Rebels and traitors

Chapter Sixty-Six — Moorfields: 1650

Priss Fotheringham's scheme, as conceived in Newgate Prison, was that Alice Smith would be given a new virginity by the tame quack 'doctor', Hercules Pawlett. Daintily renamed as 'Mistress Pernelle', she would then join the Dutch 'girls' — some of whom were stretching that youthful definition beyond incredulity. To be foreign was to be exotic. One fraudulently passed herself off as Dutch even though she came from Clerkenwell. They worked at an old trade, in what was about to become London's most legendary brothel.

Mistress Pernelle had other ideas for herself. All along, the waif had understood more of what Priss was planning than she showed. In her life on the streets she had seen enough bawds to recognise exactly what Priss Fotheringham was, and to be wary. Although she herself had had connections with men from time to time, swindling was forced on her by desperation, either financially or because of an all-too-human need for comfort. A regular life of fornication was not for her. She feared the consequences. She had seen whores sink, in only a few months, through prettiness to coarseness then further into the vile ravages of syphilis, which rotted off their faces. She had known many who died, some of them going mad on the streets first.

The former Alice Smith did recognise the false promise of this life. A girl with a sweet visage, who managed to keep herself clean and nice just long enough to secure a rich patron, could live off her trade — in her own apartment with a lute and a French clock, if she was extremely well thought of — at least until the patron spent all his income on sack and gambling, or got himself married and retired to estates in the country, or simply found a newer mistress with a gayer laugh, a tighter commodity and perter breasts. Or until he died. Few of these women achieved a tolerable old age. There were, and there would be, mistresses of kings, long-term ones too, who died in abject poverty.

There was a different route to prosperity. A smart businesswoman, who kept out of debt to bawds and pimps, might begin as a whore but one day establish her own brothel, sit all day in a parlour beneath racks of delft plates, wearing a good gown, and retire from lying down with men herself. An organised bawd like this might make her fortune through her girls, at least until some man spent it for her. Some, and Priss Fotheringham was one, really enjoyed such entrepreneurship, which brought money and fame — though generally not enough money and sometimes the wrong kind of fame. It also carried a constant risk of fines and imprisonment.

In 1650, the Six Windmills was becoming known and had embarked on what would be a long period of secure notoriety. The place hummed with excitement. Priss was creaking with the pox, which could never quite be cured even by mercury, but in those days she remained full of energy and managed her girls in a grubby style that the shameless men who trekked out to Moorfields deemed to be a fine welcome. When they called her 'Mother' Fotheringham, it sounded as if she were some homely body who might offer tureens of nourishing soup and prayers before bedtime — although once her establishment became known as the Half-Crown Chuck Office, all suggestion of gentility was dropped. Anyone who knew that name knew into what moist and mysterious cavities the money was thrown.

Only men with a healthy disposable income, perhaps acquired illegally, could afford to throw away half a crown. Half-crowns — two shillings and sixpence — came in all shapes and sizes since the war started. Two-and-six would buy you a bedstead, a stack of bees, a hammer, a yard of kersey or a barrel of oysters, pretty well fresh. Half a crown was the going rate to place a high-class advertisement in a news sheet, or to buy a reading from the astrologer William Lilly.

At the Six Windmills, half a crown was what had to be tossed between the spread legs of Priss Fotheringham when she stood on her head with her feet wide apart, showing her bare belly and breech. The whooping culleyrumpers then chucked their coins into her vagina until the cavity was filled. It was reckoned there was space for sixteen standard half-crowns, which would pay a whole year's wages for a live-in household maid. French dollars or Spanish pistolles were an acceptable alternative if the customers were foreign. The sought-for coins were the various 'official' issues of the Tower Mint in London that was controlled by Parliament or from the now-defunct Royalist Mints of Shrewsbury and Oxford. Through having to assess more dubious offerings, Priss had become curiously expert in the irregular coins issued by besieged garrisons during the civil war — the triangles and rectangles showing castles and fortified gateways that had come into general circulation after being cut from donated tankards, trenchers, salts, bowls and apostle spoons in Beeston, near Chester, Scarborough and Colchester, the diamonds with jewelled crowns from the great Royalist cavalry station at Newark, the octagons from Pontefract. Since Cromwell's return from Ireland, she was familiar with coinage from Kilkenny, Inchquin, Cork; the Youghal copper farthing; the blacksmith's half-crown that was crudely executed yet bore an ambitious equestrian portrait of the King; the round coins issued by the Marquis of Ormond, with crowns, harps and beaded rims. Priss accepted them all if the metal in them was good, though for reasons of personal comfort, she preferred that diamonds and other parallelograms with sharp corners were not thrown at her privities in the Half-Crown Chuck.

At her best, Priss could do the chuck without assistance, and several times a night. As hours passed and she gulped aqua vitae — not easy, when you are upside down — she might need the whooping customers to hold her spread legs steady, but she kept going. On some occasions Rhenish wine or sack was poured in. Even the most athletic whore could not then drink the wine or sack herself — though others might, if they were not too squeamish. To imply that chucking came from a cultured tradition, it was always said to originate with the ancient Romans. 'Well, they were noble!' Priss would roar. 'Let's have an orgy in their memory…' Riotous roistering then ensued, with rudely skimpy costumes that no one bothered to check for classical authenticity. Inevitably, there were men who boasted they were experts at the chucking. The most intense of these dab hands would expound boringly on the best method to ensure insertion. Only complete rogues offered to sell their knowledge, even for the price of a cup of sack.

By those of a whimsical nature, the Half-Crown Chuck might be described as an early form of slot machine.

Friday the 15th of September 1650 was decreed by Parliament a Day of Public Thanksgiving. Such days had been regularly held throughout the previous decade, to celebrate military victories. This one was for the subjugating of Ireland by Oliver Cromwell, who was now subjugating the Scots too, in driving rain. Public thanksgiving took the form of sermons. Not many customers at the Six Windmills bothered to attend these sermons, or read them when Parliament subsequently had them printed — though some did, because, as in all walks of life, Ma Fotheringham's clientele included a number of hypocrites. Even by the management and generality such occasions were always marked, however. Celebrations were eagerly held in brothel premises. To enter into the spirit, extra drink was ordered to accompany a raucous performance of the famous Half-Crown Chuck ritual.

Parliament had in previous months passed a brisk sequence of reforming Acts and Ordinances: against Drunkenness; against Swearing and Cursing; against Immodest Dress, which specified the deplorable habits of painting, wearing black patches, and lewd dress in women; against the importation of French wines — unless captured by Oliver Cromwell as booty at Edinburgh, which was given a specific exclusion so he could sell it to pay soldiers; against the import of French silks and wool; against the import of foreign hats and hatbands. None of those Acts and Ordinances was observed at the Six Windmills. The men were blasphemous and drunk, the women were immodest. However, Priss coarsely conceded it was not obligatory to wear a foreign hat to fuck.

During the extremely noisy evening of the 15th of September, a group of sailors arrived from a ship called the Emerald. Sailors were always attended to kindly. Whores appreciated the danger of their adventurous lives at sea, not to mention their desperation for female company the minute they made land and the fact they would have just been paid, possibly with extra prize money. A sailor with a wooden leg posed a special challenge for a whore too.

Safe harbours for that evening's wind-blown matelots were at once provided. Only officers were permitted entry to the chuck, however, since it was understood that only officers would be in possession of the correct coins. The concept of having the right money ready, please, has older origins than may be supposed. Little interrogation was needed; experienced women could tell at a glance from a man's dress and attitude whether he was a basic pug-nosed seaman or an uglier, ruder specimen but of higher status with a heavier purse. The lower ranks were peeled off slickly to the basic booths, without offence being intended or taken.

Sailors were generally faithful to the King, but at least one crewman off the Emerald held libertarian ideals. Unimpressed with the elitist entry-rules Ma Fotheringham had imposed for her own performance, one toprigger loathed being excluded. He did not claim that the world was a treasury for the common man, he just shouted repeatedly that barring him from the chuck was unfair. During this unpleasantness he was threatened that the hector would be called from doorkeeping to expel him. His outrage continued, but he simmered down. The girls, who had heard blustering before, let him mooch off on his own; they had their hands full with other people anyway, for it was a busy night.

The grumbling sailor rambled about in quieter areas of the brothel, searching for a free girl, or a free supper, or at least a free drink. He passed various small cells where men who were more willing to spend money than he was were hard at it. He stepped over one or two who had collapsed in passageways, overcome by one kind of excitement or another. As he roamed and muttered, he saw another man emerge from what must be a privy. The landbird had a confident swagger, and looked as if he knew what he was about. The sailor followed him.

Appearances were deceptive, as is so often the case when much drink has been consumed. In the cavernous interior, the swaggerer soon lost his way. By accident, he lurched into the kitchen. The brothel might be mostly taken up with parlours and bedrooms but, once the long night ended, every tired whore liked to sit down with a slice of smoked gammon folded in a piece of bread and butter, then wash it down with a tankard of small beer while complaining about that day's customers. There was a kitchen, therefore, one remarkably well stocked with gleaming copper pans, bright slipware bowls and organised knife boxes. It had bunches of dried herbs, smoked meats hung over the hearth, even jelly moulds though they were rarely used. Clean wash-cloths and pan-holders hung neatly on a string on the mantel-beam. The fire was leaping cheerily. The mousetraps were all set.

This warm nook was the province of Mrs Mildmay — a perfectly respectable cook-housekeeper (or so she maintained) who came in from Moorfields on a daily basis, bringing a ten-year-old washer-up and a coal-scuttle boy. Like the brothel's doctor, wall-painter, scrivener and doorman, she was an expert professional. She could have worked in a duke's mansion, had dukes not preferred to use illegitimate offspring of their own and had the House of Lords not been abolished anyway the year before, on grounds of being useless and dangerous.

Of course the brothel doctor was a quack, but he was a good quack, one of the best fake physicians in London. Of course, too, the doorman was a pimp; he was the bawd's own pimp, hectors always were.

The point was that running a good brothel required high standards of domestic comfort. Men might as well remain at home, unless they were pampered, fed and entertained here decently. It was not enough that the girls knew their stuff — though if girls worked for Priss Fotheringham, they certainly did. Gentlemen expected that there would be meat pies in a choice of flavours, dishes of oysters, fine wines, footstools, someone who could play a flute, books of undemanding love poems, and up-to-date copies of news-sheets, with both Royalist and Parliamentarian points of view.

Expensive claret was available to be taken on silver (well, pewter) trays to the finest rooms — claret which was more overpriced than ever, now that imports had been banned. For the half-hour, pay-a-few-pennies booths where the antique hags and girls who were just learning their trade worked, there was beer. It was brewed on the premises, brewed in fabulously large quantities by a waiflike solitary brewster. She kept to herself. She never went with men, regarding men as trouble. She had stayed here in the brothel because she believed she owed Priss something for extracting her from prison. Anyway, it was a job.

That evening she was alone in the kitchen. While the house was busy but all the men and girls were concentrating on the Half-Crown Chuck, or on more straightforward entertainment, and after Mrs Mildmay had gone home, this became the brewster's kingdom. The banked fire flickered on the whitewashed walls and glittered on the copper pans. It was warm; it was peaceful. It reminded the young woman of a kitchen in Birmingham where she had once been shown kindness. For company, she could hear the low hum of distant voices, congenial thumps, occasional bursts of music, soaring cheers and laughter. She was surrounded by happy people, yet had no need to interact with any.

Until now.

The bastard in the green velvet coat and gold-laced boot-hose had an arrogant strut and was more than tipsy. He wore an eyepatch shoved askew up on his forehead and tossed his blond ringlets in a way that she instantly recognised. He was foolishly proud of his luxurious coiffure and so sure of himself she almost laughed out loud. He made a dramatic start. 'What have we here? A choice morsel!'

'Not for you, Jem Starling!' riposted the brewster instantly. She would have kept quiet, but she saw that through his befuddlement he realised he knew her.

'Eliza!'

'Mistress Pernelle now'

'A good whore's name — ' Jem lunged towards her, falling over a joint-stool. 'You owe me a thrust, for giving me up to the constable — I'll have my revenge this minute — '

'You will not.' She felt oddly calm. That had something to do with three pints of her own brewed beer inside her. Since she last saw him, she had come through many experiences. She was like a forged sword: hammered, quenched, tempered, sharpened and polished; brought through fire and water to great strength and perfect balance. When she spoke, it was to her ears like the whip of a good weapon through the air. 'Take yourself off and forget you saw me. I have my own life and will not be bothered.'

'Damme, you'll repay your debts!'

'I owe no debts to you,' answered Mistress Pernelle, jumping up from the settle where she had been so cosy. She lost her temper, which seemed a good reaction to the possibility of losing everything. Why could men never leave a woman quietly by herself? Why must their uncontrollable jockums always drive them to impose themselves?

She snatched up a spectacular brass bed-warmer that had been preparing on the fire. Five foot long in the handle, the implement was burning hot and heavy with live coals inside it. She put all the effort she could into a mighty swing, expelling all her years of grief in the action. The great implement cracked Jem Starling's skull. He fell down without a cry and did not move. The warmer clanged to the floor, badly dented.

Mistress Pernelle sat back down on the settle very suddenly, white as ash, with her heart pounding.

'Blow me, you've only killed the blighter!' commented a new voice from the passage doorway. More trouble. A man was already in the room, bending over Jem's boots. 'If I tow him out into the yard, do I get the fun he was asking for?'

'Don't even dream of it.'

'Always worth a try! I'll dispose of him for you anyway. Let's chuck him over the gunnels before anybody cops us — ' A sailor. He was as good as his word, starting to pull the lifeless man to the back door. The girl rallied to help him, which speeded up the process. Beyond the door lay a lane, where Jem's body joined the drunks and riff-raff who were often found there, some clinging onto miserable life, some dead of cold or worse, all causing little public comment in this sordid area in the fields beyond the city walls. The sailor took coins from a pocket. 'Shall I save his boots?'

'I want nothing of his.'

'You knew him then.'

And I know you too, she thought to herself as they returned indoors. In the few moments while they removed the corpse, she had considered whether to say anything. One old acquaintance in a night was bad enough.

The sailor gazed at her. It was almost ten years since she had seen him. She had been about fourteen, and was now in her middle twenties, the age he must have been when he went away to sea. He was in his mid-thirties, a fit, lean man, dark-skinned from years of wind and weather, short, wiry, otherwise undistinguished-looking. One thing marked him out: he had the sing-song lilt of an ineradicable accent, one that came from as far inland as could be. She had noticed it immediately, feeling a pang of homesickness, and an urge to welcome him too. He had failed to spot that she spoke with the same intonation and vowels.

'Well, Mistress Pernelle!' The young sailor addressed her with the cocksure confidence of their home town. He had Midlands' goodheartedness too. He had known deprivation; he reacted kindly to her predicament. 'I covered him with leaves, nice and snug, but if he may be traced to you, you may like to think whether it is safe for you to remain here.'

She jumped up quickly, at that. With a pragmatic nod, she led the sailor down a passage to the brewhouse, where she normally slept on a mattress and kept her few belongings. Quickly putting together a bundle, she remarked that it had been in her mind to move on to a more respectable house. Brewing was a skill, she now realised; it could be marketed. The speed of her packing showed that her plans were already advanced. She turned her back and changed from her low-cut brothel gown into a plain skirt and jacket in unbleached linen, high on the neck, with a neat apron and white collar over it, clothes she must have hoarded ready for this day. She plumped a good hat on her head.

While he leaned on a malt shovel, waiting, the sailor revealed he too had dreams. He was carrying his savings and now planned to leave the sea, hoping to set up somewhere and earn his living on land.

'What can you do?'

'I can turn my hand to anything.'

'If you can work in a tavern,' suggested Mistress Pernelle, 'why don't you come along with me?'

'Do you have your own tavern, malt-masher?' chortled the sailor, with his easy grace.

'Not yet,' she quipped back, with the same wry humour. 'I shall have to begin in someone else's place, then persuade them to give it up to me.'

'Better bring your warming pan in case you need to bash heads.'

'No, that's Priss Fotheringham's own bed-warmer. I'll not be a thief — especially from her.'

'Well, it's true the pan got dinted badly. The next person who has it will be burned by the coals falling out. That should enliven the bawd's bed.'

'Say no more of bawds. My plan is to turn respectable.' She too had a few savings to bring to the venture, though she would not tell him so until she was sure that she trusted him not to drink or steal the money. 'We must go right across the city, where I am not known and the naval press-men will not look for you. Look out for purse-snatchers and pickpockets.'

They slipped out of doors and set off into the night. The sailor was intrigued. 'So why do you so suddenly trust your fortunes to a stranger?' At his side, the skinny brewster merely smiled, enjoying her mystery. 'My name is Nathaniel Tew — so who are you?'

'You will work it out eventually,' said the pale little wisp whom Nat Tew would in time recognise from long ago as one of his own raggle-taggle sisters: the one they had all called Kinchin.