Conceit (3 page)

In Paul’s choir, the two men Pegge has hired are wedging an iron bar behind her fathers effigy to pry it from its niche. They loop a rope around the statue to lower it, but the rope slips and it crashes onto the cart, striking off chunks of marble and terrifying the horse. The men barely have time to curse, for the church is swirling with hot ash whipped up by the scorching wind. They throw canvas over the statue to protect it from the dripping lead, and coax the horse towards the south transept, anxious to get out before the roof caves in.

In the harrowing light, Pegge is trying to see where the fragments of the effigy have landed. She must map her route carefully, for her shawl offers little protection from the predatory heat. The wooden choir stalls are already smoking. Set free by the softening lead, wedges of glass begin to sail out of the windows and embed themselves in solid objects or shatter on the pavingstones.

All at once, the roof splits open with a monumental crack and Pegge hurtles to safety, tasting a spurt of blood as the baby tooth punctures her tongue. Six acres of roofing-lead begin to pour into the cathedral like sauce from a demented ladle. Then the roof itself comes down, breaking through the floor that separates St Paul’s from St Faith’s in the crypt beneath. She can now see into the bone-hole where the corpses, her father’s among them, are buried in earth so dry it sparks and smoulders into flame. With another thunderous crack, the vaulting deep below gives way and the coffins begin to tilt and slide into St-Faith s-under-Paul’s. Within minutes, the books stacked up in Faith’s for safety are burning lustily.

Creeping along the perimeter of the choir, Pegge locates the largest fragment, but can only carry it a few feet at a time. She half-carries, half-drags it through the rubble in her shawl, picking her way over the slabs of Purbeck marble which cannot, she reasons, be attacked by fire. She knows the walls are nine feet thick in places, but nothing is certain anymore, for she has seen the earth itself catch fire this day. As she looks back into the choir, the rose window buckles, the walls bulge, the façade splinters and collapses, and the massive building-stones fly out like cannon shot.

At Paul’s wharf, Sir William Bowles, the King’s tailor, is waiting in his hired barge for Pegge. His wig askew, he is as agitated as Noah when the tide is turning and his wife is nowhere to be found.

William has never enjoyed such mystery plays. He would much rather know where people are and what things mean. He has been waiting long enough to have gone through all shades of anger and emerged in livid fear for his wife’s safety. Pressing a kerchief to his nose to ward off the stench of burning tar, he holds his pocket-clock in his other palm like a silver heart. If they do not leave soon, the barge will be caught in tidal waters between Hammersmith and Kingston. Hideous sounds are echoing inside Paul’s, as if the walls themselves are tumbling, and flames are shooting up the tower. Why has Pegge sent a note to meet her here? She knows their baskets were to be loaded upriver, outside the City walls. Docking at Paul’s wharf is folly.

A loaded cart appears out of the strange red light, jolting down the steep grade towards him, restrained by ropes and blocks. The cart tips, and the men stop to steady the horse and balance the load. Even draped in canvas, the shape on the cart is maddeningly familiar. Of all the valuables being swallowed by the flames, why has Pegge chosen to rescue her father’s effigy?

William spots her now behind the cart, a petticoat of Italian silk billowing shamelessly around bare legs. He starts to climb out of the barge to help, then thinks better of it. In truth, he is relieved to see Pegge at all. It would have been like her to disappear into the smoke, for she often wanders at odd hours in the maze of streets around St Paul’s. He has seen her visiting her father’s tomb dressed like a ragged child, yet she has put on her new gown to flee the burning city. Surely she did not go to her dancing lesson on such a day?

And is that Izaak Walton at her side, where it is William’s place to be? They are swinging a large object between them in her shawl, putting it down every few yards to rest their wrists. Although Pegge’s stockings are down around her ankles, William will ask no questions, but hasten her into the barge. He will say nothing about her father’s statue, nor her old friend Mr Walton, whose hair is stuck to his scalp in the most ungentlemanly clumps. Where did she find him in this holocaust? A wretched cat is jumping at his leg, probably because he stinks offish. It is just like Pegge to collect all the stray animals in her path.

Crates and baskets and rounds of cheese are piled helter-skelter on the quay since there are no boats left to ferry goods across the river. The desperate have set their possessions adrift, hoping to recover them with boat-hooks when they float below the bridge. William’s hand flutters near his sword, ready to defend his ship and wife, but Pegge is at home in the milling crowd, squatting next to the burnt cat to calm it while the men ease the horse-cart through the mass of people and goods on the wharf. She must have paid the wharfinger in advance, for he attaches his hook to the bundled statue at once, lowering it with jerking motions into the barge. As the effigy settles into the stern, William feels the full weight of his father-in-law, John Donne, who has been dead for more than thirty years.

Pegge climbs into the barge, stepping ankle-deep in bilge. Walton swings the heavy bundle over the gunwale, then climbs in next to her.
Another pair of shoes in ruins
, William thinks. He cannot bear to contemplate the damage to Pegge’s gown. Grease has beaded on his doublet and his wig is shedding flakes of ash. It has been a most untidy day.

The air is sulphurous as they set off upriver to Clewer, the shrouded sun lurking on the horizon, or perhaps it is the rising moon-he cannot read the hands on his pocket-clock even when he holds it to his eyes. Downriver, he sees an angry theatre of sky morbid reds and blacks which bleed into the rushing water, and a colour between red and yellow he does not have a name for, a discovery he would normally find intriguing.
Like some sort of fruit. Not a peach. A ripe persimmon
, he thinks, turning his back on the spectacle to try to read Pegge’s face. As she leans towards Izaak Walton, the garish light carves hollows deep into her cheeks.

When Walton came aboard, William saw the man grope dazedly for Pegge, then rest a broad palm on her knee to steady himself. He still has his hand on her leg, even though the barge is under way. The old fool is not as childlike as he feigns. There is collusion in their fire-brightened eyes and their limbs are paired like the folded arms of a drawing-compass. Have they saved the effigy or stolen it? There is no knowing what is going on in Pegge’s head, if indeed anything is. As her husband, he is due an explanation, yet William cannot speak because of the power his wife holds over him, even after all these years.

The men pull slowly at the long oars, saving themselves for the rough waters ahead. William reaches for Pegge to pull her away from the men at the bow. When he loosens her petticoat from Walton’s grip, their feet shift and expose the object they were carrying in her shawl-the grotesque head of her father, carved with uncanny likeness into stone, exact even to the hooded eyelids and the moustache drawn back around the teeth.

William lets Pegge go, for her nose is twitching and she appears about to cry. The barge lurches as it hits turbulent water, the grimacing head escapes Pegge’s feet and rolls into the bilge, and William sits down too quickly, thumping his tailbone and startling the burnt cat under a basket.

Now both of Mr Walton’s hands are free, and William sees both attach themselves to a skirt of watered silk.

Y
EARNINGS

1622-1631

1. THE DEANERY

Pegge wanted to follow Izaak Walton out to Chelsea, but was told to stay inside the Deanery. She was learning French and Latin from the tutor, and had discovered it was unwise to show her brothers up. When she recited her passage too quickly, she was sent to learn another. Now she would be lucky to catch up with Walton on his way back into London.

At last, she was able to escape. She slipped past her brother George, who was schooling his bloodied face to the razor, past her sister Constance with her head bent over her needlework, and sidestepped their old servant Bess, who was giving little Betty an enema. Pegge told her brother Jo the tutor wanted to hear his Latin, then patted Sadducee sneaking through the open door. This drooling, warmth-seeking, self-pitying stray would sprawl on the hearthstone until Bess called out her name so slowly and with such menace that the dog would slink back out-of-doors. She would hide in the flower bed until she got up courage for a new pilgrimage back to the warmth and scraps of the hearth.

Pegge could not take the dog along until she found some way of training her. Sadie did not have the knack of blending in. Just yesterday, the dog entered Paul’s sanctuary when Pegge’s father was performing the divine office. Misled by her nose, the dog tracked an old scent up the stairs into the choir loft and whimpered like a lost child—the sound echoing throughout the vast cathedral—eliciting smiles and bringing the Dean’s performance to a jerky, embarrassed halt.

Outside the Deanery, Pegge plucked an apple from her father’s tree and ate it, core and all. She cut a straight line downhill from Paul’s, heel to toe, then five steps and a squared corner into Wardrobe lane, picking up speed like an Indiaman under full sail past the sign of a pie over the baked goods at Neatflyte’s. She made a dog-leg through Blackfriars, up and over Bridewell bridge, enjoying the stench of the Fleet below, then broke into a run, slowing only to note a pigeon flapping its cage up and down in a market stall.

On the watch for Walton coming back from Chelsea, where he had gone to hear her father preach, she poked her stick into ditches, hoping to turn up the bones of a plague-victim to show him, or a pair of dogs locked in copulation such as her brother Jo boasted of seeing. The best she could do was a dead rat, though she had to drive off angry crows to secure it. Climbing to the top of a dovecot for a view, she brandished her rat at the mewling crows, fancying herself an Ariadne left behind by Theseus, her eyes filling with the pain of Ariadne’s blind, devoted love.

Instead of Walton, she saw her father on his way back
into the City, making good speed towards the Deanery on his new horse.

Pegge ran past the King’s Wardrobe back to Neatflyte’s where the Bowles twins were now waiting for their father, the Groom and Yeoman of the King’s Tents and Pavilions. She saw that the letters on the sign had been freshly defaced by a boyish knife, leaving the word
eatfly
hovering over the stale baked goods, and wished she had thought of this herself. One twin was moving his lips studiously as he read a folio while his brother was licking Mr Neatflyte’s strawberries to make them look the sweeter. Helping herself to a small pie, Pegge took the Deanery corner crisply and found Sadie hiding behind the flowers with her tail wagging in full view. Pegge stepped in front of the tail at the precise moment that her father rode into the courtyard on his mare Parrot.

Pegge watched her father dismount. He straightened his legs, danced about to get the blood flowing, then inspected the tree he was cultivating in the small garden, which no one else was allowed to touch. Parrot nuzzled at his arm, begging for a codling. The Dean selected an apple, gave it a polish on his sleeve, then held it out on his palm. Parrot bit off half the codling and worked it to the back of her jaw with her tongue. As the horse crunched down with her back teeth, the dog surfaced from her hiding place.