He went to the sick woman first, kneeling down on the floor to examine her. Her pulse was almost indiscernible, she seemed unaware of him or her surroundings, and worse still, she had a bluish-purple tinge to her face.

Bennett stifled a gasp of horror for her colour told him exactly what she was suffering from. He had never treated anyone with the disease before, but he remembered the effects of an epidemic that had occurred before he began to study medicine. He had, however, studied the disease in theory and knew how serious it was, and his stomach churned with alarm as he recalled how fast it could spread.

The young man's symptoms were identical to the woman's, but his pulse was even slower. Bennett looked up at Hope, saw her exhaustion and the fear in her eyes, and he was afraid to tell her the truth.

'How long is it since they were taken ill?' he asked.

'Only yesterday,' she said. 'Betsy said she felt poorly the night before, and Gussie wasn't quite himself either, but we all thought it was just the heat. Is it typhus, doctor?'

'No, it's not typhus,' he said, wishing it were as the recovery rate from that disease was much higher.

'Then what, doctor?' she exclaimed. 'Tell me, for pity's sake.'

He knew he had to tell her the truth. He must give her the opportunity to decide whether she would flee to save her own life now, or stay and catch it too. She might even have it already, for he knew it was a fickle disease. In some it took days to manifest, in others, like these two, it struck fast and without mercy, death following in less than a day.

'It is cholera, I'm afraid,' he said softly, a lump coming up in his throat at having to name the disease which frightened him above all others.

She gasped and covered her mouth in horror. 'Hundreds died of that the year I was born,' she said, tears springing into her eyes. 'I remember my mother talking about it to my sister. Can you make them better? Can we get them to the hospital?'

'Your friends are too sick to move now,' he said gently. His mind was whirling, weighing up how quickly the disease would spread to the others in this house. He recalled hearing some wailing as he came down the alley, which might have been another victim. Only this morning Uncle Abel had mentioned that there had been reports of several deaths among the dest.i.tute Irish immigrants, and now in the light of what he'd seen here, he thought it very likely that was cholera too.

He feared a ma.s.s panic when word got out that the dreaded disease was back in the city, and if people began swarming out into the countryside it could lead to a huge, countrywide epidemic.

But these two patients were his primary concern for now. It would be soon enough when he left here to inform the authorities and let them decide what was to be done.

'I will give you some opium to put in their water which will help their cramps,' he said. He knew he ought to tell the girl that her friends' blue colouring meant they were already in the final stages, but he couldn't. At least the opium would make their deaths gentler.

She might have been told about the cholera epidemic in '32, but Bennett had seen it for himself, for he had been twelve years old then. He often felt it was that epidemic which had prompted him to become a doctor. His childhood home was two miles from Exeter, but in the city people died like flies that summer, often dropping in the streets. His mother had been terrified by the disease, refusing to let him go out for fear of catching it, but he had slipped out and seen the bodies being flung on to an open cart, heard the church bell tolling as the ma.s.s graves were filled. He could never forget the bonfires on which victims' clothes and bedding were burned, or the fear in people's eyes as they swarmed from the city trying to escape the disease.

That same fear was in Hope's eyes now; she looked at him as if knowing he was holding something back, but afraid to question him further. 'I've been giving them cinnamon tea,' she burst out. 'That is, until they stopped drinking. I put mustard poultices on their bellies too. Was that right? Should I go on doing it?'

'All that is excellent,' he said, astounded that a girl so young could be so unselfish and practical. 'You'd make a fine nurse, Hope. But leave the poultices now, just give them water with the opium. You must get some rest too, or you will become ill.'

She looked at him long and hard for a moment. 'Why haven't I caught it?' she asked eventually, her voice shaking. 'I didn't get typhus when my parents died of it, even though I nursed them. Was that just luck?'

'I don't know, I'm afraid,' Bennett said, feeling helpless. 'There are so many different ideas about what causes these diseases. Some doctors think they are carried in the air, others think they are pa.s.sed by contact, but no one knows for sure. I don't personally believe they are airborne, but then if it is pa.s.sed on by physical contact, it's strange that some members of a family don't get it.'

He wished he could say that if she hadn't already got it, she was safe, but he couldn't lie to her like that. For all he knew she could collapse with it at any minute, just as he could wake up tomorrow with it too.

'Mother believed in washing everything with vinegar when someone was ill,' she said in a small voice. 'Do you believe in that?'

'I do,' he agreed. 'Wash your hands with soap each time you touch one of them and don't drink from the same cup as them either.'

He got up and took a small bottle of opium from his bag. 'Three or four drops, that's all,' he said. 'I'll come back to see them in the morning.'

Bennett felt strangely reluctant to leave her. He knew he must, he couldn't do any more, and it would be folly to stay a minute longer than he had to. But it seemed wrong to leave someone so young with such a responsibility. He wanted to know why someone so beautiful came to be in this terrible place; in fact he wanted to know everything about her.

Mary Carpenter was right, she was intriguing.

'Hope!'

She started at Gussie's weak call, and was surprised to find it was now daybreak and she must have dropped off to sleep for a couple of hours.

Her heart leapt, for if he could call out her name he might be over the worst. 'What is it?' she whispered as she quickly moved over to him. 'Another drink?'

He nodded weakly and she held the cup to his parched lips, but she saw only too clearly that he wasn't getting better after all, for his blue colour was even worse by daylight than it had been by candlelight.

'I'm dying,' he croaked out. It wasn't a question, just a statement of fact. But she denied it vigorously.

'Don't,' he said, his sunken eyes making him look like a very old man. 'I know the truth. You must get out of here now, it's not safe for you to stay.'

That he should only be thinking of her safety when he was so desperately sick made tears spring to her eyes. She picked up a damp cloth and wiped his brow tenderly. 'I love you, Gussie,' she whispered. 'You and Betsy have been such good friends to me and I can't leave you. So don't tell me to go.'

He just looked at her with those sunken eyes fixed on her for some little while. 'I wanted you to be my girl,' he blurted out. 'So many times I wanted to tell you how I felt about you, but I didn't dare.'

Hope blushed, surprised by his statement. But then she remembered all those times he'd taken her hand, the hugs that were just a fraction more than friendship, the way he'd looked at her sometimes. She might have been frightened by it had she realized what it meant, for she hadn't felt the same way. She'd only loved him like a brother.

'I wish you had told me,' she whispered, unable to let him die thinking his feelings for her were not returned. 'I'd be proud to be your girl.'

He smiled then. It was nothing like the wide, joyful smile she was used to, when his eyes would dance and twinkle, but just the ghost of it. Yet she felt uplifted that a small white lie could bring him some measure of happiness.

'I used to dream that our luck would change, that we'd get married and live somewhere beautiful,' he said, struggling to get the words out. 'Get away from here, Hope, find that good life you deserve. I'll go easier if you give me your promise.'

Her mind slipped back to good memories from the past. The many times they'd sat in front of the fire in winter with him ma.s.saging her icy feet to warm them. She thought of the surprised delight on his face when he ate a stew she'd cooked on the fire, or how he laughed up on Brandon Hill one day in early spring when they'd rolled down the gra.s.sy slopes together.

Gussie might not have been the man she would want to pledge herself to for life, but he'd taught her some valuable lessons that she would never forget. He was warm and funny, loyal, generous and kind, and she would hold those important a.s.sets in her heart and make sure the man she did eventually marry had them too.

'I promise,' she whispered, kissing his forehead. 'I won't ever forget you, Gussie, and I'll miss you so much.'

'How is Betsy?' he asked, trying to raise himself enough to look at her.

It was tempting to tell him she was getting better, but on a moment's reflection she thought that as Gussie and Betsy had been such close friends for so long, maybe they'd feel less frightened dying together.

'I think she wants to go with you,' she said.

He slumped back on to the mattress and closed his eyes. He kept them closed for some time, making Hope think he'd fallen asleep, but then his cramps began again, his legs and arms twitching furiously, and she rubbed them hard with both hands as she'd done before.

'Go now,' he rasped while still in the terrible spasm. 'There's nothing more you can do for us. Save yourself!'

That was the last coherent thing he said to her. He said other words, but nothing that made any sense, and she managed to make him drink a little more cinnamon tea laced with the opium until he was still again.

Betsy got the violent cramps soon after, and Hope rubbed her arms and legs until she had no strength left.

'Let me die now,' she shrieked. 'I'm finished.'

She too became quiet again after more opium, and looked at Hope with pleading eyes. 'Don't you go bad without me,' she croaked out. 'You get yerself a nice gent with some bra.s.s.'

Betsy had always been one for dishing out advice and opinions, and Hope had no doubt that her friend felt frustrated by being unable to voice all that she felt. Yet what she had managed to say was in fact a condensed version of her philosophy, and even an acknowledgement that she was glad Hope hadn't turned to thieving or prost.i.tution.

Hope had so much she wanted to say to her friend; but there weren't big enough words to cover her grat.i.tude, her affection or her admiration. She could feel scalding tears running down her cheeks, her heart felt it had swollen up so much it might burst, and her head was full of a hundred vivid pictures. She could see Betsy in the second-hand dress shop, vivaciously chatting away to the shop owner while stuffing a petticoat or shawl under her dress; her cheeky grin as she ran away with a stolen pie or piece of fruit, and the way she could captivate a foreign sailor with those big dark eyes and get him to part with a shilling. She was fiery, funny, daring, and a ray of sunshine on the darkest of days. She might have been a thief, but she had her own moral code she lived by, which was in many ways far more honourable than those of the pious ladies who flocked to church on Sundays. She had taken food and clothing down to the poor Irish, and there was scarcely a family in Lamb Lane she hadn't helped out at some time. Hope felt proud that Betsy had singled her out to be her friend, for the time spent with her had been an education, a joy and a gift of love.

'You are beautiful,' she murmured through her tears as she bathed her friend's face. 'A true sister, and one day when I've got children of my own I'll tell them all about you.'

Gussie died first, just as the church bells were ringing for the morning service. Betsy followed him within minutes.

Hope couldn't cry any more, she'd spent all her tears in the last hours, and now she felt only relief that her friends' suffering was over. Their corpses were hardly recognizable as the people she loved, for the cholera had turned their faces to those of gaunt and terrible ghouls. Only their hair, the dark and the red, was a marker of who they once were. Hope needed to go somewhere where she had good memories of their vibrant characters, where she could hear their laughter, remember their stories, and see them again in her mind when they were beautiful. Then she could mourn them.

She hauled Betsy's mattress closer to Gussie and covered them in a blanket, then, collecting up her few things, she tied them into a bundle and left, quietly closing the door behind her and fastening a note for the doctor on a nail.

Chapter Thirteen.

Bennett found Lewins Mead by day now here near as frightening or noisy as at night, but then he supposed that at ten on a Sunday morning most of the residents were still sleeping off the drink from the night before.

Yet although it felt safer, daylight revealed the full wretchedness of the place. The wooden-framed houses were tottering with age and rotting away. Few had windows intact, weeds grew out of roofs, and walls bulged alarmingly. An open drain in the centre of the alley was blocked by a putrefied dead dog and the human waste thrown from windows was backing up towards doorways. Bennett gagged at the stench, and hearing a warning shout from above, hastily jumped aside as the contents of a full slop pail came cascading down, narrowly missing him.

Further into the rookery by the water pump, a group of women were gossiping. They turned to look at him with sharp, suspicious eyes, but the youngest of them, a pretty but very dirty girl with half her b.r.e.a.s.t.s exposed, whispered some comment which made them all laugh raucously. Bennett felt himself blush furiously, but he raised his hat and wished the women good morning. Their semi-naked children were playing listlessly in the dirt close by, and as he noted their distended bellies and stick-thin limbs, he felt guilty that he'd had two fine plump kippers for his breakfast that morning.

How many of them would survive cholera? He doubted any of them could as they were so malnourished.

He had hardly slept a wink for thinking about the disease, and what he could do to prevent it from spreading far and wide. He remembered that during the last epidemic some parish councils had attempted a system of quarantine to contain it. This amounted to forcing the healthy in a disease-stricken area to be shut up with the sick. That to his mind was barbaric, for whole families died unnecessarily under the worst of conditions.

But he rather suspected that Uncle Abel was likely to approve such a plan, as long as it didn't apply to him. This was why Bennett hadn't yet told him what he'd found here last night. His uncle certainly wouldn't have allowed him to come back here today, and that poor girl would be left alone with her sick friends believing he didn't care about her plight.

After he'd seen her today he intended to notify the authorities that cholera had arrived in the town. If Hope was still healthy, he would recommend she left the area as soon as possible before she found herself trapped here.

He paused as he arrived at her lodging house, shocked by the appalling condition of it. Last night the cloak of darkness had hidden its true horror. He had of course known by the shakiness of the stairs that it was severely dilapidated; he'd also known it must be hideous, but even so he hadn't imagined anything as bad as what he saw now.

There was no front door, and the wood panelling in the hall had been wrenched off, presumably for firewood; likewise, the banister spindles and many of the internal doors were gone. There were huge gaping holes in the plaster, showing the lathes beneath, and when he looked up the staircase to the top of the house he could see the sky through a hole in the roof.

It was not fit for human habitation, yet heaven knows how many unfortunate souls were compelled to live here, and the smell was so atrocious that he had to clap his hand over his nose and mouth or he might very well have vomited.

He saw the note pinned to the door even before he reached the last landing, and his first thought was that Hope had run off and was asking him to find someone to nurse her friends.

He felt an odd sense of disappointment in her, even though it was he who had suggested that she should go. He pulled the note off the nail.

'Dear Doctor,' he read.

Sadly Gussie and Betsy died this morning within minutes of one another. I didn't know what I should do about them. I haven't got any money for a funeral and I couldn't stay in there with them, so I thought it better to go. I'm going out into the countryside until I'm sure I haven't caught it too. Thank you for coming to see them, it was very kind of you, and I hope I haven't put you at risk too. Yours truly, Hope Renton A lump came up in his throat. It was astounding that she could write so well, not one spelling mistake, and such good handwriting. But it was the honesty and kindness in her message that affected him most. He thought most people in her position would just run without any explanation or thanks.

He opened the door, but on seeing that the room was full of flies he hastily shut it again. He'd glimpsed the blanket-covered mound on the floor and didn't need to look beneath it to check Hope wasn't mistaken.

Two hours later Bennett walked wearily back to Clifton. As the council offices were closed on Sundays he'd reported the deaths to the police, leaving them to contact the appropriate people. Sadly, the man he spoke to seemed dull-witted, unable to take in how serious cholera was, or how quickly it could spread. He said deaths had been reported among the Irish squatting by the river Frome, but he chuckled as if that pleased him. Bennett had been tempted to wipe that smug expression off his face by informing him cholera wasn't choosy who it struck down, and it could very well be him or one of his family next.

But of course he didn't say it; to point out the gravity of the situation would only start panic. One thing was certain though: this handful of deaths wouldn't be the end of it. And Bennett knew that as a doctor he would be duty-bound to help. He didn't want to it would be far safer to stay up in Clifton and pray the disease didn't get that far. At least half the stricken would die, and with or without a doctor that ratio would remain the same. But he'd made his oath to help the sick and that was what he must do.

The young girl Hope worried him too. She might be infected, and without any money, a roof over her head or anyone to turn to, she could be in a desperate situation.

He tried to think where she was likely to have gone. She'd only said 'the countryside', which could mean anywhere around Bristol. It would be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack!

As the sun was beginning to set on Sunday evening Hope looked down at the Avon Gorge from a viewpoint in Leigh Woods with tears streaming down her face.

The beauty of the scene in front of her was incomparable: the majesty of the rocky gorge, the orange sinking sun reflected in the water, the deep green of the woods on both sides. The tide was high and a large three-masted sailing ship was being slowly hauled down towards the sea by horses on the river banks. She could hear the sailors calling to one another, and someone unseen was playing an accordion. On the ship's deck there was a lady in a white dress and a feathered hat, holding the hands of two small boys.

Hope had come to this spot many times when she was collecting wood, and whatever the weather, she had never tired of watching the ships, or imagining where they had come from, where they were going or what cargo they were carrying.

But today she didn't care if that lady and her small boys were sailing to America or some other far-off land. She didn't care if the ship was marooned without wind for weeks at the river mouth, or even if it sailed into a tempest. Gussie and Betsy, her dear friends, were dead, and she couldn't even be there to say some prayers for them when they were buried.

Betsy had once laughed at her for feeling sad that a dead neighbour had a pauper's burial. She had said that whether you were taken to the graveyard in a gilded coach with six plumed horses, or trundled there on the parish cart, you still met the same end under six feet of earth. Maybe that was true, but it was so unfair that her friends who had been so vibrant and beautiful in life should meet such a horrible death, and then for them to be tossed into a pit without any ceremony was too much to bear.

Hope was afraid for herself too. Except for that one night when Albert had thrown her out into the rain, she'd always had someone to run to. Gussie and Betsy had rescued her soon after that, so she had never been tested to see if she could cope alone. She might have learned to make a living, to cook meals in one pan, even to keep clean under terrible conditions. But she'd had her friends to praise her efforts, comfort her when she felt like giving up, and they'd been there every night, their bodies keeping her warm and their laughter cheering her.

It was so quiet here in the woods, the only sounds the odd rustling in the undergrowth and the occasional coo of a wood pigeon. That was why she'd always liked it so much here, for down in the town the noise was incessant. But it wasn't good to know there was absolutely no one around, not when at any moment she could begin to shiver and feel stomach cramps. She might very well die up here in the woods. There would be no one to hold a drink to her lips, to rub her limbs or offer any words of consolation. Her corpse would be picked clean by crows and no one would ever know what happened to her.

Just two days ago she'd been torn between her friends and the position in Royal York Crescent. Now both options were gone. Even if she felt well tomorrow morning, she couldn't present herself at number 5 and risk taking the disease with her.

Ironically, she had more money on her today than she'd ever had in her life before. She'd found one pound eight shillings in Gussie's pocket, another four shillings in Betsy's, and she had five and sixpence of her own. She'd felt awkward about taking her friends' money, but whoever came to collect their bodies would take it, and Gussie and Betsy would have wanted her to have it anyway.

If not for the cholera that money would have bought her a good second-hand dress and a pair of boots. There would be enough left over to set herself up in a cheap room, and buy flowers from the market to make a living for herself by selling them.

But she couldn't go back into the town until she knew she was well. And if the cholera was raging there by then, it would be folly to return.

In the past weeks of hot weather she'd often tried to persuade Gussie and Betsy to come up here with her and sleep under the stars. But they'd been horrified at the idea. They said woods were scary and they liked being around people. Betsy had even laughingly said that too much fresh air was bad for a body used to Lewins Mead. Hope had done her best to tempt them by telling them it would be fun, describing how they'd make a shelter, light a fire and get water from a stream, but they only shuddered at the idea.

She had had the presence of mind to bring the old teapot and a few other essentials from Lamb Lane, but it didn't look like fun now; without Betsy and Gussie it felt like a terrible punishment for not dying with them.

'You're just tired, you'll be fine after a good night's sleep,' she told herself, struggling to get a grip on her emotions. Resolutely she turned and made her way back to where she'd left her things. Maybe tomorrow she'd recover the will to build a shelter, and find the pond she'd discovered some months back so she could bathe herself. But tonight she was too overwhelmed with grief and exhaustion to do anything more than wrap herself in her old cloak and sleep.

A week later, Hope woke to the sound of rain falling. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, then parted the branches she'd concealed her shelter with. It was barely dawn, and the rain on the parched earth smelled good.

She lay down again, smiling smugly to herself because her shelter was still dry, proving she'd chosen the right spot beneath the canopy of a large oak, and built it well. As small children, she and Joe and Henry had often built such shelters in the woods, but she'd never imagined then that one day something which had been so enjoyable would prove so useful. It was thoughts of her brothers and home that had comforted her in the past week; they took her mind off the horror of her friends' deaths, helped her cope with her grief and prevented her from giving in to complete despair.

Every ache or pain terrified her in case it was the onset of cholera. It was so tempting to give in to the exhaustion she felt and just wait for whatever fate had in store for her, be that sickness or starvation. But she'd forced herself to scour the woods for the right kind of supple branches she could weave into a shelter, to collect up dry bracken to make herself a bed and store wood for her fire. The meagre provisions she'd brought with her were gone on the first day, but on the third, hunger drove her to walk back down to Hotwells on the outskirts of the town and buy a few things from a stall there.

Nothing had ever tasted as good as those potatoes she baked in the fire, a lump of cheese melting inside them. She had some apples and a bunch of fresh watercress, and somehow she knew as she munched on those peppery leaves that she must be well or she couldn't possibly enjoy it so much.

Yet bathing in the pond had lifted her spirits even more than the food. She had found the pond back in the spring and on many a hot day in the past couple of months she'd remembered it with longing. It took her some time to find it again for thick bushes hid it from sight. Only a faint gurgling of the spring which fed it had alerted her to where it was.

She had clawed her way through thick undergrowth, half-expecting to find it would have dried up to just a bed of damp mud. She almost shouted aloud with joy when she saw it was even prettier than she remembered: clean, fresh water, shining in the hot sun and completely surrounded by thick bushes. She waded in wearing her clothes, holding on to a thick branch for fear of getting out of her depth, and was thrilled to find it only came up to her waist.

She scrubbed her clothes with soap while still wearing them, then took them off, wrung them out and hung them on a bush to dry. She went back in naked then, washing every bit of herself, soaping her hair and revelling in the knowledge that she would finally be free of the stink and lice of Lewins Mead.

Holding on to a small log as a float, she found she could swim, and nothing in her life had ever felt as good as she floated in the cool, clear water, her limbs caressed and stimulated. She remained in the pond for so long that when she finally got out, her fingers and toes wrinkling from the water, her clothes were almost dry. She felt reborn then, her hair silky, her skin soothed yet glowing, and she vowed to herself that she would always live by water in future so she could bathe herself.