The Midnight Queen | Page 4

of the June sunshine, stricken for its sins by the hand of
God. The pest-houses were full, so were the plague-pits, where the
dead were hurled in cartfuls; and no one knew who rose up in health in
the morning but that they might be lying stark and dead in a few hours.
The very churches were forsaken; their pastors fled or lying in the
plague-pits; and it was even resolved to convert the great cathedral of
St. Paul into a vast plague-hospital. Cries and lamentations echoed
from one end of the city to the other, and Death and Charles reigned
over London together.
Yet in the midst of all this, many scenes of wild orgies and debauchery
still went on within its gates - as, in our own day, when the cholera
ravaged Paris, the inhabitants of that facetious city made it a carnival,
so now, in London, they were many who, feeling they had but a few
days to live at the most, resolved to defy death, and indulge in the
revelry while they yet existed. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow
you die!" was their motto; and if in the midst of the frantic dance or
debauched revel one of them dropped dead, the others only shrieked

with laughter, hurled the livid body out to the street, and the demoniac
mirth grew twice as fast and furious as before. Robbers and cut-purses
paraded the streets at noonday, entered boldly closed and deserted
houses, and bore off with impunity, whatever they pleased.
Highwaymen infested Hounslow Heath, and all the roads leading from
the city, levying a toll on all who passed, and plundering fearlessly the
flying citizens. In fact, far-famed London town, in the year of grace
1665, would have given one a good idea of Pandemonium broke loose.
It was drawing to the close of an almost tropical June day, that the
crowd who had thronged the precincts of St. Paul's since early morning,
began to disperse. The sun, that had throbbed the livelong day like a
great heart of fire in a sea of brass, was sinking from sight in clouds of
crimson, purple and gold, yet Paul's Walk was crowded. There were
court-gallants in ruffles and plumes; ballad-singers chanting the not
over-delicate ditties of the Earl of Rochester; usurers exchanging gold
for bonds worth three times what they gave for them; quack-doctors
reading in dolorous tones the bills of mortality of the preceding day,
and selling plague-waters and anti-pestilential abominations, whose
merit they loudly extolled; ladies too, richly dressed, and many of them
masked; and booksellers who always made St. Paul's a favorite haunt,
and even to this day patronize its precincts, and flourish in the regions
of Paternoster Row and Ave Maria Lane; court pages in rich liveries,
pert and flippant; serving-men out of place, and pickpockets with a
keen eye to business; all clashed and jostled together, raising a din to
which the Plain of Shinar, with its confusion of tongues and Babylonish
workmen, were as nothing.
Moving serenely through this discordant sea of his fellow- creatures
came a young man booted and spurred, whose rich doublet of cherry
colored velvet, edged and spangled with gold, and jaunty hat set
slightly on one side of his head, with its long black plume and diamond
clasp, proclaimed him to be somebody. A profusion of snowy shirt-frill
rushed impetuously out of his doublet; a black-velvet cloak, lined with
amber-satin, fell picturesquely from his shoulders; a sword with a
jeweled hilt clanked on the pavement as he walked. One hand was
covered with a gauntlet of canary-colored kid, perfumed to a degree

that would shame any belle of to-day, the other, which rested lightly on
his sword-hilt, flashed with a splendid opal, splendidly set. He was a
handsome fellow too, with fair waving hair (for he had the good taste to
discard the ugly wigs then in vogue), dark, bright, handsome eyes, a
thick blonde moustache, a tall and remarkably graceful figure, and an
expression of countenance wherein easy good-nature and fiery
impetuosity had a hard struggle for mastery. That he was a courtier of
rank, was apparent from his rich attire and rather aristocratic bearing
and a crowd of hangers-on followed him as he went, loudly demanding
spur-money. A group of timbril-girls, singing shrilly the songs of the
day, called boldly to him as he passed; and one of them, more free and
easy than the rest, danced up to him striking her timbrel, and shouting
rather than singing the chorus of the then popular ditty
"What care I for pest or plague? We can die but once, God wot, Kiss
me darling - stay with me: Love me - love me, leave me not!"
The darling in question turned his bright blue eyes on that