The Harlot's Tale (The Midwife's Tale)

by Sam Thomas

  I felt Isabel’s pain and bitterness in my heart, and cast about for something I could offer her, something other than fine words. My eyes settled upon the spinning wheel in the corner.

  “Will, could you have one of your father’s factors bring Isabel as much wool as she needs? I’ll pay for the first bag.” Once Isabel had spun a bag of wool into yarn, she could trade it for more wool and a few pennies.

  Before Will could answer, Isabel turned to him and bowed her head in thanks. “Mr. Hodgson, I would be so grateful for your help. I’ll be the finest spinster you’ve seen, I promise.”

  Will looked at me in surprise before stammering out his assent to the arrangement. That business complete, I asked Will to step outside so Martha and I could discuss more secret matters with Isabel.

  “Have you been caring for yourself, Isabel?” I asked.

  “As best I can,” she said. “The herbs you suggested have kept me from getting with child.” She looked down at Elizabeth. “I love this little one, but could hardly afford another.”

  “And you can get the necessary herbs?” I had heard that some of the apothecaries had become afraid to sell their wares to the city’s jades for fear of angering the magistrates. I marveled at such shortsightedness. Perhaps the godly thought the one thing York lacked was more bastards born to whores.

  “Aye. One of the apothecaries comes to me monthly. I get my herbs from him in trade. And if I can get the wool you’ve promised, perhaps I won’t need them at all.” We bade Isabel farewell, and I prayed that she would soon find her way out of whoredom. But I did not think God would hear my prayers.

  As we went outside to meet Will, I considered the course that Isabel’s life had taken. I didn’t approve of her vicious ways, of course, and when I first became a midwife, cases such as hers drove me to long nights of prayer as I wondered whether I should serve such women. I would happily aid the deserving poor, but I thought that York’s whores led evil lives, and believed that they deserved a difficult travail as punishment for their sins.

  My thinking changed after I was called to a whore’s bedside for a birth gone wrong. By the time I arrived, the poor girl—and she did seem a girl—lay near death, for the child within her had come sideways and could not be turned. I could not save her. When she died, the baby still unborn, I wrapped her body in wool for burial and accompanied it to the churchyard. The vicar absented himself, sending some traveling curate in his place, who stumbled through the service with only half his mind on the business at hand. The poor girl had no family in York, and only a few other whores to mourn her. Of course there was no sign of the man who had thrown the child into her womb. That day I realized that I could not count as innocent the men who condemned York’s whores to such a dreadful life, or paid them a few pennies for a rough grope in an alleyway. Many of them were respectable citizens who returned home from their frantic rut and laid the pox upon their wives. Such men.

  Soon enough I got to know the whores and hear their stories. Most were like Isabel, good women who had fallen into evil lives. I also had come to see that while they traveled a sinful path, their sins hardly yielded a life of luxury, as they lived out their time in one or two rooms, scraping by from day to day. Eventually I concluded that the poverty in which the city’s whores lived and the humiliations they endured were punishment enough for their transgressions.

  “If the constables took Barbara, there’s no telling where she’ll be.” Will’s voice interrupted my thoughts as we approached Peasholme Green. “She could be at the Castle, one of the gatehouses, or even a working-house. It could take days to find her.”

  “Well, we can’t concern ourselves with that,” I said. “We’ll start our search and hope fortune is with us.” Despite my words, worry filled my heart, for the delay of even a few days before we found Barbara could mean the death of more innocents.

  “Perhaps we should separate,” Martha suggested. “Will can head west toward Bootham Bar and the Minster. We’ll head south and meet at the Castle.” Will agreed and started off on his own.

  Martha and I first stopped at St. Anthony’s Hall. During the siege it had housed sick and wounded soldiers, but since then it had been repurposed as a working-house for poor women and beggars who’d run afoul of the law. If a prisoner had no skills and no master, she would be put to spinning to earn her keep.

  “I can go in by myself if you’d like,” I said. The summer before, Martha had entered the hospital and gazed into Death’s eyes. I knew she could not have fond memories of such a place.

  “No,” she said. “I’ll go with you. If Barbara is here, she may be more willing to talk to a servant than a gentlewoman.” I couldn’t argue with that.

  We stepped through the low gate and climbed the stairs. In the year since we’d last been in the hall, St. Anthony’s had changed entirely. Gone were the beds with their moaning patients. Gone, too, was the stench of infected wounds, the smell of patients’ waste, and the scent of death that underlied all the others. The floor had been scrubbed, the walls whitewashed, and rather than beds, the room was dotted with spinning wheels and bags of wool the city had purchased for the residents to work. A few elderly women sat at the wheels, spinning wool into thread, but none seemed young enough to be Barbara Rearsby. A middle-aged woman crossed the room to greet us.

  “Good afternoon, my lady,” she said with a bow. “What brings you to St. Anthony’s?”

  “We are in search of a woman taken recently by the constables,” I said. “Her name is Barbara Rearsby.”

  “I don’t know the name, and these are all the women we have today,” she said. “I am sorry, my lady.”

  I thanked her for her time and attention, and slipped a tuppence into her hand before departing. Martha and I turned south toward the Pavement, and faced into the blazing heat of the sun. After the relative cool of St. Anthony’s, it burned double. “Christ,” Martha muttered. “It will never end, will it?” We shaded our eyes as best we could and went on our way. As the lantern tower of All Saints church came into view, I heard a familiar but unwelcome voice.

  “Listen, O children of God. There is nothing that causes such boldness in sin as the failure of justice! If the sentence against an evil work is not speedily executed, the hearts of men are set to do still more evil. So sayeth the Lord. Is there anyone here who can deny that sin reigns where justice is delayed?”

  “Oh God, again?” Martha moaned. As we neared the church, we found ourselves caught up in a crowd. Hezekiah Ward stood on the steps of All Saints in the Pavement, gesturing wildly at his hearers. Martha and I seemed to be the only two in the crowd not overcome by his words. As he had on the bridge, Ward had surrounded himself with his closest followers. James Hooke stood to his left, and again he seemed entranced with Ward’s daughter. Ward’s son stood next to James, holding his Bible up for all to see. On Ward’s other flank stood his wife, whose eyes swept the crowd as if she were a sentry rather than his helpmeet. She certainly had the bulk to stop any but the stoutest of men.

  “Come on,” I said, trying to force a path through the mass before us.

  “Did we not, this very week, see God’s terrible justice visited upon the city?” Ward continued. “Yea, the failure of rain and the burning sun are sign enough of God’s wrath, but have we not seen worse of late? Have we not seen the wonderful spectacle of a whore and her master struck down for their sins?”

  I froze. It took me a moment to grasp that Ward had made Jennet’s life and death into grist for a sermon. I suppose I should not have been surprised. If John Stubb would do such a thing in a pamphlet, why wouldn’t Ward use her in a sermon? In life and in death, men used poor Jennet as they saw fit.

  “God will not tolerate such a thing.” Ward’s voice rose and fell, capturing his audience with a hypnotic rhythm. “The hope of escape from God’s justice draws men to sin, draws them barefaced and bold—but the Lord will not have it! The reason God punished this whore, the reason He cast her down to a bloody death, was for the ter
rifying of all such filthy wretches. This is God’s warning to all York’s beastly sinners that they cannot escape unpunished.”

  I pushed aside a man who—by his stench—must have come from the Shambles, and to my horror nearly crashed into John Stubb. He stared at Ward, his eyes wide and sweat streaming down his face. I could see his lips moving as he muttered to himself. A push from behind forced my face into his massive chest, but he paid me no mind. I realized that he was repeating Ward’s sermon even as it was delivered, uttering each word mere moments after Ward had. I pulled myself away, afraid that he might recognize me, but his eyes never strayed from the preacher.

  “The Lord demands the reformation of the city and the extirpation of sin. If we fail in this duty—if the magistrates, God’s vice-regents on earth, fail to suppress whoredom—then God Himself will act. Have we not seen the bloody spectacle of His justice? Amen! Amen!”

  The crowd echoed Ward’s cries and surged toward him, carrying Martha and me toward the church steps. As I veered to the right to escape the throng, I seized Martha’s arm and brought her along in my wake. A few steps before we would have broken free, I thought I caught sight of a familiar face. I stopped and searched the crowd. I wanted to be sure my eyes had not fooled me. Then I saw him.

  Mark Preston—Edward’s man and Joseph’s three-fingered comrade—stood in a doorway not far from Ward, staring at the preacher with the same intensity Stubb had. The only difference was that Preston’s visage lacked the mania I’d seen in Stubb. He looked like the soldier he’d once been, and I wondered if he still saw himself as a soldier in the Lord’s army.

  “My God,” Martha gasped when we finally burst free. “Say what you will, he does bring in a crowd. And did you see Stubb, the hulk of a pamphleteer? He seemed right fanatical about the sermon.”

  I nodded, and once again I wondered how far the giant’s zeal might take him. Ward preached death to the city’s whores; might a man like Stubb have decided to act in God’s stead?

  “Perhaps his size will help us,” I said. “If anyone saw him near Jennet, they would remember such a creature.”

  Martha nodded, and with one final look back at the crowd surrounding Ward, we resumed our search for Barbara Rearsby.

  Chapter 9

  Martha and I wound our way south and east until Clifford’s Tower came into view. For centuries the keep had stood guard over York Castle, the walled compound at the heart of the city’s defenses. We spied Will as we neared the drawbridge that led into the Castle.

  “Did you find her?” I asked as we approached.

  “I checked Ousebridge Gaol,” he said. “They had a beggar, two debtors, and a poor soul who made the mistake of drinking to the King’s health, but no whores.”

  “We can check with Samuel and if she’s not here, split up again.” The city maintained a half-dozen prisons, and while inmates had often been separated based on their crime—debtors in the gatehouses, felons awaiting execution in the Castle—order broke down after the city fell, and there was no telling where Barbara Rearsby might be. The Castle gate stood wide open, now guarded not by soldiers but by a sleepy youth who waved us through with only a glance. We arrived at a tower in the southeast corner of the wall and Will rapped on the door with his cane.

  The small window in the door popped open and Tree peered out. When he recognized us, the boy smiled broadly. The window snapped shut, and Tree dashed through the doorway, wrapping his arms around my waist for a moment before beginning to poke at my apron in search of an apple or a package of cakes.

  “Have you brought any food?” Tree asked.

  “I’m afraid not,” I said with a laugh. “If I’d known I was coming, I would have brought something. Perhaps Will has a penny or two.” Tree looked expectantly at Will, who fished a few coins out of his pocket for the boy. The two often gambled at cards or dice, with Will always coming away much the poorer. He swore that someday he’d figure out how Tree cozened him, but so far he’d had no luck.

  “Is Samuel here?” I asked.

  “Aye,” said Tree. “He’s in the jakes. He should be out soon, though.” As if Tree had summoned him by magic, Samuel Short appeared. The two made a strange pair indeed. While Tree was long, lean, and beautiful, Samuel had the wizened face of an impossibly old man, and stood no higher than my waist.

  “Lady Hodgson,” he said. His warm smile revealed only a few teeth, none of which seemed too securely moored in his head. “What brings you to my manse? If one of my guests is with child, she’s not told me.”

  “We have other business,” I said. “Is Barbara Rearsby here? We heard that a few days ago the beadles took her up as a strumpet.”

  “Aye,” Samuel said, raising an eyebrow in surprise. “I imagine Mr. Hodgson told you she was here. There are few secrets from you.”

  I looked at Samuel in confusion. “Which Mr. Hodgson brought her in?”

  “Joseph did,” Samuel replied. “He said I’m to hold her a week and then turn her out with a warning that she’ll face a whipping if she is taken again.”

  This struck me as strange. Joseph had been in the room when Edward charged us with questioning the city’s whores, and he must have known we would start with those closest to Jennet. Why had he not told us he’d sent Barbara to the Castle?

  “I don’t know what good he thinks jailing a few doxies will do,” Samuel continued. “There are still whores in the city, so it won’t stop the men from their doings. And once she leaves here, this one will rejoin their numbers.” He shook his head at the folly of the godly magistrate.

  “We’d like to see her,” I said. He looked at me warily.

  “If she’s not with child, what is your concern?” he asked. “I’m not looking for trouble with the city.”

  “We’re here on city business,” I said. “My brother-in-law sent us.” I hesitated before saying more. If the man who’d killed Jennet thought that Barbara was helping us search for him, he could set his sights on her. I knew all too well that if a man killed once, he would not hesitate to kill again. Samuel nodded.

  “All right,” he said. In the year I’d known him, I’d earned his trust. I paid him the customary fee for visiting a prisoner, and we followed him to the upper cells. When Samuel stopped, I turned to Will.

  “I think Martha and I should go in alone,” I said. He started to protest, but I interrupted.

  “You saw how you unnerved Isabel. Barbara is already in gaol and faces whipping. She’ll not say anything in your presence.” I could tell that Will resented my words, but he also knew I was right.

  “I’ll go and lose the rest of my pennies to Tree,” he said, and retreated down the stairs.

  Samuel unlocked the cell door, and Martha and I slipped in. We found Barbara sitting on the pallet that served as her bed. She looked up when we entered. She must have been attractive before poverty, the pox, and dissolute living had taken their toll, but now sunken eyes and hollow, pockmarked cheeks marred her face. After looking us over, she curled her lips back in a sneer.

  “Try giving me your gospel and you’ll have a turd in your teeth,” she hissed.

  Martha and I burst out laughing.

  “We’re not with the godly crowd,” Martha volunteered. “So you can keep your turds to yourself.”

  “Then why are you here?” Barbara looked as us warily and then stared at me more closely. “I’ve seen you. You’re a midwife. What do you want from me? I ain’t done nothing wrong. At least nothing I’m not already in gaol for.”

  “We’re here for the city,” Martha said, “but not with an eye to punishing you. Isabel Dalton suggested we talk to you. She said you knew Jennet Porter.”

  At the mention of Isabel’s and Jennet’s names, Barbara’s face softened a bit.

  “I know Jennet,” she said. “She’s new to the city. What’s she done, gotten herself with child?”

  Martha froze when she realized that Barbara hadn’t heard about Jennet’s murder.

  Barbara immediately knew that
something was wrong. “What is it? Has something happened to Jennet?”

  I could hear the ache in her voice and feel it in my own chest. Martha was still struggling for words, so I stepped in to help.

  “She’s dead, Barbara.”

  Tears filled her eyes before she looked down to hide them from view.

  “What happened?” she asked without looking up.

  “We still don’t know much,” Martha said. “She was with a man. They both were murdered.”

  “Someone killed both of them?” Barbara looked up at us, her brow furrowed. “Who would do that?”

  “That’s why we’re here,” I said. “We haven’t learned much. The only sign the murderer left behind was Bible verses. He wrote them down and left them with the bodies.”

  She looked at me blankly. “I don’t know about that,” she said. “I don’t even read.”

  “The verses came from a sermon that was preached here in the city,” Martha said. “And we heard that some of the godly sort had been preaching to you and Jennet. We thought there might be a connection.”

  “Oh, them,” she said with a harsh laugh. “I know who you mean. Mr. Ward and his people sought us out, wanted to convert us.”

  “The minister himself?” Martha asked.

  “Just the women at first,” she replied. “His daughter and wife were the worst of the lot. They started by preaching redemption, said I could be sanctified. I asked if they had honest work for me, or if one of their number might marry me.” She smiled bitterly at the memory. “They want us to change but will do nothing for us save talk, talk, talk. Like men, trying to bed us, eh?” she said to Martha.

  “Then what?” I asked.

  “And then their honey turned to vinegar. First they sent the younger one. They call her ‘Silence,’ though I know not why—she never stopped her mouth. She came to me with that giant of a man, told me God would not suffer me to continue in my ‘sinful courses.’ I asked what He would do if I didn’t listen, and she said that His justice would be done, and I should not be surprised if it was visited upon me soon. The constable took me soon after.”