by Robyn Carr
“Aye, she’s been stabbed. But I’ll pay you better money than you’ve seen picking up plague deaths if you’ll take her and forget my face.”
“Be glad to help, gov’na, but if I takes a bloody body, somebody’s likely to ask me questions.”
“We’ll tie something around her neck and you can say it was a lanced plague boil.”
“Like to, Gov’na, but—”
“Twenty pounds,” Perry said, knowing it would nearly wipe him out of funds.
The little man shivered a bit as he stood there. He was faced with a murderer, he knew that. Maybe the man would kill again. And twenty pounds was more than he’d earn this year.
“All right. Let’s hurry with it, chap.”
Perry stooped over the body, pulling the sheet off the bed and tearing a long strip of it off. He wrapped the linen around and around the neck.
“They don’t usually get boils on the neck, you know,” the man said.
“You can sneak her past,” Perry said without looking up.
“Truth is, no one much likes t’look at ‘em.”
“There. Take her out.”
“You’ll have to carry her down. She’s a mite much fer me.
Perry grumbled and started to lift the heavy body.
“Ah, first me money...”
Perry halted his action and stood to dig through the inside pocket of his surcoat, pulling out a pouch and shaking its contents out on the bed. He separated two coins for himself and gave the rest to the little man.
The man smiled and counted while Perry struggled with his burden. Down the stairs and out onto the street he walked, looking about suspiciously, but seeing no one about. The man jumped back on his wagon and resumed his shouting without giving Perry a thanks, good-bye, or any further recognition. “Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!”
He moved his cart along down the street for another few minutes, grateful that no one had answered his call. From behind him, a man’s voice called to halt him and he reined in his horse, turning to look.
“That body you brought out,” the man said. “I’d like to see it.”
The little man on the cart paled slightly. “I don’t have to show the dead,” he argued.
“I’ll pay to look.”
The man sighed and jumped down, going around to the back of the wagon.
“She’s not plague, is she?” the man asked.
“She looks like plague to me,” the driver insisted.
“What did he pay you to put the body on the dead cart?”
The man shrugged. “I couldn’t take no pay.”
“I’ll pay you double to hold the body back from burial just long enough for my employer to get a look at her. It won’t take me more than an hour to find Mr. Prentiss.”
The dead-cart driver scratched his chin in confusion.
“My name’s Scanland. I’ve been watching the lass. I know she hasn’t been sick.”
“I can’t tell plague. I just take the dead.”
“How much?”
“Just to keep them from burying her? For an hour? I won’t even be done in an hour.”
“How much?”
The little man broke into a broad grin showing his missing front teeth. “Forty pounds.”
“I’ll give you twenty. And if you keep that body warm, there will be another twenty from Mr. Prentiss.”
The man smiled and opened his palm. He took the money and climbed back on his wagon. He clicked his tongue and resumed shouting. “Bring out your dead!” And then he chuckled and talked to the horse. “Plagues been mighty good payin’ today.”
The duke of York had commanded the English fleet, chasing the Dutch for over a month, sighting them at Lowestoft. Word was delivered to the palace by Pepys, the king’s diarist, that the two fleets faced each other. Seavers did not hear of the impending battle until after midnight, and then he questioned the rumor until sunrise.
Workers had been hurriedly put to the task of loading his remaining vessels, ships he had deemed nearly ready to sail, and his crews were pulled from inns, bawdy houses, taverns, and street corners. Some of the crew who appeared drunk could have been sick with plague, for they wobbled on board and perspired piteously, but Seavers concerned himself only briefly and let them either sleep, vomit, work off their drink or illness, or flee. Illness was everywhere; it would not stop for war. He would join the battle, however disabled his forces.
By morning he was nearly ready. The brief and anxious visit with his “wife” had slowed his pace briefly, but the moment she left he donned his coat and strapped on his sword. The Patrina pulled out and down the Thames ahead of three other vessels; the channel was crowded and confusing. He could already hear the gunfire, as could most of London.
As the Patrina drew nearer the battle, the explosions became deafening and Geoffrey’s pulse raced. By late afternoon he could see the fighting. A huge warship lay tilted on its side, fired, sails and masts dipping down into the sea. Specks scattered about the water proved to be human life struggling toward upright ships. He was still too distant to see blood, but he felt the blood of the wounded and his chest swelled with excitement, his cheeks flushed with the thrill of war and adventure. The sinking ship belched and jolted: her flag was Dutch.
His first time at sea he had puked for seven straight days. On his second voyage he had climbed the mast, and the sea winds burned his face and warmed his soul and he found his sustenance. Not very many years later, he was sailing on his own captaincy on a ship that rode proudly behind Prince Rupert. Just over a year ago he had sailed for England to New Amsterdam to fight the stinking Dutch, finding when he arrived that Tilden ships, outfitted primarily for trading, had joined the fight. They took the Dutch then and left that port with the name New York.
Geoffrey stood at the helm getting directions from the lookout and surveying the sea, counting the ships, identifying the English. He looked for the Letty all through that day and the next, but did not really expect to see her in the battle. Prince Rupert joined the battle late, and he, the greatest of Charles’s sailors, contributed mightily to the sinking of Dutch vessels.
Seavers fought both by fire and hand for four filthy days and nights and saw one opponent kiss the sea good morning: the great Dutch warship tilted in flames and sank out of sight within a short time. Blood stained his right side from a Dutch seaman he had stabbed as the vessels came abreast of each other, and a painful red flow stained his left side from the blade of an aggressor. His face was blackened from powder and soot, his clothes torn, his belly empty, but his spirits flying high. His guns breathed fire, and his men screamed battle cries and fought like Vikings.
Although the Dutch surpassed the English in ships and wealth, at the end, the English sent the Dutch fleeing in their broken ships to report thousands of Dutch sailors dead. Nine Dutch ships were taken and more were sunk.
The English vessels returned home in victory, but they were wounded ladies of the sea as well. Filled with joyous and sunburned sailors, their bulging sides charred and split from the battle, the ships were welcomed by an ecstatic town of London. Bonfires lit the horizon and church bells tolled. It did not resemble the plague-torn city they had left behind.
Seavers could not let the excitement of battle fade from his soul, for it was that that sustained him. But there were times during the fighting when a vision crossed his mind and he had difficulty turning his thoughts elsewhere. He shrugged off this image of a dark-haired maid, with soft blue-gray eyes—his high-spirited lover—and raised his sword and barked his orders.
But on the return voyage he could do nothing to erase the pictures in his mind. He saw her clearly, her bright smile and her turbulent tears. He felt his emotions rise and fall as he thought in turn of her standing up to him and calling him a fool, and of her lying beneath him with her arms encircling him and her body moving with his.
She will not let me be, he cursed silently. She will never let me be!
During the hours his men neede
d his attention, his command, he could barely give them answers to their questions. He watched the sea, the scattered clouds, the crippled fleet returning with victory, and in everything he saw Alicia. He shook his head, but she would not fade.
“They’ll send me straight to Bedlam,” he growled.
“Sir?” a passing sailor asked.
“Nothing. Nothing at all,” Geoffrey insisted.
And the vision of Alicia in his mind laughed in good humor. “Do not fall in love with me, Lord Seavers. You may never be the same.”
“I do not love you!” he insisted to the face locked in his mind. But he saw her eyes grow cool and controlled, her face stem. She looked him square in the eye, a thing that many of his men could not do. “You are the most complete fool,” her voice said. And he felt as he had that day as she walked away from him.
As if his suffering with all that had passed between them had not been enough, he saw a vision of her holding a child—his child. And a stricken look came suddenly over his face. What if he’d left her with child?
“Cap’n, sir,” a man beckoned. “Let me see t’your wound now, sir.”
“Of course,” he said thoughtfully, a rueful smile crossing his lips. “Then I would be trapped…”
“Sir?” the sailor asked. It was only then that Geoffrey realized the man was tugging at his shirt to bandage his wound. He sighed and raised his arm that the man might bandage him, but his mind was elsewhere.
Not trapped, Lord Seavers, his conscience said. And his conscience looked like Alicia. You’re not trapped at all. You’ve lain with maids before and for all the world knows, you’ve fathered sons in several ports. Throw her off and make your way alone.
His heart heaved and his stomach burned. He could not be alone again. She was the woman he needed. She’d made him feel alive and elemental. There was warmth in her presence and a fire that lit their arguments and their passion. She was naught but a simple tavern wench, but he knew there would never be another like her. And what he felt when he was near her would never come again.
Something settled over him that warmed his soul for the first time in many years. I’ll build a house for her in the Colonies, and not long after there will be children, he thought. It will be ready if I begin at once. If she understands the risk and my love, she will not chafe so at the name Charlotte. I will find a way to make her glad she chose to take it.
The London streets were filled with sailors who could not be induced to help mend the wounded ships without first celebrating their victory. There was no Seavers coach waiting at the wharves to take Geoffrey to his house, but why should there be? He had not used his house since he’d moved Alicia into it. He had had no use for transportation before, and now none was provided.
A hell cart was hard to procure because of the chaos clogging the streets, but finally he found a coach to take him home. As he passed the houses on Drury Lane, the red crosses on the doors lunged at him and he found himself feeling guilty and worried. He had not protected Alicia in any way, but had ordered his man Rodney to see to her needs. Even now she could be lying sick with the plague.
“I will not stay here,” the memory of her voice said to his troubled mind.
Geoffrey’s pulse picked up and began to race. He didn’t know whether he preferred to find that she’d left the city or that she was still there, with her things familiarly scattered atop her dressing table and the soft, sweet scent of her filling her chambers.
The door was bolted when he arrived, and he pounded on it and shouted to be let in, but to no avail. Passersby looked at him strangely, recognizing that he was a returned sea captain, and afraid to speak to him. Everyone knew that sailors carried plague. It was the better part of an hour before he could persuade two passing hearties to help him break into the house, and even they were most reluctant and had to be promised a substantial reward.
The heavy oaken door took a great deal of battering and hammering before the hinges yielded and the house was vulnerable. Leaving his helpers in the doorway, Geoffrey took the stairs two at a time and found Alicia’s chamber stripped of her personal possessions. The only thing that remained was the necklace he had given her, lying atop her dressing table. He picked it up and held it for a moment. She had purposely left it behind. It was valuable beyond anything he had ever given a woman— she could have sold it for its worth—but she left it. She must hate me more than I allowed, he thought.
The furniture had not been covered or taken, but the food and clothing for her and the servants were gone. It looked as though the household had moved from the city hurriedly.
“Do you know this house?” he asked the men who had helped him.
They shook their heads dumbly and put out their palms. Geoffrey dropped a few coins in each hand. “The woman I left in this house was my wife,” he told them. “I’ve been at Lowestoft with the fleet.”
He noticed their eyes coveting the furnishings of the house and knew if they had not supported themselves as thieves before, this would be a good time for them to start. They faced a vacant house rich with furnishings. Half of London would be looted before long, with nobles leaving the plague seas for higher ground.
“I imagine I’ll wait here for word of her.” Seavers shrugged, hoping he had convinced the men the house would be protected from now on. “My thanks,” he said to them, and without a word of reply, they left him standing in the broken doorway.
All through the night the bells rang and bonfires lit the sky, but in Whitehall there were quiet corners for those who grieved friends lost in battle. While some mourned, others there were wont to celebrate, and still others skittered about wondering when the court would give up the plague-torn city and leave for safety. Word was that Charles was determined to stay and show his people that there was no need to fear. Nevertheless, there were too many who could not watch the dead cart move through the streets and remain calm.
Geoffrey walked through the halls of the palace in search of a familiar face; a person who would have word of his household. He had not bathed or changed his clothing and was still charred, thick with dried blood and sweat, and red as a tomato from the sun. Charles was with his ministers and friends and could not be bothered. Castlemaine could not be found, and her steward would not allow Seavers to enter her apartments. A group of ladies walked down the gallery and, when seeing him at a distance, recognized a seaman and widened their path to pass.
“Madame Stewart,” he called out, halting the young woman.
She looked at him queerly, tilting her pretty head and peering at the dirty, injured man.
“Lord Seavers, madam,” he said, bowing clumsily.
“Of course,” she replied, making a slight dip in response.
“My house has been vacated and there is no word of my family.”
A pained expression crossed her face as she looked at him.
“There was no one there to keep the house?” she asked uncomfortably.
“No one, madam. Have you heard where Lady Seavers might have gone? Bellerose?”
She frowned. “There have been horrible rumors, my lord,” she quavered. “Have you asked about her elsewhere?”
“I’ve been able to see no one, madam.”
Frances sighed and closed her eyes briefly. She was held as the most beautiful woman in England, and, truth to tell, she must have been, but she was not made of the hardened stuff of most courtly ladies. Frances was very sensitive. When her eyes opened to look at him again, he noted that they were tearing.
“This dreadful illness,” she exclaimed. “I’m so frightened of it, I wish we would leave. I swear if His Majesty wants to stay another day, I’ll go mad.”
“Lady, have you heard—”
“I heard a rumor. I’ve heard so many rumors,” she sighed, shaking her head. One of her ladies patted her arm while Geoffrey stood in stiff anticipation for the reported rumor. “I heard that the household left and Lady Seavers was stricken just as she would have entered her own coach. They’ve buri
ed her.”
“Buried her? Five days ago I spoke to her, before I—”
“Less than a day. I think she did not suffer.”
“But word is that the plague lasts for weeks!”
“Weeks or hours.”
Geoffrey swayed slightly on his feet. He’d been days without any comforts, and the pain in his side had begun to worsen, since the wound had not been tended for some time.
“Milord?” Frances questioned.
He pressed his side with the palm of his hand and brought it away covered with fresh blood. He smiled somewhat sheepishly, embarrassed before these ladies. “Lowestoft,” he mumbled. His vision began to blur and he noticed through a haze that Mistress Stewart and her ladies retreated slightly. His thoughts flashed rapidly back and forth, from the fire of battle and the spit of the sea, to the vision of Alicia that had floated before his eyes for days; from the blood of battle, to the softness of his woman; from the charred and desolate remains of sinking ships, to her bright eyes and smile...
Blackness swallowed him in one large gulp. The cursed visions stopped.
The sky and the sea blended together and one could not discern the beginning or ending of either. The rocking motion of the ship quieted the nerves and the cool sea breeze stung the cheeks.
Alicia leaned on the rail, her hands clasped in front of her and her eyes searching the horizon for some sign of life. The new land was a million miles away. She mumbled a prayer. Two firm hands grasped her arms and the comforting voice invaded her moment of devotion.
“Perhaps you should not have left him,” Preston said.
“Will you get word that he fared the battle with his life?” she asked.
“He is alive, cherie. I vow he sank a thousand Dutchmen himself.”
“Will you get word?” she asked again, turning.
“Word will be a long time in reaching America, but I’ve been with him in battle before. He is well, I promise you.”
Alicia nodded and her eyes were downcast.
“I’m not sure this is the best way,” Preston said. “I’m not sure you should have left him with no word.”