Jem (and Sam)

by Ferdinand Mount

  Show you the timber? Peter looked at me as though I had uttered some blasphemy. A seasoned man of business works upon trust. If he insisted on seeing every scrap of canvas or every stick of timber, trade would never go forward.

  Well then, take me for a beginner. I will see the timber.

  If you will, you will, though much good it may do you, for the quality of a parcel cannot be judged by a novice.

  Still grumbling, he led me along East Smithfield, a scurvy highway, down to Wapping along a narrow lane by a high wall through a forest of wharves and yards and across a narrow plank that bridged the cut to the yard (which he said was the back way in) where the timber was kept at Sir William Warren’s. In the back shed up against a high wall, he showed me good oak timbers heaped as high as a house with the crooked pieces kept upright by ropes like so many gibbets.

  There, you see.

  Peter pointed to a label affixed to the timber, upon which was the legend: property of P. Llewelyn Esq. and partners.

  Partners? I said. What is this?

  You’re the only one, Jem, but the plural has a ring about it, does it not?

  And indeed my heart did swell to see this great forest of shining timber. I would that my weaselly uncle or Fluffy Ralph could see me thus in front of my joint stock.

  We’re wasting good drinking time, Peter said. And he seemed strangely anxious to quit the place.

  Could you present me to Sir William Warren that we may cement our partnership?

  Another time, Jem, Peter said, taking me by the arm. I’ve a terrible thirst.

  And his thirst was not for liquor only, for in no time he had got the £100 out of me and taken me along the Lane to Dering’s office where he gave me a receipt he had written out in advance, so that I should not have a chance to repent my investment.

  Now that I had ventured half of my capital upon timber, I was anxious to return to London.

  But Nan was adamantine.

  I’ve told you before, Jem, she said. Kit must abide at New Hall and you must abide with him.

  But why?

  Don’t you love the sweet air of the country? I beseech you to wash yourself from head to toe when you get home, for the London vapours are notorious. And will you tell Mary those cabbages she sent me were rotten, they must be picked sooner?

  So I held my tongue and went back to New Hall. The sun shone and the days passed. It was our pleasure (among other sports) to take the two greyhounds, Willow and Dancer, into the cornfields beyond the river to see if we might not start a hare from his form in the long grasses. First we had to go through a low wood of old oaks.

  Hush, Kit said, who’s that?

  His hearing was sharper than mine. As we stood still and listened, it seemed that there were too many voices to be a poachers’ gang (which is seldom more than two or three men).

  We crept very quiet through the brushwood with the oaks shading us until we could see them on cleared ground where the Duke had had the trees felled to make the new roof in the Hall. There were eight or nine and they were camped there round a fire with two or three rough tents of ferns and branches. There was a woman and two children, and they were all ragged and burnt by the sun.

  These are vile Gypsies, Kit said, we must throw them off.

  Before I could counsel caution, for they looked wild and might be armed, my foolhardy pupil strode through the bracken and out into the clearing.

  What are you doing here? he cried in his cracked treble, for his voice was not yet fully broken.

  To my surprise, they did not make a violent front but cringed at his approach.

  Sir, we were in a barn at Brentwood, sir, but the barn was taken.

  Why are you babbling of barns? said my precocious charge.

  Bless you, sir, we are all honest tradesmen, sir, but in Spitalfields, sir, where we live, our homes are all shut up.

  Why shut up?

  A silence fell upon them and they looked at each other.

  Why, sir, at length resumed the tall man who had spoken first, do you not know – but he broke off.

  Know what? Come on. Out with it. When he talked in this peremptory fashion, Kit was his father in miniature.

  But they would not speak.

  Then at last I saw, and shouted to Kit (for he had come close to the tall man in his anger), come back, come away, come back.

  What do you mean, Jem?

  They have the plague, I cried. And cursed myself.

  Now I knew why Nan had kept Kit down here at New Hall. She must have had private intelligence of the spread of the distemper, perhaps from the Lord Mayor. Yet she would not tell me, for fear that I would have demanded to stay by her side (though in truth I don’t know whether I would have). But I was angry that she had thought so little of me. I vented my anger upon the trespassers:

  I’ll have a trained band sent to evict you, and they’ll be armed and impatient men. You’d be wise to take your leave now.

  But where shall we go, sir? the woman said. My child has a fever and cannot walk, but it is not the plague I swear to you, for he has not the swellings.

  I held a handkerchief to my mouth as I retreated and bade Kit do the same. The child I did not care to look upon. It was a pale skinny thing in a bundle of rags, and if the rest of them were not infected already the child would do the trick soon enough. That none of them had the swellings was by the by, for there had been cases reported from Holland (whence came this plague) of men dropping down dead and the swellings coming out only when they fell. It was the uncertainty of the signs that spread such fear through the City, for a man might know he had the distemper, yet have no visible signs of it, and thus be able to revenge himself upon his enemies by consorting with them and breathing his foul vapour upon them and infecting them – of which wickedness there were many tales told, though few fairly attested.

  When we had returned to the Hall, I despatched the bailiff and the carters and two of their men to chase off the trespassers, though I did not tell them why or the bailiff would not have gone, he being hypochondriac. But the Londoners had already vanished into the forest, like a throng of diseased ghosts.

  For some days afterwards, I looked out of my windows at night and when the mist came up from the river, I fancied that I could see their thin shapes stealing up the lawns to take their revenge upon us. Yet when I opened the casement, there was no sound but the hooting of the owl in the wood.

  Nevertheless though that gang had gone, there might be other wretches roaming the country and I prepared to defend the Hall against them. The gate on to the Chelmsford road was shut up and a guard posted night and day, and the back gates were locked. The servants had orders to admit no one, however plausible his errand, and I retired to my laboratory to mix Venice Treacle for which I had an ancient receipt. To make assurance double sure, I sent Tom the carter, an honest fellow who would not peach, into Chelmsford for plague water, telling him that he must tell no one, but the apothecary sent him back, saying that the plague water was a false remedy for fools and the only sure medicine was avoidance of those who had the plague. Kit would not take the treacle until I put more honey in it and said the potion was so nasty he would rather have the plague, but I told him he must take it or his father would have him whipped, which he laughed at, for that tough old soldier had a heart soft as butter in regard to his only son (that is, the only son surviving, a younger had died as an infant; there was rumour also of an elder son who had died young, yet that would have been before they were married, and so he could have been no duke or viscount either).

  But while I busied myself with these precautions, my heart was sore and for several reasons: primo, I did not like this nursemaid’s part which was an ignoble one; secundo, though our love was not as hot as it had formerly been, yet still I pined for Nan, for she infused a vital warmth into my solitary life; and tertio, I was sixty miles away from my Investment, whereas hitherto all my wealth had been within arm’s reach, to wit, under my bed, so that I could be sure it was safe unti
l the instant before my throat was cut.

  Nan had still told me nothing of the plague and sent word that I should bring a cart with the victuals, for it was now the season for plums and apples and onions and potatoes and many another herb. What an Irony it was that Nature should prove so abundant and the weather so fair when Death was stalking every street. You may wonder that I was so ready to enter these infernal regions, I mean London, when the danger was so great (for my memorials have not hitherto shown great record of stoutheartedness). Yet I did not wish to lose credit at this crisis in affairs, for I knew that if I did not come everyone would remember that I had not. Besides, as I have said, I must take care of my Investment.

  We came up the long road to Whitechapel, past the Miles End post. Lord how quiet it was. The hooves of our two horses sounded as clear as though we were walking at midnight, though it was two o’clock in the afternoon. The houses were all shuttered, and there was no one at their doors or upon the pavement. Those who had business to do walked down the middle of the thoroughfare that they might be as far away from the infection as they could. Here and there grass was growing upon this great highway for lack of traffic, as though it had been a country lane.

  When we came to Aldgate Barrs, Tom and I soaked our handkerchiefs in the jar of vinegar that we had brought and tied them round our mouths and noses so that we looked like highwaymen. We had covered our provisions tightly, that the infection might not reach them. And then we tramped through the empty streets of the City that was formerly thronged and noisy. We looked out for houses that had the cross upon them, but they were few. The emptiness was more fearful to us than the thought that we might be infected. Nan told me after that the Lord Mayor estimated that 200,000 persons had fled.

  She greeted me at the door of her apartment – oh how she greeted me:

  Oh, Jem, I should have told you earlier, I know, but I didn’t wish you to come rushing to my side when the infection was at its worst, for it’s better now, everyone says so. Dr Heath says the crisis was a fortnight ago, the last week in September, that henceforth those that haven’t yet got it should prove hardened to the infection. The bill was decreased a thousand last week, but the General says we must not relax our precautions, for the distemper may recover its wind and come again as it did in Holland, but how pleased I am to see you, I can’t say how pleased.

  She took me in her arms as she had not done for so many months, even when we had been together at New Hall, and though Tom was unloading the carts down in the courtyard, she kissed me upon the lips, for she felt as though she had been in a besieged city, she told me, and she must needs break out. It was not much longer before we were in her chamber and in her bed. There was in it a feverishness, which is the true word, for the fever left its mark even upon those who never got it and those who came through thanked the Lord for it and resolved to enjoy His gifts while they were yet alive to do so.

  While we lay together under the white-bear rug that had been given her by the Muscovy merchants, she told me of all that had happened while I had been nursemaiding at New Hall: of the Lord Mayor receiving visitors in his glass case at Guildhall that he might be spared the infection, of the dead carts going through the streets so full that some toppled over into the plague pits carrying the horses with them, of how the Anglican ministers had mostly fled and the Dissenters filled their pulpits, of the amulets and phylactories and other trumpery that the simple wore to protect themselves from the plague, and of the charlatans that preyed upon them, promising Infallible Pills and the like, and how the Court had removed to Hampton Court and then to Salisbury, but how the General had stayed to look after the City and to beat the Dutch, and how he had been ably served at the Navy Office by –

  But here I shut her mouth with kisses, for I did not wish to hear that name, and besides the bells of St Margaret’s started tolling for another poor wretch that had gone to meet his maker, and then the bells of another church further off, and she began to tell me of all those she knew that had been carried off: the woman that made her ribbons, and the best baker and all his family, and two of the girls that had been with her at the Gypsies, and the gatekeeper at the Cockpit and all his family that had lain dead in their lodgings for a week before the physician had gone in to them, but few persons of quality, for they had all fled and the Court had set them a bad example. For though she knew they called her a dirty slut, she was better than they were.

  And she was.

  Thus I rejoiced that out of all this misery had come one good thing, I mean our finding again that which we had lost, our love for one another. And we stayed together for an hour or more, at which she had to shoo me out, for the General was coming back.

  So I retired quietly to my chamber and looked out of the window on to the court. Beyond King Street, I heard yet another bell toll and gave thanks to God that I had been spared – which was I think the first time that ever I prayed of my own free will and not in church. But then a cold air came up from the court and I began to look in my walnut cupboard for a heavy coat, having brought only my summer vest with me. Everything in the cupboard was covered with dust, and the moth had corrupted a wool waistcoat that I had left behind. Then I went to the pantry to seek out some wine, but there was only an old cask of sack that had been opened too long and gone sour. Since my own chamber gave me such a pauper’s welcome, it was better to go out to a public tavern where I might find Peter Llewelyn and learn of the progress of my investment.

  The Leg in New Palace Yard was my first port which was our favourite, but old Stone had not seen Peter for a fortnight. Then I tried the other Leg, Clarke’s on King Street, and afterwards Harper’s, but old Mrs Harper had not seen him for a year, then the Heaven and Hell, which the members of Parliament and their hangers-on much frequented, but they were both shut up, for the members had all gone to the country.

  I did not know where Llewelyn lodged, for since he had been turned out, he had no official residence, and I had known him sleep where he drank, I mean let his head fall on to his arms and snore soundly till breakfast when Paulina or one of the others would wake him with ale, which he called a hair of the dog that bit him.

  But I could not find him anywhere, and by the time I had ended my inquiries, I had drained so many tankards to celebrate my return (for all the taverns were suffering from the plague because they were reckoned a prime source of the infection and only the foolhardy continued to frequent them) that I fell asleep on my bed, dog tired, and woke in a sweat to hear the bells tolling again though it was past midnight.

  The next morning, a dark and rainy one, I resolved to set out and inspect my timber, where I might also hear news of Peter. I found a hackney with ease, for the coachman told me that they were all starving for lack of custom because no one would take them, fearing an infection bequeathed by former passengers. And we rumbled down to Wapping where the rain was coming down hard. I walked along the narrow lane by the Wall and across a bridge to the back shed where our wood was stored up against the high wall. But I could see no ticket on it. Fearing that the label might have fallen off in the storm, I inquired of a fellow that was passing whether this was Mr Llewelyn’s timber, but he said no, it was his master’s, and he had never heard of any Llewelyn. I told him I had a receipt for it, but the fellow said I might have a dozen for all he cared, the timber was his master’s.

  This sent me mad with grief. Every sort of terror coursed through my veins: Llewelyn had sold the timber and absconded with the proceeds, he had lost it all in a wager, he had never bought it in the first place but had pinned on the label to dazzle me when the timber had always been Dering’s or Warren’s, he was in gaol for some felony and the timber had been forfeit, or . . . but my head ran on and on as the rain ran through my hair and down my cheeks where it mingled with my tears.

  Then I recovered my senses and bethought myself that someone must know where Llewelyn was if he was still Dering’s clerk, so I went to Dering’s office along Wapping Lane and inquired where I might find Mr P. L
lewelyn, his clerk. They had not seen him for some days, but that was not unusual for he roamed the town on Dering’s business, but they sent letters on to his chamber in St Martin’s Lane, hard by the Goat.

  Another hackney took me back along Fleet Street and the Strand where I was sad again to see so few people out and them walking in the middle of the street, so that my coachman had to dodge them.

  We turned the corner up into St Martin’s Lane and an abominable dread seized my heart, which was soon to be fulfilled. For there on the door of the lodging house next to the Goat was a red cross painted a foot high as the Lord Mayor said it must be, and the next house to it painted with the same. I leapt out of the carriage and battered upon the door with both my hands.

  No answer. Again I battered. No answer again. And I felt myself roughly seized from behind.

  You must not, sir, for the house is shut up.

  But my friend is there.

  They are all dead, sir.

  And the two watchmen led me away, but gently, for this was not the first such scene they had assisted at.

  They told me at the Goat that he had died two days before and had left me his ring which the landlord had instructions to give me at his funeral, but if I would rather avoid the stench and the danger, he would give it me now. It is a fine ring of agate and gold. I wear it still in the guise of a mourning ring, although it is not in that mode.

  And so took horse for Nonesuch, with two men with me, and the ways very bad, and the weather worse for wind and rain. But we got in good time thither, and I did get my Tallies got ready, and thence with as many as would go to Ewell; and there dined very well, and I saw my Bess, a very well-favoured country lass there. And after being very merry and having spent a piece, I took horse and by another way met with a very good road; but it rained hard and blew but got home very well. Here I find Mr Dering come to trouble me about business – which I soon despatched; and parted he telling me that Llewelyn hath been dead this fortnight of the plague in St Martin’s Lane – which much surprised me.