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Remembering how John Peppercorn had caught her alone in a dark passage and slyly fondled and squeezed her, Cornelia grimaced. She had always disliked him, but knew better than to say so, for the Peppercorns were close family friends, and Mistress Brent had long cherished a dream of her daughter marrying John. As a child, John had been a secret bully and a sneak. Cornelia could never see him without remembering past petty spitefulness.
They turned down into Thames Street. An old man in a ragged cloak was knocking at the door of a handsome, gabled house. A wide-latticed window opened above and he looked up. His voice pitifully shaking, he cried, ‘For the sake of Christ, Doctor, come to her, for she cannot breathe without agony.’
Cornelia’s heart leapt, and she, too, looked up, grateful for the fur-trimmed hood which hid her face from her mother.
There he was, his face a dark shadow in the unlit window, but his voice, so familiar that it made her tremble with pleasure, speaking in the gentle tones with which he calmed distressed patients. ‘I will be with you at once. Give me a moment to dress. I will soon help her, I promise you.’
The lattice closed. A candle gleamed in the dark chamber. The old man, shivering in his rags, waited with the trusting patience of the-poor.
Cornelia sighed wrenchingly, unaware that she did so, and her mother, stiffening, glanced at her, but could not see the face hidden by her hood.
‘Doctor Belgrave does wrong to go down into the tenements,’ said Mistress Brent harshly. ‘Christ knows what disease he brings back from them into our midst. Are there no surgeons in that ward of the city that he must visit their filthy hovels? He has patients enough of the better sort without seeking more.’
Hotly, Cornelia said, ‘He does God’s work in healing the sick, Mother. The poor people cannot afford to pay for a surgeon, and the quacks who will visit them, for the little they can afford, do them more harm than good.’
‘He will never be rich that way,’ said Mistress Brent tartly.
‘He does not want to be rich,’ Cornelia retorted. ‘He wants to heal sick people.’
Her mother laughed angrily. ‘There are many sick people who can afford to pay well, I am sure.’
‘Sick people?’ Cornelia was too angry to remember discretion. ‘You mean people like Uncle James, who overeat and have pains in their bellies after a banquet, and call for a doctor, crying that they are sick unto death? Rich merchants’ wives who complain of the headache because they have too little to do?’
Mistress Brent flushed. ‘Is that aimed at me, girl?’
Cornelia bit her lip, wishing she had held her tongue. It was an old argument and got her nowhere. ‘No, no, of course not. I am sorry, Mother.’
‘I should hope so, indeed. Mercy on us, your father was ill advised to bring Doctor Belgrave into our circle of friends. I think the young man has turned your head with his fine talk of Cambridge and his ideas about the rights of the poor. These people do not have to live in dirty hovels, you know, child. If they were prepared to work and be thrifty, they could soon find better lodging.’
Cornelia was silent. There was no point in further argument. Her mother—kind, impatient, gen
erous woman—had no time for those who, either through folly or misfortune, could not provide as well for themselves as she and her husband had done. Mistress Brent would send a basket of food to a sick servant, or old clothes to some deserving member of the poorer classes, but she did it with irritation, scolding where she helped, her tongue biting where her hand fed.
They were almost home now. A break in the houses, where a basket-maker’s shop had caught fire and burned to the ground, gave them a glimpse of the moving silver shine of the river. A few dark shapes bobbed on the water. The shadows of the south side were black and ragged, a gilded church spire catching the glint of the moonlight and reflecting it back upon the river.
The gables of the houses reared up towards the wind- driven clouds, their windows moonlit. Behind them lay unseen gardens, in summer sweet with rosemary and lavender, now heaped with golden leaves.
This was a handsome ward of London, full of the homes of rich merchants.
Suddenly the quietness was broken by the sound of running feet and a wild burst of laughter.
Thomas glanced over his shoulder and stiffened in dismay.
Pushing the lantern into Mistress Brent’s hand, he clutched firmly at his cudgel, growling deep in his throat, like an old hound at bay.
Half a dozen men, masked and cloaked, had already caught up with them.
‘Oh, my Lord!’ It was clear to Mistress Brent that she and Cornelia would not be able to run fast enough, in their long gowns, to reach their home.
It would be useless to scream too. No honest citizen would stir out of his house by night if he heard screaming, and the watch were out of sight.
‘What do you want, Masters?’ Thomas asked, raising his cudgel in a threatening manner.
He had taken in their rich clothes and arrogant airs though, and knew them for gentlemen out in search of amusement. Against such men he dared not use his cudgel. Unjust though it might be, his word would not be taken against theirs.
One man stepped forward and swept off his broad- brimmed, feathered hat in a mocking salute. His gloved hand held a long, beribboned cane.
‘I do not like your tone, old man,’ he said clearly. ‘Is it friendly to greet a stranger with a snarl?’
