At the Sign of the Sugared Plum (2 page)

I peered into the windows, then lingered by a stall selling strange, brightly-coloured fruit. I’d seen oranges and lemons before – I’d once saved to buy a lemon, Abigail having told me that it was most excellent at fading freckles – but most of the other vivid, oddly-shaped objects were new to me. I stopped, fascinated, amid the jostling people, but the shrill cries of the stallholders urging customers to, ‘Come buy before night!’ reminded me that I had to get on. If I got lost in the backstreets in the dark I knew for certain that I’d get my throat cut and never be seen again.

A little further on was another small square with a
number of ways leading off it and I stood there, perplexed, for a moment. Sarah had told me that the city was like a cony-warren and it surely was, although I’d had plenty of time since her last visit to go over the route in my mind. After some thought I went along an alleyway, passed more shops and entered the churchyard of St Olave’s where I came across six small children standing amid the tombstones playing a game. One was evidently pretending to be the minister, for he had a long dark piece of cloth round his shoulders as a vestment and was proclaiming in a solemn voice. One was a corpse, lying ‘dead’ on the ground muffled in a winding sheet and the others – the mourners – were wailing and crying. I deduced they were playing at funerals and after staring at them for some moments – fascinated, for I’d never seen children play such a game at home – I stepped past the ‘body’ and went out of the back gate of the churchyard. Going across a small bridge over a river I took to be the Fleet, I finally found myself in Crown and King Place.

Excited now, I looked up at the swinging shop and house signs, searching for Sarah’s. I saw the Black Boy, the Half Moon, the Oak Tree, the Miller’s Daughter – and then, in a line of four or five shops, found the one I’d been looking for: a painted representation of a sugared plum. I swung my bundle of clothes over my shoulder and broke into a run, slipping and sliding on the cobbles in my effort to get there quickly, and thinking all the while how happy Sarah would be to see me.

Nearing the shop, seeing it close by, I have to own to a feeling of disappointment. From how she’d
spoken of it I’d been imagining it to be large and painted in gay colours, like some of the shops on London Bridge, with a bowed window crammed with sweetmeats. It was not, though. It was like the others in the same row: small, with no glass in the front, and it had a wooden casement of the type that divided into two when the shop was open, the top forming an awning above and the bottom part making an open counter.

Sarah was in the back of the shop, chopping something on a marble slab and looking very cool in a cotton dress with a starched white apron over it. She was tall – as tall as Father, with a shapely figure, thick dark hair that I’d always envied, and no freckles. Not one.

I went in to greet her, sniffing in appreciation, for the shop smelt of spices and sugar water and its wooden floor was thick with strewing herbs, which was pleasant after some of the odious smells outside.

‘Sarah!’ I said. ‘Here I am.’

She looked up at me and I was disconcerted to see that she seemed surprised – even shocked – at the sight of me. Surely she hadn’t forgotten that I was coming?

‘Hannah!’ she said. ‘How did you—’

‘Just as we planned,’ I said blithely. ‘I took Farmer Price’s cart to Southwarke and then walked from there. But what a muddle and a mess it all is in London. What stinks! What crowds!’

‘But what are you
doing
here, Hannah?’

I put down my bundle and my basket. ‘I’ve come to help you, of course – just as you asked. The Reverend Davies brought your letter to me and I was that excited – Father said
he’s
never had a letter in his life.
But where is your living space? Where shall I sleep? Can I look round?’

‘But I wrote to you again,’ she said. ‘I wrote two weeks back and said not to come.’

‘
Not to come?’
I said in disbelief. ‘Surely you didn’t —’

‘I wrote to you care of Reverend Davies again. Didn’t he come to see you?’

I shook my head, upset and bitterly disappointed. I couldn’t bear it if I had to go back to Chertsey! What about all my grand plans for living in London, for wearing the latest fashions, for attending playhouses and bear gardens, going to fairs and maybe meeting a handsome gallant?

‘But why don’t you want me here?’ I asked. ‘I’ll be of such a help to you! Mother has given me some recipes for glazing of fruit and I’m much improved in my reading and writing. I’ll be able to help you in all manner of things.’ I couldn’t understand why she didn’t want me there and began to wonder what I had done in the past for which she might not, after all, have been able to forgive me. Accidentally tearing the new lace that she’d been making into a cap, perhaps, or running out of the house early on St Valentine’s day in order to greet Chertsey’s only comely young farmer before
she
did.

‘It’s not because I don’t want you here, Hannah,’ she said. ‘It’s because . . . well, haven’t you heard?’ She dropped her voice as she spoke.

‘Heard what?’

‘About . . . about the plague,’ she said, looking round and shuddering slightly, as if the thing she was talking about was standing like a great and horrible
brute behind her. ‘The plague has broken out again in London.’

I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Oh, is
that
it!’ I said. So it wasn’t because of me or anything I’d done. ‘Is that all? Why, there’s always a plague somewhere and as long as it’s not here – I mean, not right here—’

‘Well, it’s not in this parish,’ she admitted. ‘But there are some cases in St Giles – and a house has been shut up in Drury Lane.’

‘Shut up?’ I asked. ‘What does that mean?’

‘One of the people inside it – a woman – has the plague, and they’ve locked her up with her husband and children so it can’t be spread abroad.’

‘So there – it’s all contained!’ I said. ‘And it’s just one house, Sarah – we don’t need to worry about
that,
do we? Doesn’t a place like London have all the best doctors and apothecaries? I bet we’re safer here than anywhere.’

‘I don’t know—’

‘But I’m here now, Sarah. Don’t send me back!’ I pleaded, realising now that it must have been the plague that Farmer Price had alluded to in his strange expression. ‘Oh, do let me stay!’ I burst out. ‘I can’t bear it if I’ve got to go home.’

She sighed. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘I’ll do everything you say,’ I went on anxiously. ‘I won’t go anywhere I’m not supposed to. I’ll be such a help to you, really I will—’

While I’d been pleading with her Sarah had been slowly looking me over from top to toe. Now, she shook her head. ‘You look such a goose, Hannah! What a dog’s dinner of clothes you’re wearing – and why ever have you tied your cap so tightly about your
head? Everyone leaves their ribbons dangling now, and that terrible old skirt – where did you get it?’

‘The vicar’s daughter,’ I said, noting that Sarah’s dress was of a pretty light blue with white collar and cuffs, and her cap was untied, its ribbons hanging loose. I frowned. ‘Do I look so unfashionable, then?’

‘As green as a country sprout!’ said Sarah. She gave a sudden smile. ‘But come and give me a hug and we’ll close the shop early and go out and buy a venison pasty to celebrate your coming.’

‘I can stay?’ I asked joyfully.

She nodded. ‘You can for the moment. But if the plague comes closer—’

‘Oh, it won’t!’ I said. ‘Everything is going to be perfectly fine.’

For so it really seemed.

Chapter Two
The second week of June

‘Great fears of the Sickenesse here in the city, it being said that two or three houses are already shut up. God preserve us all.’

Sarah leaned over my shoulder to touch the sugar I’d been pounding for the sweetmeats we were preparing that day. She rubbed some grains of it between finger and thumb and shook her head. ‘It must be finer than that,’ she said. ‘Like soft powder. When you’ve finished you should be able to sift it so that it falls like snow.’

I carried on pounding sugar in the pestle and mortar, keeping my sighs to myself. When, the day before, I’d complained about the amount of time and hard work it took to chip chunks off the sugar loaf and pound them, Sarah had retorted that if I didn’t wish to work so hard I could take myself home again and return to my usual jobs of wiping the noses of our little brothers and minding the sheep on the common. So I wasn’t going to say another word.

Sarah’s shop sold all manner of comfits, candied flowers, and sugared plums, nuts and fruit. The shop had belonged to our Aunt Martha – mother’s widowed sister – who’d gone to start a new life in Norwich with a farmer she’d met when he’d walked his five hundred turkeys from Norfolk to the livestock market in London. Mother and I had often talked about this, wondering who was the more footsore after their journey – the poor farmer or the weary turkeys – and if they’d driven him distracted on the way down by trotting off in all directions like wanton puppies.

Sarah was four years older than me. Anne and I were closer in age – there were only two years between us – and at home Sarah had been the grownup sensible one who’d helped mother. She’d always been closest to Aunt Martha, who at one time had owned a little bakery shop in Chertsey, where Sarah had helped from the time she was ten. Sarah had a knack for making things. Mother said she made the tastiest gingerbread and crispest biscuits this side of heaven. She was good with figure work, too, and used to help Father with his accounts, even when it meant missing a dance on the village green or a visit to the travelling fair. When Anne and I used to tease her about not having a beau, she’d laugh and say getting married wasn’t the only thing in the world and, anyway, she wasn’t going to marry the first booby farmer who came along.

There were two rooms to the shop: the front one where the sweetmeats were prepared and sold, and the back one which was Sarah’s living quarters, and now mine as well. There were two more rooms above us.
Sarah told me that a family had lived there until recently, but now it was just used as storage space by a local rope-maker. Our own living space held a small table and chairs, a chest of drawers for our possessions and an iron bed which Sarah and I shared. I’d asked Sarah to let me sleep nearest to the window, for from here I could sniff the fragrant rosemary bush just outside, which reminded me of the one by the back door of our cottage in Chertsey. I hadn’t asked for this because I was homesick, it was just that London smelt so bad and was so smoky, grimy and grey even when the sun was shining, that sometimes I could not help but think of our pretty cottage with its straw-thatched roof and its door wreathed with roses and sweet honeysuckle. Alongside us was the old barn where Father made staves and spokes for his wheelwright’s business, and in the garden were a great many neat rows of vegetables – so many that there was always spare to take to market – and our apple orchard which fair burst with fruit each October. Further off still was the village green with its cattle grazing peacefully around the pond, and the manor house, tavern and church. Chertsey was a whole world in miniature, Mother used to say, and she saw no reason why any of us should want to go running off to London.

That day Sarah and I were making candied rose petals, so that morning we’d risen at four o’clock to go to market. I was already quite awake by then, for I’d heard the first cheery call of the watchman – ‘God give you good morrow, my masters! Nigh four o’clock and a fair morning!’ – and needed little encouragement to rise.

We had gone to the flower market at Cheapside to buy pink and red roses and Sarah had bought six perfect blooms of each, first examining them carefully for signs of age, or bruising, or greenfly. ‘Note carefully what I’m looking for, Hannah, for soon I’ll be sending you to market on your own,’ she’d said.

I’d watched her closely, of course, but my eyes had also been on the giggling maids buying armfuls of flowers: delphiniums, lupins, crimson roses and alabaster lilies to decorate the great houses. I looked for Abigail again, too, but with no luck. I watched the maids to see what they were wearing and how they behaved, envying them their confident manner and the way they traded glances and banter with the apprentice lads. I noticed one or two boys looking my way but I kept my head down, for I wanted to get rid of my freckles before I spoke to anyone. I was wearing my so-called best dress which was of plain brown linen and quite drab and hateful, but I’d undone the ribbons on my cap so that they hung loosely about my face, thinking that at least one part of me must be in fashion. Sarah had promised that as soon as we had time to spare she’d take me to the clothes market in Houndsditch, so I could have a new outfit. It would be less than a year old, she told me, for apparently as soon as any new mode from France reached our shores the great ladies – who would sooner be dead than out of fashion – would rush to order it, and have their servants sell at market any outfits purchased the previous season.

I carried on pounding the sugar, changing arms and trying to use my left hand as well as my right, and at last Sarah said it would do well enough.

‘Now watch me,’ she said, and she took a sharp knife, severed the head of the reddest, fullest rose, then carefully separated the petals, cutting any pieces of white (which she explained could be bitter) from the bottom of each. She told me to lay the petals side by side, touching them as little as possible, on white paper in a large shallow box. The same fate befell five more roses, until all their petals lay within boxes in long, perfect lines of pink and scarlet. Sarah then sprinkled them alternately with rose water and the finely sifted sugar and gave them to me.

‘Put the boxes outside in full sunlight,’ she instructed me, ‘and turn the petals in two hours.’

Carefully holding the first box, I went into the yard at the back which we shared with three other shops. It was a tiny space, but Sarah said we were lucky in that we shared a privy here with just our near-neighbours instead of all the street. Just outside our back door was a rack of shelves which Sarah used to dry out flowers and sweetmeats at their various stages of preparation. There was room in the ground here, too, for a few herbs – one bush each of rosemary, sage and bay, which Sarah had brought as cuttings from home and had managed to root in the beaten-down soil.