1


At the clanging of the swords, Lucy's stomach lurched and her hands tightened on her rake. The sound still made her cringe, even all these years after Cromwell's war.
No soldiers now, but two boys garbed as knights, pitching at each other with heavy swords, their underdeveloped bodies encumbered by breastplates and armor made for men. Lucy watched the boys play for a moment, as they slid about in the rubble—the aftermath of the Great Fire—trying to stay atop the mountains of debris that once comprised London's bustling Fleet Street.
Barely a fortnight had passed since the Great Fire of 1666 had devastated London in the three days between September 2 and September 5, leaving a sprawling, still smoldering, wasteland. Ludgate, Cheapside, St. Paul's—all unrecognizable. Where dwellings had once pressed in on each other, like old women clinging together in market, now all was leveled. The moment one medieval structure had fallen nearly all had collapsed, as the centuries-old timber could not withstand the mighty blaze. Here and there, a few structures remained. St. Giles-Without-Cripplegate. St. Katherine Cree. London Bridge. The Tower. Perhaps licked by flames, but not destroyed.
Lucy had heard that, by King Charles's reckoning, more than thirteen thousand homes, churches, and shops had been destroyed, leaving thousands of people without shelter or livelihoods. The real miracle was that scarcely few had perished outright, even though Lucy herself had nearly died in the early hours of the blaze. Everyone had missing neighbors though, people who'd not returned, so the death toll might still grow.
And the Fire was still not yet quenched, despite the unceasing fire brigade. In their panic, when the Fire had first started, Londoners had dug into the network of elm pipes that lay under the streets, to get at the water pumped in from the Thames. With so many punctures, the pipes did not work as they ought, and the water had ceased to flow. The horses and the pumps could not get through the narrow streets, particularly as they grew more jammed as people tried desperately to flee with as many belongings as they could carry in small carts and on their backs.
Even now, buckets of water drawn from the nearby Thames were still being passed hand to hand, from soldier to butcher to child to soap-seller, throughout the day and night, as they had been since the wind had changed on the third day and the fire had at last begun to subside. The smell of smoke still hung heavily in the air, stinging Lucy's eyes and nose, and making her petticoats and bonnet reek.
Like hundreds of other Londoners, Lucy had been pressed into service by the King and the City government to help clear away the rubble, for a few pence a day. It was a far cry from what her life had been like up until the Fire had broken out. For the last few years, she'd been serving as a chambermaid in the household of Master Hargrave, a local magistrate, who spent many hours presiding over the assizes and other court sessions.
Well, no longer a chambermaid exactly, she reminded herself. Lucy had risen to be a lady's maid, excepting now there was no longer any lady in the household for her to serve. Mistress Hargrave, bless her soul, had been taken by the plague last summer, and the magistrate's only daughter, Sarah, had turned Quaker, traveling to distant lands. Since then, the master, a good and kindly man, had kept Lucy in his employ.
Truth be told, there was no clear place for Lucy in the household. Annie was the chambermaid now, having taken on Lucy's old scullery duties, emptying chamber pots, laundering clothes, and keeping the house tidy. Cook prepared the small family's meals, while her husband, John, tended to the needs of the magistrate and his son. Lucy did what she could, helping Cook and John keep the household running with godly order. But the knowledge that she had no clear place in the household remained heavy on her thoughts.
Clinging to order was all they could do—or so it seemed—in this world gone mad. The lawlessness and looting, rampant even before the Fire, when the great plague of the preceding two years had torn social and familial ties apart, threatened to grow worse. During the plague, many servants who had survived their masters had simply seized what they could. Some took just food or trifles, others new clothes or more luxurious items, but many had taken everything, in a quest to start their lives anew. They stole their masters' carts, horses, homes, livelihoods, and, in some cases, even their titles. In an instant, barmaids could become fine ladies, apprentices could become masters, with no one the wiser. Most seemed to have gotten away with these deeds too. Some areas of the city had been so hard hit by the plague that there were few left alive who could gainsay these usurpers' outrageous claims. No gossiping neighbors, no knowledgeable parishioners, no bellmen keeping careful watch. The ties of community that had so long bound Londoners to order and authority had been shattered when the plague was at its height. Only after the members of government had returned to the city had communal order and authority slowly been restored.
Yet with the Fire the world, once again, seemed completely askew. As before, people were quick to take what did not belong to them and to seek a new place in society. The ponderous thefts that had occurred during the plague had only been worsened by the Fire. Property records, wills, legal testaments, and other such documents had been swallowed by the flames, leaving many properties, trades, and livelihoods in dispute, opening the door even wider to looters and squatters.
Although Lucy would never have betrayed the Hargraves in such a base way, as so many servants she knew had done to their masters, there was something about the way these thieves had liberated themselves that she admired. The apprentices who had taken over their masters' shops, and the servants who were now sleeping in their masters' beds, had seized the opportunity to bury their old identities and livelihoods deep within the ashes, and to craft new lives for themselves.
For now, Lucy was just grateful that her family and most of the Hargraves had survived the plague and the Fire, although that survival had not come without cost. The chaos, the suffering, the aftermath of both events were still the stuff of nightmares.
Perhaps the prophets and soothsayers were right, Lucy thought. Maybe 1666 was the devil's year, as so many people fearfully whispered. Surely a judgment was being passed by the Lord.
Yet even as the thought occurred to her, Lucy pushed it out of her head. "Fantastical stuff," she could almost hear the magistrate say. "Utter foolishness. I'm surprised at you, Lucy."
Lucy returned to the tedious work before her. Rake. Scoop. Bucket. The men would first dismantle and carry away the fallen beams, and then remove the remains of furniture, doors, shutters, and other large materials. It was up to the women then to fill sacks and pails with debris, and empty them into the waiting carts. From there, the carts would dump everything into the Thames. Buckets of water coming up to cool the embers, buckets of debris going back.
The clanging sound of the boys started up again. "Stole that armor, I'd wager," said the young woman at her side, commenting on the antics of the two boy knights. "Don't you suppose, Lucy?"
Lucy glanced at Annie. As the magistrate's chambermaid, Annie was certainly growing up, no longer the gawky scrawny girl she'd been when Lucy found her on the streets of London two years before. Though still small, her arms and cheeks were round now, and her smile was no longer so sad.
"I don't know," Lucy shrugged. The armor donned by the boys had likely come from a church, a family monument perhaps. Who could know? The Fire had disturbed as much as it had secreted and destroyed. "Maybe."
Certainly, the Fire had been fickle, incinerating some objects while gently charring others. As she and Annie had raked through the rubble over the last few days, they had seen many things surface, giving little hints about the people who may have lived and worked there. A bed frame, a spinet, children's toys, fragments of clothes, some tools, a dipper, some buckets, a laundry tub, a few knives, all a jumble of life and humanity. They had even uncovered a pianoforte. With one finger, Annie had tapped on one of the grimy ivory keys, and Lucy had winced at the discordant jangling sound that had emerged from the once precious piece.
Here and there they found bits of treasure too. A silver mirror, blackened and peeling. Some gold coins, blackened and distorted from the flames. All those involved with the shoveling and the raking had been warned not to pocket any items they found. Strict laws against looters had been passed and the King's soldiers monitored the ruins to ensure that merchants, landowners, and tenants did not lose their property or their rights. For her part, Lucy wanted nothing from the Fire, seeing that it had only brought misery, despair, and chaos.
Meanwhile, the two boys were still playing, oblivious to all that was going on around them. The helmet of one boy had slipped over his eyes. "I'll slick you to bits, Sir Dungheap," he called to his friend, his voice somewhat muffled under the heavy iron mask. They heard him make a wretching sound. "Hey, this thing stinks!"
"Not so fast, Lord Lughead," Sir Dungheap retorted. "First, you shall have a taste of my sword." The other boy struggled to lift the sword, but only succeeded in toppling them both over, a great mash of arms, legs, and rusty armor.
Although Lucy was hot, tired, and greatly in want of an ale, a smile tugged at her lips. Clearing the rubble was backbreaking work, but it had already brought in a few extra shillings that she and her brother could sorely use. Besides, there was a funny sort of camaraderie that had arisen among the group she was with, some friendly jesting and singing had helped pass the long hours. Most people blamed the Catholics for the Fire. Papists, they called them. This notion united them a bit as they labored, even though by some accounts the inferno had started on Pudding Lane when a baker had failed to douse his ovens before his slumber.
Others hysterically claimed that the French had set London ablaze. Even before the Fire, it was customary to mock and jeer the French. After all, King Charles had been at war with France for a number of months now. Why they were at war, Lucy could not really say. She thought it had something to do with the Dutch and shipping routes, but was otherwise in the dark. At first, when the war was going well, the French were just the source of many tavern jests. Who hadn't laughed at the French "dancing men," who dared fight the valiant English soldiers? Who hadn't heard the tale of the French sailors who had looked down the barrel of a cannon to see if the gunpowder had been lit? As the war dragged on though, and the English began to suffer actual damages, the mood toward the French had grown steadily more poisonous. In the weeks leading up to the Fire, rumors abounded about Frenchmen plotting to blow up Parliament, just as Guy Fawkes had tried to do some sixty years before.
Since the Fire, though, all foreigners but especially the French were looked at with heavy suspicious eyes. As rumors worsened, Lucy knew that at least a few French merchants had fled London with their families for fear of a mob being set upon them. Just yesterday, they'd heard of a Frenchman in Smithfield being run out of London with a pitchfork.
But it wasn't just the French or the Catholics who were being blamed. A lot of griping, though, and surly words were being directed toward the King himself. No matter that the monarch had helped fight the flames with his own hands, many Londoners were still quick to claim that King Charles had not done enough to help the survivors. Last Thursday, the monarch had stood at Moorfields to declare that the Fire had been an act of nature. "Not foreign powers!" he had proclaimed. "Not subversives! Not the Catholics! Not even our enemies across the Channel. An act of God!"
This pleased the soothsayers and almanac-makers to no end, of course, particularly as people began to buy their books and seek more hidden prophecies. Still, most people were not convinced. "Looking for a scapegoat, they are," the magistrate had told her. "I can tell you, Lucy, this worries me." She remembered how last year, when the full-blown plague had finally descended on London, Master Hargrave had called his servants together. "If ever you see a mob forming, you run the other way!" he had warned them. "Bad things happen when a crowd takes leave of its senses." The same was surely true in these tense days.
Thinking of the magistrate's kindness, Lucy smiled. She could never put into words the fortune she had received when entering service in Master Hargrave's household. Not only was he a just and godly man, but he was not one to diminish an idea simply because it came from a servant. As she learned later, he had not minded that she secretly listened to his daughter's tutors, so long as she had polished, chopped, swept, and laundered as she ought. When he would read texts to the members of the family, fulfilling his moral duty as the head of the household, he would allow her to ask questions. He was only required to read them the Bible to assure the salving of his conscience, but over time he began to read from other texts he enjoyed—Locke, Hobbes, and the like. Even Shakespeare, since the ban against frivolity had been lifted by the King six years before.
How shocked his son, Adam, had been, when he first returned to his father's household upon completing his legal studies in law at the Inns of Court. Not only that his father would question his chambermaid about some fairly difficult pieces, but, as he told Lucy a long time later, he was deeply struck by her ability to answer his father's questions in a lively and imaginative way.
Thinking of Adam now, Lucy bit her lip. For so long, there had been nothing between them. Like his father, Adam had always treated her respectfully, not being a man to abuse or force himself upon his servants, as so many men of their station were wont to do. He'd always been courteous, but generally aloof, seemingly paying her little mind. From time to time, though, they had shared curious fluttering exchanges that had revealed that she was in his thoughts, but she did not know what to make of it.
Then, when the family was beset by several tragedies over the last year, including the death of her mistress, Adam's mother, something between them all had begun to change. To the magistrate, Lucy had become something like a daughter. To the magistrate's daughter, she had become a sister. To Adam, well, she became something more dear, although for the longest time, as she recently learned, he had struggled with his feelings for a servant. Social convention claimed that there could be no honorable match between gentry and servant, and she knew he had not wished to dishonor her.
The night of the Fire though, Adam had seemed to cast convention aside. She shivered, remembering his fervent promises. Even in the immediate aftermath, their future together, not quite stated, had seemed possible. But what would that future be like, she couldn't help wonder. Would she be accepted by Adam's peers? Certainly not by those who knew her to have been a chambermaid. Would such a poor match hurt Adam's career? And more insidiously, a little voice whispered inside her, did she even want to get married? The world of dawning opportunities beckoned. Marriage, children—could they wait? The magistrate had told her once how much he had admired several of the petticoat authors, women who had dared take up a pen and promote their own views. Had he been suggesting something to her? She could not be sure.
With a slight sigh, Lucy remembered her last conversation with Adam, a week ago, in the magistrate's kitchen. He'd been pressed by the Lord Mayor to help survey the wreckage and assess the scope of the property claims, and had barely slept or eaten for three days. Sitting at the bench, resting his head on his fist, Lucy had never seen him so overwhelmed and distracted. The disaster that had befallen the City was clearly taking his toll.
Exhausted, he'd barely spoken to her, and seemed to be only half-listening when she broached the topic of her leaving service to look after her brother, Will, a smithy in his own right. "It's not as if I have a place here. Not truly," she'd whispered. "Not since Annie has taken on my old responsibilities."
At that, he had opened his eyes and frowned. "She's done so for a few months now. Nothing has changed. There's no need for you to leave."
"Nothing has changed?" she had asked. "It no longer feels proper for me to live here. That's what changed. Or perhaps you don't agree?"
The words came out differently than she intended, and for a second he looked hurt and puzzled. "I was not aware that I had dishonored you," he said.
"No, no. You haven't," she said, fervently wishing she had not spoken. "Please, you're exhausted. Let us discuss this at another time."
He had closed his eyes. "Yes, I am quite weary. The madness that is out there, Lucy. The beggars, the looters, the liars. So many at the mercy of some truly godless wrongdoers. I should not like you to see it." Then he trudged up to his chamber to sleep, as he was leaving early the next morning. Given her work cleaning up the rubble, their paths had barely crossed and they had found no time to resume this delicate conversation.
Watching Sir Dungheap and Lord Lughead again, tilting aimlessly at each other, Lucy was reminded of this promise of a new world. At what other time could ragamuffins become knights, she pondered with a smile.
Again, Annie was following a different thought. "Those lads best not let them soldiers see them with those swords. They look valuable, fancy-like," she said, sniffing. "Those boys are going to get hauled off to Newgate. Well, not Newgate, since that's been burnt, but another jail."
Lucy shivered, remembering the long terrible months during which her brother Will had wasted away in Newgate jail, the stinkhole of London. Mercifully, he had been released before the plague had taken hold. Not for the first time, Lucy wondered what had happened to the rest of the prisoners during the Fire, for surely the jailers she had met would not think twice about running off without setting the denizens free. The official word was that no one in the prison had died. She had heard whispers, though, that the prisoners inside had simply been left to the inferno and their eternal damnation. And if Will hadn't been set free—. She thrust the thought away.
"Oh, sorry miss, I didn't think," Annie said, awkwardly patting her arm. "They won't be off to jail. More likely they will get their ears boxed." She set her shovel down, as if she were about to start moving debris again. Instead, she took a half-step closer to Lucy. "Someone's watching us," she whispered. "Just yonder, past the stones there." She discreetly pointed her finger.
Lucy followed her gaze. Sure enough, a young man was looking at them, not raking as he ought to have been. "Not working too hard, is he?" Lucy commented. Catching her eye, the man began to saunter toward them. "Oh, no! He's coming this way. Ignore him, Annie. We've work to do."
The young man planted himself in front of them. "'Tis a shame your pretty hands are getting dirtied in this muck." When he grinned, his face lengthened, making him look a bit devilish.
In that instant, Lucy recognized him and rolled her eyes. Sid Petry. She'd seen him once pick a woman's pocket and later being tried at court for another misdemeanor. Like the other laborers, Sid was wearing heavy wool breeches and a jacket, but somehow he didn't seem quite as raggedy or dusty as the rest of the men, although a light grime covered his features. He wasn't wearing a hat, and his dark blond hair looked fairly well kept. His hazel eyes danced with mischief.
Her own eyes narrowed. "Shouldn't you be working, Sid?" she asked. Annie looked at her, surprised Lucy would know the former ragamuffin.
Sid's smirk grew. "So we've met, have we?" he asked, looking more interested. Not wanting him to recall the exact circumstances of their first meeting nearly two years before, when she was just eighteen, Lucy repeated her question.
He winked. "Who's to say I'm not working?"
Remembering Sid's penchant for petty theft, Lucy hid a smile. "Looting is a bad business," she warned. "The justice of the peace may not be so lenient this time. You might get more than the stocks, should you do anything the law might not like."
Sid puffed up his chest. "So, you've seen me work, eh?"
"Seen you get caught."
"Ah, you cut me to the quick." He looked around. "Don't see no Redcoats nearby, do you? They must have pinched off for a pint, I'd wager."
"They're around. Take something. You'll see." Lucy warned him again. She looked around. Sure enough, there weren't any soldiers around anymore. For heaven's sake, she thought. The looting that could happen if the others realized that the soldiers were no longer paying attention. She turned back to Sid. "You're familiar enough with the stocks, aren't you?"
Sid stepped closer to her. Being close to seventeen or eighteen now, he'd grown taller since she had last seen him, and now loomed over her a bit. "Ah, miss. I don't even know your name?"
"She's Lucy," Annie piped in, even as Lucy elbowed her in the ribs. "I remember you too, Sid. From the streets."
Sid turned his attention to the younger girl, slapping his head in mock dismay. "Now I must be going daft. Not to recall two lovely lasses such as yourselves."
Annie looked pleased. "Oh, get on with you."
Lucy was about to wave Sid off when she noticed one of the boys, Sir Dungheap, suddenly drop his sword, and rip off his helmet. Looking horrified, he began to shout, making an odd gurgling sound. He pointed downward at something hidden on the other side of the mound of debris. Lord Lughead was nowhere to be seen. For a moment Lucy felt sick. He probably had run his mate through with a sword.
But then the boy started to call. "Help! Help! A body! A body!"
Hearing the boy's cry, Lucy and Annie dropped their rakes and buckets and raced over the rubble, their skirts catching in the debris, Sid a few steps ahead of them. Lucy wondered sickly what they would find. She had heard of a few bodies that had been found here and there. A young woman, too afraid to jump from a burning building. An elderly woman found huddled in St. Dennis, probably thinking the great stone pillars and God would protect her. And most miraculously of all, the corpse of a saint who had died some hundreds of years before, perfectly preserved after being displaced somehow from his crypt.
But when Lucy reached the boys, she gagged. A man's body was spilling from a great wooden barrel, where it lay on its side on the ash-covered ground.
"He knocked it over, he did it," Sir Dungheap said, a bit resentfully, pointing at the other boy. "Standing on top of that barrel, 'til he toppled it over, he did."
Sir Lughead, who looked a little pale, tried to muster a cheeky grin. "Not my fault the body was in there, though, was it?"
Ignoring the boys, Lucy took a closer look. From the vermin crawling all over him, he'd clearly been dead for a while. Lucy dimly noted a shock of black hair and brownish skin before her eyes fixed on the handle of a knife protruding from his chest. His eyes—mercifully—were closed. She saw Sid turn away in disgust.
At the sight of the corpse, a great buzzing began to rise in Lucy's ears. Annie said something, but Lucy could not hear her. For a moment, the vision of a different gruesome death she had recently witnessed rose before her eyes, and she began to shake. Lucy forced herself to speak. "We must summon a constable," she heard herself say. Her voice sounded tinny and flat.
No one moved.
"We have to get the constable!" Lucy repeated, her voice sharpening. She looked about at the handful of people who had gathered. Annie looked a bit queasy but, like Lucy, she had seen far too much death in her young life to be very moved by a corpse. Murder, though, that was different. Lucy put her hands on Annie's shoulders and gave her a little shake. "Annie, you must fetch a constable. Or a watchman. Quickly."
Fortunately, Annie seemed to regain her senses. She had lived long enough in the magistrate's household to know better. "Right, miss," she said, unconsciously deferring to Lucy, before running off.
The crowd began to murmur among themselves. Most were the people Lucy had been working alongside all week, but there were a few she hadn't met.
"Looks like a foreigner. Probably a sailor."
"Dunderhead!"
"Poor man. What a way to go."
"Like as not, he had it coming." This verdict came from a small rotund man, who Lucy remembered from before the Fire. He used to sell perfumes and spices in the market. "A chap don't get knifed through the chest for no reason."
"Where's his finger pointing?" a former seller of pies cried, balancing a babe on her hip. "He's surely pointing to the one who done him in." Everyone knew that victims who had been monstrously killed would point to their murderers. A few people nodded, but others scoffed.
"Daft woman," the perfume-seller spoke again. "Can you see his hands?"
"Now how can I? They're all tucked up inside the barrel, ain't they?"
"Well, dump him from the barrel then. See where he points."
Hearing the crowd hum its approval, two men moved to dump the corpse out. But that would mean the murderer was there. It made no sense.
"Wait!" Lucy called out, finally finding her voice. "I don't think we should move the body!" She could almost hear the physician Larimer complaining, as he had many a time while supping at the magistrate's household. "Bloody fools! I need to look at the body where it lays to determine cause of death." She shook her head. The cause of death here looked easy to see; the big knife through his chest was a dead giveaway.
As if reading her thoughts, the man standing at the barrel frowned at Lucy. "He's dead, ain't he? Not going to hurt him none, are we?"
Lucy thought quickly. "Yes, well, his soul might not like being disturbed. He might decide to haunt you."
At that thought, a few people crossed themselves quickly, the gesture a holdover from their distant Catholic past, and backed away. No one wanted a spirit following them home, especially with so few crossroads that could confuse the ghost and send it in the wrong direction.
Luckily, the constable arrived just then, Annie at his heels, panting slightly. A second man, a soldier, followed them both. Lucy recognized the constable. Duncan. Lucy had first met him two years ago when he had brought news to the magistrate of a terrible murder. And just two weeks ago, on the night of the Great Fire, she had stood before him, sobbing out the story of another terrible death that had occurred.
Taking in the scene at once, Constable Duncan spoke, his Yorkshire accent setting him apart from the Londoners around him. Though young, he commanded respect. "Who found the body?" he demanded.
Lucy pushed the two young boys forward. "These two, Constable Duncan. They were playing atop the barrels."
Duncan glanced at her, his face registering slight surprise at seeing her there. "Indeed, Miss Campion? Alright then. The rest of you. Back to work."
Grumbling, sneaking glances over their shoulders, the small group returned to their shovels and carts, resuming the seemingly endless restoration of London. The soldier moved closer, keeping an eye on their work. Lucy noticed that Sid seemed to have disappeared. Not surprising, seeing how he disliked any representative of the law.
Duncan looked sternly at the boys. "Now, lads, tell me how you came to find the body."
In sullen tones, Sir Dungheap explained. "We was just playing, climbing about on the barrels. Just there."
They followed his finger. A few more barrels were still stacked against a bit of a stone wall. The rest of the dwelling must have been made of wood, as only a few burned timbers remained. The stone wall, probably once connected to a much older structure that had survived the flames, must have protected the barrels stacked alongside.
"We was rolling on top of the barrels. Dunno there was a stiff in it," the boy said sullenly.
Duncan held out his thumb, looking in the distance first at the ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral, and then did the same thing to the remains of St. Faith's. Turning, he did it a third time, looking at the structures at the end of Fleet Street that were still intact, having been just out of reach of the Fire.
"What are you doing?" Lucy could not help but ask.
"Measuring distances," Duncan said. "A trick I learned from painters. They call it ‘perspective.'"
"Why?"
"Well, Miss Campion, I'm trying to determine which tavern this was. There were several on Fleet Street."
"How do you know it was a tavern?"
Duncan pointed at the barrels. "Those are malt barrels."
Lucy frowned, trying to remember what the street had looked like before the Fire. Surely, she had walked along here enough times, to and from the market. Right now, without the shops with their signs, she was at a bit of a loss.
Duncan, however, had figured it out. "The Cheshire Cheese!" he said.
With a flash, Lucy remembered the old sign that had hung out front. She couldn't remember ever having been inside, not because she didn't enjoy a pint from time to time, but because that tavern hadn't seemed to draw the most respectable sorts. She said as much to the constable.
"Hmmm," he said, not listening to her. "Now the question is, when was this poor sot put in the barrel? I assume before the Fire, since the soldiers have been patrolling this area. But how long before?"
"The physician should be able to tell you that," Lucy said. "What he can't tell you, though, is who murdered the poor man. Or why."



Copyright © 2014 by Susanna Calkins