The Ashes of London (15 page)

Williamson marched to the door, looking at me as he passed with a flicker of malice on his face. ‘Perhaps they’ll talk to you when they hear your name. Or the widow will, if it’s the man we want.’

I opened the door and stood aside. So that was why the name of Jeremiah Sneyd had been familiar to me, and to my father. I would wager good money that he and my father had attended the same meetings.

‘You can pray together,’ Williamson said.

Cursitor Street was a narrow thoroughfare east of Chancery Lane. I asked after the Sneyds at a chop-house on the north side, but drew a blank. This did not surprise me, for I guessed that they were not the sort of people who had the money or inclination to frequent such places. I tried a butcher nearby with no more luck, and then a cookhouse, with the same result.

Then I remembered the four pins in the dead man’s coat. I went into a tailor’s shop and asked if he knew a man named Sneyd.

‘Sneyd?’ cried the tailor, who was cross-legged by the window, sewing a waistcoat. ‘Of course I do. But where is he? Faith, he could hardly have chosen a worse time to stay away.’

‘He works here, sir?’

‘He does piecework. Nothing too fine or delicate. His eyes aren’t up to it.’ While he was speaking, the tailor continued to drive his needle in and out of the fabric. ‘But he’s usually reliable, if nothing else.’

‘You were expecting him today?’

‘Yesterday. I sent word to his lodging, saying I had something for him. But I’ve heard nothing.’

‘Where does he lodge?’

‘Ramikin Row, off Took’s Court. The third turning on the left, past the pump. It’s the house by the sign of the three stars.’ The needle paused for a moment. ‘If you find him, tell him that he needn’t bother coming back.’

The house had seen better days. It tottered over the street, each of its storeys jettied out a little further than the one below. There was a shop selling rags on the ground floor. I asked there, and the shopman sent me up the rickety stairs to the top floor.

‘Mind how you go, master,’ he called after me. ‘Sneyd’s as sour as vinegar these days.’

I was glad to be out of the rain. The house was let out by the room, and many faces peered at me on my way up. I knocked on the door of the attic at the back and a woman opened it almost at once, though only by a few inches.

‘Mistress Sneyd?’

‘Who’s asking?’

She was probably in her forties but she looked older. She was toothless and her face had fallen in. The skin around her eyes was red and swollen. She was respectably dressed in a plain black gown of serge, though the material had faded with age.

‘My name’s Marwood,’ I said.

There was a spark of recognition in her face.

‘My father is Nathaniel Marwood.’

‘The printer? But I thought—’

‘That he was in prison? No, mistress. They let him out six months ago.’

‘I’m glad. But why are you here?’

‘I am looking for Master Jeremiah Sneyd.’

‘He’s not here.’ She began to close the door. ‘Anyway, he does not concern himself with such things as he did before, he—’

I planted my foot between the door and jamb. ‘Forgive me, mistress. I mean no harm to you.’

The pressure on my foot relaxed. The door swung back into the room.

‘What does it matter?’ she said, her eyes filling with tears. ‘What does anything matter? You might as well come in.’

The room was furnished only with a truckle bed, a small table by the window, and two stools. The floor was bare and swept clean.

Her lip were trembling. ‘Truly the ways of the Lord are mysterious.’

‘What’s wrong, mistress?’

She twisted her hands together as if washing them in invisible water. ‘Nothing. This miserable life.’

She fell silent. For a moment neither of us spoke. I knew that Williamson wanted me to keep her in ignorance of her husband’s fate and suck her dry of whatever she knew. I couldn’t do it.

I took a deep breath. ‘Mistress Sneyd, is your husband a small man, without much fat on him, and with long grey hair and a large mouth?’

She nodded, her eyes widening.

‘And he has a row of pins in his coat, and he carries a Bible in his pocket with his name inside it?’

‘Something’s happened to him.’ She took my arm and shook it, as if she would shake the truth out of me. ‘He’s dead. Oh merciful God, he’s dead, isn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

‘He was found in the Fleet Ditch by one of the patrols.’

It seemed wiser not to mention the stab wound, not at this point, or the bound thumbs, but to allow her to assume that her husband had drowned. I expected the poor woman to throw her apron over her head and wail. Or to fling herself onto her knees and pray to her God. Or even hit me. Instead, she turned slowly away and sank down on one of the stools by the table. She stared out of the window. After a moment she began to polish one of the lattices with her fingertip.

I sat opposite her. ‘I’m sorry. You must have been worried when he didn’t come home.’

She sniffed but gave no other sign she had heard. I couldn’t see her face. The finger went round and round, squeaking slightly on the glass.

‘This is the second day he’s been gone, isn’t it? When did he go out? Wednesday evening?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘If only he’d listened to me, he’d still be alive. He should have kept away from old comrades. Like your father.’

‘Which comrades?’ I said. ‘One in particular? Someone he’d served with? A soldier?’

She looked at me now, and her hand dropped away from the window. ‘Someone from the old days. One who believed in God as he did.’

‘A Fifth Monarchist,’ I said softly.

She nodded.

‘And who was this comrade, mistress?’

‘He wouldn’t tell me. He said he’d been sworn to secrecy, and that it was better that I should not know. Me! The wife of his bosom.’ She gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘As if he could not trust me.’

The woman was so distressed that she hardly knew what she was saying. I asked her more questions. Answers spilled out of her, though not in the order of my asking, and sometimes the answers were to questions I had not asked at all.

Gradually I pieced together a story. The unknown comrade had sent a message near the end of August, asking her husband to meet him one evening. Master Sneyd had returned from the meeting, full of mysterious excitement, but he would tell his wife nothing of what had transpired. There had been other meetings, she thought, and her husband had seemed happier in himself than she had seen him for a long time.

‘Not since Oliver seized power. Fifteen years or more. God forgive me, I rejoiced to see him so cheerful.’

I understood the timing of that all too well, for as a child I had seen a similar pattern in my father. After the execution of the King, the Fifth Monarchists had nursed high hopes that theirs would be the dominant voice in government, and that they would make England a godly country, fit for Christ’s return. But Oliver Cromwell had had a different idea of God and other plans for England. He had swiftly destroyed their hopes and consolidated his own power.

‘This man, this comrade,’ I said. ‘Do you—’

‘Master Coldridge?’ she interrupted.

‘What? I thought you didn’t know his name.’

‘Then you didn’t listen properly. How like a man.’ Anger revitalized her, and I glimpsed the woman she usually was, without this load of grief weighing her down. ‘I said he wouldn’t tell me. But I knew. I knew by the letters he sent on. They went to Master Coldridge.’

The flare of vitality died away. She wiped her eyes with her apron.

‘Letters? What letters?’

‘He’d been taking them down to the letter office for years. He thought I didn’t know.’

‘Where did they come from?’

‘How should I know? It must have been when he was out at work or with his friends. He made money by it, I know that. Not much but something.’ Her voice trailed away. Her fingers plucked at her apron.

I was losing her. I tried one last question: ‘This Coldridge: do you think he served with your husband in the late war? What was your husband’s regiment?’

Mistress Sneyd looked wildly at me. ‘Colonel Harrison’s.’

That answered more than one question. Harrison had been another Fifth Monarchist. He had commanded the escort that brought the captured King to Windsor not long before his execution. The son of a butcher, he had been a brutal and notably efficient officer; he had also been named as a Regicide, and had been the first man to be hanged, drawn and quartered after the King’s return.

‘But why do you want to know this?’ Her voice was thick with suspicion. ‘Are you one of them, another dangerous dreamer from the old days? Or are you a spy?’

‘I’m a friend, mistress. I cannot say more.’

‘You foolish men,’ she said. ‘With your secrets and your spies and your killing and your burning. You cannot truly believe that God wants such things of his creatures? Can you not let us live in peace?’

A
FTER I LEFT
Mistress Sneyd, I should have gone back to Whitehall and talked to Williamson. But I needed to think about what I had learned.

I walked up past Staples Inn and into Holborn. My head churned with uncomfortable thoughts. Mistress Sneyd had ordered me from her sight, cursing me for the news I had brought her. The best she could hope for now was a life of drudgery. As for the worst, that depended on Master Williamson and his masters.

It was possible that the government would order Mistress Sneyd’s arrest after I had made my report. If the worst came to the worst, I thought, they might also think it prudent to place my father in custody again. I had little doubt that another dose of confinement would kill him. But he was an obvious target for their suspicion. He was not only a Fifth Monarchy man but he had also known Sneyd.

Anything to do with Fifth Monarchists concerned the authorities. They must be aware as well as I was that Fifth Monarchy men had always held 1666 to be a year of great importance, for 666 was the number of the Great Beast in the Book of Revelation. Besides, when all the numeral letters in the Latin tongue were written down in diminishing numerical value, they made MDCLXVI, which was 1666. My father was quite sure that this extraordinary numerological phenomenon must portend some great event in that year. He was also certain about the form this would take: after the Beast would be the Second Coming of the Messiah, and King Jesus would reign over us all for ever and ever.

Which meant, of course, our sovereign lord King Charles II must be none other than the Great Beast. And, to make way for King Jesus, he must, like his father, be killed.

At the end of Fetter Lane, I waited at the crossing for a break in the traffic. The rain was heavier than it had been. I needed to find shelter and something to eat. An empty stomach wouldn’t help me think.

It struck me then that I wasn’t far from Barnabas Place. It lay a little further eastwards, north of Holborn. The image of Olivia Alderley’s face swam into my mind. I had a sudden urge to see her, or at least to be near her. More to the point, I remembered a tavern outside the gates of the house. I might as well take shelter there as anywhere and combine food for the soul with food for the belly.

The tavern was at the sign of the Three Feathers. I took a seat near the end of the long table and ordered ale and soup. I had a view through the tavern window of the closed gates of Barnabas Place. I watched the rain splashing into the puddles among the cobbles in front of the gateway. Half a dozen beggars were finding partial shelter under the great arch. I thought about Olivia Alderley, my father and the Great Beast until my head began to hurt.

I had almost finished eating when there was a commotion across the road in front of Barnabas Place. One leaf of the great gates opened. Two servants shouted at the beggars and shook their fists.

In the middle of this confusion, a large, red-headed man trundled a barrow under the arch and pushed it in the direction of Holborn. He was easy to see partly because of his size – well over six foot. His hair was loose, and spread below the brim of the brown hat and over his shoulders. The jolting of the cobbles made his progress slow. He stared about him as he went, like a countryman new to town.

He passed close to the window where I sat. He was wheeling a box on the barrow. A servant’s box by the look of it, and unexpectedly familiar. Below the lock, two neatly formed capital letters had been burned into the wood.

I had seen the box in Barnabas Place with Master Mundy at my shoulder. It had belonged to Jem, the servant who had attacked his master’s son and been flogged to death before my very eyes. Mistress Alderley had told me that her husband had written to Jem’s relation, asking her to remove the box. So, on the face of it, there was nothing strange about this.

Nevertheless, on impulse I threw down the money to pay my score and went out of the tavern. Keeping well back, I followed the red-headed man. He crossed Holborn, pushing his barrow briskly over the road with a confidence that suggested he was more used to London than he had at first appeared, and turned into Fetter Lane.

The box was the last trace of the man who had attacked Edward Alderley. There had been a poignancy about its contents – the silver cup, the doll and unreadable Bible – but nothing among them to suggest that Jem had nursed murderous inclinations towards his employers.

Fetter Lane ran southwards to Fleet Street. The first half was much as it had always been, though sootier than before. But the Fire had reached the southern half of the lane and wrought its dark transformations on the buildings there. To the right, undamaged London continued westwards into the suburbs. But to the left there opened a prospect of the blackened City wall, with the ruins of St Paul’s rising starkly on its hill beyond Ludgate.

To the east, there was nothing but ashes and ruins for nearly a mile and a half – from here in Fetter Lane, west of the City boundary, to the Tower of London.

The desolation struck me like a blow, fresh and painful, as if all this destruction had been newly made yesterday, and as if this were my first sight of it. It was grief, I think, nothing more or less. I knew it was absurd. But I had noticed this reaction in others as well as in myself: that we mourned for our ravaged city as if for a mother; or as Mistress Sneyd grieved for her husband. The sorrow came in waves, just as it had when my own mother died.