The Ashes of London. Andrew Taylor

      She turned and blundered against him. His arms went around her. She was trembling but she did not cry.

      ‘Child,’ he said. ‘Child. You must go alone. I would slow you down. Go to Three Cocks Yard, off the Strand. The house to the left of the sign of the green pestle. Ask for Mistress Martha Noxon. She’s my niece, and they have no knowledge of her here. Give her this, and she will know you. Perhaps your father will find you there.’

      Jem pressed something into her hand. It was small and smooth, curved, cold and hard.

      ‘Put it in your pocket.’ He gave her a little push. ‘And go. Go now.’

      Somewhere in the distance was a faint, ragged baying, growing in volume. Thunder, Lion, Greedy and Bare-Arse were giving tongue.

       CHAPTER EIGHT

      I COULD NOT afford to anger Williamson any more than I had already done. I worked late that day and made sure I was at Whitehall early on the following morning, which was Thursday, the fifth day of the Fire.

      The news was good. The wind had slackened and veered north, which made it easier for those fighting the Fire. There were reports that the Duke of York had halted the westward march of the flames at the Temple. God willing, the mansions of the Strand would be spared, and so would Whitehall itself. The fires were still burning vigorously elsewhere, but their relentless advance had been largely stopped.

      I was already at work when Williamson came up to the office in Scotland Yard. I knew he was on his way for I had seen him from the window in the court below, deep in conversation with the portly gentleman with the wart on his chin. I expected him to be in a good humour because of the news about the Fire, but his face was grim and preoccupied. As soon as he came in, he called me over, commanding me to bring him the list of fatalities.

      He scanned it quickly. ‘Good. No new ones overnight. God has been merciful.’ He lowered his voice. ‘But talking of death, Marwood, there’s one that isn’t recorded here.’

      He paused, as if to consider some weighty aspect of the matter far beyond my understanding. I was used to that, for Williamson employed such tactics to build a sense of his own importance – in his own mind, perhaps, as much as in the minds of others.

      ‘We have a body,’ he said. ‘I think you’d better see it now.’

      We clattered down the stone stairs, setting off a crowd of echoes, with Williamson leading the way. On the ground floor, he demanded a lantern from the porter. While we waited he turned to me.

      ‘A patrol went up to St Paul’s at dawn,’ he said in a low voice. ‘It’s like an oven in there, even now. A beggar told them there was a body in Paul’s Walk. In what’s left of a chantry chapel on the north side.’

      ‘Where the ballad-seller used to have a stall?’ I asked.

      The cathedral’s nave, Paul’s Walk, had become a cross between a market, a public resort and a place of assignation in recent years. The ballad-seller made most of his income from his secondary trade, which was pimping.

      Williamson nodded. ‘Two of the guards left their powder behind and went in and pulled him out.’

      ‘A victim of the Fire, sir?’

      ‘He’s definitely not the stallholder. And he can’t have been there long. Someone would have noticed him before the Fire.’

      ‘But why’s he here, sir?’ Surprise stripped the appropriate respect from my voice. ‘At Whitehall?’

      The question earned a scowl. The porter brought the lantern. Williamson gestured to me, indicating that I should light the way for him.

      We descended by another staircase into the cellarage. I had never been here before – the palace was so vast and so rambling that I knew only a fraction of it, and none of it well. A low passage stretched the length of the range. Small gratings were set high in the left-hand wall to let in a modicum of light and air. On the right was a row of doors, all closed.

      Williamson took a key from his pocket and unlocked the door at the far end. We entered a windowless chamber with a low barrel-vault of bricks. It contained no furniture apart from a heavy table in the centre of the room. The cellar smelled strongly of burning, as everywhere did now, as well as of sewage and damp.

      On the table lay a large, untidy bundle draped with a sheet.

      ‘Uncover it,’ Williamson said.

      I set down the lantern and obeyed. The man was naked. He was on his side, facing me.

      ‘God in heaven,’ I said.

      He lay awkwardly on the table, for his arms were behind his back, which pushed his shoulders forward and twisted his body to one side. It was as if he had been frozen in the act of trying to roll off the table.

      He had matted, shoulder-length hair, which was grey with ash and perhaps with age as well. There wasn’t much flesh on him. His head poked up and forward like the prow of a barge.

      ‘Who is he, sir?’

      ‘I don’t know.’

      Williamson took up the lantern and directed its light towards the body. The skin was powdered with ash. Seen from close to, it looked yellow beneath the dirt, like parchment. It was shrivelled and blistered. The heat would have done that. The body didn’t stink. But that didn’t necessarily mean the death was recent, I thought, because the heat would have mummified it.

      The man’s chin had caught on the table, and his mouth was open, which gave him the air of surprise. His lips were pulled back, exposing the remaining teeth. A bruise on the temple had grazed the skin.

      ‘Was he naked when he was found?’ I asked, for it seemed to be my place to ask questions.

      ‘No. His clothes are there.’ Williamson nodded at a bundle on a bench that stood by the wall.

      ‘Perhaps he was trapped inside when the cathedral caught fire.’

      Williamson shrugged. ‘Turn him over,’ he ordered in a casual voice, as if telling me to turn a page or a key.

      I couldn’t rid myself of the idea that the soul of the dead man was floating about the roof of the cellar and watching us. I gripped the corpse’s shoulder with one hand and his hip with the other. The flesh was cool and yielded slightly to my touch. It felt like a slab of boiled brawn. I pulled the body towards me, gradually increasing the pressure.

      The corpse lacked the rigidity of the recently dead, which made it unnervingly unpredictable. It was also much heavier than I expected. It reached its tipping point and fell with a thump on to its front.

      The arms poked up.

      ‘You see?’ Williamson said softly.

      We stood side by side, staring at the hands of the dead man in the light of the lantern. The thumbs were tied together with a length of cord, so tightly tied that they had turned black.

      ‘Why just the thumbs?’ I said. ‘Why not tie the wrists?’

      ‘I don’t know. But look there, Marwood. The back of the head.’

      There was a small wound in the neck, just below the skull.

      ‘Stabbed from behind,’ Williamson said. ‘Up into the brain. By someone who knew what he was about.’

      I held my peace. So it was murder, that much was clear. The Fire acted as a cover for many crimes, so why not murder among them? What wasn’t clear to me was why Williamson was so interested and, above all, why he had brought me here to see the body.

      ‘It’s the clothes that matter,’ Williamson said abruptly.

      He had wandered over to the bench. He held up a torn shirt, then a