Will Adams - Newton’s Fire

He broke off as a portly, balding man arrived outside the Monument’s door, popping the last bite of a croissant into his mouth even as he fished keys from his pocket. They hurried to intercept him. He held a hand over his mouth to prevent a spray of crumbs. ‘Ten minutes,’ he said.

‘Please,’ said Rachel. ‘We don’t want to go up. At least we do, but we’re mainly here to see your basement.’

‘My basement?’ he frowned. ‘There’s nothing there.’

‘There is to us,’ said Luke. ‘We’re science historians. Your vault is scientific history.’

‘Go through the City Authority. They can arrange it for you.’

‘We’re only in London for the day,’ said Luke. ‘We go back home this afternoon.’

‘Please,’ said Rachel. ‘Just a quick peek. We’ll be gone before you know it.’

He sighed extravagantly, as if they didn’t realize the trouble they were putting him to. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘But not a word to your friends, okay? Or they’ll all be here wanting to see it.’

‘Our secret,’ said Rachel. ‘We promise.’

Deception and subterfuge didn’t come easily to Jay. Apart from anything else, he found it hard to read on people’s faces whether they believed him or not. He’d therefore become anxious that Luke and Rachel had seen through his efforts to send them on a wild-goose chase and were planning to double back to see what he was up to, so he’d followed them at a cautious distance all the way to Queenstown Road Station. Even that hadn’t made him feel entirely secure. He’d kept expecting them to reappear from the station, so he’d found it impossible to tear himself away. He’d chided himself for excessive caution, but such compulsions were part of his condition, and there was little he could do about it.

When he’d finally convinced himself it was safe, he hurried back to his flat and bolted himself in. He drew the thick curtains to encase himself in the comforting cocoon of their privacy. Then he unzipped the case Luke had brought and set the laptop inside on his desk.

This was why he’d hustled them off earlier. This was why he’d sent them to the Monument.

He opened it up, turned it on, checked for recently opened files. It took him to a folder of photographs and a word document. He copied them to his own machine then zipped the laptop away again as it had been before, so that Luke and Rachel wouldn’t know. Then he went through the photographs. What he saw amazed and gratified, yet ultimately disappointed, him.

It wasn’t there.

He went through the photographs again, allowing himself enough time with each to imprint them onto his mind and build up a composite image of the vault. Then he sat back and let his brain whirr and hum with ideas and combinations, with deductions and inferences. He pulled volumes down from his shelves. He browsed the internet. He bought, downloaded and consulted various journal articles and e-books. And finally a feeling settled on him, a feeling of such perfect clarity that it was a joy. He knew where it was. He knew precisely where it was. And this time there was no possibility of a mistake. He smiled with satisfaction as he reached for his phone.

Uncle Avram was certain to be pleased.

The trap door was locked in place by a pair of steel bolts. The custodian grimaced as he stooped to release them. Then he raised the trapdoor by its handle. A steep stone staircase spiralled down into a small circular room. Luke ducked his head to avoid the stone lintel as he descended; but it was instantly obvious that there was nothing there but dust and an air-conditioning unit.

‘Told you,’ said the man.

They inspected and photographed the place anyway, but that was that. They thanked him and retreated back upstairs, brushing grit and cobwebs from their hair. ‘Are you open yet?’ asked Rachel. ‘For going up top, I mean.’

The man shot the bolts and checked his watch. ‘It’ll be a fiver each,’ he said.

They set off upwards. Slit windows at regular intervals allowed Luke to gauge their progress, as did a glance over the handrail at the lengthening corkscrew beneath. The stairs narrowed to single file as they neared the top. The breeze outside was surprisingly strong. ‘What are we looking for?’ asked Rachel, tucking hair back behind her ear.

‘Maybe we’ll know when we see it.’

The Thames lay grey before them, twinkling with morning sunlight. The London Eye and other buildings of the South Bank offered hazy reflections of themselves on its rumpled surface, as did a warship moored near Tower Bridge. Rachel peered through the safety mesh down at Pudding Lane, seat of the Great Fire. ‘Can you imagine how that poor baker must have felt?’ she asked. ‘To have burned down half of London.’

‘If he really did,’ said Luke.

‘How do you mean?’

‘No one at the time believed it was an accident. They blamed enemy action. They actually strung up some poor French halfwit for it. But the powers-that-were needed it to have been an accident. So they held an inquiry and hey presto , a negligent baker.’

Rachel frowned. ‘Why did they need it to have been an accident?’

‘A quirk of the law. Landowners had to rebuild any property destroyed in an act of war, but tenants were on the hook for accidents. Parliament was made up of landowners. Guess which side they came down on?’

Rachel laughed. ‘You’re kidding me.’

‘A little,’ admitted Luke. ‘There was a genuine concern that if landlords had to pay, London would never be rebuilt. Tenants had little choice: they needed somewhere to live. Besides, it probably was an accident. Fires were common enough: all those wooden houses, all that open flame. And this one would have burned itself out, just like the rest, except for a brutal wind that kept scattering embers and starting new blazes. No arsonist could have arranged that. And even then the mayor could have contained it by knocking down some houses as a firebreak; but he was too cheap. My only point is that everyone takes it as settled that it was an accident, but it’s not. And if it really was arson, there have been some pretty interesting names in the frame, not least our friends Sir Christopher Wren and John Evelyn.’

‘No way!’

‘Wren was a highly ambitious architect,’ said Luke. ‘He wanted a cathedral of his own, because that was how you made your name at the time. He’d already been commissioned to repair St Paul’s before the fire, because Cromwell had left it in such a terrible state. But the Dean didn’t have enough money to demolish and rebuild, as Wren wanted, so he insisted he mend and make do instead. Then came the fire.’

‘And Evelyn?’

‘He hated London. A loathsome Golgotha, he called it. He wanted it rebuilt on the European model, with great piazzas, avenues and parks; with a decent sewage system and the banishment of noxious trades.’

‘Disliking pollution isn’t the same as arson, Luke.’

He grinned. ‘Did you know that within days of the fire, both Evelyn and Wren had come up with plans for completely remodelling the city?’

Rachel shook her head. ‘I’m still not buying.’

‘Me neither,’ smiled Luke. ‘Not while we can blame the French.’

The northern skyline was crowded with the blockish monsters of the City. To the west, the morning sun put a halo around the dome of St Paul’s, while early-bird tourists on the outside galleries struck sparks with their camera flashes. They found themselves staring raptly at it. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ asked Luke.

‘St Paul does seem to keep popping up,’ agreed Rachel.

‘Our cabal inscribed both sides of that plinth to him. Once for the Damascene conversion, the other to Balinus the secret alchemist. But why settle for a plinth in a secret vault in Oxford when you’ve got a building with his name on it at the very heart of your new Jerusalem?’