Ten years in the parish had confronted him with all sorts of problems and all manner of strange sights but none could compare with what lay in wait for him now. As he knelt at the altar rail in an attitude of blissful submission, the setting sun flooded in through the stained glass window to give his rubicund face a saintly glow and to encircle his bald head with a golden halo. When his prayers were done, he used the rail to lift himself up, then genuflected with portly solemnity.
The sound of running footsteps made him turn.
'Why, Humphrey! What means this haste?'
'I must speak with you, sir.'
'And so you shall but not by bursting in like a runaway bull. This is the Lord's house, Humphrey, and we must accord it all due respect. Hold there, man.'
'I obey you straight.'
And catch your breath, dear fellow.'
Humphrey Budden leaned on one of the pews as he gulped in air. A big, broad man of florid hue, he had run much further than his legs or lungs had desired and he was now bathed in perspiration. Miles Melhuish walked down the aisle towards the glistening parishioner and tried to guess at the crisis which had brought on this uncharacteristic lapse. Budden was a respected figure in the town, a conscientious lacemaker who helped to keep the name of Nottingham at the forefront of his trade. Since his marriage the previous year, he had been the happiest of men, honest, affable, upright, regular in his devotions and often given to charitable impulse. Yet here was this same Humphrey Budden, charging into church, panting like a dog and sweating like a roast pig.
The vicar put a consoling arm around him.
'Fear not, my son. God is with you.'
'I need him mightily, sir.'
'To what end, Humphrey?'
'I can hardly bring myself to tell you.'
'Succour awaits.'
'The sound still fills my ears.'
'What sound?'
'And the sight torments my mind.'
'You are trembling with the shock of it.'
'I came straight here, sir. God is my last resort.'
'How may he help you?'
Humphrey Budden bit his lip in embarrassment then cleared his throat. It had been far easier to carry his message to church than to deliver it. Words rebelled.
Miles Melhuish tried to prompt him gently.
'Are you in trouble, my son?'
'Not me, sir.'
'Your wife?
'Indeed.'
'What ails the good woman?'
'Oh, sir...'
Humphrey Budden began to weep helplessly. The calamity which had brought him so recklessly into the church had deprived him of speech. Easing him down into a pew, the vicar sat beside him and offered up a silent prayer. Budden slowly regained some control.
'Tell me about Eleanor,' said the priest.
'I love her so much!'
'Some accident perchance?'
'Worse, sir.'
'She has fallen sick?'
'Worse still.'
'Dear Lord! Has she passed away?'
'Worse even than that.'
Melhuish coaxed the story out of him. Even in its garbled form it was enough to make the man of the cloth forget both his paunch and his place. Gathering up his belly in both hands, he led the way towards the door at a steady trot with Budden in close pursuit. They ran out into the churchyard then through the gate that opened on to Angel Row. The house was a couple of hundred yards away and the effort of reaching it took them both near exhaustion but they did not pause. Above the sound of their breathing, they heard a noise that froze their blood and put a last spurt into their legs.
It was the scream of a woman. Not the sudden yell of someone in pain nor yet the anguished cry of someone in distress. It was a weird, continuous, high-pitched howl of a wild animal, a noise so intense and unnatural that it did not seem to come from a human throat at all. Budden opened the front door and ushered the priest into a room that already had some occupants. Four terrified children were clustered around the skirts of an old servant, gazing up in horror at the bedchamber above their heads.
Humphrey Budden gave them a comforting squeeze then took his visitor up the stairs. During that short ascent, Miles Melhuish prayed more strenuously than even he had done in a long while. The sound was heart-rending. He had to force himself to follow the stricken husband into the bedchamber. What hideous sight lay within?
When his eyes beheld it, he crossed himself at once.
'Dear God in heaven!'
'Eleanor,' called Budden. 'Peace, good wife.'
But she did not even hear him. The wail continued with unabated fury and her hands clutched at her hair. Melhuish was dumbstruck. There in front of him, kneeling stark naked on the floor, swaying to and fro, staring at a crucifix on the wall, was a buxom woman in her twenties with flaxen hair trailing down her back towards a pair of round, beautiful, shuddering buttocks. It was a scene at once so frightening and erotic that Melhuish had to avert his gaze for a few seconds and call his righteousness to his aid.
Eleanor Budden was in the grip of some ineluctable passion. As her shriek soared to an even higher pitch, it spoke of pain and pleasure, of a torture suffered and a joy attained, of the misery of the damned and the joy of salvation. The mouth from which it came was twisted in a grimace but her face was luminescent with happiness.
'Eleanor,' said her husband. 'Look who is here.'
'She hears you not, Humphrey.'
'Stand forth where she may see you, sir.'
He motioned the priest forward until the latter was standing between the woman and the crucifix. The effect on her was immediate. Her howling stopped, her mouth fell shut, her hands went to her sides and her body no longer shook all over. The deafening cry was replaced by an eerie stillness that was almost as unsettling.
Eleanor Budden looked up at the parish priest with a reverential smile. The fever had broken at last. Both men dared to relax slightly but their relief was premature. A fresh paroxysm seized her. Lunging forward, she grabbed the vicar around the waist and buried her head in the ample folds of his flesh, emitting a sound that began as a low wheeze of excitement then built up quickly until it was a cry of pure elation. Firm hands were clutching his buttocks, soft breasts were pressing against his thighs and urgent lips were burrowing against him. The noise surged on to a climax then spent itself in a sigh that filled the room with carnality and made her whole frame shudder with sheer ecstasy.
She collapsed peacefully to the floor in a coma.
Miles Melhuish was still praying furiously.
Death moved through the streets of London every day and sent loved ones to an early grave but the citizens of London were still not satisfied. Private grief afflicted new families by the hour but there was still enough ghoulish interest left over to send a large crowd to Tyburn for the execution. Distraught people who had sat around doomed beds now found a sense of release as they jostled for position around the gallows. A public death carried an element of celebration. In the crude but legalized murder of some anonymous criminal, they could take a profound satisfaction and dispatch him into the afterlife with sadistic jeers. What was intended as a brutal warning to them became a source of entertainment.
Everybody was keen to get a good view.
'Stand aside, sir, I pray.'
'By your leave, Mistress.'
'I'll see nothing but your broad shoulders.'
'Come in front of me.'
'Let me through here.'
'Push hard, Mistress.'
The tall young man heaved to the left to create a space for the old woman. Having fought her way through the press to its densest point, she found that her view was still blocked. The young man recoiled from the reek of her breath but her odour was soon swallowed up in the communal stink of the multitude. She was a countrywoman of sorts, with a basket on her arm and a slope to her shoulders that told of a lifetime of drudgery. Her lips were bared in a toothless grin of anticipation.
'Have you come far, Mistress?' he said.
'All this way for an execution?'
'I'd skip twenty sooner than miss it.'
'Do you know who is to be hanged?'
'A traitor, sir.'
'But what is his name?'
'That does not matter.'
'It matters to him.'
'He is nothing in himself.'
'You walk ten miles for a total stranger?'
'Yes, sir,' she said with malicious glee. 'Death to all traitors!' I want to see them cut his pizzle off!'
When it was all over, Christopher Millfield afforded himself a quiet smile.
London came out in a hot sweat. Foul contagion spread throughout its maze of streets and alleys. Bells rang out their jangling requiems all day long and ministers went scurrying from one house of death to another. Undertakers prospered and a worm-eaten generation of parish clerks grew rich from exploiting the miseries of the bereaved by increasing their fees. Vultures fattened themselves on the wasted corpses of their fellow-citizens.
The exodus from the capital grew apace.
'I am loath to depart the place, Nick.'
'There's no staying here.'
'Where she is, there must I be.'
'And so you are, Edmund,' said his friend. 'If she has your verses, then she holds your essence in her hand.'
'I had not thought of that.'
'Then do so now. Absence can only make her heart grow fonder and you may nurture that fondness with sweet poems and tender letters. Your pen will have to serve where your lips may not.'
'This is consolation indeed.'
'Woo her from all over England.'
'What a welcome I will get on my return!'
Edmund Hoode brightened. Discussing his private life with Nicholas Bracewell always paid dividends. The book holder was a man of the world with a keen understanding of the vagaries of love. His advice was invariably sound and his sympathy without limit. Hoode had found cause to be grateful to him on many occasions and that gratitude surged again now. Nicholas had shown him that a happy compromise was possible. Leaving the city did not have to be an act of desertion. He could continue his assaults on the heart of his beloved from a distance. It would make for some exquisite pangs of loneliness on his part and heighten the magic of consummation when that blessed moment finally came.
'I'll send her a sonnet forthwith,' he decided.
'You have only today in which to compose it.'
"Today and tonight, Nick. I cast aside all thought of sleep in the joy of her service, and my Muse helps me best in the hours of darkness.'
'Do not weary yourself entirely, Edmund. We have a long journey to make tomorrow.'
'I embark upon it in good spirits.'
'That pleases me well.'
'Would that dear Gabriel could be with us!'
'My mind was sharing that self-same hope.'
The two men were walking together through Bankside on a sultry morning. They had come on a grim errand. Flies buzzed over piles of refuse and rats sniffed their way through rotting food. As the friends entered the most squalid part of the district, they saw signs of death and decay on every side. They were shocked to think that one of their fellows had been forced to live in such a , warren of mouldering humanity. Gabriel Hawkes had excelled at playing princes yet his own kingdom was that of a pauper.
They were only just in time. Turning into Smorrall Lane, they saw the cart trundling along about its doleful business, already piled high with its gruesome cargo. It stopped outside a door that was marked with a blue cross and another corpse was soon loaded up. The cart then went on to the house where Gabriel Hawkes had lodged. It was boarded up and the writing on the door confirmed that plague had also been a tenant. Wrapped in a dirty winding sheet, the body was carried out unceremoniously and, hurled up on top of the pile.
Nicholas started forward to protest.
'Take more care, sirs!' he said.
'Away!' snarled the driver of the cart.
'That is our friend you handle so roughly there.'
'It is our trade.'
'Practise it with more courtesy.'
The driver let out a cackle of derision then snapped the reins over the backs of the two horses. They pulled hard and the cart bumped on down the lane. It had a full consignment now and made its melancholy way to a piece of waste land beyond the labyrinth of houses. Nicholas and his companion followed it all the way, determined to share in the funeral rites of their former colleague. Both of them had respected Gabriel Hawkes enough to argue for his inclusion in the touring party and it was painful to have their happy memories of him marred by what they were now witnessing. A fund of wit, warmth and real talent was tied up in that winding sheet.
The cart creaked to a halt beside a huge pit that was still occupied by busy gravediggers. Fresh mounds of earth showed that other pits had already been dug and filled. Plague victims needed to go deep into the earth lest their infection sprout forth. The driver and his assistant unloaded the corpses with as much concern as if they were handling sacks of vegetables. Human beings were dragged off the cart and thrown along the edge of the pit to await the drop into their final resting place.
Nicholas Bracewell and Edmund Hoode were far enough away to miss the worst of the stench but close enough to observe the creature who crept out of his hiding place under a bush. The man was short, ragged and hirsute, old by every external sign yet as nimble as a monkey. While the driver and his assistant had their backs turned, the newcomer moved between the winding sheets as if he knew what he would find inside them. Using a knife to slit open the material, he groped here and grabbed there until he had quite a haul from his bold plundering. It was when he bent over the body of Gabriel Hawkes that Nicholas moved into action.
Darting forward at speed, he chased the man back to the bushes from which the latter had emerged, diving on him to bring the fellow rolling to the ground. The knife was brandished in Nicholas's face but it did not deter him. Years at sea with bellicose sailors had taught him how to handle himself in a fight and he quickly disarmed his assailant, winding him at the same time with a punch in the stomach. Hoode came running up to join him.
The man retreated in a defensive snivel.
'Leave off, good sirs. I do no harm.'
'Robbing the dead is both sin and crime,' said Nicholas. 'You have defiled the body of our friend.'
'He is past caring.'
'We are not.'
'Judge me truly,' said the man, sitting up on his haunches. 'I only take from those that have no need. These things would only end up in a pit of lime and what's the use of that. Better that they help the living than lie beneath the ground with the dead.'
'You are a scurvy rogue,' said Hoode.
'Necessity compels me, sir.' He was almost chirpy now. 'Plague is meat and drink to me. It is the only time we poor people may be rich for a day. The bodies of the deceased sustain us. Their loss is our gain. When they become naked, we are clothed. When they are hungry, we are fed. Their sickness is our health.
'Give me what you took,' demanded Nicholas.
'It is all mine.'
'Keep most of it. I want what was stolen from that last body. He was a good friend to us.'
'But not to me,' replied the man peevishly. "There was nothing on him to take. A miserable wretch indeed!'
Nicholas dispensed with further wrangling. Grabbing the man by his beard, he shook him violently until the creature howled for mercy.
'Now, sir. Give me what was taken.'
The man spat in annoyance then slowly opened the palm of his left hand. Nestling in it was the tiny jewelled earring that Gabriel Hawkes used to wear. It sparkled in the grubby hand of its thief. Nicholas took the earring and stood up to examine it. Neither he nor Hoode made any move when the man gathered up the rest of his haul and scampered away like an old sheep dog.
The two friends exchanged a glance. Gabriel had at least been spared this final indignity. He owned little enough in life and did not
deserve to have it snatched from him in death. They walked back towards the pit and saw that the bodies were now being heaved into it before being covered with spadefuls of lime. The stink was overpowering but they did not turn back. As they looked down into the gaping tomb, they saw dozens of tormented bodies lying across each other at angles. It was now impossible to tell them apart.
Nicholas tossed the earring into the pit then offered up a silent prayer. Edmund Hoode was horrified by the callous anonymity of the mass burial.
'Which one is Gabriel?' he asked.
'God will know,' said Nicholas.
They lingered until the busy spades hid the shameful sight with layers of earth. It was all so functional and impersonal. Both of them were deeply affected. When they finally turned and strolled away, neither was able to speak for several minutes. Edmund Hoode eventually came out of his brooding solemnity.
'Why, what a foul contagion it is!'
'A devilish pestilence,' agreed Nicholas.
'I speak not of the plague.'
'Then what?'
'That other fatal disease. It struck down Gabriel Hawkes and, in time, it will account for us as well.'
'How say you?'
"I talk of the theatre, Nick. That fever of the blood which drives us to madness all our lives and hurries us towards our graves.' Hoode gave a mirthless laugh. 'Who else would take up this profession but a sick man? We are both infected beyond cure. We have caught the germs of false hope and empty fame. The theatre will kill us all.'
'No,' said Nicholas. 'It keeps us alive.'
'Only so that we may suffer gross affliction.'
'The loss of our friend has hurt you badly.'
'He was destroyed by his profession.'
'Or by someone in it.' Nicholas stopped. 'Gabriel Hawkes did not simply die of the plague. The disease would not have carried him off that quickly without some help from another source.'
'Help?'
'He was murdered, Edmund.'
The Trip to Jerusalem nb-3 Page 3