The Fire Court Page 2

  Was that another sound? On the landing? On the stairs.

  He withdrew his hand. The fingers were red with blood. Like the butcher’s fingers when he had killed a pig on the step, and the blood drained down to the gutter, a feast for flies. Why was there so much blood? It was blood on the yellow gown: that was why some of it was red.

  Thank God it was not Rachel. He sighed and drew down the lids over the sightless eyes. He knew what was due to death. When Rachel had drawn her last labouring breath—

  The cuff of his shirt had trailed across the blood. He blinked, his train of thought broken. There was blood on his sleeve. They would be angry with him for fouling his linen.

  He took a paper from the table and wiped his hand and the cuff as best he could. He stuffed the paper in his pocket to tidy it away and rose slowly to his feet.

  Rachel – how in God’s name could he have forgotten her? Perhaps she had gone outside while he was distracted.

  In his haste, he collided with a chair and knocked it over. On the landing, he closed the door behind him. He went downstairs. As he came out into the sunshine, something shifted in his memory and suddenly he knew this place for what it was: one of those nests of lawyers that had grown up outside the old city walls, as nests of rooks cluster in garden trees about a house.

  Lawyers. The devil’s spawn. They argued white into black with their lies and their Latin, and they sent innocent, God-fearing men to prison, as he knew to his cost.

  Birds sang in the garden. The courtyard was full of people, mainly men, mainly dressed in lawyers’ black which reminded him again of rooks, talking among themselves. Caw, caw, he murmured to himself, caw, caw.

  He walked stiffly towards the hall with its high, pointed windows. At the door, he paused, and looked back. His eyes travelled up the building he had just left. The shadowy man was back at the first-floor window. He raised his arm at the shadow, partly in accusation and partly in triumph: there, see the rewards of sin. Fall on your knees and repent.

  Suddenly, there was Rachel herself. She was coming out of the doorway of the blackened ruin next to Staircase XIV. She had pulled her cloak over her face to cover her shame. She was trying to hide from him. She was trying to hide from God.

  Caw, caw, said the rooks.

  ‘Rachel,’ he said, or perhaps he only thought it. ‘Rachel.’

  A lawyer passed her, jostling her shoulder, and for a moment the cloak slipped. To his astonishment, he saw that the woman was not Rachel, after all. This woman wore the mark of Cain on her face. Cain was jealous of his brother Abel, so he slew him.

  Not Rachel. His wife was dead, rotting in her grave, waiting among the worms for the Second Coming of the Lord and the everlasting reign of King Jesus. Nor had Rachel borne the mark of Cain.

  ‘Sinner!’ he cried, shaking his fist. ‘Sinner!’

  The bite of the serpent endured beyond death. Perhaps he had been wrong about Rachel. Had she been a whore too, like Eve a temptress of men, destined to writhe for all eternity in the flames of hell?

  Caw, caw, said the rooks. Caw, caw.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It is marvellous what money in your pocket and a toehold in the world will do for a man’s self-esteem.

  There I was, James Marwood. Sleeker of face and more prosperous of purse than I had been six months earlier. Clerk to Mr Williamson, the Under-Secretary of State to my Lord Arlington himself. Clerk to the Board of Red Cloth, which was attached to the Groom of the Stool’s department. James Marwood – altogether a rising man, if only in my own estimation.

  That evening, Thursday, 2 May, I set out by water from the Tower, where I had been a witness on Mr Williamson’s behalf at the interrogation of certain prisoners. The tide was with us, though only recently on the turn. The ruins of the city lay on my right – the roofless churches, the tottering chimney stacks, the gutted warehouses, the heaps of ash – but distance and sunlight lent them a strange beauty, touching with the colours of paradise. On my left, on the Surrey side, Southwark lay undamaged, and before me the lofty buildings on London Bridge towered across the river with the traffic passing to and fro between them.

  The waterman judged it safe for us to pass beneath the bridge. A few hours later, when the tide would be running faster, the currents would be too turbulent for safety. Even so, he took us through Chapel Lock, one of the wider arches. It was a relief to reach open water at the cost of only a little spray on my cloak.

  London opened up before me again, still dominated by the blackened hulk of St Paul’s on its hill. It was eight months since the Great Fire. Though the streets had been cleared and the ruins surveyed, the reconstruction had barely begun.

  My mind was full of the evening that lay ahead – the agreeable prospect of a supper with two fellow clerks in a Westminster tavern where there would be music, and where there was a pretty barmaid who would be obliging if you promised her a scrap of lace or some other trifle. Before that, however, I needed to return to my house to change my clothes and make my notes for Mr Williamson.

  I had the waterman set me down at the Savoy Stairs. My new lodgings were nearby in the old palace. I had moved there less than three weeks ago from the house of Mr Newcomb, the King’s Printer. Since my good fortune, I deserved better and I could afford to pay for it.

  In the later wars, the Savoy had been used to house the wounded. Now its rambling premises near the river were used mainly for ageing soldiers and sailors, and also for private lodgings. The latter were much sought after since the Fire – accommodation of all sorts was still in short supply. It was crown property and Mr Williamson had dropped a word on my behalf into the right ear.

  Infirmary Close, my new house, was one of four that had been created by subdividing a much larger building. I had the smallest and cheapest of them. At the back it overlooked the graveyard attached to the Savoy chapel. It was an inconvenience which was likely to grow worse as the weather became warmer, but it was also the reason why the rent was low.

  My cheerfulness dropped away from me in a moment when Margaret opened the door to me. I knew something was amiss as soon as I saw her face.

  I passed her my damp cloak. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m sorry, master – your father went wandering today. I was only gone for a while – the night-soil man came to the door, and he does talk, sir, a perfect downpour of words, you cannot—’

  ‘Is he safe?’

  ‘Safe? Yes, sir.’ She draped the cloak over the chest, her hands smoothing its folds automatically. ‘He’s by the parlour fire. I’d left him in the courtyard on his usual bench. The sun was out, and he was asleep. And I thought, if I was only gone a moment, he—’

  ‘When was this?’ I snapped.

  She bit her lip. ‘I don’t know. Upward of an hour? We couldn’t find him. Then suddenly he was back – the kitchen yard. Barty brought him.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Barty, sir. The crossing-sweeper by Temple Bar. He knows your father wanders sometimes.’

  I didn’t know Barty from Adam, but I made a mental note to give him something for his pains.

  ‘Sir,’ Margaret said in a lower voice. ‘He was weeping. Like a child.’

  ‘Why?’ I said. ‘Had someone hurt him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Has he said anything?’

  Margaret rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Rachel.’

  I felt as if someone had kicked me. ‘What?’

  ‘Rachel, sir. That’s what he said when he came in. Over and over again. Just the name. Rachel.’ She stared up at me, twisting a fold of her dress in her hands. ‘Who’s Rachel, sir? Do you know?’

  I didn’t answer her. Of course I knew who Rachel was. She was my mother, dead these six long years, but not always dead to my father.

  I went into the parlour. The old man was sitting by the fire and spooning the contents of a bowl of posset into his mouth. Margaret or someone had laid a large napkin across his lap. But it had not been large enough to catch all the
drops of posset that had missed his mouth. He did not look up as I entered the room.

  Anger ran through me, fuelled by love and relief, those most combustible ingredients, and heating my blood like wine. Where was my father in this wreck of a human being? Where was Nathaniel Marwood, the man who had ruled his family and his business with the authority of God’s Viceroy, and who had earned the universal respect of his friends? He had been a printer once, as good as any in Pater Noster Row, a man of substance. Politics and religion had led him down dangerous paths to his ruin, but no one had ever doubted his honesty or his skill. Now, after his years in prison, only fragments of him were left.

  The spoon scraped around the side of the empty bowl. I took the bowl from him, meeting only the slightest resistance, and then the spoon. I placed them both on the table and considered whether to remove the soiled napkin. On reflection, it seemed wiser to leave it to Margaret.

  Eating and the afternoon’s unaccustomed exercise had tired him. His eyes closed. His hands were in his lap. The right hand was grimy. The cuff of his shirt protruded from the sleeve of his coat. The underside of the cuff was stained reddish-brown like ageing meat.

  My anger evaporated. I leaned forward and pushed up the cuff. There was no sign of a cut or graze on his wrist or his hand.

  I shook him gently. ‘Sir? Margaret tells me you went abroad this afternoon. Why?’

  The only answer was a gentle snore.

  Four hours later, by suppertime, the posset was merely a memory and my father was hungry again. Hunger made him briefly lucid, or as near to that state as he was ever likely to come.

  ‘Why did you go out, sir?’ I asked him, keeping my voice gentle because it upset him if I spoke roughly to him. ‘You know it worries Margaret when she cannot find you.’

  ‘Rachel.’ He was looking into the fire, and God alone knew what he saw there. ‘I cannot allow my wife to walk the town without knowing where she is. It is not fitting, so I followed her to remonstrate with her. Did she not promise to obey me in all things? She was wearing her best cloak, too, her Sunday cloak. It is most becoming.’ He frowned. ‘Perhaps it is too becoming. The devil lays his traps so cunningly. I must speak to her, indeed I must. Why did she bear the mark of Cain? I shall find out the truth of the matter.’

  ‘Rachel …? My mother?’

  He glanced at me. ‘Who else?’ Even as he spoke, he looked bewildered. ‘But you were not born. You were in her belly.’

  ‘And now I am here before you, sir,’ I said, as if this double time my father inhabited, this shifting confluence of now and then, were the most natural thing in the world. ‘Where did my mother go?’

  ‘Where the lawyers are. Those sucklings of the devil.’

  ‘Where, exactly?’ The lawyers congregated in many places.

  He smiled. ‘You should have seen her, James,’ he said. ‘Always neat in her movements. She loves to dance, though of course I do not allow it. It is not seemly for a married woman. But … but how graceful she is, James, even in her kitchen. Why, she is as graceful as a deer.’

  ‘Which lawyers were these, sir?’

  ‘Have you ever remarked how lawyers are like rooks? They cling together and go caw-caw-caw. They all look the same. And they go to hell when they die. Did you know that? Moreover—’

  ‘Rachel, sir. Where did she go?’

  ‘Why, into the heart of a rookery. There was a courtyard where there was a parliament of these evil birds. And I followed her by a garden to a doorway in a building of brick … and the letters of one name were most ill-painted, James, and ill-formed as well. There was a great drip attached to it, and a poor creature had drowned therein, and I could have scraped it away but there was not time.’

  ‘A creature …?’

  ‘Even ants are God’s creatures, are they not? He brought two of them into the ark, so he must have decided they should be saved from the Flood. Ah—’

  My father broke off as Margaret came into the room bearing bread. She laid the table for supper. His eyes followed her movements.

  ‘And then, sir?’ I said. ‘Where did she go?’

  ‘I thought to find her in the chamber with the ant. Up the stairs.’ He spoke absently, his attention still on Margaret. ‘But she wasn’t there. No one was, only the woman on the couch. The poor, abandoned wretch. Her sins found her out, and she suffered the punishment for them.’

  The fingers of his left hand played with the soiled shirt cuff. He rubbed the stiff linen where the blood had dried.

  Margaret left the room.

  ‘Who was this woman?’ I said.

  ‘Not Rachel, thanks be to God. No, no.’ He frowned. ‘Such a sinfully luxurious chamber. It had a carpet on the floor that was so bright it hurt the eyes. And there was a painting over the fireplace … its lewdness was an offence in the eyes of God and man.’

  ‘But the woman, sir?’ I knew he must have wandered into one of his waking dreams, but it was wise to make sure he was calm now, that he would not wake screaming in the night and wake the whole household, as he sometimes did. ‘This woman on the couch, I mean. What was she doing there?’

  ‘She was a sinner, poor fool. Displaying herself like a wanton for all the world to see. Tricked out in her finery, yellow as the sun, red as fire. With a coach and horses too. Oh, vanity, vanity. And all for nothing. I closed her eyes, I owed her that at least.’

  Margaret’s footsteps were approaching.

  My father’s face changed, scrubbed clean of every expression but greed. He turned his head to the door. Margaret stood there with a platter in her hand. ‘Come, James, to table,’ he said. ‘Supper is served. Can’t you see?’

  I learned nothing more from my father that day. Experience had taught me that there was little purpose in talking to him after supper, not if you expected replies that made much sense. Nor was I convinced that there was anything more to learn.

  Besides, why bother? My father’s memory was unpredictable in its workings and, by and large, he was now more likely to recall events from the remote past than more recent ones. If he remembered anything at all. For much of the time he lived among his dreams.

  ‘Come to me later in my chamber,’ he mumbled, when he had finished eating. ‘We must pray together, my son.’

  ‘Perhaps, sir.’ I did not like to look at him. There was a trickle of dribble at the corner of his mouth and his coat was speckled with crumbs. He was my father. I loved and honoured him. But sometimes the sight of him disgusted me. ‘I have business to attend to.’

  My mind was busy elsewhere. Something might be salvaged from my plans for the evening. I calculated that if I took a boat from the Savoy Stairs, my friends should still be at the tavern. And, if fortune smiled on me, so would the pretty barmaid.

  Accordingly, after supper, I left Margaret to deal with my father. I had grown prosperous enough to keep two servants – Margaret Witherdine and her husband Samuel, a discharged sailor who had suffered the misfortune of losing part of a leg in his country’s wars against the Dutch. Samuel had fallen into poverty and then into debt, partly because of his country’s inability to pay him what he was owed. Nevertheless he had done me a great service, and I had discharged his debt. In return, I believed, Sam and Margaret served my father and me from loyalty as well as for their board and lodging and a little money.

  All this was agreeable to me. God help me, it gave me a good opinion of myself. I was as smug as the cat who has found the larder door open and eaten and drunk his fill. And like the cat, sitting afterwards and cleaning his whiskers in the sunshine, I assumed this happy state of affairs would last for ever.

  So I did not see my father after supper that day. Sometimes I went into his chamber when he was ready for bed, even if I had been out late. But not that night. I did not admit it to myself but I was irritated with him. Because of his folly, I had been obliged to forgo my evening on the river. To make matters worse, when I had reached the tavern, my friends were not there and the pretty barmaid had left to be marri
ed.

  So Margaret must have settled him in his bed, listened to the mumbled nonsense that he believed to be his prayers and blown out his candle. She must have sat with him in the dark, holding his hand, until he fell asleep. I knew that would have happened because that was what she always did. I also knew that my father would have preferred his son beside him when he said his prayers, and that he would have liked his own flesh and blood to hold his hand, rather than a servant.

  The following morning, I had arranged to go into the office at an earlier hour than usual. Mr Williamson wanted my notes from the Tower interrogations as soon as possible. Besides, I was behind in my task of copying his correspondence into his letter book, and there was also my regular work for the Gazette. The press of business was very great – the London Gazette, the twice-weekly government newspaper which Mr Newcomb printed here in the Savoy, was another of Williamson’s responsibilities, and he delegated much of its day-to-day administration to me.

  My father was already awake. He was in his chamber, where Margaret was helping him dress. As I left the parlour, I heard his voice, deep and resonant, booming in the distance; like his body, his voice belonged to a healthier, stronger man, a man who still had his wits about him. I persuaded myself that I could not spare the time to wish him good morning before I left.

  I did not give my father another thought until after dinner, when my servant Samuel Witherdine came to Whitehall and knocked on the door of Mr Williamson’s office. Sam was a wiry man with a weathered face and very bright blue eyes, which at present were surrounded by puffy eyelids. He wore a wooden leg below his right knee and supported himself with a crutch.

  Something was amiss. It was unheard of for him to come to the office of his own accord. I thought the puffy eyes meant he was hungover. I was wrong.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The door opened.

  ‘Mistress?’

  On Friday morning, a woman lay on her bed in a new house on the north side of Pall Mall. She clung to the shreds of sleep that swirled like seaweed around her. Drown me in sleep, she thought, six fathoms deep, and let the fish nibble me into a million pieces.