Mask of Night (30 page)

The fault was mine. I couldn’t deny that it was mine. Illicitly entering a man’s house was a serious enough crime. The only excuse was that we – Abel, Jack and I – intended no harm, but were bent simply on righting a series of wrongs and uncovering a much greater crime.

In the normal way my conscience would have quailed at the notion of trespassing like this on another’s property. But these weren’t normal ways or normal days. The pestilence was already making a difference to the ordinary, ordered life of the town. It was a strange season. There were many little indications of this, such as the more frequent tolling of the church bells and the abandonment of street markets as well as the stop which had been put on our playing at the Golden Cross. The highways were less crowded, except in the area around the Carfax crossroads where the mortality bills were published and where the prophets of doom were continuing with their God-given work. I’d witnessed another one that very morning and on this occasion there’d been no Ralph Bodkin to break up the crowd. The speaker, not Tom Long but another man, was comparatively subdued. He did not attack anyone but urged repentance on his listeners and they responded in a similarly muted fashion.

But the taverns were still full and, if the brothel in Shoe Lane was anything to go by, the stews were attracting plenty of customers. In a way this only served to confirm how serious the situation had become, for there was a hectic quality to the manner in which people took their pleasures as though they were determined to snatch at what might be a last opportunity for enjoyment. I dare say some of those who were laying out their final shillings on a final whore or their tenth mug of beer were the same gents who’d been listening, with nodding heads and contrite hearts, to the penitent urgings of the Carfax preachers. One more beer before the bier, eh? I’d have felt the same contrary tug myself: to prepare myself for heaven, but also to waste my last few hours on earth. I would have felt this, I say, if I hadn’t been engaged on a more personal quest to get to the bottom of the Oxford mystery.

Anyway, all of this perhaps doesn’t excuse our illegal entry into the fine house in Grove Street. But it may explain it. Fortunately I wasn’t alone in this enterprise. I hadn’t had to work too hard at persuading Abel Glaze to help me. For one thing I no longer needed to convince him of the truth of my story – he’d seen for himself those hooded figures sweeping by under the mask of night, and may have felt that his own panicky flight had enabled them to give us the slip. Whatever the reason he seemed willing enough to remain in Oxford for another day or two, arguing that he was as likely to be exposed to the plague in London as here.

We’d confided in Jack Wilson, newly disappointed in his amour with the wool merchant’s wife. I’d explained my suspicion that, among the legitimate body-bearers, there was a band of two or three individuals taking advantage of the sickness in this city, and contriving to enter plaguey houses in their hooded guises (which had the added benefits of hiding their identities and giving them an official, not to say frightening aspect). It wouldn’t be difficult to play the part of a bearer unlawfully, or even to obtain the post with proper authority. It is dangerous work, and there is no great press of applicants.

Once they’d got inside a house on the pretext of fetching out the dead our false friends would help themselves to the choicest portable items, such as silver salters or candlesticks. These valuables were easily removed at the same time as they carted off the bodies for burial in one of the common pits on the outskirts of town. As if for their greater convenience the authorities, in a measure intended to lessen public alarm, had laid down in the plague orders that bodies were to be cleared away in the evening or early morning, as at Mistress Root’s house. Such periods on the margins of the night made their discovery even less likely. Anyway who would think – or wish – to challenge a couple of corpse-carriers in a cart?

What these two or three felons were doing was exactly what the Kentish Street nurse-keepers had been accused of planning to do by their Southwark neighbours, albeit on a smaller scale. They were robbing the dead.

Talking to Jack, I didn’t enlarge much on my further suspicions that something more than mere robbery was involved in this business. I was fairly certain that several of the “plague” victims had been helped on their way by doses of poison and also had a feeling that robbery wasn’t the sole motive. It wasn’t so much that the theft of a few valuables was insufficient reason for a series of killings. Men have killed each other over a single shilling or less, while the haul of goods from the dead houses would be worth many hundreds, even thousands of shillings. Furthermore the penalty of the law is the same whether you steal a shilling or another’s life. So if you’re going to be hanged for the one offence you might as well be hanged for a string of worse ones . . .

Even so, this reasoning didn’t quite fit the case. All this wickedness and elaboration – the bird-monk costumes, the ingenious application of poisons, the use of pestilence as cover for murder – appeared somehow excessive. It was out of proportion to the objective, which was nothing more than the amassing of a heap of items, however valuable. Yet a bad thief might think it a good bargain. Who knew how such an individual might choose to balance his scales? Despite all this I was certain that there was more to be discovered.

Anyway, Jack and Abel and I conferred about some of these things. I’d described the failure of the plan to track Kit Kite and his confederate from the house in Shoe Lane. Our quarry had eluded us then. Jack promptly launched into some rambling episode from his childhood about how, when out hunting, his father had advised him that the most effective way of catching your quarry was not to pursue it but to trick it into running or flying in your direction. And somehow the idea emerged of enticing Kit Kite and the other hooded figure into coming to us – or more precisely, to me – and seeing where that led us (or, more precisely, me). Which might happen if it was put about that I was dying of the plague, since these individuals were drawn to plague victims like flies to rotten meat.

“All right,” I said, “but there is one small objection. I am not – as far as I know and God be thanked for it – dying of the plague.”

“You’re a player, Nick,” said Jack, “while I’ve noticed that Abel here is a dab hand with the face-paint. He could make it appear as though you were sick or dying.”

“I’ve done it often enough,” said Abel, causing Jack to look puzzled.

“It won’t work,” I said. “For one thing, if I’m right and this pair are robbing the dead even while they’re taking away their corpses, then they’d have nothing to gain by carting off a defunct player. I’ve got little more with me than a spare shirt and a couple of books – and precious little more than that back in London. No, we need a better bait than this. We need a prosperous citizen of Oxford.”

“Like Edmund Cope.”

“Who?”

For answer, Jack Wilson made the sign of the horns in the same way that Will Sadler had when referring to another Jack – Jack Davenant the landlord of the Tavern.

“Oh, your wool merchant. His name is Cope?”

“The one whose wife you’ve been
coping
with,” Abel added.

Jack’s grimace showed that this was a sore point. He no longer referred freely to Maria. Evidently he’d been hurt by her abrupt departure, as if she didn’t have the right to save her own skin.

“Cope is a prosperous citizen of Oxford. He has a fine house in Grove Street,” said Jack.

“And it’s empty, you said,” I said.

There was a pause.

“Well then . . . ” I said.

So this is how I came to be reclining on a couch in a stranger’s house while my friend Abel Glaze was kneeling on the floor, with his make-up wallet spread out in front of him. I was about to be made dead.

Getting into Edmund Cope’s house hadn’t been difficult. In fact it had been a simple matter of turning a key in the door. Somehow or other Jack Wilson had obtained the key, either given him by the pliant Maria or got hold of in some other fashion which I didn’t choose to enquire into. In the rush to depart, the wool merchant’s wife had decamped with her servants (no doubt even more eager to quit plague-ridden Oxford than she was) and left the place less secure than they might have done. So a single key sufficed.

Jack didn’t seem over-bothered that we were entering into another man’s house. I suppose that when you’ve already trespassed on that man’s wife, then his estate seems rather secondary, mere goods. Or it may have been that Jack felt so aggrieved by Maria’s fearful departure that he was searching for some way to get back at her, and that occupying her and her husband’s house was as good as any other. As I said earlier, this was a strange season in Oxford. Ordered, everyday life had begun to break down.

Anyway, here we were in the house of the prosperous citizens of Grove Street. It was well furnished, with many valuable items, portable items.

Abel advanced towards me, carrying a candle in one hand and a little earthenware pot in the other.

“I am ready,” he said.

“Make me dead, Abel.”

“I could whiten your face first with egg-shell and alum like a fashionable lady’s, but to my eye you look white enough already.”

“I expect I am. Fear.”

“Then I shall simply apply a few tokens on the visible places, Nicholas, but they will not stand much inspection.”

“Just as long as they don’t recognize me.”

If our scheme worked, then my hope (hope – ha!) was to be carted off by the bearers without their paying too much attention to the nature and quality of the corpse they were carrying. Because if I was right in my suspicion that their primary purpose was to rob the victims’ houses of valuable stuff then they wouldn’t be too interested in the dead themselves, only in their belongings. Also I’d seen the casual way they manhandled Mistress Root’s corpse.

In fact, I didn’t believe that it would get to the stage of my being carried off in the dead cart. I intended otherwise. The cart would not be good for my health. No, my intention was to surprise these malefactors in the act of stripping the house of its more precious portables. Then I would unmask them in the midst of their malefactoring. My good friends Abel Glaze and Jack Wilson would be deeper inside the house but close at hand, ready to pounce on Kite and his confederate, ready to tear the disguises from their faces and haul them before the magistrates. I trusted Wilson and Glaze. They were my friends. Jack was a good swordsman – hadn’t he taught me (a little of) that noble art, hadn’t he played Tybalt and thereby attracted the attention of a wool merchant’s wife? While, as for Abel, he was a resourceful fellow, able to
cope
.

Maybe this course appears foolhardy. It was foolhardy. I can only suppose that there was some infection in the air apart from the pestilence, tainting all of us, making us reckless and irrational.

Abel told me to stretch out my arm and, using the tiny wooden scoop, started to apply the ointment in dabs across the back of my hand and wrist. He paused to admire his handiwork.

“These are the tokens of the plague. When they appear the poor person knows that he has only hours left to live.”

I laughed, but felt sick to my stomach. I touched the dabs which were about the size and colour of a little, tarnished silver penny. Already they were starting to harden.

“What are you using?”

“It’s a trade secret,” said Abel. “Lie back now, and I shall put some across your forehead and cheeks.”

He leant over me and, with a craftsman’s care, dabbed at my face. Several times he stopped, stepping back a few paces to check on the result, squinting in the candlelight.

I was used enough to this procedure in the tiring-room at the Globe. With a shortage of mirrors, we usually helped each other to paint our faces – for example, white for a ghost, or with streaks of sheep’s blood for head wounds. But there was a jollity about making up in the playhouse, even to act the ghost’s part, which was completely absent in this situation. With each darting touch which Abel made, I felt as though I was truly being infected with the pestilence and I struggled not to flinch. He bent over me, as close as a lover.

“Abel, you remember when we went to meet Will Kemp, the old clown in Dow-gate?”

“Yes.”

I talked to get my mind off what he was doing but I was also curious.

“You were moved by the sight of him. You kissed him farewell.”

“He reminded me of my father,” said Abel. “There! One or two more spots in the centre of your forehead should do it.”

“Your father?”

“I left my father as he slept,” said Abel. “I crept out of the house without saying farewell when I went off to fight in the wars.”

(He meant the Dutch wars back in the middle ’80s.)

“How old were you?”

“Twelve or thirteen, I suppose.”

“Then we are of an age.”

“I know it, Nick.”

“You did not see him again?”

“No.”

Abel stepped back for a final time.

“That’ll do, but only in a bad light.”

“Remember that the thieves are dressed in hoods with eyepieces for protection. I shouldn’t think they could see too clearly through those in any circumstances. And they won’t want to touch my body more than they have to, which is the reason why they wear gloves and carry sticks.”

“That’s all well and good,” said Abel, “but
you
must remember that those who die of the pestilence have experienced a dreadful final few hours. That’s if they’re lucky. If they’re not lucky then it will have been a dreadful final few
days
. Your expression must suggest all of that.”

“It will.”

“For added realism you might piss yourself where you lie.”

“Fear will probably do that trick. But if I’m correct, Abel, then these gentlemen will be much more concerned about snaffling up some of the goods in this room than examining me too closely. There’s a nice little tapestry over there, for instance. Or what about that silver perfuming-pan?”

“It is a dangerous course, Nick.”