The King's Daughter

by Christie Dickason

  I wanted just to stand and look, feeling invisible and safe in Peter’s trousers, hat and a cloak. Peter Blank could gobble up and remember all these new sights and sensations that the Princess Elizabeth would never be allowed to taste.

  ‘I’m not certain…’ Tallie began, looking back down at our wherry, now taking on passengers for the return crossing.

  ‘I am,’ I said.

  Reluctantly, she turned away from the boat.

  ‘Look at them all,’ she said, as if to herself. She pressed her fingertips to her mouth and stared about her, just as I had done. But before she came to me, this had been her world, I thought.

  I could not imagine how it might be to live here.

  Beggars swarmed like gnats around us and other newcomers, mostly men, who climbed the stairs from other boats. Some already staggered with drink and breathed out fumes of wine and sack. But I also saw women in costly clothes stepping from wherries onto the river steps, wearing masks, offering their hands to the young men in frayed coatswho skipped after them. Older men pushed past with avid mouths above fine linen collars and heavy loose gowns.

  Tallie snarled at a grimy child beggar, waved away a vendor of white clay tabacco pipes and set off at a fierce pace upstream, away from the Bridge, with her hat pulled low over her face.

  I had to run after her. I wanted to say something, to connect us again, but the gap between us felt too wide. What must she have thought of me when we first met, with my ladies and gowns, my careless indifference to everyone around me and my impertinent, invading questions? Small wonder that she had raised her hedgehog spines!

  Men in silks and men in filthy leather sat drinking outside crowded taverns and inns. Women leaned on their shoulders. Other women, not so fine as the arrivals at the stairs, strolled beside the water with seeking glances. Men with watchful eyes leaned on walls. A gang of Flemings pushed past us, shouting and waving wine bottles, calling for a boat back to London. I heard Dutch, French, German and Italian, and tongues I didn’t recognise. I saw white faces, pink faces, black faces and every shade in between.

  I smelt the sweetness of burning tabacco. A forest of pale tendrils twisted up from the white clay pipes of waterside smokers perched on barrels. Inside the inns, smoke from still more pipes and from burning fires hung like a fog. Clearly, my father’s Counterblaste against the terrible demon of tabacco, had had little effect here. I wondered what he thought of this disregard for his orders, when he came to Southwark for the bear-baiting.

  I breathed in other smells of roasting meat, charred fat, piss and ale, coal smoke, wood smoke, and a dense reek of human ordure and sweat.

  My ears throbbed at the din. Shouted greetings. Calls from the water, ‘Oars! Oars here!’ Bellows of rage and curses flung after a dog that slipped past our legs with a chop snatched from a plate. Fiddles warred discordantly from inside thedifferent inns, largely drowned in any case by the shouting of filthy rounds and glees by those who sat drinking in the street.

  The sound of curses mixed with thuds came from a piece of open ground to my left. There I saw a man standing balanced on one leg, his body twisted into an unlikely position, his eyes following his ball in a game of bowls. Then mocking shouts and the exchange of money began. Something familiar at last.

  ‘Is there no curfew here?’ I asked Tallie when I caught up with her.

  ‘Yes.’ She dodged around a seller of broken meats and rushed on. ‘But no one cares to try to enforce it.’

  I looked up at a small unexpected sound, fragile but insistent in the street-level din. Above my head, a finch fretted ‘chip, chip’ in a cage hanging outside an upper window.

  Through it all wove the constant, bellowed orders of vendors to buy, buy, buy! Trays and baskets were shoved in my way. ‘What d’ye lack?’ ‘What d’ye lack?’ Drums? Little dogs? Birds for ladies?

  I could have bought rat traps, love potions, meat pies, fresh water, or the services of a scribe. By the sign he wore, I learned that I could hire a former soldier, now without employment since my father’s peace with Spain, to be my bailiff or watchman. Or I could buy a watch of the purest gold. Or fish hooks.

  Or an assassin, I thought, dropping my eyes before one chilly gaze. I saw now why my father always took a pack of armed men when he left in his royal barge for the Southwark bear-baiting.

  I eyed a man vomiting into the river. He wore ragged wool breeches. I thought of my father on his back at Theobald’s, spewing puddles into his slashed silk velvet sleeves. Appetites did not change with wealth and power.

  My eager curiosity began to darken. Passing alleys, I lookedaway from eyes that touched mine. I felt suddenly too costly in dress and too well-fed. I began to see that those who looked like me were the prey. They brought their appetites here to Bankside where hunger fed on hunger, thinking that they would feed. And became easy victims for every Southwark predator who offered to feed them.

  Here on Bankside was all the dissolution I had ever seen at court, without any of the riches. Every corner and narrow alley was filled with bodies, some asleep, others arranging nests in piles of rags, nursing babies, picking at sores, staring into space.

  Everywhere I looked, I began to see how sex ruled appetites, that thing I feared, the thing I had come to study. I saw it in the eyes of the leaning women and the strolling ones, and in the heaving shadows of the side streets.

  I was still trying to imagine Tallie in this place before she came to Whitehall. I tried to see her among these women, and to fit the girl who must have lived here with the strange magical creature who had first entered my door.

  Then I saw a pocket being picked. And remembered Tallie’s skills with portraits and copied letters.

  She must have felt something of my thoughts, because she paused in her march and gave me an odd smile over her shoulder. ‘I escaped. Imagine that!’

  Before she had gone four more strides, two women stepped in front of her, blocking her way. ‘A black devil!’ said one. She leaned closer to peer into Tallie’s face. ‘And, I do believe, a cross-threaded bitch as well!’

  I walked up beside Tallie.

  ‘A pair of ‘em!’ cried the first woman. ‘We won’t have doxy cheats here.’ She pushed her face into mine. ‘Gentry punks!’ Her breath smelled like a dung hill.

  ‘Trying to steal our livelihood,’ said the second woman. ‘This is our patch. Do you get what I say?’

  Tallie raised her hands. No quarrel.

  ‘Get out, or we’ll tell our man to cut you.’

  Tallie nodded curtly. She stepped forward, forcing the women to let us pass.

  ‘Black witch!’ muttered one of them. Glancing back, I saw her fork her fingers against the evil eye.

  I found that my legs were shaking slightly but Tallie marched on without looking back. ‘This may prove to be dangerous learning that we’re after,’ she muttered.

  A little farther on, a deep rich bass voice, as fine as any I had heard at Whitehall, cut through the clamour. I stopped at the edge of a small crowd. A short, fat man stood on a barrel, singing the history of ‘Clymme of the Clough'. His voice steadied me and lifted my spirits again.

  While I fumbled in my purse for a few pence to buy a copy of his ballad, a mangy cur sniffed at my boots. Looking down at its ragged pelt and its ribs, I could not help thinking of Belle and Cherami, plump and clean, and most likely asleep on the foot of my bed.

  ‘What the devil are you doing?’ Tallied hauled me roughly away by the arm. ‘That’s danger over there!’

  I followed her eyes.

  ‘Don’t gawp, for God’s sake!’ She linked arms with me – two friends out for an evening stroll. ‘Don’t even look his way!’

  At a table outside an inn, sat a tall, broad-shouldered man, ponderous with arrogant command. Once handsome, his face was now badly scarred. Before him stood a much smaller man, head down, hat in hand. Other petitioners waited their turn. I risked a snatched glimpse as we passed. He reminded me of my father receiving favour-seekers at c
ourt, or a judge delivering a sentence.

  A pair of women, waiting their turn to speak to him, stared as we passed, then put their heads close and muttered.

  Tallie kept her head down and tightened her grip on my arm. ‘Dear God…’ she murmured to herself. ‘I’ve taken leave of my senses!’

  ‘Who was…?’

  She dragged me past two more taverns before she answered under her breath.

  ‘That was “their man”… the one those whores threatened would cut us. The upright man of the ward. Takes whatever he wants… demands his share of all the thieves’ takings.’ She swallowed. ‘He breaks all new whores. Those women back there, waiting to speak to him, knew us for female… I had forgot how sharp the eyes are here.’

  She glanced back over her shoulder. ‘What if he had spied us and decided that he wanted you? I should never have brought you here. I forgot too much.’

  ‘He wouldn’t dare harm us when he learned who I am,’ I said, a little out of breath from keeping up with her.

  ‘Oh, my poor chook,’ she said. ‘He’d enjoy you all the more – if he believed you, which he wouldn’t.’ She shook her head. ‘I feared all the wrong things… Then he’d most likely cut your throat and throw you in the river. Who would you call to protect you?’

  ‘I’d tell him what would happen to him.’

  ‘And he’d howl with mirth. And call you mad. Here on Bankside, my boy, you’re just a nameless footman from the wrong side of the river.’

  She stopped and turned me to face her. I looked at her more closely. I had never seen fear in her eyes before and began to understand the enormity of what she had undertaken.

  ‘My la… Peter… This is not Whitehall. And not a jape. I thought to lift your spirits. I’ve already let it go too far.’ She took my arm to turn us back.

  ‘Aren’t we near?’ I asked.

  Reluctantly, she pointed ahead to a large, white house set inside its own high walls. I now saw the risk she was taking in bringing me here. If any mischance struck the first daughter of England and Scotland, Tallie would be responsible. And the upright man might have relished having her too. I had forgot that she could not easily refuse a request from me.

  I didn’t know what to say. ‘You know better than I do,’ I said at last. ‘I’ll do as you decide.’

  She stood staring silently at the white house. ‘You’d go back now, if I said?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Hard as it was to say, I meant it.

  She wavered, not looking at me now. ‘I must make myself very clear. You do understand, don’t you, the nature of the promised oracle? I’m taking you to a brothel.’

  ‘I think that I guessed.’

  She still stood, looking at the house, undecided. Then she snorted. She pulled her hat lower over her face and shook her head.

  We walked on towards the white house hidden behind its wall.

  We had left the worst noise of Bankside behind us. The twin towers of Lambeth Palace were a dark shadow ahead of us on the bend in the river, the inns were larger and set in their own gardens. The waterside here was dark, frequented mainly by strolling couples, foraging dogs and the occasional purposeful walker headed either upstream for Lambeth and beyond, or downstream towards Greenwich and the sea.

  She stared up at the tall, white façade and stepped gables beyond the gated bridge.

  ‘Hey ho,’ she said. ‘Fish Pool House. Here I am again.’

  But she wasn’t there with me at all.

  43

  TALLIE

  I see the smouldering looks launched by the whores at the richly-dressed newcomer and the way he ignores them all. While Mrs Taft is still oozing welcome at him and all those looks bounce off him, I close my book, slip through the door into the gardens behind the former manor house, and crouch behind a rose hedge. I had seen his eyes pick me out from the others.

  ‘Tallie? Little Tallie? Where are you, sweet?’ Mrs Taft calls from the back terrace, terribly civil.

  If I run, I’ll never get away. Stand out too much in any crowd, even here in Southwark. His eyes would have picked me out, no matter what he had come for.

  Feet crunch closed on the garden path.

  ‘Where’s that little black cow?’ ‘Sister’ Meg who works in a wimple and robes, for the fervent Protestants who like to fight religious wars by pretending to ravish a Catholic nun. Now just the other side of the rose hedge. ‘Puss?’ she calls. ‘Here, puss! You must put on your best gown and pack your things. Your time has come at last!’

  I stand up.

  ‘Got her,’ Meg calls to Mrs Taft. ‘Our priceless little Moorish virgin.’ She grabs me by the arm. ‘It’s you he wants. Time to earn back the cost of all those fancy singing lessons and dancing masters.’

  I jerk my arm free and give Meg the Look. Don’t mean to. It just happens. All the rage and fear swirling around in my chest twist together and rise up in a dark fierce beam, up through my throat and behind my cheek bones, and shoot out of my eyes. My eye beams feel like hot steel, like long pointed spears. I stand firm, like a swordsman, holding my blade poised at the enemy’s throat.

  Fear flickers in Meg’s eyes. She lets go of my arm and wipes her hand on her skirt.

  ‘Chook, you must be careful how you glare at people,’ Mrs Taft once told me. ‘Or you’ll be taken for a witch.’ Too late now.

  No one told me where I’m going. Nor for how long. I glance at the man sitting beside me in the private wherry. He keeps space between us even when the boat rolls on a wave and he could easily let himself be thrown against me. He doesn’t lay a hand on my leg, nor even touch my hand. He keeps his eyes averted, almost as if he wishes he weren’t there. He does not behave as if he means to bed me. Perhaps he’s only the agent for the man who’s willing to pay a fortune to take a black maidenhead.

  Either way, he bought me. I saw him put the gold coins into Mrs Taft’s hand. Far too many for a single night, intact maidenhead or not. My lute lies in my lap and my small bundle of possessions at my feet.

  I swallow down a sour trickle that rises into my throat. From the motion of the boat, I tell myself, not fear.

  I glance sideways again. This time, the man is looking at me curiously. He keeps looking after I look back at him, but his glance does not connect with mine.

  As if I’m a dog or horse he’s just bought. I grip the gunwale when the boat rides up and over the wake of a barge, fighting down a wash of panic. I’m not certain I can bear to be bedded by a man who looks at me like that…

  I look down at the distance between us on the seat.

  Nothing feels right. The number of gold coins, far more than I’veever seen paid for the services of any of the other whores, even those schooled in music and dance like me. More than I’ve seen handed over for a prize-winning horse in the market.

  That cool, curious assessment in his eyes. The hint of a shrug as he turns away to look out over the river again. That space between us, when I have been taught that he should be leaning on my shoulder, perhaps sliding his hand under my skirt…

  Cold terror swamps me. I always imagined that when my moment came, it would happen in Fish Pool House with Mrs Taft on the other side of the door, most likely with her ear pressed against it. With the other women nearby, some of them perhaps even wondering how I was fadging. Each remembering her own first time.

  I’m completely at this man’s mercy. Alone, Lord knows where. No friendly women within earshot to hear me if I scream. No watch patrolling the Bankside… if not already inside drinking or tupping one of Mrs Taft’s whores.

  Can’t swim. I look at the dark river water and imagine how it would pull down the weight of my skirts. But even on dry land… where could I go? With my skin, I can’t hide for long. In my best skirt and bodice, and these silk shoes, I can’t even run.

  I press back against the seat, or I might fling myself from the boat. Why not? All that money might have bought my very life. How do I know that he isn’t one of those men the whores whisper about, who
liked to hurt women? Who need to hurt women in order to find satisfaction?

  My bodice squeezes my ribs tighter and tighter.

  You can never tell by looking at them, the other women said. Sometimes the mildest, weakest looking man can be the most vicious. Perhaps that smooth cheek of his, and cleanly barbered chin conceal inner foulness.

  He must surely notice my agitation. Perhaps he enjoys my fear.

  What if he hates me for the colour of my skin? Or secretly fears me? And means to bait me like a beast, to chain me like a bear and set his dogs on me, as I heard from a sailor visiting Fish Pool Housethat the Spanish and French sometimes do with the natives in the West Indies?

  What if he means to kill me?

  Hiding in the garden, I feared losing my maidenhead. Now, I’d take the press and fumble of sexual interest that I’ve seen so often, rather than this chilly indifference that pricks the hair straight up on my arms.

  We near the opposite shore. I stare up at what has always been a low distant cliff face of river walls. The wherry pulls up to the Whitehall Stairs.

  The man leads me through a gate, a maze of streets and covered passages. I don’t know if we are inside or out. Through more gates, guarded this time, then through more doors than I can count. I hug my lute in front of me like a shield.

  Standing alone now in a small wood-panelled room watched only by a single silent man-at-arms. Why does he avoid my eye?

  What happens next?

  A tall, pale woman enters, stares at me, then leaves again without speaking. The man returns and leads me through more corridors, across open courtyards, up a flight of stairs and along a gallery. He opens yet another door. And there she is.

  44

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Do you still want to go on?’ Her tone begged me to say ‘no'.

  ‘I must,’ I said. I knew that if I wavered, we would both flee.

  I looked back across the dark water at the few tiny lights of Whitehall stretched out along the other shore – my familiar world reduced to tiny orange spots of light and their broken reflections in the water. The windows of the Queen’s lodgings to my right were almost all dark, but candles and torches still burned in the king’s rooms. I was reminded of standing on the crags, looking down on Edinburgh Castle as if I were a bird, freed from the creature-self who lived down there.