Wickedness (7 page)

When Claire went downstairs the next morning, her head still muzzy with sleep, she found her mum and Micky already in the kitchen. They were frantically emptying out the larder where the food was kept. Everything except stuff in tins was going into black plastic bags.

“Rats!” Her mum was looking hot and frazzled. Packets of flour, sugar, cereals, pasta, all with great big holes gnawed in the side and their contents cascading out onto the floor. “They’ve even had a go at eating this!” She held up a white candle from the emergency supply, kept in case of power cuts.

Micky took it from her and looked at it closely. “Wow! Big teeth marks! Did you know rats can eat their way through bricks and even concrete? And…”

“Shut up Micky! It’s no good. I can’t wait for those pest-control men any longer. I’m going out
to see if I can get any rat traps.
If
there
are
any. It said on the news that this rat plague is getting worse by the day. And then I’d better go to the supermarket and get some more food. Maybe even one of those squidgy chocolate cakes for your sister’s birthday. And if we keep it in the fridge, the rats won’t get it! What do you think Micky? Shall we? I don’t suppose you’re going to want to come and help though, are you Claire?”

Claire shook her head. She was still in the old T-shirt and shorts she wore as pyjamas.

But Micky said, “I’ll come!” and ran off to put on shoes. Sweets. She was planning on coming back with masses of sweets.

Her mum and Micky had only just gone when the doorbell went. Thinking it was Micky running back to fetch her purse, which she’d carelessly left on the bottom step of the stairs, she opened the door. But it wasn’t Micky. It was that man.

She tried to keep calm. She took a step back behind the door and kept her hand firmly on it, ready to slam it shut. She wasn’t going to let him in.

“Sorry, you’ve just missed my mum. You’ll have to come back another time.” She waited for a split-second, thinking he would say something and when he didn’t, she started to close the door. Something made her stop. What was it? The way he was looking at her with such fierce intensity? It seemed as if he wanted to draw her in and hold her fast there. But she wouldn’t let him and broke free of his gaze and then he seemed to sag and lean heavily on his walking stick. As if all the life was draining out of him. His skin looked sallow. His eyes glittered. Sweat was beading his top lip. All at once he looked old and sick and frail. No threat at all.

“Are you feeling okay? Do you want to come in and sit down for a moment?” The very second she’d said the words, she wished she hadn’t, because his shoulders went back and he drew himself up tall, as if the sickness and frailty had just been an act. She thought she saw a look of triumph in his eyes and her heart skipped a beat. She hesitated. It was still not too late to shut the door, but then, in a flash, he had slipped past her, becoming just a shadowy figure in the darkness of the hall.

“This is very kind of you,” he said and the sound
of his voice was powerfully hypnotic. Her grip on reality faded. His voice seemed to be whispering in her ear, over and over:
You are mine now and always will be.

Then the rattle and thud of post being pushed through the letterbox and falling to the hall floor and the sound of it brought her to her senses.

I’ll make him leave
, she thought. But too late, the kitchen door was wide open and when she went in, there he was, sitting at the table. The black bag was at his feet and he had taken off his jacket, folded it carefully and placed it on his knee. He was leaning back, resting his head against the wall, his eyes closed. His skin looked unnaturally white; the colour of bleached flour.

“Sorry,” he said, his eyes still closed. “It’s the heat. I find it drains all the life out of me. You’d think I’d be used to it after all this time.” His eyes snapped open and he looked straight at her.

There was something about his voice, his accent. What was it?

“London has always been unbearable in the heat. Humid. Oppressive. The heat in Egypt is very different.”

“You don’t come from Egypt, do you?” she
asked. Maybe that was it. Maybe he’d lived abroad for so long his accent had changed.

“Oh, no. I know Egypt well, but I come from London and I’ve lived in the same house for what seems like for ever.” He smiled.

She found herself smiling back and asking, “Do you want some tea? Black, with no sugar, isn’t it?” She’d remembered.

Claire watched as he cradled the cup in his hands. He closed his eyes as he drank and she couldn’t help studying his face; noticing the small dark mole, high up on his left cheek, in exactly the same place she had hers.

“Well, I suppose I should go now,” he said, putting the cup carefully down on its saucer, “Please tell your mother I’ll call her. Tell her I will pay handsomely for the box.”

Claire felt a curious conflict of emotions as he said that. Fear. Then a sudden bright, inexplicable flame of excitement flaring up, but quickly dying away again.

He stood up and put on his jacket. He picked up his black bag and stick. Claire started for the door, but he was ahead of her. She was flustered to
find herself squeezing past him through the doorway. There was something frightening about having him that close. And that smell again. The cinnamon and flowers.

At the front door he stopped and said, as if he had only just thought of it, “No, even better. Ask your mother to come and have tea with me. Next Friday at three o’clock. And you must come too of course. And Micky.”

“Not Friday,” she said sharply. “Friday’s my birthday.”

“Well, Thursday then. I’ll make sure we have a special cake… with 14 candles. And I think you’ll find my house very interesting. Full of things I’ve collected over the years.”

Fourteen. How had he known that? And not an invitation,
Claire thought.
Much more an instruction
. As if he had no doubts at all that they would all go. And while he was there, standing so close to her, she had no doubt that she would go, either. She wanted to go. Why wouldn’t she?

It was only once he had gone. When she had closed the door behind him and was leaning against it, pressing her forehead against the cool glass, that she felt the fear bubbling up again. As if,
any moment now, something really terrible and unexpected was going to happen.

Many left the city as the plague grew worse; packing all their belongings onto carts and in carriages if they could afford them, or onto any riverboats still plying their trade.

At first my mother had not wanted to leave, fearing the house would be broken into and looted in our absence. My father, likewise, worried that all his books and manuscripts would be stolen from the shop. But the death toll grew so alarming, my mother became more hysterical by the day. Her fear was infectious. Jane left us, packing her few belongings and stealing away in the night. Now there was no one else to risk sending out into the streets to buy food. My mother begged my father to leave and I believe he would have done, if it had not been for Nicholas.

“I promise, you will be quite safe staying here. Take two spoonfuls of my Plague Water every time you step out of the house,” he said, giving them a brown
glass bottle of foul-smelling amber liquid. “And carry these with you at all times.” He held out two dark wax figures. Tiny dolls that had strands of dull red hair stuck to their heads and fragments of papyrus pushed into a slit in their backs. “Without them and the Plague Water, I would surely have died in Egypt.”

So they faithfully took the medicine as prescribed and carried the amulets Nicholas had given them. Believing themselves to be thus protected from infection, they went out: my father to his shop (though there was little trade; the only books and manuscripts offered, surely stolen from abandoned houses) and my mother to find food.

I stayed at home. At first all seemed well, though my father came home saying the shop had been broken into and looted.

And my mother came home with terrible tales of babies found still sucking at the breasts of their dead mothers. Of men and women senseless with grief. Of sinners driven mad with terror at the thought they might die and with their sins not absolved.

“Oh,” she said, “and the stink!”

Even though I kept to the house, the smell seeped in. The stench of rotting corpses, human excrement and rubbish. For as more and more people died, there were
fewer left to bury the dead, empty the lay stalls or sweep the streets. And now that all the cats and dogs had been ordered destroyed, rats ran everywhere unchecked. It was as if the city itself was one great weeping sore.

Then in the dog days of August, my father began to feel ill. He complained of an aching head that grew steadily worse. He lost all interest in food and what little he drank was vomited straight back up again.

Now his head ached so ferociously, he lay doubled up in pain on the parlour floor and nothing we could do soothed him. His face was quite drained of colour and was filmed with sweat. His eyes glittered. His lips were parched and cracked. His tongue was swollen. All signs of the plague, except one. There was no ring of roses. No red swellings.

“It cannot be the plague,” said my mother, her voice quite calm. “For the amulets and medicine protect us.” Her belief in Nicholas was absolute. “And if it is not the plague, your father must have some other sickness and we might all catch it. Margrat, I cannot leave your father and there is no one else I can trust to go. You must hurry to the Doctor’s house. If he is at home… and I pray that he is… then ask him to come at once. We need his help or your father will surely die. If you should happen to meet with anyone on the way,
do not tell them your father is sick, or the searcher will come. The house will be shut up and all will be lost.”

I had never been to Nicholas’s house, in spite of all his promises, nor had my mother, though she had asked about it and knew where it was: outside of the City walls and set back a little from the Strand.

It was getting late, past seven o’clock, but I set out at once. If I hurried I would be sure to get there and back before nightfall. Though the heat was terrible, I stepped out, cloaked and hooded and carrying a posy of the sweetest-smelling flowers from the garden. But nothing was proof against the stench of the streets. It grew worse in the warren of lanes and alleyways where the houses were crowded so close together, their jetties almost touched. I kept to the kennel and picked my way carefully through the filth. Church bells, which were always rung to mark a death, now tolled continually. Fires were lit at every sixth house and kept burning day and night in the vain hope they would keep the plague at bay. The smoke caught in my eyes and made them sting and water. Black smuts and grey flakes of ash swirled in the air. I could hardly tell where I was or see where I was going.

I stumbled along Carter Lane, then passed under the shadow of St Paul’s, quite empty now of people,
until I reached the City wall and the Ludgate. There I was stopped by a guard who told me that I needed a bill of health, signed by a constable and certifying that I was free from the plague. Without it he would not let me pass through. I pleaded. I begged. I grew angry. To no avail. I was turned back.

When I reached home, I found my father was dead. He lay where he had fallen down, on the parlour floor. My mother had not even covered his body with a sheet. It seemed that the shock of his death had made her take leave of her wits. For though she had been forever scolding and chastising him, I do believe that in her heart she did truly care for him. Just as I did.

While my mother ran hither and thither about the house, looking for any valuables my father might have hidden away, I fetched a sheet from the linen chest. As my mother, calling and talking out loud to herself the whole while, turned out cupboards, scrabbled under beds and pulled up loose floorboards, I knelt down beside his still-warm body and rested my head against his chest. Hot tears coursed down my cheeks and soaked his shirt. Then, when I had said a prayer and bid him a last farewell, I covered his body with the sheet and went to comfort my mother.

I found her in the kitchen, her clothes all disordered
and her eyes wild and dark. The minute she saw me, she pulled out her pocket from under her skirts and emptied it out on to the table.

“See, Margrat. All we have in the world is this!” She scooped up the three half crowns in her hands and held them out to me. “What will happen to us now your father is gone?”

We clung silently to each other in the gathering darkness. The guttering flame of our last candle flickered and went out, as two black rats swarmed up the candlestick and started to eat the candle. The horror of it. It was the longest and most terrible night of my life. All I could hear was the endless tolling of the bells, the scratching, scrabbling, squealing of rats as they took over the house… and my mother’s wracking sobs. When it was over and the smoke-grey light of early morning began to filter through the shutters, I knew I could no longer be the child. For I had no doting father to take care of me. And my mother, who, though she had many faults, had always seemed so strong and capable, now clung desperately to me.

So, when there came a loud knocking at the door, it was a quite different Margrat who answered. One who was unwashed, bedraggled and exhausted to the very core of her soul.

If I had opened the door to the Devil himself, I would have fallen into his arms, so grateful was I to see another living being. How much better that it was Nicholas come to see how we fared. And on hearing that my father was dead and my mother losing her wits, he stepped in at once, closing the door quickly behind him. Then, his hands resting lightly on my shoulders, he looked down at me, saying, “No one must know that your father has died, Margrat, or the searchers will come and the house will be sealed up. No, there is nothing else for it, but I must bury his body in the cellar. Whilst I do that, you must attend to your mother. Get her to bed. Make her comfortable. Fetch water and wash her face. Then you must give her some of this…”

He gave me another of his brown glass bottles full of a clear liquid this time. “Three drops only, on the tongue.”

I nodded, slipped the bottle into my pocket and turned from him and went as if to find my mother. But the minute he had disappeared into the parlour, I crept after him. I had this overwhelming need to see my father one last time.

I watched from behind the door, as Nicholas knelt down beside him and pulled back the sheet. I saw
that he checked under my father’s shirt for swellings. He sighed as if greatly relieved and it was then that I heard him say, “I am sorry for your death John. And for Catherine’s. Truly I am. But it had to be done, for what are two deaths now when soon all may be raised from the dead?”

Then he bent down to gather up my father’s body. I thought he would not lift it, but in his last days, my father had shrunk to skin and bone and was as light as a baby’s breath. I ran quickly up into the shadow of the stairs, peering down as I watched him carry my father down into the cellar.

Very soon, out through the cellar door rose the sour, musty smell of damp, freshly dug earth. I could not bear to think on what was happening there and so hurried up the stairs to find some consolation in helping my mother.

I found her kneeling beside her bed, her face pressed into the folds of my father’s nightshirt. I reached out and stroked her hair… something I would never have dared to do before, my mother hating any outward displays of affection. Now she grabbed my hand, pulled me down till my face was level with hers and smothered it with frantic kisses.

“Come,” I said, trying to gentle my voice. The smoke
and little sleep had made it sound rough and harsh. I helped her undress down to her shift and lifted her up into bed. Then I poured water out from the ewer into the basin and dampening a cloth, wiped her face. “Now, Nicholas says I must give you this,” I pulled out the glass bottle and held it up.

At the mention of his name, a ghost of a smile and she dutifully opened her mouth. I counted out the drops. Only three. Then I sat by the bed and rested my cheek against her hand, like a mother comforting a sick child. Worn out, we both fell into a deep sleep.

When I awoke it was night again. All the candles were lit and burned bright. My mother had turned away from me, but was still fast asleep.

We were not alone. Nicholas sat quietly in a chair by the door. His eyes were closed. His hands, fingers laced, rested on his thighs. His dark hair fell loose around his shoulders. His breathing was deep, hypnotic almost. His waistcoat was unbuttoned. The strings of his white linen shirt were undone. Streaks of earth from the cellar floor had dried light brown on the black of his breeches and soiled the ruffled ribbons. Even in candlelight, I could see his russet shoes were now quite ruined.

The heat of the room was stifling. I could feel the sweat trickle between my breasts. I struggled to breathe. It was as if the walls of the room were closing in and would squeeze the life out of me. I could think of nothing but my father. See nothing but his face disappearing as Nicholas covered it with earth. It felt as if I was being buried too. From the street I heard the creak and rumble of cart wheels and the watchman crying, “Bring out your dead”. It was then I started to scream. I ran to the window and struggled to open it, my hands scrabbling frantically against the yellowing diamonds of glass.

Within moments, Nicholas was up from his chair and his arms were tight about me and I was rocked as gently as if I was a baby. “Margrat, Margrat,” he whispered into my hair, “Ssshh. Come away. Your father is dead. Calling for the watchman will not bring him back. Listen to me. You are tired and hungry and must let me take care of you now.”

I felt so very weary. My limbs felt heavy. My speech came out dull and slurred. I struggled to keep my eyes open. I thought, if only I could just lie down and sleep, when I awoke I would surely find it had just been another bad dream. And when morning came, things did at first seem a little better. Nicholas was
gone and my mother was awake and dressed. The fire in the kitchen was lit. She had fetched fresh water from the well. There was fresh bread on the table. And apart from an aching head, she seemed almost herself again, though gentler still, for she smiled at me, saying, “The Doctor had business to attend to. He went out before first light. Now I must go and see to the shop. But you must stay here, Margrat. The Doctor made me swear on my life that you would. I will not be gone long.”

But I could not bear to be left alone in the house with my father’s body. So I stood on the step and watched as she turned the corner into Carter Lane.

Pulling the door shut behind me, I followed her. Close enough to keep her in sight, but not so close that she might turn and see me.

She was passing through St Paul’s churchyard, just as the cathedral bells began to ring out. She stopped and looked up at the great bell tower, as if she was waiting to see what hour it was. Then, just as if she had been felled by a musket shot, I saw her hands fly up to her chest and she crumpled and fell down. By the time that I reached her, she was struggling for breath. Her fingers and lips were turning blue.