Read Online All Night Awake by Sarah A. Hoyt - Free Book Online

tightly to his best suit, of much-washed black velvet, and waited his turn.
    His suit had been new ten years ago when he’d married Nan. It was not, Will knew, nearly as well made as the tall man’s wine-colored doublet.
    And yet Will had to have ten pence for the suit.
    It wouldn’t pay Will’s rent, but it would—if he husbanded it right—feed Will through the days it would take him to walk home.
    But what were his chances of getting that much when the much-better doublet was held so cheap?
    Will watched the old man purse his lips with finality and look at the young man. “Poor quality,” he told the boy. “Poor quality. I don’t think I can—”
    On those words he checked and arrested.
    The young man had started quivering, like a leaf upon a tree in high wind.
    He stumbled, gave a strangled cry, and fell toward Will.
    “What’s this, what’s this?” the shopkeeper said.
    To save himself from being toppled, Will dropped his suit and put his hands out, easing the tall, thick-boned youth onto the beaten-dirt floor of the shop.
    “He’ll be drunk,” the tall man said. “Drunk or hungry. It’s hard days in the country and many young bucks come to town searching for work and food. As if we had it to give.”
    Will shook his head. He’d come to town in search of work, but no one would call him a young buck.
    He knelt beside the young man on the floor. He looked like a farmhand and he smelled neither of ale or wine. Will lay his hand on the youth’s forehead, as he would have on Hamnet’s, back in Stratford. It was hot enough to feel burning to the touch.
    “He’s ill,” Will said. He fumbled with the man’s shirt, trying to open it, to give him air.
    But as Will pulled, the worn-through shirt ripped, exposing the man’s underarm, and the huge, pulsing growth beneath it.
    “Jesu,” the seller said. He got up and bent over the youth, staring at the growth. “Jesu. It’s the plague.” The old man’s lips quivered. His hand went to his forehead, tracing the papist sign of the cross in atavistic exorcism. “My shop will be closed now. What will become of my grandchildren?”
    “How long have you been ill, good man?” Will asked. He wanted to ask where the man had been, where he might have contracted this illness, whether in London or the countryside.
    For a moment he thought the man was too far gone to answer. His pale blue country-boy eyes looked at Will uncomprehending.
    But then he cleared his throat and coughed, and whispered, “Faith, I’ve not been ill. It was just now, this pain . . . . I’ve not been ill. Tell my mother—” He stopped, and coughed again, and his body convulsed, in a long shudder. “Mother,” he said and he was still.
    Will saw that breath didn’t rise in the broad chest.
    Dead, the boy was dead. And he’d said he was well till just now, till that pain beneath his arm.
    It could not be true. It could not be true. Even the plague took time to kill people.
    Yet something told Will that this was true. He remembered the boy walking down the street, ahead of Will. He’d walked like a healthy man.
    Trembling, Will stood up. Trembling, he wiped his hands to his pants.
    Mercy, let him not catch the plague. Oh, mercy, not so far from his wife and children. How horrible it would be, dying here all alone and being buried without name or care. His sense of his mortality, awakened, beat afraid and agitated wings against his reason. Oh, fool he was to have left those he loved and for the sake of an illusory dream of poetry to have come so far to so dangerous a city.
    “Out,” the old man said. “Out. I’ll not be buying any clothes for a long time.” With fumbling urgency, he pushed Will and the tall man with the wine red doublet from his shop.
    Will could but stop and pick up his suit on the way, as he was being pushed out.
    Outside, the cold air allowed Will to think more clearly, despite the bitter complaints of his empty stomach.
    The plague. In truth, it was