Dawn had not long broken when I left the Navy Office in Seething Lane, somewhat to the north and east of the seat of the fire. The principal officers of His Majesty’s Navy had been nowhere to be found. I had just missed Mister Pepys, the Clerk of the Acts, who was gone to the Tower to watch the progress of the fire from its high walls. I took some breakfast ale and cheese at a tavern on Mark Lane, and when I next registered the existence of the world around me, my head was on the table, my opening eyes were blinking uncomprehendingly at a tankard of ale and a plate of cheese that were at the wrong angle, a serving wench was staring at me strangely, and it was the middle of the morning. But the memory of the crisis meant that I was properly awake within moments. I hurried back out, into the horror that was Sunday, the second day of September, 1666.
I could see the great pall of smoke, blowing westerly, as I struggled along Eastcheap, forcing my way through the crowds trying to make their way to the east, toward the safety of Spitalfields and the open country between Whitechapel and Stepney. As I passed it, Saint Clement’s church was being besieged by two opposing armies: those who believed the ancient building would be beyond the reach of the fire, and were trying to cram their cartloads of goods into it for safety, against those who already had their goods inside, but were convinced the church was doomed and were endeavouring to get them out again. There were angry shouts, and fists were thrown. Of churchwardens or the aldermen of the Ward, who might have been able to keep some semblance of order, there was no sign at all.
The fire was beyond Fish Street now, creeping westward into Cannon Street. And yet, London lived on. Although, in the wards nearest to the seat of the fire, the church bells were muffled as alarms, those further away were sounding as they always did, summoning the parishioners to services where they could pray for the safety of the City. Even the great bells of Saint Paul’s were ringing out confidently. Some makeshift fruit-and-vegetable stalls had been set up, the traders spotting the main chance presented by the unexpected and very large, if somewhat preoccupied, crowds. A few of the more respectable hawkers were out too, standing on street corners, selling copies of the latest Gazette. But there were rather more of the less respectable ones, selling the sort of crude woodcuts that featured rude verse about Lord Clarendon’s arse or Lady Castlemaine’s cunny. And, yes, there were the street prophets, too, their hands and eyes raised to heaven, proclaiming this fire to be God’s righteous judgement upon the sins of England. I saw one being pelted with shit by jeering urchins.
I do not entirely recall what I proposed to do. I may have contemplated returning to Ravensden House, then dismissed the thought at once. The fire was no threat to it, no threat at all – and perhaps worrying about my safety might make Cornelia more tender toward me. I believe I next had some notion of making my way back down to the river, there to try and organise whatever watermen, scavelmen and the like that I could find into fire-fighting parties. I had turned into Martin Lane and was heading south, struggling through the press of carts and people heading in the opposite direction, when an aged, weeping, goodwife or widow, probably fifty or so, limped heavily from the door at my side, collided with me, and grabbed hold of my arm.
‘God save us, sir – please, in Christ’s name, help us – I know not what to do!’
‘Calm yourself, goodwife! What’s the matter here?’
‘The fire, sir! It’s already at the back end of Saint Martin Orgar – I have to get my family out, and no man here to help me! The apprentices all run off, an aged father to save! Pray help us, sir! Merciful God in heaven, please help us!’
I went with her into her house. It was a typical, narrow, old affair, the dark ground floor clearly a printing business of some sort. She had evidently been throwing as many of her possessions as she could into the handcart and sacks on the floor.
‘Where are your children, goodwife? Why are they not here to help you?’
‘Dead of the plague, sir. A son and his wife, a daughter and her husband. The five children they had between them. All gone a twelvemonth ago. And I not a goodwife but a widow, my husband Newman having been taken by a bloody flux the year the king came back. Me a cripple from a fall, the last autumn, and the printing business gone to wrack. My father spared it all, though, and he past seventy. Where’s the justice in that, sir?’
‘God’s plan is ever a mystery, Widow Newman,’ I said, realising how feeble the words sounded. Francis would have made them sound convincing. Or, at any rate, less unconvincing.
Up on the second floor of the house, a gaunt old man sat on the edge of a bed, incongruously dressed in a nightshirt covered by a buff jacket. A soldier’s buff jacket. He looked at me with undisguised contempt.
‘Ye’re one of them,’ he growled. ‘I can tell by the look of ye. By the smell of ye. A malignant. A cavalier.’
‘Now, father,’ said the widow, ‘this kindly gentleman will help us. Will lead us safe from the fire.’
But the old man kept his eyes on me. Eyes that brimmed over with hatred.
‘Quartermaster I was, Orange Regiment of the London Trained Bands. Fought at Gloucester, and at Newbury too. Fought against the murdering tyrant Charles Stuart, that Englishmen might be free of kings and bishops. That’s who I was. That’s what I was. And I’ll not take the charity of an ungodly malignant! Psalm One Hundred and Forty-Four. Blessed be the Lord my strength which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight: My goodness, and my fortress; my high tower, and my deliverer; my shield, and he in whom I trust; who subdueth my people under me.’
‘Forgive him, sir,’ said Widow Newman, no longer fearful only of the fire. ‘He’s old and confused. He knows not what he says.’
I nodded, but we both knew she lied, and the old man knew best of all. He was not confused in the slightest; far from it. If he had been just a few years younger, he would have been out with Rathbone – or with the Horsemen, come to that. He was the sort of fanatic the Quintons despised. But this Quinton would do his utmost to save the old man’s life, regardless.
‘And the chattels, sir? Everything I have, it is.’
‘Carry what you can, if you must. But too much will slow you, and make it harder to get away.’
I turned toward the window, and noticed a curious sight. There was an alley directly opposite, and that gave a view down to Saint Laurence Pountney, a fair way to the west. The church was a long way from the leading edge of the fire, which had not reached this side of Martin Lane. Yet Saint Laurence was on fire.
I could hear screams in the street, and made out a few shouts:
‘Laurence Church is ablaze!’
‘How can it be?’
‘It’s the Papists! The French and Dutch are burning the whole city!’
I went back down to the old man, leaving the goodwife to gather what she could. I took hold of his arm, and lifted him from the bed.
‘Reprobate!’ he shouted, and spat in my face. ‘Get your hands off me, cavalier pig!’
I wiped the spittle from my cheek.
‘Your choice, quartermaster,’ I said. ‘You can let a cavalier pig help you to safety, or you can be burned to death by your own people.’
‘My own people? You lie. This fire’s the work of the Jesuits – I hear the cries in the street, and Molly spoke but an hour ago with a man who’d seen a mass-priest flinging a fireball into the Star Inn…’
‘Enough!’ I said, and pulled him to his feet, unwillingly and slow. ‘I’ll tell you the true tale of this fire, quartermaster, as we go along. And if you don’t believe me by the time we reach Cannon Street, I’ll bring you all the way back here again, and you can perish in Papist flames if you wish.’
It took an hour and more to get Widow Newman and her father to safety in the churchyard of Saint Mary Abchurch, just off the north side of Cannon Street. The streets were even more frantic than they had been, with frightened folk not knowing which way to flee before the sudden new conflagration at Pountney. And the old quartermaster, although little more than bones and shrivelled parchment-skin covering them, was a heavy weight to half-drag, half-carry even the relatively small distance to Abchurch. But I kept my promise. He joined the very small circle of those who knew the true story of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, although, of course, he chose not to believe a word of it. And even if in due course he did come to believe it, no man would believe him if he told them.
‘Lying malignant bastard,’ he said, as I sat him down finally upon an old tombstone. ‘’Tis the Papists, for certain.’
‘Ungrateful old fool,’ said Widow Newman, who proceeded to thank me effusively. ‘But forgive me, sir, I never asked your name.’
I looked the old quartermaster in the eye.
‘Tell your friends,’ I said. ‘Tell all those who still think as you do that you were saved by Lord Percival.’
The ancient’s eyes opened wide. It was as though he was looking upon a resurrected corpse. He knew the name Lord Percival, right enough. Perhaps it had been whispered fearfully in the conventicles he had attended, before infirmity had confined him to his room.
I essayed the most extravagant Cavalier bow I could manage, and left the Newman family to fend for themselves.
I returned to Cannon Street by the London Stone, the strange lump of limestone said to have been set into the ground by the Romans. Others said the Druids had sacrificed virgins upon it, long ago. Perhaps London needs a sacrifice or two now to save it, if only it can find some virgins, I thought, irreverently.
As I turned east, back towards the advancing fire, I heard a voice I knew.
‘My Lord Mayor!’
I pushed my way through the oncoming crowd in time to see Mister Samuel Pepys, Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board, approach Sir Thomas Bloodworth, who, sweating and dishevelled, a kerchief tied round his neck, no longer looked quite so confident that a woman could piss out the great fire.
‘Sir Thomas!’ cried Pepys. ‘I come directly from His Majesty, at the Palace of Whitehall, whither I went this very morning by boat. I have the King’s direct command to you, my Lord Mayor, to pull down houses! You are indemnified, Sir Thomas! You have royal authority!’
‘Lord, Mister Pepys,’ said Bloodworth, mopping his brow and shaking his head, ‘what can I do? I am spent. People will not obey me. I have been pulling down houses; but the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it.’
I was still some way away from the two men, and was thus unable to suggest to the Lord Mayor that if he had pulled down houses during the night, when the fire was still confined to Pudding Lane and the alleys immediately around it, it might have been extinguished already. But then, hindsight makes for poor readings of the past, and even worse ones of the future.
Pepys whispered some words privately to Bloodworth. The Lord Mayor looked as though he had been struck by a musketball, shook his head vigorously, said something to Pepys, and then turned away.
Pepys saw me, and raised a hand in greeting. He was not so many years older than myself, but with a long face that made him look infinitely older. He always had about him an air of attempting to be very serious, in the hope he would therefore be taken very seriously.
‘A terrible day, Sir Matthew.’
‘Terrible indeed, Mister Pepys. Did you say you have come from Whitehall?’
‘I have – I went there by boat, directly from the Tower, after I had satisfied myself of the fire’s rate of progress.’ Despite the circumstances, Samuel Pepys was evidently mightily pleased with himself; he liked nothing more than to be at the centre of affairs, conversing on equal terms with great men. ‘Your friend, the Reverend Gale, was there, and we both reported to His Majesty. The King is appalled by Bloodworth’s behaviour. As am I, in truth. This is no time for politics, Sir Matthew. No time at all.’
‘Politics, Mister Pepys?’
‘“I need more men,” says Bloodworth to me. “I need soldiers.” So I say to him, “The Duke of York has offered the Life Guards.” An offer confirmed to me by My Lord Arlington, incidentally, before I left Whitehall. “Ah,” blusters Bloodworth then, “perhaps we have enough men after all.” Or some such words. Politics, Sir Matthew. Politics.’
Politics indeed – and perhaps the most dangerous and potent politics in all of England. After all, ordering royal troops into the City of London had been one of the principal causes of the great civil wars that had ravaged the islands of Britain for nearly ten year. The wars that had killed my father and maimed my brother. The City guarded its privileges, and its independence, more zealously than the priests of the Temple of Solomon had guarded the Ark of the Covenant. Every man, woman and child in London might be in imminent danger of being burned alive, but the Lord Mayor would rather call upon the assistance of Old Nick himself than agree to have the Royal Life Guards marching through Temple Bar.
‘So then, Sir Matthew,’ said Pepys, ‘where are you bound now?’
‘For the river, I think, to see if something can be done to establish more effective bucket relays, and set up fire hoses.’
‘I wish you well, though I fear you will find your task a thankless one. I went through the Bridge by boat, from the Tower to Whitehall, and the water wheels at the foot of the bridge are burned – the wheels that should be pumping water up into the heart of the heart of the City.’
A firedrop fell on his shoulder, but he brushed it off as he would a fly.
‘And you, Mister Pepys? Where are you bound?’
Pepys blushed a little. ‘Returning home to the Navy Office. We have guests for dinner. In this wind, Seething Lane is surely quite safe from the blaze. And my wife was loathe to cancel.’
He left me; and I smiled, despite myself. Samuel Pepys was an odd little man, pompous, self-important, and no friend to gentleman captains like myself. But, for all that, I found it impossible to dislike the fellow. For one thing, he worked quite astonishingly hard, which was more than could be said for any of his colleagues. And there was even something about him that reminded me a little of my Uncle Tristram: an insatiable curiosity, perhaps, although Mister Pepys’s tended to flow down rather more conventional channels than that of Doctor Tristram Quinton.
I made to turn down Bush Lane toward the river, but as I did so, I thought I heard something I could not have heard. There were the ominous but now-familiar sounds of the wind, of the flames roaring out of gutted buildings, of walls and roofs collapsing, of carts rumbling across the cobbles, of people shouting and crying. But there was a new sound; and it, too, was a familiar sound, although of rather longer pedigree among my memories. At first, I thought it a false hearing, a trick of the thundering fire. But there it was again, a little stronger. Unmistakeable. The sound of men singing. It was a song I had heard often enough, though usually on the cusp of battle, and there was only one body of men in London that day who could be singing it.
Yth yskynnys un myttyn mar ughel, ogh mar ughel,
Y vyrys orth an le adro hag orth an ebren tewl;
Yth esa hy ow cana yn myttyn oll adro,
Nyns yu bewnans avel araderor un mys me ytho…
A song of a lark, and of young love. Hardly appropriate, in the circumstances, but sung as lustily as a battle hymn. Which, for the men who sang it, was what it had become.
Down Cannon Street, with Martin Lanherne and Julian Carvell at their head, strode three score or more of the crew of the Royal Sceptre.