Fire

Foreword

1665. The Great Plague ravages London. One hundred thousand die, horribly.

1666. The plague passes. Citizens resume their lives.

Six years after his restoration to his executed father’s throne, following twelve years of Puritan glumness, King Charles is called ‘the Merry Monarch’ with reason. He carouses, he plays pell-mell, he attends the theatre, he beds his many mistresses. For him, and the very few very rich, 1666 promises to be another year of pleasure.

For most Londoners, though, the year will offer no more than another battle to survive. And for a radical few, it means something else entirely. For 666 is the number of the Beast – when Satan, as foretold in the Books of Revelation and Daniel, will return to battle the armies of Christ at a place called Armageddon; when Jesus will triumph, raising up the Elect – the chosen, living and dead – to dwell forever in the New Jerusalem. However these ‘Saints’ do not simply sit and pray. By their deeds will they end the Fourth Monarchy of Man, and hasten the Fifth Monarchy of Christ.

September. The year of the Beast is three quarters done and the Devil has not had his due. It has not rained in five months. Warehouses are stuffed with combustibles: coal, hemp, tobacco, brandy, parchment, silks, gunpowder. Each wooden house lights a fire daily, while bathhouses, bakeries and breweries stoke furnaces for their labours.

London is a tinder box: politically, sexually, religiously – literally. And it is about to burn.

‘And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.’

- The Revelation of St John the Divine 20:15 -

The Revelation of St John the Divine 20:15 -