Plague

by C. C. Humphreys

  A louder shout from Dickon. Coke half opened his eyes. The boy had given up leaping imaginary frogs in the finding of a real one. He held it up by its body, showing it to Sarah, its webbed feet kicking.

  She liked the boy, for all his stutterings and shambles—perhaps because of them. He’d told her about Dickon—finding him, saving him—one night in a Wiltshire inn, on the road down.

  “You have a kind heart, Captain,” she’d said.

  “William,” he’d replied, the first time he’d again offered his given name, though Lucy, asleep at last across the room, used it freely. “Or Will, if you prefer. I haven’t been more than a captain of the highway these many years.”

  “But were once, uh, William?”

  “Aye.”

  “In the late wars? And for the king’s cause like my husband?”

  “He fought most gallantly, I heard.”

  “He did.” A silence came between them, bringing memories of the mangled corpse of John Chalker. Sarah cleared her throat. “Do you think he was gallant at the end? In that cellar?”

  “Bravery needs an opportunity. I doubt the murderer gave him much of one. Yet I suspect that he was.”

  She’d nodded. “I suspect you were gallant too, were you not?”

  “On occasion. When given little choice.”

  “Does a man not always have such a choice?”

  “Not really. I know that as often as I chose to stand I often chose to run.”

  “But were not, perhaps, the first to run?”

  “Marry, perhaps not the very first.”

  Her face changed utterly when she laughed and he’d thought at that moment—and maybe it was the first time—that he’d like to banish that other face entirely. Then she’d said, “And you knew Lucy’s brother, did you not? Knew him and loved him, I understand.” He’d stared at her, seeking any colour to the word “loved.” Yet in the end, he’d decided it did not matter if there was. He and Quentin just were. He’d loved him, sure, as he had loved Evanline, in Bristol; they’d both died badly, and as he’d looked away from Sarah, he’d thought that it was best for him not to love her either, since loss was the way love ever ended for him.

  He glanced back now. She’d hiked up her skirt to wade alongside Dickon in the shallows of the river. The game had changed again; she and the boy were snatching at minnows. Again he noted her brown calf muscles, water drops caught like jewels in the faint down on them. Then beyond Sarah and Dickon he spotted the donkey, the man leading it, the rope that ran from its saddle. The next moment the prow of the barge itself was in view, steadily dragged toward the jetty that thrust into the Thames here at Sunbury. The others had not noticed it yet, so intent were they on their game, and he did not call. He would let them have their last carefree moments.

  The care had been their choice. In Cornwall, Lucy had used all her skills to persuade them to stay, to not risk death in the centre of its domain and return to London. Coke had tried to persuade Sarah, and Sarah had tried to persuade Coke. Neither had succeeded, though they had dallied several days more—for what drew them back was more powerful than any contrary argument: not least a compact made with a thief-taker that justice would be done.

  Yet he wondered: if she had been persuaded to stay, would he have too? Was it her determination that drew him back? Or was it, simply, her?

  He watched her now, saw her notice the barge, raise a hand against the sun to study it; noted the way her shoulders set. There would be no persuasion that would unset them now. The boy saw the boat also, and took longer to realize what it meant. When he did, he jerked around to seek Coke, and calmed when he found him. Dickon they’d not tried to persuade to stay in Cornwall; they’d simply left in the middle of the night, hoping that Lucy, whom he loved, would manage to keep him there. But Dickon loved his captain more, and he’d run for a day and a night back along the road until he’d caught up with them. It had taken all Coke’s skills and Sarah’s caresses to soothe the lad, together with the vow that he would never be abandoned again. Whatever dangers lay before them, be they plague, murder or the noose, Dickon would face them all at his captain’s side.

  She strode from the water to speak to him. “Is this the vessel we await?”

  “Aye. This barge will take us to Teddington and we’ll find a boat there for London.”

  “Thank the Lord for the river,” she said, dropping her skirt. “I do not think I could walk another ten steps.”

  “Yet you can run and leap the frog?”

  She pushed loose hair from her face. “The boy wanted it so.”

  Coke raised his feet from the water and reluctantly put his boots back on. They were meant for riding, not walking, and because they’d trudged most of the miles from Cornwall, and taken near four weeks to do it, his feet were a sorry affair indeed. His mare, Dapple, had injured a leg running in Cornish fields and had to be left, while their little coin had not run to horses, whose hire had trebled in price since the plague had come, nor coach fares raised for the same reason. There had been an occasional wagon going their way.

  “And what awaits us in London?”

  Death, he thought, but did not say. “Pitman,” he said instead. “By now the thief-taker will surely have some paths for us to follow. He may have already identified the villain. I would not put it past him, for he seems most able.” Coke tried to smile. “Perhaps we will regret the haste of our return if the murderer already dangles at Tyburn.”

  “The only thing I will regret, Captain, is if the words you speak are true. For I will not consider John Chalker avenged until I have looked his killer in the eye. Until I have had some hand in his taking.”

  He sighed. She had “captain-ed” him again. And there he was once more, John Chalker, the spectre ever between them. He rose, with nothing else to say save, “Then let us speed you to that, ma’am. To London.”

  Even in the short walk from Wood Wharf to Sarah’s lodgings, he could see how the metropolis had changed.

  Almost no one walked on the streets, most unusual on Sabbath’s eve. Each tavern, wine-house, alehouse and ordinary they passed was closed, when usually at this hour they would be overflowing. Though some would still be open in the dingier back alleys, despite his thirst Coke did not seek them out. Both Sarah and Dickon were exhausted, while he was determined to get to Pitman before the City gates were locked for the night.

  However, it was not just the lack of people, the shuttered inns, the many houses blossoming red crosses like roses, nor the near silence broken only by the bells. “Look,” Sarah said. At first he did not see, until she added, “The grass.”

  Then he saw it. Between the always well tended paving stones of the Strand, knee-high plants bent in the wind of their passing.

  At her lodgings, they protested when he went to depart by himself. “I go for information alone, not action,” he said. “I will return with the dawn.” He left them fallen together on the one bed as if slain.

  He chose to swing slightly from the direct course, crossed the Fleet on Holborn Bridge, bore through the Churchyard of St. Bartholomew the Less rather than enter the City by the gate nearest Pitman’s address. For that entrance was Newgate, and it was part of the prison of the same name. He’d always avoid it if he could, ever since a gypsy had discovered on his palm that he would only see its outside thrice more before he saw it from within. So instead he took lanes and alleys that roughly paralleled the Wall until he reached the next entryway, Aldersgate, the extra distance costing him, for the guards had begun to shut up and only a shilling from his scant supply made them pause to admit him. The steeple of St. Paul’s, the highest spire in London, its tip gilded by the setting sun’s last rays, guided him down St. Martin’s Le Grand.

  With few about to ask, and those few scurrying away when he tried, he discovered Cock Alley by sound rather than sight. Around a corner, he found the source of the wailing he’d heard: noise and destination, one. There, before the very house he sought, a hand cart stood with one man carrying
a body out the door while another held back a woman on the threshold who was weeping and trying to get to the corpse. A third figure stood by, an older woman in a ragged grey cloak. She was as still as the others were active and to the screams offered a sound more awful: a low laugh.

  Fear flushed him; he knew this house was Pitman’s by the distinctive gable the man had described. Still, he advanced, just as the wailing woman was shoved forcefully back inside, the door was slammed upon her and the bolts affixed to its outside were shot into place. “What happens here?” he asked.

  The woman jumped two paces back, hands raised against him. “Eh?” she screeched. The man who’d been bolting the door turned fast, hefting a cudgel.

  “Peace, friends!” Coke raised empty hands, as the second man finished dumping the body on the cart and turned too, also armed. Seeing she was warded, the old woman stepped back, into the light spill of the lantern above the door.

  Dank hair, inexpertly dyed blond, pressed into a brow that was white due to the layers of lead paint plastered onto it. Here, as on the rest of the skin, great fissures had cracked the ceruse, splitting under a single mouse-skin eyebrow; the other eyebrow was absent. A cloud of cochineal reddened each cheek, disappearing into the hollows of skin that folded over a mouth missing most teeth. Beauty patches had been randomly applied over pox scars. Most were plain orbs and half moons, though a cat chased a carriage toward the missing eyebrow.

  All this Coke saw in the one swift glance before he retreated. Yet he did not run, with that opportunity soon taken when the crone cried, “Seize him!”

  The men grabbed an arm apiece. “Easy, friends,” Coke said, gauging their strength. He would fight if he had to. The reek that rose off them showed that all three were drunk on Guinea rum, which would make any fight easier. But that would not serve his purpose: to find Pitman. Though the plain fact that his house was plagued might mean there was now no Pitman to find.

  The old woman smiled toothlessly at him, thrusting her face close. “Well, well,” she breathed, “is this the missing ’usband, then? Shall we unbolt and throw ’im inside?”

  Coke, gagging a little at the proximity of her, said, “Madam—” To an immediate chorus of jeers. “Madam,” he continued, “may I know who it is I am addressing?”

  “Oh, so polite! What a gennelman!” The woman looked down her nose. “You is ’dressin’ Mistress Proctor. I am the searcher for this parish. I sniffs out the sick. I slams them up in their ’ovels. I carts away their dead.” She slapped the wagon beside her, causing a corpse’s arm to drop and dangle outside the canvas covering. “And who might you be, sir gennelman?” She thrust her face still closer. “Are you the ’usband? Are you this Pitman?”

  “I am not.” He let his western accent thicken. “I am a cousin, come from the country to seek his kin.”

  “Country cousin?” she shrieked, falling to wheezing laughter, joined by the two men who held him. “Country fool, more like! For who would leave ’is native pure air to breathe pestilence?” Her face was now so close their lips almost met. “I think you’re lyin’, sir gennelman. Not even a fool willingly enters Hades, eh? You’re Pitman!”

  The man on his left arm spoke. “Nah,” he mumbled. “That bastard was bigger. Arrested me once, just for the beatin’ of my own daughter on the street.”

  “A daughter!” Coke was near enough to see the thought enter the gummy eyes. “ ’Course! One way to find out. Swing ’im over ’ere.” She stepped to the cart and the two men gripped tighter and shoved Coke forward. “For what father will stay as stone when he sees … this!”

  As she said the word, she jerked back the canvas. There, on top of two other corpses, lay the latest addition: a girl, perhaps two years old. It was one of her arms that swung over the side of the cart; her other arm was flung back, as if desperately reaching for the house she’d late been ejected from. Even in the poor light of the lamp, Coke could clearly see the distended armpit and the black oval tokens covering her skin.

  He could not stop it. Never could. He vomited, partly onto one of the men who held him there and who now threw him off. The other man let go as well, leaving Coke to void bile onto the cobbles.

  Fingers like claws dug into his arm. He looked up—into those eyes under their one eyebrow. “Puke tears,” she hissed, “but not sorrowing ones. A father would rage over ’is dead daughter, wouldn’t he?”

  “I tell you, s’not ’im.” The man who spoke peered up from his attempts to wipe yellow vomit from his breeches. “Bastard’s covered me, though. I’ll give ’im a beating for that.”

  A cudgel was in his hand. Coke, already bent over, reached to the dagger in his boot cuff. But a screech halted them both. “You will not!” shouted the crone. “It’s late, and there’s money to be had of the beadle of St. Leonard’s for these three if we hurry. I wants a drink. You—” she pointed at the man with the vomit “—will stay and keep the watch.” She flicked the canvas back over the corpses, tucked in the dangling arm. “And you,” she said, pointing now at Coke. “I’d not linger ’ere if I were you. Go ’ome, cuntryman.”

  With that, she gestured to the cart’s arse and the other man went to it, heaved. “Bring out yer dead!” she suddenly cried, her voice sharp and clear in the silence. “Bring out yer dead!” The man still wiping away puke followed, whining that it was not his turn.

  They’d got to the corner, were just about to turn it, when Coke felt something hit his shoulder. He glanced in time to see a ball of paper fall to the ground. He picked it up, unfolded it. One side was printed, a call to buy the world’s most effective plague water. The other side had words scrawled in charcoal. By the lantern light he could just make them out: “Next street at bak. Empte Ironmongers. Attik.”

  The captain went fast, the opposite way to the death cart.

  Three houses down there was an alley on the left. He took it, turned left again. Crossed cutlery was nailed above a door. He pushed this, and it gave with a squeal of rusted hinges. “Hallo?” he called, his voice bouncing back from emptiness. There was only one lantern back in this alley. He returned to the house. It was silent, its inhabitants no doubt asleep. He fetched an empty barrel, stood upon it and carefully unhooked the lantern from its spike, then descended and returned to the ironmonger’s.

  The little light the lantern gave revealed a room as empty as its echo: a bare counter, some broken pots, a fallen chair. At the rear of this room was a doorway and Coke went through it, climbed the narrow stair beyond. The only memory of life he found was when he stumbled on something, bent to feel what it was, grasped cloth. He lifted the object into his little light, saw the flaxen string hair, the button face of a poppet. He dropped it.

  There was a ladder on the last landing, rising into the roof. It creaked as he climbed it. When he stuck his head into the space above, he heard another sound. A whisper in the dark.

  “Do not come any closer, sir.”

  He lifted the lantern, placed it on the attic floor before him. It did not light much beyond the trap.

  The voice came again from the darkness. “Who are you, sir? Do you know my husband? Do you know Pitman?”

  “I do. Let me draw closer.”

  He made to push himself up, but her sharp cry stopped him. “Do not! Even there, the sickness may reach out and take you. How do you know my husband?”

  “My name is Coke.”

  “He told me of you. The captain. You are engaged on an enterprise together.”

  “We are. I had hoped to find him to continue our work. I—” He broke off. Pitman had said he recounted little to his wife, to save her from fretting. What could Coke say now?

  “If he lives, sir, you will find him in Newgate prison.”

  “What? How so? For what offence?”

  “Murder.” She continued over his cry. “It’s three weeks since. Caught by the All Hallows watch, his dagger in a man’s guts, they told me. They were happy to tell me.” A sob, restrained, and she went on. “I have not had another word
.”

  Within this appalling news was something that did not make sense. No one accused of murder remained in Newgate three weeks without a trial. It was usually done within a day or two. “Are you sure he is not …” He stopped.

  She must have sensed his doubts. “He is not hanged, sir. He cannot come to trial because the courts are suspended. Prisoners must wait for the plague to pass before they can be brought to justice. And most will never face it. Because if there is one place in this entire pestilent city that is the very centre of disease, that place is Newgate. Yet I believe he lives. Those who keep us shut in would delight in telling me if he did not.”

  She sobbed again, and he bit his lip till blood ran. This was the ruin of all hope. What could have happened? Pitman was not a murderer. Had he come upon the real killer and been forced to kill him? Could that not be proven?

  “Madam, what can I do for you? Can I free you? I could cut away the lath in these walls. Your family could escape through.”

  He’d half raised himself onto the floor again, when she stopped him with a shout. “And go where? This is a house of the plague, sir. I have lost a daughter this night, a babe last week, have another son sick below.” He heard her choke back her tears. “We must wait for God’s judgment, and pray that he will decide he has punished us enough.”

  “Can I at least bring you food? Medicine?”

  “Yes, perhaps that. Yet, sir, what would truly sustain us is this: find out if Pitman does still live. Take our prayers to him. Bring him word of us. Tell him that Imogen and Little Jeremiah sleep with the angels.” Another sob, swiftly pulled back. “And tell him that by God’s good grace he will be brought back to us soon.”