Plague

by C. C. Humphreys

  The five guineas had gone fast for rent, food—and the ingredients in the pot now steaming on the hob. “And I still need those last items for my mother’s plague water,” Bettina said. “You can never remember them.”

  “Nay, sweet chuck, but I can. Angelica, bay, campana roots. Uh, juniper. Mace?”

  “Pitman, you lump! I made you learn them by letter because you don’t like reading my notes. You’ve jumped from c to j and skipped such essentials as gentian, hyssop.” She slapped his arm. “And that’s why you shall take Josiah with you. He will be your memory. Will you not, boy?”

  “I will, Ma,” their son replied, leaping up. “After mace there’s myrrh, penny-royal—”

  “There’s a bright lad. But don’t tell me—tell your father when he is at the apothecary’s. Fetch your coat.”

  As Josiah scurried away, Pitman bent to speak softer. “My love, it might not be suitable for the boy to accompany me.”

  “Why?” Her eyes narrowed in concern. “Do you go to take another thief?”

  “No. At least, I do not think so.” He dropped his voice still lower. “I am going to the theatre.”

  “The theatre?” The word whorehouse would not have received more disdain. “We have not enough coin to buy unguents for Imogen’s rash and you are going to spend what little we do have on depravity?”

  “Nay, chuck. I have been vouchsafed the ticket. By an actress.”

  He wanted the word back as soon as he said it. But it was too late.

  “An actress?” His wife grabbed his arm and pinched it hard. “Have you turned lunatic, man? Next you’ll be dancing naked down the street, save for the bells on your ankles, crying, ‘Once a Ranter, always a Ranter!’ What are you about?”

  Pitman looked over her head at their offspring, who looked back with fascination at the comet rarity of their parents fighting. Discomfited, he lifted Bettina as if she were a doll, not a woman about to put forth twins, and placed her behind him in the hallway, then closed the door on the amazed faces of their children. “Hush, love,” he said, “I didn’t tell you before because you are so near your time.” Impatience was colouring her face a red to match her hair, so he hurried on. “I am on the trail of something big. Thirty guineas big.”

  “Captain Cock? I thought he was lost.”

  “He may not be the one I seek. I have a possibility. Otherwise I would never venture into such a temple of Sodom as a playhouse.”

  “Though there was a time …”

  “A time for both of us, aye.”

  “Shh!” Bettina glanced at the door, from just the other side of which came children’s whispers. “We do not speak of that time now, Pitman.”

  “I know.” He pulled her into his arms. “Though sometimes I dream of that summer and the camp by the Great Ouse. Of the whole Ranter crew. The singing. The drinking. The moonlight on your naked skin after you left Arise Evans and gave yourself only to me.”

  “Hush,” she said, “you daft ha’porth.” But she did not pull away, and when he bent to kiss her, she opened her mouth to him, her whole self, as she had always done, moonlight or none. After a few moments she stepped from his arms, laughing. “Get on with you, then. But listen. I assume the thirty guineas depend on the taking of this pigeon, and it’s not yet netted, nor will not be tonight?”

  “You assume right, my love. I have confederates—”

  “Does this mean a shared purse?”

  “Nay, love.” He thought of Mrs. Chalker and Coke. The actress sought only vengeance for her husband’s murder. The highwayman? A strange fellow, whose company and skills he’d appreciated in the hunt for Maclean. The man had enjoyed the chase, the capture—and was morose afterwards, as if all his joy was in action alone. Both Mrs. Chalker and the captain had sent him notes, which he had labouriously pieced together, being unable to ask Bettina for her usual help in deciphering. Both had said they would rendezvous at the playhouse to discuss the greater hunt. “These others aid me only, sweet. They desire no part of the reward.”

  “Citizens about their duty, then? Good. Then you’ll take Josiah—” she raised her voice against his interruption “—as far as the apothecary’s. He’ll bring back the ingredients I require for the plague water. I can bottle and be selling by noon tomorrow. We’re likely to need the cash—” she winced, placed a hand on her swollen belly “—by the Sabbath indeed, if their blows are anything to go by.”

  He placed his own hand there. “Hard kickers, eh? Boys, you think?”

  “Arise Evans would give you short odds.” She slapped his hand away. “Now be off, you great simpleton, and I’ll send Josiah.” She stood on tiptoes and pecked his cheek. “Go take us a thief.”

  I’ll try, my love, he thought, watching her waddle away. Though it’s not a thief I am after but someone much worse.

  His son found him staring at the front door, his brow creased. “Off out, Father,” he called.

  “Off out, Son.”

  They emerged to a mad carillon of bells. These did not sound with the solemnity of the toll for the dead, near continuous this past week.

  “What mean these bells, Father?”

  “ ’Tis said that the English fleet has sunk some scores of Dutchmen off Lowestoft. To hear the talk, it is a victory near as famous as Old Bess’s over the Great Armada.”

  “Is that not good for us, Father? For the realm?”

  Pitman sniffed. “Perhaps. I care little for the realm these days. My parish, my neighbours, my family are realm enough for me.”

  Coke looked slowly around the seven faces that floated over the green baize. Though they were in the back room of Lockett’s, with a clientele that professed to the genteel, he didn’t think he’d seen a scurvier crew of sharpers in the lowest den in Alsatia. They were better lit—the establishment had cut-glass chandeliers suspended above the tables, studded with candles. Yet better lighting only more clearly revealed the smallpox scars, no matter how painted or patched the face; revealed too those who had suffered from the other pox, the great one, and had attended the mercury baths to cure it—though whether the disease or its attempted remedy had ravaged them so, Coke did not know. All he could see were several men with only half their teeth their own, the other half a gleaming, false white, some below nostrils as mangled as if gnawed by a rodent.

  He continued his study, and finally halted his gaze on the man opposite him, the spokesman for the group, the one in the eye patch. This was not the customary sober black item but emerald green, and studded with sparkling stones in the oval of the missing eye beneath. “Well, sir, do you call?” drawled this fellow, resting his hands upon the raised soft cushion that edged the table. “Really, sir, call your main or pass the dice. You have left, what? Five guineas of your original stake? It has been an enjoyable hour, has it not? But truly, sir, would it not be wise for you now to pass?”

  Each “sir” he uttered with the same tinge of derision. Coke did not wear the clothes that these men did, the latest fashion displayed in colour and cut. When he’d ordered wine, someone had laughed at his Somerset lilt, someone not brave enough to emerge from the dark beyond the candle spill. Now they were all silent, waiting for the captain to pass and walk away.

  He never walked away. “Seven,” Coke said, and picked up the ivory dice.

  Eye Patch smiled. “Again? Your number of fortune, eh. Well, it has failed you so often tonight it must come good soon, what? And how much of your remaining five would you wager, sir?”

  Coke smiled back. “All of it.”

  “Very good. We shall take that wager, shall we not, gentlemen?”

  A murmur of assent came from the other six who made up “the bank.”

  “Then roll, sir. Roll. And may the devil dance in your dice.”

  Coke opened his hand, spat on the dice, then flung them across the table, thinking hard as they tumbled: seven or eleven, seven or eleven, seven—

  “Five,” called Eye Patch. “The gentleman rolls chance.”

  Two, thr
ee or twelve and he’d have lost. Seven or eleven, won. Five gave him the chance to roll again, at least—though now he must not hit his main. Seven and he would lose. Five and he would win, and stay in the game.

  He reached for the dice, but Eye Patch picked them up first and held them out with that same smirk on his face. Coke took them, staring into the one eye. There were as many sharpers at Lockett’s as upon any dirt floor in the slums. Perhaps more.

  The weight felt the same. Palming one die, he passed the other lightly between his forefinger and thumb, rubbing each surface. During the wars, he’d had a soldier in his company who’d worked in a shop that made false dice. A tiny end of boar’s bristle, wedged in, sticking out, imperceptible to the eye but not to the touch, could give the result desired, the opposite of what Coke wished for. The maroon velvet doublet of the one-eyed man could conceal a multitude of pockets, each with a pair of dice to give any result required. Yet as Coke rubbed the first and then the second die, he did not feel the telltale prickle. Eye Patch, knowing what Coke did, simply kept smiling.

  The captain lifted the dice into the light. He’d noted something on one of the treys—there! The slightest fleck of blue on the ivory, like a tick to the dot. It recalled to him the exact blue of Mrs. Chalker’s eyes. The dice were good, and the same ones he’d used for the past hour; won a little, lost much with. He raised them. Five, not seven. Five. Coke saw it, and her eyes again, just before he rolled.

  The first die stopped on a trey. Two, he thought, two, watching the other spin on a tip for what seemed an age. At last it halted.

  “Four,” called out Eye Patch. “There’s your lucky seven. Just when you didn’t want it.” He leaned across the baize, snatched up the five gold guineas. “Is that indeed your last? Do you pass? Or do you have perhaps one final coin about you to give us?”

  There was a faint buzzing. Around him. Within him. He had heard it every day for the three days since the taking of Maclean and he’d had nothing else to focus on. He could not rob again for he could not in all good conscience continue the hunt with Pitman—a hunt that would begin today after the rendezvous at the playhouse—and be a thief under the thief-taker’s gaze. So he had sought to reduce the buzzing in customary ways. At the cockpits. At the prizefights. At dice. And he had marvelled at how swiftly the profit from a rich necklace could be disposed of.

  An impatient hum. “Come! Do you cede the table, sir?”

  He focused again. Not on the true eye. On the false one that glittered beside it. “I do not,” he declared, then looked to the back of the room. “Dickon!” he called.

  The boy was perched on two legs of a chair, leaning precariously against a wall. He looked up from his latest pamphlet, his mouth agape, the shell of a sunflower seed clinging to his lower lip. “Bring me my money, boy.”

  The boy brought the two chair legs crashing down and stood. Then, instead of obeying his captain, he turned and ran.

  “Dickon! Come here!” Coke bellowed. But the only reply to his command was the sound of the boy’s boots upon the stairs.

  “Your idiot son does not heed his father, sir. Maybe not such an idiot after all.”

  Coke would have stopped and perhaps had more than words with the fellow. A finger jabbed in the man’s one good eye would make him mind his “sir”s. But that could wait till after he had thrown the dice at Hazard one more time. And that would only happen if he caught the fleeing boy.

  Derisive laughter accompanied him out the room and down the stairs. Reaching Lockett’s entrance, he looked left, then right, spotted the sheaf of wheaten hair bobbing at speed up the middle of Fleet Street, where all walked to avoid getting close to any walls. “Dickon!” he roared, his sword sheath clattering between his legs as he ran, near tripping him twice. For a time he seemed to be gaining—the boy had one gammy leg, after all—but the lad could still move fast, his size letting him duck and dart through gaps in the crowds that Coke had to run around. When after fifty paces he’d made no real gain, the captain slowed, then stopped dead. He shook his head. The buzz that had beset him had diminished. In a short while, he would be free of it entirely.

  “Dickon,” he said, with no hope of being heard. The boy had done exactly as ordered: kept the last coins they had from his captain. The rent on the rooms they’d taken near Lucy’s was paid for two months. They had an ample supply of various nuts. But they still must eat more and drink until something else arose.

  Until something else—The very last of the buzzing left him, displaced by the nearby Bridewell’s bells. Noon on a Thursday. The playhouse doors were opening; yet he had no need to rush there, for Mrs. Chalker had someone holding a place on the pit’s benches for Pitman and him. He hoped that someone was big. Pitman in the pit? It seemed an apt place for the giant. A rare character, sure, with a nose like a beagle, proved when he was tracking through the reeking country of Alsatia in search of Maclean.

  The only thing Coke regretted now about the Lockett’s episode—aside from the finger jab he still owed Sir Eye Patch—was the bumper of Rhenish he’d left beside the dicing table. He still had a thirst but now no coin to slake it. Dickon would avoid him till after the play. Perhaps Pitman would arrive early and stand him a jar.

  20

  THE BLACKER DEVIL

  “My lord! A pleasure to see you, as ever. Will you follow me?”

  The attendant led him up the stairs, then along an ill-lit corridor. Three-quarters of the way down the man parted thick drapes, and what had been a dull murmur of voices changed to a loud buzz, borne on a waft of heated air. Garnthorpe did not enter. “This is not my usual box.”

  “A thousand apologies, my lord. But there was such excitement to see Mr. Betterton attempt the Moor, and Mrs. Bracegirdle the tragic Desdemona, that every seat was fought over. A foolish colleague gave your customary box to the Earl of Sandwich before I could intervene.” The man cringed and gestured Garnthorpe in. “I hope this will do.”

  “We shall see.” Garnthorpe entered. The box was farther from the stage than he liked. His eyesight was not what it once was and he wanted to see the player’s faces clearly. One especially. At least this box, like his customary one, had some depth, some shadows; it was also farther from the giant cut-glass chandelier that lit others so well. In them sat those who liked to be observed, indeed attended for that purpose far more than to see the play.

  Or the players.

  “Tell me, Master Aitcheson,” he said, sitting without any further acknowledgement, “does Mrs. Chalker have a prominent role this night?”

  “Indeed, my lord. She plays the maid. The villain’s wife.” The man darted a tongue over his thin lips. “Are you an admirer of hers?” When no reply came, he coughed and continued in a lower voice, “Would you care to have her visit you here after—or even during—the performance?”

  “Is that possible?”

  “Sir, she is an actress. And a widow now.”

  The man’s tone irked. He obviously did not know of whom he spoke. “Do not presume, sirrah, to know what I may want until I inform you of it.”

  The attendant swallowed. “Of course, my lord. May I fetch you some food? Oranges? Wine?”

  “Bring me a quart of Canary. The best, mind you.” Garnthorpe pulled a gold coin from his doublet. “And you may keep what remains of this if you are attentive this night.”

  “Good my lord! You are as generous as ever.”

  The man withdrew, the drapes falling behind him. Garnthorpe leaned on the box’s railing and gazed down. There was indeed a throb in the playhouse today, a more than common excitement. In the pit, the orange and nut girls were competing more vociferously—and displaying more than a customary amount of breast. As for their clients, the well dressed moved among the benches or squeezed themselves upon them, while the even better dressed took their seats in the boxes above. The largest of those, closest to the stage and with purple curtains lined in gold cloth, was empty; for now but not, he suspected, for long.

  Then he felt it
—someone regarding him with as keen an eye as he regarded. He looked into the pit and saw the man immediately. He would perhaps have noticed him sooner or later. Partly for his dress: the brown coat, the simple faun doublet, a sober contrast to the peacock gaudiness about him. Partly for his size: he was a head and a half taller than the next biggest man present. Mainly for the intensity of the stare, directed straight at him.

  He sat sharply back. When Aitcheson returned with the wine, he said, “There is a fellow below. I would know his name.”

  “If you point him out to me?”

  The attendant leaned, then yelped as his lordship’s hand closed over his wrist and jerked him back. “You do not need to see him yet. I would not have him know I inquired. But you cannot miss him. He is a giant among pygmies, thick bearded, with a shaven head and the tallest man in the house, even when the king gets here.”

  He released his grip, and the attendant backed out, rubbing his wrist. “I will find him out for you, my lord.”

  Garnthorpe remained in the shadows, his gaze fixed on nothing across the auditorium. Soon enough there came the rustling of cloth behind him. “Well?”

  “He was indeed easy to discover,” Aitcheson said, entering the box. “He is known in the City, though I have never seen him here. His name is Pitman. He is a constable in the parish of St. Leonard’s.”

  “A constable?” Garnthorpe took a sip of wine. “Very well. You may go.”

  The man hastily withdrew. Garnthorpe considered. Why did you stare at me so, Mr. Pitman? What make you here?