The Ashes of London (49 page)

Authors: Andrew Taylor

BOOK: The Ashes of London

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I thought the King might be weeping. But when at last he turned back to us there were no tears on his cheeks, and his voice was as deep and calm as ever.

‘You were there, Marwood, were you not? Among the crowd at the Banqueting House.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What – what was my father like? How did he bear himself?’

‘No man could have carried himself more honourably, sir.’ I thought of that small, sad-faced man in his waistcoat, with a nightcap on his head. I thought how calm he had been, how self-possessed. ‘No man could have borne himself more like a king.’

‘You were a mere child,’ he said softly. ‘To see a sight like that … What did you think of it then? What did you do?’

‘I wept, sir.’

Blood and ashes. Ashes and blood.

Afterwards, Lady Quincy sent me home in her coach. It was the one that I had been in before, when she talked to me at the New Exchange, but the device on the door had already been changed. The flames of the servants’ links showed that Alderley’s pelican feeding her young had been replaced by a widow’s lozenge bearing arms I did not recognize, presumably those of Sir William Quincy quartered with her own. The inside of the coach smelled of her perfume, as before.

It was a clear, cold night. The coach was well lit, and the servants were armed. We went round by the City wall, skirting the ruins. The moon had risen, coating the ashes of London with silver.

The King had sworn us both to secrecy. There was nothing to be gained by revealing what Alderley had done, and it would not help Lady Quincy either. Edward would never know the truth about his father. The King was not a vengeful man; he would not visit the sins of the father on the child.

I knew I should feel happy. The King had shown me favour. My father was content enough in his way, and safe from harm. I now had an income to support us and a modest position in the world. Mistress Lovett would live without fear, if she were careful, with the help of Master Hakesby and her father’s purse of gold. Even London itself would grow again, phoenix-like, from its own ashes. I had enough.

But enough is never enough. Instead, as the coach swayed and jolted its way to the Strand, my mind dwelled on Olivia, Lady Quincy, and the impossibility that she would ever look kindly on me.

Somewhere among the ashes, a dog barked at the moon.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

I
N THE DISTANCE
, a dog was barking as if it would never stop.

‘Close the window,’ Master Hakesby said.

From the wide attic window of the house in Henrietta Street, almost everything in sight was a shade of grey, speckled with faint yellow pinpricks from windows and lanterns. The sky was darkening towards night. The air smelled of coal smoke and the river, a sour blend that caught the back of the throat.

‘The draught, Jane! We’ll catch our death!’

‘Your pardon, sir.’

She closed the casement and drew the curtain across the window. Master Hakesby was sitting over the fire, trembling from the cold or his ague or both. A candle burned on the table at his elbow, and there was another on the mantel. Away from the fire, the long room was a place of shadows, with the draughtsmen’s slopes rearing up from the long table.

‘Did you fetch more coals?’

‘Yes, sir.’

She picked up the scuttle that she had brought up from the cellar and carried it to the hearth.

‘You must keep warm,’ he said as the coals rattled on to the embers. ‘Look at you – chilled to the bone.’

She nodded and smiled, though in truth it was Master Hakesby who looked chilled, not herself.

‘And mind you make the room warm for us in the morning, too. Build up a good fire before we come. A man cannot do fine work when he’s cold.’

Cat put down the shovel and turned to him. ‘Will you not go home now, sir? Mistress Noxon will be wondering where you are.’

Master Hakesby scowled at her but he levered himself up from his chair. He took up the poker and fussed at the fire. When he had finished, Cat fetched his cloak. He allowed her to arrange it around his thin shoulders.

‘Would you like me to attend you, sir?’ Not to Three Cocks Yard, of course, not to the house, but at least along the Strand, which even on a Sunday evening was thronged with traffic.

‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘You must still keep within doors as much as possible. You must not court danger.’

But it wasn’t her safety that concerned him, she knew, so much as the fear that she might think him incapable of managing by himself.

‘Are you not afraid here?’ he said. ‘On your own at night?’

‘No, sir.’ How could she explain to him that solitude was what she most desired? ‘Besides, I’m not alone in the house.’

Master Hakesby and Dr Wren had taken only the top floor, with its huge workshop windows. They employed two draughtsmen, as well as Cat, but they lodged elsewhere. There was a hatter on the ground floor, and a French Huguenot family immediately below the drawing office. A porter guarded the common entry during the hours of daylight and slept in a room off the hatter’s back kitchen.

‘Up here you are entirely by yourself at night,’ he said, worrying ineffectually at the subject like an old dog with a bone.

Cat was standing by the door now, waiting for him to leave. ‘I can sit with Madame Charvet if I need company.’

He peered at her. ‘I’ll be back before it’s light in the morning. We have so much work on hand we cannot afford to lose a moment. Soon there will be even more to do.’

The rebuilding of London would start in the New Year. The government and the City authorities had at last agreed on what should be done and, more importantly, how to pay for it. The necessary Bills were going through Parliament and would soon become law. Master Hakesby hoped that commissions for new projects would pour in.

She opened the door for him, took up a candle and lit his way down the stairs.

‘It is a most horrid shame though,’ Master Hakesby said as they descended the final flight. ‘Posterity will say we threw away the chance to make London a great capital city, fit for all ages. Instead, all we shall do is piecemeal stuff, trying to make good what was there before.’

It was a familiar complaint, and she didn’t reply. The porter unbarred the door and summoned a linkboy.

When Master Hakesby was gone, Cat went quickly upstairs. In the drawing office, she bolted the door and lit two more candles, which she placed on the sconces beside the slope nearer the fire. She fetched her private papers from the closet in which she slept. She laid out the largest sheet on the slope and studied the maze of pencilled lines.

Firmitas
,
utilitas
,
venustas
,
Cat murmured. Buildings should be like the nests of birds and bees.

She took up her pen and dipped it in the ink. As she worked, the city rose in her mind from the paper. She saw its towers and bridges, its churches and halls, its avenues and piazzas. Everything was interconnected, the elements combining with each other to work for the whole. In the heart of the city, taller than every other building, drawing the eye from every quarter, was the shining dome of St Paul’s.

Here was London. Not London as it was or London as it would be. But the London in her head, displaying the great Vitruvian virtues in all its parts, from the greatest public buildings to the smallest alleys.

Her London.

If you enjoyed
The Ashes of London
, try:

Paris, 1792. The city is gripped by revolution and the gutters run with blood as thousands lose their heads to the guillotine.

Edward Savill, a London merchant, receives word that his estranged wife has been killed in France. Her ten-year-old son, Charles, has been taken by émigré refugees to Charnwood Court, deep in the English countryside.

Savill is sent to fetch Charles, only to discover the child is mute. The boy has witnessed unimaginable horrors, but a terrible secret keeps him from saying a word. Locked in a prison of his own mind, his silence is the only thing that will keep him safe.

Or so he thinks …

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About the Author

Andrew Taylor is the author of a number of novels, including the Dougal and Lydmouth crime series; the psychological thrillers
Bleeding Heart Square
and
The Anatomy Of Ghosts
; the ground-breaking Roth Trilogy, which was adapted into the acclaimed drama
Fallen Angel
; and the historical crime novels
The Silent Boy
,
The Scent of Death
and
The American Boy
, a No. 1
Sunday Times
bestseller and a 2005 Richard & Judy Book Club choice.

He has won many awards, including the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger, an Edgar Scroll from the Mystery Writers of America, the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award (the only author to win it three times) and the CWA’s prestigious Diamond Dagger, awarded for sustained excellence in crime writing. He also writes for the
Spectator
.

He lives with his wife Caroline in the Forest of Dean.

@AndrewJRTaylor