London - Edward Rutherfurd [415]
It was nearly four in the morning when his wife woke him. This time there was no doubt. Over the rooftops on his left, he could see a faint glow. Flames and hot ashes must be rising into the sky somewhere near the bridge. Probably not close. “But I’ll go and see,” he said.
He pulled on some clothes and left the house.
It was a fire, but not a very big one. It had begun some time after midnight in a baker’s house down a narrow street off East Cheap, called Pudding Lane. A maidservant who had panicked and run up into the roof had been trapped and burned to death. The fire had spread to about a dozen of the huddled little houses now, but he had often seen worse blazes than this. The men were throwing buckets of water on it, without much conviction. As Julius turned to go home he met the mayor.
“They called me out,” the mayor said irritably.
“It seems no great affair,” Julius remarked.
“A woman could piss it out,” the mayor grumbled, and stomped off.
This crude and famous verdict would not have gone down in history, and the fire in Pudding Lane would be entirely forgotten if it had not been for one extra factor which neither man noticed at the time.
The wind was getting up. By the time Julius was safely back in his bed, the breeze was sprightly. At the moment when, with his arm round his wife, he fell asleep again, the wind had carried the sparks and embers across to the next street, which led straight on to London Bridge. At dawn, the church of St Magnus the Martyr went. Soon afterwards, the fire reached the bridge. By mid-morning it was threatening the warehouses along the river.
By the time Julius went out again and made his way over to a vantage point near the top of Cornhill, he could see a huge conflagration spreading all round the head of the bridge. Two, perhaps three hundred of the tightly packed houses, he guessed, might be in flames. The crackle and roar reverberated all around the city now. So fascinated was he that he stood up there for more than two hours before making his way down the hill, skirting the fire as close as he dared, and then walking back up Watling Street. It was there that he encountered young Richard Meredith talking to a gentleman he introduced as Mr Pepys. This gentleman, who seemed to have seen more than most, was scathing.
“I saw both the king and his brother at Whitehall,” he was saying. “They sent orders to pull down houses to make firebreaks, but because the city authorities are afraid the owners may demand compensation, they’re leaving the houses untouched!”
“Have you seen the mayor?” Julius asked.
“Five minutes past. First he almost weeps; then he says no one will obey him; then he says he’s tired and going to dinner. Contemptible.”
“So what will happen?”
“The fire,” Pepys said, “will rage.”
During the afternoon O Be Joyful told his family to be ready to move. The fire had been growing steadily. A stream of carts piled with people’s possessions had been labouring up Watling Street from the London Bridge area for some time.
O Be Joyful had been increasingly conscious of his responsibility in the last few months. The time on the river and the general disruption of the plague had left Martha somewhat weakened. That spring he had persuaded her to live with them and her daily proximity could not fail to remind him that he was expected to take Gideon’s place. With four children to think of now, as well, he knew it was his duty to give leadership. If only, he wished, these things came to him more naturally.
Nonetheless, he acted decisively now. A friend with lodgings at Shoreditch had agreed to take them in. If need be, they would be ready. And he was satisfied that his duty had been done when Martha had suddenly announced: “I want to go and see if my old friend Mrs Bundy is safe.”
He knew this godly woman slightly and offered to go himself. “But you’ve never been