Plague

by C. C. Humphreys

  Sarah awoke, saw them. She made no sound, just rose, gracefully tucked away her breast, picked up the child, handed him to Dickon and then moved into Coke’s arms.

  “How?” he asked. “Who?”

  “No words, Captain. Not yet, I beg you.”

  There were few orders in his life he’d obeyed so happily. He held her for the longest time, while the baby quieted with the faces Dickon was pulling at him. Only when the shuddering at his chest eased did Coke lean back, lift her teary face and, just before he kissed her, say, “And I beg you, madam. Call me William.”

  EPILOGUE

  Seven months later—March 22, 1666

  “Off out, Pitman?”

  “Off out, my love. But not quite yet. I must wait.”

  “For what?”

  “For you, dearest chuck, to accompany me. Wear your best—the new dress we just bought.”

  “I told you before. It is too fancy, especially for chapel. Whatever were you thinking of, you great lummox? I’m taking it back in the morning. I’ll have a new sideboard for the price.”

  “I was thinking, love, how the green so suited your eyes.”

  “Go on with you. I’ve a mind to—Pitman! What is it that you are wearing?”

  “My new coat. Do you like it?”

  “Sure that’s the table right there to go with my new sideboard! The duke has been generous, but his purse is not bottomless. And you said you would soon be giving up his allowance.”

  “I feel it wrong to keep accepting his money, since I am quite recovered.”

  “All the more reason to return this finery. We must cut our cloth, Pitman. We must cut our cloth!”

  “And will, my sweet. Tomorrow. Tonight you will accompany me.”

  “Well, I have to say, you do look ’andsome. Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Truly, Mr. Etherege, Mr. Dryden, one of you must set it down,” said King Charles. “ ’Twould be the making of either of you.”

  The two playwrights looked at each other dubiously. Etherege coughed. “It does not sound like a comedy, Sire.”

  “A comedy? No, indeed. A great drama, like the one we are in the middle of tonight. An epic tale, full of all ranks from lords to butchers. Yet now I bethink me—” the king held out his glass, which was swiftly refilled “—it does have its comic moments. A prince of the blood royal surprised in the privy with his breeches around his knees. Ain’t that so, Jamie?”

  “Sir, please,” replied the Duke of York. “I do not find any humour in the memory. I doubt you would if it had been you with an assassin’s blade so near your throat.”

  “Pshaw! I am still certain that whatever the state of my dress I would have come up with a better line than ‘Guards! Guards!’ That was his line, wasn’t it, Mr. Pitman?”

  “Begging Your Majesty’s favour, that’s Pitman, plain Pitman, Sire, no ‘Mr.’ As to His Royal Highness’s words or clothing, I recall nothing but nobility from him in either.”

  The king threw back his head and roared. “You could teach my courtiers something in manners, Pitman, and in tact. Though you are something of my brother’s man these days, are you not? Quite right too. The beating his guards inflicted upon you before he persuaded them you were his saviour deserves much recompense. Are you near recovered?”

  “Quite near, Sire.”

  “And is this your wife?”

  “It is, Sire.”

  “May I call her Mrs. Pitman, at least? Madam, may I say the simple beauty of both you and your dress show the grand ladies who hover about me to be the painted harlots they are.” Fans fluttered nearby at that, and even more so when the king raised a curtsying Bettina and kissed her hand. “Do you enjoy the theatre, madam?”

  “It is my first time, Sire, and faith, I am surprised, but I do.”

  “Do you, indeed? It’s amusing enough, I suppose. A distraction. Though I would the matter of this play had more import. More currency.” He turned back to the playwrights. “After these times we have lived through, do we not require something with more heart?” He swigged. “Sirrahs, truly, the tale these people could tell you. Of murders, of madness, of threats against the state by a nobleman who was also a damned Fifth Monarchist.”

  “The fanatics have already been explored upon the stage, Sire,” said Etherege. “Cowley did it in his Cutter of Coleman Street.”

  “Another damnable comedy!” exclaimed the king. “I assure you, this is serious. These Saints, for all we may laugh and think them Bedlamites, are serious. They believe the end of the world is here. Perhaps they are right. They certainly strive to bring it on.” He looked back at his courtiers and his eyes narrowed. “I know. The Earl of Rochester should take them on.”

  “I?” John Wilmot shrugged, his lower lip drooping. “What have I to do with such matters?”

  “Oh, stop sulking, Johnnie. Three months in the Tower and three exiled to the country have made you a better man. You should be grateful to me. The time away removed your mind from drinking, your fingers from whores, and put them to poetry, while giving you matter to be poetic about. Is that not your true calling?”

  “My true calling, sir, is life.” The earl gave a thin smile. “As you shall see.”

  “Well, I consider myself forewarned.” Charles turned back. “Pitman, what say you? How dangerous are these fanatics? These self-proclaimed Saints?”

  Into Pitman’s mind, memories came: a lady with a single stab wound in the heart; guts on a pulpit; a jewel gleaming in a tongueless mouth. “I say they are very dangerous, Sire.”

  “I agree. And I would talk more on that later, if you will.”

  “Please, to your seats. Lords, ladies, honours all.” Thomas Betterton stood upon the stairs that led to the stage, looking down into the common area. “I beg you, Sire. No one will sit until you do. The play begins again.”

  “It does indeed,” said the king, still eyeing Pitman. Then he set down his glass. “So let us to it.”

  Court and courtiers, orange girls, vizards and actors all made for their places. Only Pitman did not move, despite Bettina’s eager tugging, for he was looking at the couple only now coming forward from the shadowed corner of the room. “Mrs. Chalker. Captain. The king will be sorry to have missed you.”

  “And not I him,” replied Coke. “Whenever he sees me, he gives me coins. To recompense me, he says, for that one bottle of Rhenish I shared with him on the eve of Worcester. Christ’s bones, I feel like one of his footmen.”

  “But you accept the money nonetheless,” Sarah said.

  “Oh, I accept it. A man must live, since the king’s pardon for past crimes—conditional on those crimes never being repeated—has taken away me livelihood.” He sighed. “Yet, hang me for a slave, I’d feel better taking his money with a gun at his belly.”

  “He recompenses you for more than Rhenish—you know that,” Sarah said. “And he has offered to recompense you still more. With employment. You must tell Pitman.” She squeezed his arm, then turned to Mrs. Pitman. “My dear, where did you get that lovely dress?” She reached for Bettina’s hand, and the two women went off a little ways. The men watched them. “So Mrs. Chalker does not play?” asked Pitman.

  “No. She returned from Cornwall only yesterday, and since the ban on gatherings and the playhouse was lifted just two days before, Betterton had already assigned all roles in this new piece.” He glanced to the floor above, through which the musicians’ tuning could be heard. “I do not think she minds sitting out. Cornwall, parting with John Edward, was hard.”

  “Did she not think to keep him?”

  “She did. But growing up with an actress in the Town, opposed to the boy’s own family in the country? And since yond puppy Rochester still refuses to acknowledge the boy …” He frowned. “So it was best for the lad, and perhaps Sarah too. She would not let me escort her when she gave him up, requested to be alone.”

  A few paces away, Bettina was making her eyes big at Pitman, gesturing to the stag
e above. “I am summoned, man. So tell me quick—what is this employment the king has offered you?”

  “Groom of the Bedchamber. A sinecure. I don’t think I actually have to lay down in the same room with him.” He laughed. “Od’s life, with Old Rowley ’twixt the sheets, a man wouldn’t get a wink for all the damned cries d’amour!”

  Pitman didn’t laugh. “A job for life, though—his life, anyway. You would be wise to take it.”

  “I would.” Coke ran his fingers over his moustache. “Yet when has wisdom been one of my qualities? I’d be interminably bored. Besides, I have been offered other employment. Less wise. More interesting.”

  “I know. I offered it to you. Are you accepting?”

  “I think I am.” Coke grinned. “You said it once: thief and thief-taker—what a pair we will make!”

  He held out his hand. Pitman clasped it, burying it in his massive ones. “We will, Captain. There’ll be takes aplenty too, for this late plague has thrown many out of work and made them desperate. Thieves abound in London.”

  “And not only native ones. Did you hear that dastard Maclean escaped Newgate last Tuesday just before the courts sat again?”

  “Aye, and Wednesday robbed Lord Butler on Turnham Green. Maclean’s price has gone up to twenty guineas.”

  “Good. Though I’d pay twenty to hear him play ‘Whisky in the Jar’ on his damn fiddle while kicking his heels on Tyburn gallows.”

  “Save the king’s money and your own,” Pitman said, releasing the captain’s hand and nodding at the approaching women, “for you’ll be needing it.”

  “Eh?” Coke said, but was unable to question further as Bettina swooped in and dragged her husband toward the stairs, beyond which the orchestra was now in full melody.

  “I like that Mrs. Chalker,” Bettina said as they climbed. “She may be an actress and so hell-bound for being cousin to a whore, but she’s still one of us.”

  “When the time comes, my dear, I hope your liking will extend to helping her with her child. In about six months, I should say.”

  “What? Did the captain tell you she’s with child?”

  “Nay. Indeed I do not think he knows.”

  “Then how do you?”

  “ ’Tis my genius for observation, love. And experience.” He stopped them and laid his hand briefly on his wife’s belly. She won’t be able to wear her new dress much longer either, he thought, but said, “Let’s to the play!”

  Just as Sarah and William passed the front of the theatre, the second act began. The doors were open to late trade and they could hear Betterton’s rich voice: “ ‘Sblood! She could not have picked out any devil upon the earth so proper to torment her.’ ”

  “Are you certain you do not wish to watch the second act?” William asked.

  “I will be in the playhouse soon enough again. I would rather enjoy my freedom.” She sniffed the air. “It smells like spring today, does it not?”

  “It does.” As they crossed Lincoln’s Inn Fields, he marvelled at the warmth and, even more, the normality. People strolling and enjoying the sunshine; oyster sellers selling oysters, maids their ribbons or combs.

  “It is as if the plague never was. Yet I hear some still die of it.”

  “I have heard so as well. In the poorer parts of the city. The monster never entirely quits the labyrinth.” He squeezed her hand. “But the king would not have returned nor the gathering places been reopened if there was a general danger still.”

  “I am not concerned for my life. Yet I am sad about those who lost theirs.”

  “As am I.” They gazed at the ground for a moment, neither with the other, both with Lucy. He was always a little surprised how readily the tears still came. He looked up, saw a match in her eyes. “Come, love,” he said. “How would you spend this free day of yours? Shall we walk? Or shall we retire to your apartments?”

  There was a change in his voice, light now in his eyes. “Truly, was last night not enough for you, sir?”

  “You were gone to Cornwall a long while. A month. And you only admitted me to your bed and your heart a short month before that.”

  “Two months. How swiftly a man forgets!” She laughed and kissed him. “Why not your apartments?”

  “Dickon’s there. The place is a shambles of lurid pamphlets and nut shells.”

  “Mine, then,” she said. “But first, William—” she resisted his immediate pull toward Sheere Lane “—let us go and see the puppets.” He knew when he was beaten. “Your servant ever, madam.”

  As they crossed the Fields, walked down to Fleet Street and then along the Strand toward Charing Cross, she wondered if tonight would be the night to tell him. It would change what was between them, and she was not sure she wanted that, this time of happiness to end. Yet she knew there could be happiness after too. Coke was not a man like Rochester. He would not disclaim his paternity. Indeed, she felt the captain would attempt to rush her to an altar—and she was not sure how she felt about that. She’d been a widow for ten months. Should she not last at least the year?

  She glanced at him. He looked content. There would always be that darkness in his eyes, which she had noticed the very first time she met him. He had seen too much in his life. As had she. Indeed, they made quite the pair. Nay, I’ll leave him in this content for one more night, she thought.

  The puppet theatre was as crowded as the playhouse, both newly reopened and drawing their partisans. A silver crown secured them a place on the front bench, as well as two oranges, two tumblers of ale and two bags of peanuts, one of which Coke pocketed to save for his ward.

  The play had already begun, but the plots were never hard to grasp. Nor the characters: a scold, a cuckold and a curmudgeonly master who gossiped, setting the scene. Then on came Punchinello, leading with his vast belly, matched by his hunched back. “Eh! Eh! Eh!” he called, “ ’As anyone seen my wife, eh? Eh?”

  The audience roared. The puppet turned to acknowledge them. This slow-moving marionette, with his small dark eyes peering past his huge hooked nose, always disturbed Sarah near as much as he amused. Especially now, when Punchinello appeared to stare right at her. She shivered.

  “Here, my love.” William unclasped his cloak, swept it off his shoulders and over hers. He tucked her tight, and she leaned her head against his chest. Must keep her warm, he thought. Especially now. Her and the new life inside her.

  The audience laughed and Captain Coke did too. Only he was not laughing at the puppets.

  Author’s Note

  In some ways, I have been researching this book all my life.

  Growing up in London helped. I believe that an event as traumatic as the Great Plague leaves a terrible scar on a city’s psyche, and its inhabitants can’t help but sense the impact somewhere deep within. I remember having plague pits pointed out to me as a child, and staring fascinated at grassed mounds of earth. I was told there was one under St. George and the Dragon at St. John’s Wood Roundabout, near Lord’s Cricket Ground. Certainly the skeletons of victims are still being excavated as the Crossrail project is dug through the city. We walk on plague corpses every day.

  As a teenager, madly in love with history, I joined the Sealed Knot—an English Civil Wars reenactment group. I fought in a number of battles (including Lansdown, where Quentin Absolute fell) and rose to the rank of sergeant in the same regiment I have placed Captain Coke, Sir Bevil Grenville’s Regiment of Foote—whose colonel, in a marvellous literary link, was Count Nikolai Tolstoy, grandson of the novelist.

  I also admit that I once went to a cockfight. I was travelling around Peru in 1988, staying near the famous Nazca Lines, and felt I should attend in the spirit of research—at least, that was my excuse! It was as brutal as you can imagine. The images lodged in my head, and are now out upon my pages.

  Yet nothing could truly prepare me for the other horrors I was to read about and ultimately set down. The period was not one I’d studied much, except in that basic schoolboy way. The first shock was in read
ing about the English Civil Wars—the British, really, as they ravaged all the isles. I think I’d retained my Sealed Knot view of something rather chivalrous and romantic. They were nothing of the kind. The images we see each day from various parts of the world remind us that civil war is the most brutal of all. Close to a staggering 10 percent of the population died, many in battle, most of the starvation, sickness and violence that occurred away from the battlefield. I realized quite quickly that most of the former soldiers I turned into characters in this book would have been suffering the seventeenth-century equivalent of post-traumatic stress disorder. It does not excuse but may go a little way to explaining some of their actions.

  There were happier areas of research—studying the English theatre, which I love and have been a part of; and studying that formative time when actresses were first allowed to grace the stage. (What would my life have been without actresses?) And the Twitter and email feeds of The Diary of Samuel Pepys I signed up for have been a daily joy, as well as vitally informative about customs, food, manners, songs … and pubs! Sam sure liked his bevy, from morning drafts for breakfast to Rhenish in the evening and many ales in between.

  I was also fascinated by the turbulent religious times. The wars, fought at least partly about God and how you saw him, unleashed a massive diversity of belief—from the extremely puritanical to its opposite, as exemplified by the Ranters, who worshipped the Almighty by living in communes where they ripped off their clothes, swore, drank, smoked and practised free love. As Lawrence Clarkson, aka Captain of the Rant, wrote: “Devil is God, hell is heaven, sin holiness, damnation salvation: this and only this is the first resurrection.”

  Such was the combustible mix at the heart of London. There were so many stunning books I read about the times, and the pestilence in particular, and I list them separately. One, Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year, was wonderfully evocative and expounded superbly in the notes in the Oxford Classics Edition. He coined the fabulous term for the plague: “The Monster in the Labyrinth.” It was, and London was, and it is with fascinated horror that I have wandered my native streets again, literally and on the page.