The Victory (76 page)

‘
Well, and my 'prentices get all that, and more. I pay for it
out of my own pocket. It's not my workers as are spreading
this plague, so don't you come laying it at my door! Aye, and
don't be looking to my daughter to be helping you out of this
mess, either. It's not fitting for a lady to be exposing herself to things like that. I said all along it was wrong, and now you see
I was right.’

Mary Ann and Father Rathbone exchanged a look which
agreed quite clearly that further argument was useless. The
priest bowed formally to Mary Ann.

‘
Mrs Morland, good night, and thank you for your invalu
able help.'

‘Good night, Father,' Mary Ann said as Hobsbawn tugged
importunately at her arm, and dragged her away. Outside the
carriage was waiting, and Hobsbawn's rage turned swiftly to concern as Mary Ann stumbled a little, and had to be helped
up the steps.

‘Eh, love, you're not sick?' he cried in alarm.

‘No, Papa,' she said, ‘only tired.'

‘
And hungry too,' Dakers said sourly from the depths of
the carriage. ‘For if you've eaten a crust today, madam, it's
more than I'll compound for.’

The thought of food sickened Mary Ann, but she said
calmly, 'Yes, I believe I am hungry. I'll have some supper
when we get home.'

‘
Aye, you will. I'll see to that, ' Mr Hobsbawn said eagerly.
When they arrived home, he fussed over her like a mother,
obliging her to sit down in his own armchair while he
removed her hat and shoes, ordering a vast supper and standing over her while she struggled to eat enough of it to satisfy
him, pouring with his own hands a glass of brandy which he
insisted she drink 'to ward off the fever'.

‘
And you'll not go off tomorrow visiting those sick folk,' he
said, half command and half plea, when she finally stood up
to go to bed.

‘
I'm tired, Papa,' she said. 'We'll talk about it tomorrow.’

 
‘
Aye, well, but you've no need to go, now they've made it public. They'll have all the help they need. You'll only be in
the way, love.'

‘
That's true. Good night, Papa.' She smiled and kissed his
cheek, and went away, leaving him with the uneasy feeling
that she had not said quite all he had wanted. Mary Ann
climbed the stairs, lon
^g
in
^g
for hot water and her own bed. but
stopped first at Henry's chamber, for she had not seen him at
all that day. He was asleep in his bed, sprawled on his back in
his usual untidy way, so at odds with the controlled neatness
of his waking self. She straightened the covers he had flung
off, and smoothed the hair from his brow with a loving hand.
He was so lovely, so perfect, her precious son. She bent to kiss
his warm velvet cheek, and he murmured and turned his head
restlessly on the pillow, but did not wake.

Exhaustion made Mary Ann sleep later the next morning
than usual.

‘
Why didn't you wake me?' she asked crossly as Dakers
drew the curtains. Her maid looked stubborn.

‘
There was no need that I could see,' she said. 'You wanted
the sleep.'

‘
Nonsense. I must get up at once. You had better put out
the brown cambric, and my strong shoes.’

Nay, madam, you're not going down to Long Millergate
again,' Dakers said. 'The master left orders before he went
out this morning that you were not to go on any account.'

‘
And who is to stop me?' Mary Ann asked grimly as she
swung her legs out of bed.

‘
Well, madam,' Dakers said cunningly, 'Mr Bowles has
orders not to let you take the carriage out.’

Mary Ann's nostrils flared with fury — she was not her
father's daughter for nothing — but she controlled herself.
'Very well, I shall deal with that question later. And now, lay
out my clothes, if you please.'

‘
Not the brown gown, madam,' Dakers said, half stubborn,
half frightened.

Mary Ann turned a cold fury on her. 'If you do not do as I
say, Dakers, I shall dress myself, and you will pack your bags
and leave this house within the hour.’

Dakers
'Yes, madam,' she said unhappily.

Bowles, the butler, proved harder to shift. He had known
Mary Ann from infancy, but he was dedicated to his master,
and feared the consequences of obeying her more than he
feared her odium. Seeing he was adamant, Mary Ann bade
him order her a hack-coach, and when he demurred, she told him that the alternative was that she walked out in the street
and found one for herself, upon which he could only yield.

The carriage came, and Mary Ann stepped in, her basket on
her arm, and Dakers, furious and sullen, climbed up after
her. She disliked everything about the business, but if her
mistress insisted on going, then she should not go alone.

The hack dropped them at the corner of Long Millergate
and Water Lane, and as they turned off Water Lane into the
courts, the first thing that assailed them was a sulphurous
stench. Following it, they came upon a scene of activity that
was very different from the previous day. In the middle of
Brook's Entry was a barrel of burning tar, whose acrid smoke
at least drowned the usual smell of putrefaction and filth in the teeming court, and, it was therefore to be hoped, would
kill the evil miasmas. Beyond the tar barrel was a bonfire, and
male helpers were dragging mattresses and pathetic scraps of
furniture out of the tenements and flinging them on the fire,
while others staggered in with barrels of limewash to paint the
walls of the dingy rooms.

Father Rathbone was co-ordinating the efforts of his small
army, and turned to greet Mary Ann with a glad smile that
lifted her heart. He wiped the sweat from his brow with the
back of his arm. It was a hot day, and the heat in the court
was intensified by the bonfire and made intolerable by the
acrid stench of the tar-barrel.

He took her hand and pressed it briefly. 'I knew you
would not fail me,' he said.

‘What has happened here?' she asked.

‘
All dead,' he said, with a jerk of the head towards the
house being limewashed.

‘
Every one?' she asked in horror. There had been twenty
people in that house, at least.

‘
We found it empty this morning, except of the dead or the
dying. Some may have run away, of course,' he said with a
shrug. 'But at least we can purge this house of the infection.
If only we could do the same in every house! In Lob's Entry,
for instance, or Grey's Court, where half the people are sick
already. But of course they will not have their poor little
scraps burned, and who can blame them? It's all they have.'

‘You have more help today,' she said.

‘
And there will be more still by tomorrow. Did you see the
Star?
It's on the front page. There's to be another meeting
tonight. We must have money as well as helpers, if we are to
purge these hellish places.'

‘What shall I do?' Mary Ann asked practically.

He thought for a moment. 'Can you go and help Ferriar in
Thomas Court? He has moved everyone that can be moved
out of the Infirmary, and we are sending the sick people
there, making it into a plague hospital. The sooner we can
separate the sick and the healthy, the better. But some of
them don't want to go — the Infirmary has a bad reputation
amongst these people — and some are unwilling to part with
their relatives. That's where you can help: persuade the
mothers to let their sick children go, for instance.'

‘
Very well,' she said, and was turning away to obey him
when he caught her back to press her hand, and flash her his
vivid smile.

‘
Thank you,' he said. 'If there were more like you in the
world!’

*

It was another long, hard day, filled with the sights and
sounds and smells of distress, as the band of helpers tried to
drag order out of the chaos. Mary Ann went only once to the
Infirmary, accompanying a sick woman and her three children who would not go without her. As Father Rathbone had
said, the Infirmary had a bad name, amongst the ignorant
poor. Only those who could not help themselves would go
there.

One visit was enough to convince Mary Ann that in their
place, she would have felt the same. The big, drab building,
grey and grim like a prison, was filled to overflowing with the
old and sick, and smelled like death. Harrassed physicians
and nurses did what they could for the flood of victims being brought in, but it was obvious that few, if any, of them would live. They were being isolated from the healthy, that was all.
At the back of the hospital carts were being assembled to take
the dead to a plague-pit, even then being dug outside the
limits of the town.

She came to recognise the look of those beginning the
disease, the pinched, anxious face, the sunken eyes, the cold,
clammy skin. With her small store of laudanum gone, she had
nothing with which to ease their suffering. In the dark cellars
and cramped rooms she found them lying helpless in their
own filth, often without so much as a bowl to vomit into.
They were tormented with violent thirst, which nothing
seemed to slake, and often the one thing she could do for them was to trot back and forth from the communal pump
with jugs or bowls of water. It was vile stuff, cloudy and
brackish, sometimes green with living things, but the fever-
victims gulped it as eagerly as though it were iced champagne,
though often they brought it up again after a few minutes.

Working all day in the gloom of the tenements, or the
unnatural twilight caused by the smoke outside, she did not
notice dusk coming on, and had no idea of the passage of time
until Father Rathbone came to find her, in a tiny house at
the end of Brock Street where she was kneeling beside a dying woman who would not let go of her hand.

He knelt too, on the other side of the rag mattress on which
the woman lay, and spoke the words of absolution over her,
and after a few minutes the dark, sunken face grew still, and
Mary Ann freed her hand and got wearily to her feet. The
priest looked at her intently.