“Are they dangerous?”

“Depends on what’s catching. I have the good fortune to’ve been born immune and impervious to plague, leprosy, impetigo…” but Eliza was up on the horse already, in a performance of a scampering nature that no man alive (excepting sodomites) would not have enjoyed watching. Jack, for lack of other occupations, had taught her what he knew of riding, and she backed Turk off expertly and rode him up onto a little mossy hummock, gaining as much altitude as possible.

“’Twas the Year of our Lord sixteen hundred and sixty-five,” Jack said. “I was coming up in the world-having established a thriving business of sorts with brother Bob, providing special-ized services to the condemned. My first clew was the scent of brimstone-then heavy yellow smoke of it hanging in the streets, thicker and fouler than the normal fogs of London. People burnt it to purify the air.”

“Of what?”

“Then it was wains trundling down streets piled with corpses of rats, then cats, then dogs, then people. Red chalk crosses would appear on certain houses-armed watchmen stood before them to prevent any of the miserable residents from breaking out of those nailed-shut doors. Now, I couldn’t’ve been more than seven. The sight of all those blokes planted in the brimstone-fog, like hero-statues, with pikes and muskets at the ready-churches’ bells sounding death-knells all round-why, Bob and I had voyaged to another world without leaving London! Public entertainments were outlawed. Irish even stopped having their Popish feasts, and many absconded. The great hangings at Tyburn stopped. Theatres: shut down for the first time since Cromwell. Bob and I had lost both income and the entertainment to spend it on. We left London. We went to the forest. Everyone did. They were infested. The highwaymen had to pack up and move away. Before we-the Londoners fleeing the Plague-even came into those woods, there had been towns of lean-tos and tree-houses there: widows, orphans, cripples, idiots, madmen, journeymen who’d thought better of their contracts, fugitives, homeless reverends, victims of fire and flood, deserters, discharged soldiers, actors, girls who’d gotten pregnant out of wedlock, tinkers, pedlars, gypsies, runaway slaves, musicians, sailors between sailings, smugglers, confused Irishmen, Ranters, Diggers, Levellers, Quakers, feminists, midwives. The normal Vagabond population, in other words. To this was added, now, any Londoner fleet enough to outrun the Black Death. Now, a year later London burnt to the ground-there was yet another exodus. Same year, the Naval Pay Office went into default-thousands of unpaid sailors joined us. We moved around the South of England like Christmas Carolers from Hell. More’n half of us expected the Apocalypse within a few weeks, so we didn’t trouble with planning. We broke down walls and fences, undoing Enclosure, poached game in forests of some extremely worshipful lords and bishops. They weren’t happy.”

By this time, the Vagabonds had mostly come out into the open. Jack didn’t look at them-he knew what they’d be-but rather at Eliza, who’d become anxious. Turk the Horse sensed this and looked askance at Jack, showing a white Mohametan crescent-moon in the eye. Jack knew, then, that, as it was with Turk, so it’d be with every person and beast they met along their way: they’d gladly suffer Eliza to climb on their backs and ride them, they’d feel her feelings as if she were an actress on a Southwark stage, and they’d shoot dirty looks at Jack. He’d only have to find a way to use it.

Eliza breathed easier when she saw that the Vagabonds were just people. If anything they were cleaner and less brutish than those peasants who’d settled in the village, especially after they swam out into the pond to retrieve fish. A couple of Gypsy boys drew a crowd as they struggled to wrestle a prodigious carp, the size of a blacksmith, up onto the shore. “Some of these fish must remember the war,” Jack mused.

Several people came near, but not too near, to pay their respects to Jack and (more so) Eliza. One was a stringy fellow with pale green eyes staring out of an anatomical complex that looked like anything but a face-his nose was gone, leaving twin vertical air-holes, and his upper lip was missing, and his ears were perforated baby’s fists stuck to the sides of this head, and angry words were burnt into his forehead. He came toward them, stopped, and bowed deeply. He had an entourage of more complete persons who obviously loved him, and they all grinned at Eliza, encouraging her not to throw up or gallop away screaming.

She was politely aghast. “A leper?” she asked. “But then he wouldn’t be so popular.”

“A recidivist,” Jack said. “When Polish serfs run away, their lords hunt ’em down and brand ’em, or cut off this or that piece-saving the pieces that can do useful work, needless to say-so if they’re seen out on the roads again they’ll be known as runners. That, lass, is what I mean by the Devil’s Poor-one who keeps at it regardless-who won’t be mastered by any man, nor reformed by any church. As you can see, his perseverance has won him a whole Court of admirers.”

Jack’s gaze had drifted to the lakeshore, where Vagabonds were now scooping guts out of carp-bellies by the double handful, exerting a hypnotic power over various mangy dogs. He looked up at Eliza and caught her in the act of examining him. “Trying to picture me without a nose?”

Eliza looked down. He’d never seen her eyes downcast before. It affected him, and made him angry to be affected. “Don’t look at me-I’ll not be the subject of such investigation. The last person who peered at me that way, from the back of a fine horse, was Sir Winston Churchill.”

“Who’s that? Some Englishman?”

“A gentleman of Dorsetshire. Royalist. Cromwell’s men burnt down his ancestral estate and he squatted in the cinders for ten or fifteen years, siring children and fighting off Vagabonds and waiting for the King to come back-that accomplished, he became a man about town in London.”

“Then whyever was he peering at you from horseback?”

“In those days of Plague and Fire, Sir Winston Churchill had the good sense to get himself posted to Dublin on the King’s business. He’d come back from time to time, suck up to the Royals, and inspect what was left of his country estates. On one of those occasions, he and his son came back to Dorset for a visit and rallied the local militia.”

“And you happened to be there?”

“I did.”

“No coincidence, I presume.”

“Bob and I and certain others had come to partake of a charming local custom.”

“Clog-dancing?”

“Clubmen-armies of peasants who’d once roamed that part of the country with cudgels. Cromwell had massacred them, but they were still about-we hoped for a revival of the tradition, as Vagabondage of the meek school had become overly competitive in those dark years.”

“What did Sir Winston Churchill think of your idea?”

“Didn’t want his home burnt again-he’d just gotten a roof on it, finally, after twenty years. He was Lord Lieutenant thereabouts-that’s a job that the King gives to the gents with the brownest noses of all-entitled him to command the local militia. Most Lord Lieutenants sit in London all the time, but after the Plague and the Fire, the countryside was in an uproar because of people like me, as I’ve been explaining, and so they were given the power to search for arms, imprison disorderly persons, and so on.”

“Were you imprisoned, then?”

“What? No, we were mere boys, and we looked younger than we were because of not eating enough. Sir Winston decided to carry out a few exemplary hangings, which was the normal means of persuading Vagabonds to move to the next county. He picked out three men and hanged them from a tree-limb, and as a last favor to them, Bob and I hung from their legs to make ’em perish faster. And in so doing we caught Sir Winston’s eye. Bob and I looked similar, though for all we know we’ve different fathers. The sight of these two matched urchins plying their trade, with coolness born of experience, was amusing to Sir Winston. He called us over and that was when he (and his son John, only ten years older than meself) gave us that look you were giving me just now.”