Plague

by C. C. Humphreys

  The wheeze came now. “Are you ready for this folly, lads?”

  “Ready,” replied Pitman.

  “And I,” said Coke, sitting up.

  “Then set about what ye must do. Have you my reward to hand?”

  Coke felt for the gold guinea, the one he’d swallowed as a precaution before he ever set foot in Newgate, and which had done its journey through his guts to eventually emerge bleached but whole. “I do.”

  “Don’t you forget to leave it me. I have such plans for it!”

  Macready laughed, but the laughter quickly dissolved into wet coughing. “I’m not sure you’ll live to spend the gold,” said Coke, leaning away. “Is that a plague cough I hear?”

  “Plague?” The man snorted. “You’re such a new one here, Captain Cock.” He sniffed, a long wet intake. “What I have, sir, is jail fever! A superior form of sickness entirely. I’ve got weeks of life in me yet. Time to spend that gold while you two are being chased down to Tyburn gallows by the Black Dog hisself.”

  Coke shivered. The Black Dog of Newgate. He’d scoffed at it, this story to frighten children to sleep. But after one week there, he could swear he’d heard its paws padding above the dungeon each night.

  “So look you do not try to cheat me,” added the Scot. “Now, about it, boys.” He wheezed off.

  “This is folly, Pitman.” Coke coughed. “Entwining ourselves with plague victims. How shall we ’scape the fell disease ourselves?”

  “Many dwell side by side with the dying—nay, lie in the same bed and never catch it. Others do and yet live. Only God decides who he takes.”

  “Very well,” said Coke, rising. “Let us see if we can cheat the Black Dog a little longer.”

  Immediately they set about it. “They will go to lengths not to touch you,” Macready had told them, “if they see the plague marks clear. And they will not study them close, for fear they will be studying them closer still—on themselves.”

  Spit, piss and charcoal made a fair black dye, they’d discovered, in the little light that arrived with day and the rare opening of the dungeon’s trap door. Pitman now daubed oval rings—darker upon the outside, lighter in the middle—first on his own throat and chest, then repeated and varied the patterns on Coke. They did the backs of each other’s necks.

  Then it was the captain’s turn. With the knife he’d brought and the rats he’d killed with it, he fashioned oval pouches of the skins, which he then stuffed with fetid straw blackened with that same charcoal mix. He pressed them into Pitman’s groin and one armpit. They’d pass as buboes if the observer did not study them too long. After tying them in place with dyed, plaited straw, he let Pitman tie others onto him.

  Now there was only the waiting.

  “Where will they take us, do you think?” Coke whispered.

  “I heard the city cemeteries are all full. They’re digging pits beyond the walls now.”

  “That means longer in the wagon?”

  “Aye.”

  “But what if Newgate is the first call, not the last? We’ll be in the bottom of the damned cart.”

  “You’ll still have to bide as you can.”

  “Christ, this I pray: that I am not thrown first into the cart. Indeed, I pray most of all I am not under you. You may be shrunk from what you were, but you are still a great ox, for all that.”

  Pitman smiled. “My only prayer is they place us so that for the entire journey your Royalist nose is up my Puritan—” He broke off. “But whatever happens, man, cling to this: if you do not escape, whatever danger Mrs. Chalker is in continues. If I do not, more of my chicks will die. And I jest when I speak of my only prayer. My true one is that the Almighty preserve us a little longer, to do his will and catch the fiend.”

  “You still do not recall his face?”

  “His face, aye, but not the name that goes with it. If—”

  “Huh-huh-huh.” The wheeze was close in the dark. “They come.”

  And they did, as always, with the scrape of the iron bar run along stone and thrust into the metal hoop, with the squeal as it was twisted, lifted. Immediately there was light, flaring torch light, which had all below holding their arms before their eyes, at the same time crying out—for pity, for water, for their God, however they knew him, to deliver them.

  “Macready,” the jailer called, “are you alive, ye hound?”

  “Ow, ow! Still alive, Cap’n, still alive!” the Scotsman howled. “So that’s another tanner you owe your corporal.”

  Laughter mingled with some curses until the voice sounded again.

  “And what’s the bill of mortality in Limbo this night, Macready?”

  “Ah, the Black Dog has run among us, sure,” was the reply.

  “There’s one dead of fever as I can see, one choked—did you know there was murderers down here, Cap’n? It’s shocking!” More laughter. Then the Scot added, “And the plague’s taken two.”

  The laughs ceased. “I’m sending down for the corpses. Clear away, do not any paw them or none will get their bread and gruel.” The Limbo dwellers who’d started to crawl onto the stone stairs hurried aside. Four other prisoners—mere thieves, no doubt, their clothes a little less ragged, their faces swathed in cloth—scurried down the steps, pausing on the last one. “Blade? Fever?” one asked, and Macready pointed. Two bodies were removed, then the men returned. “Plague?”

  Pitman was the first they picked up, amidst much swearing at his weight; the two men then carried him away up the steps, his long arms dragging. Then they came back for Coke. “Shite, look at that buboe,” one of the men said.

  “I’d rather not,” said the other, his voice a little more genteel.

  “Now, grab his arms, sir, and let’s be done with him.”

  “You grab his bloody arms,” the first said. “I’m not going near that scab.”

  Coke was halfway up the stairs, when the hiss and cough reminded him of the last thing he must do to ensure escape. Carefully he unclutched his hand and let the gold guinea slip.

  “Thank you, Cap’n. Ow! Ow!”

  “What are you thanking me for, Macready?” the officer asked.

  Coke didn’t hear the answer; he was out of the cell and being run through the gate. It appeared that his bearers wanted rid of him fast. He risked the half opening of one eye—then wished he hadn’t. He was being borne toward a cart piled high with bodies. In a moment, he was thrown atop them.

  The gates slammed shut. Two men mounted the bench of the cart. “Bring out your dead! Bring—”

  “Belay that, ya fool,” said the second man, taking the reins. “One more body and this starved nag ain’t moving. Get on, ya bitch!” He cracked a whip and the cart lurched.

  “Where to?” asked the first man.

  “Moorfields,” the second replied. “They dug a new hole yesterday. ’Alf filled it already.”

  Coke could not help the laugh that shook him. He was out of Limbo! Then he felt scratching under his left thigh. Too consistent to be a flea. He looked around, down.

  Into Pitman’s face. The man did not open his eyes but had a finger across his lips in the gesture of silence. But Coke found it hard to obey when he saw that it was in fact the Puritan who had his nose pressed up the Royalist’s arse.

  Between the swaying of the cart and the shifting of the bodies as it did, Pitman was slowly able to free his own limbs from the tangle. Though his head was close to a living man, it was the dead around who concerned him. He felt them pressing him all over—a child’s arm over his thigh, a woman’s breast at his belly. He could see the oval plague token clear on that by moonlight, which was bright as a noonday sun to him after Limbo. He needed all his will not to burst from the middle of the pile and run screaming into the night.

  He knew he must not. They had discussed it, Coke and he, every day in that darkest level of hell, and had agreed: though death was on every street in the city, in such numbers that the ink to note it was running low, even so every man’s death must still be re
corded in the parish ledgers. If the notorious murderers Pitman and Coke were to rise from a death cart and flee into the night, there would be such a hue and cry that they would soon be caught and returned to prison. Already dead, they had a chance to do what they must to save those they loved.

  Yet they had also discussed this: to be fully dead, they had to be buried.

  The cart had left on the city side of Newgate, down the road that bore its name. So it was down his most familiar streets that he was taken, and he found comfort in naming them, distraction from his situation. As he peered between limbs stiffening and blue, for a moment he thought he might even glimpse the spire of his parish church, St. Leonard’s, wondered if he’d be able to restrain himself as the cart passed within a stone’s throw of his shut-up home. But he was spared the temptation. The vehicle turned left up Butcher Hall Lane, right onto Bull and Mouth Street, and then paralleled the Wall as far as the twisting lanes allowed, past Cripplegate to Moorgate, where the gate guards averted their eyes from the grisly cargo and waved it through.

  Moorfields was the destination the driver had stated; but it was not at the lower, nearest walks that they stopped. Mounds of earth, their crests thick with quicklime glistening silver in the moonlight, showed there were no vacancies. On the cart trundled, into Upper Moorhelds; at last, it halted.

  It was time. The cart was backed a little way onto the grass. Then its rear bars were unhooked and a body near the end pulled. The entire fleshy mound slid, Pitman with it, arms above him to try to guide putrefaction from his face. He was not at the bottom of the pile, but neither was he at the top. He rolled, struggled to breathe. He had lost touch with Coke, hoped the highwayman was keeping as still as him.

  Then the body atop him cleared and hands grasped his wrists. The bubo at his armpit ripped clear and the dyed rat skin fell away, but the men were too occupied to notice. Cussing both his size and parentage, they half carried, half dragged him along the grass and tumbled him into a pit.

  The fall was not far, the landing soft. He contrived to roll as naturally as a dead body might, so that his face was not up to the sky and the next corpse. But sudden cursing made him freeze, one arm stretched awkwardly across his head, and before he could move it, another body fell, to land full upon him.

  Instant agony, searing white pain from his shoulder through his skull. He could not help the groan.

  “Did you ’ear that?” one of the carters said. “That moan?”

  Pitman did not writhe, though his whole body surged in fire. “Nah,” the second man said. “It was you yourself, you fool. Let’s get this done. I need ale and a whore before me bed. Gives you a thirst and a hunger for life, all this death, eh?”

  More bodies were flung in, fortunately not near him. A sound like seeds being sown followed for a while—until he heard the first carter call, “Where’s the rest of the lime?”

  “I thought you ’ad it.”

  “I thought you did.”

  “Shite!” The man spat into the pit. “They’ll ’ave some over there, at that next mound. Suppose I better go, what with your leg.”

  “I’m not staying ’ere by meself. Bastard might moan again.”

  He heard them walking away. He had to move. They were coming back with quicklime to throw on the corpses; that was the seeding sound he’d heard. During the wars, after battles with too many killed for individual graves, he had seen how those flakes would devour flesh. He did not wish any on him, not for a moment. He began to shift, though every small movement was agony.

  A whisper came. “Pitman? Where are you?”

  “Here!” He thrust his good arm up through the bodies above. “Can you see me?”

  “No. Yes!”

  Pitman felt him through the shiftings of the dead. In a few moments the man was above him. “I am hurt,” he said, “my shoulder.”

  “We must be swift,” said Coke.

  “Move this fellow.”

  “Get away!” Coke snarled.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Crows. They are pecking.” Pitman felt the shaking above. “Away, you beasts.”

  “Leave them.”

  He heard Coke’s groans as he heaved and shifted. Then there was brighter moonlight, a clear sky. Pitman wriggled, and between their efforts, he was freed from the dead’s embrace. When both were on top of the pile, they began a slippery crawl and scramble to the pit’s edge. Crows rose, screeching protests at this disturbing of their feast. At last they gained the edge, fell over it onto unshifting ground.

  “Do I look as bad as you?” Coke asked, getting onto his knees.

  “If I am streaked with lime, covered in blood, pus and shit and have rat-skin buboes dangling from my armpits, then yes, you do.”

  “I simply must change before I attend the theatre.” They heard voices: the carters returning. Coke grabbed the bigger man’s good arm. “Let’s leave.”

  They ran toward the hedge that lined the road. No one shouted, so after an instant they climbed it, Pitman with difficulty, then knelt again in its lee. “What now?” Coke asked.

  “My invention did not go much further than this moment. But we cannot proceed looking as we do. Ah! I’ve a thought. Come.”

  He rose, crossed the road. “North?” said Coke. “Away from the city?”

  “Just a little ways. There’s a pond at the edge of Bunhill Fields and it’s a fine night for a naked moonlight swim.”

  “Once a Ranter, eh?” Coke began to laugh. “Truly, I feel like I have drunk a quart of double double ale. A swim? Why not? And after?”

  “There’s a tenter field close to the pond. Clothes will be hanging there to dry.”

  Coke laughed again. “Did you not hear in Newgate? They’ve added stealing clothes to the list of offences for which you may hang.” They’d reached the pond, its water reflecting moonlight through the surrounding reeds. “They can’t hang us,” said Pitman, ripping off his rags, which even using just one hand fell away easily.

  “And why not, pray?”

  “Because you and me, Captain, are already dead.”

  29

  BORN AGAIN

  “You have been most diligent in your studies, Mrs. Chalker.”

  “I am glad you approve, sir. I warrant it is a comfort to me to know I receive your approbation. Yet …”

  “Yet?”

  Sarah hesitated. The role she played required the finest calculation, was far subtler than any she had ever ventured in the playhouse. And she had overreached before in the week they had been at it, too eager to please him. Then Lord Garnthorpe’s forehead would furrow, he would lean forward and slap her—once upon her face, twice upon her thighs—and bellow, “Do you take me for a fool?” and she would have need of all her playing skills and womanly skills to coax him back to calm. If she did not so soothe him, if he left the house in a fury, Maggs would continue the punishment, deny her food and water, lock her for hours in a room with no windows. She did not mind so much for herself, the darkness, the heat, the hunger. But she minded for Lucy, who would also suffer thus. With the baby almost due Lucy required sustenance more than ever.

  Lucy. Were it not for the girl so near her time, Sarah might have attempted escape. His lordship came and went. Maggs was not always watching closely within the house, and if he opened the door, as he sometimes did, she knew she could outrun the two drunkards who kept guard outside. But Lucy could not. Lord Garnthorpe had made it clear: if Sarah was not diligent, the punishment would not be hers alone. If she escaped, she knew the consequence for Lucy—death almost certainly—before Sarah could return with help. The man had not revealed much of his life, so focused was he on her redemption. But sometimes when Lucy cried loud, his eyes would narrow and he would spit out words of hate. From them Sarah gathered this little: that such a whore had corrupted his father; more, had poxed him. And his father had in turn poxed his wife, Garnthorpe’s beloved mother.

  A sob came now and she saw his head jerk to the door. Thoughts had distracted her, a
product of her exhaustion. She had to pull him back to her, away from Lucy.

  He had asked a question. Ask him one back, she thought. She had never known a man who did not welcome a chance to look superior, and Lord Garnthorpe, for all his madness, was no different from other men in that—and in other ways.

  “Yet, sir,” she said, softening her voice, raising her eyes to a point above his head, “when the Bible says, in Revelation 18:2, ‘With whom the kings of the earth have committed … fornication—’ ”

  “Revelation 17:2, child.”

  “Ah! Yes, thank you. Seventeen, of course. ‘The inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.” ’ She looked him straight in the eyes. “Are all womankind condemned for the act of procreation? Are all of my sex guilty of the harlot’s sin?”

  She put her hands on her thighs and pulled up her dress a little. She saw him flush. “Nay, child,” he said, leaning closer to her. “In your ignorance, you have mistook the word ‘fornication.’ ” He cleared his throat. “That is an illicit act between people unmarried, a carnal satisfaction only, abhorrent to God and his saints. But to come together, as husband and wife, to lie in a bed such as the one upstairs …” He coughed. “That is not a sin. That is legitimate. And necessary, for the continuation of man.”

  Yes, she thought, and I would go to that bed with you e’en now if you wished it, and lie with you upon it, let you lie upon me, even though I am certain you are the man who killed John Chalker. For if I managed it well—as I know I can, for I have—perhaps afterwards you would doze and not notice me moving toward your sword.

  She lowered her eyes in case he read her hatred in them. “I thank you, sir, for telling me I am no sinner. For I have only ever lain with one man. And that only after holy banns were read.”

  She held her breath while she waited for him to take the lure.

  Which he did. “There is something I have not told you. You mention holy banns. I took a precaution because I knew … because I felt certain you would indeed profit by my instruction. That you would see, and come to God.”