At the Sign of the Sugared Plum

by Mary Hooper

  ‘Shut up?’ I asked. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘One of the people inside it – a woman – has the plague, and they’ve locked her up with her husband and children so it can’t be spread abroad.’

  ‘So there – it’s all contained!’ I said. ‘And it’s just one house, Sarah – we don’t need to worry about that, do we? Doesn’t a place like London have all the best doctors and apothecaries? I bet we’re safer here than anywhere.’

  ‘I don’t know—’

  ‘But I’m here now, Sarah. Don’t send me back!’ I pleaded, realising now that it must have been the plague that Farmer Price had alluded to in his strange expression. ‘Oh, do let me stay!’ I burst out. ‘I can’t bear it if I’ve got to go home.’

  She sighed. ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘I’ll do everything you say,’ I went on anxiously. ‘I won’t go anywhere I’m not supposed to. I’ll be such a help to you, really I will—’

  While I’d been pleading with her Sarah had been slowly looking me over from top to toe. Now, she shook her head. ‘You look such a goose, Hannah! What a dog’s dinner of clothes you’re wearing – and why ever have you tied your cap so tightly about your head? Everyone leaves their ribbons dangling now, and that terrible old skirt – where did you get it?’

  ‘The vicar’s daughter,’ I said, noting that Sarah’s dress was of a pretty light blue with white collar and cuffs, and her cap was untied, its ribbons hanging loose. I frowned. ‘Do I look so unfashionable, then?’

  ‘As green as a country sprout!’ said Sarah. She gave a sudden smile. ‘But come and give me a hug and we’ll close the shop early and go out and buy a venison pasty to celebrate your coming.’

  ‘I can stay?’ I asked joyfully.

  She nodded. ‘You can for the moment. But if the plague comes closer—’

  ‘Oh, it won’t!’ I said. ‘Everything is going to be perfectly fine.’

  For so it really seemed.

  Chapter Two

  The second week of June

  ‘Great fears of the Sickenesse here in the city, it being said that two or three houses are already shut up. God preserve us all.’

  Sarah leaned over my shoulder to touch the sugar I’d been pounding for the sweetmeats we were preparing that day. She rubbed some grains of it between finger and thumb and shook her head. ‘It must be finer than that,’ she said. ‘Like soft powder. When you’ve finished you should be able to sift it so that it falls like snow.’

  I carried on pounding sugar in the pestle and mortar, keeping my sighs to myself. When, the day before, I’d complained about the amount of time and hard work it took to chip chunks off the sugar loaf and pound them, Sarah had retorted that if I didn’t wish to work so hard I could take myself home again and return to my usual jobs of wiping the noses of our little brothers and minding the sheep on the common. So I wasn’t going to say another word.

  Sarah’s shop sold all manner of comfits, candied flowers, and sugared plums, nuts and fruit. The shop had belonged to our Aunt Martha – mother’s widowed sister – who’d gone to start a new life in Norwich with a farmer she’d met when he’d walked his five hundred turkeys from Norfolk to the livestock market in London. Mother and I had often talked about this, wondering who was the more footsore after their journey – the poor farmer or the weary turkeys – and if they’d driven him distracted on the way down by trotting off in all directions like wanton puppies.

  Sarah was four years older than me. Anne and I were closer in age – there were only two years between us – and at home Sarah had been the grownup sensible one who’d helped mother. She’d always been closest to Aunt Martha, who at one time had owned a little bakery shop in Chertsey, where Sarah had helped from the time she was ten. Sarah had a knack for making things. Mother said she made the tastiest gingerbread and crispest biscuits this side of heaven. She was good with figure work, too, and used to help Father with his accounts, even when it meant missing a dance on the village green or a visit to the travelling fair. When Anne and I used to tease her about not having a beau, she’d laugh and say getting married wasn’t the only thing in the world and, anyway, she wasn’t going to marry the first booby farmer who came along.

  There were two rooms to the shop: the front one where the sweetmeats were prepared and sold, and the back one which was Sarah’s living quarters, and now mine as well. There were two more rooms above us. Sarah told me that a family had lived there until recently, but now it was just used as storage space by a local rope-maker. Our own living space held a small table and chairs, a chest of drawers for our possessions and an iron bed which Sarah and I shared. I’d asked Sarah to let me sleep nearest to the window, for from here I could sniff the fragrant rosemary bush just outside, which reminded me of the one by the back door of our cottage in Chertsey. I hadn’t asked for this because I was homesick, it was just that London smelt so bad and was so smoky, grimy and grey even when the sun was shining, that sometimes I could not help but think of our pretty cottage with its straw-thatched roof and its door wreathed with roses and sweet honeysuckle. Alongside us was the old barn where Father made staves and spokes for his wheelwright’s business, and in the garden were a great many neat rows of vegetables – so many that there was always spare to take to market – and our apple orchard which fair burst with fruit each October. Further off still was the village green with its cattle grazing peacefully around the pond, and the manor house, tavern and church. Chertsey was a whole world in miniature, Mother used to say, and she saw no reason why any of us should want to go running off to London.

  That day Sarah and I were making candied rose petals, so that morning we’d risen at four o’clock to go to market. I was already quite awake by then, for I’d heard the first cheery call of the watchman – ‘God give you good morrow, my masters! Nigh four o’clock and a fair morning!’ – and needed little encouragement to rise.

  We had gone to the flower market at Cheapside to buy pink and red roses and Sarah had bought six perfect blooms of each, first examining them carefully for signs of age, or bruising, or greenfly. ‘Note carefully what I’m looking for, Hannah, for soon I’ll be sending you to market on your own,’ she’d said.

  I’d watched her closely, of course, but my eyes had also been on the giggling maids buying armfuls of flowers: delphiniums, lupins, crimson roses and alabaster lilies to decorate the great houses. I looked for Abigail again, too, but with no luck. I watched the maids to see what they were wearing and how they behaved, envying them their confident manner and the way they traded glances and banter with the apprentice lads. I noticed one or two boys looking my way but I kept my head down, for I wanted to get rid of my freckles before I spoke to anyone. I was wearing my so-called best dress which was of plain brown linen and quite drab and hateful, but I’d undone the ribbons on my cap so that they hung loosely about my face, thinking that at least one part of me must be in fashion. Sarah had promised that as soon as we had time to spare she’d take me to the clothes market in Houndsditch, so I could have a new outfit. It would be less than a year old, she told me, for apparently as soon as any new mode from France reached our shores the great ladies – who would sooner be dead than out of fashion – would rush to order it, and have their servants sell at market any outfits purchased the previous season.

  I carried on pounding the sugar, changing arms and trying to use my left hand as well as my right, and at last Sarah said it would do well enough.

  ‘Now watch me,’ she said, and she took a sharp knife, severed the head of the reddest, fullest rose, then carefully separated the petals, cutting any pieces of white (which she explained could be bitter) from the bottom of each. She told me to lay the petals side by side, touching them as little as possible, on white paper in a large shallow box. The same fate befell five more roses, until all their petals lay within boxes in long, perfect lines of pink and scarlet. Sarah then sprinkled them alternately with rose water and the finely sifted sugar and gave them to me.

 
‘Put the boxes outside in full sunlight,’ she instructed me, ‘and turn the petals in two hours.’

  Carefully holding the first box, I went into the yard at the back which we shared with three other shops. It was a tiny space, but Sarah said we were lucky in that we shared a privy here with just our near-neighbours instead of all the street. Just outside our back door was a rack of shelves which Sarah used to dry out flowers and sweetmeats at their various stages of preparation. There was room in the ground here, too, for a few herbs – one bush each of rosemary, sage and bay, which Sarah had brought as cuttings from home and had managed to root in the beaten-down soil.

  I put the petals on the top shelf of the rack. ‘Watch that it doesn’t rain on them!’ Sarah called through to me, but she was jesting, for it was a hot, dry day. The weather had been fine in London for six weeks, she’d told me, with not a drop of rain falling in all that time to cleanse the streets. Maybe, I thought, that was why it smelled so bad.

  I pounded more sugar, and by the time I’d finished it to Sarah’s satisfaction my arm and shoulder were aching fit to scream. I was allowed to stop so I could go out into the yard to turn the petals, and Sarah, after inspecting them, told me to sprinkle more rose water and sugar over them. The idea was to candy them to a crisp so that they’d retain their original colour and hue. ‘Done properly, with enough care,’ she said, ‘they’ll still look fresh at Christmas.’ Then she added, ‘Although they won’t keep until then because they’re so fragrant and delicious that they’ll be eaten long before that.’

  I sprinkled and sifted carefully. I tasted a small one, but it still seemed to be exactly what it was: a rose petal, reminding me of the ones I’d eaten with Anne as we’d played make-believe with our dolls, sitting outside our cottage with oak tree leaves as plates and acorns as cups.

  When I’d finished dowsing the petals I lifted my face to the sun, happy to be outside. Then I remembered that more sun meant more freckles, so hastily pulled my cap lower over my forehead and vowed again that I would go to the apothecary the first chance I got.

  Something brushed against my foot and I looked down to see Mew, one of the cats that seemed to come and go between our line of shops. There was a menagerie of cats around – tabby, ginger, grey, tortoiseshell, black and white – and I loved them all.

  I picked up Mew and held her to my cheek. She was still quite a kitten and fluffy, with a soft grey coat like Tyb, our big grey cat at home. We’d had him since a kitten, too, and once Anne and I had dressed him up in a baby’s gown that mother had discarded and taken him into the village wrapped in a shawl. When our neighbour, Mrs Tomalin, had asked to see him, saying she’d had no idea that our mother was with child again, we’d thrust the cat at her and run away home, cackling like chickens.

  ‘Hannah!’ Sarah called, breaking into my thoughts. ‘Come in and serve this gentleman some sweetmeats, please.’

  I hurried through into the shop, bobbing a curtsey before the man. He was wearing elegant satin breeches, an embroidered jacket and flounced shirt and was carrying a vast plumed hat under his arm. Taking all this in, I made another curtsey – a little deeper and longer – for I knew Sarah wanted to encourage such dandies into the shop. It was her ambition, she’d told me, to rise in fame and perhaps be asked to supply the Court with sweetmeats.

  The man paused, his kid-gloved hand to his face, hesitating over crystallised rose petals or violets. ‘Which taste would a lady prefer, do you think?’ he asked me.

  ‘The violets are very fine, sir,’ I answered immediately, for although they both tasted exactly the same to me, the violets were more costly. ‘They’ve been crystallised with pure loaf sugar,’ I assured him.

  He nodded. ‘The violets, then.’ He was wearing face patches and had a great flapping wig, but they did not detract from his lack of teeth, or the gums which showed pale pink and shiny as he smiled. ‘Young Miss is fresh from the country, I’ll be bound,’ he said. ‘Such fetching hair and skin is not often found in London.’

  I didn’t say anything but, flicking a glance at Sarah, saw that she wanted me to.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ I said demurely.

  ‘It would take a good many patches to cover those sweet freckles!’ the fop went on.

  ‘Indeed, sir,’ I forced myself to smile back. ‘Will there be anything else?’ I weighed his violets and poured them into a twisted cone of paper. ‘Sugared almonds? Herb comfits?’

  He ignored these questions. ‘And such hair as I’ve only seen before in the playhouse!’

  I said nothing to this, just stood there, smiling as if I liked him, and eventually he produced a silk kerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. ‘It is most monstrous hot!’ he complained.

  ‘Perhaps some suckets – sugared orange or lemon?’ I asked. ‘Most refreshing on a hot day.’

  He nodded again and the wig wobbled. ‘Give me three of each,’ he said, ‘and some of your herb comfits, too.’

  ‘Certainly, sir,’ I said, raising my eyebrows at Sarah as I wrapped them. She took some coins from him and he turned to wink at me as he went out.

  ‘That was the Honourable Francis du Maurier,’ Sarah said, as we moved to watch his sauntering progress down the street. ‘A real Jack-a-Dandy.’

  I sniffed. ‘A bumble-bee in a cow turd thinks himself a king.’

  ‘Hannah!’ she reproached me.

  I giggled. ‘Sorry. That’s one of Abigail’s favourite sayings.’

  ‘Not now she’s in service at a big house, I hope.’

  As we watched, the ‘Honourable’ man hailed a sedan chair. As he climbed in, we noticed he had red leather heels to his shoes.

  ‘Look at those!’ Sarah said admiringly. ‘He’s been here before but never bought as much.’

  ‘See!’ I said. ‘I’m bringing you luck.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘And maybe we’ll need it, for the Bills will be published later today.’

  ‘What Bills?’ I asked, puzzled.

  ‘The Bills of Mortality,’ she said. ‘They list everyone who’s died in the parishes of London in the past week so we can see what they’ve died of. We’ll know then if the plague is taking hold.’

  She sighed a little and her eyes darkened, so I thought it best to make light of the matter. ‘What a long face,’ I said to her cheerfully. ‘Left to you, we’d all be in mourning weeds before supper!’

  She did not respond to this banter, but simply turned away.

  Later that day, Sarah gave me leave to go to an apothecary’s shop. ‘Although why you want to change your looks, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘You saw how your colouring was admired by the Honourable Francis.’

  ‘I don’t wish for the sort of colouring he admires!’ I said.

  The nearest apothecary was Doctor da Silva at the sign of the Silver Globe, in the adjoining parish of St Mary at Hill. ‘He’s as honest a man as any,’ Sarah said. ‘I’ve used him for many cough remedies before now.’

  I looked at her enquiringly. ‘So they don’t work, then?’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘You said many cough remedies. But if the first had worked you wouldn’t have needed the others.’

  ‘Get off with you, Miss Impudence!’ she said, but she laughed as she said it and I felt she was glad that I had come to live with her.

  I went out with instructions from her to buy caraway seeds from the apothecary, and some fresh milk from the first milkmaid I saw.

  I took a long time getting to the Silver Globe, for there were many distractions along the way. The small shops next to us, six in a row, sold, in order: writing parchment, buttons, gloves, books, quill pens and hosiery, and I found it necessary to look into each one of them. Further along was a run-down tavern called The Tall Ship, a barber-surgeon’s shop, some dark and mean alleys and a row of narrow houses with twisted chimneys, then another series of shops. Outside some of the houses women sat gossiping, or sewing, while at their feet children played with dolls or sticks, drew pictures in the dust, or t
eased their cats or dogs. Chickens pecked between the cobbled stones and occasionally a pig or goat came by to see if there was any food to be had.

  The shop at the sign of the Silver Globe was large and wide, with bull’s-eye glass windows. Inside, the space was deep and lit by candles, and its shelves were laden with all manner of fascinating objects. One wall held strangely-shaped roots and dried grasses, trugs of herbs, a huge egg – surely belonging to a dragon? – and baskets containing dried matter and layers of wood bark. On another wall differently-hued powders in glass phials were ranged, and there was a shelf full of ancient tomes and yellowing papers, and also a vast cupboard containing bulbous jars of coloured and distilled waters inscribed in a strange language. I took this to be Latin and could not decipher a word of it, for Latin was just for gentlemen to know, and the petty school in our village had merely covered reading and writing in our own language.

  I was rather nervous on entering the shop, for I had heard that apothecaries could be sinister and powerful people, and I was half-expecting a man with a beast’s head and a black cloak covered in signs of the heavens. But the young man weighing powders behind the counter had not either of these things. Instead, he had a comely, clean-shaven face with very dark eyes, and was neatly dressed in serge breeches with a white linen shirt and black velvet waistcoat.

  ‘Good morning, madam,’ he said with a merry smile which showed his even white teeth.

  ‘Are you Doctor da Silva, the apothecary?’ I asked rather timidly.

  ‘No, indeed!’ he said, laughing, and I felt myself blush. ‘And if you knew the doctor you’d not mistake me for him.’

  ‘Is he here?’ I asked, feeling as foolish as a mutton chop, for now that my eyes were used to the dim light I could see that this fellow was only a year or two older than myself.

  ‘He is not,’ the boy said. ‘But if you would care to state your requirements, I’ll see if I can serve you.’

  I now found myself in a dilemma, being too embarrassed to ask for a remedy against freckles from such a fine, good-looking lad. I therefore just asked him for the caraway seeds. While he weighed them up, he asked if I was new to the area and I said I was. I told him my name, and that I had come here to help Sarah in her shop.