‘I don’t care,’ says Henry. ‘If I did get the plague, I wouldn’t notice any difference, seeing I am a prisoner already.’
Joan crosses herself.
‘The difference would be that you would be purple-limbed, racked with pain and burning up with fever,’ I say. ‘Instead of missing the open fields, you would have a most sincere wish for Death. And stop sawing the table.’
‘Well, I wish for Death now, if I can’t go out,’ says Henry, sawing harder. ‘I want to watch the dead-carts! I want to see a plague-pit! I want to see them pour the lime! It’s not fair!’
I smack his hand, and the knife falls to the floor. Joan crosses herself again. ‘Dear Lord,’ she says. ‘There is no reasoning with the child. Say your prayers, Henry. You are tempting Providence.’
‘I care nothing for Providence,’ says Henry. ‘I care for running and fighting and… falling over in the mud. And tree-climbing, and throwing stones at ducks and mallards, and making footballs out of dead frogs. And stealing eggs and blinding cats. All the normal things that boys must do.’
Joan shakes her head at him. ‘These are not normal times. People are dying in hedges and on the highway. They say half the prisoners in Newgate died in one night, still chained to the walls. In any case, the bells of St Sepulchre’s never stop their tolling. No wonder the new King is shut up at Greenwich and keeps out of the City.’
‘Joan is right,’ I say. ‘And it’s not just an illness, it’s a madness too.’ Sometimes the sick run mad through the streets, driven by witless spite to try to infect their fellows. They cast down their ruffs and cuffs and handkerchiefs as they go, wishing to spread contagion.
‘I care for none of that. I am not a coward.’
‘It is not a matter of cowardice, but of wisdom.’
‘Then let me help you with the plague-potion. I am wise enough for that.’
‘No, Henry,’ I say, picking up the knife. ‘It’s as disgusting as anything you could get up to with those urchin friends of yours. We are using the brain of a plague corpse…’
‘How good! Wait till I tell Tom!’
‘Which is too much of a risk for a young boy. And tell no one. We came by it by means that not everyone would approve of, least of all Father Dunstan, so don’t go blabbing on to Tom. Now, be off with you, and we will get on.’
‘Stay in, but be off with me? Be off where?’
‘Go into the vegetable garden. Or up the stairs.’
‘You are a wicked gaoler. I shall go up to the attic and look out at the sky, and watch the kites and learn to fly.’
‘So be it. Go away, you cheeky little hound.’
He runs up the stairs, in a great commotion of clumping feet.
Joan smiles wryly. ‘You’ve made a rod for your own back,’ she said. ‘The child does as he pleases.’
‘Yes, well, it’s too late now. He is what he is, and I must take the consequences.’
We set to with the potion, and Lord above, it is a filthy business. When we have done, we scour our hands clean. Then we sit at the table, drinking ale. The plague-brew is simmering on the hearth, belching out its foul odours.
‘Fetch Henry down for something to eat,’ I say to Joan.
But she comes back shaking her head. ‘He’s hid himself somewhere,’ she says. ‘There’s always something with that boy.’
‘What’s he up to now?’ I sigh. ‘I’ll soon find him.’
But the bedchambers are empty, and he isn’t in the wardrobe on the landing, or in the space under the eaves, or hiding on the balcony over the street. I climb the ladder to the attic. There is no sign of him there either. All I can hear is the rustling of rats in their nests, and the sound of their babies squeaking. Could he have climbed out upon the house-top, to look at the sky as he had promised? I open the window and see that a rope has been flung across to the open window opposite, above the narrow street, to make a bridge. The house belongs to Anne Flood.
‘Henry! I call. I half-expect his head to appear at their window, but no. There is no reason for him to stay at Tom’s once he has made his escape. He could be anywhere.
We search both houses, from top to bottom, with Anne exclaiming over Henry’s bad behaviour, and assuring me that Tom could have nothing to do with it, as the players have been summoned to a meeting at the Globe, which has been closed due to the plague. ‘I shall send word to Tom,’ she says. ‘Heaven help us! We must tell him Henry has fled.’
‘He’ll soon turn up,’ say I. But I am sick with fear, for there is no denying it: Henry has disappeared.
‘The Lord has taken him,’ says Anne. ‘Oh, my heart goes out to you, Aemilia!’
I turn away from her. ‘He has run away, off to play somewhere. He’ll be back by dusk.’
But dusk falls, and there is still no sign of him. Fear takes hold of my body with an uncanny coldness. My limbs are heavy with dread. Yet at the same time it is impossible to stay still for one second, and I pace the house, up and down, ceaselessly, endlessly mounting the stairs, searching each chamber, looking under the beds, climbing up into the attic and sticking my head out of the window. I even go to the outside privy several times, as if he might have found himself some cranny to hide inside that malodorous place. At last I can bear it no longer. I set out, torch in hand, leaving Joan to wait for his possible return.
In the City, bells toll, marking not the hour but the passing of the dead. The evening is close and airless. A raven flies over my head, giving out its strange, throaty call. Prruk-prruk-prruk. An ill omen, if I needed one. Where can I look? Where might he have gone? If Tom has been at the Globe all day, there is no reason to think that Henry is with him. In any case, the Globe is on the other side of the river. Going by the Bridge is too far round, and he doesn’t have money for the wherryman. He would be more likely to head for the fields and woods. But then, he also likes to frisk along the outer walls of Whitehall Palace, fencing with himself and shrieking out in mock agony when the invisible blade strikes home. I can almost hear his high voice. ‘Ooh! Aargh! Have at thee, knave! I bowel you – dead man!’ My little Henry, wandering alone in the plague-ridden City.
Oh, Lord! Curse the boy! Or rather, bless him, protect him, deliver him from harm! I walk, as fast as I can, along Long Ditch and towards Camm Row, my breath heaving in my chest. If this is God’s way of punishing me as an unfit mother, then it is roughly in proportion to his other punishments – an eternity of hellfire for a life that mixes sin with sorrow. From time to time I call Henry’s name, in an agony of rage and pain.
I hold my crackling torch high against the dark sky, and what I behold looks like one of the old church wall paintings of the Dance of Death. I see a blasted, empty place. Deserted houses, blind and shuttered. An old woman, on her hands and knees, puking into the stinking kennel in the middle of the street. A skinny boy, carrying a limp baby. Here is a dead-cart rattling by me, loaded with corpses. Some are bundled in sheets; others are naked, mouths gaping open like landed fish.
I call out to the carter, ‘You haven’t seen a little boy, have you sir? A boy of ten or so. Yellow-headed and skittish.’ My voice sounds unreal in this weird place. I meant ‘haired’ not ‘headed’, and in my mind I see Henry-as-monster, skull gold-painted.
‘Not if he’s alive,’ says the friendly fellow, hunched and faceless. ‘I deal in Death. I don’t see the living.’
‘You might have seen him running along somewhere. You can’t miss him. He’s – bold and bonny. Noisy. You’d be sure to remember.’ I’m smiling at him, as if this might encourage him to recall my child.
‘Take a look in the cart if you’ve a mind,’ he says. ‘I’ve got all sizes in there. Might be one of about that age, if you’re lucky.’
I turn away, too brimful of horror to answer back in my normal way. The house before me is boarded – not a plague-house, but a grand merchant’s home, left in a hurry. A sack of flour is spilled across the doorway, evidence of the hasty departure of the occupants. Against one of the wood-s
huttered windows, a pamphlet has been posted. It is a warning from the City fathers, recounting a litany of causes of the plague. The fault lies with ‘runnygate Jews, thrasonical and unlettered chemists, shifting and outcast pettifoggers, dull-pated and base mechanics, stage-players, pedlars, prittle-prattling bawds, toothless and tattling old wives’, and many more. I read the words in a trance-state close to despair. I can’t stop looking. But where should I go? The very ground hungers for corpses and sucks them in, nameless and unshriven. I say a prayer, a wordless, secret prayer, for my mind is blank of proper thoughts.
Then, I remember Henry’s words – he wanted to see a dead-cart, and a plague-pit. Of course he did. Though the streets are empty and the populace lives in terror of this cruel distemper, gawpers crowd round the rims of the mass graves to wonder at the twisted faces of the dead. So, as I have no idea where to find him, I will follow the dead-cart to its destination.
I walk some distance from the cart, keeping it in view as I follow it along the road. From time to time the driver calls out, ‘Cast out your dead! Any dead bodies to bury? Cast out your dead!’ But the houses are silent.
Then, behind me, another shout goes up. ‘Have you any more Londoners to bury, hey down a down dery, have you any more Londoners to bury, good morrow and good day?’ I turn to look, and see two fellows behind me. The first is shabbily dressed and with a beard somewhat wild and untrimmed. The other is thicker-set, and looks more prosperous. His face is shadowed by his feathered hat. I quicken my pace, even though all there is to protect me is a cart loaded with corpses.
‘Madam,’ a voice calls out. ‘A fine night for barn owls, and cut-throats. Not so fine for the likes of you.’
I answer without slowing down. ‘A fine night for finding my son, I hope.’
‘You look to find him in a grave? You will be lucky.’
‘I look to find him above ground. He is not ill, he is merely disobedient.’
‘Ah, the disobedient roaring boys! London would not be the same without them. Myself, I pray they live forever. For if London’s underworld is the map of merry hell, then they are the dancing devils sent to please us.’
‘Shush, Dekker, shush!’ says the other man, grasping his arm. ‘It is she.’
I know that voice only too well. The cart has lumbered to a halt, and the driver has gone into a house. I stop and wait till the two men catch up with me, knowing now that I have nothing to fear from them. No danger to my life, in any case. And I realise, as they come closer and our three torches make a bright space in the night, that I know both of them. The first is Thomas Dekker, a boy actor with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men when I was Hunsdon’s mistress, who has now turned his hand to writing. An eager, lively fellow, who is smiling now even in this earthly hell. I know the other fellow better, even when he hides behind his cloak and keeps his head bowed in the guttering torchlight.
‘This is a strange time to be out,’ say I. ‘Did you come to take the air?’
‘Aemilia,’ says Will. ‘Forgive me, but Tom Flood told us your son was lost. And I wanted to… It seemed fitting to come to see where he might be.’
‘I assure you, sir, I have no need of help from anyone.’
‘You are white as alabaster,’ says Will. ‘The poor child! God bless him.’
‘Indeed, madam, you do not look well,’ says Dekker. ‘We will escort you, and I am sure we shall find this naughty son of yours. Why, the whole City is running mad, but there is no need to fear for one quick boy who can outrun the pestilence.’
I know this is untrue, but I’m grateful for his cheerful tone.
‘We will search with you, whether you like it or not,’ says Will.
The flames illuminate his dark eyes and I see his fear, and I remember how he stared at Henry at the Globe. There is no mistaking the similarity between them.
Dekker’s spirits seem unaffected by our two drawn faces. ‘It’s a pretty place, indeed!’ he says. He gestures around him, as if to include the silent houses, the red crosses daubed on the doors and the weeds that grow on each side of the kennel. ‘I am tired of being a poet to whores and strumpets. So I am writing a pamphlet on the plague.’
‘A gloomy subject, as I am sure Mistress Lanyer will testify,’ says Will.
We walk on together. My mind is so fixed on finding Henry, and the fear of not finding him, that I accept Will’s presence as part of the nightmare chaos that surrounds me.
‘Never was a vile contagion so badly run,’ says Dekker. ‘The Corporation hires women to keep their eye upon the sick and dying, and insists they are all sober and ancient. But instead they are a bunch of blear-eyed, drunken night-crows.’ He lowers his voice. ‘As for the likes of that one up ahead – I swear they hire these carters from Satan’s own stable-yard. Nasty, foul-mouthed breed. Too brute and slovenly to make recruits for hangmen.’
‘How long has… Henry been gone?’ asks Will.
‘Hours past. Hours and hours,’ say I. ‘I thought he was in the house – he might have been running amok since midday.’
‘He might have been among the plague-pits these last ten hours,’ says Dekker. ‘Boys do love these places.’
My voice cracks. ‘Dear God!’
‘Show some sympathy for this poor lady, will you?’ says Will. ‘For pity’s sake, she’s at her wits’ end. Her son is gone!’
‘Not gone,’ I say, quickly. ‘He is mislaid.’
Dekker smiles. ‘There is no one in London who doesn’t run the risk of catching this disease,’ he says. ‘And most of us will live to tell the tale. I certainly hope I shall, for there is money in it. I plan to call my pamphlet A Wonderful Year. Satire,’ he says quickly, catching Will’s eye and clearly wanting to avoid another reproof.
‘Look, Tom, go up ahead and see where that cart is heading,’ says Will.
Whistling cheerily, Dekker obliges. We watch his torch move forward in a jaunty fashion through the darkness.
Then Will says, ‘Aemilia, the boy – ’
‘He will be near, and we will find him,’ I say. ‘Have no fear of that.’
‘He has such a look of Hamnet.’
‘It makes no odds to us now, does it? We are estranged.’
‘I know he is my son.’
We walk in silence for a moment.
‘You have eyes to see: so be it,’ I say. ‘But he calls Alfonso “Father”.’
He turns to look down at me, and holds the torch higher so that he can see my face. ‘Do you wish to punish me?’
‘Who has punished whom?’ I ask. ‘What am I – a foul-breathed Lilith? A demon succubus, come to corrupt you? I still have those poems you wrote – some strange respect for Art prevents me from burning them to ash. If there is a distinction in inspiring a poetry of hate, then I can claim it.’
‘Aemilia – those poems – the words I used against you…’
But then Dekker returns, breathless. ‘I have found the pit,’ he says, all levity gone. ‘There’s no mistaking it. God save us all.’
We have reached the end of the lanes of Westminster, and come to open fields. Ahead of us, on the brow of a hill, a bonfire burns, lighting up the shapes of a crowd of people. There are smaller figures – children – among then. The cart has stopped at the bonfire, and the driver is climbing down. Will pulls my arm and we step back into the shadow of a hay-barn.
‘What a terrible place,’ says Dekker. ‘Jesu. I have seen nothing like it.’
‘Aemilia – let Tom and I go up ahead and see if he is there,’ says Will. ‘You will be safe here.’
‘It’s not fit for a woman,’ says Dekker. ‘Truly, madam.’
‘I would not think of staying behind,’ I say. ‘I would go into Hell to save my son. A plague-pit is nothing to me.’
Scene VII
The two men walk ahead of me and I follow, silently. I still carry my torch, and am at once grateful for the glare it casts on the rough and tussocky ground, and fearful that we will catch the attention of the watchers ahead. But no
one notices us. And, when I reach the pit, I see why. The carter has backed his cart close to the open gash in the earth, so that it is hard up against the drop. Now, he stands beside it, like a showman at a Fair. All around the edge, illuminated by the flames of the crackling bonfire, stands a motley group of citizens such as I never wish to see again. They are like the walking dead themselves, battered and bedraggled beyond humanity.
‘Show us your wares!’ shouts one, an old man with bullfrog eyeballs bulging from his skull.
‘Yes, do your worst. Let’s see what ingredients we can put into our pot!’ shouts a young bawd, pale and hollow-cheeked, with a baby at her breast and a small child clutching at her skirts with its skinny arms. The bawd is swaying, and shaking, and I suspect it will not be long before she tumbles down herself. I look into the grave, and at first can see nothing, for the pit is twenty or thirty feet deep, and the fire casts little light into its depth. But when I look closer I see that what at first seemed like gravel and stones in the shadows is a muddle of hands and feet and faces, piled and confused and tangled. The bawd is right: the grave is a cauldron, and this is human stew.
‘Now then, now then, ladies and gentlemen, babes and children, all,’ says the carter, clapping his filthy hands to win the attention of the crowd. ‘This is a good night, and good business. Sixpence I get for each of these deadmen, which you are about to see before you. The more of them, the better my breakfast. The Lord God is truly shining his light upon me.’
‘Praise God in his wisdom,’ shouts some ague-addled fool.
The carter goes to his plague-carriage and fetches the first corpse. It is the body of a big, wide-set man, of maybe twenty years or so. It is hard to tell, as its face is grey and twisted, and corrupted with sores.
‘Here’s a fine fellow,’ says the carter. ‘Wave at your attendants, good sir!’ He flops the hand of the deadman at the watchers. ‘We all know that worms need no apparel, saving only winding-sheets. So – let us take off what needs to be taken off.’ He drops the corpse down, removes the doublet, and feels inside the pocket. ‘Oh, indeed, my Maker blesses me once more!’ He waves a leather bag before us, and drops the contents into his palm. ‘Seven pieces of silver! I am near as rich as Judas! Thank you, sir!’ And, with that, he kicks the poor fellow into the grave.
Dark Aemilia Page 21