“He’ll likely die anyway,” Jack said. The topic was too familiar for tact. “The pest-house will not help his chances—but it will help yours. Antony, if you don’t send him away, they’ll shut up your house. With you in it.”
The backbone of all their attempts to stem the plague. A man could carry the distemper without knowing it; anyone who lived under the same roof as a victim must be locked in, until enough time had passed to prove they were not sick.
Or until everyone inside was dead.
Antony swallowed and turned away. “You have said yourself—the pest-houses are overwhelmed.” They had managed to build three, supplementing the two left over from the last great visitation, but they were scarce able to hold a few hundred, let alone the stricken thousands.
Jack would not let him dodge the question. “If you will not send him away, then you must leave. Remove yourself from the house, today, and go into the countryside. Join Kate. Shutting yourself in with him...you might as well put that pistol to your own head.”
They had fought this point before. Jack hated that order, and championed the pest-houses. What he advised now was nothing less than the knowing subversion of law. If Antony already bore the plague, he would carry it with him into the countryside, as others had done before him: the exact situation the plague order was designed to prevent.
That argument would make not a dent in Jack’s skull. Instead Antony said, “I cannot leave. We are meeting today to arrange relief; we’ve found ways to shift collections of coin from the parishes that can spare it to those that cannot, and to delay the payment of certain debts. Half London can scarcely feed itself, Jack, and trade is at a standstill. Would you have me abandon my city to famine and collapse?”
“No.” A trace of the old, wry smile crossed Jack’s face. “I know you better than that. But you cannot do that work shut up in your house with a red cross on the door, either. You must send Burnett away.”
The very thought of it ached. Burnett was loyal, and deserved loyalty in return. Antony would gladly have kept him at home, and hired some woman to nurse him—one who had survived the infection already. Far better than sending him into that festering realm of hell in St. Giles Cripplegate, where they could almost throw a corpse out a window and have it land in a plague pit.
Where Burnett would die, alone.
But keeping him would mean the end of Antony’s own ability to help.
More footsteps outside. Sir William Turner appeared in the doorway, and someone else hovered behind him. Two aldermen, at least; with Antony, three. Perhaps they would get more. And together, they might keep London on her feet.
They would. They had to.
Antony lowered his voice, and hoped that hid the shame in it. “Very well. Do everything you can for him, Jack.”
The doctor gripped his arm, heedless of risk. “My oath to God. I will save him if I can.”
CHEAP WARD, LONDON: September 13, 1665
Despite the oppressive heat, Antony shivered as he made his way on foot down Cheapside. Charred logs still crouched at the corner with Old Change, though the sudden downpour that extinguished the bonfire last week had vanished without a trace, returning the summer’s terrible dryness in its wake.
Three days of bonfires, burning throughout the City, ordered by the King from his court at Salisbury. Three days of flame, to purify the air.
Seven thousand dead, that very same week.
He swerved left to give a wide margin to a body slumped against the wall of the Mermaid Tavern. Dead, or dying; it hardly mattered which. The reek of death was in the air, the churchyards filled to overflowing and beyond, despite the orders that insisted all corpses be buried at least six feet deep.
His change of course brought him too close to another man, who shot out bony hands and seized Antony by the front of his waistcoat, crumpling the sweaty cloth in his fingers. “They insist we purge our bodies with potions,” the man gasped, foul breath gusting into Antony’s face. “They insist we purge the air with fire. But do we purge our souls? Do we repent our sins, which have brought this visitation upon us?”
A moment of frozen paralysis; then Antony shoved at the man, struggling to force him away. The buttons of his waistcoat gave way before the stranger did. “Get back! Do not come near me.”
The man laughed at him, exposing broken teeth, as if he had been struck in the face. “You have nothing to fear—if you are a righteous man. This is the Lord’s will, His divine punishment for a nation that has strayed from the path of holiness.”
A filthy, damnable Puritan. Rage flushed Antony to the roots of his thinning hair. “God,” he snarled in the man’s face, “has nothing to do with it. This? Is random bloody chance. It is our physical squalor, the garbage in our streets, the foul air we breathe. The pestilential suburbs we permit to crowd around our walls. God is not here. He watches from above as we scream in our agonies and die, begging His mercy or cursing His name, and He has nothing to do with any of it!”
The last shouted words echoed in his ears, reflecting off the smoke-stained walls of the shops that lined this once great street. The Puritan was running by then, staggering down Bow Lane, desperate to get away. Antony gasped for breath, his head pounding. When had he last eaten? He could not recall. With Burnett gone, vanished into the maw of the pest-house, no doubt dead by now, he made shift for himself as best he could.
There should still be a cold meat pie for him at home—if he had not eaten it already. Antony could not remember. They could feed him below, but he would not go; he could not bear the sight of the fae anymore, clean and whole and safe from the cataclysm above. If this heat did not break, if the plague did not subside, then even the living few would soon be gone, and London left to the ghosts and the faeries in the shadows.
He set off again, moving more by force of habit than anything else, down Lombard Street to the familiar door. He fumbled a cluster of rue out of his pocket and breathed deeply of its pungent scent, hoping to clear any contagion picked up from that man. Was there anything yet in his house that could take this headache from him? He could scarcely think through its clamor.
The door opened. The interior of the house was blessedly cool, no fire having been lit in the hearth for days, and Antony wrenched off his doublet and waistcoat, baring his sweat-soaked undershirt. The thought of food turned his stomach. He would eat later, after he had rested. Dropping the garments to the floor, Antony sought his bed, where he lay shivering and restless, waiting for his tremors to cease.
THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: September 14, 1665
“The problem,” Valentin Aspell said patiently, “is that it fades, your Majesty.”
Lune resisted the urge to snarl at him. Instead she forged her irritation into a sharper, cooler edge of condescension. “I am aware of the nature of faerie gold, Lord Valentin. But with judicious timing, we might yet be able to assist Lord Antony in a manner that does not expose us to the threats above. If we can do nothing for the sick, we may at least help those who are still well, by giving them the coin with which to buy food and other necessities.”
As her Lord Keeper reminded her, faerie gold would eventually turn back to leaves, and that could draw unwanted attention. But from what Antony said, the chaos above had reached such a pitch that their interference might pass unremarked. He had even named a few fellows that might be suitable targets. One boasted of increasing his personal wealth as he rushed all over London and Westminster to obtain supplies for the Navy in their wars against the Dutch, yet gave only a few pounds for the relief of the afflicted.
“Samuel Pepys,” she suggested to Valentin. “In Seething Lane. Substitute faerie gold for some of his own, and I shall give the true coin to Antony, for distribution elsewhere.”
The Lord Keeper bowed. He did not see the point of this, Lune knew. To his way of thinking, the plague was a necessary cleansing of the filthy, overcrowded streets of London and its suburbs. Humans were not meant to live like maggots, crawling over the rotting corpse of thei
r home, polluting their houses with their own smoke and waste. He had little understanding of them as people, and no sympathy for their plight.
But Lune did. The carnage above sickened her, evoking the terrifying specter of mortality; she shuddered at the thought of going above, among the boarded-up windows and the painted crosses and the desperate prayers of the dying. Yet this little thing, she could do. She knew Antony thought her wholly occupied with faerie affairs, the breathless wait for Nicneven’s next move, but the waiting threatened to drive her mad. And it would ease his heart to know she had done something, small though it was. When he returned, she would have a surprise for him: a windfall from the men who gilded their own coffers while others starved for want of charity.
“Why are you still here?” she asked Valentin, who flinched. “Find someone to carry this out—or I will send you.”
“Yes, madam,” he murmured, and fled.
LOMBARD STREET, LONDON: September 15, 1665
Antony needed water. A raging thirst had scoured him for hours, parching his throat and mouth and gut, while sweat poured off his skin to soak the clinging bedclothes. He had fetched watered wine from the cellar...he could not remember how long ago. The jug sat empty now, knocked onto its side, though he could not recall drinking from it. Perhaps he had spilled it all.
He called weakly for Burnett, in a voice that went no farther than his bed, before remembering the servant was gone. In the pest-house. Dead, by now.
Pain stabbed upward from his groin, curling his body in protest. Medicine. Was there nothing in the house for pain? For the headache that threatened to split his skull in half? Antony knew dimly that he had a fever, and must bring it down—cool cloths, soaked in water, to lay across his forehead. Kate would do that. She had gentle hands.
No. Kate was not here either. Dead? God forbid... no, she was in Norfolk still. They exchanged letters, but only rarely, since few men were brave enough to carry the post. He prayed the plague had not come to her there. She was safe, as Jack wanted Antony to be.
The stairs creaked. Burnett at last; the servant must have heard him call. No, his voice was gone; but Burnett was a good man, and came to check on him regardless.
“God have mercy...”
Not Burnett. Antony forced his eyes open, and Jack Ellin’s face swam into focus. He croaked the name, unsure whether this was another figment of his fever.
Jack had nothing over his mouth; he should be wearing a kerchief, or one of those ridiculous beaked masks some doctors affected, stuffing the front with strong herbs to cleanse the air they breathed. The man’s hands felt like ice through Antony’s sodden linen shirt. He shivered uncontrollably and tried to push them away, but Jack evaded him with ease and yanked the laces open. Antony gasped in pain as the physician rolled his head to one side and then the other, checking his neck and under his arms; then agony lanced through him again as Jack pulled aside his drawers to examine his thighs.
The doctor growled an oath, and that forced home the truth Antony had been denying all this time. Telling himself it was just a fever. A headache. It would pass.
“I am dying,” he whispered.
The pain was unmistakable. Bad now, it would only grow worse, until he ran mad, and thought of ending his own life to end his suffering. Antony could feel the swellings in his groin, not just tokens but the very stamp of the plague.
“You will not die,” Jack said violently, and shifted his weight back, preparatory to a burst of activity that would bring all his medicinal art to bear on the task of saving Antony’s life.
Antony caught his arm before he could stand, digging his fingers in hard. “Listen. You must do something for me. You must.”
Jack covered the hand with his own. “Tell me.”
“You must do it. Your oath on it. Swear to me, before God, that you will do exactly as I bid you. No matter—no matter how strange it seems. No matter what you see.”
The physician’s face grew hesitant. “Antony—I must fetch my medicines, lance the swellings—”
“Later,” Antony rasped. He did not know whether it was sweat or tears that ran down his cheeks. “Swear it!”
Jack swallowed, then nodded once. “As God is my witness, I will do as you bid me. If it will get you to cooperate, I’ll do anything.”
Antony sagged back against the pillow, made weak by relief. His hand trembled against Jack’s arm, its grip now slackened. “Thank you. God bless you, John Ellin. You may save my life indeed.”
THE ANGEL INN, ISLINGTON: September 15, 1665
What in the name of the Devil’s unholy arsehole am I doing here?
Fulfilling his oath to Antony. Every stride Jack’s horse took northward felt like another strip carved out of his heart; he should be back in Lombard Street, burning quicklime and spices to cleanse the room, getting opium and hopefully some food into his afflicted friend.
But Antony would not rest; he kept repeating his feverish words. And so Jack rode north into Islington, on the word of a dying—
Do not say “ dying.”
On the word of a very sick man.
The faster Jack carried out his duty, the sooner he could get on with his treatment. It had saved some patients, he believed. None of them so old as Antony, true—
He snarled the thought away, and dismounted behind the Angel Inn.
Go to the rosebush, Antony had said, and tell it your name.
Jack felt like an ass, but he suspected a secret meaning in the instruction. Antony had friends, he knew, from before the King’s restoration, and subtle means of passing information; Jack had long thought some of them associated with the Angel Inn. Speaking to the rosebush was no doubt a signal. But he didn’t share Antony’s apparent conviction that someone would be watching, ready to receive his message.
Nevertheless, he had sworn it. So, taking a deep breath, Jack bent to one withered, rain-starved blossom and said, “My name is Dr. John Ellin. Sir Antony Ware has sent me to say that he has fallen ill with the plague. He is in his house in Lombard Street, and begs—”
He got no further, because the rosebush began to move. The tendrils stretched themselves upward, forming a graceful arch. Jack stumbled backward in surprise, then fell without dignity on his rump as a woman appeared in the arch. “Lord Antony? Sick? Oh, no—”
Then she stopped, because a familiar sound rang out over the grassy field: the church bell of Islington, tolling the death of a parishioner.
The woman’s eyes rolled up in her head, and she crumpled to the ground.
Jack sat in the grass, staring. Did a three-foot-tall woman just come out of a rosebush and faint at my feet?
He had his answer an instant later, when a second woman of equally small stature popped out of the arch, looking harassed and bearing a tiny cup in one hand. She made an exasperated noise when she saw the figure on the ground. “Honestly, if she had just listened—I warned her not to come out unprepared.”
Reflex took over; Jack crawled forward and supported the unconscious woman—girl? No, she was mature, though dwarfish in size—helping the other pour what looked to be a swallow of milk down her throat. “She fainted—”
“Yes, the bell. I heard it.” The woman tucked the cup into her rose-embroidered apron. “Come now, Gertrude, wake up—there’s a good girl.”
Honey-brown eyes fluttered open. She blinked twice, dazed, before seeming to realize she was lying against Jack’s knees. Then she sat bolt upright. “Antony!”
He rose, backing up a pace, and brushed the dirt and dried grass from the knees of his breeches. The two women were so much alike, they could only be sisters; were it not for their different aprons, he would have trouble distinguishing them. Antony had told him to bear this message to “the sisters,” and one thing more, to a specific name. If the woman with the daisies was called Gertrude, then the other...“Are you Lune?”
The woman with the roses blinked. “What? No, of course not. She isn’t here. Why—”
“I have a message for h
er as well.”
Focusing his mind on that errand helped. As long as he concentrated on his promise to Antony, he could keep the rest of that promise: to carry out his task no matter what he saw.
Both of the women were standing now. “Tell us,” Gertrude said.
Their faces were pitiful with concern; whoever else—whatever else—they were, Jack believed them true friends of Antony’s. But his oath was the only thing holding him together right now. “No. The words are for Lune alone; I’ll give them only to her.”
“Young man,” the rose-woman began, but her sister cut her off. “Rosamund, we haven’t the time. Lord Antony sent him; we must trust him. And the Queen will want to know, regardless.”
Catherine of Braganza? She was in Salisbury with the King. Let it pass. Rosamund fixed him with a piercing glare and said, “For Lord Antony’s sake, then—follow us, and do as we bid you, without question.”
He’d already sworn it, but there was no point in wasting time telling her that. Jack nodded, and they both sighed in relief. “I will make the horses,” Gertrude said, “and we shall go.”
THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: September 15, 1665
He went along with everything. He didn’t ask why Rosamund and Gertrude were taller when they mounted up for the ride. He didn’t blink when they stopped at an alder tree along St. Martin’s Lane and the sisters’ horses seemed to vanish into thin air, straws falling to the ground where they had been.
He even managed to keep from screaming when the alder tree swallowed him whole.
A distant, perversely calm part of his mind suggested that his brain was too dazed for questions or even fear, but that when he had a moment to think, he would react very strongly indeed. It was probably true. For now, Jack just gaped at everything, like a clod of a farmer come into London for the first time.
Smooth black walls rose around him, lit by cool lights that seemed to float without support. Creatures stared at him as he passed—beings that made Rosamund and Gertrude look entirely normal by comparison. The very air felt different, secret and hushed, as if he walked in a shadow made solid.