The Fire Court: A gripping historical thriller from the bestselling author of The Ashes of London

London opened up before me again, still dominated by the blackened hulk of St Paul’s on its hill. It was eight months since the Great Fire. Though the streets had been cleared and the ruins surveyed, the reconstruction had barely begun.

My mind was full of the evening that lay ahead – the agreeable prospect of a supper with two fellow clerks in a Westminster tavern where there would be music, and where there was a pretty barmaid who would be obliging if you promised her a scrap of lace or some other trifle. Before that, however, I needed to return to my house to change my clothes and make my notes for Mr Williamson.

I had the waterman set me down at the Savoy Stairs. My new lodgings were nearby in the old palace. I had moved there less than three weeks ago from the house of Mr Newcomb, the King’s Printer. Since my good fortune, I deserved better and I could afford to pay for it.

In the later wars, the Savoy had been used to house the wounded. Now its rambling premises near the river were used mainly for ageing soldiers and sailors, and also for private lodgings. The latter were much sought after since the Fire – accommodation of all sorts was still in short supply. It was crown property and Mr Williamson had dropped a word on my behalf into the right ear.

Infirmary Close, my new house, was one of four that had been created by subdividing a much larger building. I had the smallest and cheapest of them. At the back it overlooked the graveyard attached to the Savoy chapel. It was an inconvenience which was likely to grow worse as the weather became warmer, but it was also the reason why the rent was low.

My cheerfulness dropped away from me in a moment when Margaret opened the door to me. I knew something was amiss as soon as I saw her face.

I passed her my damp cloak. ‘What is it?’

‘I’m sorry, master – your father went wandering today. I was only gone for a while – the night-soil man came to the door, and he does talk, sir, a perfect downpour of words, you cannot—’

‘Is he safe?’

‘Safe? Yes, sir.’ She draped the cloak over the chest, her hands smoothing its folds automatically. ‘He’s by the parlour fire. I’d left him in the courtyard on his usual bench. The sun was out, and he was asleep. And I thought, if I was only gone a moment, he—’

‘When was this?’ I snapped.

She bit her lip. ‘I don’t know. Upward of an hour? We couldn’t find him. Then suddenly he was back – the kitchen yard. Barty brought him.’

‘Who?’

‘Barty, sir. The crossing-sweeper by Temple Bar. He knows your father wanders sometimes.’

I didn’t know Barty from Adam, but I made a mental note to give him something for his pains.

‘Sir,’ Margaret said in a lower voice. ‘He was weeping. Like a child.’

‘Why?’ I said. ‘Had someone hurt him?’

‘No.’

‘Has he said anything?’

Margaret rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Rachel.’

I felt as if someone had kicked me. ‘What?’

‘Rachel, sir. That’s what he said when he came in. Over and over again. Just the name. Rachel.’ She stared up at me, twisting a fold of her dress in her hands. ‘Who’s Rachel, sir? Do you know?’

I didn’t answer her. Of course I knew who Rachel was. She was my mother, dead these six long years, but not always dead to my father.

I went into the parlour. The old man was sitting by the fire and spooning the contents of a bowl of posset into his mouth. Margaret or someone had laid a large napkin across his lap. But it had not been large enough to catch all the drops of posset that had missed his mouth. He did not look up as I entered the room.

Anger ran through me, fuelled by love and relief, those most combustible ingredients, and heating my blood like wine. Where was my father in this wreck of a human being? Where was Nathaniel Marwood, the man who had ruled his family and his business with the authority of God’s Viceroy, and who had earned the universal respect of his friends? He had been a printer once, as good as any in Pater Noster Row, a man of substance. Politics and religion had led him down dangerous paths to his ruin, but no one had ever doubted his honesty or his skill. Now, after his years in prison, only fragments of him were left.

The spoon scraped around the side of the empty bowl. I took the bowl from him, meeting only the slightest resistance, and then the spoon. I placed them both on the table and considered whether to remove the soiled napkin. On reflection, it seemed wiser to leave it to Margaret.

Eating and the afternoon’s unaccustomed exercise had tired him. His eyes closed. His hands were in his lap. The right hand was grimy. The cuff of his shirt protruded from the sleeve of his coat. The underside of the cuff was stained reddish-brown like ageing meat.

My anger evaporated. I leaned forward and pushed up the cuff. There was no sign of a cut or graze on his wrist or his hand.

I shook him gently. ‘Sir? Margaret tells me you went abroad this afternoon. Why?’

The only answer was a gentle snore.

Four hours later, by suppertime, the posset was merely a memory and my father was hungry again. Hunger made him briefly lucid, or as near to that state as he was ever likely to come.

‘Why did you go out, sir?’ I asked him, keeping my voice gentle because it upset him if I spoke roughly to him. ‘You know it worries Margaret when she cannot find you.’

‘Rachel.’ He was looking into the fire, and God alone knew what he saw there. ‘I cannot allow my wife to walk the town without knowing where she is. It is not fitting, so I followed her to remonstrate with her. Did she not promise to obey me in all things? She was wearing her best cloak, too, her Sunday cloak. It is most becoming.’ He frowned. ‘Perhaps it is too becoming. The devil lays his traps so cunningly. I must speak to her, indeed I must. Why did she bear the mark of Cain? I shall find out the truth of the matter.’

‘Rachel …? My mother?’

He glanced at me. ‘Who else?’ Even as he spoke, he looked bewildered. ‘But you were not born. You were in her belly.’

‘And now I am here before you, sir,’ I said, as if this double time my father inhabited, this shifting confluence of now and then, were the most natural thing in the world. ‘Where did my mother go?’

‘Where the lawyers are. Those sucklings of the devil.’

‘Where, exactly?’ The lawyers congregated in many places.

He smiled. ‘You should have seen her, James,’ he said. ‘Always neat in her movements. She loves to dance, though of course I do not allow it. It is not seemly for a married woman. But … but how graceful she is, James, even in her kitchen. Why, she is as graceful as a deer.’

‘Which lawyers were these, sir?’

‘Have you ever remarked how lawyers are like rooks? They cling together and go caw-caw-caw. They all look the same. And they go to hell when they die. Did you know that? Moreover—’

‘Rachel, sir. Where did she go?’

‘Why, into the heart of a rookery. There was a courtyard where there was a parliament of these evil birds. And I followed her by a garden to a doorway in a building of brick … and the letters of one name were most ill-painted, James, and ill-formed as well. There was a great drip attached to it, and a poor creature had drowned therein, and I could have scraped it away but there was not time.’

‘A creature …?’

‘Even ants are God’s creatures, are they not? He brought two of them into the ark, so he must have decided they should be saved from the Flood. Ah—’

My father broke off as Margaret came into the room bearing bread. She laid the table for supper. His eyes followed her movements.

‘And then, sir?’ I said. ‘Where did she go?’

‘I thought to find her in the chamber with the ant. Up the stairs.’ He spoke absently, his attention still on Margaret. ‘But she wasn’t there. No one was, only the woman on the couch. The poor, abandoned wretch. Her sins found her out, and she suffered the punishment for them.’

The fingers of his left hand played with the soiled shirt cuff. He rubbed the stiff linen where the blood had dried.

Margaret left the room.

‘Who was this woman?’ I said.

‘Not Rachel, thanks be to God. No, no.’ He frowned. ‘Such a sinfully luxurious chamber. It had a carpet on the floor that was so bright it hurt the eyes. And there was a painting over the fireplace … its lewdness was an offence in the eyes of God and man.’

‘But the woman, sir?’ I knew he must have wandered into one of his waking dreams, but it was wise to make sure he was calm now, that he would not wake screaming in the night and wake the whole household, as he sometimes did. ‘This woman on the couch, I mean. What was she doing there?’

‘She was a sinner, poor fool. Displaying herself like a wanton for all the world to see. Tricked out in her finery, yellow as the sun, red as fire. With a coach and horses too. Oh, vanity, vanity. And all for nothing. I closed her eyes, I owed her that at least.’

Margaret’s footsteps were approaching.

My father’s face changed, scrubbed clean of every expression but greed. He turned his head to the door. Margaret stood there with a platter in her hand. ‘Come, James, to table,’ he said. ‘Supper is served. Can’t you see?’

I learned nothing more from my father that day. Experience had taught me that there was little purpose in talking to him after supper, not if you expected replies that made much sense. Nor was I convinced that there was anything more to learn.

Besides, why bother? My father’s memory was unpredictable in its workings and, by and large, he was now more likely to recall events from the remote past than more recent ones. If he remembered anything at all. For much of the time he lived among his dreams.

‘Come to me later in my chamber,’ he mumbled, when he had finished eating. ‘We must pray together, my son.’

‘Perhaps, sir.’ I did not like to look at him. There was a trickle of dribble at the corner of his mouth and his coat was speckled with crumbs. He was my father. I loved and honoured him. But sometimes the sight of him disgusted me. ‘I have business to attend to.’

My mind was busy elsewhere. Something might be salvaged from my plans for the evening. I calculated that if I took a boat from the Savoy Stairs, my friends should still be at the tavern. And, if fortune smiled on me, so would the pretty barmaid.

Accordingly, after supper, I left Margaret to deal with my father. I had grown prosperous enough to keep two servants – Margaret Witherdine and her husband Samuel, a discharged sailor who had suffered the misfortune of losing part of a leg in his country’s wars against the Dutch. Samuel had fallen into poverty and then into debt, partly because of his country’s inability to pay him what he was owed. Nevertheless he had done me a great service, and I had discharged his debt. In return, I believed, Sam and Margaret served my father and me from loyalty as well as for their board and lodging and a little money.

All this was agreeable to me. God help me, it gave me a good opinion of myself. I was as smug as the cat who has found the larder door open and eaten and drunk his fill. And like the cat, sitting afterwards and cleaning his whiskers in the sunshine, I assumed this happy state of affairs would last for ever.

So I did not see my father after supper that day. Sometimes I went into his chamber when he was ready for bed, even if I had been out late. But not that night. I did not admit it to myself but I was irritated with him. Because of his folly, I had been obliged to forgo my evening on the river. To make matters worse, when I had reached the tavern, my friends were not there and the pretty barmaid had left to be married.

So Margaret must have settled him in his bed, listened to the mumbled nonsense that he believed to be his prayers and blown out his candle. She must have sat with him in the dark, holding his hand, until he fell asleep. I knew that would have happened because that was what she always did. I also knew that my father would have preferred his son beside him when he said his prayers, and that he would have liked his own flesh and blood to hold his hand, rather than a servant.

The following morning, I had arranged to go into the office at an earlier hour than usual. Mr Williamson wanted my notes from the Tower interrogations as soon as possible. Besides, I was behind in my task of copying his correspondence into his letter book, and there was also my regular work for the Gazette. The press of business was very great – the London Gazette, the twice-weekly government newspaper which Mr Newcomb printed here in the Savoy, was another of Williamson’s responsibilities, and he delegated much of its day-to-day administration to me.

My father was already awake. He was in his chamber, where Margaret was helping him dress. As I left the parlour, I heard his voice, deep and resonant, booming in the distance; like his body, his voice belonged to a healthier, stronger man, a man who still had his wits about him. I persuaded myself that I could not spare the time to wish him good morning before I left.

I did not give my father another thought until after dinner, when my servant Samuel Witherdine came to Whitehall and knocked on the door of Mr Williamson’s office. Sam was a wiry man with a weathered face and very bright blue eyes, which at present were surrounded by puffy eyelids. He wore a wooden leg below his right knee and supported himself with a crutch.

Something was amiss. It was unheard of for him to come to the office of his own accord. I thought the puffy eyes meant he was hungover. I was wrong.

CHAPTER THREE

The door opened.

‘Mistress?’

On Friday morning, a woman lay on her bed in a new house on the north side of Pall Mall. She clung to the shreds of sleep that swirled like seaweed around her. Drown me in sleep, she thought, six fathoms deep, and let the fish nibble me into a million pieces.

The door closed, and was softly latched. Footsteps crossed the floor. Light and quick and familiar.

‘Are you awake?’

No, Jemima thought, I am not. She fought the creeping tide of consciousness every inch of the way. To be conscious was to remember.

She had been dreaming of Syre Place, where she had grown up. It was strange that she knew it to be Syre Place because it had seemed not to resemble the real house. The real Syre Place was built of brick, of a russet colour like a certain apple that her father was fond of. As a child, she had assumed that the house had somehow been built to match the apples, which was all part of the rightness of things, of the patterns that ran through everything.

But the Syre Place in her dreams was all wrong. It was faced with stone, for a start, and designed after the modern fashion that Philip liked. (Philip? Philip? Her mind shied away from the thought of Philip.) It was a house in the modern fashion, a neat box, with everything tidy and clean both within and without, and a roof whose overhanging eaves made it look as if the building were wearing a hat.

‘My lady? My lady?’

In Syre Place, the real one, there was a park where her father used to hunt before he lost his good humour and the use of his legs. Down the lane was the farm, whose smells and sounds were part of life, running through every hour of every day. In this Syre Place, however, the park was gone, and so was the farm. Instead there was a garden with gravel paths and parterres and shrubs, arranged symmetrically like the house. But – now she looked more closely at it – there was nothing neat about the garden in the dream because weeds had sprung up everywhere, and brambles criss-crossed the paths and arched overhead.

Nettles stood in great clumps, their leaves twitching, desperate to sting her. Her brother had thrown her into a bed of nettles when she was scarcely out of leading strings, and she still remembered the agonizing, unfair pain of it. How strange and unnatural it was, she thought, that a plant should be so nasty, so hostile. God had made the plants and the animals to serve man, not to attack him.

Nature was unnatural. It was full of monstrous tricks. Perhaps it was the work of the devil, not God.

‘Come now, madam. It’s past eleven o’clock.’

Time? What time of year could it be? In the garden at Syre Place, the gravel paths were carpeted with spoiled fruit. Brown apples and pears, and yellow raspberries, and red strawberries and green plums, as if all fruitful seasons existed at once. They lay so thickly on the ground that she could no longer see the gravel. The smell of decay was everywhere. Jemima raised her skirts – good God, what was she wearing? just her shift? But she was outside and in broad daylight, where anyone might see her – but the pulpy fruit splashed stickily against the linen and spattered the skin of her bare legs.

There were wasps, too, she saw, fat-bellied things cruising a few inches above the ground and feeding on the rottenness. What if one of them flew up inside her shift and stung her in her most private and intimate place?

In her fear, she cried out.

‘Hush now,’ Mary murmured, the voice floating above her. ‘It’s all right. Time to wake up.’

No, no, no, Jemima thought. Despite the wasps, despite everything, it was better to stay asleep, her eyes screwed shut against the daylight. She wanted to stay for ever in Syre Place where once, she thought, she had been happy.

What was happiness? Rocking in Nurse’s lap as she sang. Sitting beside her brother Henry when, greatly condescending, he guided her as she stumbled through her hornbook. Or, better still, when he perched her up before him on the new brown mare, with the ground so far beneath that she had to close her eyes so she wouldn’t see it.

‘I’ll drop you, Jemima,’ her brother had said, his arms tightening around her. ‘Your skull will crack like an eggshell.’

Oh, the sweet, delicious terror of it.

Someone she could not see called her name.

No. No. Go to sleep, she ordered herself: down, down, down into the deep, dark depths where no one can see me. To the time before that fatal letter, before the Fire Court, before she had even known where Clifford’s Inn was.

Something was buzzing. It must be a wasp. She moaned with fear.

There was a sudden rattle of curtain rings, brutally unexpected, and she was bathed in brilliance. The bed curtains had been thrown open. It was as if someone had thrown a bucket of light over her. She squeezed her eyelids together but the light glowed pinkly outside them. A current of cool air swept over her, bringing the scents of the garden.

‘Close the curtains, you fool,’ she wanted to say, ‘shut out the light.’ But she couldn’t, wouldn’t speak.

She was lying on her back, she knew, on her own bed in her own bedchamber. If she opened her eyes she would see the canopy above her, blue and silver, silk embroidery; the bed was in its summer clothing; the winter curtains and canopy were made of much heavier material, and their embroidery was predominantly red and gold, the colours of fire. The curtains were hers, part of her dowry. Almost everything was hers. Everything except Dragon Yard.

She didn’t want to know all this. She wanted to be asleep in the dark, in a place too deep for dreaming, too deep for knowledge.

‘Master’s coming,’ said the voice. A woman’s. Her woman’s. Mary’s.

A wasp. Buzz, buzz, buzz. Why can’t it go away?

‘Any moment he’ll be here. I can’t put him off.’

Her brother Henry had had a waistcoat like a wasp: all yellow and black. Jemima wondered what had happened to it. Perhaps it had been lost in the fire. Or perhaps it was down, down in the deep, dark depths, where Henry was presumably lying himself. Anything the fishes had left. Philip had served with Henry in the Navy in the Dutch wars. That was how she had met her husband, as her brother’s friend.

The latch rattled again, shockingly loud. The buzzing stopped.

‘Isn’t she awake yet?’

Philip’s voice, achingly familiar, and horribly strange.

‘No, master.’

‘She should be awake by now. Surely?’

‘The draught lasts longer for some people than for others.’

Heavy footsteps drew closer to the bed, closer to her. She could smell Philip now. Sweat, a trace of the perfume he sometimes wore, the hint of last night’s wine.

‘Madam,’ he said. Then, more loudly: ‘Madam?’

The voice made something inside her answer to it. Her body’s response was involuntary, beyond control or desire. She knew she must continue to breathe, and that she must give no sign that she was not deeply asleep. Yet she wanted to cry out, to scream at him, to howl in agony and rage.

‘Hush, sir. It’s better to let her be.’

‘Hold your tongue, woman,’ he shouted. ‘She’s pale as a ghost. I’ll send for the doctor.’

The buzzing returned. To and fro, it went, nearer and further. She focused her attention on it. A distraction. She hoped it was not a wasp.

‘She’s always pale, sir,’ Mary said, almost in a whisper. ‘You know that.’

‘But she’s slept for hours.’

‘Sleep’s the best cure. There’s no physic can mend her faster. It’s always been the way with her. I went out this morning and fetched another draught from the apothecary in case she needs it tonight.’

‘You left her alone? Like this?’

‘No, no, master. Hester was watching over her. I wasn’t gone long, in any case.’

‘Devil take that fly,’ Philip muttered, his attention fastening on another irritation.

The buzzing stopped abruptly. There was the sound of a slap, followed by a muffled oath.

‘Hush, sir,’ Mary said. ‘You’ll wake her.’

‘Hold your tongue. Or I’ll put you out on the street with nothing but a shift to cover your nakedness. Has she said anything yet?’

‘No, sir. Not a word.’

‘Stand over there. By the door.’

The heavy footsteps drew nearer. She kept her eyelids tightly closed. She heard the sound of his breathing and knew he must be stooping above the bed, bringing his face close to hers.

‘Jemima.’ His voice was a whisper, and his breath touched her cheek. ‘Can you hear me?’ When she said nothing in reply, he went on, ‘Where were you yesterday afternoon? Where did you go?’

Philip paused. She heard his breathing, and a creaking floorboard, the one near the door, where Mary must be standing.

‘What made you so distressed?’ he said. ‘What did you see?’

After a few seconds, he let out his breath in a sigh of exasperation. He walked away from the bed. ‘Mary? Are you sure you know nothing?’

‘No, sir. I told you – she left me in the hackney.’

‘I’ll whip the truth out of you.’

‘That is the truth.’

The door latch rattled. ‘Send for me as soon as your mistress wakes. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, master.’

‘Don’t let anyone else talk to her until I have. Not Hester, not anyone. And not you, either. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The door closed. The footsteps clattered down the stairs.

She listened to Mary moving around the room and the buzzing of the fly. After a moment she opened her eyes. Daylight dazzled her. ‘I thought he would never go,’ she said.

Jemima spent Saturday and Sunday in bed. Mary tended to her needs. Mary was her maid. She had come with her from Syre Place. Her father was a tenant farmer on the estate, a man with too many daughters. Sir George had charged Mary to take special care of her mistress when she married Philip, and to obey her in all things, not Philip.

Mary sometimes slept with her when Philip did not come to her bed, especially in winter.

When Mary wasn’t in the room, she sent Hester in her place. Hester was a stupid little girl, fresh from the country. When she was obliged to speak to her mistress, she blushed a cruel and unforgiving red that spread over her face like a stain. She blushed when her master was in the room too, but he never spoke to her.

‘My lady?’ Mary said on Monday afternoon. ‘We need to change the sheets.’

She opened her eyes and saw Mary standing over her with an armful of bedlinen. She allowed herself to be helped out of bed and placed in an armchair by the window. It was a fresh, clear afternoon. Her bedchamber was at the back of the house. The trees at the bottom of the garden shielded the brick wall behind them and the fields stretching up to Piccadilly.