At the Sign of the Sugared Plum

by Mary Hooper

  Scowling at his departing back, I asked Sarah who he was.

  ‘Someone at the Admiralty,’ she said. ‘I forget his name. Someone very high up, I believe.’

  Soon after his visit, Mr Newbery came in to buy some lozenges from us.

  ‘For I’ve heard that these are very tasty and strong,’ he said, and I assured him that indeed they were, and that they had been praised highly by members of the Admiralty.

  Sarah came through from the back and asked if he knew what the Bills were for that week.

  ‘I do, and I wish I didn’t,’ Mr Newbery said, ‘for they are three thousand!’ As Sarah and I gasped, he added, ‘Three thousand – with another thousand of what they call “other causes”.’

  Sarah shook her head worriedly. ‘The plague is now in every parish of London, I have heard.’

  ‘That’s true. And I have heard that there are five plague pits dug to accommodate its victims.’

  ‘We have heard of them – have you seen one?’ I asked Mr Newbery. ‘I did wonder how . . . how big they are.’

  ‘Hannah!’ Sarah rebuked me.

  ‘For I cannot imagine . . .’ my voice trailed away. We had heard reports of these pits which had had to be dug because the churchyards could not take any more corpses. Rumours said that they were vast holes that held forty . . . sixty . . . eighty bodies or more.

  ‘I have heard that the biggest can hold two hundred!’ Mr Newbery said. ‘They are dug as deep as a man can stand in the ground, and can be as wide as the church of St Paul’s. They are needed, too, for I have heard that in some parishes the death cart is coming by day now as well as by night, for the hours of darkness are not enough to take all the corpses.’

  Sarah went through to our back room, shooting me a glance which meant we had heard enough of such matters.

  ‘But have you heard about the piper?’ Mr Newbery asked, and I shook my head.

  Mr Newbery popped a comfit into his mouth. ‘Well, they do say that a piper – just a common music man – fell down in the street insensible with drink. In the night the plague cart came round and thinking he had been struck dead, hooked him up and threw him on to a cart already piled with bodies. He was buried under more, but the jolting of the cart woke him just as they reached the pit, and he sat upright and began playing his pipes to draw attention to his plight.’

  Mr Newbery paused to suck noisily on the comfit. ‘The drivers of the cart couldn’t see him in the dark, just heard uncanny music coming from the load of bodies, and they bolted in terrible fright, saying that they had taken up the Devil himself on to their cart!’ He laughed. ‘Now, what think you of that?’

  I smiled, although in truth I did not know whether to laugh or cry.

  ‘Truly, the spectre of death stares each of us in the face!’ Mr Newbery said cheerfully as he went out.

  That night I had a terrible nightmare. I was alive, but lying in a plague pit under a press of bodies which weighed down on me so that I could neither move nor hardly breathe. Something – some foul-smelling piece of dead flesh – was hard against my mouth and my hair was held knotted in a dead man’s grip so I could not change the angle of my head to enable me to gather my strength and scream. I had no way of knowing how far down the pile of corpses I was and knew I would suffocate unless I could claw my way through them and reach the top of the heap.

  My nightmare was ended when I kicked out and hit Sarah in my efforts to climb, and she woke me properly by shaking my shoulder and calling my name. She went back to sleep quickly but I lay awake for an age, wishing I could feel the comfort of Mew’s little body on my feet and wondering when the Bills would show a downturn and we could go back to living an ordinary life.

  The next morning Abby came round to purchase some sweetmeats, saying that her mistress had a fancy for something light and delicate to tempt her appetite. We had no crystallised violets or rose petals now, but instead gave her some candied angelica and also some citron chips made from an orange, which Sarah said was held to be good for an invalid, and which we had made the same way as the angelica chips by boiling three times in sugared water.

  Abby had a pomander of herbs and flowers which she sniffed constantly as she spoke to us, and she had also tucked some blue flowers behind her ear. She said they were cornflowers and she was wearing them as a plague prevention, but indeed they looked so fetching – the blue against her dark curls – that I resolved that I too would obtain and wear some.

  We gossiped at the door while Sarah was weighing up the citron chips, finding it strange that we could now look up and down the street with hardly anything to spoil our view, for as well as being quiet of people and their conveyances, there were no cats, dogs, pigs or goats around either. Indeed, there had been so little traffic that grass and weeds had started to sprout between the cobblestones.

  ‘Your mistress is still not well enough to travel?’ I asked Abby.

  She shook her head. ‘She’s improving, but she dreads the length of the journey and the battering and jolting our bodies must take on the way.’ She looked up and down the street. ‘Are you all in good health here? Praise be, I don’t see many shut-up houses in view.’

  ‘There are two newly shut just around the corner,’ I said. ‘And a woman who was a customer of ours has this morning been taken to a pesthouse.’

  Abby shook her head. ‘I went past the Exchange just now and when I looked in there was scarce anyone there. And no one of quality at all.’

  Before I could comment on this she said, ‘And what do you think – our cook was on a ferry going across to Southwarke when the boatman was suddenly struck blind and dumb!’

  ‘And then what happened?’ I asked, alarmed.

  ‘Well, the boat started drifting downstream and one of the men passengers had to push the boatman to one side, take the oars and carry on rowing across.’

  ‘Did they reach the other side? What of the ferryman?’ I asked.

  ‘By the time they got to the other side, he was dead! And he had the tokens on him in a ring around his neck, though everyone swore they were not there when they got on board, or they surely would not have gone with him.’

  ‘Abby’s sweetmeats are wrapped and ready!’ Sarah called from inside the shop, but I pretended not to hear her. She was always telling me not to listen to gossip, that it made one morbid, but I took little heed.

  ‘But is your cook all right?’ I asked Abby.

  Abby nodded. ‘Fat and healthy as ever was a sow. But did you hear of the wraith in the woods?’

  I shook my head and asked Abby to tell me straightaway, for despite being in dread of what I might hear, I could not bear not to know. ‘A real wraith – you mean, a ghost creature?’ I asked.

  ‘It happened outside the city,’ Abby said in a low, storytelling voice. ‘At Brentwood, I believe. A maid in a big house had been taken ill of the plague and was removed to a shed in the garden to be away from the family. A nurse who was appointed to look after her went to get some medicines, and while she was gone the maid escaped from a window. When the nurse returned she got no answer to her knocks and, believing her patient to be dead, told the master of the house so.’

  She paused for breath and I urged her to go on quickly, fearing that Sarah would come up any minute and I would not hear the end of the tale.

  ‘Well, the master was much disturbed, for none of the villagers would touch a plague victim to bury them, so he went into Brentwood to obtain assistance in getting rid of the corpse. On his way back through the woods, though, he encountered the maid and believing it to be her wraith, ran back home, shouting and raving mad. Finally, it was discovered that the maid had got out of the shed window, then she was found in the woods and put into a cart to be carried off to a pesthouse.’

  I gasped. ‘And did the master of the house recover from his madness?’

  Abby looked surprised. ‘I do not know!’ she said.

  Chapter Eleven

  The third week of August

  ‘And my Lo
rd Mayor commands people to be within at nine at night that the sick may have liberty to go abroad for air.’

  For the next few days we were very busy, for news of our plague prevention sweetmeats was spreading and they were selling well, which caused us to be up all hours making more. I did not see Tom but I thought of him often – especially when I took the cordial he had made – and wondered how long it would be before I set eyes on him. I thought too about our first kiss, and could hardly wait for it.

  On Friday evening I was putting up the shutters outside the shop when a lad came running down the road looking about him in a distracted way, studying the signs as if he was looking for one in particular.

  As he came closer I saw to my surprise that it was the boy groom at the house where Abby was in service. Suddenly spotting our sign, he made a lunge towards me.

  ‘The sign of the Sugared Plum! You’re Hannah?’ he asked, panting.

  I nodded, rather intrigued, wondering what he could want.

  ‘I have a message from Abby.’ He doubled up then, breathless from running, and tried to regain breath enough to speak.

  ‘Is it your mistress? Does she want more sweetmeats?’ I asked, thinking to help.

  ‘No – it’s our house!’ the boy croaked. ‘Our house has been enclosed.’

  I gasped and stepped backwards. ‘It has been visited with plague?’

  He nodded.

  ‘And is it Abby who is sick?’ I asked fearfully, and while I was anxious for my friend I was also terrified for myself, trying to think how close we had stood while she’d been telling me about the wraith, and whether or not she might have passed on any contagion to me.

  He shook his head. ‘It’s Cook,’ he said. ‘Cook was taken very sick last night and a doctor came and said it’s plague and we all have to be shut up.’

  ‘But you’re not shut up.’

  ‘I ran off – and one of the maids got out as well. But Abby shouted down to ask me to come and tell you what had happened.’

  Shakily, I asked who was left in the house, and he told me his master, mistress, the housekeeper, cook, two maids, and the babe.

  ‘But is Abby well?’ I asked anxiously.

  He nodded. ‘As well as anyone can be knowing they’re going to be locked up for forty days,’ he said.

  ‘And your master and mistress?’

  ‘Everyone is well except the cook, who is of a fearsome waxwork complexion and everyone says is like to die at any minute.’

  I moved myself just a little further off. ‘But where will you go now?’

  ‘I will try and get back to my family in Suffolk,’ the boy said.

  ‘You don’t have a Certificate of Health.’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ll go across country and no one will see me. I’ll sleep in barns and under hedges and get a message to my ma somehow so that she will send a cart out for me.’

  I looked at him with concern. ‘I wish you well, then.’

  He grinned at me, not seeming to realise the seriousness of his situation. ‘Abby said you would give me something for my trouble in coming here.’

  I nodded, went inside and got him a few pennies, and also gave him a hunk of bread and some cherries.

  While he ate the cherries he told me that there was now a guard outside the house, but if I went round to the back yard and called up, then Abby would come and speak to me out of the first-floor window. He bade me go there as quickly as possible, and then he stuffed the piece of bread inside his shirt and ran off, leaving me to go inside and tell Sarah this news.

  I thought at first that Sarah would raise some objections to my going to see Abby, but she did not, for she had known her and her family as long as I had and was equally anxious to know that she was all right. I was not frightened, for I felt there would be no risk in speaking to Abby from the distance of a window. Just as soon as we had eaten supper, I set off.

  The streets were quiet as I hurried along, not looking at anyone nor acknowledging those who might be looking at me. When I got to City Road someone hailed me and shouted that I should go home, but I thought it was just a madman and did not take any notice. A little further on, however, I chanced upon a crier in a square who was ringing his bell and calling nine of the clock as being an hour of curfew. At this time, he called, all able-bodied people were to stay inside their houses and allow those who had been visited by plague to walk the streets and take the air unimpeded.

  I panicked then, for of course I had not known about this curfew and immediately visualised a vast crowd of diseased people sweeping through the streets and infecting me with their weeping sores and foetid breath. I turned to go home and, thinking to take a short cut, went down a long, narrow alley. When I emerged I did not know where I was and, the sun having gone down, could not work out in which direction to walk.

  I turned to the right but when I reached the Fleet River I knew immediately that I was not going in the proper direction, and turned back. In my haste, however, I missed the alley through which I had come. Breaking into a run, I at length found myself close to the city walls and near the church of St Just. I did not wish to approach the only person who passed, who had his eyes and hands raised to heaven and was praying aloud for God to have mercy on us all, so thought it best to go towards the church and hope to see someone of authority there to ask for directions.

  Alas, I could see no minister but, instead, beyond the church my eyes seized upon the most dreadful sight: one of the plague pits that Mr Newbery had spoken of, a cavernous black hole in the ground, lit by the flares and torches of those standing nearby. There were some men inside the pit itself, walking about (perhaps on bodies, I thought), and some more men beside a plague cart which had just pulled up.

  This cart was pulled by drayhorses and contained a stack of dead bodies, perhaps thirty or forty of them. I could not help but watch as it tipped up and the pile of bodies tumbled into the pit, a jumbled heap of limbs, hair and rags.

  ‘Here’s another load of faggots!’ I heard a man call, and there was a roar of laughter.

  ‘Pile ’em in and pile ’em up!’ another shouted.

  As I watched, the men already in the pit moved across and poked and hooked the corpses so they laid at an even level, and others shook out lime from great sacks and strewed it over them. I did not hear one murmured prayer or exclamation of sorrow, and indeed all was conducted with a callous and cruel indifference to the poor corpses which were now spread out before them all.

  As another plague cart arrived I turned away, sickened to my very heart, and by sheer good fortune managed to find the right path home. The horror of that evening was not yet over, though, because on the way back I encountered the dead body of a young man propped in a doorway. He held a Bible in his hands and his eyes were wide open and staring. The sight of him gave me the most dreadful fright.

  I arrived home before the plague victims walked out, however, and after thoroughly washing myself (for I felt clammy and dirty from all I had seen) Sarah and I waited for these poor creatures to appear, watching with a morbid curiosity from behind our shutters. The streets were completely deserted now and it was as silent as a morgue outside, apart from the far-off tolling of a bell, when some tapping and shuffling noises were heard along the cobblestones.

  We were expecting to see fearsome monsters, but when the sufferers came into view they were not monsters at all, just a straggling line of pitiful creatures: old and young, stooped and upright, ugly and fair, some recovering from the sickness and walking with an almost confident stride, some bent almost double and held up with sticks, and one or two pushed in a cart by others. The one thing they had in common was that they were all plague sufferers – and wore stained and tattered bandages as their mark of distinction.

  ‘And these are just the ones who are well enough to come out,’ Sarah breathed as we watched the pathetic procession pass our shop.

  Perhaps forty passed in ones and twos, some carrying flares before them, and then a party from a pesthouse
came along together: ten or twelve led by a surly-looking nurse, all carrying white staves in front of them. I imagined them returning to the pesthouse and telling the inmates who had not been well enough to walk of the things they’d seen, of a strange London, shut up and unearthly quiet, seemingly populated by none but plague victims.

  I went to sleep that night worried because I had not been able to speak to Abby, and Sarah said I should go first thing the following morning.

  In the morning Mr Newbery was standing outside his shop telling early passers-by that four and a half thousand had died of plague that week, and making much of a tale he’d heard of one of the plague walkers of the previous night who’d dropped down dead just outside St Saviour’s.

  ‘He was a frowsy-headed old man, rich with lice,’ he said, ‘and when he dropped to the ground, those coming after threw him over the wall into the churchyard. They just picked him up and chucked him over like a bundle of sticks!’

  I made noises of surprise and disgust.

  ‘Well, it saved the cart coming!’ Mr Newbery said. He scratched his fat belly. ‘But where are you heading so early on this hot morning?’ he asked, and I told him the truth: that I was going to see my friend Abby, who’d recently been enclosed.

  He stepped back from me and crossed himself, looking at me in alarm. ‘Those enclosed are fuel for the carts,’ he said. ‘She’ll not make old bones!’

  I was about to make a witty return, for I’d found that this was the only way to deal with Mr Newbery, but to my horror I found my eyes filling with tears. I turned away, saying nothing.

  I found London very different that day, perhaps because something had happened which touched me personally. The sun still shone but it seemed to have drained the colour from the City, for the house signs no longer glittered and the people (what few there were abroad, and none in the bright colours that denoted them to be of quality) were slow and dull of spirit, going about their business with their eyes cast down and none of their usual laughter or banter. The houses were desolate, too. Amid those that had crosses on their doors were many which had been deserted by their owners. They stood empty and lifeless, having been cleared of anything of value and boarded up. I missed the animals, too: the pink grunting pigs, the fighting dogs and the cats which had silently slipped in and out of the shadows. Their robust farmyard smell had disappeared and been replaced by an unwholesome and putrid stink which those such as Doctor da Silva called a miasma: a sickening, invisible fog emanating from the graveyards which were now choked with rotting bodies.