by Mary Hooper
He said his name was Tom, and that he knew our shop. ‘And a mighty attraction you’ll be to it too,’ he added, making me blush again. ‘Although it’s a pity you’ve come to London at such a time.’
I hesitated. ‘Are . . . are you talking about the plague?’
He nodded solemnly. ‘The Bills for last week have just been published and the figures for St Giles Parish have doubled.’
‘But there are no deaths in this parish?’
He shook his head. ‘No deaths. But the doctor has heard of some cases in Lincolns Inn Fields, and some in Fleet Street, and he’s gone to the Hall of Apothecaries now to discuss what’s to be done. We will need to prepare some plague preventatives.’
‘But perhaps it may not spread! Couldn’t it just die out?’
He shrugged. ‘The plague is said to go in twenty-year cycles – and it’s almost that since the last big outbreak. Besides, there have been signs in the heavens.’
‘Do you mean the flaming comet?’ I asked, for even in Chertsey people had seen a comet which had flashed across the skies and left a trail of light in its wake.
He nodded. ‘And last month there was a cloud formation showing an avenging angel holding aloft a sword. The people say that such a thing foretells a terrible disaster.’
I shivered, just a little. ‘And do you think so, too?’
He gave a bow as he handed over my screw-paper full of seeds. ‘I can hardly believe such a thing, Hannah, for according to Doctor da Silva, a cloud is just steam and vapour pushed into shapes by the wind.’
‘So we are all right, then!’ I said. I paid him, and he showed me to the door and opened it for me with a bow, just as if I were a real lady. I had other questions to ask but was so taken with his smiling dark eyes and the way he’d said my name, ‘Hannah’ – so softly, like a whispered breath – that they went out of my mind. Besides, I really didn’t want to know any more about the plague. It sounded a fearful thing, but whatever I found out, I had no intention of going back to Chertsey.
Chapter Three
The third week of June
‘The Sickenesse is got into our parish this week; and is got indeed everywhere, so that I begin to think of setting things in order . . .’
A few days later I contrived a reason to go to the apothecary’s shop again. Sarah was making sugared almonds and was colouring the sugar syrup in pink, pale blue and green from the various tints she had. I suggested that pale gold almonds would look very well amongst these, and asked if I should go to Doctor da Silva’s to buy saffron.
She looked at me and smiled. ‘Saffron, is it? Or do you wish to make the acquaintance of young master Tom again?’
‘That as well,’ I said, for after I’d told Sarah about our meeting I’d thought of little else but him. At home there had been no one to think about – think about in that sort of way – so I’d had to be content with dreaming about impossible, faraway heroes like the king, whose image I’d seen on coins and portraits. Now, though, I had a flesh-and-blood person I could close my eyes and think of before I went to sleep.
I put on a clean apron, changed my cap and rubbed the merest drop of pink colouring into my lips to redden them. However, to my great disappointment, I did not find Tom in the shop, but instead met the doctor himself. He wore black flowing robes, and was old, with a grey beard, knotted hair and bulbous nose. He looked solemn and wise, but kindly as well.
I explained who I was and said that I’d come for saffron. When I said it was for colouring, and not for cooking, he said the cheaper variety would do as well, and took a glass jar from a case. As he turned away from me to weigh out a quantity on some little gold scales, I took the opportunity (for I knew I would blush) to make bold enough to ask if Tom was nearby.
‘He is not,’ he said. He fumbled around in a pocket of his gown and placed some spectacles on his nose. Then he looked again at the scales and added a few more spidery stamens of saffron to the pile. ‘I have sent Tom to High Holborn to see what measures the new French quack doctor is taking against the plague.’
I wanted to ask more but was nervous about what I might hear; also I was very much in awe of him. However, after a moment he turned to me and explained further himself, speaking rather scornfully. ‘The Frenchman says he’s discovered a method of preventing the visitation. He says he stopped the plague in Lyons and Paris.’
‘And is that true?’ I asked.
‘Bah!’ he shook his head. ‘If any man could prevent the plague then he would become as rich as a king. And this is what the Frenchman seeks!’ He spat on the floor. ‘Frenchmen! They are good at nothing but being dancing masters.’
‘Then nothing can stop the plague?’ I asked, suddenly rather alarmed.
He looked at me gravely over his spectacles. ‘We all have our preventatives and talismans, and sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. To my way of thinking, though, once that dread disease takes hold, be it on a person or a city, then it has to run its course.’
‘Does this Frenchman make pills to take? Is it something you can eat?’ I asked, thinking that I’d go there myself, right now, and buy whatever it was, for it surely couldn’t hurt to try it.
The doctor shook his head. ‘He has a method of smoking . . . of fuming out a house. A fire of sulphur is lit; sulphur and some other ingredients which the Frenchman keeps secret. It stinks the place out and – so he says – cleanses it of plague germs.’ He spat again. ‘The Lord Mayor of London has ordered that this method be tried. He must be in the man’s pay.’
‘And was there plague in the house that’s being fumed?’
‘Indeed there was,’ he said gravely. ‘Seven dead – the whole family – although the city authorities are not yet admitting that it was plague which carried them off. It will probably go down in the Bills of Mortality as fever, so as not to alarm the people.’
I, for one, was most certainly alarmed. Seven dead in a house!
Handing over the saffron and receiving his payment, the doctor then asked if there was anything else I desired. I thought about my freckles but decided – in view of our previous conversation – that the matter was too trivial to speak of. I was surprised, then, when the doctor looked at me searchingly and said, ‘Your complexion. I suppose you wish it to be pale?’
I nodded. ‘Oh, I do!’ I said eagerly. ‘I’ve tried things myself – I’ve washed my face with May-dew, and bathed it with the juice of lemon, but nothing works.’
‘What sign of the heavens were you born under?’
I shook my head, bemused. ‘I do not know, sir.’
‘I ask you because I use the methods of Nicholas Culpeper.’
I shook my head, not understanding. I had heard of this man and knew he was a herbalist, but did not know the methods of which Doctor da Silva was speaking.
‘Culpeper decided that the planets in the heavens were responsible for the various diseases which afflict us, and that the planets also govern different parts of our bodies – our blood, skin, heart, and so on.’
I nodded, frowning with concentration.
‘So to cure people he uses plants governed by planets which are in opposition to those associated with the parts of the body.’
I did not really understand, but I tried to memorise his words so that when I saw Tom again he would not think me totally ignorant of his chosen calling. The doctor asked my birth date and when I told him I was born on the 23rd day of July he said that it was no wonder I had fiery colouring, because I was a subject of the sun. He pulled out a drawer beneath his counter and showed me a long, papery-dry leaf. ‘This is yellow dock,’ he said. ‘You must steep it in warm water and vinegar and leave it for three days, and then bathe your face with the resulting liquid.’
He wrapped the leaf in a fold of brown paper and, when I asked him what I owed, he said that Sarah was a good customer and I could have the leaf for nothing. After a moment’s hesitation I asked if there was anything I could do to make my hair less red and less curly.
‘Do you—?’ I began, but he shook his head, staring at me over his glasses.
‘I do not sell brushes, combs or complexion paints for the ladies. But if you wish your hair less curly, you may find that Lad’s Love – a little of that plant in a herbal infusion – may help to straighten it, and you can find this herb at any wayside.’
I thanked him kindly for his advice, and for the leaf, curtseyed, and went to leave. On opening the door of the shop, though, I had to tussle with a great black-and-white hog which tried to push me back in. While I was engaged in pushing it out several chickens ran in, for there was a market at the end of the street that day and a greater variety of animals than usual were sniffing and grunting and trotting around outside. I caught two chickens but another ran towards the doctor, its claws skittering on the marble tiles, but the doctor roared at it so that it turned tail immediately and ran out squawking, its tawny feathers flying. I could not help but laugh.
Once outside in the street, I blinked against the strong sunlight. It was another very hot day and the air felt clammy. Smoke and fumes curled out of the leather tanners in the next street, a soap chandler was boiling stinking bones in a cauldron at the front of his shop and there was a disgusting smell coming from the piles of human refuse which had been scraped into a heap by the night-soil men.
The runaway hog had been claimed and was now being used as a pony by two of the children playing nearby. These two young boys, Dickon and Jacob, lived in an alley near us and often hung about our shop, hoping that (as occasionally happened) a comfit or two would turn out to be misshapen and either Sarah or I would throw it to them. They were about five or six years old and worked as errand boys, taking messages between shops and their customers, sweeping a path through the muck for well-to-do visitors or obtaining a sedan chair for people who wearied of shopping and wished for someone else’s legs to carry them to their next appointment. They asked me if I would like a ride home on the hog and though I was tempted – in Chertsey I would have hitched up my petticoats and ridden him as if he were the king’s nag – in London I was different, and I laughingly refused and went on.
Now I was out and once again surrounded by London life, by busy folk going about their business, all felt normal. Already the horror of the story the doctor had told me was receding. Seven were dead – but High Holborn was a way off, and possibly the plague would be stopped in its tracks by the efforts of the French doctor. Mother had always taught us never to worry about something before we had to.
When I got back to the shop, Sarah was weighing out a quantity of crystallised violets to a customer. As I bobbed a curtsey to the young woman, she was speaking of how the violets revived her spirits and freshened her breath, and said that the ladies she worked with enjoyed them, too.
I looked at our customer with interest. She was dressed in a low-cut, primrose-yellow silk dress, ruched up all round the bottom (as was the latest fashion) to expose a yellow and red spotted petticoat. On her head was a little velvet cap embroidered all over with coloured beads, and under this – how I stared! – her hair was as red as mine.
She and I smiled at each other and it seemed to me that, as well as the hair, we matched each other in age as well. The pity was that I couldn’t see whether she had freckles because she had some whitening on her face, and several black heart-shaped patches.
Sarah coughed. ‘Will there be anything else?’ she asked, and I glanced at her, wondering why she sounded so cold and remote.
‘Not at all, thank you kindly!’ the young lady said, seeming not to notice Sarah’s tone. She paid, tucked the paper cone of violets into her yellow silk muff and went off, smiling at me again. She stood at the doorway of the shop for a moment, attracting stares and a murmur of appreciation from a passing gallant, all of which she ignored. Suddenly, she put her fingers in her mouth and gave a piercing whistle. A sedan chair came up, the door was opened for her and she got in and went off. As she climbed in the sedan I noticed that her shoes were spotted yellow and red to match her petticoat.
‘Oh, who was that?’ I asked Sarah breathlessly.
Sarah sniffed. ‘That was Nelly Gwyn.’
‘But who is she?’
‘Well, she used to be an orange-seller at the playhouse, but now I believe she calls herself an actress.’
‘An actress!’ I’d heard, of course, that women and girls were appearing on the stage, but I’d never ever seen an actress before.
‘You needn’t sound so impressed,’ Sarah said, ‘for she’s as common as kennel dirt. Her mother is famous for being drunk, and no one ever knew her father.’
‘Well, whatever she is, she must be a very good actress to be able to afford clothes like that,’ I said (and I spoke enviously, for I was still wearing cast-offs from the vicar’s daughter).
‘Oh, it’s not acting that brings in the money,’ Sarah said with an edge to her voice. ‘It’s something else.’
I looked at my sister. ‘You mean . . . you mean she’s a whore?’ I said daringly – for although I’d already heard this word used several times in London, such language was forbidden to us in the country.
Sarah gave me the faintest of nods.
‘I see,’ I said. ‘But anyway, she’s very pretty. Can we go some time?’ I asked suddenly. ‘Can we go to a playhouse and see her?’
‘Well,’ Sarah said, and she frowned. ‘I don’t know that we should.’
‘Oh, please!’ I said. ‘It’s quite all right to go now – even polite company attend playhouses, don’t they? Even the king goes!’
‘It’s not how it would look,’ Sarah said, ‘for we are known to so few people in London, that would hardly matter. No, I’m thinking of the plague. People are saying that you shouldn’t attend any large gatherings, and the nobility are already leaving London for the country.’
‘But there’s nothing official, is there?’ I said, and was glad that I’d not yet told her about the seven dead in High Holborn.
‘We’ll ask someone’s advice,’ Sarah said. ‘We’ll ask one of the clerks at the church whether it would be wise to attend a play at the moment.’
I said I would go to ask at St Dominic’s, for I meant to couch my question to the clerk in such a way that his answer – the one I would bring back to Sarah – would allow us to attend. I very much wanted to see a play and, now that I’d met her, I especially wanted to see a play with Nelly Gwyn in it.
However, before I could go to the church – in fact, that very evening – a crier came round the streets. After ringing his bell so loudly that Mew fled into a box under the bed, he called that, by order of the Lord Mayor and because of the feared visitation of plague, all playhouses were to be shut up forthwith, and drinking hours in taverns were to be restricted.
I was bitterly disappointed, for I’d heard so much of what went on in the theatre – the shouting and singing and throwing of tomatoes by the groundlings if they did not approve, and of how the great ladies and gentlemen vied, like peacocks, to outdo each other in gaiety of dress. Now I’d have to wait until the scare was over before I could see it all.
And only Heaven knew when that would be, because the following Thursday, when the Bills of Mortality were published, it was found that there had been one hundred deaths of plague that week in London. And at this figure, the authorities declared that the plague had begun.
That afternoon Sarah sent me out for water. She gave me leave to take as long as I wished and make an outing of it, for we had stayed up late the previous night, working by candlelight to blanch and pound a goodly quantity of almonds to a fine powder, and she’d told me I had worked excellently and she couldn’t think how she’d ever managed without me. While we’d worked we’d discussed the plague and told ourselves that it might not be as bad as people feared. For good or ill, however, Sarah could not send me back to Chertsey, because, as our neighbour in the parchment shop ha
d told us, the magistrates were restricting travel out of London for fear that infection would spread to the provinces. This same neighbour, Mr Newbery, a short, stout man with a merry smile who loved nothing better than morbid gossip, had also said there was little hope of escape anyway, for if you had been chosen by the Grim Reaper then he would just come along with his scythe and cut you down.
I went to draw my water from Bell Courtyard. Although there were closer watering places, I favoured this one because it was a fine, paved area with trees and seats, and was much frequented by maids and apprentices from nearby houses. Also, the water there came from the New River and was judged to be pure.
The queue to draw water being quite long, I put down my bucket and enamel jug and waited patiently, looking around me at what the others were wearing (all were more fashionable than I) and wondering when Sarah would have time to take me to the clothes market.
As I waited, amused by a pedlar selling mousetraps with a monkey on his shoulder, there was a sudden burst of laughter from the front of the queue, and a hand waved madly.
‘Hannah!’ a girl’s voice called. I saw to my great delight that it was my friend Abigail Palmer from home.
‘There was no mistaking that hair!’ she said, coming up and hugging me.
‘Indeed not,’ I said, for though I’d bought a lead comb and had been stroking it through my hair night and morning, it didn’t seem to be making my curls any darker. My freckles, too, were just as bright and, as a result of the continual sunny days, now seemed to crowd across my nose and cheeks jostling for place.
Abigail had put on weight and it suited her. She was pretty, with dark curly hair which had sparks of copper in it, deep brown eyes and a curving mouth. She had on a black fustian dress cut up the front to show a lacy white petticoat, and looked very neat and comely.