The Ashes of London. Andrew Taylor

– the one I found yesterday.’

      ‘It’s too dangerous.’

      ‘That’s not for you to decide. Do you need money? Would that make it easier?’

      ‘I won’t help you.’

      ‘Why not?’

      He looked at her. Their eyes were on a level. ‘Because it’s not safe.’

      ‘What does it matter?’ she said. ‘I must see my father. They are going to make me marry Sir Denzil. I’d rather die.’

      Jem ignored that. ‘I shouldn’t have let you go last night,’ he said. ‘The City is a madhouse on fire.’

      She stamped her foot. ‘You’ll find me clothes. And you’ll wait at the door and let me in when I come back.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘I command you.’

      ‘I’m sorry, mistress.’

      Cat advanced on him. ‘I can’t do this without you.’

      He stood his ground. ‘You won’t know where to begin. He can’t meet you in St Paul’s now.’

      ‘I’ll find him. In Bow Lane, perhaps.’

      ‘But there’s nothing left in Bow Lane.’

      For a moment she grappled with this idea, that the house where she had grown up no longer existed. ‘Nearby, then.’

      ‘He could be anywhere, mistress. If he’s still alive.’

      ‘Of course he’s alive.’ She glared at him. ‘Can you send word to him?’

      ‘No. He always sends word to me. Safer that way.’

      ‘How?’

      Jem shuffled, easing the weight on his lame leg. ‘I was told not to tell you.’

      She scowled at him. ‘My father hasn’t seen me for six years. He forgets I’m not a child any more. So do you, but with less reason.’

      He stared at her for a long moment. ‘There’s a man,’ he said at last. ‘He brings me a letter sometimes, or sometimes just a message. And he takes them from me in return. Yesterday he told me that you should go to St Paul’s, that your father would find you there in Paul’s Walk.’

      ‘Who is this man? Where can you find him?’

      ‘I don’t know, mistress.’

      She glared at him. ‘You must know something.’

      He hesitated and then said slowly, ‘He lives somewhere near Cursitor Street. I think he might be a tailor. I saw him sometimes in the old days.’

      ‘Then I shall go there and look for him. If my father isn’t with him, then perhaps he will know where he is.’

      ‘I won’t let you,’ Jem said. ‘It would be folly. Let me see if I can find him. Better still, be patient until he sends word.’

      ‘No. I shall go. You must help me.’

      Jem shook his head. ‘It’s too dangerous. If they find your father in London, they will put him on trial for treason. And anyone they find helping him.’

      She raised her hand to slap his face. Slowly she lowered it. ‘Why are you being so obstinate, old man? One word from me, and they will turn you out on the street.’

      ‘Then say it,’ he said. ‘The one word.’

      The long evening drew at last to a close.

      Uncle Alderley and Cousin Edward had been into the City and then as far west as Whitehall. At supper, they were full of what they had seen. The Fire was diminishing, though it was still burning steadily and there was always the danger it would reach the great powder magazine in the Tower, particularly if the wind veered again. The great exodus from the City had continued. Perhaps seventy or eighty thousand people had fled. They were flooding into the unburned suburbs, to Houndsditch and the Charterhouse, to West Smithfield and Clerkenwell, and even to Hatton Garden, where they were lapping around the walls of Barnabas Place itself.

      ‘They are like people in a melancholy dream,’ Master Alderley said. ‘They simply cannot understand what has happened.’

      The refugees camped wherever they could. The park at Moorfields was packed with them – more than twenty acres of ground covered with a weeping, moaning, sleeping mass of humanity. Some had gone over the river and set up camp in St George’s Fields, where the ground was marshy even in this sweltering summer, and evil humours rose from the ground at night. Others – the more active or the more terrified – had gone further still, to the hills of Islington.

      ‘God knows where it will end,’ Master Alderley said. ‘Once people leave the City, why should they come back?’

      Alarm flared in Olivia’s face. ‘But what shall we do, sir?’

      ‘You need not worry, my dear. They will always need money wherever they go. I have taken precautions. So we shall do very well, whatever they do with London’s ashes.’

      She leaned over the table and patted his hand. ‘You are so wise, sir.’

      Master Alderley withdrew his hand at once, for public displays of feeling disturbed him; but he was not displeased with this show of wifely admiration.

      ‘Is Layne back?’ he demanded.

      ‘No, sir.’

      ‘Then we shall have to turn him off. I know you brought Layne into the household, but I cannot have a servant who will not attend to his duty.’

      ‘It may not be his fault. Perhaps the Fire has delayed him. Perhaps he has had an accident.’

      Master Alderley frowned. ‘We shall see. In the meantime, we must find another man to wait at table. I don’t wish to have that cripple again.’

      ‘No, sir. Of course not.’

      ‘We saw Sir Denzil,’ Edward said in a moment. ‘He was attending the Duke of York.’ He turned to Cat, which meant that his father and his stepmother could not see his expression. ‘He and I drank to your betrothal, cousin, and to the speedy arrival of an heir to Croughton Hall.’

      ‘That would suit us all very well,’ Master Alderley said. He gave Cat a rare smile. ‘We shall have you wedded by Christmas and brought to bed of a fine boy by Michaelmas next year.’

      ‘So be sure to cultivate this French cook of his, cousin,’ Edward murmured, too low for his father to hear. ‘French cooks are always men of infinite subtlety and resource. I am sure Sir Denzil’s will know how to set his master on fire for you.’

      After supper, Olivia took Cat up to her own bedchamber to discuss the wedding, its location, who should be invited, and what she and Cat should wear.

      Ann came to undress her mistress while they talked. Olivia sat at her dressing table wearing a bedgown of blue silk trimmed with lace, with four candles reflected in the mirror and throwing their murky light on her face. The warm air was heavy with perfume.

      The subject was of absorbing interest to Olivia, and the discussion – the first of many, no doubt, she said with a smile – went on for longer than Cat would have believed possible.

      Cat’s eyes strayed to the great bed that stood in the shadows, surmounted by a canopy. She imagined Uncle Alderley – so staid, so old, so disgusting – heaving and twisting and grunting there. The thought of it, together with the perfume and the suffocating sense of femininity that seemed to fill the room, made her feel ill.

      Olivia did not belong with Uncle Alderley. She could not enjoy his attentions, Cat thought, though in public she behaved with impeccable obedience towards her husband. But Cat had heard their raised voices through closed doors.

      Was this what marriage meant? This unnatural union?