Fire (23 page)

He left his ward lightly snoring and went into the coaching inn. No one was about, but the hearth glow and one lit lantern showed him the main room. He called. When no one answered, he went behind the trestle bar and tapped a jug of ale. There was bread and a chunk of cheese upon a platter and though each looked a little mouse-gnawed, he shoved both into his cloak's pocket. They'd eaten and drunk as little as they'd slept. He thought of leaving coin, but near all of the purse that Admiral Holmes had given him had gone on the post-horses. He might need his last two crowns.

He took his bounty back to the yard, knelt down and roused Dickon, who woke with uncharacteristic complaint. But ale and food soothed him a little and he rose when his captain bade him. ‘Let's to the top of the hill, Dickon,' Coke said, ‘and see this river fire for ourselves.'

Chewing bread and cheese, they climbed Greenwich Hill. As they neared its summit, Coke became aware of a sound, beyond the whistling easterly that had blown them fast to Dover from the fleet, pushed in their backs during the ride from the port, and now soughed in the branches of the vast oaks they passed beneath. It was like a large body of people were shouting in the distance; or some battle was being fought. Battle indeed, he thought, for within the distant roar he now could hear the occasional punctuation of an explosion.

Yet no battle he had seen – and he'd fought in many – could have overwhelmed his sight as the one that faced them when they crested the hill.

‘God preserve us,' he whispered as Dickon cried out and sank upon the turf.

Under a moon near full and as red as blood, London burned, in a great curved bow of flame, its one tip placed near the Tower in the east, t'other – well, he could not tell – half a mile away at least, far past the dark line of the bridge. But the bow's centre was pushed up to – again, he could not be certain; at least as far as Eastcheap. He knew several who lived there – Isaac for one.

Recalling people he knew distracted him from the shock of the spectacle, back to the reason he was there – there, on Greenwich Hill, and not where he needed to be – there, amidst the flames.
He shuddered, then pulled Dickon to his feet. ‘Let's see if we can find a kindly boatman to take us upstream,' he said.

However, there was not a boatman to be had, for charity or hire, on Greenwich docks. ‘They're all attending the fire,' said a one-armed man they asked. ‘Fortunes to be made, 'tis said, for all who dwell near the river are trying to get their goods aboard.' He stretched out his one hand, rubbed finger and thumb together. ‘I'd be there mesself if'n the King's army hadn't taken me arm.' He cackled. ‘Fortunes!'

‘Come, lad,' said Coke, setting out, ‘it's Shanks's pony for us.'

From Deptford, which they soon reached, through Bermondsey and all the way to Southwark, the south bank of the Thames had become one sprawl of industry – dockyards, tanneries, distilleries, breweries, glue and paint factories, all jumbled together with the tenements for those who worked in them, and the many alehouses and ordinaries which fed the workers. The road took them parallel to, but a little way from, this crowded riverbank. The closer they got to Southwark, the louder the noise of fire grew – the cracking of timbers, the whoosh of some structure collapsing, with people's cries, like distant birds, caught up in it. The light grew as well, a dawn an hour before it was due. Above the roofs, the vast cloud of smoke was lit by the fires that caused it, reflecting back, making the excited faces they passed as clear as at midday.

When he could see the steeple of St Mary Overies – it glowed, too, in reflected flame as if lit by a theatre's candelabra – Coke turned up the side streets. ‘The bridge,' he said to Dickon. ‘No coin needed for that.'

But the bridge was closed. Through the grille of the portcullis, which Coke had never seen lowered, a soldier was talking to a
small and anxious mob that wanted to get through. ‘It rages at t'other end still,' the guard explained. ‘If you choose to be burned alive, 'pon your heads be it, I'd let you go. But my captain says no.'

Coke and Dickon moved away from the cajoling crowd. To the west of the bridge, the riverbank was less crowded with buildings – because this was still a liberty, as it had been since Queen Bess's time. The theatres may have moved to the town and indoors, but the bullring, the bear baiting and the cock pits, together with taverns and brothels innumerable, still thrived. Indeed, as Coke led Dickon through the gates of Paris Gardens, it appeared that pleasure was what people still sought here. It was as crowded as a Saturday night: liquor was being sold, chickens roasted, chairs and tables set out, with men and a few women grouped around them. All faced north, gaping at the spectacle.

Coke, most concerned about achieving their passage onwards, kept pushing through the mob. He stopped at the head of the boat stairs, though, Dickon beside him, both men staring in shock.

It was partly the heat. It had been a warm night anyway, the latest in a long line of them. But standing there was like being before an especially well-fed hearth. As the wave of warmth hit him, sweat started running down his head, inside his shirt. He felt also the places where he'd burned aboard the fireship. Greta van der Woude's pig-grease ointment may have healed the worst of it, but areas were yet tender and his cheek, ear and side of his head stung. He took a step back; but he could not mind it for long, so dreadful was the spectacle before him.

The great bow he'd seen from Greenwich was a wall here, stretching either side of him at least half a mile wide. Directly
ahead, smoke rose from fires that raged everywhere. He could see by its light that already so much had been burned out, vast buildings that he'd known but perhaps could not name were charred ruins now. Churches were gone, save for a stone tower here and there, all glowing as white as beacons on a dark night.

‘Cap'n,' said Dickon, tugging his arm. When Coke managed to look down, his ward pointed. ‘Boats.'

‘Good lad,' said Coke, approaching the stair again. It was well that one of them remembered their purpose.

There
were
boats. In sooth, he'd never seen so many on what was often the most crowded stretch of the Thames. Large wherries, small skiffs, rowboats of every size and type. All were occupied; indeed, all were crowded, shooting every way over ripples in whose crests the fire danced in reflected yellow. Many had to be refugees from the catastrophe, and boats were continually docking and disgorging passengers clutching a pathetic little – bundles of clothes, some boxes, a painting in a frame, candlesticks. Other boats were landing people who had nothing, save perhaps a tankard or bottle. These passengers did not have the distraught mien of those burned out, but, contrariwise, were talking excitedly about what they had been observing. As if the fire was some exotic wonder like an elephant paraded through the streets.

As enthused a crowd waited to take the place of those who disembarked. Coke, flushing with anger at people who would make a spectacle of others' suffering, pushed hard through the mob, not sparing his elbows nor heeding the complaints. ‘Crown for the two of ya,' said the boatman, one foot on the dock, one in his wherry.

It was four times the normal fare, half the paltry amount he had, and Coke felt he would need that. ‘I've family over there,' he said. ‘I must reach them –'

The boatman cut him off. ‘I'm not docking, friend,' he said. ‘Maybe later when the prices are even higher. For now –' He looked above Coke and called, ‘ 'Alf-crown an 'ead. Have your money ready.'

‘Please.' Coke stepped a little closer. There was something about the man, a deeper bronze to his face, the cording of his forearms, one of which had a name tattooed in smudged ink. ‘For a mate from before the mast?'

It made the man look again at him, appraising him now. His gaze moved over the pair of them. They were dressed once more in the motley they'd got from pursers' slops – worn shirts and breeches, patched short coats, boots that gaped. Coke had decided that the fancy laced and velvet garb the officer had lent him to dine with Holmes was not practical on the trip he intended.

He was pleased about that choice now when he saw the man's eyes light up. ‘You served?'

‘Even now.' Coke let his native Somerset accent deepen. ‘Fresh released from giving the Hogens a thrashing, uz. Trying to get home.' He smiled. ‘My wife's expecting me.'

‘Yeah, but you're goin' to visit your sweetheart first, right?' The wherryman laughed. ‘Go on, then. Keep your coin. Someone did the same for me when I got back from Tangiers.' He glanced back across the water, upstream. ‘I'll drop you at Queen Hithe. Not burning for now – but not for long, I'd wager.'

Coke and Dickon got in, settling in the stern. Once the fares had been collected and the goggling passengers seated, the wherry
shoved off. The boatman was clearly experienced, threading a nimble route through the throng. Coke did not look at the fire drawing ever closer now. He could hear it. He had also begun to smell it, where the following wind had not really allowed him to before. Mostly he could feel it upon his tender patches of skin.

Close to the dock at Queen Hithe, the boat gave a sudden lurch. ‘Way there!' cried the ferryman. ‘I'm goin' in the dock.'

‘As are we, fellow,' came the shouted reply, ‘and a monarch must precede.'

That voice. It startled Coke from the reverie where flame and his own concerns had taken him. He looked up in time to see a barge, with ten oars on each side, drive in front of them. In its prow, standing and peering ahead, hand on brow against the glare and the dawn, was Charles, King of England. Slightly behind him, gazing forward too, was James, Duke of York.

The barge entered the wide indentation that was the dock, the wherry following close to, both reaching the main wharf at near the same time. The royals alighted, and soon after so did Coke and Dickon, about twenty-five paces off. For a few moments, Coke kept his face turned away. He was not sure Charles would recognise it, even though he had asked the captain to join his household six months before. He knew he was altered by war, his hair only just growing back on one side, his moustache and eyebrows not yet at their former, luxuriant length. He was also dressed in sailor's clothes; besides, the king's focus was entirely on the flames that rose north and east less than three hundred yards away, and the men who had obviously gathered to meet him there and receive instructions. Yet to leave Queen Hithe he would have to pass quite close to Charles to exit the gate. And he'd learned in their dealings
the year before that His Majesty, for all his reputation as little more than a carousing gallant, missed almost nothing.

He hesitated. He had no idea what was ahead of him this day – what the London he must search through had become. All that information would be given to the king now. It would be useful to be near him when it was. And depending on what he heard, it might also be useful to have some regal assistance.

He decided. ‘Your Majesty,' he shouted.

Behind the wooden dock was the market area, a large, now crowded square. His was far from the only voice supplicating. Men were gathered about the king with papers and maps, while several well-dressed noblemen stood in attendance. He pushed determinedly through but, three paces away, one of the five royal guards stepped up to intercept him, large fingers splayed on Coke's chest. ‘Sire, 'tis I!' Coke called loudly.

‘Eh?' said Charles, looking up from a map, his irritation clear, one eyebrow raised above the eye that had the cast. Then the other eyebrow joined the first in puzzlement. ‘Why, I – I know you. You're Coke, William Coke.' The gaze continued down from face to the impoverished clothing. ‘Whatever are you dressed as, man? Oh,' the expression changed, ‘burnt out, eh?'

‘In a way, sire.' Coke paused. He had no desire to explain much of the story. And yet? Some had to be told. ‘I have just come from the fleet, sire. Sent by Admiral Holmes.'

‘With dispatches for me?' The Duke of York stepped forward. He was head of the Navy, Coke knew.

‘Wait, Jamie!' The king raised a hand. ‘ 'Od's life, man, but I didn't know you'd enlisted? Last I heard, after you'd turned down my bedchamber post, was that you were going to get married.'

‘I did. And was pressed into service the very same day.'

‘Out upon you! 'Tis true?' At Coke's nod, Charles whistled. ‘You are a remarkable fellow, Captain Coke.'

‘When truly, sire, my only desire is to be unremarked,' he replied.

Charles looked to his brother, who was obviously holding back a flood of questions. ‘
Do
you have news from the fleet?'

‘Only that it is scattering before this same wind that acts as such a bellows to this fire,' he replied.

‘Aye. There'll be no fighting in this.' Charles nodded at the air, which gusted and swirled about them. ‘But we have a battle ahead of us nonetheless. Have you come to enlist for that, Captain?'

‘Majesty, I –' he swallowed. ‘When I was pressed, my wife – whom you knew as Mrs Chalker – was already large with our child. She may have borne the babe by now and they may be –' he turned and nodded to the flaming city, ‘somewhere there. Also she does not know if I am even alive. So let me find her first, see her safe and then of course, I will return to the fight.'

‘I understand.' The king sighed. ‘I've always regretted the necessity to press men and your example deepens that feeling. These fellows here,' he gestured to several men standing by with papers, ‘have the latest reports of the fire's progress. Let them report to me and you may learn a safe route to your beloved.' He beckoned one nearer who held a map. ‘Where do you think she might be?'

Coke stepped up. ‘Either in her old lodgings of Sheere Lane, near Lincoln's Inn –'