by Sam Thomas
“If we have to find a harlot, the place to start is in Southwark on the other side of the river. In the morning we’ll begin our search.”
“Southwark?” I said with a smile. “I can provide a guide to accompany us.”
* * *
From the moment they met, Will and Katherine got along like old friends. The four of us chattered amiably as we walked south to London Bridge. We fell silent, though, when we reached the gatehouse on the far end. We looked up at the row of heads that had been posted on pikes as a warning against treason. A raven sat on one man’s head, croaking indignantly, as if he hungered for more executions. I looked away, and we entered the city of Southwark.
Once we passed over the Bridge, it felt as if we were in a different city, for Southwark made the chaos of London seem like a model of order and uniformity. The houses were lower built—none more than four stories tall—but the streets were ill maintained, and Southwark’s residents seemed to be even less inclined to good order than London’s; chapmen, fishwives and shopkeepers filled the air with a cacophony of voices. Before the war, Southwark had been home to London’s theaters, as well as bear- and bull-baiting pits. While the greatest of these had been closed, many smaller disorders persisted in the knowledge that London’s officers had no power south of the river. It was this gap in good government that made Southwark so attractive to London’s brothel-keepers and thus drew us across the river.
“The best place to start is in the Clink.” Will pointed to the west, past a church the size of a small cathedral.
“I’m afraid to ask,” Martha said mischievously, “how you know where to find a brothel.”
“A blind man would be able to direct you to the stews.” Will laughed. “They are entirely shameless here.” The four of us skirted south of the church and passed a decrepit mansion that lay further west.
“That’s Winchester House,” Will said. “It was home to the Bishop, when we had bishops. And those are the theaters, of course.” To the west and south we could see round buildings looming over their neighbors.
“We should go first to the Holland’s Leaguer,” Will said.
“It is real place?” I asked in surprise. Years before I’d heard of a most scandalous play, also called The Holland’s Leaguer, but I had not realized it existed outside the author’s debauched mind.
“Aye,” Will said. “In the flesh, if you will.” We turned one final corner and found ourselves standing before a large and ramshackle tenement. A garishly painted quean stood at the entrance trying to lure customers with flashes of her bosom. She noticed Will’s interest—in the building, I told myself—and approached him. She took his arm and whispered something in his ear that caused him to turn a deep crimson. Martha laughed at Will’s state before stepping forward to take his other arm.
“Er, that is tempting,” Will said once he’d regained his tongue. “But impossible, I think. In truth we are here on more serious business.”
“We would like to see your bawd,” Katherine said.
The quean looked us over before she answered. “He’ll want to know why,” she said. “You can’t just walk up and ask to see him, you know.”
If I were still Lady Hodgson, I could have bought an audience with the bawd no matter the price, but Widow Hodgson could hardly spend so freely, not in Katherine’s presence.
“A few days ago a woman might have come here.” Katherine paused, knowing how strange her words would sound. “She was looking for a stillborn child.”
“What do you mean?” the quean asked. “You found a child and you are searching for his mother?”
“No,” Katherine said. “A woman came here, to purchase a stillborn child.”
The quean gasped and sputtered in response. “My God, have you gone mad?” she demanded. “Who would do such a thing?” She produced a whistle from her apron and blew three times. Two large and very ugly men strode out of the brothel. Each held a cudgel and seemed eager to put it to use.
“Get away from here,” the quean hissed, her bosom heaving. “If I see you again, you’ll be much the worse for it. You are lunatics, you are, buying a stillborn child!”
“We do not want to buy a child,” I tried to explain. “We are looking for a woman who…” I stopped my speech when one of the men stepped forward, slapping his palm with his club. There seemed no point in arguing further, so we moved on with as much speed and dignity as we could. Once we were out of sight of the brothel we stopped to catch our breath.
“Perhaps we should try another approach,” Katherine said with a smile.
“If we are following Mrs. Ramsden’s trail,” Martha said, “it is not the bawd we need to talk to, but the doxies themselves.”
“How can we find a whore without talking to a bawd?” Katherine asked. “If the three of us try to hire a putain, it will surely bring attention we don’t want.”
“We send Will by himself,” Martha said. “He can hire the doxy.” While Will turned crimson again and struggled to find his voice, Martha explained her scheme. “He can go with the harlot as any man might. And once they are alone, he can give her a few pennies and ask about Mrs. Ramsden.”
Katherine and I glanced at each other and looked to Will. He still seemed shocked that Martha would send him alone into a brothel.
“If you have another way, we can try it,” Martha said.
None of us did.
“Very well then,” Martha said. “Let us begin.”
The four of us pooled our ready money and estimated that if all went well we could send Will into four or five brothels. We found another such place not far from the Holland’s Leaguer, and Will entered.
“How long do you think he’ll be?” I asked.
“Not long if he knows what’s good for him,” Martha replied.
Such was the case, for soon after the brothel door burst open and Will stumbled into the street followed closely by a young harlot.
“His pintle is as soft as an overcooked carrot, it is!” The girl crowed with unseemly joy. “But you’re welcome to return any time you’d like, and I’ll make it stand right tall. But for now you should go on your way.”
Will rejoined us and we hurried to find an alley where we could talk.
“What happened?” Katherine demanded.
“That little play was the doxy’s idea.” Will had once again turned bright red. “She told me to pretend I couldn’t, er, stand. That way she wouldn’t have to give a share of our money to the bawd. It seemed like a kind thing to do. I didn’t know she would announce my failure to all of Southwark.”
“Did she tell you anything of use?” Martha asked.
“Aye,” Will said. “She heard gossip about a woman searching for a doxy who had neared her time.”
“Was it Mrs. Ramsden?” I asked. “It must have been.”
“She never saw the woman,” Will said. “And doesn’t know anyone who did. But I think we are close.”
“I hope so,” Martha said. “If you visit too many more brothels your face might stay that color.”
* * *
It took visits to two more brothels, but at last Will found a woman who said she could answer our questions.
“She can’t talk right now,” Will said when he returned to us. “But around supper she’ll meet us in the alehouse on the corner.”
I glanced up at the autumn sun, hanging low in the reddening sky. I did not know when a harlot took her supper, but I hoped she would not be long. I did not look forward to a night walk through Southwark.
The four of us crossed to the alehouse and found a table by a window from which we could see the brothel door. The ale was undrinkable and the food unfit for the city’s vermin. We sat in tense silence hoping the harlot would bring us closer to the truth, but we also knew she might be lying in the hope of tricking Will out of a few more pennies.
Within an hour a woman stumbled out of the brothel and wove her way to the alehouse. She was so drunk it seemed a small miracle that she found her way th
rough the door on the first try. Will waved her to our table as soon as she entered.
“D’you have my tuppence?” she asked as she sat. I gazed at her face in amazement. The pox had taken a terrible toll on her. If she was half so old as she appeared, she was an ancient whore indeed. I wondered what kind of man would willingly lie with such a woman. One who was no less cup-shot than she, I supposed.
I put two pennies on the table, and—as I expected—she tried to take them at once. I seized her wrist and squeezed.
“You must answer our questions first,” I said. “And if we are pleased, you’ll have your tuppence.”
The whore’s nostrils flared in either anger or fear. She pulled her hand back but did not try to take the coins.
“Just tell them what you told me,” Will said. “Then you’ll have your money and be on your way.”
“Buy me an ale, too,” the woman said. “I’m too thirsty to talk right now.”
Will and I exchanged a glance. We had no choice, so Will waved his cup at the bartender.
When the slattern had her drink she drained it at a draught and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “Very good,” she said. “A woman came here a few weeks ago. She said she was a midwife and that her husband was a physician. She said the two of them, her and her husband, were trying to help mothers save their children from dying young.”
“And what did she want?” Katherine asked.
“She said they needed a baby who had died. They would examine his body and learn from it.” The whore shook her head in wonder at the idea. “She promised an entire shilling to the mother, and she said she’d give the child a Christian burial after they looked at it.”
“Who was she?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I wasn’t with child, so she had no interest in me.”
“Tell her the rest,” Will urged her.
“This other doxy I know, Isabella Wroth, she had a child born dead. She sent for the woman.”
My heart leaped in my chest, and I looked from Katherine to Martha. Could we be so close to finding the mother of the dead child? The quean saw the look in my eye and in a blink the coins on the table disappeared.
“Where is she?” Katherine demanded. “You must tell us.”
I despaired to hear Katherine’s tone, and a pained look crossed Martha’s face. Unless this whore was a complete fool, we’d have to empty our purses to find Isabella Wroth. And from the light that now shone in her eyes, I knew she was no fool.
“That’s what you really need to know isn’t it?” she asked. “It will cost you.”
I ground my teeth and reached deep into my purse. When the whore had the last of my coins she reached across the table, plucked Will’s ale from his hands, and drank it down. She belched loudly and smiled at us. “Follow me.”
The doxy led us into a maze of streets and alleys. Our path seemed so crazy I wondered if her goal was for us to become so lost and desperate that we would pay her to lead us back to London Bridge. If so, she would be disappointed, for she’d already taken every penny we had. Eventually we reached an aged tenement and climbed three sets of stairs to the top floor. There was just one door, and when we knocked a woman’s voice invited us in.
Chapter 9
The scene within was just what I expected. The apartment contained so little that it made our rooms at Mrs. Evelyn’s seem like Whitehall Palace. A bed, a clothes chest, a candle, a small unlit stove, and nothing else. Isabella Wroth lay on a small bed; two other women sat next to her. Even a penniless doxy had her gossips.
Isabella’s welcoming smile faded when she saw that our guide had brought strangers with her. She could not have guessed why we had come, but she knew an ill wind when she felt one.
“These ones want to speak to you, Isabella,” our guide announced before scampering down the stairs. I had no doubt that within minutes our money would be poured down her throat. Isabella and her gossips looked at us warily, wanting to know why we had come but afraid to ask. Even in the guttering candlelight I could see that she was far younger than the whore who’d brought us here. She had not been in the profession for long, and the pox had not yet begun its slow destruction of her face.
“We must speak to you alone,” I said as gently as I could.
Martha stepped forward and knelt at the side of the bed. “We are here about your baby. We know what happened and must talk to you about it. You are in no danger.”
After a moment Isabella nodded, and her gossips slipped out of the room, with Will close behind.
“Your friend said that a woman came to you in search of a stillborn child,” Martha said. She took Isabella’s hand just as she would take a mother’s, comforting the girl and easing her fears. In that moment, Martha was doing the work of a midwife.
“That quean is not my friend,” Isabella noted. “Not if she brought you to me for a few pennies.”
Martha smiled and waited while Isabella calmed herself. “Tell me about your child.”
“A woman did come here,” Isabella said at last. “She was a midwife, and wife to a physician. She said that if I let her have my boy, she would find a way to save other little ones. And she promised that she’d give him a decenter burial than I could afford, with a sermon and bells.”
Martha looked up at Katherine and me, unsure what to say. The truth of what had happened to her child—that he’d been used in Grace Ramsden’s lunatic scheme to feign childbirth—would hurt Isabella far more than Grace’s ingenious lie.
Katherine stepped forward and joined Martha at Isabella’s bedside. “And Mrs. Ramsden did all that. But the sheriff does not believe her. He has accused her of stealing your son and murdering him.”
“What?” Isabella cried. “He was dead-born, so she couldn’t have killed him. And she never would! She was kind to me when nobody else would be.”
“And now she needs your help,” Martha said. “You must tell the jury that the child was stillborn. If you don’t, Mrs. Ramsden will hang.”
Fear swirled into Isabella’s eyes. “Will I be whipped as a bastard bearer?” she asked. “I knew a whore who died of her whipping when she got a fever from one of the cuts.”
Martha offered the girl a conspiratorial smile. “The child was born in Southwark, wasn’t he?”
Isabella nodded.
“And Mrs. Ramsden will be tried in London,” Martha said. “Another city, another law. Nobody there will have the right to whip you for something that happened here.”
Isabella smiled faintly. Sometimes—not often, but sometimes—the space between what was right and what was legal could work to help the poor. “What do I need to do?” she asked.
With the trial only a few days away, it seemed best for Isabella to accompany us to London. No good could come from trying to find her a second time on the eve of the trial.
“You can stay with me,” Katherine said. “There’s room enough with my other maidservants, and we have coal for the stove. You will be much more comfortable there.”
Isabella nodded. I supposed that leaving Southwark and losing her place at the brothel could not be counted as too great a loss. How much worse could things be north of the river? She collected her belongings and we went outside to find Will waiting on the street. The five of us began the long walk back to the Cheap. It was a hard journey for Isabella so soon after her travail, but we had no money for a hackney or a wherry so we had no choice but to walk. With such a large party we worried more about being taken by the Watch than being accosted by thieves, but the journey proved uneventful. Nevertheless, it was past midnight when Martha and I hauled our weary bones up to our room and into bed.
* * *
When the morning of Grace Ramsden’s trial came, Katherine, Martha, and I accompanied Isabella Wroth to Newgate gaol. As with so many notorious cases, the scene seemed more appropriate for a carnival than a court. Victualers and ale-sellers had found their places outside the jail walls, and were doing a fine business despite the early hour. Chapmen walk
ed up and down the streets shouting their pamphlets, and a few particularly daring whores plied their wares.
We found the room where Mrs. Ramsden would be tried and discovered that she would soon be brought to the court. We told Isabella that, as a witness, she must wait outside. It was not true, but she still did not know the truth about why Mrs. Ramsden had taken her child and I did not want to dispel her illusion. She looked nervous until Martha offered to stay by her side.
I took a deep breath as I entered the courtroom, for I knew that if we failed to prove Mrs. Ramsden’s innocence she would hang before dinner. In keeping with the prison itself, the courtroom was a cramped and rank space, made all the more so by the crowds that had filled every seat and aisle. Indeed, it was hard to tell which men were there as jurymen, which were witnesses, and which were merely curious.
Eventually a guard led Grace Ramsden into the court, and she stood next to the judge’s raised table; she had shackles on her wrists, but I was relieved she’d not been laid in double-irons. I also said a prayer of thanks that she seemed healthy enough, for gaol-fever took as many prisoners as the hangman.
The constable who had arrested Mrs. Ramsden spoke first, explaining to the jury what had happened on the night of her “travail.” He went into great and lurid detail—far more than was necessary—and from the look in the jurymen’s eyes it was clear that he’d convinced them to hang her. Katherine and I had a difficult task ahead of us.
As Mrs. Ramsden’s midwife, Katherine spoke next, telling the jury why she had done such a terrible thing. It would not speak to her innocence, but we hoped it would make her seem less monstrous. She went on to tell the jury that the child had been born small, and had neither hair nor fingernails. These were lies, for the child had had both, but we were more interested in saving Mrs. Ramsden’s life than telling the narrow truth of the matter; we would have our justice, even if it required perjury.
A few of the jurymen looked confused at Katherine’s description of the child’s body—what had hair and nails to do with anything?—so I stepped forward to ask her to explain.