“Hey! You there!” the warden shouted. “Come back here!”
Polly yanked on the heavy door. It didn’t budge. She yanked again, and this time it opened a narrow crack.
She glanced back down at Mike and Eileen, but the incendiary was jerking and spitting too violently and erratically for them to risk running past it, and the warden was already nearly upon her.
“Go!” Mike shouted, waving her on. “We’ll catch up with you!”
Polly turned and fled into the blackness of the cathedral.
Tonight, the bomber planes of the German Reich hit London where it hurts the most—in the heart … St. Paul’s Cathedral is burning to the ground as I talk to you now.
—EDWARD R. MURROW, RADIO BROADCAST,
29 December 1940
St. Paul’s Cathedral—29 December 1940
THE DOOR CLANGED SHUT BEHIND POLLY.
It was pitch-black inside the cathedral. There was supposed to be a light under the dome for the fire watch to orient themselves by, but she couldn’t see it. She couldn’t see anything. She couldn’t hear anything either, except the still-reverberating echo of the door shutting behind her. Not planes, not the sputtering incendiary, nothing, not even the sirens.
But the warden had been just below her on the steps. He would come through that door any moment. She had to hide.
She paused a second, willing her eyes to adjust, trying to remember what lay on this side of the cathedral. Not the Wren staircase—it was blocked off—and The Light of the World was too small to hide behind. She should have paid more attention when Mr. Humphreys was showing her around.
She still couldn’t see anything, not even outlines. She groped for the wall, arms outstretched in front of her, like a child playing blind man’s bluff. Stone and then open space and narrow iron bars. The chapel’s grille. She ran her hand hurriedly along the bars, anxious to get past the chapel, and felt the gate open under her touch.
She was through it instantly and into the chapel, feeling her way. The chapel had had an altar with a tall carved reredos behind it. She could hide behind that.
She crashed into something wooden, banging her knee. The prayer stalls, she thought, reaching down to feel their waist-high fronts. They had lined either side of the chapel, which meant the altar was—
A door opened somewhere. Polly dove down behind the prayer stall and crouched there, holding her breath, listening.
A voice, too soft and too distorted to make out, and then a second, answering, and then footsteps. The warden? Or a member of the fire watch making the rounds?
It must be the fire watch. She heard more footsteps, quicker this time, and walking away, and then a door—too quiet to be the heavy door she’d come in through—
shutting.
She waited a bit longer, hoping Mike or Eileen—or both of them—would have got away from the warden and come back. They both knew what John Bartholomew looked like, and Mike could pretend to be a volunteer on the fire watch. There hadn’t been any women on it, and it was unlikely they’d let one up on the roofs to look for someone, even if she knew how to get there.
But she did know how to get to the Crypt. She could ask the officer in charge to take a message to Mr. Bartholomew.
She crept cautiously out from behind the prayer stall, checked to make certain there was no sweep of a pocket torch in the aisle or in the nave beyond, and felt her way toward the gate.
Light flashed suddenly in her face, blinding her. Polly dived for the haven of the stall, cracking her knee again, and then realized what she’d seen. A flare. A rattling clatter overhead like someone tossing a handful of pebbles made her look up. Incendiaries on the roofs. And then voices from the direction of the dome and more banging of doors and footsteps running up stairs.
Still blinded, Polly felt for the gate and opened it, trying not to make any noise. She went out into the nave and stood for a minute, waiting for her eyes to recover.
When they did, she could just discern the shadowy outlines of the arches, the bricked-up Wellington Monument across the nave, and the choir, and she thought her eyes must finally have adjusted to the darkness. But when she glanced up behind her she saw the windows were lit with yellow.
Fire, she thought, guiltily grateful for the light. There was just enough for her to find her way and not crash into the tin baths full of water sitting at the base of the massive pillars or into the stirrup pumps propped against them.
They’ll need all of those tonight, she thought, hurrying along the south aisle, past The Light of the World, though nothing of the painting but the lantern was visible in the near darkness. It glowed dimly golden, though the light from the windows seemed to be growing steadily brighter and oranger and to be coming from the north transept as well.
Out here in the aisle she could hear the drone of the planes, punctuated by the thud of the anti-aircraft guns. Another batch of incendiaries clattered onto the roofs as she passed the ranked rows of wooden chairs, so loud she looked up, expecting them to clatter onto the marble floor in front of her, but there were no more running footsteps. The fire watch must all be up on the roofs already.
A door banged heavily at the end of the cathedral she’d just come from, and this time it was definitely an outside door. Polly looked wildly about for a place to hide, then ducked behind the nearest pillar and flattened herself against it, listening. Whoever it was was running this way, straight down the middle of the nave, his footsteps ringing on the marble floor.
Polly inched her way around the pillar to get a look at him. If it was a member of the fire watch, she could ask him to take her to Mr. Bartholomew. There wasn’t enough light to see him clearly, but she could see that he was
