‘We may not have been the targets,’ said Nicholas as he thought it through. ‘It is possible that the fire was lit for someone else — Hans Kippel.’
It was the first night since her marriage that Matilda Stanford had spent entirely alone. With her husband away in Windsor, she had the bed and bedchamber exclusively to herself and she revelled in the new freedom. At the same time, however, she felt even more isolated. The news about Michael Delahaye had been horrific and she was genuinely distressed but it did not touch her heart directly. She had never known the dashing soldier and could not share the desperate loss felt by others. Suffused with real sympathy, she was also distanced from her husband and her stepson as they mourned the death of a loved one and became embroiled in sorrowful duties. Michael had been very much inside the charmed circle of the family. For all her readiness to join in, Matilda remained firmly on the outside.
What kept her awake was not the thought of a dead body pulled from the clutches of the Thames. It was something quite remote from that and it brought its due measure of guilt and recrimination. Indeed, so troubled did she feel that she got up in the middle of the night and went down to the little chapel to pray for guidance and to see if divine intercession could direct her mind to more seemly matters. Even on her knees, she remained unable to sustain more than a passing sigh for the fate of Michael Delahaye. It was another man who occupied her thoughts, not a rotting corpse in a charnel house but a person of almost superhuman vitality, a master of his art, a romantic figure, an imp of magic, a symbol of hope.
Lawrence Firethorn even infiltrated her prayers. Instead of asking for a blessing on a departed soul, she begged for the opportunity to meet her self-appointed lover. Happiness no longer lay beside a wheezing mercer in a four-poster bed. True joy resided at the Queen’s Head in the formidable person of an actor-manager. In thinking about him at all, she was repudiating the vows taken during holy matrimony. In speculating about the way that their love might be consummated, she was committing a heinous sin. Doing both of these things while kneeling on a hassock before her Maker was nothing short of vile blasphemy but her Christian conscience did no more than bring a blush of shame to her cheeks. Matilda Stanford made a decision that could have dire consequences for her and for her whole marriage.
She would accept the invitation to the play.
First light found Nicholas Bracewell out in the street to assess the damage to the house and to begin running repairs. Word was sent to Nathan Curtis, master carpenter with Westfield’s Men, who lived not far away in St Olave’s Street, and he hastened across with tools and materials. The front of the house would need to be partially rebuilt and completely replastered but the two men patched it up between them and gave its occupants a much-needed feeling of security and reassurance. Curtis was rewarded with a hearty breakfast and a surge of gratitude but he would accept none of the money that Anne Hendrik offered. As a friend and colleague of the book holder, he was only too glad to be able to repay some of the kindness and consideration that Nicholas Bracewell had always shown him. He shambled off home with the warm feeling that he had done his good deed for the day.
Hans Kippel had been kept ignorant of his role as the intended victim of the arson. Shocked by the grisly experience on the Bridge, he had withdrawn into himself again and could not explain the rashness of his conduct. In the wake of the fire, he was even more alarmed and they did not add to his afflictions by subjecting him to any interrogation. Instead, Nicholas Bracewell set out for the Bridge and walked to the little house which had provoked such an intense reaction from the boy.
There was no answer when he knocked on the door but he felt that someone was at home and he persisted with his banging. In the shop next door, an apprentice was letting down the board as a counter and laying out a display of haberdashery for the early customers. Nicholas turned to the lad for information.
‘Who lives in this house?’
‘I do not know, sir.’
‘But they are near neighbours of yours.’
‘They moved in but recently.’
‘Tenants, then? A family?’
‘Two men are all that I have seen.’
‘Can you describe them, lad?’
‘Oh, sir,’ said the boy. ‘I have no time for idle wonder. My master would beat me if I did not attend to the shop out here. It is so busy on the Bridge that I see hundreds of faces by the hour. I cannot pick out two of them just to please a stranger.’
‘Is there nothing you can tell me?’ said Nicholas.
The boy broke off to serve his first customer of the day, explaining that a much greater range of wares lay inside the shop. When the woman had made her purchase and moved on with her husband, the apprentice turned back to Nicholas and gave a gesture of helplessness.
‘I can offer nought but this, sir.’
‘Well?’
‘One of them wears a patch over his eye.’
‘That is small but useful intelligence.’
‘And all that I can furnish.’
‘Save this,’ said Nicholas. ‘Who owns the house?’
‘That I do know, sir.’
‘His name?’
‘Sir Lucas Pugsley.’
The Lord Mayor of London awoke to another day of self-congratulation. After breakfast with his family, he spent time with the Common Clerk who handled all secretarial matters for him, then he devoted an hour to the Recorder. The City Marshal was next, a dignified man of military bearing, whose skill as a horseman — so vital to someone whose job was to ride ahead of the Lord Mayor during all processions to clear the way — had been learnt in a dozen foreign campaigns. Among other things, the Marshal headed the Watch and Ward of the city, rounding up rogues and vagabonds as well as making sure that lepers were ejected outside the walls. Sir Lucas Pugsley loved to feed off the respect and homage of a man who wore such a resplendent uniform and plumed helmet. It increased the fishmonger’s feeling of real power.
Aubrey Kenyon was the next visitor, cutting a swathe through the dense thickets of the working day with his usual calm efficiency. When they had discussed financial affairs at length, the Chamberlain turned to an area that would normally have been outside his remit had not the Lord Mayor encouraged him to offer opinions on almost every subject of discussion that arose. Kenyon’s sage counsel was its own best advertisement.
‘Have you taken note of next week, Lord Mayor?’
‘Indeed, sir,’ said the other pompously. ‘I am to have another audience with Her Majesty at the Royal Palace. The Queen seeks my advice once more.’
‘I was referring to another event.’
‘Next week?’
‘On Thursday. It is a public holiday.’
‘Ah.’
‘You should be forewarned, Lord Mayor.’
Pugsley nodded importantly. The preservation of peace and the maintenance of law and order were his responsibility and they were arduous duties in a city that was notorious for its unruly behaviour. Crimes and misdeameanors flourished on a daily basis and there were parts of London, feared by the authorities, that hid whole fraternities of thieves, whores, tricksters, beggars and masterless men. Cripples, vagrants and discharged soldiers swelled the ranks of those who lived by criminal means. These denizens of the seedy underworld were a perpetual nuisance but the law-abiding could also present serious problems. Public holidays were seized on by many as occasions for riot and excess when the anonymity of the crowd shielded miscreants from punishment at the same time as it fired them on to grosser breaches of the peace. For hundreds of years, the mayoralty had learnt to rue the days when the city was at play.
Aubrey Kenyon had strong views on the matter.
‘Wild and licentious behaviour must be quashed.’
‘So it shall be, sir.’
‘Apprentices so soon get out of hand.’