London in Chains (29 page)

He tried to answer, then tapped his throat and framed the word ‘Sore!' with his lips.

‘Shall I fetch you some broth?'

‘Water!' he mouthed.

She fetched him a cup; when she held it to his lips, she saw that they were blistered. He saw her notice, gave another little smile, weary and apologetic, and opened his mouth to show her that the lining was a mass of sores.

Her heart gave another lurch: that was indeed a precursor of smallpox, though she'd heard of it happening with other fevers as well. She went back downstairs, leaving him the candle. Mrs Penington had gone, and Agnes was sitting in the parlour; when Lucy came in, she saw that her aunt was crying.

‘Aunt Agnes!' she said, at a loss.

Agnes looked up quickly, with all the old venom. ‘It's but a fever!'

‘I fear it might not be. His poor mouth is full of sores. Aunt, we should call the apothecary.'

Agnes rose to her feet. ‘The
apothecary
, forsooth! It's but a fever! I'll not spend good money to cosset Tom's foolishness! He's just lost us
eight shillings a week
, and how we shall manage without, I know not!'

Lucy glared at her, then went back to check on Thomas. He now lay propped up against the pillows, staring up at the canopy of the bed. She sat down beside him and touched his forehead. It was warm, but not burning hot. ‘Tell me truthfully,' she said, ‘how do you do? Shall I go to the apothecary?' She was willing to spend her own savings, if she had to.

He shook his head. ‘Oh, no, no, no!' he said, in a thin, croaking whisper. ‘I'm better than I was. A good night's sleep will mend me.'

He was mistaken. By morning Thomas had broken out in a rash, and the round red blotches on his forehead were beginning to form blisters.

Agnes had slept in the parlour; when she went upstairs and saw what was happening to her husband she let out a shriek that brought both Lucy and Susan stumbling down from the loft. ‘Oh, Jesu!' she cried, pointing accusingly. ‘Look!'

Thomas looked back at them in bewilderment, his face damp with sweat and his eyes glazed with fever. Lucy went to him and touched his forehead again: it was like a furnace.

‘What is it?' Thomas croaked, then looked down at the rash on his hands, and whispered, ‘Oh! Oh, dear Lord, spare us!'

‘I'll go to the apothecary,' said Lucy.

The apothecary was the neighbourhood's usual source of medical treatment: doctors were for the rich, and hospitals, like nearby St Thomas's, were for the destitute. The local apothecary had a shop round the corner, in St Thomas' Road; he was a quiet, unassuming man, well-regarded by all his neighbours. He refused, however, to come back to the house with her. ‘There's precious little I can do for the smallpox, child,' he said sadly.

‘You might purge him, sir,' she urged. ‘Or–or bleed him.' That was normally a barber-surgeon's task, but the apothecary had been known to engage in it.

The apothecary shook his head. ‘I have not known it serve, once the pustules have appeared; indeed, it does more harm than good. I will give you a tincture which may make him easier, but his best hope is in careful nursing. Take comfort, child! Most men survive this ill if they're cared for tenderly. Make him comfortable, give him to drink, and wash him, from time to time, with warm water and vinegar. I can give you a powder to mix with the water and vinegar.' He looked at her closely. ‘But let some other nurse him – unless you were fortunate enough to survive the pox without scarring.'

‘I've had the cowpox, sir,' she told him. ‘I was formerly a dairymaid.'

He shook his head doubtfully. ‘I've heard country people say that confers protection, but it's no more than an old wives' tale. It is a sad, sad thing to see a fair maid disfigured. Let some other nurse him.'

She took the tincture and the powder, promising payment later, and went miserably back to the house, pausing only to buy some vinegar. When she arrived she found Agnes in the bedroom – packing.

‘What is
this
?' Lucy demanded in horror.

Her aunt looked up at her, her eyes red and wet. ‘I've not had the smallpox.' She shoved her nightgown into a sack improvised from a bolster.

‘Agnes!' whispered Thomas weakly. ‘Don't leave me now!'

His wife looked at him bitterly. ‘Our daughter is an only child now. Do you want her to be an orphan as well?'

Thomas stared at her, his lips trembling, and began to weep silently. ‘Forgive me.'

‘I'll lodge with Hannah,' Agnes declared savagely, ‘until I can safely come back again.'

‘But what if you carry the ill to her house?' demanded Lucy, horrified.

‘
I'm
not ill!' said Agnes indignantly, as though Lucy had accused her of a sin.

‘Go with God's blessing,' Thomas whispered wretchedly. ‘Forgive me!'

Agnes, huffing, dragged her sack of clothing out of the room and down to the parlour. Lucy followed. ‘How
can
you?' demanded Lucy, in a low whisper.

Agnes turned on her. ‘
Easily!
That man has heaped enough misfortune on me, without taking my life as well!' She wiped her face with an angry hand. ‘I might have married a gentleman! I was a fool and preferred Tom, because I mistook mere
weakness
for kindness! I've paid and paid again for my error – my poor babies dead, all but two of them, and all our fine goods spent, and then he took my darling boy to that cruel unnatural war and lost him!'

‘How can you blame
him
for the war?' Lucy asked in bewilderment.

‘He supported that wicked rebellion against the Lord's anointed king! God is punishing us all for what he and his
foul seditious
friends have done!
You
stay and nurse him, if you love him so!'

Susan came in. ‘I fetched the carter,' she said nervously.

Agnes gave her a curt nod and returned a baleful gaze to Lucy. ‘Susan can nurse Tom: she's pocky-faced already. And you, miss, you may do as you please!' She went out, dragging her sack and wheezing.

Susan turned frightened eyes on Lucy.

‘I'll stay,' said Lucy. Despite what the apothecary had said, she
thought
the cowpox would protect her – in Leicestershire they said it did – and how could she leave Uncle Thomas now?

Susan came over and hugged her. ‘Thank you,' she whispered. ‘Oh, Lucy, my ma
died
of smallpox, and I was sick to the heart at the thought of staying here alone! But you've never had it; should you—'

‘I've had the cowpox,' replied Lucy resolutely. ‘That's as good. And the apothecary says that most men survive if they have careful nursing, so I think Uncle Thomas will need both of us. One of us can watch while the other rests.'

She wrote notes to White and to Mabbot, telling them why she could not come in to work, found a boy to deliver them, then set herself to looking after Uncle Thomas.

It was weirdly peaceful to stay at home, warm and dry, listening to the wind whistling in the eaves, when she should have been jostling through the dirty streets to work or struggling to set type with cold-numbed fingers. She and Susan made up a bed for Thomas in the kitchen where it was warm, and helped him down the stairs to it. He was an undemanding patient: quiet, obedient to all instructions, deeply apologetic for putting them to any trouble. They gave him the apothecary's tincture, mixed with water, and Lucy read to him from the Bible. When night fell, Lucy and Susan made up another bed for themselves opposite Thomas's: neither of them wanted to go up alone to the cold loft while death stood at the threshold.

Over the next few days the disease followed its usual hideous course: the rash turned into blisters, the blisters into pustules that covered Thomas from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. He was feverish, sick and in pain, but still apologetic and sweet-natured. The long-winded St Olave's preacher redeemed himself in Lucy's eyes by coming to visit and pray with the sufferer. A worried note from Hannah was delivered: ‘My Mother saies I showd not come to see you, for fear the ill showd strike me and the babe unborn, and for the babe's sake I heed her, yet knowe that my thowts are with you, deerest Father, and my prayers each oure of the daie.'

Thomas smiled at the letter and had Lucy pen a reply: ‘Indeed you must not come, for the babe's sake and your owne. Your thoughts and prayers are precious to me beyond rubies, deare Child, and I blesse you with a full and lovinge hart.'

On the fifth day after Agnes left, Thomas's fever soared and he fell into a childish daze. He pissed in the bed and cried when they changed the sheets. They boiled the linen and hung it to dry in the master bedroom, though it was sure to take days to dry in the cold wet air. Lucy and Susan took turns sitting by the bedside, wiping Thomas's blistered skin with the vinegar-and-powder solution and dribbling tincture into his disfigured mouth. It didn't seem to help: he moaned when he was touched, and most of the medicine simply ran out from his swollen lips. This misery continued all night and all the next day, and all the day and night after.

The following morning, however, the fever dropped a little. Thomas took some of the tincture and kept it down, and he seemed to be resting more comfortably. Lucy slumped in the chair at the bedside, exhausted by the strain and the broken nights; in the other bed, Susan was asleep.

‘Bess!' said a voice, and she looked up to see Thomas smiling at her, his blistered face alight with joy.

‘Uncle Thomas!' She bent for the cup of watered tincture.

‘I've missed you so,' whispered Thomas. ‘Sweet sister!'

She realized that his fevered mind had mistaken her for her mother. She started to correct him, then stopped herself. Why should she break the fantasy if it made him happy? She held the cup to his lips, supporting his head to help him drink. The blisters on his forehead were just starting to sag and dry: the disease had passed its peak.

‘Do you remember how we hid the puppy in the hayloft?' asked Thomas. ‘Da was so angry! Soft-hearted folly, he called it, and yet he turned out a good dog in the end.'

Lucy smiled helplessly. She picked up the basin with the vinegar and powder.

‘I never wanted you to marry Daniel Wentnor,' Thomas whispered. ‘He was ever a son of clay, and you were so bright, like the sun upon frost. Ah, but you had the right of it, too, I should never have wed poor Agnes. I thought I might make her happy because I loved her so dearly, and all I've done, it's come to naught but loss. It's an ill world! Pardon my sins, O Lord, and wash away all my iniquities with the most precious blood of your dear son Jesus Christ!'

‘Amen,' whispered Lucy, wiping his face gently with the cloth.

Thomas said nothing more, and it wasn't until Lucy had finished washing his face and hands that she realized he'd ceased to breathe.

Twelve

Thomas was buried on a cold day in the middle of November. The gravediggers had to use pick-axes to break the frozen ground, though below the icy crust the earth was heavy with water. Ooze puddled in the hole, and when the shrouded body was lowered into it there was a slopping sound that made Lucy's teeth ache.

Despite the weather the churchyard was crowded. Southwark neighbours stood soberly beside members of the Mercers' Guild, and parishioners of St Olave's touched elbows with Levellers: Thomas had had many friends. Many of them were Levellers – William Browne and his daughter, Katherine Chidley and her son Samuel, Mr Tew, Mary Overton, William Walwyn. None of the Army men were present, however: Lucy supposed dully that they'd gone to the rendezvous. Ned was absent, too. Agnes had come from Stepney with Hannah and her husband, and she glared at the Levellers across the open grave.

The preacher mumbled a long prayer, then tossed in the first handful of icy earth. The other mourners copied him, and finally the sexton began shovelling the sticky mud into the grave. The crowd watched for a little, then ebbed slowly to the churchyard gate and stood about uncertainly. There was to be no funeral feast – Agnes had declared such celebrations heathenish and unsuited for the sober times – but no one wanted to be the first to walk away.

Will Browne went over to Agnes and offered her his hand. ‘I am deeply sorry for your loss.'

She grimaced. ‘Indeed.' She turned away deliberately.

Hannah came over to Browne and hugged him. ‘Forgive my mother,' she said. ‘She is all adrift.'

‘Aye, poor woman!' said Browne with pity. ‘What will she do now?'

‘She will come live with me and Nat,' replied Hannah with an affectionate glance at her husband. ‘Help me with the babe, when it comes.'

Lucy felt a touch on her shoulder and turned to find Mary Overton looking at her anxiously.

She liked and respected Mary. Their acquaintance had deepened towards friendship ever since Lucy was released from Bridewell: several other inmates had asked after Mary, and Lucy had passed the messages on. ‘He died a most Christian death,' Lucy said now, to forestall the expected condolence. ‘I have no doubt that he is rejoicing now in Paradise.'

‘Aye, he was a good and godly man,' agreed Mary Overton. She hesitated, then swallowed nervously. ‘Lucy, I hope I will not add to your grief, but . . .' She stopped.

Lucy frowned, wondering what was wrong. Mary was a strong-willed woman, and nervousness wasn't like her.

Mary Overton drew a breath and continued, ‘What I must confess is that I have taken your place at work.'

Lucy stared in shocked bewilderment.

Mary winced. ‘Forgive me! When your good uncle fell ill and you stayed home to nurse him, Mr Mabbot asked me if I would manage the printing of
The Moderate
.'