Mary’s ladies who crowded about with huge, frightened eyes. Rumours from London had reached them early in the morning, but to now have confirmation of the worst…
“Beloved Queen,” Margaret read in a low voice, “I greet you well. Know that pestilence has gripped London since yesterday afternoon. Many have died, more are infected, and the city tosses in the throes of torment. I beg you to remain in Windsor, where I might be more assured of your safety. Know that I am well, and in the Tower, whose walls have thus far kept the pestilence at bay. Pray to Lord Jesus for our deliverance. Your loving husband and king, Bolingbroke.”
Margaret lowered the letter, staring at Neville. “Sweet Jesu,” she breathed as several of the ladies about her exchanged shocked looks.
Mary, lying as usual on her couch by the window, now struggled to sit up straight. “I must go to London,” she said.
“Mary!” Neville and Margaret said together.
“No,” Neville continued, risking a hand on Mary’s shoulder. “You are too ill—”
“No, I am not,” Mary said.
“—and you can do little to help,” Neville finished. “Sweet Jesu, madam, what do you think you can do?”
Mary regarded Neville steadily. “I can give comfort, Tom. I can be with my people.”
“Mary,” Neville said, abandoning all attempts at formality, “You can barely walk now. You are in too much pain. You—”
“I am going, Tom. I cannot sit here and twiddle my thumbs while London dies.”
“Then I’m going with you,” Neville said.
Mary hesitated, then smiled. “Thank you, Tom. Your adeptness with the last rites will no doubt be more than useful.”
“And I,” Margaret said.
“No!” Neville stared at her. “You cannot. The children—”
“The children shall stay here safe with Agnes. Mary will need me as much as you.” Margaret looked Neville directly in the eye. “You know both of us will be safe.”
The archangel needs both of us alive to play out the final drama, Neville thought, and he nodded. They would both live.
He did not see Mary’s thoughtful gaze move between him and Margaret.
Emma Hawkins hurried down Carter Lane by St Paul’s, then ducked into a small alley. The streets were deserted save for a few scurrying people, and those wretched souls manning the plague carts on which were piled the dead. Fires coughed and spluttered on their diet of wood, brimstone and saltpetre at intersections and in marketplaces: their noxious fumes twisted and writhed into the air, tangling about eaves and overhangs before rising into a sky made scarlet with the sunset and the smoke of the fires.
There was the faint sound of wailing and sobbing in the air, anguish seeping out from behind closed doors and shuttered windows where men and women and children lay dying in unspeakable agony. Occasionally the muted, sombre tones of shroud-wrapped bells tolled indifferently from one of the city’s parish churches.
Death lurked everywhere: in the stench of uncollected corpses upon the air, in the miasma of the fires, in the sewage choking the gutters, in the soft lament from tight-closed houses. Emma gathered her shawl more tightly about her face, gagging as she coughed, and regretted her decision to walk the streets in search of custom.
But she and her daughter needed to be fed, whatever crisis gripped the city, and Emma knew she would get God-all custom huddling at home behind closed doors. She stopped briefly, leaning against a closed door, and tried to catch her breath. Well, it was time she admitted she was going to get God-all custom out here as well. No point in even hoping. She should get home. Her daughter Jocelyn would be worried about her—she’d spent an hour this morning begging her mother not to go out into the streets—and the longer Emma stayed outside the more likely the pestilence would snatch at her.
Ah, that she could not think about! Pestilence crawled over the entire city, dealing death to scores every hour, and Emma simply refused to contemplate the idea that she—or Jocelyn—might be struck as well. Fate had already been unkind enough to her. It wouldn’t deal her this death blow… would it?
If only Jocelyn was older. Emma couldn’t afford to die yet. Jocelyn was only eight. Too young to work, too young to marry, and too young (by a year or two) to follow her mother out into the streets. Not that Emma would wish that on Jocelyn. It was too great a burden of sin for her frail shoulders.
“Only one of us need spend eternity in hell,” Emma whispered. “And I will not have it be my daughter.”
She struggled a little further down the alley. The air was thick with the noxious stink of brimstone and ash—was she in hell already? Had she died without knowing?—and night was closing in about her fast. Too fast. Emma coughed again, and then almost panicked as she tasted blood in her mouth.
No! No! She’d bitten her tongue… that’s all. Please sweet Jesu, let that be all!
Emma groped along one wall with one hand until she found a gate. She opened it, stumbling through into a courtyard, then hurried as best she could to the small door set to one side of the yard. Here she and Jocelyn lived in their two tiny rooms. Small, dismal, cold, but home.
She heard Jocelyn’s small voice pipe a welcome, then, horribly, the deeper voice of her landlord, Richard Harrison.
“Come to collect the rent, my dear,” he said.
“Now?” Emma whispered, closing the door behind her and drawing the shawl back from her head. Her face was thin, her hair more grey than fair, her eyes enormous and black.
A faint flush glowed on her forehead and cheeks.
“Now?” she repeated, incredulous. The city was dying, gripped in pestilence sent from hell, and Harrison had come to collect the rent?
Then her mouth twisted bitterly. Why not? Why not, when he might be too dead to enjoy it tomorrow?
Emma folded her shawl and nodded towards the other room. “Quickly, then. I have Jocelyn’s supper to prepare.”
Harrison grinned. “You’re in no position to tell me quick or no,” he said. “Rent’s rent, and it must be paid as owed.”
Emma shot him a black look, then smiled at Jocelyn. “We won’t be long,” she said, then walked into the tiny, inner room.
All it held was a narrow bed and a stool.
Emma looked at the bed, unbuttoning her dress, and sighed as the door closed behind her and she felt the great bulk of Harrison fill the room.
He was big and heavy and cumbersome and painful, but all of this Emma blocked out through years of experience. She arched her back as best she could with Harrison’s weight atop her, and moaned with as much feigned pleasure as she could manage,
