by DM Bryan
Mr. Palmer nodded. “But observe closely,” he said, shifting his finger to the printed bed-curtain itself. “Here, if only we could see it, hangs a lady’s cap with lappets, together with a man’s wig. And below, what does the little cat do?”
I set myself to consider his question. The white feline sat still as an arrow, its nose pointed to its mistress’ skirts. Even in the uncertain lines of my print, I could see how a careful stillness possessed that lady. She, like the print itself, concealed a secret.
“You suggest the Harlot hides a highwayman beneath the bed?”
Mr. Palmer shrugged but added, “Justice Gonson is esteemed a fool wherever I have heard men discuss the Harlot.”
“I am grateful for the completeness of your knowledge—you see a great deal that was hidden to us.”
“Mr. Hogarth’s trade touches closely on mine, and his innovations in our business make for much conversation wherever printers gather.”
I stared at my page of blotches. “I am robbed of pleasure by my purchase of such a dismal copy.”
“Yes, we despise such inferior products as the work of pyrates.”
“Pyrates?” said I. Sister, it seemed an odd word to use.
“Aye. They climb aboard of an honest printmaker and plunder him of all his worth.”
“An honest laundress as well.”
Mr. Palmer smiled. “Mr. Hogarth asks a guinea; you paid a sixpence. My dear, you have shown you are no fool, and you will not despise me for speaking truth. A man—and a woman too—gets what is paid for.” No sooner where the words out of his mouth than he regretted them, adding, “But perhaps the improving verse makes up for the vile condition of the printing?” Mr. Palmer turned the page of my Harlot and ran his eyes across several lines, and Sadie, I saw him blush.
I moved at once to take the book from him, judging it too ripe for such a good man. At first, I did not think he would give it up, and we engaged in a polite bout of tugging. Sister, I am certain Mr. Palmer wished only to maintain possession for the sake of my moral education, preventing me from possessing a book so contrary to the requirements of modesty. But in case he forgot himself so far as to wish to read further, I maintained my grip upon the Harlot’s spine, and in time reclaimed it as my own.
The silence that fell between us then, I filled with rustlings and bustlings, tucking the pamphlet safely beneath my cloak and adjusting the strings of my bonnet. How grateful I am for the business of ladies’ dress, which fills many moments that might otherwise prove difficult to navigate. When I judged sufficient time elapsed, I lifted my face again to Mr. Palmer, putting out my fingers and thanking him most profusely on behalf of my mistress and myself. And indeed, we are indebted to that good man, who has been so helpful to us both in all our inquiries.
Dearest Sadie, my re-entry into the close should have been the end of my adventure. I already knew enough of Mr. Hogarth’s intentions, and the world’s reactions, to return to my mistress and the pleasure of continued conversation over sudsy tubs. But, sister, I made an error, and in doing so, I discovered how easy it is to become lost in London, cast adrift with no kind friends. When I came down the stairs from Mr. Palmer’s shop, I came into Bartholomew Close as turned about as my poor printed Harlot. Where I should have gone right, I, like the Justice, went left, my eyes fixed upon my own private thoughts. Down a street I cannot name I wandered, knowing not that I had already lost myself, and soon I emerged into the stinking mud of the cattle-ground they call Smithfield. Now I understood my plight, and unable to find the sun overhead, I stupidly mistook my direction again, and thinking my path lay past the sheep pens, I went out of the market that way. I soon reached St. John’s Street, where I knew I had gone wrong once more. Oh but Sadie, good fortune did not walk beside me, for I turned myself about, retracing my steps until I came to a meeting of ways, where again I mistook my direction. Now I headed, not east into the city, but west towards Westminster, although I was so lost that I travelled some distance and passed many strange buildings before realizing my sad condition.
I attempted to ask my way, stopping a great bustling woman carrying a prayer book, but she had no time for me and walked directly past as though I were not there. Next, I attempted to inquire of a respectable-looking gentleman, but he imagined I solicited him for lewd purposes, and by the time I stuttered out my disgust at his mistake, I could see only his narrow shoulders and the bow at the end of his queue. At last a toothless person, her hat tied to her wig with several torn twists of Flanders lace, allowed that I was indeed turned about, if Smithfield was the direction I wanted. “Here,” she said, “Sharp’s Alley will take you down to Chick Lane, which will bring you direct to the sheep pens, if that will help you find your way.”
No, I thought, but “Yes,” I said, not wishing to reject the assistance I so badly needed, and so I set foot in Sharp’s Alley, which of all the wrong steps I had taken thus far was by far my worst.
Now that I have been there, Sadie, I know that Sharp’s Alley is a place beyond our ken, belonging to a harder London even than the one that suckled us. It is a labyrinth of trickling brick, far from the cackling commerce of Cheapside. Should you choose to enter there, you must do as I did and summon sufficient courage to start down that narrow passage, leaving behind light and busy-ness. Bends dexterous and sinister take you past nameless courts, places of shadow even in broad daylight. Meretricious houses in black and white, wearing their wooden stays on their outsides, lean into your path, disguising every crooked twist of the alley. Should you, like me, continue straight where you should have turned south, you will find yourself confronted by a single house, which rises to block your way. The house, as if at bay, faces you with a plastered mask, pieced with diamond-paned windows and toothed with blackened oak. The last century saw the naissance of that dwelling, and this century will surely preside over its demise. It will be dismembered, brick by brick, or perhaps rebuilt, but that terrible pile will never be redeemed.
No one lives here by choice, and if you stand silently in the road before the smokeless chimneys of that house you will hear one reason why. Sister, I heard it: a choked gurgle, like a drowning man might make. Beneath the stones of that street, a river, buried alive, passes with all the malevolence that forgotten waters can exert. The houses that line this blind court grow up like pulpy mushrooms, tracing what once was river stone and silver flow. In past centuries, the alley’s old houses backed onto a bank orange and green with boughs of willow. In those days the water flowed past Clerkenwell, where people drank it, finding it pure and dark, liquid salvation. But as the city grew harder, the buildings gathered closer, pushing the river’s head down below its own surface. Now the water creeps beneath the packed dirt, dragging with it a noxious air. Thickened odours hang above the street in a fetid mist. Damp heaves the stones and puddles the ground even in dry times, and in the winter the wet swells fingers and toes with chilblains.
The waters themselves do not linger in that place but rush away toward the covered galleries of Fleet Market, where purpose-built kennels convey the roily streams into the ditch itself. Now the Fleet, a thick rope of twisted liquid, slides past the hulk of the Prison and so down to Blackfriars, where the muddy gulp of the Thames swallows it whole. And good riddance, sister, for in its present state the river is unwholesome.
The house is worse, but I did not know its evils then, as I stood lost before its front door. Nor should I have crossed over its threshold if it had not been for the man who addressed me while I wondered what I should do next.
“Please,” he said, lifting the flap of a bundle of cloth in his arms, “can you help me, for the child is ill.”
I did not wish to look at that bundle. I had seen no children playing in Sharp’s Alley, and I was content that there should be none. But the man seemed clean and respectable, dressed in a good coat of brown drugget, and my own sad need of assistance recommended him to me as another equally beset. Unwi
llingly, I let him come nearer, and he lifted the swaddling beneath my nose, so that I could not help but look at its contents. I feared to see the little one very sick, or even worse, but in fact, Sadie, the cloth held nothing but more cloth. I put out my hand to make sure and found the swaddling empty.
“I see no child,” I said, breathing my relief.
But how anxiously the man watched my eyes. How truly he desired my assistance. I could see his need written clearly in the lines of his face.
“Please,” said he, again, “can you help me, for the child is ill.”
Unwillingly, I put out my hand and felt the bundle again and knew for certain the gentleman’s need stemmed from some terrible misapprehension of his mind—and yet his distress was real. Sadie, I did not know what to do. I feared to contradict him a second time, uncertain as to what effect my insistence might have on his disordered thinking.
“I think the child is not as ill as you imagine,” I said carefully, letting go my hold on the cloth.
“Please,” said the distressed gentleman, “can you help me, for the child is ill.”
So I could not help him—his unvarying request pointed to difficulties far beyond my means to address. Yet to turn my back on him seemed equally wrong, and so I determined to assist him at least a little.
I asked him if he lived nearby, and he pointed to the house before us. I looked more closely at its two peaked gables and gaping entry. A grey and creeping mould patchworked the stone front of one side of the house, while sickly mortar limed the brick facing of the other. However, I saw a dim light illuminating the larger of the two windows across the front, and I tried to take heart at the sight of watery figures through the rippled panes. “Come,” I said, in what I hoped was a commanding voice, “we must take the child inside.”
To my surprise, the man came easily, uttering no sound of protest and gently rocking the empty swaddling as he walked. The great oak door, which I was certain would not open at my touch, swung inwards easily, and together the distressed gentleman and I set foot in the tiled entrance. Ahead of us stretched a passage with massive, carved stairs leading upwards. Where I expected stairs down to the cellar, a trapdoor sat closed and locked with a heavy metal rod. Immediately to my right, a panelled chamber opened into a darker room, lost in obscurity. From this direction, rough voices knocked together, punctuated by the clicking of pewter tankards. At the noise, the gentleman clutched his cloth nothingness closer, and I judged he wished not to proceed in that direction. His wishes matched my own very neatly, for I did not like the stink of ale and the dampness that underlay it. Instead, I led him toward a door at the back.
I knocked and upon hearing a woman’s voice, opened the door. I found myself on the threshold of a small, low-ceilinged parlour. A good fire burned in the hearth, and a ruddy light reflected off well-polished wood. I observed a collection of teapots and cups that lined the large sideboard filling one wall. Opposite stood a bed, its curtains neatly closed, and an equally neat woman sat beside a table before the fire, darning thick blue stockings. She evidenced no surprise at our entrance but only set her work upon the table. Rising, she put out a hand to the gentleman who stood behind me. “Please,” he said to her, “can you help me, for the child is ill.” Then he crossed to her, and she seated him before the fire.
The woman turned to me, speaking as if we were already acquainted. “You must not think less of me if I sometimes let him wander,” said she. “I cannot always attend to him when matters press, and as he does not pass beyond those parts where he is well known, he always comes safe home. Where did you find him, if I might know?”
I told her he had only been in the yard in front of the house.
“Ah,” she said, “then he was hardly lost at all. In that case, I cannot give you much, you understand, or I shall think myself taken advantage of.” Then, she offered me a coin.
I gestured my refusal, and she looked at me crossly. “I will not give you more,” she said, the skin of her forehead knotting.
“I think you misunderstand me,” said I. “I only wished to assist the gentleman in his distress. I do not require payment for what was intended as an act of kindness.”
She looked at me for a moment and then put her coin back into her pocket. Then both of us looked in the gentleman’s direction. He sat quietly at the table, his bundle still clutched in his arms. “Please,” he said, observing our eyes upon him. He looked first at me and then at her. “Can you help me? The child is ill.”
She sighed heavily and crossed her arms upon her chest. “God help me,” she said, “I only wish that kindness might help him, but as you see, his condition puts him quite beyond charity.”
“Might one not show him the needlessness of his inquiry? It is most pitiable to watch his distress.”
“My brother’s distress is a fixed impression with him. You might show him its falsity, and he would kindly accept your correction. Then he would begin to collect cloths again, refashioning his waking horror from the very blankets on his bed.”
“I am sorry,” I said, but for what I hardly knew.
She shook her head. “No,” she said, “you mean well enough.”
Sadie, I ought to have departed then and there, for I knew I had accomplished everything I could. But still the gentleman’s plight expanded like freezing water in my heart, and I had another question I would ask.
I put one hand in the other and wrung them together. “Was there ever such a child?” said I, almost whispering.
I feared my companion might grow angry again, but she only laid her hands on her brother’s back. “Such a child?” she said. “There are many,” and pressing his shoulder so that he would remain seated, she crossed to a small door I had not noticed before. This she opened and beckoned for me to follow, saying, “You would do a good turn, so let me repay you in kind, and show you something useful for a young maid to see.”
A short passage and a second door led to another room, again low of ceiling and dark-panelled in the old-fashioned way. Heavy curtains shut out all daylight, so that at first all I could see was the good fire burning in the grate. Then, by its flickering light, I made out three ragged women seated at its hearth, each great with child. One sewed a tiny garment from the remains of a torn shift; one stirred a three-legged pot filled with smoking ramps; and the last held a broken-backed book to the flames in order to read by that dim light. At our entrance the women looked up.
“The beds are all full, missus,” said the one sewing.
“I’ll not share with nobody,” said the one cooking. The one reading turned frightened eyes toward me.
I turned to my companion. “You are a midwife?”
“Nature is midwife here,” she said, “and her apron is red.”
“Lord, missus,” said the sewing girl, “how you put our minds at ease.”
The cooking girl gave her pot a savage stir and addressed herself to me. “This lady has a terrible way of talking that might put you off—assuming there’s any choice in the matter. As for me, I’d rather lie-in with the ladies, rejoicing in clean linen and a paid wink to the Parish. But this is a place where a girl might deliver for nothing, so long as nothing is said.”
“That’s a hint,” said the sewer, giving me an exaggerated wink.
The one reading tucked her book under her arm and scuttled away from the fire. When I followed her with my eyes, the rest of that room slowly revealed itself. A baby wailed weakly, more like a cat than a child. Truckle beds heaped with grey bedding showed like mounds in a graveyard. Under the smell of cooking greens, I detected sweat and the metallic tang of blood. Fouler body stinks rolled off a pot in a half-lit corner. A wet cough sounded from one bed, a dry cough from another. And then I heard my companion hailed by a voice so soft I almost missed it. “Missus,” the voice cried.
At the sound, my new acquaintance turned from me and began to move amongst the beds, wh
ere there was not room for two to walk abreast. On either side, she stooped, smoothing blankets, but her fingers seemed only to test and not soothe. When she reached the furthest bed, a hand, all bone, plucked at her skirts. She bent down over what at first I took to be a length of rope. Then the mistress of that place put out her arms and raised up the inhabitant of that bed. When the girl was fully on her feet, I could finally make her out—painfully thin and younger than myself, with a torn fragment of blanket over her shoulders and an infant in her arms.
Slowly, she and the lady came toward the fire, approaching, painful step by painful step, even as the two remaining girls drew back. They left their emaciated companion more than enough room before the hearth. There she hunched, the baby hardly stirring, both sucking at warmth and air as though they could never have enough.
“You see what we are,” said the sewing girl to me. Her tiny garment lay abandoned in her lap.
The cooking girl gruffly proffered the contents of her saucepan to her deathly sister. “Will you eat some?” she said, but the other only shook her head.
The mistress of that place said to me, “Haven’t you seen enough?”
Sister, I could not speak. I left that room, moving like one of the automatons wound up and set running on St. Bartholomew’s day. When I re-entered the little parlour, my eye fell upon the gentleman, still with his burden in his arms. As one in a dream—nay, a nightmare—I began to empty my purse upon the table. My companion stopped me at once, pushing back my few coins with such vigour they threatened to fly to the floor.
“Buy her meat,” I said. “Fetch her a doctor.”
“She has seen a doctor, and meat cannot help,” she said. “Did you not notice the public house as you came in? Selling drink is a very good trade, and I need no assistance from anyone. My trade provides those girls with food enough if they want it, and warmth. And if they will wash and dry the linen, they will have a clean bed in which to deliver their child. They do not die here any more often than they die in better places—although why that should be, I cannot tell. The world does damage I cannot mend.” And here she looked at her brother.