London (59 page)

Today, however, she had a special object in view as she led him towards the river. She was going to take him on London Bridge.

Perhaps of all the changes in London in her lifetime, this was truly the finest. For where once, crossing by the old wooden bridge over half a century before, Ida had observed the great stone piers of a new bridge appearing in the water, now that work was nearing completion. It had taken a long time. Thirty years had passed before a roadway had joined the mighty piers, and then that had been damaged by fire and work had had to start again. But now it was a splendid sight. Nineteen great stone arches crossed the Thames. The bridge they supported had recently been so widened that houses were starting to appear upon it, with the road, broad enough for two carts to pass, running between them. And in the centre of the bridge there was a little stone chapel, dedicated to St Thomas Becket, the city’s martyred saint.

They had left the palfrey by the church of St Magnus, at the northern end of the bridge, and Mabel was walking the old man across.

“Where are we?”

“Never you mind.”

“What street is this?”

“The road to heaven. Or hell.”

He frowned. “I want to go back.”

“You always say that.” She edged him towards her object.

“You’re up to something,” he complained. And he was right. For Mabel had a mission; and she was determined to succeed. It concerned her poor old acquaintance, the curate of St Lawrence Silversleeves.

The man himself was long since dead, of course. So was his wife. One of the daughters was an invalid in the hospital now, but the other was eking out a miserable living in a hovel not far from the church. The Silversleeves family refused to do anything for her. Mabel had protested to Pentecost and to his children, but nothing had been done. She was so incensed that she nearly stopped seeing the old man, but she secretly enjoyed the challenge. “I’ll get something for that curate’s daughter,” she swore. And since she had taken a great liking to the little chapel on the bridge, she had decided to bring the old man there.

Reaching it now, she made him enter, then took him to a bench, and made him sit.

“What is this place?”

“A church. Now listen to me.” And for several minutes she gave him a piece of her mind about the curate, concluding: “I can’t make you see with your eyes any more, old man. I’ve no herbs for that. But I can make you see your sins. Now you just kneel there and have a good pray until you decide to do something for that curate’s daughter.”

“And if I don’t?”

“I’ll leave you here,” she said.

So grudgingly he got down on his knees, while Mabel went to another bench and prayed in silence to the martyred saint.

The miracle – for such Sister Mabel could only take it to be – occurred a little while after. She had been deep in thought when a thin voice came from where Silversleeves was kneeling.

“I can see!”

“What’s that, old man?”

He was gazing at the palms of his hands. “I can see!”

She went over to him. It was true. He could. She crossed herself. “The saint has obtained us a miracle.”

He smiled, despite himself, in an almost child-like manner. Then gave a little laugh. “It seems he has. A miracle. I can see!”

“Will you give something to that poor woman now?”

“Yes,” he said, bemused. “Yes, I suppose I will.” He looked around the chapel. “Extraordinary. I can really see!” Then he frowned. “What chapel is this? Do I know it?”

“The chapel of St Thomas.”

“Thomas?”

“Becket, of course,” she said. “Who else?”

A month later, just before dawn, Brother Michael, tended lovingly by Mabel, departed very peacefully from this life. If he had been unable to claim his wager from his brother, there was no need. Bull had long since given generously to St Bartholomew’s.

After she had said some prayers by his body, Mabel went out to walk a little while in the cloisters. The light at that early hour was uncertain, but as she turned the south-eastern corner, she had no doubt about the figure she saw for a moment at the other end of the walk. The long-tailed demon even turned its head to look at her. She was pleased to see that, having come for its prey, it was slinking away now, empty-handed.

THE WHOREHOUSE

1295

They had promised her she would still be a virgin tomorrow. It was around noon, however, that she began to grow suspicious.

All that dull November morning the girl had sat wrapped in a shawl, on a bench in front of the brothel. Opposite, across the water, were the wharfs below St Paul’s. To the left, between the river and Ludgate, where the little fort of Baynard’s Castle used to stand, lay the huge precinct taken over by the black-robed Dominicans and now called Black-friars. It was a pleasant view, but, to the girl that day, it seemed full of a vague menace. Her name was Joan, and she was fifteen.

She was a neat little person: her brown hair was pulled back carefully to reveal an oval face; her skin was pale and very smooth; her hands and feet were small and a little fleshy, hinting at the modest plumpness of her body which, she realized, men often found attractive. But it was her quiet, rather solemn eyes which told you that she was one of that busy family of craftsmen, descended from Osric, who had laboured at the building of the Tower.

Not that this mattered any more: not since early that morning when she had taken her terrible decision and crossed the river. Her father, as soon as he discovered, would never speak to her again. She had no doubt about that. As for her mother, she was sure it would be the same. Yet even this, she thought, she could bear, for if she had given up her home, her family, and every shred of reputation she possessed, she had done it to save the life of the young man she loved. She was going to save him tomorrow. If she could just last out till then.

There were eighteen stew-houses, as the brothels were known, standing in a long line by the south side of the Thames opposite St Paul’s, along a strip of reclaimed marsh known as Bankside. Some were extensive structures, arranged round courtyards, with pleasant gardens stretching back to Maiden Lane. Others were of a drearier kind – tall and narrow, with overhanging plaster and timber storeys that appeared to be sagging under long years of dingy waterside debauchery. And in these various accommodations, each leased and run by a brothelkeeper, some three or four hundred prostitutes plied their trade.

Halfway along the line, the Dog’s Head, where Joan had just come to reside, was of middling size, its plaster painted red, with a high thatched roof and a large sign hanging over the door depicting a dog’s head with a huge tongue. At the far end, upstream, the brothels ended with a large house, partly of stone. This was the Castle upon the Hoop. Downstream, just past the brothels, lay a large stone building with its own waterside dock and steps: the London manor of the Bishop of Winchester. Within its precincts it included a small but busy prison, known as the Clink.

The whole area, manor house, Clink, all eighteen brothels and the handsome profits therefrom, belonged to and was ruled by the bishop.

The area south of London Bridge had always been a place apart. Since the long-forgotten days of Rome, the road from Dover and Canterbury had met the other roads from the south to cross the river there. Since Saxon times, it had borne the name of Southwark and formed a borough of its own, independent of the city. As such, it had also been a refuge where vagrants and those in trouble with the law were usually left to their own devices. The borough of Southwark stretched for some way along the river. By London Bridge, there was a market. Further west, an old church, St Mary Overy, from which a ferry crossed the river. Then the bishop’s manor and Bankside. And how long had the brothels been there? As long as the borough, it was said. Indeed, they were still often known by their Saxon name – the
horhus
– the whorehouse.

The bishop’s estate in Southwark was extensive. Like the old private wards that had once featured in the city opposite, it was actually a feudal manor, within whose bounds the bishop dispensed justice and ruled as absolute lord. And since such jurisdictions were also called “liberties” and this one contained the prison called the Clink, the whole estate was known, even in official documents, by a curious name: the Liberty of the Clink.

The Liberty of the Clink was well run, as were the eighteen brothels. Nearly a century and a half before, in the reign of Henry II, the Bishop of Winchester, who as it happened was also Archbishop of Canterbury just then, had decided: “My brothels are a mess.” And so, aided by his able assistant, he drew up a thorough list of regulations for running them which, in Latin and in English, was preserved for future centuries in the diocesan library. “To the honour of God and according to the laudable customs and regulations of the land,” the document concluded; and so excellent were these rules that afterwards, when the city of London had been granted permission to have its own official brothels in Cock’s Lane near St Bartholomew’s, it was the bishop’s regulations which applied there too, while the prostitutes themselves were still cheerfully referred to as “Winchester Geese”. And whether or not he personally should be thanked for these rules, the Archbishop’s assistant when they were made was none other than that great Londoner, Thomas Becket.

But now the brothelkeeper and his wife were approaching her. He was a large, balding man with a black beard that always seemed to be greasy; she was a square woman, whose broad, yellowish face made Joan think of a sweating cheese. And the moment she saw them, she guessed. “You promised . . .” she blurted out. But they were both grinning. She was completely in their power.

Desperately the girl looked around. It had been the Dogget sisters who had thought of the whole idea; the Dogget sisters who had promised to protect her. Surely they had not abandoned her now? Yet where were they?

“There’s a customer for you, dear,” the square woman said.

Everyone in Southwark knew the Dogget sisters. One was called Isobel and the other Margery, but nobody – not even the brothelkeeper of the Dog’s Head where they worked – could tell you which was which. For Margery and Isobel were identical twins.

They were tall and stringy, with thick tresses of black hair, big black eyes, big buck teeth, and voices that, whenever they laughed, made a surprisingly deep sound, like a donkey’s braying. Yet, with their slim bodies and rather heavy breasts, they possessed a remarkable sexuality. And if all this was not enough to mark them out, over the centre of their foreheads, in their black tresses, each had a streak of white.

They dressed identically, always; their conversation was identical, they rented rooms side by side in the Dog’s Head where they sold their bodies; and, if a client wanted, they would, for a modest discount, make up a party of three that could, if the client had the stamina, last all night.

The Dogget sisters belonged to a small tribe that infested Southwark, and whose presence there derived from a simple, human, mistake. For eighty years ago, when poor Adam Ducket had lost the freedom of London, he had made a foolish choice. In his hurt and bitterness, when the Barnikel family had offered to help him, he had utterly refused. “If they don’t want me for their daughter, I’ll take nothing from them,” he had angrily declared. Within a month of his trial, he had drifted across to Southwark where he set up a market stall that failed. Then he had worked in a tavern, married a serving girl, and in time had a brood of children who ran barefoot in the streets. Thus, within a generation, the proud family of modest London citizens had sunk into that underclass which had been found in the larger cities of the world since history began. The two sisters belonged to a family of five and they had a dozen cousins. They all lived in Southwark; and they were all, without exception, cheerful, irrepressible, and disreputable.

They were also called Ducket – except for the two sisters, whom fame had brought a new, professional name. So well known were they, and so associated with their particular whorehouse, that they were nowadays universally known as “the Dog’s Head girls”. Which had already started to lapse into another old English name not unlike the one they were born with: Dogget, they became. Some Duckets, a little embarrassed by their reputation did not mind this distancing of the name. The girls accepted it cheerfully. The Dogget sisters, therefore, they unashamedly were.

The Dogget sisters were a kind-hearted pair; but if there was one thing they loved best, it was an adventure. So when, two days before, they had come upon Joan in floods of tears outside St Paul’s, and made her tell them her story, they had been intrigued. “We must help her,” they said together. And whether it was Isobel who had suggested it to Margery, or the other way round, they had come up with the extraordinary plan that Joan was now following, and which, risky though it was, had been working so beautifully until this moment.

The only trouble was that for the last hour they had completely forgotten her. The problem lay with Margery.

“Does it hurt?” The two sisters had gone to a quiet place on the slopes a mile away from Bankside. Now they were gazing sadly at the little sore.

“It burns,” said Margery.

“That’s it, then,” said Isobel. “They’ll find it.” The bishop’s bailiff and his assistants inspected all the girls once a month. If they had any kind of disease, they were thrown out of the Liberty. Even a bribe was probably useless. For, most Londoners agreed, it was one of the advantages of the Church running the brothels that the bishop’s inspections were thorough. And Margery very clearly had the burning sickness.

It was a form of syphilis, though less severe than the strain which would appear in later centuries. When it had first come to Britain is uncertain; but, though the infection may have been brought by returning crusaders, there are clear indications of its presence on the island from as early as Saxon times.

But what could they do? If Margery were thrown out of the brothel, her livelihood would be gone.

“I wish,” she said, “that the king hadn’t thrown out all the Jews.”