Plague Child

by Peter Ransley

  Abruptly he barked out: ‘Eaton has told you about the pendant?’

  It was useless to deny it. ‘Yes, my lord.’

  He stood up, and picked up a seal from his desk. I flinched; for a moment I thought he was going to throw it at me. Instead, he kept rapping it on his desk, punctuating his words as he spoke. He told me that, when Matthew and Susannah and – he coughed sceptically – a miracle baby had vanished from the estate, he sent Eaton to find them, but the trail was cold.

  Lord Stonehouse went to the window and stared out at the dark street. Six years later, he said, after he had picked me up in the dockyard, Eaton set out again on Matthew’s trail. He almost caught him when Matthew tried to sell the pendant.

  Taking a candle from a sconce, he held it up to illuminate a picture hanging behind his desk. It was of his wife, Frances, painted later than the one in Turville’s chambers. I learned later it had been painted shortly before she died. In one hand she held a white rose, the symbol of love. The other pointed to the falcon pendant at her breast.

  ‘I believe it contains the secret of your birth. I will not rest until it is found. You are to find it, with Eaton’s help, then I will decide what to do with you. Is that clear?’

  He put back the candle and picked up the bell to dismiss me.

  ‘I will find the pendant, but I want nothing from you,’ I said. ‘Apart from one thing.’

  For a moment I thought he was going to throw the bell at me. ‘Go on.’

  ‘The house at Half Moon Court. And my freedom.’

  ‘To do what? Marry old Black’s daughter?’ He put down the bell and roared with laughter. I thought he had no sense of humour, but there were tears of laughter in his eyes now. ‘Come, come, if you are not careful I will end up liking you! You are my – whatever you are. I have made you what you are and you will do as I say. Marry a printer’s daughter, indeed!’

  I dug my nails into my palms as I felt my temper slipping. I preferred his anger to his laughter, which mocked everything I believed in. ‘I am a printer!’

  ‘Of course, of course.’ He picked up Turville’s letter to Mr Black. ‘I know this was a ruse to get you in here –’

  ‘It was no ruse!’

  He gave me an incredulous look. His smile was condescending. ‘You think you love this girl, do you?’

  ‘As I believe you loved your wife, my lord.’

  ‘Don’t be impertinent!’ he cried angrily.

  I was about to retort that commoners could have the same passions as lords, but he had been moved in some way that stopped me. He walked up to me, round me, then seemed to forget all about me, going to the picture of his wife, muttering something I could not hear, before finally swinging round.

  ‘Very well then. Very well. Sit.’

  He pointed to a desk Mr Cole used, which had paper and ink, and instructed me to write that in exchange for the pendant Mr Black would receive the freehold of Half Moon Court in perpetuity. He put in various legal phrases and conditions, but that was the essence of it. I was unable to determine whether he was serious, or treating the whole business as a joke, but it certainly put him in much better humour. He said my hand was far too educated to be that of a gentleman, and perhaps I was a printer after all. Mr Cole and a servant were witnessing my signature when I heard the familiar urgent drum of hooves and Eaton’s shout to the stable boy.

  Lord Stonehouse was in absolute control of himself again. He told the servant to send Eaton up immediately. He instructed Mr Cole to make the necessary legal arrangements to imprison Richard, where he could stay until he had reflected on his condition. He smiled at me as he said this, taking the piece of paper I had signed. I could see him using it when Richard had reflected, as the prelude to yet another reconciliation. It did not matter to him that Richard had tried to murder me. That must be a misunderstanding, exactly as my unfortunate blundering into their meeting had been. I did not care at that time. All I cared about was Anne.

  ‘Well, well,’ Lord Stonehouse said, his good humour bubbling over. ‘You took your time Eaton! I have discovered this young gentleman is determined to be a printer! What is it, man? Are you hurt?’

  Eaton looked as if his scar had been slashed open anew. He brushed at the blood which smeared his collar and coat. ‘Not mine,’ he said. ‘Turville’s. He’s dead. The file on the pendant has gone.’

  Chapter 23

  It seemed never to have occurred to Lord Stonehouse that the ransacking and pillaging of Royalist houses, which he had organised with such ruthless efficiency, could ever happen to him, or those he dealt with. He never thought that Richard, who time and again had come to heel, would really rebel. And it certainly never occurred to him that while all his life the law had been his exclusive property, during war there might be two laws. Or none.

  As we went down to the stables, Eaton told me there was no sign of Jane or the other servants at Turville’s house. It was believed they had fled. He chose a grey mare for me which, he said, with a sly look at me, was docile, for I had done only a little riding at Moorgate Fields. She almost threw me as soon as I was on her, and I told Eaton I was glad he had not chosen me a lively one. He grinned as he controlled both horses and said the best way to learn how to stay on was to be thrown a couple of times. He seemed to have recovered from the shock of Turville’s death remarkably quickly, saying more than once that if this did not blacken Richard in his father’s eyes, nothing would.

  ‘We don’t know it was Richard,’ I said. ‘Of course it was Richard!’

  ‘Did anyone see him?’

  ‘He knew what he was looking for,’ he said shortly. ‘Keep close! Keep close, damn you!’

  He kept getting ahead of me and then reining his horse back impatiently. His eyes darted nervously from side to side at every alley. There was no curfew, but it felt like one, for the streets were almost empty. He told me that bands of militia had already marched north to join the Earl of Essex to form a Parliamentary army.

  I told him about the agreement I had made with Lord Stonehouse. He slapped his sides with laughter and said he had never heard such a good story.

  ‘Why, Mr Tom, I do believe you’re an honest man!’

  ‘I like to think so,’ I retorted.

  He touched his hat, half mocking, half deferential, and put on his country burr. ‘When we gets the pendant, my lord, you shall have Half Moon Court and I shall make do with Highpoint. How’s that for a game of soldiers?’

  He laughed and fell into a deep, musing silence until we reached Gray’s Inn, where he led me over the grass. There was the cock of a pistol, sharp as the crack of a whip in the quiet night. Eaton called out softly to the guard he had left. A constable had been sent for, but not found. It seemed the constables had gone to war as well.

  The door was open and the clock in the hall was ticking, slowly, quietly. It was the only sign of normality in the chambers. Papers were strewn down the stairs. He stopped me sharply, clapping a hand over my mouth. He had not washed and his hand had the rank smell of stale blood. Although the guard had been round, Eaton was still suspicious of a trap. I thought he was being absurdly cautious, but then I heard it. There was the creak of a board, a little animal-like grunt then silence.

  Eaton slipped back to the guard and took his pistol. I crept up the stairs. A thin moonlight came through the landing window, lighting up a bloody boot-print on some crumpled papers. Eaton pulled me back, and kicked open the study door.

  He was swinging the pistol round at body height and did not at first see the crouching figure on the floor. As he aimed, I picked out in the darkness the shape of the cap she habitually wore and shouted a warning.

  Eaton lowered his pistol. ‘Damn you, Jane – I nearly shot you!’

  She did not move. She was cradling something or someone, moaning softly. As I went towards her, paper clung to my boots. I touched her gently but still she did not move.

  ‘Jane. It’s me – Tom.’

  Eaton lit a candle. Jane was cradling Turvi
lle’s head and murmuring gently to him. Turville’s right hand was half hacked off. Near it was a pistol he must have been holding. There was a great wound in his side and I realised the papers were sticking to my feet with blood. I turned away as the rich game pie I had eaten came up, burning in my throat.

  ‘Throw it up,’ said Eaton. ‘You can’t make more of a mess.’

  He was staring down indifferently, as if he was looking at a slaughtered animal on a farm. I forced myself to swallow back the bile, kneeling down with her, putting my arm round her. Still she did not respond but kept on stroking the dead man’s cheek, murmuring that she would get a doctor, he would be all right. Only when I said he needed a minister, not a doctor, did she turn to me with a sharp animal cry. I held her shaking body, but she pushed me away, lifting his head again as if she was trying to make him more comfortable, stroking and kissing him. I watched helplessly, feeling I knew nothing about life or love. With the look of surprise in his open, staring eyes and his pock-marked skin devoid of powder, he was even uglier in death than in life. He had taken her in when she had been ruined, but he had used her, and I was sure she had been severely beaten when I escaped, but from the way she held him, and continued to kiss him, you would have thought he was the kindest, most wonderful man on earth to her.

  ‘A fine son! A credit to his father!’ Eaton swung the candle round the dishevelled mounds of paper, the empty shelves, to catch sight of the picture behind Turville’s desk. It had been slashed diagonally, decapitating Lord Stonehouse’s figure. The cut had been made with such force that half the canvas, with Frances smiling happily, curled outwards. ‘Van Dyck. In the inventory at thirty pound,’ Eaton muttered.

  A pile of old legal parchments cracked under his boots. He gave a sudden cry. The cut in the picture exposed the panelling behind, part of which had been pulled open. It was a cunningly concealed cupboard, which would probably have escaped notice. But the vehemence of the sword blow had cut into the woodwork behind, splintering the edge of the door, normally hidden by the panelling.

  ‘He has got my papers!’

  ‘What papers?’

  Eaton cried he was done for now. He was like a man demented, searching among the litter of papers on the desk and floor. He kept returning to the aperture and feeling inside, although he must have known there was nothing there.

  ‘He has me now!’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He swivelled round, towering over me and I realised that, such was his distress over his loss, he had forgotten I was there. He forced a smile on his face as much as the scar would allow him. He pointed to the torn map on the wall.

  ‘Listen, Tom. I have cared for that estate. Not Lord Stonehouse. Not his sons. I know every copse, every blade of grass, the people who pay and the people who don’t. As a reward, Lord Stonehouse bought me some pieces near it: mean thankless pieces of land. Without those papers, I may lose them. That’s all I mean. Do you understand?’

  He spoke so soft, and his voice was so chilling, that all my old fear of him flooded back. He had been so indifferent about the fate of poor Turville he would think nothing of seeing me dead on the floor with him. ‘Yes, yes I think so.’

  ‘So long as you have it clear.’

  ‘I have it clear.’

  ‘Good. We must get after Matthew.’

  ‘You know where Matthew is!’ I cried.

  ‘Might be. The details were on the papers Richard has taken.’ He pushed me to one side, seized Jane and demanded to know what had happened, what she knew. Terrified, she would not let go of Turville, and he continued to grip her until I yelled at him.

  ‘Leave her! You won’t get anything out of her like that!’

  Only then, when he saw a practical reason for a vestige of kindness, did he send his man for a minister, while I took her downstairs. The larder had been looted, but the fire was still burning and I sat her there, found a half-drunk flask of wine, mixed it with honey and warmed it over the fire. The honey came from the garden and as she smelt its familiar elderflower scent some of the vacancy left her face.

  Gradually she told us what had happened. The cook saw Richard across the gardens with a small group of men demanding entry at the gate. Alarmed, she ran to tell Turville. Turville laughed at her fears – he had spent a lifetime calming that boy’s rages and deflecting his demands. Nevertheless he loaded the pistol in his drawer, and sent Jane for the constable. She could not find one and, returning, saw Richard through the upstairs window shouting: ‘In the King’s name!’ and wielding his sword. There was a violent crash and a cheer – perhaps the moment when he slashed the picture.

  Terrified, she hid in the coal shed. Through the chinks in the walls she saw Richard stuff some letters into the pouch of his saddle. Like the others, he was cloaked dark. His high black riding boots bore no Cavalier tassels or lace and his wide black hat no feathers. She heard their raised voices arguing. One, whom Richard called Colonel Royce, said they must ride north immediately and join the King. Richard swore at him and said if they wanted to use Highpoint, they must ride east.

  ‘Highpoint – east?’ Eaton gripped her by the shoulders. ‘Highpoint is west! East? Are you sure?’

  She was sure. Like the devil, Richard turned his back on the setting sun and went east, the others following him.

  Eaton tried to pull me out of the kitchen. He wanted to leave there and then and ride after Richard.

  ‘But where?’

  ‘Poplar! The sewer where you came from!’

  ‘Poplar? Why?’

  He was too frantic to leave to say more. He ran outside to his horse, shouting for me to follow him. When I refused to leave Jane, he threatened to go alone. I argued that they were hours ahead of us and we would make better progress in the morning. Slowly, unwillingly, he returned. He had the same look on his face as I had seen in his exchanges with Lord Stonehouse: a mixture of reluctant obedience and hate. The estates, as he had just told me, were his whole life. Some part of him still believed, or hoped, or hoped to persuade his lordship that I was a Stonehouse. I might be the key to the estates. He would not, could not, go without me.

  From that moment, I must confess, I began to take some secret pleasure in this, scarcely admitted to myself. That this man, who had once carelessly ordered my death for a couple of half crowns, of whom I had lived in mortal terror since Matthew had warned me about him, should, however savagely, come to heel! It was impossible not to feel satisfaction, impossible not to act as if I was a Stonehouse. He expected it. He expected that arrogant tone, that tilt of the chin, and I found myself very gradually, over the days that followed, assuming it. At first I did it as a joke, strutting, miming my part, but as it tempered his attitude and made him easier to deal with, I almost forgot I was doing it.

  I was as desperate as he was to get hold of the pendant – but to gain my freedom from the Stonehouses, not become one of them. To be free to marry Anne. I soon stopped trying to convince Eaton of this, however, because it was clear he thought it the greatest of all jokes.

  Eventually a minister was found, and only then would Jane leave Turville’s body. While I was comforting Jane, a message came from Lord Stonehouse instructing Eaton to meet the solicitor who would replace Turville. Muttering that he was always expected to be in two places at once, Eaton arranged to meet the solicitor the next day at a tavern near Lincoln’s Inn, where we would stay after returning from Poplar.

  I lifted Jane on to the back of Eaton’s horse and we took her to Half Moon Court. Eaton stuck to me as close as a barnacle to a ship. I led Jane upstairs so Sarah could take care of her.

  When I returned downstairs I was startled to find Eaton sitting like a ghost in Mr Black’s high-backed chair. He would not leave, and when I told him I was sleeping on the floor, proposed to join me, saying the boards were damned comfortable compared to some places he had slept. When he saw the expression on my face he clapped me on the back and laughed. ‘Don’t worry, Mr Tom, I won’t murder you in your sleep –
you’re far too valuable!’

  He folded his coat up as a pillow and did indeed look as comfortable as if he was on a feather bed, seemed in fact to greet the floor as an old friend. Falling asleep is a strange time. People tell you things they would never say in the daylight. He told me he was a foundling brought up by the parish. A mouth nobody wanted. He ran away, sleeping in hedges, barns and stables. He poached and stole in every corner of Lord Stonehouse’s estate. He was whipped by Lord Stonehouse and sent back to the parish. He ran away again and was caught tearing a hare from the jaws of the hounds before the hunters reached the pack. This time he was whipped so severely his cheek was cut open. It festered and left a permanent scar. Lord Stonehouse loathed poachers, but he was intrigued by this wild animal who could swoop on a partridge with the silence of a hawk, who seemed to know the courses of every hare, and, more importantly, every poacher. He was at first tolerated, then used for the information he gave, then employed as stable boy.

  Eaton’s eyes closed and he curled up like an animal, instantly asleep. It was a long time before I followed him as, in the semi-darkness, I watched his scar rise and fall.

  Chapter 24

  In the shock and confusion at Half Moon Court early next morning at Eaton’s presence – not to mention Jane, who upset Sarah by rising first and lighting the fire – Eaton said there had been a great misunderstanding and we had come to an agreement. Though the nature of that agreement was not made clear, Mr Black was beside himself with joy, and seized Eaton’s hand.

  I had kept my word to Lord Stonehouse and taken off the gentle-man’s clothes, with a strange mixture of regret and relief. I could see that, in Eaton’s eyes, by removing the clothes I had removed some of the veneer of a Stonehouse. There was a sarcastic twitch to Eaton’s smile when he saw me in my army buff jerkin and breeches. It was as if I had been demoted to the ranks. He had a ribald, if repetitive sense of humour I had never suspected, and kept ordering me to ‘make ready . . . present . . . fire!’