She remembered how Andrew had treated her when she was ill, or hurt, or miserable. ‘Tell me,’ she whispered.
‘Then call me George, my dear,’ he murmured. ‘And perhaps, for these last few minutes, we can be friends. I could only speak to a friend, you see, since one should never burden another soul with one’s own troubles.’
‘We are friends,’ Tyballis smiled. ‘Of course we are. So, tell me about your wife, George. What was her name?’
His voice was growing faint. ‘My dearest Edalina. We were sweethearts as children, and I promised to marry her when I was bare six years old. When I was fifteen, we were wed at the church porch. As pretty as a little flower, she was. I was apprenticed to a joiner, and we planned a good future, but life, you know, has such different ideas. She wasn’t strong, my Edalina. I stayed home to look after her, and was beaten by my master for not completing my work.’
‘But you must have been very happy to be together,’ Tyballis whispered.
‘Indeed. Indeed. But she wanted children so badly, and each time she hoped, then it proved a disappointment. Finally, thanks be to God, we had a little daughter. Our sweet Grace. As beautiful as Edalina. Oh, for so long we were happy then, even though my dearest wife was often sick, and I earned very little.’
‘But you were a family,’ said Tyballis with a small sniff.
Mister Switt clutched at his chest. ‘Indeed. A happy family, for seven good years. I loved music, as you know, and so did my dearest Edalina. So, I left my apprenticeship, and joined a minstrel group. That was happiness indeed. We became a great favourite at court. Sometimes little Grace came with me and danced, and Edalina sang. Money became easier, too.’
Tyballis smiled. ‘I am envious, dear George. What a lovely story.’
‘Ah, but it did not last,’ he sighed. ‘We travelled the country until our blessed child was just seven years on God’s good earth. Then came the pestilence. That wicked plague of death that scourged the land, and caught our minstrel troop in its path.’
‘Oh dear,’ Tyballis whispered. ‘Both of them?’
George Switt’s voice had faded to little more than a breath in the night. ‘I nursed my beautiful wife and my blessed daughter. But they both died, both in my arms. So disfigured, and in such pain. I stumbled blind to their funerals.’ He looked up at Tyballis, his eyes blood streaked. ‘It would have been easier had the pestilence taken me with them. I dream of them still, you know, though this was many, many years ago. I never had the heart to look for another wife, but sometimes, in dear Felicia’s precious little Ellen, I see something of my lost child Grace. I like to sit close to Ellen, you know, and pat her soft cheek as I once did with my own daughter. But Ellen is not too willing to come beside me, and I cannot blame the child. I am too ugly and old, and she already has a good father to cling to. But watching her brings my memories flooding back.’
George Switt died in the night. Tyballis was not quite sure when, for finally, distraught and exhausted, she slept deeply. She woke to blackness, the candle gutted, and a body cold and stiff beside her.
They did not know if the night was over, but they woke, one by one, and shuffled uncomfortably at the news, for they could not bury Mister Switt. Felicia started to cry. ‘The fact is,’ Ralph sighed, ‘the man hasn’t been shriven, and isn’t likely to get a place in hallowed ground, lest those buggers let us out or Drew comes back.’
‘That’s not likely.’ Tyballis shook her head, staring down at the man who had slept beside her that night. ‘It depends if it’s tomorrow yet. If it is, then Drew’s been gone only a week, and that’s no time to get to Yorkshire and back.’
‘Then we must bang on the door,’ said Ralph, ‘and get these ruffians to call a priest.’
‘And the children are hungry,’ sniffed Felicia. ‘They need food.’
‘Reckon we all needs a sup o’ beer, and deserves it, too,’ advised Casper. ‘So, tell us where it’s hid, and let’s get the ashes out our mouths.’
Ralph and Casper laid Mister Switt at the other end of the chamber on a straw pallet, and everyone sat at the opposite end and drank stale beer. They talked a great deal, but talking solved little.
‘We had better start conserving candles,’ Tyballis said, lighting only one.
‘And how much of all else have we, then?’ asked Ralph.
Jon was drinking deeply. ‘I calculate,’ he said, eyeing his wife, ‘we have another three days at the very least before Mister Cobham returns. And at the most? Who knows? In the past he has often been gone for months.’
Felicia had not stopped crying. ‘It is all my fault,’ she wept, rocking Gyles on her lap. ‘Dear Tybbs warned me, but it was too late. I told the address, you know, to a constable in the city. But he was a friend and knew dear Drew as Lord Feayton.’ She blushed. ‘He wishes to marry our Tybbs, and seemed such a trustworthy fellow. An appointed constable of the Ward, after all, who organises the Watch. But he must have told someone, for the very same week we have these brutes imprisoning us.’ She buried her face against her husband’s crumpled sleeve. ‘And if we die of starvation,’ she snuffled, ‘it will be my little ones first, for they are hungry already. And it will all be my fault.’
‘Assistant constable,’ Tyballis corrected her. ‘But we don’t know if it was him who talked. I cannot see why he would tell some stranger where Lord Feayton lives – or why anyone would think to ask him about someone he barely knows. It is very confusing.’
‘My good wife,’ Jon said, sitting straight, ‘is not to blame. Not for anything!’ Felicia smiled gratefully up at him.
Casper drained his cup and said, ‘All very well. But some bugger is. Maybe them bastards at Crosby’s – though I don’t reckon Mister Cobham told ’em where he lives neither.’ He scrambled up and plodded back to the beer keg. ‘Anyone for another sup?’
‘That’s all we have,’ Tyballis warned him.
‘Won’t last all of us for three days though, let alone longer,’ Casper smiled cheerfully. ‘So, let’s be having it now, and be done with worrying.’
Ralph marched to the door and began to ram both fists upon it. ‘I’ll keep this up till the bastards come,’ he said. ‘Or break the door down instead. This wood don’t feel too strong, as it happens.’
Elizabeth had been curled in a corner, nose in her cup. Only recently recovered from her brother’s assault, once again she was badly bruised. Now she looked up at Tyballis. ‘You said there was knives kept here? Well, get us one, then. Anyone comes to this door, I’ll murder the prick.’
Ralph looked down at her. ‘And get your face kicked in again? You look after yourself, girl. I’ll do the slaughtering.’
‘An’ me.’ Casper bounced over. ‘Give us a knife. Give us a table leg. If there’s naught but a feather, I’ll ram that down their bastard throats. Let me at the buggers.’
No one came to the door, it was not unlocked and it did not break in splinters. After many minutes shouting and hammering, Ralph slumped down beside Elizabeth, and Casper began to pace the floor, avoiding Mister Switt’s lonely corner. Although the three younger children grizzled continuously, everyone was used to little food, had eaten a fair supper the evening before, and no one yet suffered the sharp discomfort of genuine hunger.
Time drifted unknown, and without natural light, there was a dreary confusion and a puzzlement, a sense of endless hours passing, of days without end. They began conversations, which then faded with no conclusion and were resumed much later. As each person moved, dust billowed, caught like star spangle in the candlelight, making them sneeze. Young Walter Spiers crawled to the body of the man he had once known, and pummelled it, trying to wake George Switt. Walter’s mother dragged him away.