by Ann Turnbull
“Oh, Budge!” said Sam. He hugged the dog and buried his face in his fur.
5
Locked In
For the rest of that day William Kemp burned with a fever. Sam gave him sips of beer and made new hot poultices.
Even Budge seemed to know that something was wrong. He lay on his master’s bed and guarded him, as if from an invisible enemy.
Sam longed for Alice to come back. “Where is she?” he asked Budge, stroking the dog’s ears for comfort. “Master Kemp is getting worse, and I don’t know what to do.”
Outside, a rough-looking watchman was sitting in the street, a jug of beer at his side. This man would fetch anything Sam needed – food, or medicine. But it was Alice, with her friendly chatter and practical ways, that Sam really wanted.
A howl from the bed made him rush to his master’s side. William Kemp was clawing at his clothes.
“The pain!” he gasped. “I can’t bear it!”
He struggled out of bed and hurled himself around the room, banging his head against the walls.
“Master! Get back into bed!” begged Sam. “You’ll hurt yourself.”
He struggled to restrain the sick man.
“Please!” Sam felt desperate.
At last he got William Kemp to lie down again. As he untied the neck of his master’s night-shirt to help cool him, Sam saw to his horror that there was a purple rash across the man’s chest. The tokens! He knew that once the tokens appeared, the sufferer did not have long to live.
Sam began to tremble. “Oh, Budge!” he cried. “Where is Alice? She should be home by now.”
He ran to the window.
“Watchman!” he called. “Have you seen our maid – Alice?”
The man shrugged.
“She was wearing a yellow gown.”
“Ah! Young woman, slim?”
“Yes!” said Sam.
“She came by, not long ago. I saw her staring up at your window. She was crying. At least, that’s what it looked like. Asked her if she wanted anything, but she said no, she was on her way home. And off she went – double quick.”
“But – I need to see her – to tell her…”
“You won’t see her again, I reckon.”
She can’t have left us! Sam thought.
He turned away from the window, and his voice shook as he said, “Master – Alice has left us! She’s gone!”
William Kemp struggled to speak. “Don’t blame her… Sam. Only a saint would come back in. The cross… on the door…”
“But she didn’t even say goodbye!” Sam wailed, unable to hold back his tears.
“Give me some medicine now,” said Master Kemp. “Then I’ll sleep and let you rest.”
* * *
The next morning, when Sam went to check on Master Kemp, Budge growled at him. Sam saw, with a shock, that his master was dead. William Kemp lay with his eyes open, staring at nothing.
Sam murmured a prayer for his good master’s soul. For a long time he sat on the bed next to Budge, feeling lonely and sorrowful, knowing he should tell someone what had happened. Budge was warm, but William Kemp grew cold.
At last Sam called the watchman.
“The cart will come by around midday,” the man said. “Be ready with the corpse.”
Sam shuddered. He thought, I must make a shroud. And again he longed for Alice’s help.
He used the bed sheet under William Kemp’s body. Budge growled and bared his teeth. He didn’t want anyone to touch his dead master. “Come on, Budge, please,” said Sam, as he moved the dog off the bed. “I don’t want to do this, but I must.” Carefully, he covered the body and tied the two ends of the sheet at the top and the bottom. As soon as he was done, Budge jumped back up and lay down against the shrouded figure.
Later, Sam heard cartwheels crashing over the cobbles.
“Bring out your dead!” a weary voice called.
Sam leaned out of the window and saw the cart already piled high with corpses.
“I can’t lift him!” he shouted.
He heard someone at the door, opening the padlock. Budge’s ears pricked up.
Two burly men came up the stairs, into the bedchamber. Budge stood guard over William Kemp’s body, growling fiercely. One of the men hit him and he yelped in pain.
“Don’t!” Sam sprang forward to protect his dog.
“Hold onto him, then!”
Sam obeyed, and the two men grabbed the body and carried it down the stairs and out of the door. They tossed it into the cart along with the rest of the corpses.
Tears ran down Sam’s face. Shutting Budge in the bedchamber, he hurried downstairs shouting, “Wait! Can I go with you to the churchyard?”
One of the men laughed. “Churchyard! The churchyard’s full. We’re going to the pit in Moorfields. You don’t want to go there, son.”
“I do! I want –”
The door banged shut in his face.
“Forty days!” the men shouted, as the watchman locked Sam up again in the house. “And keep that dog in or the bounty men will get him.”
Forty days. Sam sat on the stairs. He had never felt more alone in his life. Forty days – and then, if he was still alive, what would they do with him? He’d end up back at the orphanage – or, more likely, at the Bridewell, which was little better than a prison.
One thing was certain. Wherever they sent him, they wouldn’t let him keep Budge. And Budge was all he had left.
6
Escape
“Basket for you!”
Sam leaned out, and saw the watchman putting meat and a jug of beer into the basket. Carefully, he hauled it up. Budge watched, pacing about and wagging his tail. He knew the basket meant food for him, too.
The air outside was full of smoke from the bonfires burning to drive away the pestilence.
Sam noticed something else. “The bells have stopped ringing!” he called to the watchman.
“Lord Mayor’s orders! Good thing, too!”
Sam fed Budge some scraps of meat. “This is day eighteen,” he told the dog with a sigh. “Only another twenty-two days to go.”
Since William Kemp’s death he had been marking the days on the kitchen wall. By now he felt sure he had not caught the plague.
He went into his master’s deserted workshop and looked around. Pieces of shaped brown leather lay on the table, ready for stitching. On the shelves above were several pairs of finished shoes whose owners had never called for them. There were balls of twine, awls and needles. None of it needed any more.
Like me, thought Sam. I’m not needed either. When my forty days are up they will let us out, send me away – and kill Budge. We have to escape!
But how? All the downstairs windows were nailed shut. Upstairs, the window in William Kemp’s bedchamber overlooked the street, and the watchman sat below day and night. It would have to be the window in the little back room where Alice had slept.
The problem was Budge.
“I can’t go without you,” he told the dog. “But you mustn’t bark. And how am I going to get you down?”
An idea came to him. The basket!
That night Sam made himself stay awake till he had heard the dead-cart pass and the streets were deserted and quiet.
The basket, he reckoned, was just about big enough to hold Budge. He left it in the back bedchamber and went downstairs. He took a handful of coins from William Kemp’s workshop and put them in a purse that he hid under his clothes. In the kitchen he found bread and cheese for himself and a meaty bone for Budge. He wrapped the food in a cloth and filled a leather flask with beer.
“Come on, Budge!” he whispered.
Budge could smell the meat, and whined hopefully, wagging his tail, as he followed Sam upstairs. Sam tied the end of the rope to Alice’s bed frame. He opened the window. But as soon as he tried to persuade Budge to get into the basket the dog began to bark. The sound shattered the silence.
“No, Budge! No! Bad dog!” whispered Sam.
Should I
muzzle him with twine? he wondered.
But the stern words had worked – for now.
Sam grabbed the dog quickly, lifted him into the basket, and tied the handles together. Before Budge could escape he heaved the basket up onto the sill and began to lower it into the yard.
Budge was alarmed, and whined pitifully. As soon as he was down he sprang out and began barking again.
“Budge!” called Sam. “Here!” He tossed him the bone. At once there was a contented silence.
Sam grasped the rope and lowered himself over the sill. He slithered fast, skinning his hands, and dropped down beside Budge.
He listened. All was quiet.
He pulled Budge’s lead from his pocket and fastened it to the dog’s collar. As they set off he took great gulps of the night air.
They were free!
7
Alone in the City
Sam and Budge scurried as fast as they could away from Friday Street. The watchman would report their escape in the morning, and they needed to hide.
They crossed Cheapside and entered a tangle of streets and alleys on the north side. Sam felt scared. He didn’t know this area at all. He kept walking until he was too tired to go any further, then sat down on a doorstep.
“We’ll eat our food and rest here till morning,” he said to Budge, cuddling up to the dog to stay warm.
At first light he heard doors opening, voices, and a clatter of pails. Quickly, he gathered his possessions and led Budge away.
Further along the street, grass was growing between the cobblestones. Sam saw two houses with the red cross on them, and one with the white cross that meant the house was now clear of infection. Many shops were shuttered and empty. At the back of one of them he noticed a shed surrounded by tall weeds.
“Perhaps we could hide there,” he said, leading Budge into the yard. He pulled aside some of the weeds and tried the door of the shed. It opened. There was a smell of wood shavings and straw. Some broken chairs were piled at the back. In one corner was a heap of old sacks.
“A bed!” sighed Sam.
It was what he’d been longing for all night. He curled up on the sacks with Budge beside him and fell into a deep sleep.
When Sam awoke, he felt hungry. He’d need to buy food – but he couldn’t take Budge.
“I don’t like leaving you,” he said, as he tied Budge to a fence post in the yard.
Budge didn’t like it either. He looked so mournful that Sam nearly changed his mind. But Budge would be worth two pennies dead. Sam couldn’t risk losing him as well.
In the next street he found a butcher’s shop and bought a meat pie that was big enough for him and Budge to share.
As he fed Budge the scraps back at the shed, Sam looked at the coins he’d brought and worked out how long the two of them could last on a pie a day, and beer. At least a week, he reckoned. That seemed a long time.
Sam and Budge spent two more days in their hiding-place. No one came into the yard. Each day Sam bought a pie from the butcher. Gradually he began to feel safe. But on the third day, as he left the shop, he saw a gang of boys watching him with a mean look in their eyes. Alarmed, he ran off quickly, taking a path that led away from Budge and the shed.
The gang followed him.
Like a pack of wolves they circled round, one barring his way at every turn, others nipping in and jostling him.
“Leave me alone!” Sam shoved his way out, and ran, his heart thudding, towards a busier street. When he dared look back he saw, to his relief, that they were going away.
He was shaking when at last he found his way back to the empty house and crept into the shed. Budge licked him, and he stroked the dog and felt calmer. But later, when he reached for the purse he had hidden under his clothes, he found that it was gone. The boys had stolen it.
Now he would have to beg.
8
Caught!
“Oi! Be off with you!” The baker stormed out of his shop and glared at Sam. “You’re driving my customers away.”
Sam moved further up the street. He hoped people coming out of the shops would take pity on him. He was very hungry. Yesterday a maidservant had given him some stale bread, but he’d eaten nothing since. People hurried by, clutching their posies of herbs to their faces. No one took any notice of him.
He was searching for scraps among the cobblestones when a woman came by and gave him a bun.
“Thank you –” he began. But she was already gone – afraid of catching the plague.
The bun was warm and fresh and flavoured with cinnamon. He devoured it ravenously. Nothing, he thought, had ever tasted so good.
He licked the last of the crumbs from his fingers as he ran back to the shed to look for Budge.
“Oh, Budge, I’m sorry,” he said, when he saw his poor dog curled up on the ground. “I’ve nothing for you again.”
Budge didn’t even look up, and growled when Sam tried to stroke him. He’ll turn wild and leave me if I don’t feed him, Sam thought.
Things were getting desperate. He knew he must find help soon or they would both starve.
The next morning Budge barked and struggled as Sam tried to tie him up.
“You can’t come, Budge,” Sam told him. “They’ll kill you for two pennies, and you’re all I’ve got! I’ll find you some food. I promise.” He left his dog straining at the tether and whimpering.
In Foster Lane he passed a row of houses with shops at the front. It was early, and the shops were still closed, but at the end of one of the side passages he saw a half-open door. He ran towards the doorway, hoping to meet someone kind-hearted.
He knocked twice, but no one answered, so he pushed the door open cautiously and peered in. He could hear voices from somewhere in the house, but the room in front of him was empty except for a cat with a yellow stare. A fire was burning in the grate, and over it hung an iron pot that gave off the mouth-watering fragrance of meat and herbs. Sam’s stomach yearned for the contents of that pot. On the table was a knife, a dish of butter and half a loaf of bread.
Sam didn’t stop to think. Driven by hunger, he darted in, grabbed the loaf, turned – and found the doorway blocked by a tall girl with a yoke across her shoulders carrying two pails of water.
“Mother!” she shouted. “There’s a thief!”
A woman burst into the kitchen from the inner door. Sam ran and tried to pass the girl, but the yoke and pails blocked his way. And then, to his horrified surprise, Budge came racing down the passage with his chewed lead trailing behind him, and shot into the house.
The cat stood up and hissed. Budge barked. Cat, Budge and Sam all moved at once. They collided in the middle of the room and Sam fell flat on the floor, dropping the bread as he smacked down onto the hard flagstones.
The woman seized him. She shook him and shouted in a language he didn’t understand, and Sam cried out, “Sorry! I’m sorry! Please, I’m so hungry…” while Budge barked and the girl glared at Sam and said, “Dirty little ragamuffin! We’ll call the constable –”
“Please –” Sam was almost crying now as he reached out for the bread.
The woman stopped shaking him, and looked him over with angry eyes. Then something in her face softened.
“Il a faim,” she said, “voilà tout.” She took a bowl from a shelf and went to the pot over the fire.
Sam, watching her, thought: I’ve seen her before. But he couldn’t think where.
She put the full bowl down on the table, set a spoon beside it, and picked up the loaf from the ground. She cut a thick slice, then gestured to Sam to sit down.
“Eat,” she said. “Eat, and then we talk.”
9
Changes
Sam gobbled the stew so fast it burned his mouth. Budge found the cat’s bowl and swallowed its contents in one gulp.
A lot of talk in two languages was going on over Sam’s head. More people had come into the room, but it was only when he had finished the last crumb of bread that he raised his head
and looked at them all. Apart from the woman and the angry girl, there was a man, two younger girls – and a boy he recognised with a shock as the lame French boy he had bullied in Watling Street. And now he knew why the woman had looked so familiar. She used to bring the boy – her son – to the shoemaker’s to be fitted.
The mother sent the children out, back into the inner room. She sounded anxious, and he caught the word “pestilence”.
“I don’t have the pestilence!” he said indignantly.
The man faced him. “You are sure?”
“Yes! My master –” The thought of Master Kemp and how happy he’d been at the shop in Friday Street brought a lump to Sam’s throat; it was hard to talk. “My master died of it weeks ago. But I am well. Only… now I have nowhere to go.”
“You have no family?”
Sam shook his head. “There was Alice, our maid. But she left us. Please – don’t call the constables! They’ll take me to the Bridewell. And then my dog…” He felt tears rising again.
“Don’t be afraid,” said the French woman gently. “Tell us how you came to be here.”
And so Sam told them everything.
Afterwards, the woman cut another slice of bread and some cheese, and Sam wolfed it down while Budge was backed into a corner by the outraged cat. The adults talked together in French. Sam could tell that they were sad to hear of Master Kemp’s death.
At last, the man turned to Sam and said, “You need a new home.”
Sam nodded.
“Your master made shoes for our family. We liked him. He was always kind and patient with our son, who has suffered much because he is lame.”
At this Sam felt ashamed, thinking of his own disgraceful behaviour towards the French boy.
“In return for your master’s kindness, we want to help you,” the man went on. “Now, we had a servant – a boy a little older than you. He left us in the spring. If you agree, we could take you in his place –”
“Oh, yes! Thank you!” cried Sam.
“It would be a trial period at first. We’d expect you to work hard –”