He pulled a striped knitted hat from the paper.

  ‘I thought it would keep you warm on board ship. I saved the wool from the caps I knitted for the boys.’

  He swallowed, stared at it a moment. Then he deliberately put it to one side. ‘Here.’ He leapt out of bed and dragged his pouch from his breeches pocket, so the white lining was left flapping. He fumbled inside it, then threw two Angels onto the covers. ‘Buy whatever you like. I suppose you’ve earned it.’

  In the next room, Jack’s snores seemed to add insult to the injury.

  The rest of the day passed in icy politeness, with morning worship and then the Christmas feast. Mary and Bess slaved in the kitchen, and the meal was devoured in a few moments by Jack and the boys. Will barely touched his food, but kept up a conversation with Jack about the yards, bitterness written all over his face.

  Boxing Day was equally sour. She gave the boys their knitted caps, but on seeing her gift to the boys, Jack produced three sixpences from his pocket, and in the excitement at seeing real silver, her gifts were soon forgotten.

  As for Will; he spent Boxing Day in the workshop hiding from them all, despite the freezing weather and no fire below. Two days later he took his canvas carry-all and was gone to sea. So now there was no cheerful hammering from below, and the workshop was dark and silent.

  His parting words to her had been, ‘Do your duty and look to the children.’

  Now even that pleasure was to go. Jack had been offered bigger rooms over Kite’s premises, and was packing his bags. From the bedroom came crashes and bangs and scuffles as the children squabbled over who was to carry them for him.

  Bess cut six thick slices of bread and buttered them before laying on slices of cheese and packing it all in paper. She had no confidence that Jack would feed his children properly.

  Jack and Toby dragged the bags to the door. Billy’s nose was pressed to the window. ‘Grandfather’s here,’ he yelled, ‘with the cart.’

  Bess wiped her hands and went to peer out. Owen Bagwell was bulked up in a thick wool cloak and a hat with earflaps. His moustache bristled white with frost. She’d no wish to meet with Will’s father, but couldn’t deny he’d been thoughtful to organise transport on a day like this – cold to make your bones ache, and a brittle layer of snow to make stepping outside treacherous. Even the horse had sacking tied to its hooves to give it extra grip.

  The boys whooped with excitement and her warnings to be careful of the ice rang on deaf ears. They clambered on top of the cart like monkeys, huffing their breath in clouds into the cold air. Little terrors. She smiled a smile full of tears. She couldn’t resist going down to say goodbye. The number of times she’d wished them gone, and now it was happening she just wanted it to stop.

  She hugged them one by one, and handed Toby the packet of provisions.

  ‘Now you be good,’ she said, her voice choked.

  He shuffled away, embarrassed to be embraced, but little Hal clung tight to her. ‘I want to stay home,’ he wailed.

  Mr Bagwell hoisted him away and shook him. ‘No crying. Big boys don’t cry,’ he said, shoving him roughly next to the driver. Hal was so surprised to be there that he stopped immediately.

  Bless him, she thought.

  Jack handed her a scrap of paper. ‘This is where we are. Tell Will, when you write.’ She nodded. ‘And call to visit.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll miss the boys,’ she said, looking at the address. St Clement Danes, just beyond the city walls.

  ‘And me I hope,’ Jack said, catching her eye.

  She backed away, but he took hold of her arm.

  ‘It wasn’t my idea, moving out. It was Will’s. He didn’t want me in Flaggon Row whilst he’s away at sea. Can’t think why.’ His smile was full of implication. ‘Quite insistent, he was. Though you can do better than Pepys.’

  That phrase again. She ignored it, and shook him off; his words felt like a stab. ‘It will be good for you to spend time with the boys, Jack,’ she said. ‘Will they still be having their lessons?’

  ‘Lessons?’ He frowned as if he didn’t understand. ‘No. The boys will be working with me; proper men’s work. We’ve a stable to clean out, work to do. I’ll need their hands.’

  ‘What? Hal as well?’

  ‘He’s big enough now, too old to be in petticoats.’ A pause. ‘Well, my beautiful Bess, you’ll have the house all to yourself. Maybe I’ll call in.’ His eyes held hers a moment too long, and it made her recoil.

  She folded her arms; partly against him, partly against the chill. ‘Bring the boys any time,’ she said.

  Will’s father shouted a swear-word at the horse and flapped the reins. He’d not said a single word to her. The cart creaked away and not one of the boys looked back.

  Agatha scanned through Dr Harris’s leaflet with distaste, ‘Certain Necessary Directions for the Preservation and Cure of the Plague’. It was a tract revived from the last bout, but hopelessly old-fashioned. Dr Harris had given it to her, after he was summoned to an emergency public health subcommittee of the King’s council.

  It advised you to avoid bathing and smoke tobacco. There was a list of foods that were considered ‘injurious’ and to be avoided, such as cucumbers, melons and cherries. She’d never read anything so foolhardy in her life. Cucumbers and melons! Why, they were rich men’s fodder, and there were no cherries to be had in London anyway – not now suppliers from overseas had heard of the contagion and trade had stopped. Weavers couldn’t get silk, ostlers couldn’t get fodder for their horses. Dr Harris said the King had told the College of Physicians to put a stop to the plague, as if they could just wave it away with a few pills. Fools.

  She cast the tract aside, and tucked the cover over her basket which contained her precious remaining supplies of dried rue and wormwood, green vitriol and Venice Treacle, along with some cakes, four for a penny. An expensive treat. She’d tried several times to see Jack or the Sutherland boys, hoping for news of Bessie, but they were never in. She worried for them. The boys and her daughter. Today she would try once more.

  As she set off, she hoped the boys wouldn’t fight over the extra cake. It had been her plan to take the tract with her as well, had it been any use. She took a detour to avoid the Chancery Lane area, for the contagion had reached there a week ago. She knew that because she’d traced the path of the sickness, its deadly trail, through the Bills of Mortality. The Chancery Lane and Drury Lane area would be full of carts and horses by now, for the law students who would be leaving in droves from the Inns of Court.

  Her hip ached as she walked, and the basket bumped against her thigh. It was a good few miles to St Giles. She knocked on the door of the narrow house where Jack lived, but again there was no answer. Eventually, she walked around the back of the row to peer in to the window behind. She pressed her face up to the sliver of glass, shielding the light away to see better.

  The room was full of women spinning fleeces.

  ‘Oy, you.’

  She stepped away.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  The neighbour, a tanner by the look of him, in a stained smock, was blocking her retreat.

  ‘I’m looking for Jack Sutherland and his boys.’

  ‘Well they’re not here.’ He was still eying her suspiciously. ‘They moved out. It’s Widow Stow now and her daughters. Good thing too. Them boys were a bleedin’ nuisance. Always in and out banging the doors and pinching the eggs from our hens.’

  ‘Do you know where they’ve gone?’

  ‘No, and I don’t want to know. He kept some shady company, that Sutherland, despite him dressing like a fop. He was in gaol, didn’t you know? Best place for him, I say.’

  ‘You’ve no address for them?’

  ‘Are you deaf? I told you, I don’t know. And I don’t like folk snooping around my back yard.’

  He made a gesture at her, like shooing a cow into a meadow.

  Agatha took the hint, and hurried away with as much dignity as she could muster. They’d moved. And nobody had bothered to tell her. She sagged with disappointment. She’d looked forward to a cuddle from Hal and telling the older ones a tale. Now she didn’t know when she’d ever see them again. Of course she could ask Bessie about them.

  But no. She had her pride. Bessie would have to come to her first.

  *

  Bess slept badly and now she chafed her hands against each other. She’d paid Mary the wages she owed her with the Christmas gift Will had given her, and then sent her on a day’s leave.

  With no Mary to lay the fire, she busied herself tearing paper and banking coal until a blaze flamed in the hearth. She didn’t dare think; it would be too painful. She squatted before the fire, but its blaze didn’t warm her. The wind was rising, and she could hear its whistle through the spires and masts of Deptford. Her back was cold, and she was aware of the empty house behind her seeming to suck all the warmth from her body.

  Another gust, and the house creaked as the timbers moved, like an old vessel at sea. It put her in mind of Will. She wondered how he was faring in this icy blast, whether he still thought of her and longed for home. Her thoughts about him were complicated; she couldn’t square the man of the last months with the man she’d married. She supposed she loved him, or why this tearing feeling in her chest?

  She turned from the fire and surveyed the room. Now there was nobody but her to fill it, the parlour seemed huge. Under the table was one of Hal’s knitted socks that he must have left behind. She crouched to pick it up, remembering the number of days she’d helped him to pull it on. She imagined his warm little toes inside it; felt her throat tighten.

  Outside, the hollers of the early morning round of bread-men and milkmaids, knife-grinders and button sellers, drifted by, carried away by the wind, as haunting as seagulls. She didn’t feel like sewing. Couldn’t put her mind to it, somehow. She would give the house a good clean. That’s what she’d do. It was what her mother used to do in times of trouble, she realised.

  The thought stopped her in her tracks. Her mother. She saw in her mind’s eye her mother’s trembling lower lip when she told her the boys were gone and that she didn’t need her. It still made her bitter, their argument, but now the hollow pain of regret gripped her. No point in thinking of it now. Briskly, she folded up the palliasse where Jack used to sleep, and gathered the bedding in a heap, grimacing at the holes where tobacco from Jack’s pipe had dropped onto the sheets. Lord, they could have all been burned in their beds!

  Outside, the wind increased as she worked. There was no noise now except its howl, no horse’s hooves passing, just the skittering of debris in the road. Somewhere outside, a shutter banged. She peered out. The Thames was foaming with grey waves. Sleet flew horizontal across her view. No boats were passing; the watermen’s craft huddled to the bank.

  She paused with the pail and washcloth in her hand. She’d stay within; work to keep warm. She went through to her bedchamber to strip the bed. A rumble overhead. All at once lightning flashed, slashing the big four-poster bed with light. A picture came to mind of Will, how he used to take up three-quarters of the mattress, spread-eagled out with his legs too long and hanging over the end.

  How she missed that man. For the last few weeks she’d missed him even when he was here. And now he was out on the sea, in this storm, thinking she didn’t care for him. She gripped the sheets tight, absently pulling at them as another picture came to mind.

  The turned-back sleeve and lace cuff of Pepys. Then his hands pressing down on her shoulders, as she stared up at the bed canopy, trying to think only of that, fixing her eyes on the gilded button at its centre, the pleated material, and not …

  Oh Will. She bundled up the bedding in an angry gesture and threw it into the laundry basket. Everything had changed the day he’d given her to Pepys. For that was what Will had done – traded her for a position on board ship. Why had he done that? But she knew. It was her fault. She was a faithless wife and it had hurt him. You’ve made your bed, was what he would say, you’d best lie in it.

  Lightning split the sky, and a great clap of thunder. The wind roared. Above there was the sound of tearing timber immediately followed by a crash. Bess instinctively ducked, put her hands over her head. The smash of something breaking on the road outside. She ran to the window, pressed her forehead to the glass. The road was littered with roof tiles and mangled wattle fences. Up against the wall was wedged a broken garden gate that had blown clean off its hinges.

  Another squall of rain and wind; too close. As if it was in the house. Bess pushed open the kitchen door. It scraped against something gritty. She forced it open and peered around the door. And saw sky. Felt rain on her face.

  The whole of one corner of the roof was gone. Red roof tiles littered the floor and the cook-hearth. Rain gusted in over her dry provisions. A rook’s nest, a mess of twig and bird lime, had splattered into the fallen rafters. The timbers that remained above were jagged and listing in the wind.

  Hurriedly she shut the door. Just in time. Behind it a thud that shook the soles of her shoes, followed by the clatter of more falling tiles. She did not dare open the door again.

  By evening the storm had blown itself out. The door to the kitchen would not open. She went down the steps outside to look at the damage. From below she saw that some of the shingle wall had also gone. The sight of it pierced her heart. The house had been perfect, and now it was as if some devil had disfigured it.

  There’d be no cooking in that room for a while, that was certain. She knew instantly that it would cost her. Such repairs were tasks that Will could do, if he were here. But he was not here. She sat down at the table and pressed her hands to her head. Who could she turn to? Her mother? No. She said she wouldn’t come back, ‘not if you paid me,’ her mother had said. There was no-one.

  Chapter 45

  The wind was still high after the January storm, and Agatha clutched her canvas bag to her chest as she forced her way against its blast back towards the festering rookery of St Giles. The house she’d to visit was easily spotted by the dishevelled, windswept mourners by the door. She ducked into the front parlour, squeezing past, murmuring ‘beg pardon’. Someone handed her a candle and she carried it before her, the wax spilling onto her wrist. She did not usually come at night, but Dr Harris, the physician who employed her, had insisted. He was compter for the Parish records, and responsible for the Bills of Mortality in her area. ‘Too many deaths in St Giles,’ he’d said ponderously, as if he’d noticed it himself, ‘it could be a contagion.’

  The Fraser family were poor laundry-workers, so the house stank of urine from the buck tub, and of wet linen, and the back room, where the bodies lay, was dark as a tomb.

  ‘You don’t need to see them.’ The daughter of the house, Norry, a large lummock of a girl with a badly mended hare-lip, would not let her pass. ‘I swear it’s the bad water from the Fleet. Two others from our street died of it just last week.’

  ‘And your ma and pa; had they the gripes?’

  ‘Aye. Both of them.’

  ‘The flux?’

  ‘Something awful. But they be at peace now. No need for you to go prodding and poking at them. I can lay them out myself.’ Norry folded her arms across her bosom, barring the way.

  Agatha placed a hand softly on her arm. ‘I’m sorry. I know it’s upsetting, but I’ll be gentle. I have my job to do, and I just need to look in on them, to give the cause of death, so if you’ll let me by—’

  ‘No.’ The word was aggressive. ‘I’ve told you—’

  ‘Then I’ll call the constable, and he’ll have you arrested.’

  This seemed to shift her, and she stood aside. The room stank of faeces and blood, but Agatha was used to this and merely made a note to herself. In the gloom she saw that one of the bodies wasn’t even in the bed, but contorted on the floor.

  A whisper came in her ear. ‘I can pay you, if that’s what it takes. I’ve got two babbies, Have a heart, missus.’

  And neither of them in wedlock, thought Agatha, noticing the lack of a wedding band on Norry’s finger. Agatha bent low over the man on the floor. His expression was one of open-mouthed terror, lips purple over yellow teeth; his fingers clawed at his nightshirt, but had turned rigid by the strangle of death. But it was what she saw on his neck that made her recoil, clapping a hand over her nose and mouth.

  Black boils of pestilence.

  ‘Please,’ Norry said. ‘I’ll pay you.’

  Agatha turned to her. ‘You know what this is, don’t you? And you know what you must do.’

  ‘No!’ The shout was more of a moan. ‘No, not that, please, not that.’

  ‘What is it?’ An elderly straggle-haired woman came to ask what the commotion was.

  ‘Quick,’ Agatha whispered to her. ‘Fetch a constable. Anyone in this house must stay here. It will need to be signed with the cross and the doors boarded up.’

  Nobody said the word ‘plague’ out loud, but whispers of it soon cleared the house until the only sound was of a crying baby. A small girl put her head around the door. ‘Ma?’

  Norry did not answer. She headed for the parlour where, ignoring the grizzling baby, she stripped the linen from a clothes-horse and stuffed it into a bag.

  ‘Where will you go?’ Agatha said.

  ‘My cousin,’ the answer was muffled as she was bending over the bag. ‘Lives in the West Country. She’ll take us in.’

  ‘It’s a long way. Has she family?’ Agatha had to shout over the noise of the crying baby.

  ‘Quiet, Walter! Yes, two young ’uns like mine.’ The woman swept up a small pair of shoes from the hearth and was about to push them in the bag, but Agatha swiped it up and held it closed.

  ‘What about her husband? He won’t welcome you if he knows why you’ve come. Think woman. How will your cousin feel if she knows what you’ve brought with you? Would you visit this affliction on her children as well as your own?’

  The thought of Toby, Billy and Hal flashed before her. Her thoughts were interrupted by the child.

  ‘Mama, where are we going?’

 

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