous, some with shops on their ground floors, arranged around the paved court with a pump.

When I reached the yard, I went into the apothecary’s shop and asked the man within if he knew Master Hakesby.

He gave me a swift, assessing glance. ‘Two doors up, sir. He lodges at Mistress Noxon’s.’

At the house, the outer door stood open, leading to an inner door beyond. I knocked. A scrawny maid answered my knock. She frowned when she saw me, as if trying to remember something.

I gave her my name and asked for Master Hakesby, on cathedral business. She led me upstairs. On the way she glanced back.

‘Your pardon, sir. Have you been here before?’

‘Never.’

I heard movement below. I peered over the banister rail. There was a man in the gloom at the back of the hall, coming from another room with a chair in his arms. He looked up at me, and for an instant our eyes met. I saw a flash of recognition in his face, and knew it must be mirrored in mine. He was the red-headed manservant who had wheeled the barrow from Barnabas Place. So he had known that I was following him.

On the first-floor landing, the maid tapped on the door. ‘Master Marwood for you, sir.’

‘Who?’ a man said in a low, rumbling voice. ‘Come in, if you must.’

The apartment was at the front of the house, with a window overlooking the court below. A fire banked high with coal burned in the grate. The chamber was furnished for work rather than leisure or sleep. A draughtsman’s board had been set up by the window with a tall stool beside it. Wooden models of buildings were displayed on shelves, together with rolls of plans and instruments whose purpose I could not guess.

In the middle of this sat Master Hakesby in his dressing gown, with a blanket spread over his knees and a cap of rabbit fur on his head. His gaunt face was unshaven and thinner than I remembered. Beside his armchair was a table covered with books and a pile of papers, weighted down with a handbell.

I bowed to him. ‘Your servant, sir.’

He frowned up at me. ‘Have we met, sir?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘A few weeks ago – in the shed at Convocation House Yard. My Lord Arlington sent me to inspect the work of clearance, and I was waiting to say goodbye to Master Frewin.’

He nodded. ‘Yes, yes.’ His eyes widened. ‘You may go, Margery.’

The maid curtsied, shot me another curious glance and left us alone.

‘Forgive me that I don’t rise,’ he said. ‘I’ve had a touch of ague, and it’s left me as weak as a kitten. I recall perfectly how we met.’ He sucked in a breath. ‘And I cannot understand why you want another meeting.’

For answer, I set down my bundle among his papers on the table and undid it. I took out the grey cloak and held it up. ‘Do you remember this, sir?’

‘Of course I do,’ he snapped. ‘That’s Jane’s cloak. So you found a way to take it after all.’

‘Who’s Jane?’

He waved a hand, waving the question away. ‘Leave the cloak with me, sir. I’ll see it restored to its rightful owner. Where did you find it?’

‘I know it’s someone else’s cloak,’ I said.

‘That’s nonsense. Anyone here will tell you that. Ask the servants. Ask Mistress Noxon.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

I took up the cloak and bowed.

‘Don’t go,’ he said. ‘I haven’t finished with you. And put down that cloak. Who are you? I cannot believe my Lord Arlington would employ—’

I closed the door on him. I heard him calling me as I went down the stairs.

The manservant was lingering at the back of the hall, pretending to examine the chair he had been carrying. He lumbered towards me.

‘I’ve seen you before, sir.’

‘Yes,’ I said, moving down the hall towards the front door. ‘I followed you here when you brought a box from Barnabas Place in Holborn.’

My honesty took him by surprise. His mouth opened but no words emerged.

The grey cloak was draped over my arm. I held it up. ‘This is Jane’s, isn’t it?’

A bell jangled above our heads. Master Hakesby was summoning help.

The servant blinked. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Is she here? I’d like to return it to her as soon as I can.’

‘No, sir. She’s gone.’ He stretched out a hand and touched the cloak, as if to reassure himself it was real. The gesture was almost a caress. ‘Mistress Noxon said she had to go away.’

The bell rang on.

The scrawny maidservant appeared at the back of the hall, passing us on her way to the stairs. She shot me a glance.

‘Where can I find Jane?’ I said.

The maidservant swung round. ‘Jane? She’s at that coffee house by Charing Cross.’ There was a shrill note of triumph in her voice. ‘She’s not coming back here, sir, I tell you that.’

A woman’s voice called down from somewhere higher in the house. ‘Margery! Why haven’t you answered that bell? Quickly, girl!’

The maid ran up the stairs. I hurried to the door before it was too late. The manservant followed me and unbolted it. He let me out.

As I ran past him and down the steps, he said, ‘Pray, sir, tell her John asked to be remembered to her. Tell her I’m waiting for her. All I need’s a sign, sir, and I’ll walk to the end of the earth for her. A sign.’

The coffee house was doing a thriving trade. I did not usually frequent such places, because of the expense, but they were springing up everywhere. In general, the view at Whitehall was that coffee houses should be discouraged, because they attracted men of a puritanical cast of mind. They acted as centres of information and encouraged potentially seditious debate. Taverns and alehouses were quite a different matter: men went there for good fellowship and to get drunk.

I went inside, found the landlord, and asked for Jane.