by S. W. Perry
The wind has ceased to howl. The waves have calmed. The first day-watch is going on deck, a procession of grumbling, cursing men clambering sleepily up the ladder to take their turn in the head, the narrow grating beneath the bowsprit – the only place on the Righteous a man may empty his bowels, and usually then only shoulder-to-shoulder with his neighbour.
Nicholas takes this daily ritual in good spirit. He is no stranger to enforced communality. In the Low Countries, as surgeon to Sir Joshua Wylde’s company, he’d learned to dig a jakes as speedily as any man and use it without complaint, regardless of the stink. Here, at least, a fellow’s waste goes into the water, not some stinking ditch or the open drains of London.
But before Nicholas can attend to himself, first he must check on his patient, poor Edmund Hortop.
Yesterday the apprentices lashed the oars of the cockboat together to form a makeshift stretcher, trussed the lad like a rolled carpet and – as gently as they could – lowered him through the hatchway into the darkness below. It had looked to Nicholas as though they were already burying him. ‘He’s a brave English lad – see, he makes no complaint,’ the mate said, though Nicholas could tell Hortop’s silence had more to do with his injury than with any courage he might still possess.
Several times throughout the night Nicholas has woken and made his stumbling way by the lantern’s light to Hortop’s place behind the hatchway ladder, stooping to avoid dashing his brains out on the low deck beams. Kneeling beside the injured lad he has calmed and soothed, talked of the inconsequential, mopped away sweat, moistened the boy’s lips. There is precious little else he can do, and he long ago learned that activity, however futile, is a good mask for helplessness where a physician is concerned.
‘Will Edmund live, Master Physician?’ one of Hortop’s friends asked, a rangy lad with the ever-questioning eyes of a child who’s lost a parent in a crowd. Nicholas replied with some now-forgotten assurance that he suspects sounded as shallow to the apprentice as it did to himself.
‘He must live,’ another said resolutely. ‘He’s come all this way. It’s within grasping distance now. Courage, Edmund. You’ll soon be living like a prince.’
At the time Nicholas had been too tired to question what he meant. But now, as he follows the line of mariners towards the ladder, he recalls thinking that it had seemed an odd thing to say. True, Hortop had come from a humble shepherd’s hut, but a life at sea in the service of the Barbary Company hardly seems like a beckoning paradise.
Nicholas reaches the ladder. In the pale wash of light from the hatchway he can see the space behind it is empty. The lad’s gabardine coat is lying discarded against a stout timber rib. But Hortop himself has gone.
From hope to terror and back again. Tumbling, always tumbling. One moment Bianca is certain that she’s suffering nothing more alarming than a mild ague brought on by too much thinking. The next, she knows in her bones that she has the plague. I’m going to recover. I’m going to die. Recover… die…
The only question is: when? In the next hour? Within the day? The pestilence can take you so swiftly you don’t even have time to make a Will. Healthy at noon; dead by nightfall. I’m feeling a little better than I was an hour ago… I’m feeling worse…
She has closed her shop on Dice Lane. She will not open it, no matter how urgent the call for her balms and tinctures. She dares not risk coming into contact with another living soul.
She understands now why Constable Willders seemed so distracted. He was denying – even to himself – what he had encountered at his daughter’s lodgings. She can even allow him a measure of sympathy. What else was a loving father going to do: announce it outside St Saviour’s to the general population? Plague is in my daughter’s house! It may have touched me too – and any who have come close to us…
Thank Jesu I didn’t call in at the Jackdaw as I’d intended, Bianca thinks.
She stands in her bedchamber, unpoints her linen smock and lets it fall to her waist. Taking up her mother’s mirror glass – one of the few luxuries she brought with her to England – she raises her left arm towards the ceiling and carefully inspects her armpit. Then she transfers the glass to her other hand and does the same on her right side. Returning the glass to her clothes chest, she prods vigorously under each arm with her fingers, just to make sure there is no bubo developing malevolently beneath the skin.
Clean, she decides. So far.
Relacing her smock, she tries to remember if she walked or ran to Willders’s house, knowing that some physicians hold that exertion can open the pores of the skin, allowing the pestilence in. She is sure she walked.
She prods her stomach, knowing that pain there can presage the disease. It doesn’t feel sore. And she’s still hungry, which is good sign. She places a finger against the vein in her right wrist and feels her pulse. It seems normal.
Going downstairs to the shop, Bianca seeks out the shelf where she keeps a jar of squill leaves soaked in honey and vinegar, a vomitory she sells to customers who’ve eaten bad meat, or who fear an enemy or a love-rival has tried to poison them. She takes just a small amount – not enough to make her vomit, if she’s healthy. If she vomits it could be a sign she’s infected.
While she waits, she takes a wooden scoop, lifts the lid off her tub of brimstone and pours some of the yellow powder into a clay bowl. This she takes to the hearth. She heats a fire-iron in the flames for a few minutes, before plunging it into the brimstone. At once the powder begins to produce molten golden beads that give off dancing blue flames and pungent fumes, which make her think she could have done without the vomitory. Eyes streaming, she steps back and waits for the fumes to permeate her lodgings.
She realizes she’s used too much brimstone, because eventually she’s forced to open the upstairs window. Leaning out to savour the air, she sees the lane is empty. The word has spread, she thinks. I am already an outcast. I’m already dead. It’s just that no one has the courage to come and tell me.
An unbearable loneliness seizes her. She begins to tremble. Is it a sign the pestilence is spreading through her body – or just the fear of it? She longs to be able to throw herself into Nicholas’s arms. He would understand. He could even help her. He’s a good physician, no matter what he thinks of himself.
And then she remembers how they argued in her physic garden the day he said he was taking Robert Cecil’s commission: I’ve already told you: physic has no remedy. I’d be of no more use than the charlatans Gault has his eye upon.
She leaves the window ajar and goes back to the shop, the tears in her eyes not entirely the result of the brimstone. There she pours vinegar into a jar, intending to return to her bedchamber and wash herself down with it. There are still a few things she has yet to try. They might help, or they might have no effect whatsoever. It is just a matter of waiting. Waiting for death to make up his mind.
But at least she hasn’t vomited yet.
17
‘Mistress! Mistress!’
Bianca can hear Rose calling her. She climbs off the bed, catching a whiff of vinegar on her skin. Leaning out of the window, she sees Rose looking up at her from the lane. Behind her, Ned, Farzad and Timothy stand like children around the deathbed of a parent.
‘Say it isn’t true,’ Rose pleads, ‘all that nonsense Jenny Solver’s been shouting about you being taken with the pestilence.’
‘Who’s attending to the Jackdaw?’ Bianca replies, trying to sound as though she’s troubled by nothing more than a mild headache. ‘Who’s looking after the customers and keeping watch on the takings?’
Rose shakes her head in despair. Her black ringlets sweep rebelliously across her shoulders. She holds up a ring of keys. ‘Faith, Mistress, you’re not to trouble yourself on that score.’
‘You’ve locked up – securely?’
‘Yes, Mistress.’
‘And the window in the attic – in Master Nicholas’s old chamber?’
‘Locked, Mistress,’ Rose says in a weary tone. ‘It
’s been locked since he went to Mistress Muzzle’s lodgings.’
‘But what about trade? We can’t live on air, foolish girl. They’ll all go to the Good Husband and the Turk’s Head.’
‘No, they won’t,’ shouts Ned. ‘And if they do, I’ll fetch ’em back again.’
Farzad holds out an object wrapped in cloth. Bianca catches the delicious smell of stewed lamb. ‘I bring you best Abgoosht,’ he calls up proudly. ‘Is very good for sick mistress.’ Then, as his resolves crumbles, ‘Please, Mistress Bianca – not to die. I wish not to lose a second mother.’
Bianca has to stifle a cry of her own, at the pain so audible in his voice. ‘Leave it by the door, Farzad, sweet. I’ll collect it when you’ve gone,’ she calls down. ‘Is there any news of the Willders?’
Ned and Rose glance at each other.
Bianca’s stomach turns to ice. ‘Be honest,’ she shouts angrily. ‘You’ll do me no service by lying.’
Ned’s fiery countenance turns into the face of a little boy who’s just been slapped hard. ‘Dead, Mistress – the constable last night, just after Evensong. Goodwife Willders followed him this morning, at daybreak.’ He lowers his head, as though it’s all his fault.
For a moment no one seems to know what to do next.
‘Does the parish know I was in their company?’ Bianca calls down.
Rose hides her fear beneath a veneer of contempt. ‘That clacker Jenny Solver ain’t stopped squawking about it for a minute, all day. Whenever I ask someone where they heard the news, it’s always Mistress Solver what told them. She’s taken to her bed in fright.’
‘But is she sick?’
‘Not according to her husband. He was in for his ale today. Said it was good to have some quiet. Apparently she’s squawking like a bishop with the French Gout.’ Rose gives an unconvincing laugh. ‘But then when is she not, Mistress?’
It’s a small encouragement, thinks Bianca. Better than the alternative.
‘Come back to the Jackdaw, Mistress,’ says Rose plaintively. ‘We can care for you there.’
‘You know I must not do that, Rose, dear.’
‘Then let me come in and attend you. Please, Mistress.’
‘It’s not safe, Rose. It’s not safe for any of you to be near me.’
‘We don’t care,’ Rose says defiantly, to a general nodding of heads.
‘If I’m infected, you’ll leave Ned a widower. Do you want that?’
Rose begins to blubber uncontrollably.
‘We just have to wait, and trust to God’s mercy,’ Bianca says, more calmly than she feels. ‘And don’t let Buffle out into the street. With plague here now, the parish is likely to slaughter every dog it can catch.’
Rose makes a series of noises against Ned’s chest. To Bianca, she sounds like an old drunk with the croup.
Ned translates. ‘She says “God can’t tell the difference between good and bad any more.”’
Rose pulls herself away from her husband’s arms. She wipes her nose on her sleeve, takes up a four-square stance of angry defiance and shouts up at the window, ‘Why isn’t Master Nicholas here to cure you? Why has he left us when we have need of him most?’
Later, in her chamber, by the light of the tallow candle set beside the bed, Bianca reaches out to the hillock that her knees make of the coverlet. Propped there are two documents, the ink now dry, the words no longer deniable. They cannot be smudged into non-existence. They stand. It has taken all her courage to write them, because she knows that if they are read by anyone but herself, she will be dead.
I, Bianca Merton, formerly of the city of Padua, now residing in Bridge Ward Without, in the borough of Southwark, being reconciled unto God in the sure and lasting knowledge of resurrection, do here-within make my will:
To my well-beloved friends Ned and Rose Monkton, I leave the Jackdaw Tavern and all its stock, plate, furnishings, revenues and incomes in perpetuity, even down to their heirs. I do this in the trust that Timothy Norden, taproom boy, and Farzad Gul (a Moor), shall remain employed there for as long as they shall desire, and that they share in one tithe of the said revenues until the end of their days.
To my right beloved friend Nicholas Shelby, physician, I leave my father’s books, in the sure knowledge he will treasure them. He knows well the cost to him that wrote them of speaking against the prevailing thought and custom of the day. I leave him also my father’s silver Petrine cross – in memoriam of the faith I bore unto the said Nicholas, and in repentance for the words I left unspoken.
Bianca sets down the Will beside the bolster. She takes up the second document. It has taken her longer to write, because the words carry a weight that has made them harder to prise out of her heart.
I know not if you are on land or sea. But you are not here, and it would bring me great ease if you were.
It is no great trial to face death when He stands beckoning at the door. I have kept as faithful to the one true Religion as dwelling amidst heresy will permit, and I know God will take account of that when He determines how long I shall remain in Purgatory. Prayers for the soul are not permitted under England’s new faith, I know. But you are not a man who holds much with conformity. So pray for Bianca Merton’s soul, Nicholas Shelby.
I know now why you are compelled to remain so restless. You are searching for a truth that will not break, the moment you first step upon its shore. But know this: there is no such continent to be discovered, Nicholas. Not in this world.
I should not have sent you from me with harsh words. When Timothy found you that day, cast up on the shore, I knew you were a talisman, brought into my world by a goodly providence. And so has it proved to be. That I have not told you of my true feeling is my error alone. So I tell you now, Nicholas Shelby, that I love you.
Know this, Nicholas Shelby, that should I chance upon your Eleanor in heaven, I shall make all deference to her and say: The unbreakable truth he seeks was always there in his heart, and I could not sway him from it.
So now, as is the practice of my faith, I shall make my last confession before Almighty God. And I do so with you and Eleanor foremost in my thoughts.
I confess the sin of Envy.
18
‘He died in the night,’ says Connell casually. ‘It’s probably for the best. Hortop rests with God now.’ He gives a casual nod towards the far horizon.
‘You mean you cast his body overboard?’
‘What else would you have me do?’ Connell asks with a derisive shrug. ‘I can’t have a corpse aboard, Dr Shelby. Even a landlubber physician should know that.’
‘Why wasn’t I woken?’
‘You’re more use to me rested. Unless of course you can bring the dead back to life. Can you do that, Dr Shelby?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then why the concern?’
‘I could have confirmed he was dead.’
‘Confirmed?’ says Connell, his scoured brow rising. It makes Nicholas think of a serpent’s skin sliding over its bones. ‘Do you think I would have cast him out of the ship for being naught but a nuisance – while he still lived, Dr Shelby?’
‘No, of course not, but—’
‘I had money invested in that young boy. Why would I let Neptune have him for free?’ Connell scans the sky, apparently satisfied by the breaking cloud. ‘We should have a goodly sight of the sun soon, to fix our latitude. So I’ll attend to my duties, if you’d be so good as to attend to yours. If we have any more calamities aboard, I hope your physic proves more effectual that it did with poor Master Hortop.’
What did he expect of me? Nicholas wonders as he lies in his crypt above the crates of matchlock muskets. The boy’s back was broken. I’m a physician, not a worker of miracles.
He closes his eyes. Tries to catch up on lost sleep. The swaying of the Righteous has become almost comforting, now that the storm has passed. He rocks from side to side in the darkness, listening to the groaning of the hull and the snores of the sailors off-watch. But a nagging ques
tion keeps uncoiling itself in his mind like a worm in a grave: did Cathal Connell really have the living body of Edmund Hortop thrown into the sea?
It is a vigorous worm, with teeth that will not let go of Nicholas’s imagination. At length he climbs out of the hammock and goes back to the place behind the ladder. The hatch above is still open. But instead of a deathly grey light, sunshine now floods down onto the planks, illuminating a square a yard wide, which moves gently around the deck as the Righteous ploughs on through the sea.
Nicholas stands over the spot where he last attended to Hortop. A terrible image jumps into his mind – of the young apprentice, eyes rolling in terror as he realizes what the men lifting his makeshift stretcher intend.
He knows Connell could never have contrived it without the help of several men, and the tacit silence of anyone who might have woken and witnessed what was happening. Which means – if he’s right in his suspicions – that he’s in the power of a crew of murderers. He wonders what might have happened if he himself had not been in so deep a slumber.
As it sweeps to the motion of the ship, the square of sunlight picks out Hortop’s discarded mariner’s gabardine coat lying against the bulkhead. Nicholas stoops to retrieve it. It doesn’t seem right to leave it there.
As he lifts it up, a folded parchment with the remains of a heavy wax seal still attached lands with a secretive slap on the deck. Nicholas recognizes it as one of the documents he’d seen Reynard Gault of the Barbary Company hand Cathal Connell before the Righteous sailed – the same papers he’d watched the apprentices studying after the exercising of the cannon, huddled together in deep concentration as though revising for an examination. His memory echoes Gault’s words to him now: These are the young gentlemen’s… Keep them safe. A goodly profit depends upon them…