Plague Child

by Peter Ransley

  There was a screech of brakes and I lost my strap, banging my head against the front of the coach and losing my hat. Carts and coaches going into the Strand were jammed in front of us as tight as mutton pies in a cook’s oven. A carter and the driver of a Hackney hell-cart were yelling at one another.

  ‘London is getting impossible – you’d be better running,’ she commanded.

  As I fumbled for the door latch, she saw a gap open up between two carts. Snatching up a stick with a silver knob, she hammered on the partition, shouting: ‘Go through the Piazza, Alfred!’

  The door flew open as the horses veered sharply left and I was thrown out, half-hanging from the coach. I hung on to the door desperately, the cobbles a speeding blur below me, before the horses jerked sharply right into the Piazza, flinging me back inside. Dazed by her scent and the blow to my head, I managed to shut the door again and dropped back in my seat. She was so intent on the driver getting through she was either unaware or unconcerned about this, but as we made good progress along the Piazza I felt her eyes on me.

  ‘You have red hair.’

  Convinced she had recognised me as the youth hanging from the window, gazing down at her breasts, I felt blood rushing up my neck, burning my cheeks, tingling in my cursed hair.

  ‘Black . . . black, ma’am,’ I stammered.

  ‘Do not correct me,’ she said sharply. ‘It is red at the roots. You have dyed it. Extremely badly. Why?’

  ‘It is the fashion, ma’am,’ I tried, as the coach careered down St Martin’s Lane, pedestrians diving for the safety of the posts that lined the narrow sidewalk.

  ‘Fashion? Nonsense. Look at me.’

  A new note had crept into the sharp command, one of curiosity, perhaps even of interest. Reluctantly I turned my head. I have no idea what she was going to say because I was so transfixed by what I saw I moved impulsively towards her, a movement that silenced her. I had last seen it in the docks in Poplar, glinting in the evening firelight when my father had told me my fortune. The jolting of the coach had parted her cloak, exposing the pendant between her breasts which in the dark of the coach seemed to carry some of the glitter of that firelight in the jewels that formed the bird’s eyes as it stared at me, grasping a pearl in its talons.

  Unable to stop myself, I parted her cloak to see the jewel more clearly. With the flat of her hand she gave me a stunning blow on the ear.

  I fell back in the seat, reeling from the blow. In that brief, closer look, I had seen it was not the same pendant at all, although it was very like. The bird in my father’s pendant was a falcon, with rubies for eyes. This bird was a magpie, with diamonds for eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I mumbled, ‘ma’am. I – I forgot myself. My father –’

  I huddled into the corner, feeling sick from nearly giving him away, and from the swaying coach, which was fighting its way past Charing Cross.

  ‘You were looking at the pendant. There’s only one other like it. Have you seen it?’

  ‘No. No.’

  ‘You’re his boy, aren’t you?’ She was leaning closer, eyes bright with curiosity, like the magpie in her pendant.

  I stared up at her. I had suddenly changed from being the meaner sort of person, or not even that, merely a pair of legs that ran messages, to becoming a real person. His boy? Did she know who my father was? Older and wiser, I might have pretended I did know, in the hope of drawing the information from her. But raw as I was, my reactions so close to my skin, I responded with such ferocity she pulled back.

  ‘Whose? Whose boy? Tell me!’

  ‘Whose? Why . . . Mr Pym’s, of course!’ She smiled, but only after I caught the vexed bite of her teeth on her full lip, and something I did not expect to see in her eyes: apprehension. It was nothing as naked as Matthew’s fear when he showed me the near relation of this pendant, more a cautious, civilised version of it, but it gave me courage.

  ‘You didn’t mean Mr Pym’s boy. What did you mean?’

  ‘Don’t be impertinent!’

  She picked up the stick with the silver knob. Whether she would have struck me or had me thrown out of the coach, letter or no letter, I did not discover; for outside Whitehall a guard in livery stepped out into the street, holding up a pike, bellowing for the coach to stop. Alfred jerked back the reins. Through the Palace Gate I glimpsed a large group of armed men. Some were in court dress – bright slashed doublets and wide-brimmed feathered hats – some in the sober Dutch jerkins mercenaries wore; all had swords and some wore pistols. Before I could see more, the Countess was hammering with her stick on the partition.

  ‘Drive on, drive on!’

  The coach lurched forward, the guard jumping to one side with an outraged yell: ‘Stop! In the King’s name!’

  ‘Drive! Drive!’ the Countess hammered. ‘Drive, you fool!’

  The confused and terrified horses reared, then leapt forward. Fleetingly I saw the guard behind us commandeering another coach, with better results. Alfred hung grimly on to the reins rather than guiding them. At any moment I thought he must be flung from his seat. In the coach it was impossible to hold on. My strap broke. We cannoned into one another, then were immediately thrown against the sides of the coach. Shouts from pedestrians, from a carter pulling out of the way were lost in the drumming of the wheels, in the creaks and groans of the coach, which seemed about to part from its harness.

  Another coach approached and would not give way. Alfred pulled at the reins. Half lost them. It seemed we must collide. He cracked his whip at the oncoming horses. As they reared, he yanked his horses away from them. The Countess shut her eyes. The collision flung her against me. She clutched my arm. There was a drawn-out and horrible grating sound which made me wince and shut my eyes. The coachmen were yelling at one another but our coach was still moving. Alfred had steered it into the narrow gap between the other coach and the posts that bordered the sidewalk. They ripped into the side of our carriage, slowing it sufficiently for him to get the horses back under control.

  She opened her eyes. There was a look on her face not of fear, or even anger at the damage to the coach, but exhilaration. We collapsed back in our seats, saying nothing as, a broken wheel clacking at intervals, the coach limped into Westminster. I had already snatched up the letter from the floor and was struggling to open the jammed door when she seized my hand impulsively. ‘Run, Tom, run! Get this letter to him before those men come for him!’

  Tom! She knew my name! This thought hammered in my head as Alfred yanked open the door. She called me Tom. Perhaps she really did know who I was. The idea thrilled through me as I tumbled out, running into Mr Ink in the lobby. I gabbled to him that I must take the letter to Mr Pym and without a word he hurried me towards the chamber. In the shadowy approach there were two guards, and beyond them the Serjeant at Arms, in hose and full ceremonial uniform. Mr Ink’s eyes gleamed with excitement. It was as though he had been waiting all his life for this moment.

  ‘I’ll deal with the guards,’ he said. ‘You get past old Pompous Breeches.’

  I slipped into the darkness cast by a column. I could hear Mr Pym’s sonorous voice. ‘The army for Ireland is being assembled and my Lord Warwick has a four-hundred-ton vessel victualled and armed . . .’

  Mr Ink was arguing and gesticulating that he must get through to Mr Pym. I crept along the wall. The Serjeant at Arms had his broad back towards me.

  ‘The vessel could carry six hundred men and is ready to sail from the Port of London –’

  I could see Royalists howling protests. The Speaker took a point of information from Sir Edward Hyde.

  ‘Are not the normal ports of embarkation for Ireland Chester and Bristol? Is this not an attempt by the honourable member, under the guise of fighting the papists, to bring an army into London against the King?’

  I was ten, fifteen steps away from Mr Pym. It was my intention to dart past the Serjeant and run to Mr Pym, but as I prepared to launch myself he turned and blocked my way with his vast bulk. I held out th
e letter.

  ‘For Mr Pym.’

  He gave me a scandalised look. ‘What by Satan are you doing here?’

  ‘He must have it now!’

  In the Serjeant’s jowled face was all the outrage of procedure being violated. Mr Ink was taken away by one guard and the Serjeant called on the other to take me. The Serjeant would not even touch the letter. He said a similar letter had been delivered to Mr Pym containing a plague-sore dressing. I knew this to be true. It was supposed to have been delivered by a papist out to murder Mr Pym. Convinced he had foiled a similar plot, he seized me with the grip of a bear. I kicked and yelled, tears of frustration stinging my eyes.

  ‘The letter is to save his life, not kill him! The King has soldiers on his way here!’

  ‘Serjeant.’

  It was the Speaker, William Lenthall, a mild-mannered lawyer of about fifty, with a carefully pointed beard and moustache and hooded eyes that made him look half-asleep. He had a quiet, almost timorous voice that was effective in an uproar only because MPs were forced to stop shouting in order to hear him.

  ‘You have a letter for Mr Pym, Serjeant?’

  ‘I believe it to contain another plague-sore dressing, sir.’

  It was a measure of the jumpiness of the House in those days around Christmas, when every day brought rumours of plots and counter-plots – there had even been a move for Parliament to move to Guildhall for its greater protection – that Speaker Lenthall had left his seat. I could see Mr Pym rising. MPs on both sides were craning to see.

  ‘Ask the messenger if he would be good enough to open it,’ Mr Lenthall said courteously.

  I broke the seal, showing there was nothing inside, and without any comment, question or fuss, Mr Lenthall gave it to the Serjeant to take to Mr Pym. Neither seemed in any particular hurry. I remembered the swaggering courtiers buckling on their swords at Whitehall, the weathered, sabre-cut faces of the mercenaries, and in an agony of impatience watched as the Serjeant ritually bowed to the Speaker’s chair before crossing the floor to Mr Pym. He seemed to take an eternity to unfold it, then read it, then refold it carefully before clearing his throat to speak.

  ‘Mr Speaker, it appears His Majesty will shortly appear in this place to arrest me’ – roars of dismay drowned his words – ‘to arrest me and four other honourable members: Mr Hampden, Mr Haselrig, Mr Holles and Mr Strode. I request your permission to withdraw.’

  Speaker Lenthall showed the first signs of tension, drumming his fingers on the arm of his throne-like chair.

  ‘You have my permission, Mr Pym,’ the Speaker said. ‘Which I suggest you take with all possible speed.’

  While all eyes were on Mr Pym, I crept into a niche at the back of the room and crouched low to the floor.

  The Serjeant, robbed of his arrest of a poisoner, glanced at the spot where I had been. I squeezed further into my hiding place, holding my breath. Mr Pym and three other members hurried towards the lobby, but the fifth man, William Strode, rose to make a speech. Never one to compromise, he declared now was the time to confront the King.

  ‘Come on, Bill,’ a member said. ‘You don’t want to spend another ten years in the Tower.’

  But it seemed that was exactly what he did want. Only when there was the rattle of an approaching coach outside did Mr Pym lose some of his dignity and coolness and shout: ‘It won’t be ten years – it’ll be the block! Get him out of here!’

  Two of the burliest members grabbed Strode and manhandled him past the Speaker’s chair, spittle flying from his mouth as he protested vehemently about the rights and privileges of Parliament. The five members disappeared as there was a chatter of voices and laughter, and the clatter of boots on the stairs from Westminster Hall into the lobby. The rest of the House talked with nervous anger in small groups.

  The Speaker settled back in his chair and said: ‘Order! Order! Sir Edward Hyde made a point about embarking troops for Ireland from the Port of London. Does anyone wish to answer that?’

  The members took his cue and returned to their places. Edward Hyde rose and said perhaps he could amplify his point and members listened attentively, as if there had been no interruption. The drumming of boots and the clank of swords outside the lobby ceased. The door opened.

  Edward Hyde took off his hat. All the members rose as one, removing their hats. I could see only the effect, not the cause, but as all eyes were on the opening door I poked my head out to see the King, taking off his hat, entering the chamber alone. He nodded and smiled at Edward Hyde and some other members whom he counted on his side. He seemed so at ease, and so courteous, it could have been taken for a friendly visit – had it not been for the gnarled face of the Earl of Roxburgh, glowering as he stood in the doorway, exposing a troop of soldiers loosening the swords in their scabbards. Some of the younger courtiers grinned and cocked their pistols. It was the mercenaries who chilled me. They stood silent and still, eyes staring coldly into the chamber, hands hanging loosely near angled swords.

  ‘May I trouble you for your chair, Mr Speaker?’ the King asked.

  Mr Lenthall got up and sat on the benches. The King looked quickly near the bar of the House where Mr Pym usually sat, then referred to a paper about the impeachment of the five members for treason which had been tabled, and which, he said, members must consider urgently. Treason was such a serious charge, he continued, that the accused must be taken into custody while Parliament deliberated. He stared round the silent chamber.

  ‘Is Mr Pym here?’

  The shuffling and clink of swords from the soldiers in the lobby died into a complete, prolonged silence.

  I could see the King’s white-gloved hand tighten on the arm of the chair, which he had made his throne. I gazed at his magisterial profile in awe. It was the same face which had glowed from the uproarious welcome of the people on his return to London barely six weeks ago. I expected that face, with its immaculate triangle of beard, framed by the brilliant white stiffness of his collar, to glow again, to say some magic words which would lift everyone to their feet, cheering and shouting. Then, as the silence continued, I expected him to thunder wrath and retribution. So did many of the other members, whose hands instinctively crept to empty sword belts, weapons not being allowed in the chamber. What I least expected to hear from the King’s mouth was a note of petulance.

  ‘Mr Speaker, are the five members present?’

  Lenthall fell to his knees. ‘Your Majesty, I can only see and speak as this House directs.’

  The abject man on the floor suddenly grew in stature as the King, rising from his chair, diminished.

  ‘Very well. My eyes, I believe, are as good as yours.’ The King stared round the benches on one side, and then the other. I could see one hand gripping his hat, the other clenching and unclenching, but he kept the composure in his voice, even managing a lightness in his words. ‘I see the birds have flown.’ He put his hat on his head and walked away.

  Roxburgh came to life. ‘Make way! Make way!’ The army in the lobby abruptly became a rabble, those at the front now pushing and shoving against those packed at the back, who had no idea what was happening. As the last set of boots left the lobby and clattered down the stairs, the chamber erupted.

  ‘Privilege! Privilege! Privilege!’

  Sir Edward Hyde and the King’s party looked desolated, shaking their heads despairingly at what one muttered was a naked invasion of rights. Others were talking loudly, violently across one another, convinced that if the five members had been there they would not just have been arrested, but butchered on the spot. Many crowded round Lenthall, slapping him on the back, amazed that this gentle, self-effacing man had shown such courage, some declaring that only God could have put such words in his mouth. No one took any notice of me as I got up and walked out of the chamber. I could not understand why I did not feel triumphant that Parliament had won such a stunning victory. Instead I felt empty, as if I had lost something and would never find it again. All I could see was that lonely figure of t
he King, putting his hat on his head and walking out of the chamber.

  Chapter 12

  The next day London erupted. ‘Privilege! Privilege! Privilege!’ the mob roared – and I roared with them. The story of the King invading Parliament spread from mouth to mouth, the Cavaliers and mercenaries who had accompanied him multiplying by rumour into a small army.

  Will shook me awake that morning, almost unable to speak from excitement. ‘Get up! The Trained Bands have been called out.’

  He told me the City had formed a Committee of Public Safety. The King had lost control of the City militia. People believed his Catholic Queen had persuaded the King to join the papists. In pamphlet after pamphlet I read horrific stories of atrocities committed by Catholics on Protestants in an uprising in Ireland. Women in the City of London feared that, like the Protestants in Ireland, they would be raped and their children massacred. In Milk Street that night I saw two women with a cauldron of boiling water poised on the sill of a first-floor window, from which yesterday they might have flung the contents of a chamber pot.

  In vain the King asked Lord Mayor Gurney to give up Pym and the other members sheltering in the City. All the Mayor could give him was a sumptuous meal at the Guildhall, while the rioters congregated outside.

  Normally I kept clear of the big riots. I feared seeing Crow and Captain Gardiner, the man in the beaver hat, who knew my radical leanings; but there had been a call for our Trained Band to muster in Coleman Street, near the Guildhall. Once, I was sure I saw Crow’s bulky shape in the crowd, and kept my hand on my knife. Torches lit the faces of the King’s dragoons guarding the Guildhall as they tried to calm their restive horses before the swelling, angry crowd. Only a short distance away, in Coleman Street, Mr Pym and the other members were dining, the sauce for their meal beating drums calling the Trained Bands to muster. I fought my way through the crowd towards our standard – For God and Parliament – being held aloft by Big Jed, and joined Will and Luke outside the radical church of St Stephen’s to help build a makeshift barricade across Coleman Street.