Joanna (36 page)
It was reasonable that Joanna’s men should take over the duty of controlling the temporary prisoners. The lord mayor’s men were more familiar with the area and could search it more effectively and they were more likely to recognize those who had legitimate business there. For a time, Joanna questioned those who were confined, trying to discover someone who had seen Geoffrey, but even the few who thought they recognized her description were very uncertain. Yet she could not stop asking; someone must have seen Geoffrey.
One description of horrors after another was poured into Joanna’s ears, regardless of her attempts to stem the flow. It was as if the images were fixed in the minds of those who had seen them and they could do nothing except describe them. A woman, blank-faced, dead-eyed, related how the whole front of their shop on the bridge had fallen on her husband and two older sons, exposing a cavern of flame that had not been there when they fled the house only a few minutes before. She did not know how she had come off the bridge. A man, hearing Joanna’s voice, had turned the wild eyes of a madman upon her. “The mouth of hell,” he screamed. “I have looked into the mouth of hell. The whole world will burn. I have seen it, a wall of flame flying forward to engulf us all.”
His screeching made the whole crowd uneasy, and the people looked fearfully to the east and surged forward so that Joanna’s men needed to draw their swords and apply the flat of them to heads and shoulders to keep order. Obviously it was dangerous to question these people. Another madman or hysteric might create so great a panic that the armed troop could not control them. Joanna’s eyes were drawn to a wailing babe and she winced, seeing the raw and blackened flesh on a tiny arm and leg. If only she had her unguents and medicinal creams…
The tired wailing tore her mind from its fixed image of Geoffrey surrounded by flames. Unguents Unguents How stupid I am, Joanna thought. There are apothecary shops right here near the Chepe. She had even been in some of them, seeking rare simples that would not grow in the cool climate of England. Purposefully she looked about, trying to remember exactly where the shops were. Without thinking, she lifted a hand to hold down the edge of her wimple which had flown up into her face. Her mare danced uncertainly and blew heavily through her nostrils. Joanna coughed as hot, smoke-tinged air caught her lungs.
Joanna glanced uncertainly toward the east. Surely the cloud of smoke that hung over the city was lower and heavier? Still, there were no shouts of alarm from the lord mayor’s men who were to the east of the Chepe in the Poulterer’s Lane and up toward Cornhill. Poulterer’s Lane and Cornhill reminded her. The apothecaries were hard by the spice merchants, and some dealt in both spices and medicinals. They were to the south of the Chepeside, east of where she was but not so far east as the poulterers. That should be safe enough.
Joanna called to Knud and explained her purpose. Cautiously, he suggested they should take some of the men in case they should meet looters, but Joanna said it was not necessary. The crowd was so restless that every man was necessary and the shop she had in mind was not far down the lane. They would hardly be out of sight of the men. Joanna touched her mare with her heel and loosened her rein. The animal balked a bit, but when her rider insisted went delicately forward.
As she had remembered, the shop was only a short distance south of the market place. It was, as might be expected, tightly shut, but Joanna was determined to have what she needed. She bade Knud dismount and knock on the door. Perhaps someone was within. If notJoanna paused to cough againKnud should try a few of the shops farther down the street. Knud looked around. Certainly the street was quiet enough. There was no sign of thieves and, besides, this was a less likely target for looters than the goldsmiths or butchers or mercers. Little could be realized from jars of unguents or a few handfuls of spice, and the lord mayor’s men had been through this area already. It seemed safe enough to Knud to leave his mistress for a few minutes if she remained mounted. He voiced this idea and Joanna agreed readily, coughing again. The air in the narrow lane hardly stirred, but it seemed full of smoke and the horses were moving so restlessly that when Knud dismounted Joanna held out her hand for the rein of his mount.
Knocking loud and long had no effect, and Knud moved down the street, peering up at chimneys and through the shutters to determine, if he could, whether anyone was inside. He had found a likely shop quite a way down the street on the other side of the lane when Joanna heard a confused noise swelling slowly behind her. She turned anxiously, but a curve in the lane hid the open area of the Chepe. The noise swelled again. It sounded frantic and ugly. Joanna drew breath to shout for Knud to come back but began to cough so violently that she could not utter a sound.
Suddenly, the street was full of a cloud of ash so thick that Joanna could barely see and some of it was so hot that she felt as if her hands and face were being stung by a myriad of tiny bees. Dimly, she heard Knud shout in alarm, but a roarthe mindless malevolent bellow of a crowd gone maddrowned his voice. Then Knud’s horse reared and screamed. Instinctively, Joanna’s hand tightened on the lead rein. It would have been wiser to release the animal, but she had no time to think of that. Her own mare reared also, and as Joanna curbed her sharply, she lashed out and struck Knud’s horse slantwise on the shoulder. That blow, added to the pain of a burning smut which had landed on his rump panicked the horse completely. With a second scream of terror, the animal pulled away to obey instinct and flee from pain and fear, wrenching the rein from Joanna’s hand with such force that she was nearly torn from the saddle.
Knud had run back up the street when the first gust of hot ash had been sucked into the lane by an errant downdraft. He was just in time to see his horse tear free and gallop off toward the Chepe. His eyes were on his mount; he did not realize that Joanna’s own rein had also been wrenched from her hand and that she had lost a stirrup. In fact, his mistress rode as well as he did, and it never occurred to him that she could be in trouble. His one thought was to recapture his horse before it hurt itself. He did not hear Joanna’s startled cry as her mare bolted, terrified by a suddenly loose rein, a smell of fresh fire, and the odor of panic that rose from hundreds of people.
The animal knew only one thingthe scents that generated fear came from behind. Without her mistress’s guidance, Joanna’s mare flew before her terror, away from the smell of fire and fear and toward the smell of water. She ran straight for the water, indifferent to the bends of the lane except to avoid running headlong into a solid object. At the second bend, Joanna’s frail hold upon her saddle was lost, and she was flung against the corner of a building and thence to the ground to lie still like a broken doll.
p.
While Joanna and the alderman had been discussing his whereabouts in the courtyard of Salisbury’s house, Geoffrey was taking leave of the mayor of London. Their courtesies were grave and formal, but there was real warmth beneath the stilted phrases. The lord mayor regretted that he could offer no reward to Geoffrey’s men who had labored like heroes, but said frankly that all his resources and those of his fellow guildsmen must be husbanded to restore what had been destroyed. Geoffrey looked at his men, most of whom were sitting limply on the ground with their heads on their knees.
He smiled tiredly. “If you would reward them, Lord Mayor, lend me a boat or a barge that will carry them upriver. They are fordone, poor devils, and I sent the horses back from Southwark. Truly, they are in no case to walk even the few miles home to rest.”
The lord mayor was too weary and too worried to smile back, but his eyes lighted. He really was glad to be able to do something for these men who had worked beyond exhaustion to save his city. The arrangements were quickly made. Geoffrey saw his men safely onto the boats. He was so tired himself that he was briefly tempted to join them, but that would mean leaving Tostig, who was no less tired, to lead his destrier home. Sighing, he remounted. A roll of thunder made him look up hopefully. The fire seemed safely contained now, but the remains of many buildings still glowed and crackled and a good flood of rain would make all really safe.
Unfortunately, there was no more sign of rain than there had been. The clouds were low and heavy, seeming to reach down and mingle with the pall of smoke, but there was no coolness in them. They were lit from time to time with evil flashes of lightning, which seemed to be generated by the heat that rose up from the baked earth and the smoldering ruins. The wind was down, thank God. Now and then a fitful gust blew from the east. It did not concern Geoffrey, who was aware of the wide band of burnt-out land between the remains of the fire and the western part of the city.
What Geoffrey did not know, because he and his men had retreated across the bridge fighting the holocaust every step and had then been laboring to warn people and contain the eastern edge of the fire, was that a band of buildings on the western side of the bridge had been fired. These warehouses and dwellings did not burn violently but sullenly smoldered. There was little draft to fan the flames and the buildings had been well wetted in the early attempts to prevent the fire from spreading to the north bank of the Thames. Little by little, the heat of the day plus the heat of a city in flames had dried out the damp.
With the first gusts of hot wind from the east, here and there a wicked little yellow tongue licked out to taste the unburned structure. No one was there to see, to cry a warning. Those who feared had fled much farther from the fire. Those who had courage were on the eastern end of the fire where, until the wind died, it had threatened to swallow all in its path. The little yellow tongues licked more quickly, more fiercely, spawned many others. Because it was the outside of the buildings and the roofs that had been wetted, the sharp red teeth of fire that gnawed what the yellow tongues first licked ate away the vitals of the homes and warehouses. Soon, mad orange eyes that flickered and leapt looked out of the windows that were open or glared behind closed shutters.
Geoffrey’s body was inured to hard labor. He was accustomed to days in the saddle topped by days of fighting and more days in the saddle. He was accustomed to doing without sleep or with very little sleep for long periods. Nonetheless, this bout of activity had brought him near the end of his ability to endure. He had ridden down to Roselynde from the Scottish border driven by an emotional desire he did not understand with only such rest as could be snatched when the horses could go no farther. There, fury had given him strength to continue to London where he had been physically drained even further by his interlude with Joanna. After that, first a sense of duty and then real terror had driven him on and on. Now, swaying in the saddle, he was only conscious enough to keep his seat.
Orage, the destrier, was as tired as his master. He plodded numbly along, head down, keeping to the smoothest, widest path. Behind Geoffrey, Tostig was a little more awake. Therefore, he noticed they were on the road to the Chepe, not the track that ran north of the town and would surely be clear of the burnt areas. Tostig sighed. He had had enough of this fire and the city, but obviously his master was bent upon making sure everything was safe.
When the first blasts of the changing wind struck them from behind, carrying the smell of burning and a blast of hot ash, Tostig feared Geoffrey would turn back. His master said nothing, however, and Tostig was certainly not about to bring trouble upon himself by making suggestions he did not want to carry out. He was relieved when they passed Cornhill, came through the Poulterer’s Lane and reached the Chepeside. It was obvious to him that there were men enough here and everything was well under control. Their help would not be needed. It was at that happy thought that his mind stuck until the colors worn by some of the men-at-arms drew an oath of recognition from him.
South of where Cornhill ran into Poulterer’s Lane, the evil orange eyes grew bolder. They looked right through the sealed shutters, which first blackened and then fell away to ash. Soon the yellow tongues were lapping around the flaming eyes, tasting the frames of the windows and the now totally dry beams in the walls. In a little time, a very little time, the roofs would catch, fall in, and the flame would again run free, ready to leap across to new roofs, to fly on the wings of the wind to new walls.
Simultaneous with Tostig’s exclamation of surprise, one of the men-at-arms cried, “Halt!” and then, when he recognized Geoffrey, “Oh, my lord, pardon. I did not see who it was at first.” Prodded awake by both voices, Geoffrey stared dazedly at Joanna’s man. The face was vaguely familiar. His eyes slid down and fixed on the well-known colors of Roselynde.
“Good God, what do you here?” Geoffrey cried, adding anxiously, “Did the fire leap the river to the west?”
“No, my lord. There was no fire. We came first to your father’s house, then here, where we were told to hold these people.”
“Why” Geoffrey began, and then swallowed the remainder of the question. It was useless to ask these men why anything was done. That was none of their business. They were required only to follow orders. “Who led you here?” he asked instead.
“The lady and Knud, my lord.”
“Lady Jo” Geoffrey began, and choked as a blast of hot air filled with burning ash enveloped them.
Then, instantly, he was wide awake, awake to the fact that the wind came from the east, to the fact that some of the smuts that were flying about were still glowing red, to the fact that the crowd, now several hundred strong, was moaning and screaming in terror and would soon become too much for the men-at-arms to control. Joanna’s man knew it, too. He cast a frightened glance at the milling men and women. One more fire-hot blast and they would break loose, their terror of being caught by the flames outweighing the lesser fear of the punishment the guards would inflict.
“Where are Knud and the lady?” Geoffrey demanded.