Plague Child (12 page)

Tom! She knew my name! This thought hammered in my head as Alfred yanked open the door. She called me Tom. Perhaps she really did know who I was. The idea thrilled through me as I tumbled out, running into Mr Ink in the lobby. I gabbled to him that I must take the letter to Mr Pym and without a word he hurried me towards the chamber. In the shadowy approach there were two guards, and beyond them the Serjeant at Arms, in hose and full ceremonial uniform. Mr Ink’s eyes gleamed with excitement. It was as though he had been waiting all his life for this moment.

‘I’ll deal with the guards,’ he said. ‘You get past old Pompous Breeches.’

I slipped into the darkness cast by a column. I could hear Mr Pym’s sonorous voice. ‘The army for Ireland is being assembled and my Lord Warwick has a four-hundred-ton vessel victualled and armed . . .’

Mr Ink was arguing and gesticulating that he must get through to Mr Pym. I crept along the wall. The Serjeant at Arms had his broad back towards me.

‘The vessel could carry six hundred men and is ready to sail from the Port of London –’

I could see Royalists howling protests. The Speaker took a point of information from Sir Edward Hyde.

‘Are not the normal ports of embarkation for Ireland Chester and Bristol? Is this not an attempt by the honourable member, under the guise of fighting the papists, to bring an army into London against the King?’

I was ten, fifteen steps away from Mr Pym. It was my intention to dart past the Serjeant and run to Mr Pym, but as I prepared to launch myself he turned and blocked my way with his vast bulk. I held out the letter.

‘For Mr Pym.’

He gave me a scandalised look. ‘What by Satan are you doing here?’

‘He must have it now!’

In the Serjeant’s jowled face was all the outrage of procedure being violated. Mr Ink was taken away by one guard and the Serjeant called on the other to take me. The Serjeant would not even touch the letter. He said a similar letter had been delivered to Mr Pym containing a plague-sore dressing. I knew this to be true. It was supposed to have been delivered by a papist out to murder Mr Pym. Convinced he had foiled a similar plot, he seized me with the grip of a bear. I kicked and yelled, tears of frustration stinging my eyes.

‘The letter is to save his life, not kill him! The King has soldiers on his way here!’

‘Serjeant.’

It was the Speaker, William Lenthall, a mild-mannered lawyer of about fifty, with a carefully pointed beard and moustache and hooded eyes that made him look half-asleep. He had a quiet, almost timorous voice that was effective in an uproar only because MPs were forced to stop shouting in order to hear him.

‘You have a letter for Mr Pym, Serjeant?’

‘I believe it to contain another plague-sore dressing, sir.’

It was a measure of the jumpiness of the House in those days around Christmas, when every day brought rumours of plots and counter-plots – there had even been a move for Parliament to move to Guildhall for its greater protection – that Speaker Lenthall had left his seat. I could see Mr Pym rising. MPs on both sides were craning to see.

‘Ask the messenger if he would be good enough to open it,’ Mr Lenthall said courteously.

I broke the seal, showing there was nothing inside, and without any comment, question or fuss, Mr Lenthall gave it to the Serjeant to take to Mr Pym. Neither seemed in any particular hurry. I remembered the swaggering courtiers buckling on their swords at Whitehall, the weathered, sabre-cut faces of the mercenaries, and in an agony of impatience watched as the Serjeant ritually bowed to the Speaker’s chair before crossing the floor to Mr Pym. He seemed to take an eternity to unfold it, then read it, then refold it carefully before clearing his throat to speak.

‘Mr Speaker, it appears His Majesty will shortly appear in this place to arrest me’ – roars of dismay drowned his words – ‘to arrest me and four other honourable members: Mr Hampden, Mr Haselrig, Mr Holles and Mr Strode. I request your permission to withdraw.’

Speaker Lenthall showed the first signs of tension, drumming his fingers on the arm of his throne-like chair.

‘You have my permission, Mr Pym,’ the Speaker said. ‘Which I suggest you take with all possible speed.’

While all eyes were on Mr Pym, I crept into a niche at the back of the room and crouched low to the floor.

The Serjeant, robbed of his arrest of a poisoner, glanced at the spot where I had been. I squeezed further into my hiding place, holding my breath. Mr Pym and three other members hurried towards the lobby, but the fifth man, William Strode, rose to make a speech. Never one to compromise, he declared now was the time to confront the King.

‘Come on, Bill,’ a member said. ‘You don’t want to spend another ten years in the Tower.’

But it seemed that was exactly what he did want. Only when there was the rattle of an approaching coach outside did Mr Pym lose some of his dignity and coolness and shout: ‘It won’t be ten years – it’ll be the block! Get him out of here!’

Two of the burliest members grabbed Strode and manhandled him past the Speaker’s chair, spittle flying from his mouth as he protested vehemently about the rights and privileges of Parliament. The five members disappeared as there was a chatter of voices and laughter, and the clatter of boots on the stairs from Westminster Hall into the lobby. The rest of the House talked with nervous anger in small groups.

The Speaker settled back in his chair and said: ‘Order! Order! Sir Edward Hyde made a point about embarking troops for Ireland from the Port of London. Does anyone wish to answer that?’

The members took his cue and returned to their places. Edward Hyde rose and said perhaps he could amplify his point and members listened attentively, as if there had been no interruption. The drumming of boots and the clank of swords outside the lobby ceased. The door opened.

Edward Hyde took off his hat. All the members rose as one, removing their hats. I could see only the effect, not the cause, but as all eyes were on the opening door I poked my head out to see the King, taking off his hat, entering the chamber alone. He nodded and smiled at Edward Hyde and some other members whom he counted on his side. He seemed so at ease, and so courteous, it could have been taken for a friendly visit – had it not been for the gnarled face of the Earl of Roxburgh, glowering as he stood in the doorway, exposing a troop of soldiers loosening the swords in their scabbards. Some of the younger courtiers grinned and cocked their pistols. It was the mercenaries who chilled me. They stood silent and still, eyes staring coldly into the chamber, hands hanging loosely near angled swords.

‘May I trouble you for your chair, Mr Speaker?’ the King asked.

Mr Lenthall got up and sat on the benches. The King looked quickly near the bar of the House where Mr Pym usually sat, then referred to a paper about the impeachment of the five members for treason which had been tabled, and which, he said, members must consider urgently. Treason was such a serious charge, he continued, that the accused must be taken into custody while Parliament deliberated. He stared round the silent chamber.

‘Is Mr Pym here?’

The shuffling and clink of swords from the soldiers in the lobby died into a complete, prolonged silence.

I could see the King’s white-gloved hand tighten on the arm of the chair, which he had made his throne. I gazed at his magisterial profile in awe. It was the same face which had glowed from the uproarious welcome of the people on his return to London barely six weeks ago. I expected that face, with its immaculate triangle of beard, framed by the brilliant white stiffness of his collar, to glow again, to say some magic words which would lift everyone to their feet, cheering and shouting. Then, as the silence continued, I expected him to thunder wrath and retribution. So did many of the other members, whose hands instinctively crept to empty sword belts, weapons not being allowed in the chamber. What I least expected to hear from the King’s mouth was a note of petulance.

‘Mr Speaker, are the five members present?’

Lenthall fell to his knees. ‘Your Majesty, I can only see and speak as this House directs.’

The abject man on the floor suddenly grew in stature as the King, rising from his chair, diminished.

‘Very well. My eyes, I believe, are as good as yours.’ The King stared round the benches on one side, and then the other. I could see one hand gripping his hat, the other clenching and unclenching, but he kept the composure in his voice, even managing a lightness in his words. ‘I see the birds have flown.’ He put his hat on his head and walked away.

Roxburgh came to life. ‘Make way! Make way!’ The army in the lobby abruptly became a rabble, those at the front now pushing and shoving against those packed at the back, who had no idea what was happening. As the last set of boots left the lobby and clattered down the stairs, the chamber erupted.

‘Privilege! Privilege! Privilege!’

Sir Edward Hyde and the King’s party looked desolated, shaking their heads despairingly at what one muttered was a naked invasion of rights. Others were talking loudly, violently across one another, convinced that if the five members had been there they would not just have been arrested, but butchered on the spot. Many crowded round Lenthall, slapping him on the back, amazed that this gentle, self-effacing man had shown such courage, some declaring that only God could have put such words in his mouth. No one took any notice of me as I got up and walked out of the chamber. I could not understand why I did not feel triumphant that Parliament had won such a stunning victory. Instead I felt empty, as if I had lost something and would never find it again. All I could see was that lonely figure of the King, putting his hat on his head and walking out of the chamber.

Chapter 12

The next day London erupted. ‘Privilege! Privilege! Privilege!’ the mob roared – and I roared with them. The story of the King invading Parliament spread from mouth to mouth, the Cavaliers and mercenaries who had accompanied him multiplying by rumour into a small army.

Will shook me awake that morning, almost unable to speak from excitement. ‘Get up! The Trained Bands have been called out.’

He told me the City had formed a Committee of Public Safety. The King had lost control of the City militia. People believed his Catholic Queen had persuaded the King to join the papists. In pamphlet after pamphlet I read horrific stories of atrocities committed by Catholics on Protestants in an uprising in Ireland. Women in the City of London feared that, like the Protestants in Ireland, they would be raped and their children massacred. In Milk Street that night I saw two women with a cauldron of boiling water poised on the sill of a first-floor window, from which yesterday they might have flung the contents of a chamber pot.

In vain the King asked Lord Mayor Gurney to give up Pym and the other members sheltering in the City. All the Mayor could give him was a sumptuous meal at the Guildhall, while the rioters congregated outside.

Normally I kept clear of the big riots. I feared seeing Crow and Captain Gardiner, the man in the beaver hat, who knew my radical leanings; but there had been a call for our Trained Band to muster in Coleman Street, near the Guildhall. Once, I was sure I saw Crow’s bulky shape in the crowd, and kept my hand on my knife. Torches lit the faces of the King’s dragoons guarding the Guildhall as they tried to calm their restive horses before the swelling, angry crowd. Only a short distance away, in Coleman Street, Mr Pym and the other members were dining, the sauce for their meal beating drums calling the Trained Bands to muster. I fought my way through the crowd towards our standard –
For God and Parliament –
being held aloft by Big Jed, and joined Will and Luke outside the radical church of St Stephen’s to help build a makeshift barricade across Coleman Street.

To my astonishment, Luke said he had married Charity that afternoon. It was one of many such marriages in the militia, provoked by the feeling that we would soon be on the march. I helped him lift a bench from the church and pile it on the barricade.

‘You are not marrying Anne?’

‘No, no. That’s over.’

He looked at me slyly. ‘You prefer the Countess?’

‘And her carriage,’ I managed, but the banter rang hollow. For hours at a time I managed to stop thinking about Anne, but then I would see someone in the street I thought was her, or smell the damask roses she used in her pomade. Then, as now, I would hurl myself into activity, struggling to forget. We picked up another bench and manoeuvred it through the church doorway.

‘I heard Anne was with someone else.’

I dropped my end of the bench so rapidly he lost his grip, howling with pain as it fell on his toe.

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know – it was just alehouse gossip.’

There was still a gap in the barricade and I wriggled through it. I forgot my vow not to see her. I pushed and elbowed my way, but outside the Guildhall I found myself wedged in a solid mass. There was a great roar as the gates opened. A spurting flare of torches lit up the glittering gold and red of the King’s livery as his carriage pulled up outside the Guildhall. The crowd fell silent as the King emerged and brushed something from his cloak before getting calmly into his carriage. The muttering began as a group of the King’s dragoons cleared a way slowly through the crowd with the flat of their swords, and built until the crowd found its voice again, thundering ‘Privilege! Privilege!’ Pamphlets were flung at the coach, and I glimpsed the King’s white, frightened face. It was hard to believe that, less than two months earlier, the same crowd had given him such a rapturous welcome and I had thought him divine.

Seizing my chance, I darted into the passage beaten by the dragoons before it closed up again. I burst into a run, but I was now in full view. A voice bellowed, almost in my ear:

‘There he is!’

It stood out in the crowd, that scar, a living presence. The cold metallic eyes held me hypnotised. I might not be Matthew’s son, but I had inherited from him the fear of that scar. The man pushed his way towards me. In front of him was a man I had not seen before. Thin and wiry as a greyhound, he stood a foot taller than most of the crowd, slipping through it towards me as if he was oiled. He was near to grabbing me when a stave thrown from the crowd caused a dragoon’s horse to rear. Another dragoon slashed at the rioter. The man with the scar was shouting at me but I forced my way through the crowd until I reached an alley. I ran blindly. It was part of the City I did not know. When I reached a narrow street I tore down one alley after another, until the shouts of the riots dwindled, and all I could hear was the sound of my running feet and my panting breath.

I had no idea where I was. There was only a scrap of moon, but it was reflected from the ice in an unearthly glow. I leaned against a slimy wall, slowly recovering my breath. I did not even hear them, they must have approached so carefully. Looking up, I saw, silhouetted at one end of the street, the bulky shape of Crow. At the other was the man in a beaver hat, his hand on his sword. They were so sure of me they did not even move. Neither did I. It seems strange, but for a moment I almost welcomed them. It was not just that I was tired of running, it was what Luke had said:

I heard Anne was with someone else.

Even if it was just alehouse gossip, what hope was there for me? It came back to me, with redoubled force, that I had sworn on the Bible never to see her again. In that moment, with the three of us standing as frozen as the ice, I felt for a moment it would be better to die if I could not see her again. But my instincts, my legs, propelled me into a narrow alley. Crow and Gardiner were in no hurry to follow me, and I soon found out why. It led to a church huddled between two narrow passageways. The gate to the other passageway was locked.

‘Convenient,’ Gardiner said to Crow, drawing his sword, flourishing it towards the graveyard, which was above the small flight of steps. Like all the churches crammed into the City, where people fought for space, in death as in life, to be buried in their own piece of holy ground, the graveyard was crowded. There was a pile of unburied coffins at one side of the steps. Crow indicated them with a grin.

‘Perhaps we can borrow one of those.’

I ran up the steps, holding my knife, ducking behind the coffins, which rocked unevenly. On top of them was a body in a shroud.

‘Making it easier for us, Tom?’ Gardiner mocked. He drew his sword.

Gravediggers, like the scavengers, had either not been paid in the crisis, or taken to rioting, or joined the militia. Rubbish piled up; bodies were left unburied. The stench of rotting flesh brought bile into my mouth. As Gardiner began to ascend the steps I pulled the shroud from the body. ‘This one has the plague!’

Gardiner laughed and drew back his sword, preparing to lunge. ‘You’re lying! You wouldn’t go near it if it had.’

‘I’m a plague child!’ I yelled, pushing the body to the top of the steps. Gardiner backed away slowly, sheathing his sword. He drew his tongue over his lips. ‘Shoot him,’ he said, matter-of-factly.

For the first time I saw that Crow had a pistol. I stared down the long barrel, seeing every rifled groove and Crow’s eyes above the backsight, and prayed to live then, for God to forgive me for ever wishing to die, but there was a blinding flash and a searing pain before everything slid from me, as if I was falling into a dark, bottomless pit.