Plague Child (10 page)

Why? That was the question I wanted to hurl in his face: Why?

Perhaps I even shouted the word. In the blur of what happened I cannot remember. The procession had come to a stop. I ducked round one reined-in horse and was a few feet from the gentleman staring down at me. I appeared so suddenly his horse reared. I tried to catch its reins as the gentleman slipped in his saddle. All around me people were shouting. Riders were fighting to control their bucking horses. I felt the stinging cut of a whip.

‘Make way! See to my father!’

The voice was that of a rider who had his horse under perfect control. I caught a glimpse of the falcon emblazoned on his cloak as he urged his horse towards me. His face was like the old man’s but smoothed out, with a neat, spade-like beard. His sharp grey eyes were those of a man of action who is brought to life by other people’s panic and disorder. He broke through the press of people and bore down on me, his head low over his horse, his eyes narrowed along the sight of his down-pointed sword. To him I must have looked like the game he hunted on his estate. Or vermin, more like. Someone was shouting in my ear but I was like one of the rats in the dockyard, hypnotised by a stray dog which had trapped it. The point was inches from me when a stave knocked it away. The sword ripped through the shoulder of my coat, spinning me round. The rider’s horse bucked, but he controlled it, and turned the horse towards me again.

‘Run!’ the voice yelled.

It was Luke. He dragged me through the confused mêlée and shoved me towards Will. ‘Run, you little fool! Run!’

Chapter 9

They took me back to the warehouse, where Mrs Ormonde insisted on giving me a bed in Will’s room. Ben rubbed a cool salve into my shoulder. He reminded me of Matthew, except there was a sense of order in the herbal cures he carried in a battered leather satchel. Luke watched, sitting on the end of the bed. ‘What on earth were you doing?’

I did not answer, determined to say nothing more, since he had ridiculed my story. I had thanked him for saving my life, but being so indebted to him made it all the harder to stand his patronising manner.

The throbbing in my shoulder was already going down as Ben put the salve back in his satchel. ‘You shouted “That’s him.” Who did you think the old gentleman was?’

‘Were you trying to prove your story?’ Luke persisted. ‘The pitch boy and the peer?’ I tried not to listen to him, turning my face into the pillow, but then his tone changed. ‘Risky way of proving it, but effective. I saw him looking at you, and I’m sure he knew who you were.’

I sat up, staring at him, but in that irritating way of his he went off at a bewildering tangent. ‘It looked as if the younger one just took you for a madman. But he wasn’t properly dressed. He should have been wearing a ceremonial sword, not a rapier.’

He wrinkled his nose, in that fastidious way he had, as if he had smelt something bad. He had taken off the lace collar, stained with wine. He brushed some speck from his breeches. Alone amongst us, he looked almost as pristine as when we had set out for the procession, and, unlike Ben, totally out of place in such a Puritan household.

He sighted down an imaginary rapier and lunged towards me. He smiled, but a shiver went down me. Perversely, part of me didn’t want to hear what he was going to say. The salve was working and the bed, which had the first feather mattress I ever slept on, made me realise how achingly tired I was. Now all I wanted was for it to be a story and to doze off into sleep; but he brought me fully awake. His matter-of-fact tone became more chilling.

‘It was an Italian rapier. Bologna, at a guess. He should have been wearing a good old English broadsword and cut his man down. But that’s clumsy and much less effective. It’s the thrust, the
stoccata lunga
, not the cut . . . the point, not the blade – if you really want to kill a man.’

There was a relish, a ghoulish intensity in Luke’s voice that brought back with sickening clarity the smell of the horse and the young man’s eyes, one almost closed, the other focused along the rapier, as if his eye were part of the blade.

‘You mean he was prepared?’ Will put in.

‘Yes. Apart from the rapier, he was dressed perfectly. I should know whose coat of arms that is . . . The falcon . . . it’s on the tip of my tongue . . .’

‘Was he one of the people in the Pot?’ Ben asked.

‘No. They were low-pads,’ Will said.

‘The man in a beaver hat looked like a soldier down on his luck,’ Luke put in. ‘Did you hear what they said at the bar?’

‘They said they were from the Stationery Office. The soldier asked the landlord to contact him . . .’

‘Where?’

‘The Hen . . . No, the Cock and Hen in Holborn . . .’

‘Mercenary inn,’ Will said. ‘Where they’re recruiting for the war.’

‘There isn’t going to be a war,’ Ben said.

Unlike the others, he refused to believe that people here would destroy their own country as they had done in Europe. The English were not that stupid. King and Parliament had patched up their quarrels for fifteen years, so Ben said, and would continue to do so. He had joined the Trained Band because of an interest in treating wounds, which he was convinced were much more likely to happen in exercises in Artillery Fields than in some mythical war.

Will’s sister Charity, who was about Anne’s age, brought me a posset. Her black dress had a starched cotton collar and she had the simplicity of those Dutch portraits which their artists did before they came to London and burst into colour when they painted for the court.

Astonishingly, Luke took on some of that simplicity as soon as she entered the room. His wit deserted him as she talked to him with a directness that cut through his diversions and flippancy. He was modest where he had been arrogant, listened where he had interrupted, bending with a sober face as Charity expressed her concern.

‘I put your lace collar into water, Mr Ansell. There was blood on it.’

‘Blood?’ he said, startled.

I remembered the fountain of wine and could scarce check a smile. There was no drink in that Puritan house except a bottle of Dutch schnapps for use as a physic.

‘Oh yes . . . blood,’ Luke said, attempting a dismissive wave.

She came close to him, staring anxiously at the stain on the top of his doublet. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘Hurt? No no no . . .’ he stammered. ‘It was n-nothing . . .’

He caught my smile, gave me a savage look, half warning, half pleading, tried to recover his composure, stumbled against the foot of the bed, and hurried to open the door for Charity as she left to go to prayers. He returned almost immediately, his face flooded with excitement, snapping his fingers in triumph.

‘Falcon! Lord Stonehouse, third Earl. Seat Highpoint House, in extensive lands near Oxford. King Charles’s Master of the Court of Wards until about five years ago, when he fell from favour for dragging his feet paying Ship Money. That’s who the old gentleman is!’

Chapter 10

I slept late next day, and would have slept later, if it was not for Luke and Will dangling a bag with the stench of a neglected stable before my nose.

‘What on earth is that?’

‘Raven’s wing,’ said Luke solemnly.

‘Approved by the Queen to remove the curse of red hair and turn it into fashionable black.’ Will spoke like the hawker in Cheapside from whom they’d clearly bought it.

‘Suitable for court.’ Luke gave me a small bow.

I was suddenly very fond of the red hair I had hated all my life. ‘You’re not putting that on me!’ I grabbed the canvas bag from Luke, peering at the evil-smelling black slime which had the consistency of loose turds, before jerking my head away. Luke tried to seize the bag. I dodged, drawing back my hand to hurl the bag at him.

‘Do you want to be killed?’ Will snapped.

He had an authority which Luke, with all his clowning, lacked. Slowly I lowered the bag. They told me they had been to the Cock and Hen in search of the man with a beaver hat. It was, as Will had told me, a recruiting centre for mercenaries. The religious wars which had devastated Europe for thirty years were petering out, and every other ship coming into London brought soldiers of fortune, looking for the highest bidder. One of them was the man in the beaver hat.

‘His name is Captain Gardiner,’ Luke said. ‘He’s a distant cousin, a poor relation of Lord Stonehouse.’

I took one last feel of my red hair and silently handed the revolting mess to Will. In the yard I dipped my head in a freezing pail of water, shook myself like a dog, and shut my eyes.

‘Good for lice, too,’ said Will.

‘Turns them black instead of red,’ spluttered Luke.

I shuddered and gagged as they rubbed the evil-smelling slime into my hair. ‘It’s foul! How long do I have to stay like this?’

‘All night.’

‘What?’

The worst moment was when Ben came next morning to find me propped up in bed, the mixture set into a hard clay on my head. He demanded to know what was in it, for if there was ceruse, a form of white lead, I might not only lose my colour but my hair.

I stared fearfully at myself in a pewter mirror as Luke, like a sculptor, chipped away at the clay. My hair was still there, not quite black, but a dusty dark brown. The effect was startling. Even Luke was silenced. Then he began laughing again as I touched my face to make sure I was the stranger who faced me in the mirror.

The bells were ringing as I approached St Mark’s, Mr Black’s local church, the following Sunday. Their sound was recognisable all over the ward and beyond, because one of the bells was slightly cracked and seemed to limp along after the others. I looked like a devout Puritan, with a square white collar and a black jump jacket and breeches of Will’s, cut down by Charity. My darkened hair framed my face under a wide-brimmed felt hat. I looked towards Mr Black’s pew. He was not there, George taking his place with Mrs Black. My heart leapt when I caught sight of Anne – and leapt again when I saw she carried my mother’s Bible, which she had promised to bring me.

After the service I stayed seated, apparently still in deep prayer. Anne passed me so close her skirts almost touched me, a whiff of damask roses in the pomander she wore reaching me. Behind my hands, raised in prayer, I winked at her. She gave me a startled look, almost dropping the Bible, then slipped it on the bench beside me.

Outside, Anne dropped back while her mother and George talked to Benyon, the East India merchant standing as a King’s man against Will’s father in the City elections. I was surprised to see him there, for Mr Black despised his politics and his religion – St Mark’s was a ‘halfly reformed’ church and Benyon was always urging a return to sacraments and ceremony – but it gave us the opportunity we needed.

The same thought in our heads, we went behind a mausoleum dedicated to Samuel Potter & Relic. She kept darting guilty, nervous glances towards her mother and George like a cornered animal. I was afraid to touch her in case she would flee.

‘Thank you for the Bible, Miss Black,’ I said.

She swallowed a smile at the formality. ‘Tom, Tom, I must not see you again.’

‘Then you must not call me Tom, surely.’

‘Mr Neave.’ Now she could not keep the smile back, although she was near to tears. ‘You fool – what do you look like?’

‘I have become a Puritan.’

I mimicked the stiff dignity of George, who from round the edge of the mausoleum I could see, hands clasped behind his back, nodding gravely to Benyon and the minister, Mr Tooley, who had joined them. She dipped her face into her hands to contain her laughter. As soon as she stopped I doffed my hat, starting her off again when she saw my hair.

‘Stop it, you fool, stop it! What on earth have you done with your hair?’

‘It’s called Raven’s wing.’

‘Raven’s –’

She clapped her hand over her mouth to curb the laughter. Slipping in her heavy, wood-soled pattens, she clutched at me. I caught her and almost immediately released her, for I was still frightened she would fly off like a bird, but in a sudden movement she held me so tightly I gave a little gasp. She buried her head on my chest. Still apprehensive, I brought my hand tentatively down to smooth the hairs blown from under her hat across her forehead. Her eyes were shut, as if she was asleep. Sunshine briefly lit us and warmed us and she murmured something as if dreaming, and my hand stroked her gently, but otherwise neither of us moved or wanted to move.

‘Anne,’ her mother called. We stood motionless, except for my stroking hand.

‘Anne?’ Louder and querulous.

Anne’s eyes shot open. She stared up at me with a fierce, wild, hard, desperate look that softened briefly into one of deep, penetrating tenderness such as I never thought I would see in her grey-flecked eyes.

‘Anne?’ Mrs Black’s pattens clacked on the path.

‘God forgive me,’ she whispered. ‘I must not see you again. Don’t try and see me, Tom. Please. Please go.’

She pulled away, waved to her mother and began walking slowly back to her. I followed her, in my devout pose, clasping my Bible. Mrs Black stared at me, then returned to the conversation. I caught a snatch of George saying: ‘The King is right. Pym has gone too far!’ before Anne, fearful I would go right up to them, darted behind an urn, beckoning me frantically.

‘Go the back way,’ she hissed.

‘Not until you tell me what you feel for me.’

She picked up a stick and struck at some weeds. ‘I feel nothing – nothing!’

‘That’s not true! I saw the look in your eyes.’

‘The look in my eyes!’ she mocked, and now the grey eyes held all the cruelty they showed when she used to make fun of my monkey feet as a child. But I met their gaze steadily until finally she turned away with a shrug, giving the weeds another savage blow.

‘Tell me you do not love me,’ I said. ‘And I will go. I’ll never try and see you again.’

She did not seem to hear me. She began to clear the weeds she had cut. I asked her again to say she did not love me, and I would walk away.

‘I cannot,’ she muttered. Among the weeds were nettles which must have stung her, but she seemed unaware of them.

‘Cannot? What do you mean?’

She gave a little moan and I thought for a moment she was going to bury her face in the nettles. ‘It is a sin to love you.’

At first all I heard was that she loved me. I moved to hold her, but her pleading agonised look stopped me and I retreated at once, for I would do anything for her, now that I knew she loved me. I had something that I had to ask her.

‘When I found that book in your father’s office, about the money spent on me, and the portrait, you said “I knew it!” What did you mean?’

‘I had seen that book before.’

She was silent for a moment and looked towards the group. It was an unusually mild winter’s day, the sun breaking strongly through the clouds. George was still in full flow, Mrs Benyon was showing Mrs Black the gilded panelling and plump leather upholstery of their coach, while the coachman lit a pipe and turned his face towards the sun.

It was the autumn day, she told me, when we were playing together as children, and the man with a scar arrived and Mr Black called us in. When I ran away, her father took her into his office, where he was going over the accounts book with the man. She had never seen her father so stern, and yet so frightened.

‘Frightened? Mr Black?’ I said.

‘So was I.’ She trembled at the memory of the gentleman striking the table and shouting: ‘It won’t do, Black, it won’t do! Keep the boy close!’

The man had bent down to her so the scar almost touched her upturned face and she could smell the wine on his breath. ‘You know what Tom Neave is, don’t you? A plague child!’

Only then did she drop the weeds she was gathering and realise her hands were blotched red from the nettles.

‘What did he mean?’

She scratched her hands wildly. ‘I don’t know! I don’t know!’ Turning to look back towards her mother, she said, ‘They told me not to come near you. They believe you’re evil.’

‘That’s George,’ I said contemptuously. ‘He’s a liar and a hypocrite.’

‘He’s not!’ she said vehemently. ‘He’s kept the business going! Without him, I don’t know what we’d have done! He does much work for Mr Benyon.’

‘Benyon?’ I could not believe my ears. ‘He’s a Royalist! Does your father know?’

‘George shows him what he prints.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘He gives him proofs, but I cannot read them. George knows someone paid my father to take you. He says he warned him you were evil, and now his illness is God’s punishment.’

‘What nonsense!’

‘He told Father I let you out of the cellar. I thought he would go mad! It’s worse because he can scarcely speak. He writes – tries to write . . .’

She buried her head in her hands, stumbling about blindly. Blood ran down the backs of her hands where she had scratched them.

‘Anne – where are you?’ Mrs Black called.

‘Coming!’ she shouted. ‘I’ve stung my hand. I’m just getting some dock leaves.’

She wrenched up a fistful of dock leaves. I seized her by the hand.

‘Anne – when he said I was a plague child, did you think I would get black boils?’

Unexpectedly she began to laugh. ‘Yes. I looked for them every day.’

‘Did you see them?’

‘No.’

‘Do you think I’m evil?’

‘The devil is clever,’ she said, with a penetrating directness.

‘George says.’

‘He says nobody knows who you really are. Where you’ve come from.’

It was true. Everything pointed to me not being Matthew and Susannah’s child. Matthew had fled to Poplar not only because of the stolen pendant, but because of me. A plague child. What did the man mean? So far as I knew, I had never had the plague. A chill ran through me. There was a law that made it a hanging offence to ‘talk, feed, entertain or employ any wicked or evil spirit’. This, the Church believed, was the greatest offence against God:
maleficium –
making a pact with the devil.

‘Anne, you can’t believe I’m an evil spirit!’

My face must have looked so desolate, so woebegone that she laughed and held me. ‘No, no, no, Tom – not when I’m with you, not when you look like that.’

She kissed me impulsively. I had never seen her more beautiful, although her face was reddened with half-shed tears and her hat was awry, allowing her fair hair to blow in unruly tangles in and out of her eyes.

The crack of the coachman’s whip made her jump as if she had felt the lash. ‘But when I see my father lying there . . . You said if I told you I did not love you, you would go.’

‘But you
do
.’

‘I
cannot
love you.’ She was crying now, the tears blurring the words. ‘I promised my father . . . I swore on the Bible I would never see you again. And here I am, God forgive me. Promise me on your mother’s Bible you will not try and see me again, Tom.’

Her eyes were so blinded with tears, her voice so desperate, and I loved her so much, so much that I would do anything for her that the words were out of my mouth before I could stop them: ‘I promise.’