The Plague Stones

by James Brogden

  While Cristina Attlowe tended her husband, the other women, Hester included, shared the honour of nursing the priest as he worsened, by which time two of the men who had passed the night on the Attlowes’ floor had begun to sicken with the pestilence too. Their families caught it from them in turn, and the increased burden of caring for the sick was spread amongst fewer people capable of shouldering it. Where once she could walk past her neighbours’ cottages and hear their chatter and laughter coming from behind the doors and windows, now the village echoed with agonised moans, screams of pain, and hoarse voices begging for release. Eventually Hester was left to care for Cuthbert in his last hours alone, which was some comfort as they could at last speak the truth to each other without fearing gossip-hungry ears.

  ‘I am sorry,’ he whispered, stroking the tears from her face. It was one of the few times he had touched her since he’d been away on his pilgrimage, and she relished even this little. Every movement he made seemed an agony. His flesh festered with boils and the lumps in his throat were distended, the skin stretched livid and shining over them.

  ‘It is not you who should be sorry,’ she said, trying to sound gruff and strong like one of her brothers, though her heart was a wailing thing. ‘It is the bishop, for taking you away from me for what little time we might have had. It is the men of Haleswell, for denying you the water of Saint Sebastian’s Well.’ It is my fault, for defying my mother’s will.

  ‘You must accept this.’

  But her rebellion had always been stronger than her guilt. ‘No, I will not. I will do anything to stop this. Anything. I will bleed you. Maybe that will—’

  He placed his feverish hands over hers. She saw that the last three fingers of his right hand had turned black, but she didn’t flinch from his touch.

  ‘No,’ he croaked. ‘You will let it be, for my soul’s sake. Please.’

  In the end she found that she could deny him nothing, not even his death.

  * * *

  As if the village priest’s death were the final stone to fall from a leaking dam, Clegeham haemorrhaged altogether. The pestilence was terrifying enough, but the fear of dying without the Church’s last rites produced a soul-deep horror which drove even those who were already gravely ill to find someone who could minister to them. Hester saw the corpse of an old woman at the edge of the village, her hands and knees bloodied from crawling, who had obviously decided that there was nothing more to be lost by dying on the road rather than in her home. Flies were feasting at the open sores on her scrawny legs, and rose in an angry, buzzing cloud when Hester disturbed them. She froze at the sight of the woman’s body. No attempt had been made to even cover her, and Hester well understood why. When her own mother’s mother had been dying, Father Euan (who had been the village priest before Father Cuthbert), had taken her confession and delivered her last rites and when she’d died Hester had watched the village women prepare the purified vessel of her dead body for burial with reverence and love, knowing that she was with the Lord. No such care had been taken with this nameless old woman, because her soul, unshriven, was screaming in the torments of eternal damnation. Her corpse lay as if something diseased had pushed itself out of the soil, ready to burst and spill forth the vileness of hell. That was what awaited them all now.

  Alan lingered in Clegeham with Meg and the babies for as long as he dared, but in the end came to the cottage to try to persuade the rest of his family to leave with him. He was pushing a handcart loaded with their belongings, atop which sat their two-year-old son Edmund, bawling. Meg carried their infant daughter Judith on her hip, and her belly was round with their third on the way.

  ‘Come with us,’ he pleaded at the doorway. ‘You cannot stay here.’

  Their mother gestured inside, from whence the cries of her husband could be heard clearly. ‘I cannot just leave him!’ she said, indignant at the suggestion. Whether it was because of his leg or the pestilence, Dick Attlowe had spoken no word nor made any other noise than groans of pain for days now. ‘What then of my marriage vows? Would you leave Meg? Would she leave you? What has made you so cold, Alan, to even talk this way? But your brother and sister should go,’ she added, taking both Hester and Henry each by an arm and propelling them out of the cottage.

  ‘Mother, no!’ wailed Hester, turning back. ‘Who will look after you?’ With her mother tending her father, Hester had taken over the running of the household, not that there was much to take over. Food was running low, and Henry had taken to scavenging scraps from the deserted cottages; he’d already been in one fight with a group of hungry villein boys who’d had the same idea.

  ‘You will go,’ ordered her mother. ‘I will not also watch you die damned.’

  ‘Please, Hester,’ echoed Meg, her brown eyes swimming with tears. ‘Who will be aunt to my children if not you?’ Baby Judith was sucking her fist and grizzling.

  Hester felt her wilfulness swelling up behind her breastbone, the sinful heat of it which had caused so much damage already and which she knew she should swallow down and obey her mother. She knew she couldn’t save her parents’ souls, but equally she knew that she couldn’t leave them to die, crawling and flyblown on their hands and knees like that old woman. It was too much after everything. Too much.

  ‘No,’ she said, setting her face against her mother. ‘I will not. I will stay, even if you do not want me to. Alan will have to carry me like one of his children or else tie me up and drag me behind, but I will not leave.’

  Henry – always the middle child, always the peacemaker – put himself between them. ‘I will go,’ he said.

  ‘No.’ Alan shook his head firmly. ‘There must be a man in the house. You cannot leave your mother and sister unprotected.’

  ‘Wait, hear me,’ said Henry. ‘I will come with you but only as far as the next town where, if the Lord wills it, I may find a priest or a friar, who I shall bring back here to save us.’ He turned to Hester and his mother. ‘I swear to you that I will return,’ he said.

  And so it was decided. The family which was all that Hester had ever known rent itself asunder and she waved goodbye to her brothers, her sister-in-law and her niece and nephew with tears blinding her last sight of them as they disappeared around a bend in the road that led out of Clegeham. She and her mother went back into the cottage where her father moaned in his delirium.

  Hester wished she could have been surprised to find the first signs of death swelling in his neck. She wished she could have been more distraught, but all she had the energy for was a kind of numb, exhausted horror.

  17

  BREAD AND SALT

  ‘WHAT HAPPENS IF YOUR BROTHER TURNS UP?’ ASKED Toby.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Maya replied. ‘It’ll be fine. Mama has invited you; he won’t cause a fuss.’ The other good bit of news as far as Toby was concerned was that her dad was on a late shift at the post office, so he wouldn’t have to run the gauntlet of any more violently overprotective male relatives.

  Maya’s home on the Pestle Road estate was one of three flats in a converted Victorian townhouse which had seen much better days. It was three storeys tall, with wonky roof slates and weeds peeping out of the guttering. The window frames were scabrous with peeling paint, and a brown veinwork of dead ivy still clutched at the crumbling brick. Half a dozen wheelie bins were crowded into a small front yard, like an honour guard leading up to the front door which boasted a stained-glass panel of tulips, though several pieces had been replaced by duct tape.

  As they approached it she stopped and looked back at him. ‘You’re sure now?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No second thoughts?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not going to suddenly change your mind again?’

  ‘Definitely not.’

  ‘Good. Because this is my mother who’s invited you, and if you think Rajko is dangerous wait until you make her angry.’

  ‘Maya, open the door!’ whined Antony.

  ‘Shut up, bug-face,�
� she replied, and let them in. Antony barrelled straight past them and inside, his footsteps thundering upstairs.

  The first thing that hit Toby was the smell of damp. Ahead of him was the door to the ground-floor flat, and next to it a large plant pot with something green and glossy lurking in it. A faded carpet runner did little to soften the chill seeping up through the ancient floorboards. The old wooden balustrade shone darkly, and the stairs creaked as she led him up to the first floor. At some point in the distant past someone had tried to brighten the stairwell up with a coat of magnolia paint, but it couldn’t hide the bulging of damp plaster and there was a long dark streak down the wall where countless shoulders had rubbed it over the years.

  ‘Good job you don’t live on the top floor,’ he said.

  ‘Bit of a pain for the old man who does,’ she replied.

  At the first landing the door to Flat 2 was already open, and framed in it was a woman about the same age as his mum; small with a broad, smiling face and waves of blondegrey hair. She wore a violently multi-coloured jumper which stretched down to her knees and yoga pants below that. Gold dangled and flashed at her ears, neck, wrists, and fingers.

  ‘Dobrodošli!’ she beamed. ‘Hello! Come in!’

  ‘Hello, Mrs Gorić,’ he said and held out his hand to shake hers but she ignored it and swept him into a jangling hug.

  ‘Mum,’ Maya growled. ‘Don’t embarrass him.’

  ‘You’ll have tea, yes?’ said Mrs Gorić, ignoring her daughter. ‘Before you study?’

  ‘Of course. Thank you.’

  He was led down a hallway with richly patterned carpet and walls covered in family photographs, and into a kitchen. It was cluttered and colourful with racks of pans and hanging cutlery; countertops busy with jars, bottles, canisters, and cartons; the cupboards a patchwork of postcards from all over the world. Mrs Gorić steered him to a breakfast counter where Antony was already installed, munching a biscuit, and said something to Maya in Serbian which must have been an order, judging by her sulky reply.

  Mrs Gorić opened a tin and took out a round loaf of bread, richly patterned with plaits and rosettes, and a small ramekin filled with something white and crystalline which might have been sugar. ‘Hleb i so,’ she said. ‘Bread and salt for the guest. The bread is pogacˇa, to bring togetherness for our family, and the salt is to bring you prosperity and happiness in our home. Here…’ She showed him how to tear off a chunk of the bread and sprinkle a pinch of salt over it before eating. It was light but not too dry, baked with nuts and dried fruit, and he enjoyed it more than he’d been expecting.

  Maya went to the fridge, its door almost hidden behind a glittering mosaic of magnets, while her mum negotiated a complex routine of shifting some brightly coloured tins from around the kettle so that she could fill it at the sink. ‘Mint or hibiscus?’ she asked.

  Maya groaned. ‘She thinks she’s being funny. Sorry about this.’ She turned on her mother. ‘Mum! Normal brown tea like we always drink!’ It was interesting and kind of funny to hear her getting so wound up when she was normally so calm and collected at school.

  ‘You know what?’ said Toby. ‘I think I like the sound of mint tea. I’ve never had that before. Is it a Serbian thing?’

  Mrs Gorić turned a smile on her daughter which was part gloating, part conspiratorial. ‘What a nice boy you’ve brought home!’

  Maya groaned again. ‘Kill me now.’

  Mrs Gorić produced from the fridge a large pie dish, its contents obviously home-made, with a big wedge already missing and its filling a bright berry-red against the white ceramic.

  ‘Pita od višanja,’ said Mrs Gorić. ‘Cherry pie. It’s a family favourite. You need to feed your brain before studying.’

  As she began to dish up two large slices Toby racked his brains for something to say; his one experience at the Trust’s meet-and-greet had confirmed that he was terrible at social small talk, but he couldn’t keep sitting there just grinning and nodding like an idiot. ‘Maya’s been great,’ he said, for lack of anything better. ‘Like, helping me catch up with the things I’ve missed. She’s much better than me at maths.’

  ‘You’re new to Haleswell, I think? It seems an odd time to change schools. How are you settling in?’

  He sketched out the details of how his family had come to move, obviously leaving out the more problematic details such as the break-in. The kettle boiled and Maya’s mother made him a cup of mint tea, which was a lot more bitter than he’d been expecting so he sipped it politely and chased it with forkfuls of the pie, which was miles better than anything he’d had from a shop. He must have passed some kind of test because Mrs Gorić eventually shooed them out of the kitchen and into the living room where Antony was watching cartoons and a gas fire was blazing against the pervasive chill. They got their exercise books out on the large dining table and Maya helped him revise probability, which was the one thing that he just could not get his head around.

  He’d lost track of time, but it couldn’t have been much more than half an hour when he heard keys jingling in the front door and Rajko’s voice yelling cheerfully in Serbian. Toby froze with his pen halfway to the paper. A few hours, she’d said. Maya’s brother appeared in the doorway to the living room with a bag slung over one shoulder, saw him, and stopped dead. ‘Šta ´ce on ovde?’

  ‘He is a guest,’ said Mrs Gorić, the warning clear in her tone. ‘So you be nice. And talk English.’

  Rajko hesitated a moment longer, then grinned. ‘Okay, little landlord, good to have you here.’ He dumped his bag on one of the armchairs and reached over the table to scuff Toby’s hair. ‘May I borrow him for a minute?’

  Maya turned to her mother in protest. ‘Mama!’

  ‘What? I’ll be nice! But if he’s a guest then we’ve got some air to clear between us. Just a quick chat. Man business, you know?’ He winked at Toby, who felt his bowels clench with anxiety. He thought about the knife in the outside pocket of his bag.

  Rajko led him back out onto the landing where he produced a packet of cigarettes and offered Toby one.

  ‘Um, no thanks, I don’t.’

  Rajko shrugged, lit up, put the pack away.

  Toby waited for the threats, the fist in his shirt, the lighted cigarette end in his face. ‘Anyway,’ he added. ‘Won’t it set off the smoke alarm?’

  Rajko barked a laugh. ‘You think they actually fucking work?’

  Toby supposed they didn’t. Looking around, he couldn’t even see one.

  ‘Before,’ said Rajko. ‘You and me. You know that wasn’t personal, right?’

  Toby unclenched ever so slightly and looked at Maya’s big brother more closely. He was looking out over the balustrade to the ground floor, blowing smoke thoughtfully. He didn’t look like he was about to go psycho, but Toby wasn’t about to dismiss the idea that this might be a trick. Still…

  ‘Felt personal at the time,’ he said.

  Rajko gave him a look as if he’d suggested that the earth was flat, or that the moon was made of sparkly unicorn shit. ‘You were being interested in my sister,’ he said. ‘I’d have done the same to anyone. She’s too young.’

  ‘Don’t you think that’s for her to decide?’

  Rajko took another lungful and appeared to consider this carefully. ‘No,’ he decided. Still no threats, no fists, no burning. This was going well – or at least better than he’d feared.

  ‘What’s made the difference?’ asked Toby. ‘Why aren’t you threatening to beat the shit out of me still?’

  ‘Because you’re a guest, of course. You’re invited. Invitation changes things.’

  ‘So what did you mean when you called me “landlord”?’

  Rajko leaned over the rail and pointed to the ground floor. ‘Down there lives Tamanna and Stuart. He does something in IT. She’s a primary school teacher. His brother is living with them and she’s getting fed up with it; we hear them arguing a lot.’ He turned around and pointed up the stairwell. ‘Second floor is the Ash
oks. Mum, dad, grandmother, three kids. Very crowded. Last summer we had a big barbecue and the old lady made some fantastic vegetable koftas. See right up the top, in the attic conversion?’ Toby found himself staring up the stairwell towards the topmost floor. ‘Up there lives an eighty-two-year-old Jamaican man called Mr Griffith. He’s a Windrush man – you know them?’

  ‘Something about Caribbean immigrants after the war? The government deported a load of them illegally?’

  Rajko nodded. Toby was surprised at how much Maya’s brother knew about his neighbours, and a little embarrassed for himself. He’d never even known the names of the people living around them in his old place, let alone where they came from or what they ate.

  ‘This is a very old building,’ continued Rajko. ‘Used to be a home. Now it’s flats, but all our heating still runs off the one boiler. You know that big freeze we had in February? Well Mrs Griffith died of pneumonia in it. They couldn’t afford to run their gas fire and the central heating has been fucked for a year and a half. Now, guess who owns this building, and a dozen others like it, and gets kickbacks from the council to run it as cheaply as possible?’

  Toby gestured helplessly.

  ‘Haleswell Village Trust. The same organisation that your mother is the new Trustee of.’

  ‘How did you know—?’

  Rajko waved it away. ‘The Internet, obviously. And so here you come, like the lord of the manor checking out the peasants, one of them being my little sister.’ He said it quite conversationally but it got Toby’s hackles up all the same.