‘Ten?’ How had he slept? He’d not got through the Moorgate until at least three of the morning, so jammed was its narrow entrance with those that had fled, and what they brought. And he’d not got far into Moorfields before he was overwhelmed by the sight – a sight lit like the middle of the day by the thousand fires that had become one. The area beyond the wall was jammed with refugees, and what little they’d saved. Thousands upon thousands beyond the count, cramming each space, trampling the greensward, heaped up on the paths, crouched under hedges. Animals, from pigs to cats, ran everywhere. He could not remember how he’d found a piece of earth to stand upon, let alone lie on. And then, looking down, he did. For the earth he knelt on was mounded, dry, and the little grass that had grown upon it was torn and scattered.
He was kneeling on a plague pit. Probably not much more than an arm’s push through the crumbly earth, hordes of his fellow Londoners lay dead. He could see white traces in the soil of the lime used to dissolve the flesh more quickly. And he remembered coming to the only piece of land near the gate that had not already been colonised. The earliest comers had feared to rest on their relatives. Those who followed had not been so particular; every space was swallowed up now. Besides, thought Coke, perhaps it was easier for me. I lay in a plague pit before, after all.
He shook his head hard and stood. How had he allowed himself to sleep when he’d come in search of Sarah? How had he given up on that? Then he remembered – for now, as during the night, hundreds of voices called for their missing ones. His voice had added to the chorus of the lost for just a while, until he was overwhelmed. Dickon had dropped down, curled up, too exhausted to move further. They had not slept two hours in their ride from Dover. They had not slept at all since reaching the devastated city the previous dawn. Ah, now he remembered. He’d thought he could lie down for a minute, ten perhaps, no more. And he’d woken five hours later.
‘Dickon? Wake! We must go. Dickon!’
He nudged him with his toe. The boy tried to curl up into himself for a moment, grumbling. Then he sat up. His eyes, taking in the scene, widened. ‘But – where?’
Where indeed? Coke looked north, over the rough camp Moorfields had become, the vast crowd roughly camped upon it. Again he heard the innumerable cries. ‘Water, for the love of God, water!’ ‘John? John Woodbury? Has any seen him? ‘Agnes?’ ‘Mary? My Mary?’ ‘Peter?’ The thought of Sarah there somewhere made him take a breath, to add his voice again. But he withheld it. It would do no good. And he realised that if Sarah was out here somewhere – or upon Finsbury Fields, or Smithfield, east or west, which rumour had told him were also filled – at least she was safe enough. But if she was not…
‘Listen, lad,’ he said, crouching down. ‘You carry on the search here. Keep calling.’
‘Me? Why?’ The boy sat up. ‘Where will you be to?’
Coke nodded towards the great arch of flame. ‘There.’
‘No, C-cap’n,’ Dickon replied, standing too, brushing earth off his clothes. ‘I come with you.’
‘I forbid it. The danger –’
‘We face it together.’ Dickon set his shoulders, looked his guardian straight in the eye. ‘I’ll not be left.’ Then a grin transformed his grimness. ‘Don’t worry, Cap’n,’ he laughed. ‘No monkey to chase in there!’
‘You rascal!’ Coke gave the boy’s head a gentle slap. ‘Come, then.’
It was but a short walk to Moorgate; still it took time to weave through the sprawling crowds. But the gate was mobbed on this side by carters trying to get in – Coke had overheard that the price for a cart and labourer had risen to forty pounds, a workman’s wages for a year – as well as the far bigger mob t’other side trying to get out. A harassed corporal and three men were trying to regulate the flow each way to universal abuse. They watched the masses trudge out for close on a quarter-hour. Old men and women were being carried on mattresses; children were borne on backs or shoulders. Disaster had reduced all classes to only one – the homeless – and mixed them entirely. Here an alderman in a beaver coat, a gold chain of office around his neck, walked next to a scabby, one-eyed beggar. There a lady in what must be her favourite, most expensive gown, her hair held in tortoiseshell combs, followed a large, flame-haired woman in the roughest of smocks. She pulled a crying daughter in one hand, held a sack in another and she also, Coke saw when she passed close, had a black-haired baby in a sling upon her back. The child slept, to Coke’s envy.
The sight brought him straight back to Sarah – Sarah, so near her time. Past it, perhaps. ‘Come,’ he said, turning away from the gate. ‘There must be a swifter way in.’
They found it, in the lane to the west that ran parallel to the wall. It was called the Postern and led to the small gate of the same name that gave entrance or exit to no more than two abreast. Because no cart could get through here it was less crowded. Coke pushed up to the soldier controlling the flow who looked his sailor garb up and down and said, ‘Off to seek your fortune, shipmate?’
‘A wife in there. In labour.’
‘Go on then. Good hunting.’ The soldier stepped forward, shoving a man back, so that Coke and Dickon could squeeze through – and halt off the road to the side.
But where to hunt, Coke wondered, as he stared at the wall of flame that stretched from east to west and seemed, even as he looked at it, to be advancing towards them. It could be but a few hundred yards off; less in some parts, perhaps. It must have breached Cheapside, the widest, richest avenue in the city. Its width would have given some hope that the fire would halt there, with nothing but cobbles to burn. But the monster had leapt the gap to burn on, seeking easy prey.
It was Dickon who pointed nearer to them. ‘Wassat?’
Coke looked. Perhaps two hundred paces away, one of the tallest structures in London stood like a castle in a blackened wasteland. He knew the Guildhall was the very centre of the city’s industry, the place where the guilds would meet, discuss and feast. He also knew that it was made of stone, while all around was wood. If there was a place that men might rally to fight it would be there. And, with a sudden lurch of his heart, he realised too that it lay almost directly north of the Poultry Compter. Between the prison and the sanctuary of Moorfields.
‘Swiftly now,’ he said, and he and Dickon began to run, their faces getting hotter with every step they took, wind-borne cinders catching in their hair and their clothes slapped away as they ran.
Most of the heat was coming from the place they sought. The Guildhall stood alone in a sea of burnt timbers, for every shop, tavern and chapel that had abutted it was gone. Now it looked like a fire army was sending its hordes to attack, flame sweeping across the paving stones and devouring the marketplace stalls, slapping in waves against the great stone base, crawling up its walls to melt stained glass and push in to devour the wood within.
But he’d been right. Men were making a stand here, a double line of them passing leathern buckets from a well that somehow had not run dry, the end man throwing water on the fire at the corner of the building. Beside them, brass syringes were being dipped in tubs, filled and squirted at the flames’ base, a gallon at a time gushing forth. Coke could see that they were having some success – at least in this small part. He could also see above their heads the fire pushing into the building at points where men did not fight.
Screams drew his eye. ‘There’s people trapped in here,’ cried a man, his body entirely black, stepping from the western entrance, pointing back and down. ‘The crypt is part caved in. Help! Oh, help!’
Though his scarcely healed skin hurt still, and flame tormented every dream since he’d nearly died on a fireship, Coke barely hesitated. He may not be able to save Sarah, but he could save someone. Then, in another part of the inferno of London, perhaps someone would save her.
He knew better than to order Dickon to remain. ‘Axes and rope!’ he cried, seizing both from the piles that lay about. With his ward at his heels, he joined a troop of men rushing towards the entr
ance. All shied at the flames lapping around the wooden doorframe. All took a deep breath and plunged in.
The great hall was ablaze in various parts for it was near all wood inside. Timbers fell from the hammer-beam roof, exploding in sparks upon the richly rugged floor, wool crisping and wafting acrid smoke into their faces. All coughed and choked, then Coke saw the man who’d summoned them in, standing at the top of a stone staircase, driving his axe into a wedge of fallen timber there. Coke and others rushed to join him, chopping in their turn. Beams were halved, ropes attached to the pieces and these dragged off. It looked that in moments the entrance would be cleared, the people screaming below freed.
‘They fall! Give back! Run!’
Coke looked up through the smoke. Two great statues tottered on flaming plinths, leaning further and further out over them. Gog and Magog, he knew them to be, guardians of the city – forsaking their watch now, plunging down. Grabbing Dickon by the collar, he ran back and threw himself down against a wall, arms over both of them. He heard the statues smash, heard cries of agony and looked up to see the twin monsters shoot sparks up to the dissolving roof. Other cries were still coming from the crypt and he staggered, near blind, through the smoke. Heedless now of the cinders that burned him, he saw that the statues had only narrowed the stair, not closed it off entirely.
‘A line here,’ he roared, slipping a length of rope around his chest, executing a swift hitch, grateful for his brief seaboard education. ‘Make it fast to a pillar,’ he said, throwing the one end to Dickon, who’d also learned about knots. ‘I’ll get all below to follow the rope,’ he said, and then, taking a huge breath, he stepped down into the smoke-filled chamber.
At first it was more sound than sight that guided him – coughing, pleading people whose outstretched hands he brushed, seized, clamped to the rope and sent staggering to the stair with a shove. Then some crash further into the crypt and a sudden rush of air blew much of the smoke away, flushing it out as if through a horizontal chimney. Suddenly he could see.
And he saw her.
For just a moment he wondered if the smoke had taken him, or falling timber crushed him – that he was dying and having a dream ere death, a wonderful dream if so – because there was no doubt that it was Sarah – Chalker that was, Coke as she had become – lying with her back against the crypt wall. Her face was wan, her auburn hair blackened with soot; she was wearing some ill-fitting and filthy smock and he had never before seen anyone, anything more beautiful.
The sight halted him, the pure shock of it. And as he stood there, gaping, the rope attached to him being jerked and tugged by those that fled, she looked up and saw him. Wonder and disbelief moved over her face, a mirror to his. And then he had thrown off his rope, leaving it to others behind him, and he was across, pulling her up into his arms, enfolding her in an embrace that dissolved into a kiss. Her lips tasted of soot and smoke and he didn’t think he’d ever tasted sweeter.
They broke apart, as more warning cries came. ‘How?’ she said – all she could say. ‘How?’
‘Later,’ he coughed, as smoke again enveloped them. ‘We must go.’
‘I –’ She sagged against him. ‘I can’t walk.’
He bent, caught her up and carried her out of the burning crypt, out of the burning building, into the light.
He thought they were the last to leave. Dickon was at his heels, uttering wondering, wordless cries. They kept going until they reached a patch of paving that did not smoke, a wall that somehow still stood. There he set her down and crouched before her, staring, unable to speak, just as she seemed able to do no more than stare at him.
Dickon, though, was never wordless for long. ‘We found you, Sarah,’ he cried, as he leapt around them both, ‘we d-did, we did.’ He let forth a huge yelp of joy, jumped, landed, then looked at her. ‘Have you any nuts for me?’ he asked, quite solemnly.
Sarah laughed. She could not help it and she could not remember when last she had. ‘Marry, but I do,’ she said, and reached into the pocket of her smock. With a cry of joy, Dickon ripped open the little cloth bag and began immediately to crunch the hazelnuts within.
With his silence they both found some words.
‘How –?’
‘Where –?’
Coke reached out, seizing her hand. ‘The baby,’ he said, looking at her distended belly beneath her smock.
She laid her hand upon it. ‘Gone. This is just –’
‘Oh.’ His face sagged. ‘Oh, my love, I am so sorry.’
‘No, no!’ She clasped his hand to her. ‘He lives. I gave birth yesterday, in the Compter.’
‘He?’
‘Aye, William. You have a son.’
‘Truly?’ His smile gleamed a brief white in the black of his face, then vanished. ‘But where –?’
She squeezed his hand and tried to rise. ‘We must seek him. A friend carried him away when I could not follow.’ She fell back. ‘Ay! Give me but a moment. We will go together.’
‘Where to?’
‘Moorfields.’
He thought back to the crowds, the endless crying of names. ‘It would be a miracle to find him there.’
‘ ’Twas a miracle you found me.’ She tried to rise again and fell back. ‘Jesu, mercy!’
‘I do not think we could wish for two such miracles in a day,’ he said.
‘But we must try. We must!’ With a huge breath she rose, and got onto her knees. ‘There. Let us go!’
She tried to stand and he helped her. But when she wobbled there, he said, ‘Sarah, hearken to me. Moorfields is a mob of lost souls twenty thousand strong. More –’
‘But still –’
‘Did you arrange any rendezvous there?’
‘No. Yes! Not there. At the playhouse. Jenny is to bring the babe there if –’ she swallowed, ‘if I did not find her before.’
‘Then it is to the playhouse that we shall go.’ He overrode her protests. ‘Sarah, my love, you can barely walk. Besides, Moorfields will not yield our child, you have to believe me. And rendezvous must – must, in these times – be kept.’ He put a finger to her lips to halt her argument. ‘Do you trust this woman who you gave the babe to?’
‘I do. Entirely. We have been through…much together.’
There was something in the way she said it, the way she looked away. Her ragged smock. Some lines of grey in her hair. ‘Oh Sarah, I am so sorry,’ he said.
‘For what?’
‘For…everything.’ He sighed. ‘I should have –’ He broke off.
She took his hand again. ‘You were cozened, William. Our enemies sought vengeance upon you. Upon both of us.’
‘And I vow I will have mine on them,’ he said. ‘As I vow I will make it up to you.’
‘I will hold you to that.’ She smiled. ‘Beginning with the wedding night you owe me.’ She gripped him tighter. ‘Now, come. Help me. I do not think we can stay here.’
Behind them, the Guildhall was aglow, flames shooting from its every aperture and through its roof, the building lit from within, for its walls still stood. And men were still at it, in lines with buckets, and squirting syringes.
He helped her, but the going was slow. Yet they’d not gone more than twenty paces before Dickon gave a cry and skipped away through the smouldering ashes of what had been the yard of a church – and returned rolling a two-wheeled cart. ‘Look!’ he cried, turning the vehicle on one rim, spinning the other wheel. ‘Will it do, Cap’n?’
‘Bravo, lad. It will do very well.’ He looked at Sarah in his arms. ‘Your coach, milady.’
They returned the way they’d come. Arms of fire stretched out either side of them and would, ere long, link up to enfold what remained. But for a short time there was passage through them, back to the postern. The crowd had thinned, and the soldier soon greeted them with a delighted ‘Found her then?’ With his help, they put the cart on its side and squeezed it through.
London beyond the wall was as yet unburned, though the smoke was
still thick and all could see that huge approaching arc of fire and hear the roar of its destroying power. Forewarned, constables of the parishes they passed through were mustered with equipment, and there were many cries of ‘Hi! Hi! Hi!’ with men dashing past to attend a roof that a blown spark had reached. They walked in near silence, as if both understood that there was too much to say and that now was not the time to say it. Dickon, though, was as unrestrained as ever and from his chirpings that alighted on various things like a butterfly upon a bed of mixed flowers Sarah was able to gain at least some of their tale.
‘Oh, Captain!’ was all she said, when the talk passed on to fireships, and the role of monkeys upon them.
Though the streets were busy, there was not the same crowd of refugees that had gone straight north. In an hour’s push, they arrived at the Duke’s Playhouse.
‘Mrs Chalker!’ cried Thomas Betterton when he saw her, then struck his forehead. ‘Ah! I apologise, sir. Mrs Coke. I should know that, since I gave away the bride. Delighted to see you both, uh, well.’
He was studying the arrivals, all three of them blackened head to toe with soot, his nose wrinkling. ‘You have obviously emerged from the inferno. Praise the heavens for your deliverance. What’s the news? I hear the king and our patron the duke are in the forefront of the fray –’
‘News can wait, Tom,’ said his wife Mary, elbowing him aside to reach Sarah. ‘My dear, come,’ she continued, taking Sarah’s arm. ‘We’ve water to wash with, and ale to drink. Food, too. You must be parched, and starved, all of you.’
‘Oh indeed. We’ve opened the playhouse doors to so many old actors.’ It was not his best delivered line, if Betterton intended to keep his disdain from it, continuing, ‘We’ve quite the mob of ’em in the dressing rooms. Pray, join them.’
It was indeed a scene more like a party than a funeral, with many sat about, some as soot-ridden as the newcomers. Sarah was immediately swept up, cleaned up, her smock exchanged for one of her old costumes. Coke and Dickon were offered new clothes too, though he declined for both of them, taking only a pair of better boots apiece, and contented himself with sponging down what he had. He was not concerned about going back into the city wet. It was a furnace and he would be dry, and dirty again, in minutes.