Petals in the Ashes Read Online Free PDF Page A

the next few days, with our new friend’s help, we began to clean up the ill-smelling place. Already there was a nurse of a kind who called daily to seehow the bedridden fared, but now we asked that a maid be sent in to keep the floor swept clean, and also to wash the mattress covers and change their contents regularly so that the air would smell sweeter. We had the pile of refuse moved from outside the front door to a good way off, strewed herbs on the floor and indeed employed most of the methods that had been decreed in London to prevent the plague from spreading. We asked that, unless a person was on the verge of death, everyone should go outside and use the privy for their business, for it was not at all decent that chamberpots be used and left under the beds for days on end, especially as the weather continued very warm.
    The weather, indeed, was a blessing to us, for if it had rained we would have been forced to stay inside the pesthouse amid the foul vapours and humours. As it was, though, we spent a good deal of our time in the walled garden which surrounded it, separating it from the hamlet beyond. We asked for paper and pencils to be sent and amused ourselves by gathering herbs and any flowers we could find and pressing and naming them, and also taught Martha the basics of the alphabet and how to form her name, for she had never been to school.
    We kept Grace outside as much as possible, and she thrived on country air and grew plump on fresh ass’s milk, especially when a bone feeding-cup with spout arrived in one of the regular deliveries from Highclear House. This enabled her to drink more milk and at her own pace, for she quickly learned to gulp from it and bang it on the floor when she wanted it refilled. Sarah had more patience with Grace than I and spentlonger in her company for, although I loved her dearly, to tell the truth I had seen rather too much of my three little brothers mewling and puking to have any great affection for infants. One of the inmates of the pesthouse carved a little wooden poppet for her, and Sarah and I made dresses and bonnets for it from scraps of sheeting (although Grace, who was teething, ignored these coverings and just gnawed at the dolly’s head).
    Some two weeks or so after we’d arrived in the pesthouse, Martha was seen by a doctor from Dorchester, pronounced fit, and allowed to go on her way. We knew we would miss her very much, but we promised that we would see each other again – and indeed she said she could not wait to visit us in Highclear House.
    One person died over the next week (it was given out that he’d died of spotted fever) and two more people were admitted for quarantine: an old man and his son. They too had come from London and brought the welcome news that at last there had been a downturn in the numbers dying from plague. From a tragic high of ten thousand deaths in one week, the numbers had gradually fallen. The first week in October showed three thousand, with further falls expected.
    â€˜We must write to our family,’ Sarah said, on learning this news. ‘Now the numbers of dead are decreasing, they may allow a letter through.’
    I nodded. ‘Besides, we are not writing from London, but from Dorchester, and that will make a difference.’
    We deliberated a good while on what to say aboutthe death of Abby, for Abby’s mother, a widow, lived just a short distance from our house in Chertsey and would not yet have heard of it. We did not know if we should put our own mother in the difficult position of passing on the news.
    In the end we decided we would not mention it, for neither our mother nor father could read well, and it would have been too difficult to explain the circumstances of Abby’s death and to say how we had taken over the care of little Grace and brought her to Lady Jane. Accordingly, we just wrote the following:
    Dearest Mother and Father,
We trust that you remain in good health as we do,