by L. A. Meyer
Hughie kneels down by him and lets Jesse grab his big fingers in his tiny hands. "I like 'im," says Hughie, grinning hugely. Everything Hughie did was huge.
"Christ, Mary, what next?" says Charlie. "Last year it was them three kittens..."
"Right, and I raised them up proper, with no cost to the gang, and now all three are off leading good cat lives. And they gave us all a bit o' joy when they was here. I remember you playing with 'em, too, Rooster Charlie, and don't say you didn't."
"But you don't know nothin' 'bout raisin' babies, Mary, you don't. You think you know everything, and don't deny that, but you don't know how to raise babies," says Charlie, his mouth a grim line of certitude.
But I am stubborn. "What should I do? Put 'im back to die so's Muck can cart 'im off to Dr. Graves's Fine Exhibition of Guts in a Jar? Should I do that, Charlie Brewster? Should I?"
"We could leave 'im on a doorstep," says Charlie. "See if someone takes 'im in."
"They won't do that, Charlie," I says. "They'll think that he has diseases, since he comes from the likes of us. Nobody's gonna take 'im in 'cept us, and that's the truth."
"Damn!" Charlie groans. "We ain't got trouble enough..."
"But Jesse ain't got no diseases, do you, baby?" says I, taking him back from Nancy and holding him tight. "No, you don't. You're just the best baby that is, and don't you pay that Charlie no mind. You're staying here with me, or"—and here I lean into it—"the two of us will go off alone, together."
Charlie rounds on me. "A threat, is it, Mary? Well, let me tell you this: You're a valuable member of this gang, but you ain't all that rare a thing, and if that brat don't pull 'is weight, and if you slack off in any o' your duties, then you can go, and to hell with both of you!"
"Fine, Charlie," I say. "Has anybody got any food?"
Charlie grumbles but opens his sack and pulls out two-day-old meat pies, a bit of sausage, and half a loaf of hard, stale bread. Quite a haul, I thinks to myself, and it could not come at a better time.
Charlie divides up the stuff in the usual way—carving everything into as equal portions as can be made, then turning around and calling out names as someone else points at one portion or another.
"Polly," he says, and Polly goes and gets hers.
"Mary," he says, and I lean forward and gather up my share.
While the other names are being called and their portions taken, I take a piece of the meat-pie crust and hold it up to Jesse's lips. He don't do nothin', he just shakes his head and turns away.
"Ain't been weaned yet," says Charlie, observing all this. "You'll see ... It ain't gonna be easy."
We have a broken bit of a crockery jug that we keep water in, water we get from the horse trough up on Creed Street. I reach for it, lift it, take a sip, hold it, and then take a bite of the meat pie. I chew it up until it's a pasty glop in my mouth, and then I hold Jesse's lips up to mine and push the chewed-up mess out with my tongue. His lips worm around mine and he takes the food in. When we're done with that, I chew up another batch.
As I'm giving it to him, I see that Charlie is watching me doing it. I know as leader of the gang he's got to be hard sometimes and he knows it, too. But now he heaves a great sigh and his face softens, and as night falls and Jesse is full and burps his contentment and we get ready to go to sleep, Charlie says, "Mary, Mary, quite contrary, what are we gonna do with you? You're just too softhearted for this life we lead, is what it is." He says that and he puts his arm around my shoulder. "Here, let's put him between us as we go to sleep. Then we'll see what tomorrow brings. No promises, now, but we'll see."
As I lie there in the darkness under the bridge with Jesse sleepin' peacefully by me in the crook of my arm and Charlie near on the other side, and Hughie's broad back up against me on my right, the rags and straw pulled over all of us, I think about the way of things and the feel of Jesse's lips as he took the food from my mouth, and I think about how you can get real close to someone when you do that and you ... you ... you ... sleep...
Chapter 46
It is morning and Rebecca will not be put off. "I want to know about those things and I want you to tell me," she announces firmly.
We're being tossed around ferociously by the storm, but only a few of us are stretched out sick. The girls have been told that they are going soon, and now this storm comes to delay things. Still, it's better that they lie here listening to my stories than be out there in a small boat. Had we left earlier, we surely would have been lost.
There will be no Dance class this morning, so I might as well grant Rebecca her wish.
"Very well," I say, "Mother Faber will now conduct a class in The Nature of Things." I'm seated cross-legged on the edge of the Stage, having just finished my bowl of cold gruel. I pat the deck next to me. "Come, Daughter, and sit." She plops down next to me and waits, wide-eyed in anticipation. I look at the child and think, Oh, sweet Rebecca, you ain't gonna like a lot of what you're about to hear.
I clear my throat and begin. "In the mature male of our species—"
"Speak up down there," I hear someone on the Balcony say, and I hear someone else say, "Yeah. We certainly don't want to miss any of this."
Hmmm ... I realize from the silence in the Hold that all of them are listening, and I bet a good half of them are just as ignorant as Rebecca about how a baby gets made and how it enters this world. All right, then. I raise my voice to be heard over the howl of the wind outside and begin again.
"Very well. Ahem. Things Your Own Mother Should Have Told You But Plainly Did Not, part one. Ahem. In the adult male of our species, there is..."
I don't have a blackboard or a drawing pad, so I make do with my left hand's thumb and forefinger making a circle and my right hand's forefinger going in and out of that circle again and again—just like Mrs. Roundtree instructed my younger and very worried self a few years back, when I didn't know anything about this stuff, either.
I cover the basics first, about how the baby gets in there in the first place and what happens after that, and then I tell about the other games that people play when they're of a mind to be a bit naughty, and for that I hear "Eeeeeeeuuuwww!" and "I would never do that!" and "That's disgusting!" and "I think you're making all this up!"
"Oh, nay, Sisters, I am not. I got this straight from a Mrs. Roundtree on Malta, and she was definitely an expert in this field"
"But how does the baby get out of there?" asks Rebecca, perplexed.
I take a breath and quickly tell her, and her jaw drops in disbelief, as girls' jaws have for thousands of years upon receiving that particular bit of information.
"But it can't—"
"Oh, yes it can, dear, believe me. I was midwife to the Captain's wife on the Pequod, when she had young Prudence in the midst of a storm very like this one, so I've seen it done with my own eyes."
"Lord...," whispers Rebecca, still stunned.
"Cheer up, lass." I chuckle and clap her on the shoulder. "That sort of thing is a long way off for you"
I stand and say, "Today's lecture is concluded. Thank you for your attention. And, in the spirit of dear old Mrs. Roundtree, each of yiz owes me a shillin'."
Today, for the first time since work on the Plan was begun, there is no one working on any part of it—the fuse is finished and there is no more carving to be done. Even the Dianas do not hunt, because Cookie is not cooking since they don't light the kitchen fires in a blow like this, which is why our gruel was served cold this morning. So no roasted millers today—though probably we'll still liberate a few more bottles of wine, as we have become used to rich living. Some crackers might settle some queasy stomachs, too. While I'm thinking on this, I reflect again on how lucky we are not to have gone several days ago and so gotten caught up in this storm. But the fuse was not done yet, thus we did not go to our doom. Now, however, the fuse is done and coiled and stowed and waiting in the powder magazine for the right time. That will be when the weather lets up, if it ever does.
The day drags
slowly on.
Constance Howell's Bible reading was that part in Genesis where God kicks Adam and Eve out of Eden for being bad, and it being mainly Eve's fault, He tells her He's gonna punish her by making it so that it hurts like hell when she and all her descendants have babies—and so it is to this very day, thank you very much, Eve. Which I thought was a rather nice follow-up to my little lecture of the morning. Course I know she chose that bit to show what indulging in any of that nastiness I had been tellin' them about would get you, which is screaming your lungs out on the birthin' bed, but, hey, that's all right.
The flaps come down on yet another day at the Bloodhound Academy, Hepzibah leads us in a nice rendition of Anerio's Venite ad Me Omnes, and then I continue my story.
I had told you before of the place high on a rooftop that I used to favor when I had to hide out for a bit, it having a nice safe rain gutter between two gables for sleepin' in and a good view of what was happening in the streets, but there was somethin' else about the place that I liked, as well. Off the back of this building I could look down into this square where there was a small house in a neat yard. A man lived there with his wife and baby son. The husband must have been a clerk or something, 'cause he wore a suit of clothes every day when he went out, and not workingman's garb. She was a pretty, young thing, bustling about, sweeping off the front steps, or washing windows, or hanging out laundry. When she hung out the wash, she would have the baby in a basket next to her and she would sing to him and laugh, and the baby would chortle back at her, waving his arms and legs about as babies will do when they are happy. I think I liked watching this family 'cause I imagined myself bein' one of 'em, and bein' cared for and all. They used to get dressed up on Sunday mornings and go down to Saint Paul's for church. I know, 'cause I followed 'em down there once.
Anyway, it was to that rooftop, up above that family's house, that I hied myself the morning after bringing Jesse to the kip. When I had woken up, a quick check of Jesse showed that the boy needed to own more than one diaper, and I meant to get him one. So, leaving him in the care of Nancy, up to the rooftop I go.
Peeking over the edge, I see that, indeed, the young wife has hung out six nappies, all in a row on a line. Making sure there's no one about, I jump from this roof to one lower and then one lower than that, and finally I shinny down a drainpipe to the ground, right next to the clothesline. I, quick, run over, grab one, pull it off, and then run like hell. Sorry, Missus, but as you had six or more, me Jesse had only one. Now two...
"Yes, Connie, a thief as well as a tramp, and you already knew that. May I continue?"
Back at the kip, me and Nan take Jesse down to the Thames and wash off his bottom and rinse out the nappy he was wearin' when he come to join our merry band. I took off my shift and dried him with it and then carried him back to the kip. It bein' the middle of September, things was right warm, so it was no hardship to any of us. Then we put his new nappy on him and tied up the sides and hung up the wet one in the kip, and I hung up my damp shift next to it.
There's three whistles—our gang's signal—and Charlie comes back into the kip, with Judy and Polly. He sees the laundry hangin' there.
"Christ. A bloody nursery ... That this should happen to a man of my stature...," he says, and tosses a bread roll at each of us. Inside each roll is a bit of sausage. Such riches.
"Where'd you get this, Charlie?" asks I, lookin' at the wonderful roll in my hand.
"Benbow's had some heavy work to do, lifting stones and such, so we traded Hughie for the day in exchange for this grub. Lay to. Hughie's gettin' 'is at the job."
And we do...
"And yes, Hughie, once again you saved the day."
I chew up a mouthful and reach for the water jug, but Charlie stops my hand and says, "You swallow that, you," 'cause he knows what I'm up to. "Now."
I pretend to swallow, then take the jug, chew up roll and sausage and water, and tongue it out to Jesse's waiting mouth. Charlie snorts and goes over to sit down and eat his portion.
When me and Jesse are done, I pat his back and he burps and then puts his face on my shoulder and goes to sleep, just like that. He is an awfully good baby.
After all have eaten, Charlie stands back up and grabs my shift and throws it at me. "C'mon, you," he says. "And bring the damn kid." I slip on my shift and hoist Jesse onto my hip and follow Charlie out and up North Bridge. I'm a mite fearful, 'cause I know Charlie don't approve of me havin' this baby at all, and so I clutch Jesse a little closer to me as we walk along.
Charlie don't say nothin', which is not a good sign. We turn right on Ludgate and there's a bit of a crowd there among the vendors' stalls.
"Try 'im here," says Charlie, and he goes to lean against a wall.
I go out and get to work.
I put my hand out and say, "Please, Mum, please! Jesse here's gonna die if he don't get some milk," and, "Please, Sir, can you see it in your heart to give us a penny for Jesse's milk, please, Sir?" "Oh, Missus, you got a young one just like mine—please, a little somethin' for some milk," and on and on.
Finally someone pushes a coin into my palm and I look at it and it's a ha'penny. Not much, but somethin'. "Oh, thank you, Missus, thank you..."
Charlie comes up to us and says, "All right, we're done here. Let's go."
And so we walk, not back to the kip as I would have thought but up Old Bailey and up to Newgate. Charlie don't say nothin' for a long time and I don't, neither. Jesse coos by my side, lulled by the rollin' action of my hip.
"You know, Mary," says Charlie, finally, "you are a very valuable member of our gang, and you are very dear to me, as well." He lets that hang for a while. "But now you seem intent on starvin' yourself to death on account o' this baby." Another pause. "Now, you got to know that this baby is going to die, anyway, 'cause he's got to have milk, and not just bread mixed with your spit is gonna do it, and we don't have any milk. You know that, don't you, Mary?"
"Yes, Charlie, I know that, but I ain't givin' up hope yet. I still think he could be valuable to the band in the way o' beggin', I do," says I.
Charlie sighs and we continue on.
"We're gettin' right close to Shanky turf here, y'know," I says, lookin' around for signs o' the scum.
"I know," says Charlie, "but we're here now. Good day to you, Mrs. Little!"
I'm shocked to see Charlie bowing low to a woman sitting on her front steps, with an infant on her huge left breast, who is sucking, quite happily and quite loudly, away.
"Ah, and if it ain't Rooster Charlie Brewster, his own-self, God's gift to the streets o' Cheapside," says this woman, two hundred and fifty pounds if she's an ounce. "And I see you got yerself a brat. Ain't surprised at that, I ain't."
"Ah, well, Missus, that we do, and he's sore in need o' that product that you can so amply provide."
"Get on wi' you, Charlie. I can't afford to take in unpayin' clients, and I know you ain't got a pot to piss in nor a window to throw it out of," says the woman. "My girls 'ere, Thelma on the right and Betty on the left, are me sole support in this hard world. Can't expect me to give it away, now, can you?"
"Please, Missus," I pipes up. "'E's gonna die if he don't get some."
"Now, now, dearie, you save that guff for your marks or your nobs, not for me."
"Give me the coin," says Charlie to me.
Surprised, I hand it over. "That's gang money, Charlie, I don't expect you to—"
"We wouldn'a got it 'cept for the kid," says Charlie, flipping the coin in the air and catching it right in front of the woman's nose. "So, what, Mrs. Little, would be the charge to put this wee one on one o' your girls for a bit?"
"The charge, Charlie, is one shillin' a week."
My heart sinks. One shilling. A king's ransom to us.
Charlie nods gravely. I think he brought me and Jesse up here so we could see the desperation of our situation. "But what will one ha'penny buy right now?" he asks, holding up the coin.
"Oh, give it over, and give 'im o
ver, too," says Mrs. Little, taking the coin and taking Jesse as I hand him to her.
She pulls down the right shoulder of her shirt, exposing the breast named Thelma, and Jesse clamps right on, his little hands pumping away.
"Oh, he's a greedy one, he is," says Mrs. Little.
"Charlie, I'm gonna love you forever," says I, my eyes filmy with tears, and I means it.
"Awright, that's it. That's one ha'penny's worth an' more," says Mrs. Little, and Jesse's mouth come off her with a loud pop!
She hands him back to me and I thank her and I hold him to me.
"Pat 'is back to burp 'im, dearie, or he'll spit up all that good pap you just paid for," says Mrs. Little, and I do it and he does burp. I can smell his breath and I reflect—today, into his mouth I have put bread, sausage, water, spit, and a good deal of Mrs. Little's bounty, and still his baby breath smells as sweet as any flowers. I hold him to me as we leave Mrs. Little.
"So you see, that's the way of it," says Charlie, his arm around my shoulders. "We can't do a shilling a week, and unless you can figure another way..."
I know the truth of what he's saying, but I will not accept it, not yet I won't, now that Jesse's got a full belly and is good for another day, at least. Then I look up the street and see the hated gates of Newgate Prison. There are some black-clad people outside the gate, and it seems they are being refused entrance to the place.
"What's that about, Charlie?" I ask.
He looks over and says, "Quakers. Do-gooders. Prolly the turnkey won't let 'em in 'cause they make trouble."
"Come on, Charlie, let's go over there," I say, and head up the street. Charlie sighs and follows.
There are five of them. Four men and one woman, a young woman of about twenty-one. They are all dressed in that plain Quaker garb—black suits on the men, a black dress on the woman, white starched collars on all. They seem angry at being denied admittance.