Plague Child. Peter Ransley

was hovering, testing the position of the stick in his hand. I wanted him to beat me. I needed his savagery. But as I moved like a sacrificial lamb towards him, Mr Black stopped him. He was berating himself under his breath for not having written to someone. He picked up pen and ink as if he would write a letter there and then, then set it down and paced again.

      Waiting for my punishment made it ten times worse. I felt so wretched I begged him to cancel my indentures and send me home. I would return my uniform and boots, get some clothes from the rag woman at Tower Hill and go back to my father.

      He came to a full halt, staring at me as if I had said something that first of all shocked, then amused him. ‘Your father? No, no, that won’t do, that won’t do at all. It’s far too late for that. As for the boots . . .’ He gave me one of his rare, dry, mirthless smiles. ‘I doubt anyone else would fit them.’

      The touch of levity left him. ‘You are not to leave this house until I give you permission. Is that clear?’

      No. Nothing was clear. Not the evil that he said was in my soul, nor the man in the beaver hat who had suddenly come into my life, causing him such consternation. But I promised to obey him.

      He hesitated. ‘No, I can’t trust you. I can’t afford to trust you.’ He turned to George. ‘Lock him in the cellar.’

      George gripped me by the arm, nodding his head in approval at the gravity and the justice of the punishment. My tongue and limbs were so paralysed with fear at the thought of being locked in there at night that George got me halfway to the door before I anchored myself to the table.

      ‘Not in the dark, sir,’ I pleaded. ‘Please don’t lock me in there in the dark!’

      ‘Why, Tom,’ Mr Black said, an amused look on his face, ‘I thought you were grown up now and afraid of nothing. Are you still afraid of the dark?’

      I had made my confessions with the reason of a man, but now all reason deserted me and I whimpered my plea again like a child.

      ‘Let him have a candle,’ Mr Black said curtly.

      I made no further resistance. In the early days I had learned, painfully, that it was useless and only gave George more satisfaction. George lit a candle and with the composing stick in his other hand led me down the stairs, his shadow splayed out over the low ceiling. As he opened the door of the cellar the dank rotting smell brought back to me the terror of the first time they brought me here, but I stifled it, determined not to show any more fear to George. It was very late, and the candle would last me until first light filtered through the broken plaster.

      It is only when you have been punished regular that you learn instinctively to recognise refinements of such punishments. As George began to close the door on me I realised he was not going to give me the candle.

      I put my boot in the door and struggled to pull it further open. The composing stick fell on my fingers with agonising force. For a moment I could not move for the pain, but the rattle of the key drove me to wrench at the door. I got it half open and grabbed for the candle. He pulled back but hot wax spilled on his hand. He yelled, dropping the candle, which went out.

      There was now only a dim, flickering light from the room above. I glimpsed him coming for me with the stick. I ducked and, as he crashed into the wall, grabbed him from behind and shoved him into the plaster with such force I thought the wall was coming down. He groped feebly for the stick he had dropped but I saw it on the stair and grabbed it.

      I was familiar with that stick on every inch of my body, except in the palm of my hand. The feel of it there, my fingers gripping it, that hated stick, and the fear of the dark in that stinking cell drove me into such a frenzy I lashed out at George. He ducked, but I caught him a glancing blow on the temple and the thought that I had scarred him as he had scarred me let loose such a rush of savagery it felt as if the devil George always claimed was in me was released, urging me to beat him and beat him as he had beaten me.

      George slipped and fell and God knows what I would have done if I had heard Mr Black coming down the stairs sooner, but by the time I turned and saw him, he was bringing his stick down on my head.

       Chapter 4

      I thought it was a louse. Pediculus Humanus Corporis, my Latin tutor Dr Gill had drummed into me, as he triumphantly plucked a particularly fat specimen from my clothes. They came out to feed at night. We were used to one another, and, unless they ventured to a particularly sensitive spot like my groin, they rarely woke me. Even then, it was more my finger and thumb the creature aroused, which hovered, waiting for it settling to feed before closing round it with a satisfying snap, at which I would instantly sink back into sleep.

      But this creature was on my face, normally considered too leathery for a decent meal. My finger and thumb were throbbing, stabbing with pain as I instinctively tried to crook them to catch the louse. My head thumped like the big drum in the Lord Mayor’s show. Something terrible had happened but I did not want to remember, I just wanted to catch the louse and fall back to sleep. My finger and thumb crept stealthily up to my face. They touched a sticky, glutinous mass, pausing in bewilderment before closing round the object of irritation.

      All in the same instant I felt a sharp, needle-like pain and sprang up yelling, Mr Black’s angry face and descending stick jumping back to me as I realised that I clutched not a dead louse but a live rat which, attracted by the drying blood on my face, was squealing and biting in my hand.

      I threw it from me, screaming. I could see nothing. I blundered into one wall, cold and greasy with damp, then another before I found the door, hammering and shouting until I dropped to the floor with exhaustion.

      The last time they locked me in, when I first came here, I had been playing dumb, pretending I had lost my reading. I hoped in my confused way that they would believe that, just as I had been given the gift of reading, so it had been taken away. Finding me useless, they would send me home. George, however, was far subtler than me in the twisting and turning of such beliefs.

      If it was a gift, he said, and I did not use it, God would punish me by taking my sight away. Still I was stubborn and when they gave me the Bible, nonsense came out of my mouth. So they locked me in and, as the light faded, so did my stubbornness. There had always been the light of stars and the moon in Poplar, however cloudy and dim.

      As the dimness in the cellar faded to black, I believed I had gone blind. I screamed and yelled and threw myself about the cellar until they released me. Mr Black had forbidden George to lock me in again. Until now.

      Now, exhausted, I tried to thrust what had happened then from my mind. I was a man now, I told myself. Had not Mr Black said so? I took some courage from his unexpected praise, going over and over it in my mind. The light would eventually come, filtering through the cracks in the ceiling.

      I buried my face in my hands for what seemed an age. Rats whispered and scuttled. I opened my eyes, but it was still dark as pitch. We had worked long into the night. Surely the sun should have risen by now? Perhaps it had already risen! Nonsense, I told myself. God could scarcely be punishing me now for not reading – I read all the time. But then I was struck by a fresh panic. George had wished the same punishment on me for striking him. The panic mounted. Perhaps George was dead. Whatever there was of a man in me fled and I became that screaming child again, jumping up at the ceiling, tearing at the plaster with my nails.

      The cellar was under the printing shop, thus isolated from the bedrooms. Even so, I thought Mr Black must hear me, however muffled. As I clenched my fists to hammer on the door, I heard a scratching sound. It came from under the door. More rats. Trying to get into the room. I stamped my foot down. There was a cry. I jumped back in terror. Not a rat – some kind of spirit, George’s spirit, muttering behind the door. Then the muttering became words.

      ‘Stupid Monkey!’

      Never had that hateful word sounded so beautiful. ‘Anne?’

      ‘Be quiet, for God’s sake!’

      ‘Is George alive?’

      ‘Of course he’s alive – no thanks