Plague Child

by Peter Ransley

  It was not the words, for I had heard them many times before, albeit never so extreme and violent. It was not even their effect on Anne, who had a look of terror on her face. It was George opening his arms to her that made me fly at him. It took everyone by surprise, including me. My momentum knocked Mr Tooley aside and slammed George against the press. As he fell to the floor my hands, which seemed to have a life of their own, went round his throat. I fully intended to kill him. I had no thought of what would happen to me – in my own mind I was hanged anyway. Whatever happened, he must not marry Anne. He must not touch her, poison her mind – the words hammered in my head as I fought to keep my grip on George while the constables tried to drag me off. I really think I was possessed. When they finally managed to pull me away, George was not dead, far from it, but at least he could not speak. That was something.

  The print shop looked as though a storm had struck it. Blocks, type and paper were scattered about the floor. They bound my arms tight behind my back. Even then, they moved round me cautiously, as though I was a rabid dog who might suddenly bite. One con stable’s lip was thickening, and a dribble of blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. I saw this in flashes as I came round, gradually aware of the blows I had received. How long Mrs Black had been there I do not know, but she was telling Mr Tooley that Mr Black wished to see me upstairs. See me upstairs! I could scarce climb one of them. Mr Tooley dismissed this. He would not put Mr Black under any more distress.

  A violent hammering came from the room above. Plaster pattered down on us. Before Mr Tooley could stop her, Anne was halfway up the stairs to her father. The minister linked his hands and shut his eyes as his lips moved in what, I imagine, was a prayer that God should bring to an end, one way or another, the longest wedding he had ever witnessed. Mrs Black shook plaster from her hat.

  ‘Mis . . . cre . . . ant!’ bellowed Mr Black above us, in a howl of distorted syllables that brought Mr Tooley from his prayer and me to my feet. His voice might be slurred, but it still held all the vengeful power that both he and George derived from the Old Testament. It reawoke old shivers in me, and brought George’s voice back, albeit a thin reediness rattling in his throat, round which he was tenderly wrapping a silk scarf. ‘It is only right for Mr Black to see the miscreant, Mr Tooley. I told the poor gentleman, when we took the boy from without, that we were bringing the devil into this city.’

  Mr Tooley, who now looked as vengeful as Mr Black and George, took the letter on which I had forged Mr Black’s signature, and led the way upstairs. At that moment, I believe, I would rather have climbed the ladder at Paddington Fair than those stairs to Mr Black’s room. He was a fearful sight. Exhausted by thumping with his cane on the floor, his eyes were almost closed, his head nodding on his chest. His hair, still luxuriously thick but largely grey, fell down in mottled streaks, except for one clump, plastered by sweat to his forehead. He was supported partly by pillows, and partly by his hand gripping the cane. It was the successor to many such canes, but to me it looked very like the cane he had beaten me with on the first day I saw him in the shipyard.

  Mr Tooley approached him, stopped awkwardly, then coughed. Mr Black’s eyes jerked open, travelled up to the minister’s face and then stared directly at me. I would have fallen on my knees if I had not been held up by the two constables. How could I have reduced this upright man to this? Tried to destroy his daughter’s wedding? Truly the devil was in me! George stepped forward, taking off his hat and indicating me.

  ‘Here he is, Master,’ he said.

  ‘Aye.’ Mr Black struggled up on his pillows, his voice for a moment almost normal. ‘Here he is.’ Anne rushed to the bed and arranged the pillows. He sank back on them with a sigh, keeping his eyes on her all the time. ‘You thought to . . . disobey me . . .’

  She did fall on her knees. ‘No, Father, no! I thought – I thought –’ As his speech became clearer as he looked at her, hers was blurred by sobs, so she could scarcely form the words. ‘I – wanted to be – sure what your wishes were. Tom – he – brought a letter.’

  ‘This!’ said Mr Tooley, producing the letter.

  I shut my eyes as Mr Black stared at the scribble I had written, but I could not shut my ears when Mr Tooley began to read the lines about withdrawing consent. I opened my eyes when Mr Tooley abruptly stopped reading. Mr Black was holding out his good hand. He took the letter and read it. I began shaking and could not stop. I was not only a rogue and a fraud, I was that most foolish of rogues: one who did something so inanely stupid he was bound to be found out.

  Mr Black gave me a look of such searing gravity I opened my mouth to blurt out what I had done and beg his forgiveness. Only the gleam of triumph in George’s eyes stopped me. I would not give him that satisfaction. I glared sullenly back at him, just as I had done in the boat all those years ago, although it was now carrying me remorselessly not to treasure but to Paddington Fair.

  ‘Is that your signature, sir?’ said Mr Tooley.

  ‘That?’ Mr Black peered at the sheet of paper. ‘That miserable . . . spidery . . . scrawl . . . my signature?’ He spat out the words with scorn, then muttered. ‘Miscrean—’

  Mr Tooley expelled a deep, resigned sigh and signalled to the constables to take me away.

  ‘Aye,’ Mr Black muttered, nodding his head, still staring at the sheet of paper as I passed the foot of his bed. ‘That is . . . what . . . I am reduced to.’

  ‘Wait!’ cried Mr Tooley, stopping us so abruptly at the door we all collided with one another. ‘Are you saying, sir, it is your signature?’

  ‘What?’

  Mr Black clutched the piece of paper, staring up at him. Anne, who was being helped up by George, repeated the question. There followed a period of confusion such as I had endured before writing the fatal letter, until Mr Black thrust out the letter, almost striking Mr Tooley, and cried: ‘Of course . . . it’s my . . . damned sig . . . nature, sir!’ A stunned silence was broken by Mr Black exploding into a fit of coughing and Sarah and Anne rushing to his aid. Everyone began speaking at once, George shaking his head and telling Mr Tooley his poor master did not know what he was saying, until Mr Black made his meaning clear by dropping the letter and taking from under his blanket the pamphlet I had shown him of George’s secret printing.

  ‘Miscreant!’ he yelled, thrusting his stick with such force at George it sent him staggering backwards.

  ‘I knew it! I knew it! I knew you were telling the truth!’ Anne’s arms were round me, her face streaming with tears.

  ‘Anne – in front of the minister!’ cried a scandalised Mrs Black. ‘You are getting married!’

  ‘Aye,’ said Sarah. ‘But to which one?’

  The small bedroom was like Bedlam. Mr Tooley wanted to know whether there was to be a wedding or not. The constables did not know whether they were arresting me. Or George. Or neither. Sarah kept asking what she was supposed to do with all the food. Mrs Black collapsed in a chair, crying she did not care what Sarah did with it. Give it to the poor! She could never show her face in church again! I stood there in the middle of it all, dazed.

  I was consumed by the fear that the success of my falsehood had been bought only at the cost of Mr Black’s sanity. Surely he had become too confused to have any idea what he was doing. Amidst the babble, he was staring directly at me. He beckoned me closer. The good side of his face was strangely contorted, as though he was on the verge of having a fit. His right eye twitched. Fearing I had brought on his final spasm, I moved towards him, then stopped. There was no doubt about it. His right eye was closed in an outrageous wink. He pointed to the cane, which I gave him, silencing everyone with thumps on the spot where he signalled so regularly that little chips of wood had broken away. There was no sign of George, but in the silence I heard the door close downstairs.

  ‘Food,’ said Mr Black.

  ‘You mean – what to do with all the food?’ said Anne.

  Mr Black smiled and nodded. He pointed with his cane to the Bible that alw
ays lay at his bedside, and Mr Tooley picked it up. I think he expected the Old Testament, but Mr Black chose the New.

  ‘Luke,’ he managed, ‘fifteen –’ He fell back exhausted, but Mr Tooley seemed to know, or divine which verse and pointed at it. Again Mr Black smiled and nodded, and Mr Tooley read it. His voice shook a little as he did so:

  ‘Then bring out the calf that has been fattened, and kill it; let us eat and make merry; for my son here was dead, and has come to life again, was lost, and is found.’

  Chapter 19

  They were some of the happiest days of my life, that spring and summer. While the country was slowly tearing itself apart, I seemed to have come together as a person. War threatened, but never came.

  Every day I expected to see Eaton ride into the yard at Half Moon Court. I wrapped up the clothes I had escaped in, ready to give them to him. I wanted to have no obligation to him; but would not take the risk of returning them. When Eaton never came I supposed he and Turville had given up on the idea of me ever being a gentleman. The money Mr Black had received regularly from Eaton stopped. With it, it seemed, went the risk to my life. Crow was dead. For a time I saw Captain Gardiner on every street corner, but as I kept up the military training and grew tougher and stronger my fear diminished.

  I heard nothing of Matthew and no longer cared about finding my real father. That wink Mr Black gave me, and that reading from Luke, was as good as – nay, a thousand times better than – any blood a father has given to his son. Anne continued her dual mission of helping Mr Black to write again and, through the process, learning to write herself. Sometimes I joined in, but I felt I spoilt the atmosphere between them, for it was impossible to conceal our feelings for one another. One day I snatched a kiss. I saw Mr Black staring rigidly at me with his good eye and pulled sharply away, fearing his wrath – until, once again, he gave me that outrageous wink.

  But as I grew closer to Mr Black, and he depended on me, Mrs Black scarcely spoke to me. She knew nothing about George printing for the King, she said – and if she did, I think she was secretly proud of it. She dismissed politics as an alehouse argument dressed up in fine words which never brought food to the table. For her, everything had been settled. Her daughter had been about to marry a man who was a pillar of the community and did business with one of the richest men in the city. Now all that had been snatched away. And for what? A grubby apprentice with big feet who had gone through endless pairs of boots and who had bewitched her poor sick husband, which had been proved beyond doubt by her astrologer! Prodigal? That was certainly the word! Didn’t it mean wasteful? Spendthrift? Most certainly. Except he had nothing to spend.

  Mrs Black was right about that. There was no money. Mr Black, who gave me long and painful instructions on how to run a business that no longer existed, insisted there were ample funds. The cash box in which he kept money to run the business was empty. I suspected George of taking it, but Mr Black was so confused, I had no means of knowing how much, if anything, had been there. All there was to live on were the lead and tin tokens shopkeepers issued because there was such a shortage of small coins. Worth a halfpenny or a farthing, Sarah kept them in small leather bags for the butcher, baker and dairy. There was a cry of triumph when anyone discovered odd ones in a drawer, and a celebration when a small hoard was discovered in a pitcher.

  When the last of the tokens bought us only rye bread and no cheese, I remembered the tumultuous day I had witnessed when the King had attempted to invade Parliament. I wrote my first pamphlet, borrowing money from Will for the ink and paper to print it. I gazed at the proof I pulled with the fond pride of a father for his first child:

  PRIVILEGE!

  How MR PYM & Parliament

  Were Saved

  The Mysteriouse Messenger Revealed

  & the Kinges Evil Advisers Foiled

  It went through so many runs I had to reset the battered type. Its success brought in other business and I was courted, not as a gentleman, but a pamphleteer; courted and reviled, for the pamphleteer was seen as the lowest form of writer, seditious, licentious, even worse than a playwright, a whore in print, bought one day and thrown away the next. Occasionally I grew tired and disgusted with myself and wrote some poetry, but as these sold even less than moral tracts I went back to my stories, preferring to be reviled and read than not read at all.

  Mrs Black, however, began to look more kindly on me. With more money coming in she was able to afford a better class of astrologer, Mr Lilly. He found an error in the cheaper one’s calculations. Mercury was in conjunction, not opposition to the sun and I was therefore a messenger, not a devil.

  I could now afford a doctor for Mr Black, but he seemed to have benefited more from having no doctor at all. His speech had returned, slowly, albeit hesitant and slurred, and he was able to host the celebration of the fulfilment of my indentures. Seven years I had been there. Seven years – and at last I could throw away my uniform, my boots and my cursed hat!

  On a hot, humid, August day, Big Jed carried out tables and set them up under the apple tree. To mark the great occasion, he said, I was ‘excused pike’ for a week – but in truth drilling with a pike or shouldering a musket at Moorfields had fallen off. Fear of all-out war had dwindled as there seemed to be only isolated skirmishes far from London.

  Will, Ben, Luke and Charity came. She was with child, and as a treat (and perhaps practice) brought her small sister Prudence and brother Tenacious. Pamphleteers were there, like Crop-Eared Jack, who had had an ear cropped for his radical views. I most wanted Mr Ink to be there, but to my disappointment he had not arrived when Mr Black rose to make his speech. There was a rumble of thunder from the coppery blue sky, but Mrs Black said it was passing. She had bought the day from Mr Lilly, who had told her there would be no rain.

  Mr Black declared that the mysteries of the Guild had been satisfied, albeit after some debate about conduct (much laughter and thumping of the table).

  ‘Tom . . .’ His voice shook. ‘You are now free. You m-may now . . . go into an alehouse.’

  There was a great shout of laughter and another rumble of thunder, which Mrs Black dismissed with a wave of her hand.

  ‘You may even play . . . p-pass-dice.’

  There were more cheers and someone said he felt a spot of rain but Mrs Black said he was imagining it.

  ‘And . . . and . . .’ He stopped, leaning on his stick. Mrs Black got up anxiously, but he waved her testily away. He was unable to get the words out and I thought it was illness, but then, when he did speak, realised it was emotion. ‘You are . . . now . . . f-f-free to . . . m-marry.’

  Anne’s hand crept into mine. Mrs Black smiled. The rain sluiced down. Laughing, half-drenched, we were toasted in the house until the rain cleared and the sun came out again and we saw a lonely figure, dripping wet, under the apple tree.

  ‘Mr Ink!’ I cried. ‘Dear friend – you got here just in time!’

  ‘I was delayed by the news.’ He looked dazed, twisting his hat between his fingers, from which an inky rain dripped.

  ‘News?’

  ‘The King has raised his standard in Nottingham.’

  It had been expected for so long, but was still a shock when it came. What we did not expect was Eaton. He rode into the courtyard that evening, on his black gelding. He was almost civil, for him. He gave me a small bow, almost mocking, and called me Mr Tom. Just as he had done for seven years, he saw Mr Black in his office, the difference being that this time I was there. He said the King raising his standard had drawn Lord Stonehouse’s attention to unfinished business.

  ‘I . . . I have no business with Lord Stonehouse,’ said Mr Black steadily.

  ‘You have a contract, sir.’

  The contract concerned me. In effect, Eaton said, I was indentured not to Mr Black but to Lord Stonehouse. We put up a very spirited defence, telling him I was now free. The Guild had approved it. Furthermore, no payments had been made by Lord Stonehouse that year, and that had broken the contract.
Eaton clenched his fist, controlled himself with an effort, and tossed a letter on the desk to Mr Black, telling me if I wished to discuss the contents I should appear promptly at Mr Turville’s chambers at nine next morning.

  ‘I have no wish to discuss anything, sir,’ I said.

  ‘Very well. I bid you good evening, gentlemen.’

  I saw him off. When I returned to the office I thought Mr Black had had another fit. He could not speak. I seized the letter that lay open on his desk. Lord Stonehouse had bought the freehold of Half Moon Court and given Mr Black one month to quit. I knew that any move Mr Black made from the house he loved would kill him.

  Chapter 20

  I took out the parcel containing the austere dark blue doublet and breeches, not to return but to put on. Once more, I was a gentleman. But I did the last thing Eaton expected. I went not to Turville but to Queen Street, to Lord Stonehouse’s town house, determined to face the puppet-master, not his puppets.

  I went there, my words all prepared, like the speech of a player, but as I approached my courage began to drain away. I knew that, in spite of Mr Pym and Parliament, and the rioting crowds, without the moves behind the scenes of some of the richest and most powerful peers in England, peers who had fallen from favour with the King, there would have been no revolt. Pamphleteers called them the Great Twelve – peers like Warwick, Bedford, Essex and Stonehouse. No wonder I slowed, my legs shaking as if I had the ague, as I approached Queen Street.

  The street was wider and more imposing than the streets of the City. The classical façades of the four-storey terraced houses were uniform straight lines of stone and brick, with none of the comfort, the crookedness, the narrowness of wood. There was no place to hide. No comforting alleys. A constable eyed me from his sentry box at the end, but was distracted by a coach demanding entry, and I slipped by on the other side of it, past a scavenger who was sweeping up shit as the horses lifted their tails. The air was different. Not country air but air you could breathe without grabbing for a nosegay every turning or so. I did not need to ask for Lord Stonehouse. There in the centre of the terrace, the size of two or three of the other houses, was Falcon Lodge. Giant pilasters flanked windows crowned with triangular pediments. Above the main entrance, carved in a stone shield, was a falcon with a threatening, upraised claw.