God's sake. And then he said, It was hacking at the bars with its awl, seeking to get in, and he could see its face.
This was the night (or it was rather towards morning, as G. Beaton told the constables) that Master Charles expired of cutting his throat, in his bed. I will say, with obedient circumspection, and in the hope that your Lordship will understand me, that certain swellings which I observed upon his face and body were altogether disappeared by the time the laying-out women –
I found my heart beating heavily, and I was warm despite the damp air. These people lived before me: the pale lad sitting at the window, the steward painfully writing his account, the shadows of that cramped and greasy time come back upon a damned house. I began to have a hideous notion of what haunted Dean Halliday now.
Then I got up, with a muscle of fear jerking in my leg, because I could have sworn somebody had walked down the passage, and past my door. It was only a flash out of the tail of the eye; I went over to reassure myself. Stone window-boxes? They were not here now, although I could remember one, and the passage was empty.
Returning, and wiping my hands aimlessly on my overcoat, I wondered whether I ought to call Masters and show him. But the spell took me.
. And now it behooves me, though with a sick and doubtful heart, to throw what light I can upon this Visitation which GOD in his inscrutable ways hath wrought. Some part of it I observed myself, but most I learned in later time from my father; for I was bare ten years old then, which was in the year of the Great Plague, or 1665.
Doubtless your Lordship has heard men talk of this time, since there are many now alive who did not flee the city, yet survived
My father, who was a good and pious man, used to gather us his children and in his great voice he would read the text which says, 'Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness: nor for the destruction that wasteth at noon day. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee.' This was in August and September, the worst months because the hottest. Even shut into our room I can remember hearing from the upper windows of neighboring houses the shrieks of the women that broke the great silence that was on the city. Once my sister and I crept out on the roof-tiles, at a giddy height, and saw the hot murky sky, and no smoke going up from the chimneys, and such people as were abroad hurrying in the middle of the streets, and the watchmen with their red wands before houses that were marked in a red cross on the doors below the words, `Lord, have mercy upon us.' I only saw a plague-cart once, which was when I crept to a window at night: it was stopped near by, and the bellman was clanging his bell and bawling towards an upstairs window, and so was the watchman, and the linkman was holding up his light so that I saw the cart full of bodies that were covered with sores. I heard these carts every night.
However, this was later, as I shall speak of hereinafter, and the Plague (which broke out in the parish of St. Giles) took so long a time to reach us that people said it would not come at all; and it was mayhap to my father's forethought that we owed our lives. For my father took thought to GOD's signs and omens, like others less fortunate. When the great comet appeared, and burned dull and sluggish in the sky, he went to Sir Richard - as he was then, your Lordship's grandfather - and told him what it was. (This was in the month of April).
Now Sir Richard's own room of business, set apart from his counting-room and warehouses, was the stone house before mentioned. Here he entertained the great people who came to buy of him: which is to, say, inside by the fire in cool weather, and outside under the trees in fine. Sir Richard was a vasty awesome figure in his great periwig and grave fur gown, with the gold chain round his neck; but he did not take amiss what my father said to him.
My father urged on him the precaution he had heard was taken by a Dutch family in Aldersgate Street: viz., that the house should be well provisioned and shut up of itself, suffering none to go in or out until the scourge abated. Sir Richard heard him out, and pinched his chin and was mighty thoughtful. For he had a dear wife, who was soon to be brought to bed of child; likewise a beloved daughter Margaret, and a son Owen, your Lordship's own father. Whereat he said - Ay, there was reason in the plan, and if the plague showed no abatement in a fortnight, they would do it. For they dared not leave the town, because of his wife.
Your Lordship well knows that it did not abate; nay, that it breathed fiercer as the warm weather came with the flies (although all birds had gone from the town). It smote northwards to Holbourne, down the Strand and Fleet Street, and was upon us, and everywhere were people fleeing mad from the stricken town with their goods piled into carts and waggons. These stormed at the gates of the Mansion House, beseeching of my Lord Mayor passes and certificates of health, without which no other town would suffer them to enter, or no inn allow them to lie there. To some it came slowly, first the pains and vomit, then the swelling sores, and mayhap lingered a week ere dying in convulsions; to others it came in the vitals, without outward sign, until they fell in the street and died there.
Whereupon Sir Richard ordered the house to be shut up, dismissing his clerks and keeping only such servants as were of necessity. He desired his son and daughter to leave and join the Court (which had fled to Hampton), but they would not. So none were suffered to go out into the air, save only within the enclosure of our wall; and these with myrrh and zedory in their mouths. I except only my father, who manfully offered to carry abroad such messages as Sir Richard should wish: But indeed he would have thought himself fortunate, had it not been for one thing: that is to say, his half-brother, Louis Playge.
Now in truth I turn sick when I write of this man, who hath affrighted my dreams. I saw him only twice or thrice. Once was when he came boldly to the house, demanding too see the steward his brother; but the servants knew who he was, and ran from him. He caught my little sister, so that when my father came upon him he was twisting her arm horribly, and laughing, and telling her how they cut up a man at Tyburn yesterday. (For your Lordship must know he was assistant to the Hangman, a thing of horror and shame to my father, and which he strove to conceal from Sir Richard). Nor had he the courage or skill for the Hangman's office, but could only stand beside and .. .
Some things I shall not include; it is not well that I should.
. .. But my father said - That if once he could gain the stomach for all he desired to do, then, Louis Playge must be so evil that he could not die like other men. In appearance he was a short man, with a face something bloated. He wore his own lank hair, and had a greasy flopping hat pinned up at one side; and instead of a sword he wore at his side a curious dagger with a blade like a thick awl, which he was very proud of because -he had made it himself, and which he called Jenny. He used it at Tyburn for . .
But when the noisome pestilence blew upon us, we did not see him, and I know my father hoped him dead. Then one day (it was August) my father went abroad with a message, and when he returned he sat down by my mother in the kitchen - and put his head in his hands. For he had seen his brother Louis in an alley off Basinghall Street, and his brother was kneeling and stabbing at something with his weapon. Beside him there was a handcart full of small furry bodies, the which were cats. (For your Lordship must know that by an ORDER conceived by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, no hogs, dogs, cats or tame pigeons, being bearers of contagion, were suffered to be kept; but all must be made way with, and killers appointed for that purpose)....
Somehow, as my eyes fell on this sentence, I found myself nodding as though in confirmation, and saying, 'Yes!' and being positive that I remembered seeing the Order - which was bordered in black, and posted outside a tavern with people muttering about it.
And, seeing this, my father would have hastened on, but that Louis called to him, and he was laughing and saying-How now, brother, but are ye afeard of me? And the cat was still writhing, so that he trod on its neck, and came stepping through the filth of the alley, all lean and bespattered, with his hat flopping against the muddy yellow sky behind. When my father asked him if he did not fear, he replied that he had a philtre, gained of a potent necromancer at Southwark, which kept him immune.
Though indeed there were many with philtres, and plague-waters, and amulets (so that quacks grew rich), yet it did not save them, and they were put into the deadcart with the amulets still round their necks. But it seemeth that his charm was of the Devil, forasmuch as through all those crazed days he had his safety, and grew crazed with what he dared do among the dead and dying. These things I will not repeat, save only to tell your Lordship that he grew to a thing shunned like the plague itself, nor would any tippling-house take him in.
Him, however, my father forgot, for on the 21st August Master Owen - your Lordship's father fell
