In winter the kitchen servants often slept around the fire but in summer it was too hot in there and they preferred the coolness of the pantry or buttery, so there was no one to see the young lord let himself out. The stink of offal rose above the smell of the stables on the other side of the yard. Otherwise, it was a fine night, with a half-moon that came and went between the clouds and very little wind.
Within moments five other young men had joined him. Tom Herbert was there, but notably absent was his elder brother William, for he was a tediously loyal husband. Also present was Humphrey Bourchier and Walter Blount, an irrepressibly cheerful individual with three chins and a growing girth. The leader of the expedition and the eldest at twenty-five was William Hastings. A voluptuary of some repute, Hastings was as easygoing as Blount, cynical and worldly. He also read people well and always seemed to be in possession of the latest news before anyone else. It didn’t hurt that he was an avid gossip and had the ability to get along with anyone, of any age, of either sex and whether of high or low birth. He had spent a great deal of time in London with the Duke and claimed to know all the best places. The younger men were happy to defer to him.
“You’ve fought in your first battle,” Hastings said solemnly. “Now are you ready for an erotic odyssey through the stews of Southwark?”
“A night of flagrant, unbridled, unforgettable swiving?” Blount added.
“A debauchery of epic proportions!” Hastings concluded, laughing.
Edward had a lust for experience. He had already experienced more than other thirteen-year-olds, like the killing of a wild pig. Even Warwick hadn’t done that and probably never would. That had been an experience both fearful and exhilarating, and he wouldn’t have missed it for anything. He had raised men, marched them a hundred miles, fought in a battle and probably killed a man. And now he was about to experience ‘a debauchery of epic proportions’. He wasn’t quite sure what that entailed, but the words were enough to excite him further.
“I’m ready. Lead on,” he said, equally solemn, though delighted to be included in this thrilling male comradeship. If his father ever found out about this nocturnal adventure, he would be in serious trouble, no doubt, but it would be Hastings who would bear the brunt of the Duke’s anger. He was grateful to the older man for agreeing to include him.
In silence, they set off past the stables and through the water gate onto the stone jetty. The gate guards had been paid in advance. London was always locked up for the night and had a curfew in force, but there was nothing to stop its citizens hopping across the river for a night of illicit pleasure in Southwark. A boat was already waiting for them. The boatman clambered out and held the vessel steady while the adventurers climbed in. Hastings had had the foresight to hire him earlier in the day. Hastings, indeed, thought of everything. He had brought along a wineskin – not a lot of lubrication for five young men intent on excess, only enough to whet their appetites. As soon as they were safely away from the vicinity of Baynard’s Castle, Tom Herbert gave a great whoop. The wineskin did the rounds and was empty before they had reached the middle of the channel. After a noisy and hilarious crossing, the boat bumped against the wharf belonging to the Bishop of Winchester’s Palace and disgorged its passengers.
“We’ll take a shortcut,” said Hastings, and led them through the grounds of St. Mary Overy to the Bankside, where the eighteen stews, calling themselves inns with innocuous names like the Unicorn, Bell and Swan, were located.
Southwark was the most disreputable suburb of London. Its population was largely composed of harlots, pimps, thieves, assassins, beggars, defrocked priests with a penchant for little boys, fugitives from the law and other assorted malefactors. Its streets were narrow and laden with indescribable filth, vermin-infested and dangerous. During the day an innocent passerby on the Bankside might look up and see whores standing in the windows, showing their wares, while their pimp accosted him below to offer a graphic list of the services available. At the same time, a cutpurse might be relieving him of the means to pay for those services. At night every sin and vice imaginable were to be found behind its shuttered windows and crumbling facades. There were cockfights, bearbaiting and ratting, taverns and brothels that offered exotic whores, boy whores, prepubescent whores and regular whores. Any man who entered Southwark at night without adequate protection risked getting his purse cut and his throat along with it.
The Bishopric of Winchester had owned the stews for a couple of centuries. Successive bishops had claimed that the land was vacant and given over to the keeping of geese to avoid paying tithes to Rome on the rents. To the Londoners it was a huge joke, and the whores of Southwark were euphemistically referred to as the Bishop of Winchester’s geese. As the bishop owned several other houses, he rarely occupied his London residence, set as it was in an unsavoury district with criminals and harlots for neighbours.
Obviously no stranger to the area, Hastings had no difficulty finding his way. As in any other stratum of society, there was a hierarchy among brothels. Those at the top catered to gentlemen, while those at the bottom serviced sailors and foreigners. The large middle tier was the choice of the large middle class. In deference to the youngest of his companions, Hastings chose a place where the girls were regularly checked by a physician and were kept clean and well fed. The door at which he finally wore a coat of chipped paint. A hardy creeper was growing out of a crack in the front step. It was a three-story house in relatively decent shape, with the two upper floors cantilevered so that they leant tipsily over the street. The shutters of the first floor windows, being slightly warped, revealed chinks of light and they could hear voices from within. Directly across the road, incongruously, was a small church.
The door was opened by a huge and ugly brute with a bald head, a mass of nasty looking scar tissue where his right ear should have been and formidably bulging biceps. But he was quick to recognize men of quality and was immediately reduced to simpering servility. Hastings pressed a coin into his hand, and they moved further into the room. Edward barely had time to look around before they were surrounded and a woman draped herself all over him. He was so startled that it took him a moment to realise she was attempting to remove his cloak.
“Ooh!” she crooned. “He’s young and beautiful!”
Hastings was obviously known here. A couple of the girls greeted him by name. He seized one around the waist, lifted her into the air and kissed her full on the lips, before saying: “Greetings, Mattie. Did you miss me?”
“Welcome! Welcome, gentle sirs,” a husky voice said, and the whores quieted and moved aside to reveal the speaker, a tall, slender woman of about forty, with a hard but handsome face and hair bright as newly minted coins. Her gown was so fantastic, it was hard not to stare. The bodice consisted of two narrow pieces of shimmering fabric, rather like straps, covering little else but her nipples.
Hastings bowed over her hand and kissed fingers heavy with rings as if she were a Queen. Then he introduced his companions by first name only. When he came to Edward, the woman moved forward for a close up inspection. She took his face between her two perfumed hands and kissed him gently on the lips.
“The lad is in need of instruction in the rites of Eros,” Hastings said delicately.
“Young man, if I were ten years younger, I would take you myself and send you home so limp and wrung out that you would be unable to sit for a month.”
“I believe you could,” said Edward, awarding her his most irresistible smile.
The remark pleased her. “We must find someone very special for you,” she said, and returned to Hastings to discuss the matter, while Edward took the opportunity to look around. The room was warm and brightly lit, with an assortment of tables, chairs and settles, scattered with colourful cushions to soften their hard wooden contours. Several couples were engaged in amorous activities. One fellow had his face buried in a woman’s open bodice; another semi-clad couple was writhing on the stairs, so closely entwined it was difficult to tell whi
ch limbs belonged to which. Edward looked quickly away, not because he was shocked but because he didn’t want anyone to know that such goings on weren’t commonplace in his world. Then he saw Tom Herbert and a whore with their tongues in each other’s mouths. Walter Blount was already on his way up the stairs with a girl. That’s where it will happen, he thought. That’s where I’ll discover what all the fuss is about.
Before long he was introduced to a girl called Lily. She looked to be about seventeen, and she had dark red hair, sparkling blue eyes, pink cheeks and plump red lips that owed nothing to artifice. In fact, she didn’t look all that different from the girls of Ludlow.
“Come on,” she said at once, “let’s get away from this noise.”
They ran up the stairs hand in hand. Above was a dim, narrow passage. Lily pushed open a door, darted inside and kicked it shut after them. Without any more ado, she pressed him up against the door and launched herself at him, mouth to mouth in a hungry frantic kiss, her breasts against his chest and her groin grinding into his. Edward rose manfully to the occasion.
“Sorry, luv. I’ve been dying for that ever since I saw you,” she murmured against his mouth. “You’re ready, aren’t you?” she asked, and he answered with an incoherent groan. “So am I. Let’s have a quickie. To relieve the pressure, like. Then we can take it nice and easy and enjoy ourselves. Unfasten your points.”
While she hiked up her skirts, Edward did as he was bid, loosening his clothing so that his penis sprang free. Then he spun her around and pressed her against the door as he entered her.
“Oh,” she squealed in delight. “Nothing boyish there, darlin’!”
When it was over, and it was over very quickly, just as Lily had known it would be, she said: “Well, did you enjoy it?”
“Very much,” Edward said. He frowned. The response was inadequate, and he knew it, but he couldn’t articulate his feelings. It had been more, yet strangely less than he had expected. “What about you?”
“Me?” She looked surprised. “Doesn’t matter about me. You’re the customer.”
“Still, I’d like to think that you enjoyed it too.”
She saw that he meant it and was touched. “Well, ‘course I did. Being swived by a nice, clean lad with the face of an angel and the cock of a donkey – who wouldn’t enjoy it!” She grinned saucily as she began to unfasten the laces of his doublet. “Now that we’re nice and relaxed we can do whatever takes your fancy.”
“Then I want you to teach me how to please women.”
Lily stared at him for a moment. “Blessed saints!” she murmured. “I’ve died and gone to heaven!”
……….
Edward’s sexual education continued during his stay in London. On several nights, the young men of the household sneaked out of the house to visit the taverns and brothels of Southwark, returning in the pre-dawn hours, exhausted, sated and frequently drunk, to spend the following day in bleary-eyed indolence. The Duke, distracted by more important affairs and spending long hours at Westminster, where he had awarded himself a suite of rooms, had no idea how his heir was spending his nights. On one memorable morning, after another ‘epic debauchery’ in the stews of Southwark, Edward awoke late with a pounding headache and large gaps in his memory of the previous night.
“I have the grandfather of all headaches,” he confessed to Will Hastings as he came down to the great hall to find the sun well above the horizon and breakfast already cleared away.
“What you have, my young friend, is a hangover,” Hastings said loudly and jovially, “a vile yet common malady caused by an overly eager consumption of certain beverages. Symptoms include, but are not confined to, a pounding head, a churning stomach and a bilious green tinge to the skin. It can result in lack of appetite, loss of all sense of humour, general debility, vomiting and, in extreme cases, temporary impotence.”
The blue eyes widened in mock dismay. “Impotence! It’s serious then. Is there no remedy?”
“Abstinence. However, that’s rather extreme. You’ll be glad to hear that it seldom lasts longer than a day.”
Edward clutched his head and groaned. “You might have warned me. I’m not even sure I can sit a horse. And which one of you churls pissed in my mouth?”
“We took turns,” Hastings said amiably, and gave his companion’s arm a quick jab to alert him to the presence of a figure hurrying through the hall. “Your sister,” he informed him.
The figure was wearing a violet cloak with the hood pulled up and forward as if to conceal her face, so Edward could only assume that Hastings had seen her when she arrived. She was also walking very fast, almost running in fact, and although he got up immediately, ignoring the wicked pounding behind his eyes, and called her name, she was halfway to the gate before he reached the door.
After calling her name twice more, he caught up, seized her by the arm and swung her around to face him. Three things struck him at once. She was very thin, which only made it more obvious even to an inexpert eye that she was pregnant, and she was crying. So taken aback was he that he didn’t know which of these matters to address first and took the easy way by remaining silent, giving Anne time to recover herself.
Brushing a hand across her eyes, she said tremulously, “Oh, it’s you, Edward. I didn’t know you were here.”
This was a lie of course. She would have known he was at St. Albans with their father and had come to London with him. Such information was available on every street corner. No, she had tried to avoid him, not wanting him to see her in this pitiable state, and he was sorry he had chased after her instead of allowing her to depart with her tears unseen. Furthermore, he didn’t know how to deal with women’s tears; it was something that made him acutely uncomfortable.
Taking his cue from her, he decided to ignore her state and instead seized her in a boyishly exuberant embrace, wrapping both arms tightly around her so that he could lift her off her feet and kissing her on both cheeks before setting her down again. He had found that it was always best to ignore unpleasantness as long as possible.
“My dear sister, how happy I am to see you again!” he exclaimed brightly. “How long has it been?”
“Fotheringhay. The Christmas of ’53,” Anne answered at once. She had been married in ’54 and spent a miserable Christmas with her detestable husband in gloomy Rougemont Castle.
“Lots of snow that year. We strapped bones to our feet and went skating on the lake.”
“And you and Edmund made the sorriest looking sled and went sledding down Tooker’s Hill. When you ran into a tree, it was reduced to kindling.” Anne smiled at the memory, then dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief she had fished out of an inner pocket and heaved a sigh. “Childhood ends far too soon,” she said forlornly.
Not for me, thought Edward. He couldn’t wait to shake off the last chafing remnants of childhood. But now he noticed another strange thing. His sister was attended only by an older woman, who had withdrawn when he approached and stood patiently waiting, with a basket over her arm and her eyes fixed on the ground. There wasn’t an Exeter man in sight.
“Have you come all this way without an escort?”
“I had to. I should not have been allowed to come if I had revealed my intended destination. Exeter has forbidden me to have any communication with my family. So I had to pretend that I was accompanying Eleanor here to Billingsgate. It is close enough to our house that I need no escort.”
“In that case, I will give myself the pleasure of seeing you safely home,” Edward said gallantly, taking his sister by the arm and turning toward the gate.
Anne stood her ground. “Only so far. You must promise me. I daren’t think what will happen if I’m seen with you.”
“To Billingsgate then. It will seem suspicious if you return home with an empty basket.”
As they passed through the gate, Edward gave a brief order to the guard, and four men-at-arms fell into position – two before to clear the way and two more behind Eleanor. If it was unsafe
for a lady such as Anne to be out in London unprotected, it was equally so for Edward, who had the chilling memory of Thomas Clifford to remind him that his father’s enemies were also his own. He never went anywhere without a ring of stout bodies around him.
Within its walls London encompassed approximately one square mile. They had to walk roughly three quarters of a mile to reach Billingsgate, most of it along Thames Street, the narrow thoroughfare that ran parallel to the river and whose southern side was crammed with warehouses, dank and dismal alehouses, and a few mercantile businesses. It ran all the way from Knightrider Street in the west to the Tower precincts in the east and, with the possible exception of Chepe, was the busiest street in the city, as well being one of the filthiest, the smelliest, and the most generally hazardous. Its cobbles were always slick with moisture, and it was prone to netting its travellers in inescapable traffic snarls – not only vehicular travellers, but pedestrians also, who would not be allowed to pass by in peace unless they lent a hand to remove the obstacle. Yet it was not a street that could be avoided, as it led to several wharves, Billingsgate fish market, the bridge and the Tower.
“Well,” said Anne in annoyance when they had reached the corner of Thames Street, “aren’t you going to ask me why I was crying? Aren’t you going to ask me anything at all? Don’t you care?”
Edward glanced at her and saw that she was dry-eyed and composed. He couldn’t help noting how crying ruined a woman’s looks. His sister didn’t look pretty at all, with her swollen red eyes and her shiny red nose.
This Sun of York Page 18
