A Plague of Sinners (24 page)

The Mole reached for his keys and unlocked my cell door. The medic crooked his finger. I shook my head as hard as I could shake it. I had no intention of approaching the infected man, but the medic insisted and stamped his foot hard, which is when I noticed he wore Davy Dowling’s boots.

We carried the unconscious victim of plague with bare hands, out through the passage and up towards the sun, the Mole close behind. As we lay the man down on the cobbles our heads came together, and I heard a muffled sound coming from Dowling’s beak that sounded like ‘saltpetre’. Once we stood straight the Mole bore down upon me with little steps.

Dowling removed his mask and stared down at the Mole through swollen eyes. The whole right side of his face was now purple and yellow, and the bristles on his head stood up in fierce indignation. The Mole shrank before him.

‘Run, Harry,’ Dowling whispered.

I turned and ran, and as I did so my head cleared, and I realised that ‘saltpetre’ was ‘St Peter’. The Mole and Davy Dowling pursued, though the Mole lasted but twenty yards before he stopped, hands on knees, gasping like he would explode.

‘In the cart, Harry,’ Dowling panted when we reached the church. ‘We must hide.’

Aye, but only ’til midnight.

Leadenhall was two centuries old, built as a granary and market hall at a time of famine. It resembled a great fortress, with high stone walls and octagonal turrets on each corner. The ground floor consisted of a series of large, arched windows, all traceried and barred with iron. The entrance was of simple design, two enormous oaken doors behind huge iron gates, locked and chained.

Dowling peered through a ground-floor window. ‘Did he tell you to meet him inside or outside?’

‘He didn’t say.’ I struggled to be sure. ‘He just said for you and I to meet him at midnight, no earlier, no later.’

It was midnight, and Wharton was nowhere to be seen. I wanted to run around the building calling his name, terrified
he waited somewhere else. I recalled Oliver Willis’ face, furious and petrified. I prayed he hadn’t followed from a distance; Wharton would smell him, for sure.

Cornhill was empty to the west and Leadenhall Street to the east, no one within a couple of minutes’ walk. I banged my fist against the thick stone wall. ‘He is late!’

‘He is a torturer, Harry.’ Dowling laid a hand upon my shoulder. ‘Now he tortures you. Let’s walk about the building and see what we can find.’

I sighed, ready to eat my own arm. ‘What if he comes here while we are away?’

‘Leave your jacket at the grille,’ Dowling suggested. ‘If he comes then he will guess we are searching for him.’

I wriggled out my jacket, pushed it through the iron lattice and tied it in a loose knot. ‘Let’s be quick then.’

We hurried east, along Leadenhall Street. A passage led down the side of the building, lit blue by the sickly moon. Halfway down we found another door, again locked. Just before reaching the end we came across a narrow alleyway, rustling and whispering, pitch black. We walked the alley blind, each feeling our way down one wall until we met at passage end. No door, no way in.

Houses nestled up close to the south wall, leaving but a small corridor, a dirt floor covered in rubbish and debris. Halfway down we found a third door, again thick, yet older and less well cared for, the wood beginning to twist and gnarl. I tried the handle without much hope, but it opened. Behind lay a naked yard, unkempt and sparse, shadowed about the edges.

We walked the perimeter, aware of the multitude of black windows staring down upon the small quadrangle. A dark porch beckoned at the far side, drawing us in, another open door enticing us further. We stepped into a long narrow room,
wooden partitions within stone walls creating hiding spaces.

I nudged up close to Dowling. ‘You think he means to kill us?’

‘Methinks it likely,’ he whispered.

We stood in silence, listening as hard as we could. A faint dripping sounded in the distance.

‘We need light,’ Dowling muttered.

We proceeded one step at a time, senses strained. Halfway down the market stood a tall archway, barely visible in the gloom, and beyond it a glimmer of light, tiny and distant. We scuttled towards the beacon like mice. It stayed small, dancing in the weak draught, the work of just a single candle. As we drew closer, so we saw the light shine from beyond a doorway, inside a small room. Then I heard a moan, a tight sound, someone in great pain, exhausted. It didn’t sound like Liz Willis.

Dowling craned his neck and peered inside. I watched his face light up in the weak, orange glow. Then he exhaled as if punched in the belly and clasped a hand to his gaping mouth. This was the butcher, the man who ran his hands over dead bodies like sides of meat. I knew I didn’t want to share his vision, knew also that I must.

Even now, in the middle of the night, I still see those milky blue eyes staring forward. Sightless or no, I couldn’t tell, but they didn’t move when I moved, nor did they seem focussed on anything. Then I saw his entrails fallen in a steaming pile, glistening and pink. Foulest of all, two black rats sat upon their haunches, gripping with tiny claws and gnawing with sharp yellow incisors. Morrison, the vanished gaoler, innards upon the floor, his organs revealed for all to see.

He hung by his hands, tied to thick iron rings fastened into the walls, staring and alive. Someone had pulled his hat hard down upon his head so it sat just above his eyes, making him
look ridiculous. His guts spilt over the top of his thick black belt and short-legged trousers. His shirt hung in tatters about his torso. The smell of blood and fouling meat ripened the air, stinking like a dog trapped beneath the wheel of a heavy cart, left to die upon the road. The candle burnt halfway down which said he had been here for two hours, open-mouthed and gutted.

The hide of his stomach flapped open like a cow’s. Pearly white skin on the outside, peppered with fine black hairs. Thick, red meat on the inside, so rich in blood it seeped and slowly dripped. His stomach sat snugly inside his body cavity, surrounded by sheets of glistening fat.

‘How long will he live?’ I asked, appalled.

Dowling wrung his hands, unable to bear the man’s misery. ‘He should be dead already.’

I walked as close to the body as I dared and placed my mouth quite close to his ear. ‘Can you hear me, Morrison?’

A short gurgle rumbled from the back of his throat.

I turned to Dowling. ‘Can you deliver him from his pain?’

‘It is not my place to kill a man,’ Dowling whispered hoarsely. ‘If it’s God’s will he lives, then live he will, until God decrees otherwise.’

‘If you kill him then it will have been God’s will that you do it,’ I replied. ‘You are the kind of fellow God would choose as his instrument.’

Dowling held his hands together and looked to the wooden beamed ceiling. ‘If it were so then I would feel compelled to do it, which I do not.’

Then I felt compelled. I picked up Morrison’s jacket from the floor and thrust it over his mouth and nose. He hardly attempted to draw breath, but stilled quickly, faint trembling subsiding into calm.

‘Now you should lower his eyelids,’ Dowling said quietly.

I shivered at the sight of his eyes, bulging like they would escape their sockets. ‘I don’t feel compelled to do that.’

The two rats watched from the safety of the wall, waiting patiently for us to leave.

Dowling stepped up to the corpse, happier now it was dead, and closed the eyes himself. ‘Only a devil could provoke such unholy mutilation.’

I agreed. ‘Yet Morrison guarded Wharton at Bedlam. Why would he kill him in such hideous manner?’

‘Because he is a devil,’ Dowling declared. ‘Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the Devil walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.’

I shook my head, baffled. ‘He is plagued. Why does he continue to kill?’

Dowling held his hand to his forehead. ‘An ungodly man diggeth up evil and in his lips there is as a burning fire.’

I stared at Morrison, big, round head, hat atop of it. The hat was curiously deformed. I held the peak of it with finger and thumb and gently tugged, which was not enough, so I pulled harder, seizing it with my whole hand to work it loose. There on top of Morrison’s head rested a stone, and beneath the stone a yellow letter.

‘God save us,’ Dowling exclaimed, taking the hat in his hand and rubbing his palm upon the dead man’s hair.

I held the letter to the candle. Liz’s death warrant perhaps.

I handed the letter to Dowling. ‘The Bishop’s man is Boddington or Perkins.’

Dowling scanned the words quickly, horror pulling his face out from all sides. ‘We must go.’ He looked to Morrison. ‘Yet we cannot leave him here.’

I thought of Liz. ‘The bearers will pick him up. We will tell them he has plague, but we must go.’

We stepped away, taking the candle with us. The last thing I saw was the two black rats trotting back to resume their feast.

‘St Olave’s, methinks.’ Dowling wiped an arm across his forehead as we ran. ‘It was once Lucy’s parish church. St Olave’s on Old Jewry, just a few minutes away.’

We ran west towards Poultry, then north up Old Jewry. St Olave’s was a modest church, with small graveyard, big door at front and little door at back. It did not take us long to discover both were locked. We walked about the building two more times yet could find no other entrance.

‘What test has he set us this time?’ I exclaimed, frustrated.

‘God in Heaven!’ Dowling kicked at the wall, savage. He punched himself on the chest. ‘There are three St Olave’s in London!’

‘Of course,’ I realised, feeling foolish.

‘Lord save us,’ he muttered. ‘The others are at Silver Street and Hart Street.’

‘Silver Street is closer,’ I calculated. Which it was, but the two churches could not have been further apart. Silver Street was west, close to Cripplegate, while Hart Street was east, not far from Aldgate. ‘It makes sense to go to the closest first,’ I thought aloud. ‘Yet my instinct tells me Hart Street.’

‘Why so?’ Dowling asked.

‘The church at Silver Street is as small as this one, and
Wharton has a preference for the grander stage,’ I replied. ‘Hart Street is at the end of Seething Lane, where Willis lives.’

Dowling set off brisk. I followed him, silent, attempting to cast from my mind a picture of Liz in the same predicament as Morrison. We arrived in ten minutes, immediately heartened by the sight of the door stood ajar.

‘More candles,’ Dowling remarked as we entered. We were surrounded by light, hundreds of dancing flames. We proceeded slowly down the centre aisle, footsteps loud against the flagstones.

‘Stop!’ a strangulated voice screeched. There at the pulpit stood William Perkins.

I took another step forward at which Perkins began to behave in an extraordinary manner. He began to recite Ecclesiastes and did so most extremely loud and fast.

‘All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness.’

He read the words almost in a scream, beseeching us with his eyes, though beseeching us to do what? Then I saw he was naked, at least the bit of him that we could see. His skin was white, like uncooked pastry, with irregular blotches of red. He continued reading from the Bible afront of him, calmer now, but reluctant to take his eye off us for more than a second or two.

‘Everyone we meet appears to be insane,’ I whispered.

Dowling squinted into the gloom. ‘He is anxious about something.’

I took another step forward, evoking the same passionate reaction from Perkins. He recited the text with such animated ferocity it was clear he would use other words if he could. When I took a step back his intensity diminished.

‘He does not move his hands,’ Dowling observed. His hands were placed either side of the lectern upon which he stood, but were just hidden from sight. At some point he would need to turn a page.

‘He does not wish us to approach him.’ I stepped to one side, determining to rest my body, parts of which were gone to sleep; but again he began to squeak and screech with eyes that begged.

‘So he would not have us approach him, nor be seated,’ I concluded. ‘Let us see if we are free to move back the way we came.’ When I stepped backwards his face shone a deep shade of crimson.

‘Look ye.’ Dowling pointed to the floor. ‘We are in a circle.’ It was not a circle, but a star, marked in red paint, the same colour that these days signified pestilence and sin.

I sidled towards the boundary of it, while trying to make it look as if I stood still. ‘How can he see from there whether we be in it or no?’

‘He is focussed on a marker,’ Dowling replied impatiently. ‘These three pews, for example, and on ensuring we do not stray from the aisle.’

Was someone about to drop some great weight upon us, or pour boiling oil over our heads? There was nothing above us other than the ceiling.

‘Perkins,’ I shouted.

He just kept reading. ‘I applied mine heart to know, and to search, and to seek out wisdom, and the reason of things, and to know the wickedness of folly, even of foolishness and madness.’

‘If you do not talk to us, then I will turn around and leave you here!’ I shouted again. It made no difference, though I thought I detected an extra note of despondency in his voice.

‘This is absurd,’ I complained, exasperated. ‘We have to find Liz.’

‘Ah!’ Dowling raised a finger many minutes later. ‘He recites Chapter Eight, Verse Fifteen again.’

We stood quiet a while listening to the cleric read. I squinted into the shadows, where someone might lurk with gun or bow. ‘Whatever he is scared of, where could it be?’

‘He would duck and bend his knees if it was from afar.’

I turned to the jabbering cleric once again. ‘Then there must be someone up there with him.’ I peered forward, searching for any sign of movement. ‘Perhaps we should run forward and attempt to reach him afore any might harm him. If someone is there, they will have to leave by one door or other, and the vestry door is shut.’

‘Though it is but a short distance from lectern to vestry and the killer may have unlocked the door.’ Dowling sounded doubtful.

‘Then one of us should run to the vestry and one to Perkins,’ I suggested.

‘Or we wait until morning.’

It was a grim prospect. ‘In which case the killer might strike at any time while we be asleep and Liz might die.’

‘If we rush forward, which I know is your preference, we must rush quick,’ Dowling whispered.

‘Then I will rush towards Perkins and you run to the vestry door.’

‘Nay.’ Dowling shook his head. ‘I will go to Perkins.’