The baby settles into a silent sleep, exhausted by the brief effort. Beatrix watches her chest rise and fall, knows in that moment she would have wasted days watching her own daughter sleep. People would say it was a miracle the infant survived. But was it a miracle to take her entire family from her, to leave her to starve, alone and afraid?
She clothes the baby from a basket of laundry abandoned next to the hearth and swaddles her in the old cloak she discarded for the man’s coat. Did it belong to the baby’s father?
Beatrix has the sudden urge to take something else, a memento for the baby who will never know her family. Did William do the same for their daughter? She wonders if he gave her the wolf carving or told her how they danced together beneath the trees, or if he never uttered a word about her again. If the village whispered about her after she was gone or pretended she never existed. If staying away gave her daughter the peace she hoped for her.
Beatrix digs through the basket of laundry and pulls out a white linen handkerchief. The sight of the blue flowers stitched neatly onto one corner steals her breath. Forget-me-nots. She tucks the square of fabric next to the baby’s skin, as if it were armor that will protect her tiny heart.
Beatrix cradles the baby to her chest, hugs her beneath her coat as she steps out onto the darkened street. She is settled and sleepy against her. Weak. She needs to eat. She needs a proper home and a proper family and things Beatrix can’t promise her.
Beatrix forces her feet down the familiar path to St. Paul’s. The service has just ended when she arrives. Men and women and children file somberly out through the doors or mill about the yard, catching up on news and sharing condolences with acquaintances. An accounting of the dead, from what Beatrix can tell. In the past she’s been a shadow here, has probably picked the pockets of some of these same people. She pushes through them now, heads for the pair of aproned women standing beside the curved steps with weary faces and baskets of stale bread.
“Welcome, dear,” a young woman in a rough gray dress greets her. She takes one appraising look at Beatrix and offers her a hard crust instead of her collection tin.
“I found—I need—” Beatrix can’t get her words out, seized by a sudden desire to turn back, to change her mind. She clutches the baby closer to her chest. Her breath is warm against her neck. Shallow. Fading. She pulls the baby from her and shows the woman the pale sleeping child. “I need you to help her.” She swallows against the ache burning in her throat. “To take her. Please.”
The young woman looks to the stern, gray-haired woman standing next to her, wide-eyed.
“Is she yours?” the older woman asks. Beatrix is surprised by the gentleness in her voice.
“No,” she admits, a truth that drives a shard of glass through her heart. “A foundling. She’s starving.”
“Give her here, then,” the woman says, already reaching for the baby.
Beatrix lets her be taken away. She doesn’t know how her arms can feel so empty when the thing removed from them was so slight.
“We’ll take good care of her,” the young woman says. A gentle dismissal, but a dismissal all the same. She offers Beatrix the hard hunk of bread again.
Beatrix doesn’t take it. Tonight, she’d rather be hungry.
She kisses the baby on top of her downy head. She wishes she could leave her with some parting words of wisdom, a blessing for the hard road that lies ahead of her. But the words she grew up with—Be a good girlandStay out of trouble—are the last things she would wish upon the child. The only other thought pounding through her head, hammered by her own heartbeat, can’t possibly be true. She says nothing.
She reaches into the pocket of her skirt, finds the coins sitting there, heavy against her thigh. Everything she found in that plague-marked house; everything that was hers before she stepped over its threshold. Every coin meant for her escape.
She pulls them out and drops them into the woman’s collection tin.
September 4, 1666London, England
It’s been two days, and London still burns. The acrid scent of smoke clings in Beatrix’s nose, stings her eyes, and claws at her throat, even inside St. Paul’s. The sky outside the rose window is dark, the false dusk of an ash-laden sky.
She sits inside one of the stone archways, out of sight. Lines of people scurry down the walk, hushed and serious and nothing at all like the raucous crowds that have been her refuge over the years. Even at the height of the plague, St. Paul’s bustled with activity. Not so jovial as her earliest days, but there was an undercurrent of understanding among those who strolled that aisle, a camaraderie. The king abandoned his city to the disease, but they did not. But the plague was an invisible enemy. They can see the fire coming. The fear is tangible, nearly as thick as the smoke choking the city.
The printers and booksellers from the nearby streets carry what they can manage down to the crypts: stacks of paper and books, crates of inks, barrels of glue, trays of type. Some even lug their printing presses through the crowd, desperate to save their livelihood from the encroaching flames.
They aren’t the only ones. Citizens from all over London fill the church and its yard with the most valuable pieces of their lives. The stream of people is never-ending, and Beatrix wonders if the crypts have all been stuffed full. She has nothing to hide away for safekeeping. She marvels at the people who do. How do they decide what is worth saving and what to let go?
The people stay, milling about the walk or finding a quiet corner to rest. The cathedral is the safest place to seek refuge from the fire, with its walls of stone and wide-open yard to keep the flames at bay. No matter what happens in the rest of London, St. Paul’s won’t burn.
Except it does. The fire starts on the roof, with a single ember borne on the wind. Beatrix flees the cathedral with the others, silent in her disbelief. St. Paul’s can’t burn. It is being repaired, already wrapped in wooden scaffolding as workers prepare to restore it to its former glory, just like the night she first set eyes on it. It was going to be saved. It wasmeantto be saved.
Outside, Beatrix stands as close as she dares. Ash from the rest of London drifts on the wind like giant flakes of snow. The fire licks up the stone walls, follows the path of the scaffolding up to the leaden roof. Up to the heavens. Sparks drift in the darkness, a fleeting replacement for the stars she can no longer see through the smoke. The heat is unbearable. She backs away and away and away, but she can’t leave, can’t abandon the church. As if she is standing vigil.
The scaffolding burns to ash—kindling spent—but the cathedral is already alight. Flames dance against the colorful glass of the rose window. Liquid lead pours down the walls, all that is left of the cathedral roof, trailing like molten tears down the rough stone, filling the yard and the streets beyond with a river of silver.
Flames race through the cathedral, hungry and wild. They consume every book, every scrap of paper, every loved and cherished thing. Everything the people of London have tried so hard to save—had thought would be safe—gone.
The rose window cracks. A spiderweb races out from the center of the glass, the perfect whole breaking apart into pieces again. It shatters, rains colored glass down on the yard with a blast of heat. Black smoke pours from the gaping hole into the night. A mortal wound.
Something in Beatrix breaks then, cracks and shatters like the rose window. The cathedral has stood for centuries. Far from perfect, damaged, and broken; in desperate need of repair. But still standing. It gave her refuge on her first night in London. Now it is a ruin.
