The Harlot's Tale (The Midwife's Tale)

by Sam Thomas

“If it’s a birth, why didn’t your brother-in-law insist we bring the stool?” Martha asked. “It must be something worse.” I realized that Martha was right; visions of blood swam before me, and I felt my stomach churn. Had a midwife tried to remove a dead child with instruments and killed the mother, too? Edward could easily have been called in such an instance, and he would need a midwife to examine the corpse. I hoped that this wasn’t the case.

  We turned down a narrow street that wound its way into the bowels of Hungate parish. Many of the tiny cottages seemed on the verge of collapse, and small children peered at us through open windows, their eyes hollowed by hunger and a lifetime of want. I wondered if I had delivered any of them, and such a thought further darkened my mood. Joseph turned down an alley so small that I might have otherwise missed it. A man I had never seen before waved to Joseph when he saw us, and I knew we’d reached our destination.

  I looked closely at the stranger as we approached. His clothes were plain but of good quality and covered a compact, powerful frame. He had cut his hair short in the style of Parliament-men, but even without this I would have guessed that he was a soldier. To my surprise, he and Joseph embraced when they met. When they did, I noticed that the stranger’s left hand had only two fingers and a thumb. The other two, and much of the hand along with it, had been cut clean off.

  “Aunt Bridget,” Joseph said. “This is Mark Preston. We fought together at Marston Moor.”

  “And in many battles before that,” Preston added with a broad grin. “But Marston Moor was my last at Mr. Hodgson’s side.”

  A shiver passed through me when he continued to smile even as he held up his ruined hand for us to see. I glanced down at his belt and saw a long dagger hanging on his right side.

  “I can still hold my own with a knife,” he said when he noticed this. “It was loading the pistols that was a problem.” He’d stopped smiling and now stared at me, daring me to contradict his claim.

  “After Mark left the army, I recommended him to my father,” Joseph said. “I thought he would be a useful man to have in his household.” Preston’s smile returned—still without humor—as he acknowledged Joseph’s compliment.

  “I have no doubt that he is,” I murmured. I glanced at Martha and saw her eyeing Preston warily. It seemed that he had unnerved her as much as he had me. Preston turned and knocked on the door behind him.

  While we waited, I looked over the tenement to which Joseph had brought us. At one time it had been a comfortable house, but it had been divided into several smaller dwellings, which were rented to York’s poorer residents. They, of course, had no need to maintain the building, so the plaster walls had taken on a grayish color and begun to crack in many places. The building itself was no larger than any of its neighbors—I guessed that each dwelling had one room; two at the most. The horn windows would have allowed in little light under the best of circumstances, but a red cloth appeared to have been hung up inside to cover the windows. This struck me as very strange, and I tried to peer through. Whoever had covered them up had done a thorough job; I could see nothing.

  After a moment the door cracked open. Edward slipped out and closed it behind him. I don’t think I’d ever seen him so distraught, so pale, even after the deaths of his wives. He took a deep breath before he spoke.

  “Thank you for coming so quickly, Lady Bridget,” he said. He glanced briefly at Martha, but did not object to her presence. “Joseph,” he continued. “Go to the Lord Mayor, and tell him I must see him this afternoon. I will be there by two o’clock.” Joseph nodded, bade us farewell, and disappeared toward the city center.

  “I cannot find words to describe what has happened here.” Edward paused, gathering his thoughts, seeking the right phrase. “There has been a murder. Two murders. Terrible crimes. The blood is everywhere. I will tell you now that the scene is one that will haunt you until your death. If you do not wish to come inside, I will not insist. I can only ask for your help.”

  Martha and I glanced at each other nervously. We’d each been in blood up to our elbows, and Edward knew it. Whatever horrors the house contained must have been jarring indeed. I looked at Edward, struck again by his deathlike pallor.

  “I’ll help,” I whispered. Martha nodded her assent. Together we ducked through the front door and into hell itself.

  Chapter 4

  As soon as we stepped into the doorway, the heat from inside poured over us. Whoever had closed the windows had turned the small house into an oven. While the curtains kept out prying eyes, they were less effective against the sun’s fury: the room glowed with a crimson light, as if everything inside had been bathed in blood.

  On the surface, the room seemed similar to many others I’d entered as a midwife. It served as both kitchen and parlor, with a dining table against one wall, a narrow bed against the other, and a hearth for cooking in the corner. But it was also clear that something terrible had happened here. An iron cooking pot lay on its side with the remnants of some uneaten meal spilling into the ashes of a small fire, and a straw mattress lay half on and half off the bed. The bed frame had been broken down the middle. As I entered the room, I nearly stepped on an iron poker lying on the floor. The handle was bent and it appeared to have dried blood on the end.

  “The bodies are in the back room,” Edward murmured, as if afraid to wake someone.

  The second room of the house was smaller than the first—it had served as a bedchamber, but now it seemed like nothing so much as a slaughterhouse. Blood covered the uneven wood floor, a thin coating in some places, but pooled so deeply in others that it would take hours to dry. As I slowly raised my eyes to the bed, horror welled up and a scream clawed to escape my throat. Next to me, Martha gasped and leaned against the doorway to steady herself. Even Edward, who’d already seen the carnage, looked away. I heard a high wheezing sound and realized that it was my own strangled cry as I tried to comprehend the terrible scene before me.

  Two figures lay upon the bed in a gruesome imitation of carnal copulation, a man, breeches pulled down to reveal ghostly white buttocks, sprawled on top of a woman; her legs were splayed open and her skirts pulled up above her knees. I could not see the man’s face for it was buried in the nape of the woman’s neck, but it was clear that she had suffered terribly before she died. Her eyes bulged in their sockets, more bloodshot than I’d ever seen. In life they must have been a striking blue, but now the color had faded and they stared vacantly at the ceiling. Her lips were drawn back from her teeth in a horrible grimace, and her killer had stuffed her mouth with a cloth of some sort, no doubt to silence her cries. Her wrists were bound and tied to the bedstead above her head. Because of the man on top of her, I could not see any wound, but unspeakable amounts of blood had poured from the bed onto the floor.

  I closed my eyes, and leaned against the wall as waves of nausea roiled within me. I tried to drive away the image I’d just seen, but I could feel the woman’s blood seeping between my eyelids, forcing its way into my imagination. I took a deep breath in the hope of steadying myself, but the choking scent of blood and the room’s suffocating heat were too much. As my stomach rebelled, I fled the room. I threw myself against the front door and stumbled into the street. Fear and revulsion had so overcome me that I ran headlong into Mark Preston, who still stood guard at the door. He moved not an inch when I hit him, and it was I who crashed to the ground. He smiled mirthlessly when he looked down at me.

  “Not a pretty sight in there, eh, my lady?” he said, extending his hand. “I sometimes forget that we soldiers have seen and done things that the rest of you cannot begin to imagine.” I extended my hand, but instead he seized my forearm and—without any visible effort—hauled me to my feet. If he had done this in order to demonstrate his strength, he succeeded, for that night I had a bruise where he’d grabbed me. I had no doubt that even though he’d lost two fingers, he would have no trouble throttling a man if he so chose.

  Before I had the opportunity to respond, Martha and Edward
joined me. I was relieved to see that they were no less affected than I. Martha had seen terrible things in her time, yet even she had paled, and her hands shook as she wiped her palms on her apron.

  “What in God’s name happened in there?” I asked. I could hear my voice shaking.

  Edward shook his head slowly. “We don’t know much yet—we only found the bodies about an hour ago. When the neighbor came out this morning, he saw the door was open. He went in to see if anything was wrong, and found them there. He summoned a constable, who sent for me.”

  “Who are they?”

  “The neighbor says her name is Jennet Porter. He heard someone crashing around last night, but said it wasn’t too unusual.” I looked at him, confused. “She was a whore. Sometimes the men she brought here treated her badly. If they became too violent, a neighbor would intervene, but usually they quieted down.”

  “How long has she been in York?” I asked. “I’ve never seen her before.” It was not uncommon for one of the city’s whores to call on me for aid in case of a difficult birth, and over time their faces became familiar.

  “She just took the house a month ago, when another whore moved on,” Edward said. “The building is owned by Helen Wright.”

  “Ah,” I said, as some of the pieces came together.

  “Ah?” asked Martha. “Who is Helen Wright?”

  “She is one of the city’s most notorious bawds,” I explained. “She has a hand in satisfying every lewd appetite in York. God knows how many tenements she rents to women like Jennet.”

  “I’ve known such women,” Martha replied. “They make a comfortable living from such work.” Edward looked at her quizzically and I hurried to change the subject.

  “Who is the dead man?” I asked.

  “We don’t know. I imagine he’s a brotheller. What other reason could he have for being here? I’d have recognized him if he were a citizen, and he had neither letters nor a notebook with him, so it may be some time before we discover his name.”

  I looked down and saw that the soles of Edward’s boots were rimmed with blood. My stomach clenched once again and threatened to empty itself in the street. I settled on my haunches and put my head in my hands. I felt a hand on my arm, but did not look up, strangely afraid it might be Mark’s.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “It’s the heat.” While the heat didn’t make things easier, the sight of the two bodies would have been no less shocking in midwinter. After a moment I stood on my own and looked into Edward’s face. “There. I’m better.”

  “Mr. Hodgson,” Martha said. “Why have you brought us here?” I didn’t know if she was trying to draw Edward’s attention away from me, but I was grateful all the same.

  “You know the whores, and I need the two of you to question them. They might have seen or heard something.”

  “Why don’t you send Joseph?” I asked, though I knew the answer. The city’s governors, and Joseph in particular, had hounded York’s sinners, especially the whores, without a shred of mercy. If a common doxie saw a constable coming her way, she’d run for her life rather than stay and talk to him. Edward ignored my question.

  “Also, it would help if we heard what Helen Wright has to say,” he said. “She’ll not talk to a constable if she can help it, but she might be willing to talk to you.” I nodded. “I also need you—both of you—to be discreet. It is inevitable that people will hear that murders have occurred, but if the citizens knew the horror of what happened here, it would put the city in an uproar.”

  “I’ll help, of course,” I said. “Is that all?”

  “I also need you to inspect the whore’s body and give your opinion of what happened to her.”

  Though I’d expected he would ask this, Edward’s request weighed on me just the same. This was the darker side of service as a midwife. Most of our labor went into delivering mothers and infants, but constables and Justices also called upon us in more desperate situations. Midwives bore the burden of examining the wasted bodies of children who had been bewitched, and those of infants left to die under a haystack. On this day it was a slattern who had been stabbed to death. Such work was not why I or any woman became a midwife, but it was my duty. I gathered myself for the gruesome task ahead.

  “Very well,” I said. Edward nodded his thanks.

  “Go ahead and start your search,” he said. “I’ll be in momentarily.” He turned to Mark and spoke to him in low tones.

  I took a deep breath, and looked at Martha. She nodded and the two of us went back into the house. I hoped that I would be able to control myself this time. When we entered the room, I was careful not to look too closely at the bodies; even so, I could not avoid signs of the carnage. There was the blood on the floor, of course, but somehow the subtle signs were more even disturbing: the bloody handprint on the wall, another spot where Jennet or the man had raked blood-soaked fingers, and—most horrible of all—a tuft of hair, ripped from her head, lying in a pool of blood. We began to look around the room. I had no idea what we hoped to find—all I could see was blood.

  Martha crouched over a chest in the corner and examined the small lock that secured it. “If it were a better lock, I might need my tools,” she said. “But in this case a couple of pins ought to do it.” She hunched over the chest and after a few minutes, the lock clicked open. Martha opened the chest and sorted through its contents. “Nothing but clothes,” she said. “Poor ones at that.”

  When I looked back at the bodies, my eyes came to rest on Jennet’s hand. This time I noticed that she held a small piece of paper. “Martha,” I said, and reached down to get it. She peered over my shoulder as I unrolled the paper. Printed in a plain hand was Num. 25:8.

  “What is it?” Martha asked.

  “It’s a Bible verse,” I said. “Numbers, chapter twenty-five, verse eight.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “If it’s Numbers, it’s during the Israelites’ time in the wilderness,” I said. “But what part, I don’t know.” While I read the Bible regularly, I favored the loving God of the Gospels to the wrathful deity of the Old Testament. I looked about the room, but saw no books at all, which puzzled me.

  Martha noticed the same thing. “If she doesn’t own a Bible, why is she carrying about a verse such as that?”

  “And could she even read?” I asked. Not many poor country girls could. “And why did she die with that particular verse clutched in her hand?” I tucked the paper into my apron. “We’ll see what this means when we get home.”

  We heard the door to the house open, and Edward joined us in the bedchamber.

  “Now to the bodies,” he said.

  “We should separate them first,” I ventured as we crossed the room. It quickly became clear that there would be no avoiding the pools of blood that lay especially thick at the foot of the bed.

  “Let’s lift him up and roll him onto his back,” Edward suggested. “I’ll take his shoulders.” I took a deep breath and seized the man’s legs and we turned him over. Now the two corpses lay side by side and we got our first look at the man’s face. He was older than I’d expected, perhaps forty. I stepped closer to examine his wounds. The left side of his head had suffered a grievous blow—perhaps more than one. The killer had also cut the poor man’s throat, and there was a single stab wound in his belly.

  “He was alive when his throat was cut,” I said, pointing to the blood beneath that end of the bed. “Else he’d not have bled so much.” Edward and Martha nodded in agreement. My eyes traveled down his body and I saw that his hand was closed in a fist. I reached down and pulled the fingers open. A small piece of paper sat nestled in the palm of his hand. I heard a sharp intake of breath, and knew that Martha had seen it, too. I picked it up: Rev. 2:14. I showed it to her.

  “Revelations, chapter two, verse fourteen,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” Edward asked.

  “He was holding this in his hand,” I said, handing him the piece of paper. His brow furrowed as he read. I
thought I saw a flicker of recognition but could not be sure. “Jennet was holding one as well.” I gave him the other slip of paper. I had known Edward for years, and I could tell he saw a meaning in the verses that had escaped me.

  “They both held the papers?” he said. “Are you sure? You didn’t find one on the floor?”

  “Jennet’s hand was slightly open, but it was in her palm,” I said.

  “If it had been on the floor, it would have blood on it,” Martha added.

  “The killer must have put the papers there after they died,” I said. We both looked at Edward, awaiting his reaction. I could see the tension on his face. This development troubled him considerably.

  “Like everything else, you’ll keep this to yourselves,” he said. “We don’t know what this means, and I’ll not have shop women spreading gossip.” Martha and I nodded. There could be no mistaking how serious Edward was about this. “Let us examine the bodies,” Edward continued.

  I could not help being thankful for the cloth covering the windows, for I do not think I could have tolerated seeing the bodies in full daylight. The three of us bent over the man, squinting at his head. To my surprise, Martha took the lead as if she’d been examining corpses all her life.

  “What shall we call him?” Martha asked.

  I looked at her in astonishment. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “We have to call him something,” she replied. “Jennet has a name. Shouldn’t he? ‘Mr. Jones,’ perhaps?”

  Edward gazed at her in amazement. “If you must,” he said at last. I could only shake my head.

  “The killer hit Mr. Jones on the side of the head,” she said, gently combing her fingers through his hair. “Look, he did it more than once. You can see the marks in his skull.” She pointed to three distinct wounds, each one no wider than a finger.

  “Probably the poker from the other room,” I volunteered.

  “Yes, that might be it,” she said. “Could you get it?”

  Well, I asked for that, I thought. I returned to the parlor and retrieved the poker. After all the blood in the bedchamber, the smear on the end of the poker seemed almost inconsequential. I handed the poker to Edward, who placed the end in the wound.