by Sarah Burton
I needed to go home with a plan, which we could immediately put into action, not go through all these tribulations of thought again with Evelyn, as I dreaded her offering to send me and stay herself, which I could not bear to think of. The certificates, which had at first represented liberty, now weighed me down and made me tired. To my astonishment I heard a clock strike four. I had been walking for hours, had had nothing to eat, and was exhausted both in mind and body. I stepped into a churchyard and sat down on a tombstone, meaning to rest for only a few moments, but awoke to the clock striking six.
I started to hurry towards Cheapside and had made at least part of a plan. As soon as I got home I would fill in the children’s and Evelyn’s name on three of the certificates, then no matter what Evelyn said I could be certain that she could not give up her place. I would worry about the fourth name later. Sometimes, I reasoned, one should act on half a solution, rather than wait for a whole solution and in waiting fail to act at all. My heart feeling a little lighter, I arrived home in about an hour and a half, and quietly let myself in through the kitchen so as to expedite my plan uninterrupted. Cook and the children were nowhere to be seen so I went upstairs to get pen and ink from the library. I got as far as completing the children’s names when I heard footfalls on the stair, placed a piece of blotting paper over the certificates and went out to investigate.
The moment I saw Evelyn I knew something was terribly amiss. She was white as a sheet and her eyes were like saucers.
“Where have you been?” she asked, in a strange voice which frightened me.
“To Mr Fluke’s. I have the certificates. We can get the children out, Evelyn.” I moved towards her but she put out her hand quickly. I panicked. “Are you ill Evelyn? Please don’t say you are ill?”
“No. I am perfectly well… but the children… ” she looked like to cry, but stopped herself. “After you had gone, Cook went to get the children up, and Joe had a fever. She couldn’t get a doctor, of course, so she sent Sal into her own room, so she should not catch it if it were the plague. She tried to make Joe comfortable, then when she went to see Sal, she had been taken ill too. Then she came to find me, as she didn’t know what to do for the best. I gave the Potters some money and sent them away, but when Sylvia missed them she demanded to know the matter. And then… ” and now Evelyn did break down, “she was all for having the children forcibly conveyed to the pest house by the authorities… but Roger said they would demand to know the address and the house would be shut up… and they plotted and planned and in the end ordered Cook to take them there, but made her swear to say she found them in the street, and knew not where they came from, and Cook… ” She could not talk for a few moments for sobbing but would not let me touch or comfort her in any kind. “And Cook said she would not take them, and told Roger he could go to Hell before she would, and then Roger beat Cook and threw her into the street and screamed at the children to get out (for he would not touch them) and poked them out of their beds with a broom and frighted them so that they did run out to Cook, just in their shifts, and Roger shouted after Cook that if she said where they came from he would kill her. And Cook said ‘May God have mercy on your soul, for this deed has damned you.’ And then she told me to take you to Aunt Madge for we were not safe here. And then she took the children away.” And here Evelyn sank to her knees and sobbed fit to break her heart.
I was stunned and could not believe all this had happened in the time I had been out. I knew the pest house was no hospital, and offered those brought thither little more than a makeshift filthy cot in which to die. Sal, Joe and probably Cook too had received a sentence of death and there was no remedy. When I came to my senses I went to comfort Evelyn but again she put her hand out and said she had nursed the children and she would stay in Sarah’s room until we knew she was not infected.
Some moments of feeling are written in your heart for ever, and this unutterably painful scene, where my sister and I stood some distance apart, both brimming over with the deepest misery, yet unable to comfort each other, has never been erased in mine.
Evelyn was very tired and went up to bed, and though I was tired too I knew I could not sleep, and though I felt sick to the stomach knew I must eat, so I fetched Puss and went down to the kitchen, going quietly past the dining room where I heard Roger and Sylvia talking. As I waited in the yard for Puss to do his business, I wondered at how, only a few hours before, I had seriously thought of giving one of them, who I now considered as good as murderers, my chance of escaping the city.
The last thing I thought about before I went to sleep was that I had wasted two of the precious certificates. For all my fine reasoning half a solution had been worse than no solution, as now the children could not use them and neither could anyone else, and I resolved never to be tempted by half a solution again, and to think twice before doing things that could not be undone.
Still, there were two left, and that was all Evelyn and I needed.
19
As soon as I awoke next day, I went to Sarah’s room to make plans with Evelyn. I was resolved we would not spend one more night in London. My heart skipped a beat as I saw Joe had left his little slate on the landing and with the sight of that familiar but now redundant object the horrors of the day before came flooding back with great force. But when I bent down to pick it up I saw on it, not his usual sketch of Puss, but writing in what I immediately recognised to be Evelyn’s hand.
Don’t touch
Keep out
Don’t tell S & R
DO AS I SAY
In writing now, all these years later, I run short of words to describe my sensation on this latest and worst horror, and do not wish to overload the reader with so much feeling that it becomes devalued by repetition. Suffice it to say that Evelyn was not just my sister, but my parent, my friend, my conscience and my guide and life without her in it seemed an impossible thing.
I clung to her last injunction, DO AS I SAY, and tore myself away from the door and went to lie on my bed until I had stopped trembling. Then I got up, washed, dressed and took Puss downstairs. It promised to be another hot day, and even as I opened the kitchen door for Puss this early in the morning the curdling smell of death and decay filtered in, as when you pass by a horse a few days dead. I got some victuals for Evelyn, and a jug of water, and as I went up, stopped in the library to find her a book and to put the certificates in a drawer.
When I got to Evelyn’s room, Puss was already scratching at the door. I told him to stop, but he would not. I picked him up and put down the food. I knocked on the door. “Evelyn!” I called, hoping it was loud enough for her to hear but not sufficiently loud to disturb Roger and Sylvia. “I have left food. Please eat it. And get better.” And then I turned to take myself away before my distress added to Evelyn’s. And only then I saw a new message on the slate. It said simply:
Leave London now
Your loving sister
And again,
DO AS I SAY
I had already decided I would not do this. Evelyn would either get better or die. If she got better, we would leave together; if she died, only then would I go. But I could not move until I had seen which way the tide of fortune would turn, despite Evelyn’s instructions. However, I could obey Evelyn in a manner by taking every precaution not to catch the disease. I would run no more risks.
As I went down the stairs I heard Sylvia calling my sister. I found her in the dining room pacing up and down. Roger was sitting at the table nursing his head.
“You’ll do, H. There’s no breakfast.” She said this in a way that assumed I should do something about it.
“That will be because there is no Cook, I expect,” I said.
Sylvia looked at me.
“None of your pertness, Miss. Roger did the right thing. It was for all our own good. Or would you rather be shut up with the little brats and die like a rat in a bottle? You can always leave, H. Try your luck on the streets.”
“And then who will
get your breakfast?” I asked. At this Roger looked up.
As I went down to the kitchen I realised what a relief it was to not have to be pleasant to Sylvia anymore. I also knew I was in no danger of being turned out of the house while they needed my services, and so in a manner I had the upper hand. Two long days passed, during which I slipped provisions up to Evelyn (although she now only took water and did not touch the food), listened for her increasingly laboured breathing, and covered her absence to Sylvia by various excuses. However, it was drink that undid us.
When Roger was drunk he became violent or amorous, and it was impossible to say which was worse. On the third night after Cook and the children had been turned out I heard him and Sylvia arguing in Roger’s room. He staggered out on to the landing, raving like a madman, saying he could get it elsewhere and she would see. To my horror I heard him coming up the stairs and quickly locked my door and pushed a chest against it. He had not troubled me since the violation, and had instead menaced the maids to the point that they went about the house only in pairs. But now there were no maids. Perhaps in his drunken stupor he had forgot this, as he did not stop at my door but went on to Sarah’s.
As soon as I realised this I pulled back the chest and flung open the door, ran out and shouted “No!” just too late to prevent him from going in. He stood absolutely still, and past him I saw what used to be Evelyn, almost naked on the bed, her body covered with great black bruises, her neck horribly swollen, her closed eyes sunken in their sockets and her breathing laboured and rasping through dry blackened lips.
Roger staggered backwards.
“Dear God,” he said, and seemed to sober up immediately.
When he went downstairs and told Sylvia, all hell broke loose. Sylvia started screaming hysterically, then began to run up the stairs, then ran down again and did this several times before Roger slapped her and she ran into their room and threw herself on the bed howling. While they were thus incapacitated with shock, I had the presence of mind to run down to the hall and get Roger’s sword, for I was fully prepared to do anything to prevent any attempt to get Evelyn out of the house.
When Roger came up the stairs again I said, “Don’t come any further.”
If he had looked alarmed before, he now looked terrified.
“I think she has gone mad,” he said softly to Sylvia, who was on the landing below.
“Just get her out,” Sylvia whined.
“She’s got my sword,” he whispered.
“Not mad, Roger,” I said. “Not so mad as to allow my dying sister to be thrown into the street.”
“Yes,” Roger said finally. “I see that.” He seemed to think a minute, “How long… how long do you think she’s got?”
“Go away now, Roger,” I said.
Evelyn died that night.
20
I went down and told Roger and Sylvia as they were having what passed for breakfast. Sylvia was very pale and Roger was sober and seemed prepared to be reasonable.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He gestured to me to sit down but I remained where I was. “The thing is, H, we don’t want to be shut up, do we? So we can’t let the searchers take her. We mustn’t let anyone know there has been plague in the house. Must we?”
“I suppose not,” I said. In truth I did not care if the house were shut up with them in it as I intended to leave as soon as I had seen Evelyn decently buried. However I, too, could not risk the authorities finding out before I had had the opportunity to take flight. I knew I would have to collaborate with Roger a little longer.
“We must leave her body outside—” began Roger.
“Not outside our house!” said Sylvia.
“– not outside anyone’s house; but somewhere it will be quickly found by the burial-carts,” he continued. “I will help you,” he said.
“No you will not!” said Sylvia.
“Yes he will,” I said.
I had already planned, in the long hours I stood vigil outside her door, how to prepare Evelyn for burial. I had seen how the plague-nurses wore gloves and long cloaks with hoods and muffled their faces, so that only their eyes were exposed to the air. It was easy to recognise them by the coloured staffs they, and everyone who had ado with the poor plague patients, were obliged to carry in the streets. I would adopt this dress in order to wrap Evelyn in a shroud, and burn it all afterwards, but had not thought further and now wondered how to carry her through the streets unobserved. I had seen bodies carried in all manner of contraptions and even in slings like hammocks on poles which two men carried on their shoulders and figured we could carry Evelyn in Ned’s wheelbarrow without attracting undue attention as to the mode of transport, but we had no nurse or searcher whose presence would allow us to pass unhindered. And then thinking of the plague-nurses I reasoned that, could I make a coloured staff, I could walk before the barrow in my nurse’s garb until we reached a church in a quiet spot, for if I were to leave my sister exposed in the street I was resolved at least to leave her by a holy place.
I told Roger my plan, which he accepted without question, and told him to equip himself with gloves and so on. I followed him into his room, where Sylvia was fiddling with her hair at the looking glass, and went into a great chest at the foot of the bed to fetch a sheet to make a shroud for my dear sister.
“Not one of the best ones!” Sylvia snapped, snatching the one I had chosen out of my hand.
“For God’s sake, woman,” Roger muttered, “have you no shame?”
“And while you’re here,” said Sylvia, who had no shame, “the piss pot wants emptying.”
You may have wondered at my calmness or carelessness since Evelyn died, and divined an apparent want of feeling, but I now believe I was in a shocked state, and in this state, I took up the piss pot, which was almost overflowing, and went carefully across the room so as not to spill it, and tipped the entire contents over Sylvia’s head.
“There,” I said. “It is emptied.”
Roger, I think, was in a manner unhinged for he looked at me and then at Sylvia and then laughed like a maniac, clutching his stomach as if he were fit to burst, and pointing at his wife, incapacitated by mirth. I picked up my chosen sheet and went out, to prepare my sweet sister for the grave.
That night, dressed in our protective clothing, Roger and I carried my poor sister’s shrouded body down to the kitchen door, where we laid her in the barrow. I knew Evelyn was gone from the vessel we carried, but I still felt most tenderly about her remains, and wished heartily to touch or kiss her hand, and bid her body even farewell. But this was folly.
I took up my stick, which I had coloured by binding strips of a red apron about it and peered from the alley until I saw the street was empty. Then I struck out with the confidence I had seen in the plague-nurses, and Roger followed, pushing the barrow. I think if we had met with Aunt Madge that night, she would not have recognised us, so convincingly disguised and demeanoured were we. We walked past three churches ere we found one in a deserted street, and Roger was all for tipping up the barrow, but I stopped him and made him help me lift Evelyn’s body out carefully and lay her gently on the ground by the church door. Then Roger said, “No time for weeping, coz. Let’s be away.” But I told him to go on and that I would come home later. I planned to wait in the shadows and follow Evelyn’s body to wherever it was taken, and see her into the ground. Only then, I knew, would I be able to leave London and everything else behind.
I did not have to wait long before a cart came along and picked up Evelyn’s body. They were businesslike but not as rough as I had prepared myself for them to be. They picked her up carefully enough, but then had to throw and let go of her to get her on top of the cart which was already quite full of poor souls. I did not mind this as much as I might, as in the moment they let go she seemed to fly upwards, and I imagined her soul flying up and up and away from all this life’s misery. And as I looked into the night sky, which was clear and full of stars, I saw, or thought I saw, a shooting star.
Now that the scavengers had decided the cart was full, it was no mean feat to keep up with it, and also to remain out of sight, for it was forbidden to follow the carts. I knew, from the route we took, that we were headed for no churchyard, and I had heard they were a long time already overstuffed; it was to the common pits we were going.
I was amazed at the degree of activity at the pits, the number of carts that came in and out, yet all was calm industry, and no confusion. I saw the bodies on my cart unloaded, and by this time lost sight of Evelyn, so in my heart blessed each sad package of humanity – and some were heart-breakingly small packages – as it was tossed into the pit. And the scale of the loss was made the more poignant, as there seemed above fifty bodies buried with Evelyn, and the pit was yet only half full, and there must have been ten more pits dug ready to receive more, and many more filled besides. A priest said a few words, but it was perfunctory and I was sorry for that, but then he went to another pit and repeated the same, and then another, and then another, and I could not blame him, for he had to bless them all. Then lime was thrown in on top of the bodies, and then more carts came, but I did not stay to see more packages cast into the pit on top of Evelyn and her fellows. I cast aside my plague stick and began my journey home.
I walked home so full of grief I could not even weep. Yet already the urge to self-preservation, I suppose, had me making plans. I had resolved to burn her clothes and the sheets and clean the room with vinegar, but now realised there was no time, and no need for this. While I pointlessly pictured in my mind where the vinegar was stored in the cellar I also thought of what I would pack to take with me. Ideas crowded into my mind, of practical tasks and of dreams of flight. For once I entertained no debates about the right thing to be done: I could leave Roger and Sylvia without a backward glance. They had abandoned my sister and I could now with a clean conscience abandon them.
