stools he‘d purloined from the dwelling next door.
Neville rose from the bed and helped Culpeper arrange them about the confined space.
Mary moved to a stool at the head of Emma‘s bed, Margaret sat on the bed itself beside Emma,
Jocelyn with her, while Bolingbroke, Neville, and a now resigned Culpeper sat on several stools
arranged a little back and about the bed.
Mary and Margaret took turns wiping Emma‘s face with damp cloths, while Jocelyn held
her mother‘s hand and silently wept.
Time passed.
―You came quickly,‖ Neville eventually murmured to Bolingbroke.
―I was on my way from the Tower when I met your men-at-arms approaching the
bridge,‖ Bolingbroke replied.
Neville raised his eyebrows in silent query.
―Whittington and I,‖ said Bolingbroke, ―thought to walk the streets of London. We could
not bear to think that the Londoners suffered while we waited out the pestilence locked in the
silence of the Tower.‖
―You are not afraid?‖
―Of the pestilence? Nay. It cannot touch us.‖ Bolingbroke‘s steady pale grey eyes caught
Neville‘s brown ones. ―Not my brothers and sisters of the angel-children. This is a pestilence
designed to punish the ordinary men and women who supported me. The louder they cheered,
the more violently they die.‖ He looked back to Emma. She‘d drunk the potion that Margaret had
fed her drop by drop, but even so she still moaned. ―The pestilence also serves as a means to turn
the people against me. It is not a good omen with which to begin a reign, Tom.‖
Neville thought of the horrors God had visited on the Egyptian king and his people in
order to force him to free Moses and the Israelites. ―Sweet Jesu,‖ he whispered, ―what else might
we expect?‖
Now Bolingbroke had turned his piercing eyes back to Neville. ―I don‘t know, Tom. It
was a question I was about to ask you. ‖
Neville jerked his eyes away, studying Emma. Jesu, these were ordinary men and
women, doing the best they could in their daily travails. And for this God has lashed them with
His disgusting pestilential vengeance? Then Neville jerked slightly on his stool as a
revelation—it was too powerful to be called a thought—surged through him. God and his angels,
and their Church on earth, were nothing but vehicles of hate and fear and vengeance. The
demons, the angel-children, embraced Christ”s message of love.
Emma moaned, louder now, and Mary leaned forward to add her hand to that of
Jocelyn‘s as it held Emma‘s. ―Your agony will ease soon,‖ she whispered.
Emma opened her eyes—mere slits now between her swollen lids. ―Mary,‖ she
whispered, repeating what she‘d said when she‘d first realised Mary was in her chamber.
―Blessed Mary!‖
Mary shifted uncomfortably on her stool, a faint flush of embarrassment on her cheeks.
―Her mind wanders,‖ she said to Margaret, who was looking at her with an odd expression in her
eyes. ―The liquor is so strong.‖
―Maybe,‖ murmured Margaret, remembering the strange things that Mary herself had
said while under its influence.
Emma now freed her hand from her daughter‘s, and gripped Mary‘s hand tightly. She
twisted her head on her pillow so she could stare Mary directly in the face.
―Mary, Mary,‖ she said. ―What you have lost you will find again.‖
―Emma, I have lost nothing, I want for nothing—‖
―Save your husband‘s love,‖ Emma croaked. ―Never mind, sweet Mary, Blessed Mary, it
shall be yours again soon.‖
Now Mary‘s flush deepened, and she studiously avoided looking at Bolingbroke.
―Emma—‖
―You have loved, you are loved, and you will be loved,‖ said Emma, and then she died
with nothing more dramatic than a long, comfortable sigh.
There was a lengthy silence, eventually broken by Jocelyn, who began to cry anew.
Margaret gathered her into her arms, comforting her.
But she kept her eyes on Mary, sitting straight and still on her stool.
―We will wash her, and make her clean,‖ Mary said. ―And then we will have her
conveyed to a churchyard where she shall be buried.‖
―Mary,‖ Bolingbroke said, rising from his stool. ―This is not a task you should be
engaged in. I can find—‖
―No, Hal. I would like to do this for Emma. It will not take long, and it will be no effort.‖
―Mary,‖ Bolingbroke said in a stronger voice, ―I cannot allow it. You have already
exposed yourself far too much to the pestilence, and I will not have you handling this woman‘s noxious corpse!‖
―I am dying anyway,‖ Mary said in a matter-of-fact tone, ―and whether it be from the
black imp eating me within, or the black pestilence that will swell me without, is neither here nor
there.‖
―Mary—‖
―I can do good here, Hal, not cloistered up in some silken chamber. If nothing else I can
bring comfort to the dying. I can let them know that their queen cares about them, and suffers
alongside them in their extremity.‖
―It is the same reason you are here, Hal,‖ Neville put in quietly. ―London cannot be left to
suffer alone. And Mary has Margaret and myself to care for her. When we see that she needs to
rest, then she will rest. When we see that she needs to eat, then she will eat. And when we see that she needs to—‖
―Then she will do it,‖ Mary finished for him, with a smile. ―Hal, please, do not worry
about me. If you wish I will go to one of the hospitals, and do what I can there, rather than
wander the streets.‖
Bolingbroke looked at her, knowing that if the hospitals were filled with the victims of
the pestilence then they might be more dangerous than the streets.
But then, did she not say she was dying anyway? Who was he to gainsay her?
He nodded tersely. ―Very well. Tom, Margaret, I charge you with her care. Keep
Culpeper close by you at all times, and if at any time it appears necessary, then you escort my
queen to the Tower…no matter how she protests.‖
Everyone nodded agreeably, even Culpeper, who looked resigned to the prospect of
spending the next hours, or perhaps days, couched with his queen inside some pestilence-riddled
hospital.
―Come, Margaret, Jocelyn,‖ Mary said. ―Gather together some water and some towels,
for we have Emma to see to.‖
Bolingbroke watched for a brief moment, then turned to Neville. ―Keep her safe,‖ he
said, then left the room. Neville heard footsteps outside, then hooves as Bolingbroke and his
escort rode away.
―I will wait in the outer chamber with Culpeper,‖ he said to Margaret. ―For this ritual is
women‘s business.‖
Much later, when the women were done, and bearers arrived from St Mary-le-Bow
church to escort Emma Hawkins‘ body to the churchyard, Mary finally consented to allow
Margaret and Neville, Jocelyn close behind, to help her outside.
As they stepped into the tiny courtyard, they halted in amazement. Some forty or fifty
people—ordinary Londoners—had crowded into the confined space.
―What is this?‖ said Neville.
The crowd parted a little, and Dick Whittington stepped forth. ―One of Emma Hawkins‘
neighbours saw our queen enter her lodgings,‖ he said, ―and word spread. My queen, I speak for
all these good people here, and for all Londoners, in thanking you for your mercy and goodness.‖
And he dropped to one knee, sweeping his cap off his head as he did so.
One by one the other people in the courtyard did likewise, and as Mary moved slowly
towards her donkey, many reached out and touched the hem of her gown.
―Beloved lady,‖ they whispered.
VIII
Sunday 26th May 1381
—i—
For three days the Dog of Pestilence stalked London, striking down innocent and sinner
alike, leaving thousands to perish alone huddled in gutters or slumped in darkened alleyways.
The stench of ripe decay hung like a pall over the city as muffled church bells pealed an
incessant mournful toll and masked and cloaked men walked the streets, escorting creaking carts
laden with the dead to the death pits dug in orchards and gardens within the city walls. In some
churchyards the ground level rose two feet or more as the soil absorbed scores and scores of
freshly swollen and ripening corpses; some crypts were filled to the ceiling with bodies; some wells had to be closed, as body fluids from over-packed graveyards seeped into them.
Scavenging dogs and pigs scrambled over the humped soil of the churchyards, digging
with feet and snouts for the food so close beneath.
Church wardens could shoo them off, but they returned, along with the ravening crows,
as soon as the wardens turned their backs.
The city gates were closed and locked. No one was allowed in or out.
The city‘s population gradually sank beneath the soil.
Mary based herself at a hastily established hospital within the guildhall.
The guildhall‘s internal spaces were given over to row after row of low, wide and
commodious beds, each accommodating two or three victims of the pestilence. Nuns and monks