Plague (15 page)

“It’s not what you think,” replied Sarah, freeing her arm. “I’m looking for my, for a man. His name’s John Chalker.”

“I don’t give a floozie’s fuck who you’re lookin’ for. You get out now.” She jabbed a finger into Sarah’s breast. “Get out, or I’ll—” Behind her, the shouting had built to a crescendo. The bell rang, the whore turned to it—and Sarah slipped fast away, disappearing into the shadows against the warehouse walls. She could still see into the cockpit, and searched the benches she had not been able to scan before.

In the arena, two birds leaped high, wings beating, feet lashing, candlelight glimmering on the spurs attached to their ankles. John had trained cocks; she had seen the equipment lying about. The curved blades, four inches in length, were sharpened to a razor’s
edge. If the bird struck right, it would cut off an opponent’s leg. Or worse.

As here. To screams of delight and despair, both cocks fell to the sand. One bird was up in a moment, crowing, head raised, wings flapping. The other was squat on the sand, blinking at its own severed wing.

Immediately the benches cleared, as the gamblers retired to the wider area to consider the printed list of combatants, check odds, drink—and some to seek other pleasures. Sarah could see the women among the men, their brighter colours like a cock’s comb.

She shut her eyes, leaned against the back wall—and just as she touched the stone, a feeling came, a stab in her chest painful enough to make her clutch herself there. “Is that you, John?” she murmured. “Are you near, my love?”

She heard a voice then, one she recognized. Not her husband’s.

“There she is!” said the whore who’d noticed her earlier. “That’s the bitch tryin’ to cozen us.”

A hand closed over Sarah’s arm, pulled her out of the gloom. A man looked down, sweat shining in candlelight on his pudgy, pockmarked face. “You were correct, my Lizzie,” he said. “She’s a pretty one, all right.” Fingers twisted into her flesh, yanking her face nearer to his, cheap whisky wafting with his next words. “A prime pullet, sure. Not a pox mark on her.” He said this to two men just behind him, who muttered agreements. The man took his lower lip between stained teeth, appraising her. “You could do well here, my Lizzie. But you’d need protection. No lady works alone.”

“What you doin’, George? I brung ya to warn ’er off, not recruit ’er. Let me.”

Without releasing Sarah, barely glancing, the man backhanded the whore across her face. “You go back to work now,” he spat. “I
want a crown from you tonight before you take one penny ’ome to your brats.”

The whore slunk away. “Don’t worry about her, my Lizzie,” he said, “I’ll protect you from ’er and all.”

Sarah jerked her arm from his grasp. “You have mistook me, sir,” she said, stepping away.

He caught her elbow, wrenched her back. “Everything’s for sale here, my Lizzie,” he said, his voice harder. “Everything and everyone. But I’ll need to check your qualities. My customers demand it. You’re pretty enough to be a boy under all that cloth.” He grinned. “And they pays less for a boy.”

She’d known where she was coming, the risk of it. But she did not take the risk unprepared. She’d grown up on these streets and escaped worse than him. So she struck fast.

He looked down, at the line of red oozing across his knuckles. “She’s cut me! Bitch has cut me!”

Sarah palmed her knife, tried to move away. But one of the cronies had stepped around, and he grabbed, pinning her. The man she’d cut bent, prised the weapon from her grasp, held it up. “A perfect little blade,” he hissed, then nodded at the man who held her. “Take her in the back. No one cuts Gentle George and gets away with it.”

Wrapping arms around her mouth and chest, they began to drag her toward a dark corner.

“Though someone must. Get away with it. Now and again.”

Sarah had heard the voice before but could not place it. As she turned her head to the sound, she saw a flash of metal, felt something pass her ear, some whoosh of air, followed by a grunt as the man who held her let go of her mouth, released the arm around her chest. She stumbled forward, glanced up in time to see Captain
Coke, his sword drawn fully now. Realizing that earlier he must have drawn it just enough to drive its pommel into her captor’s skull.

That man was down, groaning in the rushes; the other had vanished. Only Gentle George stood there, sucking his bleeding hand, his other groping his belt, at Sarah’s knife thrust in there. But just as he touched it, the captain’s sword rose and stopped a finger’s width before his eye. Could the man see, she wondered, even in this gloom, how the steel tip wavered not at all?

“Now, why would you want to do that, sir, when the birds are about to have at it?”

The bell had rung. The man’s hand hovered, then moved slowly away from the weapon. He took a step backward. “We’ll meet again, my Lizzie,” he said.

“I would not hope for that,” Sarah replied, jerking her blade from his belt, “for next time I might take more than a little blood.”

He glared at them both, then turned swiftly about and made for the tumult.

“Come, Mrs. Chalker.” Coke sheathed his sword and nodded toward the entrance. When Sarah hesitated, he added, “Your husband is not here. I searched for some time before I noted your arrival. Please. Else Gentle George might muster both courage and friends.”

She slipped the knife up her sleeve. “You have been kind, sir. I would appreciate your kindness still.”

“Well.” He nodded again to the entrance. They got to it just as the hand bell ceased ringing, as the last great shout for bets sounded, followed hard by the shriek of fighting birds.

The gates of the warehouse closed behind them, shutting out some of its noise. A light rain had begun, together with a fitful wind, bringing a slight sweetness to the streets. She breathed it in, trying to clear her nose of the stench of the pit and the air. With all
that had happened within, she felt giddy. She swayed into Coke. “I am sorry, sir,” she said.

He reached up and held her. “How long is it since you have eaten, madam? How long since you truly slept?”

“I do not recall either with any clarity.”

“Then let me suggest that you do both straightaway. Leave me alone this night to inquire, to explore certain other places where a man can easier go
alone
.”

She heard the emphasis he gave to the word. Like a player, she thought. “You are right, sir,” she said, standing upright, stepping away from his arms. “I need a little food, a little sleep, before I resume the search. Both can be had at my lodgings.”

“I will escort you there.”

“That will not be necessary. It is not far and—” she looked around “—we grew up on these streets, John Chalker and I. I do not fear them. And if you are willing to keep to the task?” She hesitated, then added, “I sensed him, sir. Before. In there. I feel he is somewhere near.”

“Then I will seek him here.”

“Thank you, sir. Well then, good night and good fortune.” She started to go, realizing just how exhausted she was. Then a thought turned her back to him. “I am curious, Captain, as to why you undertake this. You are a gentleman and this—” she glanced around “—this cannot be your world.”

“They might surprise you, madam, the worlds I inhabit. As to why?” He ran finger and thumb over his moustache. “Well, Lucy is as dear to me as you are to her. So—” he coughed “—so there we have it.”

“Do we?” She smiled. “Then come to me at any hour, Captain. With news, I hope.”

“As do I. And please, next time we meet, do call me William.”

He removed his wide-brimmed hat and bowed in that old-fashioned style. Like something off the stage, she thought again, as she walked away.

He stood with hat in hand, enjoying the rain on his face, which ceased even as he did so, though the gusty wind continued. He watched her till the lane’s bend took her. Why, indeed, was he helping her? Was it her eyes, their beauty reaffirmed even in the darkness of a St. Giles street? No. A fool he might be, but a romantic fool he was not. Was it that he wanted something to do while he waited for further word from the Jew as to the value of his gems? More likely. After the gunshot, and the news that one of the thief-takers was that close, the sensible thing would have been to keep to the room in the Aldgate tavern after he’d accomplished his mission for Lucy. Yet he knew his nature; he could not lie low. Though Dickon was surprisingly good at Gleek or Ombre, they were not games that two could play for long. And though the boy always had coins about him, it never took more than an hour for Coke to win them all before he gave them back.

“She’s a viper, that one. Always was. Gentle George was lucky to lose only a little blood.”

Coke turned. A large man was leaning against one doorpost of the cockpit in a jumble of attire: two doublets, one atop the other; some wide breeches held up with rope; boots with soles that yawned. Strangely, strapped to those was a shiny pair of iron plattens to lift him above St. Giles’ cobbled mire. They made him a good head taller. His face, under his cloth cap, was a red beacon even in the poor light. “You know her, sir?”

“Know ’er? I’ve ’ad ’er!” He let out a loud belch. “Many did, before Chalker reserved her special for ’isself.” He leaned, spat, wiped what he’d failed to expel into his beard. “Chalker! Tight-pursed as a Jew. Can you believe it? After all these years he gives me a shillin’ at our reunion. A shillin’!” He looked to spit again, thought better of it. “When Chalker and Clancy was friends from this ’igh up!”

He held his hand at knee height. But the movement unbalanced him on his plattens and he tottered forward, his other hand reaching out to steady himself on Coke’s shoulder. The captain inhaled the man’s mix of scents. Cheap liquor predominated. Casually Coke asked, “Was this reunion recent, Mr. Clancy?”

The eyes narrowed. “Who told you my name?”

“You did. You said this woman’s husband and you were friends.”

“Oh, right.” His beard rasped as he scratched it. “What’s it to you when I last saw Chalker? Or should I say, what’s it
worth
to you?”

Coke pulled out two coins. “Shall I match his shilling and make of it a pair?”

“Make of it a threesome and I’ll tell you what I know.”

“You can say where he is?”

“Mebbe.” Clancy stared a moment, then shook his head. “Nah, I don’t. But I can tell you the hole he went into, not five days since.”

Five days was a long time. But it was the only sighting Coke had heard of, and after his wife had last seen him. “I will give you these for that information. No more.”

“All right.” Clancy snatched the coins and shoved them in the folds of his mismatched clothing. Then he stood tall and beamed. “He went around that corner. I thought it odd, because the lane leads nowhere but to Carrier Court, the filthiest tenement in St. Giles. Only one way out, the same he went in, but he never come back, though I watched a few hours, on account of how he said he’d buy me a drink. Never came back.” He wiped his streaming nose. “Strange, though, I was down in the cockpit and I thought I heard him whisperin’ me name, two days since.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Maybe he was callin’ his whore. Must have one down there. Well, you would, if you was married to St. Sarah the Viperous.”

“I thought you said you’d had her.”

The bigger man shrugged. “Yeah, well, ’twas a long time ago.”

It would not take much to thrash the drunkard for his insults—and take back his two shillings. But a fight always drew a crowd and would mean delay. He would act immediately on this small piece of information.

So he walked away. Behind him, Clancy mumbled something, but when Coke glanced back, the doors of the cockpit were banging shut again. The two shillings would be on a bird in moments.

He entered into the alley and even more gloom. Doorways on either side showed nothing but empty, foul-smelling and roofless rooms.

He nearly missed the entrance to Carrier Court. Only detected it by sound, so in shadow was it. Voices turned him. Children’s.

He felt the outlines of an archway, walked through it. From darkness he emerged into the relative brightness of a large courtyard
whose width meant that the near-full moon, emerged from the driven clouds, shone here.

The moonshine lit a well at the courtyard’s centre. Children danced around it, seven or eight of them, boys and girls, singing a rhyme as they twirled:

On the last word, they let go of each other’s hands and dropped to the ground, where they all made sounds like a mewling baby. Then one, the smallest girl there, cried, “Again! Faster! Faster!” and they were all up, linked, moving the other way, faster indeed, chanting the same verse, till they dropped again.

More laughs, more shrieks. But whether he moved or moonlight touched him, someone saw. “The devil comes to take us!” screeched that same small girl, and though he came forward with arms raised in peace, every child disappeared in seconds into the dark of stairwells and doorways, and silence swallowed their screams.

He walked twice around the perimeter of the courtyard, calling softly. None answered. He began his third circuit—and noticed it. Just another ooze among the many there. But when he knelt, touched, then smelled his fingertips, he recognized it.

Blood. It was like an arrow, pointing into the deeper darkness of one stairwell. He took a step toward it and straightaway that distinct iron tang deepened. There were other smells mixed in, none of them pleasant—and exactly like the smell of the coach in Finchley.

He drew his cloak across his face, his mouth flooding with spit. It could be a dog, he thought, or a pig, fresh butchered by the dwellers of Carrier Court. It could be … someone else. Whatever the stench, surely its source did not have to be John Chalker?

He had to find out, for Sarah’s sake; find out now. Yet he realized, with all the relief of delay, it was foolish to try and find out in the dark.