Free At the Sign of the Sugared Plum by Mary Hooper Page B

best shut ’m up again,’ the guard said, but there was suddenly a tremendous crash from inside the house, making us all cry out in fear, and the next moment a small pale figure jumped or fell down the stairs and shot past us, running down the cobbled streets as if the devil himself was after him.
    ‘A ghoul!’ Mrs Groat said, and she fell to her knees and began praying.
    ‘No!’ I said, looking after the boy in disbelief. ‘It was little Dickon!’
    ‘Stark naked and running for his life,’ Sarah said.
    I watched his progress down the street and would have turned to go after him, but Sarah knew what was in my mind and held me fast. ‘You must not,’ she said. ‘He will have the plague on his skin.’
    ‘But who will look after him?’
    ‘It can’t be us! If you catch him it will be a death warrant for us both.’
    When we turned back the guard was standing in the doorway, still reluctant to enter. He sniffed and then curled his nostrils in disgust. ‘I smell death!’ he said.
    ‘You must go and see,’ Sarah insisted. ‘We cannot just shut the house now. You must go and see who’s dead.’
    After some persuasion – and Sarah had some small coins on her which we handed to him – he went inside and came back a few moments later to tell us that there were two children dead in a bed upstairs, and the mother was lying dead by the kitchen table.
    As the news spread, a small crowd gathered outside the house, most of whom were openly crying. Sarah, brushing back tears herself, asked one of them to go down to the minister so that women could be called in to dress the bodies and make them ready for burial.
    We went home, but could not sleep for thinking about the poor, dead children and for wondering what had become of young Dickon. We were not to find this out, however, for we never saw nor heard a word of him again.

Chapter Seven
The third week of July
    ‘But how sad a sight it is to see the streets empty of people, and very few upon the ’Change . . . and two shops in three shut up.’
    When we closed shop on the day following the Williams family’s deaths, Sarah and I resolved to go along to their house to try and discover when their funeral would be, for she said it was not right that a mother and her innocent children should be buried with no one to cast flowers into their graves.
    We had enquired after Dickon that day, but had failed to find any trace of him, and Sarah had said that we must try to think that a kindly family somewhere were looking after him, or at least that he’d been taken to a workhouse or pesthouse for shelter. Neither of us wanted to think that he might still be on the streets of London, frightened, naked and hungry; that he might have ended up living in the sewers with the rats, or on the edge of the stinking Fleet ditch at Westminster where, Sarah said, the riverran thick and stagnant and the poorest, foulest beggars ended up, living on peelings and scraps.
    At the Williams’ house the wooden boarding had gone from the door and windows, and the fearful red cross had been replaced by a white one to signify modified quarantine, although it would be twenty days and the house would have to be fumigated before anyone could live in it. There was no man guarding it now, but neither were there any housewives chattering outside or children playing nearby. It seemed that people passing knew of the deaths, for they were walking in an arc past the house, as far away as they could get, as if they were trying to avoid breathing any of the air coming from it.
    When we asked at the adjoining dwelling, Mrs Groat came to her door with a full pipe of tobacco in her hand which she puffed continually as she spoke. She apologised for doing so. ‘But I have heard that it is the only true prevention against the plague,’ she said, ‘and I am not going to be seen without it all the while people are dropping faster than flies.’
    ‘We came to enquire about the children’s funeral,’ Sarah said,