Plague Child. Peter Ransley

from the kitchen and went past the printing press into the office. Mr Black must have been working here when he had the attack.

      As I picked up the chair I saw it: a bound black accounts book, of the type Mr Black used to keep a note of deliveries of ink and paper, and sales of pamphlets. But on the cover of this one was inked a single letter T.

      Whatever I hoped to see when I opened it, it was not dull accounts. But there they were in Mr Black’s neat hand, items of purchase and columns of figures.

      I flicked through the pages rapidly. There was my life in Half Moon Court, from the cost of the watermen that had brought me here and the tutorials with Dr Gill, down to the very bread and cheese I had eaten, faithfully recorded right to the last halfpenny. I stopped as a word which seemed out of place with the others half-registered in the turning pages: portrait. Portrait?

      I turned back, to see an entry whose amount dwarfed all the others.

       8 August 1635. Paid to P. Lely. Portrait in oils & frame. £20-0-0.

      I had had no portrait done. The very idea was laughable. Only people at court had their pictures painted. No. That was not quite true. Each Lord Mayor had his portrait painted and hung in the Guildhall. I went very still.

      The summer of 1635 I had taken a message to the clerk in the Guildhall and been told to wait for a reply. While I was in the waiting room a young man wandered in. His smock and hands were daubed with paint. He spoke with a thick Dutch accent and said the Mayor had gone out to a meeting, and he too was waiting for him.

      He pushed my face to one side so he could see the profile and grunted something in Dutch. He said he was tired of painting old men who wanted to look young and dashing, and as an exercise he would really like someone young and dashing to sketch.

      I was flattered and amazed by the incredible speed with which he sketched. By the time the clerk came with the reply, and to say that the Mayor was ready again, the painter had caught me like a bird in flight. A grin. A sulk when I grew bored with him. In profile. Staring with wide eyes straight out of the paper.

      As the charcoal flew across the paper he grunted, ‘The eyes you have. The nose. Everything but the hair.’

      ‘What do you mean?’

      He seemed too absorbed in the next sketch to answer. ‘Turn. No no – the other way!’

      I begged him for a sketch but he said he needed them all. ‘Perhaps the painting you may one day see, mmm?’

      He smiled, patting me on the cheek, leaving traces of charcoal and paint which I left there until they disappeared.

      Peter – that was his name. I stared at the account book: P. Lely. Peter Lely. Perhaps Mr Black had commissioned him to do a portrait of himself. No. No printer could afford it, and if he could he would surely hang it prominently. Somebody had paid for a picture of me. But who? Why? And where was it?

      I heard sounds upstairs; the doctor’s deep voice and Mrs Black’s low murmuring answer. Quickly I riffled through the remaining pages. A folded piece of paper, which I supposed was used as a marker, flew out of the book. I picked it up and placed it on the table. There was nothing of interest in the rest of the accounts, but there was a whole new section at the end. Mr Black had turned the book upside down to start the section on the last page. It was a cross between a diary and a tutor’s report on my progress, or lack of it.

      I was ‘obstinate as a mule’. ‘Bright but uncontrollable.’ One day there was ‘a glimmer of hope’, the next total despair – ‘I would have him on the boat back to Poplar if I could.’

      It was soon clear that these were notes for more carefully worded reports, for there was the draft of one of them, pulling together various amended notes. Written two months ago, it declared: ‘Mr Tom hath the Latin of a scholar, I have taught him a good Italian hand, he can use a fork at table, but his morality must still be called seriously into question.’

      Mr Black got reports from Dr Gill. Why did he need to write these? They must be for the same person who commissioned the portrait. The accounts book answered at least some of the questions that had been plaguing me. Someone had paid Mr Black to have me educated and apprenticed; either the man with the scar, or, more likely, the kindly old gentleman Matthew had told me he represented.

      Remembering the piece of paper I had picked up, I unfolded it. It was part of a letter, written on a different paper, a thick quality paper, and the hand was very different. Mr Black was proud of his hand, the simple sloping penmanship of a businessman, without flourishes, essential for something that might have to be read quickly in a dim light or a swaying carriage.

      This was written in an erratic, angular hand, liberally sprinkled with capitals and with thick upstrokes and downstrokes that cut into the surrounding lines and made the words so difficult to read I had to move the paper closer to the candle. The paper was that of a gentleman, possibly one who had a scrivener to write his letters for him. I could see why he had not dictated this one.

      It was a page from a longer letter:

       . . . means that he now looks at the boy in a different way. He sees him as a great Folie who must be got rid of. Perhaps a Taverne brawl or some similar kind of ACCIDENT.

       He has men for the purpose, who have been given a likeness and of course the boy’s hair stands out like a beacon.

       This matter will bring me to London sooner than I intended, but meanwhile re the accounts you sent me . . .

      The page ended with some minute dissections of the cost of paper and ink. I searched frantically among the papers for the preceding page, but could find nothing. In spite of what had happened to me, I could not believe I had read the words right, and, hands trembling so much I almost singed the paper with the candle, began to decipher every word of that page again.

      ‘What are you doing?’

      It was Anne, holding the kettle. I was so still, so intent on those scrawled words, she must have taken the kettle from the fire and been on her way back to the stairs before she saw me.

      ‘Somebody is trying to kill me.’

      The words came out of my mouth lame and halting, marked with disbelief in spite of the evidence in front of me. But I must have looked so rigid with shock that she came up to me, concern on her face.

      ‘What are you talking about?’ she whispered.

      ‘Look –’

      I showed her the letter. I had forgotten she could not read. In a panic I gabbled that somebody had paid to make something of me, and now that I had failed had decided to get rid of me. It must have sounded a great nonsense, for she pulled away with alarm.

      ‘You’re mad!’

      ‘Look –’

      Even though she could not read them, I tried to show her the patterns the words made, in the vain hope that she would see the madness, the evil, in the blotches, the sword-like downstrokes.

      ‘Anne!’ Mrs Black called. ‘The water must have boiled by now.’

      There was the creak of a door opening upstairs. ‘Get out,’ Anne hissed.

      ‘I’m not mad,’ I whispered. ‘You must believe me!’

      We heard her on the stairs. ‘What’s going on? Is that George?’

      ‘No, Mother,’ Anne shouted back. ‘The water’s just boiled. I’m coming.’ To me she whispered: ‘George has gone for the constable. Stay – if you want to be arrested.’

      It was only when she went that I thought of my Bible. I hurried to call her back, but she was already halfway up the stairs. I folded the letter and put it into my pocket. I went to the door and listened. It was silent in the yard, but towards the river there was the sound of rioting, in the direction