The Fire Court: A gripping historical thriller from the bestselling author of The Ashes of London. Andrew Taylor
so much. Once he had entered the building, his imagination must have taken over. But I persevered.
‘I am much occupied with business at present,’ Gromwell said in a stately fashion. ‘I bid you good day, sir.
‘Does the name Twisden mean anything to you, sir?’ I asked. ‘Or Wyndham? Or Rainsford?’
He shook his head. ‘Forgive me, sir, my studies—’
‘Or the initials DY?’
Gromwell’s face changed. For an instant, he looked surprised, jolted out of his stateliness. His features sharpened, which made them look briefly younger. ‘No,’ he said, more firmly than he had said anything yet. ‘Good day to you.’
He closed the door in my face. I knocked on it. The only answer was the sound of a bolt being driven home.
The young woman sat in the gallery taking shorthand. Her real name was Catherine Lovett, but most of the time she tried very hard to forget that inconvenient fact. Now she was Jane Hakesby, a maidservant attending the Fire Court at Clifford’s Inn to serve her master, Simon Hakesby, who was also a second cousin of her father’s. She was a maidservant with accomplishments, equipped with some of the advantages of gentle breeding, though few of them were much use to her at present. In her new life, only Mr Hakesby knew her true identity.
She did not intend to be a maidservant for ever. On her knee was a notebook held flat with the palm of her left hand. A steadily lengthening procession of pencilled marks marched across the open page, meaningless except to the initiated.
In the hall below, the court was in session, dealing with the last of the day’s cases. There were three judges at the round table on the low dais at the east end. The clerks and ushers clustered to one side, making notes of the proceedings and scuttling forward when a judge beckoned, bringing a book or a letter or a fresh pen. The petitioner and the defendants, together with their representatives, stood in the space immediately in front of the dais.
There was a lull in the proceedings – perhaps five seconds – during which no one spoke, and the court seemed to pause to draw breath. Her mind wandered. Her pencil followed. His wig’s crooked, she wrote. Judge on left. Then a lawyer cleared his throat and the talking and arguing began again.
The hall was cramped and shabby. Clifford’s Inn was not a grand establishment on the scale of the Temple, its stately colleague on the other side of the Fleet Street. Even in May, the air was chilly and damp. In the middle of the floor, a brazier of coal smouldered in the square hearth. The heat rose with the smoke to the blackened roof timbers and drifted uselessly through the louvred chimney into the ungrateful sky.
Jane Hakesby was sitting in the gallery at the west end, though a little apart from the other women. Her notebook rested on a copy of Shelton’s Tachygraphy. She was in the process of teaching herself shorthand, and the Fire Court provided her with useful practice. Most of the women were in a whispering huddle at the back, where the judges could not see them. Sometimes they glanced at her, their faces blank, their eyes hard. She knew why. She did not belong among them so they disliked her automatically.
‘All rise,’ cried the clerk. ‘All rise.’
The court rose to its feet as the judges retired to their parlour to confer on their verdict. Jane Hakesby looked down at the floor of the hall. Below her was a bobbing pool of men’s hats. Benches had been fixed along the side walls, and it was here that the elderly and the infirm sat. From her vantage point at the front of the gallery, she saw the brim of Mr Hakesby’s best hat and the folds of the dark wool cloak he usually reserved for church and high days and holidays. Even his best cloak was shabby.
Hakesby did not have a direct interest in the case under consideration. He was here on behalf of the freeholder to keep watch over his interests. The dispute itself was an involved and bad-tempered affair between the leaseholder and three of his subtenants about which of them would be responsible for rebuilding their houses after the Fire, and how the cost of doing so would affect the terms of their leases and sub-leases. The Government had set up the court solely for the purpose of settling such disputes, with the aim of encouraging the rebuilding of the city as soon as possible.
Mr Hakesby’s white hand rested on his leg. Even at this distance, she made out that the fingers were trembling. A familiar sense of dread crept through her, and settled in her stomach. She had hoped that as the weather improved, his health would improve with it. But if anything his ague grew worse.
And if it grew so bad he could not work, what would become of her?
In a while the judges returned with their verdict, which found in favour of the subtenants but varied the terms of their leases in the leaseholder’s favour. The judges departed and the hall began to empty.
Jane Hakesby allowed the other women to leave before her. She kept her head down as they filed past her to the stairs, pretending to study a page of Tachygraphy. It was improbable that any of them would recognize her, or rather recognize her as who she had been, but old habits died hard. In a moment she followed them down to the passage at the end of the hall.
There were doors at either end of the passage, one to the small court bounded by the Fleet Street gate, the other to the garden court that contained most of the other buildings of Clifford’s Inn. Mr Hakesby emerged from the hall and touched her arm. She took his folder of papers and offered him her arm. He pretended not to see it. Leaning on his stick, he made his way slowly towards the north doorway, leaving her to trail behind him.
He was a proud man. It was one thing to show weakness to his maidservant, but quite another to show it to the world, especially to that part of the world that knew him. But she was learning how to manage him.
‘The sun is out, sir,’ she said. ‘I found it so cold in the hall. Would you permit me to sit in the garden for a moment?’
But he wasn’t attending to her. He stopped suddenly. ‘Good God,’ she heard him say.
She looked past him. Her eyes widened. Without thinking, she took a step backwards, ready for flight. Here was someone who belonged to her old life.
‘Mr Marwood,’ Hakesby said, his voice trembling. ‘Your servant, sir.’
She recognized him at once, which was strange. James Marwood looked different from before – he seemed taller, and he was dressed in mourning. He was also out of place at Clifford’s Inn. He belonged among the clerks of Whitehall, not here among the lawyers. Most of all, though, her instant recognition was strange because she had seen him properly only once, and then by the light of candles and lanterns, and at a time when she had other things on her mind. She wondered who was dead.
Mr Hakesby glanced over his shoulder at her. He turned back.
‘Good day to you, sir,’ Marwood said, his voice cautious as though he was uncertain of his welcome. His eyes slid towards her but he did not greet her.
‘And to you …’ Hakesby hesitated and then went on in haste, as if to have the information off his chest as soon as possible. ‘And here is my cousin Jane. Jane,’ he repeated with emphasis, as if teaching a lesson, ‘Jane Hakesby. She’s come up to London to be my servant at the drawing office.’
She dropped a token curtsy. Four months earlier, Marwood had saved her life in the ruins of St Paul’s. Apart from Hakesby himself, only Marwood knew that Jane Hakesby was really Catherine Lovett, the daughter of a Regicide who had died last year while plotting against the King.
‘And what brings you here, sir?’ Hakesby asked.
‘An enquiry, sir. And you?’
Hakesby nodded towards the hall. ‘The Fire Court has been in session.’
‘Do you often attend?’
‘As occasion requires. When I have clients whose interests