Plague Child

by Peter Ransley

  He glared at me. ‘You happened! All hell broke loose in the big house. Your bitch of a mother had you! Where the hell you came from, I don’t know. What happened? I don’t know what happened! That’s the worst thing. All these years . . . I never spoke to Kate again. I never saw her. I never held her. I never even touched her. That’s the worst thing!’

  He lashed out with his boot at the fire, scattering the glowing embers into the hearth and went blindly away, knocking over a chair.

  I slept little. His torment started a similar turmoil in my head as I tossed and turned. I was leaving Anne and I might never see her again. I could not believe I had so lightly agreed to Pym’s plan. Oh yes, I would be Lord Stonehouse. The great peer! The peer of the people. Solving the nation’s problems. Previously, if I ever thought about it, it was a fancy. But Pym was at the centre of power. It was no longer an idea, a fantasy, but a real possibility.

  I buried my head in my pillow. What had I said? If I became a peer, I could never marry Anne. I scratched at a particularly virulent bed bug that they probably reserved for the lawyers who frequented this place, which seemed to be burying its way inside me like these poisonous thoughts. I felt her last kiss, saw her standing by the tree. Promise me you’ll come back. Touch the tree. I had such a burning, overwhelming desire for her I sprang out of bed. I felt someone watching me. For a moment I thought in my half-sleep it was Kate, who, although I had largely been unaware of it, had been watching me all my life.

  But in a room that was eerie with moonlight, it was not Kate but Eaton, still on a window seat. I had no idea how long he had been there. Perhaps I had been talking in my sleep, and he had been listening to me as I had been listening to him by the fireside. Whatever else we were to one another, we were linked by a common bond. We knew that we would never rest until we found that pendant, and discover what had led up to that night, seventeen years ago.

  All he said was: ‘There’s light enough.’

  He had packed our saddle bags. He kicked the stable boy awake and we rode through the moonlit streets, empty and silent but for the occasional night watchman calling the time, and found our way on to the road west.

  Part Two

  Highpoint

  September–October 1642

  Chapter 27

  We were out of London and beyond Chiswick village before dawn. As the sun rose over green fields my spirits lifted with every breath of good air. Lord Stonehouse had replied to Eaton’s dispatch, instructing him to use Highpoint House as a base for the search for Matthew. The house was at a strategic point north of Oxford and Lord Stonehouse wrote that he had ordered Will’s militia unit to meet us at Chipping Norton, thirty miles from Highpoint. This, Lord Stonehouse wrote ‘woulde meete both the purpose of Parliament, and my owne desired purpose to find the pendante’.

  The King was thought to be ‘cominge down confidently from Shrewsbury,’ Lord Stonehouse wrote, to march on London. The Earl of Essex, the Parliamentary commander, had left London on 9 September to an enormous citizens’ send off, with earnest prayers and great applause, and orders to capture the King. Once he was out of the hands of his evil advisers, he would see the wisdom of Parliament’s measures and there would be peace and prosperity in the kingdom.

  And what a kingdom! I had never before been in the country. Poplar, I now realised, with its High Street of timber-framed houses and narrow, gabled fronts and bleak marsh was without, not country. I gazed with awe at field after rolling field where stubble was being burnt, and soil turned before the winter frosts, at a deer – Eaton had to tell me what it was – which broke cover from the edge of a forest.

  My heart swelled at the sight of all this and on that first day, at our first stop, before we broke our bread and cheese, I sent up a fervent prayer to God to thank Him for giving me this small place in Parliament’s great enterprise. Eaton, who said he was not a great one for prayers, chewed his bread in silence and looked at the weather. I could have stayed there for ever, breathing in that sweet air – it was the first time I realised I had been breathing sea coal and stink all my life. I turned my face to the sun, but Eaton was already on his horse saying we had better make progress before the rain.

  ‘God has given us good weather!’ I protested.

  ‘He ain’t told the birds that,’ Eaton said.

  We were on the edge of a forest and the birds were silent. The birds were right. The first drops had that remorseless persistence which told Eaton it would last all day. By late afternoon we rode into a sullen blanket of dark cloud approaching from the west. The roads were riddled with potholes and thick with a pottage of mud and stones churned up by the marching armies and their baggage and artillery trains. Herds of cows and sheep driven in their wake to feed them added to the shit and chaos.

  Between overhanging trees we passed a column of Parliamentary soldiers chanting a psalm: ‘Let the saints be joyful, Let the high praises of God be in their mouth . . .’

  It was a psalm we often sang at Moorfields when drilling was over. Lifted in spirits, I joined in: ‘. . . and the two-edged sword in their hand . . .’

  There was a crack, and splinters of wood showered amidst the men. A pile of wood lay on the verge, and I thought someone was chopping it. Everyone continued chanting with gusto: ‘. . . to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with –’

  Another crack, and a soldier in front of me fell against his colleagues. I stared at him in wonder. What I believed to be chips of wood was splintered bone. Half his shoulder was missing and his arm was a muddle of mangled flesh and leather jerkin. The ball had spun him round in front of my rearing horse and he stared for a moment stupidly at his arm hanging from the remains of his shoulder. There was the most dreadful animal scream I had ever heard. I thought it was from the horse, but then saw it came from the man’s mouth, which seemed to swallow up his whole face.

  Like me, I am sure the troops had never seen action before. The front of the column was still chanting and marching, while the back was shouting for help. The officer, who was an ironmonger I recognised from Artillery Fields, yelled: ‘Deploy! Deploy!’ He pointed to where the shots had come from. But this was what the Cavaliers had been waiting for. As the troops ran to take up positions on the outskirts of the wood, a group of dragoons rode down on them from the rear, swords drawn, shouting, ‘For God and the King!’

  I drew my sword and was struggling to turn Patch round in the churning mud when Eaton cut at her with his whip. She lurched forward, almost throwing me. It was all I could do to keep on the saddle as she careered away. When I started to get her under control, Eaton lashed her again until we were out in open country and the cries and screams had faded away.

  ‘Coward!’ I yelled at him. ‘You made me desert them – leave them to die!’

  ‘We have our own business to do,’ he said.

  Tears of anger burned my eyes. ‘We have Parliament’s business! They are our colleagues, in the name of God!’

  ‘You may be a Roundhead,’ he said shortly. ‘I only bother about my own head. And if you must sing psalms, keep your voice down. God may hear them, but so can the Cavaliers.’

  I was so bitter and angry at him the words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. ‘You are a sad, lonely Godless creature and I cannot believe any woman could ever love you!’

  He bit his lip, and jerked his horse forward, saying nothing more. It was as if I had broken a confidence in even referring to it. I felt the urge to ride after him and apologise, but then burned with shame and anger at deserting my colleagues. I began to ride back to them, but stopped, fearing to run into the Cavaliers. By the time I turned to follow Eaton, he was almost out of sight. I kept on thinking he would look back, but he never did. Eventually my spirits lifted. It felt good to be free, without his morose, watching presence.

  It began to grow dark and chill. I came to a small farm and asked for lodging, but the farmer drove me away with a pitchfork and a snarling dog, saying that he wanted no more tickets. Tick
ets could not buy bread!

  I discovered that, whatever their sympathies, people were already at breaking point, being forced to billet soldiers for tickets which – in many cases – were no more than worthless IOUs, and though I had money no one would trust me. Soaked to the skin, I was tempted by the warmth of a charcoal-burner’s kiln, but seeing the way the burner and his son eyed my horse and baggage, forced myself to move on. My new-found love of the country rapidly turned to fear. It was as dark as Mr Black’s cellar, only the scuffles and cries were not rats, but those of wolves or spirits. My horse was stumbling. I was hopelessly lost. It was my town nose, more than anything else, that saved me, the smell of smoke taking me to a straggle of buildings that turned out to be the outskirts of Beaconsfield.

  He was waiting outside an inn, smoking a clay. The rain did not seem to bother him. It dripped from every corner of his hat and cloak as he gazed up at me sardonically. This expectation that I would come to him, depended on him, filled me with fresh rage. I kicked savagely at Patch, but she refused to budge from the water she was sucking. I lurched forward, grabbing ineffectually at the harness and began to slip from the horse. The stable boy caught me as I fell in an exhausted heap.

  Eaton stared down at me, puffing at his pipe. ‘Try elsewhere, if you like. You won’t get in.’

  I snarled at him I was not hungry, but the smell of pottage deflated my pride. I never slept so soundly, before or since. He woke me at dawn, to the remorseless patter of rain. My clothes were warm, but still damp.

  We did not make more than a dozen miles a day, sometimes less. We were shot at by both sides. It is difficult to believe, but in those early days, and even later, you never knew whether you were meeting friend or foe. If there were uniforms, they were regimental ones – little help at shot distance if you did not know whether the regiment’s commander had declared for the King or Parliament or (as happened not infrequently) had switched sides. After a musket ball took away my hat we adopted the general custom, which travelled by mysterious word of mouth, to wear the orange scarves of roundheads, in the hope that at least we would be shot by the enemy. Cavaliers wore red ones.

  Eaton, through the Stonehouse intelligence network, picked up news at inns along the way. Essex had successfully joined Midland forces in Northampton, but many of his troops were untrained volunteers, ill-fed, unpaid and on the point of mutiny, until fresh funds arrived from London. The King was first reported to be in Shropshire, then Worcester.

  I refused to listen to Eaton when he said nobody knew what they were doing, and said hotly that Essex was a veteran of the Dutch wars. It might be that Prince Rupert, the King’s cousin and feared cavalry commander, had won a skirmish or two, such as we had seen. But when the Parliamentary forces came together they would impale the Royalists on their pikes.

  ‘If they ever find one another,’ Eaton said.

  It was true there were practically no maps. Signposts, if they existed, were removed or twisted round to confuse the enemy. With the weather and the sporadic fighting, it took us near a week to get to Oxford, rather than the two days Eaton had expected. The city was still supposedly uneasily neutral; the University was wholeheartedly for the King, but the citizens were mainly for Parliament. It had stopped raining, but pools of water lay on Christ Church Meadow. I stared in awe at what I took to be the spires of churches and cathedrals and said it must be a very Godly place.

  Eaton laughed. ‘There are more sinners than saints in those places. They are the colleges – seats of learning,’ he said, with a sarcastic edge. ‘That’s Magdalen, where Richard Stonehouse learned to gamble.’ He pulled down his hat and raised his collar.

  I thought that made him even more conspicuous, except it hid his scar, but I wedged my hat more firmly over my red hair. ‘Is he here?’

  ‘The Stonehouses are everywhere. Lord Stonehouse bought parts of the city the colleges don’t own.’

  It was beyond the meadow, outside the broken wall of the city that I saw it. The crude red crosses on the wattle fencing had faded so as to be scarcely visible. I realised what it was more from the clay thrown up, marked with white streaks, and most of all by the way people shunned the place. I stood quite still, staring.

  ‘Do they own that?’ I said.

  ‘The plague pit? The dead own that,’ he said, almost cheerfully for him. ‘If you’d have been thrown down there, we wouldn’t be having all this trouble.’

  We stabled the horses at the Green Man, not far from the plague pit, as he said the city was not safe. We removed our orange scarves and walked to an inn near the centre, the Dog and Pheasant, too mean and small to have stabling. He would not risk me going near the Blue Boar, to which Matthew’s letters were directed, although I argued I was more likely to get information than he was. He returned surly and out of sorts, saying he had got a groat’s worth of information for a crown. Matthew had gone. He had taken the road to Woodstock and Chipping, in the direction of Highpoint.

  We went to bed early to make, he said, an early start in the morning. But I was asleep less than an hour when I heard the outside door close. His bed was empty. From the window I saw him emerge on to the street. I had been cooped up all afternoon and, still angry he had not taken me to the Blue Boar, I scrambled downstairs to follow him. It was quite dark and there were few people about as he strode into a market square.

  I stopped in terror as I saw the falcon glaring down at me. It was as big as a red kite and would have dropped on me like a stone if it had not been made of that material. It was the emblem, in place of the common wood sign, of an opulent inn, the Stonehouse Arms.

  My fright caused me to duck back into a dark doorway, and it was as well I did, for at that moment Eaton turned, staring. He had the stillness of someone who hunts, eyes and ears focused for every movement, every sound. I began to breathe again only when he turned and went down a dark alleyway at the side of the inn. I hesitated to follow him, for I feared he would be waiting for me at the end of it. The sound of laughter drew me cautiously towards a lighted window. At a table, roaring with laughter, was Captain Gardiner. With him was Richard Stonehouse. They were having a mock sword fight with lighted candles. Wax splashed over food and glasses as they sparred. Sipping wine and watching them with a mixture of indulgence and distaste was a man who, from the sharp curve of his nose and his eyes, even though they were partly hidden by thick spectacles, could only be Edward Stonehouse.

  I ran. I could not believe I had been stupid enough to trust Eaton, who was no doubt on his way to join them. No doubt also he had told me his stories to persuade me that he had – what had Kate said? – qualities he was denying to himself. I ran faster than I have ever run in my life, determined to grab my pack and get out of that place.

  The sight of that trio and my anger at my own naivety threw me into such a panic that it was minutes before I realised I was lost. I came to the river, doubled back, saw an alley I was convinced I knew and found myself back in the market square again. Everything I had was in my pack at the Dog and Pheasant – my money, even my knife. The inn was so mean, few knew it. People I asked shook their heads. A drunk was convinced he knew it, but then kept contradicting himself – keep going left from the main square, no, right and when you come to, what’s the name of the inn? – that I left him in despair. He followed me, shouting abusively that he knew exactly where it was. Finally in desperation I decided that, pack or no pack, I would leave the town. At that precise moment I recognised the crumbling jetty of a house. The inn was in a street next to it.

  Back inside I snatched up my pack and retrieved my purse from the crack in a beam where I had hidden it. I was ramming it into my pack when I heard the outside door slam and Eaton greeting the landlord.

  I took out my knife, pulled the bed-cover over me and pretended to be asleep. He stopped whistling when he came into the room, and I forced my breathing to be regular. I smelt beer on his breath as he bent over me and I gripped my knife. Something, bug or lice, began crawling up my leg but I
dare not move. At least, I thought, he would not kill me. He needed me too much to get the pendant from Matthew.

  His boots fell one by one and, as usual, he was instantly asleep. But every time I shifted the old timber creaked and groaned and I sensed his eyes on me. I felt I had no sleep that night, but awoke to find a meagre dawn light stealing through the window, and Eaton, booted, pack slung over his shoulder, standing over me.

  The cover had slipped from me. He looked at the knife, still near my hand. ‘Taking no chances?’

  Still half-asleep, I did not know whether he was real or nightmare and snatched up the knife. It caught in his coat and with a cry of annoyance he grabbed at my wrist and took the knife from me. ‘Look at my coat!’

  I should have had it out with him there and then, but he had my knife, which he was putting in his belt. I stared up at him sullenly.

  ‘What is it, Tom?’

  I pretended to be too sleepy to answer. I could be as cunning as he was. If I could get to my horse, I had a chance to escape. On our way to the horses he proposed to get breakfast at a baker’s he knew. I picked up my pack, dashed water in my face in the yard, and followed him through the quiet streets. Before I had always been the one full to the brim with chatter and questions, trying to break through his grim silences; now, perversely, he bombarded me with questions. Was I ill? Had he upset me in some way? I preserved a silence as dour and taciturn as his ever was. This was not so difficult at first, for sleep still clung to me, as it seemed to do to the day. It was dank and dark in the alleys and there was a sallow greyness in the streets as if some of the clouds building overhead had drifted down amongst us. The few people about huddled into their collars without looking at us.