‘It’s cheap,’ said Dr Cole as we made our way towards the place. ‘And very obliging. Of course, Antrobus always uses his sheath, don’t you, Antrobus?’
‘Unless you attend the ward rounds with your eyes closed, Cole, you’ll have seen the beauties of syphilis yourself. I do not intend to catch it.’ He patted his pocket. ‘Yes, I have a sheath, gentlemen. Made by a seamstress who specialises in such things down on Cuttlefish Lane. Finest kid skin.’
‘I have one too,’ said Will, rather wildly, I thought, for I was almost certain he had no such thing.
Dr Cole slung his arm around my shoulders. ‘I’m generally too drunk to care.’ He patted the front of his britches in imitation of Dr Antrobus. ‘Lucky so far!’
Mrs Spendwell’s was at the dark end of the passage. Beyond it, the dire thoroughfare of Cat’s Hole narrowed still further until it became a dripping crack between the buildings known as Bishop’s Entry. After that it ran straight down, through Deadman’s Basin, to the river. The place was not unlike Mrs Roseplucker’s house on Wicke Street – a place I would have been glad never to enter again – though it was smaller in size, and far more decrepit. Mrs Roseplucker’s Home for Young Ladies of an Energetic Disposition had been frequented by the medical men of St Saviour’s. Mrs Spendwell’s had no such appellation, but only the vile double entendre of her name to commend it. And while Mrs Roseplucker’s establishment on Wicke Street had been festooned with crimson drapery and painted in various shades of red and purple – ‘the colours of Cupid’s boudoir’ Mrs Roseplucker had always said – the place we now entered made no such effort to appeal. The door flew open with one kick of Dr Cole’s boot – there was no doorman here to let the ‘gentlemen’ in and out. The place smelled strongly of sweat and privies and – rather unexpectedly – of linseed. The hall was a dingy passage illuminated by a single shaded lamp set on a spindly-legged table. Before us, a flight of stairs ascended into the darkness. I glanced at Will. He looked sober enough now, his expression appalled at what activities he might now be expected to perform.
Dr Cole flung open the door to what would once have been a parlour, but which now served as a waiting room. There were no men there, only women, three of them, two playing dominoes, the third arguing with someone, as yet invisible to us, who was stationed behind a screen in the corner. The walls were painted a brown distemper, though it was clear that someone had attempted to improve the decor by daubing the walls with crimson paint. It was this which tainted the air, though the linseed and ground cinnabar that made up the mixture did much to improve the stink of the place. A bowl and brush red-stained were set down in a corner, the stuff on the walls evidently still wet, for the woman who was not playing dominoes was complaining bitterly about getting the paint on her dress.
‘I sent him out to get some gin,’ she was saying. ‘Gin gets rid o’ paint stains, everyone knows that. And I hope he don’t bother to come back unless he’s got some!’
‘Gin?’ said a voice from behind the screen. ‘You don’t want to waste a good drop on a dress!’
‘Oh no,’ groaned Will, sinking onto a bandy-legged chair that stood beside the curtained window. A patch of grease on the wall behind told where a hundred oily heads had rested. ‘It can’t be—’
We heard the front door bang, and the parlour door swung open. A great hulk of a man stood on the threshold, his tombstone face wide and expressionless.
‘There you are,’ cried the girl, flouncing over to him with the hem of her dress clutched in her hands. Her bony ankles were black from sitting too close to the fire, her voice as shrill as a whistle. ‘Look what you did with your paint, you fucking idiot!’
‘Now then, my lady!’ the voice screamed out from behind the screen. I saw a taloned, ink-stained hand seize the edge of it as the woman behind heaved herself to her feet and waddled into view. ‘Don’t you dare speak to poor Mr Jobber like that. Ain’t you got no manners? This place might well be a spit away from the docks but you’ll speak like a lady as best you can for there’s standards in my house no matter where I have the misfortune to be— Sirs!’ Her voice changed from hectoring harridan to wheedling madam the instant she set eyes upon us. ‘Welcome, sirs! Girls, girls!’ She clapped her hands to chivvy the domino players into action as if rounding up poultry. ‘Here’s some young gentlemen come to pay you a visit.’ She glanced behind us at Mr Jobber, who seemed now to be weeping. ‘There, there,’ she said. ‘Look, Poll, you’ve made Mr Jobber cry with your shouting and swearing. Such a sensitive soul!’ She coaxed the man into the parlour and fussed him into a seat beside the fire. Mr Jobber took a bottle from his pocket and handed it to the girl in silence. Mrs Roseplucker snatched it away and stuffed it into her pocket. ‘You gets that when you’ve earned it,’ she said. ‘An’ not before. There’s nothing wrong with your skirts. The gentlemen ain’t here to look at your skirts, my lady. Not unless you’re liftin’ them over your head.’
‘I just wanted the place nice for you, Mrs R,’ said Mr Jobber. ‘Like at Wicke Street.’
‘It’s lovely, Mr Jobber,’ crooned the old woman. ‘Lovely and bright.’
‘It looks like an abattoir,’ I said.
She peered at me closely through a pair of thickly glazed lorgnettes that hung from a chain at her sagging bosom, and which she had unfolded with her teeth like a pirate opening a cut-throat razor. ‘Well, well,’ she said. ‘If it ain’t Mr Flockhart. Got yourself some new friends, sir? These young men is quite the reg’lars here. But you two—’
‘Never mind that, woman,’ cried Dr Cole. ‘Who’ve you got?’
‘Amy,’ snapped Mrs Roseplucker. ‘Nance. Get over here.’
The two girls lifted their eyes from the dominoes and pinned smiles to their faces. Coins were exchanged, watches consulted. ‘Looks like you two will have to share that bad tempered one,’ said Dr Antrobus, pointing to an angry-faced Poll. The door banged closed, and we heard their boots stumbling up the stairs, accompanied by the forced giggles of the domino players.
Mr Jobber took out a bag of nuts and started cracking them between his teeth.
‘What happened?’ said Will, without rising from his chair. He put a hand to his forehead. ‘We only saw you a few months ago. Mind you,’ he added, ‘the old place on Wicke Street was looking rather sorry for itself.’ He eyed the penny bloods, the ink pot and paper on the desk top. Mrs Roseplucker had always been a keen reader of penny dreadfuls, and when the Home for Young Ladies of an Energetic Disposition on Wicke Street had fallen on hard times after the closure of St Saviour’s Infirmary, she had taken to writing her own lurid stories. I had seen her pen name, ‘Prosser McLucker’ in the Tales of Violence and Blight that Gabriel habitually read – though in a bid to impress Pestle Jenny he had, I noticed, hidden his stash of penny papers on the top shelf beside the poisons.
‘You’re still writing?’ I said.
‘Oh yes,’ she answered. ‘But that don’t make enough to keep us in kindling. There ain’t no money in writing – unless you’re that Mr Dickens o’ course. He stole one o’ my stories, you know. Oh yes! Must o’ read it in Tales of Violence. It were called “Lord of Villainy” when I wrote it. He makes it fifty times longer, takes out all the interesting bits and calls it “David Copperfield”! She shook her head. ‘He ain’t no gentleman!’
‘And so you came here?’
‘Business at Wicke Street must be bad,’ muttered Will, looking around at the daubed walls and threadbare floor covering, the ragged curtains and mysterious brown stains that ringed the ceiling. He rooted in his bag and pulled out his flask of nettle and plantain infusion, drinking it down thirstily.
‘Oh, it was bad, sir. We could hardly pay the rent. And when the plaster fell off the wall in one o’ the rooms and a stair tread gave way with the damp, well, we couldn’t get it fixed, could we? Not properly. And so we had to come here. Can’t get the girls though. And the gentlemen ain’t really gentlemen – ’cept you two, o’ course, and those two upstairs. I’ve taken the place over proper. M
rs Spendwell had it before. She came to a sticky end.’
‘Sticky?’ said Will.
‘On the end of a rope, young man, that sticky enough for you? Then Mrs Bellringer had it, but not for long. Then Mr Jobber heard it were goin’ cheap and so here we are. Sailors, mostly. Nice enough. Come from all over. I taught my girls how to say “yes please!” and “ain’t that big!” in four different languages. The sailors told me how. Now that ain’t something they’ll get anywhere else, I’ll be bound! Worth payin’ extra for, that is!’
‘We saw Annie the other day,’ said Will.
‘Where?’
‘At the League for Female Redemption.’
‘Siren House? That where she went, is it?’ Mrs Roseplucker smiled, her face splitting like a rotten apple. ‘She owes me money, that one. Can’t think what she’s doing in that place. Redeemed? Our Annie? She’s too lazy to stick at bein’ a domestic. Too lazy by half. She’ll be back. Once she’s had a holiday and a bath and got sick o’ blacking grates and ironing she’ll be knocking on my door, you’ll see. Let’s hope she’ll bring a couple of her new friends too!’
‘Do many of the girls come back?’ I said.
‘How should I know? But I’ll tell you what I do know, and that’s that some of ’em takes to whoring, and some of ’em don’t. It ain’t so bad if you’re in a decent house. Like this one. I looks after my girls, no matter what you might think. An’ Mr Jobber here sees they get treated right.’ She scratched at the sores beneath her wig, shifting the fuzzy auburn curls from side to side, a look of ecstasy on her face. She sighed. ‘It’s when you’re in no house at all that it really starts to pinch. And that’s the end of the road for most.’
‘Did you know a girl called Mary Mercer?’
‘No.’
‘Or Susan Williams?’
‘Ain’t nothing for nothing at Mrs Roseplucker’s.’
‘Dear lady,’ sighed Will. ‘It was ever thus.’ He tossed her half a crown.
‘No,’ she said, swiftly stowing the coin. ‘I didn’t know her. But if you give me another I’ll tell you something that might be worth hearin’.’
‘Payment after you’ve delivered the goods, madam,’ I said.
‘Nah.’ Mrs Roseplucker eased her great bulk back behind her desk. ‘That’s not how I do my business.’
Will tossed her another coin. ‘Well? What can you tell us?’
‘I can tell you that you might get more out of young Poll over there. She worked at Mrs Spendwell’s, and Mrs Bellringer’s after that.’
The girl Poll was leaning against Mr Jobber, watching greasy wraiths of black smoke trickle from between the coals in the grate, and chewing on a fingernail. With her face in repose she didn’t look much older than sixteen.
‘Poll!’ snapped Mrs Roseplucker. ‘Here’s two gentlemen for you.’
‘Together?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘That’s—’ Mrs Roseplucker’s lips moved as she tried some mental arithmetic. She gave up. ‘How much is it, Mr Jobber? How much for two gentlemen together, with special pleasures?’
‘Special pleasures?’ said Will in alarm. He had sobered up somewhat, I was glad to see. Perhaps he had been pretending after all. ‘I don’t think we need any of those—’
‘Information, costs the same as special pleasures,’ said Mrs Roseplucker.
‘Six shillings and nine pence ha’penny,’ said Mr Jobber. I did not ask how this sum had been arrived at. The coins rattled in Mrs Roseplucker’s palm. I wiped my hand on my jacket. Her fingers were sticky, her hands so covered in dirt she could have sowed them with cress.
The bedroom was a dim and miserable chamber, lit by two candle ends stuffed into stubby pewter candlesticks. No fire burned in the grate, and the room had a damp unwholesome air, heavy with the smell of sweat and hot tallow. Beneath the bed I saw a brimming chamber pot. Will spotted it too, and he sighed and went to the window. But what might be seen outside was no cheerier than what we could see inside, and if he had thought to open it he quickly changed his mind and drew the curtains instead.
Poll pulled off her dress to expose grey ragged underthings, and flopped onto the bed. ‘What do you want?’
‘First,’ I said. ‘Let me see that rash on your neck.’ She scratched at her skin self-consciously, but she let me see it. ‘Is it anywhere else?’ I asked. She showed me her arms. I rooted in my satchel and handed her a pot of salve. ‘Calendula and chickweed,’ I said. ‘Soothes the skin and calms the itch.’ She sniffed the contents warily, but I had fragranced it with lavender, and despite its ugly appearance – chickweed and calendula salve is always rather murky in appearance – it smelled nice. Her face brightened.
‘Anything else?’ I asked. ‘What about your monthlies?’
Her face turned pale. ‘Late,’ she whispered.
I plunged back into my bag. I had a packet of pennyroyal and raspberry leaf in there somewhere.
‘Here,’ I said, handing it over. ‘Drink it like tea. Four times a day and hope for the best.’
She nodded. ‘Got any gin?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Pity. I could’ve done with a nip.’
I could tell by her pinched cheeks and the bluish tinge to the tip of her nose that she was a regular at the gin bottle. She coughed, two red spots of colour appearing on her cheeks. A consumptive too. There was nothing anyone could do about that.
‘Poll, did you know Mary Mercer?’ I said.
‘No.’
‘What about Susan Williams?’
‘Why do you ask? Has something happened? Something bad?’
‘She was at Siren House. She used to work . . . like you do.’
‘There’s a lot o’ girls who used to work like I do.’
‘I know.’ I sighed. She was right. It was an impossible task. I was assuming the mummified girl with the birthmark had worked on the waterfront, but there were more girls on the game there than anywhere else in the city. And yet there was a link between Siren House, the Blood, the girls – and Aberlady.
‘Did you know Mr Aberlady?’ I said. ‘From the Blood?’
‘Look,’ said Poll. ‘Everyone knowed Mr Aberlady. He worked at the Blood and the Dispensary. He was nice – not like those two what came in with you now. And I knows Dr Proudlove, and Miss Proudlove. But I don’t know either of those girls you mentioned.’
‘Did you know any girls who had once been at Siren House?’ I wanted to ask her whether she had ever seen Eliza – and yet I had to stay focused, had to find out who the dead girl was. Eliza had chosen to leave; she had chosen to stay away from me. Should she need me, she would come. ‘Well?’ I said. ‘Was there anyone?’
Poll frowned. ‘There was one girl,’ she said. ‘Before Mrs Roseplucker came. I was here back when it was Mrs Spendwell’s. It was much worse then. There was a girl here who went to Siren House when Mrs Spendwell got her neck stretched for murderin’ babies. She didn’t like the place one bit so she came straight back. It was Mrs Bellringer’s by then. But then that curate found her.’
‘A curate?’ I said. ‘You mean Dr Birdwhistle?’
‘That his name?’ she said. ‘Didn’t like him much.’
‘Red face,’ said Will. ‘Glasses.’
‘Has the pox,’ I added.
‘That’s him! She went with him.’
‘Went where?’
‘I don’t know. Back to Siren for all I know. Up to her what she does, ain’t it?’
‘What was her name?’
‘Jane Stalker.’
‘What did she look like?’
‘Nothing much. Not pretty, not ugly. She had a birthmark—’
‘Here,’ I said. I touched the top of my arm. ‘In the shape of a heart. About the size of a florin.’
‘Yes. Used to say she wore her heart on her sleeve – whatever that means. How did you know?’
‘She’s dead.’
‘Did she drown herself? That’s what they mostly do. I’ll do it myself, on
e o’ these days.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I think it was far worse than that.’
Confession of Jane Stalker on arriving at Siren House
My name is Jane Stalker. I was born in Liverpool. I can’t remember much about Liverpool, except that it was noisier and dirtier even than this place. The river there flowed fast, much faster than here, where it lies still and stinking as a great wide ditch. My father was a clerk at one of the shipping offices. I got no idea which one, for he died when I was only a child, drowned going aboard a merchant ship. She was trying to catch the tide and wouldn’t wait for anyone. My father had been told that he must speak business with the captain, and so he was made to climb aboard her as she moved out. But he slipped and was swept away, lost in the blink of an eye to the river and the racing tide before anyone could save him. So my mother said, though there were others who whispered that he had climbed aboard and sailed away from us by his own choosing, for they never found a body. She used to take me into the city to show me the grand offices where my father once worked. Giant buildings they were, all black with soot with men going in and out, their coats and hats black as soot too, the doors opened by other men wearing white stockings and navy britches and fancy waistcoats.
We had lived in a nice little house, my mother and father and me, and my brother, but after my father drowned we couldn’t stay. We moved closer to the docks as that was all we could afford. My mother had to take in washing, though she hated it, and the rooms we had was always damp because of it, and that settled on her lungs. That and the damp and rainy weather, for it always seemed to be raining in Liverpool.
We weren’t the poorest, not then, but our decline had started, sir, for once you begin to slip from grace there is no way back, and though I didn’t know it the best of my life was already behind me and I was not yet six years old. My brother went to sea. He was about fourteen years old, a strong lad, and angry at my father’s passing. We saw him only once or twice after he left. I don’t know what happened to him on board that ship but he was greatly changed when he returned to us, hard and cruel and nothing like the boy we had known. He only stayed a week before he was off again. A year or so later we heard he had drowned. His ship was carrying slaves, so they said, though slaving was outlawed. My mother said it was the same people my father had worked for. Merchants. Sugar, tobacco, slaves, it was all the same to them and as long as they made money by it they didn’t care what it was or who suffered.
The Blood: What secrets lie aboard? (Jem Flockhart Book 3) Page 20