by Sarah Burton
As I had followed Evelyn to her piteous grave I had been blind to anything else, but now I walked back alone in the dark, with nothing but my thoughts for company, I saw the city as it really was, as it really had become, and it seemed to me as a vision of Purgatory. Scenes of horror and desperation met me at every turn. Here a poor soul stood banging his head against a wall, slowly, deliberately, and blood ran down. Here a tiny figure wrapped in a sheet had been laid by the road, awaiting collection. Here someone lay moaning, vomiting, dying, his exposed arms showing the tokens of the plague. Here was a heap of dead cats and dogs, with newborn kittens sucking at their dead mother’s teats and blindly mewling in frustration. Everywhere there was the stench of death and all was horribly illuminated by the fires that burned, now by order, day and night, tinting all in hellish colours.
I perpetually ran into poor souls, some hale, some sick, all desperate and all recoiling from me with the same fear and revulsion I felt towards them. I held my posy fast to my lips and nose, to admit no filthy miasma, but nothing could disguise the general stench of decay and disease. I passed whole streets where every house, it seemed, was shut up, and heard the moans and shrieks of the dying intermingled with the sobs and prayers of the living, entombed together in an awful muffled cacophony of despair.
This, I reflected, was all done for the greater good. How cruel the greater good now seemed. There seemed to me now no greater good than my own survival. I vowed that on my return home only that which was for my own good would be my guide. That night I had realised the plague did far worse things than kill people. Those it did not kill it made merciless, cruel as dogs to one another. We were all its victims.
Arriving at home, I realised how tired I was and thought I would go straight to bed and pack in the morning. I went to the kitchen door and found it locked and no light burned within. I went to the front of the house and knocked at the great door. No one stirred. I threw a stone up to an upper window, where I saw a light, but to no effect. I called Sylvia, and Roger, and then both again, but there was still no sign of life. Then I heard an upper casement open. Sylvia put out her head. Her face glowed red from the flames below.
“There’s no point trying to get in,” she said. “The doors are all locked.”
It took a moment for this to sink in to my reason.
“Let me in!” I cried.
“Save your breath,” said Sylvia. “There’s nothing for you here.”
“How can you do this?” I cried. “Where am I to go?”
“You are a fool, child,” sneered Sylvia. “Surely you did not think we would admit you when you have been with your sister? You are dead already, don’t you see?”
“I have been careful! I can burn all this! I have been very careful!”
“Go away,” said Sylvia, “before you attract the watch, you little idiot.”
“At least throw down my things!” I implored, tears now coursing down my face. I heard a voice within – Roger’s – but not what he said.
Sylvia turned and said, into the chamber, “I’m not touching her plaguey things. Are you mad?” Then she turned back to me. “Go away and don’t come back. We will not own you if you say you are of this house. Now, go, before the watch comes.” She leant out further and looked up the street. A burial party was advancing. “Go! Or I will say you run mad with the sickness and have you conveyed to the pest house!” She slammed the window shut.
I did not know what to do. Never mind my belongings, which were few, but my certificate, my passport to safety, was in the house. I thought of breaking in to get it and to liberate poor Puss, who was shut up in my room. I crept round to the kitchen and tried the window. I could not move it. I went back round the front. If I waited until the street was empty I could perhaps gain entry through the shop. I saw a party of searchers approaching with a constable, and concealed myself in a passage opposite the house and waited for them to pass.
But they did not pass. They stopped at the house and knocked at the door. Sylvia threw the window open again and shouted, “For the last time, go away! I shall not tell you again!”
“Open this door!” cried the constable.
Finally the door opened and the constable exchanged words with Roger which I could not hear, and then the searchers forced Roger back into the house and followed him in, leaving one man on the door. Within, it seemed, only moments, the men were out again and swarmed around the house with their tools, nailing down the casements, while the constable read something out to Roger, Sylvia all the while screaming at him. Another man took a brush from a pail and began deftly painting on the door, ‘May God Have Mercy… ’ The men worked swiftly and it was only when they were gone, leaving watchmen both at the front and the back of the house, that I fully took in what had happened.
The only explanation I could think of was that Cook had given our address on arrival at the pest house. But the fact which struck me most forcibly and strangely was that Roger and Sylvia, by their selfishness and cruelty, had probably saved my life.
PART TWO
‘DOLL’
21
Although I lost track of time during the weeks that followed I have since calculated that I lived for above two months on the streets of London, but nothing transcended the misery and terror of that first night, when I did not sleep, but wandered aimlessly, not knowing what I sought.
When dawn broke it revealed a ghost town; streets that had teemed with traffic were not merely deserted but had grass and weeds beginning to grow in them. In mockery of the city’s desperate doomed state, buttercups and daisies bloomed in Fleet Street. Drawn to the river, I found that too unnaturally quiet, though thousands of people, it had been said, were living in boats on stretches of the river, to try to quarantine themselves. The smaller boats of the watermen bobbed at the quayside, with no one to row them and no one to be rowed across. It was as if everyone in the whole world had departed, leaving me alone in it, and I thought this must be what Hell is like. Not hot and full of pain and confusion, but cool and grey and empty, where you are shut out of everywhere, yet cannot leave.
Gradually life began to stir, though specimens of humanity were few and far between, and many of them seemed like myself, to have nowhere to go and nothing to do. I saw a girl climb out of the window of a house with something – food, I guessed – in her apron. While it was obvious she was stealing she did not look about her, but seemed to just go about it in a businesslike way. I soon learnt to do the same.
I do not choose to dwell on this period of my life, as I broke into empty houses, slept in other people’s beds and ate other people’s food. I took clothes, money and anything else I wanted. I learnt to hide from the watch and to bargain with desperate people, and get the better of them. I learnt to exploit any advantage I had, whether it was a basket of apples or a bundle of firewood. I hardened my heart against the suffering of others and thought only of myself and how to survive another day. And each day I became more aware of that other me, the life that grew within me, my child that was to be, and this strengthened my resolve to live, whatever the cost.
The news – on the rare occasion when one could hear a crier – continued very bad. Whitechapel and Stepney fell to King Plague. Fires were ordered now at every sixth door to burn for three days and three nights to drive away noxious fumes. The hours of darkness were no longer sufficient to shroud in decency the burial of the dead, and now the plague carts rolled through the streets by both day and night and funeral bells tolled with barely any interval. The few clergy who remained stood in the streets admonishing us all to weep, fast and pray, as if not enough of all this were going on already, without the advice of the church.
At some point the weather suddenly turned cold and at about the same time the tide of plague seemed to begin to turn. The weekly Bills of Mortality began to show a marked drop in the number of deaths. Quarantine measures were abandoned, though I think this was more to do with the impossibility of enforcing them once the population had dropped below a
certain level, and, though nothing like normal life resumed, people began to come out of their houses and an improvised kind of business began.
You would think that when a general return to the city commenced in October those of us remaining in London would have cause for celebration. But there were no bells and bonfires. Clergymen and doctors who had been among the first to leave were coldly received by those who had been left behind and I saw one priest jeered and pelted with rotten fruit as he reopened his church and another was actually spat on. Wealthy families who had fled and left their servants to shift for themselves expected everything to return to the way it had been, but these relationships were never to be quite the same. When the court returned, none lined the streets to welcome the King home. If it had been hoped that this collective near view of death had bound Londoners together, it proved to be far from so. The plague had widened, rather than contracted, the divisions between rich and poor. When the cards were on the table, the ordinary people knew, the rich would always save themselves first. Everyone in the city had been cast in the role either of abuser or abused in that terrible plague summer and it was to be a long time before Londoners felt at ease with each other again.
From my own point of view, and that of the many like me, the general return was a disaster. The number of empty properties, which had supported us, contracted, and the long-neglected law began to be rigorously enforced. I eventually found all my adopted homes were reoccupied, and I was soon as destitute and bereft as on the first night I was turned out of my aunt’s house.
I had given little thought to what I should do after the plague, in part because I had been entirely concerned with merely surviving, and in part because, until the tide eventually turned, there had sometimes appeared to be no hope of an end to the plague, and it seemed quite possible that it would eventually kill us all. But now that a kind of normality was being established, I had to think of a legitimate means to support myself.
I had not been back to Cheapside but once, a few days after my exile, when, during my period of aimless wandering, I had found myself in the street my aunt’s house was in. Afraid to be recognised as a member of the household, I did not stop, but walked past on the opposite side of the street, and merely looked up, to be transfixed by a still, white face at the window. Sylvia saw me, and stared at me, and I stared back at her, and she half-raised a hand but I turned and went on my way. Her face continued to haunt my dreams for a long time afterwards, and the hand went on to form many shapes – sometimes a weak wave, sometimes a gesture that implored pity, and sometimes, most horribly, she beckoned to me, smiling – but, as I had forced myself to become used to doing, by day I hardened my heart and thought on other matters.
I found a room with a hearth above a tavern and though I was willing to work in the shop, the landlord preferred the rent in coin, so I now had a roof over my head, but I could not keep it without employment, as I only had money for two weeks’ rent and that was without eating. I calculated which clothes (all of which I had of course stolen) I could absolutely not do without given winter was well on its way and sold the excess. That bought me food in the short term, but I needed to buy more time.
I invested in a bunch of rosemary sprigs and got a pot of beer from the tavern and set about washing and shining my hair. I had heard that long fine hair, which mine was, could fetch up to three pounds an ounce, so when my hair was dry and combed I went to a wig-maker who had reopened his shop nearby. He said times were hard (which of course I knew) and although he said my hair was of a good quality, it was not fair so was cheaper and in short he would give me one pound for the lot. I had no option, and emerged from his shop feeling cold and strange, but I had argued him up to a guinea so that was something.
22
I had already discovered that no one wanted to employ a pregnant girl with no letters of introduction and no one to vouch for her, and my condition was quite obvious by this time, so all I had done was purchase more time in which to consider my plight. I knew that once I had sold my clothes and my hair there was nothing left but my body itself. I had seen prostitutes beginning to return to their trade and observed how they attracted customers.
There was a code of sorts, both in their dress and their behaviour, so that they could immediately be known for what they were. They were heavily painted and often wore masks which were then the fashion, and wore much finer and brighter clothes than the majority of working women, though their gaudy apparel often had a bedraggled look. They stood about in certain known places, such as Long Acre and ’Change Alley, and whereas respectable women were always on their way somewhere, or engaged in some business, these indicated their profession by their entire want of employment. Again, unlike modest women, they did not avoid men’s gaze but rather sought it, fixing likely customers with a bold stare which seemed to say ‘I am at your service.’
In places which were known for the trade they openly approached men, and even called out from their windows and doorways, exposing their legs or breasts, as a shrewd merchant keeps his best goods on the counter. I entertained strong doubts about my fitness to play this part and the women’s confidence was most intimidating. I also, of course, shuddered at letting a man do to me what Roger had done, and the thought of it brought back those memories which I had so successfully hidden from myself. For the last time I desperately ran over other possibilities, each time drawing only blanks.
I could go back to my aunt’s house at Cheapside. She would have returned from the country, and Sylvia and Roger would either be alive or dead, but that did not matter. What would her reaction be to her niece, unmarried and now showing she was with child? Kind as my aunt was, she was too chary of her reputation to have ado with anything of that sort under her own roof, and she could not be blamed for that, for it was the way of the world. And she would want to know how it came about and I could not tell her what Roger had done, as, alive or dead, he was her son, and it would break her heart, and I loved her too much to give her a pain that time would probably never heal. It was better that she thought that Evelyn and I were both dead.
I considered the rest of my family. Frances, who had gone to be a soldier, could be anywhere, or nowhere, killed by now. Evelyn had kept up a dutiful if desultory correspondence with our other sisters, Clarissa and Diana, before the plague disrupted communications, but they had always disliked me and I knew they would think me in some sense culpable, as girls, like the poor, brought ruin on themselves. And I knew how they would deal with me and my child, for I knew how they had exiled Grace and allowed her child to be taken away. This was to me unthinkable, as my child was all I had, my only reason for going on, and I had resolved that, should we both live, we should never be parted. And that only left poor fallen Grace herself: I knew not what had become of her, nor whether she was alive or dead.
I had thought that however poor I might be, I would never sell myself. But as I considered my small stock of money, I knew that if I were to survive, I must eat. By hook or by crook I must get that shining dirt, gold. I considered thieving, which I had been able to justify to myself during the dog-eat-dog plague months, but now that things were getting back to normality it seemed wrong, and though prostitution was wrong, it was not theft. I would be paid for a service rendered; it was not getting something for nothing, but a business. Going over all this for the tenth time in my mind one morning I quickly threw on my cloak, snatched up my purse, and went out to spend the last of my coin purchasing items necessary to my chosen profession, before my resolve faltered yet again.
I returned home that afternoon with the paint and clothes I needed. In those days looking glasses, in especial the small portable kind, were most hard to come by and expensive and I confess this was the one item I had stolen from a house that I could not pretend was a necessity. I was not sure at the time why I had taken it, but perhaps fate had a hand as it now proved most needful. I put on my new habiliments: a deep scarlet gown with a front lower than I had ever worn before and a little green jacket
with a peplum and a cap to match (to cover my absence of hair). Then I set to work with my paints. First I laid on a white cream (though most people’s skin was unnaturally pale that winter, as people had feared to go abroad in the streets during the summer), then blackened my eyes, rubbed on Spanish paper to redden my cheeks and applied cochineal to my lips. I finished all with a black silk patch in the shape of a diamond and regarded the full effect. It was most successful: I looked a perfect whore.
I doubted that anyone who had known me would know me now in this guise, but I put on the mask also, and with the upper part of my face covered I felt braver, and began to think I could do this, if I became another person while I was doing it. It had struck me that I looked like a little painted doll, and so chose this for my name. I would be Doll the whore and H the person. Doll was a mask that would keep H safe.
I put on my cloak, which I had trimmed with an abundance of red ribbon, and tarried on the landing until I could hear no one on the stair and then slipped down and out of the side door (for The Rising Sun was on a corner) and then, while I considered where to go, walked round to the front of the shop. I had only seen my face in the little mirror, but now caught sight of my whole being in the window of the tavern. As I marvelled at the transformation, the landlord suddenly appeared.
“Can I help you Miss?” he asked, in a voice that suggested I should clear out if I had no business there.
“I doubt it,” said Doll, who, I discovered, talked like a lifelong Londoner, and I walked away with what I considered to be a dignified air.
