London - Edward Rutherfurd [499]
1824
They had gone further than usual that day, since a kindly neighbour had offered them a ride in his cart.
Lucy and Horatio were a well-known pair in their humble little street. The thin, pale five-year-old girl would take the toddler out with her every afternoon if he was well enough, because they told her it would make him stronger. And tiny Horatio, with his shock of white hair, would hold her hand and struggle along gamely beside her.
Their neighbour, having business near the Strand, dropped the two children at Charing Cross and promised to return to pick them up in half an hour. It was a good place for the children to wander. The space before them, which would in due course be enlarged and laid out as Trafalgar Square, was gently sloping. On its southern side were the entrances to the stately streets of Whitehall and Pall Mall. Just visible to the right was the handsome classical façade of St Martin-in-the-Fields, and immediately before them stretched the buildings of the Royal Mews where the king’s horses and carriages were kept.
The summer afternoon was hot and dusty, sweet with the smell of horse dung. Great brown clouds of flies rose with a huge buzz each time a passing cart disturbed them. In the middle of the open space some stall holders had set up a little market; and from the classical pediment of St Martin’s, pigeons and doves would swoop down to pick up scraps from around the stalls. Several street vendors moved about, crying their wares. As the two children wandered contentedly about their attention was caught by one young woman with a basket and the gentle cry – “Lavender! Buy my lavender!” – which somehow sounded to Lucy more haunting than the rest. The woman came over and offered them a sprig, and when Lucy explained that she hadn’t any money, she laughed and told her to take it all the same. The smell of it was wonderful and Lucy asked the girl where it came from.
“Lavender Hill, of course,” the girl replied. “It’s out by Battersea Village,” she explained. “Between that and Clapham Common.” The market gardens on these slopes, which were less than three miles away, grew acres of lavender, she told her. It sounded a delightful place.
“This your brother?” the girl asked. “Sickly, is he?”
“He’s getting stronger.”
“Does he know the Lavender song?”
Lucy shook her head and the girl obligingly sang it to him.
“Lavender blue, dilly dilly,
Lavender green -
When I am king, dilly dilly,
You shall be queen.”
“Only”, she remarked, “as it’s me singing it, I suppose it ought to be ‘when you are king,’ the other way round really. You should sing it to him,” she told Lucy cheerfully, and moved off.
Lucy and Horatio were just about to start walking back to Charing Cross, when they saw their neighbour’s wife hurrying towards them from the Royal Mews. Her face was sweating; her red cotton dress was sticking to her body. Walking rapidly, she scattered a crowd of pigeons in her path in her anxiety to reach the children.
“You better come along with me,” she said, taking Lucy’s hand.
They had laid Will Dogget on the bed and he was still breathing, but as she held her little brother’s hand, Lucy knew it was death.
That dusty summer afternoon Will had been passing by a scaffolding, where they were working on a line of elegant houses beside Regent’s Park. For no reason he had looked up – just in time to see the great hod of bricks come crashing down.
Will was groaning a little. His breathing sounded strange, rasping. He did not seem to know that the clergyman was there, nor did he see Lucy or little Horatio. By six that evening he was dead.
Lucy’s mother’s face was grey. It was a terrible thing to lose a husband. Because of death in childbirth, women’s mortality rate was high. But a man could marry again and the new wife would look after her children, whereas if a working man died, how was his widow to live?
Will Dogget was buried the next day, in a common grave. There were only three mourners. Lucy had heard her father say that there were some other Doggets,