Petals in the Ashes (5 page)

‘Then pray take her, Mrs Black!' Lady Jane said, seeming to lose interest. ‘I know you have her nursery all prepared.'

Dropping Grace into Mrs Black's arms, Milady sat down once again at the card table and it seemed that we were dismissed (and had as much value as fleas on a counterpane, I said to Sarah later). But Mrs Black delayed, nodding at us meaningfully.

‘Oh! Thank you for your great courtesy in receiving us here in your house,' Sarah said.

Her Ladyship nodded and, as she glanced at me, I asked, ‘What are we to do now?'

Mrs Black gave a hiccup and another hard look and I added, ‘Your Ladyship. If you please.'

‘You will both stay here, of course, until the plague leaves London,' said Lady Jane, picking up her cards and studying them intently. ‘And then Carter will take you back there in the carriage.'

‘But how will we know when it's all right to return?'

‘We have news every week,' Lady Jane said, waving her hand dismissively. ‘There are newspapers and letters now coming out of London – we'll know when it's safe.' She turned away from us back to her hand of cards and, as Mrs Black and Sarah were both in the doorway and making big eyes at me, I withdrew.

‘Lady Jane must not be troubled by such as yourselves,' Mrs Black chided and hiccupped, once we were outside. ‘She has more important matters to think on.'

‘So we saw,' I murmured, but Mrs Black did not hear me above Grace's cries.

With Grace still bawling, Mrs Black led us through more corridors to the nursery wing, which she told us
was where Lady Jane's children and their staff lived and were schooled. She explained that Grace was to have a room of her own and a nursery maid to tend her, and accordingly we entered a small, whitewashed room and found a young girl of perhaps fourteen blowing on some coals in the grate to try to get them to catch. This was obviously to be Grace's nursery, for as well as a narrow bed there was a stout wooden cradle and a table and chair, and also a wooden rocking horse which looked as if it had been well used by Lady Jane's children, being battered and having most of its mane missing.

The girl jumped to her feet as we appeared and gave a curtsey to each one of us in turn. Not used to being curtseyed to and unsure of what my reaction should be, I returned this compliment, although Sarah frowned at me.

‘Anna here will have charge of Grace from now on,' Mrs Black said to us. ‘She's a careful girl. Her mother died in childbirth so she's brought up her three little sisters on her own.'

Anna smiled shyly at us and then held out her arms for Grace, who'd gone silent as we'd entered the room but who'd now started crying again. Anna did not seem perturbed at this, though, but settled Grace into the crook of her arm and, with her other hand, popped something into her mouth. Grace immediately began to suck greedily.

‘'Tis a raisin tied in muslin,' Anna said. ‘It always works.'

‘Oh! We have left her poppet behind in the pesthouse!' I said, suddenly remembering Grace's dolly.

Mrs Black made a face of displeasure. ‘She won't
need any dirty things from that place,' she said. ‘She'll have all manner of fine toys and games from now on and will play nicely with her cousins. When she's mastered Dobbin there …' she nodded towards the make-believe horse, ‘… she'll learn to ride a real one.'

Although Grace's lips still moved in rhythm as she sucked at the muslin comforter, her eyelids had closed by the time we said our goodbyes. She looked so bonny and pretty as I bent to kiss her that I felt a great ache of sadness, for I had tended her like a mother for six weeks, and she was my last link to Abby. Feeling the tears well up I let out a small sob, which caused Sarah to begin to weep too, so that Mrs Black led us from the nursery in quite a gentle manner, telling us that we could visit Grace whenever we liked.

We were then shown to our room, which was quite plain, with an iron bedstead and several sets of shelves, and told by Mrs Black that as long as we kept to the back part of the house we could come and go from here as we liked. The only time our presence was essential was in the chapel every Lord's Day.

When Mrs Black had left, Sarah and I felt such a sense of relief that our ordeal at the pesthouse was over that we sat down together on our bed and wept, nor hardly stopped for the rest of that afternoon. We were weeping for all the horror we'd left behind in London, and for our friends who were dead, and for the relief in delivering Grace safely. On my part I was also weeping because of Tom, for I had a dreadful fear that I might never see him again.

Our time in Highclear House passed slowly, for we had no regular duties and it seemed that Lady Jane
had forgotten about us. As we waited to hear that the plague had left London, weeks turned to months and the weather grew cold and frosty. We had a fireplace in our room and a weekly allowance of coal, and so spent a deal of time there either trying to improve our reading (there was a large library, though with monstrous dull books), embroidering our clothes or learning still-room recipes. Martha was skilled at these and showed us how to make pot pourri, scented washing waters and pomander balls. She also showed me how to make a herbal infusion with rosemary and lad's love to condition my hair and stop it being quite so unruly (although it did not subdue its redness). We occupied ourselves too by playing with Grace, and with the cats and dogs around the house, for in London we had not seen either of these for several months as they'd been put to death in case they spread plague.

We heard that the plague had moved from London to Sherborne, in Dorsetshire, where it was presently rife, and also to Southampton and the Isle of Wight. Mercifully, it continued to abate in London. We heard from
The Newes
(which arrived at Highclear every week and appeared downstairs a few days later), that in December there was a frost in London so hard that the Thames froze over and a Fair was held on it, and that this exceeding brutal weather had caused the numbers dying of plague to fall even more.
The Newes
informed us, however, that the king, the court and most others who'd fled still hesitated to return to the capital, not yet convinced that it was safe.

The regular servants in the house tolerated me and Sarah, although some, I felt, rather resented the fact
that we had no real work to do. Their burden of duties was unceasing, and watching them – especially the housemaids – busying themselves from morn until it pleased their betters to let them retire at night, made me vow that I would never go into service.

We helped them occasionally, making sweetmeats and comfits for several of Lady Jane's musical evenings and again when there was a ball to mark his Lordship's return from Oxford. He arrived in a flurry of pomp just before Christmas, bringing a number of personal staff: a valet, butler, groom, footman, gentleman of the wardrobe and bootboy, which swelled the numbers below stairs even more.

The bootboy, I am ashamed to say (for he was a scurrilous little wretch), became somewhat attached to me and would follow me around the gardens when I was looking for feverfew – for this herb had many useful properties – or for herbs which might be turned into comfits, talking all the time and distracting me from whatever task I was set upon. As he listened at doors and was a great gossiper, however, we found out quite a lot of information from him. He told us that there was no plague at all in Oxford, and that the gentry did not spare much time to think of those who suffered in London.

‘The only talk in Oxford is of Lady Castlemaine's imminent lying-in,' young Bill told me one morning when I was in the kitchen garden looking for winter-flowering herbs. ‘There are those who say that it is not the king's child she bears.'

‘Lady Castlemaine is at Oxford with the court?' I asked in surprise, for though we all knew who the king's mistresses were and spent many hours
discussing their various merits and who was the most beautiful, I had not realised he took any away with him.

He nodded. ‘The king has made Lady Castlemaine a Lady of the Bedchamber to the queen, so now she accompanies them everywhere.'

‘The queen is there too?'

‘She is – though nobody gives a tuppeny jot for her. It is Lady Castlemaine who has the power.'

‘And is she very lovely?'

‘I have only seen her at a distance,' Bill said, ‘but they say she has fine eyes and a mane of hair that is all her own, and when she is in a room nobody looks at anyone but her.' He came close to me. ‘But I daresay you could hold your own against her, Sweeting.' He put a grimy hand on my arm and his nails were so dark with boot-blacking and dirt that I gave a little scream and moved away.

‘Tell me more about what it was like at Oxford,' I said hastily, pulling my plaid shawl around me against the wind. ‘Do they really not care about those left in London?'

‘They say they do,' he said, ‘but I say they do not, for they continually hold balls and masques and entertainments. They say it is to keep their minds from the horror of the plague.'

‘And do they talk of when they will move back?' I began, but we had heard a hiccup which meant that Mrs Black was close by, and Bill suddenly darted back towards the house, for Mrs Black had a sharp tongue and would not hesitate to report him to his master for slacking. I bent over the ground again, finding some rosemary growing between the cracks of
paving and picking it.

‘Ah,' Mrs Black said, gliding up to me, ‘I was looking for either you or your sister, and Martha said you might be out here.'

‘I'm looking for herbs,' I said.

‘It was that of which I came to speak to you. Of … herbs and simples.'

‘I have not much knowledge,' I said hastily, for I knew it did not do to be a woman and confess to understanding of these things, for a neighbour of ours in Chertsey had been bitten by a mad dog and had consulted a local wise woman who'd given him the herb plantain. When he'd later died, she'd been accused of witchcraft.

She hiccupped twice. ‘You may have noticed this … my affliction.'

I nodded solemnly.

‘I would have it treated, but I fear going to a doctor in case he tells me that I have something else. Something worse. Is there anything I can take? Any cordial you can make me for it?'

‘I'm not sure,' I said. Sarah and I had written down various recipes and some cures which had been given to us by Doctor da Silva the apothecary, but I wasn't certain if we had anything which would cure hiccups.

‘Perhaps you could ask your sister and then let me know,' she said.

I spoke to Sarah later that morning and we came to the conclusion that Mrs Black suffered so because she liked highly-spiced foods, so we looked through our writings and found several herbs which were said to be good for the digestion. All of these, unfortunately, only flowered in summer, but luckily we had preserved
a few stalks of hawkweed, a useful herb with several medicinal properties, so we ground up the dry flowers and steeped them into a cordial. After sipping this mixture after meals for only two days, much to our surprise Mrs Black's hiccups ceased. She was so grateful to us that a whole extra pail of coal appeared in our room, and she also gave us five pairs of fine white kid gloves that Lady Jane had discarded.

However, having now lost notice of the housekeeper's imminent arrival anywhere, the other servants were not so grateful.

The Highclear Ball was held on the eve of the New Year: 1666, which was forecast and predicted to be a year of great import because of the triple occurrence of sixes. We discovered this from
Lily's Almanack
, which Cook had purchased, even though she could not understand much of the writing. When it was quiet or Mrs Black was occupied elsewhere, Cook would ask me to read from it so that we could learn what was to happen in the coming year, and also to tell her and the other servants their fortunes according to their astrological signs.

Late on the night of the ball we did this in the kitchen, sitting at the long table while the ball was going on over our heads, for, a great meal having been eaten in the dining hall earlier (and Mrs Black having retired to her own room), the staff were free to make merry. Indeed, some bottles of sack had been given for this purpose, and we had also been supplied with the carcasses of several roast capons, geese and pigeons which had been barely touched by the gentry above, so stuffed were they with the multitude of lavish
dishes which had gone before.

I didn't fully understand what I was reading from the
Almanack
, and I didn't believe that many of the servants did either, but the most important prediction was that a momentous change would occur during this year, 1666. ‘For in the Book of Revelation it says that 666 is the number of the beast,' I read out.

‘Well, whatever does that mean?' Martha asked, and we all shook our heads.

‘The beast is capable of bringing fire from heaven and causing the houses of the mighty to fall,' I continued, while everyone made wide eyes at each other, pretending to be affrighted.

The serious manner in which I presented this news to the servants was, however, somewhat spoilt when Bill came up with some mistletoe and, pulling me backwards off the table, tried to kiss me. I, screaming, ran helter-skelter across the kitchen with him in pursuit, locked myself in the dairy and only came out when he promised not to handle me so.

Later we all drank to the coming-in of the year, and Sarah and I hugged each other and said that we were grateful and relieved that the old year was over.

‘Whatever happens in this one, it cannot be as cruel as the last,' she said.

I shook my head. ‘Indeed it cannot!'

‘But now the Plague is abated almost to nothing, and I intending to go to London as fast as I can, my family having been there these two or three weeks.'