‘Agnes, I’m leaving now.’
‘Keep the door closed! I am determined to fume away any contagion that dares to enter my house,’ said Agnes. ‘You still insist on going tonight?’
Susannah nodded.
‘Then be sure to cover your face when the buriers come. Sprinkle vinegar on a handkerchief and hold it to your nose. Touch nothing and I will pray that you are kept safe from infection.’
‘Thank you.’
Agnes’s lips curled in a grim smile. ‘I believe you are as stubborn as I am. Go then! Phoebe is waiting for you.’
‘She need not accompany me.’
‘You will not vex me by arguing.’
It was very nearly dark and Phoebe carried a lantern to light the way. They walked side by side in silence, avoiding the beggars that snatched at the hems of their skirts and crossing the street into the shadows without a word spoken as they passed the open door of a noisy tavern. Warm, foetid air and the sound of drunken laughter drifted after them.
When they arrived at the apothecary shop, candles burned in every window.
‘Go home, madam,’ the watchman said. ‘No good will come of your presence here.’
‘Will the dead-cart come soon?’ she asked.
‘Soon enough.’
William threw open the casement and leaned out. ‘You came then?’
‘As you see.’
‘I have used the best linen I could find to make a winding cloth for your father and Jennet and I have carried him down and rested him on the counter in the shop.’
‘He would have liked that,’ said Susannah, a quiver in her voice.
In the distance she heard a bell ringing. Her insides lurched and she began to tremble.
‘The cart is coming,’ said William.
The bell rang again and now she could hear the mournful cry of the bellman.
‘Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!’
The bell became louder and the people hurrying along Fleet Street flattened themselves against the walls to give the bellman a wide berth. The horse-drawn cart, lit by lamps, lurched out of the darkness, trundling over the cobbles with its sorry load. Two buriers, dressed in high boots and shrouded in long capes, followed with lamps swaying in their hands. A number of weeping men and women walked behind.
The watchman held his lamp high and stepped into the dead-cart’s path. Then he motioned Susannah and Phoebe to stand well back and took the door key from his pocket.
William waited inside with Jennet behind him.
Her heart thumping against her ribcage, Susannah watched William speak a few words to one of the buriers as he came forward. She heard the chink of coins changing hands. Then the buriers went inside the shop and she waited, her eyes fixed on the open door, while she clenched her fists so hard that her nails drew blood on her palms.
The men reappeared a few moments later, carrying Cornelius’s linen-wrapped body between them. A corner of his winding sheet had come loose and trailed in the dust. They carried him with as much ceremony as if he were a rolled-up carpet, no longer wanted and about to be put into storage.
Susannah pressed her hands to her mouth, suppressing an involuntary cry. Was this cumbersome parcel all that remained of her beloved father? She tilted forward, in a despairing need to throw herself upon his body and pull away the winding sheet to see his face one last time.
The watchman grasped her tightly by the arm and dragged her back. ‘No you don’t, missus!’
One burier held up a lantern and threw aside the sacking on top of the cart.
Susannah gasped and reeled back. Corpses, some wrapped in rags, some naked, were stacked in an untidy heap. A young woman dressed only in her night shift lay spread-eagled on her back, her golden hair falling in a waterfall over the edge of the cart and her swollen neck black and suppurating.
In the doorway, Jennet let out a screech and covered her face with her apron.
Susannah stared at the cart in horror, revulsion making her stomach churn. ‘You can’t put my father in there!’ She fumbled for the vinegar-soaked handkerchief in her pocket and clasped it over her nose, retching at the stench of the dead. Even by the wavering light of the lantern she could see, and smell, the terrible pestilential tokens on the corpses.
‘Death is the great leveller,’ said the burier who held Cornelius’s legs. He nodded at the other, carrying the shoulders. ‘On three,’ he said. ‘One, two, three!’
They swung the body up between them and dumped it upon the cart. It landed with a thud on top of the young woman with the blond hair.
One of the buriers cackled and nudged his assistant. ‘That’s one old man gone happy to the grave!’
‘Tuck ’em up nice and warm together for all eternity, shall we?’ Still chuckling, they threw the sacking back over the top, took hold of the horse’s head again and the cart rolled on its way.
Susannah, frozen with horror, stared at William, framed in the doorway.
‘I wish you hadn’t come here tonight,’ he said. ‘No daughter should have to see such a sight.’
The watchman came forward. ‘Inside with you, sir. Now!’
‘May I not offer this lady a few words of comfort?’
‘Not if you don’t want to pass on the contagion. Go on, inside with you!’
‘Susannah …’ The door slammed in William’s face.
Susannah watched the tail end of the dead-cart disappearing down Fleet Street, the lantern bobbing up and down. She heaved a great sigh. She knew what she had to do now. She must see where they were taking her father.
‘Missus!’ Phoebe hastened behind her.
Susannah waited impatiently for her to catch up before following the cart.
Presently the cart stopped outside a milliner’s shop. A knot of people waited outside, talking in hushed tones. Screaming and crying came from an upstairs window as the buriers brought out the tiny corpses of three children. Their father stood nearby in shocked silence as they were thrown onto the cart.
An old woman fainted and her husband began to shout, tearing at his hair and railing at God for forsaking his grandchildren.
Susannah looked away, unable to bear the weight of their grief added to her own.
The cart moved on again, the horse’s hooves clip-clopping over the cobbles. The children’s father followed and then the other grieving relatives in a ragged procession.
At last they reached the high fence which surrounded the plague pit. Susannah gagged into her handkerchief at the sickly stench of corruption which filled the air, saturating it in despair.
Phoebe turned aside with a groan and vomited onto the ground.
The bellman rang his bell vigorously and called out, ‘Open the gate!’
After a moment the palisade quivered and then a section opened inwards and admitted the cart.
The procession attempted to follow but the watchmen barred the way. The father of the dead children, overcome by grief, began roaring and shouting and in only a few moments a fist fight had broken out between the relatives and the watchmen as the mourners were denied access.
Susannah took her chance. ‘Stay here!’ she hissed to Phoebe. She slipped through the gate while the watchmen were occupied and hovered in the shadows while she took in the scene before her. Numb with horror, she gazed at the burial trench. No preacher could have described a vision of hell as terrible as this.
Lanterns hung on poles, casting flickering light into the pit, some forty feet by twelve. The bottom was only eight feet or so below the surface now and she caught glimpses of half-buried bodies, a grinning skull, an out-thrust hand. The sweet reek of rotting flesh was overpowering, a hundred times worse than the overflowing sewers in August or the stench of simmering fish bones from the glue-maker’s vat.
Susannah started as the gate slammed shut behind her. The screaming and wailing continued outside the palisade.
The horse and cart were backed up to the pit with a great deal of shouting and the buriers, like some hellis
h demons, began to drag the corpses off the cart and hurl them into the hole.
The children went first, spinning towards the centre of the pit with their arms and legs flying out like little rag dolls. Susannah’s father was next to be dragged off the cart. She suppressed a moan as the loose end of the winding sheet unravelled and she caught a glimpse of his bare foot swinging free. The sight of his naked toes was almost her undoing. She lurched forward, desperate to snatch up his foot and press it to her cheek, to touch her father’s skin for one last time, but she stumbled and fell to her knees. By this time the buriers had heaved his body into the pit. The other corpses followed, tumbled on top of each other with no thought given to any respect for the dead.
Shaking with distress, Susannah watched the buriers sprinkle quicklime over the bodies and then set to with their shovels, spreading a thin layer of earth over the lot. She kept her eyes fixed upon her father’s last resting place until the men had finished. Once they were leaning on their shovels, slaking their thirst with a jar of beer, she gathered up a handful of earth and crept towards the edge of the trench. She scattered the earth onto the spot where she had last seen her father’s body. ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ she murmured.
She stared into the pit, remembering her last sight of her father at the window. Now she would never know what his final words to her were. She wept then, hot tears coursing down her cheeks until, at last, all her emotions were deadened.
The bell rang again and the gates opened to admit another cart. Keeping to the shadows, Susannah stole through the gate and out into the street again.
Chapter 26
The following week passed in a haze for Susannah. She slept a little but only to be haunted by terrifying dreams of her father’s corpse rising from the plague pit, trailing earth and putrefying skin behind him as he wandered the streets searching for Arabella and the children.
She wrote a letter to her brother, Tom, the ink blotched and tear-stained, to tell him of their father’s terrible death. He was all the family she had left now and she wished with all her heart that she could be with him so that they might mourn together.
She took the letter to the docks to find a sailor to carry it to Virginia. He snatched her money and then stuffed the letter carelessly into his jacket and she turned away in despair with no idea if it would ever reach her brother’s hands.
Each day she dragged herself to the apothecary shop with leaden feet, terrified as to what she might find. Each day her grief was renewed as she stood outside the window to be reminded of the last time she had seen her father. Sorrow made her so weary that she longed to be able to go inside and climb the stairs to her old bed-chamber, where she could curl up and fall asleep, never to wake again.
But William and Jennet showed no signs of sickness so far.
Jennet made it her business to scrub the house from top to bottom; William fumigated each room in turn while they hung out of the windows coughing until the smoke had dissipated.
‘I am passing the time in discovering your father’s library,’ said William, wiping the smoke-induced tears from his eyes, ‘and have been reading his treatises on the merits of Galen versus Hippocrates. Your father was a learned man as well as one of the best apothecaries I knew.’
‘He would have been so pleased you thought that.’ Susannah found it helped her to talk of her father, to remember the good things rather than the sad times that followed.
‘If you had been his son, you would have been an excellent apothecary, too.’ William drummed his fingers on the windowsill. ‘It’s making me fretful to be so confined and I’ve had a great deal of time to ponder on certain matters.’
‘Now you know as well as I how arduous it is to be in enforced idleness when you are used to being industrious,’ said Susannah.
A small frown appeared on William’s forehead. ‘I was thinking that, perhaps when I am released from here …’
‘Perhaps what?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ve been making plans but if I’m spared, there will be enough time for that later. You are grieving for your father and should not be troubled by fanciful ideas and I have kept you talking too long.’
‘I’ll bring you more provisions tomorrow.’ But she made no move to go, reluctant to leave him in case he sickened and died while she was away. Even though he had betrayed her so cruelly, the very thought of him dying made her feel as if there was a tight band crushing her chest.
‘Send Aunt Agnes my love, won’t you?’
She hesitated but the Devil made her say it. ‘And shall I send your special love to Phoebe and Joseph?’
‘Phoebe and Joseph?’ His brow wrinkled.
She waited, trying to find the right words to tell him that she knew about his treachery, but failed.
‘Susannah?’ William’s expression was concerned. ‘You look exhausted. Go home and rest.’
If she hadn’t seen him with her own eyes leaving Phoebe’s room that night, she would never have guessed that he could be so duplicitous. ‘I’ll come tomorrow with more provisions,’ she said.
On the walk home Susannah admitted to herself that she still loved William, in spite of the shameful way he had behaved. Nevertheless, he had been extraordinarily brave and selfless in nursing her father and Ned and he had shown every concern for her well-being since Father had died. Part of her wished that she had never gone up to the attics that night and then she might never have known about his betrayal.
Turning into Whyteladies Lane, she wondered again where her stepmother could be. A note had come back from Arabella’s brother to say that she and the children were not with him and he had no idea of her present whereabouts. Susannah was anxious about the twins and sad at losing touch with her baby brothers. They were her only remaining family in the country and it was of great importance to her that they knew what sort of a man their father had been. She knew she couldn’t rely upon Arabella to keep his memory alive for them and was still pondering on how to find them as she neared the Captain’s House.
Three small boys ran out of the butcher’s shop, shrieking as they chased each other down the lane. They darted from side to side, dashing in front of Susannah and nearly sending her flying. One of the boys was Joseph.
‘Joseph!’
He glanced back, stopped and then came towards her, dragging his feet. ‘Yes, miss?’
‘Joseph, you know you’re not to play in the street.’
‘But …’
‘Come inside now!’
The boy stuck out his bottom lip but followed her into the house.
Susannah returned the basket to the kitchen, where Mistress Oliver was standing at the table dismembering a couple of capons with a cleaver.
‘All still well?’ asked the cook, with a sharply enquiring look. Susannah nodded. ‘Thank the Lord for that!’ She pushed aside a mess of entrails and a dish of lardy cake to make more room before she chopped off the capons’ heads.
Joseph eyed the lardy cake and, unable to resist such temptation, shot out a hand and stole a slice.
Mistress Oliver grabbed his wrist and threatened him with the cleaver. ‘Where’ve you been, you young scallywag?’
‘I found him running out of that dirty butcher’s shop with those raggedy boys of theirs,’ said Susannah.
‘Didn’t your mother tell you you’re not to play outside, Joseph? And especially not with the butcher’s boys. Lead you into trouble they will. Now sit down at the table and eat that lardy cake. Don’t want you dropping crumbs all over the place and encouraging the rats.’
Agnes was relieved to hear that William and Jennet remained well. ‘But I shall keep vigil in my chamber until William is returned safely to me,’ she said. ‘You must continue to visit the apothecary shop every day to bring back news. Now tell me; is there any sign of Arabella?’
‘None at all. I shan’t be sorry if I never see her again but I would dearly like to know the whereabouts of my little brothers.’
‘She’s bound to turn up
in due course. And I shouldn’t worry too much about the twins. Their mother will fall on her feet; her kind always does.’
Susannah read to Agnes for much of the afternoon, though she often slipped and stumbled over the words as her mind drifted away on waves of anxiety and sadness.
Phoebe carried in a supper tray. Susannah attempted to take it from her but Phoebe, her expression sullen, pushed past her and set it down on the table by the window.
Susannah gave a mental shrug. She was too unhappy to be bothered with the woman’s continuing hostility. Phoebe had unaccountably disliked her from the day they met and she couldn’t imagine anything that would ever change that now.
Later that evening Susannah returned Agnes’s empty tray to the kitchen.
Phoebe was scouring the pots while Mistress Oliver sat on a stool soaking her feet in a basin.
‘The mistress ate her dinner, then?’ she asked.
Joseph ran into the kitchen and buried his face in his mother’s skirts.
‘Most of it.’
Susannah turned her head as Phoebe clattered the pots and then began to scold Joseph. The boy was whimpering and scratching at his arms while his mother shook him. ‘I done tole you not to go outside, you bad boy!’
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Susannah.
Phoebe pulled up the boy’s shirt to expose his chest, presently scattered with angry purple pimples.
‘Fleas,’ said Susannah peering at the spots. ‘It’s only flea bites.’ She breathed a sigh of relief.
‘That’ll teach you to play with the butcher’s ragamuffins,’ said Mistress Oliver.
‘Joseph, run upstairs to my bedchamber and fetch my apothecary’s box,’ said Susannah. ‘I’ll rub some marigold salve on the bites to ease the itching.’
Phoebe glanced up at her from lowered lashes and turned back to her son. ‘Next time, you listen to me, boy!’
‘Yes’m, Mammy.’
The child looked so chastened that Susannah had to suppress a small smile.
After Agnes had been settled down for the night, Susannah sat on the window seat in the chapel watching the sunset until the last streaks of gold faded into darkness. Perhaps William was watching the sunset, too, she thought. She pictured him pacing up and down the sitting room above the apothecary shop, frustration at his confinement in every step. Idly she wondered what the plans were that he had been making. He was so used to ordering his own life that he would find this time of quarantine very difficult. If she had been with him, if only things had been different, they could have sat together in quiet companionship reading her father’s books or playing chess.
The Apothecary's Daughter Page 31
