Fire Catcher (21 page)

Chapter 60

‘It is no treason!’ raged the alchemist as Blackstone pulled the cloth away.

Blackstone was examining the object underneath in wonder. He knelt so as to be eye level.

‘Perfectly to size,’ Blackstone muttered. ‘All the buildings in the right order.’ He ran a hand along one of the miniature streets. ‘It is illegal to make a likeness of the city,’ said Blackstone, ‘without the King’s permission.’

‘I have permission from the Earl of Amesbury,’ said the alche
mist hotly. He stopped suddenly, realising Blackstone had manip
ulated him into divulging information. ‘It’s a private business,’ finished the alchemist.

‘I see Amesbury’s hand all over this,’ said Blackstone. ‘He and I are old friends. Of a kind.’ Blackstone pursed his heavy lips. ‘We fought for the King during the war. But we had different notions of battle. Amesbury is regarded as a fine military leader,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘Because he won every battle. He has some notion of inspiring his troops. Fighting alongside them. Then he turned coat and joined Cromwell.’

Blackstone gave a scoffing little laugh.

‘Do you know what Amesbury called me?’

The alchemist shook his head.

‘The Wolf General,’ said Blackstone. ‘It was meant to be derisive. To show I ruled through fear.’ His huge frame moved closer to the alchemist. The alchemist stepped backwards unthinkingly.

Blackstone smiled. ‘When you terrify a man, you know where he will run,’ he said. ‘Fear is war’s best weapon. It places men where you want them. I learned that here.’ Blackstone waved his hand around the dank chamber. ‘In this very room.’

He was looking back at the model of London now, at a tiny wooden St Paul’s with its tall spire. ‘You carved the model yourself?’

The alchemist nodded. He was battling with an unaccountable feeling of terror. This enormous man with his torture-scarred hands and dead eyes. The alchemist couldn’t help but believe him capable of anything.

‘Quite a talent,’ said Blackstone. ‘These red-painted buildings near Pudding Lane show the path of flames,’ he added. ‘Ingenious. Parliament took away the King’s recent maps, didn’t they? So Amesbury keeps a secret street plan down here. And now he asks you to discern something of this Great Fire,’ continued Blackstone thoughtfully. He looked up at the alchemist. ‘Pyromancy?’ he suggested. ‘You divine something from the flames?’

‘It is no dark thing we do down here,’ retorted the alchemist, ‘no sorcery.’

The satisfied expression on Blackstone’s face told the alchemist he’d wandered into another trap.

‘You study the path of the fire,’ decided Blackstone. ‘So Amesbury believes something to be amiss with the way the fire moves. Or he plots to further the spread.’

He eyed the alchemist’s face and smiled again. Then Blackstone pointed a thick finger and toppled the shops of Cheapside. The alchemist instinctively moved to right them and then caught the expression on Blackstone’s face. His hand drew back.

‘Let me help my old friend Amesbury,’ continued Blackstone, sweeping a palm down towards Thames Street. ‘All this,’ he said, eyes glittering, ‘all this has now burned.’ His hand travelled up, levelling everything west of the Fleet.

‘And all this will.’

Chapter 61

One glance towards Southwark was enough for Lily to see Charlie was right. Smoke was issuing from the long pikestaffs that crowded the south entrance to the Bridge.

The traitors’ heads were burning. Fire had broken out on the south side.

Charlie made a logistical analysis. Their route back to Southwark was blocked by fire, and hot sparks flew on the breeze, whipping the wooden houses of the bridge into fast flame.

Charlie tried to see along the causeway where the fire had started. Then deep in the heart of the south-side flames, a blue light twinkled.

Charlie and Lily looked at one another.

‘Blue fire,’ said Charlie. He looked back up the frontages and then again to the fire. The south of the bridge could now be heard thundering into blaze.

Charlie looked north.

‘We can still get off the north side,’ he said. ‘If we make haste.’

The traitors’ heads were burning merrily now. One was facing Charlie, its eyeballs melting in two viscous streams down the grizzled face. It looked as though the traitor was crying for his city.

Charlie and Lily raced out of the laundry on to the narrow street. The wind was already sending thick smoke billowing down the straight. They fell back, choking and covering their faces from burning cinders.

‘This way.’ Charlie beckoned inside, covering his mouth. ‘The rooms are all connected along the Bridge. There’ll be another way out further down. Less smoke.’

He pulled Lily up a narrow wooden stair leading to the other business premises. They broke on to the second level and ran along a maze of interconnecting corridors. Charlie veered left, past a collection of quack physician premises and gore-covered barber-surgeon rooms. When he judged they must have outpaced the worst of the smoke he slowed. Up ahead was an open hayloft, built to drop hay from a height on to wagons beneath.

Charlie ran to the open edge, looked down and gave a shout of frustration.

Ladders were worth money and someone had removed it.

He looked back to see smoke was already filling the corridors they’d just run through. Lily appeared coughing and rubbing her eyes.

‘The wind is so strong,’ she gasped. ‘It’s like a bellows pushing the fire along the bridge.’

Charlie swung to the hay bales, picked the nearest up and began throwing them bodily out of the side of the hayloft.

‘It’s not so high,’ he said, sweat breaking out on his lip as he worked. ‘We can jump.’

Smoke had begun whirling and thickening beneath. Charged by the high wind it glowed with airborne debris.

Taking out his knife Charlie began sawing through the bales causing clouds of soft hay to tumble down on to the sturdier bales below. Cinders caught strands as it fell, sending burning hay back into their faces.

‘Jump!’ cried Charlie. He grabbed Lily’s hand and flung them both from the hayloft.

They fell, legs cycling and bounced on to the soft hay. Lily cried in pain.

‘What is it?’ Charlie was at her side helping her up.

‘It’s nothing,’ said Lily wincing. ‘Only I fell on the gunpowder flask.’

‘Serves you right for stealing it,’ said Charlie, looking along the narrow streets of London Bridge. Fire was blazing through the south-side buildings. But they’d landed in a narrow alley which protected them from the worst of the wind-driven smoke. Surrounded by a bewildering maze of interconnected courtyards, Charlie tried to get his bearings.

‘My dress!’ Lily gave a sudden cry of terror. ‘It burns!’

Charlie looked to her skirts in alarm. A kind of smoke seemed to come from the gold threads. A shrieking hiss was issuing up.

Charlie recognised the sound instantly. The bottle in Torr’s cellar had made the same noise right before it exploded. Lily’s gunpowder flask must have split, he realised. The lye had soaked into the fabric of her skirt.

What was making it hiss?

‘Your dress!’ he shouted. ‘Take it off!’

Lily hesitated and Charlie ripped at the red silk, exposing a thick leather bodice underneath. A collection of necklaces around her neck swung free. A bronze chicken foot and an evil eye talisman.

Charlie tugged at Lily’s skirts. A spark from the air landed. And suddenly Lily’s dress was alight. Blue fire rolled across the gold threads.

She batted ineffectually at the flame, her face pure terror. She was pulling at her skirts when something swung free from her leather bodice.

Charlie watched open-mouthed.

It was a rosary. She was a Catholic.

Chapter 62

‘A firestorm?’ King Charles looked confused. He’d convened the sumptuous environs of Somerset House as a war room. Letters and reports had begun arriving from all over the city. And the latest intelligence from his Royal Alchemist was particularly troubling.

‘That’s what conditions predict,’ said Amesbury. He was brandishing the letter. ‘The fire grows so great, it could make its own weather.’

Clarence was shaking his head. His white wig jiggled.

‘This sorcery is all very well in the dirty provinces,’ he announced loudly. ‘But here in London, we will brook no witchcraft.’

Amesbury held out his hands. ‘Your alchemist makes a prediction, Your Majesty. He conjures no magic, as you know.’

‘Pyromancy,’ announced Clarence, waving chubby ringed fingers, ‘is illegal. Like necromancy and all dark arts. You are not permitted to divine from smoke or flame . . .’

Amesbury was trying to keep the frustration from his voice.

‘Your Majesty,’ he said, turning to the King. ‘This is no sorcery or witchcraft. The alchemist’s study of cloud patterns, of air movement . . .’

‘Another dark art!’ interjected Clarence.

‘The Royal Alchemist,’ said Amesbury, ‘has predicted storms with success for many years.’

‘That’s true, Clarence,’ said Charles. ‘Our alchemist has told us many clever things of weather.’ He frowned. ‘But if there were a storm, what matter? It would bring rain.’

Amesbury was shaking his head. ‘I asked the same thing myself,’ he said. ‘In a firestorm rainfall is burned away high in the clouds. Long before it touches the ground.’

The King looked dubious. ‘No fire is great enough to stop rain,’ he said.

‘The alchemist speaks of eyewitness accounts,’ said Amesbury. ‘In Africa.’

‘This is England,’ said Clarence, who disapproved hugely of the alchemist’s habit of citing foreign scientific tracts. ‘You can’t suggest . . .’

‘The conditions are right!’ Amesbury was fighting to keep his temper. ‘You only need go out in the city,’ he said, glaring at Clarence, ‘to know something happens to the weather. We’ve never known a fire burn this hot or high.’

He fixed the King with a firm stare.

‘The alchemist says it will bring wind,’ he said. ‘Great winds, from all directions of the compass. Hurricane strength to fan the flames. Lightning strikes down bringing more fire. Dark clouds will eclipse the sun.’

Amesbury shook the alchemist’s letter.

‘The heat is strong enough to combust houses many streets away,’ he continued. ‘London becomes a living furnace.’

Clarence was openly sneering now. ‘It’s a nonsense,’ he barked rudely. ‘A complete nonsense. What he’s describing. It’s fire and brimstone. An Armageddon.’

‘That,’ said Amesbury, ‘is what I’m trying to tell you.’

Chapter 63

Charlie was reeling. So Lily was a secret Catholic. She’d concealed it so well, he thought. The implications flashed before him. Catholics weren’t loyal to the King. Could she be secretly working for Blackstone?

Lily was batting at her skirts, the rosary swinging low. Her dress was in blue flames.

‘Keep still,’ Charlie said coldly. ‘It won’t harm you. It’s not like ordinary fire.’

He was watching the path of the blue flames. Only the gold threads burned.

Lye and gold.

Lily stopped beating her skirts and looked down.

The blue fire swirled in a last colourful eddy and then went out.

Lily looked at Charlie. She noticed the exposed rosary and gripped it guiltily in her fist.

‘So you’re a Catholic,’ he said flatly.

Lily didn’t answer. Her expression said it all.

‘A secret Catholic,’ said Charlie, surprised by just how deeply he felt the betrayal. ‘You’ve played a clever game.’

The enormity of it was hitting him in waves. Lily’s handkerchief. The story of her dead father. Was any of it true?

‘I didn’t know you were one of those who hated Catholics,’ she replied.

His eyes widened.

‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘In this city who you know keeps you alive. I never miss the opportunity to make a friend. But my friends don’t lie to me.’

She didn’t answer that.

‘Did Blackstone really execute your father?’ demanded Charlie. He was wondering whose side she was really on.

Lily’s eyes shone sadly but she didn’t deny the charge. Instead she looked to the fire.

‘The flames come, Charlie.’

Smoke was thickening, pouring along from the burning buildings.

‘The magistrate can decide how it goes with you,’ Charlie decided. And gripping her wrists he made to drag her towards the north end of the bridge.

In a quick movement Lily’s knee connected hard into Charlie’s groin. Then she twitched out of his grip leaving him bent double and retching.

As he staggered back on the main thoroughfare of the Bridge, Lily was nowhere to be seen.

In the far distance Charlie caught something flicker out of the corner of his eye. A blue light, twitching at the north end of the bridge. Charlie froze. It seemed to be coming from the Skinners’ Hall.

Then came the sound of an explosion.

Charlie’s mouth dropped open in horror. Skinners’ Hall was alight. The north end of the Bridge was now ablaze. Someone had fired both ends of London Bridge. Leaving him trapped in the middle.

Charlie made for the river. Wooden jetties crowded the water beneath London Bridge. It was dangerous to jump between them. But there were steps leading down. All he needed do was find a set, climb down and swim to safety on the north bank.

Lily was somewhere on the bridge and his conscience pricked him. He wasn’t sure if she could swim. Suddenly the wail of a child pierced the air. Charlie froze. He’d thought the bridge was deserted. Surely the street children would have long gone?

The cry came again. Desperate and frightened. He guessed a child-thief must have stayed to loot, become confused by the smoke and was now trapped.

Charlie swung away from the river following the sound. It was leading him straight to the heart of the blaze. The roadway was filled with choking smoke. In the stifling heat and darkness Charlie fought to remember which direction he was facing. He caught sight of an abandoned water butt at the edge of his vision. Ripping a length of his shirt he dunked it in the dirty remnants before tying it around his nose and mouth. The mask helped him breathe but his eyes watered as biting fumes filled the air.

He could see the flames now as well as feel them. They had exploded through the windows of the buildings, spitting molten glass on to the streets below, and flaring upwards like great amber curtains. Fire spread outwards along rafters and with an agonising crack, the joists gave way and burning roof tiles began to hail down on the bridge below.

Charlie lurched in what he hoped was the direction of the sound, passing into a tangle of close wooden alleys. A badly made overhang offered scant protection from the raining debris. And underneath was Lily.