Fire Catcher (33 page)

Chapter 103

Charlie and Lily found a clutch of sweating men digging purposefully by a patch of skeleton-black bushes. For a moment Charlie thought the pawnbroker wasn’t among them. And then he saw him, leaning on his shovel looking mournfully to the smoke above. A pile of muddy goods lay by his feet.

‘Brookes!’ Charlie approached him warmly. The pawnbroker’s far-away look was replaced by surprise then pleasure. He was a silver-haired man who’d moulded into the fabric of his shop over the years. Outside his small shop he looked lost and strange.

Brookes clapped Charlie on the shoulder. Then his eyes rested on Lily.

‘This is Lily,’ said Charlie. ‘A friend.’

Brookes raised his white eyebrows.

‘You need not fear, I do not come to sell,’ said Lily.

‘You know each other?’ asked Charlie.

‘She’s come to pawn things before,’ mumbled Brookes, in a tone which suggested the transaction hadn’t been a pleasant one.

Lily smiled innocently.

‘You saved your goods?’ asked Charlie, pointing to the beginnings of an open pit. Inside was a dense packed trove of possessions. The first layer revealed blackened cooking pots, bone-handled knives, fusty wigs and linen bed sheets.

‘My goods, yes,’ said Brookes, stooping to heave out a skillet. He dusted away soil and dropped it to one side. ‘But I have nowhere to house them. The shop is all burned. The fire still rages. My shop boy goes to Watford where we have a cousin with a donkey.’

Charlie knelt to help him, pulling free some cheap bolts of cloth.

‘People say the fire will reach the Palace,’ continued Brooks. ‘Perhaps there’ll be nothing to come back for. If Whitehall burns people will doubt the Crown.’

They both stared up at the red-black clouds covering the sky. The bloody maw of the flames crashed a great crescendo in the distance. The air was parched.

‘All here was vanquished,’ continued Brookes. ‘It was like civil war all over again. The fire had laid up its wide army all around then attacked us mercilessly.’

He shook his head sadly.

‘Many poor people thought the church would save them. No flames could breach the walls. But the roof. The roof of St Swithins was wooden shingle. Flaming ashes dropped down.’ Brookes mimed the action with a palm of ash scooped from the ground. ‘I saw myself when flames had exploded through the tall windows,’ he added. ‘It tore the weeping face from the Virgin Mary and showered the street in stained glass. Like jewels. Until the looters came.’

‘Didn’t they fight the fire on Cannon Street?’ asked Charlie.

Brookes shook his head and heaved out a small, sturdy chest. Charlie helped him brush away soil and set it right.

‘It came like a stealth attack,’ said Brookes. ‘The people were distracted trying to save the church. The heat had skulked along St Swithin’s Lane, warming the dry timbers of the homes, readying them for the next wave of force. Then came a blast of gale wind. It drove smoke into our faces and suddenly all the houses were alight.’

Brookes paused.

‘But you don’t come for news of the fire,’ he decided.

Charlie shook his head. ‘I’m looking for a Royalist who pawned a set of guns. Seventeen years ago.’

They’d unearthed a new layer of pawned possessions now. Piles of dresses, underclothes, breeches and stockings lay exposed. Hose, belts, coats, and boxes brimming with buttons and buckles.

‘A set of guns?’ Brookes pulled free a bundle of shoes. ‘They’ll be in my records. But they’re all in St Paul’s Cathedral.’

‘St Paul’s?’

‘Safest place in the city for paper,’ said Brookes. ‘The stationers and booksellers of Paternoster Row began it,’ he added. ‘St Paul’s will never burn.’

‘Could we get your records out?’ asked Charlie with a rising sense of hopelessness.

Brookes shook his head.

‘The vaults at St Paul’s are sealed up so tight not the tiniest spark can get inside. Fire rages that way. Those with papers in the vault are determined it will not burn. Ah!’ he added, ‘my sledge.’

They turned to see a beleaguered-looking donkey led by a frightened boy. Both animal and herder were looking this way and that at the burned city.

‘You can see the flame from Watford,’ said the boy. ‘The people all say it’s a curse. On the King and his godless ways.’

‘Never mind the King,’ said Brookes, pointing to the pit. ‘Load the sledge.’

A clutch of tools had been revealed under the clothing. Handsaws and hammers. The boy worked to pull free a scythe and began heaping the sledge at impressive speed. Charlie helped Brookes heave up a set of hoes.

‘Perhaps you remember the man,’ tried Charlie, aware time was running out. ‘Thomas Blackstone. Tall. Dark hair, blue eyes. Very large. Grossly so.’

Brookes shook his head and didn’t stop loading.

‘He came after the war,’ pressed Charlie. ‘Few Royalists pawned guns at such a time.’

‘More than you might imagine,’ said Brookes, straightening. But he looked as though he might be remembering something. He looked distractedly to Lily. She was dipping her hand into a rescued button box and letting the contents fall through her fingers.

‘He has a smell of death about him, this Blackstone,’ supplied Lily. ‘Dangerous. A general during the war. Docked from a ship called the Mermaid.’

This seemed to prompt a memory.

‘There was a general,’ said Brookes slowly. ‘Now you say of a ship it puts me in mind of him.’

Chapter 104

Monmouth was adjusting the seed pearls on his black doublet. He pulled at the reins on his horse, coughing at the smoke. His long lashes blinked against the smuts and cinders.

‘You’ve found me a bad horse, Clarence,’ he accused, twisting in an effort to regain control. ‘She nearly had me off when we fled from that mob.’

‘She has the best temperament in the Royal Stables,’ said Clarence, giving his own steed a soothing pat. ‘She behaved valiantly. But the smoke frightens her.’

They looked to the General Post Office. It was a fine brick building with long windows in new glass.

‘We’ll defend it with our lives,’ said Monmouth grandly, still wrestling the horse. ‘Where are the men?’

‘These are what we have,’ said Clarence, gesturing to the thirty palace guards. ‘We must press commoners to make one hundred.’

Monmouth blanched a little. ‘Very good,’ he muttered. His horse jerked her head and Monmouth gave her a spiteful kick. Cries went up in the distance. Mobs were on full attack now, battering Catholics and lynching foreigners.

‘Common people,’ muttered Monmouth. ‘If I were King I’d have them hanged for looking so disagreeable.’ He glanced at Clarence irritably.

‘Do you really think it’s true?’ asked Monmouth. ‘That Parliament would have me as King?’

‘The Queen births no children,’ said Clarence carefully. ‘The Duke of York has Catholic sympathies. I can imagine it said, that a good Protestant should rule.’

Monmouth seemed to swell.

‘I would look very fine with a crown,’ he said. ‘Royal jewels ornamenting me. I have the bearing for it, that’s what people say.’

Clarence’s eyes flashing a warning. Monmouth’s ambition was troubling him. The boy seemed increasingly deluded of late.

‘Why are you twisting like that, Clarence?’ asked Monmouth. ‘Do lice trouble you?’

‘A few possessions,’ admitted Clarence, ‘inside my doublet. And I wear extra clothes too. My house will burn within the hour,’ he added, looking steadily to the enormous Post Office.

Monmouth raised his eyebrows. ‘They couldn’t get you a cart?’

‘They did, but I sent it to the Naval Office,’ said Clarence. ‘Important paperwork there. There’s rumours the Dutch could attack whilst England is weak. We need our defences in place.’

He moved a fat white hand inside his doublet and brought forth a little miniature. A portrait of a plain-looking girl.

‘It’s strange,’ said Clarence, ‘I always thought I’d protect my fine furnishings. In the end I only wanted a few items.’

Monmouth peered at the miniature.

‘Your wife?’ he suggested.

‘My daughter,’ said Clarence thoughtfully. ‘She died in child-birth, recently, but I hadn’t seen her for years. I didn’t approve of her marriage and wouldn’t pay her dowry. My daughter never forgave me,’ said Clarence, tucking the miniature back in his doublet.

‘The sins of Eve,’ said Monmouth, ‘are borne by women.’

‘She died alone,’ said Clarence, hardly listening. ‘There was no money for a live-in nurse. By the time her husband came back with the midwife it was too late. And now all burns, I realise that I lost everything long ago.’

Clarence looked to the assembled soldiers.

‘Fire comes, Your Grace,’ he said. ‘We should begin pressing men.’

‘It looks a good deal in the distance,’ said Monmouth uncertainly. He leaned down and refastened a ribbon that had untied on his breeches. ‘Once the people see us fine men on horses, they’ll rush to our aid. No need to endanger ourselves unduly.’

A guard was approaching.

‘High tide comes,’ said Clarence, looking hopefully to the Thames. ‘Pipes in the west will fill with water again. Perhaps there is a chance . . .’

‘The Fleet River is blocked with debris,’ said the guard, shaking his head. ‘The only way to clear it is gunpowder. We have no long fuses.’

‘Have we no brave men?’ asked Monmouth. He glanced at the King’s guard. ‘None who’ll risk themselves for the city?’

The guard looked at Monmouth, high on his horse in his spotless clothing.

‘None under this command,’ he said.

There was a long silence. Then Clarence began sliding from his horse.

‘I’ll go,’ he said.

Monmouth turned to him in shock.

‘You could lose a hand!’ he said. ‘It’s a commoner’s job.’

Clarence was removing his snowy wig.

‘Better an old man lose a hand than a young one,’ he said. ‘Have men roll the gunpowder by the blockage. I’ll light the fuse.’

The guard was looking dubiously at Clarence. The fat old man might lose more than a hand. He didn’t look fast on his feet. But a slim chance was better than none, he reasoned.

‘Bring the gunpowder!’ called the guard.

Chapter 105

Brookes was frowning in thought. ‘A Royalist who’d come back from Holland,’ he said. ‘I have a memory he pawned something valuable. Might have been guns, though I couldn’t say for certain.’

‘Do you remember anything else about him?’ asked Charlie.

Brookes shook his head. ‘It was a long time ago,’ he said.

‘You would have taken his residence,’ said Charlie. ‘If he pawned guns.’

‘I would have,’ said Brookes. ‘It would be written in my records.’

‘The records we can’t get to?’ said Lily, turning out a weasel-skin coat and a pair of leather stays.

Brookes looked at her and then back to the boy loading.

‘You’re sure you remember nothing of his guns?’ pressed Charlie.

Brookes shook his head slowly. ‘Couldn’t even say for sure that’s what he pawned. Many guns, Charlie. Many guns in seventeen years.’ He turned to the boy. ‘We can’t fit the larger tools,’ he decided. ‘Leave them. Take the buttons and buckles.’

‘What of his reasons for pawning?’ asked Charlie. ‘If it was something valuable you must have asked the reason?’

The boy had almost fully loaded the sledge and Brookes was looking sadly at the possessions he’d have to leave to looters.

Brookes hesitated. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I do have some recollection of that.’ He frowned trying to urge the memory. ‘This man had sailed back from Holland and I asked of our exiled King,’ said Brookes. ‘And he said . . . He said something of putting his faith in new giants. Those who warded for breed not birth.’ Brookes looked at his goods. ‘I remember it,’ he said, ‘because my wife was growing beans at the time and she made some joke. Jack and the beanstalk or some such.’

Lily and Charlie looked at one another. Lily mouthed the words to herself.

New giants.

‘Do you know what he meant?’ asked Charlie finally. Brookes shrugged. ‘A family motto?’ he suggested. ‘I was more interested that he’d met the exiled King.’

‘A strange kind of motto, breeding over birth’ said Charlie, but Brookes was focused on wedging extra goods on to the sledge.

The slightest rustling had begun to sound from the nearby ruins, and a fine mist of smoke was shrugging slowly up into the sky. The donkey let out a baleful sound.

‘You should go now,’ said Charlie, surveying the devastated remains. ‘There are still unburned embers here. The wind hasn’t died out. And something happens to the west.’

He was looking to the red clouds that had begun to swirl like Armageddon.

Brookes nodded and slapped the unhappy donkey.

‘Always take the word of Charlie Tuesday,’ he winked, ‘when fire is at hand.’

There was a sudden shout from near Fen Church. Charlie looked up, half expecting to see rekindled flame.

One of the looters had pulled free a droop of metal, melted to an indeterminate shape and studded with black cinders. He was holding it up triumphantly. Charlie watched as the father wandered over to where his son stood, stepping with difficulty where the rubble beneath him broke anew and plunged him ankle deep into soot.

They should leave, Charlie decided. The embers were burning too hot. And he could see a muddy haze begin to drift from the ash. But the problem of the guns was nagging at him.

‘Pistols,’ said Charlie, thinking aloud. ‘Giants for breed not birth.’ It sounded faintly
familiar
somehow. Like a colloquialism he’d heard before. He scanned his memory.

‘Giants in the city?’ said Lily.

‘There are wooden giants at Guildhall,’ said Charlie slowly. ‘Gog and Magog. Statues from an old legend. Men say . . .’ He turned it in his head. ‘Men say Gog and Magog watch over trade and care not for Kings.’

He looked at Lily.

‘Breed not birth,’ she said.

Suddenly things fell into place.

Chapter 106

Torr sat straight-backed, eyes closed. His damp prison vanished away.

The gunshot wound throbbed. He was dying, he knew. But his mystic meditations lifted him beyond pain and anger. It was a kind of magic.

Torr had lived by the sword and expected to die a soldier’s death. He’d never thought it would come at the hand of his brother at arms.

Torr placed a steady hand on his bloody sternum. Slowly he worked through the Tree of Life tattoo.

Foundation, Mercy, Wisdom, Victory.

His fingers settled at the very top, where a crown was tattooed. And without meaning to Torr found himself back there. Holland. The secret alchemy chamber. Holding the marriage papers.

The power.

Even now, all these years later, Torr could taste it. Crucible embers smouldering. The glow of knowledge.

A little roll of papers. Torr could feel them now, resting in his hand. He could see Teresa, dressed all in black. Tears streaming down her horrified face.

This is treason. The Brotherhood will kill us.

A little roll of papers that could destroy a Kingdom. It was temptation. Torr knew it now. His years with mystics had helped him commune with his higher self. Temptation and pride. They had driven him to it. He repented of it now, but it was too late.

We should never have made the marriage!

But it was no good. The thing had been done.

The ultimate marriage.

Torr could only hope that Sally Oakley had hidden the papers well. If Blackstone found them, he would be capable of anything.

He let his mind run deeper, back to poor Teresa Blackstone. Hers had been the most shocking confession he’d ever heard. Her husky voice, explaining the terrible things Blackstone made her do. It still haunted him.

The gunshot wound pulsed a spasm of pain. Torr’s eyes jerked open. It was no good. The nightmare reality flooded back. He called to mind the last time he’d seen his captor.

‘You never would reveal to me,’ said Blackstone, ‘the secrets of your mystic sect.’

‘You weren’t deemed worthy,’ said Torr. ‘And I swore never to reveal the secrets.’

Blackstone was looking at the tree of life tattoo, his mouth moving.

‘I think this must be sulphur,’ he said, looking up to Torr’s face. ‘Sulphur mixed with quicksilver perhaps.’

Torr shook his head.

‘It isn’t a code for you to unravel. It’s a journey.’

Blackstone stabbed a finger at the trunk of the tree. Torr flinched.

‘Foundation,’ he said. ‘The trunk is the foundation stone. The golden elixir. So these branches must be the formula. The ingredients.’

Torr sighed and looked away.

‘You never did understand, Thomas. I pity you that. If it’s wealth you seek, best look to the papers you stole.’

‘When Teresa’s soul is freed,’ said Blackstone, ‘she’ll reveal the papers to me. I’m sure of it. They’re close.’

‘Why did you make Teresa do it?’ asked Torr.

Guilt flashed across Blackstone’s face.

‘Two people,’ he said. ‘We needed two people.’

‘You could have chosen someone else.’

‘Teresa was pure,’ said Blackstone. ‘Pure, obedient and loyal.’

‘She was an innocent soul,’ said Torr, shaking his head. ‘You made her hunted. She must have feared the Brotherhood would kill her slow.’

‘But they didn’t,’ said Blackstone. ‘I protected her.’

‘In a damp cellar?’ said Torr. ‘It’s no wonder she turned to witchcraft and dark things.’

Blackstone’s eyes flashed.

‘That was Sally Oakley’s doing,’ he said. ‘Filling her mind with it.’ He shook his head. ‘You made the marriage, Torr. You’re as guilty as I. Worse. Without your powers it never could have happened. You changed everything.’

‘I thought I did right,’ said Torr. ‘But we made a monster, you and I. We mined gold from humble lead.’

‘And what of Sally Oakley? Letting her practise pagan things.’

‘Sally was from the country,’ said Torr. ‘Perhaps she even did a little good with her charms and herbs.’ Torr eyed Blackstone.

‘You broke your word,’ he said. ‘To Tobias. You said you’d protect Sally and keep her safe as a maid in your household until he returned from sea.’

Blackstone’s eyes flashed.

‘Broke my word to a traitor?’ he demanded. ‘Tobias Oakley loved a maid-servant more than our cause. And Sally meddled with things she shouldn’t.’

Torr was shaking his head.

‘You should have better counsel with yourself,’ he said. ‘Charles Stuart. He was the one who left us talking war and thrones, whilst he rutted with pretty girls. You twisted your rage to Tobias.’

Blackstone gave a thin smile. ‘Tobias married a penniless maid. What did she bring the cause? My wife’s dowry funded our last battle.’

‘Is that what you hoped to do with the papers?’ asked Torr. ‘Get back Teresa’s dowry?’

Blackstone allowed himself a smile.

‘I thought about it often,’ he said. ‘Such power. To have such power . . .’ He closed his eyes. ‘Years ago I would have made gold,’ he said. ‘Riches. Now,’ he smiled, ‘I will topple England.’

Torr looked away.

‘Fire comes,’ said Blackstone. ‘I have chosen a fitting sacrifice for Teresa. As she burns, so London will fall. All will be cleansed.’

Blackstone closed his eyes at the image. Then he opened them again.

‘I can’t take you with me.’ He gave Torr a little smile. ‘You know how sure I must be of my plans. You’re unpredictable.’

Torr looked down to see the pistol in Blackstone’s hands.

He spread his arms wide. ‘God grant me the grace,’ said Torr, ‘to accept the things I cannot change.’

Blackstone pointed the pistol. ‘Grace,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I haven’t heard that word in a long time.’ And he fired the gun.