The Ashes of London (25 page)

The afternoon was grey but mild and dry. Cat made her way swiftly through the streets, cutting through the ruins of the city to Bishopsgate and then up to Moorfields. The gloves were already parcelled up, waiting collection. From Moorfields she made her way west to Chancery Lane and Cursitor Street.

She bribed a little girl to show her Ramikin Row. She knocked on doors until she found a woman who pointed out the house where Mistress Sneyd lodged and told her that she was working in the yard at the back.

Cat walked through the passage to the yard. An old woman was sitting on a log in the corner, her eyes cast down, sorting twigs for a broom. Cat stopped in front of her.

‘Mistress Sneyd?’

The woman looked up. Her face was gaunt but she was not as old as Cat had thought. ‘What?’

‘I was saddened to hear of your husband’s death.’

‘Why? What was he to you?’

‘I think my father knew him. Was he in Colonel Harrison’s regiment in the war?’

‘Perhaps. Who is your father? Coldridge, is he?’

The familiar name caught Cat unawares. Coldridge the man, not Coldridge the place? It must surely be her father, using an assumed name. She glanced about her. She and the old woman were alone. If she could trust anyone, it was someone like this. ‘Yes.’

The woman was looking down at her twigs, her face invisible under her hat.

‘Have you seen him lately?’ Cat said.

Mistress Sneyd shook her head, the hat swaying from side to side.

‘Or had your husband?’

There was no reply.

‘Mistress? Did you hear me?’

‘Go away,’ Mistress Sneyd said softly. ‘Just go.’

‘Please,’ Cat said. ‘Listen. If he—’

Mistress Sneyd looked up at her. Her face was suffused with blood. She opened her mouth, threw back her head and howled like a dog.

Cat jumped back. She slipped and fell backwards into the gutter. She stood up. Her dress was filthy and damp. She was afraid but she was also growing angry. ‘Did your husband see him? Master Coldridge?’

‘Who was your father?’

‘I told you – a comrade of your husband’s.’

‘I want nothing to do with those fools, or with their daughters.’

Cat glanced over her shoulder. Half a dozen children had come out from the house and were staring at her.

‘Go,’ Mistress Sneyd said softly. ‘Go while you can and never come back. You keep on with your questions, like that young man the other day, but you do nothing. You and your kind have taken everything from me.’

‘But all I want—’

‘Go.’

‘What young man?’ Cat said.

Mistress Sneyd’s voice rose and from her lips came a spurt of malice: ‘You doxy. I’ll tell them you’re a witch, and you’re trying to put a spell on me. We don’t like witches here. We put them on the kitchen fire.’

Cat retreated.

‘You devil spawn,’ the woman spat out. ‘Your father killed my husband. May he rot in hell, and may you rot with him.’

She went into the house behind her, slamming the door.

The children stared at Cat and drew a little closer to her. The oldest of the boys stooped and picked up a stone.

Cat pulled her cloak around her.

The first stone hit the wall behind her.

She broke into a run. The second stone thumped between her shoulder blades. She ran on and on, pushing her way through the crowd. She did not slow to a walk until she reached the bustle of Chancery Lane.

M
ASTER HAKESBY HAD
not been well during the last few days. The tremor in his hands was worse. He was sleeping badly and, last Friday, he had fallen on the stairs. He was not a drinker, or no more than most men, but Cat could not help wondering if he had the shaking palsy, which had afflicted Great Uncle Eyre in Coldridge.

In the last year of his life, her uncle had crept miserably about the house with very small steps, complaining of pains in his limbs. His hands had trembled so much that his wife had to feed him in the end. Worst of all, he began to see things that were not there, and to mistake the nature of the real things he saw. Mother Grimes, an old woman on the estate, had made herbal infusions for him. The servants said she was a witch or a wise woman, depending who you talked to. Her infusions eased the pain a little, but they also made the visions worse.

Cat prayed that this would not be Master Hakesby’s fate. Not for his sake but for hers. She needed him too much. He must not grow ill and die.

On Monday, the boy who brought the milk said that the apprentices of Fleet Street were out, building a great bonfire in a patch of ground cleared by the Fire in Harp Lane, which lay to the east of Fetter Lane. It was Gunpowder Treason Day, the holiday that commemorated the foiling of the Catholic plot to blow up the King and Parliament more than fifty years ago.

The apprentices had made an effigy of the Whore of Babylon dressed as the Pope of Rome, complete with his triple tiara and St Peter’s Keys. John begged Mistress Noxon to allow the servants to go out for an hour in the evening, once supper had been served, so they might enjoy the spectacle for themselves.

‘You’d like to go, wouldn’t you, Jane?’ he said, turning to Cat, flushing, and making calf’s eyes at her. ‘It’ll be a rare sight. There’ll be stalls and sideshows, I dare say. All the world will be there.’

‘I’d like to see it too,’ Margery said.

‘You can all go, if you must,’ Mistress Noxon said. ‘But only for an hour, and only when you’ve cleared away supper and made things ready for the morning.’

In the middle of Monday morning, Master Hakesby’s health grew worse. He sent for Mistress Noxon, who went up to see him. Cat wondered if he needed a doctor or at the very least to be bled. But when Mistress Noxon came down, ten minutes later, she told Cat that she should go up to Master Hakesby’s room and work for him for the rest of the morning, and possibly for some of the afternoon as well. Mistress Noxon seemed content with the arrangement, though it would mean extra work for everyone else, which made Cat suspect that Master Hakesby was paying handsomely for it.

She found him out of bed, and sitting in his elbow chair. He was still in gown and slippers, though, and his face was even gaunter than usual. His skin was dry, and it was flaking like a shower of miniature snow onto the dark green shoulders of his bedgown.

‘I am not quite well, Jane,’ he said unnecessarily. His right hand began to twitch of its own volition and he clamped it onto his leg with his left. ‘I have asked Mistress Noxon to allow you to assist me. Bring me the paper from the table, will you? The one on top.’

She obeyed. It was a rough sketch of an elevation she noticed – its proportions not unlike those of the Banqueting House in Whitehall, but far smaller in scale. The sketch was in pencil, and the lines had skidded a little erratically over the paper, but the sense of it was perfectly clear. Underneath, written in ink, were measurements of the principal dimensions.

‘I must have a fair copy by the end of the afternoon,’ Master Hakesby said. ‘Can you do it?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Her voice was low, and she kept her eyes cast down. But she felt a pulse of excitement begin to beat inside her.

‘You will work at the table there, and I shall oversee your work. You should prick the measurements first and then pencil the lines in before you use ink. It must be as neat as possible, for it will be seen by the client.’

‘The client, sir?’

‘A college in Cambridge. This is merely a proposal, which may nor may not lead to a commission. Here you see a side elevation for their new chapel.’

‘That Dr Wren is designing?’ she suggested.

Master Hakesby snorted, and spots of colour appeared in his cheeks. ‘It is more accurate to say that he and I are engaged together on this project.’

She curtsied and busied herself with her preparations, watching Master Hakesby surreptitiously. He sat back in his chair, rubbing his forehead, which caused another shower of snowflakes. A muscle jumped in his cheek. A moment later, he rose from his chair with some difficulty and shuffled with unsteady steps into his closet. After a long silence, she heard him relieving himself.

When he came back, he inspected her progress so far and seemed satisfied with it. While she continued, he took up a well-worn book and rested it on the arm of his chair. He appeared to be reading, but did not often turn a page. When she was passing his chair to fetch a knife to sharpen the pencil, she glanced down at the volume. She saw without surprise that it was the
De Architectura of Vitruvius
, Aunt Eyre’s favourite book. It was a good omen.

Firmitas
,
utilitas
,
venustas
, she thought. Buildings should be like the nests of birds and bees.

The rest of the morning passed pleasantly. The work absorbed Cat, drawing her into a place where both worries and duties evaporated, leaving only the whisper of the pencil on paper, Master Hakesby’s breathing, and the plan taking shape on the table before her.

At dinnertime, he told her to go downstairs to fetch him a tray. ‘You may have your meal yourself, after that, and then we shall start again this afternoon.’

‘Sir?’ she said as she was tidying the table to make room for the tray. ‘Is the cornice a little too ornamented?’

‘What are you talking about?’ He sounded irritated. He pulled himself up from the chair and came to look at the design. ‘What in God’s name can you know of such things?’

She took a deep breath, gathering courage. ‘You said the pilasters between the bays are to have Corinthian capitals, sir. But will the carving on the cornice distract the eye from them and confuse the mind?’

He stared down at the paper, screwing up his face in concentration. ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘As a matter of fact I was uncertain about that myself. I shall raise it with Dr Wren.’ He glanced sideways at her. ‘I was intending to do that anyway.’

‘Yes, sir. I beg your pardon.’

‘But you have an eye, Jane, and that is invaluable.’

He dismissed her, and she floated down the stairs, as happy as she had been since those far-off days at Coldridge.

The clocks were striking nine, a conversation of bells that lasted for several minutes.

The three servants walked down to the Strand. John carried a lantern and a stick tipped with iron. There was rowdiness on public holidays, as well as the usual perils of the night. Margery was next to him, and Cat between Margery and the wall.

‘It’s not very busy,’ Margery said when they reached the Strand.

No one replied. But she was right, Cat thought. The street was scarcely empty – the usual pleasure-seekers were about, and some shops had not put up their shutters yet. Coaches and carts passed to and fro, as well as the occasional horseman. But there was no sign of the crowds she had expected, and no sense of that heaving, restless excitement that the mob brought to the streets on public holidays.

The three of them walked under Temple Bar and into Fleet Street. The desolation of the City lay in front of them, with the hulking shadow of St Paul’s just visible against the sky. The ruins were in almost complete darkness. Few ventured there by night.

‘Where’s this bonfire then?’ Margery demanded.

‘I told you – Harp Lane,’ John said with a hint of anxiety in his voice. The outing had been his idea, and its success or failure was his responsibility. ‘You’ll see in a moment.’

But they didn’t see. Beyond Fetter Lane, the ruins stretched down to the Fleet Ditch and then up the slope to the City wall. No torches milled about them, no hubbub rose into the air, and above all no bonfire burned the triple-crowned Anti-Christ of Rome into a heap of ash.

Cat had not wanted to come on this outing. But now it had lost its purpose, she felt disappointed.

‘They said it’d be here,’ John said; he sounded sulky, a boy deprived of a treat and made to look foolish into the bargain. ‘They must have moved it.’

Margery stopped a maidservant coming out of a pastrycook’s with a covered basket on one arm. ‘Where’s the bonfire then?’

The girl shrugged. ‘No one came.’ She waved her free arm in a gesture that embraced the City and its environs. ‘There’s no bonfires this year. No one wants another fire, do they? We’ve had enough of that.’

John bent his head towards Cat. ‘What do you want to do?’

‘Go home,’ Cat said. ‘I’ve got a headache.’

Simultaneously, Margery said, ‘Let’s have some oysters first. It’s only a step to Fleet Bridge.’

‘We’ve not got long,’ John said. ‘Jane, what do you—’

‘Come, you will not deny us this? We deserve a treat. And I know a short cut.’ Margery snatched the lantern from him. ‘Follow me. I’ll show you.’

‘There’s not time,’ he said. ‘And Mistress Noxon—’

‘There’s always time for oysters.’ Margery marched into the lane running parallel to Fleet Street, taking the light with her. She called back over her shoulder. ‘Or what do you say to gingerbread?’

Automatically the others followed. The lane had been cleared since the destruction of the Fire. Cat stumbled on the uneven cobbles, and John took her arm to steady her. She did not snatch it away. This, she realized when it was too late, gave him courage. He stopped suddenly and swung her round, so her back was against the wall.

‘Jane, I can’t help it,’ he whispered. ‘I must speak. Or I swear I’ll burst.’

The light disappeared round a corner. The darkness descended.

His hands clamped themselves onto her shoulders. She fumbled in her pocket.

‘Let me kiss you. Be my sweetheart. I beg you.’

He brought his face down to hers. His sweat smelled acrid, indisputably masculine. Nausea rose in her throat. He pushed her against the wall. His cheek brushed her lips. She heard her cousin Edward’s voice rasping in her ear.

Scream all you like
,
my love. No one will hear.

She eased the little knife from its sheath.

‘Sweet Jane. Forgive me. One kiss. Please. Just one.’

Part of her had time to think that John was not like Cousin Edward, that he was a kind, stupid man who was foolish and strange enough to desire her, whereas Edward was a monster who deserved to be hanged for all his fine airs.