At the Sign of the Sugared Plum (3 page)

I put the petals on the top shelf of the rack. ‘Watch that it doesn’t rain on them!’ Sarah called through to me, but she was jesting, for it was a hot, dry day. The weather had been fine in London for six weeks, she’d told me, with not a drop of rain falling in all that time to cleanse the streets. Maybe, I thought, that was why it smelled so bad.

I pounded more sugar, and by the time I’d finished it to Sarah’s satisfaction my arm and shoulder were
aching fit to scream. I was allowed to stop so I could go out into the yard to turn the petals, and Sarah, after inspecting them, told me to sprinkle more rose water and sugar over them. The idea was to candy them to a crisp so that they’d retain their original colour and hue. ‘Done properly, with enough care,’ she said, ‘they’ll still look fresh at Christmas.’ Then she added, ‘Although they won’t keep until then because they’re so fragrant and delicious that they’ll be eaten long before that.’

I sprinkled and sifted carefully. I tasted a small one, but it still seemed to be exactly what it was: a rose petal, reminding me of the ones I’d eaten with Anne as we’d played make-believe with our dolls, sitting outside our cottage with oak tree leaves as plates and acorns as cups.

When I’d finished dowsing the petals I lifted my face to the sun, happy to be outside. Then I remembered that more sun meant more freckles, so hastily pulled my cap lower over my forehead and vowed again that I would go to the apothecary the first chance I got.

Something brushed against my foot and I looked down to see Mew, one of the cats that seemed to come and go between our line of shops. There was a menagerie of cats around – tabby, ginger, grey, tortoiseshell, black and white – and I loved them all.

I picked up Mew and held her to my cheek. She was still quite a kitten and fluffy, with a soft grey coat like Tyb, our big grey cat at home. We’d had him since a kitten, too, and once Anne and I had dressed him up in a baby’s gown that mother had discarded and taken him into the village wrapped in a shawl. When our
neighbour, Mrs Tomalin, had asked to see him, saying she’d had no idea that our mother was with child again, we’d thrust the cat at her and run away home, cackling like chickens.

‘Hannah!’ Sarah called, breaking into my thoughts. ‘Come in and serve this gentleman some sweetmeats, please.’

I hurried through into the shop, bobbing a curtsey before the man. He was wearing elegant satin breeches, an embroidered jacket and flounced shirt and was carrying a vast plumed hat under his arm. Taking all this in, I made another curtsey – a little deeper and longer – for I knew Sarah wanted to encourage such dandies into the shop. It was her ambition, she’d told me, to rise in fame and perhaps be asked to supply the Court with sweetmeats.

The man paused, his kid-gloved hand to his face, hesitating over crystallised rose petals or violets. ‘Which taste would a lady prefer, do you think?’ he asked me.

‘The violets are very fine, sir,’ I answered immediately, for although they both tasted exactly the same to me, the violets were more costly. ‘They’ve been crystallised with pure loaf sugar,’ I assured him.

He nodded. ‘The violets, then.’ He was wearing face patches and had a great flapping wig, but they did not detract from his lack of teeth, or the gums which showed pale pink and shiny as he smiled. ‘Young Miss is fresh from the country, I’ll be bound,’ he said. ‘Such fetching hair and skin is not often found in London.’

I didn’t say anything but, flicking a glance at Sarah, saw that she wanted me to.

‘Thank you, sir,’ I said demurely.

‘It would take a good many patches to cover those sweet freckles!’ the fop went on.

‘Indeed, sir,’ I forced myself to smile back. ‘Will there be anything else?’ I weighed his violets and poured them into a twisted cone of paper. ‘Sugared almonds? Herb comfits?’

He ignored these questions. ‘And such hair as I’ve only seen before in the playhouse!’

I said nothing to this, just stood there, smiling as if I liked him, and eventually he produced a silk kerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. ‘It is most monstrous hot!’ he complained.

‘Perhaps some suckets – sugared orange or lemon?’ I asked. ‘Most refreshing on a hot day.’

He nodded again and the wig wobbled. ‘Give me three of each,’ he said, ‘and some of your herb comfits, too.’

‘Certainly, sir,’ I said, raising my eyebrows at Sarah as I wrapped them. She took some coins from him and he turned to wink at me as he went out.

‘That was the Honourable Francis du Maurier,’ Sarah said, as we moved to watch his sauntering progress down the street. ‘A real Jack-a-Dandy.’

I sniffed. ‘A bumble-bee in a cow turd thinks himself a king.’

‘Hannah!’ she reproached me.

I giggled. ‘Sorry. That’s one of Abigail’s favourite sayings.’

‘Not now she’s in service at a big house, I hope.’

As we watched, the ‘Honourable’ man hailed a sedan chair. As he climbed in, we noticed he had red leather heels to his shoes.

‘Look at those!’ Sarah said admiringly. ‘He’s been
here before but never bought as much.’

‘See!’ I said. ‘I’m bringing you luck.’

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘And maybe we’ll need it, for the Bills will be published later today.’

‘What Bills?’ I asked, puzzled.

‘The Bills of Mortality,’ she said. ‘They list everyone who’s died in the parishes of London in the past week so we can see what they’ve died of. We’ll know then if the plague is taking hold.’

She sighed a little and her eyes darkened, so I thought it best to make light of the matter. ‘What a long face,’ I said to her cheerfully. ‘Left to you, we’d all be in mourning weeds before supper!’

She did not respond to this banter, but simply turned away.

Later that day, Sarah gave me leave to go to an apothecary’s shop. ‘Although why you want to change your looks, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘You saw how your colouring was admired by the Honourable Francis.’

‘I don’t wish for the sort of colouring he admires!’ I said.

The nearest apothecary was Doctor da Silva at the sign of the Silver Globe, in the adjoining parish of St Mary at Hill. ‘He’s as honest a man as any,’ Sarah said. ‘I’ve used him for many cough remedies before now.’

I looked at her enquiringly. ‘So they don’t work, then?’

‘How so?’

‘You said
many
cough remedies. But if the first had worked you wouldn’t have needed the others.’

‘Get off with you, Miss Impudence!’ she said, but she laughed as she said it and I felt she was glad that I had come to live with her.

I went out with instructions from her to buy caraway seeds from the apothecary, and some fresh milk from the first milkmaid I saw.

I took a long time getting to the Silver Globe, for there were many distractions along the way. The small shops next to us, six in a row, sold, in order: writing parchment, buttons, gloves, books, quill pens and hosiery, and I found it necessary to look into each one of them. Further along was a run-down tavern called The Tall Ship, a barber-surgeon’s shop, some dark and mean alleys and a row of narrow houses with twisted chimneys, then another series of shops. Outside some of the houses women sat gossiping, or sewing, while at their feet children played with dolls or sticks, drew pictures in the dust, or teased their cats or dogs. Chickens pecked between the cobbled stones and occasionally a pig or goat came by to see if there was any food to be had.

The shop at the sign of the Silver Globe was large and wide, with bull’s-eye glass windows. Inside, the space was deep and lit by candles, and its shelves were laden with all manner of fascinating objects. One wall held strangely-shaped roots and dried grasses, trugs of herbs, a huge egg – surely belonging to a dragon? – and baskets containing dried matter and layers of wood bark. On another wall differently-hued powders in glass phials were ranged, and there was a shelf full of ancient tomes and yellowing papers, and also a vast cupboard containing bulbous jars of coloured and distilled waters inscribed in a strange language. I took
this to be Latin and could not decipher a word of it, for Latin was just for gentlemen to know, and the petty school in our village had merely covered reading and writing in our own language.

I was rather nervous on entering the shop, for I had heard that apothecaries could be sinister and powerful people, and I was half-expecting a man with a beast’s head and a black cloak covered in signs of the heavens. But the young man weighing powders behind the counter had not either of these things. Instead, he had a comely, clean-shaven face with very dark eyes, and was neatly dressed in serge breeches with a white linen shirt and black velvet waistcoat.

‘Good morning, madam,’ he said with a merry smile which showed his even white teeth.

‘Are you Doctor da Silva, the apothecary?’ I asked rather timidly.

‘No, indeed!’ he said, laughing, and I felt myself blush. ‘And if you knew the doctor you’d not mistake me for him.’

‘Is he here?’ I asked, feeling as foolish as a mutton chop, for now that my eyes were used to the dim light I could see that this fellow was only a year or two older than myself.

‘He is not,’ the boy said. ‘But if you would care to state your requirements, I’ll see if I can serve you.’

I now found myself in a dilemma, being too embarrassed to ask for a remedy against freckles from such a fine, good-looking lad. I therefore just asked him for the caraway seeds. While he weighed them up, he asked if I was new to the area and I said I was. I told him my name, and that I had come here to help Sarah in her shop.

He said his name was Tom, and that he knew our shop. ‘And a mighty attraction you’ll be to it too,’ he added, making me blush again. ‘Although it’s a pity you’ve come to London at such a time.’

I hesitated. ‘Are . . . are you talking about the plague?’

He nodded solemnly. ‘The Bills for last week have just been published and the figures for St Giles Parish have doubled.’

‘But there are no deaths in this parish?’

He shook his head. ‘No deaths. But the doctor has heard of some cases in Lincolns Inn Fields, and some in Fleet Street, and he’s gone to the Hall of Apothecaries now to discuss what’s to be done. We will need to prepare some plague preventatives.’

‘But perhaps it may not spread! Couldn’t it just die out?’

He shrugged. ‘The plague is said to go in twenty-year cycles – and it’s almost that since the last big outbreak. Besides, there have been signs in the heavens.’

‘Do you mean the flaming comet?’ I asked, for even in Chertsey people had seen a comet which had flashed across the skies and left a trail of light in its wake.

He nodded. ‘And last month there was a cloud formation showing an avenging angel holding aloft a sword. The people say that such a thing foretells a terrible disaster.’

I shivered, just a little. ‘And do you think so, too?’

He gave a bow as he handed over my screw-paper full of seeds. ‘I can hardly believe such a thing, Hannah, for according to Doctor da Silva, a cloud is
just steam and vapour pushed into shapes by the wind.’

‘So we are all right, then!’ I said. I paid him, and he showed me to the door and opened it for me with a bow, just as if I were a real lady. I had other questions to ask but was so taken with his smiling dark eyes and the way he’d said my name, ‘Hannah’ – so softly, like a whispered breath – that they went out of my mind. Besides, I really didn’t want to know any more about the plague. It sounded a fearful thing, but whatever I found out, I had no intention of going back to Chertsey.

Chapter Three
The third week of June

‘The Sickenesse is got into our parish this week; and is got indeed everywhere, so that I begin to think of setting things in order . . .’

A few days later I contrived a reason to go to the apothecary’s shop again. Sarah was making sugared almonds and was colouring the sugar syrup in pink, pale blue and green from the various tints she had. I suggested that pale gold almonds would look very well amongst these, and asked if I should go to Doctor da Silva’s to buy saffron.

She looked at me and smiled. ‘Saffron, is it? Or do you wish to make the acquaintance of young master Tom again?’

‘That as well,’ I said, for after I’d told Sarah about our meeting I’d thought of little else but him. At home there had been no one to think about – think about in
that
sort of way – so I’d had to be content with dreaming about impossible, faraway heroes like the king, whose image I’d seen on coins and portraits.
Now, though, I had a flesh-and-blood person I could close my eyes and think of before I went to sleep.

I put on a clean apron, changed my cap and rubbed the merest drop of pink colouring into my lips to redden them. However, to my great disappointment, I did not find Tom in the shop, but instead met the doctor himself. He wore black flowing robes, and was old, with a grey beard, knotted hair and bulbous nose. He looked solemn and wise, but kindly as well.

I explained who I was and said that I’d come for saffron. When I said it was for colouring, and not for cooking, he said the cheaper variety would do as well, and took a glass jar from a case. As he turned away from me to weigh out a quantity on some little gold scales, I took the opportunity (for I knew I would blush) to make bold enough to ask if Tom was nearby.

‘He is not,’ he said. He fumbled around in a pocket of his gown and placed some spectacles on his nose. Then he looked again at the scales and added a few more spidery stamens of saffron to the pile. ‘I have sent Tom to High Holborn to see what measures the new French quack doctor is taking against the plague.’

I wanted to ask more but was nervous about what I might hear; also I was very much in awe of him. However, after a moment he turned to me and explained further himself, speaking rather scornfully. ‘The Frenchman says he’s discovered a method of preventing the visitation. He says he stopped the plague in Lyons and Paris.’

‘And is that true?’ I asked.

‘Bah!’ he shook his head. ‘If any man could prevent the plague then he would become as rich as a king. And
this
is what the Frenchman seeks!’ He spat on the
floor. ‘Frenchmen! They are good at nothing but being dancing masters.’