Dark Aemilia by Sally O'Reilly

Author:Sally O'Reilly [O'Reilly, Sally]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908434494
Google: hmt1ngEACAAJ
Amazon: 190843449X
Publisher: Myriad Editions
Published: 2014-03-27T04:00:00+00:00

Even Paul’s Churchyard is quiet in this time of plague. The shops stand empty, their open fronts showing here a solitary printer proof-reading a chap-book, there a determined play-buyer, scrutinising a bill. When I reach Cuthbert Tottle’s shop and look inside, at first it seems deserted. All I can see is the monstrous printing press, filling the room almost to the ceiling. Then I see Cuthbert, sitting alone, head bowed, hands folded as if he is praying. He is dressed in black.

‘Mistress Lanyer,’ he says. ‘I bid you a good day.’

‘And the same to you.’

I stand, waiting for him to demand a cheerful pamphlet, or one with two-headed monsters or demon births. But, after smiling at me vaguely, he returns to the contemplation of his hands.

‘I have the cross-gartering pamphlet that you asked for,’ I say. I’ve little confidence in this. I have rarely seen a thing so dull. But I hand him my pages and he peruses them, pushing his little spectacles up his nose. I see that it is wet with tears, which set his glasses sliding down again, and what I thought was prayer is grief.

‘How is Mistress Tottle?’ I ask, as he reads. ‘I don’t see her in the shop today. I hope she is well?’ Of course, I fear the worst.

‘She died on Sunday.’

‘Oh, God rest her!’

‘It took her off in two days. I was away at Cambridge, or else I would be boarded in our house, to await the Maker with her. On Friday she sat over there…’ he indicates her habitual place ‘…setting a psalter. She was as perfect… as perfect as… Well. I can’t bear to see the half-done words.’

I frown. ‘Mr Tottle, the pamphlet I have brought in is a very poor thing. I don’t think I should trouble you with it any further.’

Grief has not affected his head for business. He hands it back to me. ‘I can’t find fault with your description. It’s not worth sixpence,’ he says. ‘Nor even a farthing. At least your Lilith poem had some amusing passages, I seem to recall. I mean to say, they seemed amusing then…’

‘I am sorry for your loss…’ I hesitate. ‘I do have something else. Something useful for these dreadful times.’

He rises from his seat and stands awkwardly, dwarfed by the printing machine. ‘Hmm,’ he says. ‘If you can help us to survive the plague… I think I can vouch that there is an audience for that.’

‘There is this,’ I say, and give him a sheet of paper. It is Joan’s recipe for plague-juice. ‘It wards off the pestilence,’ I say. ‘It doesn’t cure it.’

‘Isn’t that what we all want? Better avoid the smallpox than survive it, with the face of a pitted toad. Better avoid the plague than dance with death.’

‘Then we might do business.’

He reads it, front and back. Then he turns it over, and reads it once again. His face brightens. ‘Very interesting. I like this. I like it very much. It needs a little background – where you found this cure, why it works, why this is the best protection known to Man.

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