Garlick Hill, London. 1666. Sundown
“Run like the devil, friends! The flames are snapping at our heels!”
Way down there, between the burning buildings, a desperate band of figures sprint through the lanes for their lives. They’re racing for the river, which will loom into view just as soon as they’ve cleared the next courtyard. Already, the Thames is said to be crammed with refugees on longboats, schooners and rafts, but it’s their only hope from here.
The men among them wear bloodstained aprons around their waists. They’re fresh from the slaughterhouse, now lost to this great fire. When their wives had rushed in with smoke-blackened petticoat hems and an inferno looming behind them, they had simply downed tools and taken flight. These butchers are familiar with scenes of carnage, of course, but nothing could prepare them for this. The city is ablaze in every direction. Monstrous flames crackle and spit and billow in blankets, scorching the late evening sky. Screams and clattering carts can be heard all around, while stray dogs, chickens and pigeons, some with wings ablaze, add to the cacophony. The butchers and their womenfolk rush across the cobbled courtyard, the air here thick with smoke. At last they can see the river, just a glimpse through a narrow covered passage, only to pull up smartly when flames lick around the far end.
“We’re too late!” cries one of the women. She’s clutching a piglet under each arm. Both creatures are wriggling and squealing to be set free. “The fire has overtaken us!”
“We’re trapped like rats!” another woman wails, despite her husband’s embrace.
The leader of this pack, a mutton-chopped man by the name of Samuel Jenks, wheels around in search of a way out. There’s no going back, though. One glimpse of the colossal firestorm makes that clear. Already smoke and flames can be seen through the windows overlooking this space, consuming these wooden buildings from the inside out.
“I’ve done bad things in my time,” he mutters darkly, and wipes the sweat from his brow. “Looks like my past is catching up with me now.”
“We robbed some graves!” This is the youngest of the slaughtermen, with waxy skin and yellow teeth. “All we did is snatch the jewellery. We agreed that’s all we’d take.” As he says this, the woman beside him clutches at the necklace around her throat. She turns to him in horror, but now is not the time for a showdown about where his gift had come from. “We didn’t steal no bodies,” he says, reasoning with his boss here. “We’re butchers, not bodysnatchers.
“We disturbed the dead!” snaps Jenks, sounding both angry and panicked. “As soon as we uncovered that crypt I felt the shivers. We should’ve never gone down there in the first place. What lies beneath should be left in peace.” At this, something lifts his expression. A glimmer of hope, so it seems. The others can see it, but for the woman with the necklace who begins to sob uncontrollably. “There is still a way.” Jenks gestures towards the ditch that runs along the far side of the courtyard. It’s an open sewer, clogged as always with the waste from so many cramped houses. The sludge moves slowly, steaming in all this heat, but Jenks is not alone now in turning his attention to the point where it exits the courtyard. For the building beside the burning passage is squatting on stilts. All of them stare at the dark margin underneath, thinking the very same thing.
“We can travel underground to the river,” says Jenks. “All the ditches and drains run off into it. If we stay low, and head as deep as we can, the flames won’t touch us.”
“But there are rats down there!” cries the woman with the necklace. “And rats carry plague!”
“If we don’t get away from here now then we’ll burn,” says Jenks plainly. “Whatever might be lurking down there, we have to take our chances. Hold your noses and follow me!”
Even when he sinks up to his chest, this man refuses to betray any hint of disgust. He flattens his lips hard together, his nostrils flared despite the stink, and wades forward by a step. The passage is ablaze now, fuelled by the wind as it funnels into this contained space. A flurry of sparks blows over the courtyard, nesting ominously in the thatch. With the firestorm closing in all around them, the last of the women pull up their petticoats in vain and join this grim procession. Jenks is forced to dip low where the ditch runs under the building. Glancing over his shoulder, he takes one last look around and slips into the gloom. The others follow solemnly, steadily losing form and shape in the darkness under there. At the same time, a glow begins to build inside the building. Bottles can be heard popping one by one, as if perhaps a physician’s workshop is fast transforming into a furnace. From the darkness underneath it all comes a muffled cry. It could be one of joy or despair. There’s no way of finding out now. For the fire inside this house on stilts finds something in a bottle that’s so flammable the structure simply explodes.
By the time the wind has swept away the soot and the ashes, there is nothing left but a splintered pile of timbers, burning in places still. And in the space left behind, an unrivalled view of a river whose course never changes. London might have been razed to the ground here, but it shall soon rise again around the banks of the Thames. The city of old will live on, of course, in stories passed down through the generations, and also in those artefacts, treasures and curiosities that are dug up over the centuries and revealed to the world once more. Every once in a while, in fact, something truly special is unearthed. A discovery so surprising that it changes the way we live our lives, but not always for the best. Indeed, those who make such finds are often left wishing the very same thought as old Jenks himself – that what exists under the surface is often best left alone.