A Very Peculiar Plague

A Very Peculiar Plague by Catherine Jinks Page B

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Authors: Catherine Jinks
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There was no one on his palliasse.
    It occurred to Jem that a coster’s boy like Ned might have to rise before dawn if he wanted to reach Covent Garden Market in time to grab the choicest fruit.
    Rat-tat-tat-tat.
    ‘Whassarr . . .?’ Alfred grumbled, from somewhere deep in a nest of grubby bedclothes. Jem pushed back his own covers and stood up. He was still wearing his canvas trousers and blue shirt, but had carefully washed his feet upon crossing Alfred’s threshold the previous night.
    Alfred had insisted on it.
    ‘I’m a-coming,’ Jem growled. He staggered over to the door, dodging strips of flypaper on his way. When he lifted the latch and pulled the door open, he found himself peering at a total stranger. ‘Who are you?’ he asked crossly. ‘What do you want?’
    ‘Hugh Purdy’s my name.’ The stranger tipped his cap, which was made of leather. He also carried a leather toolbag, and wore leather pads tied to the knees of his trousers. ‘I’m looking for Mr Alfred Bunce,’ he said. ‘Miss Lillimere sent me.’
    Jem grimaced. He glanced over his shoulder at Alfred, who was sitting up in bed, running his hands through his hair.
    ‘There’s a cove here wants to see you,’ Jem told him. When Alfred groaned, Jem turned back to Hugh Purdy. ‘A little early, ain’t it?’
    ‘I got a job this morning,’ Purdy replied, ‘and I’m afeared to go up there without Mr Bunce comes along.’ As Jem hesitated, conscious of Alfred grunting and coughing in the room behind him, Purdy took off his cap. He was a wiry little man with an angular, clean-shaven face, a thatch of mouse-coloured hair, and skin as leathery as his toolbag. Jem judged him to be about thirty years old.
    ‘I’m a plumber and glazier,’ the man continued, ‘and I lost my apprentice on a roof, yesterday morning.’ Seeing Jem blink, he added, ‘Billy didn’t fall, I’d swear to it. For I searched until nightfall, but there weren’t no trace of him thereabouts.’ Purdy shook his head in bewilderment. ‘When it got too dark to keep searching, I stopped for a pint at the tavern nearby – and that’s when Mabel told me about the bogle in her basement.’
    By this time Alfred was more or less upright. He had pulled on his trousers and was dragging his old green coat over his nightshirt. Jem also noticed that the neighbours were beginning to show an interest in Alfred’s unexpected visitor. One or two doors had opened in the passage outside. Several pairs of eyes were watching Hugh Purdy’s every move.
    ‘You’d better come in,’ said Jem, having decided that Alfred would probably prefer to discuss his bogling business in private. He ushered Purdy over the threshold, then pulled a grotesque face at the nosy old woman across the hallway before slamming Alfred’s door shut.
    ‘I’m sorry to rouse you so early, Mr Bunce,’ Purdy was saying. He had fixed his bemused gaze on the flapping strips of paper overhead. ‘I’m putting lead on a roof, see, and must have it done by the end o’ the week. But I can’t do it without a boy, and won’t take another boy up there till I discover what happened to the first . . .’
    Alfred coughed, hawked, and spat. He wasn’t looking very well.
    ‘Why d’you think a bogle’s to blame?’ he asked. ‘Could the boy not have run off?’
    ‘Not Billy,’ the plumber replied. ‘Billy’s a stouthearted lad, as keen as mustard. He had no cause to run, and no desire to.’
    Reaching for his pipe, Alfred studiously ignored Jem, who was kicking his bedclothes tidily into one corner. ‘You sure he weren’t taken? There’s some folk do that, when they need boys for thieving, or begging. They grab ’em where they find ’em.’
    ‘On a rooftop?’ Purdy’s tone made it clear what he thought of that idea. ‘Billy’s a big boy, sir. Ten years old, and sturdy as a stump. Yet I didn’t hear a sound – not a single cry or clatter. One instant he were fetching sheets o’ lead, and the next . . .’

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