Thinking of my speech, if they did not give me leave to speak when it was my trial, they would not give it to me on Monday, when they were already done with me and my fate was decided. I was indebted to the Lord that I was not wholly denied to speak for my cause today. I was unlikely to have any other chance.
Perhaps they would yet treat me with leniency. I was found guilty, and for that I must pay penance, but punishment for libel was not death as it always was for treason. Nay, I should not carry hope, for, if the mood in the court were the basis on which to judge, they would give me the most severe punishment the law would allow. If my fortune followed others that published an unlawful book, I would be stoned to death on the pillory. In the meantime, I was certain to re-acquaint myself with one of Newgate’s rooms.
For the first time since I was judged, I dared look for Pierre in the rowdy crowd. When I found him, realisation of what I had done pierced my gut and heart as a hot poker. There he stood, in the midst of a lively group of well-dressed gentlemen that jostled him in their man revelry with no respect for his age. They would have treated him far worse had they known he was my husband. He seemed not to notice or care that he was pitched and tossed like a small boat on a stormy sea between them.
In the stead of the strong husband I had recently remembered respect for, stood a wizened and broken man. His eyes held neither sadness nor anger when they met mine. It was if the last years of his life, his raison d’être, were leeched from him. Indeed, no blood stained his face, and his lack of colour gave him the appearance of a laid out corpse. Aching guilt coursed through my belly. I had done this to him. I had taken his life from him. I had flouted his request and written the book against his good judgement.
And… I took myself from him by what I had done. As he had said I would. I did not long enough consider the fairness to him and the children. Perhaps blame could fall on my vanity, for my recent success in court, when I was on trial for treason, had given me false air of competence and invulnerability. I knew the possible consequences of my actions yet my pride had ridden over them.
Looking at the trail of what I had done, I saw with clarity how my fate was pinched with theirs, and my boldness affected them as it did me. Why did I not see it before? I was married to Pierre in more than his bed. I was confidant, business partner and mother to his children. I had wronged him like no other. He depended on my learning of the law in the first years together, and now, when his need was greatest, I was deserting him.
How would he go up against those that tried to trick him in business? Or those that clammed shut their purse when they should pay? My vanity! Oh my vanity! And my sweet, sweet children, what would become of them if Pierre could not care for them, or if he should die when I was gone from them? The burden of what I had done lay heavily upon me.
‘I will go home then, and come back Monday,’ I said.
Weston was quick to reply, ‘No, you do not chose your own requital. You will be committed till then.’
Then came a cry as shrill as an animal of the night that caused my skin to prickle. ‘No, no! This cannot be! Do not chain her! Confine her not! She is my life!’ He cried then. He cried like I never saw any person cry.
I shivered.
It was Pierre. He knew, as I knew, what would happen to me in prison, guilty of speaking against them. It was as a licence for them to do as they would with me. But the punishment was also his.
‘Pierre!’ I reached my hands to touch him though he were as if in another country and could do naught to save me now. Richardson grabbed the arm, pinching me, and a man that was the sheriff’s assistant at the compter in Cheapside took hold of the other. ‘Forgive me, Pierre. The truth was not mine to own!’
The words were all in the world I could say, but were not the ones I would choose. I yearned to tell him I chose to travel a different road but for only a short stretch: our paths would lie side by side until we met again, and that he was right and I should not have meddled. I longed to take every written word back, until, as a fog coming down heavy upon me, surrounding me, memories of the disgusting treatment of prisoners came back. The smell of the holes in Corral’s legs filled my nose and I knew I could not have done otherwise.
Pierre did not stop his sobbing. One of Captain Richardson’s men shouted, ‘Take that squealing pig outside!’ They grabbed hold of him and dragged him out of the side door, crying and helpless as a newborn. His whimpers peeled back the veil of my composure so that I was nearly undone. I had done him such wrong.
The more I struggled, the tighter they held me and the more they hurt me. When they had him away out of sight and I could no longer hear him. I was alone in the world. Without Pierre, I was nothing. All fight went from me. I stopped struggling against my captures, lifted my head, and said, ‘What gives you pause, my good man? My room for the night awaits me!’
‘You cannot talk your way out of this as you did the noose!’ The sheriff yanked my arm.
‘Neither will you pay your way with coins taken from a book that spoke false against us, Midwife.’ Richardson spoke between clamped teeth. ‘You know what is to become of you?’
Richardson could not be clearer. For speaking against him and his guards, not only could I expect revengeful treatment in that darksome place, but he would take the greatest of pleasure if it came out worse for me.
Screams of that poor tortured man, Prance – though he lied I knew the truth of it – came to me then and made me cringe back like a dog in his hold. What if they were to place me in his stead? What if they would torture me as they did him? What if they put me on the rack or made me wear a hat of spikes? How would I bear it! They might put me in the Strong Room, with the rats and the putrid stench of rotting bodies! Truly, I could not bear it! I begun to pray as I had never prayed before, but my prayers were interrupted by a brutal tug forward by my guards.
I stumbled. They returned me to my feet.
Then I did the only thing I could do. I walked with my head proud as they allowed me, two tough men with blacksmith’s muscles, riding roughshod over a defenceless old woman. I suspected the way they pulled and pushed me between them was so it seemed to the crowd I put up a struggle. I allowed them to play me as a puppet, for I did not, could not, fight them. It would only have added to their pleasure.
Had the judges still been present, I was certain they would turn a blind eye to what next happened, so I did not wish them there.
A women wearing a familiar red cloak spat on me and snarled, ‘Popish traitor!’
I had not time to grasp the knife of hate that cut my heart before another person did the same. This time the spittle fell close to my eye. As earlier, I could not wipe it away. Richardson and the other man each held an arm at both the elbow and the wrist. They dragged me toward the door along an aisle between iron barriers, equal in strength against the half-starved drudges from Cheapside as the lords and ladies from the West End.
It transpired, the bar was no more protection for either prisoner or public than a stone on the ground was a barrier to walking a country path. As we passed, a merchant of large stature climbed over it and jumped to the ground in my path. His clothes showed signs of travel: foreign lace, a hat of Dutch style, and breeches more loose than was fashionable.
Richardson grinned, exposing his rare broken and rotten teeth for the first time. Either some prisoner had fought back against his tyranny or he too often found himself in trouble at his local public house.
‘What would you do to her?’ he asked, not hiding his desire for severity in whatsoever it would be.
‘That whore is the Devil’s work! Hang her!’ He pointed at me, as if any doubted his meaning. ‘She sets herself against the king. When she failed to take his life, she besmirched his name and that of our countrymen.’
‘Morcock.’ Richardson turned to the man on my other arm, ‘‘Tis most unfortunate our eyes are only two and we cannot see what hides behin
d our backs.’ He winked at the other man. No other part of his face moved.
Morcock answered with deceptive lightness and so fast, showing that this was not rehearsed as a play.
‘Aye, Captain,’ he said. ‘‘Tis regrettable we are not blessed with the many eyes of that long-legged insect the spider, for then we might see what treachery lies deep in this tangled web in every direction.’ The men laughed at their secret, but I understood their code, as well as the merchant. They then both turned their backs on the man, as if discussing something together, whilst leaving me facing him.
Then came the spy-rat Stevens, so I was surrounded by four men, and derided by many more behind them.
Stevens spat the words, ‘You weather-beaten lying whore. What gives you cause to blacken my name! How did I wrong you?’
As certain as the cart follows the horse, if I had defended myself and told how he had tried to catch me out and tarnish me with false accusations (for I never did admit to writing my book to him, no matter what he said), my life would be worse than dire. And, no matter what they did to me, there was no thing I could do or say to prevent them from doing what they would to me. I could only worsen my situation by adding to their ire. So, I pursed my lips and refused to be baited.
The spittle fell, a tear of derision, down my cheek.
‘Talk, woman! Silence does not befit you! What ails your tongue; can it not move with a fork in it?’
‘Make her sing!’ shouted my good friend Bess, the croaking creature with a good arm for throwing stones. ‘I never heard a snake sing!’
I silently cursed the ungodly toad for wishing me tortured. Such words might give any of these men the confidence to draw the blood she bayed for.
I saw the merchant throw his fist at my chest. I shifted my body so he struck my arm instead.
‘Go to Italy where you belong, Popish whore!’
A woman ducked under the bar and came at me. She grabbed the corner of my old cloak and tugged at it. My beloved cloak. I prayed it would not give. With the carrying voice of a boat horn, she said, ‘Take off your cloak, whore! ‘Tis the scarlet for a midwife, not a loose-lipped strumpet!’
They all laughed. I swallowed down the lump that seemed forever to stick in my craw and stop my breath. They mocked my profession. It would not be the first or last that the two trades were pinched as one.
How dare they mock the profession that was all I had in the years after losing my first husband at the Battle of Leghorn, then again when my second husband sought the excitement of a foreign land leaving me to fend for the children and myself. The trade Pierre allowed me practice even when I had no further need of it.
Though my notebooks recorded so many losses, my ledgers attested to the wives and babies I had saved over the years. I was married to the art as much as to my husband. I could not delight more in the precious gift the Lord gave with each new life in the world, and for the skill he gave me to save mother and babe when delivery was difficult. That gave me purpose and earned me esteem amongst the Catholics.
It twisted my gut to hear such loose talk of my kind. But this was not a thing I had luxury to dwell on at this time. I should keep my wits on their game. Nay, I would not show them fear. I would not give them satisfaction of that.
Other persons climbed beneath the bar on either side of the aisle and gathered around me. The woman pulled at my cloak harder. Despite every intention otherwise, I could not help but defend myself.
‘Unhand me!’ I cried. I tried to pull the cloak from her hand by stepping back, but it was curled tight in her fingers and all that my action achieved was to make the Beast of the crowd more rowdy.
Then a hairy arm reached behind my head and grabbed the hood of my cloak, pulling it with such strength the clasp cut sharp into my throat like the back of a sword. Still feigning ignorance, neither Richardson nor Morcock did a thing to prevent it. Whatever the Beast did to me, these two would neither see nor oblige themselves to prevent. They had openly invited the crowd to do as they would with me.
My own cloak strangled me so I thought I would die. I could not draw breath and lights sparkled before my eyes. Darkness filled in from the edges. I could do nothing to help myself except turn my neck and protect my throat but a little; my arms were held still and I could not undo the clasp or pull away. What irony if I should die by the cloak I lived by.
My head turned and turned with the lack of air, and I fell into a whirlpool, the relief of near darkness, a faint. Another person, or perhaps the same, grabbed my cap, pulling the pins from my hair so it fell loose to my shoulders. Hands, all over me, pulled and tugged at my clothes and any thing that hung loose. I no longer cared. Life was distant.
I was back in ’78, with the Atterburys beating the very life from me. The blows were theirs as well as of all here. Even from the dark place I hid, I felt the pain, not of being struck, but of being so hated for a truth they could not bear. Still, I was held tight and did not fall. I was a punch bag for all fear and hatred.
‘Give her the boot!’ A woman far away wished for a piece of me, but could not reach. As if that was their signal, any that once held back were all over me.
I opened my eyes a crack and saw boots and shoes kick at my legs until my skin tore. My legs no longer held me. I stood only by the support of Richardson and Morcock that, rather than moving me from this lynch mob, shoved me amongst them.
Nails scratched at my face, and I closed my eyes to save them. My scalp screamed when some of my hair was pulled from the roots. My weak whisper of, ‘Lord save me!’ was lost in raucous jeers and taunts and laughter and bared teeth. Then the clasp of my cloak gave way, and coldness surrounded me as the mark of my profession was whipped away, leaving my soul naked and vulnerable.
‘My cloak!’ I tried to grab it back, but it was too soon gone from my reach. I had only desolation to wrap around me. If once I had fight, it deserted me. Why did the Lord God not take me now, and save me from further pain? I prayed silently for release, but release did not come. If he would not take me, why would he not let me fall into that darkness that surrounded me? If he had forsaken me, why should I care where I fell.
Thank the Lord Pierre was taken away and was spared to see what they did to me! If it did not break his heart, he might have been so angry he would have tried to protect me, and would also have been beaten. His body would not have taken what mine already had.
But I also yearned that he were here to defend me.
That anyone would defend me.
I hung from the arms of the two gaolers that still did not remove me from this unlawful beating. Still the puppets near me did as others bid them:
‘Give her one from me!’
‘Get me a handful of hair. A fairer relic I will not find!’
‘Take that shame from her face!’
Laugh all you like, you will not break me, I thought from a far-away place. One day, people might think for themselves, not think what they are told to think! Not do as they are told to do.
That day was not this day.
Some person, perhaps two, had my hair again, pulling all ways, so I thought I might lose my scalp. The pulling, and kicking, and punching would have unbalanced me had I not been held so tight upright. As if realising that, perhaps on a sign to each other, as one they both let go of me, and I fell face down to the floor and caught a mouthful of so much dry dust, the more I coughed the more I suffocated.
I was straightaway caught in a storm, buffeted and battered in every direction. My legs and arms took hits all over. Why would the Lord not take me from this pain! At the least, blows no longer maimed my front and, if I died here, I would still have enough of my face for them to know who it was they martyred.
Not for the sake of a conscience – a mob had none – my slow murder suddenly ceased. I was suddenly grabbed by my arms and pulled to my feet. I could not stand for my legs were dead to me.
>
Someone, Perhaps Richardson or Morcock, I dared not open my eyes to see, placed his head through my right armpit, and heaved me up from the ground. There was silence, or seemed to be. For a moment I thought he had stuck a knife in my chest, but soon realised the pain came from within. My ribs, broken once before, were broken twice over.
‘C’mon Morcock. Quick, grab t’other arm.’
So it was Richardson that had plucked me from the ground. The other one, his apprentice, followed suit and lifted the other side. My toes caught and bounced on the floorboards as they walked. Through a crack between my lashes, I watched the ground pass beneath me as if I floated face down in a river, the floor a blurred riverbed far below. Perhaps I could die now. Had I not punishment enough?
‘You there, what betide this woman?’ The well spoken voice might have been familiar, but I could not recall whence it came, nor from whom. The next voice I knew well. It was Richardson’s.
‘She fainted m’Lord. We’re taking her back to Newgate to recover her.’
‘Begad! Fainted you say? She appeared to be in fine spirit earlier!’
‘It must have been the heat that did it, sir.’
‘Really? I thought she fared well in it before.’
‘Or maybe it was her husband, Sir. He made such a lot of noise so they had to take him away.’
‘Strange. Very strange. I cannot see a strong woman such as this fainting over such a thing. It appears she has been truly raked over. What happened here, man? And where be her red cloak – the mark of her trade she is wont to wear – she recently wore in the stand?’
So, he did know of me. Who was this man?
After a short silence Morcock said, ‘A man ran away with it, My Lord. We could not recover it, because we were minding the prisoner.’
The Popish Midwife Page 33