Plague- Outbreak in London (1665-1666) Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Historical Note: The Great Plague

  Prologue: 21 November 1920 Croke Park, Dublin

  Sample chapter: Independence

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  Copyright

  CHAPTER

  1

  It was late in the evening and I was about to say goodbye to my mother for the very last time. The moment had come for me to try and escape, and I knew that once I left our house I would probably never see her again – not in this life, anyway.

  “Are you sure you have everything you need, Daniel?” she whispered. “We should try to fit a warm undershirt into your satchel and some more food.”

  We were standing in my father’s workshop on the ground floor of our house. Mother was holding a candle, its tiny yellow flame pushing the shadows into the corners, the light glinting off the tools scattered on the floor where Father had dropped them. She was wearing a white nightgown and her face was deathly pale, with dark smudges under her eyes. Her black hair hung loose to her shoulders, but I could still see the bruised, painful swellings on both sides of her neck.

  I knew she felt really ill and that she was only keeping herself going for my sake. She had spent the previous hour – our final precious moments together – packing my satchel and giving me advice. I stood there in my best jacket and breeches, wearing the stockings she had knitted for me and the shoes she had often polished. I clutched the satchel, feeling as if the world was coming to an end.

  “Please, Mother, don’t make me do this,” I said. I was whispering too and my voice trembled. A tear slid down my cheek. “Let me stay here with you.”

  I stepped forwards to throw my arms round her, but she quickly backed away. She held up her hands to stop me touching her. “You know that can’t be, Daniel,” she said. “It’s a miracle that you haven’t already fallen ill. I hate making you leave, but as God is my witness, I won’t let you stay, however much you plead. Your only chance is to escape tonight, before the sickness takes you, as it took your father and brothers.”

  I had already said goodbye to them. My brothers and father had already been taken by the plague. Father had been the first to fall ill, collapsing in his workshop three days ago. Although it felt like a hundred years of grief and sorrow had passed since then.

  “But it’s not right,” I said. “I would rather stay here and die than leave you!”

  “Hush now,” she said, her voice gentle. “I’ll be with you forever, wherever you are. All you have to do is listen to your heart and you will hear my voice.”

  I tried arguing with her. I fell to my knees and begged her to let me stay, but she refused to listen, even though she was crying too, the tears dripping off her cheeks. She would not change her mind. Father had often said, “By heaven, Meg, you can be so stubborn!” He had always said it with a loving smile, though. We had been a happy family.

  When I was young, life had been tough under the rule of the Puritans, but in 1660 we’d got a new king, King Charles II. The next few years were good – for the country, for London and for my family. Lots of new houses were built, and as Father was a good carpenter, his business had prospered. The Puritans had banned bright clothes, but now everyone wanted them, and Mother was a fine seamstress, so she was soon earning us extra money. My brothers worked with Father, but Mother wanted me to learn to read and write. She sent me to a school in Milk Street, where I did well. Before long, I was reading and writing letters for Father – I loved helping him.

  I also loved living in London – it was a wonderful place at that time. I roamed all over the city, from the great houses of the rich on the Strand by the river Thames to the hovels of St Giles beyond the northern wall, and from old St Paul’s cathedral on Ludgate Hill in the West to the forbidding castle battlements of the Tower of London in the East. The streets were always busy, full of noise and colour, people buying and selling, talking and arguing. Father told me London was the biggest city in the country by far, with more people in it than pebbles on the banks of the Thames.

  Then things started to go wrong. We began hearing rumours about people dying from the plague. It didn’t bother us to begin with. The plague had first struck hundreds of years ago, when it was called the Black Death, and it had never really gone away. Every year there were a few plague deaths in the hovels of St Giles to the north-west of the city, but that was where it usually stayed.

  Then the number of dead started to rise, as everyone could see in the Bills of Mortality the Lord Mayor ordered to be pasted up everywhere. Last winter, in the early part of 1665, when the weather was cold, the deaths were still in single figures and still mostly confined to St Giles. By the spring, however, it was fifty a week in some parishes and by the summer it was hundreds. It was worst in the poor parts of the city, but no one was truly safe. The rich died too, as did the middling sort of people – like my family.

  Many people fled the city and for a while the streets were choked with coaches and carts, with columns of frightened people trudging along beside them. The king left the great Palace of Whitehall with his family and went up the Thames to his other fine home at Hampton Court. But lots of families, including my own, had nowhere to go outside London. Father also said we couldn’t abandon our home and leave it unguarded. Thieves would break in as soon as they saw we were gone and they would steal everything we owned.

  So we stayed and tried to carry on as before, although that wasn’t really possible. Men went round the streets with carts – people called them the dead carts – yelling, “Bring out your dead!” and collecting the bodies of all those who had passed away. London is a city full of churches and their bells rang constantly for the endless funerals. Before long there was no space left in the cemeteries, so the Lord Mayor ordered that enormous pits should be dug for the bodies, both inside the city and beyond the walls.

  Some people thought the plague, known as the pestilence, was spread by stray cats, so the Lord Mayor ordered all cats to be killed. But the cats had kept the rats under control and soon there were rats everywhere. The taverns were packed with people trying to have fun in the short time they might have left or making sure they got so drunk they didn’t think about death. The churches were also packed with people praying to God to save them and their families.

  The plague finally reached our street, Bear Alley, in early June. Within a week most of the doors bore red crosses. When one appeared on the house next to ours, we spent the whole night on our knees praying. I wasn’t sure how much good our prayers would do. I didn’t say that, of course. How could I, when Father prayed every morning in a loud voice and read us passages from the Bible to give us strength? His favourite was Psalm 23, the one that includes the lines: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

  Both my parents had always been strong in their faith. I couldn’t let them know that I was confused and wondering if God even cared. As I stood there with my mother on that last night, I knew that her faith in God was all she had left…

  Suddenly, we heard a familiar loud BONG! sounding over the streets outside. It echoed off the houses and was swiftly followed by another and another. The great bells of old St Paul’s Cathedral were being rung to let the city know that it was midnight. Mother and I froze and stared at each other. Then she stepped past me and opened the small window in the workshop’s f
ar wall.

  “We must hurry!” she hissed, fear and panic in her face. “I hadn’t realized it was so late. We’re running out of time … the watchman will be back soon!”

  CHAPTER

  2

  The watchman was supposed to make sure we didn’t try to leave. If you were found to have the signs of the sickness – a fever, a cough, painful swellings in your neck or groin or under your arms – you were locked into your house and forbidden to come out. Then a red cross was painted on your front door, along with the words Lord Have Mercy Upon Us, and a watchman posted to stand guard. It had happened to us almost immediately after Father had fallen ill. A neighbour had heard Mother’s cries when he had collapsed and had reported us to the watch.

  Locking plague victims in their homes must have seemed like a good idea to the Lord Mayor and his Aldermen, the people who ran London and made rules in the king’s name. They hoped to stop the disease spreading by keeping the sick locked in until they died. But Mother had said it was a bad idea and a death sentence for many. Healthy members of the family and any strangers who were unlucky enough to be visiting at the time were locked in as well, just in case they were already infected but not showing any of the signs yet.

  Most of the watchmen were hard men who only cared about money. The Lord Mayor paid them a good wage to keep those who were infected locked in their homes. Our own watchman was a well-known villain in the streets around St Paul’s. His name was Bad Barnaby and he had a reputation for violence. People said he would cheerfully cut your throat for a farthing – and he was getting paid a lot more than that to make sure none of us escaped. He was a big, strong man with a shaved head, and he kept a cudgel and a knife tucked into his belt. During the day he would swagger up and down outside our house or stand glowering at the windows with his arms crossed. But I kept an eye on him, and I noticed that late in the evening he would sneak off to The Bear, the rough tavern that gave our alley its name. He would stay there for a few hours, drinking with the other watchmen and assorted ruffians, rogues and villains, usually until after midnight. I told Mother about his nightly disappearances, and she had come up with a plan for my escape. She said I had to climb out of a window and go to my aunt and uncle’s house.

  BONG! The bells of old St Paul’s rang again. BONG! BONG! BONG!

  “Quickly, Daniel,” said Mother. “You need to leave now, before it’s too late!”

  Perhaps it was the urgency in her voice that pushed me into action, or maybe I was just the kind of son who always did as his mother told him. At least that’s what my brothers used to tease me about – as the youngest, they said I was bound to be Mother’s favourite. I stepped up to the window, threw my satchel into the alley and started to climb through. It was a tight squeeze and I ended up half falling out, tumbling awkwardly down onto the cobbles. A couple of startled rats ran off down the alley squeaking and squealing.

  I jumped to my feet as the last BONG! boomed from the cathedral and the bells fell silent. The houses in our alley leaned towards each other, so only a narrow strip of sky was visible. The half-moon lay an eerie silver strip of light along the cobbles, making the shadows on either side deeper and darker. I picked up my satchel and slung it over my shoulder, then turned back to say goodbye to Mother. I opened my mouth, but no words came out. What do you say to your mother for the last time in this world, knowing that she is dying? Her face was framed in the window and I could see she was struggling to find the right words too. Her eyes locked onto mine, and we reached out to each other, but our fingertips didn’t meet. The sound of footsteps accompanied by loud voices and drunken laughter made us both jump. The watchman was returning, and it sounded as if he wasn’t alone.

  “Go, Daniel,” Mother said. “Remember us to your aunt and uncle. And whatever happens, keep your trust in the Lord our God.”

  I stared at her, trying to burn her face into my memory forever. I began to sob as I quickly walked away. I tried to stay in the shadows, keeping low and creeping along beside the walls of the other houses as quietly as I could.

  “Hey, you!” somebody yelled. “What do you think you’re up to? Get back inside with the rest of your family or I’ll kill you, never mind the plague!”

  I looked over my shoulder and saw that it was Bad Barnaby who had called out. He was striding towards me and there were two other men with him, all three of them holding their cudgels and glaring at me, their mean, ugly faces twisted with anger. I began to run. Bad Barnaby cursed loudly.

  “God’s blood!” he yelled. “After him! Don’t let the little swine get away.”

  I flew down the alley as fast as I could. They chased me, whistling and shouting, their boots crashing on the cobbles, the sound echoing off the walls. At the end of the alley I turned sharply into Bread Street, which was only a little wider, and put on a spurt of speed. Ahead of me was Cheapside, the great road that ran from the east of the city towards old St Paul’s. If I could make it to the cathedral, I might be able to hide there from Bad Barnaby and his companions. But they were still behind me – and they were getting closer. I hated the idea of being caught by them. I didn’t want my mother’s last efforts to be for nothing.

  I ran even faster down the darkened streets of the City of Death, through twisting alleys and narrow streets until, finally, I was running for my life along Cheapside, heading for the vast bulk of the old cathedral at the far end of the street. Its central tower loomed over the buildings around it and I could see a huge procession of people holding lanterns moving towards its doors. A great murmuring rose from them, everyone praying and crying. I had never seen so many people gathered there at night.

  I plunged into the crowd and pushed through the packed mass of bodies. I only looked round once I reached the steps leading up to the doors. Bad Barnaby and his companions had stopped in the street – they seemed to have given up the chase. They turned away after a moment, heading back down Cheapside towards Bear Alley. I breathed a sigh of relief and entered the cathedral, leaning against the cool stone wall to catch my breath and wondering how my life had come to this.

  The plague wasn’t the first terrible thing to happen in London. Just before I was born, civil wars had torn our country apart. King Charles I had fought Parliament for control of the country. The king had said Parliament was trying to take the power given to him by God and Parliament had said he was a tyrant who wanted to steal their freedom. There had been many terrible battles and in the end the king had lost his kingdom – and his head as well. Then England had no king, but a Lord Protector instead, a hard man called Oliver Cromwell, who was a ruthless ruler.

  My parents had lived through those times and had often talked about them, so I knew the other reasons behind the troubles. A big one had been religion. England had been a Protestant nation since King Henry VIII broke away from the Catholic Church in order to divorce his wife. But many who opposed King Charles were Puritans, Protestants of an extreme kind. My father hated them and said they were cold-blooded fanatics who didn’t like anybody having fun. At any rate, all the theatres had been kept closed for most of the time Cromwell was in charge.

  Eventually Cromwell died, but it had been clear for years things had to change.

  People were unhappy and the country wasn’t being run well. It was decided that we should have a king again and the son of the dead king was invited to rule over us. His name was also Charles and he had been living as an exile in France for years. He returned – as King Charles II – in the year of our Lord 1660. It was known as the Restoration of the monarchy, a great change in our history.

  I was seven that year, but I remember how joyful people were. There were parties and processions and the theatres soon reopened. It seemed that a new age had begun, one in which we would be allowed to enjoy ourselves again. The new king was tall and handsome and always well dressed. To begin with he was very popular, although there were still plenty of sour-faced Puritans who thought we shouldn’t have a king. But for the most part they kept their own coun
sel. Then the plague had come and the king had fled, leaving us Londoners to our fate.

  CHAPTER

  3

  I had been inside St Paul’s many times before. It was the heart of London. Religious services were held there every day, but people also visited the cathedral to hear the latest news and gossip, and to be seen in their fashionable clothes. Normally, the middle aisle – which everybody called Paul’s Walk – was entirely given over to these crowds. Day and night, the buzz of lively conversation rose into the great open space beneath the high roof.

  Tonight it couldn’t have felt more different. The cathedral was filled with shadows, and the light of candles and lanterns was lost in the darkness. It was packed and I was surprised that nobody seemed worried about being so close to other people. I saw many with the signs of the sickness, people who were clearly feverish, their necks swollen. Most of them were being cared for by family and friends. I wondered if they had escaped from their locked houses, just like me. The noise was deafening – terrible cries and shouts, people wailing and praying in front of the great altar, preachers calling out, “Repent! Repent!”

  Suddenly, I realized how tired I was. I had barely slept for the last three nights and running from Bad Barnaby had worn me out. I was supposed to be on my way to the house of Aunt Mary, my mother’s sister, and her husband, Uncle John. Mother was sure they would be free of the plague as they lived outside the eastern wall, beyond Aldgate. But their house was a long way from St Paul’s and I needed to rest. I also wanted to avoid running into Bad Barnaby again.

  I decided to spend the night in the cathedral. It had many nooks and crannies, odd corners in the side chapels where I could hide and get some peace. It took me a while, but I found the perfect spot – a small space behind the tomb of some knight who had long been forgotten. I curled up on the cold stone floor with my head resting on my satchel and tried to sleep. It was hard with all the noise, but eventually I must have drifted off.