Plague (8 page)

Maybe he would go to America. Did they not speak a form of English there?

Another groan shook him, joined now by a child’s weeping.

He would need coin. A thought came and he seized the pamphlet, to Dickon’s protests, and scanned the words again. No. There was no mention of the necklace. But that sort of detail would be included if known. Mind you, he thought, smoothing his moustache with two fingers, there’s nothing about the pistol I left either, damn fool that I was. The thief-taker must have found that.

After handing back the pamphlet to Dickon, Coke reached up to a rafter. There, between joist and plaster, was a gap, and he pulled down the bag with the necklace. When in exile in Antwerp, he had spent some time warding a jeweller—it was either serve or starve—so he knew a little about gemstones. The rubies in the necklace were good, the emeralds better. The silver they were set in appeared of good quality too. He would not be cheated as to price, though necessity might force him to accept less.

He peered closer. He’d not noticed earlier, but the lowest silver loop was broken. So a jewel was missing at the very bottom, which would have completed the display.

It did not matter. There was enough of worth here to see Dickon and him clear. Where to, he would decide later.

Pocketing the jewels, he belted on his sword, swept on his cloak and took up his hat—from which, on a sudden urge, he removed the green ostrich feather, leaving it plainer. He picked up his walking stick, tapped Dickon on the shoulder with its silver-knobbed end. The boy immediately showed him a word: “Shambles,” he said distinctly.

“Aye, ’twas. Now, listen. I am going out. I want you to pack up what we have. Most in the trunk, enough in a valise for a few nights on the road.”

The boy was instantly alert. “A m-mark?”

“Nay, we do not go to work. We just go. Tomorrow, with luck. See to it.”

Dickon nodded. Coke went into the corridor. He was surprised to find it busy at this time in the morning. Three families lived in the three rooms on his floor; four more in the rooms above, and the same below. Children, mothers, even men milled about. Then he remembered it was Sunday; the men were not at labour, and the better clothes showed that many were off to church. As he began to push his way through, the door next to his was flung open, and the groaning that the plaster had somewhat contained burst out, along with the Dutchman’s three daughters. Their mother followed, leaned against the doorway and cried, “Dood! Dood!”

“What’s she say?” The neighbour on the other side of Coke’s room was asking.

“She says someone’s dead, Mrs. Philips,” Coke replied. “I regret it is probably her husband.”

He tried to move on, but the rush of people, like crows to a corpse, held him before the door. Mrs. Philips and another lady pushed past the weeping wife.

“Merciful God in heaven,” came the cry from two throats.

They came out fast, splitting for their respective rooms. “What is it, Mrs. Philips?” he asked, following her.

“Plague.” There was terror in her eyes. “Plague, or I’m as Dutch as she is. My ma died of it in ‘36. I’ll never forget the signs.”

She’d whispered it—but enough had heard her and the word was carried from one person to the next the length of the corridor. People raised hands to their mouths, scarves if they had them. Catholics, hitherto concealed, revealed themselves in sudden crossings. Most of those gathered began to back away.

Coke did not. He’d got as far as Mrs. Philips’s door, which she now flung open. Just as she was about to step inside, he grabbed her arm. “What are you going to do?”

“Do?” she shrieked, then dropped her voice again. “I am going to pack my family up and be gone from this place within the half hour.”

“Why so fast?”

“Have you ever been in a plagued city, sir?”

He had. Bristol, during the siege. It was something he tried never to think about. Not when he was awake. When he was asleep, he could not stop her face coming to him as he’d last seen it. Swollen. Unrecognizable.

Evanline.

“As soon as this pestilence is known to the parish authorities, they will come and shut us up,” Mrs. Philips continued. “They will board up the house. They will station watchmen at the door. We will not be allowed to pass, and half of us—more—will be dead within the month.” She stuffed a hand into her mouth to stifle a sob, walked into her own room and slammed the door on him. He heard her turning out drawers.

He went back to his room. Dickon lifted the pamphlet. “Guts!” he said brightly.

“Pack,” Coke commanded, and began to scurry. Dickon joined him. In sooth, it did not take them long. Two years he’d lived there, the longest he’d lived any place since the wars, and all packed up in less than twenty minutes. All they could not carry easily about them they flung into his trunk. With two satchels apiece, they left. He locked the room, though he did not expect to see it or the trunk ever again.

The corridor was empty now, quiet. Then, down below he heard a thumping on the front door. “Open here!” commanded a deep voice. “Open for the headborough of the parish.”

“This way.” Coke followed others down the back stairs, past the two privies, around the cesspit. They blended swiftly with people in the back lane.

They did not go far. Along Duke’s Place, out the Aldgate. Just beyond it, on Houndsditch, was a coaching inn, the Hack and Horse. Access to a coach would be a good thing, he thought. Especially one that left for the eastern ports.

The inn was largely empty, it being Sunday morning. He placed Dickon in a corner, gave him coins for small beer and cheese. “Wait here,” he said. “I will return in a few hours.”

Dickon nodded. There was fear in his eyes now. He’d been abandoned too many times. “Read,” the captain said, pointing to the pamphlet where it was stuck in the boy’s breeches. “I will hear you when I get back.”

“C-Cap’n,” Dickon said, and settled on the nest of satchels.

As Coke left the yard, the Church of St. Botolph’s Aldgate began to toll its summons to service. He paused for a moment. Where would he find a jeweller to appraise his wares on the Sabbath?
Then he remembered. The one he would visit did not attend any church.

He set off for the Jew.

“It is not that I do not want to help you, my dear Captain. It is that I cannot today.”

“Mr. Ferdinando—”

“Please, sir. Call me by my real name. By the grace of Good King Charles, I no longer need pretend to be a
murano
.” He laughed. “It was confusing for so long—the choice of being despised as a Portuguese Catholic or despised as a Jew. Let the confusion end and call me as I am.”

Coke took a breath. The man indeed had shed all pretense. When first they’d met for “business” three years before, he had worn wigs, a beaver hat. Now his own curly, silver hair fell to his shoulders, topped with a small circle of leather. “Mr. ben Judah,” he said. “You know I have never despised you or your kind.”

“At least not to my face.”

“Nor away from it. A man’s faith means little to a man who has no faith himself.”

“Now, there you sadden me. All men need faith. Faith is brotherhood. It is comfort in the darkness—even if that darkness lasts for centuries. Look at us Jews of England, exiled from the realm four hundred years ago. Some remained, adopted other names.” He inclined his head. “Ferdinando, for example. And now we are brought out of the darkness. Returned from the wilderness. Yet how could we have survived so long unless with the faith that God would bring the light again?”

“Well, sir,” replied Coke, “the late wars were fought at least partly for faith. For one man’s vision of it over another’s. Every day
I saw faithful men pray fervently for God to preserve them in the fight—and the next moment saw them ripped asunder by cannon. Saw others stripped of everything that made them human—nose, ears, skin—and heard them pray to God for merciful death. Saw that death withheld and agony continue, for days sometimes.” He closed his eyes. But the vision of Quentin Absolute appeared behind them, so he opened them again and said, “I have only seen God do the opposite of what he was asked for. So you can understand why faith does not concern me.”

“I can understand, even if I—”

Coke was not there for a pity. He never wanted that from any man. Briskly he changed subjects. “We are straying from the point, sir.” He pushed the necklace across the counter. “I want a fair price for this.”

“And you will get it. Only, not today.”

“I am willing to take a little less today.”

“And I would be happy to offer it.”

“Then do so.”

“I cannot.” The Jew raised his hand to forestall the protest. “Captain, I am largely a gold- and silversmith. I know a little of jewels, but these …” He fingered the piece before him. “I do not know enough. Yet I have a cousin newly arrived from Antwerp. An expert. I will consult him, and then I will offer you a fair price. Bearing in mind the, ah, circumstances of its finding, yes?”

Coke flushed but kept his temper. Did this man know the details of its “finding”? It seemed unlikely—yet the Jews often had knowledge hidden from their gentile neighbours. Did he know already about people falling ill in the neighbourhood? Coke wondered. If plague had come, Isaac ben Judah was a man who would be much visited. Many would be trying to fund flight. Prices would go down.

The goldsmith put on spectacles and picked up the necklace. He held it up to the sunlight from the window. “This much I do know—it’s lovely work,” he said. “And good silver too. I can give you a guinea for that alone, and now. A pity the whole will have to be broken up. You can guess the reasons.” He smiled at Coke, then glanced back at the necklace. “What’s missing here, Captain? Did you keep a stone?”

“I did not. I discovered the necklace so.”

“I see. Well, judging by the setting and by the size of the broken clasps, I would not be surprised if it were a sapphire that is missing. Perhaps the richest jewel of them all. Still—” ben Judah let the necklace drop, caught it just above the table, folded it into some pocket within his cloak “—the rest will fetch a good price without it. Leave this with me.”

“May I return later today?”

“Tomorrow, Captain. Tomorrow.” The Jew held out two hands. A guinea was in one.

Coke took the coin, shook the other hand. “I will be here at eight.”

“And I will be here at noon. There’s a feast tonight in my cousin’s honour. There will be dancing. I may even drink some wine.”

Jewish celebrations could be riotous, he’d heard, and the image of the dignified grey-haired man before him cutting a caper made him smile.

The Jew put a second hand atop their joined ones. “Keep the faith, my friend.”

“I will keep the appointment, sir. No more.”

Coke stepped out of the shop, and squinted into sunlight. The house opposite the Jew’s had burned down some time before, so his was not in shadow, unlike the others in the row. Nearby, a bell tolled twelve. Coke had arrangements to make now, and perhaps
a destination to choose. Then tomorrow, with fortune, he and Dickon would leave the realm.

So today, he would go see Lucy Absolute. He needed to, prior to departing for he did not know how long.

Decided, he took a few steps to the west before he remembered that today was the Sabbath and so she would not be at the Lincoln’s Inn playhouse; also that there was no point seeing her unless he had some money. She was ever short of it, and he’d vowed to keep her purse full. She would never have to do what most actresses did to fill it, not if he could help it. This he’d vowed to her brother, Quentin Absolute, the comrade he’d loved—even if he could now not recall one detail of the man’s face, only what it had become after case shot had scoured every feature from it on Lansdown field.

“Off out, Pitman?”

“Off out, my love.”

“On parish business?”

“No, chuck. The same business as yesterday.”

“Well, I pray the Lord brings you more success today.”

“And I that he hears both your prayers and mine.”

“Will you take Josiah?”

His son raised his head from his place before the cold fireplace, like a hound hearing of a morning’s chase. “I will not, sweetheart. I may have to meet with, uh, characters.”

“Then best not.” The boy lowered his head again and shivered. The hearth had been empty these few days, and spring yet cold. Bettina waddled forward, her stomach large before her, and dropped a thin shawl around her son’s shoulders. “Good hunting, Pitman,” she said, trying to smile at him, turning away quickly at the cry from the other room. Imogen, sick again, and no more money
for fever pills than for fuel.

He stepped out into the alley, took another down to Blowbladder Street and turned left onto Cheapside. It might not be the swiftest route to his destination, but it would be far the brightest, and this morning he yearned for sun to warm him through—for Cheapside, unlike most other City streets, was wide enough that the jutties of the shops and houses did not near conjoin overhead to form a dark tunnel. The pavement was wide, well tended, the gutters constantly swept clean. And he did not feel the need, as he did so often, to hug the wall and challenge any who would force him from it. The richer merchants who dwelt in those fancy houses would not have shamed themselves by allowing their servants to empty chamber pots and other detritus from their windows.

He moved slowly, warming himself, hearing the growl from his guts. He had given most of his morning crust to his son, claiming he’d had sufficient. He had not. Taking a thief on a stomach near empty for three days was always harder. Hunger dulled. He would have to be careful.

Once more, as he headed east, he wondered if he’d done the right thing.

I would have bread, and Imogen medicine, and my son a fire to warm himself before if either the parish had paid me my three months’ salary for my constable’s duties or I’d taken Maclean yesterday and not let him go.

He shook his head. He would have received five guineas for Maclean, the Irish highwayman, as soon as he’d deposited him in Newgate prison. But Captain Cock’s price had risen to thirty—so that pamphlet and the Company of Ropewrights had proclaimed. Five against the captain’s former reward of twenty guineas and he’d probably have taken the Irish bird in hand. But the extra ten—that
would do more than clear all the Pitman family’s debts. That would set them up for a while. Till after the babes were born, anyway.