At the Sign of the Sugared Plum (6 page)

After a few moments I reached Cock and Ball Alley and judged I should turn left into it. But a man lounging by the first house held his hand up to bar my way. He held a sharpened halberd aloft and was a
dirty and ugly-looking fellow with a red, sweaty face and several teeth missing at the front.

‘I need to get along here,’ I said, somewhat nervously.

‘No, you don’t,’ he said, and he pointed to the door of the house behind him.

This was a stout oak door, cast all about with heavy chains and locks, and as I stared at it my heart seemed to contract, for it had a great painted red cross on it and a written notice saying: LORD, HAVE MERCY ON US.

I gasped, my stomach lurching. I knew already, of course, what these signs meant, but the ill-favoured fellow was eager to explain further. ‘Four dead of plague in there and the rest shut up for forty days!’ he said. He pointed with his halberd. ‘And further down Cock and Ball Alley two more houses are enclosed.’

I stared up at the house before me. One small window was open on the second floor, but apart from that it was shuttered and silent.

‘But . . . but how do they eat? Who gets their provisions?’ I asked.

‘I does their errands,’ the fellow said, ‘and buys their milk and bread.’

‘But how do they get on, shut up all that time? How do they take the air?’

‘They don’t take no air,’ he said. ‘The only time that door will be opened is to bring out a body.’ He scratched his head and I saw something – some small insect – dart along his greasy scalp. ‘Four dead so far and two more expected before nightfall.’

As I stood there, horrified, staring at the shuttered windows and trying to imagine how the people fared inside the house, there came from within a sudden
wailing, turning to a high-pitched scream which went on and on without any end. There was the sound of running feet and another scream joined the first.

I stared at the man waiting for confirmation, for I was rooted to the spot and felt unable to leave until I knew the worst. He looked at me and shrugged. ‘’Tis another,’ was all he said.

A woman walking by us on the other side of the road crossed herself and hurried away. As several others gathered outside a shop and spoke together, looking with frightened eyes towards the house, I began to back away, going home the way I’d arrived, getting out of St Giles with all haste. Before I’d got very far, I heard the bells of the parish church, tolling mournfully to tell of that latest death.

Chapter Five
The first week of July

‘Asking how the Plague goes, the Parish Clerk tells me that it increases much, and much in our Parish . . .’

Sarah, being pleased with the way I was working, gave me permission to take an excursion with Abby, and the following day we met at midday as planned.

‘Well, the plague cannot be that far advanced,’ said Abby as we walked through the vast stone pillars into the Royal Exchange, ‘for the king and his courtiers are still in London. They would surely have left if there was any chance of the pestilence coming near to his royal person.’

I shrugged, not knowing the answer to this.

Abby lowered her voice. ‘Although I’ve heard that the royal person is not that fussy about who he
does
get near. The likes of actresses and whores . . .’ Here she paused and we looked at each other gleefully. ‘. . . have had bastard children by him.’

‘Have they really?’ I said, and I would have asked more except that I was entranced and amazed and
distracted on all sides by the scene before me.

The Royal Exchange was a great blackened stone building, open in the centre, with a gallery around each of its two floors. Small, alluring, candlelit shops lined these galleries, each with its own bright metal sign hanging over its doorway proclaiming its wares. Groups of young men gathered in the centre court, looking intently at the women who passed – who, in turn, affected not to see them at all. Occasionally, I heard a long low whistle or a comment of, ‘By gad!’ or ‘Look at that filly!’

I tried to memorise what people were wearing to tell Sarah later, for it seemed to me that each group was more dazzling and brilliantly dressed than the one before. The men were mostly in velvet breeches in rich colours, gartered in gold at the knee, with handsome thigh-length black coats which bore silver-and-gold embroidered cuffs. Some carried swords or three-cornered hats with vast plumes, and some had short periwigs. The very finest wore elaborate curling wigs and their faces were powdered and patched almost as carefully as those of the women.

The women themselves were like birds of paradise in summer gowns made of lace, spangled satin, muslin or watered moiré in all colours of the rainbow: jade green, palest ivory, rich plum, lavender and dusky pink. Most of them had tumbling blonde hair (all false, Abby said in a whisper) and their whitened skin contrasted greatly with their dark eyebrows and sweeping lashes. Their bodices were low – so low, in fact, that it was a wonder that their voluptuous bosoms did not spill out of their gowns – and most carried elaborate, feather-loaded fans. Those who did
not affect to hide behind their fans were wearing vizards or masks, held up to their faces on sticks.

It was difficult not to gawp, and in the end Abby had to tug my arm to make me move. ‘Do come on, Hannah,’ she hissed. ‘You’re staring about you like a country bridegroom at a whorehouse.’

‘Sorry,’ I murmured, for my sights had just been engaged by a woman wearing a striking bright fuschia-pink dress with pearl-grey under-skirt and the largest, most ludicrous headdress of flowers and dressed hair I had ever seen. She was an old woman, at least sixty, and her face and upper body were painted waxy-white and covered in black, spangled patches. Her lips were blood red and her eyebrows painted on in large semi-hoops, giving her a permanent expression of surprise.

‘Who
is
she?’ I asked Abby in a low voice. ‘Someone’s mistress?’

Abby looked where I was staring and shuddered. ‘Years ago, maybe,’ she said. ‘And now she wears whitening and patches to hide the wrinkles and pox marks. Pray God you and I find good husbands who live long, Hannah, for I would not like to be on the market again at her age.’ She tugged my arm. ‘Come on, I have to get some silver ribbons for Madam. She’s feeling a little better and has a fancy to bedeck herself.’ She stepped confidently towards one of the small shops and I scuttled behind her, my eyes darting everywhere.

The little shops sold a thousand varieties of luxurious things: tortoiseshell boxes, silver comfit holders, velvet capes, soft leather gloves, jewelled bags, satin petticoats, watches and clocks, masks,
birdcages, linen handkerchiefs and every possible item of haberdashery. The one thing I did not see was a confectioners, and I immediately began to dream of having a shop here, of me and Sarah being at the Royal Exchange, our Sugared Plum sign hanging here amongst the glittering signs of so many others.

Abby made her purchase and, very reluctantly, we set off for home, but not before we’d taken a turn of the inner court once again and seen a most beautiful, very elegant tall woman in flame-coloured silk whom Abby said was Barbara Castlemaine, the king’s mistress. I was able to see little more than this lady’s head and fine shoulders, however, because a small crowd of gallants were surrounding her, each, it seemed, trying to outdo the others in swaggers and elaborate courtly gestures.

I left Abby at Belle Vue, the house where she was in service. It was a handsome five-storey dwelling set in a cobbled and flowered courtyard, with stables alongside, and Abby promised that the next time the master and mistress were out, she would show me around it. ‘We’ll be quite safe,’ she said, ‘for the cook spends her afternoons drinking and playing cards with the grooms and the housekeeper has a lover and is never here. When Mr Beauchurch is out and the mistress is asleep I have free run of the house.’ She eyed me quizzically. ‘But talking of lovers . . . you have not spoken of your beau. Tom, isn’t it?’

I blushed. ‘Really, I hardly know him,’ I had to confess to her.

‘Is that so?’

‘Although, if knowing him could be advanced by thinking of him, then I own I know him well enough
to marry him!’ I said.

She laughed. ‘You’ll have to contrive another meeting. ’Tis easily done. My sweetheart is ’prenticed to a bookbinder and I find all sorts of excuses and reasons to go in and question him on the book business, although I find it horribly dreary.’

I said I would think of something, and see her soon, then we kissed and parted.

When I got home, I told Sarah in great detail everything I’d seen at the Exchange, and also assured her that I was determined that one day we would have a shop there.

She was in a happy mood and joined in, saying that we might easily do that – for she had done well that day and almost sold out of our fairy fruit. ‘Everyone who passed admired it,’ she said, ‘and several ladies said they would tell their friends about us. There is just one thing —’

‘What’s that?’ I asked absently, my mind still on all the things I’d seen.

‘We must close the shop early this afternoon and set to making some more,’ she said.

Inwardly, I groaned a little, thinking of the cracking of the almond shells and the laborious peeling and pounding of the nut kernels, but did not say a word.

That evening, while Sarah and I were still grinding nuts, the crier came to say that because of fear of the dread visitation, that very day the king and his courtiers were leaving London for Isleworth. Meanwhile, to try to avert the sickness, his people were ordered to take to the churches and observe some days of fasting and solemn prayer, the first of which was to be the following Wednesday. On this
day all shops, markets and taverns were to be closed and everyone was to attend church at least once. Hearing this, I immediately thought of Tom and what a chance it was to see him – for I would make sure to attend the church in his parish as well as ours – and how fine I would look in my new green dress with its matching petticoat.

When, though, three days later, the new Bill of Mortality was published with the news that across London, five hundred persons had died of the plague in that first week of July, I upbraided myself for my vanity and made a silent promise that I would attend church as devoutly and sincerely as a nun, and not give another thought to how I looked that day.

I did not see Tom at church, and indeed it was a most grave and seemingly never-ending sermon in St Mary at Hill, so that I was mighty sorry I had decided to attend it and not go back to the shop with Sarah after the service at St Dominic’s. The vicar there wore a rough woollen shirt and had ashes on his forehead, and he roared from the pulpit that if the plague struck in its full terror, then we were all to blame by our corrupt behaviour. He said that if we wanted to avert the full might of it then we must change our sinful ways.

I looked round at my fellow men, wondering what they had to confess and thinking that they must all have souls as black as those of heathens if the vicar was right. Try as I might, however, I could not think of a single really bad thing of my own to confess. There was vanity, of course, but I had quite given up on my freckles and was almost resolved to live with
them, and could such a seemingly small thing like wishing to have darker hair and finer gowns really bring down the wrath of God on us?

That afternoon, while we were supposed to be fasting in silent contemplation of our fate (in reality, partaking of bread and cheese and talking of home) there came a tap on the door of the shop.

Going through, I was disconcerted to find Tom standing there and, moreover, Tom in Sunday best starched shirt and red fustian breeches, a felt hat on his head.

He gave me a slight bow, his eyes raking my face and smiling, and bade me good day. I curtsied and bade him the same, but then I was stuck and did not know what was the correct thing to do. At home in Chertsey I would have invited him in to take some small beer, but here in London I did not know if it was appropriate. Sarah, though, seeming to sense I was at a loss, called to me.

‘Don’t leave Master Tom standing on the doorstep like a boot scraper,’ was what she said, and it made him laugh. He tugged off his hat as he came through to our back room, and his eyes fell on Mew. I had tied an old ribbon around her neck and she was rolling across the floor playing with the fraying edge of it. ‘Oh, haven’t you heard?’ he exclaimed.

I looked down at Mew in some concern. I feared that he was going to say that Mew belonged to someone important and was being sought by them, for I’d grown very fond of the kitten and would not have liked to give her up.

‘Heard what?’ Sarah asked.

‘By order of the Lord Mayor all the cats and
dogs . . .’ He hesitated. ‘All cats and dogs are to be killed.’

Sarah and I both gasped, and I picked up Mew immediately and held her tight.

‘Why?’ we both asked together.

‘They think the sickness may be caused by cats and dogs running abroad and spreading it to different houses. Doctor da Silva does not believe this is possible, but . . .’ he shrugged, ‘this is what the authorities say. There are carts going round and the drivers are being paid two pence for the body of each dog or cat they club to death and bring in.’

I gave a little scream.

‘Is that really true, Tom?’ Sarah asked. ‘You would not joke with us?’

‘Indeed not!’ Tom said. ‘I can see how fond you are of the little thing.’ He put out his hand to stroke Mew’s soft fur. ‘All is not lost,’ he said, ‘for if you keep kitty inside they won’t see her. The men have no authority to come into the house and club the animals there – although in view of the bounty being paid, some no doubt will try to do so.’

‘Then we must keep Mew indoors!’ Sarah said.

I nodded. ‘From now on she mustn’t even go out in the yard.’

Sarah pulled a slight face, turning up her nose, for she took pains to ensure that our shop and living quarters were always clean and sweet-smelling.

‘She could go outside on a leash of string,’ I said. ‘And you or I will watch her to see that she doesn’t bite through it and get away.’ I held Mew at arm’s length and she seemed to look at me reproachfully with her big round eyes. ‘It’s for your own good!’ I
said. ‘And when all is well with the world, then you can go out properly once more.’