London (117 page)

Despite his differences with Meredith, Julius had come to tolerate him, and after his death he became quite friendly with Richard, the preacher’s son. He was a clever young man, had studied at Oxford and, as he confessed to Julius, would have liked to enter the priesthood if he could have done so as an Anglican. Instead, he had studied medicine and was setting up as a physician. He had his father’s secret scepticism and enquiring mind.

The only subject which continued to embarrass Julius was Jane Wheeler. He heard that Dogget had died three years after their departure; he was very glad indeed that she remained safely distant, down in Petty France.

But if he was sometimes haunted by guilt over Jane, his secret mission, and his loyalty to the late king’s two sons, did much to salve his conscience. He was not alone, of course. Together with a dozen other loyal souls, he continued to send letters with every kind of intelligence to the exiled Stuart king-in-waiting in France. And he was overjoyed when, in 1658 Oliver Cromwell unexpectedly died.

The collapse of the Commonwealth took just over a year. Cromwell’s son, who was pleasant but unambitious, gave up the succession almost at once. Parliament and the army continued to quarrel. Having watched for nine months, Julius dared to write in person:

If your Majesty will compromise with Parliament, which your father never would, and if you pay off the army, which the present Parliament doesn’t want to, then this kingdom may be yours.

One day, a discreet messenger arrived with tidings that gladdened Julius’s heart.

“The king thanks you for your steadfast loyalty, which neither he nor his father ever forgot.” Here the messenger grinned: “He is a much merrier fellow than his father, you know. Says he’d sooner compromise with a barrel-load of monkeys than stay an exile all his life. By the way,” the man added as he was leaving, “he knows you lost Bocton through your loyalty. It will be returned to you, as soon as he is king.”

Finally in the spring of 1660, Julius heard with almost inexpressible joy the cry: “The king is coming. King Charles II reigns. Long live the king!”

LONDON’S FIRE

1665

Ned was a good dog: medium size with a smooth, brown and white coat, bright eyes, and devoted to his cheerful master. He could catch any ball his master threw in the air; he could roll over and play dead. Sometimes, if his master was not looking, he would chase a cat for fun. But above all, he was a good ratter. There was not a single rat in his master’s house. He had killed them all long ago.

It was a hot summer’s day. His master had gone out early, so he was guarding the house in Watling Street. He hoped his master would return soon. There were a number of people about, as usual; but there was one stranger Ned did not like. He had been standing in front of the door of a house further down the street. When Ned had gone to investigate him, the stranger had tried to hit him with the long pike he carried. Ned had yelped, and kept away after that. A woman had come to the house about an hour ago. He caught a smell from her as she went past. He did not know what the smell was, but it was something bad. A little while ago, from the same house, he had heard the sound of weeping. There was no doubt, people were behaving oddly.

It was just then that he saw the monster.

The Ducket family was ready. Two coaches, as well as a cart, awaited them at the gate and Sir Julius surveyed them with satisfaction: his wife, his son and heir, his son’s wife, two children. A manservant and two female servants were also to accompany them, together with the chest of clothes and other items in the cart. “But we’ve room for one more,” he said. “And I am determined not to leave him behind.” For the third time that morning, he went out into the street. Where the devil was the fellow?

Sir Julius Ducket was, in his sixty-third year, a very contented man. Now he was prosperous and honoured, friend of the king. And it was a delightful thing to be a friend of King Charles II. Tall, where his father had been short; informal where Charles I had been reserved; bursting with humour – his father was rather serious; and, most remembered of all, a huge and cheerfully open womanizer where his father, whatever his faults, had been very chaste. King Charles II knew everything there was to know about life’s gutter. He would do whatever necessary to keep his throne because, as he assured everybody: “I have no wish to go on my travels again.”

King Charles’s court at Whitehall was the jolliest place. The Banqueting Hall, scene of his father’s execution, was in regular use and his subjects could come to watch him dine there. Just west of Whitehall, he laid out the wooded open space into a new St James’s Park where he could often be seen walking the pretty little spaniels he so delighted in, or, with his cavalier courtiers in the long tree-lined alleyway on the park’s northern side, playing at pall mall – a curious game, halfway between croquet and a primitive form of golf – at which he was adept. All London enjoyed this lighter mood also. Sports were played; the maypole came out again. Theatres were opening, including a new one near the Aldwych, at Drury Lane, where the king’s own company of players was performing and a buxom young actress called Nell Gwynne had just made her début. If His Majesty’s somewhat puritan subjects were shocked by the genial immorality and extravagance of his court, no one wanted to return to the miseries of the Commonwealth.

Above all, this Charles had no illusions. He knew he was there, not by Divine Right, but because the English Parliament had decided he should be. “Parliament and I need each other,” he remarked to Julius one day. Common and Lords were back, just as they had been half a century before; and Charles would get as much as he could from them. But he never pushed them too far. It was the same with religion. His young Portuguese wife was Catholic; so was his sister, married into the French royal house; but he knew perfectly well that many of his subjects were Puritans. “I would be happy to grant them all tolerance,” he declared. Parliament wasn’t. So the situation more or less like the settlement under good Queen Bess was reached. All must conform to England’s Church with its ceremony and its bishops. Those who did not suffered minor restrictions and were debarred from public office. But that was all. The message from the king was clear.

“Be loyal. Then go play, or go pray, as you please.” This was the royal court and settlement known as the Restoration.

The merry monarch had little desire for vengeance. One or two of his father’s murderers had to be executed. The corpse of Oliver Cromwell was dug up and hanged at Tyburn. “Looks better now than when alive,” Julius sourly remarked. But Charles made no attempt to pursue his enemies. His friends, however, he warmly remembered – including Sir Julius Ducket.

“Parliament won’t allow me to buy Bocton for you,” he apologized. “But I can give you a state pension – for life. So live long, dear friend.” The pension was generous. With no more Roundheads to question his every move, Julius was also able to spend the remains of the treasure, and to start trading vigorously. A year ago he had been able to buy Bocton back, at a modest price, since the house was in a sorry state. Within months, he had put the whole place in order.

Indeed, all England seemed to be in a state of optimism and excitement. Her commerce was increasing: her colonies yielding rich results. Even the king’s recent marriage to a Catholic was easily tolerated when it was discovered that she brought with her, as a dowry, no less a place than the rich Indian trading port of Bombay! England’s mastery of the seas, too, was growing even greater. Last year her trading rivals the Dutch had been pushed out of several colonies including one quite promising settlement in America. New Amsterdam, they had called it, Julius heard. “So our naval squadron have called it New York.” In the opinion of Sir Julius Ducket, the state of England had never been better.

At least, until about ten days ago. Just at this moment, however, he was not so sure. And it was with a trace of anxiety now, looking around, that he wondered: where the devil was young Meredith?

Ned’s hackles rose. He got to his feet, growling; bared his teeth, took two paces forward. The monster was still advancing down the street. Ned’s growl grew more savage. For he had never seen such a creature before in his life. The monster was at least as tall as a man. It was made of waxed leather. Its body was shaped like a huge cone and it reached all the way to the ground. The beast had two arms, and huge leather hands. It was holding a short stick. But most fearsome of all was the creature’s head. For between two huge glass eyes, with rings round them, was a huge leather beak. On its head the monster wore a black, broad-brimmed leather hat.

Ned barked, growled, barked again, backed away. But the monster, having seen him, had turned and was coming straight towards him.

Doctor Richard Meredith had been the happiest man in London until an hour ago. The honour conferred on him the day before was great, especially considering his youth. He had set out in the morning with a spring in his step. Until, at the Guildhall, they had shown him the document.

If the Restoration had taken place a few years earlier, young Meredith might have been a clergyman. But he had no wish to be a Puritan minister and his old father had warned him: “Look at what I had to do to survive.” So at Oxford, he had decided to become a physician. It was another way of serving his fellow man. It also suited his intellect, since he had a naturally enquiring and analytical mind.

Medicine was still a crude affair – a mixture of classical knowledge and medieval superstition. Doctors still believed in the four humours: they applied leeches and bled their patients because they supposed their blood needed thinning. They also used traditional herbal remedies – some effective – common sense and prayer. Indeed, in some cases the miraculous was considered a normal cure: no doctor discouraged the lines of people suffering from scrofula dutifully filing past the king whose touch, it was confidently believed, could cure that ailment. The natural sciences were in a similar state. Educated men still disputed whether unicorns’ horns had magical properties. But in recent decades a new spirit of rational enquiry had been growing. The great investigative genius of William Harvey had shown that blood actually circulated in the body: he had also begun to study how the human foetus develops. Robert Boyle, through careful experiment, had formulated laws for the behaviour of gases. And of all the places in which he might have lived none, surely, could be better than London. For London was the home of the Royal Society.

The Royal Society of London had begun as an informal discussion club twenty years before. Meredith’s first introduction to it had been in the year of the Restoration, when he was allowed to attend a lecture given by a leading young astronomer – like himself a clergyman’s son – named Christopher Wren. Membership of this club was restricted, though as a doctor of medicine, he was welcome to attend any lectures, which took place on Wednesday afternoons. King Charles too became a member and had granted the organization a royal charter after which it had become known simply as the Royal Society.

Some months ago, with great timidity, Richard Meredith had even delivered a short paper which had earned him kind words from Wren and several others. Yet even so, he had never expected the wonderful news of the day before.

“Doctor Meredith, you have been elected a full member of the society.” No wonder that his cup of joy had been full. At least until an hour ago.

Doctor Meredith had not taken much notice of the trouble when a few cases appeared in May. Sporadic visits like this had been a feature of summer in London for centuries. Nor was he worried when more appeared in June. There were none in the parishes along Cheapside; Watling Street was untouched. No significant outbreak had occurred, he reminded himself, for nearly twenty years and nothing really major since the reign of King James I. So when people asked him if they had cause to worry, he had reassured them: “Avoid the area to the west by Drury Lane and Holborn. The city is hardly touched, though.” The weather was exceedingly warm that month. “This dry heat,” most medical men concluded, “will increase the element of fire in men’s blood. This will produce yellow bile and make them choleric.” Perhaps, he supposed, that was causing the sickness to increase. By July, he heard of growing numbers down in Southwark and on the road to the east, outside Aldgate. But this morning, when they had shown him the document, he had received a severe shock.

The Bill of Mortality was a document produced every week. In two long columns it noted the numbers who had died, of each of some fifty causes, in the city and surrounding parishes of London. Most of the numbers were small. “Apoplexy: 1. Dropsy: 40. Infants: 21.” But near the top of the second column, the clerk had pointed to one, terrifying number: 1843. And beside it the single, awful word: Plague.

Plague, Contagion, the Black Death: all names for the same condition. “Do you mean to leave London?” the clerk had asked.

“No. I am a doctor.”

“All the doctors I’ve seen so far this morning,” the clerk smiled, “are leaving. They say they have to attend their rich patients, and as the rich will leave, they have to do so too. However,” he said approvingly, “if you really mean to stay, we have something you had better wear.”

Ned tried to hold his ground, but the monster was coming directly at him. Where could he attack the creature? It had no legs. Its arms were too thick to get a grip on. His snarls and barks grew furious, but did no good.

And then the monster did something extraordinary. It took off its head. Pulling off one huge leather glove, it held out a hand for him to sniff, and called his name. It was his master.

The huge leather outfit which the clerk at the Guildhall had given Meredith was terribly hot. The great beak was stuffed with aromatic herbs which he had just bought at an apothecary’s. For many believed that the contagion was spread through foul air.

“Poor Ned!” He was laughing. “Did I give you a fright?” He patted the dog affectionately. “Let’s go in.” He had just opened the door when Sir Julius reached him.