Forged in the Fire (2 page)

Babies. It gave me a jolt to think that I too would soon have babies if I married Will. I had often daydreamed of having children in the future, but now it drew near: real, enticing, and yet to be feared.

I went home to Long Aston on seventh-day. The roads were rough underfoot, but dry and passable after the long spell of fine weather we'd had. A farmer offered me a ride on his cart, and I was glad of it, for the weather was too warm for walking. In the fields the lambs were almost full-grown, and the hedgerows dense and green and full of pale pink dog roses. I wanted to remember it all, for I guessed I'd see no such sights in London.

The farmer set me down a mile and a half from home, and I walked there through the meadows, and picked daisies and made a chain; then crossed the stream by the stepping stones that led into the wood, and so up to our yard the back way.

Deb was there, spreading washing to dry on the bushes. She was growing up fast, and looked taller, I thought, every time I came home. When she saw me she shouted in delight and ran to meet me.

“I thought thou weren't coming till next week!”

“Mary let me come. I have news.”

“Oh, Su! What? What news? Is it about Will? Is he coming? Tell me!”

“Wait!” I said, laughing, and tossed the daisy chain over her head. I had never felt happier. I shall bring him here, I thought. He had never visited my parents' home, though they had met him, once, at Mary's shop, before he left for London. I'd show him the stream, and the path up to Overton, and the Disbury Maze where they say the fairies dance at new moon, and that grassy place at the edge of the wood where I'd once guiltily imagined lying with him, long ago…

I heard the clacking of my father's loom, and then my mother appeared and gave a cry of joy – “Husband! Susanna is here!” – and the loom stopped.

My father came out, and I was caught up in their embraces and questions.

My mother exclaimed, “Thou'rt early! I told Isaac he should come home next week and thou'd be here.”

And my father, with his grave smile, chided her. “Be thankful to see the girl now.”

“Su has news!” said Deb. Her face was eager. She has wide-set blue eyes, like our mother, and the same square chin, while Isaac and I are brown-eyed and take after our father.

I gave them my news. My parents were glad for me – though not surprised, since they had known we planned to marry as soon as I was free and Will settled in work, and with prospects. I had told them before that James Martell liked him well and intended in a year or two to bring him into the business.

“Then that would be the time to marry,” my father had said. “You are both still too young as yet.”

But my mother had prevailed. “They have waited three years,” she said, “and stayed true. Think how lightly we lived, husband, when we were young! Let them have their time together.”

Now, my father said only that we must both think of the responsibilities of marriage, and seek God's help in the silence. “And tomorrow, Susanna, as Will is not here, thou must speak to the meeting alone and tell them of thy wish to be married.”

“I will.”

I feared to have the meeting's attention all on me, but there was no likelihood that they would not approve, since my parents were willing.

My mother sent Deb to fetch a jug of small beer from the inn. There was a pottage simmering over the fire, and she ladled us out a bowlful each, and served it with bread and herbs.

Later, she took me aside, opened the big oak chest in which we had always kept our clothes and bedding, and brought out something wrapped in worn sheeting. She shook it out.

It was a woman's shift, with a high neckline and long sleeves, such as I would wear under my skirt and bodice, or in bed. The linen was fine and soft, bleached to a pale oat colour, and it was neatly and plainly stitched; without lace, for Friends do not wear such decoration, but with a narrow border of feather stitch, in the same oat colour, marking the hems.

I had never owned such a fine shift. I turned to my mother in gratitude. “Thou made it?”

“And thy father wove the linen and bleached it. It is a gift for thy marriage.”

I stroked the cloth, thinking of the hours of work, often by rushlight. “I thank thee, Mam.”

My mother held her work against me, to check the length; and I thought: I'll be wearing this shift on my wedding night. My face grew warm, and I was aware of Deb watching me.

Next day we walked to Meeting. Eaton Bellamy Meeting is held in Lewis Streetley's great barn, and we settled on benches and straw bales in the lofty space with its smells of hay and leather, and chickens scratching around the doorway. This barn was the place where I loved best to meet and had always felt closest to God. As the silence fell, I imagined standing here with Will, making our promises each to be a loving and faithful partner to the other until death should separate us. Then I tried to draw my thoughts inward as I felt the meeting become gathered.

Out of the silence, several Friends spoke of the love and power of God. Towards the end, as people began to shift in their seats, I took courage and spoke in a low, nervous voice of my desire and Will's to be married. They listened without speaking, but afterwards many came and said they would be glad to witness our marriage, and I knew I had the love of the meeting.

As we walked home, my mother said, “You may stay at the inn at Long Aston, thou and Will, since you'll have no home of your own to go to. Thy father will pay. And the Streetleys will host the wedding breakfast.”

She tried to speak cheerfully, but she looked pensive, and I knew she was thinking that soon after the wedding, Will and I would go to London – and none of us knew how long it would be before we might meet again.

But I could not share her gloom. Will's letter had taken nearly a week to reach me. In only two weeks' time he would leave London; and with hired horses they would travel fast. Soon we would be together.

“We will come back, Mam,” I said. “I promise thee. And I'll write often, and tell thee all that happens in the city.”

She touched my face gently. “Pray God Will takes good care of thee there.”

The next day I returned to Hemsbury, to my work. As I folded and cut pamphlets, hung up printed sheets and dealt with customers, I thought much about my coming role as a wife.

I told all my friends – Martha and Kezia Jevons, Grace Heron, Em Taylor – and wrote to my brother, Isaac, who was apprenticed to a weaver in Bristol. The days crept by. Once midsummer was past, I would look up, heart thumping, every time there was a knock at the door; and I got into the habit, each evening, of walking down to the East Bridge and gazing out along the road in hope of seeing them coming.

The long days dragged.

“They will come in God's good time,” said Mary.

But I was in a fever of anxiety and expectation. I feared illness, or some accident on the road. News-sheets from London told of war with Holland; the navy hard-pressed; plague increasing and spreading into the heart of the city.

At last, two weeks after they should have arrived, I heard Mary calling me. I was upstairs, and the urgency in her voice made me race down into the kitchen, alight with hope.

“Are they here?”

But Mary was alone. There was an acid smell in the room that caught at the back of my throat, and I saw that she was holding a letter over a small pan of boiling liquid.

I turned weak with fear. A letter now could only mean bad news.

“For me?” I asked. “From Will?”

“Yes.”

“What are you doing?” I reached out for it.

“We are warned to air letters from London over boiling vinegar, to avoid contagion.”

Terror leaped in my heart. The plague. Please God, I thought, not Will.

“The ink will run!” I almost snatched the letter from her. “Let me see! Oh, Mary, what does he say?”

L
ess than two weeks before Nat and I were due to leave London, I walked down towards Blackfriars to look at some rooms for rent. It was evening, warm, and still sunny, and I had left work and arranged to meet Nat later and go to an alehouse for dinner. We had little means to cook at our lodgings; it was easier to buy pies, bread and fruit in the street markets, or occasionally to pay our landlady for a bowl of pottage.

I had looked at several places in recent days, but liked none of them. They might do for me, I felt, but not for Susanna. Nat and I had got into bachelor ways. I could not imagine Susanna, so clean and orderly as I remembered her, trapped in such poor rooms without means to cook or wash linen. This latest was cleaner and more spacious, but I feared the rent was too high; I said I would think on it.

I left, and began walking to Ludgate Hill, where I had arranged to meet Nat at the Crown. On the way, I daydreamed about having Susanna here with me. Often, as I walked around the city, I imagined showing her the sights: the river, the great ships being unloaded at the wharves, Cheapside, the shops on London Bridge, and all the new books that came to James Martell's shop. But today I imagined the two of us in just such a room as I'd seen, naked in bed together, warm with love.

I was lost in these pleasurable thoughts when I reached the corner of Shoemaker Row – and pulled up in shock.

A soldier was lounging in the doorway of a house, his halberd propped beside him. It was a good-sized house, well kept, such as a successful tradesman might inhabit. But the door was chained and barred. On it was painted a red cross, with a printed notice nailed beside it:
Lord have mercy upon us
.

The sight sent a chill through me. Every summer that I remembered, whether in Shropshire, Oxford, or London, there had been deaths from plague; but I had never given it much thought, knowing it to afflict mainly the poor, who live crowded together in verminous conditions. And although I had heard of houses being enclosed and having the cross painted on their doors, it was a thing I had never seen before. Now I was struck, not with fear – for I felt too strong and alive to contract the sickness – but with horror and compassion to think that anyone should come to such a plight. The dead would have been removed, and those surviving would now be locked up for a month in the foul air of the house of sickness until the risk of contagion was over.

Nat was already at the Crown when I arrived. I observed him for a moment before he saw me, and understood why we Friends were usually recognized as such by other people, often before we spoke. There was something about his plain coat and rather old-fashioned hat, together with a quiet look of inward retirement, that marked him out. And yet Nat was not a solemn man. He had a quick smile that brightened his face when he turned and saw me.

“The rooms?” he asked.

“Fair. But too high a rent.”

“Thou can look about when she is here.”

“Yes.”

I sat down on the bench opposite him. Our Friends the Palmers had said Susanna could stay with them as long as she liked. But until we found rooms we could not live together as man and wife. Nat knew that.

“Thou'll find somewhere quick enough when the time comes,” he said, with a wink.

We laughed. Men near by glanced our way, but no one troubled us. We had found people mostly to be more tolerant in London than in the country, and we were rarely threatened except by the authorities, who were zealous at breaking up meetings.

We ordered beer, and fish cooked in a pastry coffin. The girl who served us allowed her glance to flick between the two of us. She had dark, teasing eyes, and we were both conscious of her appraisal.

When she had gone I said, “I saw a house enclosed – the cross on the door.”

“I heard folk here speaking of it. So the plague is on our doorstep now.”

We'd both read the Bills of Mortality that were posted around the city every week, but that freshly painted cross, in its blood-red starkness, acted more forcibly on my imagination than any words. We were due to leave the city soon; I'd be glad to get away. Perhaps by the time we returned the danger would have passed.

The girl came back with our food, and I asked if she knew who lived in the enclosed house.

She was only too willing to tell. “Thomas Richmond, a shipping clerk,” she said. “Sickened and died within five days. And now his wife and four little children shut up, poor souls.” She put a hand to her bosom, where I had noticed a sprig of something was tucked. “I keep a bunch of wormwood and rue always about me; and take plague waters…” She glanced at Nat. “You work for Amos Bligh, the Quaker printer, don't you?”

He nodded. “I do.”

“I've seen you about. Take care with the pastry – it's hot.”

She left, and we caught each other's eye and smiled.

The pastry was indeed hot, and we burned our fingers breaking it open. The fish inside was spiced with cardamom and nutmeg. We ate with relish, and felt glad to be alive. The plague was in the city – but danger was always present. We must go about our lives as usual, and trust in God.

During the next week, however, I began to feel a greater sense of urgency to be away. On the Bill of Mortality the figure for plague deaths had risen. I saw another house with the cross on the door, this time near Cheapside, in the heart of the city. Plague orders were posted all around: every householder was to keep the street before his door swept clean; large gatherings of people were banned (they'd use this to break up Friends' meetings, I knew); the playhouses were closed; the great fairs – Bartholomew and James's – would not be held. I had no interest in fairs and playhouses, and yet these restrictions on our liberty made me more afraid than anything else.

“You and Nat Lacon should leave the city as soon as possible,” my employer said.

We were in his bookshop in Paul's Churchyard, in the shadow of the great steeple-house. I had been out delivering an order to a customer in Fleet Street, and had seen an apothecary come out of a house wearing a waxed cloak and a long pointed mask, like a bird's beak.