Fire Catcher (26 page)

Chapter 80

The watchman waved his crossbow at the pressed men. The house he’d just flamed was roaring to life.

‘Pull the house!’ he demanded. ‘It fires!’

The house owner appeared shouting and gesticulating.

‘Pull the Cutlers’ Guild now whilst their attention is disturbed,’ Charlie urged John. ‘Use the firehooks. I’ll get inside and throw out what relics I can find. The watchmen will fall on them and you can escape.’

‘How do I know you won’t make off with the relics?’ asked John.

‘They’re sacred things,’ said Charlie. ‘Every cutler in London would want my head. I couldn’t fence them without being lynched.’

A gust of wind caused the nearby fire to roar suddenly.

‘Now,’ urged Charlie, pointing. ‘Set the firehook there.’

‘How can you be sure fire will go that way?’

Charlie hesitated. ‘I was a cinder thief,’ he admitted. ‘A good one.’

He saw the warmth go out of Waverly’s eyes. The parish man turned to the battered men.

‘On my word!’ he called. ‘Heave!’

The firehook was raised, like a giant rake striking at the dark sky. The men wielding the thick pole stumbled under its weight and for a moment Charlie thought Waverly meant to ignore his advice. Then the parish man pointed to the Cutlers’ Hall. The metal firehook was aligned to the roof, then its three huge prongs were sent smashing into the wooden shingles. The hook sunk deep into the top rafter.

Shouts went up from the watchmen. The leader made towards the firehook at a run, his crossbow raised. Charlie raced to the front of the Cutlers’ Hall.

‘You!’ the watchman was raising his crossbow inexpertly. ‘Get away from the Hall!’

Charlie eyed the solid guild. Unless the firehook worked there was no way in.

And the well-built hall was resisting its destroyers. Waverly and his men heaved, faces red from effort. But the timbers held firm.

A bolt shuddered deep into the wall next to Charlie. He looked to see the watchman loading for a second shot.

‘Get back to your fire duties!’ he called, taking a second aim.

‘Heave,’ shouted John, and the counterweight of the pole began to do its part. With a shriek of twisting timbers the joists began to give and the central beam was wrenched forward.

The half-timbered frontage of the Cutlers’ Guild cracked then began to split.

‘Go,’ panted Waverly to Charlie as the men staggered back with the pole. Timber and plaster crashed down.

‘Back!’ shouted Waverly, as the momentum of the falling house picked up in pace and fell towards them in a tirade of splintered wood. ‘Back!’

The front of the Cutlers’ Guild was completely ripped away now, exposing the rooms inside. They were more elaborate than Charlie had ever imagined. No wonder the guilds kept their insides secret. They’d be robbed daily.

Rich decorations and strange murals adorned the walls. A huge carving bore the words ‘Freemen of the City. Breed not birth right.’

Sparks from the nearby burning building were already wheeling through the air like glowing assassins. They began settling on the open walls of the guild, fanned by the high wind.

Charlie took a quick assessment. The downstairs was a large hall. This was where the cutlers held their dinners. To set trade prices for the swords and weapons they made.

Rings of candlewax and sword marks suggested ritualistic prac
tices were carried out here. It reminded Charlie of an other-worldly church.

There were no trapdoors down. No tapestries to hide chambers or doors leading off.

Upstairs were a number of closed wooden doors. Charlie made for the stair and raced up. He vaulted over a step which was being fanned into flame and made it to the top.

He arrived on a landing which had been cleared of goods. There was a large map marked with jagged red crosses.

The map told of places in London where unlicensed cutlers were trading, Charlie guessed. The Cutlers’ Guild would send men to destroy their goods and equipment.

The wall had been torn away, and Charlie could see the street and the watchmen below. A thud sounded above his head. He looked up. A crossbow dart. Charlie glanced down to see the watchman was reloading. He was a bad shot, Charlie had already deduced, looking at the arrow lodged high above him. But it wouldn’t do to hang around. Quickly he assessed the closed doors. One bore a symbol he’d seen before.

A pyramid with an eye in it. The symbol for enlightenment used by alchemists all over the city.

Another bolt sailed through the air. It landed closer this time, lodging in the floor near his foot. Charlie opened the door with the symbol on it and dived inside.

The room was small, lined floor to ceiling with red fabric. A table held a collection of bones, laid out like some kind of holy relic. Embroidery depicted unfamiliar people and places. They were in the style of bible scenes. But there was nothing here Charlie had seen in any church. One showed a man in a red robe and gold ceremonial hat with a pointed staff. Another depicted a moon with a woman’s face, over a rolling sea.

Tarot
, Charlie thought, as the images settled into place.
These are tarot cards
.

Charlie made out frankincense on the air and some other burned smell. Then he saw the cutlers’ livery and weapons. They were hung ceremonially on the far wall.

He’d been right about the expensive swords. There were seven, each exquisitely crafted in fine metals and jewels. They must be the works of the master cutler, thought Charlie. Kept secret and safe to show initiates what they might one day aspire to.

Quickly Charlie seized on them.

Charlie was halfway to the door when he saw the tapestry. It depicted a tree. A tree with symbols. ‘The Tree of Life,’ said Charlie, pausing to stare with the swords locked in his arms. What was it doing in the Cutlers’ Guild? It occurred to him that Lily might know.

He didn’t have time to dwell. Shouts from the street suggested the watchmen were moving in on the others. Quickly Charlie broke on to the landing and threw the priceless swords on to the soft mud of the street.

Waverly looked up at Charlie. Then across to the swords. Temptation glimmered in his eyes.

‘If you take a sword,’ shouted Charlie. ‘The cutlers will hunt you for the rest of your days. Let the watchmen bear that burden and go to your wife.’

Waverly stood as the watchman moved towards the glistening treasure. Then Waverly pulled back, gesturing his men to follow him.

Charlie raced back down the stair. On the street watchmen closed on the swords. Charlie switched back into the city streets, leaving them to their treasure. Guild artefacts were a poisoned chalice. They couldn’t be sold or fenced.

Charlie headed for Bridewell wondering if he’d be paid to find the cutlers’ swords again when the fire was burned out.

Chapter 81

The priest stood, blinking against the candlelight, tattered clothes hanging from his muscular chest. He reminded Blackstone of a mangy bear, chained and alert as the dogs readied to strike.

Blackstone had made a makeshift church in the back room of his house. The boys had been amazed to find a raggedy priest there, ready to give them Holy Communion.

One by one the boys approached him. The priest lifted his heavy manacles, tipped wine, offered bread. Incense poured up from a smoking tankard by his feet.

‘Body of Christ,’ he intoned. ‘Blood of Christ.’

The priest turned to Blackstone and there was the look again. Horror. Disgust. They’d known each other during the war. And though the priest was not a man easily shaken, Blackstone’s transformation openly shocked him.

‘You don’t take the Eucharist?’ he said to Blackstone as the boys retreated, chewing.

Blackstone shook his head. ‘Will you hear my confession?’ he asked.

The priest tipped up the jug of blessed wine and drank it to the dregs. ‘You wish to confess to a heretic priest?’

‘I have no other.’

‘Very well.’ The priest licked his lips. ‘In here?’

Blackstone nodded. He waved the boys away.

‘You’re still bound by the laws of the Catholic church?’ Blackstone asked the priest. ‘Despite that?’

He was pointing to a tattoo just visible beneath the priest’s ragged shirt. Its lines had bled and faded greenish over the years. But the shape was still clear. The Tree of Life. Its circles scattered the priest’s chest, marred with deep scars.

The priest smiled.

‘Thomas,’ he said, ‘I’m bound by priesthood. The same as I always was.’ He tapped his chest. ‘This is a different understanding,’ he said. ‘A meditation on life on earth. I’m still a Catholic.’

‘Mystics and sorcery,’ said Blackstone. ‘That’s what ruined us, Torr. That’s what drove us apart.’

‘No,’ said Torr. ‘You drove us apart.’ His eyes flashed. ‘You may keep me here, Thomas. You may force me to minister to your boys and take your confession. But you know these chains won’t hold me.’

‘They will,’ said Blackstone. ‘Consider them the price of your heresy.’

‘My heresy created your cursed treasure,’ said Torr. ‘The treasure you stole. The papers you lost.’

His eyes met Blackstone’s.

‘What happened to you, Thomas?’

Blackstone looked back steadily. ‘That man you knew is gone. Don’t try to look for him.’ His eyes were dead ice.

Torr shook his head.

‘Conjuror’s tricks,’ said Blackstone dismissively. ‘That’s all you learned in Holland. Your interests brought you nothing.’

‘They’ve brought me peace,’ said Torr. ‘Shouldn’t you like that?’

‘Then hear my confession,’ demanded Blackstone gruffly, ‘Let me be at peace for a while at least.’

‘As you wish.’ Torr made the sign of the cross.

‘I have seen Teresa.’ Blackstone’s eyes were closed.

‘You said Teresa was dead,’ said Torr carefully.

‘She came to me in a dream.’

Torr let out a breath. He had feared Blackstone had finally lost his mind.

‘She told me . . .’ Blackstone was speaking with difficulty. He stared at Torr. ‘Teresa told me she was in hell.’

Torr opened his mouth to reply, but Blackstone continued.

‘Her face was burned,’ he said. ‘And her long hair scorched away. She said . . . she said that demons bound her to a wheel. That they did things to her. Dreadful things.’

His face was expressionless.

‘Teresa told me . . .’ he continued stonily, ‘that they make her confess. To signing the marriage certificate. They make her confess it over and over.’

‘Tell me,’ he whispered, ‘that they can’t hurt her in death as they did in life.’

‘You’re certain she took her own life?’ asked Torr.

Blackstone shook his head.

‘My memories are scattered. Plague took things. I can’t be sure. Of anything. Most of that year is . . . nothing.’

But there was something. Even as Blackstone said the words he knew. Memories just at the edge of his grasping. A missing key.

‘Thoughts come to me,’ added Blackstone. ‘Things I don’t know . . . I don’t know if they’re real.’ He was shaking his head, eyes closed tight in pain. ‘My father and my sister. I think she wanted to marry. He was angry. Thought her disobedient. I remember . . . There’s a picture in my head. Of him hurting her. Worse than anything he did to me.’

Blackstone’s scarred fists were balled tightly.

‘He can’t have done what I think he did. My father was devout. Family was sacred to him.’

‘From what I heard of your father,’ said Torr, ‘he was very strict with his household. Your mother and sister weren’t allowed off the family estate.’

‘Women must be strictly governed,’ said Blackstone. ‘Or they fall to base ways. You need only look to my poor wife,’ he added.

‘Teresa was responsible for her own life before God,’ said Torr. ‘She was obliged to preserve it for her own salvation. If, in her arrogance, she committed violence against God’s gift, then she could not be allowed into heaven.’

‘And if she wasn’t a suicide? If I’m mistaken? Can she not be buried decently?’

Torr shook his head.

Blackstone took in a great gasp of air.

‘She made spells,’ said Torr. ‘Witchcraft, Thomas.’

There was a pause.

‘Then tell me what can be done.’ Blackstone’s voice came louder than he meant. He looked around and dropped it to a whisper. ‘Tell me what can be done, Torr. For the Brotherhood. For the love we once bore each other. Tell me what can be done.’

Torr looked at his manacles, his dirty shirt.

‘Teresa was a witch,’ he said. His eyes lifted to meet Blackstone’s. ‘So you must make a holy sacrifice for her soul. Then you must burn her.’

Chapter 82

Prisoners were pelting out of the gates as Charlie neared Bridewell. Some stumbled on ulcerated legs. Others carried skin and bone children. Fire was already cresting the east side of the prison. Charlie could hear the screams of the Bedlam maniacs in the north quarter.

His breathing quickened. Bridewell was an enormous ranging sort of prison. Some cells were half a mile apart. He might not be too late.

The thick wooden door leading inside was ajar as Charlie approached. The prison was an ex-palace of Henry VIII with the thick walls and fortressing of a bygone military monarchy. So there was no heavy gatehouse. No portcullis.

Streams of prisoners were thinning now. The older and more infirm were hobbling. But Charlie still could hear howls of many more in the endless rooms beyond.

There were no gaolers and at first he assumed they’d fled. Bridewell was an open prison like the Fleet. It housed disorderly paupers, children and religious fundamentalists. But there were no officials by the benches where prisoners sat to be memorised.

Charlie moved into the deeper prison, his breathing quickening. Likely gaolers were roaming inside trying to restore order. In the chaos they might mistake him for a prisoner. But if he could find people still confined, he could release them in return for information. Better yet, he might find Lily.

Charlie passed into the first large room where prisoners could meet visitors. It was large, airy, built for a King. The floor was covered with lice-infested straw and a corner was stained in a high arc of urine and mounded with excrement.

He heard shouts from the courtyard beyond. Then another clutch of prisoners burst forth, stampeding through the visitor room towards the gate. Charlie flattened himself against the piss-soaked wall and watched them run. Then he moved into the large courtyard. It was slung with the deserted works of hard labour. Hempen ropes abandoned. Rope-beating hammers were ominously absent.

Charlie sucked at his scarred lip. He didn’t like this. Somewhere in the prison someone wielded those hammers. And a desperate pauper was more dangerous than a gaoler.

Bridewell comprised two enormous courtyards bordered by a thick brick fortress building. It was five storeys high in places, elaborate and seemingly never-ending. To the side of the courtyard were Bridewell’s long corridors and rooms. Charlie stepped inside. It was darker in here. Thick walls to protect a King and many rooms leading off. There were no candles or braziers, only slim patches of dim light from small high windows.

The row of doors were all open. He walked along, glancing quickly inside each large room. They were ranged with straw-filled cot beds, piled with filth and empty of people. The prisoners had all broken out. No guards to be seen. Something wasn’t right. There was a scrabbling sound and Charlie froze. Then a chicken strutted from one of the cells, cocked an eye at the long corridor and began pecking at a stray pile of straw.

There was another movement out of the corner of his eye and Charlie dodged just in time. A burly man came hurtling from behind an open door. He held a thick-handled whip and a cudgel in his meaty hands. A gaoler, Charlie realised. And he was headed towards him with murder in his eyes.