London in more than a year. So how could he have been touched by the city’s pestilence?
Colonel Bradford cleared his throat. ‘Come now, Robert! Do not alarm the ladies. The next thing they will be shunning your company for fear of infection!’
‘Do not joke, sir, for on the turnpike north of London, I encountered an angry mob, brandishing hoes and pitchforks, denying entry to their village inn to any who were travelling from London. It was a low place, in any wise, nowhere I would have sought shelter even on the filthiest of nights, so I rode onwards unmolested. But before long, to be a Londoner will not be a credential worth owning to. It will be surprising how many of us will invent rusticated histories for ourselves, mind me well. You’ll soon learn that my chief abode these last years was Wetwang, not Westminster.’
There was a little stir at this, for the town the young man was mocking was a good deal bigger than the one in which he was presently being entertained. ‘Well, good thing you got out, eh?’ said the colonel, to cover the lapse. ‘Clean air up here, no putrid fevers.’
Down the table, I noticed the Mompellions exchanging meaning looks. Trying to still my shaking hands, I set down the dessert I carried and stepped back into the shadows against the wall. ‘It’s hard to believe,’ the young man continued, ‘but some few are staying in town who have the easy means to go. Lord Radisson – I believe you are acquainted with his lordship – has been bruiting it about that he feels it his duty to stay and “set an example.” Example of what? A wretched death, I warrant.’
‘Think of what you are saying,’ Mr. Mompellion interrupted. His voice – rich, loud, grave – cut off the Bradfords’ airy laughter. Colonel Bradford turned to him with a raised eyebrow, as if to censure rudeness. Mrs. Bradford tried to turn her titter to a cough. Mr. Mompellion continued, ‘If all who have the means run each time this disease appears, then the seeds of the Plague will go with them and be sown far and wide throughout the land until the clean places are infected and the contagion is magnified a thousandfold. If God saw fit to send this scourge, I believe it would be His will that one face it where one was, with courage, and thus contain its evil.’
‘Oh?’ said the colonel superciliously. ‘And if God sends a lion to rip your flesh, will you stand steadfastly then, too? I think not. I think you will run from the danger, as any sensible man would.’
‘Your analogy is excellent, sir,’ said Mr. Mompellion; his voice had the commanding timbre that he used in the pulpit. ‘Let us explore it. For I will certainly stand and face the lion if, by running, I would cause the beast to follow me, and thus draw him closer to the dwelling places of innocents who demand my protection.’
At the mention of innocents, Jamie’s little face flashed before me. What if the young Londoner were correct? Jamie had lived in George Viccars’s pocket. All that day before the illness first rose in him, Jamie had been climbing on his back, prancing by his side.
The young man broke into the silence that greeted Mr. Mompellion’s speech. ‘Well, sir, very bravely stated. But I must tell you that those who know this disease best – and that would be the physicians and the barber-surgeons – have been the fleetest of foot in leaving town. One cannot get cupped for a cough or bled for the gout, no matter if you have a sovereign to give in fee. Which leads me to conclude that the physicians have written us a clear prescription, and that is this: the best physick against the Plague is to run far away from it. And I, for one, intend to follow that prescription religiously.’
‘You say “religiously,” but I think your choice of word is poor,’ said Mr. Mompellion. ‘For if one speaks “religiously,” then one must recall that God has the power to keep you safe in peril, or to bring peril to overtake you, no matter how far or fast you run.’
‘Indeed, sir. And many who believed that now are rotting corpses passing through the streets in cartloads, on their way to the great pits.’ Miss Bradford raised a hand to her brow, ostentatiously feigning a faintness that her avid eyes belied. The young man turned to her, reading her desire for morbid detail, and continued, ‘I have had it from one whose man had need to go there in fruitless search of a kinsman. He reported that the corpses are tipped in, afforded no more respect than one would give a dead dog. A layer of bodies, a few spades of soil, and then more bodies tumbled in atop. They lie there so, just like yonder dessert.’ He pointed at the layered cake, which I had set down upon the table. I saw the Mompellions wince, but the young man smirked at his own wit and then turned pointedly towards the rector.
‘And do you know who were the fastest to follow the physicians out of the city, sir? Why, it were the Anglican ministers, just such as yourself. There’s many a London pulpit being filled by a nonconformist on account of it.’
Michael Mompellion looked down then and studied his hands. ‘If what you say is true, sir, then I am indeed sorry for it. I will say that if it be the case, then my brothers in faith are the lesser men.’ He sighed then and looked at his wife. ‘Perhaps they might believe that God now is preaching to the city, and what needs add their small utterance to the thunder of His voice?’
There was a full moon that night, which was fortunate, for otherwise I’m sure I would have fallen into a ditch as I stumbled home, almost running despite my exhaustion, as the thistles tore at my ankles and the briars caught at my skirt. I could barely speak to the Martin girl as she roused herself heavily from her fireside slumber. I threw off my cloak and rushed up the stairs. A square of silvery light bathed the two little bodies. Both breathed easily. Jamie had an arm round his brother. I stretched out a hand to his forehead, terrified of what I might feel. My fingers brushed his soft skin. It was blessedly cool.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Oh, thank you, God.’
The weeks that followed George Viccars’s death ushered in the loveliest September weather I ever recall. There are some who deem this mountainside bleak country, and I can see how it might seem so: the land all chewed up by the miners, their stowes like scaffolds upon the moors, and their bings like weedy molehills interrupting the pale mauve tide of the heather. This is not a vivid place. Our only strong hue is green, and this we have in every shade: the emerald velvet mosses, the glossy, tangled ivies, and in spring, the gold-greens of tender new grasses. For the rest, we move through a patchwork of greys. The limestone outcropts are a whitish-grey, the millstone grit from which we build our cottages a warmer greyish-yellow. Grey is the sky colour here, the dove-breast clouds louring so upon the hilltops that sometimes you feel you could just reach up and bury your hands in their softness.
But those autumn weeks were flooded with an unaccustomed surfeit of sunlight. The sky was clear blue almost every day, and the air, instead of hinting frost, remained warm and dry. I was so relieved that Jamie and Tom were not ill, I lived in those days as at a fair. Jamie himself was downcast, having lost his dear friend Mr. Viccars. In truth, the death of his father had been easier for him to bear, because with Sam down the mine for most of Jamie’s waking hours, the two had spent little time in each other’s company. In the few short months he had lived with us, Mr. Viccars had become an indispensable companion. His death left an emptiness that I resolved to fill, taking time to make our simple chores into something of a game so that Jamie would not feel the loss so keenly.
At day’s end I liked to know that the ewes were each with their lambs and none had caught themselves up in briars or burrows. So in the afternoons, when I went to check the flock, I would take Jamie and Tom with me, and we would dawdle along our way, stopping to find what story each clump of stones or hollow tree might yield us. A line of fungus marching up a fallen branch might become, in our tale, the stairway to a faery’s bower, while an acorn cap might be the cup left behind by a party of feasting wood mice.
Our flock is small, just one and twenty ewes. From the time I married Sam, my rule has been to make mutton of any who proves an inept mother, and the result is an easy lambing when the weather is with us. We had had a good lambing back in the spring, so the last thing I was looking for that day was a ewe in labour. But we found her, and fortunate,