Plague

by C. C. Humphreys

  He looked down at the jiggling white of the milk’s surface. Bettina would be pleased. More so, if Josiah sent word by a street urchin that Coke was in the shop, or followed him if he swiftly left. He’d trained his boy well in those skills. Once the murderer’s lair was found, Pitman would be there in minutes and had hopes that the taking would be easy.

  Still … Pitman shook his head. A vision of the interior of the carriage had returned. Someone who slaughtered like that? Who daubed the numbers for apocalyptic verses on the wall in victims’ blood? That man would not come easily. For he was no longer a man. He was a monster.

  Pitman spilled a little milk, cursed himself for his clumsiness. Yet he knew he would not be clumsy in this: he would be ready for Captain Cock, however he found him.

  “ ‘I am become, as it were, a monster unto many,’ ” he murmured, but for once the psalm did not calm him.

  So he gripped his cudgel a little tighter.

  “Monster,” he whispered.

  John Chalker dangled from the manacles, his hands high above him. Both shoulders were dislocated, but that had become a lesser pain among the many, many others. There was some relief in the unconsciousness into which he was slipping more and more, though nightmares always arrived fast. He’d had them since the wars. Yet all the horrors he saw in his sleep were as nothing compared to those when he woke. And what always woke him swiftest was the sound of footsteps upon the cellar stair. As now.

  He had managed to rub the silk scarf again from his mouth. He could breathe easier through his mouth than through his smashed nose. Half the time he’d thought he’d drown in his own blood. Many times he’d prayed that he would.

  When Abel Strong had discovered John, scarf out and screaming, he had cut out his tongue. He had laughed when he put the scarf back, knowing how useless it now was. But, for a brief moment, John had sensed perhaps some concern from this tormentor he could not see through the blindfold. For dangling there he had heard something—faint cries from the cockpit nearby, conveyed underground along some channel, through some crumbled brick. If he heard the gamblers, then maybe in their rare silences they might hear him. Maybe Clancy would come to collect that drink.

  He hadn’t heard them again after the butcher took his ears.

  The footsteps stopped. His blindfold was jerked off. The flame within the gated lantern was low but still hurt his eyes, especially the one missing the eyelid. He could not see the face of his torturer beyond the little light; had never seen him, had only heard his voice, felt his attentions. Still, he would not look down. Since he knew he was dying, all John Chalker had left was defiance.

  The lantern, its metal heated, was brought close enough to elicit instant pain to all the places he had been burned. “Well, you are a carcass and no mistake. Fresh meat, eh? Nothin’ like it.” The man sniffed. “She was very happy, Little Dot, with the stew I made. ‘They don’t look like pig’s ears, Mr. Strong,’ she says, when I flung ’em in the pot. ‘Oh, but they is,’ I replies. ‘A right porker they comes from.’ ”

  His lamp went lower. Chalker winced as heat neared his groin. “What I don’t understand is ’ow you is a Christian, when I’d heard your wife was a Jewess.”

  John had guessed that his tormentor must work for Garnthorpe, the man who had led him into this trap. And Sarah had said that when Garnthorpe accosted her, he’d asked if she was Jewish. So this confirmed John’s guess. Anger surged, and if he could no longer defend his wife from his lordship, at least he could defy the man’s minion.

  As the lamp rose again, he collected all the caked blood and broken teeth in his mouth and spat them full into what he hoped was the other’s face. There was a satisfying cry. The butcher staggered back, the light swinging high to the ceiling. John waited for the punishment that would come, hoping he had done enough to provoke a violence that would end his agony. But he heard only the sounds of the lantern being placed on the floor, then wiping. Finally, a laugh.

  “Well. Lucky I was wearing my apron, eh?”

  John’s chin was forced up. “As I was sayin’, my friend doesn’t like the idea that the woman he admires married out of her faith. Wants you, ’er husband—her first husband—to belong to ’er tribe.” He sniffed. “Can’t be formal about the ceremony. Don’t know the words. But perhaps—” and here he reached down and took John’s cock in his hand “—perhaps we can make you one of them in another way.”

  He released him. The lamp spill came halfway up the bloodied leather apron, and through his one ever-open eye, John could see the man’s hand dip into his pouch. He tensed, waiting to see what new horror would be drawn from it. And when he saw his own razor, the one he’d planned to use to mark Lord Garnthorpe, he could not hold back his moan.

  “That’s right,” Abel Strong said, “I’ve finally found a use for your little tool.”

  Dipping her quill, Sarah wrote the third of the locations on its own piece of paper. She lifted it, blew lightly and, once sure the ink was dry, rolled it and placed it beside the other two. Then she mixed up the papers, looked again. The three tiny scrolls, no longer than her little finger, were identical. She could not know which had which name upon it.

  She took the first of them and pushed it into the hollow end of their lodging’s large door key. Then she inserted the key in her Bible. The quote it touched from Matthew had seemed suitable: “Again the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field.”

  She uttered the shortest of prayers: “Guide me, Lord.” Then did something of which no priest would approve. Thinking of whom she sought, she spoke.

  “Where are you, John?”

  She picked up the Bible, waited. But it remained steady in her hand. So she drew the paper from the key, did not unfold to read it, put it carefully aside. She did the same with the next scroll. Still no response. Before inserting the last scroll, she hesitated. If nothing happened, she did not know what she would do next.

  She lifted the Bible. Nothing happened; she had not been answered. Then, just as she went to lay it down again, she could no longer hold it. It was as if her fingers were forced open. The book fell hard upon the table, the key spilling out. She reached for it, removed the scroll, laid it beside the others. Even though only the last gave the answer, she opened the first scroll first, hoping.

  It said “Dice House.”

  So John was not gambling.

  With trembling fingers, she opened the second scroll. Exhaled the word—“Whorehouse”—on a relieved breath.

  He was not lying in some brothel.

  She knew what was upon the third paper, but she reached for it anyway.

  “ ‘Cockpit,’ ” she read aloud.

  She had already been to his favourite one that afternoon, a swanky establishment in Shoe Lane. Women often waited outside the doors of such places, demanding their men, and other men conspired to hide their own. Then a baronet’s son she knew a little from the theatre undertook to search for her at the cost of a kiss and a fondle. She let him, and he returned shortly: no John Chalker within and not seen there for many a day.

  There was one other place to try. This one she’d have to enter herself.

  She rose, pulled her most worn black cloak over her plainest brown smock. She didn’t think it would do much good—only a certain type of woman ever ventured inside a cockpit and whatever her clothes, she would be assumed to be one of those. Yet go she must. Anything was better than sitting and waiting for the news that John Chalker’s body had been pulled out of the Fleet.

  Using the key for its proper purpose, she locked their door and began walking up Sheere Lane. She would take High Holborn and stay better lit as long as she could, before she once more entered the gloomy alleys she’d grown up in.

  As she swung up Maynard Street, she caught again that unique savour, the stench of St. Giles, and tucked her nose into her cloak. She rarely went there, though she lived less than half a mile away, unless she had to. As now. Soon enough she was standing before the cockpit in Maidenhead L
ane. John used to frequent it when they still lived near, before they were taken on at the playhouse.

  It was the cocking time of night. Nine by the toll of the old church, answered by a hand bell rung within. No one was paying any attention to the door and she slipped inside.

  It was an old warehouse, cavernous and dark except in its very middle, where it was near as bright as noonday due to the number of candles studded into an iron candelabra. It must have only just been hoisted, for it still swung to and fro, lighting the sanded arena and the raised benches that bounded it on four sides, four rows high on each riser. Every inch of bench was taken, with more people seeking to perch a buttock on each end. People pushed to reach the sand, or climbed on the shoulders of a neighbour to see. The swinging light lit now one side, now the other, each filled with the jostling, yelling crowd. Large men patrolled the squared perimeter of knee-high wooden boards, and if anyone fell over the barrier, they quickly lifted him and threw him atop the crowd wedged into the corners.

  Everyone was shouting—some the changing odds, some the exchange of bets, some encouraging the two cockerels now being brought in from opposite sides. The birds were held firmly around their middles, their shrouded heads bobbing on long necks, already scenting their opponents, despite the stew of smells.

  Sarah, perched up on a splintered wooden pillar, scanned the ranks for John Chalker, to no avail. Behind her, back from the benches, the few women present were waiting for the fight to be over, adjusting their blouses to reveal their bosoms more fully, ready to celebrate with winners or console losers. Some took the chance to cram food down; others drank from flasks.

  One looked up just as Sarah noted her and in a moment was across. “By the pox, what you doin’ ’ere?” She pulled Sarah down, scanned her clothes. “We don’t like amateurs ’ere.”

  “It’s not what you think,” replied Sarah, freeing her arm. “I’m looking for my, for a man. His name’s John Chalker.”

  “I don’t give a floozie’s fuck who you’re lookin’ for. You get out now.” She jabbed a finger into Sarah’s breast. “Get out, or I’ll—” Behind her, the shouting had built to a crescendo. The bell rang, the whore turned to it—and Sarah slipped fast away, disappearing into the shadows against the warehouse walls. She could still see into the cockpit, and searched the benches she had not been able to scan before.

  In the arena, two birds leaped high, wings beating, feet lashing, candlelight glimmering on the spurs attached to their ankles. John had trained cocks; she had seen the equipment lying about. The curved blades, four inches in length, were sharpened to a razor’s edge. If the bird struck right, it would cut off an opponent’s leg. Or worse.

  As here. To screams of delight and despair, both cocks fell to the sand. One bird was up in a moment, crowing, head raised, wings flapping. The other was squat on the sand, blinking at its own severed wing.

  Immediately the benches cleared, as the gamblers retired to the wider area to consider the printed list of combatants, check odds, drink—and some to seek other pleasures. Sarah could see the women among the men, their brighter colours like a cock’s comb.

  She shut her eyes, leaned against the back wall—and just as she touched the stone, a feeling came, a stab in her chest painful enough to make her clutch herself there. “Is that you, John?” she murmured. “Are you near, my love?”

  She heard a voice then, one she recognized. Not her husband’s.

  “There she is!” said the whore who’d noticed her earlier. “That’s the bitch tryin’ to cozen us.”

  A hand closed over Sarah’s arm, pulled her out of the gloom. A man looked down, sweat shining in candlelight on his pudgy, pockmarked face. “You were correct, my Lizzie,” he said. “She’s a pretty one, all right.” Fingers twisted into her flesh, yanking her face nearer to his, cheap whisky wafting with his next words. “A prime pullet, sure. Not a pox mark on her.” He said this to two men just behind him, who muttered agreements. The man took his lower lip between stained teeth, appraising her. “You could do well here, my Lizzie. But you’d need protection. No lady works alone.”

  “What you doin’, George? I brung ya to warn ’er off, not recruit ’er. Let me.”

  Without releasing Sarah, barely glancing, the man backhanded the whore across her face. “You go back to work now,” he spat. “I want a crown from you tonight before you take one penny ’ome to your brats.”

  The whore slunk away. “Don’t worry about her, my Lizzie,” he said, “I’ll protect you from ’er and all.”

  Sarah jerked her arm from his grasp. “You have mistook me, sir,” she said, stepping away.

  He caught her elbow, wrenched her back. “Everything’s for sale here, my Lizzie,” he said, his voice harder. “Everything and everyone. But I’ll need to check your qualities. My customers demand it. You’re pretty enough to be a boy under all that cloth.” He grinned. “And they pays less for a boy.”

  She’d known where she was coming, the risk of it. But she did not take the risk unprepared. She’d grown up on these streets and escaped worse than him. So she struck fast.

  He looked down, at the line of red oozing across his knuckles. “She’s cut me! Bitch has cut me!”

  Sarah palmed her knife, tried to move away. But one of the cronies had stepped around, and he grabbed, pinning her. The man she’d cut bent, prised the weapon from her grasp, held it up. “A perfect little blade,” he hissed, then nodded at the man who held her. “Take her in the back. No one cuts Gentle George and gets away with it.”

  Wrapping arms around her mouth and chest, they began to drag her toward a dark corner.

  “Though someone must. Get away with it. Now and again.”

  Sarah had heard the voice before but could not place it. As she turned her head to the sound, she saw a flash of metal, felt something pass her ear, some whoosh of air, followed by a grunt as the man who held her let go of her mouth, released the arm around her chest. She stumbled forward, glanced up in time to see Captain Coke, his sword drawn fully now. Realizing that earlier he must have drawn it just enough to drive its pommel into her captor’s skull.

  That man was down, groaning in the rushes; the other had vanished. Only Gentle George stood there, sucking his bleeding hand, his other groping his belt, at Sarah’s knife thrust in there. But just as he touched it, the captain’s sword rose and stopped a finger’s width before his eye. Could the man see, she wondered, even in this gloom, how the steel tip wavered not at all?

  “Now, why would you want to do that, sir, when the birds are about to have at it?”

  The bell had rung. The man’s hand hovered, then moved slowly away from the weapon. He took a step backward. “We’ll meet again, my Lizzie,” he said.

  “I would not hope for that,” Sarah replied, jerking her blade from his belt, “for next time I might take more than a little blood.”

  He glared at them both, then turned swiftly about and made for the tumult.

  “Come, Mrs. Chalker.” Coke sheathed his sword and nodded toward the entrance. When Sarah hesitated, he added, “Your husband is not here. I searched for some time before I noted your arrival. Please. Else Gentle George might muster both courage and friends.”

  She slipped the knife up her sleeve. “You have been kind, sir. I would appreciate your kindness still.”

  “Well.” He nodded again to the entrance. They got to it just as the hand bell ceased ringing, as the last great shout for bets sounded, followed hard by the shriek of fighting birds.

  The gates of the warehouse closed behind them, shutting out some of its noise. A light rain had begun, together with a fitful wind, bringing a slight sweetness to the streets. She breathed it in, trying to clear her nose of the stench of the pit and the air. With all that had happened within, she felt giddy. She swayed into Coke. “I am sorry, sir,” she said.

  He reached up and held her. “How long is it since you have eaten, madam? How long since you truly slept?”

  “I do not recall either with a
ny clarity.”

  “Then let me suggest that you do both straightaway. Leave me alone this night to inquire, to explore certain other places where a man can easier go alone.”

  She heard the emphasis he gave to the word. Like a player, she thought. “You are right, sir,” she said, standing upright, stepping away from his arms. “I need a little food, a little sleep, before I resume the search. Both can be had at my lodgings.”

  “I will escort you there.”

  “That will not be necessary. It is not far and—” she looked around “—we grew up on these streets, John Chalker and I. I do not fear them. And if you are willing to keep to the task?” She hesitated, then added, “I sensed him, sir. Before. In there. I feel he is somewhere near.”

  “Then I will seek him here.”

  “Thank you, sir. Well then, good night and good fortune.” She started to go, realizing just how exhausted she was. Then a thought turned her back to him. “I am curious, Captain, as to why you undertake this. You are a gentleman and this—” she glanced around “—this cannot be your world.”

  “They might surprise you, madam, the worlds I inhabit. As to why?” He ran finger and thumb over his moustache. “Well, Lucy is as dear to me as you are to her. So—” he coughed “—so there we have it.”

  “Do we?” She smiled. “Then come to me at any hour, Captain. With news, I hope.”

  “As do I. And please, next time we meet, do call me William.”

  He removed his wide-brimmed hat and bowed in that old-fashioned style. Like something off the stage, she thought again, as she walked away.