Peregrin was right. They would be lucky to bring themselves out. Segraine folded the hands of Sir Prigurd Nellt over his chest, tucking the now-reduced sword beneath them. “We will remember you,” she whispered, and gave her former captain one final salute.
Then the knights of the Onyx Guard left the wreckage of St. Paul’s.
THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: eleven o’clock in the evening
Jack fought his way into awareness one inch at a time, his head throbbing as if it had been split by an axe. Lune’s hands were supporting him, though when his vision cleared, he saw that the faerie Queen looked no better than he did.
St. Paul’s. Now he remembered.
He would call it a miracle that the Onyx Hall survived, but he was not certain what, if anything, God had to do with faerie palaces and the preservation thereof. Perhaps the Almighty answered my prayers. He somehow doubted it.
Lune’s words drove all thoughts of God from his head. “The wind has dropped,” she said, her voice cracking on the last word. “Nicneven has come.”
The silence rang in his ears. No voice whispering of sickness and death, no wintry blast chilling the Onyx Hall to black ice. Blessed, blessed quiet, and a breath of warmth to carry it.
And the Gyre-Carling had come.
Jack reeled to his feet, went to wipe his face on his sleeve, and realized there was nothing to choose between the two. Lune managed a faint smile. “She is not inside yet,” the elfin woman said. “We have time to bathe and dress.” For once Jack didn’t dread the finery that was no doubt in store; he had no desire to meet Nicneven looking like the inside of an oven.
As for what happened when he did…
One thing he had decided, after the knights went above to do battle, before the cathedral’s collapse felled him like a tree.
We will give her Vidar if I have to dig the whoreson up myself.
Molten lead runs like blood down Ludgate Hill, streaming from the dying body of London’s great cathedral. In the north, the roof timbers of the venerable old Guildhall shine gold in the night, a second beacon for those watching from the fields to the north, or those across the river. The papier-mâché statues of the giants Gog and Magog have fallen at its feet. In the heart of the city, embers smolder, and here and there small blazes still dance, but three days of destruction have reduced it to a desolate plain, smoking like Hell itself, and spiked by the broken fingers of brick chimneys and stone walls, survivors of the holocaust.
Those who fled before it huddle under blankets if they are lucky, nothing but their shirts if they are not. Guards watch over them, keeping the King’s peace, trying—where they can—to capture those who would plunder others in their misfortune. Elsewhere the battles continue, for with the dropping of the wind hope comes for the first time that they may, at last, be able to extinguish the Fire.
Any man who has fought these three days breathes the same prayer, hoping it will rise with the smoke into the heavens, and to the ears of the Almighty Lord.
Let the wind keep down, and what is left be saved.
PART FOUR
The Living Few
1665–1666
“It had been a year of prodigies in this nation: plague, fire, rain, tempest and comet.”
LOMBARD STREET, LONDON: May 9, 1665
Jack Ellin barely waited for the hackney coach to rattle to a halt before he leapt free like a schoolboy released on holiday. Flicking a coin up to the driver, who caught it adroitly, he dodged through the press of bodies, horses, and carts that filled Lombard Street, and across to a familiar door.
Two clerks sat in the front room, tallying up accounts for the goods that filled the rest of the ground floor. Once there had been more, but Antony’s wealth had suffered almost as badly as his health during the King’s long exile. He had regained the house, but not all his former stature. The clerks nodded greetings at Jack when he passed them, heading for the staircase that led to the family’s living quarters.
The manservant Burnett met him at the top. “Is Sir Antony in?” Jack asked.
“He is, Dr. Ellin, but not in good spirits. Ill news came today, I believe, and Lady Ware is away—visiting family in Norfolk.”
Jack had forgotten. Kate’s absence was a great pity; she, more than anyone, could lift Antony from his black moods. Well, I shall have to do my best. Jack slung off his cloak. “He needs distraction, then. He’s in his study?”
He found Antony bent over a stack of papers. Guildhall work, most likely; the baronet had withdrawn from Parliamentary life just before the restoration of the monarchy, but he stayed firmly engaged with the politics of London. Last year he served as one of the City’s sheriffs. Jack would lay money on his election as Lord Mayor some day.
If he didn’t fret himself into his grave first. “Jack. I apologize for my distracted state—some business has me concerned.”
The ill news Burnett had mentioned, no doubt. “Oh?”
“A plague death in my ward. On Bearbinder Lane.”
It dampened Jack’s good cheer, and more than explained Antony’s own mood. Plague raised its ugly head year after year, but to find it in Langbourn Ward was worrisome indeed. Professional curiosity sparked. “I knew there was plague in the pestered suburbs, St. Giles-in-the-Field and the like—but here? Are you certain?”
“The searchers verified it. But there’s some suggestion the man was a foreigner, a Frenchman, who had only just removed from St. Giles; we may hope the distemper will not spread here.” Antony rubbed his eyes tiredly. “But you did not come here for that. I judge by the spring in your step that you have some good news to share.”
It seemed less bright, after speaking of the plague, but Jack put on his best grin and offered Antony a florid, courtly bow. “And so I do. You see before you, my good sir, the newest Fellow of the Royal Society of London.”
“Wonderful!” Now the smile was genuine. “I should mock you for this; is it not enough to be both physician and surgeon? Now you must be a natural philosopher as well.”
At Antony’s gestured invitation, Jack claimed the room’s other chair. “My love will always be the physicking of people, I promise you. But theories have their uses. Take Harvey’s work on the blood—”
“My dear Dr. Ellin, if you are about to subject me to some abstruse lecture on anatomy, you may save your breath; I will not understand it.”
Jack waved the objection away. “Nothing abstruse, I promise you. Merely this: that Harvey showed the heart is a sort of pump, propelling blood around the body with its action. Now, knowing this does not change the fact that if you put a hole in a man, his blood will all come out, and he will die. But! Harvey’s observations suggest that the veins carry blood only to the heart, and the arteries away from it.”
The old man’s expression said clearly that he did not see the point.
Jack sighed. “It all depends on where a man is wounded. What has been damaged: an artery or a vein? We might find ways to improve the efficacy of bloodletting, were Harvey’s notions more widely understood. And you see, that is what the Society is about! Sharing knowledge, and testing it—deriving knowledge from observation of the world, rather than relying solely on ancient authority.”