Plague

by C. C. Humphreys

  “I do not. We hunted them, of course. But our servants prepared them.” He ran his tongue over his lips. “I never even liked to watch.”

  Pitman rose. “Show me your hands.”

  “Why?”

  “Show me.”

  Coke put the links into the sconce beside the reed torch, then held out his manacled hands palms down. Pitman turned them over, his own hands moving delicately despite their size, so lightly that Coke’s skin tickled. “They are soft, Captain. Almost feminine.”

  “I wear gloves near all the time. I do not like to—”

  “Labour with them. That is clear. Your labour requires you to hold a gun, does it not? You do have sword calluses on the palm of your right hand, on your index finger. Are you good with blades?”

  “I am sufficient.”

  “A modest reply.” Pitman sucked in a breath. “Tell me, did you ever study for a surgeon?”

  “I did not—though I extracted a musket ball from a friend’s back once. Near killed both of us.”

  “Hmm.” Pitman released the man’s hands. “You know, Captain Coke, whilst that same hanging judge might not believe me, I would testify that you did not slaughter this man. Nor, I believe now, those unfortunates in Finchley.”

  Coke felt the relief in a cooling of his brow. “And why do you believe that now?”

  “Because whoever wrought this will have the hands of one who uses tools regularly, have knowledge of how bodies are put together—and how they are taken apart. His hands are stained permanently, as yours are not. A surgeon or a butcher—though from what I witnessed in the army there was little to tell the two professions apart.”

  Coke shook the restraints on his wrists. “Then if you believe me innocent, could you?”

  “Not yet, sir. If I no longer think you a murderer, I have yet to decide what to do about the thief.” He knelt. “Bring those lights back, if you please.”

  Coke did. Pitman was turning the body this way and that. The captain watched as he opened the man’s jaws, using both hands and some force to counter death’s hardening. There was a crack. Coke looked away, mastered his stomach’s heaves, and then heard Pitman’s cry of “Found you!”

  When Coke looked back, he saw an oval lump in the thief-taker’s hand; not, he was relieved to see, of flesh. Lights reflected in it, more so when Pitman rubbed it on his cloak before holding it up again.

  “You found that in his mouth?”

  “I did. And if I was yet a gambling man, I would give you short odds that it is a sapphire.”

  “Do you have knowledge of gemstones, sir?”

  “No. But I know my Bible. I pulled a stone from the mouth of that member of Parliament in the coach.”

  “Did you, by God? A sapphire also?”

  “No. That one was a jasper. And the book of Revelation speaks of an order to such stones.”

  “Revelation again.” Coke frowned. “Why is that of concern here?”

  “Because of those numerals I mentioned, daubed upon the coach’s wall. And in that book it is written that gems will adorn the cornerstones of the new Jerusalem, which is Christ’s returned kingdom upon the earth.” He intoned, “Chapter twenty-one, verse nineteen: ‘And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second—’ ”

  “Sapphire?”

  “Which makes me suspicious of you anew, Captain. For I believe it was this very sapphire I glimpsed, aye, and sketched too, around the lady’s neck in Finchley. Part of the necklace you already admitted to stealing. What makes it here unless you brought it?”

  “I …” Coke was trying to remember something that Isaac ben Judah had said to him the last time they met. “The Jew thought that a jewel was missing from the necklace. He said he thought it might be a sapphire!”

  “Convenient for you.”

  “If you don’t believe me, we can go and ask him.”

  “I am not sure I want to see that Jew again. Last time I did he shot a gun near my head.”

  While the thief-taker continued his examination, another memory came to the highwayman. A face. A voice. “The lady,” he said. “She was not dead when I found her.” Pitman glanced up sharply. “Beyond any aid, sure.” Coke hesitated. “But she said something just before she died.”

  “Did she? What?”

  “She said, ‘Pale horse.’ She said it twice.” Coke swallowed. “It made no sense to me.”

  “It does to me.” Pitman gazed into the flames of the torch. “ ‘And I looked, and behold a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death.’ ”

  “Revelation again?”

  “Aye.”

  “So the murderer, what, quoted as he killed her?” Coke felt anger flush him, the first warmth in that cold cellar. “By Christ, if I could have that man before me now!”

  “Easy, sir. And perhaps this fellow will help you to that meeting.” Pitman put the gemstone into a pocket. “Do you know his name?”

  Coke hesitated. Reveal that and he’d reveal Sarah too, and so far he had not named her. His note would not have reached her yet. Yet somehow, whatever decision Pitman would make about the highwayman, he felt sure the thief-taker would bring no harm to the lady. “His name is John Chalker. You may know him. He is—was an actor. With the Duke’s Company at Lincoln’s Inn. He and his wife are quite a famous pair.”

  “I would not know them. Bettina and I do not approve of the playhouse, though we will watch the puppets and jugglers at Smithfield on fair day.” He looked down. “Was he a soldier?”

  “A famous one. But an enemy of yours. It is said he held Cropedy Bridge alone against a troop of lobsterbacks. ‘Cropedy Chalker,’ he was known as for a time.”

  “Is this the man?” Pitman gave a low whistle. “Well, sir, we left too many, old foes and friends, all jumbled in pits on the fields of Mars. Each deserves his own grave. Can you spare an old comrade your cloak?”

  “Will I get it back?”

  “I doubt you will want it. By your leave.”

  Pitman unclasped the cloak, then reached underneath the corpse, rolled it onto the cloth, covered it. “Do you know the mortuary in this parish?”

  “I do not. But I can inquire. Shall we go there?”

  “I will. You fetch his wife.”

  Coke lifted his manacles. “Like this?”

  “Ah.” The thief-taker took off the manacles, replaced them on his belt. Then he drew the captain’s sword from the same place and held it out.

  Coke regarded it a moment. “You are letting me go?”

  “For now. And I do not even ask you for a pledge.” When Coke took the sword, Pitman bent, lifted the cloak-wrapped corpse, carried it to the door, paused there. “Yet this I do say, Captain. Return and you may help me catch a monster. You may help avenge not only your lady in the carriage but both Chalker’s widow and a man who was if not my comrade, then an adversary worthy of my respect. Indeed, you may help to overcome true evil.” He left, and his voice echoed from the dark. “How many of us ever get a chance to do that?”

  Coke rubbed his wrists, listening to the footfalls on the stair, soft for a big man despite his burden. When he was ready, he went to the reed torch and put out the light.

  17

  RESOLUTION

  “Open the coffin.”

  The mortuary man looked past the woman to the two men who stood behind her. He pulled out a soiled square of linen and dabbed his damp face. “Sirs, I appeal to you. You know what is within this wooden box. A wife does not need to see it.”

  “But a widow does.” Sarah laid her hand on the wood before her. “Open it. Or lend me chisel and hammer and stand back.”

  As Pitman stirred, Coke said quietly, “Your husband is not there, Mrs. Chalker. His soul is departed, we hope, for a better place. What remains is corruption. Leave it be.”

  “John was never much of a churchman. Rarely on his knees, unless to throw dice or introduce a cock into the ring. So I have
no expectations of seeing him anywhere else but here. Open the coffin.”

  The man looked a last appeal at Pitman and Coke. When they said nothing, he sighed and picked up his tools.

  Sarah folded her hands before her. “Gentlemen, you may leave me,” she said.

  Pitman’s eyes widened. “Nay, lady.”

  Coke laid a hand on the larger man’s arm. “We will wait for you outside, Mrs. Chalker. However long you wish.”

  “Thank you.”

  At the first hammer strike, Coke and Pitman departed. Sarah pressed herself to the cold stone wall as the fellow went about his task. The nails had been driven in deep, and the coffin’s sides splintered under the blows and levering, while the lid cracked wherever he prised out a nail. When he finally lifted the top, its left panel split off at the one tack he’d forgotten to remove. The man, muttering and wiping his face, stacked the two broken pieces to the side then left. A long moment after the door’s soft close, Sarah came forward.

  She’d been forewarned. Not so much because of what the captain and the other man had said but because of how they’d avoided her gaze, a shadowed complicity between them. So she knew it would be bad; and it was, worse than she ever could have imagined. Yet when the first shock passed, weakening her knees so she had to rest both hands on the coffin’s edge, the next was as powerful.

  Relief. It overwhelmed her. For this wreckage could not be her husband.

  The body was wrapped in a shroud, the wounds beneath it clear, lines like bloody stigmata running across the grey linen. The face was uncovered—and nothing about it was familiar. Indeed, no face was there, just a mass of blood, pooled and congealed around slashes. And how could that be her John’s hair? His had always been thick and curled to excess, not this lank black sheet. And the eyes? Someone had put a penny over each one, and despite all the shaking in opening the coffin, they had remained in place. She would make certain of him by eyes as black as his hair. “Gypsy blood, you’d say, sweetheart, wouldn’t you?” she whispered. “Or Black Celt. Whichever story you were spinning. Though once you confessed to me that you thought your mother had had knowledge of that Italian puppeteer Orsino, even if he was near a dwarf and you—”

  She stopped talking. Since it was not John Chalker, why was she prattling at this man so? This shrunken, bloodied stranger.

  She bent, lifted one penny. The eye was open; there was no lid to close it off. And she saw him. Knew him. Began to weep for him.

  At the first cry, the three men started. The keening rose. It did not sound quite human, and the mortuary man crossed himself three times, tapped out his pipe on his boot heel and left the small yard.

  Coke and Pitman glanced at each other, taking solace in the tobacco the man had given them, sucking hard upon their pipes. Then both sought for embers in the clay, while each sought for words.

  Pitman spoke at last, loud to reach over the wailing. “I will need to speak to her. Later. There is so much I do not understand that she may be able—I mean, why him? Why an actor? A strange choice of victim after that MP in the coach.”

  “You are certain that the same man killed both?”

  “You saw this body and all those in Finchley?”

  “Aye, but many know the butchering trade or the surgical one.”

  “But few kill so precisely. The slashes just so, the guts placed, not simply extracted.”

  Coke raised a hand. “Your favour,” he said, then leaned against the wall, taking breaths, spitting.

  “You have a weak stomach, Captain. You vomited in that coach in Finchley, did you not?”

  “I did. I nearly always do.” He wiped his mouth. “I would be grateful, since we both know what we saw, if you did not dwell upon the details.”

  “Very well. Yet, other details lead me to think the murderer is the same man.”

  “The jewels in the mouths?”

  “That, certainly. And what was written—and spoken, you say—in the coach. The verses from Revelation.”

  “Were there verses also in the cellar? I did not note any.”

  “There were not. But there were other things.” Pitman pinched the bridge of his nose. “ ‘The first foundation was jasper,’ ” he declaimed. “That’s a type of quartz. ‘The second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony.’ ”

  “And what is that?”

  “An agate. People call it tiger’s eye.”

  “And it was jasper found in the mouth of the MP?”

  “Yes. While this sapphire—” Pitman pulled it out of his pocket, held it in his palm “—came from Chalker’s mouth.”

  “So the next victim will have a tiger’s eye?”

  “If we do not find the murderer before he kills again, that will be his next stone. And there is something else.” Pitman glanced at the door from behind which the keening came louder. Still, he lowered his voice. “Chalker was circumcised.”

  “Truly?” Coke frowned. “I would never have taken him for a Jew. A gypsy, perhaps.”

  “You mistake me. Or rather, I should have said that Chalker was circumcised recently.”

  “You mean …?”

  “I do. Among the many wounds, that.”

  Coke could not hold himself. Afterwards he leaned against the spattered wall, shallow breaths coming, which he was eventually able to deepen. He spat, stood straight. “Are you saying then that his killer is a Jew? You’ll be telling me next that the murderer is stealing Christian babies to drain their blood.” Red suffused his paleness. “Man, the Jews have been accused of such calumnies for centuries. All lies. You voice this suspicion and there will be blood on the street, on your hands.”

  “Captain, rest easy. I do not accuse any of that tribe. I know you have befriended them.”

  “Some. They have always been kind to me. One especially.”

  “Isaac ben Judah. The man who shot at me.”

  “Over you. Then if a Jew is not to blame, whom do you accuse?” Pitman sucked his lip. “There are those who like the Jews as much as you do. Indeed, they revere them. To these men, the Jews are God’s first chosen people, and they agitated strenuously for their re-admittance to the realm. Succeeded too during the Protectorate. Those I speak of believe that they cannot establish the new Jerusalem without including the inhabitants of the old one.”

  “Who do you mean?”

  “The Fifth Monarchy Men.”

  “The dreamers of Apocalypse? I have heard of them but know little of them.”

  “I know much,” Pitman replied. “Since I was one myself.”

  “You were?” Coke started. “You do not strike me as a Bedlamite.”

  Pitman shrugged. “I have been mad enough. The wars did that. The fighting—and the freedom that was unleashed. I was a great sinner in my day.” He looked at Coke. “Before I was a Fifth Monarchist, I was a Ranter.”

  “Ranter? So you lived in a colony and spent your days and nights naked, smoking and drinking, cussing and fornicating?”

  “Not only that. Sometimes we danced.”

  Coke laughed as he imagined the large, sober man before him cavorting. “By heaven, I’d have liked to know you then.”

  “You would not have, sir. Even less so, perhaps, after I ceased my sinning to be saved. When I believed I was one of the Elect, that I would be washed clean—burned clean!—by the floods and fires of the Apocalypse.” A light came into Pitman’s eyes as he continued. “I believed that the last of the four monarchies since Christ was about to be destroyed. That the fifth was upon us, when Jesus himself, in person, would descend and rule the wide world as sole king.” He nodded. “It is all prophesied.”

  “Let me guess—Revelation.”

  “Aye. In Daniel also. Jeremiah. Deuteronomy. It is why the Saints love the Jews so much. All is foretold in their ancient books.”

  “Saints?”

  “It is what the Fifth Monarchists call themselves. After Daniel 7:18—‘But the saints of the most high shall take the kingdom and possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever and
ever.’ ”

  “But when shall they possess it?” Coke, who had been trying to relight the little tobacco left in his pipe from a taper, gave up, stamped out the flame, knocked the ashes from the bowl to the ground.

  “Even now,” replied Pitman. “Do you not know that the End of Days is upon us? Revelation tells how the Great Beast shall bring it. Its number is 666. What year cometh, Captain?”

  “Sixteen sixty-six. Ah, I see. And you think the murderer is not content to await its coming?”

  “Many are not. Apocalypse is coming, sure. And it can be hastened.”

  “Why do the authorities not arrest them all?”

  “They’ve arrested many. But these people are not all Bedlamite, as you call them. Most are ordinary. Tanners, weavers of silk and wool, brewers. Butchers.” He paused, then continued, “They are hidden everywhere, awaiting the trumpet.”

  “Why do they not await it in the Holy Land?” Coke lowered his voice, for the keening had finally stopped within the mortuary. “Surely King Jesus will arise again there.”

  “Some think so. But most believe that England is the chosen land, the English the new Elect. A nation that could topple a king—aye, and top him too! Who allowed, for a few short years at least, such freedoms that had never been seen anywhere before—and to the common people, mind! Freedoms of action, word, deed. The return of the king only put a bung back on the bottle. Inside the beer again ferments. Ready to explode.” He shook his head. “It is the English who will lead the world into the Fifth Monarchy. Here it will happen. Here it is foretold. The Saints are preparing.”

  Coke stared at the bigger man. “Do you still believe in this End of Days?”

  “Not since I met a woman who changed my beliefs. Who showed me enough heaven on earth. I believe in our saviour. I just do not believe he is coming in person to redeem us. Not next year, anyway.”

  “But our man does believe that?”

  “I am sure every atrocity he commits is for Christ.” Pitman’s face was grim. “We met a few who committed horrors for such beliefs in the wars, did we not, Captain?”

  “We did.”