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I swallow my stodgy mouthful, wiping the honey from my fingers against my apron. Shock will have to wait. Bodies do not. The Brothers will expect me to prepare him before they wrap him, so I pull my woollen cloak from its hook and cram the pockets with herbs. Doctor Taylor is well beyond caring what we scatter over him. But the villagers know the ritual, and familiarity is one of the few comforts Beswick still has in plentiful supply.
I tuck the remaining honey cake into my deepest pocket, catch Thomas by the shoulder before he can escape, and press a twist of honeyed fennel into his palm.
“Take that to your sister, and both of you stay away from the square. There are enough people crowded together already without you two adding yourselves to it.”
I wait until he’s darted outside, then take my linen mask from the peg beside the door, soak the cloth in vinegar, and tie it firmly behind my head.
Outside, braziers smoulder at the mouth of every lane, their coals buried beneath juniper and pitch to drive back the corrupted air. In theory, this is sensible. In practice, the smoke has settled so thickly beneath the roofs that my eyes water before I’ve taken ten steps, and every breath tastes like I’ve licked the inside of a chimney.
I pull my cloak tighter beneath my chin and make for the square, keeping to the firmer edge of the lane where the icy mud has not yet been churned ankle-deep. Somewhere behind a shuttered window, a cough collapses into retching, while beyond the southern wall comes the scrape of shovels from the plague pit.
It’s a far cry from the Beswick I was so fond of, when five hundred souls lived within this parish, and every one of them seemed determined to make themselves heard. Market wives quarrelled across the lanes over the price of onions. Children tore between the houses shrieking loudly enough to wake the dead. Old Mr Walker dragged his stool outside each morning and stationed himself beside his door, where he spent the day insulting anyone unfortunate enough to pass within range.
His stool is still there. It lies on its side beneath the eaves, one leg sunk into the mud, whilst a fresh black cross stains the door behind it.
The Walkers are not all dead. Not yet. Neither are the family three doors along, though another cross marks their entrance and no smoke rises from the chimney. The village already gives both houses a wide berth, carts drawing towards the opposite wall and neighbours lowering their eyes as they pass, as though the families inside have begun slipping from Beswick before their hearts have quite stopped.
Fewer than three hundred of us remain now, and with every death the village seems to draw a little more into itself. Doors stay closed longer. Voices carry less often. Even the lanes feel wider for the people no longer walking them.
Which is why the noise beyond the final alley feels so wrong.
It opens into the village square, where half the parish has gathered beneath the church steps, huddled shoulder to shoulder despite every warning I’ve given them about sharing one another’s breath. Prayer beads twist around white-knuckled fingers and sobs disappear into stained shawls.
“Ah. Rejoice, flock. Our sweet Ophelia has arrived to tend the departed!”
At the sound of my name, the crowd parts, opening a narrow path between damp wool and bowed heads. I make my way towards the church steps beneath enough miserable attention to make me wish Thomas had kept his news to himself.
Gideon stands above them all in his black cassock with one hand pressed to his chest, the two remaining Brothers arranged solemnly behind him.
“We know Doctor Taylor’s death has brought fresh fear to you all,” Gideon says once I reach the front. “But fear must not drive us from one another, nor from the Lord. Pray for Doctor Taylor. Pray for those already sick, and for the forgiveness of whatever sins have brought such suffering upon us. Help your neighbours where you are able, and if sickness enters your home, send for Ophelia. May God guide her hands where ours cannot reach.”
A broken chorus of amens bubbles up, and gradually the crowd drifts back into the lanes in twos and threes, murmuring fresh prayers into the cold.
They are always praying.
Morning, noon and night, Beswick turns its face towards the heavens and begs. They worship, bargain, repent. Promise better lives, better hearts, coin they do not possess and good deeds they may never live long enough to perform, all in the hope that something above the clouds might finally decide they’ve suffered enough.
They call Him Father whilst His creation tears through their homes. Praise His mercy whilst lowering their children into graves. And when another prayer goes unanswered, somehow it’s never God who’s failed them. They turn the blame on themselves instead, searching for some hidden wickedness severe enough to explain why an infant died coughing blood into its mother’s arms.
Well, where is He now? He isn’t boiling the linen. He isn’t holding children still as I lance their swellings, nor carrying the dead when there are too many bodies and not enough hands. As ever, He remains conspicuously absent.
I shift my weight to my good leg, teeth grinding as Gideon lets the last of the mourners dawdle their way out of the square. Every second we stand here is another second wasted. Only when the stragglers are completely out of sight does he finally turn to the Brothers lingering behind him.
“Find Robert,” he says. “Have him bring the dead cart to the north door.”
The moment the Brothers hurry off, I move. I don’t wait for Gideon to lead the way with a slow, reverent walk. I get up the steps and head into the nave.
“Leon found him an hour ago, slumped against the north door,” he says, his longer strides echoing as he catches up to me between the empty pews. “It appears he made it as far as the church before his legs gave out.”
I frown, my boots clicking against the flagstones. That does not sound like Doctor Taylor. The old codger might have taken to his bed and demanded hot broth at the first sign of a winter sniffle, but he would sooner have collapsed across my counter whilst explaining precisely why he was not collapsing than seek help from a priest. He distrusted the holy folk almost as much as he distrusted anyone telling him what to do, and the thought of him spending his final strength crawling towards a church makes my stomach turn.
I say nothing, though the unease trails me as Gideon leads me through the narrow passage beside the altar towards a cramped stone porch wedged between the church and the graveyard beyond.
When he lifts the latch, I’m greeted with a foul mixture of cold stone and the sour stink of a body already turning.
Doctor Taylor’s mask lies abandoned on the bench beside the door, its long leather beak tilted towards the rafters. When I lift it, crushed lavender, rosemary, and flakes of camphor tumble from the hollow snout in a small, fragrant funeral, scattering across my boots before my attention drifts to the bier.
Mud cakes his boots, and one arm hangs over the edge with the fingers curling stiffly towards the floor. Dried blood crusts his lips, knotting his grey beard into a blackened mess. My first thought is a haemorrhage. My second dies the moment I look at his shirt.
