Free Petals in the Ashes by Mary Hooper

best gowns and carrying bundles and bedrolls as well as baskets and the kitten. The waterdog who’d rowed us there came to our aid, however, taking our baggage first and then sweeping us up and throwing us over his shoulder to carry us in turn to the top of the steps. Thus safely landed, I paid our fare and gave a generous tip and, with kitty in the basket meowing piteously, we set off for Crown and King Place and theshop. I was tingling all over now, happy to be back, thrilled at the thought that I’d soon be seeing Tom again.
    Anne stopped at the top of Fish Lane. ‘Can we go on to the bridge?’ she asked breathlessly, looking back at it. ‘Just to look …’
    I shook my head. ‘We cannot!’ I said. ‘Not with all the things we have to carry. See how crowded it is up there! We would be pushed this way and that and robbed of everything we have.’
    Anne looked sorely disappointed, so I added that although we ought to get to our shop quickly for the sake of the poor enclosed kitten, we’d return as soon as we could. Our load was such that I was tempted to take a sedan chair, but did not because I had never hailed one before and was not sure of the correct procedure. Besides, it being May Day, some skipjack chair-carrier would be sure to overcharge me, and I had promised Sarah that I would look after the sum of money she’d given me, trade sensibly and not get fleeced.
    It was taking an age to get through the crowds for, in spite of the incessant mewling of the kitten, Anne was stopping on every corner to gawp and gaze at the streets, the shops and the passers-by. I thought how different London looked from the way I’d last seen it. Looking now at the hoards of people, the crowded shops, the noisy taverns and the countless street-sellers shouting their wares, it was difficult to picture the City as it had been: bleak and silent, its streets rank with death. It felt to me now as if that other, plague-infested city had been but a dream.
    â€˜I never thought there were so many people in theworld,’ Anne said wonderingly, as we paused at Cheapside and looked down the wide cobbled street thronging with horses and carriages and people dressed in their best. ‘And such things to buy!’ she added, darting to a window where all manner of luxurious silk and satin collars and scarves were displayed. ‘I swear I will not rest until I have visited every shop in London.’
    â€˜Then I fear you will never sleep!’ I retorted.
    We walked deeper into the City, away from the crowds and through the lanes and alleys. Here I could see traces of the year before, for there were shops still closed and shuttered and houses – once shut-up – which still bore marks of the red cross which had been painted on them, or had their doors still barred. In some of these, whole families had died and no one had come forward to take over the accommodation.
    Anne paused before one of the churchyards, looking through the railings curiously. ‘Why is the ground raised on each side of the walkway?’ she asked. ‘It is fully six feet above the path.’
    Something caught at my heart and I stood quietly for a moment, for it was this churchyard, St Dominic’s, which early on in the plague time had taken the corpses of the four young children who had been neighbours of ours, and their mother as well. ‘Because so many died of plague they had no space to bury them all properly,’ I explained to Anne. ‘They just had to pile bodies upon bodies until they could put in no more. And when the graveyards were full right up they took to throwing corpses into plague pits.’
    Anne gasped. ‘Bodies upon bodies …’ she breathed.
    â€˜They say one hundred thousand died in all.’
    â€˜One hundred thousand!’ Anne said wonderingly. ‘I do not know and cannot think what that number is.’
    â€˜And it is better that you