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refreshed. I lay with my eyes closed, and heard something I had not heard since I left my father’s house: the sound of someone playing a virginal.

Susanna
    T o William Heywood,
at Thomas Corder’s house in Creed Lane, London.
The twenty-fifth day of September 1665
.
    D ear heart,
    I write this in the evening, after work, and try to picture thee also in thy room in London, perhaps with Nat, eating hot pies from Pudding Lane (for I remember what thou told me of thy habits). As long as I hold thy image in my mind I can believe thee safe and in good health. I know thou dare not write to me. We receive few letters now, and there are fewer travellers on the road to bring us news; but we know the pestilence still rages and has begun to spread into the country
.
    Yesterday was first-day. We met at John Callicott’s house, and John spoke long and powerfully of London’s suffering. I thought of thee, and wanted so much to be with thee that my throat closed up and I could not speak. Mary says, “No news is good news”, and so I must trust and believe
.
    The weather continues warm, but the leaves are beginning to fall. I pray thou will come before winter and take me back with thee to London. I shall not fear plague or persecution if we are together
.
    Forgive me, love, for these sad thoughts. I shall write thee something merrier next time. I will tell thee of Em Taylor’s wedding, which is to be held on the feast day they call Michaelmas; and I may have news from Isaac in Bristol
.
    I have been reading John Donne, and like well his sermons and the Holy Sonnets and find much light in them. I have found also a book of his love poems, and send thee this, which comforts me:
    Let not thy divining heart
    Forethink me any ill
,
    Destiny may take thy part,
    And may thy fears fulfil;
    But think that we
    Are but turned aside to sleep;
    They who one another keep
    Alive, ne’er parted be
.
    Thy love,
    Susanna Thorn

William
    I had been at Edmund Ramsey’s house for nearly three weeks or so when Susanna’s letter arrived: a short, sad letter that made me feel desperate to get up at once and set off to comfort her and reassure her that I was alive and well. But in truth I was still far from well – unable to travel. And I dared not write; a letter must pass through many hands, and Edmund Ramsey had told me that more than eight thousand Londoners had died of the pestilence in the last week.
    My recovery from the ague was slow. It seemed the fever was reluctant to loosen its grip on me and would ease for a while, only to return again as bad as ever, leaving me exhausted and in poor spirits. I remained for several weeks in my room, away from the main areas of Edmund Ramsey’s house, cared for by him and his servants. Because I had been in contact with the plague in Newgate, I was kept as secluded as possible, and my only visitor was Nat. Edmund paid Nat my share of the rent at the Corders’ so that I would be able to go back there when I was well. I was grateful that he had taken me in, and not left Nat with the burden and risk of attending to me in our lodgings; and glad to be spared Meg Corder with her well-meant but insanitary ways. Here, the Ramseys’ physician visited and prescribed soothing herbs, which the servants prepared. It was easier, in such a large house as this seemed to be, to keep the sick clean and apart. The kitchen was well stocked and the servants did not go out more than was necessary into the infected air of the streets.
    When I first arrived I’d had no idea of where the house was. My host told me later that we were in Throgmorton Street, not far from the Exchange, and that he lived, at present, alone except for the servants, his wife and children having gone, for their safety, to relations in Essex. I had never met his family. When I saw him at the Bull and Mouth meeting he had always been alone.
    â€œI dare not bring them into danger from the authorities,” he