And at last it came.

It was the tenth day after he had fallen sick and she sat on the bed facing him, intent on combing his hair, which was as crisp and healthy as it had ever been. She laid the flat side of her hand gently into one of its waves, smiling as she did so, deeply and truly happy. She realized then that he was watching her and that he actually saw her, knew who she was and what she was doing. A swift thrill ran over her flesh and as his mouth tried to smile at her she touched his cheek with her fingers, caressing.

“God bless you, darling—” His voice was soft and hoarse, scarcely more than a whisper, and he turned his head to kiss her fingers.

“Oh, Bruce—”

She could just murmur his name, for her throat had swollen until it ached, and a tear splashed down onto his cheek. She brushed the next one away before it could fall, and then his eyes closed again, his head turned wearily and he gave a light sigh.

But after that she always knew when he was conscious, and little by little he began to talk to her, though it was many days before he could say more than a few words at a time. And she did not urge him to talk for she knew how great was the exertion and how tired it left him. His eyes often followed her when she was in the room and in them she saw a look of gratitude that wrenched her heart. She wanted to tell him that she had not done so very much—only what she had to do because she loved him, and that she had never been happier than during these past days when she had used all her energy, all the strength she had, every thought and waking minute for him. Whatever had been between them in the past, whatever was to come in the future, she had had these few weeks when he belonged to her completely.


Day by day London was changing.

Gradually the vendors disappeared from the streets, and with them went the age-old cries which had rung through the town for centuries. Many shops had closed and the ’prentices no longer stood before their stalls, bawling out their wares to the passerby—the shop-keepers were afraid of the customers, the customers were afraid of the shop-keepers. Friends looked the other way when they passed, or crossed the street to avoid speaking. Many were afraid to buy food, for fear it might be contaminated, and some of them starved to death.

The theatres had closed in May and now many taverns and inns and cook-shops were shut up. Those which continued to do business were ordered to lock their doors at nine o’clock and to put all loiterers off the premises. There were no more bear-baitings, cock-fights, jugglers’ performances, or puppet-shows; even the executions were suspended, for they invariably drew great crowds. Funerals were forbidden, but nevertheless long trains of mourners were to be seen winding through the streets at almost every hour of the day or night.

And in spite of the great fear of the disease, the churches were always crowded. Many of the orthodox ministers had fled, but the Nonconformists remained and harangued the confused, miserable multitudes for their sins. The prostitutes had never been busier. A rumour began to spread that the surest protection against plague was a venereal disease and the whorehouses of Vinegar Yard, Saffron Hill, and Nightingale Lane were open twenty-four hours a day. Harlots and customers often died together, and their bodies were carried out by a back door to avoid offending those who waited in the parlour. An increasing attitude of fatalism made many say that they would enjoy whatever was left to them of life, and die when their turn came. Others rushed to consult astrologers and fortunetellers and anyone might set himself up as a soothsayer with the prospect of a very good business.

Searchers-of-the-dead walked in every street. It was their duty to inspect the dead and to report to the parish-clerk the cause of death. They were a group of old women, illiterate and dishonest as the nurses, forced to live apart from society during a time of sickness and to carry a white stick wherever they went so that others might know them and stop up their mouths as they passed.

The town grew steadily quieter. The busy shipping of the Thames lay still—no ships might enter or leave the river—and the noisy swearing impudent boatmen had all but disappeared. Forty thousand dogs and two hundred thousand cats were slaughtered, for it was believed that they were carriers of the sickness. It was possible to hear, far up into the City, the roaring of the water between the starlings of London Bridge—a noise which usually went unnoticed. Only the bells continued to ring—tolling, tolling, tolling for the dead.

It soon became impossible to bury the dead in separate graves, and huge pits—forty feet long and twenty feet deep—were dug at the edge of the city. Every night the bodies were brought there, some of them decently in coffins, more and more shrouded only in a sheet or naked, as they had died. In the grave they found a common anonymity. During the day crows and ravens settled there, but at the approach of a man they swarmed up into the air, circling and hovering, waiting until he was gone, and then they drifted earthward again. As the bodies began to rot a foul stench crept into the town, and there was no breath of moving air to dispel it.

There had never been a hotter summer. The sky was bright as brass, blue and without a shred of cloud; they thought of the cool soothing fog as a blessing. Large birds flew heavily and laboriously. The church-vanes scarcely turned. In the meadows about London the grass lay burnt and the earth was hard as brick, flowers withered and dried. Amber transplanted some of the stocks, pink and white ones with a spicy cinnamon smell, into pots and kept them shaded on the balcony, but they did not prosper.

She protected herself against the plague by refusing to think about it. It was all that any of them could do, who were forced to stay in the town, to keep their sanity.

Often, when she went out to shop—she had to buy almost everything herself now that the vendors were gone—she heard cries and groans and terrible screams from the closed houses. Pitiable faces appeared at the windows and hands reached out pleadingly: “Pray for us!”

It became more and more common to see the dead and dying in the streets, for the plague struck swiftly. Once she saw a man huddled by a wall, beating his bloody head against it and moaning in delirium. She stared a moment in horror and then she hurried by, holding her nose and making a half-circle around him. Another time she saw a dead woman slumped in a doorway, a baby still sucking at her breast, and the small blue plague-spots showed plainly on her white flesh. She saw a woman walking slowly, crying, and carrying in her arms a tiny coffin.

One day, as she was busy in the bedroom, she heard from outside a man’s loud voice shouting something which she could not at first understand. But he drew nearer, evidently coming up St. Martin’s Lane, and his words became more distinct. “Awake!” he bawled. “Sinners, awake! The plague is at your doors! The grave yawns for you! Awake and repent!” She pushed back the curtains and looked out. He was walking swiftly by, just beneath her window, a half-naked old man with matted hair and a long dark beard, and he brandished his closed fist at the still houses.

Amber looked at him with disgust. “Devil take him!” she muttered. “The blasted old fool! There’s trouble enough without that caterwauling!”

And then one night, at the end of July, she heard another and far more terrible cry. There came a rumbling of cart-wheels over the cobblestones, the sound of a hand-bell, and a man’s deep voice calling: “Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!”

She looked swiftly at Spong, for Bruce was asleep, and then she rushed to the window. Spong waddled after her, crowding up close. Below they saw a cart, moving slowly, one man in the driver’s seat and another ringing the hand-bell and walking beside it. In the light from the torch carried by a third they could see that the cart was half-filled with bodies, piled indiscriminately, flung one on top of another. Arms and legs stuck out at weird angles; one corpse hung over the side, her long hair pouring half-way to the ground.

“Holy Virgin Mary!” breathed Amber, and then she turned away with a shudder, sick at her stomach, cold and wet.

Spong’s teeth were chattering. “Oh, Jesu! To be dumped in like that, helter-skelter, with every Jack Noakes and Tom Styles! Oh, Lud! It’s more than flesh can bear!”

“Stop your blubbering!” muttered Amber impatiently. “There’s nothing the matter with you!”

“Aye, mam,” agreed Spong gloomily. “There’s nothin’ the matter with either of us today. But who’s to tell? By tomorrow we may both be—”

“Shut up, will you!” cried Amber suddenly, whirling around, and then, as the old woman gave a startled jump, she added crossly, somewhat ashamed of her nervous ill-temper: “You’re as melancholy as a bawd in Bridewell. Why don’t you go out in the kitchen and get a bottle to drink?”

Spong went, gratefully, but Amber could not push the picture of the dead-cart from her mind. The sick men and women she had seen, the dead bodies in the streets, the constant tolling of the bells, the stench from the graves, the city’s unnatural quiet, the news (given by the guard) that two thousand had died of plague that past week—the cumulative effect of those things was beginning to overpower her. She had held off fear and despair during the time that Bruce had been most hopelessly sick, for then she had not had time to think. But now a kind of superstitious dread was beginning to work in her mind.

Why should I still be well and alive when all these others are dying? What have I done to deserve to live if they must die? And she knew that she deserved life no more than anyone else.