Plague Child (15 page)

‘I was concerned you might be foolish, Mr Tom, but now you know what is at stake you see the world a little differently, eh?’

The brief fire in Eaton’s eyes flickered out. He grinned. ‘His lordship saw what might happen. He gave strict instructions to Black you two were to be kept apart. You can thank me for that.’

‘I can just see his lordship’s face,’ Turville said.

‘Aye!’

‘The daughter of a
printer!
’

They laughed and Eaton clapped me on my back. I sprang up. I shoved my chair at Turville, catching him in his fat stomach. He gasped and staggered backwards into the shelves. He bounced from them to grab me, but a heavy ledger slid from the top shelf on to his head. As he reeled groggily I ran past him, but Eaton’s outstretched arms were waiting to clutch me. I vaulted on to the desk, kicking at him as he tried to pull me down. He gave a grunt of pain as, with another leap, I made it to the door, slamming it shut after me.

‘Gibson!’ he yelled.

Lean-muscled, relaxed, Gibson kept his eyes focused steadily on me. I hesitated. Perhaps a window. There was one across the landing, but I would never get it open in time. Gibson read my hesitation and grinned up at me. Behind me, Eaton was cursing as he pulled open the study door. I ran down halfway down the stairs then jumped, curling my arms round my face, hitting Gibson like a ball from a cannon. Both of us sprawled there dazed, Eaton and Turville gazing down on us. At the end of the passage to the back, Jane, who was carrying a pitcher, stared in amazement.

In a better state than Gibson, for his head had struck the tiled floor, I scrambled up, but he grabbed my leg. Another moment and I would have been down, but there was a thud. A grunt. The tiles around me were shattered with broken pottery. A shower of water splashed over me. My leg was released and I pulled myself up just in time to avoid Gibson, who gave me a bewildered stare, eyes glazing. Beyond him, a look of sheer amazement on her face at what she had done, was Jane, holding the handle of the broken pitcher in her hand. I stood there watching Gibson, as he slowly keeled over, falling into a pool of water and shards of pottery. Jane reacted first, beckoning me to follow her down the passage. Another passage bent off to the right. The door at the end of it was open to the yard, from which she had collected the water.

I turned to plead with her to go with me, but hearing the others running down the passageway she gave me a push and gestured violently for me to flee.

Chapter 16

Blind rage drove my feet. Rage at my stupidity turned into rage against Anne. That she could even think about marrying anyone else was bad enough, but my old enemy George . . .

When I had struck George with his composing stick I wished I had killed him. There must have been murder in my face as I ran past Smithfield, for people pressed against the wall to avoid me.

Passing Half Moon Court I remembered something Anne had told me and turned towards the house. There was one chance. The door was locked but I knew the stone under which the key was hidden. I stopped. The table was laid with the wedding feast: game pie, a whole carp, a goose on a spit, fat dripping from it, conserves of fruit and pitchers of beer and wine. I ran into the print shop.

‘Sa-rah?’ Mr Black called from upstairs. ‘That . . . you?’

So he was still too ill to go to the service. Mixed with guilt for being a cause of his illness was a surge of hope that my plan might work.

I ran into the print shop. Machinery gleamed; frame, quoins and hammer were neatly placed by the polished stone, ready for the next imposition. Whatever else I might say about George, his work was of the highest standard. The title of a pile of tracts brought back to me George’s sour, doom-laden voice:
The Sinner’s Seven Steps to Hell.
The sinner in me knew he would not make much money from that. It would scarcely pay for the paper. Yet there was an air of prosperity about the whole shop, to say nothing of the wedding feast.

I went into the paper store. There I found the source of that prosperity: a pile of Royalist tracts, baled up and ready to deliver. I ripped open a bale and took one:
Fighte for the King’s Peace.
The imprint claimed it had been printed at the White Horse, Oxford, the King’s headquarters. I could not believe, as Anne had told me, that Mr Black knew about this.

But it was easy to believe, when I ran upstairs, that he scarcely knew about anything. He still thought I was Sarah, for he was half sprawled out of bed, groping for a quill he had dropped. Papers were scattered round the bed. He had been struggling to sign his name again, but had lost his fine Italian hand and his signature was reduced to a spidery scrawl.

‘S-arah, lift . . .’

I put my hands under his arms and tried to lift him. My bad arm cried out and he slipped even further out of the bed. I gave him another heave. If he had been his old weight, I would never have managed it, but the crackly skin seemed to slip over his bones as I pulled him against the pillows. He stared at me, or at least half of him did. Half, the right half, seemed the same Mr Black. The same dark eye fixed at me sternly, half of the lips quivering as if to issue an order. His left cheek was a frozen whirlpool of flesh, the eye half shut, immobile.

I covered my face. I could not bear to see what I had done. If I had not fought with him that day and run away this would not have happened. I could see now why Anne had sworn to him not to see me again.

‘C-closer.’

The words, or half words, were so mangled and slurred it was a moment before I deciphered them. I was afraid to go closer. He was the embodiment of my sin, a monster whom I could only barely look at through the chinks between my fingers.

‘’oser!’

An angry, bitter snarl. It must have contained some remnants of the old Mr Black for, still sitting, I shuffled reluctantly, obediently along the bed towards him, still with my hands before my face.

‘Let . . . see you.’

I flinched as I glimpsed his right hand curving towards me, but did not pull my head away, fully expecting a blow, indeed suddenly desiring my old punishment. Instead, his hand touched my hand, prising my fingers from my face. His touch was so gentle, so unexpected, and in such contrast to the scowl permanently locked in his face, that I burst into tears.

‘Oh, sir, forgive me, forgive me for what I have done!’

To my astonishment the man I had always known as unyieldingly hard and obdurate put his arms round me, or, to be more accurate, his good arm.

‘Should . . . told . . . you.’ There was a long, agonising gap between the words, during which both parts of his face seemed to be fighting with one another. But the stern, judgemental side was frozen, while the side which had smiled at me after we had put the Grand Remonstrance together, and which I had really only discovered just before I had run away, seemed to have been set free. His right eye glowed with the animation of both while he fought to move his lips into what I realised was a smile. ‘Should . . . told . . . you . . . many . . . things . . . many . . .’ He stopped, exhausted.

‘She must not marry George, sir!’ I said.

‘She . . . not . . . for . . . you,’ he managed.

‘I – I – love her, sir.’

‘George . . . good . . . man,’ he said.

Nothing had changed after all. I felt anger boiling up inside me, just as it had when they had tried to beat me into the shape they wanted me to be. ‘I never thought George would convert you to the King’s cause,’ I said bitterly.

‘King’s . . .?’

I held up the pamphlet. He slowly began to read it, then dropped it, his face reddening. I feared he was going to have another fit.

‘She must not marry George, sir,’ I pleaded. ‘If you refuse your permission, it can be stopped, even now!’

The church bells ceased ringing. In the penetrating silence his mouth quivered open, then closed.

‘Do you refuse your permission? Mr Black?’

He stared at me, his mouth quivering, closing. I picked up a sheet of paper from the floor and a quill, and dipped it in the ink.

Chapter 17

I ran past the memorial where she had stung herself on nettles that day. Stumbled on the church steps. Sprawled on the porch. Caught the words of the minister resonating: ‘. . . in sickness and in health, forsaking all other . . .’ I scrambled up, panic stricken that she was about to say ‘I will’, and ran into the church.

‘I will.’

It was George speaking, a George with his face scrubbed till it gleamed, George who even on this joyous occasion was encased in a black doublet and breeches and sent the words rolling round the church with a sense of doom. Anne’s simple, unadorned white dress made the contrast between them even starker.

The minister, Mr Tooley, turned to her. ‘Anne, wilt thou have this man to be thy wedded husband, to live together, after God’s ordinance –’

‘She won’t!’ I shouted. ‘I mean, she can’t – her father forbids it!’

For the second time, the first being when I appeared in Turville’s study, I saw the power of being a gentleman, or, at least, looking like one. Even a rich merchant like Benyon hesitated to interfere, particularly when he heard me tell Mr Tooley about Mr Black’s anger at George printing seditious material. Parliament now ruled the City, and these were serious charges. Benyon sent one of his servants scuttling from the church. The congregation was in uproar. Mr Tooley shouted: ‘This is a house of God, not a playhouse!’ as he took me into the vestry, with George, Anne and Mrs Black.

Anne refused to listen to me. Every time I opened my mouth she cut in with: ‘You broke your promise.’

‘I had to! You cannot marry him – he has been cheating your father!’

‘You broke your promise never to see me again.’ Tears filled her eyes. ‘You promised, you promised!’

‘I’ve seen your father.’

‘My father! You’ve seen my father? You’ll kill him!’

She covered her face with her hands.

‘He’s forbidden the wedding!’ I cried. ‘Forbidden?’ She took her hands from her face and looked wildly at me.

In the drab confines of that vestry, with its hanging black robes and notes of parish meetings, George recovered himself. ‘How can it be true?’ His voice throbbed with indignation. ‘Did we not talk to him before we left? Did he not bless us?’

‘Is this true, my child?’ said Mr Tooley sternly.

Anne twisted her thin fingers together until I thought they would break. ‘Yes. Yes. As much as he could speak.’ Her mother came over to put her arm round her, but she thrust her away and rounded on me. ‘Why do I keep believing you? I can’t believe a word you say. You promised not to see me again and now – now – today of all days –!’

She broke down in tears and her mother took her to a bench in the corner. I could not help trying to go to her, but Mr Tooley grabbed me on one side and George on the other. ‘Worse than a thief is a liar, Mr Tooley, for he steals the truth from your mouth,’ George said.

His quoting from his favourite Ecclesiasticus brought back all the sanctimonious homilies he had beaten into me over the years, which bruised and enraged me far more than his composing stick. I struggled to control my anger as I drew a piece of paper from my pocket. ‘I have proof.’

George tried to take it, but Mr Tooley held out his hand and I gave it to him. He read it out. ‘“I withdraw consent for the marriage of my daughter, Anne Black, to George Sawyer.” It is signed Robert Black.’ He frowned. ‘Why would he do that? At this late hour?’

I explained again about the pamphlets supporting the King that I had found. George hotly denied any such printing.

‘What has been going on, Mother?’ Anne said, with a sudden show of spirit.

‘Nothing!’ Mrs Black cried, but looked increasingly uncomfortable. ‘I have thought of nothing but you, of seeing you safe.’

George took the piece of paper. ‘The apprentice has written this! For that is what he is, in spite of his stolen clothes. Thanks to him, poor Mr Black is unable to write.’

‘He can!’ Anne broke in. ‘Let me see –’

‘There is no point in you looking at it, child,’ her mother said. ‘No more than me.’

‘Aye,’ George echoed. ‘Praise the Lord you cannot read such a foul deceit.’

‘I can read!’ Anne cried, then her voice faltered. ‘A little. And I have been learning to write.’

‘After I forbade it?’ George said, in a freezing tone.

She stared at the floor. Mr Tooley looked away. It was as though they were married already, and whatever the minister thought, he would not come between husband and wife. He used to talk in his sermons of the virtues of an obedient wife, who knew enough reading and writing to perform her household tasks, but not enough to read the Bible, which was dangerous, for it needed a man to interpret it. I began to sense what had been happening at Half Moon Court since I had left; George taking control of business and Mrs Black, fearful of the future, only too compliant in letting him do so. Anne, left with much of the nursing of her sick father, seemed to have developed a deeper relationship with him than they were aware of.

‘N-not learning to write as such,’ she stammered. ‘But my father has been learning again like a child and I, I have picked up things. That is all.’

‘Leave us,’ George said, scarcely less dismissive of her than of me when I had been an apprentice. Anger boiled up in me when she quietly returned to her mother. Her steps were slow and controlled. I could not believe this was the same person who had laughed at Gloomy George with me only two months ago.

‘Wait –’ Mr Tooley showed her the piece of paper ‘– is this Mr Black’s hand?’

‘I wrote what he wished to say and he signed it,’ I said. ‘After I showed him the proof of the pamphlet George is secretly printing for the King’s party.’

‘There is no such pamphlet!’ George said. He looked at Mrs Black. ‘Is there?’

‘I have not seen one,’ she replied.

‘Is this Mr Black’s signature, Anne? In his present state?’ Mr Tooley asked.

‘It is like . . .’ She hesitated, then whispered: ‘I do not know.’

‘Tom!’ Mr Tooley fired the question at me like a ball from a musket, so abruptly I jumped. ‘Did Mr Black sign this?’

‘It is what he said to me.’

‘Answer the question! You are in church, God’s court, which is higher than any court of law.’

It was suddenly silent outside the vestry room, except for whispering and shuffling, which sounded like the rats creeping towards me in the cellar, in my recurrent nightmare. It was the culmination of my childhood, that question. A blur of questioning faces passed in front of me. The old gentleman when I burned myself with pitch, his face asking who I was. Susannah opening the Bible. What does this say? Mr Black, stern, uprighteous. Have you your letters? I wanted to cry back a question to all of them. Which one of you has told me the truth? Not Susannah. Not Mr Black. Not Lord Stonehouse, although each knew a piece of it. In that tawdry vestry room, with its creaking table and tattered piles of greasily fingered prayer books, I felt one lie had piled on another, like one brick on another, and I feared to add to them, lest the chinks of light I had revealed would vanish, and I would be walled up in a cellar of deceit for ever.

The truth was that I was sure Mr Black did not want Anne to marry George. Anne would be condemned to a kind of death, not life, if she married him. That was the real truth. The unimportant legal truth was that Mr Black’s hand could not hold the quill, and I signed it.

‘Tom?’ The faces all dissolved into that of Mr Tooley. He had thick, bushy eyebrows which gradually knitted into one as I remained silent. ‘God waits for your answer.’

George, who had been straining forward like a dog on a leash, relaxed visibly. He smiled at Anne and took her hand. ‘There must be some hope for his soul that he cannot lie in God’s house.’

Anne pulled away from him, staring at me with a look that was like acid in my face. She kept silent but the words were in that look as plainly as if she had said them: Why do you come here to ruin all this? To tell another lie?

Mr Tooley expelled a sigh, which sounded as if it had been pent-up ever since he asked the original question. His voice and demeanour became more than ever that of a judge. ‘Tom Neave, I am bound to take your silence as evidence of guilt. As a court will tell you, the laws of the realm hold forgery to be a most serious crime, much more serious than running from your master. Mr Henderson –’

He called for the churchwarden, who evidently had his ear to the door, for he opened it immediately. Much of the congregation had crept forward as closely and showed no signs of moving.

‘The wisdom of Solomon, Mr Tooley!’ cried George. ‘You condemned him by his own silence!’