Plague Child

by Peter Ransley

  He sighed again and dropped his head in his hands, staring at the coin in the water. ‘You know everything now. Satisfied?’

  Satisfied? I dragged Matthew up from the stone and hugged him and danced him around until he nearly fell in the water.

  ‘Come on! Let’s go!’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Highpoint. Before the light goes.’ I pulled him to his horse and cupped my hands to give his old bones an easy lift.

  ‘Wait.’ He would not move an inch until I told him everything that had happened. When he learnt that the Parliamentary soldiers had left a day ago, he backed away.

  ‘Then who killed Mark?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I’ll bet it was Cavaliers, working for Richard Stonehouse.’

  ‘Mark wasn’t a papist.’

  ‘They killed him to destroy the last evidence of the wedding. They wore orange scarves like mine to pretend to be Roundheads.’

  Lightning lit up the heath. The horses lifted their heads and trod restlessly, waiting uneasily for the low mutter of thunder. The prospect of a downpour on open country made it easier to urge him on his horse. Halfway in the saddle he stopped.

  ‘They’ve been waiting until you find me, then they can get us both and the pendant.’

  ‘I’ve worked that out. We’re both storytellers, Matthew.’

  ‘There’s a difference between telling a story and being in it. We’re riding into a trap.’

  ‘Not if we know it is one.’ I could feel myself being pulled towards Highpoint, like a compass needle towards north. And I felt as cold and hard as the metal itself, as the ice that is supposed to cover the northern climes and the frost spirits who had ice for their hearts. ‘We can avenge Mark’s death. And my mother’s.’

  ‘Are you mad? We can’t fight an army of Cavaliers.’

  ‘No.’ I swung on to my horse. ‘But we can take the pendant.’

  He clapped his hand to his head with such force I thought it would fly off. ‘Steal it – again!’

  ‘Return it to Lord Stonehouse properly.’

  Lightning scored the sky again, and this time the thunder was closer. A wind sprang up, rippling the heather. I urged my horse on to the track, but Matthew pulled his back.

  ‘Tom, don’t be a fool. It’s not you riding the horse – it’s the pendant.’

  I hesitated, but only for a moment. ‘You may be right. You’re wiser than I am, Matthew. But one thing I have learned – you can’t keep running away for ever.’

  He looked as if I had cut him across the face with a whip – it hurt him more than anything else I had said or done. It was meant to.

  Chapter 35

  I heard a shout and galloping hooves as I left the heath to descend to Shadwell. When Matthew caught me up he pointed to a path that led through the copse where I had tethered Patch during the funeral service. No one knew that country better than Matthew, not even Eaton. He had lived on his herbs and his wits for years, travelling on little-known paths between Upper Vale and Oxford. As the rain came down as though it was being poured from pitchers he led me through a wood which became part of the Great Forest. It was slow riding but a much shorter route and, when we reached the spreading impenetrable oaks, gave us some shelter both from the downpour and what might await us at Highpoint.

  We reached the edge of the forest and stared down at the house. The rain had slackened to a steady drizzle, punctuated by large cold splashes dripping from the trees. The moon, when it appeared, threw long black shadows of the house. It was exactly the same moon as the night I was born, Matthew said. I scornfully told him he was imagining things, but so was I, seeing my mother being put in the coach, lurching wildly down that avenue black with rain.

  We forded the river and Matthew led me through a copse where we left our horses and mounds of leaves deadened our approach. Candles were lit in the hall and we saw a maid lighting them in one of the lower rooms. There was no sign of anyone else, and no sound except the occasional distant clatter from the kitchens and the steady patter of rain. We worked our way round to the outermost wing, where I planned to climb up and break through a window, but first I tried a servants’ door. It was open.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ Matthew whispered.

  ‘Listen.’ I pointed towards the stables.

  ‘I hear nothing.’

  ‘Exactly. No horses.’

  ‘They’d leave them out of earshot.’

  I hesitated, but felt the pendant was so close it was pulling me inside. I slipped into the dark passage. There was a smell of stale cooking. After a moment he followed me. Light spilled from an open door and I ducked back as Mrs Adams appeared, throwing some slops into a bucket in the passage. I watched her disappear, shouting at someone: ‘D’you call that clean? Scour it! Scour the soldiers away! Thank the good Lord He’s delivered us from them!’

  We climbed the back stairs, stopping in the shadows at the edge of the gallery, blinking at the light. Every candle in every sconce was lit. Once across it we would be in the maze of dark corridors that led to Frances’s bedroom. I was about to dart across when there was a woman’s cry. It came from a large reception room with double doors across the landing and was followed by a murmur of voices. I jumped back into the shadow of the stairs.

  Eaton came out of the room. I could see Kate, but no one else. It was a miracle. I never thought to see him walking again and ran towards him. He did not look glad to see me, but then he never looked glad to see anyone. I embraced him and he started to say something but it was lost in the sudden tumult of doors opening and swords being drawn.

  ‘You can release him from your fond embrace, Eaton,’ Richard said.

  He leaned against the wall, looking as if he was dressed for court, in a red doublet, over which he wore a short cloak with a jewelled clasp bearing the Stonehouse falcon, which seemed to flutter as he moved. Behind him were several men. At the door of the room from which Eaton had emerged was Captain Gardiner, very much as I first met him in the stink of Smithfield, except his new beaver hat was freshly brushed. He was leaning near the room from which Eaton had emerged, the flame of a candle reflected in the rapier in his hand.

  ‘Where’s the other one?’ Richard said sharply. ‘Idiots! The back stairs!’

  As usual, Matthew had vanished. How he managed it, I did not know, but, I thought sourly, he had had plenty of practice at it. For once I felt glad. They would soon have got out of him where the pendant was. I forgot Matthew, my attention, all my bitter attention, turning on Eaton, who stared just as bitterly back at me. ‘I trusted you,’ I said. ‘I thought you were my friend.’

  ‘You trusted Eaton!’ said Richard incredulously. ‘You thought he was your friend!’

  There was an avalanche of laughter and I realised that all the servants who had been in the congregation that morning had appeared, from doors, down in the hall, halfway up the stairway where the barrel-chested bearded man’s face was split into a wide grin; the cook stood at the door to the back stairs, her vast frame shaking. Like the King, in his attempt to arrest Pym and the other five members in the House, Richard Stonehouse had an acute sense of theatre. Everything had to have style, be part of a performance, to impress upon the people where power lay.

  ‘Eaton has no friends – have you, Eaton?’ Richard said.

  ‘None,’ Eaton said savagely.

  ‘Eaton is the best liar, the best cheat I have ever known, aren’t you, Eaton?’

  Eaton said nothing, but there was a murmur of anger among the servants, and the cook looked about to spit at him.

  ‘I only found out how he had cheated my father for years when I got the papers from that other crook Turville’s chambers. That is why you brought the pretender here, isn’t it, Eaton? Because I threatened to give proof of it to my father.’ There was another burst of anger from the servants, but Richard silenced them with a gesture. ‘But, to be fair, Eaton built up the estate. He is good at contracts, and we made a contract. Bring me him and you can keep your position
. I shall need a good steward.’

  He clapped Eaton on the back. Eaton staggered and I realised how ill he still was, the livid palpitation of his scar the only colour in his face. He gripped the balustrade behind him to steady himself, glancing at the reception room he had emerged from. Following his gaze I saw that Kate was being held by a soldier, who had a knife at her throat. My numbness went. I had been a fool, but not a complete fool.

  Eaton had changed during the journey here – nay, long before that. The thought of Kate, the prospect of seeing her again, had fought with the bitter alienated part of his nature fearful of losing what he had built up over a lifetime. I could now see signs of that struggle during the journey – half-warnings, surly rejections – even welcoming death as preferable to a struggle he had become too exhausted to believe he could ever win or resolve. Then Kate had come to him. Richard no longer had a hold on him, so he had had to take her hostage. I could read this in Eaton’s agonised look towards Kate, in the look he gave me.

  Perhaps Richard picked this up too. His mocking tone went. I saw his father in him then, in the brooding, almost morose manner he put on like a robe. He said there had been a great crime, an attempt to impersonate the family name in which, unfortunately, his father had been almost deceived, before turning on me.

  ‘Where is the pendant?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Answer my lord,’ said Captain Gardiner.

  I said nothing. Perhaps it was the signal from Richard, the movement of his cloak that, in the shifting candlelight, made me think the falcon had struck with a whirr of wings, slashing my cheek with its beak. Gardiner’s rapier was back at rest, the point still quivering before I felt the oozing of blood and its slow trickle down my cheek and neck.

  ‘Where is the pendant?’

  I stared back at him and bit my lip so I would not cry out when the second cut came, but Richard stopped Gardiner and said something to one of his soldiers, who took out his pistol, pointing it at Eaton.

  ‘Take his pistol, Eaton,’ Richard said. Eaton did not move. We were a pair then: me with my fresh cut, and Eaton with his old scar, which seemed to unnerve Richard even then. I remembered Eaton telling me that Lord Stonehouse would threaten his sons that, if they were disobedient, Eaton would come to them in the middle of the night. ‘Take it!’ Richard snapped.

  The sour, rancid smell of Eaton’s sickness hung round me as he removed the pistol from my belt. I swallowed down bile.

  ‘Is it loaded?’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ Eaton replied.

  Richard looked gratified at the form of address. He seemed to need Eaton’s humiliation as much as he needed mine. ‘Cock it.’ The soldier still kept his pistol trained on Eaton as he did so. ‘Eaton’s a good shot, aren’t you, Eaton? I know. The best. You taught me.’

  ‘Thank you, my lord.’

  ‘Stretch out your hand,’ Richard said to me. When I did not move, he said, equably, almost pleasantly, ‘Eaton can shoot you in the elbow or the shoulder, it’s all the same to him, isn’t it, Eaton?’ Eaton nodded indifferently, and raised the pistol. ‘But I deem it more appropriate, because of your seditious pamphlets against King and Church, to remove the offending hand which will, at least, leave you your arm.’

  Slowly, very slowly, I lifted my arm and stretched out my hand, willing it not to tremble, but the cursed thing did so. ‘Wait, Eaton – do not fire until I give you the signal.’ He turned to me. ‘I will spare your hand if you tell me where the pendant is.’

  Torturers have much in common with those who break children. Like Gloomy George, Richard had an instinct for weak spots. I felt my whole life, everything of meaning I had ever done was in that hand; I had written the poem to Anne with it, inked the Grand Remonstrance with those fingers that would not stop shaking. I wanted to shut my eyes but would not give him that pleasure, although the servants were the worst of it: shuffling hurriedly out of the firing line, giggling, whispering, their craning faces like those of people round a pit betting and watching cocks or dogs tear at one another. Only Rose turned away, looking white and sick, but Richard, always with an eye for a pretty face, smiled and beckoned her to the front, as if he was doing her a favour. The soldier pointing his pistol lowered it for a better view, and the man holding the knife to Kate’s throat craned forward.

  Richard said he would give me until the count of five – since I was apprenticed I no doubt knew my numbers? There was a titter of laughter, then total silence as he began to count. When he reached three, counting slowly, leisurely, I could no longer stand it, and tried to speak, to blurt out where the pendant was. He stopped counting. Bile rose in my throat, but my mouth was so dry I could not swallow it and could not speak. He waited. And as he waited he smiled. That smile of triumph welled up in me all the stubbornness and hatred for people like him that years of beatings had bred in me and I would not speak. His smile went and he continued counting. At five I shut my eyes.

  Eaton fired.

  Chapter 36

  I was deafened by the explosion, spun round expecting the blow and the violent, searing pain in my right hand, which I knew would no longer be there. Yet in almost the same moment I was being pushed against the balustrade by Eaton. His lips were moving, but I could not hear a word for the ringing in my ears. Beyond Eaton, I could see the man who had been holding Kate, his one eye staring rigidly from his shattered face as he slowly slipped to the ground. Gardiner was on the floor, trying to retrieve his rapier from amongst the feet of the panic-stricken fleeing servants. Most inexplicable of all, my right hand was still there, bleeding but still there. I realised that Eaton had used the rapt attention of the audience to draw the man holding Kate into a vulnerable position, then had knocked Gardiner down with the discharged pistol.

  I winced as the hearing rushed back to my ears. ‘Jump!’ Eaton yelled. Richard’s determination to discredit me before the servants now told against him as they ran, screaming and pushing towards the stairway, blocking the efforts of his soldiers to reach me. I scrambled up on to the balustrade to jump down into the hall below, expecting Eaton to follow me. But he ran to Kate. A soldier aimed his pistol at Eaton’s back. I jumped back down from the rail into the gallery, sending the soldier sprawling, his shot hitting a candle sconce, spraying shards of glass and molten wax down on Richard as he came at me with his sword. I ran to the room where Kate was, just before Eaton slammed the doors, shoving a table under the handles. Kate looked about to remonstrate with him but, realising it would be useless, helped me bring up more furniture to block the door.

  ‘I told you to jump!’ Eaton yelled at me.

  ‘You’ve saved my life too many times for me not to repay the compliment.’

  ‘I told you! Only fools are heroes. There’s an ante room – a window – go.’

  Lifting a chair, he almost lost his balance. I caught him. His face was parchment yellow, and I could hear the violent thudding of his heart, in tune with his palpitating scar, which seemed to be opening up his whole face. But his manner was as surly as ever, his voice almost a snarl. ‘I didn’t do it for you. Don’t think it! I did it for the estate. Everything – even the thieving – was to keep the estate together, to stop them mortgaging it piece by piece. I realised too late you are the one to do that – go.’

  He shoved me away so violently I fell near the body of the soldier who had been guarding Kate.

  ‘Here – this way! Quick, Tom!’ Kate opened the door to an ante room as there was a shot, the ball tearing a hole in the door and sending one of the handles flying. Eaton attempted to hold the makeshift barrier together with his failing weight but the table grated back inexorably and one of the doors jerked open, catapulting a soldier into the room. Eaton struck him with a chair.

  I was scrambling up to run into the ante room when Gardiner lunged over the remains of the barrier. I saw the tip of his sword come through Eaton’s back before Gardiner withdrew it. Kate was shouting at me but I made nothing of the words, for Eaton still stood the
re, only staggering a little. I suppose, from our journey together, I had grown to think him invulnerable. Perhaps everyone in some measure thought that, for there was a brief silence, a stillness. He was like a great tree which, after no matter how many blows, shows no inclination to fall. He was still holding the chair with which he had struck the soldier, and he made a movement to strike back at Gardiner. Then the chair dropped, and, slowly, he fell.

  All I could see was Richard’s triumphant face in the doorway. I seized the sword from the dead soldier and ran at him. I had none of Gardiner or Richard’s fancy Italian swordsmanship. If the Trained Band taught anything, it was the old-fashioned cut and thrust. But I had foolishness, plenty of that, and blind rage at the sight of Eaton falling, a great deal of that, as well as a liberal dash of surprise and leapt on the table, bringing the sword down on him. For a moment he staggered, but I had been deceived by the billowing cloak as he ducked away, giving him no more than a glancing blow in the arm, before the cloak twisted my sword away and I was dragged from the table. If Richard wanted to demonstrate to the servants that I was the lowest of low life I gave him full measure then. I returned, as if there had been no interval of time between now and then, to how I had been when George first locked me in the cellar, screaming and kicking and biting and scratching until, I suppose, I was like the wild animal Eaton had been before the Stonehouses subdued him.

  I believe – I was slipping in and out of consciousness – Richard intended to hold the trial the next day, but a mud-splashed messenger arrived, telling him he had to leave early in the morning. I was kicked and jeered at and told the King was going to have his own again: there was to be a great battle in Warwickshire and what a pity I would not be there to take part in it.