‘Something’s on fire.’
‘Where?’ Nottingham asked urgently. ‘Can you tell?’ They stood still, listening, then began to pick out a clamour of voices down towards the river. Together they began to run.
Two
The noise became louder, people shouting in panic then the frantic, outraged roar of a blaze. As they neared, the Constable could see dark smoke pluming low above the Calls before tailing into the sky. Christ, he thought, running faster. So many of the houses there were built from timber, old, dry and run down, crammed with the poor and hemmed tight between tanneries, dye works and cloth finishers. If the fire took full hold the whole block could catch in a moment.
Close to, he could feel the fierce heat and glow as the ancient wood caught and burned. So far it was just one house. Small tongues of fire flicked out through gaps in the woodwork, like a hunger that demanded to be fed. The sound around him filled his ears and the thick air made his eyes water, tiny crumbs of hot ash floating to leave him coughing and spluttering.
People had gathered at a distance, pushed away by the heat, already speculating on the dead left inside and taking wagers on the damage. Angrily he pushed his way through them and into a ginnel barely wider than his shoulders, darting along it to the thin, dusty ground of Call Brows and the river.
Men had already set up a bucket line and more rushed to join them, hauling water from the Aire to try to douse the blaze. They worked with quiet, desperate intent; it wasn’t just a house up there, it was their own homes and businesses they wanted to save. Without a word Nottingham shouldered his way in, squeezing between Hammond the tailor, face full of fear, eyes wild, needles still sticking from his shirt collar, and a muscled man he didn’t know who’d thrown off his coat and rolled up his sleeves, his mouth set grimly. For a full hour the Constable bent his back, moving buckets to and fro, pausing only for quick glances towards the building. There was a sharp, shattering explosion of glass as the heat blew out a window, followed by the slow, menacing rumble of a floor giving way. Anyone trapped inside had to be dead, he thought, and prayed God they’d all managed to escape.
The men battled together, throats too rough and dry from the smoke to speak. His muscles ached and there was pain in his arms and fingers with each movement. Sweat stung his eyes. But he carried on, just like all the others around him. They had no choice. He was sure he could take no more when a yell rose from the house. The Constable jerked his head up, fearing that the fire had started to spread.
Instead there were hoarse cheers and shouts, ragged at first, then growing. They’d won, they’d beaten the blaze, taken the life from it to leave it hissing and steaming. He let the bucket drop to the ground and scooped up handfuls of water to drink and splash over his face, the river coolness like balm on his skin. He straightened up slowly, pushing at his spine with his knuckles as he stretched. Like his neighbours he was grinning wide, pulled and buoyed by victory.
But he didn’t have their time for celebration. He made his way back through to the Calls, legs cramping and protesting at each step, hands rubbing at the ache in his shoulders. The crowd was still outside the house, more of them than before, still lively and laughing now the danger had passed. He spotted the deputy, a head taller than the others, and waved him over.
‘Get a couple of the men here to watch the place and make sure it doesn’t start up again,’ he ordered, his voice low and scratchy. He nodded towards the people milling around. ‘They’ll keep this lot out of the place, too. Make sure Rob knows to have someone guarding it all night, too. It won’t be cool enough for us to look inside before the morning.’
‘Yes, boss.’
Someone was passing a jug of ale. Nottingham quickly reached for it and took a long, welcome drink before handing it on. ‘That was warm work,’ he said wearily. ‘At least we managed to save it. Did you find out who was living there?’
‘No one,’ Sedgwick answered. ‘It was empty. There’d been a family but they left last week.’
‘Lucky for them,’ the Constable said. He looked at the wisps of smoke still curling up from the blackened wood and the dark patches of soot bright against old, stained limewash walls. The air was acrid, rasping like a file against the back of his throat.
He turned away, staring at the damage, the heat still strong enough to keep people back, and wondered how the blaze had started. It could have been anything, any spark would have ignited a place like this.
The Constable walked down the street towards the Parish Church, where the air smelt cleaner. He rested against the wall of the graveyard where fresh spring moss covered the coping stones, hawked up phlegm, breathed deeply to clear his chest and wondered. Perhaps they’d understand more tomorrow. The odds were that it had been an accident.
By the time he reached his home on Marsh Lane he could feel all his years in his muscles. The sweat had dried prickly and salty on his flesh. The back door was open, sun coming in to warm the kitchen. Over in the fields white linen like ghosts was spread over green bushes, still drying from yesterday’s wash. He poured a full cup of ale and downed it rapidly, scarcely noticing the taste, then followed it with another. The coat and breeches felt heavy against his tired body. He watched Mary working in the garden, planting the seedlings she’d carefully coaxed through the late winter.
She was bent in concentration, her fingers moving in the dirt with quick certainty. Nottingham couldn’t see her face but he knew her eyes would be bright in the sunlight and her mouth curved in a tiny smile of pleasure at her work. The older he grew, the more he understood that death came closer each day, the greater the tenderness and love he felt for her.
She turned as he came outside and stood, her eyes widening with worry.
‘My God, Richard, what happened to you? You’re all covered in dirt and soot. You smell like-’
‘-fire,’ he told her. ‘It’s all right, it’s out now.’ She opened her mouth to speak. ‘I was just part of the bucket chain,’ he said. ‘Nothing dangerous.’ He held out his hands, palms upwards to show the redness and blisters from the handles.
‘Was anyone hurt?’ she asked.
‘Evidently the place was empty. We managed to put it out before it could spread.’
‘Thank God for that.’ She licked her thumb and rubbed a smudge from his cheek. He grinned at the gentle roughness of her fingertip against his face. Her hair was greyer each year and the pain of Rose’s loss still lingered in her eyes, but he held her closer to his heart with each season, even after more than twenty years together.
‘You’d better go and wash and put on some clothes that don’t stink,’ she told him. ‘Are you hungry?’
‘I’m fine for now. How’s the garden coming?’
Mary smiled.
‘I’ve put the herbs over there.’ She pointed to a cleared corner where the earth looked dark and rich. ‘And I’m just planting the onions.’
Clean and in a fresh shirt and breeches, he sat and read his way through the new edition of the Mercury. As usual it was filled with news taken from the London papers, things that didn’t concern or interest him. The great men would do their damnedest in the capital, but all that mattered in his world was here in this city. He skipped past the advertisements offering outrageous claims for efficacious pills and potions to thumb through the Leeds announcements and their snippets of scandal and innuendo. There was nothing he didn’t already know or hadn’t proved for a lie.
By the time he’d finished, Emily was lifting the latch with Lister just behind. He smiled to watch the lad trailing her like an eager pup.
‘Hello, love,’ he said. ‘How was your teaching?’