The Wildest Rake

‘I know, Father,’ she soothed him. ‘Go back to your chamber. I will find food and drink and leave it at your door. Try to sleep.’

‘I want cheese,’ he said greedily. ‘Cheese and ale. Nan will not give me cheese. Nan is not kind. She makes me eat meat and my teeth cannot chew it well.’

‘I will bring cheese if there is cheese,’ she promised. Their food was all procured for them by friends who left it with the watch each day. They were fortunate to have such friends. Many like them died of hunger, shut up within their plague houses, without money or friends, and even those who could get relief from the parish went hungry to bed, kept alive yet not so generously that they could forget want.

The Alderman had turned to go when she heard knocking at the door downstairs.

Her father ran to his own chamber and shut himself inside. He could not bear the sight of Andrew now. As a sick member of a stricken herd dreads the sound of a vulture’s flapping wings overhead, so did the Alderman fear the sight of Andrew, in his marked clothing, his plague stick in his hand, coming and going about his terrible business.

Many of the city doctors had fled from the plague, leaving their patients without aid. Their physic, they were too well aware, had no effect in this most fearful contagion, and they were no readier to risk their lives in a hopeless cause than the King and Court. Thousands died without human comfort, sealed in their houses like walled-up monks, depending upon the small charity of the parish for sustenance, forced to watch their children die and unable to lift a finger to save them.

Andrew was as over-worked as ever. He stretched himself to the limits in this worst epidemic of his career. Cornelia sometimes thought that he was almost grateful for this chance, like an early Christian going joyfully to martyrdom.

As she ran downstairs now to open the door, she noticed with a pang of misery how silent the house lay about her. Were all the servants dead now? Nan had been scanty of news yesterday, barely speaking. Cornelia suspected that it had been the onset of the disease which had made her so silent.

She looked at the tall figure, wrapped in the black cloak, a broad-brimmed hat pulled down over the eyes, the plague stick raised to knock again upon the door.

‘Oh, Andrew, thank God you were at home,’ she said, pulling at his arm.

He walked past her and she shut the door.

‘I am so frightened,’ she told him, the tears rising to her eyes. Weakly she leant against his shoulder, turning her face against him. ‘Nan has it,’ she whispered. She was afraid to say the words too loudly. Some superstitious fear of defying fate made the words come low and hushed. ‘Andrew, Nan is so strong . . . she is the last. One by one they have died. All the servants. Like flies dying in autumn. God, God, shall I be the last living being in this terrible house?’

He neither moved nor spoke, standing very straight, his arms at his side.

She slowly lifted her head to look at him in alarm. She had expected his usual words of comfort, of reassurance. ‘My dear, what is it? Are you ill? Oh, God, you have not fallen to it, too?’

As he lifted his head she saw his face, beneath the dark brim of his hat, and her heart plunged sickeningly. She gave a hoarse, horrified, bewildered moan.

‘Oh, no, God, no!’

It was Rendel.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The long, thin mouth pulled into a cold smile. ‘Yes, Madame,’ Rendel drawled. ‘I am sorry to disappoint you. It is your husband, not your lover, who is beneath these trappings of death.’

She shrank back from him, pushing out her hands to fend him off. ‘Are you mad to run such a risk? Do you not realise the consequences of your folly? This house is riddled with the plague. You should never have come here.’

Her husband shrugged, as though careless of the danger. ‘I came as soon as I heard. Your beloved physician lent me these robes, so that I might pass the watch unsuspected.’

Anger made her voice harsh. ‘Andrew did? How could he do such a wicked thing? He has sent you to your death. I will never forgive him, never.’

Rendel’s eyes narrowed sharply on her white face. ‘He did not do so voluntarily. I am afraid I used some force—he will be here, no doubt, in a moment or two, when he has untied his hands.’

‘Untied his hands?’

‘I had to restrain the fellow. He became very angry when he understood my intent. I tied him to a chair, but I made the bonds loose enough for him to wriggle free in a short time.’ Rendel smiled sardonically. ‘You need not look so anxious. I did him no harm, Madame.’

‘You have done yourself much harm, however,’ she said wearily. ‘The watch will not let you pass out of here once they realise you are not a doctor.’

‘I do not mean to leave until you do, Madame,’ he said languidly. ‘Do you forget our marriage oath? Until death us do part?’ He bowed with a mocking irony. ‘I am here to fulfil my part of that bargain, Madame. Neither death nor Andrew Belgrave shall come between us, I promise you.’

She stared, for this seemed like the ramblings of a crazed man.

Half out of her mind with anxiety, she shouted at him. ‘It is madness, madness. Do you not see? This charnel house is no place for you.’

‘You prefer the company of Doctor