The Lady Brewer of London

by Karen Brooks

  I stood immobile, unable to tear my eyes from where she’d last stood until Betje’s whimpers alerted me. The men knelt around what remained of the blanket, too scared to look, fearful lest their rescue failed. Ignoring the smoking, charred mass of flesh Betje had become, I pushed through them, knelt, and, keeping the blanket around her, as carefully as I could, scooped her into my arms. Staggering as my own abused body protested her weight, inhaling and gagging as the stench assailed me, I collapsed to the ground.

  Some of the men ran forward to help, but I shook my head, sending them away. Relieved of their duty, eager to escape another death they didn’t want to witness, the men scattered to pour more water upon the burning remains.

  It was futile. Holcroft House would not survive.

  Using one arm, I dragged us toward the brewhouse, clutching Betje to my breast, muttering inanities, ignoring the way her little red legs struck the dirt.

  Falling against the garden wall, holding Betje, Blanche and Iris joined me, their sobs quieter, their fear transformed into something deeper, darker, as they stared with stricken faces at the bundle in my arms and began to pray.

  Together, we watched as men worked to put out the flames, to try and save the adjoining properties. In a parody of the winter snows, soft black and gray flakes, as well as some bright orange ones, fell around us, landing in our hair, on our clothes, settling onto the garden, onto the chickens and pigs, who, roused from their slumber, were making a clamor.

  It was some time before I thought to examine Betje. Mayhap, I was afraid of what I would find. Pushing aside the blanket, I sent Blanche for water and gingerly bathed my sister’s scorched flesh, made her drink through ravaged swollen lips, lips that had once been such a perfect rose and were now a twisted reddened mass. Blanche found a fresh blanket in the brewhouse with which to wrap her. Pretending the creature in my arms was still Betje as I last saw her, was difficult. Her clothes, like most of her hair, had been burned from her body. Every morsel of flesh that I could see had been colored afresh, the palette either black or shades of carmine. Flensed from her body, it was if her skin could not bear to remain; some stuck to Shelby’s blanket. Much came away wherever I touched. It was sickening to see, to hold, and yet I was compelled to do both, to bear witness to my poor little sister’s suffering. I’d no doubt whatsoever she was not long for this world and determined she would die in my arms, being cherished, knowing love. Quietly, I prayed to God to please save her, to save Betje, Karel, and, as time went past and he didn’t reemerge, Adam as well. I already knew that Saskia was gone. Westel roamed through my mind and I wished him to hell each time he appeared. We prayed, Blanche, Iris, and, before long, Father Clement, who, sweating, soot-streaked, and exhausted, arrived and added his to ours.

  God was not with us that night. Not only did a wind arise to blow the ash and cinders north, starting fresh fires that took Master Goldsmith’s house and business and the seven properties beyond as well, but the flames devoured all of Holcroft House except, ironically, the brewery. When Adam reappeared, coughing fit to make the earth shudder, and jogged toward us, his singed hair, blackened face, and tragic eyes told their own tale. He fell down beside us and, burying his head in his hands, wept.

  I had no more tears. Not that night, not ever again.

  When the sun rose, trying to part the clouds of billowing smoke, Holcroft House, its darkened skeleton yearning for the light, was nothing more than charred bones.

  Part Two

  The Brewer of Southwark

  Southwark and London, 1407–1409

  But first I make a protestation round

  That I’m quite drunk, I know it by sound:

  And therefore, if I slander or mis-say

  Blame it on the ale of Southwark, so I pray.

  —Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Miller’s Tale”

  Southwark for the most part pursued its accustomed way, unruly and unruled.

  —David Johnson, Southwark and the City

  Thirty-Five

  Elmham Lenn to Dover to Canterbury

  After midsummer to end of February

  The year of Our Lord 1406–1407 in the seventh and eighth years of the reign of Henry IV

  Trapped in a netherworld populated by reassuring whispers interrupted by cruel taunts and roaring flames, it was three weeks before my senses were restored enough to fully grasp what had happened, to understand what I was yet to face.

  It was not just the horror and grief of so much death, the final memory of Saskia, Louisa, and my beloved Karel, or Betje’s terrible fate, nor the loss of the only home I’d ever known, that I had to reconcile. With my recovery came the painful knowledge that any remaining goodwill I had in Elmham Lenn was irreparably forfeit as well. The fire had unleashed its fury upon my neighbors, destroying other lives and livelihoods. Looking for a scapegoat, people turned against me. Urged on by Hiske, whose capacity for sanctimony grossly exceeded her compassion, the townsfolk affected sought to sue me for restitution. Hurling insults and curses, they haunted the church grounds, waiting for me to emerge from the security of St. Bartholomew’s and for their savage justice to be served.

  All this I learned from Father Clement, Adam, and Captain Stoyan, who, when I collapsed among the ashes of my former life, had smuggled me and Betje into St. Bartholomew’s and declared sanctuary. Keeping us hidden within its stone walls, they ensured we received the best care possible. While my physical wounds were repaired quickly, it was those lodged deep in my heart that festered.

  Yet amid the bleakness there was also hope. Despite the dreadful mortification her body had suffered, Betje survived. Told it was God’s will, I demurred. Mayhap He did wrap my sister in His tender mercy, but it was also the experienced ministrations of Mother Joanna, the head of St. Hildegarde’s, the hospital in town, that kept Betje alive. To this woman of God I owed my sister’s life and to Him I was, at first, grateful.

  As the days passed and her immolated flesh slowly transformed into raw knots and puckers of red that would disfigure and disable her greatly, I wondered how, having been saved, her life would unfold. How God could be both so cruel and yet so benevolent.

  As soon as I was able, I told my saviors what I’d learned that dark night: of Westel Calkin’s betrayal; his brutality, to which my own injuries attested; and his ready admission of murder.

  Expecting indignation, rage, sworn vengeance, the uncomfortable silence and knowing looks my friends shared as we sat before the fire in Father Clement’s rooms knelled a warning. What was being kept from me?

  “Mistress Anneke,” said Adam, reaching for my trembling hand. “I’m afraid the justice you seek is not possible . . . that Goddamned blackguard perished in the fire.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. “For certes?”

  “What remained of his belongings was found in the ruins of the hall. His cap, his satchel. There were other things, human . . .” Adam swallowed.

  “They could only have been his . . .” finished Father Clement, fingers clutching his beads.

  This was the Lord’s punishment for the evil Westel wrought? Forgive my blasphemous conceit, but it was not enough. Between him and Betje, I found my faith sorely tested.

  Less than a week after I was well enough to roam the church and tend to my sister, Hiske triumphed. We learned the sheriff had been summoned from London. What were my chances—an unmarried woman, a brewster, the keeper of an alehouse—of getting a fair trial?

  * * *

  Adam and Captain Stoyan arranged our departure—our flight, if I was to call it by its real name—from Elmham Lenn. Our belongings were meager, our fears great. Adam had gone through the debris of Holcroft House and salvaged a few barrels of ale and beer from the brewery and found in the house, beneath collapsed rafters, the tin we used to keep our coin. It was half-full of groats, silver pennies, and some nobles. Not enough to compensate the townspeople, even if they could be persuaded to accept it, but enough to fund our eventual journey to London, where it was decided we co
uld disappear completely. But not yet—London was too obvious a destination. To deter would-be pursuers, we would travel south.

  “While Captain Stoyan transports you by ship to a safe house in Dover,” said Father Clement, “Adam will take Shelby and the cart and set a false trail north. For as long as I’m able, I’ll make folk believe you’re still here, in the church. There are many days left before your forty days of sanctuary expire. No one will cross the threshold, not even the city authorities till then, by which time you’ll be long gone.”

  When Mother Joanna offered to come with me and continue caring for Betje, I knew not how to express my gratitude, or the need in me she so readily met. “The dear Lord knows, you’ve both been punished enough,” she said, her eyes alighting upon Betje and then my stomach, before sidling to the bowl into which I’d purged every morning for the past week. In the liquid depths of her lovely brown eyes, I saw that she understood—my silence, my guilt. In that exchange, she became complicit in my wretched condition. I’d not mentioned the rape to anyone. I was ashamed, dirty, soiled to my very core. And, truth be told, I felt somehow to blame. It wasn’t only Westel’s insults and the stream of invective that had flowed from him that night and lodged in my veins. It was those who, when I first embarked on this venture, and whose opinion I cared about, had warned me of what might happen. They’d possessed a foresight I’d either lacked or willfully ignored. That innocents had paid so dearly for my sin and folly weighed heavily upon my soul . . .

  * * *

  Did we grow complacent in Dover as the months passed and neither the hue and cry nor the county sheriff pounded at our door? Mayhap. Our vigilance, while rigorous when we first arrived, did lessen somewhat. We assumed that we’d slipped into the annals of Elmham Lenn’s past, accompanied no doubt by dire warnings of what befell licentious women, and dared to consider safety a possibility. Even to map out a future. What none of us factored in, however, was Sir Leander Rainford.

  Learning what had happened at Holcroft House, Sir Leander immediately aborted the trip he’d undertaken with his new bride. What she must have thought, I don’t know, but instead of wintering on a sunny coast somewhere in Castile, after merely a few weeks of wedded bliss Lady Cecilia found herself rudely deposited back in London, while her husband, Tobias by his side, made haste to his father’s estates. According to Captain Stoyan and intermittent messages I received from Father Clement, Sir Leander was ruthless in his determination to uncover my whereabouts and, may God bless his soul, clear my name. Even now, the thought of him storming through Elmham Lenn, inspecting the remains of Holcroft House, demanding answers from Father Clement, comforting Tobias as they stood over little Karel’s grave, is difficult for me to comprehend. Our fate never was and should not be Sir Leander’s concern. And yet . . . he chose to make it so. The very notion made my heart accelerate, but also firmed my resolve to exclude him from my life, to protect him from the damage of any association with me. But in those deep, secret places to which I would rarely venture, I felt such warmth and gratitude toward the man. He cared—whether about Tobias’s future or mine, I knew not. He cared and it was enough for me. It had to be.

  That he continued to intrude upon my thoughts, break down the barriers I so carefully erected, happened when I’d no control or say in the matter. No one is responsible for those who enter their dreams.

  For well over a week, Sir Leander remained in Elmham Lenn, questioning the local sheriff, our neighbors, Masters Miller and Proudfellow, and anyone else who might have frequented the Cathaline Alehouse. He even tracked down Blanche and Iris, who had returned to their families after the fire. I thanked Mother Mary over and over that my dear servants could offer him nothing. Their ignorance of my whereabouts was their shield and also mine. For the same reason, after discussion with Father Clement, and with a heavy heart, I’d made the decision not to share my plans, or my grief, with Tobias. It would be as if I too perished in the fire. He was faultless in all this and I would not make him complicit now I was a fugitive.

  So why then, as the days passed and Sir Leander’s efforts led to naught, did I feel so ambivalent?

  Not even Father Clement and Captain Stoyan were spared his angry interrogations, nor, I learned, Abbot Hubbard. Captain Stoyan reported that while Sir Leander hid his evident concern for me beneath resolute looks and terse questions, Tobias did not. Despite his last bitter communication, my heart broke as I thought of him and the losses he had to bear. Being angry with a stubborn older sister is very different to mourning those you believe forever gone.

  While grief and self-recrimination occupied my evenings, the days were reserved solely for Betje and the ways in which, first with Mother Joanna’s help and, later, Adam’s, I could alleviate her suffering. Our first weeks in Dover, settling into the huge house of Captain Stoyan’s friends—a wealthy Dutchman and his sister—were mostly a blur. Amid sunshiny days, blustery winds, lashing rain, and the encroaching mellowness of autumn was the relentless insistence of Betje’s pain.

  Able to cope with the journey to Dover and our first few days in new surroundings, tolerating the unguents and lotions with which Mother Joanna insisted we gently wash and massage her charred and blistered flesh, as well as the potions she was persuaded to drink, it was as if Betje remained unaware of what had befallen her. Or, as I misguidedly believed, that the good Lord had somehow taken pity upon her innocent soul and spared her the suffering that should attend such grievous afflictions. How wrong I was. As the days merged into weeks, it was as if Betje awoke to her state and was tortured anew. The treatments she had tolerated without a murmur, the medicines she had willingly drunk while lodged in St. Bartholomew’s, became punishments we cruelly forced upon her. Every wary ministration, every down-soft touch, made her writhe in agony.

  Struggling against our attentions, screaming in her strange, hoarse manner, my promise never to shed another tear was sorely tested as I helplessly watched my sister endure. If Mother Joanna hadn’t been there, forcing me to hold Betje while she patiently flensed the dead flesh from her arm, legs, head, and cheek, rubbed the oils and sticky lotions into her skin, I would have abandoned the cure long ago. It was all I could do to contain my poor sister, hold her, pray over her, and try to soothe her haunting wails and steady her shaking limbs.

  Only guilt and love kept me firm. What right did I have to the relief of weeping? What right did I have to beg Mother Joanna to cease her attempts to help my sister when I’d caused this?

  So I bore my sister’s agony by never turning from her, by facing every day, every session with Mother Joanna, by her side.

  Adam joined us amidst all this, after laying a false trail for those intent on bringing me to justice. Pushing aside his exhaustion, he too did whatever he could to provide succor.

  It wasn’t until Christmastide that Betje began to bear Mother Joanna’s treatments with stoicism. It was also around then that her hand, which had curled into an ugly claw, slowly straightened, the fingers flexing. Likewise her feet, upon which we’d showered so much attention—the toes of one foot had melded into each other, while on the other they’d been reduced to tight little nubs—began to respond. At the same time, the angry red of her flesh faded to the fresh pink of newly grown skin.

  Despite the pretty color, suggesting youth and innocence, clear dawn mornings and balmy sunsets, it didn’t look new. Shiny and slick, as if it were perpetually wet, Betje’s face and one side of her body took on a peculiar sheen. Ridges and runnels meant the skin was never smooth, not like the portion of her features that remained unmarred. Instead, it was as if a crone had shucked off her flesh and passed it to my sister as one does a worn garment. The couple in whose house we dwelled whispered to each other that she looked like a candle that had spent half its wax. The comparison was sadly apt. Whenever I looked at my dear sister, thoughts of Apollo’s woman, the oracle who aged and never died, forced their way into my head. She was simultaneously ancient and a child.

  Our daily massages, gentle yet
firm, continuing till our digits ached and our backs were bent with fatigue, ensured her limbs finally found their old habits again. While her lips would remain twisted in a swollen parody of a smile, the teeth within were white and wholesome. The beautiful gray eye that gazed upon the world, unlike its twin, forever fused beneath a fleshy curtain, began to sparkle with curiosity once more. Denied speech, or perhaps refusing to use words when they might only describe horror, Betje eschewed talk and grunted and pointed to let her needs be known.

  Finally, after winter’s fury was tamed and the seas began to settle, we were able to introduce her to the streets of Dover, taking her down to the docks to greet Captain Stoyan’s ship when he laid anchor in late January. It was during this first foray into the wider world that I learned of its capacity for cruelty once more. Not only was Betje the focus of unwanted attention and comments from passersby, but also exclamations of horror and disgust. How could Christians so condemn one of God’s own children? Even with Captain Stoyan, Adam, and Mother Joanna there, and Betje enveloped in my arms and mantle, it was a long walk back to our residence as I seethed at the offense of it. I still recall how, as we sat in silence before the fire in the solar, Betje climbed into my lap and rested her good cheek against my breast. As I swept aside the few locks of hair that fell over her face, I felt wetness and my heart seized.

  I would do whatever it took to protect my dear sister from those people and their ready and shallow judgments. I swore it over and over in the depths of my being. As I did so, I knew that in order to keep such a promise, I needed position, money, and the authority that attached itself to both. Only then would no one dare cause my sister injury.