Amber picked up her skirts with an automatic gesture of revulsion, and walked back into the bedroom to light the candles. Her face was white and she had an intense desire to vomit, but she went about her tasks, determined that Bruce should not guess. And yet she could feel him watching her and she dared not meet his eyes, for if he should speak she felt that she could not trust herself. She seemed to be hanging on the ragged edge of hysteria but knew that she must keep herself in control, for when the dead-cart came by she would have to get the woman down the stairs and outside.
A pale velvety blueness still lingered in streaks in the sky when she heard the first call, from a distance: “Bring out your dead!”
Amber stiffened, like an animal listening, and then she seized a pewter candle-holder. “I’ll get your supper ready,” she said, and before he could speak she went out of the room.
Without looking at Spong she set the candle on a table and went to open the doors leading through the anteroom. The call came again, nearer now. She paused there a moment and then with sudden violent resolution she came back, flung up her skirts, unfastened her petticoat and stepped out of it. Wrapping it about her hands she bent and took hold of Spong by her thick swollen ankles, and slowly she began to drag her toward the door. The old woman’s wig came off and her flesh slid and squeaked over the bare floor.
By the time Amber reached the head of the stairs she was sick and wet with sweat and her ears were ringing. She reached backward with one foot for the step, found it and sought the next; it was perfectly dark in the stair-well but she could hear the nurse’s skull thump on each carpeted stair. She reached the bottom at last and knocked at the door. The guard opened it.
“The nurse is dead,” she said faintly. Her face looked out at him, white as chalk in the twilight, and the linen petticoat trailed from one hand.
There was the sound of the dead-cart rattling over the cobble-stones, the clop-clop of the horses’ hoofs, and then the unexpected cry: “Faggots! Faggots for six-pence!”
It seemed strange to her that anyone should be selling faggots in this weather, and at this hour. But at that moment the dead-cart drew up before the house. A link-man came first, carrying his smoky torch, and he was followed by the dead-cart, beside which walked a man ringing a bell and chanting: “Bring out your dead!” In the driver’s seat sat another man, and now Amber saw that he was holding the naked corpse of a little boy, no more than three years old, by the legs.
It was he who shouted, “Faggots for six-pence!”
While Amber stared at him with incredulous horror he turned, flung the child back into the cart, and climbed down. He and the bell-man started forward to get Spong.
“Now,” he said, grinning at Amber, “what’ve we got here?”
Both men bent over to pick Spong up. Suddenly he seized the bodice of her gown and ripped it down the front, exposing the old woman’s gross and flabby body. From neck to thighs she was covered with small blue-circled spots—the plague tokens. He made a noise of disgust, hawked up a glob of saliva and spat it onto the corpse.
“Bah!” he muttered. “What a firkin of foul stuff she is!”
Neither of the other men seemed surprised at his behaviour; they paid him no attention at all, and obviously were accustomed to it. Now they picked Spong up, gave a heave and dumped her into the cart. The link-man started on, the bell-man took up his bell again, and the driver climbed back into his seat. From there he turned and surveyed Amber.
“Tomorrow night we’ll come back for you. And I doubt not
Amber slammed the door shut and started slowly up the stairs, so weak and sick that she had to hold onto the railing as she went.
She entered the kitchen and began the preparation of Bruce’s supper, thinking that as soon as that was done she must take hot water and a mop and clean the parlour floor. For the first time she felt resentful that there was so much work to do, such an endless number of tasks reaching before her. She wished only that she might lie down and sleep and wake up some place far away. All at once responsibility seemed an unbearable burden.
And the driver of the dead-cart was still with her. She could not get rid of him, no matter what she tried to think of. It did not seem that she was there in the kitchen, but still downstairs, standing in the doorway watching him—but it was not Spong whose gown he tore open, and it was not Spong he thrust into the dead-cart. It was herself.
Holy Jesus! she thought wildly. I think I’m stark raving mad! Another day and I’ll be ready for Bedlam!
