At the Sign of the Sugared Plum

by Mary Hooper

  When we got home, we found that a letter we had tried to send to our family telling them that all was well with us, had been returned undelivered. A man from the carriers told us that, despite this letter being steamed over a pot of boiling vinegar to kill any contagion, the authorities in Chertsey had refused to accept it. He said that many towns were no longer taking letters from London unless they concerned official business, or were a matter of life or death.

  ‘Do you suppose they will know in Chertsey that the plague is upon us?’ I asked Sarah.

  ‘They are sure to,’ she nodded. ‘And Mother will be worried, no doubt. But they will think no news is good news.’

  We changed out of our church-going clothes and, both being very hungry – for we had not yet broken our fast – we ate some of our sweetmeats. Sarah said it could not count as proper eating just to sample the stock, and besides, we had been left with rather a lot of crystallised violet and rose petals of late, because our trade had fallen off so much.

  ‘To be plain, I am worried,’ Sarah said. ‘Our takings are down to less than a half of what they usually are.’

  I was rather distracted, for I’d finished my violets and was looking at myself in a little mirror that I’d bought from a pedlar. It seemed to me that, despite all my efforts, my hair was wilder and curled more than ever.

  ‘Hannah!’ Sarah said. ‘Did you hear me? With more and more of the quality going out of town, I fear we will soon not be making enough money to buy our daily food.’

  ‘There won’t be food to buy anyway, will there?’ I said, putting the mirror away. ‘Half the shops are already shut, and if it gets any worse Mr Newbery says we’ll all starve!’

  Sarah shook her head. ‘We will not,’ she said, ‘for I have heard today of where we may buy provisions.’

  ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘While we were waiting to go into church this morning and you were staring at the graves and thinking of God knows what horrors, I was speaking to a man who lives near Lincolns Inn. We talked of the difficulty of getting food and he said that there are some country wives who are not willing to come into the city for fear of contagion, but who bring their wares to town and set them up for sale by the city gates. They bring rabbits and chickens and all manner of pies, and they are there every day of the week.’

  ‘And we will always be able to get bread – so we will not starve after all!’ I said.

  Sarah shook her head. ‘No, indeed. But about our trade. How can we sell more sweetmeats?’

  We both fell to thinking.

  ‘I could go out with a tray,’ I said, and at Sarah’s frown, added, ‘Indeed I would not mind a bit.’

  Sarah shook her head. ‘I don’t think it would be wise for you to walk the streets any more than you have to.’ She thought some more. ‘If we could make something which the poorer people needed, then we wouldn’t worry about the quality going out of town.’

  And then I thought of the answer. ‘We must make sweetmeats which prevent the plague!’ I cried.

  Sarah clapped her hands. ‘The very thing! Why didn’t we think of it before?’

  ‘We must look through our recipes and see what seeds and herbs are of most use,’ I said, then hesitated. ‘But how do we know anything will truly work against the sickness? How can we say what will work more than any other thing? Won’t we be just like the quack doctors who set up stalls overnight and sell pellets of stale bread and call them plague pills?’

  Sarah shook her head. ‘There are a hundred different preventions now, and who is to say what works and what doesn’t? Even the real doctors and apothecaries – even Doctor da Silva – don’t know for certain what is of use.’

  I nodded slowly. ‘We may make the very things which make a difference.’

  ‘We will make sugared comfits from the little spikes of rosemary! Everyone says rosemary is most efficacious.’

  ‘And it will cost almost nothing, as we have a bush of it just outside our back door,’ I said.

  We sat and thought for a while, and looked through some of our aunt’s papers, and in the end I went to see Tom at the apothecary’s, for I assured Sarah that he would know as well as anyone what would be the best plants to use.

  To my regret, Tom was not there, having apparently gone to the docks to fetch some very rare mineral compound. Doctor da Silva, who was boiling herbs in a pot, assured me, however, that rosemary comfits would be beneficial.

  ‘And even if not beneficial, at least not harmful,’ he added.

  ‘And what else could we make into sweetmeats?’

  ‘What of angelica? This is a most powerful herb of the sun in Leo and it would be right to gather it now.’

  I nodded eagerly. ‘We can candy the stems of angelica into sugar sticks.’

  ‘And chervil has a root similar to that of angelica,’ the doctor went on thoughtfully, ‘and is said to be as effective, and there is also dragon-wort, which expels the venom of plague – although you may not know where to find it at this time of the year. The root of the scabious boiled in wine is a very powerful antidote, although I do not know how you would convert this into a sweetmeat.’

  ‘But rosemary, angelica and chervil,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘we can use all these.’ I spoke slowly, looking around the shelves of the shop, at the dusty bottles and phials, and hoping that Tom would arrive back before I left.

  ‘And the flowers of garlic may also be candied,’ the doctor said. ‘Garlic is an efficacious remedy for all diseases.’

  Some more customers arrived to see the doctor then, and feeling obliged to go home, I bobbed the doctor a curtsey and thanked him for his trouble.

  ‘’Tis nothing. We must all help each other in our distress,’ the doctor said, and as I went to the door, added, ‘Oh, by the way, some young ladies swear that an ointment made from cowslips rids them of their freckles.’

  I was tempted to ask further, but as I did not wish to be thought of as an empty-headed baggage, I just said, ‘When we are over our troubles, perhaps,’ and asked him to please commend me to Tom.

  Two days later, Sarah and I rose at the call of five o’clock, for we were going out to see if we could find angelica growing on the marshes. I had washed and left my washing water ready for Sarah – for it was not at all dirty – when she suddenly cried out my name in a most despairing voice.

  I looked round, alarmed, and she was sitting on our bed in her shift, her face flushed and a hand pressed against her jaw. I immediately began to shake with fright, for I knew what must have happened: She had found some swelling . . .

  I crouched down beside her. ‘What is it?’ I asked her urgently. ‘Is it a lump?’

  ‘I believe so,’ she said shakily, feeling along her face. ‘Just here.’ She took my fingers and pressed them against her face, although – God forgive me – for an instant I wanted to recoil and snatch them back. ‘Can you feel it too?’

  I felt along the line of her jaw. ‘I . . . I think so,’ I said.

  ‘There is pain, too, all down the side of my neck. And it has been so all night.’

  ‘And on the other side?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Do you have any other symptoms?’ I asked, my voice trembling. ‘Fever? Do you feel sick? Have the giddiness? Do you have a headache?’

  She shook her head to all of these except the last.

  ‘Let’s go quickly to Doctor da Silva, then,’ I said, and she nodded speechlessly, her face as white as her shift.

  While we dressed my mind was whirling ahead of me. If it indeed was plague, then without more ado we would be shut up in the house with a brutal minder at our door. I would have the same symptoms in one or two days, then Sarah would die, and I would follow. Mother and Father would find out in a letter from someone – a minister at the church, perhaps – and would come to London, but would be unable to find our grave.

  And I would die unkissed, before I had hardly lived.

  To our great relief the shop was open and the docto
r was in, although it was his consultancy morning and there was a queue of people outside waiting to see him. They were going in one by one and talking to him privately, so we waited our turn, keeping our thoughts to ourselves and staying a good distance from everyone else. Indeed, some of them looked most alarming: one woman was greasy with sweat and moaning softly under her breath, and a man was naked to the waist, with great open wounds under his arm and on his chest. They were most gruesome to look upon, and I averted my eyes. Sarah whispered to me to keep away, for they were plague sores which had burst, and the man must be attending the doctor for healing herbs to be packed into the wounds.

  It was Tom who opened the door to us, and when he saw it was me and Sarah waiting to see the doctor a look of such horror crossed his face that it almost brought tears to my eyes, for I knew then how he felt about me, and that it was the same as the way I felt about him.

  This was some small comfort to me for my mind was a perfect blank of dread. I began to pray, something I had not done properly, really meaning it, for many a month. I began to make God any number of entreaties and promises if only he would make Sarah well again.

  I had already told Sarah of Doctor da Silva’s strange outfit, so she was not too shocked when our turn came. We were led behind a screen and she saw him sitting there with his bird’s head, his breath rasping through the beak of herbs.

  ‘I have a . . . a lump,’ Sarah stammered. ‘Here.’ She took off her cap and lifted her head, turning her face slightly so that he could see it more clearly. ‘It’s very painful,’ she said.

  The doctor lifted a candle high and looked at the swelling, which to my eyes seemed to have grown since we left home. He pressed it with his fingers, and Sarah winced, then he directed her to open her mouth and probed inside with a small wooden stick.

  ‘Is it plague?’ I asked fearfully, begging God to spare her. ‘What can you tell?’

  The doctor pulled off his beak headgear and put on his glasses, then he looked in Sarah’s mouth again. He smiled – a smile most delightful for us to see. ‘It is a tooth in your lower jaw,’ he said. ‘It has an abscess underneath which is full of poison, and this is what is swelling your gum.’

  Tears began to swim in Sarah’s eyes and, seeing them, my eyes filled too. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked.

  ‘I am indeed!’ said the doctor, ‘and happy to be so.’ He reached behind him for a small bottle. ‘I will rub some oil of cloves on it, and Tom will give you a root of saxifrage to chew if the pain gets too much. But you must go and get it pulled.’

  ‘Can you not do that?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘But there is a man who pulls teeth at the sign of the Red Bull, by the coffee shop in Covent Garden. He wields a fair instrument.’ He gave Sarah an awkward pat on the shoulder. ‘I am glad to have given you good news.’

  ‘We . . . we must pay you,’ she stammered.

  He shook his head. ‘No need. Instead, Tom and I will have some of your fine new sweetmeats against plague.’

  Tom had heard everything and was smiling fit to burst when we came around the screen. He gave us a piece of dried root of saxifrage and explained again exactly where the man who drew teeth was to be found, then opened the door so that we could be released and the next poor customer could enter.

  The feeling I had on walking home was one of such joy and relief that I felt I wanted to dance and sing aloud, and without thinking I began to hum a tune I’d heard the balladeers singing, linking arms with Sarah and swaying with her. My poor sister, though, was still in some pain and said to me quietly, ‘The plague is still around, Hannah. We are not through it yet. We must still be vigilant.’

  I stopped humming and swaying when she said this, for indeed I had heard – could always hear – the bells of many different churches tolling for more deaths.

  Sarah, being very frightened of the tooth-puller, waited to see if the medicaments that the doctor had prescribed had any effect. They worked but a little, though, so at noon we went down to Covent Garden and found the tooth-puller at his booth by the sign of the Red Bull, and indeed we did not have to hunt for him, for the fellow – a man as big and as sweaty as an ox – was waving a frightening instrument in his hand and calling at the very pitch of his voice that he cut out ulcers, drew wormy teeth and lanced boils in the mouth.

  Sarah hung back when she saw him. ‘He looks a dirty and ignorant fellow,’ she whispered.

  ‘But the doctor recommended him,’ I reminded her. I held her hand and led her towards him. ‘And it will be over in a minute and then you can forget all about it.’

  The man sat her on a little stool, bent her head back and pushed his fingers into her mouth so she had no choice but to open it widely. He looked at her gum, then he unclipped some pincers from his belt and thrust them in her mouth so that her face twisted into a strange shape. He fitted the pincers on to the tooth and pulled. There was a gurgled scream from Sarah and she squeezed my hand so tightly I swear she almost broke my fingers. Then, suddenly, he was holding the tooth aloft and proclaiming himself the fastest tooth-drawer in the city.

  Sarah was pale and trembling all over, so I paid the fellow and we went home, only stopping on the way to buy an infusion of blackberry flowers and leaves to help heal her mouth. Sarah then went to bed and slept most of the rest of the day, while I opened the shop (but sold little) and amused myself by finding a stub of pencil and making a list of what sweetmeats we were going to make and the ingredients we would need to buy for our new undertaking. I was reasonably content as I did this, for I knew Sarah would be well, I had Tom to think on, and – apart from losing dearest Mew – all was well with us.

  That night, though, I heard it for the first time.

  The plague cart.

  There came the noise of wheels trundling on cobblestones and I went to the shutters to look out, for lately there had scarce been any traffic by our door.

  What I saw was a big farm cart, like the one I’d ridden on to London with Farmer Price. At the front sat two men, gruesome-looking ruffians, unhatted, wearing long black coats, and holding flaming torches aloft in the darkness. Instead of their load being hay, the harvest they carried was bodies: about twenty of them, wrapped in winding sheets or tied into knotted shrouds, two or three of them stark naked, their limbs gleaming pale under the light from the torches.

  ‘Bring out your dead!’ they cried, ringing a bell. ‘Bring out your dead!’

  As I looked on, horrified, a door opened in one of the houses opposite and an old man called to the drivers. One of them then went to the door of the house with what looked like a shepherd’s crook in his hand and, taking a step inside, he thrust in the hooked part and dragged out the body of an old woman wearing a nightshirt. This tumbled down the doorstep and on to the ground, prompting a cry of despair from the old man.

  The back of the cart was let down and the men manipulated the body with their crooks, throwing it all anyhow on to the cart, so that the poor corpse’s long grey hair tumbled to her shoulders and her nightshirt came up, exposing her white and wizened limbs to the world.

  Without another word to the one who stood alone on the doorstep, the men stowed their hooks, got up on their seats and drove off. I watched their progress down the street, listening to the cry of, ‘Bring out your dead!’ until the words and the sound of the cart wheels were too far off to be heard.

  When I crept back to bed I longed to wake Sarah, wanting to share with someone the awful sight I’d seen. I did not, however, feeling that she’d been upset enough that day. Instead, I laid in the darkness, going over what I’d seen and seeming to feel within me a thousand dormant symptoms of plague stirring into life. Would we survive?

  Why should we when so many others were dying?

  How cheap life seemed. How random.

  Bring out your dead . . . The words echoed around my head until dawn.

  Chapter Ten

  The second week of August

  ‘The people die so, that now it seems they
are fain to carry the dead to be buried by daylight, the nights not sufficing to do it.’

  We had managed to get all the ingredients we needed for our new venture, and were now selling sugared chips of angelica and chervil, herb comfits containing leaves of rosemary and caraway seeds, and candied garlic and rosemary flowers. We had also prepared lozenges from rue which we had chopped with caraway seeds and mixed with sugar and rose water. Although we had not been told that this herb, rue, was a plague preventative, its old name was herb of grace, and Sarah felt that anything with that name was sure to be beneficial. Besides, a green man had called at our door selling flowers and herbs, and he had given us a large bunch of rue very cheaply.

  I had prepared a notice to go outside the shop which advertised our new produce. In order to help our customers who could not read I had merely written the word PLAGUE and drawn a cross through it, for now all, even the most ignorant, knew that dread word by sight. For those who could read I gave more information.

  Excellent electuaries against the Plague may be bought

  at the sign of the Sugared Plum.

  When you go abroad, chew the sugared root of

  Angelica or the herb, Rosemary.

  Also take our lozenges made with the ancient Herb of

  Grace.

  I had copied some of these words from bills I had seen posted on tavern walls and windows, and I was very pleased with the result.

  Even though the streets seemed thin of people, within three days we had sold out of everything we had made and had to prepare more. One of our customers – a proper gentleman, with velvet and gold-laced jacket and long curled wig – told us that he had never found the taking of medicine more delightful than when it was coated with sugar candy.

  ‘And never has it been served by two more delightful gals,’ he added, chucking me under the chin and giving me an extra twopence when he handed me his payment. I could see by the look in his eye that, given any encouragement, he would have come round the counter and put his arm about my waist, so I merely dropped my eyes and thanked him demurely.