Tears sprang into her eyes. She opened them wide, gazing at him, her lower lip trembling. She had discovered, at an early age, that he could not bear to see her cry.
‘But I love Thomas. He made me my first hobby horse, he pushed me on my swing in the garden, he played at hide- and-seek with me. I could not bear it if he went away.’
‘You do not understand,’ her father said irritably. ‘I am not made of money. Why should I keep an old man who can no longer work properly?’
‘Oh, Father,’ she said softly, letting the tears trickle down her cheeks and gazing reproachfully at him. ‘You could not be so cruel.’
He looked at her and groaned. ‘Oh, very well, very well. I am mad to listen to you, but I have work to do. Leave me to do it or we shall all be on the streets.’
She hugged him, kissing his head, and ran to tell her mother.
Mistress Brent clucked crossly at the news that Thomas was to stay.
‘Why must you take so much upon yourself?’ she demanded. ‘Now I shall not get a strong young man to do the work Thomas cannot do.’
‘You could get an orphan boy to help him,’ Cornelia suggested.
‘Boys eat too much and are too idle,’ said Mistress Brent. She handed Cornelia a large bundle. ‘Here, take this to Ellen. I’ve put up some good strong cloth so that she can make her children warm clothing for the winter.’
Cornelia kissed her and went down to the kitchen. Nan had packed a basket of food; bread, a ham bone, some salt pork, eggs and a jug of home-brewed ale.
When Cornelia told him of his reprieve, Thomas went white and stammered his thanks.
Nan nudged him. ‘Hold your tongue, old man, and carry this basket for me. You can come with us.’
Cornelia put on her oldest cloak, Thomas brought his stave, and they set off for Walbrook.
On the way Cornelia stopped to buy small cakes from a street seller.
‘For the children,’ she apologised, at Nan’s irritated look.
‘Bread would have done well enough for them,’ Nan retorted.
They were pursued by cries of ‘What do you lack?’ as they walked up from Thames Street, as the street sellers tried to get them to buy their wares. Carts rattled past them. Women gossiped at the water fountains. Apprentices ran along with bundles under their arms, dodging in and out of the crowds. Sellers shouted their wares from all sides—pies, fruit, lavender—and grabbed at the sleeves of those who did not walk fast.
The street in which Ellen lived was narrow and dirty. Ramshackle tenements rose up on either side, their plaster peeling, the roofs uneven and broken, many with empty windows. Filthy urchins played in the dust of the street, bare feet black as soot, leaping over the heaps of refuse, shouting. A baby of two years or so sat with flies crawling on its head. Blue eyes shone brightly from the mask of dirt, and it clapped its hands when Cornelia, laughing, put a cake into its outstretched fingers. She watched, amused and touched, as, squashing the cake into crumbs, the baby pushed its hand up to its face.
‘Come on,’ Nan growled, turning with bared teeth on some urchins who had drawn closer at the sight of food.
Thomas was looking nervous, holding his stave close to his side. Ellen had two rooms on an upper floor. The stairs creaked as they climbed them. The walls were of plaster and lath. Fat black cockroaches scuttled in the shadows. Flies and other insects crawled on the walls. Faces peered round doors at them. They were aware of silent hostility, as tangible as the grey dust which filtered silently down through the autumn sunshine and lay everywhere, on stairs, floors, doors, walls.
The odour was so nauseating that Cornelia had to hold her handkerchief to her face.
‘How can people live in this stench?’ she asked Nan who, for answer, produced an orange, stuck with cloves, and pushed it at her, grumbling inaudibly.
They rapped on an ill-hung, peeling door. A ragged, dirty child opened it and stared at them. He was small, thin and dressed in rusty black. His face, the colour of grey dough, was old and suspicious.
‘What do you want?’ he asked, blocking the door with his leg.
‘Are you Ellen’s little boy?’ Cornelia asked, bending to smile at him although her stomach heaved at the smell of his clothes.
He shouted, ‘Mam, Mam.’
Nan picked him up and, tucking him under her arm, his small legs waving violently, carried him into the room beyond.
It was low-ceilinged, cramped and dishevelled. On a narrow bed lay Ellen, half sitting up, her white face full of alarm. Cornelia stared at her, not able to believe her eyes. Was this thin, uncombed, pallid creature her rosy-cheeked Ellen?
With a cry of pity, she ran and hugged her. ‘Oh, Ellen,’ she murmured. ‘You look so . . . tired. How glad I am that Doctor Andrew mentioned you. I should not have known where to find you.’