Everybody was keen to get a good view.
'Stand aside, sir, I pray.'
'By your leave, Mistress.'
'I'll see nothing but your broad shoulders.'
'Come in front of me.'
'Let me through here.'
'Push hard, Mistress.'
The tall young man heaved to the left to create a space for the old woman. Having fought her way through the press to its densest point, she found that her view was still blocked. The young man recoiled from the reek of her breath but her odour was soon swallowed up in the communal stink of the multitude. She was a countrywoman of sorts, with a basket on her arm and a slope to her shoulders that told of a lifetime of drudgery. Her lips were bared in a toothless grin of anticipation.
'Have you come far, Mistress?' he said.
'Ten mile or more, sir.'
'All this way for an execution?'
'I'd skip twenty sooner than miss it.'
'Do you know who is to be hanged?'
'A traitor, sir.'
'But what is his name?'
'That does not matter.'
'It matters to him.'
'He is nothing in himself.'
'You walk ten miles for a total stranger?'
'Yes, sir,' she said with malicious glee. 'Death to all traitors!' I want to see them cut his pizzle off!'
When it was all over, Christopher Millfield afforded himself a quiet smile.
London came out in a hot sweat. Foul contagion spread throughout its maze of streets and alleys. Bells rang out their jangling requiems all day long and ministers went scurrying from one house of death to another. Undertakers prospered and a worm-eaten generation of parish clerks grew rich from exploiting the miseries of the bereaved by increasing their fees. Vultures fattened themselves on the wasted corpses of their fellow-citizens.
The exodus from the capital grew apace.
'I am loath to depart the place, Nick.'
'There's no staying here.'
'Where she is, there must I be.'
'And so you are, Edmund,' said his friend. 'If she has your verses, then she holds your essence in her hand.'
'I had not thought of that.'
'Then do so now. Absence can only make her heart grow fonder and you may nurture that fondness with sweet poems and tender letters. Your pen will have to serve where your lips may not.'
'This is consolation indeed.'
'Woo her from all over England.'
'What a welcome I will get on my return!'
Edmund Hoode brightened. Discussing his private life with Nicholas Bracewell always paid dividends. The book holder was a man of the world with a keen understanding of the vagaries of love. His advice was invariably sound and his sympathy without limit. Hoode had found cause to be grateful to him on many occasions and that gratitude surged again now. Nicholas had shown him that a happy compromise was possible. Leaving the city did not have to be an act of desertion. He could continue his assaults on the heart of his beloved from a distance. It would make for some exquisite pangs of loneliness on his part and heighten the magic of consummation when that blessed moment finally came.
'I'll send her a sonnet forthwith,' he decided.
'You have only today in which to compose it.'
'Today and tonight, Nick. I cast aside all thought of sleep in the joy of her service, and my Muse helps me best in the hours of darkness.'
'Do not weary yourself entirely, Edmund. We have a long journey to make tomorrow.'
'I embark upon it in good spirits.'
'That pleases me well.'
'Would that dear Gabriel could be with us!'
'My mind was sharing that self-same hope.'
The two men were walking together through Bankside on a sultry morning. They had come on a grim errand. Flies buzzed over piles of refuse and rats sniffed their way through rotting food. As the friends entered the most squalid part of the district, they saw signs of death and decay on every side. They were shocked to think that one of their fellows had been forced to live in such a, warren of mouldering humanity. Gabriel Hawkes had excelled at playing princes yet his own kingdom was that of a pauper.
They were only just in time. Turning into Smorrall Lane, they saw the cart trundling along about its doleful business, already piled high with its gruesome cargo. It stopped outside a door that was marked with a blue cross and another corpse was soon loaded up. The cart then went on to the house where Gabriel Hawkes had lodged. It was boarded up and the writing on the door confirmed that plague had also been a tenant. Wrapped in a dirty winding sheet, the body was carried out unceremoniously and, hurled up on top of the pile.
Nicholas started forward to protest.
'Take more care, sirs!' he said.
'Away!' snarled the driver of the cart.
'That is our friend you handle so roughly there.'
'It is our trade.'
'Practise it with more courtesy.'
The driver let out a cackle of derision then snapped the reins over the backs of the two horses. They pulled hard and the cart bumped on down the lane. It had a full consignment now and made its melancholy way to a piece of waste land beyond the labyrinth of houses. Nicholas and his companion followed it all the way, determined to share in the funeral rites of their former colleague. Both of them had respected Gabriel Hawkes enough to argue for his inclusion in the touring party and it was painful to have their happy memories of him marred by what they were now witnessing. A fund of wit, warmth and real talent was tied up in that winding sheet.
The cart creaked to a halt beside a huge pit that was still occupied by busy gravediggers. Fresh mounds of earth showed that other pits had already been dug and filled. Plague victims needed to go deep into the earth lest their infection sprout forth. The driver and his assistant unloaded the corpses with as much concern as if they were handling sacks of vegetables. Human beings were dragged off the cart and thrown along the edge of the pit to await the drop into their final resting place.
Nicholas Bracewell and Edmund Hoode were far enough away to miss the worst of the stench but close enough to observe the creature who crept out of his hiding place under a bush. The man was short, ragged and hirsute, old by every external sign yet as nimble as a monkey. While the driver and his assistant had their backs turned, the newcomer moved between the winding sheets as if he knew what he would find inside them. Using a knife to slit open the material, he groped here and grabbed there until he had quite a haul from his bold plundering. It was when he bent over the body of Gabriel Hawkes that Nicholas moved into action.
Darting forward at speed, he chased the man back to the bushes from which the latter had emerged, diving on him to bring the fellow rolling to the ground. The knife was brandished in Nicholas's face but it did not deter him. Years at sea with bellicose sailors had taught him how to handle himself in a fight and he quickly disarmed his assailant, winding him at the same time with a punch in the stomach. Hoode came running up to join him.
The man retreated in a defensive snivel.
'Leave off, good sirs. I do no harm.'
