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pretty clothes. Beauty and color. Christmas and feasting. Love. I could not, would not die until I had had a taste of those things. I had such a powerful yearning to taste them, such a yearning to be happy, that it made me feel like a chick trapped inside an egg. I knew that all that separated me from light and from life was the thinnest shell, if only I could shore up enough strength to break through, to find my way out. Well, one day I would. Oh, I would. I felt the strength growing inside me all the time, a tough, unshakable determination. For my sister’s sake as well as my own, I was not going to die until I had truly lived.

Summer
    1665
    A warm spring had turned into the most sweltering summer anyone could remember, and today was yet another day of achingly bright blue skies. Knowing how I preferred to be outside, my father suggested that rather than have morning lessons in the parlor, we should have them out on the moors. “We shall see what wonders of nature we can find to study,” he said, tucking my hand into the crook of his arm.
    The moors always had a profound tranquillity in summer, but in the uncommon heat the pace of life seemed to have grown even more restful. The air was heavy with the scent of meadowsweet and the meadows were a riot of color, with orchids and yellow iris lining the ditches and silvery water-filled rhynes, as our drainage ditches are called, and the knapweed like exploding bright pink fireworks. Lazy shorthorn cattle nibbled at the river’s edge where mallards bobbed their heads beneath the surface. Even the Yeo flowed more sluggishly, dotted with water violets, parts of it growing stagnant with weeds.
    We watched pond skaters and mayflies and water boatmen. I caught a stickleback and found the conical shell of a limpet to add to my collection. When my father, usually so hale and fit, had to pause to catch his breath, I assumed it was on account of the cloying humidity. “Shall we go to the woods now and look for fungi, Papa?” I suggested. “It will be cooler.”
    “That is thoughtful of you, Eleanor. But I am not suffering from the heat,” he said. “Not at all.”
    We were by a bend in the riverbank, just upstream of where Susan Hort’s father, John, was inspecting his wicker eel traps. I kicked off my shoes and went to dip my toes in the gurgling Yeo. A heron stood with a fish in its beak and I smiled to see an otter slip out of the reed bed and go for a swim. “The river won’t dry up completely, will it, Papa?” I asked.
    He smacked his cheek where the gnats were biting again and I saw that his wrist was ringed with raised and angry sores. “Even if it does there’s always the spring water.”
    Springs gushed up through the peat all across the land and it was thanks to them that instead of an island in the midst of a lake, our little manor and its estate were now a lush haven in a desert. The pastures were red-brown in places, not from dust and drought like elsewhere in the country, but from sorrel and herbs.
    “We can count on the springs to water our beasts and crops,” my father added. “We’ll have eggs and fowl, beef, cheese and vegetables. Nobody will starve. We must thank the Lord that even if it does not rain for months yet, we will be spared here.”
    “You said the same thing when we heard there was plague in London, sir,” John Hort grunted over his shoulder, then turned to face us with a slippery eel writhing in his huge hands. “Those first two cases in St. Giles . . . are you still so sure we’re safe? They say it’s spreading toward the city. What stops it from spreading west?”
    My father clutched his leather jerkin tighter around his shoulders and I realized with a stab of alarm that he’d been wearing it all morning, despite the sweltering heat, despite it being the hottest month anyone could remember. I noticed also that his hand shook slightly, and it sent tremors reverberating through my own body.
    It was my turn now to fend off the