The Ashes of London (43 page)

Waiting, it turned out, for the sound of metal hitting stone two hundred feet below the empty heart of the tower.

H
AKESBY AND I
passed through the gateway and walked up Ludgate Hill to St Paul’s. It was gone six o’clock. I had not told him that Alderley had disappeared – it was not my secret to tell, and besides there was no point in risking Master Chiffinch’s anger any more than I already had.

The cathedral looked like an abandoned fortress. Its walls were still sheer and high, with high fences blocking the gaps that the Fire had caused. Some doorways had been permanently sealed with brick, others with wooden barriers topped with spikes. The place was dark, without a single gleam of light inside the fabric.

We walked round to Convocation House Yard. I rattled the gate for long enough to set the dog barking. Eventually the watchmen stumbled from their hut and swore at us.

‘Damn your impudence,’ Hakesby shouted in a loud, angry voice that took me by surprise. ‘You’ll be whipped and dismissed if you don’t have a care. Don’t you know I’m Master Hakesby? Let me in.’

There were agitated whispers on the other side of the gate. The dog continued to bark. It then gave a squeal and fell abruptly silent, as if someone had kicked it. The bar was lifted from the gate, and one leaf opened. One of the men held up a lantern. Hakesby stepped forward so the light fell on his face.

‘Your worship’s pardon, sir,’ the watchman said, sending a waft of spirits towards us. ‘Pray forgive us. You wouldn’t believe the rogues and beggars we get knocking on the door after dark, you—’

‘Be silent. Chain that dog and let us in.’

The yard was almost in darkness. A light burned in the watchmen’s hut, and another by the inner gate leading to the builders’ enclosure at the side of the cloister.

‘We’ve work to do,’ Hakesby said. ‘Give my friend your lantern and keep the dog confined.’

The watchman handed him the light and knuckled his forehead. ‘How long will your worships be?’

‘I don’t know. Be off with you.’

The two men dragged the dog towards their hut. We crossed the yard to the inner gate. Hakesby took a key from his pocket and unlocked it.

When we were inside, I said, ‘Better bar it, sir. We don’t want to be disturbed.’

He hesitated. I saw his eyes gleam. He was looking at me, wondering whether to trust me in this as well as all the rest. I was wondering the same thing about him.

‘I won’t get far without you, sir,’ I said. ‘Mistress Noxon knows we left the house together, and so does the maid. Those men must have seen my face, too.’

‘Do it.’

I set down the lantern and slid the bar across, sealing us in. ‘I should tell you that others know I intended to talk to you.’

Hakesby snorted. ‘Then we may trust each other completely.’

I could not see his face but the tone of his voice made me suspect that he was smiling. He led the way to the shed. He used another key to unlock that.

By night, a place changed. I had not realized that the shed was so long and cavernous. In the light of the single lantern, it seemed infinite.

We walked down the shed to the table where I had seen him working. He pointed to the wooden steps running up the back wall. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down his windpipe. ‘She’s just up there. Beyond that door.’

Hakesby asked me to hold the lantern. The self-assurance he had shown with the watchmen had ebbed away. His hand trembled when he took a key from his pocket and unlocked a chest on the floor. He stooped with obvious difficulty and took out a bunch of keys, some large, some small.

He climbed the wooden steps slowly, clinging to the rail, with the keys chinking softly in his hand. I followed behind him. He knocked at the door at the top, an oddly decorous action, and called out, ‘It’s me, Jane. Master Hakesby.’

There was no answer. He glanced back at me, selected a key and unlocked the door. He unlatched it and pushed it open. He hesitated on the threshold. ‘Jane? Jane?’

Again, there was no response. He took the lantern from me and led the way inside. I heard him muttering under his breath. I followed him in. The air was different here – colder and danker, tainted with the stale smell of burning that still clung to the entire city.

A sense of dread crept over me. ‘What is it, sir?’

‘She’s gone.’ Hakesby crossed to a door in the opposite wall and twisted the ring that lifted the latch, but the door wouldn’t move. He took the lantern to the window and examined the fastening of the shutters. ‘But she can’t have left the way we came in. The door and the shed were locked, and so was the yard gate. Then there were the watchmen and the dog in Convocation House Yard. And she didn’t go through the window—’

‘So she must have gone through the other door,’ I said with a touch of impatience.

‘We must be methodical, Master Marwood, if we wish to avoid mistakes. Yes, she must have gone by the other door.’

I went over to the second door and twisted the ring that turned the latch. The door didn’t move. ‘Have you a key? Where does it lead?’

‘It’s not locked,’ he said in his low, deliberate voice. ‘It’s barred on the other side. It leads to the gallery over the cloister, and then to some stairs into the cathedral itself, near the south door. But the gallery is so ruinous that only a fool would pass through it, even in daytime.’

‘Then where is she?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, spreading his hands. In the lantern light, his face was pitted with deep shadows. It looked like a long yellow skull.

Suddenly the pieces assembled themselves in my head. ‘Lovett’s here, isn’t he?’ I said. ‘He’s in the cathedral. You knew he was there all along, because you let him hide here. Just as you knew that he would come for his daughter. Because you’d told him where to find her. You’ve led me into a trap.’

‘Let me tell the truth,’ Hakesby said in a voice not much louder than a whisper. ‘The whole truth. This is not a trap. I swear it.’

He pushed aside some of the papers on the table and put down the lantern. He sank down on the chair beside it. He pointed to another chair, nearer to the door to the stairs.

‘Pray sit down, Master Marwood.’

‘We haven’t time to sit and discuss it, sir.’ But I too lowered my voice. ‘You’ve betrayed me.’

‘I’ve not betrayed you. I give you my oath on it. Like you, I want nothing but Mistress Lovett’s safety. And I fear I’ve led her into danger.’

‘Then we must act. Now. For her sake.’

I took the lantern from the table and went round the room, opening the cupboard and the chest, peering into corners and under the furniture. All the time, I was listening for other sounds.

‘For her sake, we must think first,’ Hakesby said. ‘Sit down, I pray you, sir. It’s uncomfortable to crane my head to see you.’

His actions and his words sucked some of the tension from the room. There was nothing aggressive about him. Only a great weariness.

‘Talk, then,’ I said. ‘I’m listening. But talk quickly.’

‘These accusations you’ve made about Master Lovett,’ he said. ‘The murders, the Whitehall fire. I know nothing of such things. You must believe me. I didn’t even know he was in England until yesterday. He told me he had come back for his daughter’s sake, to take her out of the country with him.’

I found a chamber pot under the table. It was empty. I said, ‘How long has Lovett been in St Paul’s?’

‘This will be his second night. He was here already, you see. But I didn’t bring him.’

I took up the pot and sniffed. It smelled of urine, which was only to be expected. ‘Then who did?’

‘Another man he used to know, in the old days. One of the workmen. There are scores of them in the building during the day.’

I waited but Hakesby didn’t give me the man’s name. I ran my finger around the inside of the pot. I felt a hint of moisture. ‘Not a mere labourer, then,’ I suggested. ‘Someone with a little authority?’

‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to know. We knew each other in the old days, you understand. He asked me to sign a pass to allow him to bring a wagon in.’ He swallowed again. ‘When there should have been no real need for him to do so. I didn’t ask questions. Better not.’

I put down the pot. The old days. The phrase they kept using, as if it explained all and excused all. Perhaps it did, to them, and to my father when he remembered what the old days were. But it didn’t explain or excuse anything to me.

‘This needn’t go further than us, Master Marwood, need it? I have tried to act for the best, indeed I have, and – and nowadays the King, for all his shortcomings, has no more loyal subject than myself.’

‘If you tell me everything,’ I said, ‘if you hold nothing back, and if we can find the girl unharmed – well, in that case perhaps this can remain between us. But if not …’

I was beginning to understand how Lovett worked. He had survived in England for at least ten weeks with the support of a network of people who had known and respected him in the old days. People who had shared at least some of his beliefs, who had served him or prayed with him or fought beside him. His old servant, Jem, had been one of them, Sneyd had been another, and probably Mother Grimes a third. Add to that the anonymous workman at St Paul’s and Hakesby himself. And God alone knew who else.

I stared at Hakesby, trying to make out his expression in the dim light, my mind turning and creaking fit to break like the sails of a windmill in a gale. ‘We must find her, sir. At once. She’s not long gone.’

I wasn’t sure how much Mistress Noxon knew – probably she had sheltered Cat for her uncle’s sake. But, if in the old days she had shared his loyalties, perhaps that was why Master Hakesby had come to lodge with her in the first place.

‘A moment, sir. A moment, I beg you.’

You couldn’t call these people conspirators. As far as possible, I suspected, Lovett had kept most of them in ignorance of one another, and in ignorance of his real purpose in returning to England. Nor would they have known what he had become during his years of exile, and the means he was willing to adopt in the hope that his actions would bring about the reign of King Jesus.

‘We’re wasting time,’ I said. ‘We must look for the girl, not sit here talking.’

‘The girl,’ he said. He still didn’t move. ‘You’re right, Master Marwood – she’s what matters now. Master Lovett said he’d come to London to collect her. After all, she’s his child, and a child should be with her father.’

‘Not all children,’ I said harshly. ‘And not all fathers. So Lovett knew she might have gone back to Mistress Noxon’s, and that you lodged there as well?’

Hakesby nodded. ‘He’d been to Three Cocks Yard already – on Saturday, when Mistress Noxon told him his daughter was at the coffee house. So he followed her there and removed her. But it seems that Jane – Mistress Catherine, that is, but I still think of her as Jane – ran away from the house where her father took her. He thought she might have gone back to Mistress Noxon’s.’

I wanted to pick Hakesby up and shake him. ‘When did you talk to Lovett?’

‘I told you – yesterday. He came up to me when I was inspecting the work in the cathedral. I didn’t know him at first – he’s much changed, and he was dressed as a common labourer. He thanked me for helping him find shelter, albeit without my knowing it was him I was helping. And then he begged me to say if I had news of his daughter. So today, when she came here, I – I thought it best to search him out and tell him where she was. A child should be with her father … But I didn’t realize he would come so quickly, before it was night. I thought we’d reach her before he did.’

He raised his face to me and the light from the lantern fell on it. His eyes shone with unshed tears. ‘I told Lovett where to find her, that she was here in this room, and how to get here. I was wrong to do that. But I thought a child should be with her—’

‘How did he get back in St Paul’s?’

‘There would be no difficulty if he was with the man who was helping him. The workmen were still passing in and out at that hour.’

I considered. ‘At least Lovett’s not expecting you back here until the morning. Which means that she may still be here, still in St Paul’s. Where would he take her?’

Hakesby raised his arm and pointed towards the high places of the abandoned church. ‘Somewhere up there, probably. Unless there’s a vault I don’t know of. Nobody goes above ground unless they’ve no choice – the building’s not safe, you see, even with the scaffolding we’re putting up inside. The tower sways in strong winds. Stones fall every day. But Lovett worked here a great deal before the war – even as a boy, with his father, who was one of Inigo Jones’s principal masons. He knows the place as well as anyone does, and he’ll know the risks, too.’

I calculated the implications. Lovett must have approached this room from the second door, from the cloister gallery. ‘How did Lovett reach this chamber?’

‘Assuming he came from the cathedral? It must have been from the gallery beyond that door. It would take a man of strong nerve, though.’

‘They’re not long gone,’ I said. ‘The pot has been recently used.’

Hakesby pushed back his chair and stood up with some difficulty, as though his limbs were no longer entirely his to command. He said, in a steady voice, ‘Then we must look for her at once, sir. This is my fault, and I must try to set it right as best I can.’

We could not use the door leading to the gallery, because Lovett had barred it on the other side. So I led the way back down the steps to the shed, where the leather curtain still masked the door from the shed to the cloister below the upper gallery. At Hakesby’s suggestion, we found and lit a second lantern.

I held the curtain aside while he sorted through his bunch of keys.

‘The common people say they have seen ghosts here since the Fire,’ he said. ‘The people who died, the ones whose bodies weren’t found. They are searching for their mortal remains, for how can they rise up on Judgement Day and greet our Redeemer without them?’

I said nothing. A childhood full of this sort of talk had inured me to it, as a dose of pox or measles inures a man to future infection.