Deliver us from Evil (40 page)

As they turned into Pudding Lane at last, Robert craned out desperately from his carriage window. Immediately, he felt a sudden sickness parch him from his stomach to his throat. For two guards were standing by the house; and as he leapt from the carriage, he saw that the front door had been padlocked and nailed up with boards. A red cross had been painted over it, and a prayer for the Lord's mercy; but Robert doubted that prayers would be of much assistance now.

He crossed to one of the watchmen. 'Was she dead?' he asked. 'The girl here - was she dead?'

The man stared back at him nervously. 'You knew her?'

Robert nodded, struck suddenly dumb; and at once the watchman stepped back.

'Please,' said Robert,
I
must know.'

The watchman swallowed. Fear and sympathy seemed mingled on his face. 'There were shrieks heard,' he said at last, 'and they must have been her dying ones because, when we went in, the girl was done for. There's a man still alive there, though he won't be for long. If you want to give us money, we can see he still gets food.'

Numbly, Robert felt in his purse and drew out some coins. He stared up at the window of the dining hall, is she still in there now?' he asked.

The man stared at him in surprise. 'God bless you, no!' he exclaimed. 'She was taken for burial immediately.' 'Where to?'

'Not about here, it won't be, they don't want the plague dead staying round here.' 'Then where?'

'Not my problem, burying the dead.' He shrugged. 'She'll have been taken to St Giles.' 'When?'

The watchman shrugged a second time,
I
don't know. Not long ago.'

Robert stared at him a moment more; then turned, and cried out in anguish, 'St Giles!' He ran, the carriage already moving, and took his seat. As he did so, he almost felt like laughing in despair, for he realised how wrong he had been before, when he had believed that his ambitions had sunk as far as they could go. For now his only wish was that he might see Emily dead, just once, so that dirt might not cover her forever unseen, that her grave not lie unmarked and unhallowed by his mourning.

He leaned from the window again. They were making better speed now than they had done before, and the streets were already narrowing and growing darker as they entered the slums that stood about
St
Giles. Everywhere Robert looked he saw the blight of the plague. Houses stood boarded-up or tenantless; filth was piled high in neglected alleyways; the very air seemed stagnant and heavy with abandonment. Shrieks might sometimes be heard, and cries of distress, echoing through the silence from opened windows; but there was no one abroad, save only the watchmen on guard by red-marked doors. Robert peered in vain for a glimpse of the plague cart: the stillness of death seemed absolute.

Then suddenly, just as Robert was preparing to abandon his search, his nostrils were struck by a loathsome stench; and, at the same moment, he heard the distant rumbling of wheels. He ordered his carriage to halt; he clambered out; following the sound of the wheels down a side-alley, and on through a maze of squalid, winding streets. At last he saw the cart ahead of him, half-way down an alley leading on towards the church. Men were crying out to the windows above them, asking for the dead; or they were gathering coffins and naked bodies which had been laid out in the street.

Robert cried out to the men to halt, but they paid him no attention, for they could hear nothing above their own cries and the creaking of their cart. He ran down the street. As he drew nearer to the cart, he caught a glimpse of its load - the bodies lit white and ghostly by the torches, and piled almost to overflowing in a jumbled, stinking mess. Robert held his hand up to his mouth; then clambered up on to the back of the cart. Desperately, he began to rummage through the carcasses. The driver turned round and shouted at him to stop. Robert drew out his sword and pointed it at the man. '
I
am looking for a girl, brought to you this evening from a house in the City. Do you remember such a corpse?'

The driver goggled at him, terrified, then shook his head. 'None from the City.'

'Then where would she be?'

'She was brought to St Giles?'

'So
I
was told.'

The driver stammered something, and pointed, then suddenly grinned terribly. '
I
will show you.' He twisted round and shook out his reins; the cart rumbled forward along the street, and then away from the houses into the open ground before the church. The driver pointed again. 'There,' he yelled. His eyes narrowed as he stared at the ring on Robert's finger. 'You wife will be in there.'

Slowly, Robert climbed down from the back of the cart. The stench he had smelt earlier was overpowering now. It rose from a mighty pit, dug out from the churchyard and lit a hellish orange by a ring of blazing fires. Unsteadily, Robert walked forward. Ahead of him there lay a multitude of corpses, spread out across the pit, and in places piled so high that they reached up to the rim. Where they did so, labourers were busy covering them with soil; but the task was urgent and the layer very thin. Robert watched the men work; then heard a yelled command and turned round. The driver was readying his cart to dispose of its load. A second order was shouted and corpses began to be dragged from the cart; they slithered and bounced until they came to rest in the pit. Robert watched as more were slung into their grave; but he did not see Emily, although he waited until the cart had been emptied. When all was finished, he slowly bent down. He picked up a handful of soil. He tossed it out in an arc across the pit; then he turned and left, past the fires, into the dark.

'Much wine had passed with grave discourse

Of who fucks who and who does worse
...'

The Earl of Rochester, 'A Ramble in St James's Park'

T
hey were no students of human nature', announced Savile, 'who closed those places in London
where a man may have his
fun. For
I
declare,
I
have never been fonder of my pleasures than in this time of plague.'

'To Death, then,' answered Lord Rochester, raising a bottle. 'Our sweet lady Death.' He kissed the bottle softly, then glanced at Robert. 'Why, Lovelace,' he asked, 'will you not join us in our toast?'

'Death is no lady,' answered Robert coldly, 'but only a skipping whore, for her kiss is diseased and rots away the flesh.'

'God's wounds, Lovelace . . .' Savile frowned at him glassily. 'You were not so dark-humoured earlier this night. Why, you have fucked so hard that all of Greenwich must be sore.'

'Do you think,' answered Robert, 'that because a man sweats and grunts upon some whore, he is made merry by it?'

'So
I
had always understood.'

'Then you understood falsely. For he may fuck, and drink, and play the rake, and yet hope for nothing in the end save only to forget.'

Savile pulled a face. 'And what was your success in attaining such a goal?'

Robert did not answer immediately, but rose and crossed to the tavern window. He stared out at the Thames, following with his gaze its sweep towards the sea. On the eastern horizon, a forest of masts could now be clearly made out - the fleet for the war; and beyond it, the first faint golden haze of dawn. 'Just as the sun unpurples the night,' Robert murmured, 'so the passage of hours bleeds my oblivion away.' He turned round again. 'And
I
am left to contemplate instead the mournful truth, that remembrance is the worse for having briefly been forgot.'

Lord Rochester stared up at him intently. 'Such regret is ever the fruit of our pleasures.' He smiled and, leaning back against a sleeping whore's thigh, began to stroke the curve of her belly. 'For despair is a bastard bred upon desire, that most notorious suicide, which ever feeds upon itself and at length, over-surfeited, expires.'

Robert turned away again, for he was reminded by Lord Rochester's words of his dream of Lady Castlemaine, which he had long sought to forget. 'Yet by the same token,' he said softly, 'the progeny of despair must in turn be desire.'

indeed.' Lord Rochester agreed. 'And it is thus that a debauchee is so rapidly maimed, for his mind, host to such an endless cycle of procreation, must perforce grow dulled by it. Unless, of course he drained his bottle suddenly in a single draught, then tossed it aside - 'he can discover a fresh and unsampled object of desire.'

Savile grunted. 'Unsampled, my Lord? You, certainly, will find that pressing hard.'

Lord Rochester glanced fleetingly at Robert, but did not reply.

Savile grunted again, and staggered to his feet. 'God be my witness,
I
am content with fucking whores.' He stared about him Wearily. 'Montagu.' He nudged a body sprawled beside him on the floor. 'What do you say? Are you content with fucking whores?'

Montagu half-opened one eye. 'What,' he muttered, 'you would have me do it now?' He groaned, and turned away again; and Lord Rochester laughed contemptuously. 'Thus is my case proven, when even so prodigious a fornicator as Montagu is rendered impotent and stale.'

'Not so,' answered Savile, 'for
it
proves merely that pleasure comes in many different forms. After exertion, rest - after whoring, sleep.' He tore down a wall-hanging, to cover Montagu; then curled up himself beneath a cloth from a bench. 'And so to both of you,' he nodded, 'a very good night.'

'And now he will snore like a pig,' said Lord Rochester, 'and
I
shall not be able to join him in sleep, and thus he will serve to prove my case after all.' He stared up at Robert. 'What now, Lovelace? Will you return with me to London?'

Robert shook his head. He paused by a mirror to arrange his wig, then reached for his cloak and sword,
I
must go,' he said, pausing by the door,
I
have business in Deptford.'

'Deptford?' Lord Rochester sat up, intrigued. 'That is an ugly place for so pretty a gentleman as yourself

'Yet it is favoured by those much prettier than myself.' indeed?' Lord Rochester jumped to his feet. 'You are meeting with Milady?'

Robert nodded.

'What does she do there?'

'She - and Lightborn too . . .' - he shrugged - 'they have both been always strangely drawn to Deptford.'

'And yet perhaps,' said Lord Rochester, 'it is not so strange. For doubtless, just as Greenwich is full of plague-fleeing whores, so Deptford is crowded with sailors from the war, who will be drunk and therefore all the easier prey.'

'Doubtless.'

'And what is your business there, Lovelace, so early with Milady?' 'Nothing of any great moment.' 'Tell me.'

'Why' - Robert's smile was crooked - 'we have an abduction to plan.'

He turned, and said no more, but clattered down the stairs. He began to hurry along the river front, but Lord Rochester pursued him and seized him by the arm. 'You cannot, Lovelace, like some prick-teasing jade, arouse me in that way and then leave me unfulfilled.'

'And
I
must answer you, my Lord, as any teasing jade would, that
I
have another and more pressing assignment than with you.'

'And
I
must answer you in turn, Lovelace, that
I
treat all jilting flirts - thus.' As he spoke, Lord Rochester tightened his grip, so that Robert, although he struggled briefly, could not break free. 'Now,' said Lord Rochester, 'let us continue on to Deptford.' He led the way forward, as though Robert were a lady to be escorted on his arm. 'Tell me, then,' he inquired with perfect civility, 'who is this victim you will be abducting tonight?'

Robert walked in icy silence for a minute. 'A lady,' he said at last.

'Do
I
know her?'

Robert smiled grimly. 'Indeed, we have already discussed her at length.'

'Then
I
doubt she is a lady.'
‘
I
can assure you that she is.' 'What are her qualities?'

'Unspottable virtue, inestimable wealth . . . and the very best' -Robert smiled - 'the very
bluest
of blood.'

Lord Rochester's eyes narrowed. 'She has a pedigree, then?'

indeed, my Lord - such as to a connoisseur is more priceless than gold."

Lord Rochester released his grip, and walked on in silence for a few more paces. 'Am
I
to presume, then,' he asked at length, 'that it is your intention to abduct Miss Malet?'