The Wildest Rake

‘If you had done so it would have solved all our problems,’ he said on a harsh sigh. ‘I was so sick with jealousy after I had seen you with him in the city, the day I followed you here. I would never have humiliated you as I did have I not been out of my mind with love.’

‘Oh, do not talk of that,’ she said quickly. ‘Let us forget the past now. We may have very little time left together. You realise that?’

He held her close against him, stroking her hair. ‘Yes, my dear love, I know.’

‘Then why waste it in reproach?’ she asked gently. ‘Let us at least enjoy these days together for as long as we can.’

His eyes suddenly hot with desire, Rendel ran his hand along the cool bare length of her -arm. ‘Why do you think I came here? In life or death, we must be together, Cornelia. It was written in our stars from the beginning.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Alderman’s chill became a high fever three days later. He died of it in the night with Cornelia and Rendel beside him, praying, and Andrew calmly doing what he could to ease his passing.

‘It was not the plague,’ he told them afterwards. ‘He has no carbuncles, and I can so declare to the city officers with a clear conscience.’

Cornelia took little comfort from the thought. There had been too many deaths in the house. She had accepted the possibility, even the probability, of her own death now. She would not admit a ray of hope. To do so would be to weaken her small store of spirit. She seemed to have reached a pinnacle of peace. Resignation to death was like an act of faith. One gave up one’s soul to God and waited, trusting in him. To admit a hope of life was to ask for one’s soul back, and peace would be smashed to pieces.

The days passed swiftly now. The house was empty. Only she and Rendel were there, together. Andrew came daily with food and drink, giving them news of the course of the plague. The summer heat sweltered around them. The city seemed like one vast sewer, stinking in an odour of decay and dissolution. The watch fires burned continually in the streets. The watchmen paced to and fro. The carts rumbled past. The bells rang. In and out of the secret tunnels under the wooden tenements scampered the rats, their eyes shining.

Rendel had found a small, stray dog wandering disconsolately in the garden, and had taken it into the kitchen to feed it scraps, although the city had ordered the destruction of all pet animals, on the grounds that they might carry the plague.

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sp; Cornelia shrugged when Andrew protested. ‘Poor creature. We have lived in contact with the contagion so long—does it matter now? I have seen enough of death. I’ll not kill the poor animal.’

Rendel, content now in his new-found happiness, was equally indifferent to possible contamination. ‘Let it be, let it be,’ he told Andrew. ‘It amuses my wife, and is a pretty little thing.’

The dog chased the rats which still remained since Rendel fumigated the kitchen. He killed them with a worrying snap, breaking their necks, and Rendel burnt their sleek black bodies on a bonfire in the garden. The house, once so rich and fine, seemed a stark place now. All the hangings and curtains had been destroyed. The carpets, the linen, anything which might harbour infection, had been burnt with the clothes of the dead.

A scent of smoke seemed to hang everywhere for days. It hung about in their clothes, filling their nostrils. They had grown tired of burning nitre and tar on the fires. The scent made Cornelia sick with fear and disgust.

Instead, they bathed in cool water every morning, in the kitchen, and washed their clothes daily, too, at Andrew’s suggestion.

Whether it was this new cleanliness, or an act of God, was never to be known, but gradually, as the days passed, it became clear that the tide of the plague had moved elsewhere.

Cornelia was still afraid to admit the little bird of hope, but at the back of her mind she was beginning to do so secretly.

The month of quarantine came to an end. They were free to leave the house. Rendel sent for his servants and took her in the coach down to Stelling, to spend the winter in the clean countryside, hearing the news of the plague from a safe distance.

They had occasional news of Andrew through mutual friends. He was still working in the city, still untouched by the contamination.

‘It is a miracle,’ Cornelia told her husband as the leaves began to drop silently from the great elms which stood sentinel across his park.

‘God takes care of his own,’ Rendel agreed. ‘Andrew must be stronger than he looks. He did not look fit for such back-breaking labour, yet he goes on somehow.’

‘His will sustains him,’ she said, sighing. She could not speak of Andrew’s great fear of life even to her husband. It was a secret she had no right to share.

In October, when they knew that the worst of the plague was now over, she found that she was once more expecting a child. Rendel, overjoyed by the news, promised her that she would have Andrew to deliver the child if he could be persuaded to leave London.

‘Andrew will need some rest, I should think,’ he said. ‘He can come here for a few months now that all danger is over. Then he can stay until your time of labour.’

She was delighted, and wrote to Andrew to beg him to come down to Stelling as soon as he could.

‘I need your support,’ she wrote. ‘Come to me, brother. My husband wishes it. I long to see you.’

She waited eagerly for his reply. The days passed and no answer came. She grew angry with Andrew then, and thought darkly that he was as obstinate as ever in his pursuit of duty. Surely he could put aside his work for so short a time? He had more than fulfilled his vow. She was afraid for her baby. Her miscarriage last time had made her nervous. Only Andrew’s presence could calm her fears.

She was seated in the rose arbour, one warm autumn morning, her sewing on her lap, when Rendel came towards her slowly.