Plague

by Jo Macauley

  “That one can fight,” Mott sneered, nodding at Ralph. His bristly chin was crusted with blood. “He’s street-bred. But I’ll wager you can’t, little Sir Galahad.”

  “Try me,” John said through clenched teeth, wielding the poker.

  Behind Mott, the door slammed shut. Leighton had fled, his nerve finally broken completely. Beth heard the sound of his retreating footfalls on the rickety stairs outside.

  “Damn you for a coward, Jack Leighton!” Mott bellowed back at him. “When the great day comes, you’ll be torn to bits like that parasite of a King! You’ll be—”

  While Mott was distracted, John seized the moment. He slammed the poker into Mott’s stomach, cutting his words short, and the man’s eyes bulged white in his crimson face. His cheeks puffed out and he sank to his knees.

  John bashed him again, this time on the shoulder, hard. Something cracked, and the knife fell from Mott’s hand through the open trap door, clattering on the distant floor far below.

  Mott teetered on the edge of the void, about to fall in after it.

  Ralph shouted in glee, “Give him another one like that, John! Knock him down the hole!”

  But John pulled the trap door shut, letting Mott collapse writhing onto the boards. Beth exhaled. “Let’s tie him up,” John said, breathing hard. “We need him alive.”

  “I bloody don’t!” Ralph sneered.

  “Tie him up!” Beth asserted. She threw the loose ropes across to John. “You can argue about it later!”

  Ralph angrily folded away the razor and set to work with the ropes.

  “Should we get after Leighton?” John asked. “He might be fetching help!”

  Beth shook her head. “There’s no point. He’ll be a good distance away by now. He seemed well out of it.”

  Mott groaned as Ralph looped the rope around his hands. “Get me to a doctor! I-I think my arm’s broke!”

  “I think not,” said Beth coldly.

  “You ditch-born dirty-fighting little scabs—”

  Ralph gave him a kick in the ribs for good measure. “Hold still and shut your face, or I’ll give you something to moan about,” he warned.

  Together, they bound Mott’s hands and feet, leaving him trussed like a turkey on the floor. He swore and yelled until Ralph shoved a rag into his mouth and tied a kerchief around it to keep it in place. After that he made struggling pained sounds, but couldn’t speak another word.

  “Well, he’s not going anywhere now,” John said when they were done. He mopped the sweat of exertion from his face with his sleeve. “What should we do now? Send for Strange?”

  “Shh,” Beth admonished quickly, nodding towards their prisoner. But Ralph remained quiet, staring seethingly at Mott.

  “Ralph?” Beth said, looking at him curiously.

  “I don’t see why he deserves any mercy,” Ralph said scornfully.

  “We have a code—” Beth began, but Ralph cut her off.

  “I reckon certain people don’t deserve to be held to no code.” He clenched his teeth and Beth and John both frowned at him.

  “What are you talking about?” John said, taking a step forward.

  “This old razor hasn’t got much of an edge on it, but it’ll do the job...” Ralph said coldly.

  Beth and John stared at him in horror. Beth suddenly felt like the young man she knew had gone. This pale, blood-spattered boy with murder in his eyes was a stranger to her.

  Ralph looked at their dumbstruck faces. “You can’t be thinking o’ letting him get away with it!” he said furiously. “Didn’t you hear what this sack of guts said?”

  “Ralph, calm down!” Beth pleaded.

  “He was ready to kill us! If I hadn’t have kicked him when I did, we’d all be cold corpses now!”

  “He’s our prisoner!”

  “You know what the Bible says, Beth. An eye for an eye, a life for a life. Prisoner or not, he dies—”

  “We can’t kill him!” John burst out.

  “Stand back and watch, then, if you’re too dainty to get your hands bloody! You two don’t have the stomach for the real nitty-gritty of our line of work? Very well, I’ll do it myself!”

  Beth’s blood ran cold as she realized she’d heard those very words before, only minutes ago. Are we no better than the King-killers?

  But Ralph was already brandishing the razor.

  Chapter Thirteen - Justice?

  Beth laid a hand on Ralph’s shoulder. “Please, Ralph, think! What does the spy code say about killing?”

  Ralph shrugged her hand off, but muttered, “‘A spy kills only when his own life is in danger, or to save an innocent victim.’ There. Chapter and verse, from the Strange manual of spycraft.”

  “I see no innocent victims that require saving, do you?”

  “No,” Ralph admitted grudgingly.

  “Well, then – is your life in danger?”

  “Of course it is! He tried to kill us!” Ralph insisted.

  “Tried,” John put in. “And he failed.”

  Beth nodded. “We were in danger then, but we’re not now. Look at him – he’s helpless. He’s no threat to anyone.”

  “Don’t tell me he doesn’t deserve to die!” Ralph was growing desperate now. “He’s plotting to kill the King, for God’s sake!”

  “And Strange will see he faces justice for it,” Beth told him more firmly.

  “Why wait for Strange? Let’s make our own justice! Mott’s just as dead whether he dies here or on the gallows, ain’t he?”

  Beth grabbed Ralph’s arm. “Cutting his throat with a razor while he’s tied up is not justice, Ralph. It’s revenge. Don’t pretend you don’t know that.”

  His tensed arm felt like an iron bar in her fingers. He gave Mott a ferocious, hungry look, like a wolf that craves to sink its fangs into human flesh. But then finally he gave a long, deep sigh and Beth felt his muscles relax.

  “Ah, he ain’t worth it.” Ralph flung the razor to the back of the room.

  Beth felt her body sag with relief. That’s the Ralph I know, she thought. Thank heavens. She suddenly felt drained and exhausted with all that had happened that night.

  “Good man,” John said proudly, giving Ralph a pat on the back. “I knew you had it in you—”

  Beth saw Ralph flinch, and wished John hadn’t said that. They were all still on edge.

  “Why don’t you run and fetch Strange?” she quickly told John. “Ralph and I can guard Mott while you’re gone.” And Ralph will calm down all the quicker if you’re not patronizing him, she thought.

  “Er, excellent plan, Beth,” John said, catching her eye. “I’ll be back as quick as I can!”

  “Watch out for Leighton,” Ralph snapped as John headed out through the door. “He’s still out there, remember!”

  * * *

  Ten minutes passed, then thirty, then a whole hour. Every minute that John was gone was an agony to Beth. She’d gone for almost an entire day without sleep, and Ralph’s final warning to John conjured dreadful images in her mind.

  “He is coming back, Beth,” Ralph said quietly. “You’ve got to have some faith.”

  Beth didn’t reply. What if John never came back? Leighton could have been waiting for him round the very first corner. She and Ralph might sit here for hours waiting for Strange to respond to a message that had never been delivered. What if Leighton’s backup arrived before theirs? Just thinking about the possibility of John not returning made her stomach lurch – and, she had to admit – her heart twist.

  She went from window to door and back to window, watching, alert for the slightest sound of a footfall on the back stairs or the front door opening. Despite all Ralph’s urging, she couldn’t sit and rest, although she knew she should. Once, she glanced into Robert Mott’s hate-filled eyes, and his gloating pleasure at her worries made her turn away again quickly.

  Finally a clatter of hooves came from outside as a coach drew up, and Beth snapped to attention. Moments later, she heard footsteps and hushed
voices. People were coming up the back staircase. But was it John?

  All her fears vanished as her friend burst into the room, followed by two cloaked men she didn’t recognize. John was gasping for breath, as if he’d run halfway around London and back.

  “This is the conspirator?” one of the cloaked men said, jabbing his thumb towards Mott.

  “Yes,” Beth said. Carefully, taking her time, she explained everything they had learned. The men listened as silently as ravens, and with as little show of emotion. They must be two of Strange’s “cloak-and-dagger men”, as Ralph called them – senior spies who specialized in whisking enemies of the Crown away to secret prisons...

  When Beth had finished, the men pulled Mott to his feet. “We’ll take him into custody,” the one who had spoken said gruffly. “Don’t concern yourselves with him any more. He’s ours now.”

  “Do you think he’ll talk?” John asked, with a doubtful frown.

  The spy snorted. “Strange will have him singing like a nightingale. He has his funny little ways.”

  “I don’t know. Mott seemed pretty tough—”

  “They all break sooner or later, son,” the man retorted swiftly. “Sometimes the tough ones are the most brittle.”

  Beth wasn’t sorry to see them leave. The men had a cold-blooded way about them that chilled her. From the window she watched them bundling Mott into the carriage, and thought of spiders carrying a swaddled fly.

  Then the coach was gone, as if it had never been there.

  “Sun’s coming up,” Ralph said, stretching and yawning. “Where to now?”

  “Back to the safe house in Threadneedle Street,” Beth said firmly. “We need to go over everything we’ve learned. Every clue, every scrap of information we remember.”

  “Agreed,” said John. “We still need to work out what exactly the plot against the King is. We can’t lose momentum.”

  “Mott knows,” Ralph reminded them. “Those spies thought Strange would get him to talk...”

  But Beth was already on her way out of the door. “What if he can’t? If Mott clams up, holds out for long enough, or if he dies, then we’re the only ones who have a chance of preventing whatever is about to happen!” She paused and turned back quickly to grab the crude map she’d seen on the mantelpiece. “We might need this. Now – let’s go.”

  * * *

  As the trio made their way wearily back through the London streets, Beth saw the light of morning dawn on the night’s fresh crop of human misery. The bodies of those who had died in the night lay sprawled in the gutters, and several times they had to cross the street to avoid stepping on the dead.

  At least the they suffer no more, she thought to herself. It’s the living who deserve our pity.

  Up ahead, a man was hammering on the door of a house. His face and neck were covered with the disfiguring lumps and boils of the plague.

  “Let me in, Lottie!” he begged. “It’s me! It’s your Bill!”

  “Go away!” shrieked a voice from the upstairs window. “We shan’t let you in – we can’t!”

  “Let me see the children,” Bill howled. “They need their daddy – who’s going to kiss them goodnight if not me?”

  The woman in the house gave a terrible forlorn cry, as if her heart were breaking in her chest. Then the solemn face of a small boy appeared at the window.

  “Mummy says you can’t come in,” the boy said. “You’ll bring plague into the house.”

  “Tim?” Bill pleaded, with a pathetic fresh hope in his voice. “Good boy! Come down the stairs and open the door!”

  The boy slowly closed the window shutters.

  Beth had a lump in her throat as she passed by the doomed man locked out of his own house. His cries echoed in her ears long after she had left the street.

  And yet the city was waking up around them. Those citizens who had survived the night were emerging, weary and red-eyed, into the morning light. Traders began to get on with the business of the day, setting out stalls, opening shop shutters and taking up familiar places on street corners, because life had to go on for those who were still there to live it. A cart laden with cabbages passed by, sending up clouds of dust, and Ralph coughed as the dust caught in his throat. Before Beth could even protest, a flower-seller had grabbed her arm and pulled her away.

  “It’s for your own good, miss!” the flower-seller insisted. “He’s got the plague!”

  “He hasn’t!” Beth said indignantly, fighting to get away.

  “You’ll thank me for it later, when you’re not dead,” the woman barked. With a painful wrench, Beth tugged herself free and ran back to join her friends.

  “You’ll be sorry!” the flower-seller yelled after her.

  Beth couldn’t wait to get inside the safe house, despite it not being her familiar home at the Peacock and Pie, with the jolly welcome from Big Moll and the eager face of her dear friend Maisie. Though she loved her adventures as a spy, at that moment she missed them so much it hurt. But at least young Maisie was safe in Oxford with the rest of the company...

  Just as they were about to reach the house, Beth spotted a familiar face on the other side of the road – it was Clare Smythe, one of the theatre’s loyal staff who kept the costumes laundered and mended.

  “Clare!” she called, dashing across the street. “Oh, Clare, it’s wonderful to see you! You’re well? And who’s this?” She bent down to the tearful child whose hand Clare was holding. “Can this really be little Maddy, who I used to rock in my arms? Look how big you are!”

  “Hello, Beth!” Clare exclaimed, and kissed her on both cheeks, then frowned. “My darling girl, but whatever are you doing here? Aren’t you meant to be off in Oxford with the rest of the troupe?”

  “Uh ... an old friend is very ill,” Beth explained, then changed the subject quickly. “But come now, what’s the matter with little Maddy? A face as pretty as yours shouldn’t be all filled with tears.”

  “I wanted to see the lion,” Maddy said, pressing a knuckle into her watering eye. “He was in a big cage and the cage was on a big cart and I wanted to see him and they wouldn’t let me...!”

  “A lion?” Beth repeated, amazed at what the child had said.

  “She’s telling the truth, bless her,” said Clare. “Down in Southwark, I swear to God, there was a cage with a lion in it! It must have come from the Tower – you know, where the menagerie is.”

  “Goodness! What was it doing outside the grounds?” laughed Beth. This had been a long, nightmarish night, and now it seemed to be turning into a morning straight out of a pantomime.

  “Well, I shouldn’t like to say,” Clare said, leaning in close. “Not in front of Maddy, I mean. But it was just by the Hope Theatre, and you know what goes on there, I trust...”

  “Oh.” Beth tried not to let her dismay show, or little Maddy might start crying again.

  She knew all too well what Clare was driving at. The Hope Theatre wasn’t just used for plays. It sometimes played host to a nastier spectacle – animal-baiting. Mostly it was bears who were tormented for the audience’s entertainment, but other animals had met that fate too, including – though very rarely – lions. This must be someone’s idea of a special occasion, Beth thought, feeling a little sick.

  “Well, we must hurry on,” she said. “God bless, Clare. Goodbye, Maddy dear. I’ll see you both soon!”

  “God bless. I hope to see you on the stage again soon, Miss Beth,” Clare said.

  Beth’s shoulders sagged as they hurried on – Clare’s words had reminded her of Lady Lucy back in Oxford. There was no way she’d be back in time to play her starring role, not with the plot against the King still ripe, its secrets not yet uncovered. No doubt Lady Lucy Joseph was revelling in taking Beth’s lead part right at that very moment.

  Finally they reached the safe house, and once inside with the door locked and bolted, Beth, John and Ralph gathered around the table. Beth smoothed out the vital piece of paper in front of them, along with the map she
’d pocketed from Robert Mott’s attic mantelpiece.

  “We believe we know now who three of the four conspirators are now,” Beth began. “SP was Sebastian Peters. RM is Robert Mott. JL is Jack Leighton, still at large. The only one who’s still a mystery is LB.”

  “I looked through the foundry accounts in case any of the workers was an LB,” said John. “None of them was.”

  “Didn’t find an LB at the Four Swans, neither,” said Ralph.

  “We know what the plotters want,” Beth went on. “They’re going to make an attempt on the King’s life. But we don’t know where or when, or even how.”

  “The details must be in the drawing,” John said. “If the note is an instruction of some sort from Vale, that could be how he was confirming the plot. There must be something in it we’ve missed...”

  “Wavy lines mean water, Sandford said.” Beth pointed at them. “And the bridge may denote a First Son, but it might also genuinely mean a bridge – and a bridge on water means a river. I think it simply means the Thames.”

  “Just a moment – show us that map you got from Mott’s place again,” Ralph said. Excitement was creeping into his voice, and as Beth unfolded it, he stabbed his finger on a double dotted line that led across the central river. “That’s the Thames, all right! There’s London Bridge, and there’s the Isle of Dogs ... so that circle thing near the South Bank might be the Beargarden.”

  Beth froze. Gooseflesh rose on her arms. Everything fell into place in one terrifying instant.

  “The Beargarden,” she breathed. “It was right in front of us at the foundry!”

  “Eh?” John said, looking between the others with confusion on his face.

  “That drawing in the dust on the window ledge – the two circles, and the B with the beginning of an E! Someone wrote Beargarden, then rubbed it out!”