Free Plague Child by Peter Ransley

clips holding them clattering down.
    ‘Thieves!’ he yelled, setting the candle down and running into the shop. I went after him, ducking round the press, trying to get to the door, but he saw me and blocked my way. He drew back his stick. Whatever vague plan I had formed deserted me.
    ‘It’s you!’ he said. ‘How did you get out?’
    ‘Run!’ I shouted. ‘Run!’
    ‘Two of you are there!’
    I dodged the first blow. He had his back to the kitchen and I glimpsed Anne’s petrified face as she emerged from the cellar steps.
    ‘I can handle two of you!’
    Distracted by the sight of Anne, the next blow caught me and a third sent me to the floor.
    ‘Where’s the other? Who let you out?’
    I flung my hands round my head, curling up into a submissive ball as I had done so many times before to receive his blows. Then the thought of him seeing Anne drove me to fight in a way I had not done since they first took me from Poplar. Through an aching, blurred mist I saw his legs, inches from me, grabbed them, and pulled. Off balance as he swung back his stick, he went down easily, a look of great astonishment on his face, hitting the floor with such a thud I thought the house must fall down.
    I was at the door, fumbling with the key, before I realised he hadn’t moved, and there was no sound from him. I went back to him. Mr Black was still, his eyes closed. One wild thought after another chased through my head. I was in love. I had told her I loved her. And moments afterwards I had killed her father!
    As I bent over him, his eyes shot open and he grabbed my wrist. He was a powerful man and I could not wrench away. I grabbed hold of the table to stop him from pulling me down. A chair clattered down.
    ‘Damn you!’ he panted, gasping for breath. ‘Would you –’
    I thought his grip would break my wrist. He pressed his other hand on the floor to push himself up. Another moment and I would have fallen. I brought my boot down on the hand he was using as a lever at the same time as I saw Anne returning down the stairs into the kitchen, as if she had just awoken. A look of horror crossed her face as her father yelled in pain and released me. I tried to say something to her, but her father made another enraged grab at me and I ran for the door, pulling at the latch and was into Half Moon Court before he reached the door shouting after me.
    ‘Stop, you little fool – you’re in great danger! Come back! I must speak to you!’
    I was about to run into Cloth Fair. I stopped and turned. I nearly went back. I wish I had. I hesitated, not because of what he shouted at me, for I took his warning to be yet more claptrap about the danger to my soul, and since hell could not be worse than that dark, rat-infested cellar I decided there and then I would take care of my own soul in future.
    No, it was the look of horror on Anne’s face when I stamped on her father’s hand that cut me to the heart and made me hesitate. Mr Black walked towards me. The anger had left his face. On it was that troubled expression I had seen when, only a few hours ago, he had praised me.
    I continued to hesitate as he approached. If I returned, what would I say to Anne? Explain? Explain what? Apologise? Why should I apologise? I had taken so many beatings and I was taking no more. Even so, I stood there, until he was nearly on me, for he was my master, and I respected him and thought him a good man. Unlike George, there was never malice in his beatings, which were done only to bend me to what he thought was right.
    So I stood there, hypnotised by the dark eyes set among the powerful lines of his face. He was almost close enough to touch me when I saw, above the crooked jetty of the house, the first chinks of light in the night sky.
    And in a rush it brought back that dark cellar, that terrified longing to see the first fissures of light in the plaster with such force I wrenched my gaze away from him and turned and ran.
    He shouted something else, but I