At The Sign Of The Sugared Plum Part 1

At The Sign Of The Sugared Plum.

Mary Hooper.

For Pat Samuel.

An inspiration to all her friends.

Chapter One.

The first week of June, 1665.

*June 7th. The hottest day that ever I felt in my life . . .'

To tell the truth, I was rather glad to get away from Farmer Price and his rickety old cart. He made me uneasy with his hog's breath and his red, sweaty face and the way he'd suddenly bellow out laughing at nothing at all. I was uneasy, too, about something he'd said when I'd told him I was going to London to join my sister Sarah in her shop.

*You be going to live in the City, Hannah?' he'd asked, pushing his battered hat up over his forehead. *Wouldn't think you'd want to go there.'

*Oh, but I do!' I'd said, for I'd been set on living in London for as long as I could remember. *I'm fair desperate to reach the place.'

*Times like this . . . thought your sister would try and keep you away.'

*No, she sent for me specially,' I'd said, puzzled. *Her shop is doing well and she wants my help in it. I'm to be trained in the art of making sweetmeats,' I'd added.

*Sweetmeats is it?' He'd given one of his bellows. *That's comfits for corpses, then!'

He left me in Southwarke on the south bank of the Thames, and I thanked him, slipped down from his cart and a remembering to take my bundle and basket from the back a began to walk down the crowded road towards London Bridge.

As the bridge came into view I stopped to draw breath, putting down my baggage but being careful to keep my things close by, for I'd been warned often enough about the thieving cutpurses and murderous villains who thronged the streets of London. I straightened my skirts and flounced out my petticoat to show off the creamy ruff of lace I'd sewn onto it a Sarah had told me that petticoats were now worn to be seen a then pushed down my hair to try and flatten it. This was difficult for, to my great vexation, it stuck out as curly as the tails of piglets and was flame red. Nothing I wore, be it hat, hood or cap, could contain it. I pulled my new white cap down tightly, however, and tied the ribbons into a tidy bow under my chin. I hoped I looked a pleasant and comely sight walking across into the city, and that no one would look at me and realise that I was a newly arrived country girl.

It was a hot day even though it was only the first of June, and all the hotter for me because I was wearing several layers of clothes. This wasn't because I'd misjudged the weather, more because I knew that whatever I didn't wear, I'd have to carry. I had on then: a cambric shift, two petticoats, a dark linsey-woolsey skirt and a linen blouse. Over these was a short jacket which had been embroidered by my mother, and a dark woollen shawl lay across my shoulders.

I'd been studying the people carefully as we'd neared the bridge, hoping that I might see my friend Abigail, who'd come from our village last year to be a maid in one of the big houses, and also hoping to see some great lady, a person of quality, so I could judge how well I stood against her regarding fashion. There was no sign of Abby, however, and most of the quality were in sedan chairs or carriages, with only the middling and poorer sort on foot. These folk were wearing a great variety of things: men were in tweedy country clothes, rough working worsteds or the severely cut suits and white collars of the Puritans, the women wearing everything from costly velvet down to poor rags that my mother would have scorned to use as polishing cloths for the pewter.

*That's a fine red wig you've got there, la.s.s!' a young male voice said, and I realised that I'd paused beside a brewhouse.

I turned indignantly on the speaker. *It's not a wig. It's my own hair!' I said to the two men a one young and one old a who were leaning against the wall, mugs of ale in their hands.

*And fine patches across your nose, too,' said the elder.

I opened my mouth to say more and then realised that the youth and man outside the Gown and Claret were making fun of me.

*They're not patches, William, they're called sun kisses!' the first said, and they both roared with laughter.

I picked up my basket, feeling my cheeks go pink. I hated my hair, but even more than that I hated my freckles, and one of the first things I intended to do in London was to visit an apothecary and see what treatment the great ladies were using for their prevention. I pushed my nose into the air and moved on, only just avoiding a deep rut in the road full of all manner of foul-smelling muck. As I faltered, my foot slipped out of my wooden clog, but I regained my balance, picked up my skirts and carefully negotiated around the rut.

*Well danced, young miss!' called over the older man.

*It's a young red bantum fresh up from the country!' said the youth, and I pretended not to hear. At home I was always being teased about my vivid colouring but I hadn't thought I'd stand out in London, too.

*A spring chicken ripe for the plucking!'

*You mind a piece of old Cromwell up there don't fall on you!' the first went on.

*An eyeball or an ear!'

Before I could stop myself I'd glanced up to the over-arching gateway to London Bridge, where there was a collection of human heads pierced by poles, and let out a small shriek of horror.

I heard further mannish laughter behind me and was annoyed for being so green, for I'd known well enough that the heads of felons were displayed on the bridge a and I'd even been to a public execution a so it should have been nothing to me. The thought of a piece of one of those heads, though, one of those mouldered skulls, falling as I pa.s.sed underneath a well, I forgave myself that shriek.

I walked on sniffing the air tentatively. London was crowded and smelt foul. And not just farmhouse-foul, but a churning mixture of rotting meat, kitchen slops, boiled bones, sulphurous smoke and the sweat and discharge from a thousand animal and human bodies. The bridge was teeming with people because a unless you took a ferry a it was the only way you could get across from Southwarke into the City. I knew this because my sister Sarah had told me many times the route I should take to reach her in Crown and King Place, where she traded under the sign of the Sugared Plum.

It had been arranged a year or so back that if Sarah needed my help, and if mother could spare me at home, I'd come to London to work with her, and two months ago I'd been near overcome with excitement when a letter had arrived, a letter with my own name on it brought over by our church minister, saying Sarah's trade was increasing and that she would welcome me there as soon as possible.

*But you'll get lost in London, I know you will!' she'd said on that last visit home. *You're such a cod's head you lose yourself going across the fields from home to church on a Sunday.'

*That's only because I don't want to get there,' I'd said. Why sit on a hard bench listening to a two-hour sermon when there were so many other, more interesting things to see and do on the way?

Our family home was in a small village called Chertsey which was a good half-day's journey away from the City, and if I could find things to interest me there, then you might imagine how I stared around me, marvelling, on London Bridge. There were a great variety of houses faced with brick, timber and all manner of coloured and decorated plasters, and they were of every shape and size, some crammed into minute s.p.a.ces and others which towered and leaned this way and that. Even more interesting were the shops, and I peered, amazed, into the windows of those that were cl.u.s.tered along the parapet of the bridge. I had never seen such an array of things for sale in all my life: books, china, wooden toys, brooms, ribbons, wigs, buckles, pots, feathered hats and girdles a London had everything!

I began to plan what I'd buy when I was rich. We would be rich, I was sure a Sarah wouldn't have sent for me unless the shop was doing well. We weren't poor at home by any means a we had several fine chairs and settles, some pewter plates and s.p.a.ce enough so that I only had to share a bed chamber with Anne, my younger sister (my little brothers had a room of their own) a but it was impossible there to follow the fashions. And besides, even if I could buy the silk jackets and flowered tabby waistcoats I craved, who would see me wearing them in the country, apart from b.o.o.by gamekeepers or woodcutters' sons? In London, though, I might have the chance to make a good match a or at least be taken by a fine young man to a coffee house or one of the pleasure gardens.

Coming off the bridge I steadied myself as a great fat sow, grunting madly, and a litter of piglets swept by me and began rooting for nourishment in the mud and foul refuse outside a shop door. At home, mother always fed our pigs on the best sc.r.a.ps and leavings, but here I could see precious little that they could eat. Mother said that the tenderness of the bacon depended on the pigs being well fed, and Father sometimes remarked that they ate better than he did. The last time he'd said this, though, Mother had served him up a mess of muddy potato peelings on our best pewter, and he hadn't said it since.

I dawdled, sweating gently in the heat, staring at everything, listening to the cries of the street pedlars to *Come buy!' a hundred different things, and wondering and exclaiming to myself by turn. So many busy, interesting people . . . what were they all doing? Where were they going? Two gallants pa.s.sed swiftly on horseback in a blur of jewel-coloured velvets and gold lace, their spurs and stirrups glittering in the sunlight, then came several sedan chairs, then a bright yellow carriage drawn by four fine horses with gilded leather bridles. The carriage door had a family crest on it and at the window sat a lady dressed in rich silks, peering at the world over a mask held up to her face.

She was going to a romantic a.s.signation, I was sure. I'd heard many tales of the court and the intrigues which went on, for it was said that the king had many mistresses and the gentlemen and ladies of the court not only approved of his carryings-on, but did the same thing. My mother and I had soaked up such rumours when they reached us through the ballads or the news-sheets sold us by street pedlars, but now I was set to hear them first hand.

Reaching the other side of the bridge, I turned right along a broad street and then paused at a water conduit in a small, paved area. The streets stretched out in seven directions here, like the spokes of a wheel, and Sarah had told me to go down the one which had a tavern called the Toad and Drum at the top. I did so, and found the street narrow and mean, with mud instead of cobbles underfoot. The houses were so tall here that rays of sunlight could only occasionally peep through the gaps between them, and their protruding bay windows meant that anyone living at the top could have put out a hand and touched a person in the room of the house opposite.

At the bottom of this street there was a series of alleys and I went down the first, past a dunghill and some piles of rotting refuse, and through into a small, busy market selling all manner of roots and herbs. Laid out here were rough trestle tables loaded with produce, and there were more traders selling from baskets or sacks on the ground. Food shops stood close by, their coloured signs announcing them in vividly-painted pictures and words to be: The House of Plum Pudding, The Gingerbread Man and the Pigeon Pie shop, and, being hungry, I started to wonder what Sarah would have prepared for supper.

I peered into the windows, then lingered by a stall selling strange, brightly-coloured fruit. I'd seen oranges and lemons before a I'd once saved to buy a lemon, Abigail having told me that it was most excellent at fading freckles a 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, pa.s.sed 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 m.u.f.fled in a winding sheet and the others a the mourners a were wailing and crying. I deduced they were playing at funerals and after staring at them for some moments a fascinated, for I'd never seen children play such a game at home a 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 a 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 gla.s.s in the front, and it had a wooden cas.e.m.e.nt 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 ap.r.o.n over it. She was tall a 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 a even shocked a 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 a just as you asked. The Reverend Davies brought your letter to me and I was that excited a Father said he's never had a letter in his life. But where is your living s.p.a.ce? 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 a I mean, not right here-'

*Well, it's not in this parish,' she admitted. *But there are some cases in St Giles a 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 a woman a has the plague, and they've locked her up with her husband and children so it can't be spread abroad.'

*So there a it's all contained!' I said. *And it's just one house, Sarah a 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 a and why ever have you tied your cap so tightly about your head? Everyone leaves their ribbons dangling now, and that terrible old skirt a 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. G.o.d 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 a mother's widowed sister a 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 a the poor farmer or the weary turkeys a 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 a there were only two years between us a 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 b.o.o.by 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 s.p.a.ce by a local rope-maker. Our own living s.p.a.ce 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 a so many that there was always spare to take to market a 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 a *G.o.d give you good morrow, my masters! Nigh four o'clock and a fair morning!' a 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 sh.o.r.es the great ladies a who would sooner be dead than out of fashion a 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.'