At the Sign of the Sugared Plum (8 page)

I changed into my working dress and Sarah busied herself putting more water on to boil in a pan, then she chipped a goodly piece of sugar from a new loaf and put that in as well. ‘Tomorrow we will begin to candy some borage flowers,’ she said, ‘for they are said to have virtues which may help lighten their hearts. Tonight, though, we’ll make some little violet cakes. And we will take them to the house together and try not to be alarmed at anything we might see.’ She shook the pan to help dissolve the sugar. ‘Whatever fright we take will be nothing compared to what they are going through.’

She set me to nipping the violet flowers from their stalks and washing them, while she boiled the water to
melt the sugar. Several times she skimmed it of foam, until it was a thick, clear syrup mixture. Then I was allowed to take the violets – about a quarter of all I’d picked – stir them thoroughly in the mixture, then quickly pour it out into a wetted tray.

The mixture began to harden almost immediately and we let it be while we washed the rest of the violets and borage flowers for the next day. When we turned to it again the flat cake was almost firm, and Sarah carefully cut it into small squares, lifted them from the tray and put them on white paper. They looked very pretty, for I had made sure to choose a variety of colours for the violets, and they ranged from white through pink down to deepest purple. Not, I realised, that it was likely that our poor family would appreciate this careful harmonising of colour.

When the violet cakes were quite cool we folded them into a small package and set off for the house. The windows and door were already barred, and marked with the red cross. Above the cross I could see the same paper sign that I’d seen on the house in St Giles: LORD, HAVE MERCY ON US.

Sarah and I held each other’s hands tightly as we approached, for I can’t convey how much fear was struck into us to see these words so close to home, and to imagine the terror of that little family on the other side of the door.

The guard, a youngish bearded man, was sitting outside on a stool, his halberd standing diagonally across the doorway of the house.

‘Could you give these sweetmeats to the children next time you see them?’ Sarah asked, giving the package into his hands.

He nodded. ‘That will be in the morning,’ he said, ‘when I takes in their milk and bread.’

‘Are they . . .’ I hesitated. I’d been about to ask if they were all right, but of course they were not, and I did not know what else to say.

‘They’re sleeping now,’ he said. ‘An apothecary has given them all a draught.’

I was torn between wanting to make our stay there as brief as possible and finding out more, but Sarah was already pulling at my hand to come away.

We walked to our shop, looking back only once at the enclosed and silent house.

‘Violet cakes – they seem but poor reparation,’ Sarah said. ‘What can they do to help?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

But we were glad we had gone.

The following day we took some candied borage flowers up to the house and left them with the guard, but had no way of knowing whether they actually received them or whether the guard ate them himself.

The Bills for that week showed 750 deaths in London and to our great dismay our trade began falling off a little. This was because many of our customers, being mostly of the middling classes, knew how to obtain a Certificate of Health, and were going to their country houses. The king and his court moved further out, too – from Isleworth to Hampton Court – for it had been said that Isleworth was not far enough away from the contamination in London and it was feared the plague might still be able to reach him there.

On Saturday a fruit-seller came to our door calling,
‘Cherry-ripe!’ and although Sarah said they were too early to be Kentish cherries, and must have come on a ship from the Netherlands, she bought some on my urging, for I was anxious to try out the recipe for sugared cherries which mother had given me. After washing a scoopful of these, I carefully stoned and halved them, then set them over the heat in a preserving pan with a little water. When they were scalding hot I shook them in a sieve, then put them in a cloth to dry, after which I put them back into the pan, layered with a good amount of sugar that I had previously ground down. Putting this pan back on the fire, I scalded the cherries and cooled them three times all together, so that they picked up the sugar and it crystallised on them. After this I dipped them quickly in cold water and placed them in the hot sun to dry out.

Sarah watched me and said this was a new recipe for her, and she had not worked with cherries before, but thought they looked very pretty and tasty.

That evening came the information from Mr Newbery that there had been another death at the top of our street, although as the person there had lived alone there was no need for the house to be shut up. We had received no further news of our Williams family these last three days, so as we closed the shutter of the shop, Sarah and I resolved that we would go and enquire after them.

The guard outside their house was asleep and snoring, so Sarah tapped on the next-door house to enquire how they did.

The woman who answered, Mrs Groat, shook her head. ‘I’ve heard nothing of them these last two days,’
she said. ‘That first night – and the next day – there was a wailing and a crying and carrying on, but for the last two days there’s been nothing.’

‘Has food been taken inside?’ Sarah asked.

She shrugged. ‘The guard has money to buy their everyday provisions, and get milk for the children, but to tell the truth I fear he takes it for ale. I was going to ask the minister at church tomorrow what I should do.’ She looked at us and lowered her voice, ‘I don’t even know if they live.’

Hearing this, Sarah did no more than go straight to the guard outside the Williams’ house and try to rouse him, and I fear he
had
been on ale, for it took a great deal of shaking and shouting before he was awake to our questions.

‘We want to know how the family within are,’ she said and, seeing his rather blank and stupid face, added some falsely polite words of praise for his care of them.

‘Has a doctor called on them?’ I asked, thinking that if nothing else I could run and get Doctor da Silva and see what he could do.

The man smiled, a drunken, lop-sided smile. ‘This family give me no trouble at all. Quiet as the flowers, they are.’

‘But we want to know if they’re all right!’ Sarah said. ‘When did you last see them?’

‘Can you ask them how they’re doing?’ I said. ‘Can we see if they need anything?’

The man leaned over and picked up his glittering halberd, waving it in front of our faces. ‘I has to guard this house. No one can go in!’

‘You
can go in, though, can’t you?’ I said. ‘You can
see how they fare.’

He looked at us suspiciously. ‘Are you family?’

I was about to say no, but Sarah broke in and said yes, they were our dear cousins and we were fair desperate to know how they were doing.

‘We hoped such a kind and reasonable man as yourself would be looking after them,’ I added, for I could see that flattery might be the only thing to move him. ‘Would you be able give us news on how they fare?’

Grinning now, the man got out a set of keys and proceeded to open the two padlocks which held together the chains which had been hammered across the doorway. He pushed at the door, which opened to nothing but silence and darkness.

‘How do you keep?’ the guard hollered into the hallway. ‘Is there owt you need?’

Holding each other, Sarah and I looked through into the hall, where not a candle or a taper showed through the darkness. And then the air from the newly-opened house billowed to reach us and we smelled a stench so foetid that we had to step backwards.

‘I very much fear all is not well,’ she whispered to me, and then braced herself to call, ‘Hello! Mrs Williams. Is there anything you need?’

No reply came.

She and I looked at each other nervously, for I felt sick from the smell and would not have been brave enough to enter.

‘Will you go in?’ Sarah asked the guard.

‘Not I!’ he said. ‘I’m not paid to enter charnel houses.’

‘And you mustn’t go in either!’ I said, holding fast to Sarah’s arm.

Behind us, Mrs Groat had come up to peer into the dark abyss of the house.

‘I’d best shut ’m up again,’ the guard said, but there was suddenly a tremendous crash from inside the house, making us all cry out in fear, and the next moment a small pale figure jumped or fell down the stairs and shot past us, running down the cobbled streets as if the devil himself was after him.

‘A ghoul!’ Mrs Groat said, and she fell to her knees and began praying.

‘No!’ I said, looking after the boy in disbelief. ‘It was little Dickon!’

‘Stark naked and running for his life,’ Sarah said.

I watched his progress down the street and would have turned to go after him, but Sarah knew what was in my mind and held me fast. ‘You must not,’ she said. ‘He will have the plague on his skin.’

‘But who will look after him?’

‘It can’t be us! If you catch him it will be a death warrant for us both.’

When we turned back the guard was standing in the doorway, still reluctant to enter. He sniffed and then curled his nostrils in disgust. ‘I smell death!’ he said.

‘You must go and see,’ Sarah insisted. ‘We cannot just shut the house now. You must go and see who’s dead.’

After some persuasion – and Sarah had some small coins on her which we handed to him – he went inside and came back a few moments later to tell us that there were two children dead in a bed upstairs, and the mother was lying dead by the kitchen table.

As the news spread, a small crowd gathered outside the house, most of whom were openly crying. Sarah, brushing back tears herself, asked one of them to go down to the minister so that women could be called in to dress the bodies and make them ready for burial.

We went home, but could not sleep for thinking about the poor, dead children and for wondering what had become of young Dickon. We were not to find this out, however, for we never saw nor heard a word of him again.

Chapter Seven
The third week of July

‘But how sad a sight it is to see the streets empty of people, and very few upon the ’Change . . . and two shops in three shut up.’

When we closed shop on the day following the Williams family’s deaths, Sarah and I resolved to go along to their house to try and discover when their funeral would be, for she said it was not right that a mother and her innocent children should be buried with no one to cast flowers into their graves.

We had enquired after Dickon that day, but had failed to find any trace of him, and Sarah had said that we must try to think that a kindly family somewhere were looking after him, or at least that he’d been taken to a workhouse or pesthouse for shelter. Neither of us wanted to think that he might still be on the streets of London, frightened, naked and hungry; that he might have ended up living in the sewers with the rats, or on the edge of the stinking Fleet ditch at Westminster where, Sarah said, the river
ran thick and stagnant and the poorest, foulest beggars ended up, living on peelings and scraps.

At the Williams’ house the wooden boarding had gone from the door and windows, and the fearful red cross had been replaced by a white one to signify modified quarantine, although it would be twenty days and the house would have to be fumigated before anyone could live in it. There was no man guarding it now, but neither were there any housewives chattering outside or children playing nearby. It seemed that people passing knew of the deaths, for they were walking in an arc past the house, as far away as they could get, as if they were trying to avoid breathing any of the air coming from it.

When we asked at the adjoining dwelling, Mrs Groat came to her door with a full pipe of tobacco in her hand which she puffed continually as she spoke. She apologised for doing so. ‘But I have heard that it is the only true prevention against the plague,’ she said, ‘and I am not going to be seen without it all the while people are dropping faster than flies.’

‘We came to enquire about the children’s funeral,’ Sarah said, standing back so as not to be enveloped in smoke.

Mrs Groat shook her head. ‘There will be no funeral,’ she said, ‘for the mayor has issued orders that there must be no gatherings of people.’

‘But there must be some small ceremony!’ Sarah said, concerned. ‘At least a minister must stand by their grave and offer up a prayer to send them on their way.’

‘I think not,’ the old woman said. She coughed a little herself with the smoke. ‘There have been so
many funerals already that now they are saying the dead must be dispatched with as little ceremony as possible. All that will mark their passing will be the tolling of a bell.’

‘But there haven’t been that many deaths in this parish, surely?’ I asked.

Mrs Groat shrugged. ‘Two in Crutched Friars Alley yesterday.
Said
to be dead of the fever,’ she added meaningfully. ‘Then our poor Williams family, a house at the sign of the Crooked Bear – there are four dead there, two dead in the Shambles, and one dead in a house just newly shut up in Stinking Lane. They say that at St Dominic’s there’s been funerals every day for two weeks.’

‘I had no idea,’ Sarah said in a shocked voice, while I tried to take in these numbers. As if to confirm what she was saying, I could hear, from several points across the city, the dull tolling of church bells.

The woman lowered her voice. ‘It’s said that St Dominic’s and the smaller churchyards will soon be filled to overflowing, so they won’t be able to take more bodies. And what will happen then? My husband says they’ll just be left in the houses to rot!’

Sarah and I gasped.

‘They’re already collecting the bodies in a cart instead of on a pallet,’ she went on. ‘They came last night for the children and took them all of a heap together.’

Sarah and I looked at each other. ‘Then it’s far, far worse than we thought,’ she said to me in a voice a little above a whisper.