The Ashes of London - Andrew Taylor

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Fire had been good to the watermen, for everyone wanted a craft of any sort to take them and their possessions to safety. They would pay the most inflated fares without a moment’s argument. Overladen craft, large and small, wallowed in the water. The Thames, even this far west, was as busy as Cheapside had been until the Fire had reached it.

      But, as with the road, the traffic tended to be away from London. I haggled with the boatman, reasoning that he would prefer to have a boat with a fare in it than one that was empty when he returned to collect more refugees and their possessions.

      We made good speed, with both the current and the tide on our side. The Thames was as grey as dirty pewter and littered with charred debris and discarded possessions, particularly furniture. I saw a handsome table, floating downstream, its legs in the air with a gull perched on one of them.

      As we neared Whitehall Stairs, I told the waterman not to pull in but to continue downstream as far as St Paul’s. I had a curiosity to see what was left of it. Part of me wondered if the boy–girl would return there, too. Something had drawn her toward the cathedral as the rats were fleeing from it, something so powerful that she had ignored the Fire.

      From the river, London was a horrifying sight. Above the town hung a great pall of smoke and ash. Beneath it, the air glowed a deep and sultry red. The sun could not break through, and the city was bathed in unnatural twilight.

      From Ludgate to the Tower there seemed nothing left but smouldering devastation. The close-packed houses, built mainly of wood, had melted away, leaving only fragments of blackened stone and brickwork. Even here on the water, with a stiff breeze blowing up the Thames, we felt the heat pulsing from the ruins.

      Every now and then the dull crump of an explosion boomed across the water. On the King’s orders, they were blowing up buildings in the path of the flames in the hope of creating firebreaks. There was an explosion somewhere between Fleet Street and the river.

      The waterman covered his ears and swore.

      ‘We can’t pull in, master,’ the waterman said, coughing. ‘God save us, you’ll fry if you go ashore.’

      A shower of cinders passed us, some clinging to my sleeve. I brushed them frantically away. ‘What about downstream?’

      ‘It’s the same all the way down – and hotter than ever – they say it’s the oil burning in the warehouses.’

      Without waiting for my order, he pulled away from the north bank and rowed us out to midstream. I stared at St Paul’s. It was still standing, but the roof had gone, and both walls and tower had a jagged, shimmering quality, like outlines seen under flowing water. Columns of smoke rose from still-burning fires within the blackened shell. It wasn’t a church any more. It was more like a giant coal in an oven.

      It was impossible that the boy–girl could be within twenty yards of it or more. No living creature could survive that heat.

      ‘Whitehall,’ I said.

       CHAPTER THREE

      THE PALACE OF Whitehall sprawled along the river to the south of Charing Cross. It was a warren of buildings, old and new, covering more than twenty acres. It had a population larger than that of most villages.

      There was no panic here, but there were signs of unusual activity. In the Great Court, workmen were loading wagons with goods, which would be removed to the safety of Windsor if the Fire spread further west.

      I enquired after my patron, and learned that he was in his private office in Scotland Yard, an adjacent complex of buildings which lay on the northern side of the palace. Master Williamson also worked in far grander lodgings overlooking the Privy Garden; but when his business was shabby and private he walked across to Scotland Yard and conducted it in the appropriate surroundings.

      Williamson was engaged, so I was forced to kick my heels in the outer office used by clerks and messengers. One of the clerks was making a fair copy of a report on the Fire for the London Gazette. Among his other responsibilities, Williamson edited the newspaper and ensured that its contents were as agreeable as possible to the government.

      He himself ushered out his visitor, a portly, middle-aged gentleman with a wart on the left-hand side of his chin. The stranger’s eyes lingered on me for a moment as he passed by.

      Williamson, still wreathed in smiles, beckoned me. ‘At last,’ he said, the good humour dropping like a falling curtain from his face. ‘Why didn’t you wait on me yesterday evening?’

      ‘I’m sorry, sir. The Fire delayed me and—’

      ‘Nevertheless, you should have come. And why the devil are you so late this morning?’

      Williamson’s Cumbrian accent had become more pronounced. Though he had lived in the south, and among gentlemen in the main, for nearly twenty years, his native vowels broadened when he was irritated or under pressure.

      ‘The refugees blocked the road, sir.’

      ‘Then you should have started earlier. I needed you here.’ He waved at the clerk who was working on the report for the Gazette. ‘That idiot cannot write a fair hand.’

      ‘Your pardon, sir.’

      ‘You’ve not been in my employ for long, Marwood,’ he went on. ‘Don’t keep me waiting again, or you will find that I shall contrive to manage without you.’

      I bowed and kept silent. Without Williamson’s patronage I would have nothing. And my father would have worse than nothing. Williamson was under-secretary to Lord Arlington, the Secretary of State for the South, and his influence spread throughout the government and far beyond. As for me, I was the least important of Williamson’s clerks, little more than his errand boy.

      ‘Come in here.’

      He led the way into his private office. He said nothing more until I had shut the door.

      ‘Did you go to St Paul’s last night as I commanded?’

      ‘Yes, sir. I was there when the crypt went up. The cathedral was beyond rescue within an hour, even if they could have got water to it. The heat was terrible. By the time I left, molten lead was trickling down Ludgate Hill.’

      ‘Was anyone inside?’

      I thought of the boy–girl running towards the building when the Fire was at its hottest. I said, ‘Not as far as I know, sir. Even the rats were running away.’

      ‘And what were the people in the crowd saying?’

      ‘About the cause of the Fire?’

      ‘In particular about the destruction of the cathedral. They say it has angered the King as much as anything these last few days, even the damned Dutch.’

      I swallowed. ‘They attribute it to one of two things, sometimes both. The—’

      ‘Don’t talk in riddles.’

      ‘I mean, sir, that they say the two causes may be linked. For some say God is showing his displeasure at the wickedness of the court’ – better not to blame our profligate and Papist-leaning King in person, for walls had ears, especially in Whitehall – ‘while others attribute the Fire to the malignancy of our enemies. To the Pope or the French or the Dutch.’

      ‘It won’t do,’ Williamson said sharply. ‘Do you hear me? The King says it was an accident, pure and simple. The hot, dry summer. The buildings huddled together and dry as kindling. The east wind. An unlucky spark.’

      I said nothing, though I thought the King was probably right.

      ‘Any other explanation must be discouraged.’

      The King’s ministers, I thought, were between a rock and a hard place. Either they had merited God’s displeasure through their wickedness or they

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