I stared at St Paul’s. It was still standing, but the roof had gone, and both walls and tower had a jagged, shimmering quality, like outlines seen under flowing water. Columns of smoke rose from still-burning fires within the blackened shell. It wasn’t a church any more. It was more like a giant coal in an oven.
It was impossible that the boy–girl could be within twenty yards of it or more. No living creature could survive that heat.
‘Whitehall,’ I said.
THE PALACE OF Whitehall sprawled along the river to the south of Charing Cross. It was a warren of buildings, old and new, covering more than twenty acres. It had a population larger than that of most villages.
There was no panic here, but there were signs of unusual activity. In the Great Court, workmen were loading wagons with goods, which would be removed to the safety of Windsor if the Fire spread further west.
I enquired after my patron, and learned that he was in his private office in Scotland Yard, an adjacent complex of buildings which lay on the northern side of the palace. Master Williamson also worked in far grander lodgings overlooking the Privy Garden; but when his business was shabby and private he walked across to Scotland Yard and conducted it in the appropriate surroundings.
Williamson was engaged, so I was forced to kick my heels in the outer office used by clerks and messengers. One of the clerks was making a fair copy of a report on the Fire for the London Gazette. Among his other responsibilities, Williamson edited the newspaper and ensured that its contents were as agreeable as possible to the government.
He himself ushered out his visitor, a portly, middle-aged gentleman with a wart on the left-hand side of his chin. The stranger’s eyes lingered on me for a moment as he passed by.
Williamson, still wreathed in smiles, beckoned me. ‘At last,’ he said, the good humour dropping like a falling curtain from his face. ‘Why didn’t you wait on me yesterday evening?’
‘I’m sorry, sir. The Fire delayed me and—’
‘Nevertheless, you should have come. And why the devil are you so late this morning?’
Williamson’s Cumbrian accent had become more pronounced. Though he had lived in the south, and among gentlemen in the main, for nearly twenty years, his native vowels broadened when he was irritated or under pressure.
‘The refugees blocked the road, sir.’
‘Then you should have started earlier. I needed you here.’ He waved at the clerk who was working on the report for the Gazette. ‘That idiot cannot write a fair hand.’
‘Your pardon, sir.’
‘You’ve not been in my employ for long, Marwood,’ he went on. ‘Don’t keep me waiting again, or you will find that I shall contrive to manage without you.’
I bowed and kept silent. Without Williamson’s patronage I would have nothing. And my father would have worse than nothing. Williamson was under-secretary to Lord Arlington, the Secretary of State for the South, and his influence spread throughout the government and far beyond. As for me, I was the least important of Williamson’s clerks, little more than his errand boy.
‘Come in here.’
He led the way into his private office. He said nothing more until I had shut the door.
‘Did you go to St Paul’s last night as I commanded?’
‘Yes, sir. I was there when the crypt went up. The cathedral was beyond rescue within an hour, even if they could have got water to it. The heat was terrible. By the time I left, molten lead was trickling down Ludgate Hill.’
‘Was anyone inside?’
I thought of the boy–girl running towards the building when the Fire was at its hottest. I said, ‘Not as far as I know, sir. Even the rats were running away.’
‘And what were the people in the crowd saying?’
‘About the cause of the Fire?’
‘In particular about the destruction of the cathedral. They say it has angered the King as much as anything these last few days, even the damned Dutch.’
I swallowed. ‘They attribute it to one of two things, sometimes both. The—’
‘Don’t talk in riddles.’
‘I mean, sir, that they say the two causes may be linked. For some say God is showing his displeasure at the wickedness of the court’ – better not to blame our profligate and Papist-leaning King in person, for walls had ears, especially in Whitehall – ‘while others attribute the Fire to the malignancy of our enemies. To the Pope or the French or the Dutch.’
‘It won’t do,’ Williamson said sharply. ‘Do you hear me? The King says it was an accident, pure and simple. The hot, dry summer. The buildings huddled together and dry as kindling. The east wind. An unlucky spark.’
I said nothing, though I thought the King was probably right.
‘Any other explanation must be discouraged.’
The King’s ministers, I thought, were between a rock and a hard place. Either they had merited God’s displeasure through their wickedness or they were so ineffectual that they could not prevent the country’s enemies from striking such a mortal blow at the heart of the kingdom. Either way, the people would blame the Fire on them and on the King and his court. Either way, the panic and disaffection would spread. Better to change the subject.
‘Master Maycock, sir, the printer,’ I said. ‘I saw him yesterday evening at St Paul’s. He was like a man possessed – he had his goods stored in the crypt, and they went up with the rest in the Fire.’
Williamson almost smiled. ‘How very distressing.’
There were only two licensed newspapers in the country, for the government permitted no others. Maycock was responsible for printing Current Intelligence, which was the upstart rival to the London Gazette, the newspaper that Master Williamson ran.
‘If only Maycock had done as Newcomb did, and moved his goods out of the City,’ Williamson said with a touch of smugness. Newcomb was Williamson’s printer.
‘Newcomb’s lost his house, though,’ I said. ‘It was by Baynard’s Castle, and that’s gone.’
‘I know,’ Williamson said in his flat, hard voice. ‘I already have it in hand. I have in mind some premises in the Savoy for him, if all goes well. If God wills it, the next Gazette will be Monday’s. We shall lose an issue but at least that means we shall not be able to publish the City’s Bill of Mortality this week. People will understand that – there’s more important work to do than waste time compiling lists of figures. Besides, I’m told that the death count has been remarkably low. God be thanked.’
I understood Williamson perfectly, or rather I understood what he did not say. There might well have been dozens of deaths, perhaps
