The Darling Strumpet (21 page)

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Authors: Gillian Bagwell

Tags: #Fiction, #Historical, #Romance, #General

BOOK: The Darling Strumpet
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“Worse than that,” said Killigrew, coming in. “The winds are whipping it on. It’s got to Thames Street.”
“Christ,” said Hart. “All those warehouses …”
“Standing cheek by jowl, and packed full of pitch, oil, wine, brandy,” Mohun said.
“Aye,” said Killigrew. “It’s like the fires of hell.”
Fear clutched at Nell’s heart. What if the theater should burn? What then?
“What will they do?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.
“The king has given orders to blow up houses in the fire’s path, to create a break. It’s the only way to hope to stop it leaping from building to building.”
“And us?”
“Wait and see,” Killigrew said.
But by afternoon, the fire was worse. More and more people of the company came to the theater, and all the news was that the fire was burning rapidly westward.
“Folk who removed their goods this morning in hopes of safety have removed again,” Rose said.
“They say it was the French that set the fire to burning,” said young Richard Baxter, one of the scenekeepers. “And now they’ve started another, further east.”
Night came, and from the street Nell could see that the eastern sky burned orange. She and Rose went down to the river and saw a flaming arc of fire a mile long, a vibrant golden corona shading upward into angry red. The whole of the City was engulfed in flames, and smoke clouded the night sky. The river was crowded with every kind of vessel. Boats crammed with people and laden with furniture, chests, barrels, musical instruments, and animals collided with jetsam that floated in the black water. Showers of hot ash and flaming bits of debris rained from the sky, hissing as they hit the river. Even at this distance, Nell could hear the roar and crackle of the fire. The horror of what was happening seemed in odd contrast to the beauty of the summer night, with the moon hanging bright in the balmy sky.
She tried to tell herself that all would be well, that surely the fire would be stopped before it reached Drury Lane. The magnitude of its destruction was too awful to face, and, exhausted, she went to sleep curled on a pile of cloaks in a corner of the greenroom, comforted by the rise and fall of voices nearby. She woke after a few hours to find the theater was crowded with more people, not only actors and others from the playhouse, but their friends and families with nowhere to go. A sound like thunder reverberated in the distance, followed shortly by a second explosion.
“What was that?” she asked Hart.
“They’re blowing up houses in Tower Street.”
“Tower Street? But that’s east of Pudding Lane. Has the fire changed course?”
Hart shook his head. “It’s burning in all directions now. The Duke of York is patrolling the City with guardsmen, trying to keep some kind of order. I’m going out to see if I can get more news or be of any use.” He was buttoning up a buff coat, and the sight of him armoring himself with the thickly padded suede made Nell realize what peril he could be facing.
“I’m coming with you.”
“No, it’s too dangerous.” His face was grim.
“I care not what happens to me if anything happens to you or to the playhouse,” Nell pleaded. “If there’s aught I can do I must do it.”
Hart shook his head in exasperation. “Then at least put on some boots and breeches. You’ll go up like a haystack if a cinder lands on your skirts.”
 
 
 
NELL HURRIED BEHIND HART DOWN THE SOUTHEASTWARD CURVE of Drury Lane and Wych Street, fighting through the heaving crowds that streamed in the opposite direction, carrying with them what they could in carts and barrows and on their backs. Panicked people and animals shrieked, brayed, and shouted as they struggled their way westward.
The churchyard of St. Clement Danes was mobbed, its portico stacked with barrels and furniture. Hart stopped short as they came abreast of the church, where they had an unobstructed view down Fleet Street. Nell cried out in terror. A wall of flame spread over the eastern horizon as far as she could see, angry tongues lashing the sky. The fire was roaring toward them. A torrent of embers bounced and skipped along the ground like a river of fire. A pigeon shot past, its singed wings working furiously. The street seemed to be seething, and Nell realized with a shudder of revulsion that the movement was hundreds of rats scurrying away from the fire. Hart pulled her flat against a wall to prevent her from being run over by a wagon.
“Mr. Hart!” Dicky One-Shank’s gravelly voice cut through the confusion as he stumped toward them. “The king has called for help on the fire lines. I was on course for the playhouse to raise a crew.”
Hart turned to Nell before she could speak. “No. I’ll not hear of it. Go back to Drury Lane. You’ll be of more use there. Tell Killigrew to send what lads he can spare—actors, scenekeepers, whoever is there—with buckets. And tell him to make ready to fly.”
 
 
 
BACK AT THE THEATER, NELL AND ROSE AND THE OTHER WOMEN folded the best of the company’s costumes into great chests while Killigrew packed the precious play scripts and promptbooks in a strong-box and went in search of a wagon. The frantic activity kept Nell’s mind from dwelling on the fear of what danger Hart would be in so near to the fire and what would become of her if the theater burned. Would she have to return to whoring? Only hope for the future had sustained her through the long wait in plague time. If the playhouse went up in smoke, her dreams with it, she didn’t think she would have the strength to continue.
 
 
 
AS DARKNESS FELL, HART STAGGERED INTO THE GREENROOM, HIS face and clothes black with soot. Nell ran to him and threw her arms around him, not minding the reek of smoke in her relief to have him back. Then she cried out at the sight of his hands, scorched and blistered.
“Water,” he coughed, and he gulped it down when she brought it to him. The company gathered around and he stared at them, his haunted eyes bright in his sweat-streaked face.
“St. Paul’s has fallen,” he said, his voice flat and hoarse.
“And Cheapside?” someone asked, and other voices chimed in.
“Newgate Market?”
“Thames Street?”
“The great houses by the river?”
“The theater in Salisbury Court?”
“Gone,” he said. “All gone.”
 
 
 
NELL SLATHERED HART’S HANDS WITH GREASE AND BANDAGED THEM in strips of linen.
“Are you hurting?” she asked.
“Not so much now,” he said. “Only I wonder will I be able to play the fiddle when my hands have healed.”
Nell stared at him in horror and his lips twitched in a smile.
“It would be a miracle, indeed, as I could never play before.”
Nell began to laugh but it came near to turning into a sob. “Don’t frighten me so.”
“I’m sorry. Never fear. We’ll come through it.”
“Will we?” Nell’s fears were too enormous to voice. She looked into those dark eyes that had reassured and sustained her so often.
“Take heart, my little love. I’ll not leave you to the wide world. While I have a home, you have one, too.”
 
 
 
AN HOUR OR SO AFTER HART HAD RETURNED, A TALL STRANGER, hatless, his face swathed in a filthy kerchief, limped through the stage door. He cradled his bloody right hand against his chest, and Nell saw with shock that the sleeve of his long coat and the thigh of his breeches above his tall boots were soaked through with blood. He collapsed onto a bench, unwound the cloth from around his face, and pressed it to his hand.
“Dear God,” Rose exclaimed, as the cloth bloomed crimson.
“Bene darkmans,” the man said in greeting, looking up at the alarmed faces around him. “I’m sorry to intrude. I was struck by falling timbers. Crushed my arm and gashed my leg, and I’m losing blood that fast that I thought it best to get indoors before I fell in a swoon, though I feel like a cow-hearted granny to say it.” He gave a wry smile, but his face was deathly pale and he slumped back against the wall, his eyes closed.
“Don’t move, sir, I’ll tend to you,” Rose murmured, and she hastened back with a basin of water, a sponge, and clean linen strips. Nell helped her to remove the man’s coat and waistcoat. He shuddered and set his jaw as Rose rolled up his bloody sleeve. He looked down at his limp forearm and hand and when he tried to move the fingers, he went even more pale.
“Broken, and badly at that,” he said. Rose, kneeling before him as she gently swabbed away the blood, looked with concern into his face, and he smiled down at her. “Good thing heaven’s sent me an angel to care for me, though I’ve little deserved it.” He was very handsome, Nell thought, or would be when his long dark hair was not soaked with sweat and dirt and his face was not caked with grime, and from Rose’s blush she knew her sister agreed.
 
 
 
LATE THAT NIGHT, NELL SAT NUMB WITH EXHAUSTION. IT SEEMED centuries since Sunday morning, when she and Hart had woken to hear of the fire. What day was it now? Wednesday. She lay down and slept fitfully, uncomfortable on the hard floor, her dreams filled with fire.
She was awakened by excited voices. At first the words did not penetrate her sleepy haze, but suddenly she heard what was being said and sat up abruptly.
“It’s out,” Lacy said again.
“It’s out?” Nell asked, scrambling up.
“Aye,” he said. “By the grace of God. And the hard work of the king and the Duke of York, among many others. His Majesty stood in the bucket brigade himself, working like a horse through the night.”
 
 
 
IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING THE FIRE, EVERYONE WAS HUNGRY FOR news, and stories and rumors flew.
“The king is calling for proposals for a new plan for the City,” Killigrew said. “And to rebuild the churches. Eighty and more we lost.”
“Buildings can be replaced,” Hart said. “I mourn for poor old James Shirley and his wife. It was his play
The Cardinal
that gave me my first great role. And now the pair of them are dead of fright and exposure for that their house burned and they had nowhere to go. It breaks my heart. Why did they not come to the playhouse?”
“There’s to be a monument to those who died,” said Richard Baxter. “And it will be graven in stone what all do know—it was the Papists that started it.”
“No one knows that,” Lacy said. “And they say that by a miracle fewer than a dozen were killed. But the City …” Nell felt an overwhelming need to see for herself.
“Come with me, Hart,” she begged. “I want to know that something is still left.”
 
 
 
THE AIR HUNG HAZY AND OPPRESSIVE, DAMPENING THE SOUNDS AND the spirits of the City. The bloodred sun cowered behind curtains of gray, and black flecks of ash rose in listless eddies, as a sudden gust of dry wind drew them up and then spat them out, so that they drifted into and became part of the wash of grit and mud that fouled the streets even as far west as the Strand. Nell felt the foul air choking her and held a handkerchief over her nose and mouth.
As they made their way eastward, she felt a sense of dread and sadness, as if she were approaching a home in which there had been a death. As Fleet Street rose to Ludgate Hill, she clutched Hart’s elbow and gasped. It was not so much what she saw as what she did not see that produced that sensation of a blow to the stomach, for the towering front of St. Paul’s, as much a part of the landscape as the sky and the clouds, was gone. Its absence was palpable; the emptiness of where it should have stood was shocking in its blankness.
To the north, familiar streets and houses remained. But down to the river and eastward as far as Nell could see lay a rubble of stone and charred wood. What had been the bustling streets of the City were unrecognizable, buried in debris and impassable except by foot.
Nell and Hart skirted the desolate skeleton of St. Paul’s. Its ancient walls, which had seemed eternal, had fallen; its very stones had cracked and shattered in the heat. The lead of its roof had melted in the inferno and run into pools, now hardened into freakish frozen puddles. Curls of smoke rose and met the gray mist that hung over all—even now, fire still smoldered in the depths of the vast ruin.
They picked their way through what had been St. Paul’s Churchyard, where London’s booksellers had stood, and here and there Nell could discern the remains of books, their leather bindings charred black, the creamy purity of their pages sodden and smeared. An orange cat streaked by, yowling, its eyes wild, its fur blackened.
In Cheapside, parties of men with kerchiefs over their faces against the foul air were already at work at the unfathomable task of clearing the wreckage, heaping stones into piles, and loading into wagons what was beyond hope. Here and there others picked through the rubble or simply stood and stared at the emptiness that surrounded them.
Nell felt lost as she looked around her. She turned in desperation, striving to find some identifying marker that would provide connection between the streets of her memory and what lay before her.

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