Plague Child (16 page)

Chapter 18

Useless running, even if I had any life left in my legs. They had called a constable, and there was another in the congregation. Gripping me by the arms, they led me down the aisle, where I had once dreamed of walking with Anne. Mr Tooley was urging everyone back in their places so that the ceremony could continue. There was another couple waiting outside – everyone was getting married because of the approaching war.

‘Forgery,’ said George to Benyon. ‘Forgery!’ Benyon gave a low whistle and shook his head. ‘A felony.’

‘The very day I brought him upriver with poor Mr Black I predicted it.’

‘A hanging job!’

The words spread through the congregation like a spark falling on dry tinder. Snatches of conversation came to me as I stumbled down the aisle. Forgery. A felony. A hanging job. Always knew he would mount the ladder. Take the morning drop. Mr Black, dead? Murdered in his bed! Then he forged his signature to try and stop the wedding. The devil is in him! It was as though, with no fancy preliminaries like a trial and Newgate, I was already on my way to Tyburn. From bearing composed, set, wedding smiles when I had entered the church, the faces of the congregation now bore a hanging-day flush. Necks craned, eyes protruded, as they elbowed and pushed to see me.

‘Hanged?’

I heard Anne’s voice rising above the rest. I jerked to a stop, pulling away from one of the constables. Mr Tooley was bending over her, making soothing, placatory gestures. George came to join him in a little huddle. Mrs Black got up from the front pew, clutching at her hat, and joined them in a mounting argument. Out of it came a whirlwind. Every part of Anne seemed to be in furious motion. Her hair flew, her large liquid eyes and her quivering mouth seemed to fill her face. Her words rang round the church.

‘Why? Why? Why cannot we go and ask my father if he did sign it?’ Mrs Black began to speak, but a freezing glance from Mr Tooley stopped her. He struggled to keep his voice low, but in the awestruck silence it reverberated round the stone walls. ‘Anne, do not listen to other people. There will be a trial. I do not know what will happen. No one does.’ As she opened her mouth to reply, his voice struck the exasperated tone no one in the church had ever dared to disobey. ‘Anne – do you wish to be married or not?’

She bowed her head. There was a huge collective sigh from the congregation. Mr Tooley waved the bride and groom peremptorily back into position to take their vows. Mrs Black scuttled back to the front pew. The constables gripped me by my arms again and led me into the porch.

‘Five minutes!’ Anne’s voice echoed round the church.

I turned at the door to see Anne bringing her clenched fists down on her hips with such force I thought she would break into pieces.

‘It is five minutes to my father, Mr Tooley –
five minutes!
Marriage is
my whole life!
’

The arrivals for the next wedding stared at us as we wound through the graveyard, past the mausoleum to Samuel Potter & Relic. We must have looked a curious procession; Mr Tooley led the way with Benyon and Mrs Black, who struggled to keep her hat on in the wind, then came the bride and groom, Anne staring straight ahead, George murmuring into her ear, casting glances back at me, who stumbled between the two constables, both of them gripping me so close we must have looked like a creature with six legs.

It was the longest five minutes of my life. It now seemed the height of stupidity to have forged Mr Black’s signature. But there was the secret printing George had been carrying out, the proof of which Mr Black had read – although how much he had really taken in I did not know. George clearly believed this would be outweighed by the forgery, which I had all but admitted by my silence. His face as he glanced back bore the expression I knew only too well from childhood: anticipation of my punishment to come.

As we turned into Half Moon Court, Mrs Black let out a cry. The curtains of Mr Black’s window were drawn. Sarah was standing on the doorstep and Mrs Black and Anne ran towards her. All my previous fears were dwarfed by the thought that I had killed him.

‘All but,’ Sarah scathingly said. ‘You nearly managed it this time, with the upset you gave him.’

She said she had left the house to buy fresh bread and had returned to find him in a terrible state. She had made him a draught and he was now asleep. While Mrs Black hurried upstairs to him, the rest of us filed through the parlour, where the smell of new bread had joined that of the game pie and the goose, which was still sizzling on the spit, and then into the printing shop. Mr Tooley demanded proof of the seditious material.

Under the eyes of the constables I went straight into the paper shop. There was no sign of
Fighte for the King’s Peace
, or any other Royalist pamphlets. Nor was there any sign in the shop of the formes from which it had been printed.

I struggled to keep calm. I could not meet Anne’s eyes. George stood watching me, head slightly bowed, arms folded.

‘It was there – I swear it was there!’

Anne turned away. George’s arms encircled her. I felt Mr Tooley’s eyes follow me as I searched every shelf and bench. I remembered Benyon sending his men out of the church. ‘Sarah – did Mr Benyon’s men come?’

‘Aye. In a coach. To tell me the feast would be delayed.’

‘Did they take anything?’

‘I don’t know. I was upstairs, with Master.’

‘It
was
there!’ I said to Anne. ‘You
must
believe me!’

I could not bear the look on her face. She turned away from me. She looked as if she had just been told that a loved one had died. Although Sarah had no love for Miss Hoity-Toity, she recognised grief when she saw it.

‘Come on, tha’s getting married. Remember?’

Anne did not seem to know where she was, or what had happened. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. The words were barely audible. Whether she was sorry for me, or saying it to me or in general I had no means of knowing, but George took it as a personal apology to him. He was magnanimous, forgiving and sorrowful at the same time. ‘It is one of her best qualities, Mr Tooley, to try and see the good in people. Mr Black and I struggled to find it in him for years. But you have just demonstrated, my dear – more eloquently than I have ever been able to – that there is nothing there.’ He reflected. ‘Nay, there is worse than nothing.’ He had combed his thinning hair over the mark on his forehead where I had struck him, but the wind had disturbed it and it flushed red as he levelled a finger at me. ‘He is possessed – possessed by the devil!’

It was not the words, for I had heard them many times before, albeit never so extreme and violent. It was not even their effect on Anne, who had a look of terror on her face. It was George opening his arms to her that made me fly at him. It took everyone by surprise, including me. My momentum knocked Mr Tooley aside and slammed George against the press. As he fell to the floor my hands, which seemed to have a life of their own, went round his throat. I fully intended to kill him. I had no thought of what would happen to me – in my own mind I was hanged anyway. Whatever happened, he must not marry Anne. He must not touch her, poison her mind – the words hammered in my head as I fought to keep my grip on George while the constables tried to drag me off. I really think I was possessed. When they finally managed to pull me away, George was not dead, far from it, but at least he could not speak. That was something.

The print shop looked as though a storm had struck it. Blocks, type and paper were scattered about the floor. They bound my arms tight behind my back. Even then, they moved round me cautiously, as though I was a rabid dog who might suddenly bite. One con stable’s lip was thickening, and a dribble of blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. I saw this in flashes as I came round, gradually aware of the blows I had received. How long Mrs Black had been there I do not know, but she was telling Mr Tooley that Mr Black wished to see me upstairs. See me upstairs! I could scarce climb one of them. Mr Tooley dismissed this. He would not put Mr Black under any more distress.

A violent hammering came from the room above. Plaster pattered down on us. Before Mr Tooley could stop her, Anne was halfway up the stairs to her father. The minister linked his hands and shut his eyes as his lips moved in what, I imagine, was a prayer that God should bring to an end, one way or another, the longest wedding he had ever witnessed. Mrs Black shook plaster from her hat.

‘Mis . . . cre . . . ant!’ bellowed Mr Black above us, in a howl of distorted syllables that brought Mr Tooley from his prayer and me to my feet. His voice might be slurred, but it still held all the vengeful power that both he and George derived from the Old Testament. It reawoke old shivers in me, and brought George’s voice back, albeit a thin reediness rattling in his throat, round which he was tenderly wrapping a silk scarf. ‘It is only right for Mr Black to see the miscreant, Mr Tooley. I told the poor gentleman, when we took the boy from without, that we were bringing the devil into this city.’

Mr Tooley, who now looked as vengeful as Mr Black and George, took the letter on which I had forged Mr Black’s signature, and led the way upstairs. At that moment, I believe, I would rather have climbed the ladder at Paddington Fair than those stairs to Mr Black’s room. He was a fearful sight. Exhausted by thumping with his cane on the floor, his eyes were almost closed, his head nodding on his chest. His hair, still luxuriously thick but largely grey, fell down in mottled streaks, except for one clump, plastered by sweat to his forehead. He was supported partly by pillows, and partly by his hand gripping the cane. It was the successor to many such canes, but to me it looked very like the cane he had beaten me with on the first day I saw him in the shipyard.

Mr Tooley approached him, stopped awkwardly, then coughed. Mr Black’s eyes jerked open, travelled up to the minister’s face and then stared directly at me. I would have fallen on my knees if I had not been held up by the two constables. How could I have reduced this upright man to this? Tried to destroy his daughter’s wedding? Truly the devil was in me! George stepped forward, taking off his hat and indicating me.

‘Here he is, Master,’ he said.

‘Aye.’ Mr Black struggled up on his pillows, his voice for a moment almost normal. ‘Here he is.’ Anne rushed to the bed and arranged the pillows. He sank back on them with a sigh, keeping his eyes on her all the time. ‘You thought to . . . disobey me . . .’

She did fall on her knees. ‘No, Father, no! I thought – I thought –’ As his speech became clearer as he looked at her, hers was blurred by sobs, so she could scarcely form the words. ‘I – wanted to be – sure what your wishes were. Tom – he – brought a letter.’

‘This!’ said Mr Tooley, producing the letter.

I shut my eyes as Mr Black stared at the scribble I had written, but I could not shut my ears when Mr Tooley began to read the lines about withdrawing consent. I opened my eyes when Mr Tooley abruptly stopped reading. Mr Black was holding out his good hand. He took the letter and read it. I began shaking and could not stop. I was not only a rogue and a fraud, I was that most foolish of rogues: one who did something so inanely stupid he was bound to be found out.

Mr Black gave me a look of such searing gravity I opened my mouth to blurt out what I had done and beg his forgiveness. Only the gleam of triumph in George’s eyes stopped me. I would not give him that satisfaction. I glared sullenly back at him, just as I had done in the boat all those years ago, although it was now carrying me remorselessly not to treasure but to Paddington Fair.

‘Is that your signature, sir?’ said Mr Tooley.

‘That?’ Mr Black peered at the sheet of paper. ‘That miserable . . . spidery . . . scrawl . . . my signature?’ He spat out the words with scorn, then muttered. ‘Miscrean—’

Mr Tooley expelled a deep, resigned sigh and signalled to the constables to take me away.

‘Aye,’ Mr Black muttered, nodding his head, still staring at the sheet of paper as I passed the foot of his bed. ‘That is . . . what . . . I am reduced to.’

‘Wait!’ cried Mr Tooley, stopping us so abruptly at the door we all collided with one another. ‘Are you saying, sir, it
is
your signature?’

‘What?’

Mr Black clutched the piece of paper, staring up at him. Anne, who was being helped up by George, repeated the question. There followed a period of confusion such as I had endured before writing the fatal letter, until Mr Black thrust out the letter, almost striking Mr Tooley, and cried: ‘Of course . . . it’s my . . . damned sig . . . nature, sir!’ A stunned silence was broken by Mr Black exploding into a fit of coughing and Sarah and Anne rushing to his aid. Everyone began speaking at once, George shaking his head and telling Mr Tooley his poor master did not know what he was saying, until Mr Black made his meaning clear by dropping the letter and taking from under his blanket the pamphlet I had shown him of George’s secret printing.

‘Miscreant!’ he yelled, thrusting his stick with such force at George it sent him staggering backwards.

‘I knew it! I knew it! I knew you were telling the truth!’ Anne’s arms were round me, her face streaming with tears.

‘Anne – in front of the minister!’ cried a scandalised Mrs Black. ‘You are getting married!’

‘Aye,’ said Sarah. ‘But to which one?’

The small bedroom was like Bedlam. Mr Tooley wanted to know whether there was to be a wedding or not. The constables did not know whether they were arresting me. Or George. Or neither. Sarah kept asking what she was supposed to do with all the food. Mrs Black collapsed in a chair, crying she did not care what Sarah did with it. Give it to the poor! She could never show her face in church again! I stood there in the middle of it all, dazed.

I was consumed by the fear that the success of my falsehood had been bought only at the cost of Mr Black’s sanity. Surely he had become too confused to have any idea what he was doing. Amidst the babble, he was staring directly at me. He beckoned me closer. The good side of his face was strangely contorted, as though he was on the verge of having a fit. His right eye twitched. Fearing I had brought on his final spasm, I moved towards him, then stopped. There was no doubt about it. His right eye was closed in an outrageous wink. He pointed to the cane, which I gave him, silencing everyone with thumps on the spot where he signalled so regularly that little chips of wood had broken away. There was no sign of George, but in the silence I heard the door close downstairs.