Marie Brennan - In Ashes Lie

No one else looked relieved. But they would not have to endure much longer. “Lord Antony, if you would join me? Let us together place Vidar’s prison where it will disturb no one’s rest.”

A deep line cut between his brows as he approached; she thought he understood her meaning, but doubted whether it would work. I hope it does. I can think of no better way. He took up the box, and at Lune’s nod replaced it within its hawthorn case.

Her subjects breathed easier with the iron thus shielded, but when Lune reached out to the Onyx Hall, she still felt the taint inside the wood, like poison beneath a sugared coating. Or was that her imagination? Her hand tightened on Antony’s, and she heard his breath hiss between his teeth, as if he felt it, too. But the Hall answered when they called; the marble split open, as if it were sand falling away from beneath the box. Down it went; down, and down, deeper into the foundations of the Hall than she had ever gone, until at last it reached some indefinable boundary. The palace lay beneath London, but only in a mystical sense; one could not reach it with a shovel. Yet there was a point at which the Hall gave way to ordinary earth once more, the bedrock upon which London sat.

They left the iron box there, and sealed the stone above it.

Every single pair of eyes in the chamber was fixed on the floor, which had swallowed Vidar’s prison without a trace. Lune pried her hand free of Antony’s, and cast a sideways glance at him. He met it with a faint smile, knowing her concern. But his eyes were clear, and he showed no sign of weakness.

“It is finished,” Lune said. “Let Ifarren Vidar be forgotten.”

GUILDHALL, LONDON: August 12, 1665

The hoof beats of Antony’s horse echoed off the walls and overhanging jetties of Ketton Street. He might have been alone in the world, the street devoid of its usual hawkers and housewives. London might as well have been snatched away to a different realm, leaving its people behind; even the Onyx Hall seemed more populous these days than the city above it.

Antony sweated behind the kerchief wrapped over his nose and mouth, and wondered how much it protected him against the infected air. But leaving it off would certainly not help, and so he kept it on—just as he rode, instead of hiring a hackney coach, whose previous occupant might have borne the plague. His own coach gathered dust for lack of anyone to drive it. Antony’s household was reduced to Burnett and himself, and Burnett had enough to do, keeping his master fed and clothed. He was lucky to still have a horse, so many had been stolen.

A pile of rubbish half-blocked the turn onto the narrow lane between the church of St. Laurence Jewry and Blackwell Hall—the remnant of some shopkeeper’s effort to sweep the street before his house, in accordance with the plague orders. But no one had taken the refuse away, and the shopkeeper had clearly abandoned his effort weeks ago. Antony guided his horse past and emerged a moment later into the tiny courtyard of the Guildhall. On an ordinary day it would have been thronged with men engaged in government and trade; now it stood all but empty under the gaze of the statues adorning the Guildhall porch. Christ and the Virtues, their faces blank and stern. The only living figure in sight was a lone watchman, standing by the Triple Tun, whose door was marked with the familiar red cross and the legend Lord Have Mercy Upon Us.

Antony had long since given up shuddering at the sight. One could hardly find a street in London that did not hold at least one infected house.

The Guildhall itself stood forlorn, nearly as empty as the courtyard outside. Lord Mayor Lawrence had not called a meeting of the aldermen in weeks; half the council was fled. But Antony hoped that very desolation would aid him today. Men feared gathering in public places, where plague might spread. Here, though, their only company would be the spiders spinning their webs undisturbed.

He lit tallow dips in the Court of Aldermen, and brushed dust from his own seat. How many would come today? Sir William Turner for certain; he understood that his City needed him. Others had stayed as well. With the help of parish officials, they carried out the plague orders issued by Charles before he withdrew with his court, in the withering hope that it would somehow check the plague’s ever-rising tide. Nearly three thousand dead in the last week alone, and no sign of ebb.

Lune’s thoughts were elsewhere, waiting to see if Vidar’s cruel punishment would satisfy Nicneven and prevent war. But Antony had given up on blaming the fae for their inaction. In the dark of the night, when he lay in his bed alone, he did not believe any effort, faerie or otherwise, could make a difference.

And then the morning came, and he rose, and carried on nonetheless.

Footsteps outside the door. Antony straightened, but could not prevent a slump of disappointment when he saw Jack Ellin. “I hoped you were an alderman.”

“Then I am even sorrier to bring you this news.”

The bleak tone pierced Antony’s weariness, and he saw in the candlelight that Jack’s ironical face was pale and strained. “You—are not ill? ”

His mind leapt to that conclusion without prodding; it was the obvious one, nowadays. With Jack, more than obvious: the man, in his lunacy, was offering his services as a physician in the parish of St. Giles Cripplegate, now among the worst afflicted. Over three hundred and fifty dead there last week, and those were only the ones reported as plague; they were scarcely half the full total. Antony’s mind tallied the numbers reflexively.

The doctor shook his head. “Not I. But Burnett, yes.”

It should have upset Antony. Perhaps somewhere, far beneath his exhaustion, it did. At the moment, it was a blow to insensate flesh. Impact, without meaning. “How—”

“I called at your house this morning. He answered the door in a fever.” Jack’s jaw tensed, heralding his next words. “I examined him, and found the tokens.”

Hard red spots on the body, like fleabites. Coupled with fever, an infallible sign of the plague.

“Antony.” The name broke through his dazed blankness. Jack crossed the room with swift strides, but halted himself before he could take Antony’s arm. No doubt the doctor had worn gloves and all the rest of his usual costume when examining Burnett, but even standing this close could be dangerous, if Jack had breathed in the distempered vapors. How much longer could the man survive, going so often among the diseased?

“Antony,” Jack said, softly. “You must send him to a pest-house.”

He shook, roused himself. “Incarcerate him among the dying? I might as well shoot him myself.”

“He’ll likely die anyway,” Jack said. The topic was too familiar for tact. “The pest-house will not help his chances—but it will help yours. Antony, if you don’t send him away, they’ll shut up your house. With you in it. ”

The backbone of all their attempts to stem the plague. A man could carry the distemper without knowing it; anyone who lived under the same roof as a victim must be locked in, until enough time had passed to prove they were not sick.

Or until everyone inside was dead.

Antony swallowed and turned away. “You have said yourself—the pest-houses are overwhelmed.” They had managed to build three, supplementing the two left over from the last great visitation, but they were scarce able to hold a few hundred, let alone the stricken thousands.

Jack would not let him dodge the question. “If you will not send him away, then you must leave. Remove yourself from the house, today, and go into the countryside. Join Kate. Shutting yourself in with him…you might as well put that pistol to your own head.”