Winsor, Kathleen (83 page)

And
in spite of the great fear of the disease, the churches were always crowded.
Many of the orthodox ministers had fled, but the nonconformists remained and
harangued the confused, miserable multitudes for their sins. The prostitutes
had never been busier. A rumour began to spread that the surest protection against
plague was a venereal disease and the whorehouses of Vinegar Yard, Saffron
Hill, and Nightingale Lane were open twenty-four hours a day. Harlots and
customers often died together, and their bodies were carried out by a back door
to avoid offending those who waited in the parlour. An increasing attitude of
fatalism made many say that they would enjoy whatever was left to them of life,
and die when their turn came. Others rushed to consult astrologers and fortune
tellers and anyone might set himself up as a soothsayer with the prospect of a
very good business.

Searchers-of-the-dead
walked in every street. It was their duty to inspect the dead and to report to
the parish-clerk the cause of death. They were a group of old women, illiterate
and dishonest as the nurses, forced to live apart from society during a time of
sickness and to carry a white stick wherever they went so that others might
know them and stop up their mouths as they passed.

The
town grew steadily quieter. The busy shipping of the Thames lay still—no ships
might enter or leave the river—and the noisy swearing impudent boatmen had all
but disappeared. Forty thousand dogs and two hundred thousand cats were
slaughtered, for it was believed that they were carriers of the sickness. It
was possible to hear, far up into the City, the roaring of the water between
the starlings of London Bridge—a noise which usually went unnoticed. Only the
bells continued to ring—tolling, tolling, tolling for the dead.

It
soon became impossible to bury the dead in separate graves, and huge pits—forty
feet long and twenty feet deep— were dug at the edge of the city. Every night
the bodies were brought there, some of them decently in coffins, more and more
shrouded only in a sheet or naked, as they had died. In the grave they found a
common anonymity. During the day crows and ravens settled there, but at the
approach of a man they swarmed up into the air, circling and hovering, waiting
until he was gone, and then they drifted earthward again. As the bodies began
to rot a foul stench crept into the town, and there was no breath of moving air
to dispel it.

There
had never been a hotter summer. The sky was bright as brass, blue and without a
shred of cloud; they thought of the cool soothing fog as a blessing. Large
birds flew heavily and laboriously. The church-vanes scarcely turned. In the
meadows about
London the grass lay burnt and the earth was hard as brick, flowers withered
and dried. Amber transplanted some of the stocks, pink and white ones with a
spicy cinnamon smell, into pots and kept them shaded on the balcony, but they
did not prosper.

She
protected herself against plague by refusing to think about it. It was all that
any of them could do, who were forced to stay in the town, to keep their
sanity.

Often,
when she went out to shop—she had to buy almost everything herself now that the
vendors were gone—she heard cries and groans and terrible screams from the
closed houses. Pitiable faces appeared at the windows and hands reached out
pleadingly: "Pray for us!"

It
became more and more common to see the dead and dying in the streets, for the
plague struck swiftly. Once she saw a man huddled by a wall, beating his bloody
head against it and moaning in delirium. She stared a moment in horror and then
she hurried by, holding her nose and making a half-circle around him. Another
time she saw
a
dead woman slumped in a doorway, a baby still sucking at her breast, and the
small blue plague-spots showed plainly on her white flesh. She saw a woman
walking slowly, crying, and carrying in her arms a tiny coffin.

One
day, as she was busy in the bedroom, she heard from outside a man's loud voice
shouting something which she could not at first understand. But he drew nearer,
evidently coming up St. Martin's Lane, and his words became more distinct.
"Awake!" he bawled. "Sinners, awake! The plague is at your
doors! The grave yawns for you! Awake and repent!" She pushed back the
curtains and looked out. He was walking swiftly by, just beneath her window, a
half-naked old man with matted hair and a long dark beard, and he brandished
his closed fist at the still houses.

Amber
looked at him with disgust. "Devil take him!" she muttered. "The
blasted old fool! There's trouble enough without that caterwauling!"

And
then one night, at the end of July, she heard another and far more terrible
cry. There came
a
rumbling of cartwheels over the cobblestones, the sound of a hand-bell, and a
man's deep voice calling: "Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!"

She
looked swiftly at Spong, for Bruce was asleep, and then she rushed to the
window. Spong waddled after her, crowding up close. Below they saw a cart,
moving slowly, one man in the driver's seat and another ringing the hand-bell
and walking beside it. In the light from the torch carried by a third they
could see that the cart was half-filled with bodies, piled indiscriminately,
flung one on top of another. Arms and legs stuck out at weird angles; one
corpse hung over the side, her long hair pouring half-way to the ground.

"Holy
Virgin Mary!" breathed Amber, and then she turned
away with a
shudder, sick at her stomach, cold and wet.

Spong's
teeth were chattering. "Oh, Jesu! To be dumped in like that,
helter-skelter, with every Jack Noakes and Tom Styles! Oh, Lud! It's more than
flesh can bear!"

"Stop
your blubbering!" muttered Amber impatiently. "There's nothing the
matter with you!"

"Aye,
mam," agreed Spong gloomily. "There's nothin' the matter with either
of us today. But who's to tell? Tomorrow we may both be—"

"Shut
up, will you!" cried Amber suddenly, whirling around, and then, as the old
woman gave a startled jump, she added crossly, somewhat ashamed of her nervous
ill-temper: "You're as melancholy as a bawd in Bridewell. Why don't you go
out in the kitchen and get a bottle to drink?"

Spong
went, gratefully, but Amber could not push the picture of the dead-cart from
her mind. The sick men and women she had seen, the dead bodies in the streets,
the constant tolling of the bells, the stench from the graves, the city's
unnatural quiet, the news (given by the guard) that two thousand had died of
plague that past week—the cumulative effect of those things were beginning to
overpower her. She had held off fear and despair during the time that Bruce had
been most hopelessly sick, for then she had not had time to think. But now a
kind of superstitious dread was beginning to work in her mind.

Why
should
I
still be well and alive when all these others are dying? What
have
I
done to deserve to live if
they
must die? And she knew
that she deserved life no more than anyone else.

Fear
was as contagious as the plague, and it spread as the plague spread. The well
expected to be sick; hope of escape was small. Death was everywhere now. You
might inhale it with a breath; you might take it up with a bundle of food; you
might pass it in the street and bring it walking home beside you. Death was
democratic. It made no choice between the rich and the poor, the beautiful and
the ugly, the young and the old.

One
morning in mid-August Bruce told her that he thought they would be able to
leave London within another fortnight. She was spreading up his bed, and though
she answered him as casually as she could she had been worrying about it for
some time.

"No
one is allowed to leave the city now, whether they have a certificate-of-health
or not."

"We'll
go anyway. I've been thinking about it and I believe I know a way we can get
out."

"There's
nothing I'd like more. This city—God, it's a nightmare!" She changed the
subject quickly, smiling at him. "How would you like a shave? I'm a mighty
good barber—"

Bruce
ran his hand across the five-weeks growth of beard on his chin. "I'd like
it. I feel like a fishmonger."

She
went out to the kitchen for a basin of warm water and
found Spong
sitting morosely, a half-eaten bowl of soup in her lap. "Well!" said
Amber merrily. "Don't tell me that you've got enough to eat at last!"
She swung the crane out from the fire and poured some water into the pewter
basin, testing it with her finger.

Spong
gave a heavy discouraged sigh. "Lord, mam. Seems like I'm off the hooks
today. Don't feel so good."

Amber
straightened, looking at her sharply. If that old bawd's going to be sick now,
she thought, I'll put her out in a trice and the parish-clerk be damned!

But
she was eager to get back to Bruce and returned to the bedroom where she laid
her implements on a table, wrapped a great white linen towel about his chest,
and sat down beside him. Both of them enjoyed the operation, and were much
amused by it. Amber felt a deep current of joy running through her and once, as
she leaned close to him, she saw his eyes on her breasts. Her heart gave a beat
and she was aware of a slow creeping warmth.

"You
must be feeling
much
better," she said softly.

"Well,
enough," he agreed, "to wish I felt much better than I do."

When
at last his face was clean again, but for the mustache he had always worn and
which she left, it was easy to see how sick he had been, and how sick he still
was. The smooth brown colour of his skin, habitually tanned before, had faded
to a light pallor, his cheeks were lean and drawn and new faint lines showed at
his eyes and mouth; all his body was much thinner. But to Amber he seemed as
handsome as ever.

She
began to pick up after herself, dumping the water out the window, gathering
towels and scissors and razor. "In a few days," she said, "I
think you can have a bath."

"God,
I hope so! I must stink like Bedlam!"

He
lay down then and presently fell asleep, for he was still so weak that a very
small exertion was fatiguing. Amber took up her hood, locked the bedroom door
so that Spong could not go in during her absence, and went out through the
kitchen. The old woman was wandering aimlessly, a stupid staring look in her
eyes. She reminded Amber of the long-snouted rats which sometimes came out of
their holes and stood dazedly, or squeaked with distraction when she went after
them with a broom, sick creatures with patches of fur fallen out of their
blue-black coats.

"Are
you feeling worse?" Amber was tying on her hood, watching the nurse in the
mirror.

Spong
answered her with a whine. "Not much, mam. But don't it seem cold in here
to you?"

"No,
it doesn't. It's hot. But go sit by the fire in the kitchen."

Amber
was annoyed, thinking that if Spong was sick she would have to throw away all
the food she had in the house and fumigate the rooms. And she felt, as she had
not when Bruce was sick, resentful on her own behalf, afraid that she
would be
exposed herself. When I get back, she thought, if she's worse I'll tell her to
leave.

Spong
met Amber at the door as she came in. She was winding her hands in her skirt
and her expression was worried and depressed, almost comically self-pitying.
"Lud, mam," she began immediately, whining again, "I'm feelin'
mighty bad."

Amber
looked at her, her eyes narrowed. Spong's face was red, her eyes blood-shot,
and as she talked it was possible to see that her tongue was heavily coated
with a white fuzz, the tip and edges bright red. It's plague, right enough,
thought Amber, and turned away so as not to get the woman's breath in her face.
She put the basket onto a table and began to unpack the food, transferring it
immediately to the food-hutch so that Spong could not touch it.

"If
you want to leave," said Amber, as casually as she could, "I'll give
you five pound."

"Leave,
mam? Where could I go? I got no place to go, mam. And how can I leave? I'm the
nurse." She leaned heavily against the wall. "Oh, Lord! I never felt
like this before."

Amber
swung around. "Of course you haven't! And you know why—you've got the
plague! Oh, there's no use pretending you haven't it, is there? It won't make
you well again. Look here, Mrs. Spong, if you'll leave and go to a pest-house
I'll give you ten pound. You'll be taken care of there. But I warn you, if you
stay here I won't raise a hand to help you. I'll get the money now—wait
here."