Those bells! They drive me mad!” Alice exclaimed. The church bells rang almost all the time now, to mark the passing of those who had died. Day and night you could hear the plague carts rumbling over the cobbles, the cry of, “Bring out your dead!” and the thump of bodies being flung into the carts. Despite the bells, Alice was cheerful, humming a tune as she went about her work. Sam knew it was because tomorrow was her day off. She would be going home to Southwark to see her mother and sisters. “You can strip your own bed, Sam, since you’re up here,” she said. They were in Master Kemp’s bedchamber and Alice was changing the sheets. Sam slept on a low bed in one corner of the room. He hardly needed sheets at all, he thought, the weather was so hot. It was mid-August, a month since they had started keeping Budge indoors. In the heat of the midday sun, the upper floor of the house felt like a furnace. “It’s so hot,” Sam sighed. “Shall I open the window? The bells have stopped now.”
