by L. A. Meyer
I take Jesse up to the woman and say, "Please, Mum, I got this here baby and he's gonna die if he don't get milk regular and I can't give it to him, but there's a woman up the street who can for a shillin' a week. Oh, please, Miss, I know you Quakers do good all over the world. Can't you do good for this one poor little tyke what don't ask for much and—"
"Come, Elizabeth," says one of the men. "You, girl, get away, please."
"Aw, Miss, I know you're tryin' to help those poor wretches in the prison there, but why not help this poor little wretch out here, only one shillin' a week and you're sure to go straight to Heaven for it, I know you will, I—"
"Be off, girl, we are on important work here," says another of the men, severely.
"What could be more important than baby Jesse here?" I wail, tears pouring out of my eyes. "Look at 'im, he's a good baby, he's—"
"Elizabeth."
"One moment, please, Friend Fry," says the young woman. "I will speak with the girl." She stoops down to talk to me, eye to eye. "How came you by this baby?"
"I found 'im in a rubbish bin, Miss. No one else wanted 'im, but I did and I'm tryin' to keep 'im alive, but I can't without milk, I can't..."
She seems to be considering this and I look over at the prison and I say, "I can get in there anytime you want, Miss, really, I can. Me and me pals have always gotten in there. And ... and ... if you need messages passed back and forth, I can do it and ... and I can read and write, and if you want to pass a message to one what can't read, then I can read it for 'im, and if you need word from some cove inside what can't write, then you can give me a piece o' paper and I can write down what that cove had to say and bring it out to you, and—"
"All right, child, enough," says the young woman, rising. "Where is this wet nurse of yours?"
"Right up the street there, Miss. Her name's Mrs. Little, and bless you, Miss, bless you."
We walk, an unlikely parade of Quakers and urchins, up the street, and the young woman confronts Mrs. Little.
"My name is Elizabeth Gurney. Will you feed that baby for one shilling a week as this child states?"
"I will," says Mrs. Little.
"Good. Then do it," says Elizabeth Gurney, opening her purse. "And you," she says to me, "how may we contact you when we need your services?"
And so began my time as messenger for the Quakers, or Society of Friends, as they preferred to be called. It was easy for us to worm our way into the prison. Heck, we had always done it ... Well, the others done it, but I always held back 'cause I couldn't stand to see the poor condemned criminals in there, waiting their turns to be hanged. Oh, it warn't the criminal part that bothered me—after all, I was a criminal, too—no, it was the hanging business that got me. Y'see, I've always had this fear, this dread that bein' hanged was gonna be my fate at the end of it all—and given my way of life and all that, it wasn't such an out-of-the-way suspicion. But I felt that it was my duty, since I was the one what brought Jesse into our midst, and so I had to go down into those dank tombs and do what was asked of me.
"And such horrors did I see there that I cannot relate them to you, my sisters, for fear of destroying the sweetness of your sleep."
Anyway, with Mrs. Little and her Thelma and Betty, and my chewed-up bits of food to get Jesse fully weaned, the little lad prospered. He became the darling of the kip, the pride of the gang, and the joy of all, for he was just the best baby—he seldom cried and never complained. When his teeth started coming in and hurt him in doing so, Charlie went out to see the Dodger and came back with a bottle of Mother's Little Helper, and we rubbed it on Jesse's sore gums and it fixed him right up—made him sleep good, too, with a little smile on his face.
"And I know that you loved the baby, too, Hughie, from the way you played with him and rode him around on your shoulders. You was big, Hughie, and you could be rough, but none could have been gentler with Jesse."
But, no, it was not to last, for October turned into November and November into December and Christmas was around the corner and the land was turnin' to the cold, and one night when Jesse was between Charlie and me in bed in the kip, the rags and straw all pulled up, but not doing much good, Charlie said what I feared but didn't want to hear. "You know, Jesse ain't gonna make it through the winter. It's just gonna get too cold. He'll start shiverin' one night, catch the chill, and be dead in the mornin', and we'll just have to take him down to the Thames and float 'im off."
I sniffle and gather Jesse to me and say it ain't gonna be so, but I know what Charlie says is true. We ain't gonna be able to keep Jesse warm enough, what with the gang going from blacksmith's hearth to Saint Paul's basement crypt to any of the other dodges we did to keep ourselves alive through the cruel winter.
I'm thinking mightily on this problem, but I come up with nothing.
"What's that, Helen? Why not take him to an orphanage? Oh, Sisters, there were no orphanages, or none where a street kid could be dropped off. Don't you think we might have gone to one if we could? Nay, it was live hard and die young for such as us, make no mistake about that."
The wind come across the Thames real cold on this particular day, and I set out to get Jesse a blanket—if I could find one—to hold off the inevitable a while longer, and so I went back up onto my perch above the little family that lived so happily down below to see if they could spare a blanket, as they had once spared a diaper, and when I got there, I was met with a great shock.
As I looked over the edge, I saw a black crepe ribbon on the door, and even as I looked, the door opened and people came out—first, the young husband, then the wife, who was being held up by an older man and woman, and then others, bearing a small white coffin. I knew they were going to Saint Paul's, and all would come back, except for the coffin and the child held inside it.
I sat there for a while, looking down. There was wash on the line in the cold December air—the young woman's mother must have come to her daughter in her time of grief to help where she could, and what she could do was cook and console and do the laundry and hang it up outside. What else could she do, except the homey things that might bring some comfort to the bereaved girl?
I looked at the wash flapping in the breeze. I looked at the black crepe ribbon. I thought about the young family I had so admired, so envied, so loved.
Then I went down and stole the baby's blanket.
Chapter 47
It was a nice blanket. It was a light blue, with pink needlework along the edges and tiny white flowers in the center and...
"Do you want me to go on? I told you I was a criminal, didn't I? Yes, so you should not have been so shocked at my action. And I might have had some other use for the blanket in mind. Maybe I had a plan forming in my head—did you think that might have been possible, oh, you who are so quick to condemn me? Shall I go on? All right, then..."
I kept an eye on the young man and young woman who had lost their baby. He went out each day to work and his wife resumed her chores, she did, but she did it without joy. She no longer sang, and sometimes, when she thought no one was around, she'd sit down on her steps and cry, rocking back and forth in her grief.
On the Sunday following the funeral, I took Jesse up for his breakfast at Mrs. Little's and then left him in the loving care of Judy, happily snugged in his new blanket. Then I went to check on the still-grieving parents to see if they would keep on going to church, now that God had taken their joy. They did, a downhearted two instead of a joyous three, but they did. And I had to know that.
"No, Rebecca, I couldn't just walk up to them and give them the baby. Don't you think I would have done that if I could, for Jesse's sake, as it was growing colder by the day and we'd see no more warm days till spring? No, the husband would have taken one look at me in my rags and filth, and he'd have refused to take him in. The same with leaving Jesse on their steps and knocking on the door and running away. Nay, there had to be another way to do it. Now, dear, pray let me continue."
Saint Paul's Cathedral sat like a huge fortress in the
middle of its own open square, with no other buildings near it and no way into its fastness. Or so thought the smug bunch of tightfisted priests who ran the place, the same bunch who would not let us in the door for services, nor give us any money from the poor box, though you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone poorer than we were. The cheap sods.
It serves them right that the Rooster Charlie Gang found a way in.
There is a graveyard on the river side of the cathedral with the usual gravestones and markers, and a few of them are those little stone houses—mausoleums, I think they're called—where people stick the bodies of their dead 'cause they don't want to put them in the ground with the poor folk.
Anyway, about two years before, on a warm summer's day, when Charlie and me is out on our own tryin' to scare up a little action, we go up a side alley and come out on that graveyard. We go to cut across it on our way to the Bull and Boar Tavern to see what's shakin' there, when we see this bloke dressed in a long priest's cassock come walking through the yard toward us. Charlie grabs my arm and pulls me behind a large tombstone so's we can watch and see what the fellow is up to.
He walks along, then he stops in front of one of those mausoleums, one that's got some bushy trees around the doorway, hiding it, like. He looks about him, as if to make sure no one is about, then he steps behind the bushes. We hear the faint jingling of a ring of keys, the creak of a door opening and shutting, then silence.
A slow grin works its way across Charlie's face. "It's a priest hole," he says.
I ask what that means, and Charlie explains, "It's from back in the old days, when Protestants were runnin' around killin' Catholics and vice versa, all in the name of God, of course. Sometimes a churchman had to get out quick and secretlike, before the mob nabbed 'im for a roastin'. So a lot o' churches, and even some houses, had secret escape tunnels, called 'priest holes.' Get it?"
I got it, and Charlie got out his little lock-pickin' kit he kept tucked in his blue vest, next to his shiv, and we creep over and duck into the bushes where we saw the man disappear. Charlie runs his hand over the door and peers at the lock, and then chooses a pick and sticks it in.
"Are you sure about this, Charlie?" I say. "What if he's in there?"
"Wot? In there payin' a visit to 'is great-great-grandmum? Nah, 'e was out gettin' 'imself a nip, 'e was, or else 'e's got a lady friend out there somewhere 'e don't want 'is vicar to know about." He pulls out another pick and puts it in next to the first. "Ha!" he says as the lock clicks and the door swings open. "I knew it'd be easy. I mean, who wants to break into a crypt? Come on."
We step inside. With the door open and letting in some light, we can see that there is an opening in the floor and stone stairs leading down into darkness. There does seem to be a few real tombs in here, as well, and on top of one sit several oil lamps, along with a flint striker. Charlie takes a lamp, lights it, closes the door, and heads down the stairs, with me followin' a bit fearfully, I can tell you.
The stairs go down about twenty feet and then there is a door. This door is not locked and Charlie carefully looks in. "Good. It's what I thought it would be. It's the catacombs." He opens the door and we go in.
It is a long, long tunnel of stone, probably as long as the church itself, and on either side are shelves, and on the shelves are stone coffins, and on top of some of them are dead bodies just laid out in the open. Charlie's lamp shines on the face of one whose head is to the side so the gaping eye sockets of the skeleton look right at me. I whimper and grab on to Charlie's hand.
"Now, now, Little Mary," he says, soothingly, "these churchmen won't bother you. It's the ones upstairs you've got to worry about." But I ain't convinced ... There's one what ain't been dead too long, his eyes sunken, the skin on his face like brown leather. Oh, God, there's one that—
But finally we come to the end, and there's another flight of stairs going up, and up them we go. When we reach the top, there's another door, and Charlie puts his ear to it and listens. Then he opens it. He puts the lamp down on the top step and steps out, with me hangin' on to him like a leech.
We have come out into the great, silent cathedral itself, in an aisle to the side. Light pours in through the grand stained-glass windows and the row of windows that go around the base of the great dome high overhead. Charlie heads down the aisle toward the entrance, toward where he knows the poor box will be. There's a foyer, and there's the box. Charlie sticks his hand in. "Damn!" he hisses. "Cheap bastards prolly don't let the money stay in there for even a moment 'fore they pulls it out and go spend it on themselves! Come on, let's see what's behind those doors."
We go back down the aisle and Charlie opens the door at the end of it. "It's where the altar boys hang their robes. Nothing for us there. Let's check the other one."
We cross in front of the huge altar with all the fine things on it and around it. It was probably the richest-looking thing I had ever seen in my life up till then. There's statues there, too, and they're very realistic. That's gotta be Mary and that Joseph, and there's Jesus in His cradle. Charlie's reaching for the handle on the other door when—
"What! Thieves! How the hell did you get in here?" shouts the man who comes out the door to gaze at us, astonished.
"The front door was wide open, Guv'nor!" says Charlie, backing up. "We just come in for some spiritual guidance!" The man charges.
"Run, Mary!" shouts Charlie, making for the front door, but he don't have to tell me, as I'm leaping across pews and down aisles in my desperation to get away.
We make it to the foyer and have the door open, when the man catches both of us by the neck and shakes us about violently. Then he kicks open the door and thrusts us down the stairs.
"Gutter scum!" spits the man as he glares down at us sprawled on the cobblestones.
"Peace be with you, too, Brother," says Charlie, sitting up and then getting to his feet. He reaches down and pulls me up, and grumblin' about the milk of human kindness and all, we head on down to the Bull and Boar.
So, though we didn't get anything we could sell or eat that day, we got something even more valuable—now we knew how to get into the place, anytime we wanted. And some of the times we wanted to were on those nights, in the dead of winter, when it got too unbearably cold to be out and huddled about the banked fires of the blacksmiths. On those freezing nights, our gang would creep into Saint Paul's through the priest hole to find some warmth, and we were grateful for it.
On this morning, this morning of Christmas Day, I take up Jesse and have him say good-bye to the Rooster Charlie Gang, there under Blackfriars Bridge. He giggles and coos and waves his arms about as Judy and Nancy each kiss him on the forehead and say, "Good-bye, Jesse," and brush away tears from their eyes. "Bye, baby," says Polly, hardly more than a baby herself. Jesse grabs one of Hughie's big fingers as he pats the boy on his head by way of farewell. Then Charlie and Jesse and me leave the kip and head up into the town.
I had gone down to the river this morning and washed my face and hair as best I could with a bit of soap that Charlie had got from somewhere. Then I went back to the kip and Judy combed my hair out straight with the comb that we had borrowed off Mrs. Little last evening, when Jesse had his last supper with her. We then put some Mother's Little Helper on his gums and gave him a little sip, besides, right out of the bottle.
Jesse falls into a sound sleep as Charlie and I walk along. We go up Earl to Saint Andrew Street and then up that alley to the churchyard of Saint Paul's Cathedral and to the entrance to the priest's hole. Charlie opens the door and lights the lamp and leads the way through the catacombs to the door at the other end. Again he listens, then opens the door, and I step through, holding the wrapped-up Jesse in my arms.
"Good luck, Mary," whispers Charlie.
"Thanks, Charlie. You'd best go back now," I whisper in return. He nods and retraces his steps out of the church.
It's a good hour before Christmas service is to begin, and there is no one in the great room. I can hear the priests off
in their vestry, prolly puttin' on their gear.
I hurry down the aisle to the little room holdin' the altar boys' robes. I put down the slumbering Jesse, choose one of the garments, and pull it over my head. I pick Jesse back up and head for the altar, my heart thumpin' madly in my chest—to get caught now would ruin everything.
I dash across in front of the altar and see that they have now placed the Nativity scene directly in front of it. I, quick, pull the statue of the Baby Jesus out from under his swaddling clothes, say, "I'm sorry, Jesus, but I think You'll understand," and I put baby Jesse in the cradle in His place. I rush the Baby Jesus statue back into the robe room and stick it under some velvet material that lies folded on a shelf.
I go back to Jesse and tuck him in carefully. He certainly is sleeping soundly. I lean down to plant a last kiss on his brow and then turn to go make myself scarce. I figure I'll head up into the choir to watch what happens from there and—
"You, there, boy. What are you doing?"
I freeze. There is a man standing there. A man in church robes. A deacon or a sexton.
"I-I was just giving my devotions, Sir. To the Baby Jesus," I stammer.
"Who are you? I've not seen you before." He peers at me closely.
"I've come in from the country, Sir. I'm Henry Hat-field. I'm with Father Philpott. To be here on this special day. The Reverend Philpott's off having his breakfast, Sir."
"Ah. Very well," he says, apparently satisfied. "Well, let's get started, shall we? Open the Gospel to Luke 2:1. Then we'll bring out the other things."
What other things? I'm thinking, as I go up on the altar and open the Bible and feverishly flip through. Ah, there's Luke ... I thumb through three pages and there it is, Luke 2. As I'm doing it, I see some other boys come in and go to the robe room and put on their vestments. Hope one don't notice his is missin'.
I can hear the crowd gathering outside, and the church bells are starting to ring. The boys, now robed, come up to me and ask who I am and I say, "Henry Hat-field, in from the country to help out," and they say, "All right."