“Now Peter,”she said. From her voice she was smiling though she sounded tired. “I’m visiting my gossip Mrs Briscoe and we’ll need to buy some supplies for her.”
It wasn’t far. They bought soap and raisins and half a sugar loaf which was heavy and smelled so sweet it made Peter’s mouth water. When they got to the place it was a neat little house on a street that was full of rich children playing – the girls skipping and the boys at football. It reminded him of the good old gaol again, though there wasn't anybody dragging about in chains because of not paying the gaoler enough garnish, obviously.
Mrs Morgan knocked on the door and a small birdlike woman opened it and smiled. They went right in. He pulled his forelock to the lady because he didn't have a cap to take off any more. The innkeeper had been moaning about it, he was supposed to have a statute cap and he didn't. Well that was a problem for the innkeeper to solve, not Peter who certainly didn't have the money for even a second-hand one and wouldn't have wasted pennies that could buy him food in any case.
Peter looked around inside the house: it was big with a main room you could fit several chairs in and the kitchen at the back, all clean with new rushes and the walls covered in pink plaster and even the table was clean and there was an impressive fire made with those expensive northern coals that came from Newcastle. In front of the fire was a wooden cot with a swaddled baby in it, sleeping soundly. Peter remembered babies in the gaol with their cheesy smelly swaddling clothes and their red angry faces. He could never understand why any woman would want one though he supposed they couldn’t help it really.
He’d better not stare at the baby, they might not like it or it might start crying. He put down the basket, wiped his nose and ducked his head nervously at the lady of the house who smiled at him.
Mrs Morgan took her mask off and put it in the basket. She certainly did have a big pockmark next to her mouth, that was sure. It made one side of her mouth lopsided because it couldn’t move so much.
Mrs Briscoe was talking to Mrs M. “I don’t know what you said to my ma-in-law,” she said, “But she’s been lovely ever since.
Mrs Morgan sniffed. “I made her feel thoroughly ashamed of expecting you to do housework before you were churched. Now, did you get the ale barm and the flour?”
Mrs B nodded excitedly. “Oh yes, and I got it bolted twice because little Annie from next door asked me if she could help and so I got her to do it rather than me, like you said. And I got the starter from the baker three days ago and I've been feeding it every since and it's all foamy and bubbly and smells of booze so I think it'll work. I’m ever so happy you could help, I’ve been so worried about the churching party on Sunday.”
Mrs M smiled crookedly. “This is really a twelfth night cake,” she said, “But it does very well for any party because it’s so big. Did Mr Briscoe get you the spices and the dried fruit?”
Peter was staring with his mouth open. He loved cake. His old mistress used to make it too for special occasions and she made sweetmeats too, knew exactly how to boil up sugar and fruit together, all that. He stole a piece once that had been cut off because it was burnt and it was so wonderful, just thinking about it made him drool. Were they actually going to make a cake?
“And you’ve talked to the baker?”
“Yes, he said when we've got it kneaded and thrown, we can bring it along and prove it by his oven and he'll put it in right after he's baked his penny loaves tomorrow. He’s baking a second batch now because there’s a big banquet at the Guildhall this afternoon and we can use his oven after the penny loaves have come out.”
“Splendid,” said Mrs M, taking her sleeves off and putting on an apron. “Peter, I want you to go in the yard and wash your hands, then come back and help with grinding the sugar.”
For cake, Peter would even wash his hands. He fairly sprinted into the yard.
Two hours of measuring, mixing and kneading later, Peter and Mrs Morgan carried the big circle of dough along the street on a big slate, to the baker who was waiting at the door of his shop. It weighed a lot – it was as big as a barrel head because it had been cast inside a cleaned barrel hoop. The baker showed them into his shop, full of the wonderful smell of new bread, right up to his oven door at the back which was still glowing hot inside. The penny loaves were piled in baskets and were too hot to touch when Peter experimentally tried to pick one up. The baker took the big slate as if it weighed nothing and put it on a shelf by the oven, covered it with a napkin.
“It should be baked by nine tomorrow morning. Will Mr Briscoe come for it in the afternoon?”
Mrs Morgan had her mask on and nodded mysteriously at the baker. She paid him and he gave Peter a penny loaf which he immediately started to gnaw in case someone stole it, so he burnt his mouth. She bought some pies too from the counter, mutton pies with onion gravy from the smell.
Back at Mrs Briscoe’s house, the two ladies sat down to eat the pies and started talking – amazingly they gave Peter his own pie to eat by the fire instead of just giving him the pastry from theirs, and he listened while he happily engulfed it. It was mutton, but with mint. They talked the way people did when there was a serving boy around. Sometimes they forgot you were there, sometimes they remembered. It seemed Mrs Briscoe was going to come and work for Mrs Morgan as her companion, he heard that. There were also hints about some secret but Peter was tired from being up late washing pots at the Cock and then from grinding the sugar and cinnamon and almonds to put in the cake and pulling the seeds from the raisins (although a lot of the raisins had gone into him, not into the bowl). He was sitting next to the fire, carefully picking pie crumbs off himself to eat, and his eyes got heavy and he fell asleep.
It was one of the dreams about his sister which he hated because she was scolding him and he didn’t know what he’d done wrong. He woke up crying and found Mrs Morgan’s ugly face close to his.
“What’s the matter, Peter?” she asked and he snortled and wiped his nose.
“It’s my sister Mary,” he mumbled, still half in the dream. “She’s so angry with me and all ‘er guts is coming out and they won’t go in again and... and...”
Mrs Morgan’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what happened to her?”
“Yerss,” sighed Peter, with tears still flooding down his face. Mrs Morgan gave him a handkerchief of real linen, worth as much as a penny, and he snortled into it. He was ashamed of crying like a baby but he couldn’t help it, couldn’t possibly stop now.
“Where did it happen?”
“Dunno,” sobbed Peter, “somewhere near the river in Whitefriars. I found her once the Devil went away.”
“What devil?”
“The one what killed her. I saw him. Hot as hell and a big Devil with horns and tails and a mouth full of teeth. I was so scared, I just fell down and then when I woke up, it was gone.”
“Was that when Mary died?”
Behind Mrs Morgan’s shoulder, Peter could see Mrs Briscoe quietly take the baby out of the cradle and go upstairs with it.
“Peter, was it...”
“I dunno!” he wailed, “She went off and I never seed her again and she said it was all right she could get lots of money for it and have a whole orangeado to be a good boy and she went off and I never seed her again, not alive, and...”
“Where did she go off to?”
“I dunno, I dunno, or I’d go and kill 'im for wot he done to my sister, don’t care if I hang for it or go to Hell cos that’s where she is anyway cos she was bad, she was a... a...”
“Was it a customer she was going to?” asked Mrs Morgan and her voice had ice in it that almost made him choke on his tears.
“Probly, he was going to pay her a lot of money, a whole pound and I don’t suppose it was for her to sing to him, do you?”
“No, I don’t suppose so either,”said Mrs Morgan.
“So he done it maybe thinking she was a virgin and when she wasn’t e cut her up, I fink.”
“She wasn’t?”
> “Nah, course not, she was at least four years older’n me.”
“How old are you?”
“Dunno. First fing I remember is the Armada and the bonfires when they was beat by Sir Francis Drake, so I must’ve been about three then. We got extra meat and wine in the old gaol too.”
Mrs Morgan’s lips moved as she did the sums. “So you’re about seven years old?”
Peter scowled. It was up to her to do adding up, not him. He shrugged. “Somefing like that. So she was old enough and anyway that was why we had to leave the lawyer’s house.”
“What?”
“Well, the master was tupping her, wasn’t he and the lady didn’t like it and nor did her ma-in-law so out we went.”
“What was the lawyer’s name?”
Peter shrugged. “Dunno. I always called ‘im sir.”
“Could you tell me where he lives?”
“On Fleet Street, sign of the bearded lady. I’ll take you there, if you like missus.”
“The master was lying with your sister, you had to leave and that’s when things went wrong?”
“Yerss. It’s cruel hard to get a new place though we tried and tried and she was too skinny and small for most of the gentlemen. Falcon wouldn’t have us... Well, they’d have had her, Mrs Nunn said, but not me cos Mary said I wasn’t to go to the Chick cos I’d get poxed and it was against Scripsha and it wasn’t right so that was that and we was just starting to get somewhere and she went out to get the money to put down on a room in the Whitefriars and... and...”
“Who was the pander?” asked Mrs Morgan, which surprised him because she was a respectable lady.
“It was that orangeado seller, Goody Mellow. She got Mary some clients before even though she said she was a cousin to the Missus wot kicked us out, she said she felt sorry for us.”
Mrs Morgan shook her head. Peter was suddenly full of terror that she’d turn him off now because of his wicked sister.
“Mary said it couldn’t be helped about her but I wasn’t to be a punk like her. I’d’ve done it,” he whispered, “I’d’ve let ‘em do it at the Falcon’s Chick, but Mary wouldn’t have it, she said I’d got to be a lawyer and I couldn’t if I was poxed, could I? I don’t care if that’s wicked, I’d do anyfing, but you try and get a master in London wivout any letters or friends. Mary said our mother said in the old days before the change, I could’ve been a monk or a priest but I can’t now so it’s got to be a lawyer.”
Mrs Morgan’s smile was rueful.
“What happened to your parents?”
“Oh they was rich once, Mary said, but they lost all their money and land and ended in the Fleet for debt or somefink worse and then they both got a gaol fever and died of it, see and left us alone. I liked it in the dear old gaol, see, and Mary was helping at the gaol but then the keeper got a new woman and she didn’t like us so we went to work for sir and his missus. See Mary could read and I fink she read something she shouldn’t of...”
“Can you read?”
“Yerss,” said Peter, wiping his nose on his sleeve and then remembering and swiping with the grubby hankerchief. “Mary taught me and she said Mother taught her but I was too little for it then and she said if I worked hard and she could get me in a school and I got to be a lawyer I could get rich and get her a husband, maybe.”
Mrs Morgan narrowed her eyes and went up the stairs to call to Mrs Briscoe. She came back with a small new book of the gospels and psalms like you could get at St Paul’s for the vast amount of several shillings. Peter squinted at it.
“Yerss,” he said, “I can read from that.”
She just opened it anywhere, the way sir did once and showed it to him. Peter narrowed his eyes to a squint because they were sore and swollen from all the crying he’d been doing and started to read.
“B...blessed are the poor, for they shall in-herit the king-dom of heaven...”
Mrs Morgan smiled ironically.
“Dunno about that,” commented Peter, looking down, “Mary said it’s wicked to argue wiv Scripsha but I fink it should be more like cursed are the poor for everybody will kick ‘em, wot do you fink?”
Surprisingly, Mrs Morgan nodded.
“Peter,” she asked without commenting on what he had said, “Can you write as well?”
“A bit, I never ‘ad time to learn that proper but I can do me name and lists.”
The look on Mrs Morgan's face was suddenly so fierce, Peter hunched back away from her with his knees tucked up against his chest and his arms wrapped around. She gently touched his shoulder. "It's all right, Peter," she said, "I'm not angry with you at all. Thank you for telling me about Mary, she sounds like she was a... a very good sister to you."
Well the tears started again after that, of course, but not so hot and scalding. She left him alone by the fire and went up stairs again to do mysterious woman things with the baby. Gradually the tears stopped, leaving him empty and strangely clear-headed. He dozed a little and there were no more dreams.
Mrs Briscoe and Mrs Morgan hugged when they left and Peter knew that she and Mrs Morgan had agreed on something so he went with Mrs Morgan and they stopped off at St Paul’s for paper – a big expensive pile costing two shillings that Mrs Morgan said was also for her brother’s work as a lawyer. She'd got a good deal on it though, she was sharp like that, she'd got thirty sheets, not twenty-four, for bulk.
In the large comfortable chambers she shared with her brother, Mrs Morgan sat down at his desk, cleared up some spilled ink and started to write. She did it very small so you had to squint to see the letters but you could still just make them out because it was still quite clear.
She wrote down all that happened, asking questions the whole way. Some of the questions made Peter cry again because it was about what he saw when he found his sister’s body bundled into a gap behind a wall in the Whitefriars.
“Nah, it was a straight cut, not ragged, and ‘er innards was falling out like a hanging drawing and quartering at Tyburn.”
“What was her face like?”
“That was funny, you know, cos it was calm, like she’d been sleeping.”
Mrs Morgan nodded.
“What was the weather like back then?”
Peter frowned. “Dunno, not cold. She’d started to smell a bit cos she went off in the night and then I saw the Devil and when I woke up more than a day had gone by but she wasn’t back so I give it anovver day cos you never know wiv gentlemen and then I’d eaten all the food see, even the rainy-day cheese so I went to look for ‘er and then it took me anovver day to find ‘er...”
Mrs Morgan stared into space, biting her lip. Then she coughed, blew her nose and said sternly.
“What did you do with the body?”
Peter started crying again. “I tried lifting ‘er but she was bigger’n me and I was tired so I couldn’t so I left it.”
“Two weeks ago?”
Peter nodded. “I done a terrible fing not burying her,” he muttered. “But I couldn’t fink how to, no money nor noffing to pawn and so I l...left ‘er. I just left 'er. All alone, wiv 'er innards coming out. I left 'er.”
Once again. Mrs Morgan coughed. Then she pulled out her purse, counted carefully, put it back inside her stays and leant over to him.
“I don’t think you did anything bad, Peter, because you just didn’t have the strength,” she said, her eyes fierce and shiny, “But I think it would be a bad thing if I didn’t help you give her a decent burial so that’s what we’ll do now. Can you show me where the body is?”
Peter gulped and shut his eyes, which never did any good to stop the pictures in his memory.
“I’ll show you but I won’t look cos it was scary enough before.”
“Quite right,” said Mrs Morgan, standing up and putting on her hat and her mask again. “I’m not going to look any more than I have to.”
From her voice Peter knew she was smiling at him. She left the chambers locked carefully behind her and held out her hand to him as
if she was a sister or something to go down the stairs which were a bit steep. He hesitated then put his grubby paw in her pocky hand, surprisingly brown and strong it was. He looked up at her face which gave him a bit of a turn because of the velvet mask.
“Do you fink she’s in a nice bit of Hell?” he asked huskily, “Maybe not too big a fire or somefing? After Mother and Father died, she always looked after me as well as she could. Even though she was a little trollop like the missus said.”
“Well... er... the Papists say she would be in Purgatory which is like a prison where you...”
“Oh yes, I remember!” said Peter joyfully, “That’s what it was, Purgy, we couldn’t remember what it was called but she said we’d only go there. Do you fink so? Like a gaol?”
“Ah...”
“Cos it was nice in the Fleet wiv warm places and food wiv brown sauce and people to play wiv so long as you kept out of the Beggar’s Ward... Specially before our Mother and Father died of the gaol fever.”
They were walking down Fleet Street and Peter found himself suddenly skipping with happiness. He was sure that was where Mary was, and it stood to reason, if she could get into Purgatory, he might too if he tried hard enough to be a lawyer and everything and then he could be a proper brother to her and head of the household and get her a dowry and...
His brow wrinkled. “Do you still need dowries to get married in Heaven?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Mrs Morgan slowly, “I don’t think so. Which lane should we take?”
He showed the way, past the window with the scary-looking picture of a dying man with a hat made of thorns and all blood on him, past the back of the lawyers' new hall which Mary said only in the summer he would go and eat in one day, some chance, past where they were knocking down more huts to make way for gardens and down another alley, deep in Alsatia. Mrs Morgan looked nervous, as well she might. Peter looked around but didn't see anyone he knew was a nip or a footpad or an upright man. He held her hand tighter.
"S'all right," he whispered hoarsely, "I'll protect yer."
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