by DM Bryan
“Are you properly shrive then?” one of them demanded of me, when I was done. I blinked my eyes until I could see him. His calf and foot hung bent and shrivelled behind. A wooden post was bound to the thigh of that leg, and he had two crutches tucked under each arm. So equipped, he moved with great facility. He swung a crutch now and knocked me painfully on the chest. “Have you learned your lesson then, boy?”
I nodded. Whatever the lesson, I felt I could honestly be said to have learned it.
The little dog, who still kept faith with the company, came now and licked my face, his paws upon my bruised chest. The dog’s master checked my pocket and came away with my own purse, empty even of the farthing I’d thrown to my sister-in-crime. I shuddered in one of the cruel breezes that sprang up in the openness of the cattle-ground. The dog’s master regarded me with disgust and threw me back my empty purse.
“Not a penny richer,” said he, “for all your thieving. Remember, boy, the wages of sin will never make you better than the rest.”
“It will make him worse,” added another, “for at least our coats is clean.” They laughed, each in a different register.
The man on crutches said, “He’s just lucky we chose not to call upon the constables,” which was as true an utterance as might ever be made. I nodded, and the fellow grinned at me before cracking me hard on the side of the head with a crutch. My ear so burst with noise—or perhaps it was pain—I almost lay me down in the mire again.
“He has confessed. Be easy with him, brother,” said the porter, calling his dog to his side.
The remaining ruffian leant forward and offered me his hand to pull me from the pool where I half lay, half sat. I feigned not to see his thin fingers and began to struggle on my own to rise to my feet, but my head hurt beyond measure, and I had to pause to vomit again. When I was done, I wiped my mouth with the sleeve of my reeking coat, and finding the ruffian’s hand still extended, I seized it, not entirely remembering to whom it belonged. I found myself pulled to my feet, and held in place until I could stand on my own again. When he let me go, I staggered but managed to steady myself, using the man’s ugly features to show me which way was up. He’d taken a step backwards, and already his figure had begun to fold back into the night. I saw his eyes, liquid in the starlight, and, below them, the ghost of his smile, and then he turned away and left me alone, his coat flapping in the Smithfield breeze.
They were all done with me, the men. Already, I could see the porter’s back diminishing in the direction of the hospital, his animal at his heels. The man on crutches was little more than a wooden tattoo in the dark, beating the way back toward St. Bart’s. I began to walk myself, a drunken sort of stumble that sent me reeling from gaping doorway to knuckle-scraping wall, and I continued in this state for some minutes. As I lurched through the streets leading off the square, I noticed heads turned toward me, but nobody thought a gin-dizzy child worth robbing. Shadows barred my way, only to fall back again, allowing me to continue, though in an uncertain direction.
How I found my way back to my bolt-hole in my confused state, I hardly know. I know only that when I found myself in the doorway of Mother’s crooked house, I sat on the stone step and wept. Then I roused myself and knocked. No one came. I knocked again. I sat back down on the step and wept some more, until, at last, I remembered to try the latch of the door and felt it give way under the pressure of my hand.
Upstairs, in the safety of my room, I stripped down to my shirt, leaving behind my mud and dung-covered breeches, waistcoat, and coat lying on the floor. Then I slipped me beneath the blanket of my bed, for I had no linens. I regretted the filigreed pattern of dirt my filth-stiffened curls left wherever I lay my head, but I had not the strength of will or of body to so much as wash my face. I awoke from time to time, from cold or pain in my belly, but I could no more light my fire than I could eat the bit of bread and cheese stored on the mantle. Indeed, I had the severest trouble telling the time of day
My room had no window, the strange result of its having been formed, as I think I have said, from the division of a larger chamber. Each resulting cell retained some feature suggestive of its grander past, which is how it came to pass that my bolt-hole featured a mantelpiece that was both unusually large and unnecessarily elegant. This magnificent item had old-fashioned curves that now, in my illness, made me think I was at sea. Sick fancy set me in a ship that rose and fell at the whim of the pain in my head. In the faint daylight that filtered in through gaps in the dividing wall, I watched as the prow of this boat broke waves into droplets, sending up sprays of bell-shaped blossoms. At night I shook and shivered in the sea air, feeling the roaring of a great tide press hard against the bones of my head. The heaving of the wooden boards of my floor made me sick, and I first filled my chamber pot, before vomiting bile into the ashes of my extinguished fire.
The first morning of my illness, Mother came to see why I had not descended to break my fast with my criminal kindred. I awoke to find her bent low and sniffing at the heap of mud-stained clothing that were my only garments. She kicked them aside with the toe of her slipper, causing a cloud of dust to bloom from their folds. “Quire, child,” she said, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand, “I don’t suffer my young gentlemen to drink. You know that well enough.”
I groaned from my bed by way of an answer, desiring to explain, but when I looked a second time, Mother had taken on a foggy appearance, her bulging outline bleeding wetly. “The sea air,” I told her as best I could, “eats all things. You are not safe.”
She loomed over me now, her face shimmering from beneath the waves. Her lips parted and silver bubbles hung between us. “—in London, fool,” she said, as she surfaced. She gulped, drawing breath into her lungs. Lacy foam covered her breast and crested over her head.
I warned her, “The deep shall enfold you,” but Mother only slipped back beneath the swell, the inky stain of her skirts spreading as she sank. I stood alone beside the Thames, watching the rising ribbon of water—a shining strip stitched with a hundred masts. Ships at anchor, tarnished and soft with rain. I looked for a ship to bear me away, but no little craft plied the span of water between deck and dock. And so, the storm took me. In my panic, I could find neither candle nor chamber pot. Hunched with pain, I arose and urinated in a corner of my cabin. The pitching caught me off balance and I fell hard against rough boards. Then I crawled back toward my bed. The blanket, stiff as it was, comforted me as I drew it up beneath my chin.
When next I awoke, the grey dim light of another day filled the chamber—although I did not know that then. Rain fell on the roof, and damp patches appeared in the plaster of my wall. I saw there a map of continents unvisited and vast lands of exposed brick. I watched the sea around my doorway, until that plank opened into the hallway. In came the small girl from the street—the singer—and with her she brought a dirty napkin. She pulled a chair beside my bed and sat in it, opening the napkin and setting a roll upon each knee. She sat for a while, silent and staring about her and wrinkling her nose. She was perhaps nine or ten years old—the same age I’d been when I’d first come under Mother’s desultory care.
“Hullo,” I said in a voice made of sand. I was clemmed with hunger, and the drumming on the roof hurt my head very much.
“I saw them take you,” she said at last, and looked very hard at me. When I didn’t answer she gave me a roll, which I ate in tiny bites, chewing carefully because of the pain. The girl spoke again. “You came back,” she said looking aggrieved, “but where’s our Nat?”
“Nat’s at the bottom of the Thames. A storm—” but even as I said the words, I knew I spoke a dream—or something akin. “I don’t know where Nat is.” After a moment, I said, “Who’s Nat?”
“You know Nat. When I sing he—” and she made a motion with her hand as if she cut something with a knife.
The cutpurse. I never bothered much with finding out what my family calle
d themselves, for few stayed with us long. Some changed their names daily, and some found other families and never wanted us to know them again. Some vanished into Bridewell where, even if I knew them when they went in, I took care to not know them when they came out again. The girls in particular I ignored, for most who passed through that house became whores, despite Mother’s warnings. A singer on her own had no trade whatsoever, and so I didn’t want to tell her what I’d seen: Nat dropping in the dark like a ham cut from a beam.
The child got up and found me a cup full of stale water. I drank it and had the second roll from off her skinny knee. “Nat’s like to be gone awhile,” I told her, my mouth full of bread. “He had some business come up.”
“How would you know such a thing?” she said at last. “He’d not tell you of any business without telling me first. I know he wouldn’t. Why, you hardly know us.”
There was nothing for it but to be honest and open with the child. “I saw a man—at least, I think he was.”
She stared without a word. I looked at the ceiling where straw poked through the damp plaster.
“He was made of clothes,” said I. “Like he was naught but a suit. A coat both thick and glossy.”
“A religious?”
“More like a clerk or a scribbler from up Grub Street.” I thought of Gotobed. “That’s all I know. That’s all I want to say. I saw a man, and don’t look for Nat to be coming home.”
She made no reply, but one of her herring eyes began to be rimmed with a tear. It grew fatter and fatter until some mysterious barrier broke along its salty perimeter, and it sank into a wet line down her pale cheek. The other eye remained perfectly dry.
I turned my back on her. I felt too sick to witness her sorrow, too tired to watch her wrestle.
In time, the girl slipped softly down from my chair and closed my door behind her. Despite myself, I wondered if I knew her name, and I thought I must have heard it before. Moll? Poll? But she hardly mattered, for I did not like girls and had no need to know one.
I wanted rest. I lay under my blanket and waited for sleep to swallow me whole. My nausea had eased a little with the bread and with water, and while I felt more hungry than I had before the rolls, exhaustion kept me from going in search of more to eat and drink. I tried to shut my eyes, but my lids seemed painted open like the wax dolls at Bartholomew Fair. I could no more sink back into darkness than I could stop running pictures through my head.
In that state of mind, St. Bartholomew himself appeared to me, standing perched on his pedestal and holding the large bladed knife they’d used to skin him. ’Twas a butcher’s blade, and the saint held it upright and at his side like a soldier with a musket. He’d go marching with it by his side into the day of final judgment, but on that day, I knew I would have nothing in my hands with which I might defend myself. The entire store of my small cupboard would avail me nothing, for my Judge would not take the fine cambric handkerchief, nor the snuffbox with its enamelled lid. What cared He for my small bag of coins or the golden rings? He’d look into my heart, and what would he find there? He’d find a secret cupboard as bare as any in London. I was no more than a thief—or worse—and now I was dying.
The grey light in my room had grown intolerably bright. My eyes stung but still I could not close them, staring at the broken plaster and the beams, furred with years of smoke. The reek of my room grew intolerable, and I was ashamed of the wet patch in the corner. I would that I had thrown down a little ash and swept away my shame. Now, my room opened to me like one of Mr. Hogarth’s prints, full of emblems that might be read and understood. The overfull chamber pot. The empty cup upon the table. Bickham’s picture on the wall. The gutted fire. My own thin torso, crouching, my face uplifted. My hands stretch out in a supplication as clean as a sheet of fine linen paper.
Oh hear these words, O Lord.
I did know the child’s name—it was Dorothy. I’d known all along, and Nathaniel, her brother. She was still a child and did not understand the risk that attended her, never further away than the hem of her skirts. That danger was a little dog now, a pug that nipped at her ankles. She’d consent to let it tease, laughing at its mock growls. In time, a bite would close on her hand, but by then it would be a bigger dog, its sunken face watchful and patient. When she grew hungry, it would lead her into Tom King’s coffee house, and then it would bar the door, showing its teeth if she tried to go before her time. A borrowed dress, it would bring her, and it would pad after her when she took her gentlemen upstairs. If she wept, it would comfort her. If she had children, it would howl. And when she grew ill, it would live on. I should have shown her that dog, drawing its likeness upon the walls of my room with a bit of charcoal. Doll, meet the dog, I should have told her, sketching its round head and trim ears. Beware. I tried to call her back, speaking her name aloud. Doll. Dorothy.
Truly, I was ill. I thrashed so in my bed that my blanket sprang from me and caught between my legs. In haste, I pulled up the blanket and down my shirt. I sat up, fearful that someone had come, but no one had heard me. I was alone.
My mother wore a scarlet dress, and she was dead. I was alone.
I knew I’d slept when I woke again, my head fully clear at last. I could sit up, but I was weak for want of food, and I was still that way when Mother entered. “Phew,” she said, when she had satisfied herself that I was not a corpse. “It smells very poorly in here. I could send up my girl if you had something to pay her with.” It was one of Mother’s rules that we saw to our own needs, for her servants had better things to do than tend to infants. I nodded weakly, for I could also smell the pissoir-reek that rose from my hearth and from other parts of my room as well.
“I can pay,” I told Mother. “Bid her come up.”
Mother nodded, pleased by this, and no sooner had she left my chamber than one of her servants came up to me with a piece of beef, a heel of bread, and a jug of well-watered wine. While I ate, the woman swept the hearth and built a fire. I bid her scatter clean ash in the corner of my room, which she did, and it served to improve the odour somewhat. While she worked, I quizzed her on the whereabouts of Dorothy—a task complicated by the number of children in the house.
“Which one is she?” said the maid. “Is she crippled in the arm?” but I could not remember that she was. “No?” said the woman. “Then tell me if she be fair or dark, tall or short. Is she a pretty one? Has she quick fingers? Does she—” and here she winked at me, “take gentlemen on the side? Oh, you look so shocked, little sir, but they all flout Mother’s rules, and the sweetest ones more so than all the rest, for they have most opportunity and are least suspected.”
I thought Dorothy still innocent, but neither would I argue the point. “She sings,” I told her, “while her brother picks pockets.”
The woman took out her fire-steel. A small, pale flame danced and spread, burning bright. “There’s many as fit that bill,” she said, rising and brushing off her apron. “Choosing out one from the rest is like to finding a particular sparrow in a whole flock. Mayhap God can do it, but ’tis more than I can manage. Your ear’s all covered in blood, small sir, if you don’t mind me saying.”
I put my hand to my ear and found it crusted and twice its natural size. My head still hurt and speaking made the pain worse. I asked her to fetch me some warmed water from the kitchen, rising while she was gone to find a coin to pay her. When I gave it her, she took the token gladly but kept it in her hand, begging my pardon but saying she put nothing in her pockets on account of all the thieves that lived in that house.
When she had stumped down the stairs, I washed my head, paying particular attention to my ear, which bled feathers of rust into the basin of water. Afterward, I had nothing clean with which to wrap my head, until I found me a Monmouth cap I’d bought from a sailor to keep my head warm on winter nights. It was made for a man and too large for me, coming down over my ears, but stuffed with a worsted wool s
tocking, it made a tolerable bandage. My neck, my arms and my legs, I washed as well as I could. Then, I regarded my clothes on the floor, but I could not imagine how I should clean these, for a good laundress was beyond my means. Layers of dried mud and shit covered both breeches and coat, and also coated the row of buttons. I was very proud of these buttons, for they were made of pewter, with a death’s head pattern, and I thought them very fine. I had stolen twelve dozen from a draper’s shop, and my effort pleased Mother so exceedingly she had allowed me to keep six of them for myself. Now, they had lost their lustre, and I had nothing else to put on, so I went back to bed, still in the shirt I’d been dunked in. The garment had dried under the blanket with me, and most of the filth had rubbed off, settling in the creases of my mattress. We were old friends, that dirt and I, and so I curled up in its middle and went back to sleep.
It was in this condition that Gotobed found me. On the third day after we shook on our deal, he’d gone to the coffee house where he’d promised to wait, and when I did not at length appear, he began to ask after me. In time, he came to Mother’s door, where he was firmly told that no such person as Cass Quire lived there—a reply that was no more than routine in the business that was that lady’s. Luckily for me, Gotobed understood at once what Mother was, and knew he had come to the right place. He knocked again, and this time demanded Mother herself, and after submitting to the servant’s careful examination of his person, and following the transfer of a farthing from his pocket to hers, he found himself admitted to the ground floor parlour where Mother sat at an escritoire, pretending to write.
Mother demanded at once to know Gotobed’s business, and he told her he looked for a young person who lived there, and that he came on a matter of no very great importance save to young men such as himself and Mr. Quire. At this Mother set down the pen she held dripping over an empty page. “Mr. Gotobed,” said Mother, for my new friend confessed she had forced his name from him the moment he entered her parlour, “the gentleman you seek is at church—my boarders go very regular. I myself make sure they do.” All this Gotobed told me later, when we had leisure to speak of such things, and I sat open-mouthed to hear Mother tell such a falsehood. I knew that I lied often and well, but Mother was a master.