And into the arms of the chorister. “Not that way, miss,” he said, catching her with both hands. “Down this way.”

He took her back down the steps.

“I was only—”

“Quickly,” he said; he didn’t seem angry, only in a great hurry.

He hustled her at top speed through the Crypt to where the shelterers were sitting. “Attention, everyone,” he said. “Please collect your things. We need to evacuate the building.”

The women began gathering up their belongings. “This is the second time I’ve had to move tonight,” one of them said disgustedly.

“Is St. Paul’s on fire?” the boy asked.

The chorister didn’t answer. “This way,” he said, and led the way to a narrow recessed door in the northwest corner. “I’ll see you all get to another shelter.”

“But you don’t understand,” Polly said. “I must speak to Mr. Bartholomew.”

“You can speak to him outside,” he said, herding them through the door. “The fire watch is being evacuated as well.”

The fire watch? Why were they being evacuated? They were supposed to be putting out incendiaries. It doesn’t matter, she thought. It means you can tell Mr. Bartholomew.

“Will they come out this way?” she asked.

“No, they’ll have gone out through the nave. It’s quicker,” he said, pushing Polly through the doorway, up the short flight of steps to the surface, and through the outer door. They emerged into the churchyard and a cacophony of sound—droning bombers, clanging fire bells, the deafening thud of anti-aircraft guns, the wind. It was blowing hard, fanning the flames of a Victorian house on fire just beyond the churchyard.

The flames lit the churchyard with an eerie reddish light. The shelterers stood in a huddle among the tombstones, waiting for the chorister to take them to the shelter.

Polly darted past them and around to the west front of the church. The fire watch was already there, standing in the courtyard. But there were far too many of them—an entire crowd—and they weren’t the watch, they were civilians. And beyond them, firemen were playing water on several buildings on fire in Paternoster Row. The people in the courtyard must have fled those buildings and come here for shelter.

But they were making no attempt to go inside St. Paul’s. They were all standing well back from the steps, in the center of the courtyard, and they seemed oblivious to the fires behind them and to the deafening drone of planes overhead. They were looking, transfixed, up at the dome.

Polly followed their gaze. Halfway up the dome was a small gout of blue-white flame. “An incendiary!” a man behind her shouted at her over the roar of the planes. “It’s too far up for the fire watch to reach.”

“Once the dome catches,” the woman on her other side said, “the whole building will go up like a torch.”

No, it won’t, Polly thought. St. Paul’s didn’t burn down. The fire watch put out twenty-eight incendiaries and saved it.