Plague Child (29 page)
Authors: Peter Ransley
I sat on a stone by the stream, unable to move or think. In one part of the sky rain clouds were building up again, merging with the heath, but in the west the sky was white as milk. The horses were sucking contentedly in the stream. The constant heath wind rippled the hair tufted round Matthew’s bald crown as he took some bread and cheese from his saddle bag.
‘Did me no good and it would have done you no good, Tom,’ he said softly.
I said nothing. I had carried the memory of him all these years and tried to tell myself I still loved him, but the truth was I did not. I loved the memory of him building ships and telling me stories of foreign lands, and making things happen by magic and bringing out the pendant, the falcon flashing and dipping and flying in the firelight as he told me my fortune. But I knew now he had never left England and the stories were from sailors in the docks; there was no magic but that of persuading people his herbs would work; and, he was now telling me, no pendant.
I noticed how bent his back was and that the bread he was preparing to eat was mouldy. He offered me some, admitting it did not look much, but fresh air and a dip of spring water was a very fine sauce.
‘What is it, Tom?’ he said gently. ‘Art thou not pleased to see me?’
‘Yes, yes, of course I am,’ I said, against the curious sort of lump that seemed to be forming in my throat. Then: ‘No! No! No! I am not!’
I seized the lump of mouldy bread and flung it into the stream. He stared in astonishment as it drifted away, bumping and eddying against a rock before being swept out of sight. He was even more astonished at the torrent of bitterness that poured out of me. So was I. I had no idea that it had been sealed up in the deepest caverns of my heart all these years. He had deserted me. He had deserted Susannah, leaving her to be murdered. Burned. Did he know that?
‘Of course I know that!’ He rounded on me with a sudden venom. ‘Why do you think I got rid of it? Ever since I picked it up it’s been a curse on me, and it would have been a curse on you. Do you think there’s been a day when I haven’t thought about Susannah? About you?’
That cut me, but like everything Matthew said it was true and not true. There was something he was holding back from me. He knew where I was in the City, I retorted, because he had remained in touch with Kate. Yet he had made no effort to contact me. Why should I be pleased to see him? To care about him?
He stood by the stream, fidgeting with the lump of cheese, putting a crumb of it in his mouth. When he gave no answer and I made a furious move towards him to demand he at least look at me, he jerked his cheese away as if afraid I would throw that in the water too. The movement both filled me with shame and irritated me beyond endurance.
‘I have not been a good father,’ he mumbled.
‘You are not my father!’ I shouted, so loudly the horses lifted their dripping mouths from the stream to stare at me.
‘That too,’ he said. ‘That too.’ He scratched his bald patch. All life’s puzzlements seemed to be in that scratch, as he stared across the barren heath which, with its scrub and rock, always seemed to retain something of evening. In places it was almost one with the lowering sky, which looked heavy with more rain, in others brighter than noon with flickering patches of light. I thought for a moment he was whistling through his front tooth, but it was the wind, shredded by the thorns. Furtively, he eased another crumb of cheese into his mouth.
I could not look at him or keep still. I strode to my horse, feeling I never wanted to see him again. Patch shook herself, spraying me with water, but I scarcely felt it. I stopped, strode back to see Matthew sucking some morsel from a crevice in his tooth and turned to my horse again, plunging my hands in my pockets, as I always did when I did not know which way to turn. My fingers closed on the coin. I whirled back, overwhelmed by a great rush of guilt, staring at his bent figure, his cheeks hollowed, then ballooned out by his scouring tongue. After what he did, how could I have said he was not a good father?
‘I’m sorry,’ I wept, ‘I’m sorry.’
I went over and hugged him properly. He jumped, dropping his cheese, afraid I had gone crazy and was about to throw him in the stream too, then saw the coin in my hand. ‘Kate told me it was dangerous to get in touch with you. You were leading a different life. You
are
different.’ He took the coin. ‘Is that it? My Judas coin? Is that really it?’ He turned it on the edge, saw the fleur de lys, weighed it in his hand and moved to give it back to me. He told me what I have related, that when he threw what he thought was a dead child into the cart there was a fiendish cry of an evil spirit pursuing him. The faster he went, the louder and more piercing it became, until he could stand it no longer. He stopped, intending to fling out the child. But the fearsome cry stopped as soon as he went round the cart.
‘You looks at me. And I looks at you. And you looks as though you’re about to cry up to the heavens again, so I puts you inside my jacket and, God help me, you goes to sleep! After taking you to Susannah, I show Mr Eaton a dead baby from the cart and –’
He flipped the coin in the air, caught it, looked at it rather regretfully, then flung it in the stream. I looked at him with the same astonishment that he had shown when I threw away the bread. I ran down the stream, saw it glinting in the water, but as I stretched out to get it, he put his hand on my arm.
‘Leave it, Tom. It’s finished now. It’s no more good to you. Nor is the pendant.’
‘You still have it.’
‘No, Tom.’
‘I need it to find out who my real father is. I don’t want to keep it!’
‘Is that true?’
‘Yes!’
He gave a great sigh. He stared at the coin glinting in the eddying water. ‘I put it back.’
‘Back? Where?’
‘Highpoint. So no one could accuse me of stealing it. I gave it to Kate. She put it in the jewellery drawer in Frances’s bedroom.’
I gaped at him. ‘In the – Anyone could find it. I could have found it.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s a secret drawer. It’s true!’ he said when he saw my disbelieving expression, with the desperate vehemence of a habitual liar who cannot get anyone to believe him when he does tell the truth. ‘Where do you think I learned carpentry? Before I got the plague cart I delivered wood to the cabinet maker. I watched him shape that secret drawer.’
I rounded sceptically on him again. ‘Then how did my mother know where to look for –’ I shivered. It was not just the evening cold that was coming with the advancing rain clouds that crept slowly over the heath, gradually staining the paler sky like spilled ink. I knew the answer to my question before I put it. ‘You told my mother, didn’t you?’ I shook him. ‘Didn’t you?’
He sighed a very deep sigh and said he used to tell stories about the pendant which everyone had marvelled about when Frances Stonehouse wore it in church. He boasted he knew where it was. That afternoon in September, Margaret Pearce came to him. She threatened to tell everyone neither his love philtres nor his whore’s physic worked if he did not tell her about the drawer.
He sighed again and dropped his head in his hands, staring at the coin in the water. ‘You know everything now. Satisfied?’
Satisfied? I dragged Matthew up from the stone and hugged him and danced him around until he nearly fell in the water.
‘Come on! Let’s go!’
‘Where?’
‘Highpoint. Before the light goes.’ I pulled him to his horse and cupped my hands to give his old bones an easy lift.
‘Wait.’ He would not move an inch until I told him everything that had happened. When he learnt that the Parliamentary soldiers had left a day ago, he backed away.
‘Then who killed Mark?’
‘I don’t know. But I’ll bet it was Cavaliers, working for Richard Stonehouse.’
‘Mark wasn’t a papist.’
‘They killed him to destroy the last evidence of the wedding. They wore orange scarves like mine to pretend to be Roundheads.’
Lightning lit up the heath. The horses lifted their heads and trod restlessly, waiting uneasily for the low mutter of thunder. The prospect of a downpour on open country made it easier to urge him on his horse. Halfway in the saddle he stopped.
‘They’ve been waiting until you find me, then they can get us both and the pendant.’
‘I’ve worked that out. We’re both storytellers, Matthew.’
‘There’s a difference between telling a story and being in it. We’re riding into a trap.’
‘Not if we know it is one.’ I could feel myself being pulled towards Highpoint, like a compass needle towards north. And I felt as cold and hard as the metal itself, as the ice that is supposed to cover the northern climes and the frost spirits who had ice for their hearts. ‘We can avenge Mark’s death. And my mother’s.’
‘Are you mad? We can’t fight an army of Cavaliers.’
‘No.’ I swung on to my horse. ‘But we can take the pendant.’
He clapped his hand to his head with such force I thought it would fly off. ‘
Steal it – again!
’
‘Return it to Lord Stonehouse properly.’
Lightning scored the sky again, and this time the thunder was closer. A wind sprang up, rippling the heather. I urged my horse on to the track, but Matthew pulled his back.
‘Tom, don’t be a fool. It’s not you riding the horse – it’s the pendant.’
I hesitated, but only for a moment. ‘You may be right. You’re wiser than I am, Matthew. But one thing I have learned – you can’t keep running away for ever.’
He looked as if I had cut him across the face with a whip – it hurt him more than anything else I had said or done. It was meant to.
I heard a shout and galloping hooves as I left the heath to descend to Shadwell. When Matthew caught me up he pointed to a path that led through the copse where I had tethered Patch during the funeral service. No one knew that country better than Matthew, not even Eaton. He had lived on his herbs and his wits for years, travelling on little-known paths between Upper Vale and Oxford. As the rain came down as though it was being poured from pitchers he led me through a wood which became part of the Great Forest. It was slow riding but a much shorter route and, when we reached the spreading impenetrable oaks, gave us some shelter both from the downpour and what might await us at Highpoint.
We reached the edge of the forest and stared down at the house. The rain had slackened to a steady drizzle, punctuated by large cold splashes dripping from the trees. The moon, when it appeared, threw long black shadows of the house. It was exactly the same moon as the night I was born, Matthew said. I scornfully told him he was imagining things, but so was I, seeing my mother being put in the coach, lurching wildly down that avenue black with rain.
We forded the river and Matthew led me through a copse where we left our horses and mounds of leaves deadened our approach. Candles were lit in the hall and we saw a maid lighting them in one of the lower rooms. There was no sign of anyone else, and no sound except the occasional distant clatter from the kitchens and the steady patter of rain. We worked our way round to the outermost wing, where I planned to climb up and break through a window, but first I tried a servants’ door. It was open.
‘I don’t like this,’ Matthew whispered.
‘Listen.’ I pointed towards the stables.
‘I hear nothing.’
‘Exactly. No horses.’
‘They’d leave them out of earshot.’
I hesitated, but felt the pendant was so close it was pulling me inside. I slipped into the dark passage. There was a smell of stale cooking. After a moment he followed me. Light spilled from an open door and I ducked back as Mrs Adams appeared, throwing some slops into a bucket in the passage. I watched her disappear, shouting at someone: ‘D’you call that clean? Scour it! Scour the soldiers away! Thank the good Lord He’s delivered us from them!’
We climbed the back stairs, stopping in the shadows at the edge of the gallery, blinking at the light. Every candle in every sconce was lit. Once across it we would be in the maze of dark corridors that led to Frances’s bedroom. I was about to dart across when there was a woman’s cry. It came from a large reception room with double doors across the landing and was followed by a murmur of voices. I jumped back into the shadow of the stairs.
Eaton came out of the room. I could see Kate, but no one else. It
was
a miracle. I never thought to see him walking again and ran towards him. He did not look glad to see me, but then he never looked glad to see anyone. I embraced him and he started to say something but it was lost in the sudden tumult of doors opening and swords being drawn.
‘You can release him from your fond embrace, Eaton,’ Richard said.
He leaned against the wall, looking as if he was dressed for court, in a red doublet, over which he wore a short cloak with a jewelled clasp bearing the Stonehouse falcon, which seemed to flutter as he moved. Behind him were several men. At the door of the room from which Eaton had emerged was Captain Gardiner, very much as I first met him in the stink of Smithfield, except his new beaver hat was freshly brushed. He was leaning near the room from which Eaton had emerged, the flame of a candle reflected in the rapier in his hand.
‘Where’s the other one?’ Richard said sharply. ‘Idiots! The back stairs!’
As usual, Matthew had vanished. How he managed it, I did not know, but, I thought sourly, he had had plenty of practice at it. For once I felt glad. They would soon have got out of him where the pendant was. I forgot Matthew, my attention, all my bitter attention, turning on Eaton, who stared just as bitterly back at me. ‘I trusted you,’ I said. ‘I thought you were my friend.’
‘You trusted Eaton!’ said Richard incredulously. ‘You thought he was your friend!’
There was an avalanche of laughter and I realised that all the servants who had been in the congregation that morning had appeared, from doors, down in the hall, halfway up the stairway where the barrel-chested bearded man’s face was split into a wide grin; the cook stood at the door to the back stairs, her vast frame shaking. Like the King, in his attempt to arrest Pym and the other five members in the House, Richard Stonehouse had an acute sense of theatre. Everything had to have style, be part of a performance, to impress upon the people where power lay.
‘Eaton has no friends – have you, Eaton?’ Richard said.
‘None,’ Eaton said savagely.
‘Eaton is the best liar, the best cheat I have ever known, aren’t you, Eaton?’
Eaton said nothing, but there was a murmur of anger among the servants, and the cook looked about to spit at him.
‘I only found out how he had cheated my father for years when I got the papers from that other crook Turville’s chambers. That is why you brought the pretender here, isn’t it, Eaton? Because I threatened to give proof of it to my father.’ There was another burst of anger from the servants, but Richard silenced them with a gesture. ‘But, to be fair, Eaton built up the estate. He is good at contracts, and we made a contract. Bring me him and you can keep your position. I shall need a good steward.’
He clapped Eaton on the back. Eaton staggered and I realised how ill he still was, the livid palpitation of his scar the only colour in his face. He gripped the balustrade behind him to steady himself, glancing at the reception room he had emerged from. Following his gaze I saw that Kate was being held by a soldier, who had a knife at her throat. My numbness went. I had been a fool, but not a complete fool.
Eaton
had
changed during the journey here – nay, long before that. The thought of Kate, the prospect of seeing her again, had fought with the bitter alienated part of his nature fearful of losing what he had built up over a lifetime. I could now see signs of that struggle during the journey – half-warnings, surly rejections – even welcoming death as preferable to a struggle he had become too exhausted to believe he could ever win or resolve. Then Kate had come to him. Richard no longer had a hold on him, so he had had to take her hostage. I could read this in Eaton’s agonised look towards Kate, in the look he gave me.
Perhaps Richard picked this up too. His mocking tone went. I saw his father in him then, in the brooding, almost morose manner he put on like a robe. He said there had been a great crime, an attempt to impersonate the family name in which, unfortunately, his father had been almost deceived, before turning on me.
‘Where is the pendant?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Answer my lord,’ said Captain Gardiner.
I said nothing. Perhaps it was the signal from Richard, the movement of his cloak that, in the shifting candlelight, made me think the falcon had struck with a whirr of wings, slashing my cheek with its beak. Gardiner’s rapier was back at rest, the point still quivering before I felt the oozing of blood and its slow trickle down my cheek and neck.
‘Where is the pendant?’
I stared back at him and bit my lip so I would not cry out when the second cut came, but Richard stopped Gardiner and said something to one of his soldiers, who took out his pistol, pointing it at Eaton.
‘Take his pistol, Eaton,’ Richard said. Eaton did not move. We were a pair then: me with my fresh cut, and Eaton with his old scar, which seemed to unnerve Richard even then. I remembered Eaton telling me that Lord Stonehouse would threaten his sons that, if they were disobedient, Eaton would come to them in the middle of the night. ‘
Take it!
’ Richard snapped.
The sour, rancid smell of Eaton’s sickness hung round me as he removed the pistol from my belt. I swallowed down bile.
‘Is it loaded?’
‘Yes, my lord,’ Eaton replied.
Richard looked gratified at the form of address. He seemed to need Eaton’s humiliation as much as he needed mine. ‘Cock it.’ The soldier still kept his pistol trained on Eaton as he did so. ‘Eaton’s a good shot, aren’t you, Eaton? I know. The best. You taught me.’
‘Thank you, my lord.’
‘Stretch out your hand,’ Richard said to me. When I did not move, he said, equably, almost pleasantly, ‘Eaton can shoot you in the elbow or the shoulder, it’s all the same to him, isn’t it, Eaton?’ Eaton nodded indifferently, and raised the pistol. ‘But I deem it more appropriate, because of your seditious pamphlets against King and Church, to remove the offending hand which will, at least, leave you your arm.’
Slowly, very slowly, I lifted my arm and stretched out my hand, willing it not to tremble, but the cursed thing did so. ‘Wait, Eaton – do not fire until I give you the signal.’ He turned to me. ‘I will spare your hand if you tell me where the pendant is.’
Torturers have much in common with those who break children. Like Gloomy George, Richard had an instinct for weak spots. I felt my whole life, everything of meaning I had ever done was in that hand; I had written the poem to Anne with it, inked the Grand Remonstrance with those fingers that would not stop shaking. I wanted to shut my eyes but would not give him that pleasure, although the servants were the worst of it: shuffling hurriedly out of the firing line, giggling, whispering, their craning faces like those of people round a pit betting and watching cocks or dogs tear at one another. Only Rose turned away, looking white and sick, but Richard, always with an eye for a pretty face, smiled and beckoned her to the front, as if he was doing her a favour. The soldier pointing his pistol lowered it for a better view, and the man holding the knife to Kate’s throat craned forward.
Richard said he would give me until the count of five – since I was apprenticed I no doubt knew my numbers? There was a titter of laughter, then total silence as he began to count. When he reached three, counting slowly, leisurely, I could no longer stand it, and tried to speak, to blurt out where the pendant was. He stopped counting. Bile rose in my throat, but my mouth was so dry I could not swallow it and could not speak. He waited. And as he waited he smiled. That smile of triumph welled up in me all the stubbornness and hatred for people like him that years of beatings had bred in me and I would not speak. His smile went and he continued counting. At five I shut my eyes.
Eaton fired.