Plague (14 page)

May 22, 1665

As the church bell tolled noon, he heard the cry.

“Ass’s milch! Fresh from the teat! Sweet as honey!”

Pitman rose. His son would arrive soon, and Josiah hated the small beer in this alehouse, which was sourer than most. Indeed, the whole place stank, the rushes on the floor unchanged in months, clogged with scraps of food thrown down and the street filth customers’ boots had brought in. The alehouse’s location was its only recommendation: almost opposite the goldsmith shop of Mr. ben Judah, with glass that could be seen through if eyes were not too far removed from it, thick enough so that the shape of the watcher would be but vague from across the pavement, let alone the whole street.

He would buy both himself and his son ass’s milch. And he would take some back to Bettina. Emptying the remnants of the pint he’d been nursing to further sweeten the floor, then scooping
up another tankard that had not been collected, he went outside. The landlord, a thin, scabby-faced fellow, grunted at him. Pitman may not have been a high-spending customer, but he was a steady one, having been there every day for five days now. And in the few hours when he was not, his son was.

He waited till a larger group was passing, stooped into it, followed the ass and its owner to the corner. There, with one eye still on the Jew’s front door—the shop had not a back, he knew from exploration; its rear wall conjoined with another—he delayed the milch man and offered his tankards for filling. The man set up his stool, took the teats, squirted expertly into the vessels held between his knees. When one was full, Pitman drank it off, returned it for refilling. The milch ass let out a mournful bellow and flicked its tail, before returning its patient gaze ahead.

As the second vessel filled, Josiah came up. “Here, lad,” Pitman said, handing over a mug brimming white. The boy slurped, but after a few big gulps, his father pulled his hand away from his mouth. “Save it,” he said. “The new barrel of beer’s even fouler than the last. Buy a pint of it later, but nurse the milk.”

He gave the boy some of the metal tokens that passed for coins—few of the local shopkeepers had much small change, so short was its supply—and watched Josiah till he disappeared inside the alehouse. Then Pitman went down Love Lane and cut across some alleys to avoid passing the storefront, yawning widely. Ever since the Jew had fired that gun over him he’d watched the shop, from an hour before the goldsmith opened at seven till five in the afternoon when he closed. Josiah stayed for a couple of hours more, in case Mr. ben Judah—and more importantly, their quarry—returned. It allowed Pitman to attend to his parish duties as constable, till nightfall.

He frowned, thinking about those duties now. Only last night the first case of plague in the parish had been discovered in a house three streets over from his own on Cock Alley. With two other constables he had shut up the two families who lived there, hammering planks across windows, bolting the doors on the outside, daubing “Lord have mercy on us” in red upon one exterior wall. The wails of those within had been terrible, and indeed, to close up the sick with the well seemed a harsh thing. But the law was the law, and he saw the sense of it. Keep the plague in that one house and with God’s mercy it would not spread farther … to his own dwelling in Cock Alley.

And if it did? Well, if his fortune held, he might soon have enough coin to move his family away from the City altogether. A few weeks with his wife’s brothers in Kent, while the whole thing passed over, might not be too bad.

If his fortune held. Good fortune indeed, or rather God’s blessing, to have spotted O’Toole, the second of Coke’s accomplices in the Hounslow robbery, staggering from a tavern in Whitefriars, so drunk he could barely run and certainly incapable of fighting. He had not been able to tell much more of Coke than Maclean had, having not seen the captain since their joint endeavours. But the five guineas Pitman had collected for depositing O’Toole at Newgate, where he now awaited his short trial and even shorter rope dance, had enabled this watch to be tolerable and had bought his family some food and fuel for the nonce.

He looked down at the jiggling white of the milk’s surface. Bettina would be pleased. More so, if Josiah sent word by a street urchin that Coke was in the shop, or followed him if he swiftly left. He’d trained his boy well in those skills. Once the murderer’s lair was found, Pitman would be there in minutes and had hopes that the taking would be easy.

Still … Pitman shook his head. A vision of the interior of the carriage had returned. Someone who slaughtered like that? Who daubed the numbers for apocalyptic verses on the wall in victims’ blood? That man would
not
come easily. For he was no longer a man. He was a monster.

Pitman spilled a little milk, cursed himself for his clumsiness. Yet he knew he would not be clumsy in this: he would be ready for Captain Cock, however he found him.

“ ‘I am become, as it were, a monster unto many,’ ” he murmured, but for once the psalm did not calm him.

So he gripped his cudgel a little tighter.

“Monster,” he whispered.

John Chalker dangled from the manacles, his hands high above him. Both shoulders were dislocated, but that had become a lesser pain among the many, many others. There was some relief in the unconsciousness into which he was slipping more and more, though nightmares always arrived fast. He’d had them since the wars. Yet all the horrors he saw in his sleep were as nothing compared to those when he woke. And what always woke him swiftest was the sound of footsteps upon the cellar stair. As now.

He had managed to rub the silk scarf again from his mouth. He could breathe easier through his mouth than through his smashed nose. Half the time he’d thought he’d drown in his own blood. Many times he’d prayed that he would.

When Abel Strong had discovered John, scarf out and screaming, he had cut out his tongue. He had laughed when he put the scarf back, knowing how useless it now was. But, for a brief moment, John had sensed perhaps some concern from this tormentor he could not see through the blindfold. For dangling there he had
heard something—faint cries from the cockpit nearby, conveyed underground along some channel, through some crumbled brick. If he heard the gamblers, then maybe in their rare silences they might hear him. Maybe Clancy would come to collect that drink.

He hadn’t heard them again after the butcher took his ears.

The footsteps stopped. His blindfold was jerked off. The flame within the gated lantern was low but still hurt his eyes, especially the one missing the eyelid. He could not see the face of his torturer beyond the little light; had never seen him, had only heard his voice, felt his attentions. Still, he would not look down. Since he knew he was dying, all John Chalker had left was defiance.

The lantern, its metal heated, was brought close enough to elicit instant pain to all the places he had been burned. “Well, you are a carcass and no mistake. Fresh meat, eh? Nothin’ like it.” The man sniffed. “She was very happy, Little Dot, with the stew I made. ‘They don’t look like pig’s ears, Mr. Strong,’ she says, when I flung ’em in the pot. ‘Oh, but they is,’ I replies. ‘A right porker they comes from.’ ”

His lamp went lower. Chalker winced as heat neared his groin. “What I don’t understand is ’ow you is a Christian, when I’d heard your wife was a Jewess.”

John had guessed that his tormentor must work for Garnthorpe, the man who had led him into this trap. And Sarah had said that when Garnthorpe accosted her, he’d asked if she was Jewish. So this confirmed John’s guess. Anger surged, and if he could no longer defend his wife from his lordship, at least he could defy the man’s minion.

As the lamp rose again, he collected all the caked blood and broken teeth in his mouth and spat them full into what he hoped was the other’s face. There was a satisfying cry. The butcher staggered back, the light swinging high to the ceiling. John waited for
the punishment that would come, hoping he had done enough to provoke a violence that would end his agony. But he heard only the sounds of the lantern being placed on the floor, then wiping. Finally, a laugh.

“Well. Lucky I was wearing my apron, eh?”

John’s chin was forced up. “As I was sayin’, my friend doesn’t like the idea that the woman he admires married out of her faith. Wants you, ’er husband—her
first
husband—to belong to ’er tribe.” He sniffed. “Can’t be formal about the ceremony. Don’t know the words. But perhaps—” and here he reached down and took John’s cock in his hand “—perhaps we can make you one of them in another way.”

He released him. The lamp spill came halfway up the bloodied leather apron, and through his one ever-open eye, John could see the man’s hand dip into his pouch. He tensed, waiting to see what new horror would be drawn from it. And when he saw his own razor, the one he’d planned to use to mark Lord Garnthorpe, he could not hold back his moan.

“That’s right,” Abel Strong said, “I’ve finally found a use for your little tool.”

Dipping her quill, Sarah wrote the third of the locations on its own piece of paper. She lifted it, blew lightly and, once sure the ink was dry, rolled it and placed it beside the other two. Then she mixed up the papers, looked again. The three tiny scrolls, no longer than her little finger, were identical. She could not know which had which name upon it.

She took the first of them and pushed it into the hollow end of their lodging’s large door key. Then she inserted the key in her Bible. The quote it touched from Matthew had seemed suitable: “Again the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field.”

She uttered the shortest of prayers: “Guide me, Lord.” Then did something of which no priest would approve. Thinking of whom she sought, she spoke.

“Where are you, John?”

She picked up the Bible, waited. But it remained steady in her hand. So she drew the paper from the key, did not unfold to read it, put it carefully aside. She did the same with the next scroll. Still no response. Before inserting the last scroll, she hesitated. If nothing happened, she did not know what she would do next.

She lifted the Bible. Nothing happened; she had not been answered. Then, just as she went to lay it down again, she could no longer hold it. It was as if her fingers were forced open. The book fell hard upon the table, the key spilling out. She reached for it, removed the scroll, laid it beside the others. Even though only the last gave the answer, she opened the first scroll first, hoping.

It said “Dice House.”

So John was not gambling.

With trembling fingers, she opened the second scroll. Exhaled the word—“Whorehouse”—on a relieved breath.

He was not lying in some brothel.

She knew what was upon the third paper, but she reached for it anyway.

“ ‘Cockpit,’ ” she read aloud.

She had already been to his favourite one that afternoon, a swanky establishment in Shoe Lane. Women often waited outside the doors of such places, demanding their men, and other men conspired to hide their own. Then a baronet’s son she knew a little from the theatre undertook to search for her at the cost of a kiss and a fondle. She let him, and he returned shortly: no John Chalker within and not seen there for many a day.

There was one other place to try. This one she’d have to enter herself.

She rose, pulled her most worn black cloak over her plainest brown smock. She didn’t think it would do much good—only a certain type of woman ever ventured inside a cockpit and whatever her clothes, she would be assumed to be one of those. Yet go she must. Anything was better than sitting and waiting for the news that John Chalker’s body had been pulled out of the Fleet.

Using the key for its proper purpose, she locked their door and began walking up Sheere Lane. She would take High Holborn and stay better lit as long as she could, before she once more entered the gloomy alleys she’d grown up in.

As she swung up Maynard Street, she caught again that unique savour, the stench of St. Giles, and tucked her nose into her cloak. She rarely went there, though she lived less than half a mile away, unless she had to. As now. Soon enough she was standing before the cockpit in Maidenhead Lane. John used to frequent it when they still lived near, before they were taken on at the playhouse.

It was the cocking time of night. Nine by the toll of the old church, answered by a hand bell rung within. No one was paying any attention to the door and she slipped inside.

It was an old warehouse, cavernous and dark except in its very middle, where it was near as bright as noonday due to the number of candles studded into an iron candelabra. It must have only just been hoisted, for it still swung to and fro, lighting the sanded arena and the raised benches that bounded it on four sides, four rows high on each riser. Every inch of bench was taken, with more people seeking to perch a buttock on each end. People pushed to reach the sand, or climbed on the shoulders of a neighbour to see. The swinging light lit now one side, now the other, each filled with the jostling,
yelling crowd. Large men patrolled the squared perimeter of knee-high wooden boards, and if anyone fell over the barrier, they quickly lifted him and threw him atop the crowd wedged into the corners.

Everyone was shouting—some the changing odds, some the exchange of bets, some encouraging the two cockerels now being brought in from opposite sides. The birds were held firmly around their middles, their shrouded heads bobbing on long necks, already scenting their opponents, despite the stew of smells.

Sarah, perched up on a splintered wooden pillar, scanned the ranks for John Chalker, to no avail. Behind her, back from the benches, the few women present were waiting for the fight to be over, adjusting their blouses to reveal their bosoms more fully, ready to celebrate with winners or console losers. Some took the chance to cram food down; others drank from flasks.

One looked up just as Sarah noted her and in a moment was across. “By the pox, what you doin’ ’ere?” She pulled Sarah down, scanned her clothes. “We don’t like amateurs ’ere.”