Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall (20 page)

He nodded. “Judgment has come upon the city. From the King downwards there has been evil debauchery and out in the sea men are killing each other at this very moment.”

She bit her lip to hold back angry tears. “Why, Father? And why do the innocent suffer with the guilty.” But Daniel, she thought, is not innocent. He has gone into this with his eyes open. He has been caught up in the mad fervour which calls itself patriotism. But the plague was different. If it was God’s punishment why were little children dying?

“That house I saw with the cross, Father. There may be babies there. Why should they die?”

William looked her in the eye as if wondering at her ignorant question.

“They are born for eternal life. What matters it then if their span here is short?”

“Oh Father, you grieved when Mother and my baby brother died together.”

Pain and fury crossed his narrow face. “I had not found the strait gate then. I lacked the Lord’s strength to uphold me.”

“Will you not weep if I catch the plague and die? Our Lord wept over Lazarus.”

“Of course I will weep, child. Life here and now can never be constant happiness. Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards. This earth is our testing ground. If the just never suffered the wicked would attempt goodness only to save themselves punishment. But the Lord will uphold me as He will uphold you should I go first. Let us sit down and ask his blessing on this food.”

Eunice washed her hands and sat down. Conversations with her father always ended like this. He put her down with what to him were self-evident truths. When she examined them in the quiet of her own chamber they still had the ring of truth but there was a warmth and a wideness lacking. It might be the tone of his voice but whatever it was the sayings were cold and hard and left her unsatisfied.

CHAPTER 15

It was two days before the city was filled with the news of a great English victory at sea. Despite the threat of plague and the continuing hot weather, bonfires were lit in the streets and there was a general air of rejoicing.

Eunice wondered if her grandparents had heard any news of Daniel. She dared not go and ask or her curiosity would be exaggerated into a passion for him. But it
was
a passion, she had to admit. His image in her room at that house and again here at home at the foot of the wooden stair was as bright as ever. Whatever had happened to him afterwards she knew he had not been indifferent to her in those moments and it was to them she clung. Meanwhile the plague spread as the summer advanced.

The horrible cry of ‘Bring out your dead’ was heard at night as the carts went round the streets with bells and lanterns collecting the corpses. Many were unidentified and space in church graveyards was quickly used up and plague pits dug so that the bodies could be disposed of as quickly as possible. There were no more celebrations.

The Reverend Woodhouse closed the crypt and decided to send the children into the country where he had a cousin with a farm. “He will teach them to bring the hay in. It will strengthen their bodies and perhaps their minds too.”

“Aren’t you coming with us?” they called out to Eunice as they clambered onto the wagon sent to fetch them.

“I keep house for my father.”

“You’ll catch the plague.”

“Then you must pray for me.” She waved them off, knowing she would miss them. Uncouth as they were she had grown fond of them.

She had spoken cheerfully to them but there was a chill apprehension always in the pit of her stomach as the hot weather helped the disease to flourish. She was horrified when she realised that houses with the red cross sign were to be boarded up for at least a month so that no infected person could escape and carry the disease further. The coffin makers and apothecaries grew rich though there were few remedies that had much effect. The plague nurses used vinegar to disinfect but were more interested in looting from the dead and dying and they too stashed away small fortunes during these desperate months.

Eunice had heard nothing from her grandparents till Tom Fletcher told her he had passed the house in the Strand on an errand and had learnt from a neighbour’s servant that the Hordens had fled into the country early in June and the business was being run by a manager. Trade was slack because of the fear of interception of merchantmen by Dutch ships at sea. There had been no more big battles. The fleets were stalking each other in the northern waters and prizes were taken on both sides but there was widespread confidence that we were slowly beating the Dutch.

Eunice was grateful for any scraps of news but nothing in her experience enabled her to picture Daniel in a sea battle. This was frustrating as it left her imagination too much scope. As for her grandparents she was glad they were out of London but a little hurt that they had sent no word of their going. The number of deaths increased through August and it was not only the wealthy who fled London. Many shops shut including Thompsons’, the Baker next door. Eunice had to trail further through the dusty streets to find bread.

It was a day in September when the weekly numbers of deaths was at seven thousand that her father came in one day from preaching at Billingsgate his usual message of the need for prayer and repentance.

He sat down at the table, his face more than usually sallow. His hair which he had lately allowed to grow hung limp about it. In silence he began to take off the shabby black coat he always wore, which reached to his knees and partly hid his threadbare breeches. Eunice, frightened by his manner went to help him.

“Touch me not,” he cried. “Keep your distance.”

She shrank back and watched in horror as he stripped off his shirt also and lifting his arm revealed a blotchy swelling under it.

“As I thought. I have sneezed and my head has been aching all morning. You must leave this house. You must report to the authorities that it is a plague house and you must not come back to it. Go to your grandparents’.” He looked round at her then with a ghastly smile. “I never thought to say that to you but they are your only kin that will lodge you and I pray God you have learnt enough to be submissive to them but not to engage in their service of Mammon. Go, this minute.”

“I cannot. They are out of town and I know not where they have gone. But if you think I would leave you in your illness you know me very little. In this for the first time I will not obey you.”

He staggered to his feet and stared at her long and hard. She stared back, her lips compressed and her eyes pricking with tears. Holding onto the table he seemed to accept she was immoveable.

“Then you will be utterly alone when I am gone,” he choked out.

“No. You may recover. Many have. I have learnt what must be done. Can you get up to your bed? You must have every blanket we have to cover you and raise a great perspiration.”

As he began to move he was violently sick and almost fell to the ground. She grabbed his arm although he tried to pull it from her grasp and guiding him round the vomit she walked him to the foot of the little wooden stair. He caught hold of the rail and dragged himself up, she with a hand on his bare back to support him. Somehow he tottered to his bed and fell back onto it.

It was the first time in her life she had ever seen him helpless. She hauled one blanket from beneath him and pulled it over him as he struggled to aid her by rolling onto his side. He seemed to have no strength left and she could only marvel at the will-power that had got him home when he already knew he was smitten.

She now ran into her own small chamber and took the blankets off her bed and piled them over him. Although she had never had the money to lay in any remedies herself she knew that Mistress Fletcher, the leather worker’s wife, had a whole shelf of jars and bottles that she swore contained all that was needful.

Without thinking of the consequences she ran next door and cried out in the doorway, “Pray give me what I need, Mistress Fletcher. My father has the plague.”

The woman screamed out, “What!
He
is punished when he has breathed curses on all us sinners! Stay away from me, Eunice. Keep clear of my house,” and she rushed on her and pushed the door shut in her face.

Eunice was shocked. She had known this woman for most of her life. She backed slowly off looking up and down the street but already her cry had been noted and people were scurrying into their houses and barring their doors.

She went back inside and cleaned up the floor as best she could. It needed to be done and for the moment she was too stunned at what had happened to think what else she should be doing.

When she had finished she heard an urgent tapping at the window and ran to pull back the sacking. Tom was outside.

“Quick, Eunice,” he mouthed and held up a bottle and a small earthenware pot.

She opened the window. “Oh Tom, what have you brought me? Don’t touch my hands as I take them.”

“That’s vinegar,” he said. “Your father should drink some and you as well but also wipe it on every place your father touched. This is an ointment for the plague sore. It may help. Mother has plenty of both. I pray she won’t miss them.”

“Tom, you are a good, brave boy. God bless you.”

“But oh Eunice, you will get it if you nurse him. I could run for one of the plague nurses.”

“Never, I wouldn’t trust them near him. I believe they are in league with the coffin makers and will let no one live.”

There was a shout from his father’s shop. “Come away from there, Tom.”

“I must go. But knock thrice on the wall if you need help.”

“You can do one thing. Notify the parish examiner of our plague state.”

“I will.” He ran.

Eunice took a clean rag and wiped vinegar onto her own hands and then the door handle, the table and the banister rail and everywhere she could think that her father’s hands might have touched.

Next, clutching the pot of ointment, she scampered up the stairs to look at her father. He was rolling about under the pile of blankets and seemed delirious. She must turn back the covers again and treat the plague spot. The ointment had a strange pungent smell. When she uncovered him to reach the spot he thrashed so much it was almost impossible to hold him down and apply the greasy substance to the lurid swelling. Some went on the bedding and some on his chest but she managed to get a blob of it in the right place and smooth it over. She didn’t dare to rub it hard but he was already groaning so that she couldn’t tell if it burned or soothed him.

She covered him up and ran down to wash her hands and coat them again with vinegar. She heard Tom at the window again. He was holding up a mug. When she opened the window he said, “Mother was sorry and has sent this. She said he must drink something but cold water would be bad. It’s a posset of sack. She said I must put it on the ledge and run back and not touch you.”

“God bless her and you, Tom.”

“I’ve notified the examiner and they will send a man to paint the cross and no one must go in or out for a month. They nail a plank across the door.”

To Eunice it sounded like a death sentence. Her father would die and she would follow a few days later. Then the dreadful carts would come and their bodies would be taken away at night and flung into one of the plague pits.

This body is nothing but dust, she repeated as she carried up the posset of sack to her father. A new body will be given us at the resurrection. I must not be afraid.

But she
was
afraid. She was shaking so much that a little of the precious liquid spilled from the mug before she could get it to her father’s lips. He rolled his head away from it. In a panic now she set it on the small table by the bed and dragged him into a sitting posture. “You must take this, Father,” she yelled at him. “Drink!”

His eyes opened and for a second he seemed to be there in their dark depths.

“Drink!”

He seized it from her then and tossed it off. Immediately he fell back onto his pillow and though his eyes were open consciousness had vanished again.

She dropped to her knees. “Don’t die. Don’t leave me. What if I live! I will go mad in here. Father, we are to be shut up for a month. How can I endure that?”

She gabbled on to him because there was no one else but she knew he was taking nothing in. What can I do for him now? Oh God, tell me what I am to do.

She ran down the stairs again, half expecting to see her father sitting at the table with his Bible open. She could ask him what to do. He had always told her and nearly always she had obeyed him. He would know what she had to do.

The bench was empty. It was he on the bed upstairs, the wild, thrashing body. How could he have been reduced to that when he was always so in control, so certain of everything!

She heard a cry or a shout from him and clambered back up and stood fearfully in the doorway of his room. He was sitting bolt upright, glaring at her.

“You have given me strong drink. You know I do not touch it.”

“Oh Father, it was medicine. It will do you good.”

“Do me good to break my oath? Do me good to sin when I am dying?”

The covers had slipped down and she saw dark spots on his chest. Pity turned to anger. How dare he berate her if he was dying! Was that the last word she would have from him – a reproof?