Deliver us from Evil (39 page)

They had no luck all that morning. Then, in the late afternoon, they discovered a beggar-man who had seen a girl swathed in sheets, crouched shivering in a doorway
at
the end of Drury Lane. They journeyed there at once; and found others too who remembered having seen her. Emily's trail led towards St Giles, into the very stinking heart of the rookeries; and Robert, remembering the butcher who had robbed him there, began to fear the worst. Yet still the trail led on; and for as long as
it
did so, Robert knew that hope remained.

At length, pointed towards the church, they found a large crowd gathered in front of it. Everyone was gazing up at the sky; some were screaming and moaning, others in tears. They appeared to be listening to someone's cries; and then, as Robert drew closer, he knew whose they were.

it
is an angel clothed in white!' Emily was shrieking. 'Burning, deathly white!'

Robert pushed forward and saw that Emily, like the crowd about her, was gazing at the sky. Her sheets were torn and muddy, like funeral clothes; her face was blotched with spots and sores. 'Do you see him?' she sobbed. 'How he wields a fiery sword in his hand, now waving it - and now brandishing it over his head!' The crowd surged and moaned, and shaded their eyes. Robert stepped forward, and took Emily in his arms; she was shivering, and her skin felt burning hot. 'Woe!' she cried. 'Woe, for all London must be destroyed!'

The crowd parted as Robert led her through, as though in dread of her; and yet even once she was past them, they continued to stare into the sky and to sob and moan. Emily too was muttering to herself, and seemed not to recognise Robert at all. He could see now how the spots had spread across her neck. He glanced at Milady - afraid to speak, to ask her what she thought. But all the time, he was remembering Colonel Sexton's warning, and wondering if perhaps it had not been true: that Woodton had indeed been a place of pestilence; that with all its other sufferings, the village had been infected with a terrible sickness too. Even as he thought this, he heard a sudden shriek from a window above. A woman appeared at it; her face too was covered with spots, violent and red, encircled by blue. 'Oh, Death!' she cried. 'Death, Death!' From behind her there rose a wailing like a suffering child's.

Emily was returned to her bed. Day after day she would scream in her delirium, as though the pain she felt were boiling her alive. It was now April. Robert would leave her windows open, so that she might be cooled by the breezes; and from the distant spire of the church of St Giles a perpetual tolling would carry, echoing across a frightening, mournful stillness. Yet weeks passed, and still Robert refused to admit that Emily might die; for he had learned that the sick in St Giles were expiring within days of their infection, while Emily, for all her suffering, still clung feverishly to life. Then at last, one morning, he discovered swellings in her groin and under her arms. They were tumour-like and black; and it was impossible for him any longer to deny the name of her disease. Yet still Robert refused to utter it, or even to hear it said, as though by banishing the word he might banish the possibility of Emily's death; and it was Lightborn who finally spoke the dread name first. 'The plague is spread beyond St Giles,' he said that same night. 'It is officially confirmed, and indeed,
I
have just come from Long Acre and seen, painted upon all the doors, red crosses and a mewling prayer for help. "Lord have mercy upon us," they scrawl.' Lightborn laughed derisively. 'It is not the Lord who will save anyone, but only ourselves.' He beckoned to Godolphin, who was standing in attendance with a bottle of wine. He was shivering, Robert saw, and a violent sweat was glistening across his brow. 'Turn around,' Lightborn ordered; then reached for a knife and ripped the livery
off Godolphin's back. 'There,'
he said, pointing. 'He has the spots. Out, Godolphin, out you go -
I
will not have you here to infect my sweet boys.' He turned to Robert. 'Your whore upstairs as well. It is certain now that she has the buboes? Well -
she wanted to leave us, and so indeed she shall.'

'But she is too sick to be moved,' cried Robert in fury.

Lightborn shrugged. 'What should
I
care?' he asked,
I
have told you, Lovelace - the bitch must go.'

Milady reached out and laid a hand upon Robert's arm. 'We shall take her to our house in Pudding Lane. It is not prettily furnished -but
I
doubt she is in a humour to be much concerned by that.' She turned to Godolphin. 'Order the carriage prepared and its curtains drawn. We shall drive through the meanest streets, where we shall not be seen.' She paused, then frowned as she saw spots upon his neck, it were best,
I
think, you come with us as well.'

All was soon prepared. Already, the plague's hold upon Godolphin was gripping him so rapidly that he could barely stay upright in his place; while Emily, who seemed unaware that she had even been moved, was laid out full-length on the opposite seat. Robert sat with her, to wash her brow, and to calm her when she sobbed or cried out with her pain. Once, so piercing were her screams that Robert glanced out through the curtain, to ensure she had not been heard. But no one in the street had even glanced round: all were walking very fast, with cloths about their mouths or their faces to the ground. Upon almost every door they passed, it seemed, red crosses had appeared; as though the very city were a trunk of mortality over which the crosses were spreading like monstrous spots.

Yet beyond
St
Giles the marks of plague were few, and in the City itself the crowds on the streets seemed as bustling as ever, as though the darkness of St Giles had risen in a strange and far-off world. For all that, once the carriage had halted by the house in Pudding Lane, Robert and Milady did their best to make certain they were not being watched, as they helped Godolphin from the carriage, and then in through the house's front door. As Emily was transported in turn, they were careful to ensure that she was covered by a sheet, so that not a trace of her skin could be seen; for it was rumoured - so Lightborn had reported - that infected dwellings were being locked up and guarded for forty days; and Robert had no wish to be immured inside the house. For, as he agreed with Milady, standing by Emily in the bare and echoing dining hall, there was a mystery to the plague, and its sudden appearance in London, which neither of them had chosen to speak of before; and which might need all their time and energies to solve.

Robert bent down by Emily's side. He clasped a hand to his nose, for her sweat stank like poison; and when he touched her face, its flesh seemed putrid. 'How like those risen dead she seems, whom we saw in the village where the plague had struck.'

Milady nodded. 'Exceedingly like.' She turned and crossed to the window; gazed at the streets and the traffic outside. 'Half of that village, it appeared, had been wiped out,' she murmured. 'And now the same plague is here. What a freight of death will there not be, in a city so mighty and populous as this?'

‘I
t is possible,' answered Robert slowly, 'that it is not the same sickness - that it was not Emily who brought it here after all.'

'All things are possible.' Still Milady stared out through the window at the streets. Robert watched her for a moment, then turned back to Emily. He bent down to kiss her on her blackened lips; she moaned with pain as he did so and, gazing into her eyes, he saw a stare of unutterable horror. It seemed very like that of the Marquise, which he had gazed into as she lay on her bed in the inn; and suddenly, Robert was struck by a remembrance.

'All things are possible,' he echoed Milady, rising to his feet. He crossed to her. 'What do you know of a medicine named
mummia?
'

'Mummia?'
Milady frowned. 'Why, what should it be?'

'My Lord Rochester mentioned it when
I
told him that the Marquise had been struck down.'

Milady shook her head,
I
have never heard of such a thing.'

Robert gazed towards Emily, where she lay sobbing on her bed. 'Yet if my Lord Rochester were right, and it were indeed a cure
..."

'Yes, Lovelace, but still, it would not serve for her.'

'Would it not, though?' asked Robert. He crossed to Emily. He raised a curl of her hair, and kissed it softly; then glanced back at Milady. 'For the Marquise was brought low by what she saw in the vault - the very same vault from which Emily was brought. Yes,' he nodded, 'yes, and now
I
remember! When
I
rode that day with Sir Henry,
I
asked him why he kept the guards upon the barricades and did not allow the villagers the chance to escape. He answered me that
I
did not understand; and then rode on, and would not say more. It may be that he, who had been the spokesman for Wolverton Hall, had indeed learned its secrets better than we knew.'

'What secret - that those who left the village bore the plague germ in their blood?'

Robert nodded. 'For just as the dead thing bore it to the village where we stayed, now Emily has brought it in her own veins to London.' He laughed harshly with sudden despair. 'Or so at least
I
find
I
must hope - for what other chance of a cure does she have?' He glanced across at Emily as she began suddenly to shriek again, scratching at her buboes as though to gouge them from her flesh.

'She does not have long,' Milady murmured. 'Her sweat smells of death.'

'And yet how long she has already endured,' answered Robert, as he knelt by Emily's side.

'A great length,' agreed Milady, 'such as might indeed mark her out as infected by a strange and monstrous spirit, for her agony has been a cruel and lingering one. So come.' She raised her hood, and took his arm. 'You must seek out Lord Rochester and his
mummia
at once.'

Robert gazed down despairingly at Emily,
I
cannot leave her.' 'You must. For whatever this
mummia
may be,
I
doubt Lord Rochester will surrender
it
into a servant's hands.' 'He would surrender it to you.'

'Yes, but
I
must go to Mortlake. For it may be that Madame has already been cured and, should you not be able to discover Lord Rochester, then she will be your one remaining chance. Lovelace!' She tugged on his arm.

But Robert shrugged her away, and bent down again to embrace Emily. In his arms, she paused in her screams; she opened her eyes and, for the briefest of moments, Robert thought that she smiled, and recognised him. But he could not be certain, for her lips were too rotted, her eyes too hectic; and so he kissed her, then released her, and hurried from the room. In the doorway, he glanced fleetingly back. The light was fading and he could see nothing on the bed but a curled-up silhouette, the sheets wrapped round it sodden with sweat, so that the body seemed already swathed in funeral clothes. Robert swallowed, then turned and did not look round again. He followed Milady out into the street.

The carriage drove them together to Milford Stairs. Milady embarked there for the journey upriver to Mortlake; and as she parted from Robert, she squeezed his hand and whispered in his ear that all would soon be well. But he could not believe her; for he remembered how Lord Rochester had once promised him the same, when they too had left for Mortlake from Milford Stairs; and how that promise had led him to Wolverton Hall. And now Emily was dying, and maybe all of London with her too. Desperately, Robert urged the driver on; and yet he felt in his soul that he was wasting his breath - that hope, along with Emily, was already dead.

As they drew closer to Whitehall, the traffic grew worse, and by Charing Cross the roads seemed impassable. The carriages were painted on their sides with coats of arms, and Robert wondered if they bore noblemen already fleeing the early rumours of the plague. He abandoned his own carriage at the end of the Strand, and passed through the traffic to the Palace on foot. Beyond the Holbein Gate there seemed an even greater hubbub, for war had been lately declared against the Dutch, and officials and secretaries were scurrying wildly about, brandishing papers, discussing the news. But Robert also observed servants loading trunks and piles of clothes; and saw how some of the courtiers' rooms appeared deserted. He could not believe that Lord Rochester himself might have fled; but he was not in the Palace and, although Robert pressed his servants, they swore they did not know where their master might be found.

In the end, he had no choice but to return to his carriage. 'Pudding Lane,' he cried, 'with all the speed you can!' His former ambitions -that Lord Rochester be found, that Emily be saved - now seemed nothing but the merest phantoms of air; and indeed, the great castle of his hopes had collapsed into nothing but the wish that he might find Emily still alive. He gripped his carriage's side, and prayed as desperately as he had ever prayed before. Yet as they drove into the City, the traffic barely thinned; and Robert saw, leaning from the carriage, how lanterns in windows were already heralding the dusk. He had been absent, he realised, for several hours: time for more than the light of day to fade.