‘But I know a kindred spirit when I see one.’
Nathaniel thought his young friend was about to strike the auburn-haired woman. Grace’s face was flushed, her left hand gripped into a tiny fist.
Shouting, whistling and beating his stick on the limestone roadway, the drover moved his flock of geese on. The traffic began to flow once more, most of it running south to the river or west to the market at Cheapside. Shielding his eyes against the sun, Nathaniel continued to look north along the row of large houses, past the great stone bulk of St Helen’s Priory to the city walls. After a while, he saw a ripple pass through the merchants and servants bustling along the street’s edge as head after head ducked down and turned towards the walls of the houses.
‘It comes,’ he whispered, waving a hand to catch the attention of the women behind him.
With silence in its wake, the death-cart trundled along Bishopsgate Street, its progress as steady and relentless as the plague. Nathaniel tried not to think what horrors his master must be experiencing.
At the crossroads, the death-cart drifted out into the centre of the street. The flow of drays and carts gradually drew to a halt, allowing the morbid carriage to turn right on to a cobbled way.
‘Yes!’ Nathaniel exclaimed quietly. ‘We were right. They go to the Lombard Street plague pit.’
‘It’s the nearest one to Bedlam,’ Red Meg said in a bored voice.
Filled with anxiety, Grace urged, ‘We must hurry, before Will is thrown into the pit.’
‘Do not hurry!’ the Irish woman snapped. ‘We must not draw attention to ourselves. We will have time to stop those slow-witted fools, even if we adopt the steady pace of servants off to market.’
Nathaniel set off first from the lea of the shadowy court, darting among the horses and carriages and into Lombard Street. Clutching his hand to his mouth, he smelled the stench of rot long before he reached the location of the mass grave. In the summer heat, droning clouds of black flies swarmed overhead. Bloated and lazy from feeding, they formed a thick cover on windows, blocking out the light.
Twisting up the brim of his hat, Nathaniel spotted the two labourers sitting on the edge of the street in the shade of a whitewashed house, mopping the sweat from their brows before the exertions that were to come. A roughly erected wooden fence with a gate in it led to a field of churned earth where the trees, shrubs and flowers had been rooted up. Rats scurried over each other in their feeding frenzy. The land was divided into plots. Five had already been used, the fresh earth heaped atop them. In the sixth plot lay a yawning hole. Crossing himself, Nathaniel couldn’t help a shudder when he looked at it.
The two women arrived at his side a moment later. Grace’s face was drained of blood, her gaze skittering across the graves and the contents of the cart, but Red Meg was unmoved. She primped her auburn hair, a seductive smile alighting easily on her lips.
‘As agreed, we shall distract the labourers with light conversation and flirting,’ the Irish woman said, flashing a glance at Grace. ‘Are you capable of that?’
‘Yes, of course,’ the younger woman snapped.
‘You must creep to the back of the cart and search for Master Swyfte,’ Red Meg instructed Nat. ‘The effects of the death potion will not yet have faded, but your master should be able to walk a few steps with your support. Take him into that street to the north. We will meet you there.’
‘And if I am seen?’ Nathaniel replied.
‘Then I will leave you here to your fate.’
Red Meg stepped into the street with an unsettled Grace close behind. But they had barely taken a pace when they caught sight of five men in black cloaks and tall black hats striding along the street from the west. Rapiers hung at their sides, and their grim features told of men about serious business.
Returning to Nathaniel’s side, the Irish woman urged him into a small, shaded street to the south from where they could observe proceedings without being seen.
‘Who are they?’ Grace whispered.
‘I think they are the men who pursued Will and me from St Paul’s,’ Nat said, peering at the faces of the new arrivals.
The five men surrounded the two puzzled labourers. One of them, clearly the leader of the group, leaned down to talk in low, fierce tones, ending his speech with a sharp sweep of his arm towards the death-cart.
With sullen faces, the two shabbily dressed men hauled themselves to their feet. Grabbing the first shroud- wrapped corpse, they carried it through the gate on to the cleared land, kicking out at the rats swarming around their feet. They tossed the body into the grave with all the bored disrespect of a woodman stacking logs for the winter.
Appalled at the sight, Grace cried out so loudly that Red Meg had to shake her furiously. ‘You do not have the luxury of acting like a child any more,’ the Irish woman snapped. ‘You will be the death of us and of the man who clearly holds your heart.’
‘But Will-’
‘-has his life resting in our hands. Would you have it on your conscience that your own weakness killed him?’
Grace calmed, her face hardening. She glanced back to the mass grave, to which the two labourers were now carrying the second body under the vigilant watch of the five men. ‘What do we do now?’ she whispered.
‘Once they have deposited these poor souls they will fetch more,’ Nathaniel replied, his knuckles white where his fingers gripped the corner of the wall. ‘There is a shortage of land for the pits. They fill each to the brim before they start another.’
Barely had he uttered the words than one of the labourers broke off from his work to collect shovels from the rear of the cart. He rammed them into the heap of black earth next to the grave and returned to dispose of the rest of the bodies.
Shaking his head, Nathaniel gasped, ‘They are going to bury Will alive.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
His heart pounding, Will sucked in a mouthful of air and fought to clear his sluggish head. Some life was returning to his limbs, but agonizingly slowly.
Black walls towered up on every side to a square of blue sky overhead, which seemed to him at that moment impossibly far away. Now that the linen had been torn clear of his face, he could see around the dank hole, half filled with mouldering corpses in shrouds stained with bodily fluids. The ones directly beneath him, where decomposition was well under way, were soft and yielding. His eyes watered and he gagged as the reek of escaping fumes seeped into his lungs.
At first the spy thought stones were being dropped into the grave, but as he rolled his eyes, he saw rats plummeting from the edge of the pit. Their movements had a feverish intensity. Many of the shrouds nearby had been gnawed through, and the rats ducked their heads into the gaps, their jaws working hungrily.
Will watched one rodent speed sinuously towards his exposed face, its jaws gaping wide in anticipation to reveal two rows of tiny white teeth. Snarling deep in his throat, he spat at the predator. The rat flipped over in shock and raced to easier prey. But the spy knew it was only a matter of time before the pack descended on him and ate him alive.
Hearing the grunts of the approaching labourers, he played dead again. A body crashed across him, pinning his arms.
‘Can you now see your end?’ the devil’s voice echoed from some corner of the pit that the spy couldn’t see. The rats continued their furious feeding, oblivious.
‘Leave me be,’ Will said under his breath. ‘I have work to do.’
Mephistophilis’ laugh was like a cold wind.
Bodies rained around the spy. But by the time the last one had crashed into the pit, he had almost regained enough movement in his arms to free himself.
Will wondered how much longer he had. He received his answer a moment later when the first shovelful of earth hit him full in the face. Spitting the soil from his mouth, he continued to press against the shroud, straining his unresponsive muscles, willing the potion to leave his body.
