But the dirt fell in a black rain. Across his legs and torso, the rats scurried in a frenzy, snapping at the linen in their eagerness to feed before they were deluged. The square of blue sky seemed to recede. Will felt the earth cover his body, then his face, and his heart began to thunder.
Twisting his head, he found a pocket of air under a fallen corpse. Within moments the last of the light had winked out.
He felt the weight upon him increase with each shovelful. With precise but painfully slow movements, the spy drew his leaden body out of the shroud, but he wasn’t fast enough. He was lost to a dark, stiflingly hot world. Each breath was small and shallow and a band began to tighten across his chest.
Drenched in sweat, Will dug his fingers into the corpses and tried to haul himself up. The earth was alive all around him with the constant churning of the rats.
Yet the dirt crashed down faster than the spy could move, filling his mouth, his eyes, his nose. Dread began to shred his thoughts.
‘But for yourself?’ his private devil whispered in his ear. ‘No, you have forsaken Will Swyfte in your embrace of death. And now it embraces you.’
‘You will not distract me,’ the spy hissed.
With the toes of his right foot, Will dragged the last of the shroud down, but the weight of the earth was now so great he could barely move his battered limbs. Making mole claws of his fingers, he began to drag soil from above him into the few spaces that lay below. Burrowing rats raked his flesh as they continued their own, more rapid journey back to the light.
‘You will never find your Jenny,’ Mephistophilis whispered again. ‘While you die in slow, suffocating agony, you will reflect that you have wasted your life chasing an illusion. Days go by, years go by, and you cling on to one tiny thing, a discarded locket, that is your only evidence that she may still live. Hope exceeds reason.’
As the life returned to Will, so did the pain from his beatings in Bedlam. His limbs trembling from the exertion, he paused. Thin air wheezed into his lungs. Loam lined his mouth and caked his tongue.
Digging deep for the last of his reserves, Will renewed his efforts. Dragging handfuls of soil down, forcing himself upwards with his feet, searching for what little air remained to ease his struggling lungs, he inched on.
The black world appeared to be endless. He was unsure if he was rising or sinking, or how near he was to the surface. But he could still feel the faint thud-thud-thud of soil falling from above. His exertions grew weaker again, the strength draining from his limbs. He could not go on.
All around him, the devil’s laughter drifted. ‘Beyond the sea your love lies, in the west, where the dead go. Under the full moon, in a golden city, she sleeps, and cries, and you will never feel her loving touch again.’
Breathing in the stink of the grave, and death, and hopelessness, Will pressed his face into the soil and closed his eyes.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Sweating and scowling, the two labourers leaned on their shovels beside the sea of trampled earth now covering the plague pit. Nearby, at the fence, the five armed men smoked as they watched the sun sink past the chimneys of the surrounding houses. The job was done. Will Swyfte was dead and buried.
Clutching on to the brick wall in the small street across the way, Grace fought the urge to sob. She felt numb, as if a part of her had died with every shovelful of earth that fell into that black hole. She had wanted to run to the grave and attack the men with her bare hands, digging Will out herself if it was necessary. But she knew it was a foolish girl’s dream that would only lead to harm for Nat, who would undoubtedly have rushed to help her.
And now, a grown woman, she had been forced to watch the man she loved die.
‘You said they would break off from their digging. You said we would be able to help Will,’ Nathaniel raged. His hands shook as he fought to control himself. ‘Your plans have come to naught. You killed him.’
‘If he had not died here, he would have died in the Tower. I gambled on a slim chance that we might be able to save him,’ Red Meg replied quietly, her hands clasped in front of her, her face emotionless. ‘But it was not to be.’
‘And that is all you can say?’ Nat turned on her. ‘William Swyfte is more than my master — he is my friend. He saved the life of my father, and he helped me when I needed it most, even at cost to himself.’
A crack appeared in the Irish woman’s mask, and her green eyes flashed.
Grace confronted Nathaniel. ‘Do not risk your life when the situation is hopeless,’ she pleaded. ‘Will would not want you to die needlessly.’
‘Where there is life, there is hope. That is what the preachers say, is it not?’ He glanced over his shoulder at the men standing around the plague pit in the ruddy light of the setting sun. ‘I have Will’s sword that we were due to give him after we …’ The words caught in his throat. ‘After we rescued him.’
‘Nat, you are not a fighting man!’ Grace said incredulously. ‘You are as likely to fall over your sword as to kill with it. I would not lose you too.’ She couldn’t hold back the tears any longer.
‘Nevertheless, I must do what I can.’ Without another word, Nathaniel strode out into the street, keeping his head down but allowing one hand to fall on the rapier that hung incongruously at his side.
‘Fool!’ Red Meg snarled. Hesitating for a moment, she looked back along Lombard Street, weighing her decision. But just as Grace became convinced she had given up on them, the Irish woman stepped out after Nat, a broad, seductive grin leaping to her lips.
As Nathaniel closed on the burial site, the five men threw aside their clay pipes and turned to face the new arrival.
‘Keep moving, stranger,’ the steely-eyed leader of the group said.
‘On whose authority?’ Nat called, vaguely recognizing the man. Was he in the employ of Lord Derby?
‘The Queen’s.’
‘You do not do the Queen’s work.’
As she neared, Grace could see Nathaniel’s hand shaking above the rapier hilt. The five armed men were sure to have spotted his inexperience and doubt.
‘The papers I have from the Privy Council say otherwise,’ the leader said with a faint sneer. He walked to the gate, his hand resting on his own rapier as a warning to Nathaniel.
‘Boys! How handsome you all are.’ Red Meg’s rich voice rang out across the street. ‘It makes my heart beat faster to see hard-working men sleeked in sweat.’ She drew the attention of the five men with the swing of her hips and a flourish of her crimson skirt as she danced across the cobbles. Her right eyebrow was arched, her eyes and her broad smile promising much.
Four of the men turned their attention to the Irish woman, unable to prevent the hint of a leer reaching their lips. Sensing trouble, the leader remained grim, his eyes darting between Red Meg and Nathaniel.
‘Step aside,’ the young man called. ‘I do not wish to find trouble here.’
‘You will find it if you do not move on.’ The leader’s fingers clenched around the hilt of his sword.
‘Let us have no fighting,’ Red Meg trilled. ‘We can put those passions to better use, I am sure. Come here and help a maid find her way about a strange city.’
‘Away with you, doxy,’ the steely-eyed man snapped.
Grace flinched at the slur, but the Irish woman appeared unmoved. Drawing her bodice a little lower, she continued to advance on the burial site.
Her actions unnerved the leader. He drew his rapier and pointed it from Red Meg to Nathaniel. ‘Away with you both, now,’ he growled.
With a fumbling action, Nat unsheathed his own sword. It wavered as he brandished it at the five men.
The leader gave a humourless laugh.
‘Stand aside!’ Nathaniel shouted, stepping towards the gate. Still smiling seductively, Red Meg advanced too.
