Now, at night, she says prayers to the doll, which she does not touch, but which has become the centre of her vigil. She believes it to be a little replica of the infant Jesus. The fact that its face – if it is like a human face at all – more nearly resembles the face of Rosie Pierpoint than that of a newborn Christ is of no consequence to her. It is the Jesus of her imagination that she sees.

With the coming in of the month of May, news came to us from Earls Bride that the plague, whispered about for so long, had taken hold in London, "so that there is a weekly tally of deaths now that is above seven hundred."

We were told "on the good authority of some upon the staging coach" that the King had removed himself and his Court to Hampton Court but might not be safe there for long. An outbreak of such virulence, said the people of Earls Bride, would creep outwards on the waterways and on the wind and the people themselves, fleeing the city, would bring it into all the shires upon their breath.

The Keepers of Whittlesea sat down by their fire and folded their hands and asked Jesus "not to sew the poisoned seed of the Black Death among us, that the suffering we daily witness here be not added to."

It was then proposed by Edmund (whose eyes and beard shine with such health that it is most difficult to imagine him laid low even by an ague) that the gates of Whittlesea Hospital be closed, allowing no one in except those from whom we buy straw and wood and flour and meat.

Since we are a forgotten place, few people ever make their way here and I remarked therefore that Edmund's proposed precaution was scarcely necessary. It was Ambrose who reminded me that from time to time the relatives of those incarcerated here make the journey from London or Lynn or Newmarket to visit them, bringing provisions, money and clothing. "And it is these," he said, "whom we must – for as long as the epidemic may last – turn away."

Eleanor, Hannah and Edmund nodded in agreement. Daniel rose and made an arch of his hands in front of his mouth and started blowing into it, like someone trying to teach himself to whistle. Pearce sniffed and took from his pocket his little phial of mithridate. He then delivered himself of his opinion that these visits of relatives "are all that defines time for certain of our Decayed Friends. If we prohibit them," he said, "we shall lose many of them to vacancy and so to despair."

I have noticed that the Keepers of Whittlesea are very courteous to each other in argument, Pearce alone among them being given to fits of sulking. And so it was that the closing of the gates to visitors was now discussed in a most amiable way, each one putting forward an opinion and listening politely to those that countered it. Only Daniel remained outside the argument, now and then through his cupped hands making a very peculiar noise a little resembling the hoot of an owl I used to hear from my bedroom at Bidnold. No one paid this any attention at all.

I found myself on the side of Pearce. I knew, for instance, that Katharine's mother had promised to visit her in the summertime and that she longed for this day and hoped her mother would put her arms around her. The notion that, because of our own fear, we would turn this woman away made me feel most uncomfortable. But Ambrose was very passionate in defence of Edmund's proposal. Better that some here should suffer deprivation and loneliness, he declared, than that we should perish and the Hospital fall to ruin. "For where," he asked, "would the survivors go then but to the London Bedlam, which is the saddest place on earth? And there, in all probability die from the very pestilence from which we are trying to protect them!"

Being a large man with mighty lungs, the voice of Ambrose is very big. To me, it appeared to fill up the small parlour so completely that when Pearce spoke again his voice sounded faint and reedy, as if there was no room for it.

And so it was decided: from that very night, the gates would be barred and under the inscription "I have refined thee in the furnace of affliction" would be posted a bill, giving notice that in time of plague no visitors whomsoever would be admitted to Whittlesea. Provisions or money could be left in a basket and would be given to the one for whom they were intended. The well being or otherwise of any inmate could be ascertained by means of a letter to the Keepers.

Pearce was most unhappy with the decision, his disquiet causing a copious running of phlegm from his sore nostrils. And it made me feel afraid. I fell prey to the notion that all the world I had known and loved outside Whittlesea would sicken and die and that we and our hundred tormented souls would be the last beings left alive in England.

And so May came in, hot and still, and the light on the flat horizon danced.

So little rain had fallen since my arrival that we were forced to get water from our well to irrigate our vegetable plot and the nodules of fruit on Pearce's pear trees began to appear wizened, like the cods of an old man.

The primrose season was past and the grass in the ditches was brown and dry. Though Pearce talked of making us nosegays to sweeten our air and drive away the plague germ, he could find no flowers but a few late jonquils with which to make them.

Edmund who, as I have told you, loved a deluge for washing in, declared the heat to be "foul type of weather, ripening nothing but disease" and took to wearing his hat at all times.

I remembered the winter and the snow on my park and my thoughts about Russians, but these things seemed so very distant, it was almost impossible to believe that they had ever been.

The air of the nights seemed not much cooler than that of the days and in them I found sleep difficult, so it became my habit to get up many times in each night; sometimes only to stare out of my window in the direction of Earls Bride and then lie down again; sometimes to tuck my nightgown into a pair of breeches and put on my shoes and go quietly out to Margaret Fell and see whether or not Katharine was sleeping.

I had continued daily with the rubbing of her feet with black soap and I had begun to have some hope for this cure. I could now pause in the task or cease altogether and she would stay asleep for an hour. And whenever I looked at her sleeping thus, I would feel very moved by my own success.

So now, if I found her awake in the hot nights, talking to her doll Jesus, pulling her nightclothes or braiding and unbraiding her hair, I would sit down on the floor beside her pallet and bid her lie down, and then I would place her feet in my lap and begin rubbing them, not with any soap but only with the palm of my hand, and in not many minutes I would see her eyes close and a merciful wave of sleep come over her.

One night, being very tired out of this wakefulness of May, I too fell asleep on the floor of Margaret Fell while rubbing Katharine's feet and when I woke up I saw that Katharine had laid her blanket over me. I might have stayed some while at her side if there had not begun all around me an early morning clamour of the women to piss, so that everywhere I looked they were squatting down on their buckets and the smell of urine quite overpowered me and drove me out into the dawn.

I went to visit Danseuse_, who is most plagued by flies in this hot weather, and I laid my head against her neck and thought about the early morning coming slowly to the Thames, unseen by Celia asleep with the King at Hampton Court. And I remembered Celia's longing for a child and began to wonder whether, in her, the King would create yet another bastard, while with his own Queen he could not produce an heir. These reveries are interrupted by the stamping of Danseuse who, since we rode inside the Whittlesea gates, has been restless and prone to fear. If she were not the only precious thing I own, I would open the gates and let her gallop away.