London (119 page)

So that’s who this woman was. She had no idea of his identity; but though he had not seen her since he was a boy, he remembered the scandal about her. Poor woman, he thought, what a way to depart.

The will was short and to the point. She had no children. She left her little fortune, which it seemed had been diminished by time, equally to all the surviving children of John Dogget deceased, with the exception of the child by Martha. Hardly surprising, Meredith thought privately. “Is that all?” he asked.

“Nearly,” she said. “But there’s one thing more.”

Richard Meredith was not aware, as he was writing, that under the floorboard of the room a black rat had just died. Nor could he have seen for it was very small indeed, the flea that had just come through the crack between the boards.

The flea was in poor condition. For several days it had been feeding upon the blood of the black rat, which had the plague. The bloodstream of the rat had contained hundreds of thousands of the plague bacilli, and some tens of thousands had been transferred to the flea. Inside the flea’s stomach, the plague bacilli had multiplied, blocking the entrance. As a result, the flea was very hungry. Now the flea, finding its host lifeless, was looking for another body on which to feed. As soon as he punctured the skin of the next creature, he would try in vain to ingest blood through the blocked entrance to his stomach; meanwhile thousands of bacilli would seep into the new host where, they would quickly multiply, and multiply; and multiply again. The flea was death. It hopped on to Meredith’s coat.

The last paragraph of Jane Wheeler’s will was startling.

Finally, with this my last testament, and with my dying breath, to Sir Julius Ducket, thief and liar, who has stolen my rightful fortune and caused my ruin, I bequeath my curse. May God, who is just, send him to hellfire for his sins, and may his family be cursed hereafter and his inheritance stolen as mine has been. Amen.

“Are you sure you want to say that?” Meredith asked.

“I am. Have you written it? Show me. Good,” she breathed. “Give me the pen.” She signed with difficulty. “You and the nurse witness.” Meredith did so. The nurse made her mark.

The flea hopped on to Meredith’s sleeve.

“I must go now,” Meredith said, and pulled on his glove again. Jane hardly seemed to hear him. Suddenly she cried out in pain. The nurse and Meredith looked at each other. It would not be long now. He decided he would not tell poor Sir Julius that he had been cursed.

The flea could get nothing from the coat. He was just preparing to try Meredith’s bare hand when it vanished inside the long leather glove. As Meredith went towards the door, the flea leaped on to the nurse.

By the month of October, the plague seemed to pass its peak. For the first two weeks the Bills of Mortality were in the four thousands; by the fourth week, fewer than fifteen hundred; then about a thousand for three weeks. Then a falling away. Although cases would continue to crop up into February, by November London was cautiously opening up again. By late January, the carriages of even the wealthiest citizens and their doctors were rolling back into town.

The total official death toll of the Great Plague is over sixty-five thousand. The true figure was certainly more, perhaps nearly a hundred thousand. One curious feature of the plague however, which is often overlooked, was the colony of folk living on floating islands in the Thames. There were a considerable number of these huge and curious structures. Altogether some ten thousand people lived on the river like this for several weeks. As far as is known, few if any of them caught the plague. It was a fact which Doctor Richard Meredith noted, but was still, to his chagrin, unable to explain.

So it was, at the end of November, that Dogget and his family finally ventured back to their lodgings, to find they had gained a small inheritance.

If Richard Meredith was saddened at his failure to understand the plague, nobody else did either. Not for almost two centuries would the true nature of the disease and its carriers be identified. Until that time it was remembered only for the fact that no herbs could cure it and for its symptoms – the rosy rash or the sneezing – recorded in the song which, a little time after, the children began to sing.

Ring a ring o’ roses
A pocket full of posies
Atishoo, atishoo
We all fall down.

In later times, in North America, the “Atishoo” of the song, not understood, was changed to “Ashes”. But there were no ashes – only, that year in London, the terrible sneezing before death.

1666

September the 1st was a quiet night. Sir Julius lay peacefully in the big house behind St Mary-le-Bow. It had been a long, pleasant summer and the family had only returned from Bocton the week before. It was Sunday tomorrow. About midnight he awoke briefly and went to the window. The air was pleasantly cool, with a hint of breeze coming from the east. He took a few deep breaths, then went back to bed.

At about one o’clock in the morning he arose again. Had he heard something? He looked out of the window. Was there, perhaps, a faint sound coming from the direction of London Bridge? Outside, the courtyard was like a dark well. A faint sheen of starlight touched the steep rooftops all around. He listened, but after a minute or two decided he had heard nothing so he returned to bed and fell asleep.

It was nearly four in the morning when his wife woke him. This time there was no doubt. Over the rooftops on his left, he could see a faint glow. Flames and hot ashes must be rising into the sky somewhere near the bridge. Probably not close. “But I’ll go and see,” he said.

He pulled on some clothes and left the house.

It was a fire, but not a very big one. It had begun some time after midnight in a baker’s house down a narrow street off East Cheap, called Pudding Lane. A maidservant who had panicked and run up into the roof had been trapped and burned to death. The fire had spread to about a dozen of the huddled little houses now, but he had often seen worse blazes than this. The men were throwing buckets of water on it, without much conviction. As Julius turned to go home he met the mayor.

“They called me out,” the mayor said irritably.

“It seems no great affair,” Julius remarked.

“A woman could piss it out,” the mayor grumbled, and stomped off.

This crude and famous verdict would not have gone down in history, and the fire in Pudding Lane would be entirely forgotten if it had not been for one extra factor which neither man noticed at the time.

The wind was getting up. By the time Julius was safely back in his bed, the breeze was sprightly. At the moment when, with his arm round his wife, he fell asleep again, the wind had carried the sparks and embers across to the next street, which led straight on to London Bridge. At dawn, the church of St Magnus the Martyr went. Soon afterwards, the fire reached the bridge. By mid-morning it was threatening the warehouses along the river.

By the time Julius went out again and made his way over to a vantage point near the top of Cornhill, he could see a huge conflagration spreading all round the head of the bridge. Two, perhaps three hundred of the tightly packed houses, he guessed, might be in flames. The crackle and roar reverberated all around the city now. So fascinated was he that he stood up there for more than two hours before making his way down the hill, skirting the fire as close as he dared, and then walking back up Watling Street. It was there that he encountered young Richard Meredith talking to a gentleman he introduced as Mr Pepys. This gentleman, who seemed to have seen more than most, was scathing.

“I saw both the king and his brother at Whitehall,” he was saying. “They sent orders to pull down houses to make firebreaks, but because the city authorities are afraid the owners may demand compensation, they’re leaving the houses untouched!”

“Have you seen the mayor?” Julius asked.

“Five minutes past. First he almost weeps; then he says no one will obey him; then he says he’s tired and going to dinner. Contemptible.”

“So what will happen?”

“The fire,” Pepys said, “will rage.”

During the afternoon O Be Joyful told his family to be ready to move. The fire had been growing steadily. A stream of carts piled with people’s possessions had been labouring up Watling Street from the London Bridge area for some time.

O Be Joyful had been increasingly conscious of his responsibility in the last few months. The time on the river and the general disruption of the plague had left Martha somewhat weakened. That spring he had persuaded her to live with them and her daily proximity could not fail to remind him that he was expected to take Gideon’s place. With four children to think of now, as well, he knew it was his duty to give leadership. If only, he wished, these things came to him more naturally.

Nonetheless, he acted decisively now. A friend with lodgings at Shoreditch had agreed to take them in. If need be, they would be ready. And he was satisfied that his duty had been done when Martha had suddenly announced: “I want to go and see if my old friend Mrs Bundy is safe.”

He knew this godly woman slightly and offered to go himself. “But you’ve never been to her lodgings,” Martha had pointed out; so they set off together. As they descended Watling Street and crossed Walbrook the billowing smoke over the bridge area rose several hundred feet. As they passed the London Stone, Martha indicated a narrow street on the right and, with a resolute face, headed downhill, straight towards the fire.

If any explanation of the fire’s unstoppable growth were needed, the scene before them certainly provided it. The narrow street, the wooden and plaster houses (the orders to build in brick or stone were always ignored, every century), the upper storeys that jutted out, each one further than the one before until they practically touched the house opposite: this huddled mass of tenements, courtyards and wooden structures that leaned this way and that, sagging and stooping like a row of drunken old gossips, was in reality nothing more or less than a huge tinderbox. Worse yet: people trying to put out fires in a hurry had already broken open the wooden water-pipes in the street to fill buckets, then left them gushing; consequently, the water cisterns, even from Myddelton’s New Canal, had all run dry. As O Be Joyful looked down the street, he could see the fire steadily eating its way from house to house.

Yet strangest of all, he realized, was the behaviour of the people. For if the richer citizens were making off with their valuable goods, the poor, with nothing except the roof over their heads, were often remaining huddled in their houses in the hope that the fire might somehow stop before it reached them. He could see whole families coming out of tenements even after the roof of their house had started to burn.

The tenement Martha sought lay halfway down the street, some fifty yards from the edge of the fire. When they got there O Be Joyful offered to go in but she told him: “I know where she is. Keep watch outside.” And he saw her enter the hallway and disappear up the stairs.

The progress of the fire was frightening, yet also fascinating. The brown and grey smoke rose above him now like a great wall, shutting off the whole sky. The heat was soon so great that he had to put his hand over his face. The air was full of glowing sparks and embers. Several fell close by him. He could see others lodging on roofs where little fires were breaking out. Above all, he was struck by the terrifying sounds of the fire, the crackle, the bursting bangs, the growing roar as it ate its way from house to house. Soon it was only thirty yards away. But where was Martha? Surely, even if Mrs Bundy was in there, she could not be much longer?

The bang, and the roaring tongue of flame that shot through the house took him completely by surprise. The hot wave of air almost knocked him off his feet. As he scrambled up, he could see glowing flames at some of the windows. Smoke was starting to billow under the roof. How had that happened? And then he suddenly realized: he had forgotten about the rear of the houses. The fire had come roaring in from the back.

He ran to the hallway and the foot of the staircase, calling out Martha’s name. But the roar of the fire all around must have prevented her hearing him. Somewhere above he could hear a crackle of flame. Smoke was oozing out from under the floorboards. He started up the stairs, still calling.

Then another great crack and a rushing sound, above him. God knew what was happening up there. He hesitated. He was not sure what part of the house she was in. He turned, ran back down the few stairs he had climbed and went out into the street.

“Martha,” he cried. “Martha!” The fire had attacked houses right up the street. He glanced around to make sure he still had a line of retreat. “Martha!”

Then he saw her. She was at a small window, up on the top floor under the roof. Frantically he waved at her to come down. She made a sign he did not understand. Was she trapped? He signalled he was coming, and rushed inside. Moments later he was running up the stairs.

Crash. Something, a beam he thought, had fallen up above. Bang. Another. A pall of smoke hung over the stairs ahead of him. From his left, at the rear of the house, a loud crackle. Some plaster fell, only ten feet from him. Flames came through. He must hurry. He pressed on. The stairway creaked as he went up. A burst of flame shot out from the top floor. He gasped, stood still. And then his heart failed him. He went no further, but turned and fled. Moments later he was looking up at Martha again. He made a sign to her, as though to indicate that the stairs were impassable. Her pale round face continued to gaze down at him.

“Jump,” he cried; but only to salve his conscience. Had she done so it would probably have killed her; anyway, the window was too small. “Martha!” Smoke was billowing out from under the eaves. Was she crying out? They just stood, looking at each other, for fully a minute until, with a roar, he saw the roof turn into a torch. Timbers started to fall; flames were pouring out of her window. And then he saw she was no longer there.