The Fire Court Read online

  Copyright

  Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

  Copyright © Andrew Taylor 2018

  Cover design by Dominic Forbes © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

  Cover illustration Old London Bridge (engraving), Jongh, Claude de (fl.1610-1663) / Private Collection © Look and Learn / Illustrated Papers Collection / Bridgeman Images

  Andrew Taylor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  Prelims show ‘A map of the area of London affected by the Great Fire of London in 1666’ © The British Library

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008119133

  Ebook Edition © April 2018 ISBN: 9780008119126

  Version: 2018-01-26

  Dedication

  For Caroline

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  The People

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Keep Reading …

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  About the Publisher

  THE PEOPLE

  Infirmary Close, The Savoy

  James Marwood, clerk to Joseph Williamson, and to the Board of Red Cloth

  Nathaniel Marwood, his father, widowed husband of Rachel; formerly a printer

  Margaret and Sam Witherdine, their servants

  The Drawing Office, Henrietta Street

  Simon Hakesby, surveyor and architect

  ‘Jane Hakesby’, his maid, formerly known as Catherine Lovett

  Brennan, his draughtsman

  Clifford’s Inn and the Fire Court

  Lucius Gromwell, antiquary

  Theophilus Chelling, clerk to the Fire Court

  Sir Thomas Twisden, a judge at the Fire Court

  Miriam, a servant at Clifford’s Inn

  Pall Mall

  Sir Philip Limbury

  Jemima, Lady Limbury, daughter of Sir George Syre

  Mary, her maid

  Richard, Sir Philip’s manservant; also known as Sourface

  Hester, a maid

  Whitehall

  Joseph Williamson, Under-Secretary of State to Lord Arlington

  William Chiffinch, Keeper of the King’s Private Closet

  Others

  Roger Poulton, retired cloth merchant; late of Dragon Yard

  Elizabeth Lee, his housekeeper

  Celia Hampney, his widowed niece

  Tabitha, Mistress Hampney’s maid

  Mistress Grove, of Lincoln’s Inn Fields; who lets lodgings to Mistress Hampney

  Barty, a crossing-sweeper in Fleet Street, by Temple Bar

  CHAPTER ONE

  Rachel. There you are.

  She hesitated in the doorway that led from the Savoy Stairs and the river. She wore a long blue cloak over a grey dress he did not recognize. In her hand was a covered basket. She walked across the garden to the archway in the opposite corner. Her pattens clacked on the flagged path.

  That’s my Rachel, he thought. Always busy. But why did she not greet him?

  You are like the river, my love, he had told her once, always moving and always the same.

  They had been sitting by the Thames in Barnes Wood. She had let down her hair, which was brown but shot through with golden threads that glowed in the sunlight.

  She had looked like a whore, with her loose, glorious hair.

  He felt a pang of repulsion. Then he rallied. A woman’s hair encouraged lustful thoughts, he argued with himself, but it could not be sinful when the woman was your wife, joined to you in the sight of God, flesh of your flesh, bone of your bone.

  Now the garden was empty. There was no reason why he should not go after her. Indeed, it was his duty. Was not woman the weaker vessel?

  He used his stick as a prop to help him rise. He was still hale and hearty, thank God, but his limbs grew stiff if he did not move them for a while.

  He walked towards the archway. The path beyond made a turn to the right, rounding the corner of one of the old hospital buildings of the Savoy. He glimpsed Rachel ahead, passing through the gate that led up to the Strand. She paused to look at something – a piece of paper? – in her hand. Then she was gone.

  She must be going shopping. A harmless pleasure, but only as long as it did not encourage vanity, a woman’s besetting sin. Women were weak, women were sinful, which was why God had placed men to watch over them and to correct them when they erred.

  The porter in his lodge took no notice of him. A cobbled path led up to the south side of the Strand. The traffic roared and clattered along the roadway.

  He looked towards Charing Cross, thinking that the shops of the New Exchange would have drawn her like a moth to a blaze of candles. No sign of her. Could he have lost her already? He looked the other way, and there she was, walking towards the ruins of the City.

  He waved his stick. ‘Rachel,’ he cried. ‘Come here.’

  The racket and clatter of the Strand drowned his words.

  He followed her, the stiffness dropping from
his limbs, his legs gathering strength and momentum with the exercise. On and on she walked, past Somerset House and Arundel House, past St Clement’s and under Temple Bar into Fleet Street and the Liberties of the City.

  He kept his eyes fixed on the cloak, and the rhythm of his walking lulled his mind until he almost forgot why he was here. By the Temple, Rachel hesitated, turning towards the roadway with its sluggish currents of vehicles and animals. She looked down at the paper in her hand. A painted coach lumbered to a halt on the opposite side of the road. At that moment, a brewer’s dray, coming from the other direction and laden with barrels, drew up beside it. Between them, they blocked the street.

  Rachel slipped among the traffic and threaded her way across the street.

  The brewer’s men were unloading the dray outside the Devil Tavern. A barrel broke free and crashed into the roadway. The impact shattered the staves on one side. Beer spurted into the street. Two beggars ran whooping towards the growing puddle. They crouched and lapped like dogs. The traffic came to a complete halt, jammed solid by its own weight pressing from either side.

  A sign, he thought, a sign from God. He has parted this river of traffic for me just as it had pleased Him to part the Red Sea before Moses and the Chosen People.

  He walked across the street, his eyes fixed on Rachel’s cloak. She turned to the left in the shadow of the square tower of St Dunstan-in-the-West.

  Why was she leading him such a merry dance? Suspicion writhed within him. Had the serpent tempted her? Had she succumbed to the devil’s wiles?

  An alley ran past the west side of the church to a line of iron railings with a gateway in the middle. Beside it, a porter’s lodge guarded the entrance to a cramped court. Men were milling around the doorway of a stone-faced building with high, pointed windows.

  Rachel was there too, looking once again at the paper in her hand. She passed through the doorway. He followed, but the crowd held him back.

  ‘By your leave, sirs, by your leave,’ he cried. ‘Pray, sirs, by your leave.’

  ‘Hush, moderate your voice,’ hissed a plump clerk dressed in black. ‘Stand back, the judges are coming through.’

  He stared stupidly at the clerk. ‘The judges?’

  ‘The Fire Court, of course. The judges are sitting this afternoon.’

  Three gentlemen came in procession, attended by their clerks and servants. They were conducted through the archway.

  He pressed after them. The doorway led to a passage. At the other end of it a second doorway gave on to a larger courtyard, irregular in shape. Beyond it was a garden, a green square among the soot-stained buildings.

  Was that Rachel over there by the garden?

  He called her name. His voice was thin and reedy, as it was in dreams. She did not hear him, though two men in black gowns stared curiously at him.

  How dared she ignore him? What was this place full of men? Why had she not told him she was coming here? Surely, please God, she did not intend to betray him?

  On the first floor of the building to the right of the garden, a tall man stood at one of the nearer windows, looking down on the court below. The panes of glass reduced him to little more than a shadow. Rachel turned into a doorway at the nearer end of a building to the right of the garden, next to a fire-damaged ruin.

  His breath heaved in his chest. He had the strangest feeling that the man had seen Rachel, and perhaps himself as well.

  The man had gone. This was Rachel’s lover. He had been watching for her, and now she was come.

  His own duty was plain. He crossed the court to the doorway. The door was ajar. On the wall to one side, sheltered by the overhang of the porch, was a painted board. White letters marched, or rather staggered, across a black background:

  XIV

  6 Mr Harrison

  5 Mr Moran

  4 Mr Gorvin

  3 Mr Gromwell

  2 Mr Drury

  1 Mr Bews

  Distracted, he frowned. Taken as a whole, the board was an offence to a man’s finer feelings and displeasing to God. The letters varied in size, and their spacing was irregular. In particular, the lettering of Mr Gromwell’s name had been quite barbarously executed. It was clearly a later addition, obliterating the original name that had been there. A trickle of paint trailed from the final ‘l’ of Gromwell. The sign-painter had tried ineffectually to brush it away, probably with his finger, and had succeeded only in leaving the corpse of a small insect attached to it.

  Perhaps, he thought, fumbling in his pocket, temporarily diverted from Rachel, a man might scrape away the worst of the drip with the blade of a pocket knife. If only—

  He heard sounds within. And a man’s voice. Then a second voice – a woman’s.

  Oh, Rachel, how could you?

  He pushed the door wide and crossed the threshold. Two doors faced each other across a small lobby. At the back, a staircase rose into the shadows.

  He listened, but heard only silence. He caught sight of something gleaming on the second step of the stairs. He stepped closer and peered at it.

  A speck of damp mud. The moisture caught the light from the open door behind him.

  ‘Rachel?’ he called.

  There was no reply. His mind conjured up a vision of her in a man’s chamber, her skirts thrown up, making the two-backed beast with him. He shook his head violently, trying to shake the foul images out of it.

  He climbed the stairs. On the next landing, two more doors faced each other, number three on the right and number four on the left. Another, smaller door had been squeezed into the space between the staircase and the back of the landing.

  Number three. Three was a number of great importance. There were three doors and three Christian virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity. Man has three enemies, the world, the flesh and the devil. Mr Gromwell’s number was three, whoever Gromwell was.

  In God’s creation, everything had meaning, nothing was by chance, all was pre-ordained, even the insect trapped in the paint, placed there to show him the way.

  He raised the latch. The door swung slowly backwards, revealing a square sitting room. Late afternoon sunshine filled the chamber, and for a moment he was transfixed by the loveliness of the light.

  A window to God …

  He blinked, and loveliness became mere sunshine. The light caught on a picture in a carved gilt frame, which hung over the mantelpiece. He stared at it, at the women it portrayed, who were engaged in a scene of such wickedness that it took his breath away. He forced himself to look away and the rest of the room came slowly to his attention: a press of blackened oak; chair and stools; a richly coloured carpet; a table on which were papers, wine, sweetmeats and two glasses; and a couch strewn with velvet cushions the colour of leaves in spring.

  And on the couch—

  Inside his belly, the serpent twisted and sunk its teeth.

  Something did not fit, something was wrong—

  The woman lay sleeping on the couch, her head turned away from him. Her hair was loose – dark ringlets draped over white skin. Her silk gown was designed to reveal her breasts rather than conceal them. The gown was yellow, and also red in places.

  She had kicked off her shoes before falling asleep, and they lay beside the couch. They were silly, feminine things with high heels and silver buckles. The hem of the gown had risen almost to the knees, revealing a froth of lace beneath. One hand lay carelessly on her bosom. She wore a ring with a sapphire.

  But she wasn’t Rachel. She didn’t resemble Rachel in the slightest. She was older, for a start, thinner, smaller, and less well-favoured.

  His mind whirred, useless as a child’s spinning top. He had a sudden, shameful urge to touch the woman’s breast.

  ‘Mistress,’ he said. ‘Mistress? Are you unwell?’

  She did not reply.

  ‘Mistress,’ he said sharply, angry with himself as well as with her for leading him into temptation. ‘Are you drunk? Wake up.’

  He drew closer, and stooped over her. Such
a wanton, sinful display of flesh. The devil’s work to lead mankind astray. He stared at the breasts, unable to look away. They were quite still. The woman might have been a painted statue in a Popish church.

  She had a foolish face, of course. Her mouth was open, which showed her teeth; some were missing, and the rest were stained. Dull, sad eyes stared at him.

  Oh God, he thought, and for a moment the fog in his mind cleared and he saw the wretch for what she truly was.

  Merciful father, here are the wages of sin, for me as well as for her. God had punished his lust, and this poor woman’s. God be blessed in his infinite wisdom.

  And yet – what if there were still life in this fallen woman? Would not God wish him to urge her to repent?

  Her complexion was unnaturally white. There was a velvet beauty patch at the corner of her left eye in the shape of a coach and horses, and another on her cheek in the form of a heart. The poor vain woman, tricking herself out with her powders and patches, and for what? To entice men into her sinful embrace.

  He knelt beside her and rested his ear against the left side of her breast, hoping to hear or feel through the thickness of the gown and the shift beneath the beating of a heart. Nothing. He shifted his fingers to one side. He could not find a heartbeat.

  His fingertips touched something damp, a stickiness. He smelled iron. He was reminded of the butcher’s shop beside his old premises in Pater Noster Row.