Plague Child

by Peter Ransley

  I covered my face. I could not bear to see what I had done. If I had not fought with him that day and run away this would not have happened. I could see now why Anne had sworn to him not to see me again.

  ‘C-closer.’

  The words, or half words, were so mangled and slurred it was a moment before I deciphered them. I was afraid to go closer. He was the embodiment of my sin, a monster whom I could only barely look at through the chinks between my fingers.

  ‘’oser!’

  An angry, bitter snarl. It must have contained some remnants of the old Mr Black for, still sitting, I shuffled reluctantly, obediently along the bed towards him, still with my hands before my face.

  ‘Let . . . see you.’

  I flinched as I glimpsed his right hand curving towards me, but did not pull my head away, fully expecting a blow, indeed suddenly desiring my old punishment. Instead, his hand touched my hand, prising my fingers from my face. His touch was so gentle, so unexpected, and in such contrast to the scowl permanently locked in his face, that I burst into tears.

  ‘Oh, sir, forgive me, forgive me for what I have done!’

  To my astonishment the man I had always known as unyieldingly hard and obdurate put his arms round me, or, to be more accurate, his good arm.

  ‘Should . . . told . . . you.’ There was a long, agonising gap between the words, during which both parts of his face seemed to be fighting with one another. But the stern, judgemental side was frozen, while the side which had smiled at me after we had put the Grand Remonstrance together, and which I had really only discovered just before I had run away, seemed to have been set free. His right eye glowed with the animation of both while he fought to move his lips into what I realised was a smile. ‘Should . . . told . . . you . . . many . . . things . . . many . . .’ He stopped, exhausted.

  ‘She must not marry George, sir!’ I said.

  ‘She . . . not . . . for . . . you,’ he managed.

  ‘I – I – love her, sir.’

  ‘George . . . good . . . man,’ he said.

  Nothing had changed after all. I felt anger boiling up inside me, just as it had when they had tried to beat me into the shape they wanted me to be. ‘I never thought George would convert you to the King’s cause,’ I said bitterly.

  ‘King’s . . .?’

  I held up the pamphlet. He slowly began to read it, then dropped it, his face reddening. I feared he was going to have another fit.

  ‘She must not marry George, sir,’ I pleaded. ‘If you refuse your permission, it can be stopped, even now!’

  The church bells ceased ringing. In the penetrating silence his mouth quivered open, then closed.

  ‘Do you refuse your permission? Mr Black?’

  He stared at me, his mouth quivering, closing. I picked up a sheet of paper from the floor and a quill, and dipped it in the ink.

  Chapter 17

  I ran past the memorial where she had stung herself on nettles that day. Stumbled on the church steps. Sprawled on the porch. Caught the words of the minister resonating: ‘. . . in sickness and in health, forsaking all other . . .’ I scrambled up, panic stricken that she was about to say ‘I will’, and ran into the church.

  ‘I will.’

  It was George speaking, a George with his face scrubbed till it gleamed, George who even on this joyous occasion was encased in a black doublet and breeches and sent the words rolling round the church with a sense of doom. Anne’s simple, unadorned white dress made the contrast between them even starker.

  The minister, Mr Tooley, turned to her. ‘Anne, wilt thou have this man to be thy wedded husband, to live together, after God’s ordinance –’

  ‘She won’t!’ I shouted. ‘I mean, she can’t – her father forbids it!’

  For the second time, the first being when I appeared in Turville’s study, I saw the power of being a gentleman, or, at least, looking like one. Even a rich merchant like Benyon hesitated to interfere, particularly when he heard me tell Mr Tooley about Mr Black’s anger at George printing seditious material. Parliament now ruled the City, and these were serious charges. Benyon sent one of his servants scuttling from the church. The congregation was in uproar. Mr Tooley shouted: ‘This is a house of God, not a playhouse!’ as he took me into the vestry, with George, Anne and Mrs Black.

  Anne refused to listen to me. Every time I opened my mouth she cut in with: ‘You broke your promise.’

  ‘I had to! You cannot marry him – he has been cheating your father!’

  ‘You broke your promise never to see me again.’ Tears filled her eyes. ‘You promised, you promised!’

  ‘I’ve seen your father.’

  ‘My father! You’ve seen my father? You’ll kill him!’

  She covered her face with her hands.

  ‘He’s forbidden the wedding!’ I cried. ‘Forbidden?’ She took her hands from her face and looked wildly at me.

  In the drab confines of that vestry, with its hanging black robes and notes of parish meetings, George recovered himself. ‘How can it be true?’ His voice throbbed with indignation. ‘Did we not talk to him before we left? Did he not bless us?’

  ‘Is this true, my child?’ said Mr Tooley sternly.

  Anne twisted her thin fingers together until I thought they would break. ‘Yes. Yes. As much as he could speak.’ Her mother came over to put her arm round her, but she thrust her away and rounded on me. ‘Why do I keep believing you? I can’t believe a word you say. You promised not to see me again and now – now – today of all days –!’

  She broke down in tears and her mother took her to a bench in the corner. I could not help trying to go to her, but Mr Tooley grabbed me on one side and George on the other. ‘Worse than a thief is a liar, Mr Tooley, for he steals the truth from your mouth,’ George said.

  His quoting from his favourite Ecclesiasticus brought back all the sanctimonious homilies he had beaten into me over the years, which bruised and enraged me far more than his composing stick. I struggled to control my anger as I drew a piece of paper from my pocket. ‘I have proof.’

  George tried to take it, but Mr Tooley held out his hand and I gave it to him. He read it out. ‘“I withdraw consent for the marriage of my daughter, Anne Black, to George Sawyer.” It is signed Robert Black.’ He frowned. ‘Why would he do that? At this late hour?’

  I explained again about the pamphlets supporting the King that I had found. George hotly denied any such printing.

  ‘What has been going on, Mother?’ Anne said, with a sudden show of spirit.

  ‘Nothing!’ Mrs Black cried, but looked increasingly uncomfortable. ‘I have thought of nothing but you, of seeing you safe.’

  George took the piece of paper. ‘The apprentice has written this! For that is what he is, in spite of his stolen clothes. Thanks to him, poor Mr Black is unable to write.’

  ‘He can!’ Anne broke in. ‘Let me see –’

  ‘There is no point in you looking at it, child,’ her mother said. ‘No more than me.’

  ‘Aye,’ George echoed. ‘Praise the Lord you cannot read such a foul deceit.’

  ‘I can read!’ Anne cried, then her voice faltered. ‘A little. And I have been learning to write.’

  ‘After I forbade it?’ George said, in a freezing tone.

  She stared at the floor. Mr Tooley looked away. It was as though they were married already, and whatever the minister thought, he would not come between husband and wife. He used to talk in his sermons of the virtues of an obedient wife, who knew enough reading and writing to perform her household tasks, but not enough to read the Bible, which was dangerous, for it needed a man to interpret it. I began to sense what had been happening at Half Moon Court since I had left; George taking control of business and Mrs Black, fearful of the future, only too compliant in letting him do so. Anne, left with much of the nursing of her sick father, seemed to have developed a deeper relationship with him than they were aware of.

  ‘N-not learning to write as such,’ she stammere
d. ‘But my father has been learning again like a child and I, I have picked up things. That is all.’

  ‘Leave us,’ George said, scarcely less dismissive of her than of me when I had been an apprentice. Anger boiled up in me when she quietly returned to her mother. Her steps were slow and controlled. I could not believe this was the same person who had laughed at Gloomy George with me only two months ago.

  ‘Wait –’ Mr Tooley showed her the piece of paper ‘– is this Mr Black’s hand?’

  ‘I wrote what he wished to say and he signed it,’ I said. ‘After I showed him the proof of the pamphlet George is secretly printing for the King’s party.’

  ‘There is no such pamphlet!’ George said. He looked at Mrs Black. ‘Is there?’

  ‘I have not seen one,’ she replied.

  ‘Is this Mr Black’s signature, Anne? In his present state?’ Mr Tooley asked.

  ‘It is like . . .’ She hesitated, then whispered: ‘I do not know.’

  ‘Tom!’ Mr Tooley fired the question at me like a ball from a musket, so abruptly I jumped. ‘Did Mr Black sign this?’

  ‘It is what he said to me.’

  ‘Answer the question! You are in church, God’s court, which is higher than any court of law.’

  It was suddenly silent outside the vestry room, except for whispering and shuffling, which sounded like the rats creeping towards me in the cellar, in my recurrent nightmare. It was the culmination of my childhood, that question. A blur of questioning faces passed in front of me. The old gentleman when I burned myself with pitch, his face asking who I was. Susannah opening the Bible. What does this say? Mr Black, stern, uprighteous. Have you your letters? I wanted to cry back a question to all of them. Which one of you has told me the truth? Not Susannah. Not Mr Black. Not Lord Stonehouse, although each knew a piece of it. In that tawdry vestry room, with its creaking table and tattered piles of greasily fingered prayer books, I felt one lie had piled on another, like one brick on another, and I feared to add to them, lest the chinks of light I had revealed would vanish, and I would be walled up in a cellar of deceit for ever.

  The truth was that I was sure Mr Black did not want Anne to marry George. Anne would be condemned to a kind of death, not life, if she married him. That was the real truth. The unimportant legal truth was that Mr Black’s hand could not hold the quill, and I signed it.

  ‘Tom?’ The faces all dissolved into that of Mr Tooley. He had thick, bushy eyebrows which gradually knitted into one as I remained silent. ‘God waits for your answer.’

  George, who had been straining forward like a dog on a leash, relaxed visibly. He smiled at Anne and took her hand. ‘There must be some hope for his soul that he cannot lie in God’s house.’

  Anne pulled away from him, staring at me with a look that was like acid in my face. She kept silent but the words were in that look as plainly as if she had said them: Why do you come here to ruin all this? To tell another lie?

  Mr Tooley expelled a sigh, which sounded as if it had been pent-up ever since he asked the original question. His voice and demeanour became more than ever that of a judge. ‘Tom Neave, I am bound to take your silence as evidence of guilt. As a court will tell you, the laws of the realm hold forgery to be a most serious crime, much more serious than running from your master. Mr Henderson –’

  He called for the churchwarden, who evidently had his ear to the door, for he opened it immediately. Much of the congregation had crept forward as closely and showed no signs of moving.

  ‘The wisdom of Solomon, Mr Tooley!’ cried George. ‘You condemned him by his own silence!’

  Chapter 18

  Useless running, even if I had any life left in my legs. They had called a constable, and there was another in the congregation. Gripping me by the arms, they led me down the aisle, where I had once dreamed of walking with Anne. Mr Tooley was urging everyone back in their places so that the ceremony could continue. There was another couple waiting outside – everyone was getting married because of the approaching war.

  ‘Forgery,’ said George to Benyon. ‘Forgery!’ Benyon gave a low whistle and shook his head. ‘A felony.’

  ‘The very day I brought him upriver with poor Mr Black I predicted it.’

  ‘A hanging job!’

  The words spread through the congregation like a spark falling on dry tinder. Snatches of conversation came to me as I stumbled down the aisle. Forgery. A felony. A hanging job. Always knew he would mount the ladder. Take the morning drop. Mr Black, dead? Murdered in his bed! Then he forged his signature to try and stop the wedding. The devil is in him! It was as though, with no fancy preliminaries like a trial and Newgate, I was already on my way to Tyburn. From bearing composed, set, wedding smiles when I had entered the church, the faces of the congregation now bore a hanging-day flush. Necks craned, eyes protruded, as they elbowed and pushed to see me.

  ‘Hanged?’

  I heard Anne’s voice rising above the rest. I jerked to a stop, pulling away from one of the constables. Mr Tooley was bending over her, making soothing, placatory gestures. George came to join him in a little huddle. Mrs Black got up from the front pew, clutching at her hat, and joined them in a mounting argument. Out of it came a whirlwind. Every part of Anne seemed to be in furious motion. Her hair flew, her large liquid eyes and her quivering mouth seemed to fill her face. Her words rang round the church.

  ‘Why? Why? Why cannot we go and ask my father if he did sign it?’ Mrs Black began to speak, but a freezing glance from Mr Tooley stopped her. He struggled to keep his voice low, but in the awestruck silence it reverberated round the stone walls. ‘Anne, do not listen to other people. There will be a trial. I do not know what will happen. No one does.’ As she opened her mouth to reply, his voice struck the exasperated tone no one in the church had ever dared to disobey. ‘Anne – do you wish to be married or not?’

  She bowed her head. There was a huge collective sigh from the congregation. Mr Tooley waved the bride and groom peremptorily back into position to take their vows. Mrs Black scuttled back to the front pew. The constables gripped me by my arms again and led me into the porch.

  ‘Five minutes!’ Anne’s voice echoed round the church.

  I turned at the door to see Anne bringing her clenched fists down on her hips with such force I thought she would break into pieces.

  ‘It is five minutes to my father, Mr Tooley – five minutes! Marriage is my whole life!’

  The arrivals for the next wedding stared at us as we wound through the graveyard, past the mausoleum to Samuel Potter & Relic. We must have looked a curious procession; Mr Tooley led the way with Benyon and Mrs Black, who struggled to keep her hat on in the wind, then came the bride and groom, Anne staring straight ahead, George murmuring into her ear, casting glances back at me, who stumbled between the two constables, both of them gripping me so close we must have looked like a creature with six legs.

  It was the longest five minutes of my life. It now seemed the height of stupidity to have forged Mr Black’s signature. But there was the secret printing George had been carrying out, the proof of which Mr Black had read – although how much he had really taken in I did not know. George clearly believed this would be outweighed by the forgery, which I had all but admitted by my silence. His face as he glanced back bore the expression I knew only too well from childhood: anticipation of my punishment to come.

  As we turned into Half Moon Court, Mrs Black let out a cry. The curtains of Mr Black’s window were drawn. Sarah was standing on the doorstep and Mrs Black and Anne ran towards her. All my previous fears were dwarfed by the thought that I had killed him.

  ‘All but,’ Sarah scathingly said. ‘You nearly managed it this time, with the upset you gave him.’

  She said she had left the house to buy fresh bread and had returned to find him in a terrible state. She had made him a draught and he was now asleep. While Mrs Black hurried upstairs to him, the rest of us filed through the parlour, where the smell of new bread had joined that of the g
ame pie and the goose, which was still sizzling on the spit, and then into the printing shop. Mr Tooley demanded proof of the seditious material.

  Under the eyes of the constables I went straight into the paper shop. There was no sign of Fighte for the King’s Peace, or any other Royalist pamphlets. Nor was there any sign in the shop of the formes from which it had been printed.

  I struggled to keep calm. I could not meet Anne’s eyes. George stood watching me, head slightly bowed, arms folded.

  ‘It was there – I swear it was there!’

  Anne turned away. George’s arms encircled her. I felt Mr Tooley’s eyes follow me as I searched every shelf and bench. I remembered Benyon sending his men out of the church. ‘Sarah – did Mr Benyon’s men come?’

  ‘Aye. In a coach. To tell me the feast would be delayed.’

  ‘Did they take anything?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was upstairs, with Master.’

  ‘It was there!’ I said to Anne. ‘You must believe me!’

  I could not bear the look on her face. She turned away from me. She looked as if she had just been told that a loved one had died. Although Sarah had no love for Miss Hoity-Toity, she recognised grief when she saw it.

  ‘Come on, tha’s getting married. Remember?’

  Anne did not seem to know where she was, or what had happened. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. The words were barely audible. Whether she was sorry for me, or saying it to me or in general I had no means of knowing, but George took it as a personal apology to him. He was magnanimous, forgiving and sorrowful at the same time. ‘It is one of her best qualities, Mr Tooley, to try and see the good in people. Mr Black and I struggled to find it in him for years. But you have just demonstrated, my dear – more eloquently than I have ever been able to – that there is nothing there.’ He reflected. ‘Nay, there is worse than nothing.’ He had combed his thinning hair over the mark on his forehead where I had struck him, but the wind had disturbed it and it flushed red as he levelled a finger at me. ‘He is possessed – possessed by the devil!’