The Remarkable Life and Times of Eliza Rose (3 page)

Elinor shook her head. ‘And I don’t even know when I will be, for the judge sits as and when it pleases him.’

‘And what sort of punishment do you think you’ll get?’

She shrugged. ‘The judges punish according to whether or not their bellies are full. If I can make a case for saying I was only taking something that was due to me I may get off light. But what of you?’ she asked Eliza.

‘How did I come to be here? I was hungry and stole a pasty, that’s all. And I was more hungry than careful, for the shopkeeper saw me and called the constable.’

‘And how is it that you’re here, in London?’ Elinor asked. ‘You have a country accent. Is it Somersetshire
that you’re from?’

Eliza nodded. ‘From a village called Stoke Courcey,’ she said, then hesitated.

‘Don’t tell me a thing if you’d rather not,’ Elinor said. ‘And take no notice of all my questions, for my brothers say my tongue runs on wheels.’

Eliza smiled at her. ‘It’s all right,’ she said, ‘I don’t mind saying. I’ve come to London to try and find my father.’

‘Did he run away from your ma?’

‘No, he came to the City to get building work.’

Elinor nodded. ‘London’s full of tradesmen just now, since the Fire. Is he a woodworker?’

‘He’s a mason,’ Eliza said. ‘There was no work at home, so he answered the call to come to the City and help rebuild it.’ She hesitated, putting her thoughts in order, knowing that Elinor was waiting for the rest of the story. ‘I’m looking for him because, once he was out of the way, my stepmother told me that I was no longer welcome in our cottage.’

‘Well, there’s a fine thing!’ Elinor said indignantly.

‘I want to find him, then have him take me home and tell her she has no right to turn me out.’ She looked at Elinor, who nodded at her to go on. ‘Like you, I’ve no mother now. She died some years back … she was swept away crossing the river. She nearly drowned, and then caught a fever and died.’ She sighed. ‘We managed by ourselves for a while, then our father was married again to a woman from the village. Once she began having babies of her own, she didn’t seem to care about me and my brothers.’

‘And did she make them leave home too?’ Elinor asked.

Eliza shook her head. This had puzzled her. Still puzzled her. Why had Richard and Thomas and John, who were several years older and certainly more able to fend for themselves, not been asked to leave at the same time as she had?

‘She did not,’ she said.

Elinor thought for some moments. ‘Perhaps you look like your mother, and your stepma don’t like to be reminded of her.’

‘No,’ Eliza said, shaking her head again, ‘it’s not that. My real mother had fair hair and light colouring and was small and round. I don’t look like her at all.’

‘Well,’ Elinor said, pondering the matter further, ‘maybe you’ve shown unkindness to your stepmother’s own babes.’

‘I never have!’ Eliza said, shocked. ‘I’ve tended them with care from the moment they were born, just as though they were my own true sisters.’

‘Well, then!’ Elinor said. ‘Having heard all about her I can only conclude that your stepmother is a selfish, vexatious and ignorant wretch who deserves to be horse-whipped!’

Eliza, astonished and rather pleased at this character assessment, forgot her surroundings and laughed. There was something else she hadn’t said, of course. Something concerning the last conversation she’d had with her stepmother … but she would think on this later.

As the girls continued to talk, sometimes straining to be heard above the shouting, singing and screaming of the other prisoners, a turnkey came in and began to distribute the food that had been sent out for: herrings, pigeon pies, hard-boiled eggs, oysters and
rice puddings. As Eliza and Elinor ate their fish, the prisoners who’d had no money to order any food set up a wailing and (those who still had both shoes and energy) a stamping, and after a time a steaming cauldron was brought into the cell and hot water poured into the iron mugs which were chained to the walls. Elinor told Eliza that the water also held some oatmeal, although this was such a pitifully small amount that Eliza could neither see nor taste it.

As the women who were manacled to the walls sought to ease their aches and pains by rubbing at their chafed legs, Eliza saw that one of them, as well as being chained, was also wearing a strange contrivance on her head.

Elinor said it was a scold’s bridle. ‘It’s fixed on her head with a spur which goes down into her mouth so that she can neither speak nor hardly breathe, just take a little water,’ Elinor said. ‘She’s been here for six days, and will be released tomorrow.’

Eliza stared in horror at the woman, immobile in her iron head cage.

‘Her husband had her put in here,’ Elinor went on in a whisper. ‘He said he hadn’t slept for a year because of her constant grumbles.’

Eliza gasped, for she had never heard of such a thing before, and the girls exchanged glances and quickly averted their eyes.

Almost as soon as the cups which had contained the gruel were drained dry, a turnkey came around the cells ringing a bell and calling nine o’clock. Several of the tapers which lit the cell were now extinguished, leaving the place in semi-darkness.

Eliza, looking around her, began to feel frightened.
Where was she going to sleep? It looked to her as though the only space left was alongside the sewer, and who knew what rats or other creatures might come swimming along this in the night? Trying to hide her fears, however, she thanked Elinor kindly for the herring, and prepared to take her leave.

‘Oh, you needn’t go,’ Elinor said immediately, taking her hand. ‘Stay here on my pallet and share my blanket if you wish.’

Eliza hesitated.

‘Really you must!’

‘I’ve nothing to give you in return,’ Eliza said, sitting down again nonetheless.

‘It’ll be your turn to pay another day,’ said Elinor. She put out her hand to touch Eliza’s hair. ‘And I warrant that if you put your hair down, pinch your cheeks into some colour and go and stand before the yard grille, you’ll pay your way through Clink before you know it.’

Eliza turned to her. ‘Can you buy
anything
here, then?’

‘You can,’ Elinor asked, unfolding her blanket. ‘You can buy food, warmth, clothes – you can buy a room of your own and a servant too, if you’ve a mind to, and if you really come into money you can pay to get out.’

Eliza’s attention was suddenly taken by the threadbare blanket which Elinor was offering her a share of. It was stiff with grease and smelt of the hundred unwashed prisoners who’d used it before them. She touched it and couldn’t help but recoil at its feel.

‘I know,’ Elinor said, pulling a face, ‘it’s horrid and
beastly. But it gets cold in here at three in the morning.’

Eliza, allowing the blanket to partially cover her, couldn’t help but think of the feather bed and soft linens of home. Was she still able to regard that cottage in Somersetshire as
home
, though?

‘And we must pray it doesn’t rain,’ Elinor added.

‘What happens then?’

‘The river rises, so the water going into it from that channel runs back into the prison. Those who haven’t got themselves on to pallets will find that they’re lying amongst dead dogs and offal which have floated back up here from the butchers’ shambles!’

Eliza shuddered.

‘But it doesn’t look like rain,’ said Elinor, ‘so your bath can wait until another day.’

Eliza, thankful to have fallen in with Elinor, managed to smile.

Chapter Three

‘’Tis not begging,’ Elinor said, ‘but just like working.’ She looked down at Eliza in exasperation. ‘’Tis what you have to do in here. You’ll starve otherwise!’

Eliza sat on a corner of Elinor’s pallet, feeling tearful. The previous night had been dreadful, despite the dubious comfort of Elinor’s blanket. A woman lying nearby had sobbed the whole night through, another had sung a tuneless and continual dirge, while others had let out sudden piercing screams at intervals as if they’d only just realised what a hell-hole they were confined to. People had risen to relieve themselves in the buckets, sometimes falling over in the dark and swearing loudly, and the turnkeys had walked in and out, jingling their keys loudly or calling the time. What with the smell, the noise and the strange and unwholesome surroundings it had been impossible to sleep.

‘’Tis monstrously foul here!’ she said to Elinor. ‘I don’t know how you stand it.’

‘You stand it because you have to,’ Elinor said, ‘but – doubtless you won’t believe this – you’ll get used to it a little. In time.’

Eliza burst into tears. ‘I never shall!’

Elinor fumbled in her pocket and pulled out a
comb. ‘You must start planning what you’ll do when you get out,’ she said. ‘Now, where will you go to first to look for your father?’

Eliza shrugged hopelessly. She’d just thought to come to London; no further than that.

‘As he’s a mason, you can go to his trade’s hall and seek him there.’ Elinor removed her cap and untied the piece of string which held back her hair. ‘But have you thought of what you’re going to say to him?’ she asked. ‘And are you sure that he’s not going to side with your stepma?’

‘He cannot!’ Eliza protested. ‘He’s a fair man. He’s my father!’ As she said this, Eliza tried to erase the memory of the busy, worried and rather remote figure her father had been and tried to imagine someone quite different. Someone who’d missed his eldest daughter most dreadfully since he’d been parted from her, someone who’d only recently realised how much she meant to him.

‘But if she’s the wicked shrew that she sounds …’

Eliza thought of the final conversation she’d had with her stepmother. ‘Since you’ve told me I’m no longer welcome here I’ll go and find my father!’ she’d said. ‘I’ll tell him what you’ve said to me and I warrant he won’t let you treat me so.’

‘Is that right?’ her stepmother had said, smiling her tight smile. ‘Are you so sure, miss?’

There was something about the way she’d said this which had caught at Eliza’s heart. She’d tried not to show it, though, as she’d shouldered her few possessions.

‘Yes, I
am
sure,’ she’d said, ducking to go through the low cottage door.

Her stepmother had come out to the doorstep for a parting shot. ‘You’ll find out I’m speaking the truth,’ she’d shouted after her. ‘He no longer wants a cuckoo in his nest!’

Those words had stayed with her:
a cuckoo in his nest
. What had she meant? But Eliza had not given her the satisfaction of turning round to ask.

Elinor now pulled the small comb through her fair hair, muttering and grimacing by turn as it caught the tangles. ‘Come,’ she said when she was satisfied. ‘Let me comb your hair now, then you and I must go and earn our breakfast. We’ll get into the yard while the others are still rubbing sleep from their eyes.’

Eliza started to protest again but Elinor, ignoring this, bade her turn round so that she could comb out her hair. She made sounds of approval as she did so.

‘Such curls and such waves!’ she said. ‘It reaches your waist and it glistens even in the glow from the candles, so ’twill look lovely in the sunlight.’ She arranged Eliza’s hair so that it rippled over her shoulders and down her back, then turned her round and round so she could admire her handiwork. ‘There! You look good enough for a king!’

Eliza managed a smile. ‘I’m sure I do not!’

‘You do indeed. And your eyes are green as the leaves on the trees!’

The comb now being put away, Elinor brought out a small bottle from the pocket of her gown. ‘A going-away present I stole from my mistress,’ she said, carefully applying a tiny amount of the red liquid to first her own, then to Eliza’s lips and cheeks and smoothing it in. She then touched a tiny smut of dirt on to Eliza’s cheek to enhance the effect. ‘There,’ she
said, finally satisfied. ‘Let’s see what attention we gets from the gentlemen today.’

The two girls were first outside in the yard and they made straight for the grille. Some women passed by – housewives on their way to buy produce at Borough market – and Elinor said to hold back, for a pretty face wouldn’t work on them. A group of workmen came by next: builders crossing to the City by London Bridge, and Elinor turned her nose up at these, too, saying they would have no money. On seeing three tall youths approaching wearing ruffled breeches under matching velvet coats, however, she prodded Eliza into action.

‘Here come some fine popinjays back from an evening spent carousing,’ she hissed. ‘Speak your bit and remember to smile nicely.’

As the pairs of ruffled breeches – one pair deep green, one black, the other maroon – drew level with the grille Eliza took a deep breath. ‘Spare a penny for two fair maids, sires!’ she called, blushing pinker than the cochineal which stained her lips. ‘Oh, please help us!’

The men paused and Elinor nudged her to go on. ‘We … we haven’t eaten a morsel these last days and are fair desperate for food!’ she continued.

The youth in maroon velvet walked on, twirling his gold-topped cane and giving the girls no more than a haughty glance, and the one in black velvet looked hardly sober enough to know what was going on, but the other, the one in green, halted. Eliza looked up at him nervously and as their glances met he smiled at her. Such a ready smile, she thought, and a well-shaped, curved mouth and merry blue eyes. How
shameful it felt to be begging money from such as he.

‘Val! Do come on, man!’ his friend in maroon called impatiently. ‘Hang around there too long and you’ll catch something.’

‘If you could … could but spare a penny, sire!’ Eliza said in little more than a whisper. She felt sweat begin to prickle her forehead, though the sun wasn’t yet in the prison yard. ‘We are nigh on starved to death in here.’

Elinor, who had been turned discreetly away, now joined in. ‘Oh, sire, my sister and I are helpless with hunger,’ she said, slipping her arm around Eliza and dropping her head on her shoulder in an appealing manner. ‘And we are imprisoned here through no fault of our own. Our wicked father tried to sell us to a slave ship but we ran away.’