By the end of the second week in September Amber was able to dress and sit in the courtyard for a few minutes every day. Bruce carried her down and back again the first few times but she begged him to let her walk for she wanted to grow strong enough so that they could leave the city. She believed now that London was doomed, cursed by God, and that unless they got out they would die with everyone else. For though she was much better she was still gloomy and pessimistic; her usual attitude was completely reversed. Bruce was so well now that his own confidence and optimism had returned and he tried to amuse her—but it was not easy to do.
“I heard an interesting story today,” he said one morning as they sat in the courtyard.
He had brought down a chair for her and she drooped in it pathetically. The clothes she had worn while taking care of him he had burned, and the one gown which was left was a high-necked one of plain black silk that made her skin look sallow and drained. There were dark pits beneath her eyes and her hair hung in drab oily coils about her shoulders, but there was a red rose pinned at one temple which he had found that morning while shopping. Flowers had almost vanished from the town.
“What?” she asked him listlessly.
“Well, it sounds preposterous but they swear it’s true. It seems there was a drunken piper who left a tavern the other night and lay down in a doorway somewhere to sleep. The dead-cart came along, tossed him on top of the heap, and went off. But halfway to the graveyard the piper woke up and nothing daunted by the company took out his pipe and began to play. The driver and link-man ran off bellowing that the cart was haunted—”
Amber did not laugh or even smile; she looked at him with a kind of incredulous horrified disgust. “Oh—Oh, how terrible! A live man in that cart—Oh, it
“I’m sorry, darling.” He was instantly contrite and changed the subject immediately. “You know, I think I’ve found the means to get us out of the city.” He was sitting on the flag-stones before her in his breeches and shirt-sleeves, a lock of his own coarse, dark hair falling over his forehead, and he looked up at her now with a smile, squinting his eyes against the sun.
“How?”
“Almsbury’s yacht’s still here, moored at the water-stairs, and it’s big enough so that we could take along provisions to last us for several weeks.”
“But where could we go? You can’t go out to sea in a yacht, can you?”
“We won’t try. We’ll sail up the Thames toward Hampton Court and go past Windsor and Maidenhead and on up that way. Once we’re sufficiently recovered not to spread the disease we can go to Almsbury’s country seat in Herefordshire.”
“But you said they wouldn’t let ships leave port at all.” Even simple plans sounded more difficult to her now than preposterous ones would have when she was in good health.
“They won’t. We’ll have to be careful. We’ll go at night—but don’t you worry about it. I’ll make the plans. I’ve already begun to—”
He paused, for Amber was staring at him, her face almost green, all her body stiffened in an attitude of listening. Then he heard it too—the rumbling sound of wheels turning over the cobble-stones, and a man’s distant voice.
“Bring out your dead!”
Amber began to sway forward but swiftly he was on his feet and had her in his arms. He carried her back up the stairs to the balcony and through the parlour into the bedroom and there he laid her down, very gently. She had lost consciousness for only a moment and now she looked up at him again. The sickness had left her wholly dependent upon him; she looked to him for all strength and confidence, she expected him to supply the answer and solution for every fear or worry. He was lover, God and parent.
“I’ll never forget that sound,” she whispered now. “I’ll hear it every night of my life. I’ll see those carts every time I shut my eyes.” Her eyes were beginning to glitter, her breath came faster with hysterical excitement. “I’ll never be able to think about anything else—”
Bruce bent close and put his mouth against her cheek. “Amber, don’t! Don’t think about it. Don’t
A few days later Amber and Bruce left London in Almsbury’s yacht. The country was beautiful. The low riverside meadows were thick with marigolds and along the banks grew lilies and green rushes. Tangled masses of water-grass, like green hair, floated on the swift current, and in the late afternoons there were always cattle standing at the edge of the water, quiet and reflective.
They passed a great many other boats, most of them small scows or barges on which were crowded whole families who had no country homes and had taken that means of escaping the plague. But though they exchanged mutual greetings and news, people were still distrustful of one another. Those who had avoided the sickness this long had no wish to risk it now.
