VI. The Dying Priest
By August, the Lazar-house overflowed with bodies half a step away from being corpses. This was still shaping up to be a mild plague year, but “mild” hardly meant plague-free. Thomas, in his doctor’s mask and cassock, remained anonymous in public, one of a number of such garbed physicians about London. Through St. Thomas Hospital, rumors spread that more victims of plague recovered in this particular Lazar-house than any other. People of means who had survived twenty days of isolation paid to be taken there, whereas others with more money and the knowledge to bribe the right authorities, could avoid isolation altogether and be delivered directly to the Lazar-house. Inevitably, the house’s reputation and that of the practitioner Thomas Gerard became intertwined. That was how he came to encounter the priest named Mortimer.
The priest arrived in a small plague cart as if he were already dead. The cart driver must have been paid well to remain after delivering the afflicted priest. A spindly man, he watched Thomas arrive in his cassock, hat, and mask, then climbed down. The driver said, “You’re the doctor, Gerard? ’Is Grace heard about you from a parishioner what credits you with saving his life. Wants you to see to ’im, and nobody else. ’Is name’s Mortimer. And he’s paid me to wait ’ere and take him back home, and you ta see ’im.”
He proffered a small purse. Thomas said nothing, although he thought the priest mad to think he was going to be fully cured of the plague in short order and would ride out of here sitting upright in the cart. Nevertheless, he took the purse and, upon entering the house, handed it to Mme Bennet. She looked tense, strained.
Thomas hadn’t even removed his mask and cloak before an intense chirring filled his head, as if two or more nearby Yvags were shouting at each other. He winced, and paused in his tracks. Had the driver been paid to deceive him, send him into a trap? How could the creatures have found him here? He’d been careful, wearing this costume in public, seeming sometimes tall and thin and sometimes shorter and rotund beneath it. He remained anonymous in mask and cassock to keep people away. He looked over his shoulder, but no one was behind him, no one followed after; but he understood why Mme Bennet looked strained. No doubt she sensed something of the rage pouring forth. “Please,” he told her, “wait here.”
The Yvag chatter ahead was vituperative—not the whispering communications of elven knights lying in wait, but a stream of invective fueled by rage against many perceived insults. More surprising was that the name Nicnevin wove through the cursing. This was not an ambush nor anything like it, but an argument that did not even include him.
Thomas continued along the hall. Another hapless plague victim occupied the first chamber, and was attempting to cover his ears and curl up tight to escape the screeching dispute.
Thomas walked on to the last room, amazed that Mme Bennet had been able to endure the inner turmoil that long. He stepped into the doorway.
The afflicted priest lay barefoot on a pallet. He wore an embroidered smock, and somehow still had a sleeping cap on his head, which rocked side to side in his delirium. The priest was a skinwalker host, and in such dire straits that the two personas of priest and Yvagvoja had fractured, severed by the plague. The voja clutched onto small lucid moments here and there but could not keep his detaching conveyance from deteriorating. From that alone, Thomas knew the priest’s time was short. Probably, he had ignored the buboes and other signs of the plague, thinking himself so far above mortality that he needn’t concern himself.
Thomas couldn’t have helped him if he’d wanted to. And he didn’t want to.
He was, however, interested in the seeming backflow of rage the plague had triggered. The human host was in a state of delirium, of course, but the voja, wherever it lay, wasn’t clamping down on their communication, either. The Yvags, like Thomas, would normally be immune to the disease. Mortimer’s voja had made the mistake of assuming his occupancy of the human host would protect it. Now all the Yvag could do was ride out the storm or for the sake of its own sanity try to withdraw prematurely by killing the lich, the occupied body. It might have waited too long. The fever had spread.
Thomas backed away from the fiery squabble. He walked out to where the cart driver waited. “I am sorry,” he said. “Someone has exaggerated the curative powers of our house. We will make your priest as comfortable as we can while he’s here, but at this juncture, there is little anyone can do other than pray for his soul.”
“Is ’e—” the cartman started. “Is ’e yellin’ at God, sir?”
“I can’t say. His soul has torn in half.”
The driver crossed himself, then looked nervous that he had done so. “God ’ave mercy on the poor man,” he muttered.
Thomas assured the driver that he would do all he could to aid the priest. “Which church is it he represents?”
“St. Botolph, sir,” the man replied.
“Any one in particular? There are four such in London.”
“In Billingsgate, sir.”
Thomas nodded. “God’s blessing that your parish recovers.” He handed the man a shilling. “No need for you to wait.”
“Thankee, sir.” The cart driver tucked the coin away, then brushed his hands down the front of his dirty jerkin and hurried to his cart now that he had permission to drive off.
Thomas assured Mme Bennet that he would be fine, but that she mustn’t come in, because the dying man was far too infectious. Then he returned to the priest.
Mortimer had sweated through and vomited upon his smock. Even through the barrier of flowers and herbs in the mask, the stink was mephitic.
Coming up beside him, Thomas lifted the priest’s left arm, studied the wetness beneath it. The blackened armpit was freely leaking pus and blood into the smock. Delicately, he turned the head to view the swollen, bulbous neck clearly, and finally lifted the smock to peer within. If there had been any doubt before, the prominent buboes in both armpits and groin confirmed the lethal state of the plague. It was a wonder the priest wasn’t already dead . . . except, of course, he was.
He lowered the smock. At last the priest focused upon him with eyes sunk deep in two pits, then erupted in laughter as if amused by the long-snouted mask. “Only thing worse than spies is the death,” wheezed Mortimer. “Both so treacherous, hey?” He grinned.
“Fatal,” Thomas agreed.
The priest grabbed him by the wrist and began to speak in French. “You will not save me then, physician?”
“You’re a prelate. Surely, you know more about salvation than I.” He carefully pulled himself free of the priest’s hand, pushed it back onto the pallet. “Your corporal self cannot now be saved withal.”
“No. But you could hurry it along.” The priest grunted dismissively, then drifted off, eyes closed. The chirring quieted. The voja seemed to lose its connection to the body, and Thomas anticipated he was about to die. Then suddenly, the priest glanced up at Thomas again and momentarily came to his senses. With sudden intensity he asked, “What is the day?”
“’Tis a Thursday.”
At that, the priest visibly relaxed. “Then it is tomorrow and I’ve missed it not.”
“What is tomorrow?”
In singsong, he answered, “The Queen’s barge, it travels the river, the glorious Thames, all glitter and gold.” He tittered. “Oh, the Lambeth bells do ring out . . .” He seemed to lose the thread of it. Then he asked, “From here we can hear them, can we not, the bells?”
“Whenever Her Majesty sails the river, we hear the bells, yes. You hope to live that long, do you, to hear the bells ring out again?” It seemed an odd thing for a skinwalker to fixate upon.
But the priest wasn’t listening to him any longer. “At Deptford praematurus ends the reign, rejoice, rejoice! Hosanna!”
In his head the chirring intensified, lich and passenger lost in some form of giddy, incoherent raving. Thomas leaned over Mortimer and prompted, “Deptford? What happens in Deptford?”
Sunken eyes focused on the blue lenses of his mask. “Bird doctor, in the marsh near the creek, you can stand on one leg and watch our assassin, ay. Oh, he’ll be quick and not miss such a doe when it presents. One shot wherefore all the banishéd come home, carrying silver spoons to sup on her corpse.” The wheezing priest seized up then. A shudder traveled through his body.
Here it came.
Mortimer’s heels kicked at the pallet and then stopped. Thomas pulled back before a watery red mist erupted out of the smock only to rain back down upon it. As he looked on, the body decayed, its festering liquids leaking into the pallet, its skin turning gray and coriaceous.
No point in rushing to St. Botolph’s now. The voja would be active immediately. Even if it was suffering any aftereffects from contact with the plague, it would open a portal and vanish long before he could make his way across the river.
The only remaining question was whether he understood correctly that the Yvags intended to assassinate the Queen. Mortimer, while not a part of the arrangement, had been privy to it, and a beneficiary of its successful enactment. Some unnamed assassin would await her barge, tomorrow near a creek in Deptford.