by S. J. Parris
‘That is good advice,’ I say, sidestepping a huge mound of fresh shit that might belong to one of the gaunt dogs that patter along the streets, or might not.
‘Lots of the whores live down here though,’ he says, cheerfully. ‘Can’t move for ’em, my uncle says. This is where the sailors come when they’re down to their last groat, before they go back on their ships. Take home more than they bargain for, my uncle says. Not much further now, sir.’
He stops at a low doorway and pushes it open. Inside is a small, dingy room, stinking of urine and ale. The walls look as if they have scrofula, patches of damp plaster bulging and flaking away to reveal the horsehair and rubble stuffed in the cavities. A handful of men slump on stools around a table, sleeping off the effects of drink, while women in filthy clothes, their breasts hanging over their bodices, drape themselves over the men’s shoulders, their eyes clouded. One of these creatures rouses herself as we come in, and makes a pathetic attempt to smooth her skirts.
‘Is that you, Sam? What have you brought me, my darling?’
I fight not to let my reaction to this woman show on my face, but her appearance would provoke horror and pity in anyone with a grain of human feeling. She is bone-thin and the skin of her face and chest shows the red weals that proclaim to the world she is in the early stages of the pox. Her hair is lank and scabbed bald patches show through her scalp in places where it has been pulled or fallen out. Is this really the whore Robert Dunne so recently favoured? It can’t be possible. I dart a sharp glance at Sam; perhaps he has tricked me, luring me here to the mercies of these desperate people, knowing I have money to spare.
‘Eve?’ I ask, tentatively.
‘If you like,’ she says. Her eyes are barely focused on me; she says it as a reflex. ‘Where have you sailed in from, darling?’ she asks, languidly rearranging herself over the table. Her breasts are shrivelled and shapeless with her lack of flesh. ‘Don’t matter – I’ll take whatever coin you have. Do you want it here or in the street?’
I look again at Sam, more urgently this time. He grins.
‘This is the gentleman wants to know about Eve,’ he says, holding on to my sleeve.
The girl’s eyes open a fraction wider and she appears to register me for the first time.
‘What you want with Eve then?’ She pushes a strand of hair behind her ear; there is still some vestige of coquetry in the gesture. ‘I promise you, darling, there’s nothing she can offer you that I can’t.’ She gives a cracked laugh. ‘En’t that right? Oi.’ She kicks the nearest man in the ankle; he lifts his head an inch from the table and mumbles something before sinking back again.
I don’t doubt her word; this woman looks as if she could give you everything under the sun, I think, trying not to stare at the pox welts on her face.
‘I want information,’ I say. She blinks and sits upright, frowning in concentration. ‘Where would I find her?’
‘Eve . . . She’s most likely been sent to Goodwife Mullen,’ she says, surprisingly lucid. ‘That’s where she sends them as are stupid enough to get their belly filled. She can still squeeze a few pennies out of them.’ She raises a hand and rubs thumb and forefinger together, the universal sign for avarice.
‘She? You mean Mistress Grace?’
She produces the dirty cackle again; it collapses into a hacking cough. ‘Mistress Grace. Like a mother to us all, she is.’ She spits a gob of phlegm on to the floor. ‘Not that I ever had a mother I remember. Can’t have been any better.’
‘Were you one of . . .’ One of the Vestal Virgins, I had been going to say. It seems almost insulting. I could not begin to guess this girl’s age – she could be anywhere from sixteen to forty – but I suspect she barely remembers her maidenhead either.
‘One of her girls, her Vestal Virgins. Oh, I was, sir. And look at me now – aren’t I the very model of purity?’ She lifts the ends of her hair, twirls them around her fingers in a parody of flirtation, then lets her hand drop limply to her side.
‘What happened to you?’ I ask, more gently. ‘Did you have a child?’
‘No, sir. I had the other sort of ill luck, the one with no reward.’ She points to her face. ‘I conceived this from some generous gentleman. And this gives her nothing to sell. So.’ She shrugs. ‘If you can’t earn your keep, there’s no place for you. I had to find a new home, as you see.’ She gestures around the room.
‘What do you mean, “sell”?’ I ask, trying to piece together her explanations.
She rolls her eyes. ‘What I said. If any of the girls get with child, she sends them to Goodwife Mullen soon as their belly starts to show. She’s a wet-nurse who keeps her mouth shut for money. They wait out their confinement, then if the child is healthy, Mistress Grace finds a home for it. Not out of the goodness of her heart, mind.’ She makes the money sign again.
‘She sells the babies?’
‘You’d be surprised, sir, how many folk have uses for a healthy infant,’ the girl says, leaning forward as if imparting a confidence. ‘Gentlewomen, as can’t have their own. She does the deal in advance, so the lady can pad herself out with cushions, pretend to go into her confinement, if she wants to pass it off as her own. They usually only want boys, though.’
‘And if it’s a girl?’
‘Mistress Grace has people who’ll raise them for her till they’re old enough to be useful. For profit, naturally.’
‘Until they can work in the brothel, you mean?’ I shake my head. I thought I had seen most of the corruption known to humankind, but this is new. ‘She is breeding her own stable. Dio porco. She must have been at this business a while. What age does she start them?’
The girl shrugs. ‘Soon as they start to bud. Eleven, twelve. There’s plenty of customers would take ‘em younger, but Mistress Grace says it wears ’em out too soon.’
‘She is all compassion.’ I picture barren gentlewomen stuffing their bodices with cushions while they wait to buy a whore’s bastard. My thoughts flit by association to Mistress Dunne and the sadness in her voice when she mentioned that her marriage had produced no children. ‘And Eve? This is what happened to her?’
‘Ah, Eve – she was a sweet one.’ The girl’s eyes glaze over and she slumps forward, resting on her elbows. Just as I think she has forgotten me and drifted into some reverie, she flashes a sudden grin. Most of her teeth are missing. ‘She had what you might call a natural modesty. Wasn’t hard to believe she was a blushing maid. I almost believed it, and I knew what she was up to every night. The gentlemen loved little Eve.’ She laughs again and spits out whatever it has dislodged. ‘But I suppose even her luck ran out,’ she adds, sombre again.
‘Where will I find Goodwife Mullen’s?’ I ask.
She sits up straight, focusing her gaze on me with disconcerting suddenness.
‘She won’t admit you. She keeps the girls out of sight. It’s not strictly legal, see, but they turn a blind eye. What’s it worth to me?’ She sticks out a filthy hand. Her palm is blistered with marks of the pox. Her deflated breasts rest on the table top.
I reach into my purse and throw a penny on to the table. Almost before I can blink she has closed it in her fist and spirited it away somewhere inside her rags.
‘Out in Stonehouse. On the waterfront, the white house at the end. Like I say, wait till she’s gone out. She has a manservant guards the front door. Some of the girls try to run, see. But she has a yard out the back they can take the air. You might see Eve there.’
I thank her and beckon to Sam, who has stood patiently against the wall through this exchange, watching the passed-out men with the same fascination you might save for rare animals in a menagerie.
‘Don’t want nothing else from me, darling, while you’re here?’ the girl says, without enthusiasm, jutting out a hip and planting a hand on it as if to show off the figure she might once have had. ‘I mean, since you’ve paid.’ She gives a hollow laugh; she knows very well how she looks. I glance around at the drunks half-lying across th
e table. Do men still pay her? Perhaps in the dark she can hide what she is becoming, poor creature.
I smile. ‘No, you take the day off.’
‘Thank you, sir – I’ll spend it in prayer.’ She grins, and ducks in a half-curtsey.
I fish inside my doublet and draw out another groat. ‘And buy yourself a hot meal – what is your name?’
‘Hardly matters, does it? Not like anyone’s going to carve a headstone for me.’ She lurches forward and snatches the coin; I flinch from her breath. ‘I like you, darling. I’d have taken you for nothing, just for your pretty smile. I wasn’t always this way, you know,’ she adds, with unexpected ferocity. ‘If you’d seen me back when I was worth something . . .’ She looks down at the coin in her hand; her shoulders slump.
‘One last thing,’ I say, at the door. ‘At the House of Vesta, did you ever know a man called Robert Dunne? Or John Doughty?’
‘Oh, probably,’ she says, and laughs until the coughing threatens to overwhelm her. ‘Probably both at once. They never give their real names, unless they’re fools and fancy themselves in love.’
‘Of course.’ I realise I have not thought of this. Even if I find this Eve, how can I be sure she will tell me anything about Robert Dunne? She may not know him by that name, and I can hardly describe him; I have only seen the man three days dead.
As I leave she says, ‘Send Eve my good wishes, won’t you.’
I turn. ‘I still don’t know your name.’
She pauses, looks down. ‘Sara. That’s how she knew me.’
‘I will, Sara.’ I nod. ‘It means “princess”, you know.’
‘Really?’ She considers this. ‘And aren’t I fucking just?’ With a toothless grin she lifts her skirts, ducks a curtsey and blows me a kiss. At least she can still smile. I have seen the pox take hold; the best she can hope for is that the insanity comes quickly.
I have rarely been more relieved to step into air that I can breathe; even the lanes around the tenements are an improvement on the fetid air of that hovel. The stench of it is so thick in my nostrils that I could almost believe I have caught the contagion without so much as touching the girl. Sam and I stand on the harbourfront, feeling the wind in our faces, letting it sweep away every foul odour. My bruises ache and throb, and my eyes are heavy; I would like nothing more than to return to the Star and fall into my bed. I would also like to know if Jonas has been seen yet; his disappearance makes me uneasy. But the sun is high overhead, though still webbed with cloud; the day is moving towards noon and I am no closer to finding any answers. If I am to learn anything useful before tomorrow, I must chase every scent, however faint. Like a pig after truffles, as Sidney put it. I consider asking him to come with me to find the house of this Goodwife Mullen, who stables pregnant young girls as if they were brood mares, but reason that if I must gain access by stealth, it will be easier alone.
‘Are we off to Stonehouse, then?’ Sam asks, as if reading my thoughts.
‘Won’t your mother be expecting you?’
He shakes his head. ‘She’ll be out.’
‘Who gives you your dinner then?’
He frowns, as if he doesn’t understand the question. ‘We just see what falls off the stalls.’
I smile. ‘Do many things fall off?’
‘They do if people bump into them. It’s not stealing,’ he adds, hotly, ‘if you knock it by accident. Any case,’ he says, ‘you don’t know the way to Stonehouse. I know the house she meant. You need me to show you.’ He tucks his small hand under my arm as if the deal is settled. To Sam, I realise, I am some kind of guardian angel, dropped from heaven with a bottomless purse. But more than that, I make him feel that he is useful to me, and this in turn makes him feel important. It is the relationship of patronage in microcosm, I think, putting an arm around his shoulder; a reflection of my present situation with Sir Francis Drake.
‘Come, then,’ I say. ‘Show me the way to Stonehouse. But first we’re going to stop at a decent tavern for some hot dinner.’
His eyes light up, amazed. ‘With meat?’
‘With meat. And we are not going to knock anything off tables by accident while we are there, are we?’
He beams; you would think I had promised him fireworks and a sugar castle. ‘No, sir.’ He lays a solemn hand over his heart. ‘Not even if it’s very near the edge.’
FOURTEEN
A sullen bank of cloud has mooched in off the bay and blocked out the sun by the time we limp into Stonehouse, a small village of squat cottages that straddles a promontory on the other side of the headland. For most of the walk Sam has been clinging to my back like a monkey, his skinny arms tight around my neck; though he never complained, I could tell the distance was hurting his feet, bound up as they are with nothing but rags, so I offered to carry him over a stony patch of ground. When I asked about shoes, he claimed he’s never had any and looked at me as if I had asked whether he owns a carriage. He weighs no more than my travel bag, but with each step his knees thud into my bruised ribs. After half a mile I am regretting having begun this journey.
A chill wind slices across the cliffs; the clouds have turned the landscape grey, green and brown. ‘Call this a summer?’ I say to Sam. ‘Where I come from, it’s warmer than this in mid-winter.’ To lift our spirits I tell him about Italian summers, the riot of colour around the Bay of Naples: the shocking blue of sky and sea, the violent sunlight, the little white houses and churches with their red and purple explosions of bougainvillea, the sunsets so wild and vivid you fear the sea is aflame, as in the end of days. The fat lemons that hang from the trees, dark glossy grapes you can eat straight from the vines. Then I grow a little carried away and tell him Pliny the Younger’s story about the boy who befriends the dolphin and rides on his back across the bay, and when he asks if I ever did this I tell him all Neapolitan boys ride on dolphins to school, and the mermaids wave at them as they plait their golden hair.
‘Oh, we have them,’ he says, unimpressed.
‘What, mermaids?’
‘Yes. They lie out on the rocks when it’s sunny. Ours don’t have golden hair though. They have whiskers. They look more like dogs.’
‘Those are seals,’ I say. ‘Italian mermaids are the most beautiful in the world. They can’t live in English waters because it’s too damned cold.’
‘Why did you come here, then?’ He waves a hand at the murky estuary stretching out before us as the road slopes down towards the cluster of houses.
‘Some men wanted to kill me,’ I say. There seems no point lying to a child.
‘Oh.’ He thinks about this. ‘Why?’
‘I provoke people. Sometimes on purpose. Other times, I don’t even realise I’m doing it. Just something about my face.’
He nods gravely. ‘Sometimes my uncle gives me a slap for nothing. Just for being there.’
‘Then you understand.’
‘When I’m grown,’ he announces, ‘I am going to have a ship like Sir Francis Drake, and fight the Spanish, and bring home treasure, and my uncle will never dare clout me then, and my brother won’t push me in the water or throw stones at me with his slingshot.’
‘Quite right,’ I say. ‘They will all have to call you captain. Now – let’s find this house.’
He laughs and hugs his arms closer around my neck. We walk on a few more yards. At the outskirts of the village I swing him down to the ground, gasping at the pain in my side.
I recognise the place by the girl Sara’s description: a lime-washed cottage set apart from the rest at the end of the street that faces the estuary. An expanse of silted sand stretches from the far side of the road down to the mud-coloured water. Gulls patrol the beach, standing sentinel on the overturned hulls of fishing boats. I squint up at the house. All the windows are shuttered.
‘I suppose we just wait for the goodwife to go out,’ I say, casting around for somewhere to keep our vigil. A few yards along the beach is a small boat that will serve.
‘She might be o
ut already,’ Sam observes.
‘You are sharper than me today,’ I say. ‘How will we find out?’
He thinks about this. ‘I could knock on the door and ask for her.’
‘What if she answers it?’
‘Then I just say I got a message for Jem. And they say there’s no Jem here, get on your way, and then we’ll go round the back.’
‘Good work,’ I say. ‘You are earning your keep today, Sam. Wait for me to hide in that boat. And if she’s there, walk away so she doesn’t get suspicious.’
He scampers off and I hunker down inside the boat, watching the door. At length it is opened by a short, broad woman in an apron, her hair scraped back under a white coif. She shakes her head and points up the street, then slams the door in Sam’s face. He saunters away in the direction of the promontory, then hops down the low sea wall and sits himself down on the sand to wait. I pass the time by trying to organise the facts of Dunne’s death in my mind according to the memory system I developed for King Henri in Paris, but they refuse to fit in neat concentric circles; instead they fly up and scatter like a flock of starlings. There is a splat against the boards of the boat as a seagull shits an inch from my shoulder; I flinch away and the movement sends shivers of pain through my ribs. My eyelids grow heavy; I let them drop and picture the Bay of Naples, blue and silver, shimmering tails of dolphins and mermaids arcing over the surface.
A moment later I snap them open again; Sam is standing over me, poking my shoulder.
‘You were asleep,’ he says, mildly reproachful.
‘I was not. I was thinking. What’s happened?’
He points to the street in front of us; the stout woman, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, is waddling off towards the village, a large reed basket hooked over her arm. When she has turned a corner, out of sight, we dash across the damp sand to the cottage.
A path runs around to the rear of the house, past a garden enclosed by a wall not much higher than a man. A wooden door is set into it at the very back but this is firmly locked. From behind the wall comes the sound of women’s voices, subdued. Trees grow at the edge of the garden, branches snaking over the wall.
