Chapter 41

Will wrapped the woollen scarf tighter round his neck and speeded his step. He had to get away. He was stifled in the house. As if he couldn’t breathe. Or perhaps it was because he still hadn’t decided what to do about Pepys. Part of him had wanted to go and punch the fat bastard in the face. But he knew that would certainly finish his ship’s carpenter’s career – not that it had ever really started.

There’d been an atmosphere in the workshop all day.

‘What’s wrong, sir?,’ Jacob had asked. ‘Is it something I’ve done?’

‘No, lad. It’s just …’ He’d shaken his head, unable to find the words. He couldn’t bear to talk to Jacob, and in the end had sent him home.

And now it was the second night Will had to push away Jack’s offer of company. He wrapped up warm and headed for the churchyard, his eyes fixed on the sky. He couldn’t fathom it – the strange apparition above him. For God had certainly placed that bright comet in the sky, right over London.

He shivered as he sat down and the cold of the tombstone bit through his breeches, but he didn’t look away. He pondered on the comet’s trajectory, working out angles and ellipses in his head, as if he could make it conform to a ship’s sextant, but it seemed to move of its own accord, subject to its own unearthly will.

He had never thought much about his soul before, but now, with that light showing up the shadows of every soul in London, he was humbled. It was no star, he was certain. It was a flaming torch, but dark, moving slowly as if watching them all. What did it mean? Would it suddenly fall to earth and consume the city? It was a sign. It could even be a sign especially for him. He’d sinned, he knew, just as certainly as if he’d made that plague water himself. For hadn’t things started to go wrong just as soon as he’d given away their savings?

He’d tried to talk to Jack about it, but he’d dismissed him, blaming the new quarantine laws for their misfortune. Didn’t they always say, bad things came in threes?

First the loss of his work, then the loss of his savings, now the loss of his wife.

He’d had no work since he’d gone into business with Jack, selling those potions. Just today, the Shipwright’s Guild had sent his papers back unstamped, with no offer of a place in the Guild. His father, curse him, must have the Guild in the palm of his hand.

He shivered. Or perhaps God was punishing him. He’d seen a preacher on the corner of Lombard Street tell them they must repent their sins, for a day of judgement was coming. He used to have no sins to speak of, but now? Well he couldn’t help but think of all those dying people in Holland, taking hope from Jack’s medicine, where there was no hope to be had.

He got up and walked towards the jutting spire of the church, stamping his feet to keep warm. He hadn’t told Bess about the plague water, because he’d thought she’d chide him for turning a blind eye to something so cruel.

But now he was not convinced he knew his wife at all. One thing he did know – he didn’t want to look. He didn’t want to know what she’d done with Pepys. He just wanted it not to exist, for them to be back the way they were before. But that was impossible. At night they lay apart, each in their own cold, silent shroud of sheets.

God, please God, help me. But the church door was locked. He leant on the walls, pressed his hands to the stones, trying to feel something, to absorb the holiness of those walls, to get some comfort. Things were all stirred up inside him; there was a pressure building, like a boil that needed to be lanced. He had to do something. But what? There were only two things he knew how to do – to carve and shape wood was the first, and the other was to pray. Anything else would be to jump out of his own shoes.

He prayed now, asking God why he was a failure. As a shipwright. As a son. As a husband. And asking him what he should do. No answer came, just the steady burn of the flame in the sky, and the feeling that the flame was burning inside him, eating him from the inside out.

*

That night when Will got back, Jack was sitting by the window, the limp periwig hanging round his face. He was wearing one of his two remaining fine velvet suits, his bony wrists protruding from lace cuffs. Next to him lay an empty flagon of ale.

‘Where did you get that?’ Will asked, his voice low so as not to wake Bess or the children.

‘The Cock Crow. They let me have it on the slate. I went in to ask about work.’

‘You’ll find something.’

‘I already have.’

Will raised his eyebrows in question.

‘Your father was in there, and we got talking.’ He was looking to Will intently for his reaction.

‘And …?’ He was wary. Not his father. Surely Jack hadn’t got work with his father?

‘Your father’s helping me out. He saw it was bad luck our ship got impounded. He wants to invest in my business. There’s always plague in London, so he can see the sense in it. We’ll start small. We won’t need a ship then, we can sell directly on the streets.’

Will felt his tension rise. ‘Not the plague water again, Jack; please tell me you’re not thinking of that again.’

‘Why? It’s profitable. Your father’s got a syndicate of sawmen from the shipyard to back me.’

‘C’mon, Jack, Toby told me it’s just dye and water.’

‘Toby’s just a boy. He always gets things wrong.’ ‘I’ll tell the authorities.’

‘And if you do, I’ll say you were my accomplice. See how Bess likes that.’

‘Do it. I don’t care.’

‘What’s going on? You used to be all over each other. Now you act like you want to stick knives into each other.’

‘Nothing. We’re just tired,’ he said.