Fire Catcher (3 page)

Chapter 4

Nailing Charlie with a stare as if to etch him in her memory, the girl spun on her heel and sprinted off down Fetter Lane.

Charlie was about to give chase when the sound of crackling flames stalled him. The city was a warren of wood buildings built virtually on top of each other, and Londoners lived in constant fear of fire. People on the street were already panicking.

Charlie’s conscience pricked at him. The locals would be unlikely to muster the rationality needed to tackle the blaze. With a frustrated glance at the escaping girl, he span in the opposite direction. There was a laundry stall on the street, and in a few quick strides Charlie was by the water butts.

‘Which is wool?’ he demanded of the laundress, who was standing open-mouthed in terror at the rising smoke. She turned to him like a sleepwalker. Charlie seized her roughly by the shoulder.

‘Wool,’ he repeated. ‘Which holds the woollen clothes?’

She pointed and without waiting for permission Charlie plunged an arm into the tub and seized forth a load of sopping clothing.

‘Bring the butt,’ he commanded. The laundress hesitated and then moved to obey. Charlie sprinted off with his armful of wet wool without waiting to see if she followed.

There was a roar from the house as Charlie blazed through the doorway. The man inside was swinging one way and then another. He held an upended bottle of wine. Around him the flames burned blue on the sugary residues.

Charlie made a rapid assessment. Working quickly with the wet wool garments, he doused one fire and then another. Steam rose as fire spluttered resentfully beneath the sopping clothes.

As Charlie suffocated the last flames, the washerwoman sidled clumsily into the house with her water butt.

‘Throw it there,’ directed Charlie, pointing to a charred wooden wall. She looked at him in confusion.

‘There’s no fire there,’ she said.

Charlie seized the water butt just as the flame flared. He threw it at the wall and the fire retreated, hissing discontentedly.

Behind them a younger woman in a mob cap arrived carrying her own pail of water. The fire was smoking in submission now but she threw her water anyway.

The three of them stood silent for a moment, bonded by mutual heroism as the final splash of water fell on charred wood.

‘How did you do that?’ the washerwoman asked Charlie. ‘You knew where the flame would come.’

‘Lucky guess,’ said Charlie.

‘It was no such thing,’ announced the younger woman. ‘I know you, Charlie Tuesday. You were a cinder thief.’

‘That was as a boy,’ said Charlie, giving her the uncertain smile he reserved for women-he-might-have-slept-with. ‘I value my neck more greatly nowadays.’

He was eyeing the younger woman, mentally debating.

Did we? Didn’t we?

The washerwoman was looking at him with disapproval. Looting burning buildings was frowned upon, even by commoners.

‘I grew up in the Foundling Orphan Home,’ explained Charlie. ‘Hanging is better than starving.’

Understanding dawned on the washerwoman’s face. Everyone knew about Foundling Home soup.

The younger woman gave Charlie a hopeful smile.

We did
, he decided.

‘All of London dry as a bone and candles lit when there is sunlight,’ announced the washerwoman, eyeing the aristocrat slumped dejectedly in a chair.

‘And my babes asleep only a few houses away,’ added the younger woman, her voice quailing as the chance for drama occurred to her.

‘The fire is out now,’ said Charlie firmly. He could see the women were sizing the aristocrat up for compensation, and judged the man had suffered enough for his stupidity. Charlie turned to the aristocrat.

‘The purse was of value to you?’ Charlie asked. It was an odd thought. The man’s clothes suggested a few lost coins would be nothing more than an inconvenience.

‘It was a ring,’ said the man. ‘She took a ruby ring of great importance.’

Charlie thought of his key. The crown looped with knots. His whole life he’d searched for the mystery of what the symbol meant. The girl. She
knew
something. Something that frightened her deeply.

‘If you’ll allow me to help you, sir,’ said Charlie slowly. ‘I may be able to return this property to you.’

‘What are you?’ asked the man. ‘Part of the Watch?’

The two women exchanged glances. Since Cromwell’s army had been deposed and King Charles reinstated, the Watch were a figure of fun among Londoners. They had not successfully tracked a criminal in over three years.

‘God forbid,’ said Charlie, with a wide grin. ‘I am a thief taker.’

Chapter 5

‘The girls are all asleep,’ explained Mother Mitchell, leading Charlie inside a richly furnished salon with a distinctive tang of male sweat. ‘So we may talk in here.’

Two women were slumbering on the floor, arms slung over one another, faces flushed. The fire grate hadn’t been swept and wine cups lay all around.

‘They won’t wake,’ said Mother Mitchell. ‘What is it you need?’

‘I’m looking for a girl,’ said Charlie, following her ample frame through a doorway carved with cherubs and wreaths. Beside the silken skirts, Charlie’s seamed breeches and muddy feet looked conspicuously out of place.

‘But of course it is always a girl,’ she said, seating herself on a gold-legged chair and drawing the enormous folds of her silken gown around thick legs. Mother Mitchell had once been a famous courtesan, and the striking cast of her younger features could still be traced in the older face. But she had embraced the authority of her ageing body, expanding outwards until she echoed the proportions of the wide court dresses favoured in her youth. Heavily constructed ringlets of greying dark hair framed her face like a military helmet, whilst her unchecked moustache and eyebrows served as a whiskery warning that she was no longer for sale.

‘Here, boy. Pass me my tobacco.’ Mother Mitchell was gesturing to a marble mantelpiece littered with spent candle stubs. She coughed from the depths of her lungs and waited as Charlie passed her the silver box.

There was a girlish shriek from upstairs. Mother Mitchell raised her eyes to the ceiling then back to Charlie. She extracted a slim white pipe from the folds of her gown.

‘Have you tried to find Maria?’ Mother Mitchell asked, after a moment’s pause.

‘No,’ said Charlie.

‘She’d have you back,’ said Mother Mitchell, ‘if you’d only offer the poor girl a little stability. It’s not much to ask.’

‘I’m a thief taker,’ said Charlie.

‘That isn’t the reason,’ said Mother Mitchell. She nodded to the key around his neck. ‘It’s because of that. You won’t let it go. You’re obsessed by a mystery you can’t solve.’ She rearranged her skirts. ‘No sensible woman can plan a future with that looming large.’

When he didn’t answer she laughed her creaking phlegmic laugh.

‘I have known you since a boy,’ she said. ‘Who else will tell you if not me?’

Mother Mitchell tugged out a pinch of tobacco and pressed it into the silver-edged bowl of her pipe. ‘I thought it would last,’ she continued, without waiting for an answer. ‘I truly did.’

Charlie said nothing. There was something wrong in him, he knew. Maria was beautiful, clever and much too good for him. For a short time they’d been truly happy.

But the more Maria pressed for an ordered life, the more Charlie yearned for his thief taker’s hand-to-mouth transience. And much as it burned him, he knew Mother Mitchell was right. At the heart of every argument with Maria was a truth Charlie couldn’t admit.

How can I settle down, when I don’t know who I am?

‘Maria was good for you,’ added Mother Mitchell. ‘I remember the actress. How many fights started over that one?’

‘None that I did not finish,’ said Charlie evenly.

She shook her head. ‘If you could only think with your head, Charlie Tuesday, you could rule the world.’

Charlie didn’t disagree. Women always seemed to be his undoing. Women and the extra-strength ale sold after Lent.

He unravelled a small purse from inside his shirt and removed several coins. Her eyes glittered as she took them.

‘Who do you seek?’

‘I saw her this morning on Fetter Lane,’ he began. ‘She was with a man in one of the rental rooms. A better type of building.’

Mother Mitchell grunted. ‘A kept woman?’

‘More in thieving,’ answered Charlie after a moment’s thought.

‘Pretty, was she?’

The answer came to Charlie in a rush. ‘Beautiful.’ A memory of the girl’s mesmerising eyes and long dark hair flashed in his memory.

‘A street prostitute?’ asked Mother Mitchell.

Charlie shook his head. ‘Her dress was silk. Well made. And the wine they were drinking. It was too good. Much better than a man would buy for a common prostitute.’

Mother Mitchell nodded at this.

‘Any marks? Smallpox scars?’ she asked.

Charlie ran the image of the girl in his mind.

‘No smallpox,’ he said finally. ‘But she had a scar on her back. Red raised. Shaped like a scythe.’ He motioned the shape.

Mother Mitchell rocked back and forth as if trying to urge a memory forward. Then her face broke with sudden enlightenment. ‘Lily Boswell!’ she announced. ‘Aye, that is your girl.’ Her face darkened. ‘You must stay away from Lily Boswell. She is deadly.’

Chapter 6

The stink of the cellar washed over the boy. Blackstone’s red-clad figure loomed over him like a demon. Hanging behind the curtain was someone the boy recognised.

‘He failed the rite,’ said Blackstone. ‘You share his fate if you show his weakness.’

The boy’s heart was racing. He’d tried to look away and found he couldn’t. A young carpenter’s apprentice from St Giles hung in bloody tatters. A rictus of pain was frozen on his dead lips. Fear rose hot and thick. The boy had not realised, until now, what it truly meant to fail the initiation.

‘He dropped his arm,’ said Blackstone, taking in the mangled remains with pleasure. ‘When the Bringer of Death was upon him.’

The boy saw Blackstone was holding a wooden block. A hard ball of terror tightened in the boy’s stomach. He knew part of what must come. He’d seen the scars on the other recruits.

The boy felt his forearm seized. Blackstone pressed the block on to his arm and raised the chalice again. The boy looked down. The wood bore a shape, cut out like a stencil. A crown looped over with three knots.

‘When I was a boy,’ Blackstone said, ‘my father made tests of my faith. He burned my fingernails to yellow stumps. But I never renounced my Catholicism.’

Blackstone paused, letting the image sink in. The boy swallowed, and his eyes flicked to the dead recruit hanging.

‘Are you a worthy son of the Brotherhood?’ asked Blackstone. In a smooth movement, he poured liquid from the glass goblet over the exposed skin on the boy’s outstretched arm. The boy drove down a shriek of agony. It burned worse than any fire he’d ever known. Every instinct screamed to run from the cellar, to plunge his arm into cool water. But the hanging recruit grimaced a warning.

Blackstone left a long pause. ‘During the Civil War,’ he continued, ‘Catholics fought for the King. England’s true father. When we lost, Cromwell’s Republic hunted and killed us.’

There was a deadly hush in the cellar. All the boy could hear was his own laboured breathing. He tried to form silent words between the breaths.

Hold firm. Hold firm.

‘Now King Charles is reinstated,’ Blackstone continued. ‘The escaped heir we risked our
lives
to secretly toast, in cellars and outhouses. He cavorts with whores and unclean women. Dishonouring his good Catholic Queen.’

Blackstone’s dead eyes suddenly flashed. ‘This false King is no father to us,’ he spat.

The boy’s forearm was shaking uncontrollably. His teeth were gritted hard. He squeezed his eyes tight shut, trying to drive back the pain. But it came on and on in relentless waves. A boiling heat that knew no mercy.

He couldn’t stand it any longer. He must drop his arm. Rub at the boiling agony.

‘Do you swear to keep our secrets?’ demanded Blackstone.

The boy couldn’t speak. He managed to nod. His arm was shak
ing uncontrollably.

I can’t do this.

The boy knew he was about to fail the rite. He would join the terrible remains.

Whatever Blackstone does to failures, it couldn’t be worse than this.

But as the corpse’s gluey eyes stared back at the boy, he knew it wasn’t true.

Blackstone was staring at him hungrily. Then his pale eyes widened suddenly, as though he saw something unexpected in the candle flame.

Blackstone whispered something barely audible. A woman’s name. The boy thought he said:
Teresa spills blessed blood.

Then something else.

She wears the dark crown.

Through his agony the boy felt something shift in the atmosphere behind him. It was well known that Blackstone had a wife who’d died at her own hand. No church would bury her and other recruits whispered Blackstone was maddened by thoughts of her in hell.

An unmistakable odour of burning flesh was wafting through the cellar. The boy could feel his arm bubbling. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t bear any more pain. Swaying on his feet he knew he was close to a faint. The boy made to move his arm.

Blackstone was holding something now. A leather pouch decorated with strange letters.

Blackstone was saying words. ‘The Elixir.’

Unstopping the pouch Blackstone poured a stream of liquid on to the boy’s arm. He let out a whimper. The Bringer of Death had burned deep into the muscle. And the Elixir brought heat before relief. There was a wet hiss and a vinegary smell rose up.

Slowly the boy stopped trembling. He let out a breath and stared at his arm. Blackstone stepped forward and embraced him. And in that moment with the blood pounding in his ears, the boy felt a surge of emotion that took him by surprise. He was filled with love for the Grand Master.

Blackstone straightened, giving his newest recruit a paternal pat on the shoulder.

‘You have passed the first test,’ said Blackstone proudly. ‘Your new name is Jacob, ward of the Sealed Knot.’

Jacob
. The boy rolled the title around his mind. He’d been Peter Carpenter before. A simple furniture-maker’s son.

‘Jacob was one of the first biblical sons,’ said Blackstone. ‘You must be obedient, always, to your Grand Master. Never question, always obey and your rewards will be great.’

Jacob nodded.

‘More tests will come,’ said Blackstone. ‘The more you pass the more truth you will learn. Fail and you have seen your fate.’

The pain in Jacob’s arm was already fading. He was hungry now for the secrets he’d been promised.

‘Our faith has finally been rewarded,’ said Blackstone. ‘Last night a fire started on Pudding Lane. An accidental blaze, but we may use it for our purposes.’ He waited for this to sink in. As the lowliest recruit, Jacob had been building fireballs for weeks. He’d not been told when the plans would begin. Jacob was now of a select few who knew the truth. He swelled with pride.

‘I have claimed the fire in the name of the Sealed Knot,’ continued Blackstone. ‘Today the King will receive news that we will burn London to the ground, unless our demands are met.

‘The true faith shall rise again,’ said Blackstone. ‘And what shall we do, with those who defy us?’

‘They will burn in holy fire,’ Jacob replied, automatically delivering the familiar words.

‘Yes,’ agreed Blackstone. ‘We will burn them.’