The Scar-Crow Men

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE




THE CELL DOOR GROUND OPEN. AFTER A MOMENT OF SILENCE, A low voice said, ‘Stinks.’

‘Stinks everywhere in here,’ a gruff voice growled in reply. ‘Stink and madness go together.’

‘Looks dead.’

‘Ah, he does.’

Lying face down in the filthy straw, Will couldn’t see anything, but he guessed the two men were pulling cloths over their mouths and noses to keep out the noxious, infecting fumes of the plague. He sensed one kneel beside him, hovering for a moment before prodding him sharply in the back.

‘He’s done, all right. Not breathing. Cold,’ the death-cart labourer muttered. ‘Let’s get him out of here.’

Will’s head ached from where it had been pressed for hours against the chill flagstones. His limbs had ceased working within moments of taking the clear potion which Red Meg had left with him after she had applied the plague disguise over his exposed skin. He had found the sensation of his thoughts roaming freely within a seemingly dead body unsettling in the extreme at first, a foretaste of the grave, and, with his devil whispering in his ear, perhaps a flavour of hell too.

Inured by their daily dose of plague deaths, the labourers didn’t even give the spy a cursory examination as they rolled him in a fresh linen shroud. As the two men pulled the material tightly over his face, Will was overcome with panic that even his barely perceptible breathing would be stifled. Might he die while faking death? he wondered, the irony not lost on him.

Rough hands gripped his ankles and under his arms and he was lifted amid grunts and curses. The cloth smelled of damp and mildew. His mouth was dry, his tongue fat and unmoving and heavy in his cheek.

Swaying, the spy was carried across the cell. At the door, his head cracked against the jamb, stars flashing before his closed eyes. His ankles clattered against the wood. But the discomfort cleared his thoughts a little, and when the shroud snagged on the splintered wood of the old cell door, he felt the linen tugged from his face enough to let in a little cool air.

Quarantined in their cells, the inmates were silent, but Will was convinced he could once again dimly hear Griffin Devereux’s wild laughter rising up from the depths. There is more madness in the governance of England than there is in this pitiful place, the spy thought bitterly.

Cursing and wheezing behind their masks, the death-cart labourers carried Will’s body through the Abraham Ward, along the corridor and into the entrance hall, battering his bruised limbs on every door they passed. And then he was out in the hot sun, which warmed him even through the linen. From the street, he could hear the rattle of wheels on ruts, the whinny of horses and the whistle of carters, the hailing of good friends and the shouts of the guards on the wall above the city gate. Despite his predicament, his spirits rose after the long days in the stinking gloom of Bedlam.

His toes twitched involuntarily. The potion was starting to wear off, as Red Meg had told him it would.

The two men came to a halt, and then began a slow swing. Gathering speed, Will was swept back and forth three times, until, with a loud grunt, the labourers let go of him. The dizzying sensation of flying made his head spin. Winded, he crashed on to what he knew must be the back of the death-cart, with his feet higher than his head. The shroud tore away from the upper half of his face and sunlight seared his eyes through his lids, painful after the ever-present gloom of his incarceration.

As the stink of human rot swept into his nose, the spy’s stomach turned. Unmoving elbows and knees prodded his back, and with his limited vision he could make out four blackened fingers close to his face. The index finger was extended downwards as if pointing the way to the doom that awaited them all. Will felt a pang of fear that he might contract the plague, though he had heard that some physicians thought the dead were no longer infectious. If he had been a religious man, he would have prayed for that to be true.

Will could hear the death-cart labourers arguing nearby, but couldn’t make out their words under the stamp of the horse’s hooves and the breeze whistling around the hospital yard. After a moment, the two men climbed on to the cart’s seat and with a crack of the whip they lurched off.

Shaken roughly, the spy watched the cobbles pass beyond the edge of the cart. The horse took a wide arc, trotting through the open gates into the flow of traffic on Bishopsgate Without. Conversations faded away the moment the grim burden was seen. Will felt a shadow as he passed under the city walls, and then the rough ride eased as the cart rolled on to the smooth limestone and flint paving of Bishopsgate Street. As life began to return to his limbs, the spy gave in to the gentle rocking and the sounds of the vibrant city.

Ahead lay the plague pit, his final resting place.