For all the plague victims who lie nameless.
Cover photograph: © iStockphoto.com
First published 2017
The Mystery Press is an imprint of The History Press
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© Chris Nickson, 2017
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CHAPTER ONE
May 1364
‘Do it like this,’ John the Carpenter said. He worked the chisel into the wood and eased it back out, then felt the straightness of the cut with his finger. The boy watched, absorbed, following each small movement. ‘Now you try it.’
Alan wriggled closer, so he could look down into the joint. He tested the sharpness of the tool’s edge with his thumb. Satisfied, he took a breath and began, aware of the line marked on the wood, knowing he couldn’t go beyond that.
‘Very good,’ John told him once he was done, and the lad beamed. Alan had just turned eight, still without the strength to do many things, but he was learning quickly. John had agreed to take him on, to teach him, because the boy had the feel for wood; it was deep in his nature. That was a rare gift. It spoke to him, told him what it needed. In time he’d be able to make a living from this, the way John did. For now, though, he needed to learn, to work his apprenticeship. The carpenter brushed the sawdust off his hose and shirt. A day’s work, well done.
Alan was mute. He’d never said a word since he was born. But he was quick, eager, with a sharp mind for his age.
The carpenter tousled the lad’s hair.
‘Come on, it’s late. I’d better get you home or your mother will wonder where you are.’
The shadows were starting to lengthen. Late May already. After a wet spring, where water puddled deep in the lanes and the fields and the world seemed filled with mud, the weather had finally turned warm and dry.
The crops would be late. Some were starting to grow, although much of the soil was still heavy. The farmers were worried. John had heard them at the Saturday market in Chesterfield, muttering and grumbling and shaking their heads.
But everyone was on edge. The dampness meant illness and bad humours. And a return of the plague. Already rumours had fluttered around of cases in towns away to the south or off to the north. Just talk, he hoped; there’d been nothing close to home. Pray God all the words were wrong. His father, a carpenter, had died in agony during the year of the great death, when John was just the same age as Alan.
No more of those horrors. Never again.
Alan was a fine worker, already cleaning the tools with an oiled rag the way he’d been shown. Slow and steady until he finished, putting everything away in the battered leather satchel.
This wasn’t a big job, just a pen large enough to hold twenty sheep. But it meant five pennies a day, the wage of a skilled man now. One of those went to Alan. From the way the boy picked things up so quickly, a few more years and he’d be off seeking his own jobs.
Soon enough it would be evening and the road into Chesterfield was already empty, all the traders and travellers gone for the day. Just their own footsteps raising dust. He’d be glad to be home, to see his wife and his daughter, Juliana. She was almost a year and a half old and more beautiful than he could have imagined any child could be. He’d hoped for a boy but as soon as he saw her it didn’t matter; she was so delicate and so full of life. It terrified him to think that the plague might return and take her. Or his wife, Katherine, her sisters, her brother. Even Dame Martha, the neighbour who’d moved into their house the year before, slowly growing too infirm to manage on her own. They were all his family. He wanted to protect every one of them.
John felt it as soon as they entered the town. Something was wrong. The place seemed too hushed, as if it was covered in a pall of sorrow. John escorted the boy to his house, then hurried home.
• • •
He held his breath as he opened the door and stepped into the hall. Jeanette and Eleanor, Katherine’s sisters, sat at the table with Dame Martha, practising their writing on pieces of slate. No sign of Walter, his brother-in-law, but that was no surprise; the lad would still be off somewhere delivering messages or with his friends.
Katherine was on a bench, nursing their little girl.
Everything was so ordinary, so normal. Had he imagined things?
‘John,’ Martha began. Her voice was a worried croak. ‘Have you heard?’
‘Heard what?’ He slipped the bag of tools from his shoulder, looking first at her, then to Katherine. ‘What?’ It was no mistake; he could feel the fear crawling up his back.
‘You know Jack the Fuller?’ She put her arms around the girls, drawing them closer to her.
‘Yes, of course.’ Always smiling when they met, full of bad jokes and a large laugh.
‘Two of his children, the youngest ones.’ She hesitated for a moment, as if not speaking could unmake it all. ‘Plague.’
He crossed himself, offering up a small prayer as he looked at his wife. Such helplessness on her face.
‘Sweet Jesu.’ But even as he spoke, his mind was working. Jack and his family lived down the hill, at the bottom of Soutergate, close to the bridge over the River Hipper. The air was always damp there, the ground boggy, especially after the wet spring.
Maybe it was the miasma in the air by the water. Maybe it was God’s will. He knew that in the end the reason didn’t matter. A man was going to lose two of his family, probably more. All the people around would be holding their breath and offering up their prayers to live.
Here, at the top of the hill where the air was clearer and the wind swirled around, would they escape? He knew, he remembered all too well what it had been like when he was a child. No one could forget. The black lumps in the armpits and the groin. The empty cries for help that nobody could give. And finally the stench of hell when they broke, then the sweet relief of death for the sufferers. Half the world had died, and many of those left alive and bereft wished they could be gone, too, because it seemed better than the devastation that surrounded them. Were those days returning? How could he keep his family safe? He reached out and took Katherine’s hand, looking down at Juliana. Her eyes were closed. She was content, oblivious to all the pain and panic in the world. Let her live, he thought. Let them all live.
• • •
Supper was quiet, everyone subdued and reflective. Walter came home, but he had no fresh word. No one else struck down, Jack’s children holding on to life.
Later, up in the solar, John stood by the small bed he’d made for his daughter, staring as she slept. He didn’t even hear Katherine approach until her arms were around his waist. The girls were asleep, with their soft snuffles. Walter was curled up, snoring. Downstairs, Martha moved around quietly; these days she needed little rest, it seemed.
‘It’s in God’s hands, you know,’ Katherine said softly in his ear.
‘Yes.’ But how could he put all his
faith in someone who had allowed so many to die in agony just a few years before? Better, he thought, to fear and try to fight. Not that anyone could battle this. ‘I know.’ He turned and held her tight.
• • •
For three days, life in the town seemed to be suspended. No new cases and Jack’s children clung to the world. Each morning John collected Alan and they’d march out along the road to Unstone until they reached the farm where they were working. John kept an ear cocked for any gossip from travellers on the road. With evening they’d return to town, to the quiet and the desperate prayers for the future.
Then, on the fourth day, it changed. The news passed rapidly, not long after dawn: Jack’s children had both died, and there’d been another case in the night: Will the Miller’s widow, a woman who also had her home down by the river. Come evening, two more – Jack himself and a labourer with a tiny cottage on the other side of the Hipper.
No one from up the hill.
Yet.
No one said the word. No one dared breathe it. But all of them thought it.
John tried to concentrate on his work. It would keep everything else at bay. But whether he was using the chisel or the saw, the hammer or the awl, his mind kept wandering. Juliana, Katherine. Jeanette, Eleanor, Walter, Martha. Spare them all.
Twice he almost cut himself, then he had to stop himself shouting when Alan made a mistake, watching the boy flinch.
‘I’m sorry.’ He pulled a small wooden mug from the satchel and filled it with watered ale from a barrel before handing it to the lad. ‘It’s just my mood. Pay me no mind. I don’t mean it.’
In the middle of the afternoon John stopped and began to clean the tools. Alan gave him a questioning look, but the only answer he could offer was a shrug. He needed to be at home. He had to be with his family.
John stamped the dust off his boots and slipped the worn leather jerkin over his shirt. His hose needed to be darned at the knee again, he saw. But that came with the job, so much moving and crouching and kneeling. He hefted the satchel on to his shoulder and grinned at the boy. Alan beamed back.
They’d barely set foot on the road when he heard it. The slow toll of the bell from St Mary’s in town. Burying Jack’s children. The first of the Chesterfield dead. He’d spotted the gravediggers when he left that morning, working in an empty corner of the graveyard. How long before all that space would be full? How many more would die in the coming months?
It was only May. Summer, the worst season for the pestilence, hadn’t even arrived yet. This could linger, it could worsen. But surely it couldn’t be as bad as the black visitation they’d had before? Surely not...
A small elbow nudged him and he looked down. Alan was making quick signs with his fingers. It was a language of sorts they’d worked out between them. John watched, frowned, then watched as the boy repeated it all.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. At least Alan heard with no problem; it was just his speech that God had forgotten. ‘Believe me, if I knew when it would all end, I’d gladly tell you.’
• • •
Sunday morning and everyone gathered in church. Dame Martha stood off to the side with the other old goodwives. She always leaned on John’s arm when they walked now, but her smile lifted as soon as she saw the women she knew so well, all of them with their snow-white wimples and wrinkled faces. A chance to gossip and compare their aches and pains.
Katherine held Juliana in her arms. By now the girl could toddle well enough before falling over. Each time she tumbled, though, she cried as if the sky had fallen on her. Better to keep a grip on her here and let her gaze around, curious at everything.
The service was short. The priest, Father Crispin, seemed distracted. He was still new, in charge of the parish less than a year and they were still weighing him up, not certain yet what to make of him. Plenty of grey in his hair and today his eyes seemed to be full of fear. Just like his congregation, John thought. They all needed to feel God’s blessing today.
After the echoes of the final amen had faded, people gathered outside, sun dappling through the tall trees. Hardly a cloud in the sky but the air still felt close, as if it was pressing tight against his flesh. Not a good omen, John decided. He looked around, waiting for his wife as she talked to some of the other young mothers.
Then the coroner beckoned him over.
De Harville, preening like a peacock in a tunic of red and blue, his parti-coloured hose reversing the colours, all with boots the colour of dark wine. His wife was already on her way back to their house on the High Street, their young son at her side and a servant trailing after. He was the King’s Coroner here, and he wore the title with pride. Twice John had helped him find a murderer.
‘It’s not good news, Carpenter.’ His face was grim and his eyes tired. ‘Two in the ground and five more confirmed.’
‘Five?’ John brought his head up sharply. ‘I’d heard of three.’
‘Two more this morning. Someone came to tell me as I was walking here.’ At his side, Brother Robert, the old monk who served as the coroner’s clerk, began to mutter a prayer.
‘It’s in God’s hands.’ John echoed the words his wife had spoken, empty as they felt. He knew de Harville. A hard man when he chose, but he’d be as scared for his family as every other father in Chesterfield. Ready to cling to any hope, no matter how ridiculous or strange.
‘I’m worried about that priest.’ The coroner rested a hand on the hilt of his dagger.
The words took him by surprise. ‘Crispin? Why?’
‘In case he decides to run off. Didn’t you see him in there? He has the look of a coward.’
Maybe he was right; perhaps the priest was a frail man. Taking holy orders couldn’t change someone’s nature. It didn’t bring patience or courage or saintliness. He’d seen that during the two years he worked in York, a city full of men who claimed they were dedicated to God. But in the end they were all human. Some were tempted and fell. Some were venal. And a few were good.
‘Let’s hope not,’ he answered. They’d need someone strong to bind them all together. And someone to say the service of the dead.
‘We should go, husband.’ Katherine linked her arm through his, smiling. De Harville might possess rank but that didn’t mean he had her respect. She’d never cared for him and the way he used John to solve killings in the town.
The girls had scampered on ahead, Walter lumbering after them like a monster and delighting in their shrieks. God be praised, John decided, he was a lucky man to have all this. He just hoped it would all still surround him at the close of the year.
• • •
Evening. It was light outside, but the shadows were growing and the warmth of the day was beginning to drift away. Walter was playing nine men’s morris with Dame Martha. Katherine was darning and mending clothes, the girls sewing and cutting at her side. Juliana lay asleep, eyes closed, at peace with the world.
John sat with a mug of ale, lost in his thoughts, content. He sat up quickly at the knock on the door. Who could want him at this time? He looked at his wife. Her eyes were wide and frightened.
‘Brother,’ he said as he opened the latch. ‘Come in.’
Robert shook his head. He was breathing hard. These days walking even short distances seemed to exhaust him.
‘Father Crispin has gone. He wasn’t at the service tonight and he’s not at his house. The coroner wants you to help search for him.’
‘Me?’ He didn’t understand. ‘That’s a job for the bailiffs.’
‘He wants everyone looking, John.’ Brother Robert’s chest moved more slowly, the redness starting to disappear from his face. ‘He’s out there himself. You heard what he said about the priest this morning.’
He remembered, and it seemed as if he’d been right. But this wasn’t like the coroner.
‘What do we do if we find him?’
‘Bring him back.’ Robert lowered his gaze, staring at the ground. ‘He says a priest shouldn’t run away and he�
�ll be damned if he’ll let him.’ As soon as he spoke he crossed himself.
Those certainly sounded like de Harville’s words. He could hear the man’s voice and see him plunging his dagger into the scarred wood of his table as he spoke.
‘I’ll come,’ he agreed. A quick word, pulling on his boots, the hooded tunic and the old jerkin on top, and he was ready.
• • •
Full night arrived and they had to stop. They’d simply be blundering around in the dark. Even if the priest was there they’d never see him.
Dame Martha was still awake when he returned, sitting by the soft light of a tallow candle.
‘Did you find him?’
‘No.’ With a weary groan he lowered himself on to the bench. ‘He could be in Sheffield by now or halfway to Lincoln.’
‘His duty is here, John. In the parish.’
‘I know.’ Yet how could you force someone to stay? He took Martha’s hand. Her skin was like parchment, old, mottled with brown spots. Each year she seemed to grow more frail, her bones more brittle and her step less sure. But her mind was agile, and her tongue could be tart when needed.
‘Perhaps he’ll see sense,’ she said. ‘Maybe God will open his eyes.’
‘Let’s pray He does.’ He kissed her cheek and climbed up to the solar. He needed his sleep; the morning would arrive all too soon.
• • •
No word on Crispin as John walked over to collect Alan. A shower had passed through before dawn, enough to dampen down the dust for an hour or two. Fluffy, high clouds skittered across the sky, passing in front of a pale sun.
Not as warm today, he thought as they walked out towards Newbold. Farmers were on the road to town, ready to set up at the weekday market on the north side of the churchyard. Slabs of fresh-churned yellow butter, chickens in cages, early onions and beans, fragrant heads of wild garlic. He nodded his good morrows, exchanged a word here and there.
He was ready to work. Another day and they should have the sheep pen finished, then there were other jobs waiting, in town and around the area. Alan was learning more with each one. Walter helped when they needed extra muscle and a stout back, but wood didn’t call out to him; he was happier delivering messages all around Chesterfield.
The Holywell Dead Page 1
