The Good Wife of Bath

by Karen Brooks

  ‘What are you all giddy about?’ Lowdy asked no-one in particular, wiping one hand on her apron while Wace clutched the other, thumb in his mouth. I looked at Lowdy. Tall, with fine features, her dark hair was braided, her wide, brown eyes narrowed with mock suspicion as she regarded us fondly. Smart, quick and kind, that girl would succeed at whatever she tried.

  The women fell quiet, shooting guilty glances at each other.

  ‘What else, Lowdy,’ I came to their rescue, standing and taking both children’s hands, leading them to the hearth, ‘but trade.’

  ‘Trade? What kind?’ she asked.

  Leda choked back a cough as I guided her son’s hand to hers and she straightened his little shirt, smoothed his nest of curls.

  ‘The fair kind,’ I said solemnly. ‘One where women make the rules and men obey.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ said Leda and Yolande. Rose whooped.

  ‘I think it’s time we celebrate, don’t you?’ said Milda, standing. ‘It’s not every day you get bested by your own words, mistress.’ She winked and, taking Yolande with her, disappeared before the cushion I threw hit her.

  Laughing, Lowdy fetched it and returned it to its seat. Then she came and draped her arms around me, nuzzling my cheek. She smelled so sweet; like home. Violets and wood smoke mixed with cinnamon and sage, the promise of spring or autumn.

  I returned her embrace, enjoying the closeness, the dizzy excitement of the girls; an excitement I feared wouldn’t last long.

  Whether this was right or wrong, I swore to myself then and there as the ale was poured and mazers passed around, Drew joining us, it was a choice Lowdy would never, ever have to consider.

  ‘Here’s to being bawds,’ I said, raising my drink.

  ‘Bored?’ asked Lowdy, frowning. ‘Why would you ever want to be that?’

  FORTY

  St Martin’s Le Grand, London, and Southwark

  The Year of Our Lord 1396

  In the twentieth year of the reign of Richard II

  From that day forward, the household became one whose primary business was queynte. Reluctant though I’d been to become what I most loathed, someone who profited from a woman’s body, when the role was thrust upon me, I not only enjoyed the privilege, but was damn good at it too.

  Whoring was illegal in London and yet, as was the way with anything men desired, the authorities turned a blind eye, excusing it with prayers and pardons. Naturally, it thrived. Each Sunday, the priests and bishops would rail against the wickedness of women and their whoring ways and then seek them out for just that purpose the moment they left church. Yet, when punishment was meted out, even though it took two to commit the act, it was the women who suffered.

  So it is for now and for evermore, amen.

  Apart from a few churls who thought it was within their rights to beat the girls as well as swive them, and one young lordling who convinced himself he was in love with Leda and attempted to kidnap her, Leda, Rose and Yolande ventured out into the city most days and returned with shillings and pennies.

  In no time, our fortunes turned. Decent quantities of food graced the table; throughout the following winters we were warm. Soon, we were able to afford enough wool to make good quantities of thread. I began to weave again – not that it was necessary.

  Instead, spinning and weaving became the legitimate cover for our real trade.

  When the girls came home, always together as instructed in those early days, then waiting until the children were abed, I’d ask them about their day. Gathered around the kitchen table, the yellow hoods that whores were required by law to wear cast aside, they’d chat about who sought their services and where. Some of the men were young, others old, some wealthy, many just able to afford them. They’d laugh, wink and make light of what they were doing, even the occasional bruises or grazes. I watched carefully for any signs of unhappiness, but, God be praised, there were none. What they most complained about were men whose breath smelled like onions and stale ale, were covered in lice and treated soap and water like a leper – best avoided lest they catch something. When I understood they were still accommodating these hog’s entrails, I was horrified.

  ‘Don’t you understand? You don’t need to go with just anyone. Ordric may demand that, but I don’t. If the men stink like the Fleet, tell them to piss off.’

  ‘Some already have,’ said Rose, screwing up her nose. ‘Pissed, that is.’

  ‘Then tell them to find someone prepared to tolerate their filth. You won’t.’

  The girls stared in disbelief.

  ‘But they have coin –’ began Yolande.

  ‘So? Doesn’t mean you have to take it.’

  ‘But –’ said Leda, looking at Yolande and Rose.

  ‘But what?’ I said. ‘God’s balls, ladies! The whole point of me agreeing to this was to give you control. If you don’t respect your bodies, how can you expect anyone else to?’

  My thoughts flew to Jankin. I hadn’t respected mine, allowing him to use it ill. The shame was still raw, and I pushed it aside. ‘Order them to wash, present themselves accordingly. Just because the men have coin, doesn’t give them rights. It’s you who has the authority in this transaction. Use it. Oh –’ I added, as the women shook their heads in wonder, ‘and then raise your price.’

  ‘We can’t do that!’ protested Rose. ‘Making them wash is bad enough. We’ll lose custom.’

  ‘Nay, you won’t. Anyway, since you’re offering a discount to the priests here, we need to make up the shortfall.’

  Not only did the majority of men agree to make themselves more presentable, but as the months flew by, word got around my girls were fussy. This made men more inclined to hire them, believing it reduced the chance of the pox or some other disease. While that worked in our favour a while, it made the other bawds and pimps angry. We were stealing customers. Careful never to frequent Gropecunt, Puppekirty or Cock Lane and upset the likes of Ordric and his maudlyns, soon we were hard-pressed to find anywhere we were welcome.

  Sometimes, the girls would seek my advice regarding men – how to ensure the cleaner and better-quality customers returned.

  ‘Encourage them to talk about themselves,’ I said. ‘Men love to be listened to. Ask about their wives, if they have one, then prepare to hear them moan.’ My experience was showing. ‘Get them to tell you about their sweethearts. If they’re sailors, the ports they’ve visited. If they have a trade, liken their pricks to tools and tell them they must be good at what they do, because they wield their instrument so well.’

  The girls would fall about laughing. Later, they’d report my advice worked, depositing a few extra coins as proof.

  ‘If only we could lease our ears along with our queyntes,’ said Leda. ‘We’d double our money.’

  I’d make a businesswoman of her yet.

  More than once the girls were threatened and chased away from popular meeting places like St Paul’s, the land up near Smithfield, or Aldgate. Customers were never brought into St Martin’s Le Grand (the priests being the only exception), so it was becoming difficult to find suitable places to offer services – after all, we still had to avoid the law. It wasn’t until a sympathetic customer told Leda the alleys around St Katherine’s were more accepting of the trade than others that we operated securely there a while. But after a year and a half, even that became untenable as more and more women were also drawn to a place where pimps wouldn’t coerce them or other whores attack them.

  It was a crowded market and no-one traded well in those.

  Then I heard some maudlyns were making trips across the river into Southwark during the day. The Bishop of Winchester’s Liberty on the south side of the river had different laws to London. Over there, the oldest profession in the world flourished. Bankside was dominated by a colony of Flemish people who’d settled there years earlier, and many of the places along the waterfront had been turned into bathhouses. Over near the fishponds owned by the bishop, the area became known as the ‘Stews’.

/>   Time to see what it was like. If this was a place the girls could ply their trade safely.

  In the October of 1396, I finally crossed the river. Along with Milda and Drew, who I’d coaxed out of the precinct, I left as the bells sounded prime. The wicker gates had just opened, yet the city was bustling. Vendors parked their carts and wagons along the Cheap, barrow-boys too. The grind of wheels and hooves on cobbles were matched by the grunts of swine, baying of cattle and bleating of sheep being herded with crops and sticks along the main thoroughfare towards the markets and the blood-soaked lanes of the Shambles. Bakers and milkmaids cried out in sing-song voices, the shutters of shops flew open. Trestle tables were swiftly erected and goods carried outside. A stiff wind made awnings flap and pennants crackle as frost was blown away. Above us was the promise of weak sunshine. Women wrapped in shawls, baskets over their arms, chins tucked into chests, walked towards the conduit or paused to purchase candles, fur, nails, rushes, woad, leather or stockfish – everything was for sale. The ring of hammers almost drowned the faint strains of a keen lute player. Men in livery, satchels slapping their hips as they darted between folk, their faces grim, refused to be distracted by the temptations around them.

  We walked through St Paul’s, ignoring the urgent beckoning of merchants who invited us to buy their ink, books, oranges, spices and all manner of other goods. One old man with a scrappy white beard delivered warnings atop a barrel. Another held a star chart in his hand, promising he’d forecast futures for a mere shilling. One young maid held up handfuls of ribbons, claiming they were the finest in all the world and not to be found anywhere else.

  ‘Poppycock,’ grumbled Milda. ‘I saw the same ones just yesterday in Master Hall’s shop.’

  Distracted, Drew kept pausing to consider a barrow filled with cabbages or a milkmaid’s brimming jug and doe-eyed cow. His limp slowed us as well, and I tried to be patient. I laced my arm through his and kept him close, pointing out the man tossing swords or the cat suckling its kitties beneath a costermonger’s cart, all the while moving forwards.

  We headed to Powle’s Wharf near Baynard’s Castle. The smell of the river was strong and the number of carts and buckets filled with fish, oysters and eels being pushed uphill increased with every step we took down. When we reached the waterstairs, a boatman who’d just deposited some passengers was happy to take us back across the choppy brown waters.

  ‘What you reckon ’bout his lordship, eh?’ he asked, steering us towards the middle of the river, hailing neighbouring wherries and boats.

  He was referring to John of Gaunt, who’d recently wedded his former mistress, Katherine Swynford. It just so happened, she was the sister of Geoffrey’s late wife. I’d been stunned when Geoffrey told me – he was now related to royalty, albeit in a roundabout manner. It was like a fairytale, a prince marrying a commoner; a man as rich as Croesus plighting troth with a pauper. It was the talk of the town and set women’s hearts racing as suddenly the stuff of dreams became a reality. Fools. I knew the stuff those kinds of dreams were made upon. Marriage was no elevation for a woman but a slow descent into ignominy and slavery, all in the name of God.

  Much better to be a whore and be beholden to neither God nor one man.

  When Geoffrey first told me, I’d asked, ‘Why does the Duke wed her now?’

  ‘Likely so his children won’t be bastards anymore.’

  Together, John of Gaunt and Katherine had four children.

  ‘You don’t think he marries for love?’ I asked, certain of my own thoughts on the matter.

  Geoffrey shrugged. ‘Who does?’

  It was on the tip of my tongue to say I had once and look where that led, but stayed silent. I caught the wistful look on his face. Had Geoffrey ever loved? Was he even capable? He loved his children – at least, I think he did, even though he rarely spoke of them. I knew Elizabeth was still at Barking Abbey. I didn’t know much about his eldest son, Thomas, except he’d made a good marriage recently. Of Lewis, Geoffrey scarce made mention, though when he did, his entire face lit up.

  Mayhap, the Duke had wed for his progeny. There were worse reasons, and if it benefited the woman who birthed them, then that was the least she was owed.

  While the boatman discussed Gaunt and his new wife, declaring her a whore who’d pay for her sins if not on earth then in the hell where she belonged, I thought about pushing him overboard, but how would we finish our crossing? Instead, I shut out his carping and focused on the approaching bank and the houses set back from it.

  Clouds of smoke squatted above the buildings, the familiar stench of tanning and fulling apparent as we drew closer. On the muddy foreshore, there were some horses and carts, as well as thin dogs, skulking cats and hens with their feathers fluffed up against the cold. People milled about, working on the wharves, unloading boats and wherries. Goods were stacked in crates to one side, while people queued to board swaying vessels on the other, baskets and burlaps empty, purses no doubt full. There were shouts to move aside, chatter and the general din of industry. Church steeples cut through the haze, signs that the godly also dwelled in a place with a reputation for vice and sin. Well, they’d ever been comfortable bedfellows.

  As we paid the boatman and came ashore, I was struck by the poor efforts of those nearby not to stare at us. It would have been laughable if it wasn’t also reassuring: after a cursory glance, they turned away. We didn’t warrant a second look. A good sign.

  We hadn’t walked very far when the door of a rather large two-storey house with a mews opened. A fading shingle depicted a large bird. A big woman stood, her cap askew, her puffy face blotchy as she shook a rug then proceeded to beat it with a stick, uncaring that the dust flew in our faces and back inside the open door. Over her shoulder she called out in another language. Flemish. I looked again at the house. It was in a dire state. So was the one next to it, the sign so dirty it was hard to discern – a cross and key? The shingle on the next house appeared to depict a pointed edifice.

  The frontage was strewn with rubbish and stank of shit and piss. A couple of men came out of another place, again Flemish from the sound of them. I steered Drew and Milda away and back towards the water where, even though the shore was littered with the innards of fish and other animals and a dead dog’s carcass, it was cleaner.

  ‘Big houses,’ said Milda, nodding towards them.

  ‘Bathhouses.’

  Drew twisted his head to study them. ‘What? You have baths in ’em?’

  ‘I think once upon a time, you did, but now they’re just bawdy houses.’

  ‘Like what we are?’ he asked.

  ‘Sort of. Only our girls can’t swive indoors.’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Milda.

  ‘Not ever, not in St Martin’s,’ I reminded her. ‘If they do, that will be the end of us.’

  ‘Will that necessarily be a bad thing?’ She fixed her eyes on my face. Ever present was the worry the girls would be harmed. Every week, news reached us about this or that maudlyn being beaten bloody or having her throat cut and found in a ditch.

  ‘Nay, it wouldn’t. But as the girls remind me daily, no job is without risk.’ I drew her close. ‘There’ll come a time, Milda, I promise, when we won’t make a living in this manner.’ I nodded towards a woman in the window of one of the whorehouses. Her kirtle had slipped over one shoulder, exposing the swell of her bosom. Her long, mahogany hair was unbound. She sat eating an apple in a manner I’m certain most priests imagined when discussing Eve. ‘For now –’ I jerked my chin towards another large establishment as two young girls without aprons emerged from a doorway beneath a shingle bearing a crane, ‘we’ll see if we can ply trade around here. Mayhap, not here exactly. That’ll get everyone offside, Flemish or not. Let’s see where the girls can work, shall we?’

  We followed the maudlyns towards the High Street, meandering in and out of the various alleys, past a cordwainer’s, a butcher, at least two mercers, taverns, a bookseller, goldsmith, scrivener’s and lawyer’s.
Barrows and carts filled with vegetables, fruits, fish and all sorts of tempting vittles as well as hay, planks, coal, wine and laths lined the street. Hucksters with jugs of ale wandered about, so did bakers with trays of steaming bread. Every so often, we’d see a woman leaning against a doorway or just standing idly on a street corner. Not too far away was a man or boy, his face alert, one hand hovering over a weapon strapped to his hip. When a customer approached the woman, the man or boy would step forward, there’d be some discussion, the coin would be taken and the woman led her client into the shadows. It happened right beneath people’s noses; no-one turned a hair. Was it really so simple?

  We paused, watching a while, pretending to be interested in some fragrant oils a Moor was selling. I purchased some rose oil and, when there was a lull in business, approached two women. Even though they didn’t wear the yellow hood, they were from London. None too happy to talk at first, when I pressed a few pennies in their hands, they admitted it was fairly easy to get custom, provided you didn’t venture into the next liberty.

  ‘Stay this side of the street and don’t go any further than St Margaret’s Hill, up by the Tabard, then you’re alright. But take one step over there –’ the older of the two, possibly the mother of the other, nodded towards the opposite side of the road where a tavern stood with a sign bearing an angel standing on a hoop, as if its halo had slipped to the ground, ‘and the cock-sucking bailiff’ll be onto you. He’s a nasty piece of work – Lewis Fynk. Likes to pinch you if he thinks you ain’t listening to ’im.’ She pushed up her sleeve to display a series of livid bruises.

  ‘That’s the least of what he does,’ said the younger girl, rubbing her jaw.

  Milda sucked in her breath. Drew frowned. My heart began to beat strangely. I resisted the urge to put my arm about her. Bastard.

  ‘You thinkin’ of doin’ some business, are you?’ said the older woman. She looked me up and down. ‘You be a looker for an old doxy. There be some like ’em buxom and with age on the bones – and cunt,’ she cackled. ‘Experience.’ She rotated her hips suggestively. Abruptly, her demeanour changed. ‘But don’t tread on our turf, you hear?’ She shook a fist in my face, then unfurled her fingers. Her nails were long and filthy. ‘If you do, I’ll mark you like I’ve others.’