Fire Catcher (31 page)

Chapter 97

Enoch was laid out on the wood floor of Blackstone’s house. He’d been prepared for burial with an improvised winding sheet. His eyes were closed with coins.

‘He was burned,’ said Jacob, looking sadly at his friend. ‘The barrel slipped.’

‘He was dead when I found him,’ explained Abraham. As an initiate of the highest level, he’d been permitted to retrieve the body from Blackstone’s cellar. Abraham wore second-hand military breeches and a hair shirt that rubbed open sores on his chest. He’d been charged with clearing Blackstone’s house after Jacob reported fire.

They were both looking at the corpse. Behind them was the heaving and dragging of furniture being lifted and packed. Blackstone’s boys were packing up at speed. Fire was coming.

‘Where did you find the coins?’ asked Jacob.

Abraham looked at him in surprise. ‘This is how I found him.’

A chill rippled through Jacob. He was seeing something else now. There were deep scratches on the face.

‘There’s a raven loose down there,’ said Abraham, following his gaze. ‘It probably had a peck at him, after he died.’ The long marks were curved, as though made by a beak.

‘The winding sheet,’ said Jacob. ‘It’s a woman’s dress.’ His eyes lifted to Abraham’s. Then he tugged away the fabric.

They both recoiled. Marked on Enoch’s burned chest were circles and mysterious symbols. They formed a rudimentary tree shape.

‘He looks more like a sacrifice than a burial,’ said Jacob, staring. He drew back from the body and looked at Abraham accusingly.

‘Who did this to him?’

‘I don’t know.’ Abraham spoke with the firmness of a boy who didn’t ask questions.

‘There’s something down there, isn’t there?’ said Jacob. ‘Enoch heard it at night.’

Abraham hesitated. ‘I’m not permitted to take a candle into the cellar,’ he admitted in a tight whisper. ‘Your friend was directly under the trapdoor. All else was darkness. But one time . . . I thought I heard breathing,’ he admitted.

‘His rosary’s gone,’ said Jacob sharply. ‘Where is his rosary?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Abraham. He took the other boy by the shoulders. ‘Fire comes,’ he said. ‘Sooner than expected. We must prepare Master Blackstone’s things for the cart.’ He pointed to the other boys sweating and loading.

‘Now,’ he instructed. ‘Or there’ll be consequences.’

Numbly Jacob allowed himself to be led.

He joined the sweating boys, arranging trunks, heaving rugs and candlesticks.

‘Fire will be here within the hour,’ said Abraham. ‘Master Blackstone needs his things packed up and packed well.’

‘Where does he take them?’ asked Jacob.

‘Guildhall,’ said Abraham. ‘If we can get a cart.’ He paused to scratch under his hair shirt. A louse was dislodged and fell wriggling to the ground. ‘Did you clear upstairs?’ he asked the boys.

‘All but a big sea chest,’ said one. ‘It was too heavy to move.’

Abraham cast his gaze around. It rested on Jacob. ‘You and me then,’ he decided. ‘We’ll get it down.’

The boys moved into the landing. There were five doors leading off, all open and empty but one.

‘His sister’s room,’ explained Abraham as they approached.

‘I didn’t know he had a sister,’ said Jacob.

‘She died during the war.’

Abraham opened the door. A gentle female face smiled out from behind a shroud of incense. Both boys drew back in amazement.

Chapter 98

The screams of the lunatics were blood-curdling and musket fire crashed around Bedlam.

‘Stay back,’ said Charlie. ‘There has to be another way out.’ He turned to the prisoner. ‘You escaped before,’ he said. ‘Can we get out from here?’

‘I got out into the Fleet River,’ said the prisoner. ‘Dropped out through the privy holes. But they’ve bricked them up smaller since.’

He was pointing inside a cell, where a fist-sized hole winked daylight from the outside.

‘There might still be a way,’ decided Charlie. He was looking at the brazier with the cauldron of pitch. ‘Those men have guns,’ he said. ‘So they’ll have black powder. We put a powder flask in that hole. Blow a big enough opening to escape.’

‘Even if you could get black powder we’d need a fuse,’ protested Lily. ‘Unless you want to lose a hand lighting it.’

‘The pitch could work,’ said Charlie, eyeing the smoking tar used for treating lunatics. More shots fired and he made his decision. ‘It’s all we have,’ he said. ‘Take the pitch. Make the best fuse you can and wait for me there.’

Lily hesitated and then nodded. She eyed the aged prisoner and then put out an arm for him to lean on. Charlie stepped into the fray.

The soldiers had been caught off guard. But now they were winning the battle. Two lunatics had been shot dead. A third lay dying. A few lunged and hung off the soldiers. Others cowered in their cells.

The door to Bedlam was wide open and a few inmates were moving tentatively towards daylight. But most were docile as the soldiers rounded them up for execution.

Charlie ducked low and made for a soldier grappling with a scrawny inmate. The two swung wildly, fists flying. A powder flask hung low on the soldier’s hip and Charlie’s fingers closed around it. Sensing the theft the soldier tore away. But not before Charlie had ripped free the flask.

‘The lunatic has black powder!’ shouted the soldier as Charlie raced towards the cell where Lily and the prisoner waited.

And as Charlie made for the open door a stampede of soldiers followed behind.

Chapter 99

Blackstone’s sister’s room held a simple altar, with a picture of a woman. Fresh candles and incense burned.

Abraham spoke first.

‘It’s a shrine,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders to rearrange the hair shirt. ‘To his sister.’

He was eyeing a large portrait of a gentle-faced girl with pale eyes and soft flowing hair.

‘She was lovely,’ said Jacob, staring. ‘Must have been young when she died.’ He took in the rest of the shrine. It was carved wood, depicting St Benedict holding a poisoned chalice.

‘I’ve seen this before,’ said Jacob. ‘When I was part of the Carpenters’ Guild.’ He turned uneasily to Abraham. ‘They do it when a person has been cursed. To ward off evil.’

Abraham stepped back as though the floor were red hot.

He took in the rest of the plain chamber. The only other object in the room was the large sea chest.

‘Leave the shrine,’ he said, crossing himself. ‘Come help me with the chest.’

‘I think we should leave the chest too,’ said Jacob, looking at the shrine. ‘I don’t think Master Blackstone should know we’ve been in this room.’

Abraham thought. ‘If the chest is worth something,’ he said, ‘Master Blackstone will be very angry we let it burn.’

They eyed it appraisingly.

‘Looks like it’s worth a bit,’ Jacob conceded, with a sideways glance at Abraham. Jacob ran bitten-down fingernails across an intricate locking mechanism.

‘It’s a wedding chest,’ said Abraham. ‘Dutch or Frenchie.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I unload at the wharves,’ said Abraham. ‘Seen things like this before.’ He winked. ‘Smugglers pay a song to know when things like this arrive in port,’ he boasted.

‘It’s locked.’ Jacob was pulling at the lid. He gave the lock an experimental prod with a calloused finger. ‘What do you think’s inside?’

Abraham slapped his hand away. Jacob was making him uneasy. By his reckoning the newest recruit was not nearly frightened enough of the Grand Master. Because Abraham had seen things. Seen what Blackstone could do. And worse. How readily he did them. Hardly any excuse was necessary. The new boy needed learning before it was too late. Abraham was true to the cause. He believed in the power of the initiation. But he wanted no more hanging boys in the cellar.

‘What’s inside will be your guts if you go sneaking,’ replied Abraham. He drew back, considering. ‘See the initials? I think this is the wife’s wedding trunk,’ he said.

‘Blackstone’s wife?’

Abraham nodded. ‘The suicide,’ he said meaningfully. He scratched a sore on his shoulder. ‘Talk is,’ Abraham said, his eyes sliding back to the shrine, ‘the wife killed the sister. With black magic.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Talks in his sleep doesn’t he? You must have heard it.’

Both boys looked uneasily at the gentle face glimmering behind the candles.

‘Why would he leave his wife’s wedding trunk here?’ asked Jacob. ‘Her things are down in the cellar.’

There was another uneasy silence. They’d all walked through Teresa Blackstone’s strange possessions during their initiation rite.

‘The chest is too heavy, even for Blackstone,’ said Abraham, assessing the solid shape. ‘You’d need two men. Maybe he didn’t want anyone else in here.’

‘We should leave,’ said Jacob.

‘No.’ Abraham reached a decision. ‘My orders were to clear the house. A good son does not question.’

He bent, fitted his hands and puffed out his cheeks with effort. ‘Help me,’ he grunted.

Reluctantly Jacob grasped one end of the chest.

‘Where’d he learn the alchemy then?’ panted Jacob as they heaved out the chest.

‘Holland,’ said Abraham, with a gasp as they made it to the stair. ‘I heard he sailed there . . .’ he puffed air, ‘learned it from the source. The mystics.’

They dropped the chest with a heavy thud.

Abraham wiped his brow and looked down the street. Flames were coming. He turned to Jacob in alarm.

‘There should be a cart here,’ he said. ‘A cart to take Master Blackstone’s things.’

The colour had drained from his cheeks.

Jacob watched the flames in the distance.

‘Fire’ll be here soon,’ Jacob guessed. ‘What will Master Blackstone do if his things burn?’ He was looking at the piles of possessions. Clothes, plate and furniture.

‘Help the other boys. Start moving everything to the street,’ said Abraham. ‘I’ll keep a watch for the cart.’

Jacob nodded and headed deeper into the house. But as he reached the trapdoor to the cellar he hesitated. Enoch’s death taunted him. Something was down there, he knew it. Something dangerous.

Curiosity burned at him. He was gripped with a strange compulsion to open the trapdoor. It was so strong. As though forces beyond his control drew him closer.

And before Jacob could help himself, he was prising open the trapdoor.

As it opened his arm flew to cover his mouth. The smell. It was incredible.

Then he saw it. Enoch’s rosary. It had been hung on a rung of the rope ladder down. The rosary glimmered in the semi-darkness. Like bait.

Jacob thought of his friend. He couldn’t let Enoch be buried without his rosary.

Throwing a leg over the trapdoor entrance, Jacob began descending the rope ladder. Deep in the dark a candle flame twinkled. He made towards it like a sleepwalker and a rush of terrible stench rolled up to meet him.

At first Jacob attributed it to the piles of mouldering food. He’d never seen anything like it. There was enough to feed an army here. But rotting away. Stinking. A nest of rats writhed over what might have been a side of beef, now liquefied and reeking. Sugar loaves were spotted with mould and spoiled. Sacks of grain and flour ran with weevils. Pitchers of fetid green water might have once held milk.

Then Jacob saw her. Blackstone’s wife. He wanted to look away but his eyes were riveted. Was that . . . skin? Or something else?

The sound of the cellar door jolted him from his torpor. And there, enormous in the entrance, was Blackstone.

His icy eyes rested silently on Jacob. An ocean of silence seemed to pass.

‘I . . . I came to get Enoch’s rosary,’ stuttered Jacob.

‘This is my wife’s room,’ said Blackstone. ‘No one may look on her.’ His voice turned steely. Jacob knew his fate was sealed.

‘I didn’t . . . I don’t.’ Jacob was casting his eyes everywhere but Her. ‘The fire comes,’ he said desperately. ‘Your things will burn. There’s . . . a
chest,’ he stuttered, ‘your wife’s. A wedding trunk I think.’

Blackstone hesitated.

‘I’d forgotten her chest,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘It was too heavy to be moved and empty in any case.’ Blackstone wondered if Teresa had hidden the key somewhere. He was remembering the wedding blessings, torched and blackened.

Blackstone put a hand to his scarred head. He had an image of the missing key. Then nothing.

‘The wedding trunk should be with my wife,’ he decided.

Something else occurred to him.

‘You were in my sister’s room,’ said Blackstone.

‘We were told to clear the house,’ managed Jacob.

Blackstone inhaled deeply. His eyes settled on his wife. ‘The ribbons and poppets,’ he said, ‘I thought it a harmless fancy. A foolish woman’s trickery.’ He was shaking his head.

‘She will burn,’ said Blackstone slowly. ‘And it will be on a pyre to make the city weep. I’ll make her a bonfire so great that God himself will open up the heavens to receive her.’

His eyes switched back to Jacob.

‘Gunpowder must be used,’ he said, ‘to make the hottest flame. She must also have a sacrifice. An offering to be sure her soul is freed.’

Jacob felt fear tighten his stomach.

‘You will help me,’ Blackstone decided.

Chapter 100

Bedlam was in smoking turmoil. Charlie got inside the thick cell door and pulled it shut just as a pack of soldiers herded towards the grating.

‘Lock it up!’ shouted Lily as Charlie fumbled for the right key. He found it, plunged it into the keyhole and turned the lock as the first man flung himself against the door. The door rebounded and held.

There were shouts and pounding of rifle butts as the soldiers assaulted the heavy wood. Then the barrel of a musket came through the grating in the door.

‘Get down!’ shouted Charlie as a spray of fire ricocheted around the room. Lily ducked, one hand over her head, the other pulling the prisoner down. Charlie’s eyes fixed on the small privy hole. Lily had laid a thin line of pitch. Too narrow to light, he thought.

‘There wasn’t enough pitch,’ explained Lily, following his line of sight as Charlie ducked down beside her.

‘It might still fire,’ he muttered. ‘Give me your tinderbox.’

She handed it over with shaking fingers. On the other side of the door they could hear the soldier fumbling to reload his musket.

‘Be careful,’ she whispered, pointing to the open grating in the cell door. ‘They’re reloading.’

‘I didn’t know you cared.’

‘I care about escaping.’

Charlie made across the cell on his hands and knees. He’d tucked the black powder into the privy hole and raced back out of sight before the soldier could raise his gun again. Then he struck the tinderbox against the pitch.

It flared and for a few seconds a cheerful orange flame weaved up the line. Then it reached the bottom of the wall and died.

Charlie cursed. Behind them something heavy slammed into the door. He heard the wood split. He looked up to where the soldier with the musket was angling for a clear shot.

‘Charlie,’ said Lily, realising what he intended to do. ‘Don’t.’

But he was already halfway across the cell. A shot from the powerful musket would light the powder flask. Guns had a full few seconds’ delay. Charlie was confident he could duck and roll before the shot hit.

The soldier had put his muzzle full through the grating this time, to be sure of a clear shot. Charlie stood up in clear line of sight, the flask of black powder behind him. The soldier’s finger tightened on the trigger.

‘Don’t shoot,’ came the voice of another soldier from outside the cell. ‘He’s no lunatic. He’s got black powder in that privy hole. Take the shot and you’ll blow the wall out.’

The soldier hesitated. Charlie’s heart sank. Then Lily jumped to her feet, grabbed the musket barrel and pulled it hard through the grating. The soldier’s face slammed into the bars. In his surprise his finger pulled the trigger. Charlie dived, rolled and the shot went off, driving a blast of fire into the small cell.

The gunpowder exploded loudly, driving brick fragments in all directions.

For a moment the air was too tight in gun-smoke to breathe. And then the fumes cleared through the sunlit hole in the prison wall.

They all made for it.

‘You got out this way?’ protested Charlie, looking down at the sheer drop. ‘It’s a clear thirty feet to the Fleet.’

‘I’m a Baptist,’ said the prisoner. ‘It’s my faith. God receives me safely in water.’

Lily rolled her eyes. Charlie was eyeing the stinking streaked wall. It looked slippery. But the brick was uneven and the mortar crumbling away.

‘We can climb,’ said Charlie, swinging a leg over the side of the blast hole. ‘Come on.’ He climbed on to the outer wall, feeling for holds with his bare feet. ‘It’s not too hard,’ he promised Lily, holding out a hand. ‘Plenty of raised bricks to catch a hold.’

She hesitated and then pulled her skirts close to her body and climbed out on to the prison wall, hanging on to the remaining brickwork. Warm air blew over them. Below, the Fleet rippled.

Lily began climbing down. Charlie glanced back to the prisoner. The soldiers had renewed their pounding on the door now, perhaps deciding to save musket fire. It had split down the middle and was giving way.

‘Can you climb?’ Charlie asked the prisoner. ‘If you stay here you’ll be captured or executed.’

‘I’m not of a mind to climb,’ said the prisoner, with a nod at his manacle-savaged ankle. ‘But I won’t meet my death today. Not at the hands of them.’

He had a strange expression on his face and he looked down to the low Fleet River.

‘Your coat,’ said the prisoner suddenly. Charlie realised his coat was still resting over the man’s skinny shoulders.

‘Take it back.’ The prisoner heaved it off and passed it over.

Charlie took it with one hand and rested the leather in the crook of his arm.

‘You won’t survive the river this time,’ said Charlie, nodding to the Fleet. ‘The water is low after the hot summer.’

The prisoner nodded. ‘You may be right,’ he said. He hesitated. ‘You’re a good man,’ he said, nodding to the coat. ‘And though you’re no Baptist, I owe you a courtesy. I didn’t tell you the truth,’ he continued, ‘back in the cell.’

Charlie froze halfway out of the prison wall. There was a crashing sound. A musket butt appeared through a gap in the thick door.

‘I do remember something about the Mermaid which might help you,’ continued the prisoner.

‘What?’ Charlie was eyeing the door desperately.

The prisoner shot him a crafty glance.

‘I did see a man,’ he said after a moment. ‘As we were brought out on to deck. I don’t know if he was your Blackstone. But he was perhaps the right age, and dressed as a cavalier. In Royalist clothes.’

Lily and Charlie exchanged glances.

The prisoner nodded. ‘He was selling a gun,’ he said. ‘I heard him talking of it.’

Charlie was turning this over. Guns could be traced. Even seventeen years ago.

‘What makes you think him the man we seek?’ asked Charlie.

‘There were two men with him,’ said the prisoner, staring at Charlie. ‘One was dressed ragged like a hermit. With a tattoo. Circles. Some mystic thing. The other man . . .’

The prisoner stared Charlie full in the face. ‘The other man looked just like you,’ he said. ‘That’s why I thought I recognised you. When I first saw you.’

Charlie felt the blood in his veins turn to ice. The prisoner licked his lips.

‘Just like you,’ he repeated. Then he turned to the water, opened his arms wide and jumped into the Fleet River.