Plague (34 page)

Yet they had also discussed this: to be fully dead, they had to be buried.

The cart had left on the city side of Newgate, down the road that bore its name. So it was down his most familiar streets that he was taken, and he found comfort in naming them, distraction from his situation. As he peered between limbs stiffening and blue, for a moment he thought he might even glimpse the spire of his parish church, St. Leonard’s, wondered if he’d be able to restrain himself as the cart passed within a stone’s throw of his shut-up home. But he was spared the temptation. The vehicle turned left up Butcher Hall Lane, right onto Bull and Mouth Street, and then paralleled the Wall as far as the twisting lanes allowed, past Cripplegate to Moorgate, where the gate guards averted their eyes from the grisly cargo and waved it through.

Moorfields was the destination the driver had stated; but it was not at the lower, nearest walks that they stopped. Mounds of earth, their crests thick with quicklime glistening silver in the moonlight,
showed there were no vacancies. On the cart trundled, into Upper Moorhelds; at last, it halted.

It was time. The cart was backed a little way onto the grass. Then its rear bars were unhooked and a body near the end pulled. The entire fleshy mound slid, Pitman with it, arms above him to try to guide putrefaction from his face. He was not at the bottom of the pile, but neither was he at the top. He rolled, struggled to breathe. He had lost touch with Coke, hoped the highwayman was keeping as still as him.

Then the body atop him cleared and hands grasped his wrists. The bubo at his armpit ripped clear and the dyed rat skin fell away, but the men were too occupied to notice. Cussing both his size and parentage, they half carried, half dragged him along the grass and tumbled him into a pit.

The fall was not far, the landing soft. He contrived to roll as naturally as a dead body might, so that his face was not up to the sky and the next corpse. But sudden cursing made him freeze, one arm stretched awkwardly across his head, and before he could move it, another body fell, to land full upon him.

Instant agony, searing white pain from his shoulder through his skull. He could not help the groan.

“Did you ’ear that?” one of the carters said. “That moan?”

Pitman did not writhe, though his whole body surged in fire. “Nah,” the second man said. “It was you yourself, you fool. Let’s get this done. I need ale and a whore before me bed. Gives you a thirst and a hunger for life, all this death, eh?”

More bodies were flung in, fortunately not near him. A sound like seeds being sown followed for a while—until he heard the first carter call, “Where’s the rest of the lime?”

“I thought you ’ad it.”

“I thought you did.”

“Shite!” The man spat into the pit. “They’ll ’ave some over there, at that next mound. Suppose I better go, what with your leg.”

“I’m not staying ’ere by meself. Bastard might moan again.”

He heard them walking away. He had to move. They were coming back with quicklime to throw on the corpses; that was the seeding sound he’d heard. During the wars, after battles with too many killed for individual graves, he had seen how those flakes would devour flesh. He did not wish any on him, not for a moment. He began to shift, though every small movement was agony.

A whisper came. “Pitman? Where are you?”

“Here!” He thrust his good arm up through the bodies above. “Can you see me?”

“No. Yes!”

Pitman felt him through the shiftings of the dead. In a few moments the man was above him. “I am hurt,” he said, “my shoulder.”

“We must be swift,” said Coke.

“Move this fellow.”

“Get away!” Coke snarled.

“Who’s there?”

“Crows. They are pecking.” Pitman felt the shaking above. “Away, you beasts.”

“Leave them.”

He heard Coke’s groans as he heaved and shifted. Then there was brighter moonlight, a clear sky. Pitman wriggled, and between their efforts, he was freed from the dead’s embrace. When both were on top of the pile, they began a slippery crawl and scramble to the pit’s edge. Crows rose, screeching protests at this disturbing of their feast. At last they gained the edge, fell over it onto unshifting ground.

“Do I look as bad as you?” Coke asked, getting onto his knees.

“If I am streaked with lime, covered in blood, pus and shit and have rat-skin buboes dangling from my armpits, then yes, you do.”

“I simply must change before I attend the theatre.” They heard voices: the carters returning. Coke grabbed the bigger man’s good arm. “Let’s leave.”

They ran toward the hedge that lined the road. No one shouted, so after an instant they climbed it, Pitman with difficulty, then knelt again in its lee. “What now?” Coke asked.

“My invention did not go much further than this moment. But we cannot proceed looking as we do. Ah! I’ve a thought. Come.”

He rose, crossed the road. “North?” said Coke. “Away from the city?”

“Just a little ways. There’s a pond at the edge of Bunhill Fields and it’s a fine night for a naked moonlight swim.”

“Once a Ranter, eh?” Coke began to laugh. “Truly, I feel like I have drunk a quart of double double ale. A swim? Why not? And after?”

“There’s a tenter field close to the pond. Clothes will be hanging there to dry.”

Coke laughed again. “Did you not hear in Newgate? They’ve added stealing clothes to the list of offences for which you may hang.” They’d reached the pond, its water reflecting moonlight through the surrounding reeds. “They can’t hang us,” said Pitman, ripping off his rags, which even using just one hand fell away easily.

“And why not, pray?”

“Because you and me, Captain, are already dead.”

“You have been most diligent in your studies, Mrs. Chalker.”

“I am glad you approve, sir. I warrant it is a comfort to me to know I receive your approbation. Yet …”

“Yet?”

Sarah hesitated. The role she played required the finest calculation, was far subtler than any she had ever ventured in the playhouse. And she had overreached before in the week they had been at it, too eager to please him. Then Lord Garnthorpe’s forehead would furrow, he would lean forward and slap her—once upon her face, twice upon her thighs—and bellow, “Do you take me for a fool?” and she would have need of all her playing skills and womanly skills to coax him back to calm. If she did not so soothe him, if he left the house in a fury, Maggs would continue the punishment, deny her food and water, lock her for hours in a room with no windows. She did not mind so much for herself, the darkness, the heat, the hunger. But she minded for Lucy, who would
also suffer thus. With the baby almost due Lucy required sustenance more than ever.

Lucy. Were it not for the girl so near her time, Sarah might have attempted escape. His lordship came and went. Maggs was not always watching closely within the house, and if he opened the door, as he sometimes did, she knew she could outrun the two drunkards who kept guard outside. But Lucy could not. Lord Garnthorpe had made it clear: if Sarah was not diligent, the punishment would not be hers alone. If she escaped, she knew the consequence for Lucy—death almost certainly—before Sarah could return with help. The man had not revealed much of his life, so focused was he on her redemption. But sometimes when Lucy cried loud, his eyes would narrow and he would spit out words of hate. From them Sarah gathered this little: that such a whore had corrupted his father; more, had poxed him. And his father had in turn poxed his wife, Garnthorpe’s beloved mother.

A sob came now and she saw his head jerk to the door. Thoughts had distracted her, a product of her exhaustion. She had to pull him back to her, away from Lucy.

He had asked a question. Ask him one back, she thought. She had never known a man who did not welcome a chance to look superior, and Lord Garnthorpe, for all his madness, was no different from other men in that—and in other ways.

“Yet, sir,” she said, softening her voice, raising her eyes to a point above his head, “when the Bible says, in Revelation 18:2, ‘With whom the kings of the earth have committed … 
fornication—
’ ”

“Revelation 17:2, child.”

“Ah! Yes, thank you. Seventeen, of course. ‘The inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her
fornication.” ’
She looked him straight in the eyes. “Are all womankind condemned for
the act of procreation? Are all of my sex guilty of the harlot’s sin?”

She put her hands on her thighs and pulled up her dress a little. She saw him flush. “Nay, child,” he said, leaning closer to her. “In your ignorance, you have mistook the word ‘fornication.’ ” He cleared his throat. “That is an illicit act between people unmarried, a carnal satisfaction only, abhorrent to God and his saints. But to come together, as husband and wife, to lie in a bed such as the one upstairs …” He coughed. “That is not a sin. That is legitimate. And necessary, for the continuation of man.”

Yes, she thought, and I would go to that bed with you e’en now if you wished it, and lie with you upon it, let you lie upon me, even though I am certain you are the man who killed John Chalker. For if I managed it well—as I know I can, for I have—perhaps afterwards you would doze and not notice me moving toward your sword.

She lowered her eyes in case he read her hatred in them. “I thank you, sir, for telling me I am no sinner. For I have only ever
lain
with one man. And that only after holy banns were read.”

She held her breath while she waited for him to take the lure.

Which he did. “There is something I have not told you. You mention holy banns. I took a precaution because I knew … because I felt certain you would indeed profit by my instruction. That you would see, and come to God.”

“What precaution, sir?”

“In my church in St. James’s I have caused the banns to have their first reading.” She made her cry joyous and his voice rose above it. “That Sarah Chalker, widow, might marry Sir Roland, Lord Garnthorpe, bachelor of this parish.”

Another sob. Lucy again. Yet for once, he did not take his stare from Sarah until the bells of St. Dunstan’s briskly tolled. “Five of
the clock,” he said at the final strike. “I have something I must do.” He stood. “An important personage to see.”

There was danger in it; she could tell that instantly. At the beginning of her imprisonment he had said they had one week for her “studies.” One week to the day, she had been in the house. Now her role there demanded something more. For herself. For Lucy. For John Chalker.

“Sir,” she said, rising too. “Tell me you go not into peril.”

The words were almost the same as in a play she had once performed. She could only pray Garnthorpe had not seen it.

“It is true, madam. I am about something wonderful. And yes, there is danger in it. I may not—”

“May not return?” She took his hand then, squeezed it. “Tell me it is not so.”

“It is. I—” He broke off again when she lifted his hand, kissed it. “Mrs. Chalker, you weep?”

“Call me Sarah, I beg you. And I cannot help my tears, sir.” She looked up at him, eyes welling. “I know you have doubted me. Thought me a sinful woman, ignorant of all save pleasure. But my time here has changed me. Your kindness has, in teaching me.” She gestured to the Bible under the saint’s painting. Her face, she knew, wore a look near identical to the martyr’s. “And you were right, Roland—may I call you so? You were right also in this. That first moment our eyes met I also knew, though I have tried so hard to deny it.” She wiped tears away. “Revelation speaks of the End of Days fast coming. Do not let me face it alone, I beseech you.”

The next moment he was in her arms, his mouth on hers, and she opened to him, let his tongue penetrate her. A different church’s bell sounded, these tolls slow, and for their duration he held her, kissed her, and when he pulled back, she kept his body close.

“I must go. To help a friend in a … an enterprise at the palace. Yet I have always triumphed in the cause of King Jesus.” He stared into her eyes. “If I do return, shall I cause the banns to be read the second time?”

“Do so!” she cried. “And then I shall count the hours till the third reading and we can be—Oh, Roland! That we did not have to wait!”

She saw it then, in his eyes, heard it in the husk of his voice, felt it in the heat of his body pressed against her. “Maybe we do not. For will our troth not be plighted in the eyes of God?”

“Of course it will!”

She had only one fear now: that he was so far gone in lust he would try to take her immediately. But then his eyes changed and he slipped from her grasp. “I will return … Wife,” he said. “Tonight. Be ready for me.”

“Sir,” she called as he reached the door, “can you send your man for some ass’s milk or goat’s milk? My friend weakens.”

He considered, then nodded. “Maggs must remain to watch. But I will send one of those outside.”

“Thank you, sir. Roland. Husband.”

He stared at her a moment longer, then bowed, left. She heard him issue commands, heard the front door opened and bolted behind him. Her knees gave; she sank onto the chair—until another cry had her up, out, moving down the hall.

“Open it,” she ordered before the cellar door. Maggs took his usual exaggeratedly slow time despite the moans from beyond it. When the key turned, Sarah pushed past him, ran down the stairs.

Lucy was not on the truckle bed. She was standing, leaning on a wall. “So hot!” she moaned, as Sarah rushed to her, sagging into her friend’s arms at the first touch.

“Hush, child,” Sarah said, struggling to hold the younger woman up. She was not as strong as she had been and Lucy was much heavier than ever she was. “Here.”

With an effort she half lifted, half dragged Lucy across to the bed. She fell heavily upon it. Then, when Sarah had raised the young woman’s legs up, took a step to pick up the bolster that had been thrown across the floor, Lucy gave a louder cry and fastened on her arm. “Do not leave me,” she begged, “do not. He will come when you are gone.”

“Nay, child, he has gone out. Let me fetch—”