Plague

by Jo Macauley

  I have to get out of here, Beth thought. There could be more of them!

  She peered out of the windows again, hoping for an opening or that the bearward would have wrangled the lion again. But at that moment, Beth saw two figures leap from the Heavens onto the roof of the upper gallery. They swung themselves down and dropped to the floor. She saw John, cornered by the men, begin to back away as they advanced towards him. They drew long clubs from their belts, raised them above their heads – and charged.

  Before she could devise a plan to get out of the actors’ room, she heard a violent crash shake the rear door, rattling the bolts in their casings. She whirled around. Someone was trying to break in! She had nothing with which to defend herself, but knew she’d better find something, and fast. Whoever was out there would be through that door in seconds, by the sound of it.

  As the door shook again, she leaped over to the props chest and dug around in the musty heaps. She flung masks, crowns, goblets and an unrealistic skull aside. Finally she found what she was looking for – a sword, though it was made from wood covered with metal foil.

  “Better than nothing,” she muttered to herself, just as the door crashed open, the bolts torn from their moorings from the sheer force of the attack.

  The man standing there in the settling dust was huge. Piggy eyes glared from a broad, brutish face half hidden by a wound kerchief, as if he had been a highwayman. The club he held looked as if half a tree trunk had gone into making it. It had reduced the door to splinters and Beth had no doubt it would do the same to her bones. He looked shocked to see her there, but then his face crumpled into a scowl.

  “Out of my way, girl!” he grated in a thick accent.

  “You need a lesson in manners, sir,” she threw back at him.

  Beth had practised her stage fighting regularly, thrusting and parrying for hours with a sparring partner. She stood en garde, looking as fiercely confident as any swordsman in the King’s army. It was mostly acting, of course, but the assassin didn’t know that, and the ease with which Beth levelled her sword at him made him stop in his tracks.

  He glanced past her at the door. Beth knew then, beyond any doubt, that the man was here to kill the King. And the man realized she knew his plan.

  “Have it your way, then!” the assassin roared. He swung his club down at her like an angry ogre, but Beth darted out of the way and the club cracked a flagstone where she’d been standing. The man heaved the club back for another swing, this time swiping across like a man reaping corn. Beth jumped back out of his arc.

  “Come here, you little—!”

  The club swung at her again. Beth ducked out of the way and smacked the man’s rear with the wooden sword, making him yell in pain. That move always made them howl with laughter at Drury Lane, she thought. The assassin wasn’t at all amused, of course. He began to slam the club down again and again, anger making him clumsy, smashing into props and rails of costumes. Beth suddenly wondered if she could use that anger against him.

  “You fight like a gardener hunting moles!” she mocked.

  He spat some words at her that she didn’t understand. They sounded like German – and they sounded obscene. He swung the club in a broad figure of eight in front of him, advancing on her as he did.

  Beth was soon pressed up against the inner wall, with nowhere to retreat to. Fancy footwork couldn’t save your hide if you were boxed in. There was only one place she could fall back to now.

  She skirted sideways and quickly pulled the actors’ door open, backing into the wide open space of the arena.

  Behind her, the lion roared hungrily...

  The sand of the arena floor was soft under Beth’s feet, and she glanced to the side nervously as she heard the dogs barking up a storm in their gated enclosure. The shot had gone off before the bearward could release them. Fortunately, that meant only the lion was out here ... which was in fact not all that fortunate, she thought nervously.

  The lion roared, rattling its chain urgently. Beth even thought she felt its hot breath blasting on the back of her neck. Her attacker loomed out of the actors’ room and stood with his club ready. He let out a guttural laugh.

  “Nowhere to run, little girl. It is over for you now!”

  “My word,” Beth taunted him. “Is that supposed to be gloating? You sound like a third-rate ham...”

  “I kill you!” the man bellowed, lurching towards her.

  “I shall kill you,” Beth corrected him.

  She skipped lightly forward with her wooden sword – the foil was hanging off it in strips now – and jabbed the man hard in the ribs before retreating quickly. The final insult was too much. He ran at her, roaring, and his huge boots shook the ground.

  Beth waited, every muscle taut and tense. Just a little closer...

  As the club swung at her, she dived with all her might. She fell hard on the sand and rolled over and over, scrambling back up again onto one knee.

  The lion saw the club-wielding man running right for it. It leaped at him, trailing the entire length of its chain. Too late, the man realized he had been tricked. He tried to stop, but could only stagger like a drunkard.

  Enormous claws raked down the man’s front. He screamed and tried to pull away. One of the lion’s claws was hooked in his belt. The man’s struggles just made it worse, and his legs skidded out from under him. The lion mauled him like a cat playing with a rat, swatting his limp body back and forth, roaring. Beth felt sick, and squeezed her eyes shut against the sight.

  A moment later, the guards from the front door came stampeding into the arena, along with the bearward. One guard helped Beth into the safety of the theatre, while the others dragged the hapless conspirator away from the lion’s murderous embrace. He was moaning, his clothes ragged and wet with blood, but he was still alive.

  Beth swallowed. Maybe it would have been a mercy if he hadn’t survived.

  She suddenly realized she had to check on Ralph and John, but as she moved away, the guard grabbed her arm. “Stay here, miss! It’s too dangerous up there!”

  “My friends need me!” she said angrily and twisted herself out of his grasp. She ran up three flights of stairs and nearly collided with John at the top, who was running to check on Ralph too.

  “Beth! You’re all right!” John said with something between a gasp and a laugh. Forgetting himself for a moment, he grabbed her by the shoulders. “That lion—”

  “I don’t even want to think about it.” Beth shuddered, gently removing herself from John’s grasp and patting his hands affectionately. “Ralph. Where is he?”

  “Last I saw, he was up at the top of the galleries. Th-there were more of them, Beth! He must have been completely ... outnumbered...”

  John’s face went slack with amazement as he saw Ralph come sauntering round the bend towards him. Beth raised an eyebrow but couldn’t stop the grin spreading on her face.

  Ralph exhaled with relief to see them both alive and well, then returned her grin. He was flipping one of the assassins’ clubs and catching it in one hand.

  Behind him were five men with kerchiefs around their faces. Four of them were being held captive by the King’s guards; the fifth was being dragged behind, slumped unconscious with a red mark on his forehead.

  “You took your time getting here!” he joked. “This show’s already over. Not like you to miss a grand finale, Beth!”

  Chapter Nineteen - Heroes

  “Kneel,” the King commanded.

  Beth, John and Ralph all fell to one knee and bowed their heads.

  “In recognition of the mighty service you have all shown to us, and for your notable gallantry and valour in exposing a most felonious plot that threatened our very person, we are pleased say that we will be awarding you the King’s own special medal.”

  The spies had assembled in a secluded part of the theatre to protect their identities. Meanwhile, the baffled generals and courtiers, as well as the German ambassador, had been told only that some of the King’s el
ite personnel had prevented a dreadful attack.

  “You may stand,” the King said, smiling as if it were an afterthought.

  The three spies got to their feet. Beth could hardly breathe for excitement.

  “This new litter of bloodhounds will do very well, wouldn’t you agree, Strange?” the King said. “Once again, they have foiled a nefarious plot against the Crown. Certainly up to your usual standards, I’d say, if not a good deal beyond!”

  Behind him, the spymaster limped into view. He had finally arrived at the Beargarden after the assassins had all been taken into custody. Every time he took a step he winced in pain, but he was alive. Beth was relieved to see it would take more than the fury of Jack Leighton to end Strange’s life.

  “They have clearly been paying attention to my lessons,” Strange said neutrally.

  Oh, well. That was about as high praise as you ever got from Strange, Beth thought wryly. She consoled herself with the thought that the King himself had just awarded her one of the highest honours in the land. Wanting some kind of recognition from Strange on top of that would have been looking the proverbial gift horse in the mouth.

  Strange cleared his throat. “But yes, Your Majesty. They have excelled my expectations in every degree. I counted on them to do their duty, but I admit, I did not expect them to go so far beyond it. They are loyal patriots and more. I would go so far as to say they are heroes.”

  Heroes, Beth thought. She felt her heart would burst with pride. There was something she had to say and if she didn’t do it now, she never would.

  “Your Majesty?”

  “Yes?” said the King, surprised to be addressed directly.

  “Please let the lion live,” she said quickly. “He’s not done anything wrong, and it would be horrible to set the dogs on him now, and surely the German ambassador has had quite enough entertainment for one day...”

  “Hmm,” said the King.

  “And he did save my life!” Beth said, politely but firmly.

  “Indeed,” said the King, his eyes twinkling with amusement. “Very well, Miss Johnson. Our valorous lion shall be returned to the menagerie at the Tower, to live out his days in peace. Being viciously attacked from all sides is not a noble end to one’s life.” He leaned in close and whispered to Beth: “And after today, I fancy I understand rather better how it feels!”

  * * *

  Much later, they were all sitting around the table in the safe house. Strange’s gold had paid for a delicious hot meal. As debriefings went, it was about the heartiest Beth and the boys had known.

  Their spymaster was back to his usual businesslike self and only picked at his food, though. Beth wondered where he got his energy. There must be uncanny fires deep within the man’s soul that kept him going, fuelling his devotion to King and country, she thought proudly.

  “This has been a successful operation in almost all respects,” he summed up. “We have identified the conspirators as a German cell, the League of the Black Rose. Most of the assassins were German or had connections with the country, like Sebastian Peters.”

  “Germans? You asked us if we knew Sebastian Peters’ nationality,” Beth remembered.

  “I suspected a German influence as soon as I heard his name,” Strange explained. “Sebastian Peters is an English name, but has an equivalent in German. Of their English agents, Robert Mott is safely in custody, along with Jack Leighton.”

  “I thought you’d knifed that cur,” Ralph said indelicately.

  “I did,” Strange said. “But I struck only to hobble him, not to kill. A quick death at my hands would have been too much like mercy.”

  Beth was still pondering Strange’s mention of German names, and that “Sebastian Peters” had a German equivalent...

  “Only one aspect of this case eludes me,” Strange said, snapping Beth back to attention. “The fourth conspirator remains at large, this LB. While he is still out there, the danger still remains. The beast is not slain until the last head is severed.”

  “What do we know about him?” John asked.

  “None of the other conspirators had the money to plan anything as ambitious as this,” Strange mused. “So LB must be wealthy. High-born too, to have the connections he did. Nobody else would be privy to such knowledge. I wondered if LB might be code for Vale himself, but whoever it is, he has been in London recently – we know that from the tavern. And yet, as far as we know, Vale is still working from overseas...” He paused. “Beth, are you all right?”

  A single thought was burning in Beth’s mind like a flaming torch, going back to a passing comment John had made: Strange always tells us not to make assumptions. What if we’ve assumed something about LB that isn’t true?

  “Sir, I have just had an odd thought,” she said. “Though you may think me mad...”

  Chapter Twenty - A Revelation

  It was all but impossible to sleep on Strange’s coach. At the speed they were going, every pebble seemed like a boulder and every rut a trench, jolting and bumping until Beth felt her head would be shaken off her shoulders.

  “We’ll stop only when we must, to change the horses,” Strange warned them. “This will not be comfortable. But it will be swift.”

  Beth wondered if any coach had ever rushed from London to Oxford as quickly as theirs. John, sitting opposite her, looked green from the constant pummels and bumps. Ralph, however, was slumped across the leather cushions, snoring loudly.

  “How does he do it?” Beth wondered to John.

  “He told me he learned the knack at sea,” John said. “On a ship, you snatch what sleep you can when you can get it.”

  Beth wished she had Ralph’s gift. She couldn’t even remember when she had slept last. But there was one more conspirator to catch, and everything depended upon getting to Oxford in time. If Vale’s agents had reached their co-conspirator first, then LB would slip away and be forever out of their grasp. I won’t let that happen, Beth thought. Not for anything. Sleep would have to wait.

  Strange showed no sign of fatigue, of course. He passed the time on the journey by reading through a sheaf of reports, despite the bumpy course. Beth could not tell whether they contained good news or bad, since the spymaster’s face never changed expression.

  Except once. When he cracked the seal on one small folded paper and opened it, his eyes widened. “I knew it,” he muttered. “It is him. It could be no other.”

  “Sir?” Beth prompted him.

  “Henry Vale,” Strange said. “This billet-doux has come all the way from Aachen. We have a sighting that matches Vale’s description.”

  “Aachen? So he is in Germany like you suspected!”

  “I am not certain, Beth. But I am as close to certain as I can be. The man my informant saw is one and the same as the man who was supposedly executed for treason at the Tower. He is cunning and sly – but we are one step ahead of him this time, Beth.”

  Strange looked out of the window then, clearly wishing the coach could travel even faster. Beside him, John made a hiccupping sound and leaned back with a groan.

  “Are we at Oxford yet?”

  * * *

  It was many hours before the coach came to a halt in the Christ Church courtyard. A familiar figure was standing listlessly outside, frowning at the strange black vehicle.

  “Maisie!” Beth exclaimed delightedly. She burst out of the coach and ran to give her friend a hug.

  “Oh Miss Beth, Miss Beth, thank heavens you’re back! And you’re well? Oh thank goodness, we’ve all been so worried that you may catch that dreadful ailment. Oh, but she’s terrible, Miss Beth. A gorgon, is what Jake calls her! And a harpy! She made me wait out here, said her opening night wasn’t for the likes of me to witness—”

  “Slow down!” Beth laughed. “Who made you wait outside?”

  “Her!” Maisie said, then with a scowl “Lady Lucy, who’d you think? She’s a hell-cat, Miss Beth, and you know I don’t like to speak ill of people, but she’s been nothing but bad. That drea
dful Lord Wilmot of Rochester too, he’s a wrong ’un. Hangs around the King’s Company all day long, smirking like the Devil himself! There’s a tale I heard from Mistress Jessop, she’s the cook here, and she told me the maid Tilly saw him under the stairs with—”

  “Maisie, dear, the gossip will have to wait,” Beth said quickly. “Is tonight’s performance still going on?”

  “Should be just about finished by now,” Maisie said. “She’s murderin’ your part, miss. Even Mister Lovett says so! ‘Beth Johnson may be a bumbling girl,’ he said, ‘but at least she can enunciate! This wretched Lucy speaks like her mouth was full of toads!’ He said that, Miss Beth, I heard him!”

  “Quickly!” Strange commanded. Beth followed close behind, along with John and Ralph, as Strange flung open the door to the room the actors were using. Maisie tailed eagerly behind them, happy to be disobeying the hated girl who’d told her to stay outside.

  The Great Hall was lit by a thousand glimmering candles. Long tables lay down the centre of the room, where nobles and scholars sat watching. Beth recognized Rochester, along with several other important-looking figures. They wore expressions of polite tolerance, as if there was a nasty smell in the air that nobody wanted to admit was there. Beth knew all too well what they were tolerating – Lady Lucy’s atrocious performance.

  On the stage, Love’s Green Garlands was drawing to a close. There was Lucy, wearing Beth’s shepherdess costume and absolutely caked in make-up.

  She spread her arms, addressing the audience in the final speech. Beth knew the words by heart. She mouthed them along with Lucy, who stumbled her way through the speech like a drunkard tottering through a back alley:

  Good gentles all, we players fondly hope

  That we have taught as well as entertained;

  For there are lessons lurking in our jape.

  The wise who sit amongst you will have gained

  From all our warnings; but I do attest

  There is no help for any of the rest!

  She bowed.

  Rochester began the applause, a slow awkward clap. The other members of the audience joined in, rather reluctantly.