Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 50 of 150

Ben stood alone on the cart track after the others ran east. The knocking of the decoy box faded into the trees. Somewhere behind him, west, Chris sat in front of a cold hearth with a chest in the flue. Ben needed to circle back without being seen. His face was known on every road inside a day's ride. A tall man walking west now would undo everything Justin's noise had bought. He stepped off the track into the birches and crouched. He counted what he had. A coat the herbalist's men had described. A height they knew. A stride Anita said a scout could name at fifty paces. He needed to be someone else before the road forked back. A low whistle came from the slope below. Joe stood at the edge of a hollow Ben had missed twice walking past it. Moss and cracked stone. A door set flush into the rock, almost part of the hill. Joe pushed it open with one bare foot. Inside, a figure sat waiting on an overturned crate. Bandaged hands. A hood pulled low. Two yellow eyes lit the dim room like lamp glass. Dr. Payne. The plague doctor Ben had once paid a debt to with a sealed jar. Ben had not asked Joe to fetch them. Joe had done it anyway. "You need to disappear," Payne said. "West. Two miles. Past the ring of scouts." "Sit." Ben sat. Payne opened a flat wooden case. Gray paste. A roll of linen. A tin of ash. "Coat off." Ben shrugged it off. Payne bundled it into a sack and handed him a stained smock from a hook on the wall. The smock stank of vinegar and smoke. Payne smeared paste along Ben's jaw, down his neck, across his hands. The paste dried gray and cracked like sick skin. Payne wound linen around Ben's head, low over the brow, high across the mouth. A plague rag. The kind travelers crossed the road to avoid. "Walk slow," Payne said. "Cough when you see a man. They'll clear a field for you." "How long does it hold?" "Half a day. Don't sweat." Ben stood. In the small polished tin on the wall he saw a hunched figure in filthy linen. Not Ben Dover. A dying man on a road. He flexed one hand and the paste cracked convincingly. Joe cracked the door and looked out. "Ring's thin on the north face. Two men. One dozing." Ben turned to Payne. "What do I owe you." "Later." Ben ducked out into the light and started west at the pace of a sick man. The first scout he passed sat on a stump chewing bread. The scout saw the linen, the gray hands, the shuffle. He stood up and walked twenty paces off the track without a word. Ben kept moving. The hearth was two miles ahead, and no one was watching him now.