Plague

by Jo Macauley

  Once Lucy had left the hall, Huntingdon sighed heavily and covered his face with his hand. “We may as well take an early lunch break. Off you go, everybody.”

  One dispirited lunch break later, Beth returned to the hall. Prentice Kipps had enlarged the window and Lucy had already taken her place behind it, looking smug.

  “At last! She’s here!” Lucy said, rolling her eyes as she saw Beth come in. “Now perhaps we can begin?”

  Beth wasn’t late and everyone knew it, but she bit her tongue and apologized for her tardiness anyway. She saw Wilmot’s face in her memory and heard him repeat the words “It is very important that young Lady Lucy be kept happy...”

  “King and country,” she whispered to herself, clenching her fists.

  “Very good,” Huntingdon said to the gathered company, clapping his hands together. “Let’s begin. Beth, when you’re ready.”

  Beth began to tiptoe across the polished wooden floor, which was standing in for the palace garden. Lucy pretended to see her, gave an exaggerated gasp, leaned over the edge of her window and called “Who goes there?”

  Lovett was ready. “Hush, hush, sweet sister, ’tis but the wind you hear,” he said. “Away to bed again, and rest your soul—”

  “Stop!” Lucy ordered him. “Master Huntingdon, I wish to start the scene again.”

  “Oh ... very well,” Huntingdon said. “Places, everyone. Beth, when you’re ready.”

  Once more, Beth tiptoed across the floor. Once more, Lucy made her startled appearance at the window, popping up like a jack-in-the-box. This time, she boomed “Who goes there?”

  “Hush, hush, sweet sister—” Lovett tried to say, but again Lucy interrupted him.

  “Master Huntingdon, I require your opinion. Which is the better? ‘Who goes there?’ or ‘who goes there?’”

  Beth could feel the irritation radiating from the other cast members. They were standing back, arms folded or thrust into their pockets, glaring at Lucy.

  “It’s a minor line,” Huntingdon tried to assure her. “All you have to do is say it, then Lovett and Beth can continue the scene.”

  “A minor line?” Lucy bristled. “It introduces the character of the princess! Her first words should declare her innermost soul to the audience!”

  Beth and Lovett could only watch, helpless to intervene, as Lucy dragged Huntingdon into a numbingly tedious discussion about the scene. When Lucy had finally been placated, they started the scene over again. And again. After three more false starts, with Lucy changing the inflection each time and wanting to discuss it to death, Beth was about ready to start hurling the rotten eggs herself.

  Huntingdon was clearly feeling the pressure too. “Would you please just say the line, Lady Lucy,” he said through clenched teeth. “Other members of this cast do have lines to practise too!”

  “In the German Royal Court, it was considered an honour to act alongside me,” Lucy sniffed. “Your players should be grateful I am giving them that same honour.”

  Beth tried to contain her sigh. They might be safe from the plague here, she thought wearily, but having Lady Lucy dumped on them was a whole new kind of ordeal. Not only was her lack of professional stage experience embarrassing and obvious, but she also seemed to think everyone ought to be in awe of her royal connections as she ordered the cast around like flunkies. They were enduring it well, thank goodness; like Beth they were professionals, even if they didn’t also have the added responsibility of being a spy working to protect the King...

  Jake, another of the actors, had even tried to butter Lucy up by flattering her, talking about her noble relatives and what an honour it would be for the company to give the first night’s performance in the King’s presence. The look of cold contempt Lucy had given him in response would have frozen the Thames. As Beth thought over that nasty moment, she began to wonder. Had Lucy’s sneer been meant for Jake, or did she feel disdain of some sort for her cousin, King Charles?

  As the long afternoon of rehearsals limped towards its end, Beth was given yet another reason to be angry with Lucy. When Beth was in the middle of her first speech, a merry one about how sweet and full of secret promise the palace gardens were after dark, the younger girl suddenly cut her off mid-flow.

  “Master Huntingdon!” Lady Lucy declared. “I have a most splendid suggestion!”

  “Yes?” Huntingdon said wearily.

  “Surely it is I, the princess, who should be speaking these lines? These royal gardens are mine, are they not?”

  Maisie, watching from the audience, looked on in disbelief, her mouth gaping wide enough to catch flies. Beth clenched her fingers tight and told herself to keep calm.

  Huntingdon was helpless to object. “I suppose we could try the scene that way, if Beth doesn’t mind?”

  Lucy gave Beth a venomous glance, as if she were daring her to object.

  “Master Huntingdon is our director, Lady Lucy,” Beth said sweetly. “A good actress must always listen to what her director tells her to do.”

  Lucy completely missed the rebuke in Beth’s words and just smiled primly. A short while later, when only Beth could hear, she leaned over and whispered, “Master Huntingdon will not always be your director, you know.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” said Beth, trying to contain her frown.

  “I have friends all over London,” Lucy said with a smile that cracked her thick make-up like rotting plaster. “Soon I will be the one directing you. Just you see.”

  Beth took a deep breath and gave Lucy her very broadest smile. “Won’t that be fun?”

  By the end of the day, Lucy had persuaded Huntingdon to transfer half a page’s worth of Beth’s lines to herself. Beth held it in until she reached her room, then threw herself on the bed with a cry of sheer exasperation.

  “I knew she was a bad ’un!” Maisie said angrily. “I wouldn’t stand for it.”

  “I don’t suppose it’s her fault, really,” Beth said. “She’s just spoiled rotten. She wants everything her own way. They must have treated her like a precious little princess over in the German court!”

  Maisie stood firm. “You should complain to Master Huntingdon about it, miss! I don’t know why he lets her get away with it!”

  I do, Beth thought to herself. He has no choice. It’s all part of this diplomatic chess game...

  Losing some of her lines to another actress wasn’t so bad. She could deal with that. But the way Lucy mangled their delivery? That was more than Beth could bear. She groaned and rolled over face down onto the pillow, stifling the angry words that might have come out of her mouth.

  Lady Lucy Joseph was right about one thing, though – Huntingdon wouldn’t always be her director, but not because he’d lose his job. Beth had always dreamed of being in charge of a troupe of her own. She held onto that thought, imagining the productions she’d put on, the bold decisions she’d make – not only as an actress but as an undercover spy too. Dynamic and daring, loved, without others knowing her alternate occupation...

  Someone was tramping up the stairs, interrupting Beth’s reverie. A folded piece of paper was thrust under the door. “Letter for Miss Johnson,” the innkeeper’s gruff voice declared. She sprang across the room and snatched it up. The return address proclaimed it to be from a Mr Aleister Edwards of Wardour Street, London.

  Beth fought to hide her excitement from Maisie’s eager gaze. “Uh, it’s from one of my gentleman admirers,” she said. “Nothing interesting, I’m afraid.”

  Once Maisie was out of the room, Beth quickly broke the seal on the letter and unfolded it. Cramped handwriting filled the page:

  My dear cousin Beth,

  It is many days since last we met, and this dreadful plague has taken its toll on many of our neighbours. I fear that unless some relief is found...

  And so on and so forth.

  Beth squinted and crossed the room to the window to hold the paper up to the light. Shining through the paper, so tiny you could barely see them a
t all, were pinpricks. They marked the letters Beth was truly meant to read among all the filler. The C and O of the word “cousin”, the M of “many”, the E of “since”...

  It took Beth only a minute to decipher the real message – from her spymaster Alan Strange:

  Come London urgent. Bell tower.

  Letter is yr cover. S.

  The letter mentioned how gravely ill Beth’s old friend Mr Collins was. She of course had no friend called Mr Collins, any more than she had an admirer called Aleister. That had to be what Strange meant by “cover”. Heart pounding at the thought of a new assignment, Beth went to find Huntingdon immediately. It was almost a relief to be leaving, she thought as she descended the stairs. Even if London were full of plague, at least a certain enthusiastic amateur wouldn’t be there!

  She knew however, with a twist in her heart, that Maisie would be difficult to leave – and would be very apprehensive about her friend returning to London. But Huntingdon took it surprisingly well.

  “Of course you must go,” he said. “I pray it’s not the plague he has. May God be merciful.”

  “Amen,” Beth said meekly.

  “However, no matter what else happens, promise me you will return for the opening night,” said Huntingdon pointedly. “If you don’t, well ... I will have no choice but to give your part to Lady Lucy Joseph...”

  Chapter Four - A New Assignment

  “Were you followed here?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Beth said, caught momentarily off guard.

  “That’s not good enough,” Alan Strange snapped. “Don’t waste my time with guesswork. You must be certain.”

  Beth made a mental note never to give vague answers to Strange in the future. The spymaster was as exact as a surgeon’s knife, and when he needed to be, just as deadly.

  She stood at the very top of the Bell Tower of St Paul’s Cathedral. Strange was standing opposite her, closer to the ledge, unconcerned by the dizzying drop down to the streets below – as it was their regular meeting place, he’d clearly become accustomed to it. Wrapped in his heavy cloak even on this suffocatingly hot day, he reminded Beth of a roosting bat.

  Anxious to prove herself, Beth recounted her journey. “I went in through the front door of Mrs Conway’s haberdashery and left by the back, into the alley. There weren’t any other customers. I doubled back when I got to Tanner’s Lane. I only heard my own footsteps in the hallway downstairs, and they’re marble tiles, so nobody could have crossed them without me hearing the sound of their shoes. If anyone was following me, I lost them long before I reached here.”

  “Someone walking barefoot, or in stockinged feet, would make no noise even on marble,” Strange reminded her. “Be wary of making assumptions, Beth. They can get you killed.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.” She sighed. “I’ll be more careful in future.”

  “Good. Now, you’ll be wondering why I summoned you. I’ll come straight to it. There is a new plot on the King’s life.” Strange looked down at Beth, meeting her eye for the first time. She saw the weariness of many sleepless nights in that bloodshot stare. “We knew this would happen, of course. Cut one head off and two grow in its place. It was only ever a matter of time before these King-killers began to plot again.”

  “What do we know?” she asked, her breathing quickening in spite of herself. “Is it Groby? Or ... Vale?” Beth thought back to the conspirators whose plot they had foiled not so long ago – Edmund Groby, a menacing thug with one finger missing. And he reported, they believed, to Sir Henry Vale – the shadowy figure who had plotted against the King but somehow faked his own execution...

  “Thus far we know next to nothing for certain,” Strange said gravely. “Whispers, rumours, stories of cloaked figures in the dark, yet no confirmation of who could be behind the plot. But there’s surely some fire causing all the smoke. We’ve got our hands on what could be the first piece of solid evidence.”

  “But you’re not certain of the plot,” Beth said, her brow knitting.

  “No,” Strange admitted, flinching in frustration at the word. “The evidence we have is not much, I grant you. Nothing but a single scrap of paper that happened to cost a man his life. And if it turns out to be worthless, then I’ll have that on my conscience ’til my dying day.”

  Beth raised an eyebrow. “Would the King’s enemies really kill a man over something worthless?”

  “Right now in London, life is cheap,” Strange retorted. “Bodies lie in the streets; men stab each other over the price of a half pint of watered beer. But if there is any worth to this scrap of paper, Beth, I need you to find it out.”

  “I promise I’ll do my utmost,” she said, standing taller automatically.

  “I expect no less.”

  “But...”

  “You’re wondering why I asked you,” Strange said. “What’s the matter? Losing confidence, are you? Want to go back to amateur work?”

  Beth shook her head hastily. “I’m no amateur,” she said, choosing her words carefully. Strange hated false modesty even more than he hated imprecision. “But I’m not stupid either, sir. I know I’m not your most experienced. And if I were in your shoes, with the King’s life at stake, I’d send my very best.”

  “As would I, on any other day,” Strange said. “But the plague has cost us dearly. Many of my best spies are dead now from this damned disease. Men who’ve survived stab wounds in Italy and poison in France, now dead like dogs, left unburied in the streets of the country they fought to protect.” He shook his head. “I’m pitching you into deep waters, girl. I know that. But you have already succeeded in foiling one such plot—”

  “And I’m not a child playing at rogues-and-rascals, Master Strange,” Beth said quickly. “I know the work we do is dangerous.”

  Strange gave a single nod of agreement. “And of course,” he continued, “as a woman, you’ll arouse less suspicion.”

  Beth smiled. “That’s what you said on the first day I met you, sir. ‘If people don’t believe women can be spies, they might not see one even if she’s right under their nose.’”

  Strange did not return her smile, though she saw his eyes twinkle a little in the gloom of the tower. “Go to 19 Threadneedle Street in Bishopsgate,” he said. “The next stage of your briefing will take place there.”

  Beth didn’t need to write the address down. She had always been brilliant at remembering spoken words. It was part of what made her such an accomplished actress – and a promising spy.

  “Be careful, Beth,” Strange warned as she turned to leave. “A spy has already died observing these people, remember. Let your guard down, even for a second, and they’ll kill you too.”

  * * *

  As Beth walked through the London streets towards Bishopsgate, she barely recognized the city. The big shops and boutiques that she had loved to dawdle in front of were shuttered up. Hastily scrawled notices told of how the shopkeepers had left for the cleaner air of the country and assured the customers that all would return to normal once the plague had passed. Beth wondered if they really believed London would ever be normal again.

  As she passed through the poorer districts, she entered a vision of hell beyond anything Dante or Virgil could have conjured. She was unsure why, but fires were burning on the street corners, sending clouds of smoke up into the air. Figures shuffled back and forth on the streets, wearing grey rags, groaning aloud. Beth held her head high as she walked into the terrible scene, willing herself not to believe that these were London’s last days. The hot stench of the smoke burned her nose and throat, and it wasn’t just wood smoke, she realized. There were spices, the malty smell of hops, the thick head-spinning perfume of frankincense. Passing by one bonfire, she saw grim-faced men throwing fresh handfuls of pepper on the flames. A sudden stab of pungent smoke made her eyes water and she sneezed violently.

  “God bless you, miss,” said one of the men, crossing himself as he did so.

  “What are you doing?” Beth asked, fin
ally allowing curiosity to get the better of her.

  “Purifying the air, miss,” the man said. “Orders of His Majesty’s Government.”

  “We’d do better to burn the poxy houses if you ask me,” his companion said, and spat.

  “Plague’s borne on the air,” the first man said, ignoring him. “So we burn strong-smelling stuff, to turn the plague away. You should carry a posy, miss. Have you not got one?”

  “Uh, I left it back at my lodgings,” Beth lied.

  The man passed her a fistful of small, crumpled flowers. Beth stammered her thanks and turned to leave, her eyes watering from the peppery smoke. Near the end of the street, something loomed at her out of the smoke – it looked like a raven-headed monster wearing a long coat and carrying a rod. With an involuntary gasp, she backed away from the apparition as it slowly turned to face her. As she gaped at it, Beth realized that the head of the creature was actually a leather mask. The huge eyes above the beaklike nose were lenses. Suddenly, Beth remembered hearing about such practices.

  “A-are you a plague doctor?” she stammered.

  The figure nodded, and to Beth’s amazement, gave a formal bow, then went on its way. Beth stared after it, her heart pounding. She remembered Maisie’s terrified description of these plague doctors, self-appointed experts who roamed the streets of London looking for victims to cure – though the cures were often quack medicine that did the sufferers more harm than good. They wore long coats to keep the “bad air” away, and wore masks for the same reason. The huge beaks, which looked so frightening, were full of herbs – hyssop and rue and lavender – to purify the air the doctors breathed.

  Beth hurried on before any more grotesque figures could emerge from the smoke and shadows.

  “Hell is empty,” she said to herself, quoting Shakespeare, “and all the devils are here...”

  In spite of her hopes, the scenes of horror did not lessen as she passed further into the bowels of London – if anything, they grew even worse. As she walked past the churchyard of St Botolph, she saw a gigantic muddy-walled hole had been dug. White, motionless human bodies lay inside it, their mouths open to the London clay, their stiff limbs sprawled higgledy-piggledy. There were hundreds of them. Beth bit down on her knuckle to keep a surge of nausea from overwhelming her. As she watched, a gravedigger hauled a cart up to the pit’s edge and dumped a fresh load of bodies in. They went tumbling down with a horrible sound of sliding and rustling. Once, these people had names. They had families, trades, memories and dreams. Now, bundled together in death, they were nothing but flesh...