King Pest
A TALE CONTAINING AN ALLEGORY
The gods do bear and will allow in kings
The things which they abhor in rascal routes.
--Buckhurst's Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex
About twelve o'clock, one night in the month of October, and
during the chivalrous reign of the third Edward, two seamen
belonging to the crew of the Free and Easy, a trading schooner
plying between Sluys and the Thames, and then at anchor in that
river, were much astonished to find themselves seated in the taproom of an ale-house in the parish of St Andrews, London--which
ale-house bore for sign the portraiture of a 'Jolly Tar'.
The room, although ill-contrived, smoke-blackened, lowpitched, and in every other respect agreeing with the general
character of such places of the period--was nevertheless, in the
opinion of the grotesque groups scattered here and there within
it, sufficiently well adapted to its purpose.
Of these groups our two seamen formed, I think,the most
interesting, if not the most conspicuous.
The one who appeared to be the elder, and whom his companion
addressed by the characteristic appellation of 'Legs', was at the
same time much the taller of the two. He might have measured six
feet and a half, and an habitual stoop in the shoulders seemed to
have been the necessary consequence of an altitude so enormous.
Superfluities in height were, however, more than accounted for by
deficiencies in other respects. He was exceedingly thin; and
might, as his associates asserted, have answered, when drunk, for
a pennant at the mast-head, or, when sober, have served for a
jib-boom. But these jests, and others of a similar nature, had
evidently produced, at no time, any effect upon the cachinnatory
muscles of the tar. With high cheek-bones, a large hawk-nose,
retreating chin, fallen under-jaw, and huge protruding white
eyes, the expression of his countenance, although tinged with a
species of dogged indifference to matters and things in general,
was not the less utterly solemn and serious beyond all attempts
at imitation or description.
The younger seaman was, in all outward appearance, the
converse of his companion. His stature could not have exceeded
four feet. A pair of stumpy bow legs supported his squat,
unwieldy figure, while his unusually short and thick arms, with
no ordinary fists at their extremities, swung off dangling from
his sides like the fins of a sea-turtle. Small eyes, of no
particular colour, twinkled far back in his head. His nose
remained buried in the mass of flesh which enveloped his round,
full, and purple face; and his thick upper-lip rested upon the
still thicker one beneath with an air of complacent selfsatisfaction, much heightened by the owner's habit of licking
them at intervals. He evidently regarded his tall shipmate with
a feeling half-wondrous half-quizzical; and stared up
occasionally in his face as the red setting sun stares up at the
crags of Ben Nevis.
Various and eventful, however, had been the peregrinations
of the worthy couple in and about the different tap-houses of the
neighbourhood during the earlier hours of the night. Funds, even
the most ample, are not always everlasting; and it was with empty
pockets our friends had ventured upon the present hostelrie.
At the precise period, then, when this history properly
commences, Legs, and his fellow, Hugh Tarpaulin, sat, each with
both elbows resting upon the large oak table in the middle of the
floor, and with a hand upon either cheek. They were eyeing, from
behind a huge flagon of unpaid-for 'humming-stuff'', the
portentous words, 'No Chalk', which to their indignation and
astonishment were scored over the door-way by means of that very
mineral whose presence they purported to deny. Not that the gift
of deciphering written characters--a gift among the commonalty of
that day considered little less cabalistical than the art of
inditing--could, in strict justice, have been laid to the charge
of either disciple of the sea; but there was, to say the truth, a
certain twist in the formation of the letters--an indescribable
lee-lurch about the whole--which foreboded, in the opinion of
both seamen, a long run of dirty weather; and determined them at
once, in the allegorical words of Legs himself, to 'clew up all
sail, and scud before the wind'.
Having accordingly disposed of what remained of the ale, and
looped up the points of their short doublets, they finally made a
bolt for the street. Although Tarpaulin rolled twice into the
fireplace, mistaking it for the door, yet their escape was at
length happily effected--and half after twelve o'clock found our
heroes ripe for mischief, and running for life down a dark alley
in the direction of St Andrew's Stair, hotly pursued by the
landlady of the 'Jolly Tar'.
At the epoch of this eventful tale, and periodically, for
many years before and after, all England, but more especially the
metropolis, resounded with the fearful cry of 'Plague!The city
was in a great measure depopulated--and in those horrible
regions, in the vicinity of the Thames, where, amid the dark,
narrow, and filthy lanes and alleys, the Demon of Disease was
supposed to have had his nativity, Awe, Terror, and Superstition
were alone to be found stalking abroad.
By authority of the king such districts were placed under
ban, and all persons forbidden, under pain of death, to intrude
upon their dismal solitude. Yet neither the mandate of the
monarch, nor the huge barriers erected at the entrances of the
streets, nor the prospect of that loathsome death which, with
almost absolute certainty, overwhelmed the wretch whom no peril
could deter from the adventure, prevented the unfurnished and
untenanted dwellings from being stripped, by the hand of nightly
rapine, of every article, such as iron, brass, or lead-work,
which could in any manner be turned to a profitable account.
Above all, it was usually found, upon the annual winter
opening of the barriers, that locks, bolts, and secret cellars
had proved but slender protection to those rich stores of wines
and liquors which, in consideration of the risk and trouble of
removal, many of the numerous dealers having shops in the
neighbourhood had consented to trust, during the period of exile,
to so insufficient security.
But there were very few of the terror-stricken people who
attributed these doings to the agency of human hands. Pestspirits, plague-goblins, and fever-demons were the popular imps
of mischief; and tales so blood-chilling were hourly told, that
the whole mass of forbidden buildings was, at length, enveloped
in terror as in a shroud, and the plunderer himself was often
scared away by the horrors his own depredations had created;
leaving the entire vast circuit of prohibited district to gloom,
silence, pestilence, and death.
It was by one of the terrific barriers already mentioned,
and which indicated the region beyond to be under the Pest-ban,
that, in scrambling down an alley, Legs and the worthy Hugh
Tarpaulin found their progress suddenly impeded. To return was
out of the question, and no time was to be lost, as their
pursuers were close upon their heels. With thorough-bred seamen
to clamber up the roughly fashioned plank-work was a trifle; and
maddened with the twofold excitement of exercise and liquor, they
leaped unhesitatingly down within the enclosure, and holding on
their drunken course with shouts and yellings, were soon
bewildered in its noisome and intricate recesses.
Had they not, indeed, been intoxicated beyond moral sense,
their reeling footsteps must have been palsied by the horrors of
their situation. The air was cold and misty. The paving-stones,
loosened from their beds, lay in wild disorder amid the tall,
rank grass, which sprang up around the feet and ankles. Fallen
houses choked up the streets. The most fetid and poisonous
smells everywhere prevailed: and by the aid of that ghastly light
which, even at midnight, never fails to emanate from a vapoury
and pestilential atmosphere, might be discerned lying in the bypaths and alleys, or rotting in the windowless habitations, the
carcass of many a nocturnal plunderer arrested by the hand of the
plague in the very perpetration of his robbery.
But it lay not in the power of the images, or sensations, or
impediments such as these, to stay the course of men who,
naturally brave, and at that time especially, brimful of courage
and of 'humming-stuff'', would have reeled, as straight as their
condition might have permitted, undauntedly into the very jaws of
Death. Onward--still onward stalked the grim Legs, making the
desolate solemnity echo and re-echo with yells like the terrific
war-whoop of the Indian; and onward, still onward rolled the
dumpy Tarpaulin, hanging on to the doublet of his more active
companion, and far surpassing the latter's most strenuous
exertions in the way of vocal music, by bull-...
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