Plague
LSO BY
C.C. H
UMPHREYS
The French Executioner
Blood Ties
Vlad: The Last Confession
Absolute Honour
The Hunt of the Unicorn
Jack Absolute: A Novel
A Place Called Armageddon
The Blooding of Jack Absolute
Shakespeare’s Rebel
A
S
C
HRIS
H
UMPHREYS
The Fetch
Vendetta
Possession
Copyright © 2014 C.C. Humphreys
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.
Doubleday Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Humphreys, C. C. (Chris C.), author
Plague / C.C. Humphreys.
ISBN
978-0-385-67992-3 (bound)
ISBN
978-0-385-67993-0 (epub)
I. Title.
PS8565.U5576P54 2014 C813′.6 C2013-906370-6
C2013-906371-4
Cover photograph © Malgorzata Maj/Arcangel Images
Map on
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this page
© Darren Bennett
Image on
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© Getty Images/NYPL Science Source;
on
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© Getty Images/Culture Club
Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House company
v3.1
To Ingegerd Humphreys
.
Miss Oslo. Spy. Mother. Friend. Much missed
.
Five years after his restoration to the throne, after a decade of glum Puritanism, Charles II leads his citizens by example, enjoying every excess. Many Londoners flock to the reopened places of entertainment: the cockpits, the brothels, the theatres—where for the first time women may perform onstage alongside the men.
For some citizens, though, the wounds of the Civil Wars, which ended with the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the triumph of Oliver Cromwell and Parliament, have never healed. Especially bitter are radical Christians, those dissenters who enjoyed a brief tolerance under Cromwell and who are again persecuted. For them this liberated age has turned London into Babylon and many dream of an Apocalypse to purge the realm of sin.
Some do more than dream.
With its rambling streets, its great mansions, its fetid tenements, London is a city of contrasts. There is not enough clean water; there is too much garbage, there are too many rats. Refugees from Holland and France live ten to a room beside the English, who resent them.
The city is a labyrinth. At its centre sleeps a monster. When the time is right, that monster will wake. And it will want to feed.
The monster is the Great Plague.
THE HIGHWAYMEN
Captain William Coke
Dickon, his adopted boy
Swift Jack
Maclean
O’Toole
THE THIEF-TAKER AND FAMILY
Pitman
Bettina, his wife
Josiah, their son
Grace, Faith, Imogen, their daughters
RESIDENTS OF ST. GILES IN THE FIELDS
Abel Strong, butcher
Little Dot
Mrs. Queek
Clancy, parish friend of John Chalker
Gentle George, pimp
“Lizzie,” whore
THE PLAYERS
Sarah Chalker
John Chalker, her husband
Lucy Absolute
Thomas Betterton
THE COURT AND THE NOBLES
King Charles II
James, Duke of York
Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
Sir Charles Sedley
Roland, Lord Garnthorpe
Frances Stuart
Barbara Castlemaine
Winifred Wells
THE FIFTH MONARCHY MEN
Simeon Critchollow—Brother S.
Hezekiah Chambers
OTHERS
Colonel Wingate, magistrate, Finchley
Sir Griffith Rich, member of Parliament
Lady Rich
Aitcheson, attendant at the playhouse
Isaac ben Judah, goldsmith
Maggs, servant to Lord Garnthorpe
Mrs. Philips
The Coachman
Mrs. Chambers
The Doctor
Eye Patch, gambler
Tobias Sym, informer
Mistress Proctor, the searcher
Macready
Tombes, the ironmonger
James Morrow, headborough of the parish
Turvey, royal cook
Various Saints, jailers, guards, link boys, servants, searchers, boat men, playwrights.