The Scar-Crow Men

by Mark Chadbourn

  As the stink of human rot swept into his nose, the spy’s stomach turned. Unmoving elbows and knees prodded his back, and with his limited vision he could make out four blackened fingers close to his face. The index finger was extended downwards as if pointing the way to the doom that awaited them all. Will felt a pang of fear that he might contract the plague, though he had heard that some physicians thought the dead were no longer infectious. If he had been a religious man, he would have prayed for that to be true.

  Will could hear the death-cart labourers arguing nearby, but couldn’t make out their words under the stamp of the horse’s hooves and the breeze whistling around the hospital yard. After a moment, the two men climbed on to the cart’s seat and with a crack of the whip they lurched off.

  Shaken roughly, the spy watched the cobbles pass beyond the edge of the cart. The horse took a wide arc, trotting through the open gates into the flow of traffic on Bishopsgate Without. Conversations faded away the moment the grim burden was seen. Will felt a shadow as he passed under the city walls, and then the rough ride eased as the cart rolled on to the smooth limestone and flint paving of Bishopsgate Street. As life began to return to his limbs, the spy gave in to the gentle rocking and the sounds of the vibrant city.

  Ahead lay the plague pit, his final resting place.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  ‘KEEP YOUR HEADS DOWN AND STOP YOUR BICKERING OR YOU WILL be the death of us,’ Nathaniel hissed, a wide-brimmed hat pulled low on his face. Behind him, in the shadows of a court on the east of Bishopsgate Street, Grace glared at the woman they knew as Lady Shevington.

  Smoothing down her crimson skirts, the Irish woman replied with a condescending smile, ‘Bickering only happens among equals.’

  The younger woman’s tart response was drowned out by the loud honking of a flock of geese being driven south along Bishopsgate. With the traffic backed up in all directions, the carters and draymen yelled abuse, shaking their fists and their whips, but the drover marched along behind his birds, uncaring.

  ‘Will they bring the death-cart through this crowd?’ Nathaniel asked, concerned.

  ‘You must trust me. They will want him in the pit and buried, and the business done with as soon as they can,’ Red Meg replied. ‘They would not wait until the evening for a man like our Will.’

  ‘Our Will,’ Grace snapped. ‘You have spoken to him … what? Twice?’

  ‘But I know a kindred spirit when I see one.’

  Nathaniel thought his young friend was about to strike the auburn-haired woman. Grace’s face was flushed, her left hand gripped into a tiny fist.

  Shouting, whistling and beating his stick on the limestone roadway, the drover moved his flock of geese on. The traffic began to flow once more, most of it running south to the river or west to the market at Cheapside. Shielding his eyes against the sun, Nathaniel continued to look north along the row of large houses, past the great stone bulk of St Helen’s Priory to the city walls. After a while, he saw a ripple pass through the merchants and servants bustling along the street’s edge as head after head ducked down and turned towards the walls of the houses.

  ‘It comes,’ he whispered, waving a hand to catch the attention of the women behind him.

  With silence in its wake, the death-cart trundled along Bishopsgate Street, its progress as steady and relentless as the plague. Nathaniel tried not to think what horrors his master must be experiencing.

  At the crossroads, the death-cart drifted out into the centre of the street. The flow of drays and carts gradually drew to a halt, allowing the morbid carriage to turn right on to a cobbled way.

  ‘Yes!’ Nathaniel exclaimed quietly. ‘We were right. They go to the Lombard Street plague pit.’

  ‘It’s the nearest one to Bedlam,’ Red Meg said in a bored voice.

  Filled with anxiety, Grace urged, ‘We must hurry, before Will is thrown into the pit.’

  ‘Do not hurry!’ the Irish woman snapped. ‘We must not draw attention to ourselves. We will have time to stop those slow-witted fools, even if we adopt the steady pace of servants off to market.’

  Nathaniel set off first from the lea of the shadowy court, darting among the horses and carriages and into Lombard Street. Clutching his hand to his mouth, he smelled the stench of rot long before he reached the location of the mass grave. In the summer heat, droning clouds of black flies swarmed overhead. Bloated and lazy from feeding, they formed a thick cover on windows, blocking out the light.

  Twisting up the brim of his hat, Nathaniel spotted the two labourers sitting on the edge of the street in the shade of a whitewashed house, mopping the sweat from their brows before the exertions that were to come. A roughly erected wooden fence with a gate in it led to a field of churned earth where the trees, shrubs and flowers had been rooted up. Rats scurried over each other in their feeding frenzy. The land was divided into plots. Five had already been used, the fresh earth heaped atop them. In the sixth plot lay a yawning hole. Crossing himself, Nathaniel couldn’t help a shudder when he looked at it.

  The two women arrived at his side a moment later. Grace’s face was drained of blood, her gaze skittering across the graves and the contents of the cart, but Red Meg was unmoved. She primped her auburn hair, a seductive smile alighting easily on her lips.

  ‘As agreed, we shall distract the labourers with light conversation and flirting,’ the Irish woman said, flashing a glance at Grace. ‘Are you capable of that?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ the younger woman snapped.

  ‘You must creep to the back of the cart and search for Master Swyfte,’ Red Meg instructed Nat. ‘The effects of the death potion will not yet have faded, but your master should be able to walk a few steps with your support. Take him into that street to the north. We will meet you there.’

  ‘And if I am seen?’ Nathaniel replied.

  ‘Then I will leave you here to your fate.’

  Red Meg stepped into the street with an unsettled Grace close behind. But they had barely taken a pace when they caught sight of five men in black cloaks and tall black hats striding along the street from the west. Rapiers hung at their sides, and their grim features told of men about serious business.

  Returning to Nathaniel’s side, the Irish woman urged him into a small, shaded street to the south from where they could observe proceedings without being seen.

  ‘Who are they?’ Grace whispered.

  ‘I think they are the men who pursued Will and me from St Paul’s,’ Nat said, peering at the faces of the new arrivals.

  The five men surrounded the two puzzled labourers. One of them, clearly the leader of the group, leaned down to talk in low, fierce tones, ending his speech with a sharp sweep of his arm towards the death-cart.

  With sullen faces, the two shabbily dressed men hauled themselves to their feet. Grabbing the first shroud-wrapped corpse, they carried it through the gate on to the cleared land, kicking out at the rats swarming around their feet. They tossed the body into the grave with all the bored disrespect of a woodman stacking logs for the winter.

  Appalled at the sight, Grace cried out so loudly that Red Meg had to shake her furiously. ‘You do not have the luxury of acting like a child any more,’ the Irish woman snapped. ‘You will be the death of us and of the man who clearly holds your heart.’

  ‘But Will—’

  ‘—has his life resting in our hands. Would you have it on your conscience that your own weakness killed him?’

  Grace calmed, her face hardening. She glanced back to the mass grave, to which the two labourers were now carrying the second body under the vigilant watch of the five men. ‘What do we do now?’ she whispered.

  ‘Once they have deposited these poor souls they will fetch more,’ Nathaniel replied, his knuckles white where his fingers gripped the corner of the wall. ‘There is a shortage of land for the pits. They fill each to the brim before they start another.’

  Barely had he uttered the words than one of the labourers broke off from his wor
k to collect shovels from the rear of the cart. He rammed them into the heap of black earth next to the grave and returned to dispose of the rest of the bodies.

  Shaking his head, Nathaniel gasped, ‘They are going to bury Will alive.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  HIS HEART POUNDING, WILL SUCKED IN A MOUTHFUL OF AIR AND fought to clear his sluggish head. Some life was returning to his limbs, but agonizingly slowly.

  Black walls towered up on every side to a square of blue sky overhead, which seemed to him at that moment impossibly far away. Now that the linen had been torn clear of his face, he could see around the dank hole, half filled with mouldering corpses in shrouds stained with bodily fluids. The ones directly beneath him, where decomposition was well under way, were soft and yielding. His eyes watered and he gagged as the reek of escaping fumes seeped into his lungs.

  At first the spy thought stones were being dropped into the grave, but as he rolled his eyes, he saw rats plummeting from the edge of the pit. Their movements had a feverish intensity. Many of the shrouds nearby had been gnawed through, and the rats ducked their heads into the gaps, their jaws working hungrily.

  Will watched one rodent speed sinuously towards his exposed face, its jaws gaping wide in anticipation to reveal two rows of tiny white teeth. Snarling deep in his throat, he spat at the predator. The rat flipped over in shock and raced to easier prey. But the spy knew it was only a matter of time before the pack descended on him and ate him alive.

  Hearing the grunts of the approaching labourers, he played dead again. A body crashed across him, pinning his arms.

  ‘Can you now see your end?’ the devil’s voice echoed from some corner of the pit that the spy couldn’t see. The rats continued their furious feeding, oblivious.

  ‘Leave me be,’ Will said under his breath. ‘I have work to do.’

  Mephistophilis’ laugh was like a cold wind.

  Bodies rained around the spy. But by the time the last one had crashed into the pit, he had almost regained enough movement in his arms to free himself.

  Will wondered how much longer he had. He received his answer a moment later when the first shovelful of earth hit him full in the face. Spitting the soil from his mouth, he continued to press against the shroud, straining his unresponsive muscles, willing the potion to leave his body.

  But the dirt fell in a black rain. Across his legs and torso, the rats scurried in a frenzy, snapping at the linen in their eagerness to feed before they were deluged. The square of blue sky seemed to recede. Will felt the earth cover his body, then his face, and his heart began to thunder.

  Twisting his head, he found a pocket of air under a fallen corpse. Within moments the last of the light had winked out.

  Stay calm, Will told himself. If you panic, you die.

  He felt the weight upon him increase with each shovelful. With precise but painfully slow movements, the spy drew his leaden body out of the shroud, but he wasn’t fast enough. He was lost to a dark, stiflingly hot world. Each breath was small and shallow and a band began to tighten across his chest.

  Drenched in sweat, Will dug his fingers into the corpses and tried to haul himself up. The earth was alive all around him with the constant churning of the rats.

  Yet the dirt crashed down faster than the spy could move, filling his mouth, his eyes, his nose. Dread began to shred his thoughts.

  For Jenny, he told himself. For Kit. For Grace and all the others relying on me.

  ‘But for yourself?’ his private devil whispered in his ear. ‘No, you have forsaken Will Swyfte in your embrace of death. And now it embraces you.’

  ‘You will not distract me,’ the spy hissed.

  With the toes of his right foot, Will dragged the last of the shroud down, but the weight of the earth was now so great he could barely move his battered limbs. Making mole claws of his fingers, he began to drag soil from above him into the few spaces that lay below. Burrowing rats raked his flesh as they continued their own, more rapid journey back to the light.

  ‘You will never find your Jenny,’ Mephistophilis whispered again. ‘While you die in slow, suffocating agony, you will reflect that you have wasted your life chasing an illusion. Days go by, years go by, and you cling on to one tiny thing, a discarded locket, that is your only evidence that she may still live. Hope exceeds reason.’

  As the life returned to Will, so did the pain from his beatings in Bedlam. His limbs trembling from the exertion, he paused. Thin air wheezed into his lungs. Loam lined his mouth and caked his tongue.

  Digging deep for the last of his reserves, Will renewed his efforts. Dragging handfuls of soil down, forcing himself upwards with his feet, searching for what little air remained to ease his struggling lungs, he inched on.

  The black world appeared to be endless. He was unsure if he was rising or sinking, or how near he was to the surface. But he could still feel the faint thud-thud-thud of soil falling from above. His exertions grew weaker again, the strength draining from his limbs. He could not go on.

  All around him, the devil’s laughter drifted. ‘Beyond the sea your love lies, in the west, where the dead go. Under the full moon, in a golden city, she sleeps, and cries, and you will never feel her loving touch again.’

  Breathing in the stink of the grave, and death, and hopelessness, Will pressed his face into the soil and closed his eyes.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  SWEATING AND SCOWLING, THE TWO LABOURERS LEANED ON THEIR shovels beside the sea of trampled earth now covering the plague pit. Nearby, at the fence, the five armed men smoked as they watched the sun sink past the chimneys of the surrounding houses. The job was done. Will Swyfte was dead and buried.

  Clutching on to the brick wall in the small street across the way, Grace fought the urge to sob. She felt numb, as if a part of her had died with every shovelful of earth that fell into that black hole. She had wanted to run to the grave and attack the men with her bare hands, digging Will out herself if it was necessary. But she knew it was a foolish girl’s dream that would only lead to harm for Nat, who would undoubtedly have rushed to help her.

  And now, a grown woman, she had been forced to watch the man she loved die.

  ‘You said they would break off from their digging. You said we would be able to help Will,’ Nathaniel raged. His hands shook as he fought to control himself. ‘Your plans have come to naught. You killed him.’

  ‘If he had not died here, he would have died in the Tower. I gambled on a slim chance that we might be able to save him,’ Red Meg replied quietly, her hands clasped in front of her, her face emotionless. ‘But it was not to be.’

  ‘And that is all you can say?’ Nat turned on her. ‘William Swyfte is more than my master – he is my friend. He saved the life of my father, and he helped me when I needed it most, even at cost to himself.’

  A crack appeared in the Irish woman’s mask, and her green eyes flashed.

  Grace confronted Nathaniel. ‘Do not risk your life when the situation is hopeless,’ she pleaded. ‘Will would not want you to die needlessly.’

  ‘Where there is life, there is hope. That is what the preachers say, is it not?’ He glanced over his shoulder at the men standing around the plague pit in the ruddy light of the setting sun. ‘I have Will’s sword that we were due to give him after we …’ The words caught in his throat. ‘After we rescued him.’

  ‘Nat, you are not a fighting man!’ Grace said incredulously. ‘You are as likely to fall over your sword as to kill with it. I would not lose you too.’ She couldn’t hold back the tears any longer.

  ‘Nevertheless, I must do what I can.’ Without another word, Nathaniel strode out into the street, keeping his head down but allowing one hand to fall on the rapier that hung incongruously at his side.

  ‘Fool!’ Red Meg snarled. Hesitating for a moment, she looked back along Lombard Street, weighing her decision. But just as Grace became convinced she had given up on them, the Irish woman stepped out after Nat, a broad, seductive grin leapin
g to her lips.

  A better player than Kit ever had on the stage, Grace thought.

  As Nathaniel closed on the burial site, the five men threw aside their clay pipes and turned to face the new arrival.

  ‘Keep moving, stranger,’ the steely-eyed leader of the group said.

  ‘On whose authority?’ Nat called, vaguely recognizing the man. Was he in the employ of Lord Derby?

  ‘The Queen’s.’

  ‘You do not do the Queen’s work.’

  As she neared, Grace could see Nathaniel’s hand shaking above the rapier hilt. The five armed men were sure to have spotted his inexperience and doubt.

  ‘The papers I have from the Privy Council say otherwise,’ the leader said with a faint sneer. He walked to the gate, his hand resting on his own rapier as a warning to Nathaniel.

  ‘Boys! How handsome you all are.’ Red Meg’s rich voice rang out across the street. ‘It makes my heart beat faster to see hard-working men sleeked in sweat.’ She drew the attention of the five men with the swing of her hips and a flourish of her crimson skirt as she danced across the cobbles. Her right eyebrow was arched, her eyes and her broad smile promising much.

  Four of the men turned their attention to the Irish woman, unable to prevent the hint of a leer reaching their lips. Sensing trouble, the leader remained grim, his eyes darting between Red Meg and Nathaniel.

  ‘Step aside,’ the young man called. ‘I do not wish to find trouble here.’

  ‘You will find it if you do not move on.’ The leader’s fingers clenched around the hilt of his sword.

  ‘Let us have no fighting,’ Red Meg trilled. ‘We can put those passions to better use, I am sure. Come here and help a maid find her way about a strange city.’