The two men appeared at a run between two of the dilapidated buildings, and she could see now just how gaunt and grizzled they were. Their clothes were grey and ragged, much like their sanity. They stopped on the opposite side of the pavement to her and the first man dipped down to pick up a loose stone the size of his fist.
‘Throw it, Nathaniel. Drive it away.’
The stone, when it came, landed well short. The man called Nathaniel simply didn’t have the strength, let alone the accuracy, to hit her. It clattered across the pavement, and Mary looked down at it as it spun and clacked against the base of the wall.
He seized another while his companion uncertainly raised his arms and tried to shoo her. ‘Go! Fly, beast, fly!’
She was, in bird form, more than twice their size, and it didn’t seem credible that they would try and take her on, but here they were, two men dressed like tramps, trying to scare her away when for all they knew she was planning to have them for lunch. The second stone struck the wall just below her clawed feet, and she decided she’d had enough rock-throwing and nowhere near enough explanation. She changed, and they stared at her for a moment.
Then they ran, back the way they’d come, as fast as they could, disappearing behind the line of houses.
She shrugged and walked along the top of the wall as it curved down to meet the ground, and jumped when the distance was narrow enough. She looked around: everything seemed on the verge of collapsing, like she’d walked on to the scene of some end-of-days catastrophe.
The door in the wall didn’t look like it could be locked. It was old and wooden and warped, but she could see nothing between the cracks in the boards. There was no handle or knob on her side, and even though there was a place where she could squeeze her fingers between the door and its frame, it wouldn’t flex, let alone open.
She frowned, then became aware of being watched.
The two men were back. Nathaniel, the stone-thrower, had armed himself with a club. His colleague was empty-handed but for some rope.
‘Why don’t you hold it right there,’ she said, ‘because I’m not into the whole hit on the head and tied up thing.’
The rope-carrier licked his thin lips and the pair of them edged forward a step, each one daring the other to go first.
‘I can either fly away or knock your sorry arses into next week. Your call.’
The stone, hidden in Nathaniel’s other hand, flew straight for her face, where it stopped an inch from her nose, turning slowly. She reached up, plucked it out of the air, and dropped it next to her.
‘You’re not getting this, are you?’
They looked ready to run again. The rope-carrier touched his free hand to his chest, four times in quick succession, making the pattern of a cross. ‘God protect us. A witch.’
Mary had been called a lot of things in the past, and given she could turn into a falcon and light fires with a snap of her fingers, she let this one slide.
‘We can talk, or we can call each other names. You’re not exactly Brad Pitt yourself.’ When they didn’t respond, and just quivered with fear and uncertainty, she decided that she’d nothing to lose going with a direct approach. ‘I’m looking for the White City. Do you know where that is?’
‘We know of no such place: ask your demon familiar instead. Now, back to Hell, witch, and take the plague with you.’ Nathaniel raised his club higher and gripped it harder.
‘Whoa. Hang on.’ She thought about burning bodies and run-down houses, the crosses and skulls. ‘Plague. You’re shitting me, right?’
‘Your tongue is as coarse as your manners, you heathen blackamoor. Perhaps I should send you to Hell myself.’ He took another step, and Mary took one back.
‘What’s the other side of that door?’ she asked, pointing behind her.
‘London, for all the good it does us,’ said the rope man. ‘We are marooned here, and still the pestilence follows us through.’
‘Do not furnish her with answers! She will use them for devilry.’
‘Aye, that she might, but the sin will be hers, not mine.’ The man dropped his rope, recognising the exercise as futile. ‘You have a name, witch?’
‘Mary,’ said Mary.
‘A Christian name?’ He wiped at his pale, sweaty face. ‘Beelzebub goes by many disguises.’
‘Whoever that is. You’re serious about this plague, though?’ There was something half-remembered tickling the back of her mind. ‘What year is it through there?’
‘The year of our Lord, sixteen sixty-five.’
‘Fuck. The Black Death.’
‘It is a judgement for our iniquities,’ said Nathaniel. ‘If we turn back to God, then we will be saved. As it is, we serve him here. When we are not consorting with witches, that is. We try to live lives of penitence and mercy, for as long as it pleases Him to spare us.’
She took another step back, and she felt cold, inside and out. ‘You have the plague.’
‘Aye,’ said the rope man. ‘Brother Nathaniel is miraculously recovered and seems to enjoy God’s ongoing protection. I confess that I do not. So we burn the bodies of those who come through that door to die on these lonely shores, just as I will be burned in turn. ’Tis a good cause, to keep these lands free from the disease, since we cannot do that for our own.’
‘They come through that door?’
‘A dozen a day, more this past fortnight.’ He turned away and coughed long and hard. When he turned back, his sleeve was speckled with fresh bright blood, and his breathing was laboured. ‘Witch though you surely are, you had better be gone on those wings of yours, or else stay with us for ever. These houses are nearly full, but there’ll be plenty of room soon enough.’
She knew almost nothing about the Black Death, except that it killed thousands, was spread by rats, and it ended when London caught fire.
‘You’ve gone nowhere else but this island?’
‘Some try,’ said Nathaniel. He lowered his club and tapped it in his empty hand. ‘I persuade them to stay if I must. Most can be reasoned with, being honest Englishmen and women, though truth be told, there is no escape.’
She could tell him about the boats, how they grew up out of the sand. There was a portal here, and the lines of power connecting it with other doors to London would cut the coast in several places. Perhaps even the beach where she first spotted the skulls and crosses.
‘I think you’re very brave,’ she said. ‘It gets better. It really does.’
‘Cold comfort from you,’ said Nathaniel. ‘John will take his place in the houses, and I will conscript some other damned soul to help me dispose of the dead. If that is better, then I do not know what is worse.’
‘I’m sorry. I’ll go.’
‘Aye, go,’ he said. ‘Go before the door opens, and we have to be about our dread business.’
She definitely wasn’t going to tell them about the boats. They’d quarantined themselves for a good reason, and she wasn’t going to put temptation in their way. So she nodded and trotted back to the wall, climbing up on it and running along the top of it.
John called after her. ‘Before you go, tell us if you can: where is this place? Are we in some cloister of England, or are these the foothills of Heaven?’
‘Neither. It’s just… Down,’ she said, and she raised her hand in farewell.
10
Mama dumped herself next to Dalip on the crest of the dune and splayed her legs out in front of her. She took a while to get comfortable, wriggling the sand into shape with little movements of her hips and shoulders. Then she sighed.
‘You know that girl’s not coming back, don’t you?’
Dalip chewed at his lower lip and, rather than answer, he reached between his knees for a handful of sand and let it slowly dribble away.