The Ashes of London (29 page)

They stood aside, each with his back to a wall, forcing us to pass in single file between them. The man with the dagger put out his boot as I went by, causing me to stumble and almost fall.

‘Careful, young sir,’ he called after me. ‘The ground’s as slippery as that whore’s arse.’

When we were past them, Margaret squeezed my arm again. ‘God be praised, sir,’ she murmured. ‘It could have gone either way. But they were kind-humoured today.’ She snorted, a sort of laugh that had nothing to do with amusement. ‘You did well to give them your purse.’

My arm was trembling, and my forehead was prickling with sweat as she guided me through a network of lanes and courts. I lost my sense of direction almost immediately, for there was nothing to help me orientate myself apart from the occasional glimpse of the river.

We came to a small yard surrounded by crumbling buildings of brick, stained with soot. A layer of ashes covered the flagstones beneath our feet. A boy of four or five years was squatting in the dirt and relieving himself. He wore nothing but a shirt, and his arms and legs looked like chicken bones. He held out a cupped hand for alms but otherwise ignored us.

‘That door there,’ Margaret said. ‘Home.’

She led me through an archway into one of the buildings and opened a door into a ground-floor room barely six feet square. The only window was tiny, and a rag had been nailed over it in place of glass. To my immense relief, the first thing I saw in the gloom was my father, sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. Beside him, was another man. His right leg had been taken off below the knee, and he wore a wooden stump in its place.

My father squinted at me in the doorway. ‘James,’ he said pettishly. ‘Where have you been? I wish you’d been here hours ago. This gentleman is Samuel. He and I have been discoursing on the probable nature of Armageddon, and it would have nourished your soul.’

‘Is all well?’ Margaret whispered.

‘Also, on the subject of nourishment,’ my father went on in the same irritable voice, ‘I find that I’m hungry.’

‘Nobody’s been in since you left,’ Sam said.

‘We met Rock and Captain Boyd in Ram Alley,’ Margaret said. ‘Master Marwood gave them his purse.’

‘Shame. But wise.’

The sailor stared at me. My eyes were adjusting to the gloom. I made out a long, unsheathed dagger on the platform beside him. On his other side, close to his hand, was a shape I took to be his pistol, partly concealed by the folds of his coat. Next to it was a small earthenware bottle.

‘Thank you for your kindness to my father, sir.’

‘And I thank you for yours to my wife.’

I expected Margaret’s husband to be little better than a distressed animal, a drunken wreck wholly dependent on his wife. Samuel Witherdine was certainly a cripple, and perhaps he drank too much, but there was nothing about him that asked for pity.

‘You want to get him out of here,’ he said. ‘This is no place for an old man. Not like him.’

I addressed my father: ‘Can you walk, sir?’

He stared at me in surprise. ‘Of course I can walk. Is it suppertime?’

‘Not without help,’ Samuel said. ‘He’s got a wrench or a sprain to his left ankle. But you’ll get him up to Fleet Street between you, and then you can find a hackney or a chair. I’ll come with you, just in case.’

‘But I don’t want to go yet,’ my father said. ‘We haven’t finished our discourse. Could supper be sent for?’

‘Another time, sir,’ Samuel said, and his voice had become gentler. ‘If you would be so kind.’

My father’s face brightened. ‘We can sing psalms.’

‘Indeed we can.’

Margaret helped her husband to rise and gave him his crutch. He stuffed the pistol in the pocket of his long coat and put the dagger in his belt.

When we left the lodging, Samuel hopped behind us. He was marvellously agile, and could have made faster progress than the rest of us despite the crutch. My father was weary, and he hung between Margaret and me, making little effort to help, and squealing with pain when something jarred his injured ankle. Trailing behind us all came the little boy, sucking his fingers as if he hoped against hope to derive nourishment from them.

We took a different, shorter route up to Fleet Street from the one we had come by. No one tried to stop us, though many watched us go. Perhaps Sam’s presence deterred them, or perhaps word had got about that we had already paid our dues to the bullies of Ram Alley.

For the first time in my life, the racket in Fleet Street was a foretaste of paradise. Margaret and I reached the corner, with my father dangling between us. Samuel lingered behind, thirty yards into the safety of Alsatia.

The old man became more lively when he saw where he was. I propped him against the wall, with Margaret to keep him company and stop him from straying. It was only a short distance to the Savoy but I did not think he could manage it, even with our help. I looked about for a vacant hackney coach or chair to take him back. I would have to beg a loan from the Newcombs to pay for it.

Behind me, my father was talking to Margaret, his tongue suddenly unleashed.

‘You see, my dear, London is a perfect Gomorrah, another City of the Plain, a place of luxury and sin. Tom Lovett was in the right of it. It is too wicked to last. The Lord will destroy it.’

I turned round sharply. ‘What did you say? Tom who?’

My father raised his watery eyes to me. ‘Tom Lovett. Fire and brimstone will not be the half of it, he said. He is a most godly man, in his way, though a little rough in his manner.’

‘I didn’t know you knew him, sir.’

‘He’s one of the saved. I used to see him sometimes at meetings in the old days. The room we used was in Watling Street, not a stone’s throw from his house in Bow Lane. Tom says the return of this King cannot last. God will blot him out, sooner or later. Charles will go the way of his father, the man of blood.’

I heard my father’s words but my understanding lagged a few seconds behind. ‘Do you mean you’ve seen Tom Lovett recently? Since the Restoration?’

His attention was wandering towards two brightly painted prostitutes who were approaching, scanning the crowd for possible customers. ‘Recently? Yes – quite by chance. Didn’t I say?’ He waved behind us, towards the alley where Sam was still waiting. ‘I saw Tom in there.’

‘This afternoon? Are you saying you’ve seen him this afternoon?’

‘Yes, I told you. Why are you so foolish today?’ My father frowned as a memory passed like a shadow through the ruins of his mind. ‘Indeed, it was Tom Lovett who made me fall in the gutter. We conversed only for a moment. Then he pushed me down when I tried to follow him. Now why would Tom do that?’

N
EXT MORNING
,
I
still did not know what to do for the best.

My duty to my masters was clear enough, that I should reveal what my father had told me yesterday about meeting Lovett in Alsatia; it was up to them to decide what to do with the information. But my duty to my father was opposed to that.

If I told Williamson and Chiffinch, they would interrogate my father to see if they could squeeze more information from him. They might quite possibly imprison him again on suspicion of conspiring with a Regicide. They would comb Alsatia for traces of Thomas Lovett, though I had not the faintest idea how they could do that discreetly.

I left my father in the parlour with strict instructions not to stir until I returned. He would do as I asked, if only because he had no choice – he was still lame from yesterday’s adventure in Alsatia, and he could hobble only with difficulty, and with the aid of a stick.

As I had expected, Margaret was in the passage leading to the Newcombs’ lodgings, waiting to receive the day’s deliveries. I thought it wiser to meet her as if by chance, rather than to summon her, which might arouse Mistress Newcomb’s curiosity. Mistress Newcomb was not quite happy with me, because I had borrowed a pound from her husband yesterday to tide me over after Rock and Captain Boyd had taken the contents of my purse.

I drew Margaret aside and gave her two shillings, which drove the colour to her cheeks and prompted a flurry of undeserved thanks.

‘By the way, do you remember what my father was saying yesterday just before we found the hackney?’ I asked.

‘That London was Gomorrah, sir. And that God would destroy it.’ She glanced up at me with a hint of a smile. ‘If you ask me, God’s already done half the job.’

‘And …?’ I prompted.

She hesitated, her eyes falling. ‘And something foolish about the King.’

Instinctively we both looked up and down the passage to make sure we were alone.

‘His mind was rambling, of course,’ I said. ‘He didn’t know what he was saying. But do you perhaps recall him mentioning a name?’

‘The man who told him about … about Gomorrah? Tom something, was it?’

I lowered my voice. ‘Tom Lovett. My father thought he’d met him in Alsatia.’ It was my turn to hesitate. ‘An old comrade, I believe. But Lovett did not wish for his company and pushed him over. That’s what caused the sprained ankle.’ Another hesitation. ‘According to my father.’

Margaret nodded, and I knew that she understood me. My father was too confused, and his memory too erratic, for us to be sure of anything he told us.

‘I wonder …’ I stopped, for her sharp little eyes were making me uncomfortable. ‘That is to say, I should like to know whether this Lovett is really there or not. Would you find out for me, if you can? Without his being aware of it, or anyone else.’

‘What’s this man look like then?’ she demanded, as if I’d asked her the most ordinary thing in the world.

I felt suddenly foolish. ‘I can’t tell you. He’s in middle age, I believe, not as old as my father at any rate. He’s a Puritan by persuasion, though he may not advertise that.’

‘I’ll ask Samuel,’ she said. ‘That’ll be best.’

My face must have betrayed what was in my mind.

‘Just because Sam’s a cripple,’ she said, firing up, ‘it doesn’t mean he’s lost his wits. Those Dutch bastards took off his leg with their cannonball, not his head.’

I bowed my head. ‘Pray ask Samuel. Whatever you think best.’

I hoped that time and Margaret between them would resolve the matter with the minimum of help from me, that Lovett would betray himself by his actions, or simply disappear. Fear makes fools of us all.

At Whitehall, Williamson had the toothache, which brought out the bully in him. I spent the day copying the letters for his correspondents, the routine ones that went out to the provinces with the
Gazette
. I dined at the palace and continued at my labours for most of the afternoon.

It was a tedious day, and I was glad when it ended. I walked back to our lodgings. It was raining. At this hour, the streets were still busy, and there was a particular bustle outside the arcades of the New Exchange in the Strand, where the rich and fashionable clustered around the shops like wasps around a bowl of honey. The double galleries were packed with customers and their servants. In the road outside, their coaches had almost brought traffic to a standstill.

A servant came up to me as I was making my way through the pedestrians. He bowed very civilly and asked if I was Master Marwood.

‘Yes. Why?’

‘My mistress desires to speak with you.’

He was wearing livery, I noticed, marked with bold vertical stripes of black and yellow. Alderley’s livery. I had a sudden memory of Layne’s body in the cellar of Scotland Yard all those weeks ago, and Williamson saying in his grating voice, ‘It’s the clothes that matter.’

The man gestured at one of the coaches drawn up at the side of the road. I had passed it a moment ago without paying any attention. I saw now that Henry Alderley’s badge was painted on the door: the pelican plucking the flesh from her own breast to feed her young. In my family, I thought grimly, it was the other way round.

He led me through the throng and opened the coach door. Mistress Alderley was sitting facing towards the horses, with her maid opposite her. I bowed low.

She inclined her head in reply. ‘Master Marwood. A word, if you please. Come out of the rain.’ She waved a gloved finger at her maid. ‘Go and enquire when the necklace will be ready.’

The footman let down the steps and handed down the maid; she gave me a sour look as she passed. I climbed into the coach and took her seat. The footman closed the door and I was alone with Olivia Alderley in a dim, sweetly scented box. I was obliged to hold my legs rigidly against the door to prevent my knees from brushing the skirt of her dress.

‘Well,’ she said softly. ‘This is a fortunate chance.’

I said nothing. The rain pattered on the roof of the coach.

‘Except it isn’t a chance at all. I was at Whitehall this afternoon and I saw you leaving.’

‘Did you see Master Chiffinch at Whitehall?’ I said. Or the King?

‘I must see you on Sunday.’ She spoke as one speaks to a servant. ‘At the same time, the same place.’

‘If it pleases you, madam.’

‘Yes.’ Her voice was brisk, with nothing flirtatious in it. ‘It pleases me.’

‘I did not find her,’ I blurted. ‘Your niece, that is. Catherine Lovett.’

She glanced at me briefly. ‘I know.’

She tapped the glass beside her. The footman opened the door. I mumbled farewell. She murmured something in reply but I did not catch it.

My father was dozing by the fire and Mistress Newcomb engaged in preparing supper when I arrived. While I was waiting, the maid came in to tell me that Margaret was outside and begged the favour of a word.

I found her among the shadows in the yard by the kitchen door. It was dark now, and the only light filtered through the cracks of the kitchen shutters.

‘What is it?’ I asked in an undertone.

Her face was a grey blur in the dusk. ‘There was a man, sir.’ She spoke in a whisper and I had to strain to catch the words. ‘Might be Lovett. Hanging Sword Alley, Salisbury Court end.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘Tall and well set up, wore his own hair. Samuel used to see him in Blood-Bowl Tavern sometimes. Never in liquor, though. He drank a little ale, warmed himself at the fire, read the newspaper.’