When London Burned : a Story of Restoration Times and the Great Fire

"I am an honest man I hope, master. My name is John Wilkes, and, as that young lady will tell you, I am in the employ of her father."

"Then I tell you, John Wilkes, or John the Devil, or whatever your name maybe, that if you don't at once take yourself off, I will let daylight into you," and he drew his sword, as did his two companions.

John gave a whistle, and the wooden-legged man was heard hurrying up from Fenchurch Street.

"Cut the scoundrel down, Penrose," Harvey exclaimed, "while I put the lady into the chair."

The man addressed sprang at Wilkes, but in a moment his Court sword was shivered by a blow from the latter's cudgel, which a moment later fell again on his head, sending him reeling back several paces.

"Stay, sir, or I will run you through," Cyril said, pricking Harvey sharply in the arm as he was urging Nellie to enter the chair.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" the other exclaimed, in a tone of fury. "My boy of Cheapside! Well, I can spare a moment to punish you."

"Oh, do not fight with him, my lord!" Nellie exclaimed.

"My lord!" Cyril laughed. "So he has become a lord, eh?"

Then he changed his tone.

"Mistress Nellie, you have been deceived. This fellow is no lord. He is a hanger-on of the Court, one John Harvey, a disreputable blackguard whom I heard boasting to his boon-companions of his conquest. I implore you to return home as quietly as you went. None will know of this."

He broke off suddenly, for, with an oath, Harvey rushed at him. Their swords clashed, there was a quick thrust and parry, and then Harvey staggered back with a sword-wound through the shoulder, dropping his sword to the ground.

"Your game is up, John Harvey," Cyril said. "Did you have your deserts I would pass my sword through your body. Now call your fellows off, or it will be worse for them."

"Oh, it is not true? Surely it cannot be true?" Nellie cried, addressing Harvey. "You cannot have deceived me?"

The fellow, smarting with pain, and seeing that the game was up, replied with a savage curse.

"You may think yourself lucky that you are only disabled, you villain!" Cyril said, taking a step towards him with his sword menacingly raised. "Begone, sir, before my patience is exhausted, or, by heaven! it will be your dead body that the chairmen will have to carry away."

"Disabled or not," John Wilkes exclaimed, "I will have a say in the matter;" and, with a blow with his cudgel, he stretched Harvey on the ground, and belaboured him furiously until Cyril dragged him away by force. Harvey rose slowly to his feet.

"Take yourself off, sir," Cyril said. "One of your brave companions has long ago bolted; the other is disarmed, and has his head broken. You may thank your stars that you have escaped with nothing worse than a sword-thrust through your shoulder, and a sound drubbing. Hanging would be a fit punishment for knaves like you. I warn you, if you ever address or in any way molest this lady again, you won't get off so easily."

Then he turned and offered his arm to Nellie, who was leaning against the wall in a half-fainting state. Not a word was spoken until they emerged from the lane.

"No one knows of this but ourselves, Mistress Nellie, and you will never hear of it from us. Glad indeed I am that I have saved you from the misery and ruin that must have resulted from your listening to that plausible scoundrel. Go quietly upstairs. We will wait here till we are sure that you have gone safely into your room; then we will follow. I doubt not that you are angry with me now, but in time you will feel that you have been saved from a great danger."

The door was not locked. He lifted the latch silently, and held the door open for her to pass in. Then he closed it again, and turned to the two men who followed them.

"This has been a good night's work, John."

"That has it. I don't think that young spark will be coming after City maidens again. Well, it has been a narrow escape for her. It would have broken the Captain's heart if she had gone in that way. What strange things women are! I have always thought Mistress Nellie as sensible a girl as one would want to see. Given a little over-much, perhaps, to thinking of the fashion of her dress, but that was natural enough, seeing how pretty she is and how much she is made of; and yet she is led, by a few soft speeches from a man she knows nothing of, to run away from home, and leave father, and mother, and all. Well, Matthew, lad, we sha'n't want any more watching. You have done a big service to the master, though he will never know it. I know I can trust you to keep a stopper on your jaws. Don't you let a soul know of this—not even your wife."

"You trust me, mate," the man replied. "My wife is a good soul, but her tongue runs nineteen to the dozen, and you might as well shout a thing out at Paul's Cross as drop it into her ear. I think my back will be well enough for me to come to work again to-morrow," he added, with a laugh.

"All right, mate. I shall be glad to have you again, for the chap who has been in your place is a landsman, and he don't know a marling-spike from an anchor. Good-night, mate."

"Well, Master Cyril," he went on, as the sailor walked away, "I don't think there ever was such a good wind as that which blew you here. First of all you saved Captain Dave's fortune, and now you save his daughter. I look on Captain Dave as being pretty nigh the same as myself, seeing as I have been with him man and boy for over thirty years, and I feel what you have done for him just as if you had done it for me. I am only a rough sailor-man, and I don't know how to put it in words, but I feel just full up with a cargo of thankfulness."

"That is all right," Cyril said, holding out his hand, which John Wilkes shook with a heartiness that was almost painful. "Captain Dave offered me a home when I was alone without a friend in London, and I am glad indeed that I have been able to render him service in return. I myself have done little enough, though I do not say that the consequences have not been important. It has been just taking a little trouble and keeping a few watches—a thing not worth talking about one way or the other. I hope this will do Mistress Nellie good. She is a nice girl, but too fond of admiration, and inclined to think that she is meant for higher things than to marry a London citizen. I think to-night's work will cure her of that. This fellow evidently made himself out to her to be a nobleman of the Court. Now she sees that he is neither a nobleman nor a gentleman, but a ruffian who took advantage of her vanity and inexperience, and that she would have done better to have jumped down the well in the yard than to have put herself in his power. Now we can go up to bed. There is no more probability of our waking the Captain than there has been on other nights; but mind, if we should do so, you stick to the story we agreed on, that you thought there was someone by the gate in the lane again, and so called me to go down with you to investigate, not thinking it worth while to rouse up the Captain on what might be a false alarm."

Everything remained perfectly quiet as they made their way upstairs to their rooms as silently as possible.

"Where is Nellie?" Captain Dave asked, when they assembled at breakfast.

"She is not well," his wife replied, "I went to her room just now and found that she was still a-bed. She said that she had a bad headache, and I fear that she is going to have a fever, for her face is pale and her eyes red and swollen, just as if she had been well-nigh crying them out of her head; her hands are hot and her pulse fast. Directly I have had breakfast I shall make her some camomile tea, and if that does not do her good I shall send for the doctor."

"Do so, wife, without delay. Why, the girl has never ailed a day for years! What can have come to her?"

"She says it is only a bad headache—that all she wants is to be left alone."

"Yes, yes; that is all very well, but if she does not get better soon she must be seen to. They say that there were several cases last week of that plague that has been doing so much harm in foreign parts, and if that is so it behoves us to be very careful, and see that any illness is attended to without delay."

"I don't think that there is any cause for alarm," his wife said quietly. "The child has got a headache and is a little feverish, but there is no occasion whatever for thinking that it is anything more. There is nothing unusual in a girl having a headache, but Nellie has had such good health that if she had a prick in the finger you would think it was serious."

"By the way, John," Captain Dave said suddenly, "did you hear any noise in the lane last night? Your room is at the back of the house, and you were more likely to have heard it than I was. I have just seen one of the watch, and he tells me that there was a fray there last night, for there is a patch of blood and marks of a scuffle. It was up at the other end. There is some mystery about it, he thinks, for he says that one of his mates last night saw a sedan chair escorted by three men turn into the lane from Fenchurch Street just before ten o'clock, and one of the neighbours says that just after that hour he heard a disturbance and a clashing of swords there. On looking out, he saw something dark that might have been a chair standing there, and several men engaged in a scuffle. It seemed soon over, and directly afterwards three people came down the lane this way. Then he fancied that someone got into the chair, which was afterwards carried out into Fenchurch Street."

"I did hear something that sounded like a quarrel or a fray," John Wilkes said, "but there is nothing unusual about that. As everything was soon quiet again, I gave no further thought to it."

"Well, it seems a curious affair, John. However, it is the business of the City watch and not mine, so we need not bother ourselves about it. I am glad to see you have got Matthew at work again this morning. He tells me that he thinks he has fairly got over that sprain in his back."

CHAPTER VIII

THE CAPTAIN'S YARN

Mindful of the fact that this affair had added a new enemy to those he had acquired by the break-up of the Black Gang, Cyril thought it as well to go round and give notice to the two traders whose books he attended to in the evening, that unless they could arrange for him to do them in the daytime he must give up the work altogether. Both preferred the former alternative, for they recognised the advantage they had derived from his work, and that at a rate of pay for which they could not have obtained the services of any scrivener in the City.

It was three or four days before Nellie Dowsett made her appearance at the general table.

"I can't make out what ails the girl," her mother said, on the previous evening. "The fever speedily left her, as I told you, but she is weak and languid, and seems indisposed to talk."

"She will soon get over that, my dear," Captain Dave said. "Girls are not like men. I have seen them on board ship. One day they are laughing and fidgeting about like wild things, the next day they are poor, woebegone creatures. If she gets no better in a few days, I will see when my old friend, Jim Carroll, is starting in his brig for Yarmouth, and will run down with her myself—and of course with you, wife, if you will go—and stay there a few days while he is unloading and filling up again. The sea-air will set her up again, I warrant."

"Not at this time of year," Dame Dowsett said firmly. "With these bitter winds it is no time for a lass to go a-sailing; and they say that Yarmouth is a great deal colder than we are here, being exposed to the east winds."

"Well, well, Dame, then we will content ourselves with a run in the hoy down to Margate. If we choose well the wind and tide we can start from here in the morning and maybe reach there late in the evening, or, if not, the next morning to breakfast. Or if you think that too far we will stop at Sheerness, where we can get in two tides easily enough if the wind be fair."

"That would be better, David; but it were best to see how she goes on. It may be, as you say, that she will shortly gain her strength and spirits again."

It was evident, when Nellie entered the room at breakfast-time the next morning, that her mother's reports had not been exaggerated. She looked, indeed, as if recovering from a severe illness, and when she said good-morning to her father her voice trembled and her eyes filled with tears.

"Tut, tut, lass! This will never do. I shall soon hardly own you for my Nellie. We shall have to feed you up on capons and wine, child, or send you down to one of the baths for a course of strengthening waters."

She smiled faintly, and then turning, gave her hand to Cyril. As she did so, a slight flush of colour came into her cheeks.

"I am heartily glad to see you down again, Mistress Nellie," he said, "and wish you a fair and speedy recovery."