“There isn’t many escapes,” the vintner assured him ruefully. “And you having had the pestilence makes you a safe man. Ye can come and go as ye please without uneasiness.”
“And your sack as an electuary is wasted on me. But if I’m safe I’m also penniless, which is what has brought me here: to see if some gear of mine is still in your possession that I may melt it into shillings.”
“Aye, aye, I have it all safe,” Banks assured him. “A brave suit, with boots and a hat, a baldric, and some other odds and ends. They’re above-stairs, waiting for you when you please. But what may you be thinking of doing, Colonel, if I may make so bold as to ask?”
Holles told him of his notion of sailing as a hand aboard a vessel bound for France.
The vintner pursed his lips and sadly shook his head, regarding his guest the while from under bent brows.
“Why, sir,” he said, “there’s no French shipping and no ships bound for France at Wapping, and mighty few ships of any kind. The plague has put an end to all that. The port of London is as empty as Proctor’s yonder. There’s not a foreign ship’ll put into it, nor an English one go out of it, for she wouldn’t be given harbour anywhere for fear of the infection.”
The Colonel’s face lengthened in dismay. This, he thought, was the last blow of his malignant Fortune.
“I shall have to go to Portsmouth, then,” he announced gloomily. “God knows how I shall get there.”
“Ye never will. For Portsmouth won’t have ye, nor any other town in England neither, coming as ye do from London. I tell you, sir, the country’s all crazed with fear of the plague.”
“But I’ve a certificate of health.”