A Plague of Sinners Read Online Free PDF Page A

for I had no desire to be left alone with the monstrosity that used to be Thomas Wharton.

Chapter Three
    IF ONE SHALL FIND THE PARTY AT HOME HE WOULD SPEAK WITH
    If the Lord of the seventh house be in any of the four angles, you may conclude the party is at home with whom you would speak with.
    Dowling secured us a butcher’s cart, stained a deep enduring red, testament to a regular procession of bloody carcasses. Now the Earl lay there, wrapped in sheets and blankets, lain straight inside his coffin. I tried to ignore the sound of his body bouncing in the box as we negotiated the uneven track.
    The road north to St Albans led through the parish of St Giles, one of the worst affected by plague. These church bells pealed all day long, a ceaseless reminder to a parish already on its knees. The sky was a perfect blue, as it had been all summer, no clouds to blunt the rays of a fierce yellow sun. It was said the sun conspired with the pestilence, heating up the ground to release the poisonous miasma.
    I sat, nervous, up on the wagon next to Dowling, shirt burning against my back, praying no one would set upon us, no infected destitutes hungry for food. The best outcomewould be that we solved this mystery early and convincingly. Then I might withdraw from London for the few weeks it would take for the plague to tire of itself, and return soon to more responsibility, a grander title and some money.
    Frightened faces peered from the windows of poor, mean houses, speaking of misery and bewilderment. Here the sound of cartwheels was as common at night as it was during day, for the death-carts emerged from the graveyards at dusk, to rattle about the streets in search of the newly deceased. Bearers loaded bodies onto the back of their wagons and fetched them to the plague pits, where they threw the bodies down in piles and attempted to spread them out tidy.
    ‘What did you not tell me this morning?’ Dowling mused, staring ahead.
    The cart lurched as we ran across a deep rut dried into the road. I thought of deceiving him, but had not the will. ‘There may be illness in the Willis household.’
    Dowling glanced sideways. ‘What illness?’
    ‘Dr Hedges was dining with us when he dropped dead of the pest,’ I said. ‘I dragged him to the street and told the churchwarden he died afore he reached us.’
    Dowling’s eyes stretched wide as dinner plates.
    ‘You are my confessor, Dowling, so ye may not tell anyone I told you it.’
    ‘How do you know you are not diseased, Harry?’ Dowling exclaimed. ‘They lock people behind closed doors for a reason.’
    ‘Aye,’ I agreed, ‘but not a very good reason. Hedges had walked to all parts afore he came to dinner. Any man might have been infected. For my part I kept as far from him as I could while we ate, for he was not a pleasant fellow.’
    He shook the reins, angry. ‘You sat at the same table!’
    ‘It was a long table.’
    He cast me a furious gaze and clamped his jaw closed.
    We left houses behind for open fields. The further north we rode, the more families we encountered camped by the roadside, belongings spread out beneath the bushes. Others set up residence in the fields. These were those without credentials to pass the turnpikes. They would wait for nightfall before seeking covert passage through fields and forest.
    Just before Whetstone the sharp crack of a musket shot rang out, crisp against the still morning air. Around the corner a crowd gathered, their passage blocked by a long turnpike manned by a dozen men with guns held up. One musket smoked, its owner a young fellow holding his weapon to his chest, body trembling.
    We stopped as close to the turnpike as we could reach, our progress blocked by a wall of thirty or forty angry men leaning forwards into the barrier.
    Dowling jumped from his seat and marched into the mob. ‘What happens here?’
    A short, strong fellow shoved him in the chest. ‘Who do you think you are?’
    Dowling shoved harder and sent him