Devastated by their loss, Anna stumbles through her daily tasks, oblivious to the fact that the plague is spreading throughout the town. Meanwhile, while serving a dinner at Bradford Hall, Anna hears a visitor from London callously describing a deadly outbreak of the plague in London.Īfter a few weeks of calm, the children of Anna’s neighbors, the Hadfields, catch the plague and die, quickly followed by Jamie and Tom. But the villagers refuse to part with the clothes they have commissioned from George, ensuring that the plague quickly spreads throughout the town. Suspecting he has contracted the plague from bolts of cloth shipped from London, George exhorts Anna to burn the cloth and all his possession. Eventually, he proposes marriage to Anna, and she considers accepting, but before she can make a decision, he falls ill with a mysterious and powerful fever that kills him in just a few days. George turns out to be kind and interesting, entertaining Anna with tales of faraway London and playing with her sons, Jamie and Tom. With finances tight after the recent death of her husband in a mining accident, Anna takes in the apprentice tailor, George Viccars, as a boarder. The narrative goes back in time a year and a half, to the spring of 1665.
Mompellion suggests ironically that Elizabeth pray for divine assistance but says that she will find God a “poor listener.” Then he deliberately drops a Bible on the floor, shocking Anna with his blasphemous behavior. Elizabeth Bradford arrives at the rectory and haughtily demands that Anna and Mompellion come to the aid of her mother, who is suffering from a “tumor.” They are incensed by her behavior, given that her family fled the plague with no regard for the fate of the town, and they refuse to help. While she doesn’t mention the plague by name, she hints at the nature of the disaster that has decimated the population, threatened her own sanity, and catalyzed a breakdown in Mompellion, towards whom she is fiercely loyal and protective. She reflects that while autumn used to bring successful harvests and security for the winter, now it only reminds her how much the village has lost the rhythm of its ordinary life. Anna is the housekeeper to the vicar Michael Mompellion. The protagonist, Anna Frith, watches the half-hearted harvesting process as farmers bring bruised apples to the rectory.
Year of Wonders opens in the autumn of 1666.
0 kommentar(er)
