‘Well, sometimes a taste is better than a full feast,’ William replied, amused, ‘but I promise you we shall go again. Perhaps we shall bring your mother as well this time.’ He cast a sparkling glance at Joanna and offered her a piece of toasted bread.
She made a face at him, and taking the bread, bit into the crisp brown crust.
‘No, I am serious.’ He paused, raising his head and sniffing. ‘What’s that smell?’
Joanna lifted her head and inhaled. ‘Burning,’ she said. It wasn’t from the fire, nor from the candles and lamps that had been lit as dusk descended.
And then came the shout of ‘Fire!’ The door burst open and two of Henry’s clerks shot into the room. ‘Fire! The King’s great chamber is ablaze!’
Joanna gasped, and William leaped to his feet.
‘What?’
‘The chimney, sire, the chimney is on fire and the flames are engulfing the room!’
‘Right. Get the barrels of water from the kitchen and the buttery. I’m coming.’ He left in haste with the men, beckoning to his retainers and servants as he ran.
Fear surged through Joanna as the smell of smoke intensified. Fire was a deadly hazard that would cause massive destruction around the convoluted chambers and corridors of the old palace where she had just been walking, including the King’s great chamber. The heat had indeed been intense over the mantel.
‘Stay here,’ she told the children. ‘Nicola, Mabel, look after them. If you have to leave, put on their cloaks and hoods and take them to the abbey.’
‘But, madam—’
‘Do as I say – and don’t forget Weazel!’ Joanna snapped, and hurried after William, grabbing the household’s water pail on her way out. She could be another pair of hands in a bucket chain if nothing else.
Even before reaching the King’s chamber she saw the smoke billowing from the windows and the smell of burning was now a stench. Entering the hall was like standing in the antechamber to hell, and she gasped. The flames had reached out from the cracked chimney and were already gorging on the roof beams. The King’s great bed was a roaring conflagration. William was directing bucket chains, using barrels of drinking water from the stores, while others beat at the flames with cloaks and blankets and brooms. Sparks showered upwards like vicious fireflies amid the billows of smoke, and William stepped back, choking, but darted in again to bat down the flames with his drenched cloak as they surged again.
Joanna grabbed his arm. ‘What can I do?’
Coughing into his sleeve, eyes streaming, he choked at her, ‘Take the furniture and objects – anything that can be salvaged.’
She darted away to her task, determined to do her part, fiercely glad that William had not ordered her back to the chamber.
Some items had already been moved, but Joanna organised two men and a serjeant’s wife to carry out anything portable from the chamber and deposit it on the yard outside the porch. She fetched and carried with them – candlesticks, chests and coffers. Rolls of precious textile. A sodden colourful rug, charred at the edges. The items from the chapel. Sooty smuts bedaubed her gown, and water soaked through her clothes to her skin, but she had no time to notice.
Finally, the desperate firefighters brought the fire under control and the last stubborn licks of flame were beaten into the ground and stamped out. William stood, chest heaving, amid murky, stinking chaos. Smoke layered the room in oily grey veils. People were coughing, clutching themselves, stooping over. Joanna joined him, took his arm and saw the raw burn blistering his wrist below his singed sleeve.
‘You should have this seen to.’
He looked down, noticing for the first time, and shrugged. ‘Later,’ he said.
Someone brought candles back into the room, which seemed like sacrilege given the amount of damage, but they needed light.
‘Dear God,’ Joanna whispered, gazing at the blackened ceiling and the destroyed décor. Henry’s bed was a charred lump in one corner; the painted soldiers guarding the area were scorched beyond recognition, as was the figure of Edward the Confessor. ‘What is the King going to say?’
William shook his head. ‘I thought at first it was a good thing he was not here, but if he had been, the fire would have been spotted straight away.’ He pushed a sooty hand through his hair. ‘Done is done. We must send him word, and in the meantime clear this up as best we may.’
He turned and began giving orders, clear and concise, but she saw his despair. The damage was catastrophic. The King’s red lions above his chair were bubbled to ruination. The chair itself, borne outside in the nick of time, had suffered scorching, as had the royal cushion, which had been stitched by the Queen in the early, happy days of their marriage.
William doled out more instructions and then paced the room for another assessment, stopping before the figure of Hope. Joanna, walking with him, covered her mouth in dismay for Hope’s face and upper body were no more than a dirty shadowy outline under the searing smoke damage. It felt as though a part of herself had been obliterated.
‘I should have been more vigilant,’ William said in a grief-filled voice. ‘I should have been on my guard.’
‘How was anyone to know?’ Joanna replied, turning to the practical because it was the only place left where she was able to move. ‘It has happened. You might say that if I had lingered a moment longer I might have seen the smoke. It was God’s will. Clean what can be cleaned, shore up the damage, and wait for Henry.’
‘I will send word now.’
‘At least no one has died, or been hurt beyond a few burns,’ she said. ‘We stopped the fire before it could spread. It could have been much worse.’ It was true, but the words felt like nothing – like ashes and dust.
