Plague (38 page)

“There, there,” she said, sitting again. Her tears flowed then, even if her milk could not.

Then she heard it—knocking on the front door, muffled shouting; finally, the turning of a lock.

She had so given up the hope of it that her tiredness almost made her forget what she’d prepared. She rose, removing the boy from her breast, lifting him to her shoulder, patting his back until he belched. Then she went to the privy closet, a door behind and to the side of the bed. The breast, even without milk, had lulled him. His eyes fluttered and closed as she laid him in a basin she had lined with ripped blankets and a pillow.

“Sleep, child,” she whispered. “Sleep awhile.”

As she tucked herself into her blouse, she heard the front door open.

Garnthorpe put a hand to the sticky wetness at his side and then wiped his fingers on the door before knocking loud. But Maggs did not respond to that, nor to his shouts. Fortunately he had a key, though at first it did not want to fit. When at last it did, he pushed open the door. “Maggs!” he called, but received no reply.

The door to the parlour was ajar, a lantern burning within. “Sarah,” he said, moving toward the room, “where are my servants? Have they negl—”

He stopped on the threshold. At first he thought no one was in the room, for the two chairs were empty. Until he glanced down and saw the bare feet on a mattress on the floor. There was something about the colour of them that he did not like.

“Sarah?”

He entered the room, bent to the mattress. Yet it was not Mrs. Chalker upon it but Mrs. Absolute, the harlot he’d lured back from the country to influence her friend. He could tell that she would influence no more, for clearly she was dead. A closer glance told him what had killed her.

His eyes filmed as he moved back to lean against the wall. Someone else was meant to die this day. Someone who was meant to hold a jewel in their mouth.

“The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald.”

He had an emerald in his pocket. He pulled it out. Candle flame moved in its facets, making him dizzy again.

Was it for
her
mouth? This earl’s whore?

Death stank. He shut the door on it. “Sarah?” he cried.

Her voice came softly from above. “Up here.”

Garnthorpe placed a foot upon the stair.

Sarah heard each footfall. She’d moved the chair to face the door, four steps away. She sat in it now.

She was surprised at him, his coarse clothes, the stained apron. No plain wig on his head, just grey stubble. “You bleed, Roland,” she said.

Garnthorpe paused in the doorway. He touched his hand to his side, brought it away. “I am sorry for the state of my clothes, Sarah. Sorry too that I have not had the opportunity to have the banns read a second time. But as you said, love does not need to wait. And if I could not bring you a ring as my pledge, still I have brought you … this.”

He held out his swollen right hand. The fingers would not open. “Come closer,” she said. “I also have something for you.”

What gift could she give him? Only her love, promised in that first time they’d looked into each other’s eyes, in her arms lifting to him now. He took a step into the room.

She was so tired. So she used both hands to raise the pistol Maggs had forgotten when he fled.

The explosion was loud and her first thought, as the man was lifted from his feet and thrown out of the room to crash against the banister, was that the noise would wake John Edward. But the babe did not cry out, not yet anyway.

Garnthorpe had his legs before him, his back against the railing, his eyes open. As she drew nearer, he gazed up at her over the ruin of his chest. She had loaded with two balls, as her husband had once taught her to do, since she knew she would not need much range.

His eyes were as startled as a baby’s. He was trying to speak. “What is it?” she said. “What?”

He stretched out an arm. His swollen fingers unfurled. On the palm of his hand was an emerald.

She knelt, took it. “I thank you, my lord. But I told you once before, I cannot accept jewels from you. So you keep it. Keep it for John Chalker.” She pushed the stone into his mouth. “Choke on that.”

He was blown; he had to admit it. This night’s hot actions at Whitehall had taken what remained of his jail-diminished strength. If not for Dickon urging him on, he might have curled up on some comfortable cobbles and given up.

Yet even as he thought it, Coke knew it to be untrue. There could be no rest until Mrs. Chalker was free. Afterwards … Well, he suspected that was still a dream: the real murderer remained at large,
a price still lay on the Monstrous Cock’s head and God only knew what had happened to Pitman.

Their quarry had escaped them. Coke had followed him close, but the man had hired a wherryman at Essex House Stairs and soon put distance between them. The captain knew he was not oarsman enough to shoot the race under London Bridge even when rested. They’d docked, headed to the streets. A hackney carriage heading to his home stable near the Dyers Hall had taken them most of the way for the last shilling he possessed but would take them no farther without more coin. Hence this stumbling run along Thames Street. He could only thank providence for Dickon’s watch this past week. The boy knew exactly where he was going and only paused to let his captain catch up at every corner.

Finally they were in St. Dunstan’s Churchyard, slipping on cobbles made slick by sudden summer rain. “Close, lad?” inquired Coke, pausing to lean on a gravestone, flowers scattered before it.

“C-close,” replied the boy, gesturing him impatiently on.

When they were before the house, tiredness loosed its hold. The front door was open, and through it came a long, shrill wail. Drawing his sword, the captain ran in, Dickon a step behind. Off the hall all the doors were shut. The strange cry came again, from up the stairs. He climbed them two at a time, Dickon at his heels.

A man was sitting on the landing, his back against the railing. Coke thrust his sword before him—but he had no need of it. For the man he’d stabbed and then pursued on the Thames was dead. The glaze of his open eyes, the hole torn in his chest, showed that.

The cry that had drawn him had ceased as he’d mounted the stairs. He listened for it and heard instead a gurgling. It came from the room the dead man faced. The door was half closed. Bidding
Dickon to silence with a gesture, he used his sword to push open the door, and peered in.

He knew that when exhausted on battlefields, sea voyages, in siege works, he was prone to see things, strange things, things that were not necessarily there. So it took a moment to believe the sight before him: Mrs. Chalker, asleep on the end of a ravaged bed, a baby near a single exposed breast. And it was the baby who looked at Coke now, at Dickon behind him, then let out another cry.

Coke was so shocked that he did not move.

Sarah awoke, saw them. She made no sound, just rose, gracefully tucked away her breast, picked up the child, handed him to Dickon and then moved into Coke’s arms.

“How?” he asked. “Who?”

“No words, Captain. Not yet, I beg you.”

There were few orders in his life he’d obeyed so happily. He held her for the longest time, while the baby quieted with the faces Dickon was pulling at him. Only when the shuddering at his chest eased did Coke lean back, lift her teary face and, just before he kissed her, say, “And I beg you, madam. Call me William.”

Seven months later—March 22, 1666

“Off out, Pitman?”

“Off out, my love. But not quite yet. I must wait.”

“For what?”

“For you, dearest chuck, to accompany me. Wear your best—the new dress we just bought.”

“I told you before. It is too fancy, especially for chapel. Whatever were you thinking of, you great lummox? I’m taking it back in the morning. I’ll have a new sideboard for the price.”

“I was thinking, love, how the green so suited your eyes.”

“Go on with you. I’ve a mind to—Pitman! What is it that
you
are wearing?”

“My new coat. Do you like it?”

“Sure that’s the table right there to go with my new sideboard! The duke has been generous, but his purse is not bottomless. And you said you would soon be giving up his allowance.”

“I feel it wrong to keep accepting his money, since I am quite recovered.”

“All the more reason to return this finery. We must cut our cloth, Pitman. We must cut our cloth!”

“And will, my sweet. Tomorrow. Tonight you will accompany me.”

“Well, I have to say, you do look ’andsome. Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

“Truly, Mr. Etherege, Mr. Dryden, one of you must set it down,” said King Charles. “ ’Twould be the making of either of you.”

The two playwrights looked at each other dubiously. Etherege coughed. “It does not sound like a comedy, Sire.”

“A comedy? No, indeed. A great drama, like the one we are in the middle of tonight. An epic tale, full of all ranks from lords to butchers. Yet now I bethink me—” the king held out his glass, which was swiftly refilled “—it does have its comic moments. A prince of the blood royal surprised in the privy with his breeches around his knees. Ain’t that so, Jamie?”

“Sir, please,” replied the Duke of York. “I do not find any humour in the memory. I doubt you would if it had been you with an assassin’s blade so near your throat.”

“Pshaw! I am still certain that whatever the state of my dress I would have come up with a better line than ‘Guards! Guards!’ That was his line, wasn’t it, Mr. Pitman?”

“Begging Your Majesty’s favour, that’s Pitman, plain Pitman, Sire, no ‘Mr.’ As to His Royal Highness’s words or clothing, I recall nothing but nobility from him in either.”

The king threw back his head and roared. “You could teach my courtiers something in manners, Pitman, and in tact. Though you are something of my brother’s man these days, are you not? Quite
right too. The beating his guards inflicted upon you before he persuaded them you were his saviour deserves much recompense. Are you near recovered?”

“Quite near, Sire.”

“And is this your wife?”

“It is, Sire.”

“May I call her
Mrs
. Pitman, at least? Madam, may I say the simple beauty of both you and your dress show the grand ladies who hover about me to be the painted harlots they are.” Fans fluttered nearby at that, and even more so when the king raised a curtsying Bettina and kissed her hand. “Do you enjoy the theatre, madam?”

“It is my first time, Sire, and faith, I am surprised, but I do.”

“Do you, indeed? It’s amusing enough, I suppose. A distraction. Though I would the matter of this play had more import. More currency.” He turned back to the playwrights. “After these times we have lived through, do we not require something with more heart?” He swigged. “Sirrahs, truly, the tale these people could tell you. Of murders, of madness, of threats against the state by a nobleman who was also a damned Fifth Monarchist.”

“The fanatics have already been explored upon the stage, Sire,” said Etherege. “Cowley did it in his
Cutter of Coleman Street
.”

“Another damnable comedy!” exclaimed the king. “I assure you, this is serious. These Saints, for all we may laugh and think them Bedlamites,
are
serious. They believe the end of the world is here. Perhaps they are right. They certainly strive to bring it on.” He looked back at his courtiers and his eyes narrowed. “I know. The Earl of Rochester should take them on.”

“I?” John Wilmot shrugged, his lower lip drooping. “What have I to do with such matters?”

“Oh, stop sulking, Johnnie. Three months in the Tower and three exiled to the country have made you a better man. You should be grateful to me. The time away removed your mind from drinking, your fingers from whores, and put them to poetry, while giving you matter to be poetic about. Is that not your true calling?”

“My true calling, sir, is life.” The earl gave a thin smile. “As you shall see.”

“Well, I consider myself forewarned.” Charles turned back. “Pitman, what say you? How dangerous are these fanatics? These self-proclaimed Saints?”

Into Pitman’s mind, memories came: a lady with a single stab wound in the heart; guts on a pulpit; a jewel gleaming in a tongueless mouth. “I say they are very dangerous, Sire.”

“I agree. And I would talk more on that later, if you will.”

“Please, to your seats. Lords, ladies, honours all.” Thomas Betterton stood upon the stairs that led to the stage, looking down into the common area. “I beg you, Sire. No one will sit until you do. The play begins again.”

“It does indeed,” said the king, still eyeing Pitman. Then he set down his glass. “So let us to it.”

Court and courtiers, orange girls, vizards and actors all made for their places. Only Pitman did not move, despite Bettina’s eager tugging, for he was looking at the couple only now coming forward from the shadowed corner of the room. “Mrs. Chalker. Captain. The king will be sorry to have missed you.”

“And not I him,” replied Coke. “Whenever he sees me, he gives me coins. To recompense me, he says, for that one bottle of Rhenish I shared with him on the eve of Worcester. Christ’s bones, I feel like one of his footmen.”

“But you accept the money nonetheless,” Sarah said.

“Oh, I accept it. A man must live, since the king’s pardon for past crimes—conditional on those crimes never being repeated—has taken away me livelihood.” He sighed. “Yet, hang me for a slave, I’d feel better taking his money with a gun at his belly.”

“He recompenses you for more than Rhenish—you know that,” Sarah said. “And he has offered to recompense you still more. With employment. You must tell Pitman.” She squeezed his arm, then turned to Mrs. Pitman. “My dear, where did you get that lovely dress?” She reached for Bettina’s hand, and the two women went off a little ways. The men watched them. “So Mrs. Chalker does not play?” asked Pitman.

“No. She returned from Cornwall only yesterday, and since the ban on gatherings and the playhouse was lifted just two days before, Betterton had already assigned all roles in this new piece.” He glanced to the floor above, through which the musicians’ tuning could be heard. “I do not think she minds sitting out. Cornwall, parting with John Edward, was hard.”