‘He knows you,’ Sam went on.
‘Do I?’ Of course I gave the sweeper a penny occasionally. If you used a crossing regularly, you would be a fool not to. But I could not for the life of me remember what the man looked like.
‘His name’s Bartholomew,’ Sam said. ‘Like the prophet. Barty.’
I was not attending to what he was saying. I was trying to attract the attention of the waiter and order more wine.
‘He’s the one who brought your father home. The day before he died.’
I forgot the waiter and looked at Sam. ‘Yes – I remember. Margaret told me. I should give him something for his trouble.’
Sam touched the side of his head with his forefinger. ‘Barty said he didn’t know the old man’s wits were wandering. Not at first. I mean, seeing him from the outside, who would? He didn’t look as if he had an addled brain.’
It was a fair point. Nathaniel Marwood had looked what he was – an old man in his sixties, but hale enough. It was only if you tried to talk to him, and you heard the nonsense that poured out of his mouth, making little more sense than the babble of an infant, that you realized his infirmity.
‘There’s an archway up beyond the church, sir. Barty said that was the way your father came.’
‘An archway?’ I thought he meant the great gateway that divided the City from Westminster, and Fleet Street from the Strand. ‘You mean he came through Temple Bar?’
‘No, no. This archway’s off the street. To the north, by St Dunstan-in-the-West.’ Sam leaned forward. ‘It’s the way into one of these lawyers’ colleges. Clifford’s Inn.’
Suddenly my father’s words were in my mind. The last words, nearly, that I had heard from him, and possibly the last words that contained some fragmentary elements of lucidity. ‘Where the lawyers are. Those creatures of the devil.’ He had hated and feared lawyers since they helped to put him in prison and take away his property.
‘Isn’t that where the Fire Court is sitting? Why would he go there?’
Sam shrugged.
Have you ever remarked how lawyers are like rooks? They cling together and go caw-caw-caw … And they go to hell when they die.
So there had been, after all, a single fragment of fact among my father’s ramblings, buried in all the nonsense about my mother. He had been to Clifford’s Inn, among the lawyers.
‘Did Barty say more?’
‘He was weeping,’ Sam said. ‘Barty told me that. So he walked him home, but he couldn’t make head nor sense of what your father was saying.’
I hammered my fist on the table. ‘Then I shall go to Clifford’s Inn and find out.’
The waiter mistook the gesture and was at my elbow in a trice. ‘Beg pardon, master, didn’t mean to keep you waiting. Another quart of sack, is it? You will have it directly.’
‘Yes,’ I said, frowning at him. ‘Very well, a drink before we go, to godspeed us and drink to my father’s memory.’ I glared at Sam. ‘He should not have been weeping. He should not have been unhappy.’
Sam stared at the table. ‘No, sir.’
‘And why in God’s name did he go to Clifford’s Inn? Did someone drag him there?’ All my guilt, all my sorrow, had at last found an outlet. ‘I shall have the truth of it, do you hear, and I shall have it now. Find me this Barty and I shall question him.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Sam said.
There was the waiter again, back already. Before I was an hour older, I was too drunk to have the truth of anything.
The day after the funeral I woke with a headache that cut my skull in two.
My mouth tasted as it had in the first few weeks after the Great Fire when everything had turned to ashes, from the air we breathed to the water we drank. Every breath and every mouthful was a reminder of what had happened. Every footstep raised a grey cloud that powdered our clothes and our hair. The destruction of a city and the death of an old man tasted the same: ashes to ashes.
It was early. I wrapped myself in my gown and went down to the kitchen, tottering like an old man myself: in fact just as my father used to do when his limbs were stiff after sleep. Death, I think, must have a sense of humour.
The kitchen was at the back of the house, a gloomy room partly lit by a leaded casement which looked over the graveyard. Margaret was already there. She had lit the fire and was busying herself with the preparations for dinner. She took one look at me, pointed at the bench by the table and went into the pantry.
The kitchen smelled of smoke and old meat. Now I was here, I wanted to leave, but I lacked the strength. In a moment Margaret returned with a jug of small beer and a pot to put it in. Without speaking, she poured a morning draught and handed it to me.
The first mouthful made me retch. I fought back the rising nausea and took a second mouthful. I kept that down and ventured cautiously on a third.
‘I put juice of the cabbage in there too,’ Margaret said. ‘A sovereign remedy.’
I retched again. She went back to stirring the pot over the fire, the source of another smell. I watched a rat skim along the bottom of the wall from the larder and slip through the crack below the back door. I lacked the energy to throw something at it.
Taking my time, I drank the rest of the pot and let it settle. I felt no worse for it. At least my mouth was less dry.
Margaret refilled the pot without my asking. Sam had a tendency to take too much drink, and she knew how to deal with it.
I closed my eyes. When I next opened them, Margaret was standing over me. She was a short, sturdy woman with black hair, dark eyes and a high colour. When hot or angry, she looked as if she might explode. She looked like that now but I wasn’t sure why. My memory of the later part of yesterday was blurred. Clearly, I had been very drunk. That probably meant that Sam had been very drunk too.
‘Master,’ she said. ‘Can I speak to you?’
‘Later,’ I said.
She ignored that. ‘Your father’s clothes, sir. I—’
‘Give them to the poor,’ I croaked. ‘Sell them. I don’t care a fig what you do with them.’
‘It’s not that, sir. I tried to clean his coat yesterday. The one he was wearing.’
I winced and looked away, reaching for the pot.
‘It’s a good coat,’ she said. ‘There’s a deal of use left in it.’
‘Then get rid of it somehow. Don’t bother me with it, woman.’
