Plague (12 page)

“Fie, sister,” replied Lucy, pouring out a glass, carrying it to Sarah. “I heard that the bills of mortality note only three dead of the plague in the whole City during April, and probably not many more in May. Did you not recently observe, William, that every year a few die of the plague?”

“I did.” He thought of the house he’d fled the week before. He had walked past it yesterday and it was boarded, his former neighbours, who had not been swift enough to escape, now trapped within, hanging from the barred windows, begging for extra food from the constables. “Though I fear the contagion may be a trifle worse this year.”

“Trifle?” Lucy replied. “Pah! I do not think even so much. Besides, that was not the news I was after. What of your husband?”

“I am sure the captain does not want—”

“Nonsense.” Lucy seized Sarah’s hand. “My friend here is seeking her husband, William. You must know him—John Chalker, our fellow player. Missing these three days. Could you not help her seek him?”

“Child, you cannot ask a stranger to undertake such a thing.”

Lucy continued over Sarah’s protests, “You said, sir, that you could not leave for a few days. And you know that there are places where a woman cannot easily go alone.” She turned. “Besides, my dear, William is no stranger. He is my most especial friend.” She leaped up and, while retaining Sarah’s hand, grabbed Coke’s. “And so he should be yours.”

Sarah went to speak again, but it was the captain who now interrupted Lucy—after he laughed. “Mrs. Chalker, it seems that today I am able to deny Mistress Absolute precisely nothing. Only now I have agreed to undertake another quest on her behalf. Indeed, business will delay me in town a few days more. And she is also
correct. There are some who are persuaded to talk more readily to a man than a woman.”

“Persuaded—exactly!” agreed Lucy.

“Do you believe your husband will most likely be found within the boundaries of St. Giles in the Fields, since that is where you recently were?”

“I cannot say why, sir, but yes, I sense that he is.”

“Then let me inquire of some people I know there. And since I have indeed seen John Chalker perform upon that same stage where I have so enjoyed you, I believe I would recognize him, or could describe him.” He held up his hand. “Mrs. Chalker, I promise nothing. Except that in the little time I have, I will try.”

Sarah opened her mouth to protest again but then closed it. She was desperate. She knew she needed both sleep and help. “I am most grateful, sir.”

“Yes, thank you, dearest William,” said Lucy. “If Sarah were not present, I would kiss you again.”

“Dear heart, I live in the theatre. I have seen everything.”

They all laughed. All stopped as suddenly. “I’ll take my leave. Ladies.” Tucking both Lucy’s letter and the invitation to the king’s touching into a pocket within his cloak, Coke bowed and left.

For a moment, the two actresses gazed at each other in silence. Lucy, as ever, broke it. “Did you like my captain?” she asked.

“I did. His eyes …”

“A unique grey, are they not?”

“They are, but it was not that.” Sarah stared above her friend. “There is such pain in them.”

“Only you would look beyond their beauty,” Lucy chided. “But he has seen things, I know, that he would prefer not to have seen. And like many in the late, deplored wars, he lost land, family,
fortune. Love. There was a lady in Bristol, I believe, who died of this same plague. And my brother, whom he also loved.” She faltered. “Perhaps he will find your lost love.”

“I pray God he may.”

“Amen.”

Then for a while even Lucy was silent, and the two friends sat and held each other’s hands.

On reaching the street, the captain whistled. Dickon hopped out of a doorway.

“Guts!” he yelled, pointing out the word in that same foul pamphlet.

“Indeed. Now, put that away and come.”

Coke headed for a tavern he liked hard by, the Seven Stars. As he walked, he cursed himself again for a fool.

Dickon, gambolling along, grinned up at him. He never minds owning his moonstruck state, Coke thought, whereas I? Oh, I am always so sure. Incur few risks and so keep my neck from the noose. Yet here am I agreeing to go into the court like some knight errant from a romance on behalf of his wronged lady. And after that, to go into the gutters of St. Giles—it took me two weeks to remove the stench the last time I ventured there—to chase down a man who probably has all good reason to be gone. And why? For eyes. For two pairs of eyes.

He shook his head. Lucy’s eyes would always coerce him because of her brother. But Mrs. Chalker’s? Which ghost did he see in their exquisite blue? Evanline? Nay, her eyes were green. No ghost at all, then?

Fool indeed. The very same one who as a youth had strapped on his father’s sword and marched whistling off to a war that would take everything from him.

But oh, what eyes! Should have introduced myself beyond my old rank. I would she did not “Captain” me.

A few more steps and he paused with his hand on the door of the Seven Stars. Tomorrow he must go to the Banqueting House and “hide in plain sight.” But how? Could he develop overnight the tuberous neck of the scrofulous? Paint a rash all over his back?

Dickon was before the tavern window, making faces at himself in the thick glass and spitting peanut husks at his reflection. The boy looked up at his captain, crossed his eyes. Studying him, a thought came to Coke.

Does this king also cure the lunatic?

War had offered many sights to William Coke’s eyes. Most, terrible. A few, amusing. There had been a soldier in Sir Bevil Grenville’s Regiment of Foote, a Devonian by the name of Bulstrode. A passionate morris man, he had come to believe that it was the magic of the dance that kept him safe. Well, some men wore amulets with Greek or Hebrew letters upon ’em; some, dried lizard or toad skins; others, half a dozen Bibles under their breastplates like extra sheets of armour. Bulstrode danced. Laid down his pike, picked up his jangling belled staff, wound his whole body with red ribbon and capered before the ranks. The priests didn’t like it, because he usually did so after prayers but before battle, and they felt it took men’s minds from God’s awful majesty and their duty to him and their king. His comrades loved it, and many joined in, especially as he survived battle, skirmish and fight, and ever in the forefront. It was said that Waller’s regiment, their constant foes and rivals in the army of Parliament, would jostle to watch
Bulstrode before a clash, to the despair of their Puritan chaplains, even stricter than the king’s; said too that their musketeers would aim away from him. He’d disappeared after the second battle at Newbury, but since no one saw his corpse—though many went unnoted into the mass pits—it was believed he had simply gone home, as many had. Or was now dancing for the devil—and making him laugh.

The man Coke saw as he and Dickon walked down the Strand toward the Banqueting House and the king’s evil reminded him somehow of Bulstrode. At least, for a moment.

Dickon heard it first and stopped. “Wha-what’s that?”

“What?” replied Coke, wanting to hasten on. Until he heard the sounds too: whips cracking, the frantic neigh of a horse. Glancing back, he saw a blockage where the roads met at Charing Cross. “Two hackney drivers fighting for the right of way is all. Come on!”

But Dickon did not move. “L-look.”

Irritated, Coke turned again—and stared like his ward.

One of the coaches was now heading fast toward them, its driver standing on his box, whip in hand, flicking the metalled tip between his lead horses’ ears with a crack like gunshot. And he was as naked as Adam before the Fall—more so, if the paintings were to be believed, with not a fig leaf to be seen. The only covering he had—which did not cover the essentials—were the reins wound about his body like Bulstrode’s ribbons. He was laughing too, as the morris man had, while yelling words that became distinguishable as he sped closer.

“Flay me!” he screamed. “My skin! Rip it off!”

The coach skittered back and forth across the roadway. An elderly man and woman leaned out of the coach’s flapping doorway, both shrieking. Coke and Dickon gaped—until the captain realized
just how fast the vehicle was moving and dove back against a storefront, yanking his ward with him.

The vehicle passed within a yard of them. Swung back across the roadway, smashed into a stall; combs, fans and inkhorns flew up. The driver yelled, “All them bastards, burn!” just before the coach’s right wheel got stuck and then ripped off. The body of the carriage flipped, slid for a dozen paces roof down, flipped again. Somehow the central bar sheared, slashing the traces, and the four horses, still yoked but free of their toil, galloped away.

Long moments passed before sound returned to normal. Dazed, Coke stood, took a wobbly step forward, followed by firmer ones. In a moment he and Dickon were running. They were the first to reach the wreckage, and Coke crouched to peer inside.

The old man he’d glimpsed was upside down in a corner, his neck bent at an impossible angle. His eyes were open but glazing. The woman was lying on her side, her face twisted in pain. Coke had just moved back to see if he could open the wreckage of the door, when a voice shouted near him.

“He lives! By Christ’s mercy, help here, for he lives!”

Others arrived. One, a woman of middling years, cradling what had to be a broken arm, cried, “Mama!” and pushed past, while a younger man attempted to pry open the crumpled door.

The driver was alive, though how Coke could not reckon. “Water,” the man cried. “Water for my head. It’s filled with hell-fire.” They were spared the full extent of his nakedness, for the box of the coach had snapped off and wedged him in at the waist. Jagged splinters pierced his chest and back, blood oozing from a dozen wounds. As Coke bent to help pry him from the wreckage, the man’s eyes, which had remained open, fixed on his. A hand grasped. “Put out the fire,” he beseeched. “Put it out!”

Mercifully he fainted. The man beside Coke, who was trying to unwind the leather reins cut deep into the flesh, suddenly ceased and hissed, “What’s that …?”

Coke followed the pointing finger—and saw in the driver’s armpit what looked like a black tennis ball thrusting from the flesh there.

“Is that?” the man said, drawing back his hand.

Coke rose, took Dickon’s shoulder, began to shove him through the gathering mob. Yet before they reached the rear of it, that same man shouted, “Plague! He’s got the plague!” Instantly handkerchiefs, sleeves, hats were thrust before faces, and people began to run—so did the captain and his ward. The pleading cries for help from the daughter with the broken arm, followed them a-ways, yet Coke only slowed to a fast walk. He pitied the lady, but he had undertaken to help two other women this day and that was enough for any man.

The road to Whitehall was busy. Within a few score paces, they passed from those who had seen, to those who had heard a little to those who strolled oblivious. Soon, the columned front of the Banqueting House was close, as was a line of people waiting before it. As a bell tolled ten, they joined that line, not needing to ask its purpose: the collection of the lame, the scabbed and most especially the scrofulous, with their goitres large and small, showed the line’s purpose. Coke and Dickon were perhaps thirty back from the first, who stood directly before the doors. An hour to wait before they were admitted … and then? He had no plan beyond getting inside and delivering Lucy’s letter to Rochester. He’d heard, though, that once the king touched the people, they waited and returned to have a gold token on a ribbon hung over their necks. In the interim between these two events, he assumed his chance would come.

People filled in behind them, chattering excitedly—or gibbering, depending on their state. All clutched the same paper invitation that Lucy had given him. Occasionally the king’s guards walked down the line in pairs. He assumed they were looking for threats to His Majesty, and as he stood out because he was a head taller than most there and visibly healthier, when the guards drew near, he would crouch and fuss Dickon. The boy needed little to set him off in jerks and giggles. He writhed and drooled, and the guards must have taken his tall companion for attendee on the sick, as many in the line were, for they walked on.

I do not know why they fear, thought Coke, after another scrutiny. The English, unlike the French, Dutch, Germans or Turks, do not assassinate their kings. They kill them in public. In battle. Or right here.

When eleven sounded and the line began to shift, he considered. In front of these columns, they took his head, the king in whose cause I gave all I had.

He’d been in Holland when he’d heard. Those around him had wept, for they were Royalist exiles all. He had not. That well, he’d discovered, had long run dry.

“Bl-bl-blood!” exclaimed Dickon, pointing. Coke looked at the stains on the pavement. Could it be his late master’s blood? Would not sixteen years of London rains have washed away all trace, howsoever royal?

They were now passing the street traders, many of whom had vials they claimed held that same regal fluid, collected that sad day; still others sold small sheaves of mouse-grey monarch’s hair, bound in thread. Since some were bought even now, and so replaced, Coke assumed that Charles, the first of that name, must have had gallons of blood in his veins, and hair enough to furnish
the city’s thousand
perruqiers
. And since many thought Charles a saint, that miracle might be possible, like loaves and fishes.

The line shuffled through the gates and into the small yard, thence up the stairs into the Banqueting House itself. When he entered, Coke looked up first. He’d heard the ceiling was magnificent, and it was. An artist he’d admired in Holland had painted it, Rubens. He’d depicted the martyred king’s father, James I, ascending to heaven; whither his decapitated son soon followed, the captain presumed.

So the father, the son—and now for the son’s son. He lowered his eyes and gazed upon his monarch.