The Ashes of London. Andrew Taylor

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       CHAPTER FOUR

      CAT DREW THE grey cloak over her head. The fine wool smelled of the fire, but also something unpleasantly musky and masculine. The face of the thin young man whose cloak she had stolen was vivid in her mind, his skin almost orange in the light of the flames.

      She was still breathing hard from running through the streets, from pushing her way through the crowds. She had looked back often as she fled, and sometimes she was sure she glimpsed his face. But, thanks be to God, he wasn’t there any more.

      She crouched and tapped on the window shutter.

      Three taps. Then a pause. Three more taps.

      Light flickered in the crack behind the shutter. The window was no more than eighteen inches wide, and not much taller. The sill was barely six inches above the cobbles. The ground level had crept higher and higher over the centuries.

      Something flickered in the crack of light. Three answering taps. Then a pause. Three more taps.

      She moved deeper into the alley. It wasn’t dark – even here, beyond the walls. The Doomsday glow filled the narrow space with a murky orange fog that caught at the back of her throat and made her want to retch.

      No one had taken refuge here yet. No one human. The mouth of the alley was concealed by an encroaching extension from the shop on the other side of it. Unless you knew it was there, you wouldn’t see it.

      But the rats had known where the alley was. They were fleeing the burning city in their hundreds of thousands. She felt movement around her feet and heard a distant squealing.

      The ground was paved with uneven flags, which were covered with cinders, scraps of paper and charred fragments of wood and cloth that crunched like black gravel beneath her shoes.

      At the end of the alley was a pointed archway recessed in the wall, the stone frame for an oak door studded with nails. She had seen it by daylight: the wood had blackened with age and was as hard as a stone wall.

      In the distance came the sound of three explosions. They were blowing up more of the houses in the path of the fire.

      There came a faint scraping sound from the other side of the door. Then silence. Then another scrape. No lock, thank God. Only two iron bars, as thick as a man’s arm.

      The door swung inwards. A crack of light appeared on the other side, widening with the opening door. She slipped through the gap. Immediately she turned, closed the door and dropped the latch in place.

      ‘Mistress …’ The whisper was a hiss of air, barely audible.

      ‘The bars, Jem.’ Cat’s eyes hadn’t adjusted to the gloom yet. ‘Quickly.’

      The flame wavered behind the grille of the closed lantern as he placed it on the floor. Shadows fragmented and glided over the wall. The air was foul, for the cesspit of the house on the other side of the alley had leached through the foundations of the wall.

      Jem scuttled to the door. Iron grated on stone. He had rubbed grease on the bars to make them move easily and as quietly as possible. She watched, clutching the grey cloak about her throat.

      When the door was doubly barred, he turned to face her. She heard his breath, wheezier than usual perhaps because of the smoke. Sometimes his wheezing grew so bad that they thought he would die of it. ‘Scratch me, I wish he would,’ Cousin Edward had said last winter. ‘It’s like listening to a death rattle.’

      ‘Mistress, what happened?’

      She brushed aside the question with one of her own: ‘Where are they?’

      ‘Madam’s retired. Master’s in the study. Master Edward’s not back yet. The dogs are loose.’

      If the dogs were in the house, then the servants had gone to bed too, all but the watchman and the porter.

      Jem bent down for the lantern. As he picked it up, the shadows merged and swooped to the vaulted ceiling, sliding over stone ribs and bosses.

      Now she was safe, or as safe as she could be for the time being, Cat was aware that she too was breathing raggedly, and that she was drenched with sweat. It was hot even in here.

      He lowered his voice still further. The flame flickered as he mouthed the words, ‘Did you find him, mistress?’

      Tears filled her eyes. She bit her lower lip, drawing blood. ‘No. And St Paul’s is lost. I saw part of the portico fall and crumble into dust.’

      ‘If Master Lovett was there, he will have escaped.’

      ‘We must pray he did.’ Her words were pious, but her feelings were more complicated. Was it possible to love her father and fear him at the same time? She owed him her devotion and her duty. But did he not owe her something as well? She wondered why Jem cared for him, the man who had once beaten him so hard that it caused the lameness in his leg.

      ‘Remember, I cannot be sure it was him I saw this morning.’ Jem brought the light closer to her. ‘Your clothes, mistress. What happened?’

      ‘It doesn’t matter. Light me upstairs.’

      The house was built mainly of stone and brick – a blessing in these times, Master Alderley had said at dinner, though he also urged his family to mark that God tempered the wind to those who took thought for the morrow – and it lay at a safe distance beyond the City wall near Hatton Garden. The place had belonged to the monks in the old days and it had been much altered since then. It was old and rambling, with stairs that spiralled to chambers that were long gone and to great vaulted cellars half-full of rubble.

      Jem led the way, holding the lantern high. They mounted a flight of steps and passed through another door.

      Claws clattered on stone. The mastiffs met them in the passage. One by one, they pushed their moist muzzles at Cat. They pressed against her, sniffing and licking her outstretched hand, eager for her familiar touch. By day the dogs lived in a special enclosure in the yard, and by night they patrolled the house, yard and the garden.

      ‘Thunder,’ she whispered into the darkness, ‘Lion, Greedy and Bare-Arse.’

      The dogs whined softly with pleasure. Cat drew a deep breath. Now the worst was over, she began to tremble. It was unlikely she would be discovered now. For most of the time, the nightwatchman stayed at the other end of the house, away from the kitchens and close to the study and the cellar that Master Alderley had adapted to be his strong room. The dogs would warn them if he was about, and his lantern and his footsteps came before him when he patrolled the other СКАЧАТЬ