Plague

by Jo Macauley

  The gravedigger looked up and saw the expression on her face. “At least we’re burying ’em, miss!” he protested. “They’d lie in the streets otherwise!”

  “I’m sorry,” Beth said. “But ... can’t it be done some other way? This seems so inhuman. Burying them all together like rubbish.”

  “It ain’t pretty, but it’s got to be done,” the gravedigger replied. “There’s no room, that’s the trouble. More dead than the parish can find graves for.”

  Beth forced herself to look down into the pit again. Death didn’t play favourites, she saw. Old and young alike were piled up like carcasses in a slaughterhouse. She sighed and started to move on, and when the gravedigger noticed she was leaving, he called after her: “God save the King!”

  “God save the King,” she gratefully said back to him, picking up speed as she walked. Yes, she thought. London, and all of England, needs the King now more than ever. That gravedigger understood – he had seen more of death and horror than anyone, and yet he still did his duty, because it needed to be done. Because duty and loyalty were important. Determination rose in her as she strode through the streets. He’s doing his duty, she thought. I shall do mine. We’ll need a strong and healthy King in charge to guide us out of this darkness, and it’s my duty to keep him safe from harm...

  Finally, Beth arrived at the house in Threadneedle Street, and despite the horrors of her journey, she’d kept her mind on her spycraft and had watched for figures shadowing her. She was entirely certain this time that she hadn’t been followed. The street was empty but for her.

  She stood at the door, about to knock, but was startled as she noticed two familiar faces watching her through the window.

  Chapter Five - Mors Ad Regi

  As Beth saw who was waiting inside at the address Strange had sent her to, a sudden rush of emotions went through her: surprise, delight, excitement. On the other side of the glass, she saw Ralph and John look at one another and grin, beckoning her to come in.

  “It’s so good to see you again! Where have you been?” John Turner exclaimed, clearly overjoyed to see her. He seemed for a moment as though he was going to take her in his arms and hug her like a gallant hero, but instead he took her hand awkwardly and then let it go again with a lopsided smile. Beth returned it warmly. It was good to see her friends and fellow spies again – they’d had a handful of smaller assignments from Strange over the past few months, but lately it had been almost ominously quiet on that front. And when they weren’t working, Strange had advised them not to spend too much time in one another’s company, lest their cover be blown. Still, in spite of not seeing each other often, the three of them had grown close, and now had a strong bond that Beth held dear.

  “I’ve been in Oxford!” Beth replied. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you when we have more time.”

  “How’s your health?” John asked hesitantly. “You’ve been well, I hope?”

  “Huntingdon says I’m blooming like a spring rose,” Beth laughed.

  Ralph Chandler chuckled. “Use your eyes, John! Does she look like she’s had the plague?”

  “It doesn’t hurt to ask,” John muttered.

  “Well, I see you two are both fine and healthy!” Beth said. “Thank goodness. And your sister, John? How’s Polly?”

  “She’s well,” John said. “As well as she can be, I mean. She’s being looked after.”

  Beth understood. Polly had two withered legs and couldn’t walk without help – if John had thought she was in the slightest danger, he wouldn’t have left her side. After the horrors of her walk over, Beth was suddenly feeling as light as a dandelion seed. John and Ralph were safe. None of them had the plague. Sweet relief washed over her.

  “I tried to find you,” John continued breathlessly, “but I didn’t know where to start. The plague is just everywhere, and at first Strange wouldn’t help at all...”

  “You know why he wouldn’t as well as I do,” Ralph put in. “We’re not meant to spend too much time together unless we’re working on a case. You never know who’s watching.”

  Beth noticed Ralph was still dressed in the same grubby clothes he’d been wearing when she first met him. Knowing him, he probably sleeps in them too, she thought fondly.

  “Well, we’re working on a case now, so let’s make the most of it!” she said with a smile. “Strange said you would brief me on what we’ve found out so far.”

  Ralph jerked his thumb towards the back of the little house. “Papers are all on the kitchen table.”

  “Strange said a spy was killed?” Beth said, as John led the way through to the kitchen. It was drab and functional, completely cheerless. No pictures on the walls, not even so much as a looking glass, she observed. This was clearly not a house where anyone stayed for very long.

  Ralph nodded. “Jeffrey Tynesdale. “He was good – one of Strange’s best. Nobody expected him to get offed. It fair rattled old Strange when Tynesdale got his skull split.”

  Beth pursed her lips disapprovingly, and began to study the papers spread out on the table.

  “Can I fetch you some water, Beth? You must be parched!” John said. He flushed a little. “I mean, I’m getting some for myself anyway, so—”

  “I’ve got something better than water,” Ralph interjected proudly. He rummaged in a sack and set three dark bottles down on the table. Each one was stoppered with a cork and sealed with a blob of scarlet wax. “It’s medicine,” he said, seeing the dubious looks on John and Beth’s faces. “What did you think it was, liquor?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past you,” John retorted.

  Ralph rolled his eyes at them both. “Not when I’m on a job for Strange. This is a herbal infusion. Culpeper says there’s nothing better for protection against the plague.”

  Of course, Beth thought. Ralph’s landlord was a master herbalist by the name of Walter Culpeper, and he had seemed to know what he was talking about from her brief encounter with him all those months ago. She twisted the stopper from her bottle and sniffed. A powerful acrid scent like burning phosphorus left her nose tingling. This will not be pleasant, she thought.

  “We should have a toast,” she said brightly, holding her bottle up.

  “What shall we drink to?” John said, opening his own and grimacing as the smell hit his nose.

  Ralph stood. “Here’s a health to His Majesty, blessings on our enterprise, and swift ruin to all England’s enemies!”

  “And good fortune to our ships at sea,” John added.

  “Right. The ships an’ all.”

  “I’ll drink to that!” Beth said with a laugh.

  The bottles clinked and they drank the potion down.

  “Blimey,” Ralph said with a cough. He shook his head like a soaking wet dog that had just jumped out of the river. “There’s potent.”

  “Hate to seem ungrateful,” John choked out, “but are you sure that wasn’t poison?”

  Beth couldn’t speak. The liquid had burned like fire going down, and now it lay in her stomach like a bar of hot iron. Her mouth was full of the taste of burdock and honey, with the smell of musty cellars. She prayed it was true that strong herbs repelled the plague, because if they didn’t, she was suffering through this for nothing. When she finally managed to talk again, she laid a hand on John’s arm.

  “Actually ... I think I’d like some water after all, please!”

  * * *

  They spent the next hour sitting around the kitchen table, sorting through the notes that Strange had left them. One crucial scrap of paper sat in the midst of all the others; the evidence Strange had mentioned – the one that had cost Jeffrey Tynesdale his life. Beth yearned to look at it, but John told her Strange had said to go over the other documents first. Many of those were letters written by Tynesdale to Strange, laying out the course of his investigation in painstaking detail. John read the letters aloud while Ralph and Beth listened carefully.

  It seemed Tynesdale had followed a trail of rumours across the city
to the Four Swans tavern in Bishopsgate, only three streets away from where they sat now. He’d begun to visit the inn regularly, blending in like the professional he was, drawing no attention to himself. He spoke little and listened much.

  His main target was a man called Martin Sykes. “‘I am becoming certain the man is a King-killer conspirator,’” John read. “‘When drunk, he talks much of the King’s failings – as he supposes them to be – to any who will listen, and though he speaks no treason openly, he glares about himself with such dark looks that I am sure he yearns to.’”

  By the sound of it, eventually Tynesdale’s patience had paid off. By chance he overheard a conversation, “the voices too low for me to tell who spoke,” mentioning that Martin Sykes had been entrusted to bring a message to someone that night. Tynesdale knew then that he had to intercept that message and bring it to Strange at all costs.

  “So how did Tynesdale die?” Beth asked.

  “Coshed over the back of the head, not a stone’s throw from his own front door,” said Ralph. “We’re just lucky he got the paper to Strange first.”

  “Do you think it was Sykes who killed him?”

  “Seems likely. Once he found out the paper was gone, he’d have known something was up.”

  “He must have lain in wait near Tynesdale’s house, knowing he would come back eventually,” John said. “Which means he knew where Tynesdale lived...”

  “Someone was watching him, while he was watching them,” Beth said with a shudder. She reached for the scrap of paper. “Come on, boys. Let’s see what Sykes might have been willing to kill for.”

  She unfolded the paper and smoothed it out on the table. All three of them craned in close to see what it said.

  Down the centre of the paper ran a list of initials:

  SP

  LB

  JL

  RM

  Below the letters was a strange pictogram. In the centre were two concentric rings, like the letter O within a larger O, and underneath that was a crude drawing of a lion’s head facing forward. Above the circles was an image that looked like a bridge in three parts, below which lay a wavy line.

  At the very bottom of the paper were three words, all in capitals.

  “Mors ad Regi,” John read aloud.

  They all stared in silence for a long time.

  Ralph was the first to speak. “What’s that supposed to mean? Don’t even sound like English.”

  Beth didn’t recognize it either. “Maybe it’s a name?” she guessed.

  Ralph slapped the table. “’Course it is. Must be two names, not one!” he exclaimed. “Morse and Reggie. They must be two of the men behind all this!”

  Beth frowned, unsure, but she noticed John had turned pale. “Neither of you ever studied Latin, did you?” he asked quietly.

  “What do you think?” Ralph scoffed. “Latin, indeed!”

  “I was always too busy with the stage,” Beth said. “But you do have some Latin, don’t you, John?”

  “You pick it up, doing the clerical work I do.” John rubbed his forehead. “It’s not a name at all. ‘Mors’ means ‘death’, and ‘ad Regi’ means ‘unto the King’.”

  Beth swallowed hard – it was just what they had been dreading.

  “Death to the King...”

  Chapter Six - A Piece of the Puzzle

  “Well, that they’re King-killers is not a great surprise, I suppose,” Ralph said with a sigh. “But what about these initials, and the drawings?”

  “I’d guess that the initials must stand for names,” Beth said. “This could be a list of people?”

  “Makes sense,” Ralph agreed. “But who? Conspirators? Or people they wanted to get rid of?”

  “There’s no ‘MS’ on the list,” John pointed out. “If it was the conspirators, wouldn’t Martin Sykes be down there too?”

  “Not if he was only the message-bearer,” Beth said. “If it were the conspirators themselves, whoever wrote this wouldn’t write their whole names down. If it fell into the wrong hands, it would prove their guilt.”

  “That still doesn’t make sense,” John complained. “The conspirators must know who they are, surely? They wouldn’t need a note to tell them. So why write down a list of their initials?”

  John’s argument was sound, but Beth still couldn’t shake the feeling that the initials represented the conspirators somehow. Something about that list – the style of it – was oddly familiar. Whoever had sent the message wasn’t just passing information – they were giving an order. Perhaps confirming some sort of arrangement?

  Beth murmured to herself, reading down the list again. “Mister S.P., Mister L.B., who could you be...? Wait! That’s it!” She snapped her fingers. “I knew it reminded me of something!”

  “Go on,” John urged her.

  “It’s like the way the Gazette reports the billing for our plays,” she said. “Little narrow columns down the page. Mister F.D. as Julius Caesar, Miss B.J. as Cleopatra.”

  “You think this is a cast list, Beth?” Ralph said, looking at her incredulously.

  “Of course not,” she said with a grin. “But it’s like one. It’s like how the director chooses the cast for the play. I think whoever sent this is telling the conspirators who he’s chosen to play the parts in his plot!”

  “I see what you mean,” John said eagerly. “They could be saying, ‘These are the people I’ve picked to do the job.’”

  “Exactly,” Beth said, feeling like a piece of the puzzle had clicked into place. She wished Strange could see her working like this. She may not have been his most experienced spy, but she was certainly no amateur!

  “I dunno,” said Ralph, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms. “Seems like a bit of a wild guess to me ... Meaning no disrespect, of course, Beth.”

  John tutted at his reclining friend. “At least it’s a start,” he said, then turned back to look at the paper. “What about the rest of it, though? The circle inside a circle, and some sort of bridge, a wavy line and a lion’s head? I suppose it’s some kind of code, but I haven’t a clue what it could mean.”

  “Well, if the first part is picking out the people for the job,” Beth said, “maybe the second part is telling them what the job actually is?”

  “‘Death to the King,’” Ralph quoted. “That’s got to be the job, ain’t it? Killing the King.”

  “There’s got to be more detail here than that,” Beth insisted. “They wouldn’t just tell the conspirators to go and kill the King. That’s not much of a plot.”

  “It’s about the only part of this ruddy thing that we do know,” muttered Ralph, then he straightened up. “I reckon that lion’s head means the same thing. Lions are symbols of kings, aren’t they?”

  “There’s three lions on the King’s banner,” John pointed out.

  “Right!” said Ralph enthusiastically. “And what happens if you chop a lion’s head off? It dies, don’t it?”

  “I imagine so,” John said, hiding a smile. “I’ve never had the chance to find out.”

  Ralph continued, oblivious. “There you go, then. Lion’s head means ‘Death to the King’. Simple. No need to make it any more complicated than it already is.”

  “Well, one thing’s obvious,” John said, standing up. “We need to act, and act now. The King’s life is at stake.”

  “Now you’re talking sense,” Ralph said, on his feet in a second. “Come on.”

  John raised an eyebrow. “Where to?”

  “We should pick up where Jeffrey Tynesdale left off. The Four Swans tavern. That’s where Martin Sykes was drinking when Jeffrey lifted the note off him, wasn’t it?”

  “Good idea. It’s about the only lead we have. Beth?” John held Beth’s cloak out to her expectantly, but she remained seated.

  “Wait. We’re not finished.” She pointed at the circles, the bridge and the wavy line. “We haven’t accounted for these symbols yet. They must mean something.”

  “Surely we can think ab
out that later?”

  “He’s right!” said Ralph irritably. “Come on, Beth, we could stare at that scrap of paper all night and be none the wiser. In the meantime, in case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a plot being hatched out there.”

  “And this piece of paper is our only clue to what exactly it is!” she retorted. “Strange wanted us to look into it. Do you want to go back to him and apologize, saying we didn’t think it necessary to unravel every clue we could?” She finally stood and accepted her cloak from John. “We can go to the Four Swans later. There’s one other place I want to go first. Derby Place.”

  “The College of Arms?” John said in disbelief. Seeing Ralph’s baffled face, he explained. “It’s where the heralds are based. They’re the officials who handle coats of arms, rights to noble titles and that kind of thing, on the government’s behalf.”

  Ralph raised an eyebrow. “Heraldry, eh?”

  “I think these look like heraldic symbols,” Beth said. “I’m sure I’ve seen them before.”

  “So, what do you imagine, you’re just going to march up to a building full of high and mighty officials who deal with lords and earls, and ask for a natter over a glass of brandy?” Ralph looked deeply cynical. “Pardon me for a moment while I pop ’ome and put on my best Sunday wig!”

  “I have a friend in the college,” Beth said. Both of them looked stunned at that, and she allowed herself a moment of pleasure at their surprise.

  “A friend?” John asked, and Beth thought she heard a hint of jealousy in his voice. “You think he can help?”