Fire! Fire! by Stuart Hill Page A

those numbers gave no real idea about the people whose lives had been ruined. Many had lost their businesses – the only way they had of making a living and feeding themselves and their families. Someone in the government had calculated that more than 100,000 were now homeless, with very little hope of getting anywhere else to live.
    This made me think of Mother Bellows, the old Puritan lady I’d helped, but at least I thought she’d be safe with her family, unlike some who might have nobody to help them.
    In the end all I could do was accept that I could do nothing to help; I was just a twelve-year-old boy who had the good fortune to work for a kind master in a good household and I quietly breathed a sigh of relief. In fact, I was soon back into the routine of being a pageboy and, as Master Pepys and I made our way towards the ruins of the burnt streets, I walked two paces behind him, carrying his finely embroidered gloves.
    Everything was deadly quiet where once there’d been the hustle and bustle of a busy city. But even so there were many people about, picking their way through the ruined houses. I thought that perhaps they were looking for where their homes had once stood, but many of them just seemed dazed and wandered about aimlessly.
    We walked on for what seemed like hours and, even though the fire was now definitely out, the ruins still smoked and gave off heat and sparks in great billowing clouds.
    There were rumours that the fire had been started deliberately by the country’s enemies, but my master didn’t believe it:
    â€œAccident, Tom, pure accident,” he said, when I asked him. “It’s said that a bakery in Pudding Lane didn’t put out its ovens properly and that a spark escaped and set fire to rubbish and from there it spread.” He fell silent for a moment before adding. “There’s a lesson to be learnt from that, my boy… from a tiny spark of mischief can come the greatest of tragedies.”
    I nodded, but said nothing as we arrived before the huge broken remains of Saint Paul’s Cathedral. Some of its walls still stood, but they were blackened and there were great holes where the stones had exploded in the heat. It was also completely roofless and the great central tower had fallen in, leaving nothing but a smoking shell.
    â€œ Even the houses of God have been destroyed,” I said quietly.
    Master Pepys laid his hand on my shoulder. “But they will rise again, my lad. They will rise again. Already the king is calling for plans that will allow a great re-building of all that has been lost. But this time it will be better. It will be built of stone and of brick so that no fire will ever again burn our city…”
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    That night as I lay in my bed, I told Pip what Master Pepys had said and he yapped as though agreeing with every word. We went to sleep, safe in the knowledge that our city would never burn again.

HISTORICAL NOTE
    The Great Fire of London started at one o’clock in the morning on Sunday 2nd September 1666 in a baker’s shop that stood on a street called Pudding Lane. By seven o’clock the same morning, Samuel Pepys was woken by his maid to be told that over three hundred houses had already been burnt down.
    Pepys decided that the king must be told about the situation and at ten o’clock he travelled to the Palace of Whitehall. He told Charles II about the terrible fire and recommended that houses should be pulled down to stop it spreading further. The king agreed and sent Pepys to tell the Lord Mayor, Thomas Bloodworth, to demolish all buildings in the path of the flames.
    By one o’clock in the morning of Monday 3rd September, the fire had spread and the post office on Cloak Lane was destroyed. The postmaster and his family had to run for their lives, taking as much post with them as they could carry. The king’s brother, the Duke of York, was put in charge of the efforts to