A plague on mr pepys, p.33
A Plague on Mr Pepys, page 33
Illegal then, Agatha thought. No licence. More handbills fluttered to the ground as the youth and his shorter ill-kempt friend trundled the cart away.
‘Quick.’ The doctor hurried towards it and their presence cleared the protesting gaggle of customers who retreated hurriedly, all except two. One – a butcher by trade, judging by the state of his apron – was clinging to his bottle, but the other taller man, dressed in fine raiment of lace jabot and petticoat breeches cursed him and tried to wrest it from him.
‘Leave off!’ the butcher yelled. ‘It’s mine. I paid for it.’
‘I was first in the queue,’ the tall man said, and he grabbed the bottle, uncorked it and put it to his lips.
‘My wife needs this! Give it back, or you’ll feel the cut of my knife!’ The butcher drew his boning hook from his belt.
The taller man drew his sword and keeping the other at bay, downed the liquid on the spot and threw the empty bottle back at him.
‘By heaven, I’ll take you!’ The butcher lunged, and thrust his knife at the other. It met flesh and the man staggered back, then fell to the floor clutching his stomach.
‘You’ve murdered him, you fool!’ the doctor said.
‘Quick,’ Agatha said, ‘get something to tie the wound.’
But the butcher was already fleeing half-way up the road.
She knelt and undid the buttons of the man’s doublet to get at the wound, and raised his shirt. The wound was deep and bubbled with blood, but it was the other marks that made her drop the shirt back. ‘Tokens,’ she said.
He stepped back. ‘Not worth treating.’
‘Looks like a rich man.’
‘Maybe I’ll take a look. If I can mend this wound, I could apply a poultice of hog’s grease and get him to discharge the poison …’ The physician shook his mask to release the herbal vapours and strapped it on.
‘Fetch me a hired horse,’ he said, his voice muffled through the contraption, ‘I’ll need to get him to his home.’
Agatha left her searcher’s stick with him and did as he asked.
When she returned, leading a hired horse by the bridle, he was leaning over the body like a carrion crow. ‘You’re too late. Call the dead-cart,’ he said, through the mask. ‘He’s dead. Of the plague, not the wound.’
‘You’ll not be needed, fella,’ she said, stroking the horse on the nose. ‘Lucky for you, horses can’t catch it.’
*
Bess startled as the door opened. Automatically she put the table between her and the door. Jack. Again. He’d taken to visiting her whenever he had business in the workshop below.
‘Jack,’ Bess said. ‘I’d prefer it if you’d knock.’
‘Why? Will kept open house for me.’
‘Will’s not here.’
‘Shall I go out again and knock?’
‘No. Don’t be foolish.’ He was well-dressed in fine slate-blue breeches and one of the new light-weight coats with a cream silk waistcoat. They hung off him a little for he’d lost weight, but his boots were new and shiny, and barely worn. It gave her a pang just to look at them; they said ‘money’.
Bess sat herself down on the opposite side of the table from Jack, and resigned herself to keeping the peace. ‘Well?’
‘Do you miss having a man about the place?’
This wasn’t the sort of question Jack usually asked. She shook her head whilst she tried to form an answer. ‘There’s no time to miss it, what with my piece work.’
‘I miss Alison.’
She was disarmed. Jack never talked of anything personal.
‘And you’re fond of my boys, aren’t you?’
‘’Course I am. They’re like my own.’ She wondered where the conversation was going. Something about his intense look made her uncomfortable.
‘Don’t you want children?’
‘Yes … of course we do, but … it just hasn’t happened yet, that’s all.’ She shuffled in her chair.
‘I could give you children.’
She froze. What was he saying? She was so shocked, it was as if she was pasted in place.
He was running on now, his voice urgent, ‘We’d be a good match, you and I. My business is expanding, and you’d always be provided for. You said yourself, my children are like your own. And in time we’d have more—’
She found her voice. ‘What are you saying? Have you lost your senses?’ She made a little laugh, but it sounded weak and tinny.
He grabbed her hand where it lay on the table and gripped it tight. ‘You wed the wrong man. Even his own father says so. Will’s weak, and he’ll never give you children. He’s got no ambition—’
She wrenched her hand away and stood up. Her mind could not keep up with the conversation, her mouth had turned dry as dust. She saw him as if he were a picture in a book, an illustration of some scene that had nothing to do with her.
‘But Jack … I’m married to Will, have a care—’
He stood too, and in two strides had hold of her shoulders. His eyes bored into hers, determined. ‘There’s no love lost between you now, is there? Any fool can see that. Think about it, Bess.’
She wrenched away. ‘What are you playing at, Jack? Is this your idea of a jest?’
‘Just listen. The boys need a mother, and you need children. You were born to it; anyone can see that, it’s a waste, you being with Will …’
She backed away. Something of what he said had struck deep inside her like a lance. When her voice came out, it was like a croak. ‘Enough. Do you want to destroy us? I’m married to Will. And I’ll stay that way, d’you hear me?’
His intake of breath was loud in the silence. He cracked his knuckles together then, as if making a deliberate decision, his face took on a benign expression. He sat down, in Will’s chair near the fireplace, and his voice was almost leisurely. ‘That’s a shame. You’ll do it with Pepys, but not with me.’ He shook his head wonderingly. ‘You still think you’re too good for me.’
‘I’m a married woman, Jack. Before God.’
‘You’re the daughter of a whore. But I’ll forgive all that, because I have a tenderness for you. I always have.’
She turned rigid as a stone pillar. A tenderness? Was that what he called it? Whatever it was, it was laced with threats. His reasonable tone sent a chill into her heart. ‘Just go, Jack, and I’ll pretend you never said it.’
‘You forget,’ he said, resting a boot casually onto the hearth. ‘I own this house. Will made it over to me. Last year. October. Didn’t he tell you?’
It was as if the ground beneath her feet had begun to quake. ‘Yes.’ Her voice was a whisper. ‘I knew.’ She sat, suddenly. Afraid.
‘Will couldn’t pay the loan, and I was doing well, so I bought him out.’
She put her head in her hands. ‘No. You don’t mean … you wouldn’t.’
He smiled. ‘I care about you. I wouldn’t force you to anything. You could choose me, and this house, or you could choose to go back to Ratcliff. But I know you’ll see the sense in it and choose me.’
Against such certainty there was nothing she could say. She was numb with shock. On shaking legs she left him sitting there, went to her chamber and slid the bolt home.
Silence. She rested her back against the door.
Then his voice on the other side. A whisper. One inch away. She leapt away from it.
‘I give you one month. After that, I’ll take it you want to go back where you came from, and I’ll claim the house.’
His footsteps receded. Below, she heard the men return, the chink of glass and Fletcher’s harsh voice.
A few moments later she heard the parlour door click shut and Jack’s boots on the stairs.
Only then did she realise the predicament she was in. She longed for Will, for safe, predictable Will. But he had turned against her too. If Will were to abandon her, what option would she have? How would she survive? It would be the street or the workhouse. And the boys – Jack was right, she loved them.
If Jack took the house, Pepys would not help her. She shuddered at the thought of him. He’d had what he wanted; there was no bargaining power left with Pepys. Whereas Jack … But no. The thought of it made her shudder.
Sleep evaded her. Over the city the sky lightened into pale pearl, and the clamour of bells pealed for the early morning service. But Bess didn’t want to go to church. Her prayers were over and done, even before dawn lit up the sky. Bring Will home. Let him forgive me.
The workshop below was silent. Gone was the rasp of the saw and the clang of the hammer, the whirr of the string from the treadle-lathe. It was as if Will had never existed. She turned the brass wedding band on her hand, but it was tarnished, and there were no words of love inside to bring her comfort.
Chapter 53
The Assurance, coast of Holland
Will struck the chisel with the hammer, bracing his legs against the timbers as the frigate Assurance rolled. He was making pegs to replace the ones that had broken, splintered by the strain of eight weeks at sea in a freezing northerly wind. It was May now, and no sign of any summer heat. He planted his heels against the beams, feeling the squelch of leather, his ankles six inches deep in water. It sloshed inside his boots as he worked, so that he could no longer feel his feet; his fingers were disobedient maggots, clumsy with cold.
He imagined his dry parlour at home, but the moment’s inattention caught him off-guard. The ship lurched, and the chisel slipped on the greasy wood, slicing into his thumb. He cursed and sucked at it. Now it would get salt in it and sting like the devil. He rummaged through his kit, searching for a dry bandage to bind it, and finally managed to tear a strip of muslin loose and wrap it around it, staggering in the swell of the sea as he did so. He was weary through lack of sleep. He climbed up the ladder to the decks where his presence was ignored – everyone was busy belaying.
He weaved his way unsteadily to the rails, hoping for a sign of land. Nothing. Just a heaving swell the colour of mud. In the distance another set of sails battled against the wind. He was sick of this tilting deck, sick of the cold, the greyness of the sea off the coast of Lowestoft, the sting in his eyes, the queasiness in his belly. He pulled his oiled cloak tighter around his shoulders for he felt the weather more now. He’d lost weight, what with the bad diet and the worry. Not the impending battle – the Dutch were rumoured to have more than a hundred men-of-war, as well as galliots and fireships, and that was worry enough. But he never thought being wed would be the death of him.
His fingers clung to the rails, the spray splattering his face. He wondered what Bess was doing, whether she and Jack were at each other’s throats, whether Jack would be laughing at him when Pepys came calling. He did not care, he told himself. Then he cursed himself, for the thought of Bess brought nothing but a raw pain. She’d be in Pepys’s bed. He groaned, doubled over.
‘Sick again, mate?’ One of the men threw the remark to him as he passed clinging to a rope, skidding on the salty planking.
Will shook his head. He was sick, yes, but not from the sea. From jealousy, from the horrible cramping feeling that someone else might be at this very moment in his bed. Every day grew worse than the next. The longer he was away, the more it swelled inside him like a canker. He should never have let it happen. It was his fault. He’d agreed to Pepys’s bargain, not realising he’d condemned himself to this – this purgatory of his own making.
‘Lord, make it stop,’ he said. But he’d said the same prayer over and over, and the pain still flayed him.
He’d thought they’d be back on land by now, but no. The Dutch had captured a convoy of English merchant ships off Hamburg, and so they’d been ordered to go back to sea. He didn’t know how he’d survive it; not the fighting, but the torture of not-knowing. How much could Pepys do in a day? In a month? In two? How many times could a man …? He shuddered. A wave crashed over the side, soaking him, sending a stinging pain into the cut on his hand. But the pain inside him hurt more.
*
At noon on the first day of June, Evans, one of the midshipman came to fetch him.
‘Look there!’ In the distance the Dutch fleet was, like them, waiting for the wind.
‘Christ.’ It was enormous. At least twenty flagships. The rails of the Assurance were packed with men, all staring morosely at the grey blur that hugged the horizon.
‘Thank God there’s no wind,’ Evans said.
‘For how long, though?’ Will said.
The two fleets were separated by a calm sea, but it only made the waiting worse. Will wondered if the Dutch sailors felt as he did, and whether their commander, who they called Foggy Obdam, was as foolish as the Duke of York, who was always wanting to divide the fleet and make them more vulnerable.
They jumped every time a puff of wind lifted a tarpaulin, every time a seagull cried. The tension curdled his innards so he couldn’t eat.
He was sleeping the next night, swaying in his hammock when the call came.
‘The wind’s with us,’ Evans shouted to him.
Even a ship’s carpenter was expected to fight, so Will hauled himself to upright and staggered onto deck in the darkness, ready to load cannon.
Crouched in the dark he had no real idea what was going on, the fleets passed each other, taking fire as they could, until one of their lines, headed by the Earl of Sandwich, saw his chance, and broke through a gap that had opened up in the Dutch line.
The sky suddenly flashed with an orange light.
‘What’s going on?’
Evans, who was at the rails, called back, ‘We’ve split the Dutch fleet in half. Hold out for your orders.’
‘Fire!’
Will and Evans lit the taper and got out of range. The blast from their cannons seemed to explode inside his head.
‘To starboard!’ came the shout.
The ship veered to the side, just as a burning Dutch sloop came across their bows.
Shit. A fireship. An enormous blast. Timber and burning debris rained down on them. In front of him, Evans fell.
At first it was all Will could do to put out fires. The rigging trembled with runnels of flame. Hot pitch rained from the sky. Around him screaming men scurried like ants, clutching their burning clothing and stamping out gobbets of flaming shrapnel. The fireship had been close, but not close enough to sink them.
A groan. Evans was pinioned by one foot under a collapsed mast. Will rushed to try to free him, but the mast, that looked so tiny from below, was thicker than a girl’s waist. Beneath it, Evans struggled and shrieked. Will braced his shoulder against it, but it didn’t budge.
‘Here they come!’ came the yell. Will glanced over the side to see a Dutch ship drawing alongside. Men rushed to the side, swords and muskets ready. The Dutch were preparing to board.
‘Help me!’ Evans cried.
Will didn’t stop to think. He leapt down the stairs to the cabin and grabbed an axe and his saw.
When he got back, the rails were full of fighting men. ‘Lie still,’ he shouted at Evans above the booming noise of cannon and musket.
Evans twisted and writhed. Fear glazed his eyes as Will hacked at the timber with the axe.
‘What are you doing?’ the bo’sun shouted, pulling at him. ‘Leave him. Man the cannon.’
Another deafening blast that seemed to come from deep in the bowels of the ship. Almost immediately the ship began to list to the side.
‘A hit. My God, we’re going under,’ yelled the sailor next to him.
‘Abandon ship!’ From then there were constant volleys of musket fire and screams. The rails were black with figures leaping into the sea.
‘The boats! Lower the boats!’ Will had one eye on the rail and the other on Evans as he sawed through the mast. The timber was damp and snagged in his saw; his muscles burned. The ship creaked and listed further, the mast shifted, and Evans screamed once before his face turned white and his eyes rolled back in his head.
‘Hold on,’ Will shouted, frantically rasping the saw.
The ship tilted again. Cold water sluiced up to his waist. Evans choked and gasped as water hit his face. He sat up, struggling for breath. The water was over his chest, the mast submerged. The ship was moving beneath them now, in a way that felt all wrong, the masts veering sideways, the cannons sliding to the rails.
For a split instant, Will thought, this is it, we’re going to die. But then a dull splintering and the mast rose up in the centre, out of the water, and into a jagged peak.
Will grabbed Evans and rolled him away as the mast sheared in two, and the ends plummeted back down. The deck slid away from him and the water closed over his head. Dark, stinging salt water. He still had hold of Evans by the arm. They struggled, gasping, to the surface. Next to them a boat bobbed, a life raft crammed with men. Arms reached out to pull them on board. Evans was so white he was almost translucent.
Will ran a hand over his mangled ankle. ‘Broken,’ he said. ‘You’ll not be fit for duty now.’
‘I’ve never been … fit for duty. But thanks to you, I’m still …’ he winced, ‘… still here.’
Will smiled, and squeezed his arm. Next to them the limping Assurance had been flanked by two more English ships, divided from the English fleet to prevent the Dutch taking her carcase away. The Dutch ship the Hilversum had been taken and was under their escort too.
Dawn came as they bobbed in the boat, all shivering, watching the battle from a distance; nobody seemed keen to row or to swim to join another ship. In the distance the
Duke of York’s ship, the Royal Charles let loose their cannon on Opdam in the Eendracht. The men were silent, knowing that the flashes of firepowder and squalls of smoke meant more dead men like them.
Finally, after a two-hour duel, the sea seemed to shudder. An almighty flash and Eendracht exploded in a flower of flame. One moment it was there, and the next gone. They stared into the empty space, unable to believe it. The boom reached them a few seconds later, a deep thud in the air that shivered Will’s chest. The men stood and rocked the boat with their cheering, all except Evans, who could not, but made up for it by punching his fist in the air.
