It began auspiciously. The king and court returned to Hampton Court. It was not London, but it was a step closer. Barbara Palmer had another baby by the king, and it was said the queen was finally with child.

Then came the news that France had declared war against England. Nell wished that both nations would go to the devil, if their warring delayed the long-awaited opening of the theaters.

The end of January brought a violent storm. Heavy rain battered the town, and the winds ripped tiles and bricks from their places, toppled chimneys, and wrought destruction among the ships and boats in the river, tearing vessels loose from their moorings and driving them against each other and blowing one ship completely over, so that its keel rose from the water like the fin of a great fish.

The spirit of the country mirrored the ravages of the storm when word came that the queen had miscarried.

ON CANDLEMAS, THE SECOND DAY OF FEBRUARY, CAME NELL'S BIRTHDAY, and with it the glad news that the court had returned to London.

"It won't be long now before we can open again," Hart a.s.sured her. "I met with Killigrew, Lacy, and Mohun today, and we've decided to use this idle time to make some improvements to the playhouse. We'll widen the stage, add some room for storage. G.o.d knows we need it, and we'll not get such a chance again."

Nell finally let herself believe that the theaters would be open again soon when she went with Hart to inspect the progress of the work a couple of weeks later. Everything was in chaos and dirt, but it cheered her mightily, for out of the sawdust and plaster would emerge a bigger and more elegant stage, on which she would soon be acting.

"Nelly!" The familiar gravelly voice rang out from the stage as d.i.c.ky One-Shank stumped toward Nell.

"d.i.c.ky! I've thought of you often. How happy I am to see you well!"

"Aye, I'm aboveground and breathing, and that's enough in these times, we may say. I'm pleased to see you, pigsnie." He pinched Nell's cheek and then turned to Hart. "And right pleased to see you, too, sir, and looking forward to the pleasure of watching you act again."

"I'm going to act again, too!" Nell cried. "In The Humorous Lieutenant ! Remember? It played the day this theater opened."

"I remember it well." d.i.c.ky nodded. "And it'll be better than ever with you in it, sweeting."

NELL WAS OVERJOYED TO BEGIN REHEARSALS FOR THE HUMOROUS Lieutenant and to be gathered once more at the playhouse with the other members of the company, with work before them.

"It seems an age since last we were here," Kate Corey said.

"It has been an age," Nell said. "Truly, I never thought I'd play again."

"Nor I," agreed Betsy Knepp.

"Look how fine all is here now," Beck Marshall marveled. "I like this bigger stage, and it's so much better now everything is not all jumbled together in here with us."

Sunshine flooded the greenroom, and the other actresses seemed to share Nell's high spirits. Talk turned to the latest gossip from court.

"They say Lady Castlemaine's newest baby looks as much like the king as if he'd spit him out of his mouth," Betsy said.

"That's five babies in five years she's had," laughed Kate. "The king's obviously not put off by a breeding woman."

"No," said Beck. "But he treats her like a mere wife. Visits her before breakfast and then goes off to see the beauteous Frances Stuart, I hear."

"And the queen?" Nell asked.

"Keeps her mouth shut and prays for a baby of her own, I warrant," Betsy said.

MAY TWENTY-NINTH, THE KING'S BIRTHDAY AND THE SIXTH ANNIVERSARY of his return, was marked as it was each year with a day of public celebration. But that happy day was followed by a tremendous four-day battle at sea with the Dutch. The first wild reports of a great English victory were soon contradicted by the somber news of a terrible defeat, with appalling loss of ships and men. Then came panicked rumors that the French were about to invade England. With no standing army and the navy woefully inadequate to defend against such a breach, hundreds of foot soldiers set sail from Blackwall to join the battle, and the navy began to press men into service once more.

"It's not right," d.i.c.ky One-Shank growled. "The press-gangs are seizing men off the streets. Laborers, merchants, artisans, men with no fitness for the sea, shipped against their will. They've not even been paid the press money they're due. How are their families to live?" Nell pitied the poor men and their families, and despaired at the knowledge that the war would further delay the opening of the playhouse.

Spring turned to high summer. There had been no rain since winter. The unpaved streets cracked and the hot wind threw up choking clouds of dust. Rain barrels and troughs went dry. The marshy slopes of the river turned from mud to baked clay. And as the weather grew hotter, the specter of the plague loomed. Nell knew well that the king would not reopen the theaters now, with the risk of contagion so great, and fought down her rising fears of what would become of her.

With Lammas Day, July pa.s.sed into August. The plague had not erupted into the terror that it had been the previous summer, but the threat of it hung in the air.

The sun was barely up on the morning of Sunday, the second of September, when Nell and Hart were awakened by a clamorous alarm of bells. A knot of people gathered in the street below, fingers pointed east. Hart opened the window.

"What's amiss?" he called.

"A great fire," a man shouted back. "Near Fish Street."

"That's a long way off," Hart said, turning back to Nell. "Near two miles. No need to fear, I think."

But by late morning, plumes of smoke billowed into the eastern sky and cast a pall over the sun. Nell and Hart went across the road to the theater and found Lacy, Mohun, and others of the company gathered there.

"It began in a baker's shop in Pudding Lane," Lacy said, mopping his brow with a handkerchief. "Whole streets of houses are gone-three hundred already, they reckon. St. Magnus's Church has burned, and the flames have spread to houses on the bridge."

"Worse than that," said Killigrew, coming in. "The winds are whipping it on. It's got to Thames Street."

"Christ," said Hart. "All those warehouses . . ."

"Standing cheek by jowl, and packed full of pitch, oil, wine, brandy," Mohun said.

"Aye," said Killigrew. "It's like the fires of h.e.l.l."

Fear clutched at Nell's heart. What if the theater should burn? What then?

"What will they do?" she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

"The king has given orders to blow up houses in the fire's path, to create a break. It's the only way to hope to stop it leaping from building to building."

"And us?"

"Wait and see," Killigrew said.

But by afternoon, the fire was worse. More and more people of the company came to the theater, and all the news was that the fire was burning rapidly westward.

"Folk who removed their goods this morning in hopes of safety have removed again," Rose said.

"They say it was the French that set the fire to burning," said young Richard Baxter, one of the scenekeepers. "And now they've started another, further east."

Night came, and from the street Nell could see that the eastern sky burned orange. She and Rose went down to the river and saw a flaming arc of fire a mile long, a vibrant golden corona shading upward into angry red. The whole of the City was engulfed in flames, and smoke clouded the night sky. The river was crowded with every kind of vessel. Boats crammed with people and laden with furniture, chests, barrels, musical instruments, and animals collided with jetsam that floated in the black water. Showers of hot ash and flaming bits of debris rained from the sky, hissing as they hit the river. Even at this distance, Nell could hear the roar and crackle of the fire. The horror of what was happening seemed in odd contrast to the beauty of the summer night, with the moon hanging bright in the balmy sky.

She tried to tell herself that all would be well, that surely the fire would be stopped before it reached Drury Lane. The magnitude of its destruction was too awful to face, and, exhausted, she went to sleep curled on a pile of cloaks in a corner of the greenroom, comforted by the rise and fall of voices nearby. She woke after a few hours to find the theater was crowded with more people, not only actors and others from the playhouse, but their friends and families with nowhere to go. A sound like thunder reverberated in the distance, followed shortly by a second explosion.

"What was that?" she asked Hart.

"They're blowing up houses in Tower Street."

"Tower Street? But that's east of Pudding Lane. Has the fire changed course?"

Hart shook his head. "It's burning in all directions now. The Duke of York is patrolling the City with guardsmen, trying to keep some kind of order. I'm going out to see if I can get more news or be of any use." He was b.u.t.toning up a buff coat, and the sight of him armoring himself with the thickly padded suede made Nell realize what peril he could be facing.

"I'm coming with you."

"No, it's too dangerous." His face was grim.

"I care not what happens to me if anything happens to you or to the playhouse," Nell pleaded. "If there's aught I can do I must do it."

Hart shook his head in exasperation. "Then at least put on some boots and breeches. You'll go up like a haystack if a cinder lands on your skirts."

NELL HURRIED BEHIND HART DOWN THE SOUTHEASTWARD CURVE of Drury Lane and Wych Street, fighting through the heaving crowds that streamed in the opposite direction, carrying with them what they could in carts and barrows and on their backs. Panicked people and animals shrieked, brayed, and shouted as they struggled their way westward.

The churchyard of St. Clement Danes was mobbed, its portico stacked with barrels and furniture. Hart stopped short as they came abreast of the church, where they had an un.o.bstructed view down Fleet Street. Nell cried out in terror. A wall of flame spread over the eastern horizon as far as she could see, angry tongues lashing the sky. The fire was roaring toward them. A torrent of embers bounced and skipped along the ground like a river of fire. A pigeon shot past, its singed wings working furiously. The street seemed to be seething, and Nell realized with a shudder of revulsion that the movement was hundreds of rats scurrying away from the fire. Hart pulled her flat against a wall to prevent her from being run over by a wagon.

"Mr. Hart!" d.i.c.ky One-Shank's gravelly voice cut through the confusion as he stumped toward them. "The king has called for help on the fire lines. I was on course for the playhouse to raise a crew."

Hart turned to Nell before she could speak. "No. I'll not hear of it. Go back to Drury Lane. You'll be of more use there. Tell Killigrew to send what lads he can spare-actors, scenekeepers, whoever is there-with buckets. And tell him to make ready to fly."

BACK AT THE THEATER, NELL AND ROSE AND THE OTHER WOMEN folded the best of the company's costumes into great chests while Killigrew packed the precious play scripts and promptbooks in a strong-box and went in search of a wagon. The frantic activity kept Nell's mind from dwelling on the fear of what danger Hart would be in so near to the fire and what would become of her if the theater burned. Would she have to return to whoring? Only hope for the future had sustained her through the long wait in plague time. If the playhouse went up in smoke, her dreams with it, she didn't think she would have the strength to continue.

AS DARKNESS FELL, HART STAGGERED INTO THE GREENROOM, HIS face and clothes black with soot. Nell ran to him and threw her arms around him, not minding the reek of smoke in her relief to have him back. Then she cried out at the sight of his hands, scorched and blistered.

"Water," he coughed, and he gulped it down when she brought it to him. The company gathered around and he stared at them, his haunted eyes bright in his sweat-streaked face.

"St. Paul's has fallen," he said, his voice flat and hoa.r.s.e.

"And Cheapside?" someone asked, and other voices chimed in.

"Newgate Market?"

"Thames Street?"

"The great houses by the river?"

"The theater in Salisbury Court?"

"Gone," he said. "All gone."

NELL SLATHERED HART'S HANDS WITH GREASE AND BANDAGED THEM in strips of linen.

"Are you hurting?" she asked.

"Not so much now," he said. "Only I wonder will I be able to play the fiddle when my hands have healed."

Nell stared at him in horror and his lips twitched in a smile.

"It would be a miracle, indeed, as I could never play before."

Nell began to laugh but it came near to turning into a sob. "Don't frighten me so."

"I'm sorry. Never fear. We'll come through it."

"Will we?" Nell's fears were too enormous to voice. She looked into those dark eyes that had rea.s.sured and sustained her so often.

"Take heart, my little love. I'll not leave you to the wide world. While I have a home, you have one, too."

AN HOUR OR SO AFTER HART HAD RETURNED, A TALL STRANGER, hatless, his face swathed in a filthy kerchief, limped through the stage door. He cradled his b.l.o.o.d.y right hand against his chest, and Nell saw with shock that the sleeve of his long coat and the thigh of his breeches above his tall boots were soaked through with blood. He collapsed onto a bench, unwound the cloth from around his face, and pressed it to his hand.

"Dear G.o.d," Rose exclaimed, as the cloth bloomed crimson.

"Bene darkmans," the man said in greeting, looking up at the alarmed faces around him. "I'm sorry to intrude. I was struck by falling timbers. Crushed my arm and gashed my leg, and I'm losing blood that fast that I thought it best to get indoors before I fell in a swoon, though I feel like a cow-hearted granny to say it." He gave a wry smile, but his face was deathly pale and he slumped back against the wall, his eyes closed.

"Don't move, sir, I'll tend to you," Rose murmured, and she hastened back with a basin of water, a sponge, and clean linen strips. Nell helped her to remove the man's coat and waistcoat. He shuddered and set his jaw as Rose rolled up his b.l.o.o.d.y sleeve. He looked down at his limp forearm and hand and when he tried to move the fingers, he went even more pale.

"Broken, and badly at that," he said. Rose, kneeling before him as she gently swabbed away the blood, looked with concern into his face, and he smiled down at her. "Good thing heaven's sent me an angel to care for me, though I've little deserved it." He was very handsome, Nell thought, or would be when his long dark hair was not soaked with sweat and dirt and his face was not caked with grime, and from Rose's blush she knew her sister agreed.

LATE THAT NIGHT, NELL SAT NUMB WITH EXHAUSTION. IT SEEMED centuries since Sunday morning, when she and Hart had woken to hear of the fire. What day was it now? Wednesday. She lay down and slept fitfully, uncomfortable on the hard floor, her dreams filled with fire.

She was awakened by excited voices. At first the words did not penetrate her sleepy haze, but suddenly she heard what was being said and sat up abruptly.

"It's out," Lacy said again.

"It's out?" Nell asked, scrambling up.

"Aye," he said. "By the grace of G.o.d. And the hard work of the king and the Duke of York, among many others. His Majesty stood in the bucket brigade himself, working like a horse through the night."

IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING THE FIRE, EVERYONE WAS HUNGRY FOR news, and stories and rumors flew.

"The king is calling for proposals for a new plan for the City," Killigrew said. "And to rebuild the churches. Eighty and more we lost."

"Buildings can be replaced," Hart said. "I mourn for poor old James Shirley and his wife. It was his play The Cardinal that gave me my first great role. And now the pair of them are dead of fright and exposure for that their house burned and they had nowhere to go. It breaks my heart. Why did they not come to the playhouse?"

"There's to be a monument to those who died," said Richard Baxter. "And it will be graven in stone what all do know-it was the Papists that started it."

"No one knows that," Lacy said. "And they say that by a miracle fewer than a dozen were killed. But the City . . ." Nell felt an overwhelming need to see for herself.

"Come with me, Hart," she begged. "I want to know that something is still left."

THE AIR HUNG HAZY AND OPPRESSIVE, DAMPENING THE SOUNDS AND the spirits of the City. The bloodred sun cowered behind curtains of gray, and black flecks of ash rose in listless eddies, as a sudden gust of dry wind drew them up and then spat them out, so that they drifted into and became part of the wash of grit and mud that fouled the streets even as far west as the Strand. Nell felt the foul air choking her and held a handkerchief over her nose and mouth.

As they made their way eastward, she felt a sense of dread and sadness, as if she were approaching a home in which there had been a death. As Fleet Street rose to Ludgate Hill, she clutched Hart's elbow and gasped. It was not so much what she saw as what she did not see that produced that sensation of a blow to the stomach, for the towering front of St. Paul's, as much a part of the landscape as the sky and the clouds, was gone. Its absence was palpable; the emptiness of where it should have stood was shocking in its blankness.

To the north, familiar streets and houses remained. But down to the river and eastward as far as Nell could see lay a rubble of stone and charred wood. What had been the bustling streets of the City were unrecognizable, buried in debris and impa.s.sable except by foot.

Nell and Hart skirted the desolate skeleton of St. Paul's. Its ancient walls, which had seemed eternal, had fallen; its very stones had cracked and shattered in the heat. The lead of its roof had melted in the inferno and run into pools, now hardened into freakish frozen puddles. Curls of smoke rose and met the gray mist that hung over all-even now, fire still smoldered in the depths of the vast ruin.

They picked their way through what had been St. Paul's Churchyard, where London's booksellers had stood, and here and there Nell could discern the remains of books, their leather bindings charred black, the creamy purity of their pages sodden and smeared. An orange cat streaked by, yowling, its eyes wild, its fur blackened.

In Cheapside, parties of men with kerchiefs over their faces against the foul air were already at work at the unfathomable task of clearing the wreckage, heaping stones into piles, and loading into wagons what was beyond hope. Here and there others picked through the rubble or simply stood and stared at the emptiness that surrounded them.