But she and her daughter needed to be fed, whatever crisis gripped the city, and Emma knew she would get God-all custom huddling at home behind closed doors. She stopped briefly, leaning against a closed door, and tried to catch her breath. Well, it was time she admitted she was going to get God-all custom out here as well. No point in even hoping. She should get home. Her daughter Jocelyn would be worried about her—she’d spent an hour this morning begging her mother not to go out into the streets—and the longer Emma stayed outside the more likely the pestilence would snatch at her.
Ah, that she could not think about! Pestilence crawled over the entire city, dealing death to scores every hour, and Emma simply refused to contemplate the idea that she—or Jocelyn—might be struck as well. Fate had already been unkind enough to her. It wouldn’t deal her this death blow… would it?
If only Jocelyn was older. Emma couldn’t afford to die yet. Jocelyn was only eight. Too young to work, too young to marry, and too young (by a year or two) to follow her mother out into the streets. Not that Emma would wish that on Jocelyn. It was too great a burden of sin for her frail shoulders.
“Only one of us need spend eternity in hell,” Emma whispered. “And I will not have it be my daughter.”
She struggled a little further down the alley. The air was thick with the noxious stink of brimstone and ash—was she in hell already? Had she died without knowing?—and night was closing in about her fast. Too fast. Emma coughed again, and then almost panicked as she tasted blood in her mouth.
No! No! She’d bitten her tongue… that’s all. Please sweet Jesu, let that be all!
Emma groped along one wall with one hand until she found a gate. She opened it, stumbling through into a courtyard, then hurried as best she could to the small door set to one side of the yard. Here she and Jocelyn lived in their two tiny rooms. Small, dismal, cold, but home.
She heard Jocelyn’s small voice pipe a welcome, then, horribly, the deeper voice of her landlord, Richard Harrison.
“Come to collect the rent, my dear,” he said.
“Now?” Emma whispered, closing the door behind her and drawing the shawl back from her head. Her face was thin, her hair more grey than fair, her eyes enormous and black.
A faint flush glowed on her forehead and cheeks.
“Now?” she repeated, incredulous. The city was dying, gripped in pestilence sent from hell, and Harrison had come to collect the rent?
Then her mouth twisted bitterly. Why not? Why not, when he might be too dead to enjoy it tomorrow?
Emma folded her shawl and nodded towards the other room. “Quickly, then. I have Jocelyn’s supper to prepare.”
Harrison grinned. “You’re in no position to tell me quick or no,” he said. “Rent’s rent, and it must be paid as owed.”
Emma shot him a black look, then smiled at Jocelyn. “We won’t be long,” she said, then walked into the tiny, inner room.
All it held was a narrow bed and a stool.
Emma looked at the bed, unbuttoning her dress, and sighed as the door closed behind her and she felt the great bulk of Harrison fill the room.
He was big and heavy and cumbersome and painful, but all of this Emma blocked out through years of experience. She arched her back as best she could with Harrison’s weight atop her, and moaned with as much feigned pleasure as she could manage, and closed her eyes against Harrison’s sweaty, straining face above hers, and her mind against the ponderous thrusting of his body.
Sweet Jesu, why was he taking so long? Reluctantly, Emma opened her eyes.
Harrison’s round, pasty-skinned face wobbled above her. His eyes were closed, and his expression was one of the greatest concentration. His hips continued to thrust himself deep into her, his massive belly crushing her against the bed, the rest of his weight supported on arms locked rigid and splayed to either side of her body.
Thankful his eyes were closed, Emma allowed herself a grimace of distaste. Everything about him wobbled—his face, his fleshy shoulders, the rolls of fat down his back, his buttocks.
And it all sweated, great glistening globules of—
Emma went rigid, her eyes starting, then she screamed and tried to writhe away.
Under his left armpit was a massive, black swelling!
“Am I driving you wild?” he whispered, his eyes still closed. “Am I? Am I?”
Emma screamed again, trying with all her strength to topple the man off her. But he was too heavy, too strong, too determined in the sating of his lust.
His efforts increased, and as he did so the bubo in his armpit swelled until the skin enclosing it stretched thin and tight.
Sweet Jesu, this was Death riding her. God’s judgement on her sinful life.
The door to the room flew open. Jocelyn, her face crinkled in worry at her mother’s screaming.
Emma saw her over Harrison’s heaving shoulders, and she screamed yet again, not only with fear this time, but with horror that Jocelyn should finally see what she had spent eight years keeping from her.
Harrison climaxed, and as he did so, the bubo in his armpit burst.
He was long gone now, his face lax, his eyes glazed, and apparently still unaware of what his body harboured. He’d left the instant he’d pulled himself free from her body, and shucked on his clothes. Then he pushed past Jocelyn, still standing, staring at her mother on the bed. When the outer door had slammed behind him, Emma pulled the soiled sheets about her, trying to not only hide her nakedness, but also to clean off the filth from the burst bubo.
Jocelyn had stood, staring, frightened, until Emma quietly asked her to fetch a pail of water from the other room so that she might wash herself.
Now, sitting shivering before the small fire in the inadequate grate, Emma knew that she, and probably her beloved daughter, were doomed.
Death had been a-visiting.
Outside a dog howled once, then was silent.
Emma shivered some more.
Jocelyn sat down at Emma’s feet, and silently held out to her mother a piece of bread. Emma took it, even though she felt ill, and forced down a few bites.
Satisfied, Jocelyn lowered her head to watch the flames, and once her gaze had turned away, Emma hid the bread in a pocket in her skirt. She reached out a trembling hand, and touched Jocelyn’s shining fair hair.
What would happen to her when I am dead? Emma wondered, then began to weep, silently, despairingly.
Then, on cue, the fever struck, and Emma shuddered.
“Mama?” Jocelyn twisted about. “Mama?”
“Jocelyn… ”
“I will fetch the physician.”
Emma smiled tiredly. “I have no coin with which to pay the physician,” she whispered.
“Then I will fetch the monks to take you to Saint Bartholomew’s.”
Emma began to laugh, a grating, grinding sound that was more sob than laugh. “I have no virtues with which to pay the monks,” she said. “I am unvirtuous, and they will not save me. Their hospital is as unobtainable to me as is heaven.”
“Then I will save you,” the young girl said with such a determined air that Emma almost believed her.
With the utmost effort, Emma raised a shaking hand and touched her child’s cheek. “You are so beautiful,” she said.