The Chocolate Maker’s Wife

by Karen Brooks

  The twins again shared a look, then shrugged. ‘Dunno. Not since he ran off weeks ago.’

  Their indifference to their father’s fate was as astonishing as the delivery. They really didn’t care.

  Rosamund sat upon the bottommost step, her head in her hands. Matthew stood over her.

  ‘Well, you’ve delivered your news,’ he said. ‘Go, and allow the lady to think upon such sorrowful words.’

  Oh, if only he knew.

  For a moment Fear-God and Glory looked as if they might challenge him, but then thought the better of it.

  ‘Very well, but we’ll be back, Rosie,’ said Fear-God, throwing his cap on his head and giving it a defiant tug. ‘After all, you’re the only family we got.’ He stared about the hall, lingering on the silver, the fine artworks, the coat of arms.

  ‘Be nice to get to know ya again, if ya know what we mean,’ added Glory with a sneer.

  With a growl, Matthew strode towards them, sword raised. ‘Begone, you rascals, before I run you through.’ Jacopo joined him, his knife thrust forward. Two of the young footmen raised their fists.

  ‘All right, all right, no need to get all glimflashy. We be goin’.’ Fear-God trotted quickly towards the door and one of the footmen opened it.

  ‘If I catch sight of either of you again,’ said Matthew through gritted teeth, ‘I won’t hesitate to do what I should have done this time.’ He held up the glinting weapon to make his point.

  The twins were escorted to the gate by the footmen, casting resentful looks over their shoulders the entire way. Matthew waited until they were out of sight before sheathing his sword and turning to Rosamund, who sat almost doubled over. Matthew knelt beside her and spoke softly.

  ‘I’m so sorry, my lady. Sorry for the burden of the terrible news and for those who were chosen to deliver it. That you call those ruffians family tells me more about what you must have endured growing up than I ever imagined.’ He paused. Rosamund didn’t move or speak. His understanding was far more than she deserved.

  When she didn’t respond, he continued. ‘I’m so sorry about your mother…’

  ‘Are you?’ asked Rosamund, raising her head. ‘Because I’m not sure that I am and —’ she looked from Matthew to Bianca then Jacopo, ‘I fear that makes me the most terrible person, unworthy of God’s love, let alone a mother’s.’ She began to laugh, a dreadful, haunted sound before, with a strange hiccough, she burst into tears.

  Matthew squeezed in beside her on the stair and, with a look of anguish and longing, took her into his arms.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  In which the chocolate maker’s widow provides hope in bowl

  Not a day passed without rumours reaching them of more deaths, more houses being marked and their inhabitants quarantined. Each Tuesday when the Bills of Mortality were published, they’d scan them anxiously to find out where the pestilence had spread. Throughout July the number of dead grew and the bells, which rang for each one, never ceased their tolling. What had once marked the passage of time became a continuous dirge, matched only by the carters’ cries of ‘bring out your dead’ as they moved through the streets. A pall of gloom and terror hunched over the city.

  It didn’t matter how warm it was, Rosamund felt a chill run through her every time those words carried up to the chocolate house or penetrated the walls of Blithe Manor.

  So far, God be praised, they’d been spared the illness. Still following the plague orders, she moved between the chocolate house and Bishopsgate Street with relative ease. The once crowded streets had grown quiet apart from the rumble of the dead carts and the murmurs of watchmen. The familiar sounds of the barrow-boys and milkmaids crying their wares were gone. No dogs barked their greetings; cats no longer prowled. Hackney carriages, sedan chairs and other conveyances ceased to roll along the cobbles, which sprouted grass and weeds.

  Each day Jacopo, Bianca and Rosamund rose before dawn and went to the Phoenix, only going home once night had fallen. Neither the dark of evening nor the muted light of pre-dawn could disguise the stench of sickness, or the sight of the watery red crosses painted on so many doors.

  The chains across quarantined houses glimmered warnings, as did the pikes of the guards securing them, who cast steely looks at those passing by. The wails of those trapped inside were heart-wrenching as they mourned their dead and anticipated their own likely fates. They would lean from upper windows and shout to God, or to the few passersby, begging for release, succour, even forgiveness. Some spat vitriol. Others just spat. Once divided by wealth and birth, the city was now cleft by whether a person was healthy or ill. Homes became tombs. It was almost more than Rosamund could bear, but she had to stay brave and true. She had to.

  Oft times Matthew would accompany them home, trying to entertain them with tales from his voyages. Sticking to the middle of the road, they steered well clear of doorways, the thresholds any contamination might cross. Once at Blithe Manor, they would retreat to the withdrawing room with a decanter of sack (recommended as a preventative) and discuss the day, how many customers they’d had, who’d fled the city, who remained, and who they feared might be struck down next. It was on these occasions that Rosamund gradually drew from Matthew the story of his childhood and his family.

  Born a gentleman from a long line of knights, he had a stipend provided by an uncle, a resident of the colony of New York who had the favour of the royal family, and rents from lands he inherited in Kent. She already knew his father was a poet, but what she didn’t know was that Matthew had trained as a lawyer and had disappointed his family by not being called to the bar. Prior to meeting the Blithmans, he’d dabbled in trade via the East India Company, but mainly as a cover for the work he did spying for the King while he was in exile — a role that continued once His Majesty was restored. Initially, his job as a correspondent had served the same purpose, as he coded messages for the government into his reports. He was intending to reduce his spying work and write in earnest for Muddiman when, as a consequence of a commission he was given by the Lord Chancellor, he crossed paths with the Blithmans.

  Matthew asked Rosamund about her life before London. While she was most forthcoming about her early life at Bearwoode with her grandmother, the steward Master Dunstan and the jolly if strict servants, she was reluctant to share much about her years at the Maiden Voyage Inn. Matthew didn’t press her, changing the subject when she grew quiet.

  If there was one topic which obsessed everyone, it was the pestilence. People pored over the news sheets and Bills of Mortality to see if their parish was under threat; many resorted to what Filip called ‘quack’ cures to protect them. Every day Rosamund heard conflicting advice: burning juniper, purging, drinking urine and eating excrement or rancid meat, taking regular doses of London Elixir, keeping a gold coin in the mouth — preferably from Elizabeth’s reign — or wearing a quill filled with quicksilver around the neck. Sam chewed tobacco; other men did all they could to contract the pox, also believed a preventative, bedding as many trulls as possible. While other businesses suffered, the oldest profession thrived.

  Mr Henderson wryly noted that while in the official news sheets L’Estrange downplayed the plague, he also sold advertising for curatives.

  The practice of quarantining the healthy with the sick was widely condemned. One pamphlet, The Shutting Up of Infected Houses as it is Practised in England Soberly Debated, circulated in the chocolate house. It referred to ‘this dismal likeness of Hell, contrived by the College of Physicians’ and railed against a barbarism that did more to increase the number of dead than protect the living. Matthew didn’t put his name to it, and though his words provoked great discussion and much sympathy, nothing changed.

  Rosamund marvelled at Matthew’s commitment, his need to challenge ineffectual authority that was more concerned with protecting those who could already protect themselves. Gone was the man who once noted all things trivial, replaced by someone determined to seek justice for those who could not do it for themselves. K
nowing she was partly to blame for the risks he was taking, she did what she could to help him.

  For all the chocolate house was a dreaded meeting place, it appeared to be one the men were prepared to tolerate, even if they did carry pomanders stuffed with aromatic herbs. Since the beginning of July, health certificates attesting one was not infected had been issued by the hundreds from the Lord Mayor’s office so folk might leave London; these now also became essential to gain entry to the Phoenix. Rosamund had expected objections, but instead the patrons were grateful for the care being exercised to safeguard them and showed their appreciation by bringing friends who had also obtained certificates.

  That gave Rosamund food for thought. If the men were healthy now, perhaps there were other measures she could take to ensure they stayed that way.

  Re-reading Colmenero’s treatise on chocolate, and the work of Henry Stubbes, she extracted any information from them regarding both preventatives and restoratives. From one of the patrons, she heard of an apothecary named William Boghurst who, despite going into houses and treating the suffering, survived to tell his tales. Located at the White Hart ale house in Drury Lane, he swore by nutmeg, an additive Dr Nathaniel Hodges also used to great effect. Rosamund ordered some from her apothecary immediately.

  Along with extra sugar, vanilla and even some ground fennel, which gave strength, Rosamund put pinches of wood sorrel for joy, mugwort for happiness, celandine for joy-to-come, as well as the all-important nutmeg in every single bowl of chocolate they served. No-one noticed her little inclusions, so subtle were they — no-one except Matthew and Filip. Yet after the patrons downed a drink, they certainly seemed less worried than when they arrived. Their friends wondered how they could be so calm in the face of the calamity all around them, especially as the bells rang and rang and the starving begged upon the streets. Customers would mention the chocolate they’d drunk at the Phoenix and how well it made them feel. Rumours began of an elixir made of chocolate prepared by a smiling angel that could not only chase away sorrow and fear, but possibly the plague as well.

  For a time, they were inundated with new customers and orders for deliveries of chocolate cakes. They rose to meet the challenge, grateful for anything that could keep their own growing despair at bay; anything that could help ease distress.

  August came and with it the numbers of dead and dying became so great neither the bells nor the graveyards could keep up. Huge pits were dug outside the city walls and cartloads of corpses flung into them and sprinkled with lime.

  The air was thick with the sickly-sweet odour of necrosis; flies multiplied as did the worms crawling through the rotting corpses.

  Sometimes when she walked home Rosamund would see the bodies of the afflicted collapsed in the street. The dead had a strange grey tinge to their flesh, broken by the huge, suppurating mulberry and onyx tokens on their necks. The stench of unwashed, decaying bodies attracted swarms of flies and crows. Some swelled and burst in the heat, their entrails spread about them like a putrid skirt. Some were still alive, too ill to move or call out for aid. Rosamund would mutter prayers for their swift release and divert her eyes and stopper up her tears. She’d already shed so many. There were even those who ran, shucking off their clothes as they passed, hollering and dancing. Shouting to God or whoever would listen, they were oddly joyous in their abandon but deadly in their potential to infect. Everyone gave these folk a wide berth.

  As if despair over the pestilence itself wasn’t enough, rumours soon spread about the plague nurses and the searchers, many of them old women admitted to houses to confirm a diagnosis and, later, a death for parish records. Some not only stole from the dead, but on occasion ended a life so they might take something of value. There was a story of a young gentlewoman being smothered, another of a man having his nose and mouth held till he passed away. A few women were caught and whipped, but most were not. After all, they were doing a job no-one else was prepared to do. Along with the animal catchers, mortuary cart drivers, gravediggers and watchmen, they prospered from the misery. Few begrudged them that — not then.

  Believing the plague to be a manifestation of divine displeasure, people were encouraged, against all good sense and warnings against crowds, to continue going to church. But the greater the numbers in the churches, the more people contracted the sickness.

  Rosamund had given up going to church and freed the household from any obligation to do so, promising to pay their fines when the outbreak passed — if it ever would. There were days where she felt as if she’d woken into an apocalyptic nightmare from which there was no escape. Yet within Blithe Manor it was easy to feel as if everything was normal. Apart from a scarcity of certain foods, there was an order to the mornings and evenings that was only interrupted by the hours she spent at the Phoenix. But even that became a matter of routine.

  Sam, who would call by as often as his work allowed, treated the disease as an inconvenience to be tolerated. In his hard-heartedness he was reassuringly unaffected by events — happy even. He appeared oddly content, boasting of his new appointments — treasurer to the Tangiers Committee and surveyor-general of the victualling of the Navy. When he was admitted to the Royal Society, he celebrated by purchasing a twelve-foot telescope. He even went to Moorfields to see the plague pits for himself, as one might attend the theatre. His ghoulish descriptions allowed him to hold court at the Phoenix, and he relished the attention.

  However, when he finally moved his household to Woolwich to keep them safe while remaining in the capital himself, Rosamund wondered at the wisdom of keeping the chocolate house open.

  Every day she and Matthew reassessed their decision. The arguments were always the same: if they shut, what would happen to Wolstan, Harry, Owen, Art, Kit and Cara? They didn’t have the resources to look after themselves and their families without the wages they drew. The numbers of customers had gradually declined but there were still those who made a point of attending once a day, drinking their chocolate, sharing news, including the brave (some said foolhardy) Dr Nathaniel Hodges; the non-conformist rector Thomas Vincent; John Allin and two of the Three Unwise Men (the eldest, young Sir Roger Catesby, having fled in the first week — not even Rosamund was enough to keep him in London); a Highlander, Grant McSearle, who picked the wrong time to come to the city, adopted the Phoenix, along with the jovial clerk Peter Goddard. Kit and Owen’s fathers would also attend.

  Thomas Bludsworth, who, it was rumoured, would be the next mayor, oft made an appearance along with Sir Henry Bennet, who made the odd discreet trip from Oxford. After reassuring himself as to Rosamund’s wellbeing, he would find Matthew and disappear with him into a booth, where they would discourse in low tones. And then there was Mr Henderson. And Sam. What Matthew and Rosamund silently conceded was that they needed the Phoenix to remain open as much as anyone else.

  With anxiety gnawing their stomachs, they fiercely checked certificates of health, praying that the bearers were still pestilence free and refusing to admit those in possession of obvious forgeries.

  A slight cough, a complaint about a megrim or the heat would give them all pause. A strange new etiquette developed where the drawers would leave the bowls and pots on the edge of the tables instead of placing them in front of customers, for fear they might breathe on them. The cost of admission was no longer thrown into a bowl, but a large jar of vinegar. No-one objected.

  Mid-August, Sam brought news that the Navy Office was moving to Greenwich. Along with the Treasury and other government organisations, they sought the safety of distance. The impact was felt directly by the Phoenix — some days they were lucky to have a dozen patrons come through the door. Not even Sir Henry visited any more. Still they remained open and stubbornly adhered to routines, celebrated the small things and tried to make sure the plague didn’t cross their threshold.

  So when Wolstan didn’t show up for work one day, they made excuses for his absence. When a scruffy young fellow gave Mr Henderson a note to take upstairs for ‘the lady
’ mid-afternoon, claiming it was from Wolstan’s mother, the workers gathered around Rosamund as she read it.

  She raised her eyes from the hastily scrawled note, the colour fleeing from her face as she passed it to Matthew, who’d followed Mr Henderson into the kitchen.

  ‘I’m afraid Wolstan is sick,’ she said.

  Cara gasped and covered her mouth. Art, Kit, Harry, Owen and Thomas all moved apart and began surreptitious examinations of each other. Solomon looked at his father, who reached over and placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

  Rosamund quickly thought about the last time she had really paid attention to Wolstan. He’d seemed fine yesterday, perhaps a little distracted, but weren’t they all? He’d served the few who entered along with Kit and she recalled he’d played a game of cards with Art and Mr Henderson. She looked towards them — Art was staring at his hands, frowning. Mr Henderson was shaking his head. She wondered who else among them had worked closely with him, if they’d shared a bowl, a cloth, anything other than cards. As she looked around, it was clear they were all doing the same thing, trying to recall their interactions.

  ‘We must go to him,’ said Rosamund, pushing away her misgivings. What’s done cannot be undone, wasn’t that what Lady Macbeth said to her husband? She’d been terrified this day would come, and now it had.

  Gathering some cakes of chocolate, she searched desperately for a cloth to wrap them in and a basket, anything to keep her mind off what Wolstan’s illness signified.

  ‘We’ll take him food, drinks, medick.’ She whirled around helplessly. ‘He has a mother, siblings. His father is at sea, so he’ll be fine —’

  ‘Rosamund,’ said Matthew, forcing her to stop. She stared but didn’t really see him. Dear God, Wolstan.

  Matthew spoke softly. ‘We will ensure he has whatever nourishment and potions he needs — he and his family — but you’ll not be delivering the necessities to him. I don’t want you going anywhere near his house.’