Dark Waters (18 page)

‘I mean an exhumation. I will send you fair notice. And now I must go. Good day, and thank you.'

Leaving her standing and staring, with mouth open, at the gate, I doubled back up the street to my horse.

Riding home I listened to the sound of the hedgerows bustling with bird life. What the naturalist delightfully calls nidification was in progress everywhere: the bird couples were darting into the foliage with their beaks crammed with twigs, straw and moss, then flinging themselves out again a moment later to fetch more building materials. With the election uppermost in my mind I wondered if birds, like men, have their politics. They certainly seem to chatter together a great deal as they go about their business, and my father had told me as a child a story of a strange assembly called a Crow's Parliament, in which hundreds of crows would meet together, for what reason no one knew for sure, but on occasion, it seemed, to peck one of their number to death in a brutal attack. I was frightened by the story, but he assured me it was absolutely true. I had never had the opportunity to verify this, but now I got it into my head that I would do so, when the opportunity arose.

*   *   *

Coming into Cheapside I found the stallholders in the Saturday market already packing up, though it was not yet noon. There was a difference in the air, or in the general mood, but it was hard to define.

After dismounting I crooked my finger at a boy who was loitering nearby: this was Barty, a trustworthy urchin who made his way by doing errands for me and others in the neighbourhood. I handed him a halfpenny and the reins of the mare, telling him to walk her over to the livery stables that I used.

‘Say they must give her a good rub. She's brought me home pretty smartly from Hoghton.'

‘Right, Mr Cragg, sir.'

‘Good lad. But what's happening here, Barty? The market's already packed up.'

‘It's this sickness they're talking about, sir.'

‘Sickness? What sickness?'

Barty shrugged.

‘I just heard them talking about some sickness.'

‘Here in town?'

‘I reckon so.'

Barty was no fool, but you couldn't expect a boy of ten to interest himself in such matters, so I let him get off with the mare and walked directly to the lodgings of Luke Fidelis.

‘Doctor's been summoned out, sir,' I was told at Lorris's door. ‘So busy he is. It's been one call after another all morning.'

‘Do you know where he has been called to this last time?'

‘Yes, sir, it is Mr Oldswick the watchmaker. He's been taken bad, was the message.'

Taking the lane that connects Fisher Gate laterally with Friar Gate at a fast pace, I was at Oldswick's within five minutes. The window displayed a pasteboard sign saying ‘
Closed
', and the door was locked. I rang and after a minute's delay Oldswick's ancient footman came crook-legged to the door, wiping his hands on his apron. I stepped inside.

‘Hello, Parsonage. Is Dr Fidelis here?'

Parsonage screwed up his watery eyes, apparently to read my hidden intentions. I have found that all experienced servants do this, having the strongly developed sense, rightly or mistakenly, that their betters rarely if ever deal straight with them.

‘He
was
here, Mr Cragg,' he stated.

‘When did he leave?'

The bent old man half turned to glance at one of the several clocks in the shop.

‘Eighteen or nineteen minutes since.'

‘Do you know where?'

‘Gone chasing another case of sickness, I think it was.'

‘This is most strange, Parsonage. Are there many in town suddenly stricken today?'

‘How would I know, sir? I have been entirely engaged in the care of Mr Oldswick.'

‘When did he fall sick?'

‘In the middle of the night.'

‘And what is wrong with him?'

Parsonage replied only that his master was, in sequence, poorly, properly poorly and most vilely poorly. I pressed him and he gave a brief account of his master's staggers, and his aversion to having the lamplight near him. I suggested he return to his nursing duties and retreated to the pavement outside, looking up and down the street in case I saw Luke going about his business. Not finding him I decided to return to his lodging and wait.

I had barely turned once again into Fisher Gate than I was tapped on the shoulder. I turned to find Miss Colley, bonneted and booted, on her way back from market.

‘Oh, Mr Cragg, there's hardly an egg, nor a piece of bacon, to be had.' Her voice was trembling, though whether from excitement or fear I could not tell. ‘The market men have gone home. Is it true we have the contagion in town? After what happened to that out-of-town man the other night, and now people going down with the sickness all over, everyone's affrighted.'

‘Miss Colley, you must calm yourself. I cannot believe it has developed so vastly in a few hours. But I have been away on business this morning and I do not know anything. Perhaps you should go indoors and stay there until you can be sure it is safe to go abroad.'

‘That is a good idea, Mr Cragg,' she trilled. ‘You always give such sound advice.'

In answer to my knock, Lorris's servant opened the door with apron pressed to nose. She was plainly reluctant to let me in, but I insisted and she backed away from the door, then scurried away to her basement as I entered. I closed the door behind me and went up to Fidelis's rooms to await him.

The longer I waited the more perturbed I felt. I had smiled at Miss Colley, yet this was not something likely to amuse most Prestonians. Fixed in the memory of our town was the great sickness of 1631. Our oldest grandfathers would relate tales of how it had been, told to them by their own grandfathers. In the course of that fatal year all trade and marketing in Preston ceased; a pest house was established, in which more than 200 were incarcerated; and, in cases where whole families were visited by the contagion, they were boarded up sick in their own houses until they died. In the midst of all these cruel, futile measures 1,000 townspeople succumbed. There had never been such a disaster in the town, yet all were conscious that it might one day return in all its biblical fury. My father told me that, when the 1631 sickness was over, the survivors gathered in St John's church to give thanks and to hear the incumbent vicar preach a sermon on the text ‘We had been as Sodom and been made like unto Gomorrah'.

By the time Fidelis at last arrived, I had imagined the worst without being able to control myself: the horror of my Elizabeth reduced to the degraded state I had seen in Allcroft – sick and imprisoned at home, or rather entombed there and left to die. There was a certain shame in this abject fear. Just a few rumours of contagion and I was sweating. I resolved to hurry home and tell them to stay in at all costs and see no one. But not until I had seen Fidelis. I had to know what he knew.

He came bustling in, throwing his wig down with the expression of a man preoccupied with many tasks.

‘I can't stop. I have some drugs to collect and I must go out again.'

‘What is happening? What is this epidemic?' I asked.

He went to the wall-mounted shelves and took down a jar containing a white powder. He moved to his scales and rapidly weighed out a measure.

‘I've been to five bedsides already today. I believe my colleagues are equally busy. There are perhaps twenty victims of this to appear so far.'

He poured the powder into a paper, made a twist of it, and repeated the process from the contents of another jar.

‘What do they complain of?'

‘Violent vomiting, explosive incontinence, delirium, photophobia.'

‘Like Allcroft! You realize what this looks like? That the town is victim to some epidemic pestilence.'

‘Yes, I can see what it looks like. But I am not sure that the appearance coincides with the deeper reality. I still have in mind our other suspicion.'

‘You mean, what we suspected about poor Allcroft? But it looks wrong now, doesn't it? Come now! How do you poison twenty or more people all at once? Surely this is some dreadful disease.'

By now Fidelis had placed the two papers in his bag, picked up his wig and was preparing to go out again. On his way to the door he stopped before me and tapped me on the shoulder.

‘So it looks, I know. But I have an idea that I need to prove, Titus. I will come to your house this evening with my results – will that satisfy you? Meanwhile, I must ask you to let yourself out.'

And he was gone.

*   *   *

Seized as everyone now was with the policy of avoidance, I was not surprised to find the common parts of the Lorris house hushed and deserted as I passed down the stair. For the same reason I was not expecting to be waylaid by any of its inhabitants, yet this is what happened, on the landing halfway down.

‘Mr Cragg, sir!'

The voice came from behind a door that was a few inches ajar.

‘Yes. Who is it?'

The door creaked a little further open and Miss Lysistrata Plumb showed herself.

‘It's me,' she said.

I bowed and said, ‘Of course it is!'

‘May I speak to you, please?'

‘I am at your service.'

She came out and closed the door behind her.

‘We cannot talk here, but I am sure the sitting room will be available. Come.'

We found the room empty. Miss Plumb sat in an upholstered armchair beside the unlit fire with her hands crossed over her knees. I brought an upright chair from the wall and placed it before her.

‘What would you like to talk to me about?' I asked.

I judged her to be about twenty-three years old, an age at which a woman's beauty – in my eyes, anyway – is set at its most heart melting. And she was indeed a beauty, with regular classical features in an oval face, though with lips perhaps fuller than the average marble from Greece and (unlike the statues again) with eyes alive and sparkling. At the same time she had an assurance about her that commanded respect.

I waited for her to speak.

‘I have heard that you and Dr Fidelis are friendly.'

‘Yes. I think of him as my closest male friend.'

‘Then I wonder if he has spoken to you of anything … any matter in regard to myself?'

This was ticklish. Fidelis had not sworn me to secrecy but when a man unburdens himself of his feelings about a lady it is usually in the nature of a confidence. I took a cautious lawyerly line.

‘He has indeed spoken of you. For example, after you had been taken ill the other day, he gave me the good news that you were feeling better. I hope that is still the case.'

In answer she only smiled and inclined her head.

‘Well, I shall confide in you,' she went on, ‘even if he hasn't. I believe that Dr Fidelis has fallen in love with me. There! I've said it.'

She gave a small laugh, of embarrassment I suppose.

‘I see,' I said in a measured way. ‘I wonder what reason you have for the supposition? Has he, in fact, declared himself?'

‘No, that is the annoying thing about it. If he would only speak, I could respond in an appropriate way. Instead, I am left uncertain what to do.'

‘Must you do anything – at this stage, I mean?'

‘Why, yes, of course I must. Dr Fidelis is a kind man and a fine physician. I cannot leave him to wring his heart over me indefinitely, and to no purpose.'

‘No, that would be a shame. Does he have no hope, then?'

I had not meant to ask this, because I was afraid it would leave me in possession of information I'd rather not have. But Miss Plumb had virtually invited the question and I could see she was bent on answering it.

‘Well, when you know about that, you will understand why I wanted to speak to you. I am hoping to employ you as a go-between.'

Employ
me! I thought. This was a girl with spirit.

‘As an intermediary?' I suggested.

‘As a message bearer. And the message is the same as the answer to your question. Naturally, I cannot deliver it to him directly without Dr Fidelis raising the matter first.'

‘Naturally. So what is the message?'

For the first time she showed a slight sign of discomfort, studying her hands rather than looking at me.

‘The message is that … I have the highest regard for Dr Fidelis and find him a most agreeable gentleman in every way. But…'

Now she did turn her face to me and I saw in it a struggle between emotion and a kind of philosophical pessimism.

‘But I am connected to another, you see. I am not free.'

‘You are married? Should I call you Mrs Plumb?'

‘No, not married. But in every other way…'

She left the sentence incomplete, and in doing so gave it a great deal more meaning than if she had finished it. She let her pause hang in the air and then went on.

‘So you see, if he were the most eligible hero in the most charming storybook, he must still be barred from my affections, and I from his.'

‘I think he will be distressed,' I said.

‘And he will want to know the name of the gentleman, no doubt. But –' lifting her hand from her lap she waved her finger from side to side – ‘I cannot tell him. That would be impossible as things are at present.'

‘I will take your word for it,' I said. ‘But may I ask about yourself? What is your reason for being in Preston? Is the man you refer to here? Is that why you have come?'

‘Yes, but I shall say no more. I am bound to him, and doubly bound.'

Doubly bound? She was speaking in riddles. What did they mean?

‘So,' she continued, more briskly now. ‘May I take it you will let the doctor know of the position? And take the greatest pains, if you please, to spare his feelings.'

I nodded.

‘I shall break it to him as delicately as I can, Miss Plumb. But I doubt I can spare him all pain. He is, I fear, very susceptible.'