Do We Not Bleed

by Patricia Finney

  “I can’t...” wailed Ellie, “I’ve got t...to sweep out the rushes and change the baby and... and... “

  “Where are your gossips? Isn’t anyone helping you at all?” As soon as she had strangled Mother Briscoe, Portia decided she would go down to the nearest conduit and give the women there a piece of her mind as well.

  “Jane Brady took the plague last week so they're all locked up and the Long family have gone all the way to their parents in St Albans for fear of it and... and...”

  Perhaps she would simply kill the mother-in-law. “Ah, I see. Well, I’ll do it then. Up you go.”

  “B... but you can’t, you’re a lady.”

  Portia smiled grimly. She had spent her teens learning huswifery at Arwenack House from the redoubtable and terrifying Kate Killigrew who believed that no lady could properly command a household if she knew nothing of how to sweep, mop, polish, wash and cook. It had been a very tiring adolescence and she had hated Lady Killigrew’s guts with a passion, but... blast it, the woman had been right. Lady Killigrew also held that no man could command troops who had never fought, no matter how high his blood, but regarded herself as exempt from that rule and commanded troops herself as well as ships. She was rumoured to have laid a Spanish nobleman out cold with a belaying pin during the boarding of one of her prizes, but she also knew how to sweep a floor. She contended loudly and often that running a household was a great deal more difficult than mere generalship or leading a privateering expedition, and enraged every man in Cornwall by showing that this was in fact the case.

  With the baby-parcel securely under her arm, Portia helped Ellie up from her crouch by the fire and practically pushed her up the narrow stairs to the bedroom where it smelled quite badly of birth-soiling and old milk. And what had that bloody woman been doing herself when her grandson needed her to help his mother? Ellie clambered into the four poster bed that filled the room and settled down again in the pillows, took the baby in to lie next to her.

  Portia found a jack with some mild ale in it, poured it out for Ellie and watched eagle-eyed to see that she drank all of it down. “What are you going to make milk with if you don’t drink enough or eat anything?” she demanded, but Ellie winced back from her so that she felt sorry for it and patted the girl’s hand. “It’s all right, I’ll make you something nice for your breakfast. Have you had anything?” Ellie shook her head, of course. “Tim tried to make a mess of eggs but it burnt,” she explained.

  Portia snorted, unlaced her sleeves and took them off, rolled the sleeves of her shift up to the shoulders and tied them there with her points. There was a not too grubby apron lying on the floor which she picked up and put on, then checked under the bed and found a truly horrible jordan brimming there.

  “Godsakes!” she growled, just as Goody Janner would have.

  She dumped the jordan out into the jakes in the back yard, found a rainbutt and tapped out some water so she could rinse the thing clean. There didn’t seem to be any lye anywhere. There were a couple of hens poking around in the overgrown vegetables, so she poked around after them and found that for a miracle they hadn’t quite stopped laying and there were two small eggs nestling in a leafy corner. There wasn’t much growing anywhere and it seemed Ellie had been growing flowers rather than useful things like cabbage, but there were a few onions that hadn’t been lifted.

  Shortly after Portia had the dish of coals filled with some hot coals from the fireplace, more wood on the fire to build it up and provide extra coals for the copper she had found in a shed out the back. She got an earthenware dish that wasn’t too dirty, scoured it with sand, rinsed it, melted some butter on the edge of going off and fried the onions with the eggs for Ellie to eat. When she took it up to her, she found Ellie had dozed off with the babe still on her breast, so ruthlessly woke her since she would wind up with a sore nipple and milk fever if she did that. Ellie protested that she wasn’t hungry, then ate every morsel of the mess of eggs. There had been no fresh milk and the only beer in the shed was too strong for someone who was nursing, so Portia diluted it with some of the rainwater and hoped for the best.

  You simply couldn’t carry on ignoring the ripe smell from the baby. Portia took the child who was dozing off again, laid him on her lap by the fire with a linen cloth underneath and started unwrapping his swaddling bands, rolling them up deftly as Goody Janner had first shown her with her littlest brother who had died of something when he was three.

  Sure enough, the clout between his legs was soiled with the swirl of yellow cream that a healthy baby made. She cleaned him off with the clout and some spit to protect him from a swaddling rash, put on a new one while his pink arms and legs waved and his fingers clutched at air and he made the surprised offended noises that most babies made when you dared to take their swaddling bands off. His shirt was in not too bad a state since the bog-moss sandwiched between the folds of linen had soaked up most of the damp. The moss went in one bucket, the cloths in the other. For a wonder, there was a pile of more of them, neatly rolled, so Portia wrapped a sheet around him and bound him up again, rolling round and round from feet to shoulders and tucking his arms in last. Ellie didn’t use a board to keep his legs straight which Goody Janner would have tutted at, but that was thought old-fashioned now. He was quite a soft little package once she had done. She let him suck her finger afterwards but he wasn’t at all hungry and his eyes were drooping with the little chirrups and sighs of a happy baby. It soothed her but it also made her own breasts prickle and ache. She hadn’t held a babe since... Since... She wouldn’t think of it. She couldn’t think of it.

  She put the baby carefully between the sheets where Ellie sleepily put her arm round him and smiled at last. Poor love. Not churched yet and expected by her hag of a mother-in-law to sweep the floor and clean up with no gossips to help either thanks to the Plague. Although Goody Janner was far away in Cornwall, Portia could practically hear her tutting. There was no quicker way to a dead mother and a sick baby than doing housework of any kind before the forty days after the birth had passed and you had been received back into the safekeeping of the church.

  Portia’s lips tightened down to a severe line with a rage that was also partly for the wicked god who stole children like Moloch, but she said nothing of that even to herself. It was very obvious what needed doing in the place and nobody around except herself to do it, so that made it simple. At least it meant she could get her own washing done while she was at it and it would cost her nothing but considerable effort.

  She went downstairs with the moss bucket and the clout bucket, both very full, went into the yard and dumped the moss and turds into the jakes as well. Tim Briscoe needed to bring in the nightsoil men to dig it out soon, the rate it was filling up.

  The laundry buck was hiding behind some badly overshot runner beans that had died back. It had filled up with rainwater which looked clean enough, so Portia dumped all the linen she had with her into it and added some more from a pile by the hut where the copper was. There was a useful stick against the wall that she used to stir it up and then, blessed be, she found an old barrel which stank of lye, nice and strong. There was a lye dripper on its side near it as well. At least someone had thought to provide Ellie with most of what she needed, even if she hadn’t got to grips with it yet, so Portia put a good measure of lye into the rainwater buck and piled up firewood under the copper, brought a shovelful of coals from the living room fire and left the fire to catch and heat up the water in the copper. Soapwort was no good at all for soiled breechclouts and stained shirts, you need to boil them and scrub them with strong lye if you didn't have grated soap, something which made your hands red and unladylike. No help for it.

  While she waited for the water to boil, she swept out the nasty old rushes and piled them next to the shed ready to burn, looked at the floorboards which clearly needed scrubbing but she was only one woman and didn’t have time for that as well as the washing which was far more urgent. Tim would have to order more floor-rushes
from the market or invest in rush-mats which could be cleaned by beating. Rushes for the floor were now out of fashion because the Queen used mats. One Portia's first acts when she and her brother had taken over the old top-floor chambers in the Earl of Essex’s court, was to pay a man to dig out and cart away a foot deep litter of ancient rushes filled with bones and petrified pie crusts, revealing floorboards and enough dropped shillings and pennies to pay for it and more. She had got a woman in to scrub the boards with ten day old piss to take the stains out and perhaps kill a few fleas as well. Then she had bought white rush-mats for the whole chamber and never regretted it.

  That shed had a neat shingle roof which looked to have been done recently – perhaps by Mr Briscoe who had even filled the copper with clean water. You couldn’t fault him – he had done all that he could and more but you couldn’t expect a man to launder, they knew nothing of the art.

  The water hadn’t boiled yet, so she tidied the sitting room, found a food-safe with some ham and cheese in it and very old bread, looked at the sun, scowled that it was already noon and no sign of the old harpy who should have been helping her daughter-in-law with her grandson. So she grated the bread, fried the ham on the dish-of-coals, grated the hard cheese and mixed it with the breadcrumbs, piled it on top of the ham and made a sort of pudding which she took upstairs and shared with the still sleepy Ellie. The baby woke up at the smell of melted cheese and sniffed hungrily, demanding more food, so Portia left him to feed, took the bowl downstairs to clean later and hauled the linen out of the buck into one of the scoured buckets, transferred it to the copper and boiled all of it at once as hard as she could get the fire sharpened up, which she stirred with the useful stick which she now realised must be one of Tim Briscoe’s veney sticks for practising of swordplay.

  The original buck needed emptying but was too heavy for her. It was now two o’clock for she could hear the drums for the bearbaiting clear across the Thames. At that point the door opened and in walked the hag, a broad red-faced woman in a red gown with murrey trim that didn’t suit her and an expression of disapproving stupidity.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs Briscoe,” said Portia with killing politeness, “How lovely to see you.”

  Mrs Briscoe senior had small suspicious eyes and a truculent expression.

  “Where’s that little Ellie?” she demanded.

  “Oh I’m one of Ellie’s gossips,” Portia said in the most disgustingly sweet voice she could manage, “I’m sure you wouldn’t expect her to be out of bed so soon. I'm afraid I found her downstairs, trying to clean up this morning when I visited. Of course I sent her straight back upstairs.”

  Mrs Briscoe sniffed. “She’s running out of milk and I have gone to some trouble to find a reliable woman to nurse the boy...”

  “Dear me,” said Portia, “Do you think so? Perhaps it is her having to run around and do housework before she is churched?”

  Mrs Briscoe senior stared at Portia. Slowly but surely what passed for her brain was catching up with the implications of what Portia was saying and the way she was saying it. “She...”

  “After all, your grandson is a lusty young man and he’s growing fast. I’m sure if Ellie gets plenty of rest and food and drink she’ll have no trouble feeding him and so no need to put yourself to any trouble or expense to find a wetnurse. Besides, with the Plague about, I’m surprised you’d dare bring a stranger in to feed him.”

  To be fair, Mrs Briscoe senior did look worried at this idea, which clearly hadn’t occurred to her.

  “At least she’s done the rushes at last,” she said to which Portia smiled brightly.

  “No, Mrs Briscoe, I swept those out – they did need doing, didn’t they?” Even Mrs Briscoe could catch the implication there. Come on, thought Portia, I dare you, I dare you to say that the floor needs scrubbing. I’ve got a scrubbing brush and some lye just waiting for you.

  “I was delayed at the market,” the hag said defensively, “You didn’t have to...” She gestured at the floors and bright fire.

  “I did, Mrs Briscoe,” said Portia, “Of course I couldn’t let Ellie exhaust herself doing it all herself. In Cornwall we say a tired cow makes no milk.” They didn’t in fact, but Portia felt they probably should since in her experience of dairying while her children were small, she had found it to be true.

  “Now Ellie needs fresh rushes for the floor, more bread, butter, cheese and mild ale, collops for supper, more moss and I’m afraid there’s a great load of washing to do. I just started boiling it all up.”

  Mother Briscoe frowned and settled her tall hat on her cap. “I’ve only just arrived...”

  “And how lucky that you did,” said Portia with iron in her voice, “If you go now you might catch the rushes man before he runs out.”

  Mother Briscoe stood up and haughtily straightened the hat again. Very fashionable it was too, Portia hoped she had enough money left to get supplies in. She swept to the door and then turned heavily. “How many rushes?”

  “Three faggots of the freshest,” Portia told her, “Bad airs are so dangerous for a small baby, aren’t they?”

  Mrs Briscoe got that hint too. And he wasn’t small, he was large and beefy and already made Ellie look frail, but so what? He was still a baby and just as likely to die of bad airs.

  Mrs Briscoe left, very much on her dignity, while Portia set about fishing out linen and scrubbing the worst stains with soap.

  Mother Briscoe came back followed by a small procession including the rushes man carrying the faggots on his back and two street boys holding the food she had bought. The two of them worked together to spread the rushes in the living room and upstairs, sprinkled with dried ladies’ bedstraw and rue against fleas. Ellie was sitting up in bed, looking much less hollow-eyed and feeding the great greedy baby again. Mrs Briscoe chucked him under the chin and clucked at him, but he wasn’t interested and went on feeding with the little “glug glug aaahhh” sounds that babies made, while his little ears wiggled. Portia’s breasts ached again so she refilled the flagon with some very good mild ale that Mrs Briscoe had found somewhere and made sure Ellie drank it and had some bread and cheese.

  “He’s not nearly so cross with me,” Ellie said, “Look,”

  “You’re resting now and making more milk for him,” Portia told him, “You see, I told you.”

  “I’ve bought some double beer for Tim when he comes home,” put in the mother-in-law, “and a great raised pork pie for his dinner so he can do for himself and you needn’t leave your bed.”

  “Oh Tim wouldn’t let me,” Ellie said with an artlessness that was a credit to her, “He even tried to cook me some collops last night but I couldn’t eat them because they were burnt too much.”

  “Dear of him,” Portia said, “What a kind husband you have, Ellie.”

  Ellie shot a suspicious look at both Portia and her mother-in-law which Portia returned blandly. Perhaps she had overdone the sugar. Clearly Mother Briscoe had had time on her marketing trip to think about what it would do to her reputation if Ellie’s gossips found out she had expected her daughter-in-law to do housework before she was churched.

  Together Mrs Briscoe senior and Portia got all the dirty linen boiled, scrubbed, rinsed in the buck, after bribing the largest of the next door children to go to the conduit four times for the rinse water. By the late afternoon the clouts and baby shirts and shifts were festooning the little living room because it looked like rain outside and anyway, if you put out linen on a hedge or wall in London, you were simply offering a free gift to whichever urchin happened to pass by first. Ellie settled down to feed the baby again while her mother-in-law cooked the collops with mushrooms, ale and mustard to her own recipe, as she boasted.

  Portia put her wet shirts and cloths into her marketing basket in a bundle and headed home, feeling tired and hungry, but somehow refreshed. She had never particularly enjoyed the minutiae of housekeeping, much preferring to command others. She had been her husband’s steward for the small farm
. Indeed, that was how she had first found out her gift for law when there had been a dispute over some land taken from Glasney College in Penryn in the Dissolution of Good King Henry's reign. But now there was a strange kind of refuge in being wrapped up in the subtler business of women, after the rough and tumble of the Inns of Court and Westminster Hall.

  She had even hooked into the latest gossip, which was, as usual, juicy. An alderman had been caught by his wife in his mistress’s arms, a prominent churchman found at the Falcon’s Chick (the notorious boy-brothel on the South Bank), a series of thefts by hookmen had all the women in the city locking their shutters every time they went out, two women of the town had been found foully murdered, probably by the Jesuits who were back in London again, a barrister had made a contract with the Devil and wriggled out of it, so the Devil had possessed him, the Earl of Essex had supposedly got dead drunk at a banquet and fallen out of a boat taking him back to Essex House, there was definitely and for certain sure a witch’s coven in London, an alchemist had been saved from the plague by the Philosopher’s Stone...

  “What?” Portia had asked, wringing a shirt against Mrs Briscoe’s vigorous twisting.

  “It’s all over the city, there have been evil spirits and poisonous plants seen in many places and a woman ran wood from wicked spells...”

  “No, no, the alchemist? Was it Mr Cheke?”

  Mrs Briscoe shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps it was, only they say he found the Philosopher’s Stone by accident and it cured him of plague.”

  “Hm,” said Portia.

  “Only of course, the Philosopher’s Stone has a wicked ingredient so it is the most unChristian thing to seek, almost as bad as witchcraft,” said Mrs Briscoe.