by Diana Norman
From here Southwark, across the river, looked like a rural village instead of the continual alehouse-cum-brothel it really was.
Dutifully she thought: Woe unto you, Jerusalem. But it had become her Jerusalem, a city of energy and beauty and a promise it hadn't yet fulfilled. In contrast, the unknown Taunton assumed the qualities of Puritan Springfield in Massachusetts: ordered, worthy, loveless — and dull. She would stay there only until she had discovered what there was to discover about Aunt Margaret; then, somehow, she would come back.
All the way home Peter Simkin chattered about the Orders. Doctors to examine suspected cases and report, all needless concourses to be prohibited, the poor to be given relief and work, houses to be kept clean, ordure to be removed from the streets, pest-houses to be built, none allowed to travel in the kingdom without a certificate of health, the College of Physicians immediately to advise on medical procedure ...
She barely listened. 'Reasonable,' she said. What a fuss.
'That's reasonable if put in hand, Pen, but old Johnson — he's St Martin's — he says as the same Orders was issued in '25, and look what happened then.' Peter Simkin sucked on his teeth. And reasonable if they got the cash for it, Pen. But Parliament's only voted money for war against them damned Dutch, if you'll pardon my French. Now it's gone and prorogued itself and when's it going to meet again, that's what I want to know? If they put the charge on the parishes — well, St Giles ain't got it, and that's a fact. And it's the poorest parishes'll get the "P" worst, you mark my words.'
He looked around him in case anybody was listening, and touched her arm, speaking low: 'And young Pettit - he's Houndsditch — he said as how the King's issued secret orders as how the Tower's got to be garrisoned in case of panic and riot.'
What a fuss. As they passed the alley leading to the Cockpit, she happened to glance down it but saw nobody she recognized.
Full of his news and duties, Peter turned off to the High Street while she wandered on to Dog Yard - and found the place in tumult.
They were shutting up the Ship.
Have the Dutch invaded? Her first impression was of a battle; but that was ridiculous. The first hostilities on English soil weren't likely to be fought in Dog Yard. But it was a war all the same. On one side soldiers armed with pikes and parish officers lashing out with their white wands, all commanded by a small magistrate in a big hat on a white horse, waving and shouting. On the opposing side Dog Yard.
The Dog Yarders were impeding, screeching and fighting. Two Tippins were pummelling a beadle lying on the cobbles. Mistress Parker was trying to kick the shins of a soldier, who was holding her off with one arm.
Penitence saw Footloose propel himself and his tub into the path of two more beadles going to their fellow's rescue. One fell over him, but the other, an enraged fat man, plucked the beggar out of his tub, looked round, spotted a cresset-holder sticking out of the Buildings and hung him up on it by the back of his jacket.
In the shelter of the Stables chimney, a young Tippin was tearing tiles off the roof, dodging out to throw them at the soldiery, then dodging back. The Cock and Pie and Mother Hubbard's had joined forces. She saw Dorinda clinging like a monkey to the back of a man who was attempting to do something to one of the Ship's windows while hampered by a Mother Hubbard girl swinging from his arm.
From her window, Mistress Hicks was emptying her boarders' pots over the head of any member of the opposing army who happened in range, following up with well-aimed throws of the pots themselves.
The noise was horrific. In the encircled court it was like being trapped with yowling cats in a bucket battered by bricks. Between, under, through the chaos ran children, dodging and yelling: among them the hair of the Brysketts streamed like torches.
One ran up to Penitence and flung his arms round her waist. 'Don't want to be shut up, Pen. Don't let 'em shut me up.' She put her arms round him. It was the second littlest Bryskett.
A pikeman strode up. 'Let's be having him, mistress.'
Convulsively, she hugged the child closer. 'N-n-no.'
Behind the face-bars of his lobster-tail helmet, the pikeman's look was not unsympathetic. 'Orders, mistress. Plague-houses to be shut up with all inhabitants.'
A muffled voice came from the middle of Penitence's coat. 'I ain't got it. Jenny had it. Ma wouldn't let us see her.'
'No,' said Penitence again.
'Come on, son,' said the soldier. Leather gauntlets manoeuvred the boy firmly out of Penitence's clutch, carried him across the Yard, up the steps, and handed him in at an upstairs window of the Ship to the pale-faced, red-headed Mistress Bryskett.
The Ship's door was already stapled with a chain fastened by a padlock. A large figure trapped on the inside was struggling to get his shoulders through the tiny gap the door offered, bellowing a desperate litany of complaint. 'That's not right, maister. I'm clean. Hertfordshire man, me. Just delivering. You let me out. I got wife and children in Potters Bar. What of me hosses? You let me out.'
No one was taking any more notice of him than of the magistrate on the horse, whose voice had gone into the higher register of scream.
Click, click, click-click-click. Light, ordered sound did what shouting couldn't and impinged on everybody's consciousness. One by one, parish officers and Dog Yarders turned their head towards it.
The pikemen had drawn up in a crouched line with their backs to the Stables and the Buildings, the base of their pikes on the ground in a neat line sloping towards the riot.
The man who had taken the second littlest Bryskett away from Penitence went on tapping his pike on the cobbles until there was silence. He stepped forward. He was tall; only tall men could carry the eighteen-foot pike with grace.
'My name,' he called, conversationally, 'is Corporal Forbush. These gentlemen squattin' here is a troop of His Majesty's Pike. They are in the position what is adopted to repel chargin' horse.' He had everybody's attention. 'Now then,' he went on, 'when this here troop charges, they stand up, like what I'm doing, and they level the pike. Like this.'
Dog Yard's eyes became riveted on a steel-sharp tip.
'Now then,' said Corporal Forbush, 'they don't want to do this. I don't want 'em to do it and you don't want 'em to do it. So what I suggest is, we all stay very quiet and listen to what Magistrate Flesher here's got to say.' He saluted in the direction of the little man on the horse, whose mouth was still open.
So that's Flesher. Known to the Rookery with reason — and among other things — as Flogger Flesher.
'I'll arrest the lot of you,' he was screaming. 'Constables, get those men.' He pointed at the spot where the Tippin brothers had been punching the beadle. The beadle was sitting up, feeling his jaw, but the Tippins had disappeared, and with them had gone much of Dog Yard's attempt to defy the inevitable. Corporal Forbush strode up, and under cover of quietening the magistrate's horse, offered some muttered advice.
Reluctantly, Flogger Flesher took it. He put his sword into its scabbard, straightened his hat and, producing a scroll, began to read: 'By the authority invested in me by His Royal Majesty ...' The audibility of the warrant was marred as much by the clove-studded orange he now held to his nose as by the drayman, who was still shouting.
Penitence turned to the figure next to her, which turned out to be Phoebe stemming her bleeding nose on her petticoat.
'How I-long d-did he s-say?'
'Forty days,' said Phoebe. 'Fuckers. That's finished me with the King.'
The Ship, those children, shut up for forty days? 'C-c-can't,' she said. They c-c-can't.'
They were. Such younger Brysketts as were still outside were rounded up and lifted in.
As, one by one, the diamond-paned ground-floor windows were boarded over, the imprisoned Bryskett children ran to the next. Outside, Dorinda followed them, her hand raised to clutch theirs, like someone saying goodbye to a passenger in a moving coach. When the planks went over the last window she leaned back against the wall, then slid down on to her hands and
knees.
Penitence ran to help her up. The girl was sobbing. 'The little 'uns. I can't bear it.'
'I know.'
Mistress Parker was still trying to effect an entry into the Ship as forcibly as the drayman was trying to make an exit. 'You got my old man in there, turd-brain,' she screamed.
Magistrate Flesher urged his horse to the Ship steps. Who's in there?'
The beadle on the door saluted: 'Landlord and his lady, sir, eight childer, two potboys, one tapster, one drayman, a skivvy — and a person still asleep with a pint pot in his 'and.'
'That's him,' shouted Mistress Parker.
'All persons found on the premises stay on the premises,' said Magistrate Flesher. He dismounted and strode up the steps. 'Give me the chalk.'
There was squealing from the back of the Ship and a constable came marching round to the front, his hand clamped on the thin shoulder of a girl. 'Nelly Ogle, sir, spinster of this parish. Skivvy to the Ship. Caught trying to escape.'
Magistrate Flesher considered Nelly Ogle and his options. If he opened the door the drayman, a very big man like all draymen, would get out. 'Get a ladder and tip her in.'
In silence Dog Yard watched twelve-year-old Nelly Ogle, spinster of its parish, hauled up a ladder, watched her helped in by Mistress Bryskett, watched Mistress Bryskett's face, watched Magistrate Flesher draw a red cross on the Ship's door and chalk words above it. He turned round, planted his short legs apart and addressed the crowd: 'Anyone violating this order will be subjected to the severest penalties. Consider yourselves lucky I have not imposed them already. Constable.'
Ill-will was something Magistrate Flesher was used to, but he preferred facing it from the height of his Bench. He waited at the top of the steps until the pikemen had formed two protective lines around his horse before giving the signal for the company to move off.
As he marched out of Dog Yard, Corporal Forbush reached up, plucked Footloose off his bracket and popped him tenderly into his tub. 'God Save the King,' he said.
It was a salutation usually eliciting a cheer from the Dog Yarders among whom a sovereign of legendary naughtiness had been an icon. 'To Charlie, may he bust a thousand bellies' was a toast that had raised many a loyal tankard in the Ship. Today they remained silent.
Between them, Dorinda and Penitence helped a weeping Mistress Parker to her feet. 'What's them words say?' she asked, pointing at the Ship door.
Penitence read them: 'Lord Have Mercy Upon Us.'
Mistress Parker wept again. 'He always wanted to die with a tankard in his bloody hand,' she said, 'I reckon he's got his wish.'
They took her to the door of the Buildings and returned to the Cock and Pie, threading through a yard full of people who were being joined by others from the alleys of the Rookery, all staring in the direction of the Ship.
'There'll be trouble,' said Dorinda.
How much more trouble can there be?
Plague was as yet merely one of the immeasurable diseases the Rookery lived with; on the other hand, intrusion by royal authority was here and now. As far as popularity went, the King couldn't hold a candle to Sam Bryskett, who provided employment and entertainment in an area where both were scarce. Penitence heard one man say: 'Whosis Fornicating Majesty with his jools and fancy women to shut up our fucking inn?'
Gaining the attic, Dorinda sank on to the bed, Penitence on to a stool. The last vestiges of daylight were coming through the front window.
'My bread's baked,' said Dorinda. With her eyes closed, the girl looked vulnerable and exhausted. 'I ain't never been taken medicinally before.'
Penitence remembered the men who'd been tramping up and down to the clerestory all day. The Plague sign on a nearby door would keep them away from now on. 'Th-that's over, at 1-least.'
The sympathy in her voice stirred Dorinda into sitting up and reclaiming ground lost by her show of weakness. She looked round the attic and sniffed. 'Smells like a new-baked turd in here.' She got up and swatted a stem of St John's wort hanging from a beam - Penitence had gone out into the country near Tottenham Court to pick herbs after spring- cleaning the attic. 'Think a bunch of weeds'll keep off the Plague?'
Penitence shook her head. 'F-f-umm-fleas.'
'Fum-fleas,' said Dorinda, with contempt. 'Fleas won't kill you. Plague will. But I forgot, didn't I? Miss Prinkum-Prankum won't get it. Her Ladyship's sending Miss Prinkum-Prankum away.'
'N-n-no m-more w-w-work.'
'That's what she said.' The old viciousness was back. 'She's favouring you, you ballocker. She's always favoured you.' She glanced towards the actor's window, found his room empty, and went.
Upstairs after dinner, Penitence emptied her bead satchel on to the bed, ready to repack it. Her Ladyship, with surprising generosity for the imprisoned drayman, had told Job to take the man's team back to his wife in Potters Bar in the morning. Penitence was to go with them.
She considered the small pile of belongings; useless strings of wampum which she would take with her because they were reminders of the Squakheag, as were the little hunting bow and quiver of arrows Matoonas had made for her. The tobacco and pipes she would give to Kinyans, who was a fumer when he could afford it. Clean underwear and dress, her old coat, clean but threadbare — thankfully, she would have little need for it with summer coming on — a pair of Phoebe's cast-off slippers and a new cap she had made from a linen cut-off.
Even with Her Ladyship's two guineas, it was little enough for the months she had spent in this attic. On the other hand, she was taking other things away with her: a compassion for the life of whores, a reluctant admiration, even fellow-feeling, for the spirit of an indigent people who, half a year before, she would have condemned as worthless. Whether these changes of attitude were advances, or merely destructive Anythingarian- ism, she could not have said. The God she'd believed in when she arrived here would certainly have disapproved, but He had undergone a bit of a sea-change Himself.
She heard movement from the play-actor's room and saw light from his window flicker on her sill. Lately, he'd taken to sitting at his table, writing into the early hours. The scratch of his quill had been audible through her shutters and kept her awake. Alania said he was writing a play.
It occurred to her that he might not know there was Plague at the Ship and ought to be told. Personally, she didn't think there was danger; but he ought to be told.
Immediately the thought of exposing her stutter sent her into a panic. There was no avoiding the word 'Plague', it being the raison d'etre of the warning, but it would block her. Was there no other noun for it? Only Pestilence, another insuperable 'p'.
Bartholomew the man. What did she care what he thought of her? And who was he to cavil at the messenger? He should be grateful she was telling him at all.
Whipping herself into a fury, she went to her half-open shutters and pulled them wide. He'd taken off his cloak and hat and was studying the papers on his table. 'Hey,' she shouted.
He looked up. 'Ah, Mistress Boots.'
At once, her anger left her and she went into the worst stutter of her life. 'There's P-p-p-pl-p . . .' It wouldn't come out. It stayed reverberating behind the compression of her lips. Give up. Run and hide. Her clenched knuckles dug into the sides of her thighs as she fought with it. 'There's P-p-pl...'
Instead of turning away, or helping her out, he looked at her with interest. 'Why do you do that?'
She was so surprised, she said: 'I s-st-stutter.'
'So it seems. You know it can be cured?'
So casual. As if she'd caught it, like a cold. How dare he. She was angry enough to get out: 'There's P-plague at the Ship.' Let him cure that. The last glimpse she had before she slammed the shutters and went to bed was of his grimace as he reached for a bottle on his table. He'd get drunk. It was all actors were good for.
Chapter 5
The Reverend Block knelt by her bedside, muttering profanity and prayer. This time he'd brought reinforcements. A dozen lecherous clergymen were outside the
door, shouting obscenities. The noise pinioned her arms to the bed like clamps. She wouldn't be able to fight him, them, unless the noise let her arms go. Stop it, stop it.
She sat up in bed, drenched in sweat. There was noise, like that produced by the riot earlier, but magnified ten times over. Pulling the bedspread over her night-shift, she hurried to the front window.
The scene below was like the evening riot magnified ten times. Yet not like. One hundred or more figures milled in and out of the flickering light thrown by Dog Yard's only cresset. Where before there had been anger, now there was hate, unfocused, generalized hate. It scalded through the Yard like boiling steam.
It took a while for her to realize that the resentment which had erupted in Dog Yard that evening had spread to the rest of the Rookery as its men — and the swarming crowd below consisted mainly of men — emerged into the night to find their favourite inn closed against them.