Winsor, Kathleen (75 page)

Jemima
did not trouble her again, and neither did anyone else in the family. She was
left as strictly alone as if she were not in the house at all.

She
sent Nan about the town searching for lodgings—not in the City but out in the
fashionable western suburbs that lay between Temple Bar and Charing Cross. And
about three weeks after the baby's birth she went herself to look at one Nan
had found.

It
was a handsome new building in St. Martin's Lane, between Holborn, Drury Lane,
and Lincoln's Inn Fields, where she would be surrounded by persons of the best
quality. The house was four stories high with one apartment on each floor and
there was a top half-story for the servants. Amber's apartment was on the
second floor; a pretty young girl just in from the country with her aunt to
find a husband was above her, and a rich middle-aged widow occupied the fourth.
The landlady, Mrs. de Lacy, lived below Amber. She was a frail creature who
sighed frequently and complained of the vapours, and who talked of nothing but
her former wealth and position, lost in the Wars along with a husband whom she
had never been able to replace.

The
house was called the Plume of Feathers and a large wooden sign swung out over
the street just below Amber's parlour windows—it depicted a great swirling blue
plume painted on a gilt background and was supported by a very ornate
wrought-iron frame, also gilded. The coach-house and stables were up the street
only a short distance. And the narrow little lane was packed with the homes and
lodgings of gallants, noblemen, titled ladies and many others who frequented
Whitehall. Red heels and silver swords, satin gowns and half masks,
periwigs and
feathered hats, painted coaches and dainty highbred horses made a continuous
parade beneath her window.

The
apartments were the most splendid she had ever seen.

There
was an anteroom hung in purple-and-gold-striped satin, furnished with two or
three gilt chairs and a Venetian mirror. It opened into one end of a long
parlour which had massed diamond-paned windows overlooking the street on one
side and the courtyard on another. The marble fireplace had a plaster
overmantel reaching to the ceiling, lavishly decorated with flowers, beasts,
swags, geometrical figures and nude women. The chimney-shelf was lined with
Chinese and Persian vases, there was a silver chandelier, and the furniture was
either gilded or inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl. Nothing, Mrs. de Lacy
explained proudly, had been made in England. The emerald-and-yellow satin
draperies were loomed in France, the mirrors came from Florence, the marble in
the fireplace from Genoa, the cabinets from Naples, the violet-wood for two
tables from New Guinea.

The
bedroom was even more sybaritic: The bedstead was covered with cloth-of-silver
and all hangings were green taffeta; even the chairs were covered with silver
cloth. Several wardrobes were built into the walls and there was a small
separate bench-bed with a canopy and tight-rolled bolster for lounging, surely
the most elegant little thing Amber had ever seen. And there were three other
rooms, nursery, dining-parlour and kitchen, which last she did not expect to
use.

The
rent was exorbitant—one hundred and twenty-five pounds a year—but Amber had the
merest contempt for such small change and paid it without a word of protest,
though she hoped and expected that she would not be there even half that long.
For Bruce should be back soon; he had been gone now more than eight months and
the Pool was crowded again with captured merchant-shipping.

She
moved her belongings from Dangerfield House before she herself left, and though
the process took three or four days no one came near or commented on what she
was taking, not all of which strictly belonged to her. She had hired a
wet-nurse and a dry-nurse for the baby, and now she hired three maids, which
completed the equipage necessary to a woman of fashion living alone. The day
she left, the great house was perfectly silent; she scarcely saw a servant and
not even one of the children appeared in the hallways. Nothing could have told
her more plainly than this silent contempt how they hated her.

But
Amber did not care at all. They were nothing to her now—those stiff precise
formal people who lived in a world she despised. She sank back onto the seat of
her coach with a sigh of relief.

"Drive
away! Well—" she turned to Nan. "That's over— thank God."

"Aye,"
agreed Nan, softly but with real feeling. "Thank God."

They
sat quietly, looking out the windows as the coach
jogged along, enjoying
everything they saw. It was a dirty foggy day and the moisture in the air made
stronger than ever the heterogeneous and evil smells of London. Along one side
of the street swaggered a young beau with his arm in a sling from a recent
duel. Across the way a couple of men, obviously French, had been caught by a
group of little boys who were screaming insults at them and throwing refuse
picked up out of the kennels. The English hated all foreigners, but Frenchmen
most of all. A ragged one-eyed old fish-woman lurched drunkenly along, holding
by its tail a mouldering mackerel and bawling out her unintelligible chant.

All
at once Nan gave a little gasp, one hand pressed to her mouth and the other
pointing. "Look! There's another one!"

"Another
what?"

"Another
cross!"

Amber
leaned forward and saw a great red cross chalked on the doorway of a house before
which they were stalled. Beneath it had been printed the words, in great
sprawling letters: LORD HAVE MERCY UPON US! A guard lounged against the house,
his halberd planted beside him.

She
leaned back again, giving a careless wave of her gloved hand. "Pish. What
of it? Plague's the poor man's disease. Haven't you heard that?"
Barricaded behind her sixty-six. thousand pounds she felt safe from anything.

For
the next few weeks Amber lived quietly in her apartments at the Plume of
Feathers. Her arrival in the neighbourhood, she knew, created a considerable
excitement and she was aware that every time she stepped out of the house she
was much stared at from behind cautiously drawn curtains. A widow as rich as
she was would have aroused interest even if she were not also young and lovely.
But she was not so eager to make friends now as she had been when she had first
come to London, and her fortune made her suspicious of the motives of any young
man who so much as stepped aside to let her pass in the street.

The
courtiers were all out at sea with the fleet and—though she would have enjoyed
flaunting to them her triumph over the conditions which had once put her at
their mercy—she had no real interest in anyone but Bruce. She was content
waiting for him to return.

Most
of the time she stayed at home, absorbed in being a mother. Her son had been
taken away from her so soon, and she had seen him so infrequently since, that
this baby was as much a novelty to her as if it were her first. She helped the
dry-nurse bathe her, watched her while she fed and slept, rocked her cradle and
sang songs and was fascinated by the smallest change she could discover in her
size and weight and appearance. She was glad that she had had the baby, even if
it had temporarily increased her waist-line by an inch or so, for it
gave her
something of Bruce's which she could never lose. This child had a name, a dowry
already secure and waiting, an enviable place of her own in the world.

Nan
was almost as interested as her mistress. "I vow she's the prettiest baby
in London."

Amber
was insulted. "In London! What d'you mean? She's the prettiest baby in
England!"

One
day she went to the New Exchange to do some unnecessary shopping, and happened
to see Barbara Palmer. She was just leaving when a great gilt coach drove up in
front and Castlemaine stepped out. Barbara's eyes went over her clothes with
interest, for though Amber was still dressed in mourning her cloak was lined
with leopard-skins—which Samuel had bought for her from some African slave-trader—and
she carried
a
leopard muff. But when her eyes got as far as Amber's face and she saw who was
wearing the costume she glanced quickly and haughtily away.

Amber
gave
a
little laugh. So she remembers me! she thought. Well madame, I doubt not you and
I may be better acquainted one day.

As
the days went by red crosses were seen, more and more frequently, chalked on
the doors. There was plague in London every year and when a few cases had
appeared in January and February no one had been alarmed. But now, as the
weather grew warmer, the plague seemed to increase and terror spread slowly
though the city: it passed from neighbour to neighbour, from apprentice to
customer, from vendor to housewife.

Long
funeral processions wound through the streets, and already people had begun to
take notice of a man or a woman in mourning. They recalled the evil portents
which had been seen only a few months before. In December a comet had appeared,
rising night after night, tracing a slow ominous path across the sky. Others
had seen flaming-swords held over the city, hearses and coffins and heaps of
dead bodies in the clouds. Crowds collected on the steps of St. Paul's to hear
the half-naked old man who held a blazing torch in his hand and called upon
them to repent of their sins. The tolling of the passing-bell began to have a
new significance for each of them:

Tomorrow,
perhaps, it tolls for me or for someone I love.

Everyday
Nan came home with a new preventive. She bought pomander-balls to breathe into
when out of doors, toad amulets, a unicorn's horn, quills filled with arsenic
and quicksilver, mercury in a walnut shell, gold coins minted in Queen
Elizabeth's time. Each time someone told her of a new preservative she bought
it immediately, one for each member of the household, and she insisted that
they be worn. She even put quicksilver-quills around the necks of their horses.

But
she was not content merely with preventing the plague. For she realized
sensibly, that in spite of all precautions one sometimes got it, and she began
to stock the cupboards with remedies for curing the sickness. She bought James
Angier's
famous fumigant of brimstone and saltpetre, as well as gunpowder, nitre, tar
and resin to disinfect the air. She bought all the recommended herbs, angelica,
rue, pimpernel, gentian, juniper berries, and dozens more. She had a chestful
of medicines which included Venice treacle, dragon water, and a bottle of
cow-dung mixed with vinegar.

Amber
was inclined to be amused by all these frantic preparations. An astrologer had
told her that 1665 would be a lucky year for her, and her almanac did not warn
her of plague or any other disease. Anyway it was true, for the most part, that
only the poor were dying in their crowded dirty slums.

"Mrs.
de Lacy's leaving town tomorrow," said Nan one morning as she brushed
Amber's hair.

"Well,
what if she is? Mrs. de Lacy's a chicken-hearted old simpleton who'd squeak at
the sight of a mouse."

"She's
not the only one, mam, you know that. Plenty of others are leaving too."

"The
King isn't leaving, is he?" They had had this same argument every day for
the past two weeks, and Amber was growing tired of it.

"No,
but he's the King and couldn't catch the sickness if he tried. I tell you, mam,
it's mighty dangerous to stay. Not five minutes' walk away—just at the top of
Drury Lane—there's a house been shut up. I'm getting scared, mam! Lord, I don't
want to die—and I shouldn't think you would either!"

Amber
laughed. "Well, then, Nan—if it gets any worse we'll leave. But there's no
use fretting your bowels to fiddle-strings." She had no intention at all
of leaving before Bruce arrived.

On
the 3rd of June the English and Dutch fleets engaged just off Lowestoft, and
the sound of their guns carried back to London. They could be heard, very
faintly, like swallows fluttering in a chimney.

By
the 8th it was known that the English had been victorious—twenty-four Dutch
ships had been sunk or captured and almost 10,000 Dutchmen killed or taken
prisoner, while no more than 700 English seamen had been lost. The rejoicing
was hysterical. Bonfires blazed along every street and a mob of merrymakers
broke the French Ambassador's windows because there was no fire in front of his
house. King Charles was the greatest king, the Duke of York the greatest
admiral England had ever known—and everyone was eager to continue the fight,
wipe out the Dutch and rule all the seas on earth.