by Cleo Cordell
Glancing around Mercer’s Yard now, Rufus took a swig from a bottle of geneva in his pocket, feeling the satisfying warmth hit his stomach. Alcohol kept away the infection, as did the pox. Pushing his dirty red hair back from his forehead, he pulled up the scrap of cloth to cover his mouth and nose. He hammered loudly on the door of the mercer’s shop. No answer. Good.
‘Here Bunner, bring a flambeau,’ he called, taking the jemmy from his other pocket. ‘’Tis dark and quiet within. Good pickings ’ere to be sure.’
Bunner came around the cart, holding the light aloft. He was a stooped man with grey hair and watery blue eyes. Like Rufus his clothes were covered by a ragged apron which bore a hell’s patchwork of stains. Together they levered off the boards, the sound of screeching nails and splintering wood loud in the silence of the yard.
‘Well, well. Would you lookee here,’ Rufus said with satisfaction.
CHAPTER THREE
Rufus shouldered aside the door, which hung on shattered hinges. Even in the gloom he could see the many bolts of cloth, bobbins of lace and silk ribbons.
‘God’s bones, but it’s rank in ’ere,’ Bunner said, stepping into the darkness.
Rufus sniffed laconically and pushed past him to light the way. ‘Bound to be. Shop’s been boarded up fer well on a month.’
Picking their way through the shop they went into the back room. Bunner saw the bodies at once. Three of them, lying side by side, covered with a stained sheet. He gave them only a cursory glance, his eye caught by a movement in the shadows. ‘Mercy, I reckon we found a live un,’ he said, going over to investigate.
Rufus followed, eyes widening with interest. ‘A wench is it? Has she her wits?’
A number of pleasant possibilities presented themselves. Those who had not yet been touched by the sickness were often moved to offer money or goods, so that the bearers would leave them and their property untouched. Or like the night before he might be inclined to demand other services. The woman sat on a couch, her arms crossed over her breasts, her head down. She rocked slowly back and forth. Her loose hair tumbled over her shoulders. She wore only a shift. The whiteness of her skin shone through the fine fabric.
Rufus’s belly tightened with lust. No red-necked country lass this, but near-on a fine lady. Young too. Hardly more than a girl. Even better than yester eve. His cock twitched and stirred against his groin. He reached out to touch her. ‘How now, pippin? How about rattling my ballocks fer me?’ he said in his most charming voice. ‘And then we’ll see what ole Rufe can do fer you, eh?’
The girl looked up as if she noticed them for the first time. Her face was gaunt, her eyes unfocused. Wits have left her for certain, thought Rufus. No matter, he did not want to make converse with her. She need do nothing but open her legs and lie still. Didn’t need no reasoning to do that. As he closed a hand on her arm she recoiled. ‘Life in yer yet then, eh,’ he grunted, plucking at her shift and lingering a moment to feel the fine fabric with its lace trim. ‘I’ll give you a portion more.’ As he dragged the garment from her shoulder, the shift tore open to reveal her breasts. They were high and round, pert-looking. He smacked his lips. Nice. She was as soft and white as a nun.
‘Please . . . leave me alone . . .’ the girl murmured, her voice toneless.
Rufus ran a filth-encrusted palm over her breasts, fondling the tender nipples. They were as soft as silk, cool against her hot skin. The girl flinched away, trying to cover herself. He grabbed at her, holding her still while he pinched and stroked her breasts until the nipples tightened into buds. She was just like the other one, pretending she was pure and didn’t want it. Well old Rufe wasn’t fooled.
Bunner, who had been watching with interest, sniggered. He spat a gob of phlegm on the floor. ‘Can’t leave any of ’em be, Rufe? You randy beggar. This one’s got the tokens on her. Good as dead she is. Pity. Mun ’ave been a beauty once.’
‘Ain’t bad now.’ Rufus decided to have her anyway. ‘Want to share her?’
Bunner shook his head, pushing his lank grey hair behind his ears. ‘Don’t like the live uns. Do what thee want. I’ll take these three stinkers outside.’
His needs were well catered for. He took his pleasure with corpses. It had been difficult to indulge his particular lust in normal times. But the pestilence had changed all that. Many of the young died with hardly a mark on them. He could do as he liked; stroke their cold limbs, rub his engorged cock against their dead flesh and push into tight, cold orifices. Rufus was more picky, he’d tried it Bunner’s way and pronounced that ‘It an’t no fun swyvin’ a cold oven. I like mine to move and moan a bit. All the better if they fight.’
The girl let out a strangled scream as Rufus pushed her back on the bed and began forcing open her closed thighs. Bunner yawned and turned his back. He grabbed hold of the feet of one of the corpses and yanked it off the bed. The head banged onto the floor with a hollow sound. The rushes crackled as he dragged it towards the passage way. There was a sound like a sigh as the putrid gasses escaped from the bloated flesh. Bunner blew out his breath, avoiding breathing the stench. A dirty black smear trailed all the way down the passage to the back room. Trust Rufus to leave the hard work to him, he thought with disgust. Then he heard the sound of a slap and a cry of pain and chuckled to himself. Ah, well, a man had to have his fun. It did not sound as if Rufus would take long.
Rufus’s voice rose in a curse as the woman cried out. She had some fight left in her then, Bunner thought. Rufus would enjoy subduing her. Maybe he would stay and watch after all. He left the corpse lying in the narrow passage way and went back to lean against the door frame.
In the back room Rufus knelt beside the struggling girl, his filthy trews around his knees, his buttocks bare. The torn shift was rucked up around the girl’s waist, showing her flat belly, the floss of pale hair at her groin. As Rufus covered her, the girl writhed under him, long pale legs flailing helplessly. Rufus hit her again. She lay still, her cries subsiding to a whimper. He grunted as he fell onto her, jabbing around until he found her entrance.
‘Lord, but she’s dry,’ he said, drawing away momentarily and flashing Bunner a grin. Rufus appreciated an audience. ‘Better’n a mummers’ play at Eastertide, this, eh Bunner?’
Spitting onto his palm he rubbed the spittle around his glans, then tried again. After a few more attempts he managed to breach the closure of her flesh. With a great thrust forward he rammed into her, burying his cock to the hilt. The girl’s scream of agony was high-pitched, an animal sound. ‘Lovely. A virgin,’ Rufus said, his buttocks pumping back and forth as he leaned on her upper arms.
Despite his earlier lack of interest, Bunner began to get aroused. He was used to Rufus’s brutality, was unmoved by it, but the way the young woman lay there, so white and still, her pale limbs spread out in disorder, reminded him of a corpse.
Rufus gave a hoarse moan and lunged forward. Bending his head he bit down hard on one breast. His buttocks clenched a final time. Groaning, he spilt his seed. After a moment he pulled away. He laughed when he looked down and saw the maiden blood that smeared his cock.
The woman lay still, her legs open wide. All the fight had gone out of her. One side of her face was swollen and discoloured. Tears streaked her cheeks. The livid bite mark on one breast oozed dark blood. Bruises showed on her shoulders and upper arms. Bunner could not look away from the joining of her thighs, from her poor, abused coynte. How tender it had looked with that floss of pale hair, the neat, pinkish folds. Now the sex looked raw and puffy, streaked with blood and semen. Rufe had torn her up a bit as he took her maidenhead. Poor little lass. She had been pure. Now she was spoiled.
Something dark and formless rose up in Bunner. Suddenly his cock was heavy against his thigh. Desire pulsed and twitched inside him. It was as if all of his vitality was centred in his groin. He felt faint with the pleasure of it and pressed his hand to his cock. Rarely these days did he feel young or energetic. Approaching the bed he leaned down and thrust his ha
nd between the girl’s thighs, staining his finger with her blood and Rufus’s slick emission. Fumbling at his belt, he opened his trews. His erect penis sprang free. Rufus would be impressed. By God, he was impressed. Getting up onto the bed, he knelt between the spread thighs. Grasping her behind the knees, he eased her open, his breath coming fast and shallow. She parted beneath him like a bruised fruit.
‘No . . . no more . . .’ she murmured, struggling weakly. ‘It hurts. Have pity.’
‘Go on, Bunner. Give it to her,’ Rufus chuckled, coming to stand beside the bed. ‘Stoke a live un fer a change.’
Bunner pressed inwards, holding his breath as the bruised passage enfolded him as firmly as a fist. He shivered with the pleasure of it. God it felt good. He felt powerful, potent, effectual. The woman shuddered and sobbed.
‘That’s it,’ Rufus laughed, shouting encouragement as Bunner bent the woman’s legs into her chest. ‘Tip her up. It’s sweeter that way. Give her sommat to remember yer by!’
Bunner’s breath came in short bursts as he laboured, pulling almost all the way out of the girl before plunging back in. ‘Oh, Lord,’ he grunted, sweating. ‘Oh, Lord.’
Rufus felt himself growing hard again as he watched Bunner’s skinny arse bobbing up and down. He hadn’t realized that grizzled old Bunner had so much juice left in him. It was not long before Bunner shuddered and groaned, his fingers digging into the soft, white flesh of the girl’s thighs as he came.
Rufus moved forward, licking his lips eagerly. ‘Here Bunner, get off. Help me turn her over. Watchin’ you has got me all hot. I’ll have her again. Kick them other two corpses on the floor. The stink’s puttin’ me orf.’
Bunner put his clothes to rights, then obliged. The body of the old man thudded onto the rushes. He looked over his shoulder to see that Rufus was holding the girl down by sitting on the back of her thighs, his thick fingers probing between her buttocks. He grinned and shrugged. Dirty young beggar! Ah, well, might as well make a start on the corpses. Rufus looked like he would be no help for a while yet.
Rufus groaned, his eyes closed with pleasure, preparing to force himself into the girl a second time. Leaning forward he balanced himself on his hands. He bunched his muscles. Just then the girl twisted violently. A choking sound came from her. A stream of black vomit poured from her mouth, splashing onto one of Rufus’s hands.
Bunner laughed hugely as Rufus cursed and scraped his fouled hand down the side of his apron, using the woman’s hair to wipe the filth from his sleeve. ‘Serve thee right thee randy bugger!’ he said, wiping away tears of laughter.
Rufus gave a snort of disgust, his brutish young face flushing under the freckles. He thrust viciously between the woman’s buttocks, but his cock had wilted. Angry that she had robbed him of his pleasure, he slapped her hard and shoved her off the bed. She rolled face down onto the frowsty rushes and lay still. Rufus got up and adjusted his clothing, looking down at the crumpled figure. The woman turned over, her body jerking in a convulsion. Her eyes had rolled back to show the whites. Rufus aimed a kick at her head, missed and kicked out again, his foot connecting with her ribs.
‘Come on, Rufe. Lend a bleedin’ hand will yer,’ Bunner called out irritably, dragging a corpse up the narrow passageway. ‘Ain’t you finished yet? Leave orf playin’ with er now.’
Gawd, but this one stank something awful. Black fluid was leaking through the sheet like steam off a boiled leek pudding. Good thing it was winter. Had it been hot weather there would have been swarms of flies. Rufus gave the woman a final nudge with his toe, then let her be. Cursing under his breath he went to help Bunner. Grunting and complaining the two men manhandled the sheet-wrapped bundles out of the front door.
Behind then Garnetta raised her head. Her whole body was a map of pain and soreness. She felt somehow removed from it. Everything was all mixed up. The fever raging in her blood warped her vision. She could see, far off down the passageway, a square of night sky. It was blue-black, pricked with stars. Beautiful. For a moment she was almost lucid. The clean night air blew into the shop, thinning the stench of sickness and death.
In a moment Rufus came back into the shop. He began pulling bolts of cloth from the shelves. ‘Look’ee here,’ he said to Bunner, smoothing a filthy hand over the silks, the embossed brocades, frosted laces and murry velvets. ‘Should furnish us with a pretty penny, eh? There’s too much to carry though. Cart’ll be about full when we get this lot aboard.’
Bunner nodded sagely. ‘We mun come back after we unload at the pit. Best nail up the door again, lest some others come lookin’ fer pickings.’
Both men turned at the sound of rustling. Bunner’s mouth dropped open in astonishment. Rufus slapped his thigh. ‘Blast my lights! Would yer look at that. The wench’s crawlin’ t’wards the door. Where you think you’re goin’ then?’ He bent down and grabbed a handful of her hair.
‘Oh, do leave orf baitin’ the wench, Rufe. Let’s get on now. I got a supper of ale and oysters waitin’ on me.’
Rufus let go of Garnetta. Together they went out into the yard, picked up the pile of corpses by their wrists and ankles and swung them up onto the cart. As they worked their breath fanned out on the cold air. The sound of their nailed boots was loud in the silent yard. Frost gleamed on the cobblestones. When the last body had been thrown onto the cart Rufus jumped aboard. He pushed and kicked the corpses into a more solid pile. Jumping down he rejoined Bunner who was blowing onto his fingers to warm them.
‘What’s to do about this un?’ Rufus said, indicating Garnetta who lay sprawled across the threshold.
Bunner shrugged, his belly growling with hunger. All he could think about was the plate of oysters and the blazing fire he would sit by to eat them. ‘She’s near dead. Won’t last long in this cold anyways. Throw her up with the others.’
As they swung her into the air, Garnetta revived enough to struggle weakly. She moaned once when she landed on the cold hard flesh, then was still.
The smell of freshly dug earth filled Garnetta’s nostrils. There was a fainter smell underlying it, cloying, sickening, which she did not at first recognize.
Cold. Bone-freezing, all encompassing, it ate into her. She was shivering so badly that she could hear her teeth chattering. She lay flat on her back, unable to move. Everything hurt. For a while she drifted in and out of consciousness, her mind fuzzy and unfocused. Then all in a rush, she remembered everything; the pestilence, the weeks of enforced isolation, the men breaking into the shop and abusing her. Oh dear God. Jessy, Sellice, Father – gone. All of them dead. She was alone. But where?
Something hard pressed into her side. It was the jutting hip of the body beneath her. A cross-hatch of bleached limbs supported her lower body. Gradually she became aware that the back of her hand was pressed to the cheek of an old woman, her skin discoloured by purple-black blotches. A child’s head, achingly small, was pressed into her shoulder. Turning her head she saw that all around her were piled corpses; hundreds of them, a uniform grey in colour, their eyes sightless. The old lay side by side with the young. A mother clasped her dead babe to her breast, her ravaged face peaceful in death. Others had been food for the crows. Through gaping wounds, teeth, shreds of entrails, and bone were visible.
Garnetta shrank from the dead faces. The expressions of purest agony echoed the visions of purgatory displayed on the placards of the brothers of the Holy Penitence. A rime of frost, like flour, lay over everything making the dead look as if they had been sugared for some ghastly celebration. I’m in a death pit. But I’m alive. I don’t belong here. This was some dreadful macabre joke. She felt the urge to laugh and laugh, but knew that if she began she might never stop. Have to get out. The smell of corruption seemed to seep into her. Her gorge rose. With a groan of horror she wrenched her hand free, hardly feeling the skin tear away as it separated from the old woman’s frozen face.
She tried to sit up and found that she had to tug at her shift to free it – it too had frozen to the bodies ly
ing beneath her. Pushing and kicking at the corpses with her bare feet, she worked her fingers in underneath them, scrabbling to pull herself loose. The dead flesh was as hard as stone. The faces stared at her as if in reproach. Thank God she could see no sign of her father or sisters. They must have been thrown in first and other bodies tipped on top of them. Her lips moved in the words of a prayer as she scraped and dug, frantic to be free and away from this golgotha.
Her fingers were sore and bleeding by the time she had torn her shift free. Sobbing with reaction as well as from the pain and cold, she clambered over the piled bodies, elbows and knees jamming and sliding against the frozen flesh. She fell more than once. Finally she reached the edge of the pit. Above her head the sloping earth gave way to sky. The pit was almost full. It was easy enough to climb out of it. Lying on the grass, she gathered her strength.
Someone would surely find her. Grave-diggers would come along soon, bringing lime to sprinkle on the corpses, it being impossible to shovel the frozen earth over them. Weekly services were held for the dead, the priests saying prayers over mass graves. A priest would help her to a warm bed, soothe her burning throat with a hot posset, put a healing unguent on her wounds. Please. Someone come. I can’t bear this. But no one came. In a while she raised her head and looked around.
The light was thick and grainy. Shapes of bushes and trees loomed out at her. There were no flares of light in the gloom, no rumble of cartwheels, no sign of anything moving at all. Where was the shadowy bulk of the church tower, the sound of bells tolling? She was alone with the dead in some Godforsaken, unhallowed field. No one would help her. She had not the strength nor the will to help herself. How easy it would be to just close her eyes.
Then she remembered that there must be other corpses to dispose of, many of them. The bearers who had cast her into the death pit would be coming back. Fear of what they would do if they found her there gave her the impetus to move. On her hands and knees, her teeth clamped down on the pain in her lower belly, she began crawling forward. The frozen mud, rutted by cart tracks, made it difficult to make headway. The back of one hand hurt. She glanced at it, surprised to see that it was raw and bleeding. Ignoring the minor discomfort, she kept moving, dragging herself forward.