The Ashes of London. Andrew Taylor

My niece is away at present, staying with friends in the country. She finds the summer heat intolerable, especially with this Fire, and her uncle decided a change of air would be good for her.’ Mistress Alderley took up her pen and lowered her head over her letter. ‘Perhaps you can ask her about Jem when she returns. Pray remember me to Master Williamson when you see him, and thank him for his kindness to us.’

      

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

      HOT AND FILTHY, Cat had arrived in Three Cocks Yard in the early hours of Thursday, 6 September. The Fire was still raging but the wind had changed, swinging from the east to the south and slackening in force. She was aware of that even as she stumbled through the crowds. During the Fire, everyone was aware of the wind.

      She had nothing but the clothes she stood up in, the small bundle she had carried with her, and the object that Jem had pressed into her hand when she fled from Barnabas Place. She was still in pain from Cousin Edward’s attack – a dull, continuous soreness, punctuated by stabs of agony that made her gasp. Her thighs and her arms were tender with bruises.

      On any other night, Three Cocks Yard would have been dark and silent at this hour, the houses barred and shuttered. But nothing was normal now. The sky reflected the Fire, casting a lurid glow over the yard. A heavily laden wagon filled half the space.

      Mistress Noxon’s house was beside the apothecary’s, which Cat knew by the sign of the pestle swinging in the air above the shop. The front door was standing open. Two porters were manoeuvring a pair of virginals down the steps, with a young gentleman scurrying about them like an agitated terrier.

      Behind them, in the hall of the house, was a small, handsome woman of middling height and generous proportions. Unlike the men, she was perfectly calm. In her hand was a sheet of paper.

      ‘And that’s thirty-five shillings for the dinners ordered in, sir,’ she was saying in a sharp voice that cut through the racket in the yard. ‘If I don’t have it on the nail as well, you’ll have to leave the rest of your furniture to cover what you owe.’

      She caught sight of Cat as she was squeezing past the wagon. She motioned her to wait and continued to deal with the young gentleman. A large, red-headed manservant staggered down the stairs with a crate in his arms.

      ‘Don’t take that out, John, not until he’s paid his reckoning. Leave it in the back of the hall.’

      The servant did as he was told. He saw Cat and stared at her.

      ‘Don’t stand there dreaming,’ the woman snapped. ‘Bring down something else.’

      At last, when the young gentleman had paid his bill and left with his wagon, she came down the steps from the front door and beckoned Cat forward.

      ‘Who are you?’

      ‘Mistress Noxon?’

      She ran her eyes over Cat, taking in the bundle under her arm. ‘Who’s asking?’

      ‘Jem sent me.’

      ‘Oh yes? Jem who?’

      Cat fumbled in her pocket and brought out the object that Jem had given her. It turned out to be a dark, smooth, flattish stone in the shape of an oval, which might have been picked up on a shingle beach. There was a white line of another mineral embedded in it, orange in this light. It made a wavering M if you had a mind to see one there.

      M for Martha? Mistress Noxon took the stone, stared at it for a moment, and slipped it in her own pocket.

      ‘Mistress Lovett,’ she said softly.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘You need somewhere to lodge.’ It was not a question. ‘How long?’

      ‘I don’t know.’ Cat swallowed, for her mouth was terribly dry. ‘I have a little money. Not much.’

      Mistress Noxon ran her eyes over Cat, inspecting her as if she were a prospective purchase. ‘Mistress Lovett can’t stay here. Nor can any young lady. This is a house where single gentlemen lodge.’

      Cat turned to leave by the street door, which still stood open.

      ‘You don’t have to go,’ Mistress Noxon said. ‘But if you stay, you stay as a servant and you work for your keep.’

      ‘I’m not afraid of hard work.’

      ‘You will be by the time I’ve finished with you. Well? Do you stay as a servant or do you go as a lady?’

      ‘I stay.’

      Mistress Noxon folded her arms across her bosom and stared at her. ‘As a servant.’

      Cat dipped a curtsy. ‘If it please you, mistress.’

      ‘Close the door, then, and come down to the kitchen.’ Mistress Noxon led her into the house, calling up to the manservant, telling him to bar the door. In the kitchen, she said, lowering her voice: ‘In this house, your name’s Jane.’

      ‘Yes, mistress. Has Jem talked of me? Did he say he might send me to you?’

      Mistress Noxon brought down the flat of her hand on the table. ‘You’re not to mention him. If you want to stay, you will be Jane and nothing but Jane and you will do as you’re told and not ask foolish questions.’

      ‘But I should tell you why I—’

      ‘I don’t want to know,’ Mistress Noxon said. ‘It’s better not.’

      The house in Three Cocks Yard had been bought as a speculation by a wealthy Oxford haberdasher. It stood with three neighbours in a flagged court, from which a narrow alley led down to the Strand on the northern side, not far from Temple Bar.

      The principal apartments were let to single gentlemen. There were three lodgers. At present, only Master Hakesby was in residence. He was a draughtsman, an elderly man of uncertain temper. He was working on a design with Dr Wren, the architect and mathematician whom the King had appointed as one of his Commissioners for the rebuilding of London, which made him automatically an object of fascination to Cat.

      The haberdasher had installed Mistress Martha Noxon as housekeeper. She had formerly been in his service as his wife’s chambermaid and, if Margery’s insinuations were to be believed, as his own paramour. Margery did most of the cooking but Mistress Noxon considered her too slatternly to wait at table. There was also a manservant named John and a ten-year-old boy, who was more trouble than he was worth and slept in a sort of kennel by the kitchen chimneystack.

      The servants were told that Jane was a stranger from a village near Oxford, and that she was a remote connection of Mistress Noxon’s. They knew that this was probably a lie, and that the young woman called Jane was a mysterious intruder in their world, but they were too afraid of Mistress Noxon to ask questions or tell tales.

      Cat did the work she was given. She kept her mouth shut when she could. When she couldn’t, she roughened her voice and tried to imitate the inflections and turns of phrase that the other servants used. They thought she gave herself airs, but they left her alone for fear of Mistress Noxon. There was even an unexpected pleasure in being Jane, not Cat: in being someone else.

      The work was often hard but it was not strange to her. She had been brought up not only to run a household but to do the various tasks, from cooking to cleaning and beyond, that she might set a servant to do; this was good for the soul, for it kept a woman humble, which was pleasing in the eyes of God and man; it was also prudent, for it enabled one better to direct and instruct one’s own servants.

      For Cat, what was strange and