Plague, Page 2

  He swung himself off the coach. With one foot on the running board, a hand on the door handle, he pressed an ear to the window—glass, the latest in fashion. The man within spent near as much adorning his transport as he did his wife. There were leather curtains beyond and not a sound emerged through them. “Do not,” he began, then had to cough to clear his throat. “Do not move if you value your lives,” he continued. Thrusting the pistol ahead of him, he jerked open the door.

  The interior was dark. Thus, before sight it was scent that took him. It wasn’t the first time he’d smelled this odour. He had hoped never to smell it again and hadn’t for so long he thought he might have forgotten. But he had not—the stench of guts, freshly pierced, was such a distinct one. As ever, as here, it was overlain with the iron tang of blood.

  It took him back, that special savour. He was on a battlefield, which one he did not know. They were all different and they were all the same, blended now by near two decades. Men had died swiftly and in silence, slowly and with great noise.

  Then he came, the one who always did when something carried Coke back, some sight, some sound, some … scent.

  Quentin.

  They had served together as officers in Sir Bevil Grenville’s regiment for over a year, had laughed, got drunk, saved each other’s lives. Were as close as comrades could be. Yet the shot that had erased Quentin’s features had erased the memory of them too. Mouth, eyebrows, ears, chin, all wiped away, as if Quentin had become a fresh canvas awaiting an artist’s brush. Quentin had moved one hand before the ruin, seeking what? The other hand had held in his own guts, the source of the unforgettable, ineradicable smell.

  Sinking against the door frame, the captain closed his eyes, until he remembered that nothing was as terrible as what went on behind them. So he opened them again.

  At least the three figures before him had faces. With eyes accustoming to the gloom, he could see those now. And seeing, he lowered his pistol, uncocked it, for even if it had had ball in it, you could only kill someone once.

  The walls of the carriage he’d glimpsed in the tavern yard had been primrose but now were mainly red, the colour splashed like a painter’s carelessness. The open door had let some blood flow out, but still more pooled among the limbs and entrails of the men, the two of them lying together upon the floor as if embracing.

  At least the dead lady was whole, and upright upon the bench. Her cream gown was pinkened now, as if it had been washed with a courtesan’s scarlet dress. The source of the stain was a deeper patch of crimson above her heart. Of the three in the coach, she was the only one with her eyes shut. For that, Coke was grateful.

  Noise startled him. He turned fast—to Dickon’s eyes focused on the horror. “Do not,” began Coke, too late.

  “No, no, no, no, no!”

  “Out, Dickon,” Coke ordered, and the boy collapsed, sobbing, onto the roadway.

  When Coke turned back, something struck him. This slaughter was not as random as he’d first thought. He’d seen men—aye, women too—torn apart by cannon, hacked by sword, split by pike thrust. This was different. This was more like the killing shed on his father’s estate. Within it, there was a place for every part of a pig, for every part would be used. And in this carriage, parts had been … placed. Even the blood looked like it had been channelled.

  These people had been butchered.

  He thought the wars and all he’d seen in them had long since hardened his guts. He was wrong. He lifted his scarf just enough to vomit down the inside of the carriage door.

  The horn sounded again, more than one dog this time. Nearer. They had to get away. But first, something had to come from this carnage. Setting the gun upon one bench, he reached both his hands around the lady’s neck, feeling under her dress for the clasp of her necklace. It was hard to undo, and he had to lean close. As he did, he glanced up.

  The lady’s eyes were now open.

  He tried to jerk back, but his fingers became entangled in the chain and this delayed him just long enough for the woman to wrap her hands around his wrists. Her cold touch froze him, though the fierceness of her grip would have held him anyway. “Lady, I—I will help you.”

  He couldn’t tell if she heard him. Nothing showed in her eyes, bright with the last of life. Her blue lips moved, soundless. “What is it, lady? What?”

  “Pale horse,” she whispered, “Pale horse.”

  The light in her eyes died with her. Her grip slackened; her fingers released him. But his hands were still on the chain, and as the bugle sounded a third time, too close now, he said, “Forgive me,” and tore the necklace from her neck.

  Then he was out of the coach, pulling the whimpering Dickon to his feet, shoving him toward his tethered horse. Coke turned back to the carriage, grabbed the driver’s whip. “Yah,” he cried, flicking the tip of the leather between the lead horses’ ears. The beasts, reacting to voice and crack, took off at once, and a few moments later Coke was astride Dapple. Pausing only to cram the necklace deep into his coat pocket, he heeled his horse into a gallop, taking the same faint deer path through the woods that Dickon had, just as the horn sounded again, close now, very close.

  They were halfway across Finchley Common, still travelling at speed by the light of a rising and gibbous moon, when Coke glanced down and saw just one of his holsters filled. He’d left one of his matched pistols in the coach.

  But there was no going back.

  THE THIEF-TAKER

  A few minutes earlier

  What was strange about the footman’s corpse was that it appeared to have been arranged after death.

  Pitman did not think the man had moved himself: that in the act of dying, he would so spread out his arms and cross his ankles in imitation of the Crucifixion. He himself was a devout man, but he doubted even he’d have the will to assume such a pose with life fleeing so fast. In his brief examination before he remounted and heeled his horse again in pursuit of the coach, he saw that the footman’s head had been near severed. One stroke, he’d wager. By an axe or perhaps a cleaver.

  Behind him, the bugle man sounded. Brass brayed, the hounds gave tongue and Pitman flinched. The rule of silence he’d imposed on these men who’d insisted on accompanying him from the Tally Ho Inn on this pursuit had now been violated. A warning for those ahead justified it. Perhaps they were right. A man who killed once like that might kill again.

  A man like Captain Cock?

  He looked to the mount beside him. “All right, lad?” he asked, leaning down to touch his son’s arm.

  Josiah jerked up. “Did you see him, Father?”

  “I saw him.”

  “His eyes were … his eyes.” The boy closed his own, too late to trap the tears. “I wish I had not come.”

  I wish so too, thought Pitman, squeezing his son’s arm. But Bettina had insisted. With three daughters pulling her skirts and two more, by the feel, on the way, she had enough on her plate. “Get him out from under my feet, Pitman,” she’d said. “There’s never any danger. You say the thieves always come as meek as lambs.”

  I say it because it is usually true, Pitman had thought. And from all reports, Captain Cock would be especially gentle. His politeness to women; just one driver injured in a dozen robberies, and that because he’d gone for a gun he’d laid down. The captain hadn’t even shot him, just cracked him atop the skull with his own pistol.

  But now—this body, the head near off? What’s happened, Captain? Have you gone mad at last? Like so many who fought in the Troubles, then or later?

  A horse’s muzzle nudged up on his other side. “I’ve dispatched riders ahead, by different ways,” barked Colonel Wingate. The local magistrate was a corpulent man, but he sat his horse easy, as befitted one of Cromwell’s lobsterbacks. He raised a hand to wipe road mud from a claret-reddened cheek. “Holcolme. Mill Hill. Totteridge.” He gestured. “Constables will be roused. Citizens mustered. We’ll catch this murderous swine. Have no fear.”

  He dropped back again, m
ore comfortable with men of his own class and household, no doubt. Pitman glanced again at his son, weeping openly now. Josiah was rarely so wordless.

  Pitman shook his head. His son’s talkativeness back at the inn had led to this large accompanying party. Tending to their mounts, the boy had blabbed their purpose to a stable lad: the taking of the notorious Captain Cock. Within minutes, a large group of locals, sober and less so, had mobbed Pitman at his table. Their spokesman, this same Colonel Wingate, had informed him that only two weeks earlier they’d had the nabbing of Swift Jack, aye, and his hanging too, and they were damned if any thief-taker from London should trespass on their prerogatives.

  Pitman had had but one recourse. He’d sat back, picked up his tankard and told them plain that he would not stir a foot unless they swore that the twenty-guinea reward for taking the highwayman would be entirely his. Otherwise, the men could proceed without him. Uncertain how to do so, they had grudgingly accepted his terms.

  Even then, he had taken his time, partly in the hope that many would get too drunk to ride but mainly because he was certain his man was still somewhere on the premises. Indeed the captain could be among the pressing crowd, eager to hunt himself down. He had a reputation for just such bravado.

  Now, as they reached a downward slope and he urged his horse to more speed upon it, Pitman sighed. This noisy mob. The corpse. Not how he’d meant this affair to go. Not when it began so well.

  Back in the crowded inn, he had not hoped to single out his quarry—but he had easily spotted the man’s mark. Captain Cock had a distinct modus operandi. He struck rarely and richly. A coach would be leaving later that evening, its owner Sir Griffith Rich, well-known firebrand of the king’s party. His driver and footman, though large men, would not deter the bold captain; while the pretty wife, suffering the rough jests of her far older husband and his brother, would entice any gallant knight of the road near as much as the jewels around her neck.

  Would have enticed me once, he’d thought, wondering how she would look, naked by candlelight. Not as an ordinary man did, with casual lust. He’d smiled. Well, not entirely like an ordinary man.

  “Have you sniffed him out, Father?” his son had asked, mistaking the smile for confidence.

  “I’ve narrowed him down to three, Josiah, lad.” He’d held up the sketches he’d made. “He will be one of these, I reckon.” It wasn’t true. There were a dozen candidates, more; former soldiers, hard men with steel gazes not unlike his own. He’d suspected Captain Cock for a military man from the reports, though he may have appropriated the rank.

  His sketching stopped him drinking too much ale, calmed him too. It was a practice from before the war, when he’d thought to apprentice to an engraver. He had drawn the men as he’d waited for the coach to leave. He’d also sketched the lady. And her necklace; although seen briefly, it was hard to forget.

  When the coach set out, he had not warned the member of Parliament. The party was well protected—an armoured lure, giving Pitman his best chance in a long while of a large reward. Besides, if there was a man in the realm he would wish a little discomfited, Sir Griffith Rich, the MP, was he. Not because the man was an ardent Royalist—Pitman had fought them in the wars and beaten ’em too. No, because of the type of Royalist he was—a Tory of the High Church who would harass and condemn any who chose to worship differently and worked ceaselessly in Parliament and out to secure their prosecution. Those, indeed, like Pitman and his wife.

  Lord, let Captain Cock crow over him a little first, he’d prayed as they set out a few minutes after the coach. Then let me take him after.

  Now, with his horse splashing through a little brook, Pitman prayed differently. Lord, he muttered, let me take this man before anyone else dies.

  They came upon it suddenly, the second corpse, while they still dripped with water. This one was not arranged, Christ-like, but was a heap at the side of the track. The coach driver, by his livery. “See to him, some of you,” he called, kicking his horse on. It was a huge beast he’d hired, which was necessary, for so was he, but it showed some speed now, as if also eager for this chase to be done. Perhaps it too could see in the twilight, as its rider did, his fellows up the long hill ahead, pulling the coach toward the summit.

  The quarry was in sight. The horn sounded again. Men and hounds gave tongue. “Hi ya!” cried Pitman, setting heels to flank.

  Perhaps the brass call succeeded. Perhaps the hill had sapped the coach horses, or they were less urgent since no driver snapped his whip between their ears. But the animals slowed from canter to walk. A hedge stood alongside the highway and the front horses made for it, to halt and nibble unchastised.

  Pitman was among the first to draw level, and the very first off his mount. “Stay back,” he shouted, his bellow cutting through the babble. “Hear me! I am an officer of the law and I will not be hindered. Allow me to proceed.” He was an officer of the law, but not in this parish; he operated here under no one’s jurisdiction but his own. Yet his size, bearing and the large pistol he now cocked gave him authority enough.

  He walked up to the coach, gripped the door handle, took a breath, then opened the door just enough to admit the muzzle of his weapon.

  He did not expect to see Captain Cock, like his namesake, crowing on a seat inside. But what he did see he did not expect either.

  Three bodies. All on the floor, two men as close as lovers. The woman on top of them both, on her back, arms flung over her head as if reaching for the other door. The stench made him gag, and he shoved his sleeve against his mouth.

  “What is it, man? Let me past.”

  It was the colonel behind him. But Pitman had obeyed men like him too often, for too long, during the late king’s wars, and with the realm at peace, he was no longer a soldier. “One moment,” he said curtly, not moving, blocking the interior with his bulk. He knew he had only a few moments, and he must use them, for he noticed things that others didn’t. It was why he took more thieves than anyone else.

  He breathed the stench again. Blood, pierced gut, a woman’s fragrance—primrose. Some other smell also, sweet-foul? There, sliding down the door, yellow and thick as a custard. He reached a finger. The vomit was still slightly warm. He doubted it had come from any of the corpses: no yellow disturbed the pure crimson of their clothes.

  Unlike the men, the woman had not been gutted. A single stab through the heart had done for her. So a different blade, the men’s wounds different too from the cleaver that had killed the footman. An array of weapons, then? A butcher’s set of tools? A surgeon’s?

  He looked at the woman again—at her eyes, half open. At her neck. He noticed an abrasion there, a scrape not caused by a blade. He reached a finger to a droplet of blood. He pulled the top of her gown slightly down. He had seen her display the necklace to the MP’s brother, and so to half the tavern.

  It was gone.

  Anger came. So you killed her, Cock? Then robbed her, or t’other way about? Did she give you much of a fight?

  The noise had faded behind him. Not disappeared, it was still in his ears. He heard the colonel demanding entry again as if calling from another county. But Pitman did not shift. There were other things here. He’d seen them in his first glance.

  In the corner of one bench was a pistol. He picked it up, raised it into the little light. It was fine, with a brass plate showing Parket of London had made it. One of the victim’s or—Then he saw the two letters carved into the butt.

  CC. Captain Cock.

  The weapon was uncocked. A sniff of the barrel showed it was also unfired. Pitman shoved it into his large pocket. Then he looked up, at another thing he’d noticed.

  A scene was painted on the panel above one of the benches. Men walked with women beside a river, beneath willows and a sky that had once been cornflower blue and was now as red as a sunset that would gladden any shepherd. Yet something else marred the tranquility. Red numerals. Latin ones.

  He was not an educated man, could read only halti
ngly his own language. But he recognized numbers: XII.XII. Even Roman ones.

  “I insist, sirrah,” came the voice again behind him, accompanied by tugging now, “I am the local magistrate and I insist.”

  Pitman was about to admit the colonel. Until he realized that there was one last thing he’d nearly missed, mainly because it was red, and so much there was red. It rested in the blood-flooded mouth of one of the men lying on the floor, the very recently deceased member of Parliament, Sir Griffith Rich.

  With difficulty because it was slick and wedged between teeth, Pitman plucked it from the man’s mouth. A stone, some kind of quartz. He pocketed it as well. Then, just before he backed out of the carriage, he did something he knew he would later struggle to explain. He wiped the Roman numerals off the panel.

  Pitman had blocked the entire doorway and the man behind had to step off the running board to allow him out. “Well, sir?” the colonel snapped. “Will you now let me see?”

  “Let me caution you first—”

  “Caution, pish!” replied the man, shoving past. “I’ve been in more battles than you’ve had—”

  As the cry came, the first hoarse half prayer, Pitman went to Josiah, who stood with his face pressed against his horse’s neck. “Mount, boy.”

  “Should I not see, Father?”

  “Nay, you should not.” He helped his son up into the saddle. “Let us go home.”

  A few hours’ rest, if no sleep, in the stable of the inn, and they left at the first hint of light. An hour’s ride brought them to Cripplegate Without and the farrier’s where they’d hired their mounts. Cripplegate itself was just being unbarred, so they passed through and walked into the City down Wood Street. Halfway along it, the pavement before some especially handsome merchants’ houses was being washed down. This did not stop a man—drunk, no doubt, despite the early hour—from lurching out of an alley, preceded by his vomit. He collapsed onto the ground, moaning. Pitman and his son stepped around him. As they neared their home, church bells began to toll, the first summons to Sunday worship. Pitman could distinguish among them the distinct bass tones of Old Toby, which stood in the tower of St. Leonard’s, their parish church.