Forged in the Fire (17 page)

O
f the fifty-five prisoners on the
Black Spread-Eagle
only twenty-eight had returned alive to London. News gradually came to us in our meetings of their suffering during the seven months aboard the ship. The women had fared better than the men since they had been allowed on deck, but the men had been confined below the whole time, and more than half of them had died.

Susanna spent time with Rachel, often going to her house in the afternoons, after work. I was on my way to meet her there one seventh-day evening when I passed James Martell's shop and saw that it was unlocked, the door standing open, and voices and movement inside.

I stopped. I'd known, of course, that James Martell's relations must have inherited the stock, but I had grown used to seeing the shop locked and shuttered. All the books, as well as the Martells' personal possessions, were within.

A man – middle-aged and of prosperous appearance – came out. My concern made me bold, and I stepped up to him and asked, “Is the shop to reopen?”

He glanced at me without interest; I suppose I looked young and poor.

“Possibly,” he said. “I am here merely to remove the contents.”

I saw a likeness in his face to James Martell. This must be the brother he'd told me of. They had not been close.

“I used to work here,” I said.

He looked at me more keenly then. “You're a Quaker?”

“Yes.”

“The place is half full of Quaker books and pamphlets. Would your people buy them? Take the lot?”

“I would think so – if they can.”

“There are booksellers around who might buy most of the stock; but the Quaker stuff…” He waved a hand in a gesture of dismissal. “Whom do I call on?” he asked. “Who's in charge?”

“I'll speak to the meeting,” I said, “tomorrow.”

He hesitated. I could see he thought me too young to deal with. I said, “We have elders. I know the meeting will want these books.”

“Very well.” He told me he was Richard Martell, a mercer, and that we would find his shop at Aldgate.

I spoke to Friends after Meeting next day. There was a general feeling that we should try not only to buy such books as we could afford, but to keep the shop in Friends' hands, if someone could be found to rent it. The word would be put about.

A few days later, Edmund Ramsey came to see me at home. He arrived, somewhat breathless, at the top of our stairs, admired our little parlour and the view from the window, then accepted a mug of beer from Susanna and put a proposal to me.

It seemed that the Leighton brothers had told him about the shop and he had been inspired to take it on. He had made an offer to Richard Martell to buy all the stock and to the landlord to rent the premises.

“Now: I have my own business, as thou know,” he said, “and no time or inclination to run a shop, although I have an interest in books. What if I employ thee as manager? No one seems better suited. Thou worked for James Martell for three years and must know the business well.”

“I do,” I said. I had a sense of a great burden being lifted, of a new opportunity. “I would willingly take it on.”

He must have seen from my face how happy I was at the prospect. To be manager of a shop, and one that I knew and cared about, was the best offer I could have wished for. Now I no longer needed to feel that I had married too hastily. Susanna and I could live well enough on my wages. I glanced at her and saw that she agreed.

“Thou might wish to take on an assistant,” Edmund said, “though for a while, at least, it may be that Susanna—”

“Yes,” she said. “I know the work, and Will and I could run the shop together. I'd like nothing better.”

He smiled. “Then we have a bargain. It seems the landlord does not offer the living quarters with the shop. He finds it more profitable to let them separately, and is asking a high rent.”

“No matter,” said Susanna. “We have a home, and are happy here.” She was sitting close by me, and took my hand, unseen. Our fingers twined. I knew she would not have wanted to move; she loved our attic, as I did. Everything had come right for us at last.

We knew the shop had already been aired and fumigated, but Edmund feared that books and papers left dusty could harbour the pestilence, and before we took over he employed some women to take everything off the shelves and dust and wash all the surfaces and smoke the place again. On the day Susanna and I took up our new employment, a pale spring sunlight lit the rooms and showed us empty shelves and books piled high around them on the floor.

I walked among the stacks of shelves and remembered my good employer and his wife, and the small earnest face of six-year-old Agnes as she sat on the floor, a book open on her lap, reading to her brother.

Edmund must have guessed how I was feeling.

“We will keep the name – James Martell – on the shopfront,” he said. “It is his only memorial.”

The room smelled clean, herb-scented and smoky. But still we had not done, for Edmund had brought gunpowder to drive out any lingering breath of the plague. Some people fire guns in the room, but Edmund favoured sprinkling a trace of the black powder in a dish and setting off a small charge in two or three places around the shop. The flash was alarming, but afterwards the air seemed brighter and fresher, and I believe it was beneficial.

After this final cleansing came the task of replacing all the books, arranging the stationery, setting up the counter and a box for money, and preparing a new account book, ready for the shop to be re-opened in two days' time.

At last we were done – all three of us dusty, tired and thirsty. We locked up, and walked to the nearby Bell Inn for supper.

Before we began to eat we sat a moment in silence. Then Edmund said, “Friends, it is God's work we do. This venture of ours will be a source of truth and light in the city.”

T
he summer of 1666 was the happiest of my life so far. It was hot – from May onwards the hot, dry weather continued, much like the summer before, and folk feared a return of the plague, which had never quite died out. But Will and I had no fears. In our new-found happiness we felt immortal. We had our home, our work, and our love for each other. I gave up my employment with Amos Bligh and joined Will some days in the bookshop, where we soon found James Martell's old customers began to return, pleased to find the place open again. I was glad of my training with Mary Faulkner and knew I was an asset, both to my husband and to his employer. We sold all manner of books, as well as Friends' writings, and Will sought out hard-to-find copies and ordered stock from as far afield as Oxford and Antwerp.

On the days when I was not working with Will I shopped in the markets: the Stocks or Newgate for meat, Aldersgate for herbs and roots. Sometimes I strayed into Cheapside or the Exchange to look at the jewellery, fine gloves, silks, and suchlike vanity displayed there. These goods, for all their worldliness, I could not resist seeing and admiring, even though I did not desire such things. I did, however, buy myself a gown – some wealthier woman's cast-off – from the stall of a trader recommended to me by our landlord's wife.

“You may be sure her stock is clean and not much worn – and she never buys plague goods,” she said.

The gown I chose was a soft green, the neck rather low – but I covered that with a collar, and took the waist in to fit me. Will was much pleased with it.

Our attic home I kept clean and simple. We bought wooden plates and tankards, and a cooking pot or two, and I hung herbs from the ceiling where it was highest. I cooked on the trivet – “proper food”, I told Will, for the London way of running to the shops for everything shocked me; and I made bread and took it to a baker's to be cooked. For our bedroom I hemmed sheets, and hung curtains around the bed, and stored our small stock of linen between layers of lavender in the chest.

That attic bedroom became for us the centre of our world – so much so that I sometimes feared we were in spiritual peril, and ought to think more of our souls. But if I had ever dreamed of having Will in my arms in the meadow at Long Aston, now I longed each evening for our time together in that little room within sight and sound of the steeple-house of Mary Aldermary. The room was north-facing, and for that we were grateful, and for the shelter of the tower, which kept it dark and cool as the heat of summer advanced.

I came to love Mary Aldermary, for all it was a steeple-house. Its close presence and booming bells spoke of home to me; and its tower was a landmark as I moved about the city. Though I never went inside, I was happy to live in its shadow and to have landlords who worshipped there and were part of the life of its parish. At the north end of the lane was the great steeple-house of Mary le Bow, and all up and down were shops, inns and ordinaries where we might eat. From the southern end I could see down towards the river, though the wharf of Queenhithe was hidden behind houses.

Nat came to see us often, and sometimes all three of us would go out east to Mile End Green, where Friends' meetings were held. Nat's interest in premises at Bethnal Green had fallen through, but now he looked set to rent another place – a workshop with rooms above in Stepney – when it became vacant in August. He was full of plans and enthusiasm and talked much with us about it.

I was glad nothing had happened between Nat and me to put a constraint on our friendship now. He seemed the same as always, but for a while I wondered how he felt, if he was disappointed, even if I'd imagined his intentions. I'd never know for sure.

I also visited Rachel, who slowly emerged from her well of grief, helped by the need to care for Tabitha.

She had begun to take in sewing – plain work that as a Friend she could approve, and that she could do with the child playing near by.

“I used to work as a maidservant,” she said – and I could tell from her voice that she missed it. “In a silversmith's shop in Cheapside. That's where I met Vincent. He'd bring in his finished work to be sold there. My mother never liked him; said he'd come to no good end, with his ‘quaking'.” She managed a trembling smile.

“He died bravely, in the truth,” I said, “as we all hope to do if we must.” But I wondered if I should be so brave when my time came, or whether I could bear it if Will put his life in danger again, even for the truth.

As spring turned into summer I had something more immediate to wonder about. The sun blazed down every day, and the filth and smells of the city would have been unbearable had Will and I not been high above them all, in our eyrie, as he called it. But the heat rose through the building and made our rooms a furnace; and though we threw open the windows not a breath of wind came through. One night towards the end of June we heard, from our bedroom, the reverse peeling of bells a little way off, and cries of “Fire!” This was so common a sound that I did no more than get up and glance out, and, seeing the smoke some streets away, took no more notice.

“The city is a tinderbox,” said Will. “So tight packed with wooden buildings.”

But the fire was far off, to the north-west. And I had something else on my mind.

“Will … hast thou noticed? I have missed my terms these last two months…”

He had been lying stretched out, lazy, trying to get cool.

Now he sat up, and I had all his attention.

“Thou'rt with child?”

I saw the gleam of his eyes in the darkness but not their expression.

“Art thou pleased?”

For answer he hugged me close and covered my face with kisses. “How could I not be? Clever girl! Clever me! We lack nothing now.”

“Perhaps a cradle?”

“Thou shall have a cradle. We'll have one made. Carved with flowers and hearts—”

“No such vanity! It must be plain.”

He laughed. “I was thinking of our family cradle at home: it's old, passed down; it has borders of leaves and berries, dark and shiny with age. Someone took joy in its making. That will go to Anne one day, no doubt.”

“We should tell thy father this news,” I said. “It will be his grandchild.”

“Maybe… When we are sure.”

“I am sure now. Quite sure.”

But I knew he would not write. He had never written, even to Anne, about our marriage.

I wrote to my own parents, and had back a letter from my father telling of their joy and their longing to see me:
but do not think to travel – the heat is too great, and there is plague in the country. Thy mother urges thee to think much on God's grace, to eat fresh meat only, and new eggs, and to avoid parsley…

Mary Faulkner responded with similar advice, and Rachel rejoiced in my happiness and looked out some little garments that had been Tabitha's.

Tabitha was growing fast. She was rosy fair and blue-eyed – like her father, Rachel said. He will live on in her, I thought. And I wondered what
my
child would be like, whether it would be boy or girl, whether brown eyes or grey – or even blue, like my mother's. Would it have Heywood looks? The Heywoods should be told our news, I thought again.

Will and Nat had begun occasionally visiting more distant meetings, in Middlesex, Essex and Surrey. Often I went with them, for I liked to go into the countryside. Once we took a boat across the river and walked through Redriff and Deptford and out to a meeting at Greenwich. We bought strawberries from a farmer's stall, and ate them with the bread and cheese we'd brought; and I picked wayside flowers: daisies and cornflowers. I thought of my coming child, how I'd like to bring it up in a place like this, with fields and trees and healthier air.

I felt no fear that my child would die, though so many do, at birth or soon after. Nor did the thought of the birth frighten me yet; I was strong, and believed I would bear a healthy child safely. But I knew Will was afraid for me, for my life. He became overprotective towards me, and I had to remind him I was a country girl, well used to lifting and carrying. I carried on working as before, and had no sickness. I looked no different either, except that I needed to loosen my bodice a little. But in my heart I felt different, and I knew I must give out happiness as the sun gives out heat. Only one thing concerned me as the weeks went by: that Will had not told his father our news.