In March 1645, during the Civil War, Leeds was under the control of a Roundhead garrison when plague broke out. It started in the poor areas, along Vicar Lane and the Calls. The first victim was a young girl, Alice Musgrave. But any hopes that it might disappear soon vanished. Plague raged in Leeds until the end of the year, killing more than 1,300 people, at least one-quarter of the population. Plague cabins were built on Quarry Hill to isolate victims, but it didn’t help…

LITTLE ALICE MUSGRAVE – 1645

Little Alice Musgrave, lying in her bed,
Little Alice Musgrave with plague in her head,
All the prayers for Alice that all the preachers said,
Little Alice Musgrave, buried and dead.

The children sang it for years afterwards, long after most people had forgotten who Alice had even been. At first I’d chase them away and cuff at their heads, yelling through my tears, shouting at them to shut up. But it didn’t help. They’d keep on singing and every word cut deeper and deeper until my heart until I couldn’t cry out any more.
Last week I heard it again. A pair of girls, neither of them more than six, were using it as a rhyme for skipping ropes. The good Lord alone knows where they’d learned it. Alice has been dead these twenty years now. Maybe they’d heard their mother idly singing a memory one day.
I was walking along Call Lane with my granddaughter, her hand tight in mine, and the words just made me stop, frozen as winter. I thought my heart might never beat again.
“What is it, Grandmama?” Emily asked. “Why are you crying like that?”
I had to draw in my breath slowly before I could answer her.
“It’s nothing, child,” I told her. “Just a memory that flew past.” I tried to make my voice light but it was filled with the weight of all the tears I’d cried. “Come on, let’s get ourselves home. Mama will be wondering where we are.” I clutched her hand tighter and we hurried away.

It wouldn’t go away. In the darkness, when I lay alone on the sheet and straw, it came back, singing and taunting. It was as if God wasn’t going to give me the peace of forgetting, as if He’d uncovered all the jagged edges of memory again.
The Roundheads had come again the year before, so loud that we cowered in the house and prayed they wouldn’t come in and kill us. But Leeds had been buffeted like a feather in the wind, from King to Parliament and back again, more dead each time.
But these troops stayed. It felt like a year of mud, when every colour was brown or black and the rains just came and came. The men put up notices for everything – church attendance, how we had to behave, what we could wear. They forbade us from celebrating the birth of our Lord in the old way. That was sinful, they said.
We’d been poor before, desperate for every penny and every bite. But now they took all our joy, too. Snow fell to bring in the new year, only the pikemen with their shining leather boots and glittering weapons allowed on the streets after dark.
We tried to make ourselves into mice, scurrying and unnoticed lest the cat see us and pounce. Sometimes they’d come and drag one of the menfolk away with their accusations of supporting the king. If he ever came home again it was as someone broken and quiet.
I feared for my husband. He’d been a clerk to lawyer Bolton before the attorney had fled. Now his grand house on Briggate was a ruin, a burned-out gap in the street and there was a fine waiting against his name. I kept thinking they’d arrived one day and take Roger off.
He had no work. No one needed a man with his letters. The law was whatever the soldiers said, not something to be argued in a courtroom or written into books. And the cloth trade had dwindled so far that even some of the merchants went hungry. Once it would have been a marvel to see a grand man begging his bread. Now it happened every day.
We had three girls to feed, Alice, Hannah and Anne. They often went hungry, but we fed them before we took anything to eat. When Hannah woke in the night, moaning with pain, at first I thought it was nothing more than an empty belly.
“Hush, love,” I whispered. “Just go back to sleep now.”
But she didn’t stop.
“It hurts, mama.”
I knelt by the bed she shared with her sisters, just a sheet over old straw. Her skin was so hot I thought it could burn my fingers and her shift was soaked with her sweat. I bathed her face with cold water and stroked her damp hair, softly singing every lullaby I could remember. And I prayed. The first of so many prayers to rise from Leeds that year, but God blocked His ear to them all.
By morning she was cold, shaking and shivering with it. Nothing I did could help. I sent Roger to bring the wise woman who lived on Kirkgate. She looked, poking my beautiful little girl with her fingers so that she gave a scream like Christ’s agony.
Outside, where a bitter wind came out of the west, the woman put her arms on my shoulders and looked at me with wise, ancient eyes.
“She has the pestilence,” she said softly.
I opened my mouth. I wanted to say no, to shout, to cry, but nothing came. All I could think was why was He judging her like this? What had she done? She was only eleven, she had no sins to her name.
“I’ll bring something in a little while,” the woman continued. “It’ll help her rest and ease the pain a little.” Then she was gone and I was out there, alone as the cold whipped around me.
The word passed quickly, as if the wind had carried it around the town. The soldiers’ doctor arrived in his neat, clean uniform to examine her then shake his head. A pair of troopers were placed outside our door to keep folk away. We were kept inside. Roger tried to amuse Hannah and Anne, to distract them, while I tended to Alice. The wise woman delivered her little bottle, something clear and sweet-smelling inside, and it worked. My beautiful girl slept. Little Alice Musgrave with plague in her head. But it was on her body, the lumps growing so quickly under her arms and between her legs, the stink growing stronger with every hour, as if death was consuming her inch by inch.
The army left food outside our door, kindling and blankets. For the first time in a year we could have lived like human beings if we’d wanted. But who could have an appetite with this. I tried to keep Alice warm when the cold racked her, hugging her close to give her my heat. Weariness took me deep into my bones but I couldn’t sleep. I only had hours left with my daughter and I couldn’t let any moment of them slip away.
They held a service in St. John’s to pray for her, I heard later. For her soul and her salvation. What good is that when the Lord has turned away, I wanted to shout? But I never said a word.
After a day she’d moved beyond speech, only able to make noise like a baby, each one full of pain and fright. Her swellings turned black, the change coming in the blink of an eye. I kept hold of her hand, letting her know that we all loved her. All I wanted now was for her suffering to end.
Alice lasted until the shank of the day. She wasn’t fighting, not even aware, just waiting. Then she gulped in a breath and it was over. I sat, still clutching her fingers and felt life leave her.

They took her body away quickly, the first to go into a plague pit. No coffin, no more than a winding sheet and a covering of quicklime. They wouldn’t let us go to watch her being placed in the earth. All we were allowed were the four walls of our room and a heaven full of sorrow in our hearts.
Two mornings later it was Roger who began to sweat and by dinner Hannah was ill. I tended to them as best I could, moving like a ghost from one to the other as Anne became a silent, frightened child in the corner, too scared to move in case death caught her.
I hadn’t had time to grieve for my Alice when the others fell ill. All I could do was exist, snatch rest when I could, lying next to a body with the stench of decay, waking to another scream or a moan.
At least he took them quickly, less than a day each. And then it was just Anne and I, waiting and wondering how long before it came for us, too.
But it never did. After a week I walked outside. People talked and went about their business, trying to pretend nothing had happened, as if Alice and Roger and Hannah hadn’t died. Yet I could see the terror in their eyes and the way they shunned me, as if I carried the pestilence like a shadow around me. Then I heard the rhyme for the first time, a group of children playing down the road, throwing a ball from one to the other. Little Alice Musgrave, lying in her bed. I ran towards them screaming and saw them scatter in surprise. My arm caught one boy and I started to hit him over and over as the tears tumbled down my cheeks.
Spring came, sunny, bright and fertile to mock us all. I knew what it meant. With the warm weather the plague would remain with us all. While others held their Bibles close, I prayed it would take me and Anne, that it would lift the weight in our hearts. Each week there’d be fewer faces I knew on the streets, but death kept denying me.

The soldiers left in the end. I’d lost track of how long they stayed; sometimes it seemed as if they’d always been there. Now we have a king again in London, or so they say. It makes little difference to our life in Leeds.
The houses that were destroyed have been rebuilt. Maybe they’re even grander than they were before, I can’t remember. My Anne is married with a little girl of her own. She had one before but Alice died when she was no more than a month old. I tried to tell her it was a fated name, but she wouldn’t listen to me.
I play with Emily, take her to the market and down to the river where men sell the fish they catch. I live with them, accompany them to church on a Sunday, but all I pray for now is to forget.

Annabelle Atkinson is one of the main characters in Gods of Gold. The fiancee of Detective Inspector Tom Harper, she’s a successful woman, owning the Victoria public house and a pair of bakeries. But she had a life before they ever met. Here’s a moment in her past:

She stared at the mirror. The light flickered in the gas mantle, reflecting on the jet buttons of her dress. In black, head to toe. Even the lace and the petticoats and the new button boots that pinched her feet.
Annabelle picked up the funeral hat off the back of the chair and arranged it on her head, spreading the veil in front of her face. Her hand was raised, ready to pin it all in place, when she tore it off and sent the hat spinning across the room.
She turned to the photograph on the mantelpiece. A shiny silver frame. Herself, younger, happy on her wedding day, arm in arm with her husband. Mr. and Mrs. Atkinson.
‘You sod,’ she said quietly. ‘You bloody sod.’
They’d all be waiting downstairs in the pub. Will’s sister and her children, Dan the barman, the two servants, and all the neighbours and friends from round Sheepscar. The hearse was outside, the horses with the ebony plumes.
She breathed deeply, gathered up the hat and set it in place again, hearing the footsteps on the stairs, then the tentative knock on the door.
‘Annabelle, are you ready, luv?’ Bessie, her sister-in-law. ‘Only it’s time.’
A last glance in the mirror and at the picture.
‘Yes,’ Annabelle Atkinson said. ‘I’m coming.’

To begin, apologies for a long post. But as you read, I think you’ll understand the necessity.
The other night I delved back, hunting my ancestors. I’d done it a few years ago, but most of the information had vanished – probably in a box somewhere in the garage. Still, with nothing on television, and some time to kill, it seemed like fun to trace that line through history.
Somewhere in the first 40 years of the 19th century, Isaac Nickson arrived in Leeds. He’d been born in 1792 in Malton, North Yorkshire, and married Jane Caulter on June 2, 1813. He brought a pair of sons along with him, Isaac and George. According to the 1841 census (the first one undertaken), Isaac Nickson Sr. was living in Garland Fold, just by Timble Bridge. His 16 year-old-son William was with him and a 15-year-old daughter, Mary. By this time, Isaac Jr and George shared a house on Gower Street in the Leylands. Isaac was 25, George 20. Hey made their living as painters – for which, read Jack of all trades – and both were married.
George had wed Mary Caroline Hewson on April 22, 1839, in Leeds Parish Church. She was born in 1821 and would live until 1897. He’d die on December 30, 1866.
By 1851 they’d moved to the bottom of Meanwood Road, in Sheepscar. George was still listed as a painter and paper hanger, and by now they had three children, John William, who was nine, Jane, aged five, and Hannah, three (in 1861 Isaac and his wife were on Wade Street, more or less where the Merrion Centre now stands, with his wife. No children mentioned).
Skip forward to the 1871 census. A Caroline M. Nickson is listed at 200 North Street in Holbeck. She’s the head of the house, which chimes with George dying a few years before. However, she’s also a painter a decorator, with a cryptic (7 men and boys) after the job. She took over the firm? Maybe. Living with her are her sons, John William and Robert, as well as daughters Caroline (12) and another son, Richard (9).
The 1861 census shows a William Nickson, old Isaac’s son a painter just like his older brothers, ahe 36 living on Elm Street, in the Bank area of Leeds with his wife Charlotte and his daughter Martha (they don’t show up on the 1851 census). He’s 36, The three of them are still address a decade later.  By now Martha is 15 and listed as a flax screwer.
In 1881 they’re still at 13, Elm St. Martha isn’t mentioned, but there’s a son call John William, born in 1864 and making a living as a repairer and heeler of boots. There’s also Mary Rushworth. She’s five and listed as granddaughter. Martha’s child – she married Benjamin Rushworth on Christmas Day, 1873.
John William would marry Elizabeth Mona (or Marie) Nickson. In 1901 he was 37 and still a boot repairer, living on Ellerby Road, near East End Park. The couple had five children, Willie (16) a grocer’s assistant, Nellie (15), Maud (14) – both girls listed as tailoresses – John William, Jr (4) and Harold Ewart, then 9.

10 years later and they’d barely moved 200 yards. Still living in the Bank, on East Park Rd. John William, Sr. is still a painter. Willie is still a grocer’s assistant. John William, Jr. is a clothier ticket, and Harold Ewart is a miller – he worked in a flour mill.
But by 1914, Harold was living on Garton Road and was a tailor’s cutter. It was still just a stone’s throw from his parents. He’d obviously been courting, because on June 1, he marries Elizabeth Laycock, the daughter of a publican oat 103, South Accommodation Rd in Hunslet. It’s a Baptist ceremony.
It’s also a necessary one, because five months later, on November 2, my father, Raymond Ewart would be born. She was in the family way at the ceremony. My father grew up in Hunslet. Still close to the Bank area, but on the south side of the river, and a definite step up. The family must have moved there, a definite step up from where Harold had been.
So why am I telling you all this? Perhaps because a strange feeling began to creep over me as I researched. My fiction and my family were colliding.
In my new book Gods of Gold, the main character, Tom Harper, grows up in the Leylands, not even two minutes away from Gower Street, where Isaac and George Nickson lived for a while. His fiancée, Annabelle, grew up on the Bank, round the corner from John William Nickson and his brood; they might well have known each other. And she’d go on to run the Victoria, at the bottom of Roundhay Road in Sheepscar. When George Nickson lived on Meanwood Road, it would almost have been his local, albeit before Annabelle’s time.
They were all working-class people. Poor. I doubt a single one of them owned the roof over their heads. They probably all struggled from day to day.
Suddenly I began to wonder if those ancestors of mine, and their relations, hadn’t been tugging at my sleeve when I was writing the book. ‘No, have him born there.’ ‘She should come from there.’ ‘Have a scene set there, I’ll tell you what it looked like.’ Or perhaps it’s some atavistic memory.
There’s even link of sorts to Richard Nottingham. At the first census, old Isaac Nickson was living in Garland Fold, by Timble Bridge. That’s yards from where I sited Richard’s house.
I don’t know. But it’s strange, and even a little creepy. It tells me that my roots run deep here. Sometime I’ll dig deeper into those 19th century ancestors. I’m just not sure I’m ready for it yet…