Читаем Forever Amber полностью

She protected herself against the plague by refusing to think about it. It was all that any of them could do, who were forced to stay in the town, to keep their sanity.

Often, when she went out to shop—she had to buy almost everything herself now that the vendors were gone—she heard cries and groans and terrible screams from the closed houses. Pitiable faces appeared at the windows and hands reached out pleadingly: “Pray for us!”

It became more and more common to see the dead and dying in the streets, for the plague struck swiftly. Once she saw a man huddled by a wall, beating his bloody head against it and moaning in delirium. She stared a moment in horror and then she hurried by, holding her nose and making a half-circle around him. Another time she saw a dead woman slumped in a doorway, a baby still sucking at her breast, and the small blue plague-spots showed plainly on her white flesh. She saw a woman walking slowly, crying, and carrying in her arms a tiny coffin.

One day, as she was busy in the bedroom, she heard from outside a man’s loud voice shouting something which she could not at first understand. But he drew nearer, evidently coming up St. Martin’s Lane, and his words became more distinct. “Awake!” he bawled. “Sinners, awake! The plague is at your doors! The grave yawns for you! Awake and repent!” She pushed back the curtains and looked out. He was walking swiftly by, just beneath her window, a half-naked old man with matted hair and a long dark beard, and he brandished his closed fist at the still houses.

Amber looked at him with disgust. “Devil take him!” she muttered. “The blasted old fool! There’s trouble enough without that caterwauling!”

And then one night, at the end of July, she heard another and far more terrible cry. There came a rumbling of cart-wheels over the cobblestones, the sound of a hand-bell, and a man’s deep voice calling: “Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!”

She looked swiftly at Spong, for Bruce was asleep, and then she rushed to the window. Spong waddled after her, crowding up close. Below they saw a cart, moving slowly, one man in the driver’s seat and another ringing the hand-bell and walking beside it. In the light from the torch carried by a third they could see that the cart was half-filled with bodies, piled indiscriminately, flung one on top of another. Arms and legs stuck out at weird angles; one corpse hung over the side, her long hair pouring half-way to the ground.

“Holy Virgin Mary!” breathed Amber, and then she turned away with a shudder, sick at her stomach, cold and wet.

Spong’s teeth were chattering. “Oh, Jesu! To be dumped in like that, helter-skelter, with every Jack Noakes and Tom Styles! Oh, Lud! It’s more than flesh can bear!”

“Stop your blubbering!” muttered Amber impatiently. “There’s nothing the matter with you!”

“Aye, mam,” agreed Spong gloomily. “There’s nothin’ the matter with either of us today. But who’s to tell? By tomorrow we may both be—”

“Shut up, will you!” cried Amber suddenly, whirling around, and then, as the old woman gave a startled jump, she added crossly, somewhat ashamed of her nervous ill-temper: “You’re as melancholy as a bawd in Bridewell. Why don’t you go out in the kitchen and get a bottle to drink?”

Spong went, gratefully, but Amber could not push the picture of the dead-cart from her mind. The sick men and women she had seen, the dead bodies in the streets, the constant tolling of the bells, the stench from the graves, the city’s unnatural quiet, the news (given by the guard) that two thousand had died of plague that past week—the cumulative effect of those things was beginning to overpower her. She had held off fear and despair during the time that Bruce had been most hopelessly sick, for then she had not had time to think. But now a kind of superstitious dread was beginning to work in her mind.

Why should I still be well and alive when all these others are dying? What have I done to deserve to live if they must die? And she knew that she deserved life no more than anyone else.

Fear was as contagious as the plague, and it spread as the plague spread. The well expected to be sick; hope of escape was small. Death was everywhere now. You might inhale it with a breath; you might take it up with a bundle of food; you might pass it in the street and bring it walking home beside you. Death was democratic. It made no choice between the rich and the poor, the beautiful and the ugly, the young and the old.

One morning in mid-August Bruce told her that he thought they would be able to leave London within another fortnight. She was spreading up his bed, and though she answered him as casually as she could she had been worrying about it for some time.

“No one is allowed to leave the city now, whether they have a certificate-of-health or not.”

“We’ll go anyway. I’ve been thinking about it and I believe I know a way we can get out.”