The Blast That Tears the Skies (2012) (20 page)

Casually, Tristram again reached inside the coat, this time with his right hand, and drew out another pistol. He described an arc with it, pointing it at each incredulous face in turn. Then he reached out and plucked one sword from the ground with his left hand.

‘Never, ever, assume that you face a right-handed assailant, my friends. Now, let us return to the matter in hand. The Lugg business. The burning of a witch in this place, more than thirty years ago. As I said at the inn, I have an amount of honest coin of the realm – a goodly amount – to bestow upon whosoever tells me the truth of that affair. Or, of course’ – Tristram gestured toward the still twitching remnant of the man upon the ground – ‘we can conduct matters differently. But remember that I am, as I say, a man of peace.’

 

 

 

Cornelia Quinton and Phineas Musk made their way past Saint Helen and Saint Ethelburga, and so out into Bishopsgate. This was ever one of the busiest streets of London, full of coaches, carts and horsemen bound for the north or for the City itself. Yet now it was eerily quiet. The doors of several houses bore the plague-cross.

Cornelia and Musk had taken all essential precautions against infection. Cornelia wore a kerchief around her lower face; concealed within it was a posset emitting fragrances that were held to ward off the plague-bearing miasma. Musk trusted to his pipe, puffing out a cloud of tobacco smoke to repel any noxious air.

‘Woe for London,’ said Cornelia. ‘I pray it does not assail us as terribly as Amsterdam, last year. My brother says a tenth of its people died, and it still rages there.’

‘Aye, madam,’ said Musk. ‘No leveller like the pestilence, that there isn’t. I recall the plagues here, back in twenty-five and thirty-six. The former took away over thirty thousand, they say, two of my sisters among them.’

‘You had
sisters
, Musk?’ Cornelia Quinton had known the steward of Ravensden House for the best part of seven years, but had never actually heard him speak of his family.

‘Brothers, too. They’ve only hanged one of them, far as I know.’

The unlikely pair passed through the square, brooding Bishop’s Gate itself and entered the Moor Fields. Those broad spaces were empty of their usual clientele of hawkers, vendors, jugglers and whores. A few stray cattle grazed forlornly; an occasional horseman or pedestrian scurried along one of the paths criss-crossing the fields, hoping by haste to avoid any potential source of infection, such as the man and woman making for a decaying, narrow house almost in the shadow of the Moor Gate itself.

In ordinary times, this building was known for the openness of its door; or at least, its openness to men of all ranks and conditions with sufficient coin to purchase the wares within. Now, though, the door was marked with the tell-tale red cross.

‘As we feared, mistress,’ said Musk. ‘Time to go back, I think. You’ve done all you could. My Lord wouldn’t expect more of us, going into the way of the plague and the like.’

But Cornelia Quinton was to be daunted neither by Musk’s entreaties nor by the regulations to prevent the spread of the plague. With barely a sideways glance to see whether or not she was observed, she strode to the door and hammered loudly upon it.

‘Have we come so far to be deterred by some paint on a door, Musk?’

They heard steps upon the flagstones within. Someone came up to the door, stopped, listened, but did not move away. Cornelia hammered again.

‘Begone, in God’s name!’ cried a quivering woman’s voice from within. ‘We’re closed for business. Three cases of plague within – may God have mercy upon all our souls. And besides, you’ll be arrested –’

‘We seek one of the bawds – one of the girls. She uses the name of Lugg, or did when she was at the Spanish dame’s establishment in Drury Lane.’

There was silence behind the door; for even in plague-time, a brothel keeper remained alive to the possibility of turning a profit. ‘Lugg, you say? And what would you be doing with her?’

Musk nudged Cornelia. ‘Constable,’ he said, nodding in the direction of the Moor Gate. Cornelia turned and saw three men checking buildings, alleys and outhouses. The bastions of the law had not yet seen the man and woman concealed within the archway of the house further up the street, but it would be only moments before they did.

‘Admit us, madam,’ hissed Cornelia, ‘and we will pay you five guineas at once.’ Musk shook his head vigorously and gripped Cornelia’s arm, but she shrugged him off. ‘Another five if you can show us the girl. And if she is the one we seek, much more to carry her away with us.’ There was a silence of calculation behind the door. ‘We have no time, madam! Is it yes or no?’

There was a sound of a bolt being drawn back, and the door opened. Cornelia and Musk stepped within, and the door was smartly locked shut behind them.

‘Five guineas, then,’ said the woman’s voice. ‘Let’s see it,
Dutch-woman
.’

Seeing anything at all took some moments, for with all the windows shuttered and no candles lit, the hallway was in almost complete darkness. The house stank of decay and a strange, indefinable yet revolting sweetness. Somewhere upstairs, a girl was sobbing.

Gradually, Musk and Cornelia made out the shape and something of the appearance of the creature in front of them. A short, bent woman, it was clear, but it was impossible to tell her age; she wore a mask over her head, obscuring it entirely but for two slits cut for her eyes.

Cornelia took out a heavy purse and handed it to the old whoremistress. ‘You’re running a mighty risk, Dutchwoman,’ she said, opening the purse to estimate the amount of coin within. ‘Double risk, indeed – catching the plague or being arrested for breaking the plague laws. Or both. With a war on, they could probably hang you for treason, too. You must want my girl mighty badly, so I think you can’t be seeking her for the usual reasons, are you?’

‘Show her to us,’ demanded Cornelia.

‘Another five, you say, just for showing her?’

‘We are true to our word, madam.’

‘Very well. But remember, I want the money for showing her to you. Don’t expect to like what you see, Dutchwoman.’

The crone led Cornelia and Musk up two flights of stairs, and into a small room lit only by two feeble candles. On the bed lay a woman of eighteen years or thereabouts. A face that might have been beautiful only very recently was covered in a foul rash and bathed in sweat. Dried blood stained her nose and mouth. Upon her neck was a swollen purple bubo. Cornelia extended her gloved hand and pulled down the sheet that covered her. The girl was naked, revealing the full extent of the rash; yet more purple or reddish-brown buboes disfigured her groin and armpits. Her belly was swollen and her blueish flesh ran with sweat.

‘So now you’ve seen her,’ said the brothel-keeper. ‘Five guineas more.’

Cornelia handed over a second purse. ‘Now leave us,’ she said.

‘Leave you? What you going to do with her? Fancy a threesome with a plague victim, do you? Seen all sorts over the years, but that –’

‘Leave us!’

The old woman shrugged and left the room, closing the door behind her.

Cornelia looked down at the recumbent body of the girl. ‘Nothing can be done until she recovers,’ she said. ‘If she recovers. The colour of the buboes suggests she’s nearly at the crisis.’

‘Aye, mistress,’ said Musk, ‘so it seems. And by the looks of her, recovery will be a miracle. As great a miracle as if we don’t catch the plague, you and I.’

Cornelia pulled back the sheet to cover the girl’s modesty. ‘Oh, you will survive, I think – it will need more than a trifling epidemic of plague to do for Phineas Musk.’ Cornelia smiled. ‘And as for me … remember, we Dutch are Calvinists, and predestination is a reassuring notion in such times as these. It is already ordained whether I will live or die, however many plague houses I visit.’

Cornelia knelt down at the side of the bed to pray that the young whore named Lugg, too, was predestined to live. In his deposition, Musk admits that he looked about him awkwardly; he had no truck with predestination, or with any theology other than the preservation of Phineas Musk, and presumably reckoned that remaining longer than was necessary in the room of a plague victim was not especially conducive to that end. Nevertheless, he had particularly good cause to pray for the survival of the Lugg girl. Awkwardly, he fell to his knees and joined his mistress in prayer.

* * *

The fleet was at anchor once again in the Gunfleet, some four leagues off the Naze. A steady procession of victuallers was coming out to us from Harwich, making good the supply of beer to our thirsty fleet. I was in my cabin listening to Thurston, the ancient carpenter. Having effected the repairs to the fire damage, he was now opining that we ought to seek orders to take the
Merhonour
up into the Stour and put her upon he careen, that being the only way of enhancing her sailing qualities to even the slightest degree. I was listening sympathetically, but was firm in my refusal. No amount of careening was going to turn the
Merhonour
into the finest sea-boat in the fleet, and I was aware that orders to sail might come at any moment; not to mention the possibility that the Dutch might attempt a surprise attack. I had no intention of missing what might be the only battle of the entire war with my ship beached and its bottom exposed to the air, for such a fate truly would have been the final proof of the curse upon the
Merhonour
.

Almost at once, my presentiment seemed to be fulfilled. I heard gunfire, first from one ship, then from another, then from more and more. I ran to the quarterdeck, and realised at once that the gunfire was coming from the ships to southward: hardly the direction from which the Dutch would attack. Giffard, who had the watch, had his telescope trained that way, but even without an eyepiece, I could see bunting being set on the southerly ships and their crews manning the shrouds, cheering loudly.

Young Scobey handed me my telescope, and I levelled it at the little flotilla approaching the fleet from the south.

‘Four of the royal yachts,’ I said to Giffard, recognising at once the headmost as my erstwhile command, the
Mary
. She flew a large royal standard at her masthead. ‘But not the king … he would hardly sail without at least a dozen craft around him.’

‘We just had word from one of the victuallers,’ said Giffard. ‘’Tis the Duchess of York, come to visit her husband. Yet again.’

‘Then we had better dress ship to salute Her Royal Highness, Mister Giffard,’ I said.

I did not share with him my true thoughts, which were dishonourable to the very point of becoming treasonable. We were a fleet ready for war, about to encounter an enemy that might be already at sea for all we knew, and yet we were to be overrun with
women
! We already had enough idle and entirely useless scions of the nobility cluttering the fleet: I was fortunate in that regard to have only the amiable and covertly martial Comte d’Andelys sharing my ship. Yet somehow it had been decreed that we should now also be slaves to the cloying presence of petticoats. I thought upon the poor drowned girl of the
London
, and prayed that was not a foretaste of what might occur if the Dutch attacked while the Duchess and her retinue remained in the fleet. What was the woman thinking of, to inflict herself upon her husband at such a moment?

My one consolation was the reflection that the noble court ladies were certain to confine themselves to the flagship or to the ships that contained the court rakes, the likes of Buckingham, Sedley and Buckhurst. There was no prospect at all of a woman disturbing the martial preparations of the
Merhonour
.

* * *

A fog had fallen upon London: a thick, swirling miasma that made the plague-ridden streets seem even more ghastly than they already were. As Musk and Lord Percival entered the precincts of Saint
Giles-in
-the-Fields, a true vision of Hell confronted them. Shadowy masked figures moved through the graveyard, heaving great linen-swathed parcels from the dead-carts and dragging or carrying them to large, newly-dug holes, far wider and deeper than single graves, whither they flung them without ceremony. Other figures were piling the clothes and other possessions of the dead onto bonfires, the smoke and ash drifting across the churchyard while the flames enhanced the hellishness of the scene. Musk’s original words, lying before me on the fading paper, are perhaps less eloquent than those of a Quinton; but I make no attempt to emulate his brutal descriptions of the condition of individual corpses, too explicit by far for these times that pretend to greater gentility. Even now, my stomach turns as I contemplate his account.

One man stood at the centre of proceedings, a little way from the west door of the modern Gothic church of Saint Giles, directing all. As Musk and Lord Percival approached him they saw that his head was entirely concealed by a leather mask, akin to that worn by executioners; yet another of the ways by which men sought to protect themselves from the foul air that carried the plague. Or so Musk and his mysterious lord assumed.