The Ashes of London

CHAPTER TEN

ON MY SECOND visit to Barnabas Place, two days later, I went alone, trudging through warm ashes among the ruins. The heat was still intense.

There were many other people in this wasteland, some looking for their families or what was left of their homes; others scavenging for valuables. I had heard stories of men who had found artificial mines of metals in this lost city – pools of solidified lead, lumps of iron, even veins of silver and gold. Truly, this was another New World, where a man with few scruples might find riches as well as horrors, privations and sorrows.

‘Not here, sir,’ the porter said when he opened the wicket to me. ‘His worship went to Westminster two hours ago.’

‘Then Mistress Alderley?’ I said, and I felt a faint and foolish current of excitement pass through me. ‘Is she within?’

The porter went to enquire. After a few minutes he returned and showed me into the room with the oriel window through which I had seen a man flogged to death.

Time passed. I had no means of measuring it, but at least half an hour must have passed before I heard the Alderleys’ steward, Master Mundy, ordering that a horse be brought round. A small, richly dressed gentleman crossed the courtyard below, his face concealed by a hat in which were two ostrich feathers; they were dyed purple and bobbed up and down as their owner walked beneath them.

Shortly afterwards, a manservant appeared and conducted me into the body of the house.

‘Who was that below?’ I asked. ‘The gentleman who just left.’

‘Sir Denzil Croughton, sir.’ The man added, with a hint of vicarious pride, ‘His worship’s niece is betrothed to him.’

‘So he’s a regular visitor, then?’

‘She’s away in the country.’ He shot me a glance, and I thought there was an air of caution about him now, as if he had said too much. ‘Sir Denzil calls for news of her, and also to enquire of his worship’s son. This way, sir.’

The servant led me down flagged passages to a richly furnished parlour overlooking a small garden, and told me to wait. I resigned myself to the loss of another half hour but it was only a moment before Mistress Alderley glided into the room, with her own maid behind her.

‘We met on Thursday,’ Mistress Alderley said. ‘I remember – Master Williamson’s clerk. Your name?’

I gave her my best bow. ‘Marwood, madam. James Marwood.’

‘I don’t know when my husband will be back. But perhaps I can help you.’

She sank into a chair and waved to me to sit opposite her. Such remarkable condescension, I thought: was she always like this or was it a show for me?

The maid settled with a pile of mending at the other end of the room. She glanced briefly at me and her face twisted as if she had a mouthful of vinegar.

‘First, madam, Master Williamson commanded me to ask how Master Edward Alderley does.’

‘A little better, thank you. He still lives. Dr Grout is with him now. He says we must thank God the knife did not penetrate the brain.’

I dipped my head in mute gratitude for this mercy. ‘You are as yet no wiser about the reason for the attack?’

‘Our old servant was unhinged, a malcontent with his head full of blasphemous notions. Such madmen are two a penny after the late war. We must try to forget Jem, sir, for we can never understand him.’ She paused and added in a lower voice, ‘We were most grateful for Master Williamson’s kindness in the matter. It was Providence indeed that sent you both to us on that day.’

I admired her delicate way of putting it. Though Alderley had been quite within his rights to beat a servant, particularly on such gross provocation, it was a little unfortunate that the guilty man had actually died under the lash. At least Williamson, a witness of unimpeachable veracity and with useful friends, had been there at the time. He had smoothed away much of the awkwardness with the authorities, pointing out that the culprit had probably died from his illness and old age rather than the beating, and also making the point that his death had been a kindness to the villain himself, for it had saved him from the rigours of imprisonment, a trial and public execution.

‘There was also the other servant who died, madam. At St Paul’s.’

‘Layne?’ She spoke faster and more loudly now, as though this was a subject she preferred to talk about. ‘Yes – what a terrible thing, sir.’ Her voice acquired a touch of emotion that would not have been out of place in a playhouse. ‘Alas! Poor Layne! There was a man who fully repaid our trust. My husband and I were most distressed by his death.’

After the coroner’s inquest, Layne would go quietly to his grave. Alderley had offered to pay for the burial, Williamson had told me, and the thing would be done decently.

‘I suppose it was for the sake of the few pence in his purse?’ Mistress Alderley leaned forward. ‘Have you news of the murderer? Has someone laid information?’

‘I’m sorry, madam. Not that I have heard. The times are so out of joint that nothing is as it should be. But Master Williamson understands your indignation, and he wondered if he might serve you in any way.’

‘How very kind of him.’ Her eyes narrowed, for perhaps she knew that no one offered something for nothing. ‘But surely nothing can be done? Unless a witness comes forward, how could we lay the rogue who killed Layne by the heels?’

‘You may be right.’

‘I wonder if it could have been the lunatic.’ She noticed my puzzled expression. ‘Jem, the man who attacked my stepson. After all, he attempted murder inside this house, so perhaps he had already committed one outside it.’

‘It is a most ingenious suggestion, madam.’ It was a convenient explanation too, and one that would resolve the business without troubling the Alderleys too much. ‘Tell me, pray, who is Layne’s next of kin?’

‘A brother, I believe. He’s in the West Indies, serving as an able seaman on one of the King’s ships. Why?’

‘Are Layne’s belongings still here? His box?’

‘Yes. My husband has taken charge of it until the brother comes home.’

‘Master Williamson wondered whether I might inspect the contents in case there is something to suggest the identity of the assailant. It’s just possible, you see, that the murder was not something that happened by chance.’

‘I believe Master Mundy – our steward, you know – has already gone through the box and made a list of what was in it. Would that do?’

‘It would be better if I saw it myself – no doubt Master Mundy was listing the contents rather than considering their possible significance.’

‘Neatly said, sir.’ She gave me another of those subtly unsettling smiles. ‘You should be a lawyer. But perhaps you are?’

In another life, I might have been. I shrugged the flattery aside with a smile, though I was warmed by it, for flattery rarely came my way. ‘What of the other man’s box?’

‘Jem’s? I think we have it still. I would have burned it but Master Alderley would have none of it. My husband is a stickler for following the due processes of law. There is a niece or a cousin in Oxford, I believe, and he has instructed Master Mundy to write to her.’

‘In that case, perhaps I might see Jem’s box as well.’

‘Of course, sir. Master Mundy shall be your guide.’

She was looking at me as she spoke, and I was looking at her. Suddenly the words dried up. A silence settled between us, as uncomfortable as it was unwanted. I stirred, and the chair beneath me creaked twice. The sound was deafening in the silence.

Mistress Alderley looked away, in the direction of her maid, who still sat with her head bowed, sewing industriously. ‘Ann? Take Master Marwood to Master Mundy. Tell Master Mundy to give our visitor every assistance in his power.’

Master Mundy, a grave man aware of his own importance, led me down to the servants’ part of the house. It was strange to think that, two days earlier, this sober and upright gentleman had beaten an old man to death with a cat o’ nine tails.

‘Was there not a printer in the City named Marwood in the old days?’ Mundy said as they were descending the stairs. ‘A Republican, I think – a Fifth Monarchist?’

‘Perhaps, sir. I cannot say.’

‘I believe he was imprisoned when the King came into his own again. No connection of yours, then?’

‘No, sir. I come from Chelsea.’

I had grown used to deflecting such questions, for Marwood was not a common name. I had Mundy’s measure now. He had the manner of a gentleman but now he worked as a rich man’s steward. There were many such in London – men who had lost their estates and who now clung all the more tenaciously to the airs of their former stations.

I followed the steward to a locked room near the kitchens of Barnabas Place. Here, on slatted shelves, were kept the trunks and boxes of the servants. Mundy indicated two of them on the bottom shelf. They were crudely made from deal boards nailed together, with the corners strengthened with thin strips of metal. Each was about two feet wide, and eighteen inches high and deep.

He left me to lift them onto the table that stood under the small window at the end of the room.

‘I cannot understand why you need to inspect them,’ he said. ‘It is quite unnecessary. I have made full inventories.’

‘I must follow my orders, sir. I am commanded to search them, and I must do as I’m bid.’

A crude letter L had been burned with a poker into the wood beneath the lock of the nearer box. Mundy turned the key in the lock, lifted the lid and stood back.

I examined what was inside. A servant’s box was his private life enclosed in a small space; everything else – his time, his labour, his clothes, his loyalties – belonged to his master; but the box was his. Apart from a few clothes, Layne had possessed a winter cloak, a pair of gilt buckles, a horn mug, a knife with a blade ground almost entirely away, a pipe, a pouch containing a few shreds of dry tobacco and an astrological almanac, printed octavo.

I picked it up and glanced at the title page. ‘Was he a Dissenter?’ I asked.

Mundy drew himself up. ‘Sir, all members of this household attend the Established Church and follow its forms and usages.’

‘How long had he worked for Master Alderley?’

‘Two or three years. Mistress Alderley hired him when her husband was in France.’

‘And you were satisfied with him?’

‘By and large, yes. He was clean and sober in his habits. I would not have suffered him to stay if he had been otherwise.’

‘Was he liked in the household?’

‘I suppose so.’ Mundy shrugged, indicating that such matters were far beneath his exalted sphere. ‘As far as I know.’

‘What was he doing abroad on the Tuesday?’

‘He went out after dinner. The master sent him to Whitehall with a ring he’d had reset for Sir Denzil Croughton.’

I looked up from the book. ‘The gentleman who is betrothed to Master Alderley’s niece?’

‘The ring was a gift from Mistress Lovett to Sir Denzil, a token of their betrothal. In fact I warned Mistress Alderley it might be unwise to trust a servant with such a valuable jewel.’

‘So when Layne didn’t return that evening, you thought he might have run off with it?’

‘Indeed.’ Mundy drew himself up, pursing his lips. ‘A not unreasonable supposition, you must agree.’ His voice was solemn, nasal and monotonous: a voice to drive his listeners either asleep or distracted. ‘But in fact Layne had given it into Sir Denzil’s own hands. Sir Denzil was wearing it when he dined here on Wednesday. And I saw it again on his finger not an hour ago, when he called on Mistress Alderley.’

‘So Layne must have reached Whitehall?’

‘Yes. It was the last time he was seen.’

Until, I thought, his body was found amid the ruins of Bishop Kempe’s chantry chapel in the nave of St Paul’s.

‘It must have been the Catholics,’ Mundy burst out. ‘They need no reason to murder honest Protestants.’

He unlocked the other box, Jem’s. This one too had its owner’s initials burned beneath the lock. I had been a printer’s apprentice once so I knew enough to appreciate well-proportioned letters. These ones were neatly squared and equipped with serifs.

‘Could they read and write?’ I said.

‘These two?’ Mundy shrugged. ‘You can tell by their marks on the boxes. Layne could read, more or less, but he could barely write his own name. Jem could write well enough if he had to, and he could read as well as I can. He’d come down in the world. Because of his wickedness, no doubt.’ The steward raised the lid of the box. ‘He kept a strange collection of rubbish. But it’s only to be expected. The man was strange enough himself.’

On top was laid a shabby serge coat. Beneath it was a small silver cup, a Bible with print so tiny and poorly set as to be almost unreadable, a cracked clay bowl with a ragged ochre line running around the rim, and a child’s doll about five inches long, crudely carved from a single piece of wood. The doll’s face was flat with tiny, blunt features gouged into it. The eyes were black dots. The mouth was a faded red line. It wore a dress of ragged blue cotton.

Mundy poked the cup. ‘This has some value. Jem must have brought it with him from his old place. Or perhaps he had it from his own kin – I heard it said that long ago his father was a clergyman, but they turned him out of his curacy for his godless ways.’

‘Mistress Alderley told me he had once worked for the family of her husband’s first wife.’

‘Indeed. Mistress Lovett’s kin.’ He frowned. ‘Best forgotten.’

‘Why?’ I said.

Mundy put the cup back in the box. ‘Are you finished here, Master Marwood? I have people waiting.’

‘One moment, sir.’

I returned to Layne’s box, partly because I sensed that Mundy was trying to hurry me away. I took up the almanac. I lifted it up to the window and turned the pages against the light, to examine the paper more closely.

As my father’s son, I knew at once that the paper was French, which was normal enough for any book. The watermark, a version of the bunch of grapes, told me that it came from a well-regarded mill in Normandy that used only rags from pure white linen in its manufacture. The type was sharp and clean, probably from a newly cast case of type, and it had been set by a man who knew his business.

The binding told the same story. All in all, this was not a book that you would expect to find in the box of a servant who struggled to write his own name.

I closed the almanac and put it into Layne’s box, tucking it under the cloak. Something stabbed my finger, and I withdrew my hand with a cry of pain.

‘What is it?’ Mundy said.

I squeezed the pad of the index finger on my right hand, and a tiny ball of blood appeared on the tip. ‘Something sharp.’

I licked the blood away and pulled aside the cloak. A batten had been nailed across the bottom of the box, bisecting it from back to front, in order to strengthen it. One of the nail heads stood proud of the wood, and its edge was jagged – and sharp enough to pierce the skin. There were two other battens parallel to it, to the left and the right. It struck me that the central one was made of a different wood from the others. It was newer, coarser grained and slightly thicker. The nail heads attaching it were new and rough, whereas those on the other side were dark with age and deeply embedded into the soft wood.

I knew a little about hiding places. In his prime, my father had been something of a carpenter, like many printers, and sometimes he had had a need to conceal papers and other small objects. I took out my knife and used the blade to lever away the central batten from the base of the box. The nails securing it were much shorter than the size of their heads suggested.

‘Master Marwood! I cannot allow you to damage the property of one of our servants, even if—’

Mundy broke off as, with a twist of the blade, I wrenched up the baton. Beneath it, gouged into the base of the box, was a shallow and irregular depression about four inches long and two inches wide. It contained a piece of paper, folded into a flat package.

I picked it up. The paper was unexpectedly heavy. Something shifted within its folds. A guinea fell out. Then another; then a third, and then three more. I picked one up and held it to the light from the window. The gold shone like a miniature sun. The guinea had been minted this year: 1666.

‘You had better add these to your inventory, sir,’ I said.

I took up the paper, smoothing it out before I rewrapped the gold inside it. There was something written on the inside in a neat, clerkly hand.

Coldridge. PW.

I rubbed the paper between finger and thumb and held it up to the light. Even before I saw part of the bunch of grapes, I knew that it was probably an endpaper torn from the almanac I had just examined.

Six new guineas. An expensive almanac. A servant who had been barely literate at best. Two, neatly written words: Coldridge. PW.

I asked to see Mistress Alderley again before I left Barnabas Place. I was shown into the parlour. She was writing at the long table while her sour-faced maid sewed by the window.

She looked up. ‘Did you find anything?’ she said abruptly.

‘Very little, madam.’ I glanced at the maid, whose head was lowered over her work, and said quietly, ‘Layne had six guineas concealed in a hidden compartment of his box.’

‘What of it? His savings, I suppose.’

Perhaps she was right, I thought, though it was a great deal of money for a servant to have. The guineas had shown no signs of use. Their hiding-place had not been made long ago, for the scars in the wood had not darkened with age.

‘There was something written on the paper that held the guineas.’

She sat up, suddenly alert. ‘Yes? What?’

‘“Coldridge PW”. Does it mean something to you?’

She shook her head, the interest draining from her face. ‘Why should it?’

‘According to Master Mundy, Layne wrote but little and poorly. So perhaps Jem wrote it. But in that case, why was it in Layne’s box?’

I waited but she did not reply.

‘On Thursday you told Master Williamson that Jem once served a connection of your husband’s first wife,’ I said.

She stared at me, as if surprised and even irritated that I should have raised the matter. ‘Yes – he served the father of my husband’s niece, Mistress Catherine Lovett. She’s his niece by marriage, not blood, by the way – the child of his first wife’s brother. Jem served her father, when they lived in Bow Lane off Cheapside. Afterwards he went with Catherine to her aunt’s house, and then he came with her here.’

‘May I speak to Mistress Lovett, in that case?’ I said. ‘As Jem was once a servant of her father’s she may know more about him.’

‘That’s not possible. My niece is away at present, staying with friends in the country. She finds the summer heat intolerable, especially with this Fire, and her uncle decided a change of air would be good for her.’ Mistress Alderley took up her pen and lowered her head over her letter. ‘Perhaps you can ask her about Jem when she returns. Pray remember me to Master Williamson when you see him, and thank him for his kindness to us.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

HOT AND FILTHY, Cat had arrived in Three Cocks Yard in the early hours of Thursday, 6 September. The Fire was still raging but the wind had changed, swinging from the east to the south and slackening in force. She was aware of that even as she stumbled through the crowds. During the Fire, everyone was aware of the wind.

She had nothing but the clothes she stood up in, the small bundle she had carried with her, and the object that Jem had pressed into her hand when she fled from Barnabas Place. She was still in pain from Cousin Edward’s attack – a dull, continuous soreness, punctuated by stabs of agony that made her gasp. Her thighs and her arms were tender with bruises.

On any other night, Three Cocks Yard would have been dark and silent at this hour, the houses barred and shuttered. But nothing was normal now. The sky reflected the Fire, casting a lurid glow over the yard. A heavily laden wagon filled half the space.

Mistress Noxon’s house was beside the apothecary’s, which Cat knew by the sign of the pestle swinging in the air above the shop. The front door was standing open. Two porters were manoeuvring a pair of virginals down the steps, with a young gentleman scurrying about them like an agitated terrier.

Behind them, in the hall of the house, was a small, handsome woman of middling height and generous proportions. Unlike the men, she was perfectly calm. In her hand was a sheet of paper.

‘And that’s thirty-five shillings for the dinners ordered in, sir,’ she was saying in a sharp voice that cut through the racket in the yard. ‘If I don’t have it on the nail as well, you’ll have to leave the rest of your furniture to cover what you owe.’

She caught sight of Cat as she was squeezing past the wagon. She motioned her to wait and continued to deal with the young gentleman. A large, red-headed manservant staggered down the stairs with a crate in his arms.

‘Don’t take that out, John, not until he’s paid his reckoning. Leave it in the back of the hall.’

The servant did as he was told. He saw Cat and stared at her.

‘Don’t stand there dreaming,’ the woman snapped. ‘Bring down something else.’

At last, when the young gentleman had paid his bill and left with his wagon, she came down the steps from the front door and beckoned Cat forward.

‘Who are you?’

‘Mistress Noxon?’

She ran her eyes over Cat, taking in the bundle under her arm. ‘Who’s asking?’

‘Jem sent me.’

‘Oh yes? Jem who?’

Cat fumbled in her pocket and brought out the object that Jem had given her. It turned out to be a dark, smooth, flattish stone in the shape of an oval, which might have been picked up on a shingle beach. There was a white line of another mineral embedded in it, orange in this light. It made a wavering M if you had a mind to see one there.

M for Martha? Mistress Noxon took the stone, stared at it for a moment, and slipped it in her own pocket.

‘Mistress Lovett,’ she said softly.

‘Yes.’

‘You need somewhere to lodge.’ It was not a question. ‘How long?’

‘I don’t know.’ Cat swallowed, for her mouth was terribly dry. ‘I have a little money. Not much.’

Mistress Noxon ran her eyes over Cat, inspecting her as if she were a prospective purchase. ‘Mistress Lovett can’t stay here. Nor can any young lady. This is a house where single gentlemen lodge.’

Cat turned to leave by the street door, which still stood open.

‘You don’t have to go,’ Mistress Noxon said. ‘But if you stay, you stay as a servant and you work for your keep.’

‘I’m not afraid of hard work.’

‘You will be by the time I’ve finished with you. Well? Do you stay as a servant or do you go as a lady?’

‘I stay.’

Mistress Noxon folded her arms across her bosom and stared at her. ‘As a servant.’

Cat dipped a curtsy. ‘If it please you, mistress.’

‘Close the door, then, and come down to the kitchen.’ Mistress Noxon led her into the house, calling up to the manservant, telling him to bar the door. In the kitchen, she said, lowering her voice: ‘In this house, your name’s Jane.’

‘Yes, mistress. Has Jem talked of me? Did he say he might send me to you?’

Mistress Noxon brought down the flat of her hand on the table. ‘You’re not to mention him. If you want to stay, you will be Jane and nothing but Jane and you will do as you’re told and not ask foolish questions.’

‘But I should tell you why I—’

‘I don’t want to know,’ Mistress Noxon said. ‘It’s better not.’