She understands now why Constable Willders seemed so distracted. He was denying – even to himself – what he had encountered at his daughter’s lodgings. She can even allow him a measure of sympathy. What else was a loving father going to do: announce it outside St Saviour’s to the general population? Plague is in my daughter’s house! It may have touched me too – and any who have come close to us…
Thank Jesu I didn’t call in at the Jackdaw as I’d intended, Bianca thinks.
She stands in her bedchamber, unpoints her linen smock and lets it fall to her waist. Taking up her mother’s mirror glass – one of the few luxuries she brought with her to England – she raises her left arm towards the ceiling and carefully inspects her armpit. Then she transfers the glass to her other hand and does the same on her right side. Returning the glass to her clothes chest, she prods vigorously under each arm with her fingers, just to make sure there is no bubo developing malevolently beneath the skin.
Clean, she decides. So far.
Relacing her smock, she tries to remember if she walked or ran to Willders’s house, knowing that some physicians hold that exertion can open the pores of the skin, allowing the pestilence in. She is sure she walked.
She prods her stomach, knowing that pain there can presage the disease. It doesn’t feel sore. And she’s still hungry, which is good sign. She places a finger against the vein in her right wrist and feels her pulse. It seems normal.
Going downstairs to the shop, Bianca seeks out the shelf where she keeps a jar of squill leaves soaked in honey and vinegar, a vomitory she sells to customers who’ve eaten bad meat, or who fear an enemy or a love-rival has tried to poison them. She takes just a small amount – not enough to make her vomit, if she’s healthy. If she vomits it could be a sign she’s infected.
While she waits, she takes a wooden scoop, lifts the lid off her tub of brimstone and pours some of the yellow powder into a clay bowl. This she takes to the hearth. She heats a fire-iron in the flames for a few minutes, before plunging it into the brimstone. At once the powder begins to produce molten golden beads that give off dancing blue flames and pungent fumes, which make her think she could have done without the vomitory. Eyes streaming, she steps back and waits for the fumes to permeate her lodgings.
She realizes she’s used too much brimstone, because eventually she’s forced to open the upstairs window. Leaning out to savour the air, she sees the lane is empty. The word has spread, she thinks. I am already an outcast. I’m already dead. It’s just that no one has the courage to come and tell me.
An unbearable loneliness seizes her. She begins to tremble. Is it a sign the pestilence is spreading through her body – or just the fear of it? She longs to be able to throw herself into Nicholas’s arms. He would understand. He could even help her. He’s a good physician, no matter what he thinks of himself.
And then she remembers how they argued in her physic garden the day he said he was taking Robert Cecil’s commission: I’ve already told you: physic has no remedy. I’d be of no more use than the charlatans Gault has his eye upon.
She leaves the window ajar and goes back to the shop, the tears in her eyes not entirely the result of the brimstone. There she pours vinegar into a jar, intending to return to her bedchamber and wash herself down with it. There are still a few things she has yet to try. They might help, or they might have no effect whatsoever. It is just a matter of waiting. Waiting for death to make up his mind.
But at least she hasn’t vomited yet.
17
‘Mistress! Mistress!’
Bianca can hear Rose calling her. She climbs off the bed, catching a whiff of vinegar on her skin. Leaning out of the window, she sees Rose looking up at her from the lane. Behind her, Ned, Farzad and Timothy stand like children around the deathbed of a parent.
‘Say it isn’t true,’ Rose pleads, ‘all that nonsense Jenny Solver’s been shouting about you being taken with the pestilence.’
‘Who’s attending to the Jackdaw?’ Bianca replies, trying to sound as though she’s troubled by nothing more than a mild headache. ‘Who’s looking after the customers and keeping watch on the takings?’
Rose shakes her head in despair. Her black ringlets sweep rebelliously across her shoulders. She holds up a ring of keys. ‘Faith, Mistress, you’re not to trouble yourself on that score.’
‘You’ve locked up – securely?’
‘Yes, Mistress.’
‘And the window in the attic – in Master Nicholas’s old chamber?’
‘Locked, Mistress,’ Rose says in a weary tone. ‘It’s been locked since he went to Mistress Muzzle’s lodgings.’
‘But what about trade? We can’t live on air, foolish girl. They’ll all go to the Good Husband and the Turk’s Head.’
‘No, they won’t,’ shouts Ned. ‘And if they do, I’ll fetch ’em back again.’
Farzad holds out an object wrapped in cloth. Bianca catches the delicious smell of stewed lamb. ‘I bring you best Abgoosht,’ he calls up proudly. ‘Is very good for sick mistress.’ Then, as his resolves crumbles, ‘Please, Mistress Bianca – not to die. I wish not to lose a second mother.’
Bianca has to stifle a cry of her own, at the pain so audible in his voice. ‘Leave it by the door, Farzad, sweet. I’ll collect it when you’ve gone,’ she calls down. ‘Is there any news of the Willders?’
Ned and Rose glance at each other.
Bianca’s stomach turns to ice. ‘Be honest,’ she shouts angrily. ‘You’ll do me no service by lying.’
Ned’s fiery countenance turns into the face of a little boy who’s just been slapped hard. ‘Dead, Mistress – the constable last night, just after Evensong. Goodwife Willders followed him this morning, at daybreak.’ He lowers his head, as though it’s all his fault.
For a moment no one seems to know what to do next.
‘Does the parish know I was in their company?’ Bianca calls down.
Rose hides her fear beneath a veneer of contempt. ‘That clacker Jenny Solver ain’t stopped squawking about it for a minute, all day. Whenever I ask someone where they heard the news, it’s always Mistress Solver what told them. She’s taken to her bed in fright.’
‘But is she sick?’
‘Not according to her husband. He was in for his ale today. Said it was good to have some quiet. Apparently she’s squawking like a bishop with the French Gout.’ Rose gives an unconvincing laugh. ‘But then when is she not, Mistress?’
It’s a small encouragement, thinks Bianca. Better than the alternative.
‘Come back to the Jackdaw, Mistress,’ says Rose plaintively. ‘We can care for you there.’
‘You know I must not do that, Rose, dear.’
‘Then let me come in and attend you. Please, Mistress.’
‘It’s not safe, Rose. It’s not safe for any of you to be near me.’
‘We don’t care,’ Rose says defiantly, to a general nodding of heads.
‘If I’m infected, you’ll leave Ned a widower. Do you want that?’
Rose begins to blubber uncontrollably.
‘We just have to wait, and trust to God’s mercy,’ Bianca says, more calmly than she feels. ‘And don’t let Buffle out into the street. With plague here now, the parish is likely to slaughter every dog it can catch.’
Rose makes a series of noises against Ned’s chest. To Bianca, she sounds like an old drunk with the croup.
Ned translates. ‘She says “God can’t tell the difference between good and bad any more.”’
Rose pulls herself away from her husband’s arms. She wipes her nose on her sleeve, takes up a four-square stance of angry defiance and shouts up at the window, ‘Why isn’t Master Nicholas here to cure you? Why has he left us when we have need of him most?’