Plague (4 page)

With difficulty because it was slick and wedged between teeth, Pitman plucked it from the man’s mouth. A stone, some kind of quartz. He pocketed it as well. Then, just before he backed out of the carriage, he did something he knew he would later struggle to explain. He wiped the Roman numerals off the panel.

Pitman had blocked the entire doorway and the man behind had to step off the running board to allow him out. “Well, sir?” the colonel snapped. “Will you now let me see?”

“Let me caution you first—”

“Caution, pish!” replied the man, shoving past. “I’ve been in more battles than you’ve had—”

As the cry came, the first hoarse half prayer, Pitman went to Josiah, who stood with his face pressed against his horse’s neck. “Mount, boy.”

“Should I not see, Father?”

“Nay, you should not.” He helped his son up into the saddle. “Let us go home.”

A few hours’ rest, if no sleep, in the stable of the inn, and they left at the first hint of light. An hour’s ride brought them to Cripplegate Without and the farrier’s where they’d hired their mounts. Cripplegate itself was just being unbarred, so they passed through and walked into the City down Wood Street. Halfway along it, the pavement before some especially handsome merchants’ houses was being washed down. This did not stop a man—drunk, no doubt, despite the early hour—from lurching out of an alley, preceded by his vomit. He collapsed onto the ground, moaning. Pitman and his son stepped around him. As they neared their home, church bells began to toll, the first summons to Sunday worship. Pitman could distinguish among them the distinct bass tones of Old Toby, which stood in the tower of St. Leonard’s, their parish church.

The smile that always came at this sound of home went as he turned the last corner into Cock Alley and paused before their dwelling. We’ll have to return to a single room and a poorer parish, he thought, if I don’t take another thief soon.

They climbed to the first floor. She was awake, of course. One girl at her breast, two more round her feet. Ten years after Josiah, certain that God had withdrawn that blessing, Grace arrived. Then Faith, then Imogen. Blessings in abundance, and two more on the way.

“Success, Pitman?” Bettina asked.

He shook his head, too tired to speak. She sighed, and took the children into the only other room. The door closed softly on their son’s renewed weeping.

Pitman walked toward his horsehair sleeping chair, then went past it, to the book on the window ledge. He drew Cock’s pistol from his pocket and set it down before lifting the Bible. It fell open to his touch, as it always did, to the same page, for he had had this copy since his time with the Ranters, that mad sect of drinkers, cursers, smokers, and dancers he and Bettina had run with for a time after the wars. Ranters were much taken with this book especially, for the Revelation of St. John the Divine was the most sacred of all texts. Indeed, it supported one of their fundamental beliefs, for it spoke of the imminent end of the world. With that so near, the Ranters reasoned, why face it wearing clothes?

Revelation 12:12.

As soon as he traced the verse he knew it, as he knew many of them, by heart: “For the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.”

He ran his hand over his shaven head and stared at the window before him, not seeing through it. He had something else in his pocket, but he was too tired to remember what it was.

When he walked into the yard, there was a crowd around the well. He did not wish to wait and he never had to, for as soon as he was spotted, the cries began: “Why, look! Look! It’s Abel Strong!” In a moment, they were all pressing round him. They knew not to jostle him, but their hands hovered near his smock.

He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “It’s there, good neighbours,” he said. “Just inside the arch.”

He continued to the well as the crowd ran past. Behind him, the scrapping began for the bounty he’d brought. Meat fell from his cart to the ground but was snatched up, wiped down. Nothing ever went wasted in Carrier Court.

Strong smiled as he lowered the well bucket, hauled up the water. They loves a butcher in St. Giles, he thought. No one minds how much water I pours over me. No one says nothing. He closed his eyes and let the cool liquid flow over himself.

The blood from the shambles covered him. So he kept dipping,
hauling, pouring. The red water ran off him, onto the flagstones, into the gutter channel. A baby sat beside that, abandoned while the meat rush was on; she laughed at the flood, trying to stem it with skinny fingers.

As Abel scrubbed his smock with the stiff brush he always carried, he ran over the words again, trying to make them into a song. He’d always liked songs; they was easy to remember. Some of these words was hard to fit, though. Big words. Each had a colour and he matched them as he said each name.

“ ‘The first foundation was ja-sper,’ ” he sang. “ ‘The second stone is sa-ph-ire. The third, that’s chalc-chalc-chalc-e-dony.’ ” He paused. He liked the sound of that one. “ ‘A chalc-chalc-chalc-e-dony’s quartz,’ ” he continued. “ ‘Could be gre-een, could be blu-ooh. Could be a tiger’s eye, aye, aye.’ ”

He liked that too. The tiger was a fierce beast, it was said. Could tear a carcass apart swifter than he could, and he was as swift as a butcher got. Perhaps I’m part tiger, he thought, and laughed. The baby looked up, laughed too. She’d found some scrap in the gutter and waved it about. He waved his brush back at her.

A last bucketful, a final good scrub, and he was done. Clean and shivering, still dripping, he walked to the stairwell. He passed children on the stairs, sprawled with kittens and puppies. He frowned. He didn’t like animals. Perhaps it was his trade. He hated cats special.

He hadn’t noticed her in the mob, but he heard her following him up the stairs. She caught up at their door. “ ’Allo, Little Spot,” he said, not looking. He heard her giggle as he pushed into the room.

“That’s Dot, not Spot—you know tha’.” The girl followed him in and he saw that she had the baby from the gutter on her hip. She set her down by another on the floor and the two babes began to struggle for whatever the one still held.

He waited for the question that always came: “Save somethin’ special f’r us, did ya, Mr. Strong?”

He made a little show of searching under his apron. Then he pretended to startle as he slowly pulled out a bone, watching her eyes widen. “A mutton leg,” he said, handing it to her, observing her bend a little under its weight. “Straight in the pot, now.”

He and Little Dot, her two sisters and their mother shared one of maybe five rooms in the whole of Carrier Court with a fireplace that still worked. Some of the other rooms held ten—fifteen people, if the inhabitants was Irish or gypsy. Mrs. Queek, Dot’s ma, always had pots on the go, cooking for others. The coins from that, and the little he handed over each week, kept them separate from the crowd.

Dot stepped past the two babies on the floor, lifted a lid on a cauldron near as big as her and crammed in the haunch. “Ma, you should see what Mr. Strong ’as brung us,” she called. “It’s an ’ole sheep.”

She laughed again. But all that came from the other side of the hanging blanket was a groan. Dot’s smile vanished. “Our ma’s not well, Mr. Strong. Not well.”

“Is she not?”

Another blanket separated out his side of the room. He stepped behind it now. Nothing much there except the cot, a basin, other clothes hung on a hook.

He stared at them, till her voice came. “Are you ready for us, Mr. Strong?”

“Wait.”

He pulled the apron over his head, hung it on a hook. The room was warmer than most because of the fire, but still he shivered in his wet clothes. Still, he wasn’t ready to change. Not quite yet.

He sat down on the cot. “Come,” he said.

A hand appeared, her pale face above it. “Will ya ’ave a look at ’er, Mr. Strong? ’As a terrible headache, she says. And the sweats.”

“Afterwards.”

She moved closer to him. “You’re all wet.”

“Don’t matter.” He patted his thighs.

She giggled, then sat on him. “Ooh,” she said, wriggling a little. “Lucky the fire’s goin’.” She put one arm around his shoulder. With her free hand, she pushed a curl of wet hair from the forehead she then began to stroke. “Which one?” she asked.

“You know which one.”

He closed his eyes. She began to sing:

The singing was high-pitched, trembling, sweet enough, even if she pronounced the words like any girl from St. Giles. Tiny grimy fingers continued to stroke his forehead. She sang the verse three times, just as he liked, and then she sang, “ ‘I leaned my back up against a young oak,’ ” so he could lean his back against the wall, while her hand on his face became another’s. One that was not grimy at all but clean, gentle to touch. And the voice?

The voice also became another’s.

“Mama,” he breathed, seeing her, though he did not open his eyes. Her auburn hair flowed over her shoulders within her nightdress. Her dark eyes filled with love as she sang the next verses. For him. Only for him.

“ ‘And fades away like the morning dew.’ ” He sang with her on that last repeated line. And though his mind cleared as the song ended and he knew where he was, still he wanted to linger with her. “Again,” he whispered. “Sing it again.”

But someone was calling them away. He could see the sadness in her eyes as she rose from his lap. “Don’t go, Mama,” he said, reaching out. “Don’t go to him.”

“I have to.” Her cool, clean fingers were on his lips now. “I must obey him.”

“I ’ave to,” she said.

Not her. The other had returned. He opened his eyes. Little Dot was standing at the blanket.

“I ’ave to, Mr. Strong. Sorry, but Ma needs me. I’ll be back, don’t you fear.”

She left. The blanket dropped back. He heard retching, then groans from beyond it. He stood, stripped off his wet clothes, dropping the rough shirt, the hand-knitted stockings and the wool drawers to the floor. Dot’s ma would get to them in time. They would always be pink from his trade, he didn’t expect white, but lye took out the worst of the stains. She’d scrub ’em, hang ’em on the hedgerows along Tottenham Court Road to dry. Ready for his
next time in the shambles. Sick or not, she wouldn’t want to let him down.

He dressed. The feel of these fresh clothes was good. Nothing fancy. Dry. Better made.

A hand reached round the blanket. “I’m back.”

“Come, then.”

She came, glanced up at him for a moment, then slipped little fingers under his doublet and began to hook it nimbly to the breeches.

He gazed down at her. Fleas crawled in her hair. Finishing the last hook, she spoke again. “Will you look at ’er now? She chucked, but I cleaned it up.”

Silk on skin. Scratches on a shoulder, where a woman had raked him. Fleas on a girl’s head. He felt dizzy, swayed, steadied himself against the wall. “I will,” he replied.

She left. He scratched at the grey stubble on his head, then set his broad-peaked hat upon it, covered himself with a grey cloak, tied a scarf around his neck and stepped around the blanket. “Let’s have a look,” he said, passing between Mrs. Queek’s crawling babies, now playing with kittens on the floor. Another litter? There were more cats in Carrier Court than rats. Toeing one aside, he put his hand upon the other blanket. “Mrs. Queek,” he called, “may I enter?”

No reply. He tugged the blanket aside.

Little Dot is right, he thought. Her mother is not well. The eyes, which flickered open as he bent over her, were sunk deep in her fever-red face. “I’m sick, sir,” she whispered. “Me bones are cold, but I’m sweatin’. And me ’ead—” she clutched it “—feels like someone ’as knives in there.”

He had no need to bend any closer. She had a stench to her that he’d smelled before, years before. Her blouse was open—for the
sweats, he supposed—and he glimpsed a small oval mark on one vast breast.

He knew it was not a bruise.

He was still holding the hanging blanket. Stepping back, he let it drop before retying the scarf around his lower face. Then he reached into a pocket and pulled out a silver half crown. Dot’s eyes went wide. He stooped to her, holding it up. “You know the apothecary’s next to the Maid in the Moon?” She nodded. “Run there and buy a bottle called Dragon’s Water. Give it your ma. Also buy some wormwood. That’s to burn on your grate.”

“Yes, sir. Oh, thank you, sir.”

She grabbed the coin, but he did not let it go, looked at the girl over it. She might be lucky, he thought. If she is not, what will I do? He looked a moment longer, then released the half crown, realizing that he knew. In St. Giles, there would always be a little girl willing to learn songs for meat.

He turned at the door and spoke through his scarf. “Oh, and Little Dot?” he said.

“Yes, Mr. Strong?”

“Kill all the cats.”

May 10, 1665

When the prompter’s whistle blew, everyone upon the stage froze.

Is it me? Sarah thought. Oh God, let it not be me
again
!

She looked at the other two players. Lucy Absolute’s mouth was already twitching, about to rise into the smile that would inevitably lead to the giggles to which she was so prone; while John Chalker, her John, her rock on the platform and beyond it, was staring at her, the huge and bushy eyebrows scarce seen in nature but affixed to emphasize his character’s bluster now joining and parting like a signal whose import was obvious. It’s your line, they flashed. For the love of Christ, speak it!