June 7, 1665 London, England
The house will be empty. Beatrix watched from the mouth of the alley as the doctor—a tall man in sweeping black robes, a wide-brimmed hat, and a pointed mask the color of bone—left for the final time.
Watched as a pair of grim-faced men hauled three lifeless bodies from inside, heaved them unceremoniously onto their wooden cart.
Watched as they moved on to the next door painted with a red cross and the next, down the narrow cobbled lane, until their cart overflowed with the dead.
She traces the letters gouged into the door above a cross that could be painted in blood. Fresh splinters prick at her fingertips. She can’t read the words, but she knows what they must be, carved so deeply into the wood. A desperate prayer to live.
A desperate, unanswered prayer.
A shiver runs down Beatrix’s spine that has nothing to do with the damp evening air settling over the city. She pushes the door open. It swings easily, unlocked. No one else would be mad enough to enter a plague-marked house.
It reeks of sickness, and Beatrix nearly retches from the sour stench hanging heavy in the too-warm air.
When her eyes adjust to the dimness of the room, she is met with an eerie tableau of a life interrupted.
A man’s coat hanging behind the door. Boots drying by a fire that burned itself to nothing days ago.
A half-darned sock set aside for a moment in the basket of mending on the table.
A hard loaf of bread, wrapped in a towel for a supper that never came.
She makes her way methodically around the room. She peers inside every basket and cupboard and drawer, searching for any money that has been hidden away, any food that hasn’t spoiled, any trinket she can easily sell tomorrow at the cathedral walk.
St. Paul’s will be the only thing she misses.
She doubts Calais will compare with London, but from what she’s heard from the sailors at the riverside market, Paris will.
Half the size of London, with twice as many people, at least. She could never feel lonely in a place like that.
No one will care about the woman with the strange eyes who never ages, who is never ill.
They won’t even notice her. With another few houses scavenged, another handful of pockets picked, she’ll be on her way.
She checks the coat by the door. The pockets are empty, but the coat itself is heavy wool and better than her threadbare cloak, even if it is too large. She shrugs it on. It smells vaguely of pipe tobacco. Too heavy for June, but she’ll be happy to have it in a few months.
Maybe not. She smiles at the exhilarating thought. She has no idea where in the world she’ll be by then. Perhaps she won’t need a coat at all.
Something clatters behind Beatrix, and she spins toward the sound. A brown tabby sits at the edge of the table, a tin mug fallen to the floor beneath it. She lets out a long breath.
“You scared me,” she says, approaching the cat. She scratches it behind the ears before it leaves as suddenly as it arrived, slinking through a door at the back of the room.
Beatrix follows. Another sound greets her. This one is faint, quiet enough that if she turns away now, leaves the house and the lane far behind her, she can convince herself she has only imagined it—the wind down the chimney or the mewing of the cat.
But she can’t leave. It’s a sound she would recognize anywhere. There is no mistaking it for another, no convincing herself it is anything other than what it is. A baby, crying from the next room.
Beatrix throws the door wide. The stench of death knocks her back, suffocating and clinging. Her eyes water as she scans the bedroom, the soiled bed, the cradle by its side.
Empty.
Another cry, muffled, from the corner. Beatrix dives for the mess of blankets piled there. She flings them away, pulls out the whimpering infant. “Hello, lovely,” she coos. She clutches the baby close and carries it from the room, her heart pounding a wild rhythm inside her chest.
There is still water in the kettle by the fire. Beatrix washes the baby, and the infant screams at the sudden cold, her wide, dark eyes flying open with a feeble cry that pierces Beatrix through. She counts every rib beneath the gray-hued skin, every shallow breath, willing the next to come.
The baby settles into a silent sleep, exhausted by the brief effort.
Beatrix watches her chest rise and fall, knows in that moment she would have wasted days watching her own daughter sleep.
People would say it was a miracle the infant survived.
But was it a miracle to take her entire family from her, to leave her to starve, alone and afraid?
She clothes the baby from a basket of laundry abandoned next to the hearth and swaddles her in the old cloak she discarded for the man’s coat. Did it belong to the baby’s father?
Beatrix has the sudden urge to take something else, a memento for the baby who will never know her family.
Did William do the same for their daughter?
She wonders if he gave her the wolf carving or told her how they danced together beneath the trees, or if he never uttered a word about her again.
If the village whispered about her after she was gone or pretended she never existed.
If staying away gave her daughter the peace she hoped for her.
Beatrix digs through the basket of laundry and pulls out a white linen handkerchief. The sight of the blue flowers stitched neatly onto one corner steals her breath. Forget-me-nots. She tucks the square of fabric next to the baby’s skin, as if it were armor that will protect her tiny heart.
Beatrix cradles the baby to her chest, hugs her beneath her coat as she steps out onto the darkened street. She is settled and sleepy against her. Weak. She needs to eat. She needs a proper home and a proper family and things Beatrix can’t promise her.
Beatrix forces her feet down the familiar path to St. Paul’s.
The service has just ended when she arrives.
Men and women and children file somberly out through the doors or mill about the yard, catching up on news and sharing condolences with acquaintances.
An accounting of the dead, from what Beatrix can tell.
In the past she’s been a shadow here, has probably picked the pockets of some of these same people.
She pushes through them now, heads for the pair of aproned women standing beside the curved steps with weary faces and baskets of stale bread.
“Welcome, dear,” a young woman in a rough gray dress greets her. She takes one appraising look at Beatrix and offers her a hard crust instead of her collection tin.
“I found—I need—” Beatrix can’t get her words out, seized by a sudden desire to turn back, to change her mind.
She clutches the baby closer to her chest. Her breath is warm against her neck.
Shallow. Fading. She pulls the baby from her and shows the woman the pale sleeping child.
“I need you to help her.” She swallows against the ache burning in her throat. “To take her. Please.”
The young woman looks to the stern, gray-haired woman standing next to her, wide-eyed.
“Is she yours?” the older woman asks. Beatrix is surprised by the gentleness in her voice.
“No,” she admits, a truth that drives a shard of glass through her heart. “A foundling. She’s starving.”
“Give her here, then,” the woman says, already reaching for the baby.
Beatrix lets her be taken away. She doesn’t know how her arms can feel so empty when the thing removed from them was so slight.
“We’ll take good care of her,” the young woman says. A gentle dismissal, but a dismissal all the same. She offers Beatrix the hard hunk of bread again.
Beatrix doesn’t take it. Tonight, she’d rather be hungry.
She kisses the baby on top of her downy head.
She wishes she could leave her with some parting words of wisdom, a blessing for the hard road that lies ahead of her.
But the words she grew up with—Be a good girl and Stay out of trouble—are the last things she would wish upon the child.
The only other thought pounding through her head, hammered by her own heartbeat, can’t possibly be true. She says nothing.
She reaches into the pocket of her skirt, finds the coins sitting there, heavy against her thigh. Everything she found in that plague-marked house; everything that was hers before she stepped over its threshold. Every coin meant for her escape.
She pulls them out and drops them into the woman’s collection tin.