Plague Child by Peter Ransley Page B

that somebody had paid to make something of me, and now that I had failed had decided to get rid of me. It must have sounded a great nonsense, for she pulled away with alarm.
    ‘You’re mad!’
    ‘Look –’
    Even though she could not read them, I tried to show her the patterns the words made, in the vain hope that she would see the madness, the evil, in the blotches, the sword-like downstrokes.
    ‘Anne!’ Mrs Black called. ‘The water must have boiled by now.’
    There was the creak of a door opening upstairs. ‘Get out,’ Anne hissed.
    ‘I’m not mad,’ I whispered. ‘You must believe me!’
    We heard her on the stairs. ‘What’s going on? Is that George?’
    ‘No, Mother,’ Anne shouted back. ‘The water’s just boiled. I’m coming.’ To me she whispered: ‘George has gone for the constable. Stay – if you want to be arrested.’
    It was only when she went that I thought of my Bible. I hurried to call her back, but she was already halfway up the stairs. I folded the letter and put it into my pocket. I went to the door and listened. It was silent in the yard, but towards the river there was the sound of rioting, in the direction of Westminster. I hoped that would make it difficult for George to find his constable.
    After a minute or so Anne returned to refill the kettle. The pail in the kitchen was empty. Ignoring me, she went to the pail in the yard we normally washed in. I followed her, taking the pail from her, doing what I had done so many times, drawing my fingers over the water, breaking the thin film of ice already forming on it. I ached for normality, and the everyday action calmed us both. I dipped a jug in the water and poured it into the kettle.
    ‘How is Mr Black?’
    ‘He cannot speak.’
    I was stunned. Water flowed over the top of the kettle as she pulled it away. I stared up at the window, where I could see the elongated shadow of the doctor move across the wall.
    ‘I am sorry.’
    ‘You struck him,’ she said, accusingly.
    ‘He struck me!’
    ‘It is his right.’
    ‘When it is just. George taking the candle was not just.’
    We had instinctively drawn away from the house, into the shadows of the tree where, for that brief period, we used to play as children. ‘I should never have let you out! George knows.’
    ‘Don’t trust him.’
    ‘I must.’
    She began to move back to the house.
    ‘If he meant well by you, he would tell your father.’
    She stopped. She was now in the light, and I could see that her hands, which she twisted together constantly, were white with cold. I longed to touch them, to take them in my hands, but dare not. There was a trace of the old mockery in her voice.
    ‘And I can trust you?’
    ‘Yes!’
    I spoke with a ferocity that made her jump with fear, but then she gave me back a look of such intensity I wanted to lower my eyes but could not, or dare not. It seemed to go into my very soul in a way no preacher, nor my mother and father had ever done.
    ‘Did you write that poem?’
    ‘Yes – and meant every word of it.’
    Everything at that moment was as sharp and clear as the moonlight on the splinters of ice I had broken in the pail. She stared back at me, trembling, but before she could speak there was the sound of someone turning into the court from Cloth Fair. At the same time I saw her mother coming to the window. I jumped into the shadows.
    It was the pewterer who lived opposite. His clothes were usually dusty with the chalk shed by the plates and mugs when he took them from the mould, but now they were clean. For him, like the shipwright, business had dried up.
    His gait was unsteady. He scarcely gave Anne a glance. ‘Goodnight, Mr Reynolds.’
    ‘Goodnight, Anne.’
    Mrs Black had withdrawn from the window. The intensity of the moment had gone. Neither of us spoke. She picked at her apron. Suddenly she put a hand to her mouth to smother laughter.
    ‘What do you look like!’
    ‘Well, I think,’ I said stiffly, with a stab of