Pleasing Mr. Pepys

by Deborah Swift

  The bang of the downstairs door made Aunt Lillibet snatch her hand away and sit up in bed, arrange her ruffled cap over her sparse grey hair. ‘It’s William,’ she whispered. ‘Best you don’t say anything about what I’ve told you, he’ll be angry—’

  Moments later, Deb’s Uncle Butts arrived and there was no more chance to speak. Though she was glad to see his familiar face – fatter and with a bigger, more extravagant wig than her father, he had the same long family nose and pointed beard.

  He exclaimed on how much she had grown, and how wonderful it was to see her, but Deb’s mind was elsewhere, thinking of Aunt Lillibet’s words about her mother. No wonder Aunt Beth had thought her mother scandalous. Who was the man who had dared to belittle her father, the man who had ruined their lives? She had known all along that it must be this, but she had not wanted to admit that Mama could have been so stupid. And a baby? The thought was too disturbing to think on.

  She hoped, at least, that her aunt was right about Jack. Uncle Jack, on her mother’s side, had always been known as the black sheep of the family because he held dissenters’ views, being a staunch Presbyterian. He had fled to Holland and Mama used to sigh over him and wish he would repent. Deb had no idea he was back in London, though her mother must have had word.

  As soon as she returned to London, she’d go to The Grecian coffee house and find out where they were now.

  Elisabeth was not happy to be going back to London, but Sam was insistent he had had enough diversion, and was needed at the Treasury. On the way, the carriage jolted and jounced, and flies from the horses kept getting in through the open windows. She flapped her fan at them and stifled her annoyance with her husband. He would keep telling Deb the latest scandals – the King and Lady Castlemaine, Lord Carnegie, whose whore gave his Lordship the pox, and the Duke of Buckingham, who had installed that slattern the Countess of Shrewsbury in his house. They always said Paris was bad, but it was nothing to London – a city full of whores just waiting to pull a good man down.

  And when Sam wasn’t telling Deb about whores and doxies, he was simpering across the carriage at her like a fool, as if these exploits were some great joke. It was enough to make any woman scream. It was clear from everything he said that he had spent the entire time they had been away in the country, not at work as he should have been, but gallivanting.

  She glanced over. Ever since they had met Deb’s relations, Sam was looking at Deb in quite a new way. ‘Well, your family seem very nice people. Very nice indeed,’ he had said to Deb, after the odious Butts had showed off his enormous wine cellar, and glass cabinets full of blindingly polished silver plate.

  Elisabeth’s heart had shrivelled in her chest with jealousy. Her own family were the cause of much shame – continually impoverished and the source of much annoyance to her husband. Now Elisabeth stared out of the window at the darkening landscape, dreading returning home. Back to her empty life in London, with nothing to do except envy other women their babies and give the servants instructions. It was better when it had just been her and Sam, when they were poor, and she did the cooking herself, and he came home every night asking for a cuddle with his hot broth.

  On days like this, the terror of losing Sam was just too much to bear, as if it would consume her, this tearing feeling in her chest. She had the urge to flee, back to France, instead of staying in the black wart of London, which disfigured the country with its whoremongering King. A king who gave every man a God-given excuse to behave just as His Majesty did.

  Sam was still telling Deb about the scandals of the court. Elisabeth gritted her teeth. If that pricklouse laid one finger on Deb Willet, she’d see to it that he never walked again.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  THE DAY’S TEACHING WAS DONE, and Jem picked his way over the creaking duckboards which covered the running slime of filth in the road and into the yard. The first time he saw the dilapidated tavern where he was to lodge, the lanterns swathed in red silk by the door, he had protested.

  ‘Not here,’ he said to Lizzie, but she had taken him firmly by the arm. ‘You wanted to see how we live? Well, Clement’s Yard is the best place to see it.’

  Even now he could not quite believe he was actually lodging at Mrs Cresswell’s bawdy house, in the same house as Lizzie herself. He passed two of the scantily clad, white-faced girls by the door, who giggled at him and said in chorus, ‘Evening, Mister Wells.’

  His curt nod in reply brought gales of laughter in his wake.

  He passed through the tavern and up the uneven wooden stairs to the end of the corridor. Groans and a woman’s hoarse cough came from behind the plank doors as he passed, but he studiously ignored them. He was not used to being laughed at, especially by women, and it made him feel foolish.

  Once inside his own room he shut the door firmly behind him. None of the doors had locks, to his surprise. ‘What’s there to steal?’ Lizzie had said. ‘And besides, we trust each other.’ Jem went to pick up his Bible, which lay open on the floor by his pallet. But he had no mind to read it; he was too tired and cross.

  What was he doing here? He had asked Dr Thurlow for a week’s leave, to do charitable work in Lukenor Lane, and to his surprise it had been granted, eventually, but only after he’d done another month’s stint preaching at St Margaret’s. He almost laughed, remembering how full of zeal he’d been when he arrived. Now he was exhausted. In only two days he had discovered that he could never be a teacher. His ideals from the hallowed halls of his own education simply did not apply here in the rookeries of Lukenor Lane, where violence was the language of every day and discipline meted out with a cane would be laughable – too mild to even provoke surprise.

  How Lizzie stood it, he had no idea. Her pupils came and went, most of them barefoot and riddled with lice. Her weapon was kindness, and she was patient with them all, even though writing out a single chalk letter might be the most that any of them would ever achieve.

  He unbuttoned his coat and took it off, but some instinct of self-preservation made him reluctant to take off his breeches. Hauling the rough, thin blanket up to his chin, he lay down, hearing the straw rustle on the hard wood. He shifted to try to get his hip-bones comfortable and thought ruefully of his well-furnished chambers in town. This room was empty save for a weighty chair, probably from old Henry’s time, which Lizzie had somehow found for him. Its solidity was unsuitable for a room which had only been partitioned from the next by a thin wall of wattle and daub. A wall which panted and sighed along with Polly, the whore next door.

  A week, he’d said he would stay. God’s truth, but it would be a long week.

  He took out Deb’s letter which he had brought from his lodgings. It told him of her journey towards the West Country. She described the sight of Wells Cathedral, and told him it was his namesake, and she hoped he would one day have the chance to see it for himself.

  He pressed the letter to his cheek to try to catch a scent of her, and he itched to reply. Over the weeks, he had received several letters, but she had told him not to write back, for fear she would lose her position. Thinking of her made him hot and fidgety, and not at all like a churchman. Instead, it gave him an ache that made him want to hit something. Groaning, he put the letter to one side, closed his eyes, and before long, fell into a restless slumber.

  He was woken by a hand shaking him by the shoulder. Bleary, he sat up, tried to slap the hand away.

  ‘Mr Wells, you’ve to come quick. Lizzie says to fetch you.’

  In the gloom he made out Polly from next door, hair hanging loose, a sack wrapped round her shoulders over her grubby chemise.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Someone’s dying. We need a vicar.’

  ‘I’m not a vicar.’

  ‘What’s the bloody difference? You’re something aren’t you? A churchman?’ She pulled at his shirt to try to rouse him. ‘You’ve to come quick.’

  ‘Let go, I’m coming.’

  Polly held out his coat for him to pu
t his arms in. ‘We need you respectable. It’s our Joan, and she’s going to have a proper send-off. We owe it her.’

  Polly grabbed a lit taper from the rush-stand and led him downstairs, clattering down in her wooden clogs. The taper blew out instantly in the air outside and he heard her curse, but she did not slow, just wound her way a half-mile, through the dark wasps’ nest of alleys until she came to a brick-built house with lights like hot eyes at the windows. Over the door swung a sign showing a metal bath with a pair of naked winged feet hovering disembodied above the painted steam.

  Polly did not knock but burst through the door with Jem at her shoulder.

  What he saw inside was a scene from hell.

  He instinctively covered his nose to block out the stink of metal and sweat. Steam belched from copper vats over four huge fires. In one of the baths flopped a naked man, his body cratered with sores, what was left of his ravaged face red with heat. Jem had heard of this, the mercury baths, a treatment for the French pox, but had never stopped to think of the reality of the words. He passed another bath where a woman with her sleeves rolled to her wet armpits was wiping a man over and over. Jem averted his eyes; he did not want to see what she was wiping. Nobody paid them any attention as Polly hurried them through the coiling blanket of steam to a back room.

  They stumbled their way past the paraphernalia of the sick; the cloths and basins, the bloodletting bowls and chamber pots, but what made it even more difficult was the crowd. Twenty or so young women, packed close together, in various states of disarray, one even with a grizzling baby at her breast. Jem was relieved to see Lizzie, the face of sanity, stand up from where she had been kneeling to greet him.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It’s Joan. She won’t last much longer. We sent for her mother, but she might not get here in time.’

  Jem looked at the waiflike figure on the bed. Lacking hair and her cheeks hollow, her nose eaten away, her skin silvered with mercury, she looked like a corpse already. Jem stared in horror. He could go no nearer.

  ‘Courage,’ Lizzie whispered. ‘It is her soul that needs your prayers, not her body.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’Jem dithered.

  ‘For heaven’s sake man, what do you think? Say a prayer, and quickly. Tell her who you are, and if you believe it, tell her there’s a better life waiting than the one she’s had here.’

  He looked around him for inspiration but was met by the expectant stares of the gathered women. Lizzie pushed him forward. ‘Take hold of her hand.’

  Jem took the cold clammy hand in his. ‘I’m Jeremiah Wells,’ he said. ‘I’m a curate … from St Gabriel’s … come to pray with you.’

  The girl showed no response, her breath was fetid, rasping and slow. He could think of nothing, was frighteningly hollow, completely unprepared. He grasped onto the first words that came to him. ‘I pray you, Good Jesus, that as you have given me the grace to drink in with joy the word that gives knowledge of you, so in your goodness you will grant me to come at length to yourself, the source of all wisdom, to stand before your face for ever. Amen.’

  On cue, the rest of the women mumbled ‘Amen’.

  ‘Don’t he look nice in his smart breeches?’ He heard a woman’s loud whisper.

  ‘Wish Joan could see him, an’ all. A blooming parson praying over her. She’d have laughed so hard she’d ‘a’ split her sides,’ another said, but her voice was crock-full of tears.

  A slight movement in his palm. The girl twitched her hand.

  He squeezed it harder, feeling the birdlike bones of her fingers. ‘God bless and keep you,’ he said, but he was hanging on to her now, holding her to life, willing her to stay. As if she could read his mind, her hand tightened a moment. A great exultation rose in him, and he squeezed the hand for all he was worth. The hand fell limp. There was silence.

  Jem squeezed again, but there was nothing.

  This couldn’t be it, could it? Just this? He looked up to Lizzie, who leaned down to listen at her lips. She shook her head.

  The girls gathered in the room did not cry – there was not a sound – but many made the sign of the cross before trooping out.

  Jem shifted in his boots, unsure whether to stay or go. The atmosphere in the room tied him there, and the gnawing sense of having failed somehow.

  ‘I’ll sit with her until they come to bury her.’ Lizzie’s voice broke the tension. ‘You go.’

  ‘No, I’ll wait with you. I couldn’t sleep now in any case.’ He sat down opposite her.

  She shot him a grateful look. ‘Bede. A man who believed in miracles. I’ve always liked that prayer.’

  ‘It was the first thing—’

  The door behind them opened. They turned. A handsome woman in a full-skirted green dress took one look at Lizzie’s face. ‘I’m too late.’

  ‘Sorry, Abigail, she could not hang on any longer. Mr Wells, here, said a few words.’

  The woman looked dazed. ‘Mr Wells?’

  ‘Our pet curate.’ Somehow Jem did not mind this description. He stood to give the woman his chair, but she did not take it.

  She went to the bed, knelt and took the still-warm body in her arms, stroked her white forehead and the scanty strands of hair. ‘She used to let me do this when she was a baby. But she wouldn’t let me since. She’d be angry with me if she could see me, wouldn’t she, Lizzie?’

  ‘Probably,’ Lizzie said, ‘she was always a wildcat, your Joan. But she’s at peace now.’

  ‘At peace.’ She looked to Jem. ‘The pain will be gone?’

  Jem nodded, though he had no idea what might be happening, what heaven might await a girl like Joan. Yet he could not think of her in the fires of hell either. It did not seem fair.

  ‘She was so pretty. Will she be pretty too?’

  Jem could not answer. The woman was too large for this scene. She was too well-dressed, too bright, her clothes too fine. Only her eyes were the right size, searching for an answer from him for her own pain.

  ‘Lord forgive me,’ the woman said to him. ‘She didn’t want to die here. Fool that I am, I bullied her into it. I thought there was a chance … but it was too late. And she wanted to die near the folk she knew, in Clement’s Yard.’

  ‘It’s all right, Abigail,’ Lizzie said. ‘Clement’s Yard came to her.’

  During the long night, Jem sat with Joan’s mother, Abigail, and with Lizzie. In the morning Abigail left to make the funeral arrangements.

  ‘She must be made of steel,’ Jem said. ‘Her daughter dead, and she did not shed a single tear.’

  ‘She could always hide her feelings. She’s an actress with the Duke’s players. Lord Bruncker’s lady. She and Joan used to live here, after her drunken husband tired of her, got a new wife, and threw them out. They lived just round the corner, plied the usual trade. But then Abigail got taken on by Davenant’s men, and as she moved up, little Joan moved down. Wouldn’t listen to her mother, though Abigail tried often enough to get her out of Clement’s Yard. I taught Joan for a while, but it was no good. She was one that was too clever for learning.’

  ‘You taught her?’

  ‘She was sharp, but she wanted the quick way. She’d no time for sitting still, always needed to be on the move. She’d pilfer, and run rackets or bets, and always thought she knew best. Wouldn’t have it that her mother could help her, and it used to be torture – to see Abigail leave her behind, drive off in her fancy coach, her back ramrod stiff as if she didn’t care. Broke her heart, I wager. But Joan was adamant. “A whore’s a whore,” she said, “however you dress it up, and I don’t know any other life but the yards.”‘

  ‘You mean she chose it? She could have got away from it all?’ He was incredulous.

  ‘It was her home, where she was queen of the roost. You saw all those round her bed paying their dues to her; she had friends in the Yard; she was well liked, respected. Invincible, they used to say. That was until the pox got her. It was one of the King’s men, I think, who was responsib
le. Her friends warned her, watch out for the King’s petticoat-men. They’re the dirtiest, despite their fancy lace breeches and French manners.’

  Jem was silent. His chest felt as though it was caving in.

  ‘It wasn’t her fault. It’s a risk they all take. Goes with the occupation. Just like sailors at the mercy of the weather. Joan was a good woman, lived her life her own way, valued only her own opinion. Don’t suppose any god could ask for much more.’

  Jem turned away; her words had brought up a great well of emotion. Abigail Williams’s tears came then, but not from her eyes, from Jem’s.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  THE STINK OF THE CITY gave Deb a shiver of excitement. She had not realised how much she missed the bustle and hubbub of the streets, and, though she did not want to admit it to herself, how much she had missed Jem Wells.

  She allowed herself a moment to dwell on him. It had been months, and now summer was here, and there wasn’t a single day, or even an hour, when she had not thought of him. She couldn’t help it; it was as if all her thoughts had gathered in a magnifying lens, all focussed towards him, with a light so hot it could burn. She hoped something would have resolved itself and his brother would have been paid by now. It made her feel guilty to be employed by Mr Pepys, who worked for the Navy Board, when Jem’s brother was still awaiting his pay.

  And now it was her first day off. She hurried to St Gabriel’s but was disappointed to find Jem was out, so she decided to continue to The Grecian coffee house in search of Uncle Jack. It was a long way downriver, so she had to catch a boat, but once alighted at Wapping Old Stairs she found it easily enough. She was nervous, but the smell of roasting coffee beans drew her along the street to a sagging half-timbered building with an unevenly tiled roof, which was almost dipping into the river at the back.

  At the door, a liveried man, sweating in a tied wig, waited to take the pennies from the customers. ‘Beg pardon,’ she asked, ‘but may I speak with the proprietor?’