Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall (31 page)

Eunice saw that one calamity on another was too much for her. She raised her up and took her back upstairs and led her into Clifford’s room where Betty had brought up a bowl of porridge.

“There, help to feed Grandfather before this goes cold.”

She was rewarded by seeing her grandmother pick up the spoon and put it to his mouth. I don’t believe he knows anything about the fire, she thought, and I hope Grandmother has the sense not to worry him.

She took herself up the next stair to her own little room at the back and drawing back the bed curtains she sat down with her father’s Bible. She was shaking more than ever now from her ordeal. She tried to focus on the fly-leaf of the Bible but the sight of the flaming house burying the woman reared between her and the page. She shut her eyes and prayed for it to leave her.

When she opened them she read, through tears, the words written in a careful boyish hand “William Horden, his book to be treasured all my life long.”

She began to turn the pages and read the notes he had written in the margins. The flaming picture was coming back. Desperately she felt for the pages and finding a marker sticking out further on she turned to it and opened it and saw, blinking her eyes again, that she was very near the end in the Book of Revelation. Her father had underlined some words and written in the margin in large letters ‘Very soon.’ The words were ‘The merchants that were made rich by her . . . stood afar off and cried out as they looked upon the smoke of her burning saying ‘What city is like the great city?’’

Eunice fell on her knees by the bed “Oh father, did you see this coming? Plague and then fire? You were indeed a prophet.” She prayed then that the fire would be stayed and that it would have a purifying effect on people’s hearts and lives, an end to corruption and all that a devotion to riches brought with it.

Rising, she knew for certain that she had been called here to be a comfort to her grandparents and she spent the rest of the day with a cheerful outward front, fulfilling every whim of Celia’s. She helped Betty carry several empty crates from the cellar and packed into them all the valuables Celia brought to her, wrapping her three prize Chinese vases in pieces of fine linen, padding the silver cutlery with old woollen rags so they wouldn’t rattle and give away their presence to handlers. She folded small rugs about the best mirrors and pictures.

“Let us not take anything out of Grandfather’s room,” she suggested, “in case he becomes anxious.”

Celia, apparently deriving much comfort from all this activity, demurred at this since there were two portraits of herself and Clifford on the walls and several of the very best silver candlesticks on the side table.

Eunice reassured her. “We will have plenty of time for them. If we keep a watch at the front gate we will know if the fire reaches the far end of The Strand so we will have due warning.”

She said this to reassure herself too. Having been so close to the conflagration and felt the force of the wind and the terror of the heat she could not quell a deep-down sense of panic just waiting to burst out.

Later in the day they heard from passers by the horrific news that the fire had after all engulfed St Paul’s. No amount of clearing around it had had any effect since burning embers had been blown onto the roof and set fire to timbers that had been used to replace holes in the lead. The huge building had burned from the top down and though the walls appeared to be standing the place was an incandescent mass, all the lead melted into St Faith’s below and the mortar burnt out between the stones.

Eunice who heard this from one of the servants felt sick to her stomach. She wanted to keep it from her grandmother but before nightfall Celia went on the terrace herself to look eastward. She couldn’t see the cathedral from there but the curve of the river showed her that fire was beginning to attack the buildings of the Temple close to the water’s edge.

“Eunice,” she cried coming in in a panic. “If it has come so far what about the cathedral?”

Eunice was obliged to tell her then that the fire had not only consumed St Paul’s but had leapt the Fleet River and attacked Ludgate Hill too.

“Then we are doomed indeed. My wretched son will be laughing in his grave.”

“Nay, Grandmamma, he may have foretold destruction but he was a compassionate man and wished no ill to any who repented before God.”

“Well I will not take my clothes off this night. I have not been enough of a praying woman and will spend the time on my knees by Clifford’s bed.”

“Will that not distress him?”

“I will draw the curtains around him. He calls out in the night sometimes and the nurse goes to him but I will do so myself tonight for it is very likely to be our last.”

But it was about eleven o’clock that night that the miracle happened. The wind dropped. Eunice went to her window and listened to the change. She looked down river to the Temple. Some buildings behind the Inner Temple were still burning, but as a static, containable bonfire. The wild flames hurrying westward were stilled. I think we are safe, she murmured to herself. Thank God.

She lay down on top of her bed and fell asleep.

In the morning she found her grandmother curled into a plump ball on the rug by her husband’s bed. The nurse had been in and covered her with a blanket.

That day there was an air of great relief in the house, but when Celia woke she would not authorise unpacking any of the goods that had been set aside yesterday. It was plain that buildings at the Temple were still burning and there were reports that a light southerly breeze had now arisen and would drive the fire towards Holborn. Several times loud explosions were heard which frightened them all.

Eunice, now the calmest among them, said she would go into the street and find out what had caused them. She found some people who had left their homes cautiously returning with their carts still laden. One man said he and his family had slept under the cart all night in the fields and had sent his son forward at daybreak who had found their house at the top of Fetter Lane unburnt.

“The Duke of York is there himself,” he told Eunice, “and he has sailors and dockworkers blowing up houses with gunpowder. That’s what you heard. But he has also rounded up everyone in sight to clear even more space to stop the fire. They say it is still raging in Cripplegate and will go right to the wall. We are going slowly till we know if he has spared our house from the general demolition.”

“Would you think The Strand is now safe?” Eunice asked him.

“If the Dutch and the French do not come up river and start all up again.” He seemed to be grinning when he said this so she took it lightly. Still there were rumours on every side that the great fire had been no accident. If it wasn’t foreigners responsible it was home-grown traitors.

Eunice went back inside and spoke cheerfully to her grandmother. But Celia was shaking with a new fear. “Your grandfather has guessed something terrible has been going on. I took away the silver candlesticks and he noticed and wanted to know why. I had to tell him that there had been a great fire and all the City was burnt down to the river. So he tried to sit up and babbled about his warehouses and of course they are gone. He became very agitated and now he has fallen back in a fit. I had to fetch the nurse. She says he has had another seizure and I should send for Doctor Rowe but what will have happened to him who can tell. He lived in Monkwell Street near the Barber Surgeons Hall.”

“I will go and see if his house has been spared and bring him if I can.” Eunice longed to be doing something useful.

“Oh, child, that is a long way and you could be in danger from fires breaking out again.”

But Eunice insisted and set off. She soon found she must bear north but she was not allowed up Fetter Lane where the fire had been stayed half way up it by demolition of a wide swathe of houses. All the burnt area was still full of smouldering fires and the ground was too hot to walk on. The pall of hot stinking air made it almost impossible to breathe. Picking her way among debris where workmen were beginning to clear passages through the exploded houses she was able to skirt the burnt ground and get out with much relief into Moorfields.

She was not surprised to find it full of refugees from the fire. Some had rigged up makeshift tents and shelters and there were men from the trained bands taking water and provisions around on the King’s orders she was told. Venturing back in through the walls further along she saw that the Barber Surgeons Hall was still standing though with black scorch marks up its walls. It seemed the fire had been stayed here too. She asked a gentleman inspecting the premises if he knew aught of Doctor Rowe.

“His house was one that was pulled down before the fire. He went off with some of his goods and I have no notion where he has gone.”

“Are you a physician, sir?”

He acknowledged it with a little bow.

“Could you come to my grandfather? He has been ill for a long time after a seizure and can scarcely speak nor move but hearing that his warehouses had all been destroyed he has had another – so the hired nurse says who has been helping my grandmother look after him and –”

The gentleman interrupted her. “If he has had another fit that will be fatal. I am needed to treat the hundreds injured in the fire. Go back and you will find your grandfather dead.”

Eunice could scarcely credit the callous way he said this. She made no reply but turned and began the long walk back. Now that she was sure how to go she looked about before passing through the gates again and surveyed the desolation of the whole burnt area. It was astonishing to see right down to the river over the blackened ground with its stumps of church towers. Down there on the waterfront warehouses that must have held barrels of oil and other combustibles were still burning fiercely. Were any of those grandfather’s? She didn’t know. How could she tell one street from another now? Where was the old alley she had only just escaped from yesterday? What would the Fletchers do? Where would they set up a business that young Tom could work at the rest of his life? Gazing over the wreck of so many futures it seemed to her that the world had come to a full stop. The heart of London had been ripped out and how could it ever revive?

The thought reminded her of her grandfather and spurred her into motion again. It was a tedious way and she was tired but she walked quickly once outside the wall again and returned through Holborn which seemed largely to have escaped because of the open spaces created.

She found her grandmother arguing on the doorstep with a stout woman in blue serge gown and a very grubby white cap who she supposed must be the nurse she had not yet encountered.

“No I will not lay him out till I am paid and if I don’t get what I’m owed I’ll fetch the nearest constable.” The woman’s voice was slurred and she was supporting herself with a hand on the doorpost but her tone was determined.

Celia saw Eunice and cried out, “He is gone. Not ten minutes after you left. I would have sent Robert after you but I had no notion which way you would go if you could find the place at all. And now what can I do here? There is no more money in the house.”

Eunice came up to them and looked at the nurse with her gentlest smile. “Surely you can see this is not the time to be making such a disturbance?”

“You pay me then.”

“How much do you say you are owed?”

“Two pounds for the weeks I have been here. It should be more for the heavy work it was.”

Celia clasped her hands in horror. “She has been well fed, has slept hours of the day and been in liquor most of the time. Our food and our liquor.”

Eunice laid her hand on her grandmother’s arm. “If she will wait here I will see what I have left after my fare from Woolwich.”

She ran upstairs and took her purse from the drawer of the bedside cabinet. There were three shillings in it and a few pence.

Coming down again she found the nurse in the same belligerent posture, chin jutted out at Celia who looked ready to drop.

Eunice handed over the money. “That is all I have and I worked very hard for it. Now pray leave us in peace.”

The woman took it into her grubby hand, saw how much there was and spat on the ground. “I’ll be back for the rest.” She lurched away, the leather bag she carried bouncing on her large hips.

“What was in the bag I wonder,” Celia said as she closed the front door. “It looks fatter than when she came.”

Eunice put her arms round her. “Sit down a moment, Grandmamma. She is gone and you are well rid of her. Let me fetch you a glass of wine.”

“What am I to do? I am a widow. You won’t leave me now, will you, child?”

“Of course I won’t.”

“Oh promise me, promise me faithfully. I am so alone. I have never in my life been so alone.”

“I do promise. Before God, I promise. He sent me to you for this very thing.”

Celia was still all of a quiver so Eunice fetched her the wine. She was loath to encourage her to find solace in that after all her father had taught her about the evils of drink but it brought a temporary revival. Her grandmother got up and turned to her and took her hands.

“That’s better, dear girl. I shall not grieve for him. The life he was leading was no life at all. The day I lost him was when he had his first seizure. He could not bear the helplessness nor I to see him like that. Is the horrible fire out now?”