Winsor, Kathleen (84 page)

She
started out of the room, but Spong stopped her.

"It's
no use, mam. I won't go to a pest-house. Lord, I've got no mind to die if I can
help it. A body might as well go to a burial-pit as the pest-house. You're a
cruel-hearted woman, to want to turn a poor sick old lady out of your house
after she helped you nurse his Lordship back to life. You ain't a Christian,
mam—" She shook her head wearily.

Amber
gave her a glare, full of disgust and hatred. But she had already decided that
when night came she would force the old woman out if she had to do it at the
point of a knife. Now, it was only two o'clock, and time to prepare another
light meal for Bruce. Spong wandered back into the parlour, uninterested in
food for once, and Amber began to set his tray.

As
she carried it into the bedroom she passed Spong who lay on a couch before the
long range of windows, mumbling beneath her breath and shivering convulsively.
She reached out a hand to her. "Mam—I'm sick. Please, mam—"

Amber
went by her without a glance, her jaw muscles setting, and took the key from
her apron to unlock the bedroom door. The old woman started to get up and in a
sudden panic of terror Amber rattled the key, flung the door open and rushed
inside, slamming it again and turning the lock swiftly. She heard Spong
collapse back onto the couch, whining some unintelligible words.

Amber
blew a sigh of relief, thoroughly scared, for she had
heard the tales
of those sick from plague who roamed the streets, grabbing others into their
arms and kissing them. She looked over to find Bruce propped upon his elbow,
watching her with a strange expression of puzzlement and suspicion.
"What's the matter?"

"Oh.
It's nothing." She gave him a quick smile and came forward with the tray.
She did not want him to know that Spong was sick, for she was afraid that it
would worry him, and he was not strong enough for worry or any other exhausting
emotion. "Spong's drunk again, and I thought she was going to come in here
and trouble you." She was setting down the dishes and now she gave a
nervous little laugh. "Listen to her! She's drunk as David's sow!"

He
did not say anything more, but Amber thought that he had guessed it was not
drunkenness but the plague. She ate with him but neither of them talked very
much or with any gaiety, and Amber was relieved when he fell asleep again. But
she dared not go out and stayed there, occupied with changing his bandage and
cleaning the room—her ears were constantly alert for sounds from the parlour,
and again and again she tiptoed to the door to listen.

She
could hear her moving restlessly about, groaning, calling for her, and at last,
late in the afternoon, she heard a heavy thud and knew that she had fallen to
the floor. By her cursing she was evidently struggling to get up again but
could not do so. Amber felt discouraged and frightened and she watched Bruce
constantly, but he was sleeping soundly.

What
can I do? How can I get her out? she thought. Oh, damn her, the filthy old
fustiluggs!

She
stood looking out at a bright setting sun that lighted the trees with red and
orange patches and struck a window-pane down the street so that it gave back a
blinding reflection. Then, rather slowly, she began to be conscious of a
strange new sound and for a few moments she listened curiously, wondering what
it was and where it came from. She realized, finally, that it was coming from
the other room. It was a sort of bubbling rattle. As she listened it stopped
and then, just when she had begun to think her own imagination was playing
tricks, it began again. It filled her with pure terror, for it was an evil
eerie sound, but she was impelled almost against her will to cross the room
and—very softly—turn the lock and open the door, just a crack, to look out.

Mrs.
Spong lay on her back on the floor, arms and legs flung wide. Her mouth was
open and a thick bloody mucus poured out of it, bubbling from her nose as she
breathed, coming out in a gush with each collapsing rattle of her throat
muscles. Amber stared, chill with horror, stiff and motionless. Then she closed
the door again, more loudly than she had intended, and sank back against it.
The sound evidently attracted Spong's attention for Amber heard a choked,
gurgling noise as though the old woman was trying to call her—and with a
whimper of
terror she rushed into the nursery, her hands over her ears, and banged the
door.

It
was several minutes before she could force herself to return to the bedroom.
There she found that Bruce was awake. "I wondered where you were. Where's Spong?
Is she worse?"

The
room had darkened and as yet she had lighted no candles, so that he could not
see her face. She waited for a moment, listening, but as she heard no sound she
decided that the nurse must be dead. "Spong's gone," she said, trying
to sound unconcerned. "I sent her away—she went to a pest-house." She
picked up a candle. "I'll light this from the kitchen-fire."

In
the semi-darkness of the parlour she could see the bulk of Spong's body but she
went by without stopping, lighted the candle, and then returned. Spong was
dead.

Amber
picked up her skirts with an automatic gesture of revulsion, and walked back
into the bedroom to light the candles. Her face was white and she had an
intense desire to vomit, but she went about her tasks, determined that Bruce
should not guess. And yet she could feel him watching her and she dared not
meet his eyes, for if he should speak she felt that she could not trust
herself. She seemed to be hanging on the ragged edge of hysteria but knew that
she must keep herself in control, for when the dead-cart came by she would have
to get the woman down the stairs and outside.

A
pale velvety blueness still lingered in streaks in the sky when she heard the
first call, from a distance: "Bring out your dead!"

Amber
stiffened, like an animal listening, and then she seized a pewter
candle-holder. "I'll get your supper ready," she said, and before he
could speak she went out of the room.

Without
looking at Spong she set the candle on a table and went to open the doors
leading through the ante-room. The call came again, nearer now. She paused
there a moment and then with sudden violent resolution she came back, flung up
her skirts, unfastened her petticoat and stepped out of it. Wrapping it about
her hands she bent and took hold of Spong by her thick swollen ankles, and
slowly she began to drag her toward the door. The old woman's wig came off and
her flesh slid and squeaked over the bare floor.

By
the time Amber reached the head of the stairs she was sick and wet with sweat
and her ears were ringing. She reached backward with one foot for the step,
found it and sought the next; it was perfectly dark in the stair-well but she
could hear the nurse's skull thump on each carpeted stair. She reached the
bottom at last and knocked at the door. The guard opened it

"The
nurse is dead," she said faintly. Her face looked out at him, white as
chalk in the twilight, and the linen petticoat trailed from one hand.

There
was the sound of the dead-cart rattling over the cobblestones, the clop-clop of
the horses' hoofs, and then the unexpected cry: "Faggots! Faggots for
six-pence!"

It
seemed strange to her that anyone should be selling faggots in this weather,
and at this hour. But at that moment the dead-cart drew up before the house. A
link-man came first, carrying his smoky torch, and he was followed by the
dead-cart, beside which walked a man ringing a bell and chanting: "Bring
out your dead!" In the driver's seat sat another man, and now Amber saw he
was holding the naked corpse of a little boy, no more than three years old, by
the legs.

It
was he who shouted, "Faggots for six-pence!"

While
Amber stared at him with incredulous horror he turned, flung the child back
into the cart, and climbed down. He and the bell-man started forward to get
Spong.

"Now,"
he said, grinning at Amber, "what've we got here?"

Both
men bent over to pick Spong up. Suddenly he seized the bodice of her gown and
ripped it down the front, exposing the old woman's gross and flabby body. From
neck to thighs she was covered with small blue-circled spots—the plague tokens.
He made a noise of disgust, hawked up a glob of saliva and spat it onto the
corpse.

"Bah!"
he muttered. "What a firkin of foul stuff she is!"

Neither
of the other men seemed surprised at his behaviour; they paid him no attention
at all, and obviously were accustomed to it. Now they picked Spong up, gave a
heave and dumped her into the cart. The link-man started on, the bellman took
up his bell again, and the driver climbed back into his seat. From there he turned
and surveyed Amber.

"Tomorrow
night we'll come back for you. And I doubt not
you'll
make a finer
corpse than that stinking old whore."

Amber
slammed the door shut and started slowly up the stairs, so weak and sick that
she had to hold onto the railing as she went.

She
entered the kitchen and began the preparation of Bruce's supper, thinking that
as soon as that was done she must take hot water and a mop and clean the
parlour floor. For the first time she felt resentful that there was so much
work to do, such an endless number of tasks reaching before her. She wished
only that she might lie down and sleep and wake up some place far away. All at
once responsibility seemed an unbearable burden.

And
the driver of the dead-cart was still with her. She could not get rid of him,
no matter what she tried to think of. It did not seem that she was there in the
kitchen, but still downstairs, standing in the doorway watching him—but it was
not Spong whose gown he tore open, and it was not Spong he thrust into the dead-cart.
It was herself.

Holy
Jesus! she thought wildly. I think I'm stark raving mad! Another day and I'll
be ready for Bedlam!

As
she went about her work, mixing the syllabub, setting the tray, her movements
were slow and clumsy and finally she dropped an egg onto the floor. She scowled
wearily but took a cloth and bent to wipe it up, and as she did so there was a
sudden
splitting pain in her forehead and she was seized by a swirl of dizziness. She
straightened again, slowly, and to her amazement she staggered and might have
fallen but that she grabbed the side of a table to brace herself.

For
a moment she stood and stared at the floor, and then she turned and walked into
the parlour. No, she thought, shoving away the idea that had suddenly come to
her. It can't be that. Of course it can't—

She
took the candle-holder, carried it to the little writing-table and set it
there. Then she placed the palms of her hands flat onto the table-top and
leaned forward to look at herself in the small round gilt mirror which hung on
the wall. The candle-flame cast stark shadows up onto her face. It showed the
deep hollows beneath her eyes, flung pointed reflections of her lashes up onto
her lids, heightened the wide staring horror of her eyes. At last she put out
her tongue. It was coated with a yellowish fur but the tip and edges were clean
and shiny, unnaturally pink. Her eyes closed and the room seemed to sway and
rock.

Holy
Mother of God! Tomorrow night it
will
be me!

God's
terrible voice was in the city.

But
twenty miles away at Hampton Court it could scarcely be heard at all; there
were too many distracting noises. The whir of shuffled cards and the clack of
rolling dice. The scratching of quills writing letters of love or diplomacy or
intrigue. The crashing of swords in some secret forbidden duel. Chatter and
laughter and the sibilant whisper of gossip. Guitars and fiddles, clinking
glasses raised in a toast, rustling taffeta petticoats, tapping high-heeled
shoes. Nothing was changed.

They
did, occasionally, discuss the plague when they gathered in her Majesty's
Drawing-Room in the evenings, just as they discussed the weather, and for the
same reason—it was unusual.

"Have
you seen this week's bills?" Winifred Wells would ask as she sat talking
to Mrs. Stewart and Sir Charles Sedley.

"I
can't bear to look at 'em. Poor creatures. Dying like flies."

Sedley,
a dark short plump young man with snapping black eyes and a taste for handsome
lace cravats, was scornful of her tender heart. "Nonsense, Frances! What does
it matter if they die now or later? The town was overcrowded as it was."

"You'd
think it mattered, my Lord, if the plague got you!"

Sedley
laughed. "And so it would. Sure, my dear, you'll allow there's some
difference between a man of wit and breeding and a poor drivelling idiot of a
baker or tailor?"

At
that moment another gentleman approached them and Sedley got up to welcome him,
throwing one arm about his shoulders. "Aha! Here's Wilmot! We've been
sitting here most
damnably dull, with nothing to talk on but the plague. Now you've come we can
be merry again. What've you got there? Another libel to spoil someone's
reputation?"

John
Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, was a tall slender young man of eighteen,
light-skinned and blond with a look of delicacy which made his handsome face
almost effeminate. Only a few months before he had come to Court direct from
his travels abroad, precocious and sophisticated, but still a quiet modest lad
who was just a little shy. He adapted himself to Whitehall so quickly that he
was but recently released from the Tower for the offense of kidnapping rich
Mrs. Mallet with intent to marry her fortune.