Plague Child

by Peter Ransley

  In the reception hall he heard a violent argument between Lord Stonehouse and his two sons, Richard and Edward. Edward’s shrill voice cried that the child was John Lloyd’s bastard. Eaton winced as Richard savagely broke in: ‘You surely know what she feels for her cousin Lloyd, Father? Did she not tell you whose bastard it is? You were with her!’ A door slammed and there was silence. Mrs Morland, the housekeeper, was cleaning a dark pool of liquid from the floor of the gallery room – a task with which she would not normally demean herself.

  Eaton was summoned to Lord Stonehouse’s study. His lordship was now alone, very calm, ominously so, carefully pressing his signet ring into the still molten wax of a plague order. In the tone of voice that he might use about uncollected rents or diseased cattle, he told him a baby had died of plague at Horseborne. It must be removed before the contagion spread.

  Relating this, Eaton never looked at me once. Now he did so, fingering his face as if he were adjusting a plague mask. ‘I found Matthew Neave, the driver of the plague cart, and told him to collect the dead child.’

  ‘My father never drove a plague cart!’ I shouted.

  Eaton ignored my outburst. ‘I waited for him near the plague pit. He showed me the dead baby, then flung it in the pit. I paid him –’

  I brought the birth-coin out of my pocket and slid it across the desk. That silenced him. Turville craned across to see it. His eyes became suddenly sharp. ‘You’ve seen Matthew Neave recently? You know where he is?’

  I shook my head and told them how I had come by it. Eaton scoffed and said it could be any coin. I turned it over so they could see the fleur-de-lys on the rim, above the King’s head, showing it was minted in 1625, the year the King was crowned.

  ‘It was a half crown?’ Turville asked Eaton.

  ‘One to collect the body. Another to throw it in the pit.’

  I shuddered and slipped it back in my pocket before Eaton could reach it. He was close-fisted enough to want to take it, saying that Matthew had cheated him by showing him a dead child from a plague family already on his cart.

  A month or two later, he said, rumours began to circulate among the villages on the Highpoint estate that Matthew Neave’s common-law wife, Susannah, had given birth to a healthy male child. As she was nearly forty, childless, and had shown no sign of pregnancy, it was thought a miracle – or a spell cast by her husband, who was known to be a cunning man.

  ‘When I rode up to their cottage,’ Eaton said, ‘they were gone. Pots, pans, plague cart, child, everything. Gone.’

  Eaton had spent himself. It was as if he had ridden through that rain-soaked night again, telling the story. He sat like a wind that has blown itself out, chin resting on his linked hands, knotted together like a tree root, staring pensively at me. Turville poured more wine. This time I swallowed mine at a draught. The ray of winter sun had moved slightly, lighting up something in the painting I had missed before. I jumped up, Turville grabbing at his wine as I brushed against it. The woman’s russet-coloured dress was modestly cut, much more so than Lucy Hay’s, but there was no mistaking it. Suspended by a gold chain, half in and half out of her dress, was the pendant Matthew had shown me over the fire that dark Poplar evening. The head of the falcon peered at me over the edge of her dress, ruby eyes seeming to glint accusingly at me.

  ‘What is it? What is it, Tom?’

  Eaton’s voice was urgent, hoarse, catching in his throat from talking. He used my name for the first time. He wanted something, and I was sure from the way he looked at the picture it was to do with the pendant Matthew had stolen. They were both like dogs hunting, bellies down, breath held, ready to spring.

  ‘What is it?’ Eaton repeated.

  ‘Is she my mother?’

  They both laughed. ‘Lady Frances? She had been dead five years when this happened,’ Turville said.

  ‘Who is my mother?’

  ‘A whore and a thief,’ Eaton said.

  I flew at him, taking him unawares. My fist struck him on his scar. He cried out, his head jerking back, his drink spilling on his jacket. He grabbed me in a grip as tight as prison chains.

  ‘Go to your head, do they, those fancy clothes? You are nothing without us – nothing! I could just as easily throw you in a pit! And this time I’d make sure you were dead.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you let Gardiner and Crow kill me?’ I shouted.

  Turville laughed. ‘He has you there, Eaton.’

  Eaton pulled me to him until I feared he was going to throttle me. Turville scrambled up. ‘Leave him, leave him, for God’s sake. Eaton, you fool – he has his mother’s temper. And you are as mad as you were then!’

  The clock struck twelve. Eaton suddenly smiled at me as it chimed, then at Turville, and pushed me away. I was too desperate to hear about my real mother to worry about these strange exchanges between them. They told me she had captivated all the Stonehouses, father and sons. She lived on an adjoining estate and was, said Turville, of gentle birth.

  ‘Gentle? Margaret Pearce!’ Eaton slapped his thighs in derision.

  Turville said she died shortly after my birth. Her companion in the coach, Kate Beaumann, had left the district and they had been unable to find out what had happened to her.

  ‘Have you seen her?’ Turville asked. ‘Short woman. Always wore a grey cloak, winter or summer.’

  I had a memory of myself in Poplar, gazing through holes in oiled paper to catch a sight of the will o’ the wisp delivering my cake and seeing a cloaked figure, but dismissed it as fanciful. I had been too frightened to see much, for fear of being turned into a cake.

  They were gazing at me intently. ‘A plain woman –’ Turville continued.

  ‘Not plain!’ cried Eaton, then almost immediately: ‘Yes, plain. Plain as bread is plain. About this high.’ He put his hand to his chest. ‘Quiet, West-country voice. Ye had to dip to hear the lady. Dark hair. Well, it was dark. I suppose it now be as grey as her cloak. Have you seen her?’

  This time it was more of a plea, but I shook my head. What little I knew, however fanciful, I was determined to keep to myself, while finding out as much as I could from them.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense!’ I cried. ‘Why would Lord Stonehouse have me thrown in the pit – then change his mind and have me educated?’

  Eaton jumped up. ‘Because he was tricked, humiliated by your mother – I only know the half of it, the gossip, the rumours. When you were born he was convinced you were not a Stonehouse.’

  ‘Until he saw you in Poplar, ten years later,’ Turville said quietly. He steered me over to the portrait, his hand almost a caress. ‘Saw the flaming red hair and the Stonehouse nose – Roman, wide-bridge – and the set of the deep black eyes . . .’

  ‘Unless he was seeing what he wanted to see,’ Eaton put in sourly. ‘He was in one of his rages – about to disinherit Richard. Again! He paid Mr Black, through me, to apprentice and educate you.’

  I stared at the portrait, felt the curve of my nose. ‘But . . . but surely Lord Stonehouse can find out who my father is?’

  Eaton gave me an incredulous look. ‘Ask his sons, you mean? They denied it that night. Anyone seeing his lordship would have denied it. Now? Worse. Edward married again after the plague death of his first wife and child and has a young family. He don’t want no bastard turning up! Nor does Richard – he fears for his inheritance.’

  ‘At least Lord Stonehouse must know if I am his child!’ I blurted out.

  Eaton laughed. He laughed outright. It was one of the few times I ever saw him do so. He laughed until his body shook and he broke out into a fit of coughing. ‘If a bitch on heat runs loose a dog may cover it, but he don’t know how many other dogs have been there, do he?’

  I could feel my cheeks burning, but bit back my feelings, digging my nails into the palms of my hands.

  Turville’s hands flew into the air with pretended outrage. ‘Mr Eaton – show some delicacy, please!’

  Eaton stopped laughing. His voice was bitter. �
��If he don’t know love ain’t poetry, he won’t get very far, will he? Neither will we.’

  He turned away again to stare out of the window. I could not help feeling that Eaton was not seeing the garden but the fields and woods of Highpoint on that dark rainy night. I wondered what had caused such bitterness, and how it was connected with the night when I was born, as Turville continued, choosing his words with care.

  There were signs, he said, that Lord Stonehouse was beginning to think of me as more than an act of charity. Now that Richard had joined the King, he had ordered Turville and Eaton to find out as a matter of urgency who my father was. Again he stressed they had strict instructions to tell me nothing – but had come to realise that, without my help, they would get nowhere. Turville linked his hands together and stared intently at me.

  ‘Shortly before your mother’s companion, Kate Beaumann, disappeared she told the housekeeper that the locket part of the pendant contains proof of who your father is.’

  I was very still. Eaton swung round from the window but did not approach me. For a moment the only sound was the wind rustling the trees outside.

  ‘We know Matthew has it, because word reached me he once tried to sell it. Do you know where he is?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Come, Tom,’ said Turville gently. ‘We are on the same side, are we not?’ When I said nothing, he tapped a file on his desk. ‘We have been gathering information about where Matthew might be. Will you help us find him?’

  I felt a sudden surge of excitement and hope, which I could not conceal. I had no illusions about them, but, if they needed me, I needed them. I had lost Anne because I did not know who I was. At best I was a bastard, at worst George’s evil spirit. But if I was the bastard of a lord, even Mr Black might forgive me.

  ‘What will happen to Matthew if I do help?’

  ‘Nothing. In fact – no promises – but he might get a small reward for, er, helping us to find the pendant.’

  Eaton bit his lip but said nothing.

  Turville smiled at me. ‘I told you Eaton! I knew from your file, Mr Tom, that beneath – shall I call it your poetic wildness? – there is a native shrewdness that would tell you where your best interests lay.’

  My file! From shelves of land litigation and law books he took a file with a falcon crest and THOMAS NEAVE on the cover.

  Thomas! I had been Tom all my life and now I was to be Thomas. Thomas Neave Esq. Dizzily, as he opened the file, I saw letters for me to be indentured, educated, my portrait commissioned. Turville, beaming at my excitement, painted a glowing picture of what might be in prospect, if I played my cards right. A house in Drury Lane was far from a remote possibility . . .

  ‘A house!’

  ‘Ssshhh –’ Turville put his finger to his lips and looked nervously around, as if there were ears in the very panelling. Once again he stressed that if Lord Stonehouse knew they were telling me this it would ruin everything. I must not expect more than three servants, he went on.

  ‘Three –’ I dug my nails into the back of my hand to make sure I was not dreaming.

  He said he was sorry there could not be more, but it would be politic to display a Puritan frugality in contrast to Richard’s excesses. Faintly I said I would struggle to manage on three, as across the garden square came the distant sound of church bells. One of the bells had a dull, cracked peal.

  ‘That sounds like my old local church, St Mark’s,’ I said.

  ‘It is in that direction, certainly,’ replied Turville.

  Again there was that complicit exchange of glances. ‘Be done with it,’ Eaton said. ‘Tell the boy. Now he knows where his real interests lie.’

  Even when Turville, speaking now in his measured lawyer’s phrases, told me that Anne Black had married, or – as the clock in the hall struck the half-hour – to be precise, would be married at one o’clock to George Samuel Sawyer, I did not believe it. If she could not marry me, I was arrogant, blinkered enough to think she would never marry. Least of all to Gloomy George! It was absurd. Laughable. She would never, in this world or another, marry someone so old! Gloomy George?

  It was Eaton who brought me to my senses. His eyes, normally dull as old coins, flared into life at some painful memory. ‘Love!’ he snarled. ‘Forget it. There’s only one thing that matters –’ he flung out a finger towards the estate map ‘– soil! Land! The seat!’

  Eaton’s bitter outburst wrenched me out of the cosy, self-satisfied belief that Anne would never marry anyone but me. I remembered the reports George gave Mr Black when he found me with Anne and saw them as the jealousies they were. When Mr Black was struck down and George took Anne’s hand, telling her to confess to God it was her fault for letting me out, I saw it as the love-making it was. I was so lacerated by my own stupidity, I did not move. They took my silence not as shock, but acquiescence. Turville now laughed openly.

  ‘I was concerned you might be foolish, Mr Tom, but now you know what is at stake you see the world a little differently, eh?’

  The brief fire in Eaton’s eyes flickered out. He grinned. ‘His lordship saw what might happen. He gave strict instructions to Black you two were to be kept apart. You can thank me for that.’

  ‘I can just see his lordship’s face,’ Turville said.

  ‘Aye!’

  ‘The daughter of a printer!’

  They laughed and Eaton clapped me on my back. I sprang up. I shoved my chair at Turville, catching him in his fat stomach. He gasped and staggered backwards into the shelves. He bounced from them to grab me, but a heavy ledger slid from the top shelf on to his head. As he reeled groggily I ran past him, but Eaton’s outstretched arms were waiting to clutch me. I vaulted on to the desk, kicking at him as he tried to pull me down. He gave a grunt of pain as, with another leap, I made it to the door, slamming it shut after me.

  ‘Gibson!’ he yelled.

  Lean-muscled, relaxed, Gibson kept his eyes focused steadily on me. I hesitated. Perhaps a window. There was one across the landing, but I would never get it open in time. Gibson read my hesitation and grinned up at me. Behind me, Eaton was cursing as he pulled open the study door. I ran down halfway down the stairs then jumped, curling my arms round my face, hitting Gibson like a ball from a cannon. Both of us sprawled there dazed, Eaton and Turville gazing down on us. At the end of the passage to the back, Jane, who was carrying a pitcher, stared in amazement.

  In a better state than Gibson, for his head had struck the tiled floor, I scrambled up, but he grabbed my leg. Another moment and I would have been down, but there was a thud. A grunt. The tiles around me were shattered with broken pottery. A shower of water splashed over me. My leg was released and I pulled myself up just in time to avoid Gibson, who gave me a bewildered stare, eyes glazing. Beyond him, a look of sheer amazement on her face at what she had done, was Jane, holding the handle of the broken pitcher in her hand. I stood there watching Gibson, as he slowly keeled over, falling into a pool of water and shards of pottery. Jane reacted first, beckoning me to follow her down the passage. Another passage bent off to the right. The door at the end of it was open to the yard, from which she had collected the water.

  I turned to plead with her to go with me, but hearing the others running down the passageway she gave me a push and gestured violently for me to flee.

  Chapter 16

  Blind rage drove my feet. Rage at my stupidity turned into rage against Anne. That she could even think about marrying anyone else was bad enough, but my old enemy George . . .

  When I had struck George with his composing stick I wished I had killed him. There must have been murder in my face as I ran past Smithfield, for people pressed against the wall to avoid me.

  Passing Half Moon Court I remembered something Anne had told me and turned towards the house. There was one chance. The door was locked but I knew the stone under which the key was hidden. I stopped. The table was laid with the wedding feast: game pie, a whole carp, a goose on a spit, fat dripping from it, conserves of fru
it and pitchers of beer and wine. I ran into the print shop.

  ‘Sa-rah?’ Mr Black called from upstairs. ‘That . . . you?’

  So he was still too ill to go to the service. Mixed with guilt for being a cause of his illness was a surge of hope that my plan might work.

  I ran into the print shop. Machinery gleamed; frame, quoins and hammer were neatly placed by the polished stone, ready for the next imposition. Whatever else I might say about George, his work was of the highest standard. The title of a pile of tracts brought back to me George’s sour, doom-laden voice: The Sinner’s Seven Steps to Hell. The sinner in me knew he would not make much money from that. It would scarcely pay for the paper. Yet there was an air of prosperity about the whole shop, to say nothing of the wedding feast.

  I went into the paper store. There I found the source of that prosperity: a pile of Royalist tracts, baled up and ready to deliver. I ripped open a bale and took one: Fighte for the King’s Peace. The imprint claimed it had been printed at the White Horse, Oxford, the King’s headquarters. I could not believe, as Anne had told me, that Mr Black knew about this.

  But it was easy to believe, when I ran upstairs, that he scarcely knew about anything. He still thought I was Sarah, for he was half sprawled out of bed, groping for a quill he had dropped. Papers were scattered round the bed. He had been struggling to sign his name again, but had lost his fine Italian hand and his signature was reduced to a spidery scrawl.

  ‘S-arah, lift . . .’

  I put my hands under his arms and tried to lift him. My bad arm cried out and he slipped even further out of the bed. I gave him another heave. If he had been his old weight, I would never have managed it, but the crackly skin seemed to slip over his bones as I pulled him against the pillows. He stared at me, or at least half of him did. Half, the right half, seemed the same Mr Black. The same dark eye fixed at me sternly, half of the lips quivering as if to issue an order. His left cheek was a frozen whirlpool of flesh, the eye half shut, immobile.