Where Ashes Lay
by Katherine Haun
He watched from his window as the large black cloud of smoke rose above the city, shrouding the hot orange flames under a dark and paralyzing blanket. Thomas hadn’t thought that a sight could be worse than the city’s black smog, but this made him miss the familiar display of burning sea-coal. As he looked out on this scene, feeling the rising panic within his heart, he had never wished more to go home.
The fire had started on Sunday in a bakery and had slowly been inching its way towards Thomas for two nights. It had consumed everything within its path, burning homes and shops from the poor and rich alike. Thomas thought of this raging fire as some sort of biblical beast, with fiery orange jaws that opened so wide that he could imagine it swallowing the whole of London in one large gulp.
It was the fourth year of Thomas’s seven-year long apprenticeship, and London had nearly sucked the life out of him. He had seen more despair here than in the whole of his life. Plagues and poverty, beggars and thieves, and now this great raging fire, he wanted to run away from it all. He wanted to run back in time, shedding years like how snakes shed their skins. He wanted to see his sister, his mother, and the gardens of his childhood. He couldn’t imagine how this would end.
The fire would not cease tonight, nor would it reach him. Thomas allowed himself to think of home as he drifted to sleep. He could almost feel the sun on his face, the smell of damp earth, and the songs of small birds all around. He thought of the beautiful stone house in the grassy meadows. He could feel it all until a loud knock yanked him back into the dark and dry present. The door was pushed open by the, strangely cheerful, familiar face of Rupert, the surgeon Thomas was apprenticing for.
“You must make haste, boy. It is a big day,” he said with a certain fake solemnity.
Tragedy meant business, but Thomas hadn’t quite the same uncontained enthusiasm in the face of it. He hoped that was something he’d never learn. Rupert left the room, closing the door behind him. He got up slowly, feeling every bone in his body move as he did so. Sunlight snuck its way through the closed shutters, peaking through at the fastenings. They were made of dark oak and were sparsely decorated with small ornate carvings of flowers. The rest of the room was the same dark oak, deep and richly brown, with plain moldings around the room. In the center of these walls, the moldings were situated in squares and, where the walls met the ceiling and the floor met the walls, they were plain and straight. As Thomas opened these shutters, he could see the ever-enlarging stain of smoke, it seemed to have grown overnight. It looked stranger in the day, with sunbeams fighting their way through the large black cloud only to be pushed back seconds later; like a soldier fighting their way through a muddy battlefield, struggling to survive.
Rupert was convinced that they needed to wander the streets, instead of waiting for the sick or wounded to come to their doorstep. He had completely ignored Thomas’s protests.
“They say there are mobs, and all of the carts are blocking whole streets.” Thomas was turning all about trying to face Rupert as he spoke to him, but Rupert moved frantically, sorting through small bottles and large tools to find what they may need. “It doesn’t seem wise.”
“Wise? What would you know of wisdom?” He chuckled to himself, turning to finally face Thomas, “what need should you have of me with all that wisdom,” he lifted and wiggled his hands, mockingly, as he said “wisdom”. Thomas did not take any offense to this, nor did Rupert, not truly. The old man was kind at heart, just eccentric.
“There are mobs every day, today is not so different,” Rupert turned back to his bottles.
“The new residents of Moorfields would likely disagree.”
As they stepped outside their door, Thomas started to cough, as did Rupert, and nearly everyone around. A gust of wind brought ash and smoke over River Fleet from Newgate, Ludgate, and all the scorched eastern streets. Rupert’s home, and shop, was on the corner of Holborn and Fewter Lane. The fire was even closer than yesterday.
A bony elbow pushed into Thomas’s left side. “Don’t stand about, we must go,” Rupert said, while stepping from the doorstep and into the madness before them.
The southern end of Fewter was on fire. Carts full of household belongings filled the central street making it almost impossible to break through the stream of ashen covered faces. The people were panicking. Children’s cries could be heard, people shouting at one another to move, and the blowing of whistles. Rupert wanted to go downstream, he wanted to get to Fleet Street.
“This is impossible, we should leave before the fire spreads here,” Thomas nearly shouted, pushing past writhing warm bodies, following Rupert through the crowd.
“No, we must go.”
Thomas was about to protest more when among the crowd he saw a little girl. She was sitting in a cart, holding onto a small wooden horse, and was being held tightly by a woman. Their faces were covered in soot and ash. They were surrounded by, what he assumed, were the contents of their home. Various wooden objects, stonewares, tools, linens, and the lot, were piled into the cart and they sat among them, like they were apart of them, as if it were their station. The little girl had dark curly brown hair and hazel eyes, she looked just like the woman holding her. Thomas imagined that, when her face was clean, she must’ve had freckles just under her eyes and on her nose; then she would’ve looked just like his sister. This little girl was so calm. All around them the noise seemed to be drowned out by her cold and solemn face.
“You’re a fool if you go down there,” a gruff man said to Thomas as he pushed past him.
Thomas followed Rupert. As they made their descent, people continued to warn them. Rupert would simply raise a hand in response or ignore them entirely. He seemed so sure of where he needed to be, but no longer excited about any of it. The air became hotter and the sky darker as they got closer to the fires. The yelling was louder and the people more frantic.
Once they reached Fleet Street, before rounding the corner to go east towards St. Paul’s, Thomas saw a reflection in the leaded windows of a crumbling jettied house, a large mob had formed in the middle of the road. People were shoving and shouting at each other, while buildings all along the street were ablaze. Armored men on horseback were riding up and down the street, shouting and trying to move the mob away from the flames. One man among them was wearing finely decorated armor. His breastplate was engraved in flora all over, and in the very center was a crown, with the sun flanking on the right and the moon on the left, with outstretched rays pouring downward towards the crown. Below it, two crossed scepters were surrounded by small flowers, ivy, and a singular large angel, with wings that resembled the sun and moon’s rays. Various objects surrounded the angel, drums and horns, lances and hammers, arrows and flags, as if the angel was able to excite all the pursuits of men. The helmet’s face guard was fretted, and rather impractical, with the decorated Stuart Royal Arms being held up by a rampant lion and unicorn. This man was riding back and forth along the mob on a large white horse. As he turned to go back down the eastern portion of the street, Thomas could see a vermillion birthmark on the left side of this man’s face, starting just below his jawline and inching up his cheek.
“Must be some serious business if the King has sent the Duke of York to clean up this mess,” Rupert said.
They watched silently as the Duke rode back down the street, towards them, grabbing hold of a woman’s outstretched arm and pulling her out of the mob, while on horseback. The other armored men were trying to do the same, with far less ease. On the other side of the street, going westward, Thomas could see Temple Bar in the distance. With its wooden Corinthian columns, tasseled ornaments, and royal arms, he was sure she’d soon catch ablaze. More of the Duke’s guards could be seen tearing down the houses that lined the street to the overpass, in the hopes of stopping the fire’s raging pursuit.
“They say Bloodworth has fled,” one man, having just escaped the mob, said to another.
“He was always a coward,” the other said, wiping his face with a dirty rag, “a mayor is not a prince, could never have expected him to do that,” he gestured towards the Duke, who had, alone, now lifted five people out of the crowd without so much as dismounting his horse.
In the distance cannon-fire could be heard, and immediately around them the sounds of falling wood and bricks filled the black air. It was as if the very timber frames of the city were falling apart. Across the street from them, closest to the mob, there was a young boy lying face down on the ground. His hair was covered in ash and dirt, and his clothing was torn and grey. Rupert started to cross the street towards him and Thomas followed. Once beside him, Rupert motioned Thomas to wake the boy. He bent down and gently pushed his arm. The boy did not move and Rupert motioned him again. This time, Thomas tried to roll the boy over. The dead flopping weight of this boy was enough for Rupert to realize. As the boy’s limp body flipped over, they saw his cold and pale face. His face had been sliced open, from the bottom of his eye down to the bottom of his chin there was a long and deep cut. Dried blood, ash, and dirt covered his face. His hair was a rich golden shade of blonde, covered now by ash and dirt; his eyes were closed. On the front of his grey-blue tunic, closest to his heart, there was a small amateur-embroidered orange lion wearing a crown, carrying an outstretched sword in his right paw and a bundle of seven arrows in his left. Thomas knew that this was the Dutch States Lion, and that this boy was dead because of it.
Thomas felt sick to his stomach. Rupert spoke to him, but he could not hear. He couldn’t take his eyes off of this boy. He was not startled by seeing the dead; he scarcely would’ve survived the last year if that startled him. This boy had not died of disease, exposure, or accident, he had been killed.
“There is nothing that can be done,” Rupert said as he placed his hands on Thomas’s shoulders.
In the distance, to the east, past the Duke and his guards, St. Paul’s Cathedral, covered in wooden scaffolding could be seen, not yet alight. The large stone building stood above them all like an imposing reminder, just as this young boy laid before them. Thomas felt it was all too much. He shook his head as Rupert spoke to him. Thomas closed his eyes and felt the outstretched arms holding onto his shoulders in a much softer grasp. He did not smell the smoke or feel the ash fall upon his face. He felt the sun, he smelled the damp earth, and he heard the songs of small birds.
When he opened his eyes, he saw Rupert. The aging man’s face filled with concern. His brows furrowed, making the lines on his face more prominent, and his eyes glassy, irritated by the air. Thomas nodded to the old man as he spoke, hearing him now clearly.
“This will pass,” Rupert gestured around them, “tragedy never lasts.”
“What about him?” Thomas said, looking down at the boy.
“He’s gone home; his tragedy is over.” Rupert patted Thomas’s shoulders and turned back towards the boy, and bent down, placing a soft hand on his face, muttering something Thomas could not hear.
Thomas looked around them. He saw the flames, the darkened faces, and the crumbling buildings. He heard the shouting, the whistles, and the cannon-fire. Above him the sun’s rays fought through the black smoke, and he saw, flying through the air, an orange-faced robin. On any other day it would’ve been too small to see, but today, among the darkened sky, its orange face and brown feathers were unmistakable. He watched as it flew above him, chasing the light. He saw it rise higher and higher, until it had escaped the flames and smoke, until it rose above it all. His heart swelled at the sight of it.
Thomas wondered what this place looked like before the sea-coal, before the houses made of stone and brick. He wondered what it looked like when robins and sparrows outnumbered people. When the streets were grassy meadows and the lampposts were trees, when the rivers had no names and the air smelled only of grass and rain. He wondered if this place looked like home. He wondered if this place missed that feeling, if it missed peace.
BIO
Katherine Haun is a senior at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, majoring in history and minoring in creative writing. She currently resides in the Greater Lansing area, but grew up in Detroit, Michigan. Katherine has previously published non-fiction articles for the Doughboy Foundation, immortalizing the experiences of American veterans of the First World War. Her personal historical interests include British History spanning from the medieval era to the 19th century and the Italian Renaissance.
