The Ashes of London

BARNABAS PLACE WAS not far from Holborn Bridge, where my Lord Craven’s men had brought the Fire to heel yesterday. The streets around it were mean, but the house itself was ancient and of considerable size. It also appeared to be built largely of stone, which must be a great comfort (Master Williamson remarked) in these inflammatory times.

I rapped on the great gate with the hilt of my dagger. Williamson stared about him, his mouth twisting with distaste. Refugees had swollen the crowd of beggars and supplicants that usually gathered at a rich man’s gate.

I knocked again. This time a shutter slid back and a porter asked me what we wanted.

‘Master Williamson is here on the King’s business. Tell Master Alderley he is here.’

The porter let us in, shaking his staff at two women, one with a baby wrapped in a shawl, who tried to slip in after us to beg for alms or find shelter. He showed us up a short flight of steps and into an anteroom.

All this was to be expected, but for some reason the porter was not at his ease. His eyes were restless, and he could not wait to leave us alone. After he left the room, we saw him whispering to another servant, and then both men turning to look towards the room where we were.

Moments passed. I stood by an oriel window overlooking a small courtyard. Williamson paced up and down, occasionally pausing to make a pencilled note in his memorandum book. It was strangely quiet after the hubbub of the streets. The thick walls of Barnabas Place made it both a sanctuary and a prison.

‘Why in God’s name is Alderley keeping us waiting?’ Williamson burst out, his Northern accent particularly marked.

‘Something’s going on, sir. Look.’

While I had been at the window, nearly a score of servants had gathered in the yard; they waited, uncharacteristically idle for the time of day, moving restlessly to and fro, and holding short, murmured conversations with each other. There was a furtiveness about their behaviour, and a strange air of uncertainty.

At that moment the door of the anteroom opened and a young lady entered. Williamson and I uncovered and bowed.

‘Mistress Alderley,’ Williamson said. ‘How do you do?’

She curtsied. ‘Master Williamson. I hope I find you in good health?’

Her dark eyes flicked towards me, and I felt an inconvenient jolt of attraction towards her.

‘Sir, my husband begs your indulgence, but he is delayed,’ she went on without waiting for a reply. ‘He will come as soon as he can, I promise. A matter of minutes.’

‘But he’s here?’

She was older than I had first thought, a shapely woman with fine eyes. Her charms were not moving at the same rate as the calendar. She looked tired.

‘Yes, sir, he is,’ she said. ‘And you must pardon the delay. We have had such—’

She was interrupted by another knock at the gate. Murmuring excuses, she slipped from the room in a rustle of silks.

We heard her voice outside, raised in command, and that of the porter and of a stranger. A little later a man clad in black crossed the courtyard under convoy of the porter. They went almost at a run, scattering the servants as they passed.

‘I know that man,’ Williamson said, joining me at the window. ‘It’s Dr Grout, isn’t it?’

‘A physician, sir?’

‘Of course. What did you think I meant? A doctor of theology? He treated my Lady Castlemaine when she had the French pox. She swears by him.’

Mistress Alderley returned. ‘Forgive me, sirs – we are at sixes and sevens.’

‘Someone’s ill?’ There was a hint of panic in Williamson’s voice, for stone walls were not a barrier to all evils, only to some of them. ‘Not the plague, I hope? Not here?’

‘Not that, sir, God be thanked.’ A muscle twitched beneath her left eye. ‘Something worse. My stepson, Edward, was attacked last night. In this very house. In his own bed.’

Williamson sat down suddenly.

‘God’s body, madam. Will he live?’

‘It’s in the hands of God, sir, and Dr Grout’s. Poor Edward was stabbed in the eye. He has burns as well – his bed curtains were set on fire. He lies between life and death.’

‘Have you caught the man who did it?’

‘We believe so.’ Mistress Alderley sat down opposite him and gestured with a hand heavy with rings at the window to the courtyard. ‘It was an old servant, a malcontent. He was roaming the house last night at the time of the attack. My husband will soon have the truth out of him.’

‘Madam,’ Williamson began. ‘There is something Master Alderley must know about another—’

He broke off. There was a commotion in the courtyard below. Two burly servants were manoeuvring an old man out of a narrow doorway sunk below the ground. The captive’s hands were tied in front of him. His face was bloody. His hair lay loose on his shoulders. He wore a shirt and breeches. His feet were bare.

‘He set fire to the house, too,’ Mistress Alderley said. ‘We could have burned to death in our beds.’

The servants pulled the old man up the steps and dragged him across the cobbles to a ring set in the opposite wall. They strapped his wrists to the ring. The younger servant tugged at the buckle to make sure it was secure.

His colleague brought out a trestle, placed it between the old man and the wall, and forced him to his knees. He seized the shirt at the neck and ripped it apart, exposing the victim’s thin, curving back. The vertebrae stood out like a bony saw.

Williamson and Mistress Alderley joined me at the window. No one spoke.

Another man approached the little group in the yard. He wore a dark suit of good quality and looked like a discreetly prosperous merchant. He carried a whip in his hand, from which hung nine tails, each tipped with steel.

‘Who’s this, madam?’ Williamson said.

‘Master Mundy, sir. The steward.’

Both Williamson and Mistress Alderley had automatically lowered their voices.

There was a hush in the yard. Apart from Mundy, no one moved. He took the bound man by his hair and twisted his head so he might see the whip with its dangling tips of steel, so that he might understand that this would be no ordinary whipping.

Mundy released the old man’s head. He stood back and waited.

The seconds stretched out and seemed to grow into minutes. I found I was holding my breath. At last a figure emerged from the shadow of an archway on the far side of the yard. With the exception of the man stretched over the trestle, the servants straightened their bodies and turned towards him.

He was middle aged, tall and spare, dressed with a sober magnificence. He walked to the trestle and stood by it.

The scene in the courtyard now had a theatrical quality – even a religious one, as if some quasi-sacred ritual, sanctified by law and custom, was about to be enacted. Master Alderley was entirely within his rights to take a whip, even a cat o’ nine tails, to a refractory servant, particularly one under suspicion of a grave offence. Was he not master in his own home, where his word was law, just as the King was master in England, and God was the master of all?

But something chilled me in the sight of Alderley on one side of the trestle and Mundy swinging the whip in the other. Their victim, tied like a pig before slaughter, was small, ragged and grey.

Alderley’s lips were moving. The window was closed. His words were inaudible in the anteroom above the courtyard.

The steward bowed to his master. In a flurry of movement, he swung the whip high and brought it down on the wall just above the ring to which the victim was tied. Mortar sprayed from the masonry in tiny puffs of dust. The steel tips did not touch him. But the old man bucked against his bonds and tried to rear up.

Williamson watched, his face rapt. ‘You’re sure he assaulted his master’s son?’