The Strange Adventures of H

by Sarah Burton

  She opened her arms to reveal not Mary, but Tobypuss. He was dead.

  “I found him on the step,” she sobbed. “Someone’s cut his little throat. Why would anyone do that?”

  Fricker could not have put his message more eloquently in words. He was telling me he knew where Joe lived, and had got close enough to take Tobypuss. He was telling me that if I didn’t produce Joe, he would not hesitate to do to me what he had done to the dog. He was telling me he meant business.

  The other girls gathered, summoned by Janey’s wails, and as she and I held each other and cried over dear Tobypuss, I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see Kat.

  “Now do you see?” she said quietly.

  I nodded. I did see. I hated Fricker with all my heart and had resolved, as soon as I had the means, to free myself of him, somehow.

  We buried Tobypuss in the yard and Bessie composed a poem for the occasion, and inked it on a piece of wood which we set as a head-stone. It read:

  Here lies a dog both small and white

  Who did not growl and did not bite;

  Well loved on Earth, he’s gone ahead

  And now sleeps by the good Lord’s bed.

  She had wished to add a further couplet:

  May misfortunes pile of many types

  On him who cut his little pipes.

  But Mother Cresswell declared it “de trop” and admonished us all with the words: “Toujours l’amour, my sweets, toujours l’amour.”

  Though I did not pray these days, on this occasion I did say a few words commending Tobypuss to Heaven and was inwardly thankful that the day of my own deliverance, of a kind, was at hand. I was ready to make my move.

  48

  My younger readers will not recall the Shrove Tuesday riots which occurred regularly at this time, but as the next part of my narrative concerns them I should perhaps explain the circumstances and character of these annual events a little. I had been but dimly aware of the riots prior to my attachment to Mother Cresswell’s house, noticing only that the traditional festivities were generally taken too far by over-zealous apprentices whose revelry spilled over into violence against the city’s places of entertainment, namely the theatres and brothels. I do not know when this tradition began, but believe there were cases long before the civil wars where apprentices would, with the tools of their respective trades, dismantle whole playhouses, breaking up the benches and smashing the place indiscriminately to pieces. Bawdy houses were given similar treatment and were so despoiled that in some cases the buildings were entirely pulled down.

  During my first Easter at Clerkenwell, Mother Cresswell ordered me, along with the other girls, to clear out of the place, having first assisted her in nailing boards over the windows and otherwise making the house secure. In fact, we usually got off lightly as Clerkenwell was too far out of town to receive much attention, but Mother Cresswell said you couldn’t be too careful and you never knew.

  I must confess to having been a deal baffled by these occurrences. Why should the apprentices, who frequented the bawdy houses and playhouses as much as anyone else, vent their rage on them on this day of the year?

  “It is a day off work for roaring boys inflamed by drink,” Mother Cresswell explained, as I helped her nail the back door fast. “What else can they vent their rage on? Not Whitehall, nor the courts of law, nor the churches, for the soldiers would defend them. But who will stand up for the poor whores and players? Your government men choose to look the other way, for they are grateful that it is us and not them getting the brunt of it.” She sighed. “You would think, to hear great and learned men talk, that we was the only folks what took money for favours. This world is, and ever was, a great brothel,” she said.

  I still did not understand it, but then I had never understood why the same young men who spent money at our house one night would come another night, drunk and penniless, and break our windows. Mother Cresswell would shrug and say, “Men,” and that was all the answer I received.

  Shrove Tuesday, then, generally represented distraction, disorder and upheaval, which was why I had selected this particular day to make my move and part with Mother Cresswell for good. As usual, the girls decamped, although Janey thought to stay home, or to go and leave the baby with Mother, but we persuaded her to go and take Mary. As the weather was fine, the girls had elected to spend the day in the country at Islington, and were to overnight at an inn there owned by an aunt of Winnie’s, returning the next day. Also as usual Mother Cresswell elected to remain immured in the house for she had a positive aversion to ever leaving it empty – to protect her hoard, as I supposed. Kat and I volunteered to remain with her to finish making it secure, promising to catch up with the girls later on, at the inn. This of course was all part of our plan.

  I had wanted to use no violence on Mother Cresswell to achieve my ends as I feared that once I started I might not be able to stop. All my aim was to get the key on the lilac ribbon which hung about her neck. I had talked to Kat of drugging her, but Kat said that was only for plays and stories – it was difficult to get the dose right and we might kill the old cow by mistake and then where should we be. We would have to tie her up, Kat said, but this proved to be much easier said than done.

  Kat and Mother Cresswell were talking in the saloon when I entered holding the necessary rope behind me. Mother had her back to me, which made it easier, and Kat’s steady expression gave her no hint I had come in. But at the very moment I went to loop the rope over Mother’s shoulders, she turned suddenly, and seeing me jumped back. The rope slipped down only round her neck, and though I did not mean to strangle her, I did not mean her to escape either, so I pulled it tight. Kat stood rooted to the spot until I cried “Hold her arms!” for Mother’s arms were flailing wildly, scratching and clutching at me and at the rope round her neck, and I could not get out of her reach without letting go the rope. Kat grabbed at Mother’s arms from behind, allowing me to slide the rope down over her shoulders and make a knot, but neither of us had appreciated how strong she was, and she wrested herself out of Kat’s grasp and kicked me so hard that I let go the rope and fell backwards onto the floor. Then, when she might have escaped, she instead fell to kicking me, and abusing me, though I could not understand her words as she was still gasping from being nearly strangled, and I could not understand why Kat did not help me, as I feared Mother Cresswell meant to kick me to death, so hard did her blows rain on my head, my stomach and my back. Then she lifted up her foot to stamp on my head, as I thought. I instinctively shut my eyes and though I heard a horrible crack, felt nothing. I opened my eyes in time to see Mother Cresswell fall to the floor, revealing Kat standing behind her with the poker in her hand.

  Kat helped me up and we both looked at Mother Cresswell and then at each other. She seemed to be breathing, though very shallowly, in a red pool that was growing at an alarming rate.

  “Who would have thought the old girl had so much blood in her?” said Kat, who seemed almost transfixed by the gory sight.

  I snatched the ribbon with the key from Mother’s neck and pushed Kat into Mother’s room. I took down the picture and opened the concealed cupboard. We began to empty bags of coin and rolls of notes into a small trunk, but soon realised that the cupboard was much larger than I had at first assumed. Although the door was perhaps eighteen inches square, the alcove itself was perhaps four foot wide, and full of plate and jewellery as well as money. It was clear that here there were not hundreds but thousands of pounds. We emptied another small trunk of clothes and filled that too. Then we lugged them outside and Kat sat on them while I fetched our own luggage. I could hear Mother Cresswell moaning and while I was relieved she was not dead I was concerned she might crawl into the street and raise the alarm before we were clear of Clerkenwell, so as a precaution we nailed up the front door. We knew the girls would free her when they arrived the next morning, by which time we would be far away. When we had finished I remarked to Kat that it reminded me of the plague houses being
shut up.

  “It is a plague house,” said Kat.

  Now it was my turn to sit on the trunks while Kat went for a coach, and we were soon on our way out of Clerkenwell for ever. Kat and I looked at each other and smiled. Mother Cresswell’s fortune was greater by far than either of us had imagined in our wildest dreams.

  49

  As we got further into town we began to understand that the apprentices were setting about their task with greater vigour than ever before. We had already learned from the coachman that they had been pulling down bawdy houses in Moorfields and the court had been sufficiently alarmed at the anger of the mobs rampaging through the city to deploy troops throughout not only the city but Westminster. We had to pull aside to allow one such detachment to pass, drums beating and trumpets blaring.

  “You’d have thought the French were coming,” shouted the driver, with some satisfaction. Later we had to pull aside again as a gang of malefactors was being escorted to the new prison at Clerkenwell. Bystanders on the street, learning they were being arrested for pulling down bawdy houses, cheered them rather as heroes, as Londoners are wont to side with anyone the authorities have taken against, unless he is plainly the worst kind of villain. It was pretty to see the unease of the militia, vastly outnumbered by the crowd that harangued them. We had no idea, at this time, how ugly the scene would turn, and that the mobs of apprentices who moved through the crowds in tidal waves would later break open the prison and free their fellows. Still, it was a deal alarming and both Kat and I were glad to be safe in our carriage and not on the streets, where whores were like to be roughed up and abused at the least.

  At last we got to St James’s where Mrs Snags was discomposed to see my condition (as Mother Cresswell had made quite a meal of me) and Kat, with her easy gentility, explained we had unfortunately got into a rough crowd and got caught up with the apprentices, who had not minded us as they should, and that what her dear sister (that is, myself) would most appreciate would be a dish of tea. Mrs Snags bustled off to effect this, most apologetic that I should have received such treatment, as though she considered herself entirely responsible for my well-being, now that I was living in her house. The coachman summoned a pair of urchins to help him get the trunks upstairs and complained that they were so heavy they might contain bodies, but was appeased by the judicious deployment of an extra half a crown and Kat’s wry explanation that they were merely the bodies of our husbands.

  And so Kat and I found ourselves in my new rooms, already furnished, and more conveniently and pleasingly so than I could have imagined. After the extraordinary and violent events of the day we had passed, it may seem strange to you, dear reader, that I felt so calm and untroubled, but I was relieved and content to be at last in a place of my own and mistress of my own destiny. Yet Kat and I were not so secure that we did not share a bed that night, and kept our newly acquired fortune about us, and once woke together at the same moment and checked ourselves and blessed ourselves and knew we were really safe.

  The next morning we set about assessing and dividing the part of our fortune that was in note and coin. I had determined, when I first secured Kat’s assistance, that whatever Mother Cresswell’s fortune consisted of, it should be divided in six parts, one for each of the regular girls at Mother Cresswell’s. But Kat insisted that it should be entailed in eight parts, of which she and I were entitled to two each, for the danger and trouble we had passed in securing it. Kat would not be gainsaid in this matter, and when I demurred on my own part she said, besides, I had lost two children, and that counted for more. I did not argue with her, recalling the trouble our differences of opinion about money had caused over Joe, and when I saw the extent of the money, which could set each and every one of us up more than comfortably in an independent existence, reflected that none of the others could or would complain at the bountifulness of their windfall. So I went along with it, considering also what dear Nell had told me about thinking of myself and my own interest.

  We had decided it would cause too much trouble to explain to the girls our plan in advance, and would merely present them with the outcome. The second part of Kat’s involvement in the plan was to make contact with each girl and present her with the facts of what Mother Cresswell had been doing with our children, and their fortune at the same time, enabling them to make a clean break. I left this – and a complicated matter it was too, if we were to avoid Mother Cresswell’s attentions – to Kat, as I had Janey to deal with.

  I had taken the precaution of leaving, at Winnie’s aunt’s inn, a letter for Janey, which contained my address and two pictures: Janey’s carpet bag and a face with a finger to its lips. As she did not read I hoped she would understand that she was to show the address to someone who could bring her here. And so it turned out. I had it all worked out in my head and had rehearsed in my mind the moment I would bring her home many times. She would arrive at my fine new lodgings and say, or rather shout – although to be fair, she had got better at adjusting the volume of her conversation since the baby had been born, as we said it should not get enough sleep if its mother were shouting her head off the whole time, though as it turned out, little Mary must have got used to her mother’s voice in the womb, as she slept through the night, Janey’s hollering not withstanding, from six weeks of age which is a thing almost unheard of – but I digress, and as I say, I imagined Janey arriving at our new home and marvelling at its beauty and richness – although it was not gaudy or in any sense showy, as I knew the most successful Misses gave to all intents and purposes an outward show of being respectable, so Mother Cresswell’s cerise velvets and turquoise rugs should not do here; here all was muted, mustards, creams, watercress greens, cool and unexceptional, but smart, fashionable, pretty and clean – so as I say, I imagined Janey coming in and being overwhelmed by the beauty and respectability of her new surroundings. Then she would shout: “But how have you paid for all this?” And then I would explain how it was all a cover for our new venture. And then she would look sad but would not say that she wished to get out of the game altogether for Mary’s sake. And then I would guess her feelings and say, “But that is the beauty of it Janey! You need be a whore no longer! I can earn enough to keep us both and I shall need a maid, and you and Mary can live here happily, and we will divide my income, and she can grow up a respectable girl and we shall send her to school, and she shall have a respectable mother, et cetera, et cetera.” And we should hug each other and kiss each other and kiss and bless Mary and know that tomorrow brought only profit and respectability, outwardly at least. It was a moment I had played in my head so many times, I could not imagine taking real pleasure in my new state until I shared it with Janey.

  But, as so often is the case with the best laid plans, this was not how it turned out. When any of us made plans, Frenchie was wont to say, “L’homme propose; le Dieu dispose”, and when I asked her what it meant, while she struggled for a translation, Kat supplied her own: “We make plans, while God laughs.”

  50

  As soon as Janey arrived it was clear that something was terribly amiss. She was white as a sheet.

  “Oh Doll you are safe! And Kat!” She fell on us and kissed us. “You will never guess what has happened! Mother Cresswell is dead! I thought you might be dead too!”

  Kat and I exchanged glances but maintained our composure. This was a blow indeed. But Janey’s next statement was even more surprising.

  “Our house is gone! Burned to the ground! Poor Mother couldn’t get out – well you know how it was all shut up, a mouse couldn’t have got out – she was burned in it!”

  I asked Janey whether she had seen the evidence of this herself, wondering whether this was wild hearsay, as reports of the apprentices’ excesses were sometimes exaggerated, but she said she had and that when they had all returned to Clerkenwell that morning the house was reduced to a pile of smouldering timbers and Mother Cresswell’s remains had already been taken away.

  “At first we thought it was the ap
prentices what done it – for they broke open the prison you know – but the neighbours saw a man on his own running away and gave chase and apprehended him and were like to tear him to pieces for you know we were not unpopular with the neighbours and Mother Cresswell was always charitable but the watch arrived in time to take him but the fire could not be put out and it all went up like a tinderbox. And you will never guess who it was! That little toad from the playhouse – what’s his name? The one with the scar. He should swing for this or there is no justice!”

  “Fricker!” I exclaimed. Fricker who would not be bested by a whore; Fricker who said he would burn me if I did not produce Joe; Fricker who had slit poor Tobypuss’s throat; Fricker who had meant to kill not Mother Cresswell but Doll.

  “Supposing we had all been at home?” Janey cried. “Or if I had left the baby with Mother?” She fell to sobbing loudly, which made the baby cry too, and Kat and I comforted them as well as we could and then after a while Janey said she could murder a dish of tea, and anyway what was this place and how came we here, as the neighbours said they saw us moving out, and what, in short, was it all about?

  It took some time to make Janey understand our new situation and she was shocked in the extreme when I told her what Mother Cresswell had been doing with our babies and at first refused to believe it so that I was obliged to tell her that it was only because I happened to walk in at a particular moment that Mary had not been drowned too. This revelation, on top of all the strange events of the last day, was too much for Janey and we had to put her to bed, as she began shivering like a person who has sustained a bad shock and the baby became inconsolable. Kat and I were also extremely shaken at the thought of what would have happened had we all been at home that night. It was not, in short, the happy homecoming I had so fondly dreamt of.