Petals in the Ashes (17 page)

Here he breathlessly pointed towards St Paul's, shaking his head the while, and sitting up on the cart I could see flames rising at the edge of the great roof, and from this point catching all over and darting in every direction, different colours according to the material they burned: red, orange, yellow, white and gold, each stretching up to the dense fire-storm cloud above. Within just a few moments large parts of the roof, stone and burning timber, fell inwards and the whole cathedral became a roaring cauldron of fire.

Speechlessly we watched as this maelstrom of fury began to melt the lead roof of the cathedral, which then began to flow in silvery streams, sparkling and flashing, making everything it touched erupt in darting pinnacles of flame. Suddenly, like pistol shots, the great windows began to shatter and flames burst through. At this point the heat and brightness of the great fire became so intense that, although we were a good distance off, we had to move or our skin would have blistered.

Both exhausted, we stopped at last in a thoroughfare where the heat from the fire could not touch us, and I knew that my saviour was indeed Bill, Lord Cartmel's bootboy. Realising this, I somehow mustered the strength to fling my arms around him and sob out my thanks for saving me, for I knew that I would not
have had the courage to run through that ring of flames and save myself.

‘But what are you
doing
here?' I asked when I had left off my speeches of gratitude.

‘Making a pretty penny!' he said. ‘I'm a beast of burden with a cart for hire and I've been charging the gentry two pounds a load to take their furniture and treasures away to safety out of the City.' His smutty face grinned at me. ‘I've made myself a fair fortune in the last two days!'

‘But where is your master?'

‘Oh, he high-tailed it to Dorchester at the first sign of danger, leaving me and two footmen to clear his house.' He rubbed his hands. ‘I tell you, Mistress, I'm a made man! I've earned enough money in this last two days to marry and live in luxury for the rest of my life!'

He winked at me and I knew where his thoughts were heading and sought to distract him. ‘Bill,' I pleaded, ‘could I ask you for one more thing – to help me find my sister? I told her I'd meet her by the wall in Moore Fields but don't know how to get there.'

‘Oh, that's easy!' he boasted. ‘The route out of the City is drawn in my head, for I've now done it fifty times or more. But we'll not go through Moorgate but by way of Aldgate in the east.'

And so we set off across the City at a steadier pace – with me riding on the cart like a pig going to market, for he would not let me walk – and only stopped once more: when there was, of a sudden, a tremendous noise from the west and a moment later the whole of the City was lit up with a glow as bright as the noonday sun.

‘'Tis the crypt below St Paul's,' Bill said grimly. ‘The booksellers have packed it full of their precious papers and books and now the fire has reached down there and 'tis all exploded into flame.'

After surveying the roaring and flickering city scene before us – the great heaps of rubble, the piles of ash, the charred stone and, nearby, some vast oak church beams glowing red like coals – we commenced our journey to Moore Fields, for I think Bill was anxious to install me in a place of safety so that he could carry on making his fortune.

‘Going to the fire, I find, by the blowing up of houses and the great help given by the workmen out of the King's yards, there is a good stop given to it …'

When I opened my eyes in Moore Fields the following morning, it was to find Anne sitting close at my side looking down at me anxiously.

‘You've been asleep for hours!' she said. ‘You were curled up like a cat and I didn't like to wake you.'

I looked up at her blankly, as for some moments I could not recall where I was or how I came to be there.

‘And if you
are
a cat, then you're a very dirty one!' Anne went on. ‘Your gown is filthy, your hair is singed and matted. You look like a sweep and stink worse than a glue-maker!'

I sat bolt-upright and looked around, suddenly remembering where I was – in that hummocky, shrubby place where the laundresses of the City took their sheets and hung them on the bushes to dry. There were no sheets there now, however, for their
place had been taken by hundreds – nay, thousands – of people sitting, lying or standing, together with their furniture, bundles, baskets, books and animals, and all so cramped that there was scarcely a space between them.

‘However did you find me?' I asked Anne in astonishment.

She smiled. ‘'T'was easy!' she said. ‘I fell in with the McGibbons family last night, and at first light this morning I told their six children what you were wearing – although I did not know your gown would have changed
quite
so much – and said that I would give a paper cone of sweetmeats to the one who found you.'

I looked around for the McGibbons, who owned a small pie shop a few doors away from us in Crown and King Place, but for the moment could not see them amid the crush.

‘The children took off at first light and by searching diligently along the walls, found you within a half hour!' Anne shook her head ruefully. ‘I don't know when I'll be able to pay them the sweetmeats, though …'

I gasped. ‘Has the fire then reached our shop?'

She nodded solemnly. ‘Mistress McGibbon told me that it reached Crown and King Place late last afternoon. There was a trained band of men there and they pulled down the houses behind ours with grappling irons to try and save our row, but the flames leaped across the gap and …' She stopped, seeing my eyes brim with tears, and after a moment went on, ‘No lives lost, though, Hannah. And look!' She lifted a corner of her skirt and there was Kitty, fast asleep on the grass with a ribbon around her neck, the end of
which was tied around Anne's wrist.

I smiled, but it was only a very small smile. We had lost everything – everything except Kitty and the clothes we stood up in – and even
those
were ruined and torn. My hand once again flew to my neck and my smile lightened a little, for I still wore my precious locket – moreover, I knew my pocket was still tied under my skirts, for I could feel the little swell of money resting on my hip.

‘But our little shop, though!' I said, picturing its pretty sign, its wooden shutters and limewashed interior. ‘Our shop all gone to ashes … What will Sarah say? She left me in charge of it.'

‘Hannah!' Anne exclaimed. ‘She won't say a thing. She'll just be happy that both of us are safe. And how could you have preserved
our
little shop when the greatest buildings in the city have caught fire?'

I sighed and nodded. ‘I saw St Paul's alight,' I said. ‘What a sight it was, Anne – a great box of fire lighting up the sky and turning it into day. 'T'was hot enough nearby to cook a thousand turkeys.'

‘They say that all the big buildings have gone, and thousands of smaller houses besides. The prisons, too – and poor mad people left to burn in their chains!'

I turned away with a shudder. ‘Don't!'

‘But tell me how you came to be here,' Anne said, ‘for I stayed close to the wall as you told me, and watched and watched people coming through the gate until it was grew dark – although it didn't really grow dark because of all the flames – but I never saw you come in.'

‘I'll tell you soon, but I have not the heart to talk yet,' I said. ‘And I'm fair famished! Is there anything
to eat anywhere?'

‘There's some ship's biscuit,' Anne said, ‘though it's nasty and salty and hard. But there are folk coming in from the country today with fruit and beer and milk to sell, and the king has promised that no one will go hungry.'

‘Really? How could he promise that?' I asked, looking across the field where, as far as the eye could see, people were crowded into makeshift camps. ‘There must be people holed up in every single safe place outside the City. How will he feed them all?'

Anne shrugged. ‘I don't know.
He's
the king, not me.'

We sat there for a very long time, for I felt weary and befuddled – and besides, there was nowhere to go. Occasionally news would come to us of what was now burning, what had been burned down or of where the fire had been stopped. Smoke blew across the walls, eddied around and hung over us, and smuts and burning brands swirled and dropped all around. On the other side of the walls we could hear the fire roaring and the wind blowing, and booming and cracking from different directions where they were blowing up houses with gunpowder, followed by the tumbling crash of falling stone.

By the afternoon of that day, however, which was Wednesday, the news came to us that the wind was blowing itself out. Later still, we heard that the fires in most directions had been extinguished, while those that still burned were thought to be under control.

This information ran around the whole of Moore Fields until it reached every far corner, but there was
very little delight or joy shown, for we were all dreadful tired, hungry and disorientated and, as most had already lost their homes and possessions, it meant little. We took in the news and were pleased about it, but could display no emotion. The only time any feeling was shown was when some citizen or other, hearing a rumour, would try and rouse others, calling, ‘To arms! To arms!' and giving out that a Frenchman had started the fire, or a Dutchman, or any foreigner at all. During the day we heard many such tales, and also that a man seen throwing fire balls into a shop had been torn limb from limb by the crowd, and that a woman who had predicted the fire had been killed for a witch, but I did not know whether these things were true.

‘What will we do?' Anne asked me frequently during the day. ‘What will become of us?'

Each time she asked I shook my head, for I just did not know. I felt, too, that I was not qualified, nor hardly old enough, to have to deal with such questions, and wished desperately that Sarah were with us so that I would not have to be the one to make any decisions.

Anne looked dishevelled but was not too far off from her normal self; though she kept looking at me and smiling with some amusement at
my
appearance. Seeing this, I asked leave to borrow a looking-glass from a family we were alongside, and had the shock of seeing what I had become.

‘I'm a scabby, sooty, dirty beggar!' I said, holding the glass this way and that and looking at my reflection in shock.

‘Indeed you are,' Anne said. ‘I don't think even your
sweetheart would recognise you.'

‘Have you anything – a cloth or a kerchief I could wipe myself with?' I asked.

She shook her head. ‘Nor a comb to de-tangle your hair, or soap to clean you or any flower water to hide the smell of soot on you.' As I uttered a sigh of protest, she added, ‘But everyone looks the same, Hannah. You won't be noticed.'

The mention of Tom had spurred me into action and at length, not finding any other cloth, I tore a strip from my undersmock and, walking around the perimeter of the field, wetted this material in a stream. On instruction from Anne on where the worst dirt was, I then began to clean myself as best I could. The singed eyebrows I could do nothing about, nor the bruise on my cheek, nor my hair which, to my despair, had tangled into a vast red cloud, but I managed to get all the smuts from my face and felt the better for it – even if I did not actually look much better.

By and by, people were seen coming round with trays of food from the naval storehouse, and everyone fell to cheering, but these trays proved only to contain more of the hard ship's biscuit which no one liked. Anne and I took some, however, and after eating a little ourselves, pounded up the rest for Kitty and she was glad enough to have it. Others in the Fields fed their dogs with it, and the McGibbons family – who had thought to bring along three chickens from their backyard – fed the biscuit to them and hoped thus to ensure a couple of fresh eggs each day for their children.

We heard later that day that the king had ordered the magistrates and lieutenants of the surrounding counties to ensure that all the food that could be
spared, especially bread, should be sent immediately to London, and that temporary markets were to be set up for this just beyond the burned areas at Smithfield, Bishopsgate and Tower Hill. As well as this, any City bakers who had not been gutted by fire were ordered to bake bread around the clock, and extra grain was to be made available for this purpose. These loaves were later brought into Moore Fields, and we managed to obtain some small beer and also milk, and in this way kept ourselves going. I thought often of the sweetmeats and comfits that we had left behind in the shop, and wished that I had thought to put some of them in my pocket. Other shopkeepers, though, had left behind far more costly things: bales of silken fabrics bought ready for the Michaelmas fairs, rare books, boxes of scented gloves from Persia, gold coins (which we heard had melted and fused together in the heat) or silver plates destined for the same fate – so we counted ourselves lucky to have left behind only frosted rose petals and sugared plums.

By that evening we were assured that, although fires still burned in some cellars and warehouses, these would not now spread further. We were urged to stay on the Fields, however, until it was quite safe to move. This suited me very well, for I felt mighty fatigued still and could not have dealt with moving. I just wanted to sit where I was on the grass and feel safe, and not think about what was going to happen next.

As night came, it was the strangest thing to go to sleep (or try to sleep) amongst such a vast company and in such strange circumstances. As far as the eye could see, people were now packed head to tail across the grass, sitting or lying down, squeezed into corners
with whatever stuff they had managed to bring with them: a bundle of clothes, say, or a chair or wash stand, a cloth containing food, the household pig or some small treasure. A few had also managed to bring a candle or taper along, so that, as darkness fell across the field, a number of flickering lights appeared, and these reflected off people's faces and lit up the field into a huge and peculiar landscape the like of which can hardly be imagined.