by C. S. Quinn
Chapter Sixty-One
Thomas usually had little call to enter the prison, and it was a practice he aimed studiously to avoid.
He hated the dungeons. They reminded him of his time in the Clink prison. Not to mention that plague cases had now been reported. He thought of his wife safely housed in her secret separate cell. Soon he would collect her and they could return to London.
But first he had cause to visit the lower dungeon. The gaoler had informed him that a woman had been imprisoned. A young girl named Maria.
Thomas enjoyed his ready access to any females imprisoned in Wapping. Usually he toyed with them inside the cell. But with plague rife he would rather take this girl back to London for longer entertainment.
Since the Civil War his tastes had changed, and pain had become inextricably linked with pleasure. He was careful only to indulge with Protestant girls. And it still surprised him how much some women would bear, for a few more coins.
Others were less willing, but he was not averse to capturing by force. The girls never told their tales. Not once they knew who he was. And what he could do.
Teresa.
He had a sudden vision of his wife, manoeuvring bloody remains. Lighting candles. Saying words.
Beneath his hot mask Thomas squeezed his eyes tight shut.
He hadn’t been able to refuse his wife. Not after he’d failed her the first time. What else could he do, but give her the victims she craved for her witchcraft?
In the past he had delivered her animals. But when Teresa discovered his infidelities, her bloodlust had turned to punish him. She wanted his women as penance. The dirty Protestant girls who had tainted her husband.
Thomas, carrying a lifetime of guilt, married to a half-dead thing, searched his soul and found nothing left there to refuse her.
He never saw the spells and did not believe in their power. But he left her a trail of ready girls on which to work her horrors. And under the plague costume, charged with the prospect of casting her unholy works, Teresa was brave enough to leave their dark cellar and visit in person.
His beaked mask nodded in comforting protection from the foul air.
Then he saw something to take his mind off infection entirely. A flash of blonde hair.
He had arrived at his destination. And he moved forward to peer further into the cell. To his amazement the attractive face looked familiar. Who was it the girl reminded him of? Then memory of the meeting rushed back in.
Thomas had been deep amongst the throngs of Catholics petitioning for their lands to be returned when he saw her. Eva had worn her dress low enough to make it clear what was for sale but her face was haughty with her own self worth. She met his gaze with a challenging stare of her own, and when he approached her she turned and walked away. Though not fast enough that he might not follow.
He pursued her through the backstreets until she had stopped suddenly and turned.
‘You needn’t think I am for business,’ she said, eyeing him in a manner which suggested the complete opposite. ‘Here,’ she leaned forward and pushed a scrap of paper into his hand. ‘You might find me here, in the evenings, if your intentions are of a better kind than desire for a prostitute.’
She’d slipped away then leaving Thomas alone. The paper in his hand had been inked with the name of a tavern, suggesting the girl could read and write. And though in his heart he knew that the look in her eyes was acted, Thomas felt some feeling stir.
He’d found her out later that day. Eva was one of the many who arrived in London imagining their beauty to be a ticket out of poverty. Her family now languished in a cheap rented house in Holbourne. A situation she made clear she had no intention of remaining in.
‘For gentlemen can be kind to poor girls,’ she said, looking carefully up at him through long lashes, ‘and I pray that some man might buy me up as a mistress so that I might live fine in the City.’
Thomas had let his eyes roam shamelessly over her as she talked. There was no doubt she was right for his purpose.
Thomas felt his stomach rumble beneath the heavy canvas. It was not Eva. He could see that clearly now. But in the dank dungeon the girl had much of Eva’s attraction – she looked like an angel. He found his breathing becoming heavy and strained in the heat of the air.
Thomas signalled to the gaoler.
‘Open the door.’
Chapter Sixty-Two
The angelic calm in Teresa’s face evaporated. She shuffled back with a snarl, her hands clasped protectively towards the bloody ribbons now hidden in her dress.
‘I know it was you,’ said Charlie, ‘those ribbons you carry are part of your spell. No one but the witch would own them.’
Teresa’s eyes darted back and forth as if searching for a way to deny the accusation. Then she replied.
‘Yes,’ she hissed. All the music had gone from her voice. ‘I decided to avenge myself.’
‘But what revenge could you want?’ whispered Charlie.
Teresa’s face twisted. ‘Those girls. For what they did with my husband.’ She stared at Charlie for a moment as if daring him to answer. ‘Thomas does my bidding, for he knows what sin he did. He has dishonoured me and must make amends.’
Charlie’s brain was whirring, working it all out.
‘Thomas brings you girls, so you might perform your spells?’ he decided.
Teresa nodded, seeming pleased by his interest.
‘Since the war Thomas has indulged his taste for Protestant girls,’ she said. ‘Why should he deny me the same?’
Charlie was silent with horror.
‘The first,’ she said. ‘Such a greedy girl. She told her family she had plague, so Thomas might visit her more easily.’ She moved a hand to her mouth, stifling a giggle.
‘How people shrank from me, in Thomas’s plague-doctor costume!’ she gloated. ‘Since the soldiers came I have been afraid of stepping outside. But cloaked and masked I grew bolder. And I roughened my voice with syrup of hellebore, so none knew me for a woman.’
Teresa’s eyes glittered.
‘Her neck was still warm, when I had the knife at her throat,’ she crooned. ‘Then all the blood flowed out. And I had all the time I wanted to cast my spell.’
Teresa seemed to be enjoying the revelations of her cleverness.
‘I was sold like cattle for my dowry,’ she added bitterly, ‘and after the soldiers got to me my husband would not come to my bed. Yet those girls sought to make money from my misfortune.’
‘So you made your spells against your husband?’ Charlie had half his mind on the escape route and the other on keeping her distracted by talking.
Teresa gave an arch smile. ‘Not against my husband. Against his return to them. The Sealed Knot. Those whose sign you wear.’
She pointed at the key looped around Charlie’s neck.
‘They were the men who sold me and spent my dowry. And now they rise again.’
Teresa closed her eyes, and her voice lowered, like a chant.
‘I wrapped the ribbons. And I burned the candle to make the words. ‘He Returns’, to hinder his return to the Sealed Knot. I know my powers are true,’ she added, ‘for after I made the spell their traitor King was driven out of London. Blood magic is powerful.’
Her eyes flicked quickly to his neck and back again.
‘You seek out your mother,’ she murmured. Something of the musical quality had returned to her voice. ‘I could call her to us.’ Her eyes travelled over his face and then paused.
‘We could summon Sally Oakley,’ she said. ‘With the blood in your veins it could be easily done.’
The tiniest spark of hope flashed in Charlie’s mind.
What if her powers were real? He pushed it back, but it grew.
‘I will make a plate of water,’ she was saying. ‘Just a few drops of blood and a candle. The right words. She will be revealed to us.’
Charlie knew he shouldn’t be curious to see the spell done. But he found himself leaning forwards, hypnotised, to see
what Teresa meant to do.
She was tugging free some bundle of artefacts from the corner of the cell.
Seeing the direction of his gaze the woman drew the bundle closer, hiding it against her body. Then she began shuffling back towards where he stood, eyeing him hungrily.
The movement called to mind something Mother Mitchell had told him when he first came to her house.
Do not be a fool man and imagine a beautiful woman must be harmless, she had said. In this city a woman might hide a weapon as well as a man.
His reaction came just in time. Teresa lunged at him, a long knife flashing in her hand. He deflected it just as the blade nicked his neck.
The rest of her bundle clattered to the floor. A blood-stained cup and a bell rolled in the dirt.
Charlie grabbed both her wrists but she was strong, and the blood which now showed on his neck had driven her into a kind of mania. Her blue eyes were slitted with intent, her words a babbling monologue.
‘Blood,’ she was saying, ‘powerful blood.’
He raised them both upright still clinging to her wrists. The knife in her hand was pointed towards his jugular. Madness gave her an unnatural strength.
Desperately, Charlie kicked out with his foot, dislodging the heavy metal plate that had lain over the flames.
Sparks and hot tinder flew, and Teresa shrieked, shielding her face from the spray. Taking his chance, Charlie pushed her away and dived for the opening in the wall.
His shoulders grazed both sides and he landed on the other side of the cell in total darkness.
Chapter Sixty-Three
Maria awoke to find herself jolted painfully against a dusty wooden floor. She tried to move her hands and found she couldn’t. They were bound tightly together, and as she tried to raise them up an electric pain stabbed in her wrists and arms.
Her mouth was dusty, dry and her head throbbed.
She tried to think back to how she’d got there.
There was the prison. She searched the jumble of memories. Even that was painful. Like prodding the place where a tooth had been with your tongue. The cell. Plague.
The memory thudded back.
The plague doctor.
Her stomach filled with ice.
The plague doctor.
Her last memory was of being dragged from the cells. She’d kicked and screamed, and the guards had let him take her. They seemed to think he was an important man.
Then . . . She struggled to remember.
He’d got her outside the prison and told her to sit still whilst he bound her legs and hands.
Numbly she’d watched as he wrenched the rope around her wrists and ankles.
Then he began pushing up her skirts, telling her not to scream.
She had tried to fight with him. But he’d reached out and gripped some part of her neck. The strength of his fingers was inhuman, and the grip found out some thick nerve, charging her body with excruciating pain.
‘Do not struggle,’ he’d said to her, ‘this is only a tiny part of what I can do to you.’
The pain combined with her tight bodice must have been great enough to make her faint. Because after that there was nothing.
She moved her knees, trying to discover if anything had been done to her whilst she was unconscious. As far as she could tell it hadn’t. Which meant he wanted her to be awake for whatever he meant to do.
And that frightened her far more.
Maria twisted on the wagon floor, trying to see some way to escape. The walls of the wagon looked thick. She moved experimentally on the boards beneath her.
The planks were immoveable, and thudding against the floor brought a searing paroxysm of pain to her hip and shoulder.
Her legs and shoulder must have been badly bruised from where he’d flung her in the wagon, she realised. Maria gave her shoulder another little twitch, and the pain flooded back, worse this time.
She thought it might be dislocated.
To the back of the wagon she could see a heap of shapes which came and went with the slices of sunlight flitting through the moving vehicle.
At first she thought her eyes had deceived her.
Corpses?
There was no mistaking them. Each wrapped neatly in a winding sheet. But the faces were covered. Which was unusual. And now that she thought about it there was no smell either.
Was it something other than bodies that he transported?
Maria inched painfully towards the shapes. Every movement brought a fresh pain to her injured shoulder.
Something pulled at her foot with an ominous clinking sound. There was some kind of manacle around her ankle. She was chained to the side of the wagon.
He must have a connection to the prisons then, she thought. No ordinary man would be able to lay his hands on irons.
The chain held firm, but she thought if she stretched out her damaged arm far enough she might be able to tug free one of the winding sheets and see what it was he transported.
She stopped for a moment, as the white heat shuddered through her shoulder. Then she gritted her teeth, willing herself to make the final distance.
Her hand touched the nearest body.
It was cold. Hard. And she snatched her hand back in alarm, gasping as the movement ricocheted through her shoulder.
Slowly, she reached out again. Her fingertips tapped the hard corpse. Then she realised. It was metal. Something metal she was feeling.
Maria scrabbled for a closer hold, but couldn’t get one. This was the nearest she could get.
There was a sudden jolt, and she found herself sliding back along the floor of the wagon.
Her heart began to race. The wagon had stopped.
She heard the slow sound of the driver dismounting, his heavy tread sounding along the side of the wagon.
Her purse was still attached to her hip, and she mentally rummaged through its contents for something which could help her. She could feel by its weight the pistol had gone. All she had were a few coins, and some wax cosmetic to make her cheeks look rosy.
She almost sighed aloud at her own vanity. Why hadn’t she armed herself with a knife, instead of a useless cosmetic?
The tinderbox she had given to Charlie. Was there a needle? She thought there might be. That was something at least.
A key turned and a shaft of sunlight blinded her. She tried to throw up her arms, squinting in the unfamiliar light.
Peering into the dark was a great metal beak. The crystal goggles lay as flat and cold as the blue eyes beneath them.
The plague doctor began to heave his great bulk inside the wagon. And then he was standing over her. She could smell his sweat.
‘It hurts,’ he said, raising a gloved hand slightly towards her shoulder.
It wasn’t a question, but she nodded anyway.
The plague doctor stood for a long moment, looking at her.
‘I do not feel such things any more,’ he said. ‘But I like to see them in other people. It reassures me I am still alive.’
He stuck out a booted foot and pressed down on her damaged shoulder.
Maria felt white hot waves of agony course through her. She pressed her lips together, feeling tears roll from her eyes.
‘Things were done to me after the war that cannot be spoken of,’ he said.
Beneath his foot her whole arm had begun to pulse.
‘After your body is used in such ways you feel nothing. Mostly nothing,’ he corrected himself. ‘At times like this I can feel a little something. Watching your face.’
He pressed down harder. Maria gritted her teeth.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘a little something.’ He watched her with interest for a moment.
Carefully he drew up his foot. Then he leaned forward, wrapped a tight gag around her mouth and unlocked the manacle at her ankle.
‘Soon we will be in London,’ he said, dragging her upwards. ‘First I must collect my wife. She will be very happy, when I deliver you to her.’
Chapter Six
ty-Four
Charlie pulled the rest of his body through the opening just as the blade of a knife snickered across his bare ankle.
‘Come back Charlie!’ cried Teresa. ‘I will tell you more of your mother.’ Candlelight glimmered through, throwing her tall silhouette. The light revealed a tunnel large enough to stand up in, but gave no clue as to what might be ahead.
He straightened up, feeling with his hands for what he couldn’t see, hobbling blindly into the darkness. The light was enough to see a man-sized tunnel had been dug and walled with tiny tiles, like mosaics. Then it died and all was black.
From behind he heard Teresa heaving herself through the opening, her knife scraping against the stone.
Throwing out his arms Charlie made a stumbling jog forward.
‘Wait Charlie Oakley!’ cried Teresa. ‘I will share your mother’s secrets!’ She switched to shout after him in English. ‘Come back and we shall find out where she is gone.’
Abandoning all thoughts of caution Charlie started to run. He needed to get to Maria. Fast. The ground beneath him was uneven and he lurched over mounds of ragged soil struggling not to fall.
He could hear the woman had broken into an ungainly sort of trot but it was impossible to judge how fast she was moving. His shoulders bounced against the tiled wall and he swore as the stonework tore his skin.
Teresa’s voice echoed along the tunnel. He staggered on.
Then with a cry of pain he thudded face-first into a solid wall of earth.
It was a dead end. The tunnel had been blocked. He cycled through his options. Despite her height he was stronger than her. But fighting blind and unarmed against her knife he might not avoid a chance swing of the blade.
He laid a hand against the wall behind him to steady himself, and as he did he felt a tangle of thin roots. Something was growing on the other side of the earth. That meant the end of the tunnel couldn’t be too far from the surface. The delicate root structure suggested something which didn’t grow deep.
He scrabbled to drive his hand into the soft earth. It broke out almost instantly into warm air on the other side, and as he pulled his arm back through a shaft of light followed the falling soil.