‘I didn’t know you took an interest in astrology,’ I said.
‘It has played a great part in my life recently.’
‘You did not say so to Marjory Henslowe.’
Liz bowed her head and bestowed upon me a faint smile. ‘She was not of a mood for civil discourse once you arrived. You upset a few people that evening.’
‘Aye,’ I conceded. ‘So I did.’ I waited for her to speak, yet she said nothing. ‘Your father is out?’
‘Yes.’ She held her lips together tight and looked to the floor. ‘I think we will go to St Albans.’
‘St Albans?’ I exclaimed. ‘I would go further north. The plague is already at St Albans.’
‘We are not leaving to escape the plague, Harry.’ She squared her shoulders. ‘St Albans is where we come from, where Father built his wealth afore we came here. Now that wealth is gone we must go back to St Albans where he will begin again.’ She scanned the room, the hundred or more books that sat upon the shelves. ‘One day we hope to return.’
I caught her eye, pained and afraid. ‘I had hoped to …’
She folded her hands upon her lap. ‘Hoped to what, Harry?’
Hoped to what, indeed.
‘Did he hurt you?’ I asked at last.
‘No, Harry.’ She clenched her small fists and screwed up her mouth. ‘He terrified me.’
I could think of little else to say. I wanted to ask if we might spend time together before she left, walk or dine, but now did not seem to be a good time.
She leant over and placed five delicate fingers upon my green silk sleeve. ‘Harry, I am a merchant’s daughter from St Albans, not much of a match for a King’s man.’ I opened my mouth to protest, but she squeezed my arm and dug in her fingers. ‘Which matters not, Harry, for I see you as an unlikely courtier.’
A short blade in my hairy belly.
‘My father was fond of you for a while, but I fear you lost that affection. For my part I find you rather short, Harry, and I hope you don’t mind me mentioning it, you are also a little stout.’
I opened my mouth, but no words emerged. It was like being slapped across the face with an old fish. I closed my mouth and breathed deeply. ‘I think I am a worthy man,’ I replied. Sometimes.
She turned to me and smiled sadly. ‘Worthy perhaps, Harry, but I have no desire to spend another night at the Tower in the name of worthiness.’
‘No matter then.’ I swallowed my disappointment. ‘I shall keep my eyes open for a short, stout woman with a taste for pies and ale and nights abroad.’
She laughed out loud, bright and trilling, before stopping herself and turning upon me a solemn eye. ‘I like you well enough, Harry. May God watch over you.’
I stood. ‘And you, too.’
My heart was sore, but not broken. The meeting had proceeded much as I anticipated and I had other duties to perform. The day would have to wait for when I might allow myself to feel this pain, allow it to soak through.
‘Goodbye, Liz.’ I bowed to kiss her hand.
‘Goodbye, Harry.’
I found Dowling still at the Guildhall, tight and anxious as always.
‘Did you get it?’ I asked.
He handed me the document without a word.
‘If we are called to see Arlington, you know where I will be.’
‘God be with you, Harry,’ was all he said. ‘I will see you soon.’
I gazed a moment into his old brown eyes and resisted the temptation to hug him to my chest. ‘Thank you, Davy.’
He shook his head and handed me the reins to his horse and cart.
‘I will return them within the week,’ I promised.
He waved like he heard enough, and turned to walk wearily back towards Newgate.
Hearsey sat afront my house still. I took the long sword from the wagon, marched towards him, and pushed the blade against his chest.
‘Stand!’ I commanded, which he did. I took the key to my door and pushed him towards it.
‘How is Jane?’ I asked.
‘She is well!’ he protested. ‘The medic says she recovers.’
I opened the door. ‘As I always believed. Then you shall have no qualms spending a few minutes inside my house.’
He looked for help, but I had positioned the cart so few might see us. The street was quiet anyway.
Jane emerged from the kitchen, pale and thin, with but a few marks only about her face to show for the pox. ‘Harry.’
I never was happier in all my life. Joy surged from my belly, up my throat and all over my face. I stopped the smile before it escaped, allowing myself but a small awkward grin. ‘Good morning, Jane.’
I prodded Hearsey into my front room, bid him sit, and whispered into his ear. ‘You sit here, John Hearsey. If you try to break out through my window then I shall chase you down the street and run you through the guts. I haven’t forgotten what you did to me.’
He leant back, big head pale.
‘Harry, what are you doing?’ Jane poked me in the ribs from behind. ‘I am supposed to stay here alone another thirty-five days.’
‘We’re leaving now.’
‘I can’t leave now. I have no certificate of health.’
I pulled the document Dowling obtained for me from my jacket. ‘Now you do.’
She clutched at her hair and screamed. ‘Harry, I wanted to leave London before I was infected with plague, not after. Why should I wish to leave now?’ She stamped about the floor in a small circle. ‘I am alone in the house, with Hearsey bringing me food and provisions. I am as safe as any person might be. Why now, when I would stay, do you insist that we leave?’
I felt deflated, my heroic endeavour unrecognised. ‘There are many at St Giles who rejoiced their recovery from the sickness, thinking they were spared. They were struck again and died.’ I spoke low so Hearsey couldn’t hear. ‘While you have been lain here, insensible, so many more have died this week. More people are infected every new day and the plague is now rampant within the city walls.’
Jane’s eyes welled with tears. ‘My aunt died.’
‘I know,’ I said, soft. ‘I was in here on Thursday and on Friday. It was I chased out the first nurse they left here that sat and snored.’
‘It was not!’ she replied, indignant.
‘Aye, so it was,’ Hearsey called from the room behind us. ‘And I punched him in the belly for his troubles, for he wore a medic’s costume.’
‘Ow!’ she howled. ‘Then you are the one who looked under my nightdress!’
‘I did not look under your nightdress,’ I exclaimed. ‘I changed your nightdress because you had fallen onto the floor and lay in your own mess.’
‘You are not a medic!’
‘There was no medic, nor no nurse,’ I protested, indignant.
‘There was not,’ agreed Hearsey from the other room.
Jane wrung her hands and hung her head. She wavered, body blowing from side to side as though she would fall over.
‘Hearsey!’ I called.
‘Aye!’
‘Will you help me load provisions onto the wagon?’
‘You are not allowed to leave this house,’ he declared. ‘You nor I. Now we all must stay here forty days.’
‘I am not staying here forty days,’ I assured him. ‘If it pleases you I will be happy to strike you upon the eye and witness that you never stepped over the threshold.’
‘Very well.’ He emerged into the hall.
We left the house after lunch, after I punched Hearsey in the face.
‘Where are we going?’ Jane demanded sullenly, bouncing up and down upon the wagon.
‘Cocksmouth,’ I answered.
‘Where your mother lives.’
‘Aye.’
‘Where it is dirty and the people are lewd and men keep pigs in their house living with them?’
‘Aye,’ I conceded.
‘Could you not have found somewhere better?’ she demanded. The sun beamed down upon her red hair, and it sh
one for the first time in a week. ‘I am recovering from plague, and you would have me live in a pigsty?’ She shook her head and clicked her tongue. ‘I don’t know why I stay with you.’
‘You are not staying with me,’ I answered, indignant. ‘I am going to a boarding house at Ewell. My mother has room only for one.’
At which the ungrateful woman poked me in the eye so hard I couldn’t open it again for a week.
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About the Author
Born in a convent hospital in Malpas in 1963, PAUL LAWRENCE lived in Spain, Japan and the UK before finally settling in Australia with his wife and children. Paul is currently busy writing the fourth book in the Harry Lytle series, while living a second life as a management consultant and executive coach specialising in leadership development.
www.harrylytle.com
By Paul Lawrence
The Sweet Smell of Decay
A Plague of Sinners
Hearts of Darkness
Next in the Harry Lytle series …
1666. London is recovering from the Great Plague which has now slithered out of the City to breed in other towns. Shyam is one such place, a disease-ridden village shut off from the rest of the world. And it is here where Harry Lytle, who works for Lord Arlington’s intelligence service, is ordered to go, to track down a traitor and bring him back alive.
Under a killer’s watchful eye, and with the help of his reluctant friend, David Dowling, a hulking butcher of uncommon wit and ability, they set off on their mission. The road to Shyam is long and dangerous, and the story that awaits them will turn their world upside down.
Copyright
Allison & Busby Limited
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London W1T 6DW
www.allisonandbusby.com
First published in Great Britain in 2010.
This ebook edition published by Allison & Busby in 2014.
Copyright © 2010 by PAUL LAWRENCE
The moral right of the author is hereby asserted
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–0–7490–1572–5
A Plague of Sinners Page 30