The earth crunched with the first bite, and a cloud of misty air rumbled up from the ground. A cloaked figure drove the blade into the soil a second time. Again the same belching of air. A lady of some elegance, attired in deep-toned velvets, stood back in the shadow of an oak tree. With her eyes hidden by a hood, she watched from beyond the amber glow of the lantern as the gravedigger loosened the topsoil.

A pack of mongrels started growling and snapping near by. They fought viciously over a shallow grave where a corpse had been poorly covered. The lady grew faint at the sound of clothes ripping and jaws grinding in the mouldering flesh. But she couldn't take her eyes off the feeding frenzy, that titillatingly gruesome sight of animals tugging at the diseased body, tearing it apart with dreadful ease. The dogs then scattered into the city to quietly gnaw on the remains, unwittingly spreading the contagion. She pulled her gaze towards the church and surrounding grounds, but nothing else stirred in the predawn cemetery.

"They'll be lucky to live the night out."

"Pardon?"

The peak of her hood dipped slightly as if she lowered her eyes in shame.

The man cut and cut into the earth with his long red-handled spade, an ornately carved thing, she observed. She wasn't the least bit concerned about the incredible speed with which he dug his hole, nor the way he lobbed the soil as if it were lighter than air. Exhaustion had dulled her curiosity. She hadn't slept in four days, not since her nine-year-old daughter fell to the Black Death.

"She'll be cold." He paused to listen to the town cathedral ringing the dawn bells. "You have something warm for her?" The lady nodded. "Is your horse ready-"

He suddenly jerked his head to the side. His eyes, which had seemed unremarkable to this time, appeared brilliant and glowing, silvery almost, like a new coin. The vague outline of a large man appeared on the nearby knoll.

Broad across the shoulder and deep in the chest, the stranger walked with a limp, or perhaps with the lopsided gait of someone whose one leg was shorter than the other. In the grey silence of the churchyard, the digger and the lady clearly heard the gulping sound of his laboured breathing.

"Magistrate." The digger inclined his chin because the opulent man before him wore the symbol of his profession, a dark blue coif under a cap.

"What are you doing here...?" The city official regarded him with thin slit eyes. "Digging for treasure?"

"I'm a burier." The digger's cloak by contrast was a patchwork of reddish brown rags. He wore a wide thrown back hood, and his long red-blonde hair was tied back with a leather thong, as was the style among gravediggers.

"Are you a sexton?" he asked in panting breaths.

"No, I dig for all the parishes, all people, religious or atheist. Dead's dead, as they say."

"You do have permission from the sexton to dig up his churchyard?"

"No, sir."

The magistrate's eyes squinted at the man's peculiar accent. "Where you from, gravedigger?"

A plague follower, he thought. "You up to mischief?"

"I moved a girl from her shallow grave over there and laid her to rest here, six feet under, as the law now requires."

"This place is filled with plagued scum." The magistrate jabbed his finger at the ground. "Those diseased souls are down there for good reason, burier! God despises them. By which authority are you moving the body?"

"Mine." The robed lady stepped up to the edge of the lantern. "I am the mother."

The magistrate's narrow-slit eyes cut to the lavishly dressed woman, whose deep hood hid the loathing he would otherwise see.

"Lots of hollow graves around." He turned back to the burier. "Are you collecting for the college?"

"The College of Surgeons has fled the city."

"Quite." The magistrate plucked some invisible irritant from his face, possibly a spider web. "What are these for?" He shook his finger at the grave where a small leather pouch sat on each of the four corners. He stretched his nostrils wide and sniffed. "Smells like a spicer's stall."

"A burial rite in my family." The woman moved fully into the circle of light, which was a warm caramel colour against the advancing grey of morning. "I mean to have a proper burial for my daughter. I've brought some heirlooms also, to honour the occasion." She showed him a handful of jewelled trinkets. "Must times be so dreadful, death so quick and abundant, that not even a mother can pay her respects to her only child?"

"So true, my lady. May I...?" The magistrate opened his hand, his eyes darting from jewel to jewel. "Even the royal blood is no longer immune." He looked up from his glittering palm. "Terrible also that we should lose the crown prince Nathaniel. Such beautiful things, madam." He handed the jewellery back to her.

"I do love a stroll in the cemetery before sunrise. Enriches the soul, don't you think?" He tipped his cap and bid them good morning.

They watched him disappear into a wall of grey fog just starting to roll across the contoured grounds. Until the sound of his breathing faded not a word was spoken or a muscle moved.

"Who is he?"

"A body-snatcher, a despicable man who wears the robes of a magistrate. Before the plague he sold body parts to the students and lecturers at the college. I suppose now he must find other ways of supplementing his dark wage."

The gravedigger made no answer, saying nothing of the secret transaction between the lady and magistrate. The payment of jewellery would ensure that the man left them well alone.

Digger held the shovel over his head like a Moses staff and rammed the blade into the earth, parting the grave, and they felt a rush of warm air from the ground. He stood with his legs straddling the corpse, the small body bound with strips of dirty white cloth. The lady saw dust particles rising in small repeated puffs around the mouth of the body. She ripped back her hood. Her jaw plunged. Her wild staring eyes locked on her daughter's grave.

Digger lifted the breathing body by its cloth wrapped hands, and the woman collapsed in a swirl of dark velvet....

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