by Mary Hooper
The young men were obviously well-born and dressed very fine, and the ladies were arrayed in silks of all colours and carried favours which had been purchased at the Fair: ribbons, hair ornaments and silvery trinkets. One auburn-haired beauty had a nightingale in a cage, another a pet monkey which ran continually backwards and forwards across her shoulders.
Despite their apparent sophistication, however, everyone was entranced by the novelty of a mermaid.
‘Where did you find her, Mother?’ Nell asked, bending across the pool to try and lift a lock of Eliza’s hair.
‘Why, in the ocean, of course,’ Ma Gwyn replied.
‘Really, Mother!’ Nell reproved her.
Eliza looked up and into Nell’s eyes and the two girls smiled at each other conspiratorially.
‘She has lovely green eyes – and such excellent dark waves,’ Nell said, and she held out her own gingery tresses and gave an exaggerated sigh of disapproval, whereupon all the young men present immediately cried that they adored and admired red hair and no other shade was bearable. ‘But I don’t think she came from the ocean!’ Nell added.
‘As I hope to be saved, that’s just where we found her!’ said Ma.
Nell indicated a plump man in clerical attire. ‘Mother,’ she said warningly, ‘we have a minister of the church with us.’
‘If I tell a lie, may I go to bed a woman and wake up a donkey!’ Ma said, looking wounded.
One of the men gave an ee-aww bray and the party laughed.
‘Oh, someone throw some money into the pool!’ a girl in green satin cried. ‘I want to hear her siren song.’
Several other female voices rose to say that they, too, wanted to hear the mermaid sing, and then a youth’s voice called, ‘Valentine! Have you some change? Throw it in, there’s a good chap!’
At the mention of the name Valentine, Eliza grew hot, then cold. It was he – the first person she’d ever begged money from! And his companion, the one who’d just spoken, was the same friend he’d been with outside Clink – the one who’d seemed so arrogant.
A coin was flicked and splashed into the pool and Eliza gasped as she saw the gold angel sinking to the bottom. Susan, making the waves, saw it too, and the turbulence in the water suddenly became greater as she increased her efforts in line with the amount given.
Ma Gwyn’s sharp eyes had also caught the glint of gold. ‘The mermaid will give you a lovely song for that!’ she said. A moment went by and, no song being forthcoming, she crossed to stand in front of Eliza and frowned deeply at her. ‘A luvverly song such as she sings on the rocks far out to sea,’ she confirmed. ‘Yers, she will for certain.’
Eliza sat still as a statue, her face hidden under the veil of her hair. She feared being exposed as a convict and a trickster in front of all these fine people, but more especially she feared him – Valentine – recognising her, perhaps laughing with derision when he realised that this so-called mermaid had actually been in Clink. Surreptitiously she glanced at him and saw the same merry eyes and ready smile. He was very comely. Claude Duval was handsome and magnificent, of course, but he was perhaps twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, a fully grown man and in a different league. Valentine, although vastly more sophisticated and elegant than she, was perhaps only two or three years her senior. And there was something so vastly compelling about his blue eyes and wide, curved mouth.
‘Dammit, but the jade won’t sing!’ the first man said crossly.
‘Give her a chance, Henry,’ came the more reasoned voice of Valentine.
‘Yes, give the girl a chance,’ Nell said, laughing. ‘If you were a mermaid plucked out of the ocean perhaps you wouldn’t always feel like singing.’
‘She’ll sing if she knows what’s good for her,’ Eliza heard Ma mutter in an undertone.
‘She must sing!’ said the girl in green. ‘We’ve given her gold and if she doesn’t then she’ll have to be chastised for her insolence!’
Eliza knew she’d have to perform. She swallowed hard and, remembering not to sing the adapted prison song, began the ditty about the ‘wild, wild sea’.
As she sang, her audience became still and attentive, and when she finished a smattering of applause broke out.
‘That was very lovely,’ Eliza heard Valentine say. ‘And let’s go now for a glass of sack and a pigeon pie!’
Eliza breathed a sigh of relief. She would have liked him to have stayed there longer; she would have liked to have looked at him again. But it was better that he went away.
Arguing and taking bets amongst themselves as to the authenticity or not of the mermaid, the small group began to move off. One remained behind, however.
‘She has a damn fine figure for a mermaid!’ the arrogant youth called Henry said, staring at Eliza.
Eliza did not react to this comment, but looked at him under her lashes and through her hair. She saw a man of average height, with pale blue eyes and fair, almost blond lashes and eyebrows. His long curly periwig was fair, too, and he wore a soft blue coat, heavy with gold lace and braiding. He wasn’t unpleasant-looking as such, but she did not like what she saw: the lips were full but over-red, the eyes hooded, the skin too pink-and-white.
‘A fine figure!’ he repeated. ‘And … and yes, I think I should rather like to lie with a mermaid. What a novelty that would be.’
Eliza felt herself flushing with shame and embarrassment.
‘Novelty, indeed!’ said Valentine, who had come back for his friend. ‘But Henry, remember that he who bulls the cow must keep the calf. How would you like to breed a child who was half fish?’
They stared at Eliza while she, horrified, kept utterly still. Susan, behind the rock, was so rapt at their conversation that she forgot to pull the blade to stir the water, and the ripples in the pool ceased.
‘I shouldn’t mind it if I’d had the pleasure of lying with its mother,’ Henry said.
‘But not today!’ countered Valentine. ‘Come on, my friend. The others are waiting.’
‘Let them!’ Henry shrugged off the arm which Valentine had placed around his shoulders. ‘Let them wait.’
He approached Ma Gwyn, who was standing at the side of the tent ready – just as soon as she’d removed the gold coin from the pool into her pocket – to let in the next crowd of customers.
‘I want,’ he said grandly, ‘to make you an offer for the mermaid. I presume you are her bawd.’
Eliza began to shiver, in spite of the closeness of the air within the tent.
Ma shook her head. ‘Oh no, sire,’ she said. ‘She’s rare and beyond price.’
‘I don’t want her for ever,’ Henry said. ‘Just for the one night.’
‘She’d still be awful expensive,’ said Ma.
‘Come now. I’m sure we can arrive at some arrangement.’
Ma considered this, taking deep puffs on her pipe. ‘Just the one night, you say?’
‘Quite.’ He gave an affected wave of his arm. ‘You can name your price.’
A small cry escaped Eliza, but neither Henry nor Ma Gwyn took any notice. Ma’s old, creased face broke into a broad smile as she beckoned him outside the tent.
‘Well, sire,’ she said, ‘I think you and I will talk business.’
Chapter Nine
‘Oh, do not take on so,’ Old Ma Gwyn said to Eliza as the Fair closed on its final evening. ‘You’ll make your eyes red and nose run and you’ll end up looking like a boar’s backside.’
Eliza, hunched in a corner of the kitchen in Coal Yard Alley, carried on weeping. As she did so she reflected on the fact that, since coming to London, she’d probably spent part of every day in tears. She’d thought that once she got to the city her problems would be solved, but London, in fact, contained more troubles than she’d ever known existed.
‘Don’t you want to ’ave a rich admirer?’ Ma said in disbelief. ‘’Tis what every wench dreams of! You give ’im what ’e wants and ’e’ll keep you more than the one night, you see if ’e don’t. ’E might ev
en rent you a nice little room and give you an allowance.’ She sniffed and spat. ‘You’ll be made, then. A kept woman. And just you be sure to remember Old Ma Gwyn when you is.’
‘I … I cannot just lie with him,’ Eliza began, her breath catching in her throat. ‘I don’t know what to do, and besides I –’
‘Don’t you worry about not knowing what to do!’ Ma said cheerfully. ‘I warrant that young man will know all right. And don’t you be fretting about losing your maidenhead, neither. We can fix it so that any man who comes after this one thinks you still ’ave it! Why, some of my girls lose their maidenheads regular – like whenever there’s a customer who wants a girl who’s new to the game!’
Eliza refused to be comforted. Apart from the fact that she had no idea of what might be expected and feared that the experience might be painful, she hated the idea of being sold off like a penny loaf. She’d known, of course, from quite a young age, that one day she’d marry and sleep with a man, but had always thought that this act would only happen when there was some love between the two parties. But now – well, money on one side and fear on the other didn’t seem the right combination at all. And besides, she had no wish to have a child, and surely that was what happened when you slept with someone.
‘Now, ’e wants you to be dressed as a mermaid,’ Ma went on, ‘so you stay wearing that tail.’
Eliza looked round the room hopelessly. She would have to stay wearing it, for her own clothes seemed to have disappeared.
Ma stuck her head out of the door and squinted at the church clock. ‘Let’s just hope he gets here before he’s too drunk to remember what to do. A carriage and four, ’e’s coming in.’
But Eliza thought of his round face with the bleached eyebrows and lashes, and the over-red, moist lips, and was revolted. She couldn’t bear him kissing her with those lips, or touching her with those delicate, manicured hands. She would bite him if he came near her!
‘’E’s jest come into a title, too,’ Ma went on. Eliza did not look impressed by this and she went on, ‘Most wenches would sell their own arms to lay with a man with a title! A Monteagle, and a lord! Now, what do you think to that?’
Eliza did not think anything to that – in fact it just made her feel more desperate, for she knew full well that those with money and power always got what they wanted in life. What hope was there for her? She’d be ruined by sleeping with this man. No decent man would ever want her.
Ma went across to the fire and lifted down a heavy black kettle of boiling water from the trivet. She poured a quantity of water into a cup, then added a teaspoonful of something from a lidded pot. She stirred the mixture and handed it to Eliza, telling her to drink it up quick.
Eliza looked at the mixture suspiciously, thinking that she wouldn’t put anything past the devious old hag.
‘’Tis a recipe given to me by a cunning man,’ Ma said. ‘Camomile flowers and St John’s wort. ’Twill make you settle down and enjoy the experience ahead.’
Eliza took the cup from her, although she had no intention of drinking its contents – for all she knew it was a sleeping draught and she’d wake up some hours later to find that the deed had been done – while at least if she had her wits about her she might be able to run off once her fishtail had been removed. She looked round the kitchen desperately. Where were her clothes? If she knew they were nearby, then she might possibly be able to roll herself on to the ground, wriggle out of her sequined tail, get into her smock and run away. But that would only be possible if Ma were occupied elsewhere – and it was clear that, until Eliza was safely inside the carriage, she wasn’t going to be left on her own. If Susan was around maybe she could have been persuaded to help – but she’d gone off to prison to visit her highwayman father, and besides, like Ma she did little to help anyone without being paid.
Dusk was falling when they heard a carriage clattering on the cobblestones outside. Eliza began weeping again, but swiftly stopped when a ferocious Ma rounded on her.
‘’E’s paid good money for you and ’e won’t want tantrums. Take care you don’t get a beating from ’im as well as a good tumbling.’
Eliza, terrified, bit her lip hard to stop herself crying. Steps were heard coming across the cobbles and Eliza braced herself, but, to her enormous surprise, it was Nell Gwyn who came in. Her hair was bedecked in jewels, and she wore a vast taffeta dress of cobalt blue with a hooped skirt and looked magically out of place in such mean surroundings.
‘I’ve not much time, I’ve come straight from the theatre,’ she said, glancing at her mother.
‘There!’ Ma said, nodding at her daughter with satisfaction. ‘See the dress, Eliza? See the jewels? That’s what you gets when you ’as admirers!’
Eliza felt too overawed to speak. She knew Nell was only Ma’s daughter and thus from a humble background, but at that moment her dress, jewels and deportment said otherwise. Why, she’d heard that King Charles himself had noticed Nell and admired her.
‘Have you come to collect Miss?’ Ma asked, indicating Eliza. ‘I thought His Lordship was coming to the ’ouse ’imself.’
‘I’m collecting her all right,’ Nell said briskly, ‘but not for him.’
Eliza and Ma Gwyn stared at her. ‘You what?’ said Ma.
‘I’ve not much time, Ma,’ Nell said breathlessly. ‘Henry Monteagle is even now trying to gather his aleaddled wits together. When he does he’ll straight away call the carriage and come to collect his mermaid.’
‘As was agreed and paid for very nicely,’ Ma said. She frowned. ‘But what are you to do with anything?’
‘I’m here to take her away,’ Nell said, and Eliza shrank back.
‘Lord above!’ Ma said. ‘What d’you mean, girl?’
‘Where are her clothes?’ Nell asked swiftly. ‘She can’t come to my lodgings wearing only her tail!’
Ma gave a roar of dismay.
‘Listen out, Ma,’ Nell said, ‘I am determined to take her. I won’t let Henry Monteagle bed her and spoil her!’
‘What?’ Ma lowered her bulk on to a chair. ‘What are you going to do? I shall be ruined!’
‘No, you won’t! You’ll find more girls – you always do.’
‘But this is a special girl that I can earn fair money by. A mermaid –’
‘Anyone can play a mermaid and most girls can play a whore,’ Nell snapped, ‘but this is a girl new to London who’s as green as a gooseberry. ’Tis not right that she should be given to Henry Monteagle as a plaything.’
Ma began to rock in her chair. ‘Oh, Lord! I’ll ’ave to give ’im ’is money back.’
‘Where are her clothes, Ma?’ Nell said, looking around the room.
‘No, I shall not give it back,’ Ma said decisively, while Eliza looked from one to the other of them, speechless. ‘I shall tell ’im that the little wretch stole the money!’
‘Her clothes!’ Nell cried impatiently. ‘Tell me this instant.’
‘They’re all in a bundle in the privy,’ said Ma. She waved her hand dismissively. ‘Yers. I shall tell ’im she stole the money and ran away!’
Eliza sat on the corner of a rough chair in Nell’s rented room by the Cat and Fiddle in Lewkenor’s Lane. It was a poor dwelling, the room containing just a bed, a table holding a washstand and jug, and two chairs. Several nails had been knocked into the walls and there were clothes hanging on these, and the floorboards were bare apart from a grimy rag rug upon which, if one looked carefully, some of the original colour could be detected. Nell’s room, Eliza thought, looking around her, didn’t seem to go with her at all.
Nell turned and asked to be unbuttoned from the blue satin dress, then carefully stepped out of it, revealing pristine white petticoats edged with lace.
‘The whole outfit, right down to my undersmock and hair ornaments, belongs to the theatre,’ she said, seeing Eliza’s admiring glances. ‘It’s the costume of an Italian Countess.’
‘Where are your own clothes, then?’ Eliza asked. She glanced
up at the nails as she spoke, thinking that these did not appear to hold any gowns worthy of a girl such as Nell.
Nell, putting on a muslin smock, said, ‘I’ll tell you all that in a moment.’ She poked at the fire and made one or two coals glow, then lit two stubby candles and set them to stand upright on the table. She turned to smile at Eliza. ‘You needn’t look so rabbity-scared,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. I know your name’s Eliza, and mine’s Eleanor – although they call me Nell. And that’s not all they call me when they’ve a mind to!’
Eliza returned the smile. She wondered, however, if she could trust this girl, this Nell. There must be some reason why she’d been brought here.
‘Most of my clothes – my good clothes – are at Charles Hart’s house,’ Nell explained. ‘He’s a playwright.’
‘Susan told me that he’s your … your admirer,’ Eliza said.
Nell laughed. ‘That’s the polite way of putting it,’ she said, beginning to take down her hair. ‘I live at his house in St James’s some of the week, but I keep this room rented for when he wants me out of the way.’
Eliza looked at her enquiringly.
‘For when he’s entertaining his playwright friends or the nobs. They get girls in from a brothel then and he doesn’t want his everyday whore around!’
Eliza felt herself going red. ‘Don’t you mind that?’
‘Lord, no!’ Nell said. ‘Two can play at that game.’ She winked. ‘When the cat’s away the mouse dances!’ She looked at Eliza consideringly. ‘It’s a shame, but we must cut your lovely hair,’ she said, ‘and I’ll get a wig from the theatre wardrobe for you to wear.’
‘But why?’ Eliza asked, and she instinctively pulled her hair back and wound it around her hand. Was this why she’d been taken? Just for the cost of her hair?