The King's Evil

Chapter One

The fire was cunning. It was no more than a dying ember in a Pudding Lane bakehouse when Thomas Farriner, the proprietor, checked his oven and the five other hearths on the premises before retiring to bed at midnight on that first Saturday of the month. Having deceived the practised eye of the baker, the fire rekindled itself with glee and crept stealthily around the ground floor of the house until it had wrapped every stick of furniture in its hot embrace. By the time the occupants caught their first whiff of smoke, it was far too late. Leaping from their beds, they found their descent cut off by a burning staircase so they were forced to escape through an upstairs window and along the gutter to a neighbouring house. Not all of them made the rooftop journey. Frightened at the prospect of a hazardous climb, the maidservant chose to remain in her room and was slowly roasted to death.

The fire tasted flesh. There was no holding it now.

Enlisting the aid of a sharp northeast wind, it sent a shower of sparks across Pudding Lane and into the coach- yard of the Star Inn, setting alight the heaps of hay and straw piled against the wooden galleries. Word was immediately sent to the Lord Mayor. Sir Thomas Bludworth, roused from his slumbers at his home in Maiden Lane, rode irritably to the scene to survey the fire. It caused him no undue tremors. What he saw was nothing more than a typical local blaze which would soon spend itself and leave only limited damage behind. It did not justify any official action from him.

'Pish!' he said with contempt. 'A woman might piss it out.'

And he returned swiftly to his bed with a clear conscience.

But the contents of every chamber pot in England could not have doused the fire now. It mocked the Sabbath with the flames of Hell and turned a day of rest into a continuous ordeal. Wafted by the rising wind, the fire was carried irresistibly across the cobbles of Pudding Lane and down towards the timber sheds and stalls of Fish Street Hill. The littered alleys which led from Thames Street to the river were soon ablaze and the stacks of wood and coal on the wharves made a suicide pact with the bales of goods in the warehouses and with the barrels of tallow oil and spirits in the cellars, flinging themselves on to the flames and turning a troublesome fire into a raging inferno. Houses, tenements, shops, inns, stables and even churches were alight. When the indifferent Lord Mayor was hauled once more from his complacent bed, dozens of buildings had already been destroyed and the fire was spreading relentlessly.

Billingsgate Ward was in a state of utter chaos. The narrow streets and alleys made it a most difficult part of the city in which to fight a fire. Householders were in a complete quandary, not knowing whether to flee with whatever they could carry or try to beat back the flames. The noise was indescribable. The few fire engines which were rushed to the scene proved hopelessly inadequate and the leather buckets of water which were thrown on the blaze produced no more than hisses of derision. Heat and smoke drove the firefighters back with brutal unconcern. They had lost the battle at its very outset. Roaring in triumph, the fire revelled in its invincibility. No part of the city was safe now.