by DM Bryan
The punch glass before me on the table stood empty, only the damp rings to show where I replaced it after each sip. My head spun. I burped and tasted vomit. Mouse sat beside me, her hands tucked beneath her thighs, shoulders hunched in her voluminous gown. She twisted away her head and did not look at me, but I could see her bone-ribbed chest, flat as my own. If I put my fingers in the neck of her gown, like I might slip them into the pocket of my greatcoat, what would it avail either of us? I thought for a moment or two I might try. And then I knew I would not.
I put my shoe on the seat, making a regrettable, dampish mark, and took out a coin from my stocking. This I passed to Mouse, who gaped at it.
“What’s this,” said she. “What do you want?”
“Is it too much?” said I. “I have left some mud on the chair.” I pointed to the stain.
“But you have not begun—you need not pay me now.”
I did not know what to say. I longed for the night and the rain, for silence and the cleansing cold.
Mouse was turning the coin over in her fingers, the surprised look still upon her face. In a slow, thoughtful tone of voice, she said, “What about the punch? That’s paid separately.”
This seemed merely grasping to me, and I wanted to take my coin back. I said, “But I have already overpaid you. Strictly speaking, the punch was all I received.”
“Whose fault is that?” said Mouse.
“Shut up, you bawling infants,” said Gotobed, his face reddened and devilish from the divan. The skirts of Blue’s gown were higgledy-piggledy and all I could see of the girl was her face, which slowly rotated in our direction. Once, in a coffeehouse, I overheard two men speaking of the Earl of Shaftesbury, who believed that a virtuous man operated from a spirit of complete disinterest. If so, Shaftesbury might have found his ideal here, in this brothel. Blue’s face said all—she had no share in whatever Gotobed did to her. I applauded her virtue.
Mouse had made my coin vanish as if never in the world and again hunched in her chair, as though she did not know what to do next. I thought the time right to make a dignified departure—rising to my feet, throwing back my chair, and delivering a short sermon on the wrongness of our actions—but just as I steeled myself to begin, Prosper arose and stole my thunder.
“French fuck?” said Prosper, decanting Mustard from his lap. He had a long fuse, he did, but at last he went off like a firework. His rush-bottomed chair hit the floor with a clatter, and he rose to his feet. Pointing a finger, he began to curse Gotobed in a stream of French syllables. Then, he took a deep breath and switched to English, so that we might better understand what he had to say. “I cannot stay here any longer,” he told us. “I do not like this place. That is a terrible drink,” and he pointed at the punch bowl. “These are terrible girls.” This time he did not point, but we all knew who he meant.
“Hoity-toity,” said Mustard, retired to the far side of the table. “I don’t care for you neither, Frenchie,” and she drank down Prosper’s untouched punch.
Gotobed emerged from the froth of Blue’s skirts, a sailor from the waves. His coat had joined his hat on the floor, and his linen shirt was untucked at the waist. He looked at Prosper. “What the hell?” said he. “I mean, what the hell?”
Prosper’s pointer finger returned to circle the air in Gotobed’s direction.
“I think he means you’re terrible too,” said Mustard, helpfully.
“You do this thing out in the open,” Prosper said, finding his tongue, “like pugs in the street.”
Gotobed hooted in assumed astonishment. “A timid Frenchman,” said he. “Who would have guessed?”
“And such a filthy room.”
“It’s a side-street bagnio,” said his opponent, his surprise now genuine. “Of course, it’s dirty. If you’d only take out your pizzle, Prosper, you’d forgive it soon enough.”
Prosper spoke again in French, but his meaning was clear. He would not take out his pizzle—he valued his pizzle far too much to expose it to the dreaded English affliction, to syphilis, to a dose of the clap. He named this disease in our native tongue, and was well enough understood by all.
“Well, thanks very much,” said Blue, sitting up and gathering her garments to her.
Gotobed swung a long leg over and sat square of the sofa. “Perhaps, said Gotobed, suddenly stuttering and ugly, “that printseller had the right of it—you are one of those Ganymedes who cares not for girls.”
Prosper broke with us then. He spat once, hitting Gotobed’s cheek, and again on the floorboards, leaving little wet marks in the grime, and then, with a clatter of his buckled shoes on the planks, he was gone. We heard his footfalls all the way to the bottom of the stairs.
“Damn,” said Gotobed, wiping his face with his sleeve.
“Well,” said Mustard, “now who will pay me?”
“Shut up,” said Gotobed, but his voice frayed as he said it. He went to the door and looked after Prosper. His untucked breeches slid halfway down his white thighs, exposing grey linen, but he did not seem to notice. He looked around for me, and when he saw me standing, he said, “There you are, Cass—you will not leave me.”
God help me, I did, although I do not know for whose sake I went. All the way down the stairs, I seemed to see Gotobed’s face before me, for I had never before seen a man look so lost.
Outside, the rain-washed night hung clean as laundry. I touched the scoured cobbles with my feet and took off running. As I went, I listened behind me, straining to catch Gotobed’s following feet, or his voice urging me back, but I neither heard nor saw anyone. Only the moon peeped down at me, round and silver as a sixpence. Down the street and around the corner, lighted windows marked my way, and in them, I saw London tableaus, illustrations in a black and golden book. I saw a man in a doorway, covered in lather, tipping his chin to the ceiling, as a barber tugged his nose to shave his lip. Through a pointed opening, I glimpsed a family at prayer. Down an alley, an open casement held a handsome whore in a neat black cap. She smiled and waved me in, but I knew she was in jest. To her eyes, I was only a boy, and I did not disagree.
I took off again, turning my feet toward Mother’s. Soon, I came into a bending lane of houses, dark walls with white, moonlit edges. My shoulders brushing bricks, I raced along, but with speed came a sweet pain, spreading through my chest, and soon I could no longer breathe with ease. Neither could I ignore the weight of my wages, clanking in my stocking. I jangled as I came to a halt, tumbling myself into a gloomy cranny, bent double, gulping air.
All around me, night stuck fast, and fleeting shadows ran wetly along the brick walls. Cats padded and rats scurried. But even here, London’s poor tucked themselves out of the weather beneath the corseted overhang of leaning houses. A gaunt figure hurried past, wrapped in a cloak. A ragged woman with a bundle crept by me with a distrustful glance. An elderly gent stumped past, followed by a curly-tailed dog. The little animal stopped before me and barked shrilly.
“What’s that?” cried the gentleman, turning to his dog. “Curse you, Trump. You must shit soon, or we will wait forever,” and the two of them trotted away.
I thought to repeat this sally to Gotobed, and then I remembered.
But even as my heart broke, I saw my friend—it was indisputably him, handsome in the glow of a tavern window. He saw me directly, though I was still half in the shadows, and he cried out, a little brokenly and a little drunkenly. “Cass,” he said, stepping towards me. “Can you forgive me?” And then he reached me, and my imagination failed. Gotobed turned to a puff of air and blew away on a night breeze.
In a crack between rooftops, the moon reappeared—now a clipped sixpence behind a disk of cloud. I remembered the boy, Nat, lost outside St. Barth’s flinty church, and Doll’s weighty sorrow, and yet here I crouched, a jingling fool, abandoned in the road. At the thought, I began to cry. First, droplets of water slipped from my eyes
, but then snotty tears, big as buttons, filled my mouth with salt.
We had fallen out, we three. Our partnership was dissolved. Gotobed would never see me again. I would never see him, and never stretched a span too long.
[
It was work to find my way back to the bagnio. In the end, I followed the cup of St. Paul’s to the one crooked alley that smelled worse than the others. After that, the grape-laden signpost showed me the way. I knocked, expecting the serving girl who answered before, but it was Mustard who opened the door. Close up, she stood a foot above me. Her face showed very pale and, between stained lips, her teeth parted in something like a smile.
“Go on,” said she. “You’re back for your penny’s worth.” Her laugh ended in a cough.
I peered behind her in the hopes of seeing boots descending from that upstairs room. The hall candle flickered, but it was only the draft from the door. I said, “The gentleman upstairs—”
“Long gone,” said Mustard. “Paid for all of you and left.”
She wrapped her arms around her as she spoke, as the night chill crept through the open door. She craned her head a little and looked out into the street. “Faith,” she said, “what season is it now?”
I stared.
“It’s a simple enough question.”
“Autumn, madam. The leaves on the trees are the colour of your gown.”
Mustard looked down at the skirt of her mantua and then gave me a sharpish nod before stepping back a pace to shut me out.
[
Mother’s lay in darkness, and at this late hour no servant would rise to unfasten the lock, but a barred door was no impediment in that place. Moving to the rear of the dwelling, I climbed to the top of the wall, over the tiled roof, and through the window that always stood open, no matter the weather. Inside, I found a floor filled with sleeping children, curled up under shared blankets, on whatever spare bit of ticking they could scavenge. The moon showed through the glass, and as I crept on tiptoes, I peered into each face I passed, finding more than one glittering eye upon my own. Each time I found a wakeful child, I bent and breathed a name into its ear, until I found one who silently pointed to a spot near the door.
Doll lay by herself, hardly covered by a tattered shawl and an old rug. When I shook her shoulder, her eyes flickered apart so quickly I doubted if she’d ever been asleep. At night, after the fires burned down, the house grew chill, and the air, icy as a wintergreen wave, rolled through that window left ajar. In cold seasons, sleep came in close-fisted, parsimonious portions. It was no house for a friendless child—no place to live alone.
“Come,” I said to Doll, “you’ll be warmer with me.”
She rose up with a practiced quiet. Noiselessness is any young criminal’s first and best lesson, and once learnt, it is never forgotten. In my room, the air was warmer, although the fire showed only cold ashes. I had a truckle bed, straw ticking, and a better blanket. Doll had her shawl and rug. If we curled up together, Doll and I, we might sleep in tolerable warmth. I gestured for her to lie down, and she only hesitated a moment before crawling beneath the welcoming layers. Next, I sat myself beside her to slip off my shoes and roll off my stockings, making a kind of bag for my coins. I still had many of the larger pieces hidden in my coat and breeches. Then, I lay me down to sleep, my coat beneath my head, and my stocking beneath my coat.
Doll stiffened as I settled myself, but I didn’t care. I had no designs on her, whatever she might imagine.
We did not sleep for long. Just before dawn came a pounding on the door that set the housemaids shrieking. Doll was out of bed at once. Overhead, childish footsteps thumped, rattling the ceiling so that plaster fell.
A man’s voice down below demanded to know what kind of house this was, but he wouldn’t have asked, if he hadn’t already known. Mother paid good money to avoid that very question, and the house rang with her objections. Recriminations rose and fell, like a warrior’s axe. She called after the men to go, to stop, to pass no further, but the constables were too many for her. The stairs thrummed with boots.
Doll scrambled in the unfamiliar dimness of my little cell. She reached the door but returned for her shawl. Frantically, she dug for it in the mess of blankets. Pushing past her, I sprang in my bare feet to where Bickham’s print covered over my hiding place. I tore the ugly image away and snatched up the folded page I kept there, tucking it into the lining of my coat. Mr. Hogarth’s half print, with its irregular indenture cut, lay there also and I placed this into my pocket. Then, snatching up my shoes and holding my coin-laden stocking, I grabbed Doll’s hand, and together we ran out to the landing.
Our preparations were our downfall. We were already too late. A constable stood on the floor above, blocking our passage to the room with the open window. Downstairs, the way looked clear, but as soon as we crept to the landing, we spied more constables milling in and out of the rooms below. Mother, a candle in her hand, stood half in, half out the front parlour, turning this way and that, swearing at the officers. Unpinned from her stays, she seemed looser and somehow softer—I do not mean kinder. She’d grown indistinct at the edges, cloudlike, but with all the diffuse malevolence of a thunderhead. Curses flew, striking hard against whatever target she could find. When she saw Doll and me peeking down the stairs she crackled angrily, shocking us back to my room. We pulled closed the door behind us and stood a moment in
the dark.
“She might have kept quiet,” said Doll. She adjusted her shawl, and its tattered length ran over her shoulders to pool at her feet. “She always tells us to do so.”
“Never mind,” said I, as footsteps stopped before my door. I seized the handle, pulling it closed with all my strength, and Doll lent her sparrow’s weight to mine. Then, the metal bar was wrenched from our fingers, and the door came suddenly open.
The two constables who entered wasted no time. Without any address, the first struck me, and the other snatched at Doll. The girl ran as far as she could in that tiny room, but a few paces were all a grown man required in any direction, and he soon snatched at her, catching her up. As she struggled, the shawl came loose, sliding to the floor, threatening to trip the constable reaching for her. He kicked it away, and hefted her into the air, so that her petticoats flipped up and her stocking legs kicked free. Over his shoulder her face showed damp, white hair clinging to her skull.
I hit the man holding her with my stocking-cosh as hard as I could, landing a blow on his thigh. He grunted, reeling, almost dropping his burden. As he righted himself, Doll shrieking and hammering him on the back, his partner tore my weapon from my hands. With his other hand, he grabbed me by my coat and held me fast.
In truth, it would have been easy enough to twist myself out of that garment and sprint away, except that I would not willingly leave my coat behind. Instead, I had to watch as my gaoler held up the stocking, the lamp-lit folds of his stupid face opening in surprise.
“It’s chockablock with silver,” he said, while the coins jingled in their woollen cover. I spat at him, and he shook me by my collar.
“Here,” said the one holding Doll, “half that’s mine.”
“Half?” said my assailant.
“We split it even—that’s fair.”
“What’s fair is finders-keepers.”
“I got a black and blue lump that says different.”
“Keep your damned voice down or the others will hear.”
With his foot, Doll’s captor pushed closed the door to our cell.
I knew what ought to happen next—even in my neglected state, I’d heard a fairy tale or two. Our captors would begin to quarrel over the treasure, and in their greed, would come to blows, destroying each other. Doll and I would creep out into the morning light, unscathed, our pockets filled with gold.
But my stocking held little gold. Mostly it contained copper farthings and pennies, leavened with a few c
rown coins. And our captors were true born Englishmen, pragmatical and phlegmatic. With a free hand, the constable carrying Doll held open a flap in his coat, while the other poured in a generous dollop of tinkling metal. Then, without taking his hot, heavy hand from my collar, my gaoler tucked the rest, still in its stocking, under the cord that held his trousers up. He patted the bulge under his coat and bent down to me, his kippered breath in my face. “What else you got, you little sneak?” He said. When he searched my pockets he found my half Hogarth and looked it over. A moment later, the print joined Doll’s shawl, crumpled on the floor.
I lost my faith in stories then—at least in the kind with happy endings. And I hardly cared when we were made to walk downstairs and stand with the remnants of Mother’s household. That lady herself sat, a prisoner of her sofa, while her parlour brimmed with black coats. As we passed, she looked our way, and gnashed her teeth, a terror to the last. Even more than was usual, the weeping of children filled that house.
In time, we would discover our destination. It was a façade of white stone, a blank visage with a gaping mouth—a place called Bridewell. Who I met there and what happened next, you must wait to discover.
[
Chapter 16
I could not expect you should find any Amusement in my Narrations, if I did not keep alive a little Curiosity. Suspense is the Soul of a Story, without which it grows dead and lifeless.
Sarah Scott’s A Journey Through Every Stage of Life.
London, 1762.
Sarah reaches her destination. A façade of honeyed stone, a neat visage with a gleaming front door—the house in Hill Street. How pretty the place looks from outside, a slice of pound cake, but inside the story is different. Inside, greasy smells from the kitchen, damp from the cellars, paint from all Elizabeth’s renovations, combine to leave her queasy, headachy, sorry she has come.
“Do you like them, Pea?” says Elizabeth. She sits across from Sarah in her newly decorated dressing room and gestures at the furniture—the very chairs in which they sit. “I think the gold is perhaps too much?”