One cloudy September evening in 1625 Matthew Neave drove the cart, loaded with the bodies he had collected, to the edge of the River Cherwell. Seven bodies: they would not pay him much for that.
While the horses drank he finished off the last of his bread and cheese. The bread was hard and dry and he softened it from his flask of beer as he waited for the light to go. He never went near the plague pit before dark.
In early summer, at the start of the plague in Oxford, relatives would lie in wait for the cart. Fear of the disease was overcome by the fear of hell that their loved ones (and they later) would suffer if they did not get a Christian burial in sanctified ground. Matthew was stabbed and nearly thrown into the pit in one fight before the watch was called.
But as people died or fled, and that remorseless hot summer reduced the remainder to a numb apathy, the disturbances petered out. Nevertheless, when he heard the sound of a galloping horse, Matthew put down his flask. Beer dribbled unnoticed down his stained fustian jacket as he stared over Christchurch Meadow.
He couldn’t make out the rider at first for the trees, but the horse was a black gelding, a gentleman’s horse. The horse cleared the trees. The rider was dressed in black. He was masked, although the day had not been hot. The mask might hold a nosegay of herbs to protect against the plague, but Matthew was taking no chances.
He picked up the knife with which he had cut the cheese and retreated to the cart – the stench of its rotting bodies better protection than any weapon.
The man reined in the horse well short of him.
‘Matthew Neave?’
‘Who wants him?’
The man took off his mask, but kept the herbs it contained to his face. Matthew dropped his knife and pulled off his hat, words drying in his throat. This was no gentleman. The horse was better bred than the man riding it, but for Matthew Mr Ralph was of much more immediate concern than any gentleman.
Mr Ralph was Lord Stonehouse’s steward. A yeoman’s son, he had acquired a small estate in his own right, field by field, the painful struggle to build it showing in the deep seams of his face. The deepest seam was a jagged scar running from his right cheek to his neck.
‘There’s a dead child at Horseborne. Bennet’s farm.’
Several miles away, over Shotover Hill, on the edge of Lord Stonehouse’s estate.
‘A plague child, sir?’
‘Yes.’
Matthew knew this was wrong, knew this was trouble. He had caught the disease when he was six. The agonising black boils under his arms burst and he had survived. They threw the rest of his family in the cart and left him locked in the house alone.
The Plague Orders, no doubt reflecting most people’s conviction that the disease was God’s punishment, specified that victims should be quarantined for forty days and forty nights. For over a month Matthew had been locked in alone, kept alive by the pottage and weak beer passed to him through a window by the only neighbour who would go near him.
Since the few who survived did not catch the plague again, what had nearly killed Matthew now provided him with his bread and, in a plague year like this, meat. Some people thought Matthew a cunning man because it was said he could predict who was going to die of the disease and who was going to live. Perhaps the steward kept his distance now not just because of the bodies, but because he had heard these stories.
Matthew scratched his head. He knew every case for twenty miles around. Someone might have escaped from quarantine, but that was unlikely. It was even less likely that the disease was still spreading. The cold sharpness in the air, the dwindling number of bodies, told him the outbreak was practically over.
Matthew shook his head slowly. ‘Horseborne, sir? Can’t be.’
As painstakingly as he had built his small estate, Mr Ralph had built his voice, away from Matthew’s slow burr, mimicking the cool mockery of his betters.
‘I’m afraid it can. It’s still spreading.’
The clouds were now edged with black and the wind freshening. As if aware that the evening would be a short one, swifts were diving, skimming above the water catching flies. Soon they would go, swarms of them, vanishing into the sky. Just as the swifts knew when there would be no more flies, so Matthew knew there was no plague at Horseborne.
‘I’ll collect he tomorrow.’
In spite of the steward’s fear, both of the bodies in the cart and the curse Matthew might put on him, Mr Ralph pulled his horse closer. His voice reverted to a country, flint-edged burr.
‘You’ll collect he tonight.’
‘There’s no papers,’ Matthew answered stubbornly.
Not all the people ending up in the pit had been plague victims. Nobody worried overmuch about the poor, but when a farmer was murdered and dumped in the pit, the watch had dinned into Matthew the importance of papers which they flourished in front of him before unsealing a plague house. And Susannah, who lived with him, had dinned into Matthew the evil of denying anyone a Christian burial whom God had not touched with the plague.
From a pouch on his saddle Mr Ralph produced an order. He did not bother to move any closer, for he did not expect Matthew to be able to read it. The paper was enough. Afterwards, Matthew could not remember whether there was a signature, but burned in his mind was the falcon’s talons clutching a shield, the seal of Lord Stonehouse, whose word was law.
The wind was bending the trees above Matthew and what was left of the sun was buried in dark clouds. It would take him an hour to get over Shotover Hill. He would set off in that direction and then turn back to Oxford, pleading the next day a broken wheel, or a lame horse. He went to his horses.
‘I’d best go now,’ he said.
‘You’ll do it – no excuses!’
Matthew stared at him. The steward had a reputation of being afraid of nothing, but something had frightened him. His words came out so violently the nosegay he was holding over his mouth dropped from his hand but still he pulled his horse closer.
‘Here –’
There was a glint of silver in the air. Matthew caught the coin as deftly as the swifts catching the flies. His manner changed.
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘I will give you another at the pit. Say nothing – do you understand?’
Matthew understood that two half crowns were a crown. And that Mr Ralph would be waiting for him at the pit to make sure he finished the job.
The rain began shortly after Matthew left the meadow. It swept at him in great gusts as he swore and cut at the horses, struggling and sliding to climb up Shotover. At the top of the hill, to lift his spirits he took out the silver coin. A half crown. Newly minted that year for the coronation of Charles I.
It helped Matthew forget he was soaked to the skin. A half crown! More than a labourer’s wages for a month. And another at the pit!
He was so intent on the coin that he was only dimly aware of the
