At the Sign of the Sugared Plum

by Mary Hooper

  Chapter Six

  The second week of July

  ‘But Lord, how everybody’s looks and discourse in the street is of Death and nothing else.’

  When I went inside there was just one taper burning in our back room, and Sarah was sitting quietly on our bed, her hands folded in her lap.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, alarmed, for normally she would have been busy doing something: weighing up sugar, writing the accounts or mending an apron. Now, though, she was just sitting there, her face shocked and pale.

  I put down the trug and went towards her. ‘I saw two horrible old women on the road. Tom told me they were searchers of the dead. Did you see them? Where have they been?’

  Sarah’s hands clenched into fists. ‘They’ve been nearby, Hannah. In the first alley off Crown and King Place.’

  ‘And where did they search?’

  She looked down. ‘In the old house hard by the sign of the Blue Goose.’

  ‘Dickon and Jacob’s house?’

  She nodded. ‘It was the babe. Their little sister Marie —’

  I gasped. ‘Not—’

  Sarah swallowed hard. ‘She was taken poorly only yesterday, but her mother, Mrs Williams, told no one for fear they’d call in the authorities. She said it looked like just a rash. She thought it was a sweating sickness. But then this morning two buboes came up on the child’s body.’

  ‘What are they?’ I asked fearfully.

  ‘Hard lumps of matter. They come up in the groin, or in the neck or under the arm.’ She hesitated. ‘They are a sure sign of plague.’

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘Mrs Williams called for an apothecary, for they couldn’t afford a doctor. And it wasn’t Doctor da Silva, it was someone else. But before he could arrive the buboes had become so engorged with matter that the baby could not move its legs or head without screaming.’

  I shuddered.

  ‘And although the apothecary tried to lance the buboes it was too late. They said she screamed out one last time – the most terrible sound – and then died.’

  I pulled up a stool and sat next to Sarah, not saying anything for some moments, trying to absorb and understand what this meant. I hardly knew Marie, for she was barely two years old and had not been walking long enough to be out and about much with Dickon and Jacob. I’d just seen a sturdy, grubby, child staggering about the place trying to catch hold of one of the cats. Once I’d given her a few candied rose petals and she’d gabbled in baby-talk at me and run off.

  After a while I asked Sarah to tell me more of the tale.

  ‘The first I knew that the child had . . . that is, the first I knew what had happened was that the bells of St Dominic’s started tolling. And then Mr Newbery banged on the door here and shouted that there had been a terrible event. I went outside and everyone seemed to be at their doors, just standing there, silently. I went from house to house asking what had happened, but they were all crying and could hardly tell me. And then Mrs Williams ran into the street. She was tearing at her clothes and screaming, pulling her hair out like she was going mad with grief. Only then did someone tell me it was Marie who had died, and it was thought to be of the plague.’

  I went to our fireplace and put the kettle on to boil so I could make some camomile tea for us both. I felt cold and hollow, hardly believing what had happened. How could that child be among us one moment, running about happily, and dead the next?

  ‘The worst thing,’ Sarah went on, ‘is that this poor woman . . . this mother quite demented by grief...could mayhap have been comforted by someone’s voice soothing her and telling her that she must look now to her other children, but no one would go near her.’

  ‘She has no husband,’ I said, remembering what Sarah had told me about Jacob’s father being a sailor, and dying at sea earlier in the year.

  Sarah shook her head. ‘No husband, no comforter at all. I felt I wanted to do something for her, put my arms around her and console her, but I could not bring myself. The fear of the plague was too great. And so she suffers in her grief alone.’ Sarah began crying. ‘But you have not heard the worst,’ she added – and I knew it was selfish of me but I immediately looked round to see where Mew was.

  ‘It’s not Mew,’ she said, shaking her head through her tears. ‘He’s in a box under our bed and hasn’t been out.’

  ‘What, then? Tell me quickly,’ I begged her.

  ‘The eldest child has it. Kate – she has the same symptoms. And their house is being shut up.’

  ‘Oh,’ I breathed.

  We were both silent as we waited for the water to boil. I tried to imagine how it would be in that house, with Mrs Williams just sitting and waiting for the signs of plague to appear, waiting to see if Death would visit any other of her children.

  ‘What if she dies?’ I asked suddenly. ‘What if Mrs Williams dies next and the children have to fend for themselves alone, shut up in the house?’

  Sarah shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Maybe they will all be taken to the pesthouse – although there are not many of those and I hear they are already full.’

  ‘Is their house already closed?’

  ‘I fear so,’ Sarah said. ‘And now they must stay inside for forty days.’

  ‘The boys will hate that.’

  Sarah glanced up at me and I knew what she was thinking: they would probably be visited with plague and die before then.

  ‘Maybe we could give them something,’ I said suddenly.

  She nodded. ‘I was thinking that. Something to cheer the children, perhaps. Some comfits.’

  The kettle was rattling on the fire, so I poured boiling water on the camomile flowers and let it steep for a few moments. ‘Even if the house is already locked and barred, we could ask their guard to give them the sweetmeats.’

  Sarah dabbed at her eyes with her apron and stood up. ‘It will make us feel better if we do something – even just some little thing – for the family,’ she said. ‘What flowers did you harvest today?’

  I showed her the trug and its contents, and while we drank our tea I told her something of my hours with Tom, and how thoughtful and pleasant a companion he was. I did not tell her of the times when we’d been rapt in each other’s glances, however, for they were private moments, for me to think on later.

  I changed into my working dress and Sarah busied herself putting more water on to boil in a pan, then she chipped a goodly piece of sugar from a new loaf and put that in as well. ‘Tomorrow we will begin to candy some borage flowers,’ she said, ‘for they are said to have virtues which may help lighten their hearts. Tonight, though, we’ll make some little violet cakes. And we will take them to the house together and try not to be alarmed at anything we might see.’ She shook the pan to help dissolve the sugar. ‘Whatever fright we take will be nothing compared to what they are going through.’

  She set me to nipping the violet flowers from their stalks and washing them, while she boiled the water to melt the sugar. Several times she skimmed it of foam, until it was a thick, clear syrup mixture. Then I was allowed to take the violets – about a quarter of all I’d picked – stir them thoroughly in the mixture, then quickly pour it out into a wetted tray.

  The mixture began to harden almost immediately and we let it be while we washed the rest of the violets and borage flowers for the next day. When we turned to it again the flat cake was almost firm, and Sarah carefully cut it into small squares, lifted them from the tray and put them on white paper. They looked very pretty, for I had made sure to choose a variety of colours for the violets, and they ranged from white through pink down to deepest purple. Not, I realised, that it was likely that our poor family would appreciate this careful harmonising of colour.

  When the violet cakes were quite cool we folded them into a small package and set off for the house. The windows and door were already barred, and marked with the red cross. Above the cross I could see the same paper sign that I’d seen on the house in St Giles: LORD, HAVE MERCY ON U
S.

  Sarah and I held each other’s hands tightly as we approached, for I can’t convey how much fear was struck into us to see these words so close to home, and to imagine the terror of that little family on the other side of the door.

  The guard, a youngish bearded man, was sitting outside on a stool, his halberd standing diagonally across the doorway of the house.

  ‘Could you give these sweetmeats to the children next time you see them?’ Sarah asked, giving the package into his hands.

  He nodded. ‘That will be in the morning,’ he said, ‘when I takes in their milk and bread.’

  ‘Are they . . .’ I hesitated. I’d been about to ask if they were all right, but of course they were not, and I did not know what else to say.

  ‘They’re sleeping now,’ he said. ‘An apothecary has given them all a draught.’

  I was torn between wanting to make our stay there as brief as possible and finding out more, but Sarah was already pulling at my hand to come away.

  We walked to our shop, looking back only once at the enclosed and silent house.

  ‘Violet cakes – they seem but poor reparation,’ Sarah said. ‘What can they do to help?’

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

  But we were glad we had gone.

  The following day we took some candied borage flowers up to the house and left them with the guard, but had no way of knowing whether they actually received them or whether the guard ate them himself.

  The Bills for that week showed 750 deaths in London and to our great dismay our trade began falling off a little. This was because many of our customers, being mostly of the middling classes, knew how to obtain a Certificate of Health, and were going to their country houses. The king and his court moved further out, too – from Isleworth to Hampton Court – for it had been said that Isleworth was not far enough away from the contamination in London and it was feared the plague might still be able to reach him there.

  On Saturday a fruit-seller came to our door calling, ‘Cherry-ripe!’ and although Sarah said they were too early to be Kentish cherries, and must have come on a ship from the Netherlands, she bought some on my urging, for I was anxious to try out the recipe for sugared cherries which mother had given me. After washing a scoopful of these, I carefully stoned and halved them, then set them over the heat in a preserving pan with a little water. When they were scalding hot I shook them in a sieve, then put them in a cloth to dry, after which I put them back into the pan, layered with a good amount of sugar that I had previously ground down. Putting this pan back on the fire, I scalded the cherries and cooled them three times all together, so that they picked up the sugar and it crystallised on them. After this I dipped them quickly in cold water and placed them in the hot sun to dry out.

  Sarah watched me and said this was a new recipe for her, and she had not worked with cherries before, but thought they looked very pretty and tasty.

  That evening came the information from Mr Newbery that there had been another death at the top of our street, although as the person there had lived alone there was no need for the house to be shut up. We had received no further news of our Williams family these last three days, so as we closed the shutter of the shop, Sarah and I resolved that we would go and enquire after them.

  The guard outside their house was asleep and snoring, so Sarah tapped on the next-door house to enquire how they did.

  The woman who answered, Mrs Groat, shook her head. ‘I’ve heard nothing of them these last two days,’ she said. ‘That first night – and the next day – there was a wailing and a crying and carrying on, but for the last two days there’s been nothing.’

  ‘Has food been taken inside?’ Sarah asked.

  She shrugged. ‘The guard has money to buy their everyday provisions, and get milk for the children, but to tell the truth I fear he takes it for ale. I was going to ask the minister at church tomorrow what I should do.’ She looked at us and lowered her voice, ‘I don’t even know if they live.’

  Hearing this, Sarah did no more than go straight to the guard outside the Williams’ house and try to rouse him, and I fear he had been on ale, for it took a great deal of shaking and shouting before he was awake to our questions.

  ‘We want to know how the family within are,’ she said and, seeing his rather blank and stupid face, added some falsely polite words of praise for his care of them.

  ‘Has a doctor called on them?’ I asked, thinking that if nothing else I could run and get Doctor da Silva and see what he could do.

  The man smiled, a drunken, lop-sided smile. ‘This family give me no trouble at all. Quiet as the flowers, they are.’

  ‘But we want to know if they’re all right!’ Sarah said. ‘When did you last see them?’

  ‘Can you ask them how they’re doing?’ I said. ‘Can we see if they need anything?’

  The man leaned over and picked up his glittering halberd, waving it in front of our faces. ‘I has to guard this house. No one can go in!’

  ‘You can go in, though, can’t you?’ I said. ‘You can see how they fare.’

  He looked at us suspiciously. ‘Are you family?’

  I was about to say no, but Sarah broke in and said yes, they were our dear cousins and we were fair desperate to know how they were doing.

  ‘We hoped such a kind and reasonable man as yourself would be looking after them,’ I added, for I could see that flattery might be the only thing to move him. ‘Would you be able give us news on how they fare?’

  Grinning now, the man got out a set of keys and proceeded to open the two padlocks which held together the chains which had been hammered across the doorway. He pushed at the door, which opened to nothing but silence and darkness.

  ‘How do you keep?’ the guard hollered into the hallway. ‘Is there owt you need?’

  Holding each other, Sarah and I looked through into the hall, where not a candle or a taper showed through the darkness. And then the air from the newly-opened house billowed to reach us and we smelled a stench so foetid that we had to step backwards.

  ‘I very much fear all is not well,’ she whispered to me, and then braced herself to call, ‘Hello! Mrs Williams. Is there anything you need?’

  No reply came.

  She and I looked at each other nervously, for I felt sick from the smell and would not have been brave enough to enter.

  ‘Will you go in?’ Sarah asked the guard.

  ‘Not I!’ he said. ‘I’m not paid to enter charnel houses.’

  ‘And you mustn’t go in either!’ I said, holding fast to Sarah’s arm.

  Behind us, Mrs Groat had come up to peer into the dark abyss of the house.

  ‘I’d best shut ’m up again,’ the guard said, but there was suddenly a tremendous crash from inside the house, making us all cry out in fear, and the next moment a small pale figure jumped or fell down the stairs and shot past us, running down the cobbled streets as if the devil himself was after him.

  ‘A ghoul!’ Mrs Groat said, and she fell to her knees and began praying.

  ‘No!’ I said, looking after the boy in disbelief. ‘It was little Dickon!’

  ‘Stark naked and running for his life,’ Sarah said.

  I watched his progress down the street and would have turned to go after him, but Sarah knew what was in my mind and held me fast. ‘You must not,’ she said. ‘He will have the plague on his skin.’

  ‘But who will look after him?’

  ‘It can’t be us! If you catch him it will be a death warrant for us both.’

  When we turned back the guard was standing in the doorway, still reluctant to enter. He sniffed and then curled his nostrils in disgust. ‘I smell death!’ he said.

  ‘You must go and see,’ Sarah insisted. ‘We cannot just shut the house now. You must go and see who’s dead.’

  After some persuasion – and Sarah had some small coins on her which we handed to him – he went inside and came back a few moments later to tell us that there were two children dead in a
bed upstairs, and the mother was lying dead by the kitchen table.

  As the news spread, a small crowd gathered outside the house, most of whom were openly crying. Sarah, brushing back tears herself, asked one of them to go down to the minister so that women could be called in to dress the bodies and make them ready for burial.

  We went home, but could not sleep for thinking about the poor, dead children and for wondering what had become of young Dickon. We were not to find this out, however, for we never saw nor heard a word of him again.

  Chapter Seven

  The third week of July

  ‘But how sad a sight it is to see the streets empty of people, and very few upon the ’Change . . . and two shops in three shut up.’

  When we closed shop on the day following the Williams family’s deaths, Sarah and I resolved to go along to their house to try and discover when their funeral would be, for she said it was not right that a mother and her innocent children should be buried with no one to cast flowers into their graves.

  We had enquired after Dickon that day, but had failed to find any trace of him, and Sarah had said that we must try to think that a kindly family somewhere were looking after him, or at least that he’d been taken to a workhouse or pesthouse for shelter. Neither of us wanted to think that he might still be on the streets of London, frightened, naked and hungry; that he might have ended up living in the sewers with the rats, or on the edge of the stinking Fleet ditch at Westminster where, Sarah said, the river ran thick and stagnant and the poorest, foulest beggars ended up, living on peelings and scraps.

  At the Williams’ house the wooden boarding had gone from the door and windows, and the fearful red cross had been replaced by a white one to signify modified quarantine, although it would be twenty days and the house would have to be fumigated before anyone could live in it. There was no man guarding it now, but neither were there any housewives chattering outside or children playing nearby. It seemed that people passing knew of the deaths, for they were walking in an arc past the house, as far away as they could get, as if they were trying to avoid breathing any of the air coming from it.