At the Sign of the Sugared Plum (7 page)

Tom gave a slight cough. ‘Miss Hannah. I came to ask if you wished to come picking violets with me,’ he said.

I smiled at him, pleased and excited to be asked.

‘Where do you intend to go for them?’ Sarah wanted to know.

‘To Chelsea,’ Tom said. ‘Doctor da Silva is busy now preparing a great many remedies against the plague and he needs several herbs which only grow wild. I know you use violets a great deal yourself, and there is a patch known only to myself on the banks of the Thames there.’

I glanced at Sarah, who was nodding. ‘Violets – yes, we always need many!’ she said. ‘It has been harder to buy them at the market lately. And if you should see any wild strawberries, Hannah, or borage, I would have some of those too.’ She glanced at Tom. ‘But of course Master Tom must have first pick.’

Tom smiled. ‘There is plenty enough to go round,’ he said. ‘I know all the secret places.’ He patted the canvas bag which he carried over his shoulder. ‘This will be full by the time we come home.’

Sarah found me a trug, and asked me in a low voice if I would rather not change out of my green gown and into another more modest one. I stopped her words with a frown and shake of my head, however, and she smiled and let me go.

Chelsea was about five miles away but a pleasant walk once we got through the press of London, and it only took us just over an hour to reach the meadows
Tom had spoken of. We talked all the way. Tom told me about Doctor da Silva, saying that he was a clever man and a good master to his apprentices – which seemed just as well, for Tom still had another four of his seven years to serve. He told me that his mother had died in childbirth several years ago, his father had married again and it was then that Tom had been bound to the doctor.

‘’Twas to get me away from home, for my stepmother can’t abide me,’ he said. ‘She has no time for the children born to my father before she came.’

I hadn’t had such an interesting life, but I told Tom about my family in Chertsey, and how Sarah and I were faring in the shop, and also about meeting Abby again. Then I told him about our visit to the Exchange and all the elegant and fashionable people we’d seen.

‘There won’t be so many of these elegant people around soon,’ Tom said. ‘Now that the king and his court have left London, they’ll all be going after them.’

This led to us talking about the plague, and I asked what remedies were most effective. Tom said that everyone had different ideas. ‘Some say the best thing is to hold a coin of gold in your mouth whenever you go out – and the best of these is an angel from Elizabeth’s reign,’ he said.

I shook my head, astonished. ‘I have never even seen a gold angel,’ I said, ‘much less have a spare one to put in my mouth!’

‘There are many other remedies. You can hold a piece of nutmeg in your mouth. Or a sprig of rosemary. Or a clove,’ he said, laughing. ‘Or a roasted fig, or some tobacco, or a quantity of snails without
their shells.’

I shuddered.

‘The doctor has all cures for all prices. For the rich he will provide a cordial made from unicorn’s horns and honey, for the poor a decoction of clover and cat’s-foot. There is a great deal of money to be made from the plague.’

‘So is he a quack, then – your doctor?’ I asked wonderingly.

Tom shook his head. ‘Of course not. What he prescribes he truly believes in.’

‘What then will
you
take against the plague?’

He thought for some time. ‘The seeds and leaves of cornflowers taken in wine are said to be most effective for those born under my planet.’

‘And should I take the same?’

‘You’re a sun subject – so the doctor told me,’ he said, and I felt a moment’s pleasure at the knowledge that he had been talking about me. He thought for a moment, frowning. It caused a small line to appear between his eyes which I had a longing to smooth out with my finger. ‘The peony is a flower of the sun,’ he said at last, ‘though I have not studied enough to know . . .’ His face cleared, ‘but it is well known that chopped with rue it will promote pleasant dreams and take away fears, and this is all to the good.’

I nodded. ‘And where shall I get these things?’

‘I shall steep the leaves and begin making you a decoction tomorrow, Hannah.’

There it was again, his voice, saying my name in that soft way. I stopped walking, turned to him, and caught him staring at me. We smiled at each other and I felt a shiver run through me, moving down my spine
like a trickle of iced water. He said nothing, but he caught hold of my hand and held it to his face for a moment before letting it go. I felt that we both wanted to say or do something but, ignorant of what this thing should be, we just walked on.

Chelsea was a pretty little village on the Thames, its thatched cottages, farms and uncrowded streets reminding me a little of Chertsey. A field fronted the river, a field thick with lush grass and bright with starry white daisies and golden marigolds. Tom led me through this pasture to the river edge where green rushes grew thickly, and tangled masses of reeds floated out like green hair. We took off our shoes and sat peaceably for some time with our feet in the water, watching the river craft go by and listening to the birdsong. I said there seemed to be more boats about and Tom told me that because of the fear of plague, many people had taken to the river, intending to live on barges and makeshift craft until the danger was over.

Tom had a list of flowers and herbs which the doctor needed. These included angelica, cornflowers, wild garlic, scabious, chervil and sage, all of which he said would be used in plague remedies. Along the edges of the field and in certain places already known to Tom he collected these, snipping off the flower heads and putting them into muslin bags and then into his canvas holdall. Afterwards, he showed me where the patches of wild violets were, and helped me gather a large number to put in my trug. There were many borage flowers, too, which I knew Sarah wanted to candy. Tom took some of these as well, for he said
that an infusion made from the flowers expelled melancholy. ‘The doctor always says that a merry heart does good like a medicine,’ he added.

Setting off for home, we were light-hearted, but as we neared London an invisible pall seemed to gather over us and stifle our laughter. A stillness lay upon the city (Sunday being the day of atonement) as if it was waiting, hushed, for something to befall it. I shivered for I knew now that this thing was plague.

As we reached the shop Tom moved near to me, took a lock of my hair and, looking into my eyes, curled a ringlet around his finger so that I had to move my face closer and closer to his. I was quite breathless, thinking he was about to kiss me, when suddenly there came down the quiet street the loud clattering of clogs on cobbles, and Tom and I sprang apart from each other. Two women appeared – but such women! Frightening old hags, clad in sacking, with deep hoods over their heads, carrying long white staves in front of them.

I instinctively shrank back, fearing their very appearance, and Tom did too, pressing into the shop doorway beside me.

‘Who are they?’ I asked with a shiver as they passed us. ‘Where are they going?’

‘They are the searchers of the dead,’ Tom said. I looked at him, alarmed, and he added, ‘They are employed by the parish. In the event of a death it is their gruesome duty to search the body and ascertain why that person has died. If they find the plague marks on them then the sexton has a grave prepared and sees that their house is shut up for forty days.’

‘But there have been no cases of plague round here!’

His expression grew solemn. ‘I fear there may have been,’ he said. He squeezed my hand. ‘But go in and tell your sister what you’ve seen – she may know something further.’ He caught my eyes and smiled. ‘Try to be of good heart whatever the news is. I shall call on you with your cordial as soon as it is made.’

Chapter Six
The second week of July

‘But Lord, how everybody’s looks and discourse in the street is of Death and nothing else.’

When I went inside there was just one taper burning in our back room, and Sarah was sitting quietly on our bed, her hands folded in her lap.

‘What is it?’ I asked, alarmed, for normally she would have been busy doing something: weighing up sugar, writing the accounts or mending an apron. Now, though, she was just sitting there, her face shocked and pale.

I put down the trug and went towards her. ‘I saw two horrible old women on the road. Tom told me they were searchers of the dead. Did you see them? Where have they been?’

Sarah’s hands clenched into fists. ‘They’ve been nearby, Hannah. In the first alley off Crown and King Place.’

‘And where did they search?’

She looked down. ‘In the old house hard by the sign
of the Blue Goose.’

‘Dickon and Jacob’s house?’

She nodded. ‘It was the babe. Their little sister Marie —’

I gasped. ‘Not—’

Sarah swallowed hard. ‘She was taken poorly only yesterday, but her mother, Mrs Williams, told no one for fear they’d call in the authorities. She said it looked like just a rash. She thought it was a sweating sickness. But then this morning two buboes came up on the child’s body.’

‘What are they?’ I asked fearfully.

‘Hard lumps of matter. They come up in the groin, or in the neck or under the arm.’ She hesitated. ‘They are a sure sign of plague.’

‘And then what happened?’

‘Mrs Williams called for an apothecary, for they couldn’t afford a doctor. And it wasn’t Doctor da Silva, it was someone else. But before he could arrive the buboes had become so engorged with matter that the baby could not move its legs or head without screaming.’

I shuddered.

‘And although the apothecary tried to lance the buboes it was too late. They said she screamed out one last time – the most terrible sound – and then died.’

I pulled up a stool and sat next to Sarah, not saying anything for some moments, trying to absorb and understand what this meant. I hardly knew Marie, for she was barely two years old and had not been walking long enough to be out and about much with Dickon and Jacob. I’d just seen a sturdy, grubby, child
staggering about the place trying to catch hold of one of the cats. Once I’d given her a few candied rose petals and she’d gabbled in baby-talk at me and run off.

After a while I asked Sarah to tell me more of the tale.

‘The first I knew that the child had . . . that is, the first I knew what had happened was that the bells of St Dominic’s started tolling. And then Mr Newbery banged on the door here and shouted that there had been a terrible event. I went outside and everyone seemed to be at their doors, just standing there, silently. I went from house to house asking what had happened, but they were all crying and could hardly tell me. And then Mrs Williams ran into the street. She was tearing at her clothes and screaming, pulling her hair out like she was going mad with grief. Only then did someone tell me it was Marie who had died, and it was thought to be of the plague.’

I went to our fireplace and put the kettle on to boil so I could make some camomile tea for us both. I felt cold and hollow, hardly believing what had happened. How could that child be among us one moment, running about happily, and dead the next?

‘The worst thing,’ Sarah went on, ‘is that this poor woman . . . this mother quite demented by grief...could mayhap have been comforted by someone’s voice soothing her and telling her that she must look now to her other children, but no one would go near her.’

‘She has no husband,’ I said, remembering what Sarah had told me about Jacob’s father being a sailor, and dying at sea earlier in the year.

Sarah shook her head. ‘No husband, no comforter at all. I felt I wanted to do something for her, put my arms around her and console her, but I could not bring myself. The fear of the plague was too great. And so she suffers in her grief alone.’ Sarah began crying. ‘But you have not heard the worst,’ she added – and I knew it was selfish of me but I immediately looked round to see where Mew was.

‘It’s not Mew,’ she said, shaking her head through her tears. ‘He’s in a box under our bed and hasn’t been out.’

‘What, then? Tell me quickly,’ I begged her.

‘The eldest child has it. Kate – she has the same symptoms. And their house is being shut up.’

‘Oh,’ I breathed.

We were both silent as we waited for the water to boil. I tried to imagine how it would be in that house, with Mrs Williams just sitting and waiting for the signs of plague to appear, waiting to see if Death would visit any other of her children.

‘What if
she
dies?’ I asked suddenly. ‘What if Mrs Williams dies next and the children have to fend for themselves alone, shut up in the house?’

Sarah shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Maybe they will all be taken to the pesthouse – although there are not many of those and I hear they are already full.’

‘Is their house already closed?’

‘I fear so,’ Sarah said. ‘And now they must stay inside for forty days.’

‘The boys will hate that.’

Sarah glanced up at me and I knew what she was thinking: they would probably be visited with plague and die before then.

‘Maybe we could give them something,’ I said suddenly.

She nodded. ‘I was thinking that. Something to cheer the children, perhaps. Some comfits.’

The kettle was rattling on the fire, so I poured boiling water on the camomile flowers and let it steep for a few moments. ‘Even if the house is already locked and barred, we could ask their guard to give them the sweetmeats.’

Sarah dabbed at her eyes with her apron and stood up. ‘It will make us feel better if we do something – even just some little thing – for the family,’ she said. ‘What flowers did you harvest today?’

I showed her the trug and its contents, and while we drank our tea I told her something of my hours with Tom, and how thoughtful and pleasant a companion he was. I did not tell her of the times when we’d been rapt in each other’s glances, however, for they were private moments, for me to think on later.