Plague

by C. C. Humphreys

  “To oar,” he cried, and the black man laid down his rope and slid oars into the rowlocks. Coke put one leg upon the skiff, dropped in the rope, turned and shouted, “Run!”

  Despite the tumult, Dickon heard him and sped up. But so did the giant behind him, his stride doubling in length, his mouth wide to bellow, “A thief! A thief! Make way!” Some did not hear, nor clear; others froze. One porter stopped directly in the path and Dickon slid under his arms, skating, barely breaking step. His pursuer could not duck so low, nor slip around, and his velocity was too great on a slope slick with scales and guts. He smashed into the porter and both went down.

  Dickon ran into his captain’s arms. “Fish! Fish! Fish! Whish!” he cried, laughing.

  In a moment Coke had him swung into the skiff. The next he followed, and shoved them off from the dock, nearly capsizing the boat as he leaped in. “Heh,” yelped the rower, struggling with his oars. Then he had them right, and a few strokes pushed them away.

  Not too soon. Heavy boots thumped onto the jetty. Coke looked at the man, even larger now he was so close, anguish on his heavily bearded face as he stretched an arm out at them. But he said nothing, just wheeled and began seeking something. A skiff himself, Coke suspected, but did not see as they steered around a fishing boat coming in and the market was lost to his sight. Indeed, it was frustrating what a devious route they were forced to take, swirling around vessels swirling in, others of every shape and size also heading out, his boatman in constant argument for right of way. At last they emerged from the chaos, his man pulling strongly for the centre stream, and Coke could look back. Criss-crossing traffic still obscured everything. Then it cleared, and he saw a wherry shoot out between other boats. There were two men rowing it, and when one turned for direction, Coke saw again the bearded face of his pursuer.

  He regarded the blackamoor. Gravesend was a two-hour row at the least. They would be overtaken, undoubtedly. Overtaken before they reached the Surrey shore! Cursing, he looked the other way to the bridge. He could see the turbulent water between its piers. London beyond. His streets. “There!” he shouted, pointing.

  The oarsman, in the midst of swinging the stern downriver, glanced where Coke pointed, then jerked his head the opposite way. “Grave-es-end,” he said, his voice a bass rumble.

  “Change,” Coke replied. “Savoy Stairs.”

  The man looked again, then shook his head. “Tide turn. Now race too strong under bridge.” He shrugged. “We can die.”

  Coke kept one gold sovereign sewn into the hem of his cloak for only the most pressing of matters. He ripped the stitching away, squeezed the coin out, held it up. “Savoy Stairs?”

  The man’s eyes went wide. But he shook his head. “We can die,” he said again.

  “We can always do that,” Coke replied, and drew a pistol from within his cloak. “Go.”

  The man spat out a word in his own language. But the half cocking of the gun made him move. He swung the oars to steady his craft and turned the stern to face London Bridge. Glancing back, the captain saw his pursuer make the same adjustment.

  The blackamoor began to pull hard. They would reach the bridge first, be the first to run the race. Beside him, Dickon could barely keep himself on the cramped bench but lifted and dropped, lifted and dropped, till Coke laid firm hold of him. The boy squirmed, giggling with delight. His guardian kept him tight as the bridge got rapidly nearer, as he felt the push and tug of water under the bows. Coke knew they both could swim—and that swimming would not help them here at all.

  From the middle of the bridge to its northern end was a large gap where fire had consumed the houses some decades past. But before that end one building had been rebuilt and in the arches nearest it, wheels turned to pump water for the New River Company. They revolved furiously now and it was at the empty arch nearest to them that his boatman aimed, closest then to the City shore, though to Coke this arch did not look to contain any less a maelstrom than did any of the others.

  The tide now had them. Uncocking his pistol and then putting it away—the boat could not be more committed than it was, nor the boatman—he wrapped a second arm around Dickon.

  “Whee!” the boy yelled, as the shadow of the bridge fell over them and water surged around.

  Pitman watched his quarry slip under the arch, vanishing in spray. “Pull harder!” he shouted.

  Instead the man lifted his oars from the water. “Can’t go in from this side, friend, not now,” he said. “Too bloody dangerous.”

  Pitman stared at him for but a moment. “Can you swim?” he asked.

  “Nah. Bad luck for a wherryman to swim. Cos then he might ’ave to.”

  “Well, can you float?” As he asked the question, Pitman hurled the oarsman from the boat. He nearly followed, so violently did the vessel tip. Terror helped him right it—he certainly could not swim, and he doubted he’d be lucky enough to grasp the tangle of nets and spars where he’d thrown the man. He’d sink like Jonah, with no whale to take him into its belly.

  “I’ll be back to compensate you,” he called as the man scrabbled onto the flotsam. Using the oars, Pitman righted the craft, pointed it again at the same arch Coke had disappeared through. He’d been an oarsman on the Thames when he first came to the City. He’d shot the race several times. But looking back over his shoulder as he steered into the surge, he realized he’d never done so when the tide was so perfectly on the turn.

  God preserve me, he prayed. And Lord? Let Bettina be carrying boys this time.

  With that, Pitman put the boat into the race, shipped oars and closed his eyes.

  There was an immediate grinding of wood on wood as the skiff scraped the starling that girded the pier. A surge of water lifted the boat high and his eyes jerked open just in time to save a smashed skull as the wherry shot toward the stone roof. The boat dropped as suddenly, with Pitman hanging in the air before plummeting, to miss the bench and end up half on the canopy that sheltered passengers from rain—and whose crest impaled him now between his legs. With a mighty effort, he threw himself forward, and landed on hands and knees on the strake.

  Someone screamed. He looked up and saw above him, as if on a higher shelf, a skiff going the other way. A man and a woman gazed down, horror on their faces. Their vessels scraped, seemed to stick, parted as if discharged from a cannon. Then there was light where gloom had been, and his boat shot out into it, its bow dipping once to splash enough river over him to fill a dozen tubs.

  He shook himself, wiped water from his eyes and looked about. The river was calmer this side, but that did not mean he did not feel the draw back toward the arch. Miraculously the oars were still in the bottom of the boat. “Praise God,” he cried, seizing them.

  One rowlock had snapped off, but he leaned an oar against its ruined stanchion, found the other, steadied the vessel and gave a few strokes. Only then did he see, pulling hard about a hundred paces from the bridge, the fox he followed.

  Curses came now instead of prayers, as Pitman rowed in pursuit. He could not go as fast as two had, nor as one if that one had had a brace of rowlocks. Still, he did not fare too badly. They passed the Queenshythe, Wood Wharf, Baynards Castle. As they passed the place where the Fleet River discharged its filth, a deeper brown ooze in the Thames, his arms began to tire.

  “Where are you going, Captain?” he wheezed.

  Then he saw the other vessel swerve and make for a jetty. Two wherries had just departed it and his quarry was able to glide immediately alongside. But they only stopped long enough for the captain and his boy to leap out. In a moment they were running up the stairs, their skiff already pushed away behind them.

  Pitman used curses he thought he’d long forgotten under his wife’s influence. “Alsatia,” he muttered, as the boat bumped into the dock. He was out in an instant, aware of the injuries he’d sustained in the race as soon as he took weight upon his leg. He glanced at the skiff that had just pulled away, its black boatman, something golden glittering between very whit
e teeth. Then he began a hobbling run.

  “Alsatia. Give me Southwark any day.”

  14

  THE WARREN

  Alsatia, Coke thought with a shudder, striding into the shadows of the first crumbling warehouse. He had lived here once. When he was first back from the Continent and his purse could run to nothing else, ’61 and part of ’62. Left as soon as he was able, on the proceeds of the first successes of his new career. You didn’t keep gold about your person in Alsatia. Not when you shared a room with a dozen other people, some of whom could sniff it beyond the stench that smothered the place like a fog.

  Thrusting his nose into his cloak’s neck, liberally doused anew with sandalwood, and keeping one hand in Dickon’s collar to prevent dawdling, Coke advanced deeper into the warren.

  Though he’d been away only three years, he was soon lost. Alsatia shifted constantly. Hastily made shacks thrown up from the collapse of others, built as single rooms, then built on above and again above, three ill-joined storeys and sometimes more, forming the new laneways that they leaned over, conjoining above to shut out near all the light. Trapping the air too on this warm afternoon, making the street fetid. These shacks were a front for others, erected in the same manner by people desperate for space, every row linked by shifting narrow wynds scarce the width of a wide man’s shoulders. My big thief-taker will have to go sideways, Coke thought, and one arm would be easier to deal with than would two, if it came to it. Though he doubted he was still pursued. If he was lost, his pursuer was bound to be.

  Glimpses of the sun and the slightly rising slope from the river gave him a rough north. A few twists and then he would go straight. Five minutes and he would be among the strollers on Fleet Street. Fifteen and he would be at the Lincoln’s Inn playhouse.

  He thought of the note he’d arranged to be delivered to Lucy at the time when he believed he would already be a-ship. Well, now he would see her briefly—Mrs. Chalker too. His note to her, for delivery at the same time, informed her only that her husband was dead. He would not wish that havoc in anyone’s mind before it had to be. He did not wish it in his own. Yet he had also given her the corpse’s location. Too many widows in the late, deplored wars had been unable to mourn fully without the body of their beloved. She would have that much of him back, at least.

  The increasing narrowness of the lanes had forced him to let go of Dickon. Now at a crossroads, the boy halted to offer hazelnuts to an urchin in a doorway. Coke seized the boy’s hand, spilling some of his precious nuts to stuttering protests. The thief-taker might yet be somewhere close.

  He took the narrowest lane, heading north. Five minutes and they would be clear of Alsatia. Soon clear of London. Clear of the whole damned country.

  —

  Five minutes, thought Pitman, pausing at yet another crossroads. Only five that I’ve been in this hell pit and I am already lost. Worse, I have lost him. And if I have, I have probably lost him for good. No medicine for Imogen. No food for Josiah. No provision for the babes to come.

  There was movement near his feet. A crippled child, legs twisted underneath him, was crawling a few paces toward some tiny things brighter than the muck they lay on. Just as the boy reached them, Pitman bent and seized the child’s hand in the very act of picking one up.

  The child squealed. “It’s mine! I sees it! Mine!”

  Gently Pitman prised the begrimed fingers open. There was a hazelnut in the hand, more scattered about. Releasing him, Pitman said, “Did someone drop these?”

  “Yeah. Boy. Crazy boy.”

  “Which way did this crazy boy go?”

  The child popped the nut in his mouth and then pointed. “There.”

  “Good lad.” Pitman pulled out a groat. It had few companions in his pocket, yet he gave it to the boy before taking at speed the lane indicated.

  It was narrow, stalls and carts on each side. He twisted, dipped, did not slow even when he barked his shin. His pace paid off. As he rounded a bend, he saw the captain and his boy twenty steps ahead. At the same time Coke turned and saw him too.

  Pitman sped up. He preferred a more measured pace but could sprint if he must. He noted that the boy was not as fast as either man, with a stutter in his gait. Coke was slowing to keep with him.

  Fifteen steps now and closing. Another junction approaching, three splits there. But his prey must have known as well as his hunter that the chase was soon up if it continued this way. Pitman saw him bend down, put his mouth close to the boy’s ear. The lad jerked his head up and down; then, at the junction, he went left, while his captain ran straight on.

  The thief-taker didn’t hesitate. While the boy was probably old enough to hang, or at the least be transported to Jamaicy to work the sugar, there was no money in him. Besides, the thought of that slaughter in Finchley, of the dead lady in particular, drove Pitman and made him do two things: speed up to apprehend her murderer, and make sure his cosh was fitted to his hand.

  They were both running full out now, as far as the passage allowed—a trip would cost either of them the race. People stared, slid into doorways, did not interfere, and Pitman did not cry out. A yell of “Stop thief!” upon Fleet Street, which they were rapidly approaching, would bring the thief-taker aid from the gentry who walked there. In Alsatia any aid would go to the thief. So he kept his voice silent and his pace fast and waited for his prey to burst out upon that avenue, drawing near.

  However, his quarry must have realized what lay ahead too, for he darted right down the last alley he could. Pitman followed, cursing as Coke swung back into Alsatia. The man was heading straight past a crowded tavern, its doors wide to the heat of the day, a large group drinking and smoking before them. Many began to cheer like spectators at the races as the men hurtled toward them. Pitman recognized the place immediately; he’d found Coke’s confederate, Maclean, there. He had got useful information and given the fellow two days to quit the town in exchange for it. So he was surprised as he ran up to spot the man standing there, a tankard in his hand, shock on his face. Escalating shocks: the first for the man only now passing him; the second for the man in pursuit.

  Pitman was close enough now to see the progression from surprise to fear to cunning. “Look lively, me lads!” Maclean cried, stepping onto the alehouse’s stoop. “For that’s the Monstrous Cock what’s just run by and there’s thirty guineas for the man who takes him. Dead or living!” And with that he vanished into the interior.

  I’ll pay you in hemp, Maclean, Pitman thought, but did not slow, nor turn as the hue and cry began behind him, along with the noise of tankards dropping, of men running. Perhaps the captain heard the ruckus too and it made him falter, for he slipped and fell into a oyster stall, scattering shells and meat. He was up in a moment and running again, but Pitman had gained five paces. Now he was a bare five behind.

  A swerve right, a dart left, ducking under hanging clothes and close enough now to hear the man’s breaths coming in whoops, an echo of his own, audible even above the shouting behind them. The captain took another alley left—but this came to a dead end at a coopery, its doors open, barrels stacked up before. The cooper froze, his mouth full of tacks, hammer in one hand, as Coke raced past him and inside, three steps ahead of his pursuit. Pitman wrenched the two doors shut, rolled a huge barrel into their centre and then sat on it.

  Not a moment too soon. There was an almost immediate banging, shouted demands to open. When Pitman did not move and pushing could not shift him, the men retreated a little while plans to force entrance were loudly discussed. Pitman noticed a wooden bar to the side, lifted it and then dropped it into hooks either side of the door.

  He knew he did not have long. “Are … are you there, Captain Coke?”

  The reply out of the shadows was equally breathy. “I … I am.”

  The voice drew him, and Pitman could now make out, through the shafts of sunlight that filtered through gaps in the walls, the figure standing a half-dozen paces from him. “They’ll hang you here, Captain, a
nd drag your corpse after to a magistrate for the reward. Come easy and I may be able to get us out. At least you’ll live to see a trial tomorrow.”

  “And Tyburn the day after. It is not much of a prospect.”

  “And your son?”

  “My son?”

  “Come easy and I’ll see he has ale to toast you with ’neath the gallows tree.”

  A soft laugh. “He’d prefer a bag of nuts. But mostly he’d prefer not to see me hang at all. So I have another idea.” The man passed through bars of sunlight, though his face remained hidden. “Let me talk to the mob. They like a bold dog in Alsatia.”

  “But not a mad one.” Pitman had got his breath back—enough, anyway, for what he must do. “Your foul murders have put you beyond even their regard.” He stood, readied his cosh. “So you must accompany me.”

  Someone smashed an axe into the wood behind him. It stuck, was wrenched out. Pitman took a step, then stopped, as the man before him moved into a larger patch of sun—which glimmered on the barrel of the pistol he held. Even with the shouting outside, the sound of it pulled to full cock was loud in that space.

  “Do you think that after the bridge race, all that water, all that running, you still have powder in the pan? Dry powder?” asked Pitman. “You have scarce had time to reload.”

  “I never needed much. I learned to reload fast in the late king’s wars.”

  A memory came. “I thought that Captain Cock never put ball in his pistol.”

  “You know that? Well, today I did. I felt I might need it. As for the dampness of powder …” The barrel flicked slightly but did not waver, not a jot. “Are you a gambling man, Thief-taker?”

  “I was. No more.”

  “Well, you must hazard on this. We both must, for I will pass.”

  “You will not.”

  “Alas, then!” Coke took another step forward. A beam fell slantwise on his face now, and Pitman saw him fully for the first time, his black hair streaked in silver, his grey, troubled eyes. “Yet before you die, I would you knew this. Outside of those wars you will be the only man I have ever killed.”