Plague Child

by Peter Ransley

Mr Black took some wine, cleared his throat, and gave me a long stare. My stomach churned. Now he was going to question me about how the papers and myself had got into such a dishevelled state. His eyes, however, were drawn back by the drying newssheets, still shining with ink in the candlelight, and his face filled with the triumph of getting the speech on the streets next day.

  ‘Well done, Tom,’ he said.

  The words came stiffly and awkwardly from his mouth, for he was as unused to saying them as I was to hearing them. In fact it took a moment – several moments – before I was sure there was no hidden sarcasm signalling the reproof to come. It was only when he put more wine in my tankard and raised his glass, his face coming out of the shadows with a smile on it, that I knew he meant it.

  The smile was as much a stranger to me as the words. Without warning, tears pricked my eyes. I had cried myself to sleep often enough in that place, but I had never cried in their presence. The more I was beaten, the more I resolved never to cry in front of them.

  ‘Come, Tom,’ he said, ‘are those tears?’

  ‘No, sir,’ I stammered, ‘no, sir,’ pulling away into the shadows and drawing my sleeve over my face.

  ‘Thou art a curious child, is he not, George?’

  ‘Aye, sir,’ said George, with a vehement look at me.

  ‘Hard as stone when chastised, and cries when praised!’

  ‘I am not used to it, sir,’ I said.

  ‘Ah well, Tom, that’s as maybe. You were very rough when we took you, was he not, George?’

  George looked as if the end of the world was not merely imminent, but had come. ‘He was, sir. The roughest ’prentice in the City. And if I may venture an opinion, still is.’

  ‘But improving, George, improving.’

  George said nothing, but Mr Black was not waiting for an answer. ‘There was much to do and too little time.’

  He poked the dull red coals of the fire until a few flames appeared, lighting up his face. He was not yet forty, but the flickering light threw up the furrows in his face of a much older man, etched deeply into his forehead and cheeks like the lines of a finely cut woodblock. He stared into the flames as if he had forgotten we were there. I crept closer. When he had said I was a curious child I was minded of Matthew; now I was took back to the time when Matthew gazed into the fire and drew out the pendant, and I wondered how such a devious cunning man and a straight-backed religious man could stare into the fire in an exactly similar way, even though one was looking into the future, and the other into the past.

  ‘You do not know how much evil there was in your soul, Tom,’ he said.

  I shuddered. At that moment I utterly believed in the evil he had found in me: Susannah only thought me good because of my trick with the Bible.

  ‘We prayed to God we could root it out, did we not?’ he said to George.

  ‘Aye,’ George replied, clasping his hands together, speaking with an irony that seemed to be lost on Mr Black. ‘We are still praying.’

  ‘More evil than you know. More than you can possibly imagine!’

  He swung round as he said this, his face moving into shadow, his voice suddenly harsh. The change from a tone of reverie was so abrupt it shook not only me, but took George aback. George unclasped his hands, took his brooding attention from me and stared at his master with the avid expression I had once caught on his face when he was listening at the door to some quarrel between Mr Black and his wife.

  ‘I would never have taken you, never, if the business had not been bad. Bad? About to go under!’

  He finished his wine, poured more, drank half of that and then walked about the room.

  ‘Even then I would not have done it, I would have gone home to Oxford with my tail between my legs if Merrick had not offered to buy me out. Merrick!’

  He spat the word out. Merrick was the printer at The Star, in Little Britain. He finished his wine with a gulp, as if he wanted to wash away the taste of his rival’s name. George nodded slowly, looking at me, as if he was understanding something for the first time, though I had no idea what it was.

  ‘That was about the time, master, you . . . er, found the money to buy the new press, the new type from Amsterdam –’

  ‘Borrowed it!’ Mr Black said sharply, as though regretting these disclosures. ‘Just so! Borrowed the money!’

  He half moved his glass to his lips, realised it was empty, and had a little argument between himself and the bottle. He put his glass down with resolution, then looked at the drying newssheets, his eyes gleaming with pleasure, turned back to the bottle, hesitated, turned regretfully away, then saw me, with a smile on my face at this little dance and, before I could remove it, to my utmost surprise smiled back. He poured more wine and pointed at me.

  ‘I thought I had brought the very devil into this place, the printer’s devil, did I not, George?’

  ‘A most subtle devil,’ said George, looking steadily at me.

  ‘Oh, come, George!’ His gesture included not only the well-equipped workshop, but the new cedar chest in the room where we ate, with its flagons and candlesticks – not silver, but the most expensive pewter, polished to look very like. ‘Is not all this a sign of God’s favour?’

  George turned his steady, unblinking gaze on his master. ‘“Prosperity will not show you who are your friends. Or good servants.” Ecclesiasticus, twelve eight.’

  The drink brought out a totally different side of Mr Black. He looked as solemn as ever, but I swear there was a twinkle in his eye.

  ‘Come, George. “Whose friend is he that is his own enemy, and leaves his own cheer untasted?” Ecclesiasticus, fourteen five.’

  I had never heard Mr Black trump one of George’s quotations before. George looked completely put out. Mr Black clapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘Come, gentlemen – drink up!’

  George refused, and when Mr Black moved to my tankard, said: ‘The boy has had enough, sir.’

  Mr Black waved him away. ‘He has had but little.’

  ‘Aye, plus what he took at the alehouse,’ George said.

  I jumped up. ‘I did not go to the alehouse!’

  ‘You stank of it when you came in!’

  ‘I was in a fight!’

  ‘A tavern brawl!’

  ‘Stop this! You will wake the house!’

  For the first time, the rebuke from Mr Black was for both of us, not just me. And, for the first time, he questioned me without automatically assuming my guilt.

  ‘Did you go into an alehouse?’

  I hesitated. Going into an alehouse had led to some of my worst beatings, and was the main reason why apprentices were thrown out of their Guilds. But that was because they drank, diced and whored. I had not even had one drink, or one pass of the dice.

  ‘No, sir,’ I said.

  ‘Mark the hesitation,’ said George.

  ‘Are you speaking the truth?’ The sternness reappeared in Mr Black’s speech, beginning to fight with his conviviality.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  George’s lips moved quietly, but I caught the prayer on his lips. ‘Oh Lord, guide him, let him see the error –’

  ‘Stop that, George!’

  George did so, abruptly. His pale face seemed to twist and shrink, his lips still moving but no words coming out. Mr Black turned sharply, almost knocking a chair over. He sat heavily at the head of the table, in the leather seated, high-backed chair he had recently bought, looking like a judge.

  George found his voice. ‘Ask him how he got into the fight.’

  ‘I was attacked. Thieves who tried to get the speech.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us all this before?’ George’s voice was acid with scepticism.

  ‘There has been no time!’

  ‘Apprentices from Merrick?’ said Mr Black.

  ‘No, sir. I never saw them before. One had a sword.’

  George looked up at the ceiling in disbelief, but Mr Black leaned forward sharply.

  ‘A gentleman?’


  ‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’

  ‘Perhaps once was?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Describe him.’

  ‘A thin face. A beard like the King. He was wearing a beaver hat.’

  ‘Like half London,’ said George.

  ‘The other?’

  ‘A lowpad. Shoulders like a bull.’

  George laughed. ‘It’s a tale from a halfpenny broadsheet! He’s lying.’

  Mr Black jumped up. His good mood had disappeared as quickly as it came. He seized his cane, which had become a stranger to me in recent months. ‘Are you?’

  ‘No, sir!’

  I ducked as I saw the cane move and flung my hands round my head, wincing in anticipation. But the blow never came. The cane clattered as he flung it on the stone flags. His face looked tortured. I feared he had been struck by the strange ailment that affected him at times when he would stand quite still, as if struck by some vision others could not see.

  George backed away, muttering. ‘The boy has cursed you. I saw his lips move.’

  Mr Black shook his head, as if he was shaking off the vision, like a dog shaking off water. He seized me by the shoulders and shook me. ‘Are you lying?’

  ‘No, sir!’ I sobbed, more frightened by the strange contortions of his face than the violence.

  He shook me again, and pushed his face into mine. ‘It’s as import ant for you as it is for me that you tell me the truth! Do you understand, you little fool?’

  I pulled away from him with a rush of anger that overcame my tears. I did not consider myself a fool and I was certainly no longer little.

  ‘It’s true – I heard one of the men asking another ’prentice about a boy with red hair and then the man turned round and saw me and I ran and then –’

  ‘Where was this?’

  The words dried up in my mouth. Normally I would have lied. Told him the street, anywhere, but the look on his face was so alarmed, so urgent, I felt compelled to tell the truth.

  ‘The Pot.’

  A sad smile played round George’s mouth. ‘Now we have it, sir, now we have it.’

  I expected to be given the beating then. I wish they had. George was clearly relishing the thought. He picked up his old composing stick with the rusty metal end from which I still bear a mark on my left temple. But Mr Black waved him away. He gave me a look of such sadness it cut me more sharply than any whip or stick.

  ‘Oh, Tom, Tom, I was beginning to trust you.’

  Now I could not stop the tears bursting out of me and with them a torrent of words. He must have beaten more of his obsession with sin into me than I realised, but it had all been concealed from me until a little kindness let it out. That, and my realisation that the words that were going to change the world could have been lost because of my desire for a drink.

  I confessed drink. I confessed pass dice. I confessed lusting after Mary, the pot girl. I confessed cursing his daughter. I confessed, although I feared it would be the greatest sin of all in Mr Black’s eyes, drinking and getting into debt with Henry, Merrick’s apprentice.

  George was hovering, testing the position of the stick in his hand. I wanted him to beat me. I needed his savagery. But as I moved like a sacrificial lamb towards him, Mr Black stopped him. He was berating himself under his breath for not having written to someone. He picked up pen and ink as if he would write a letter there and then, then set it down and paced again.

  Waiting for my punishment made it ten times worse. I felt so wretched I begged him to cancel my indentures and send me home. I would return my uniform and boots, get some clothes from the rag woman at Tower Hill and go back to my father.

  He came to a full halt, staring at me as if I had said something that first of all shocked, then amused him. ‘Your father? No, no, that won’t do, that won’t do at all. It’s far too late for that. As for the boots . . .’ He gave me one of his rare, dry, mirthless smiles. ‘I doubt anyone else would fit them.’

  The touch of levity left him. ‘You are not to leave this house until I give you permission. Is that clear?’

  No. Nothing was clear. Not the evil that he said was in my soul, nor the man in the beaver hat who had suddenly come into my life, causing him such consternation. But I promised to obey him.

  He hesitated. ‘No, I can’t trust you. I can’t afford to trust you.’ He turned to George. ‘Lock him in the cellar.’

  George gripped me by the arm, nodding his head in approval at the gravity and the justice of the punishment. My tongue and limbs were so paralysed with fear at the thought of being locked in there at night that George got me halfway to the door before I anchored myself to the table.

  ‘Not in the dark, sir,’ I pleaded. ‘Please don’t lock me in there in the dark!’

  ‘Why, Tom,’ Mr Black said, an amused look on his face, ‘I thought you were grown up now and afraid of nothing. Are you still afraid of the dark?’

  I had made my confessions with the reason of a man, but now all reason deserted me and I whimpered my plea again like a child.

  ‘Let him have a candle,’ Mr Black said curtly.

  I made no further resistance. In the early days I had learned, painfully, that it was useless and only gave George more satisfaction. George lit a candle and with the composing stick in his other hand led me down the stairs, his shadow splayed out over the low ceiling. As he opened the door of the cellar the dank rotting smell brought back to me the terror of the first time they brought me here, but I stifled it, determined not to show any more fear to George. It was very late, and the candle would last me until first light filtered through the broken plaster.

  It is only when you have been punished regular that you learn instinctively to recognise refinements of such punishments. As George began to close the door on me I realised he was not going to give me the candle.

  I put my boot in the door and struggled to pull it further open. The composing stick fell on my fingers with agonising force. For a moment I could not move for the pain, but the rattle of the key drove me to wrench at the door. I got it half open and grabbed for the candle. He pulled back but hot wax spilled on his hand. He yelled, dropping the candle, which went out.

  There was now only a dim, flickering light from the room above. I glimpsed him coming for me with the stick. I ducked and, as he crashed into the wall, grabbed him from behind and shoved him into the plaster with such force I thought the wall was coming down. He groped feebly for the stick he had dropped but I saw it on the stair and grabbed it.

  I was familiar with that stick on every inch of my body, except in the palm of my hand. The feel of it there, my fingers gripping it, that hated stick, and the fear of the dark in that stinking cell drove me into such a frenzy I lashed out at George. He ducked, but I caught him a glancing blow on the temple and the thought that I had scarred him as he had scarred me let loose such a rush of savagery it felt as if the devil George always claimed was in me was released, urging me to beat him and beat him as he had beaten me.

  George slipped and fell and God knows what I would have done if I had heard Mr Black coming down the stairs sooner, but by the time I turned and saw him, he was bringing his stick down on my head.

  Chapter 4

  I thought it was a louse. Pediculus Humanus Corporis, my Latin tutor Dr Gill had drummed into me, as he triumphantly plucked a particularly fat specimen from my clothes. They came out to feed at night. We were used to one another, and, unless they ventured to a particularly sensitive spot like my groin, they rarely woke me. Even then, it was more my finger and thumb the creature aroused, which hovered, waiting for it settling to feed before closing round it with a satisfying snap, at which I would instantly sink back into sleep.

  But this creature was on my face, normally considered too leathery for a decent meal. My finger and thumb were throbbing, stabbing with pain as I instinctively tried to crook them to catch the louse. My head thumped like the big drum in the Lord Mayor’s show. Something terrible had happened but I did not wan
t to remember, I just wanted to catch the louse and fall back to sleep. My finger and thumb crept stealthily up to my face. They touched a sticky, glutinous mass, pausing in bewilderment before closing round the object of irritation.

  All in the same instant I felt a sharp, needle-like pain and sprang up yelling, Mr Black’s angry face and descending stick jumping back to me as I realised that I clutched not a dead louse but a live rat which, attracted by the drying blood on my face, was squealing and biting in my hand.

  I threw it from me, screaming. I could see nothing. I blundered into one wall, cold and greasy with damp, then another before I found the door, hammering and shouting until I dropped to the floor with exhaustion.

  The last time they locked me in, when I first came here, I had been playing dumb, pretending I had lost my reading. I hoped in my confused way that they would believe that, just as I had been given the gift of reading, so it had been taken away. Finding me useless, they would send me home. George, however, was far subtler than me in the twisting and turning of such beliefs.

  If it was a gift, he said, and I did not use it, God would punish me by taking my sight away. Still I was stubborn and when they gave me the Bible, nonsense came out of my mouth. So they locked me in and, as the light faded, so did my stubbornness. There had always been the light of stars and the moon in Poplar, however cloudy and dim.

  As the dimness in the cellar faded to black, I believed I had gone blind. I screamed and yelled and threw myself about the cellar until they released me. Mr Black had forbidden George to lock me in again. Until now.

  Now, exhausted, I tried to thrust what had happened then from my mind. I was a man now, I told myself. Had not Mr Black said so? I took some courage from his unexpected praise, going over and over it in my mind. The light would eventually come, filtering through the cracks in the ceiling.

  I buried my face in my hands for what seemed an age. Rats whispered and scuttled. I opened my eyes, but it was still dark as pitch. We had worked long into the night. Surely the sun should have risen by now? Perhaps it had already risen! Nonsense, I told myself. God could scarcely be punishing me now for not reading – I read all the time. But then I was struck by a fresh panic. George had wished the same punishment on me for striking him. The panic mounted. Perhaps George was dead. Whatever there was of a man in me fled and I became that screaming child again, jumping up at the ceiling, tearing at the plaster with my nails.