The Betrayal (7 page)

There were smaller rooms at the back of the house, one of these a kitchen with a range, oven and turning spit. Outside was a courtyard shared between the row of houses, a soakaway for the emptying of chamber pots, a well and a privy to be shared with the neighbours. In all the rooms, upstairs and down, broken furniture, gnarled, stinking vegetables or rubbish lay on the floor. The walls were so damp that mildew and fungi grew on them and the windows, if not broken, were grimy. To top it all the husky smell of mouse hung in the air.

Mistress Midge observed these rooms, taking a horrified breath in each until finally she was as puffed up as a pigeon.

‘Good God alive!’ she finally exploded. ‘What are we supposed to do with this filthy piggery? Does he really think we can turn this hole into a place a lady would want to live? What if Her Grace came to visit, as she did in Mortlake?’

‘Perhaps we won’t find it so bad once we start work,’ I said lamely.

‘Not so bad! It’ll be worse, you mark my words! This is a rat hole, a kennel, a fly-bitten pigsty of a place!’

Shouting and muttering by turn, she paid the carter and then the three of us set about clearing the fireplace
so that we could light a fire and warm ourselves. At least we could do that, I thought, for there was rubbish aplenty to burn. And in the morning, perhaps, things would look better.

Of course, things did not look better, for the day dawned mild and clear and the bright morning sunshine streaming into the rooms showed up the squalor even more. The three of us spent several hours clearing two rooms, piling up the few things that were worth saving (a chair, an oak chest, some bedsteads with old straw mattresses and a few blankets) and putting all the rest of the rubbish in the yard at the back ready to burn. Sonny worked very hard, for of course he was hoping to make himself so invaluable to us that we’d keep him. Come the afternoon, however (finding Mistress Midge’s continual muttering and grousing most wearying), I offered to go out for provisions and take Sonny back to Christ’s Hospital at the same time.

‘Oh, no, Missus!’ he cried, looking very anguished.

I shot him a sympathetic smile, for I own I felt sorry
for the little lad. I wished that he didn’t have to be returned, but Mistress Gove’s words had hit hard and we were uneasy in our minds about having him there if it meant we were to fall foul of the law.

We tidied him as best we could and, though he would not suffer his face to be washed, I brushed off an amount of dust that had accumulated on his black funeral clothes and made him polish his shoes. Before we set off he had a large wedge of pie that had been left over from our tavern meal of the night before, and Mistress Midge also wrapped up a large piece of cheese for him to take.

Asked where the foundlings’ home was situated, Sonny answered in a gloomy voice that it was at the old Greyfriars Monastery in Newgate Street. ‘But if you take me back I’ll only run away again,’ he added.

‘And where would you be, then?’ I asked. ‘Out on the streets with no shelter and no one to feed you.’

‘I’d fend for meself all right. I’d hold horses for gents or card wool. I’d beg on the streets if I had to.’

‘If you did that the watchmen would catch you and take you to the workhouse as a vagrant.’

‘Don’t care,’ he said. ‘I hates Christ’s Horspiddle.’

I squeezed his hand. He wouldn’t want to be seen holding hands with me, but I couldn’t trust him not to run off. ‘Perhaps you’ll like it a little better there now, after some time away.’

‘I shall like it worse!’ he retorted.

‘But you must have friends there. What about the
other boys?’

He looked up at me balefully. ‘No family. No friends. ’Tis every boy for hisself there and the Devil take the lad who doesn’t watch his back.’

I was dismayed at this, but tried not to show it. ‘You’ll get on all right as time goes on,’ I said encouragingly. ‘’Tis a sight better than sleeping on Thames mud – and in a few years you can go to be a grocer or a wheelwright and will be running rowdy with the other ’prentices.’

He didn’t reply and I didn’t prolong this line of reasoning any longer, I’m ashamed to say, because I was so rapt at the scenes of London life unfolding before me: at the horse-riders with their silver stirrups jangling, the busy shops, the painted carriages, the hackney coaches and grand ladies being carried aloft in curtained litters. Other well-dressed and highly perfumed ladies walked, I noticed, but were flanked front and back by footmen carrying fur blankets against the cold, and spare shoes and gloves in case milady should fall foul of the mud. And, of course, there
was
mud and filth running down channels in the centre of the lanes, and beggars all in rags and sacking, and children without shoes shaking with cold, but that day, my first in London, I hardly saw these poor creatures at all, for I was so bewitched by everything else.

Coming to a crossroads, an ancient tavern named the George caught my eye. It was built in an L-shape with two long galleries overlooking a courtyard, and
people were standing along these looking down upon a story being enacted on the platform below. Everyone seemed to be enjoying it, for there was much laughter and shouts of acclaim from the onlookers.

My first thought was that it might be a masque with jesters (and of course my mind went to Tomas), but then I saw a board written with the words
The Queen’s Players
and the name of the performance, which was
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
.

Sonny and I stood watching for some moments at the entrance to the courtyard and I realised that it was not a masque that was being performed – for I’d seen these played at Court over Christmas, and they’d had persons representing Spring and Autumn and Love and so on – but a merry story acted out as if in real life. There was applause and whistling from the audience, especially when a pretty girl (whom I own must have been a very comely man) came on to the stage and showed the audience a dainty turn of ankle.

‘Shall we go nearer to see a little more?’ I asked Sonny.

He looked at me and shook his head, frowning. ‘’Tis not for the likes of ladies such as you.’

‘I’m hardly that!’

‘But playhouses are where the nightwalkers go to find their customers.’

I laughed, surprised that he even knew what the word ‘nightwalker’ meant. ‘Surely not?’

‘’Tis true! I’ve heard the bigger boys talking about it,
telling of how much it costs.’ He pulled at my hand, embarrassed. ‘Indeed you cannot go in there, Missus.’

I studied the audience, both on the balconies and those standing around the players at ground level. Possibly what Sonny said was true, for there were very few females around – and while those on the balconies may have been of a more refined appearance, those downstairs seemed to be wearing very frivolous headdresses and showing a substantial amount of bosom.

‘You may be right,’ I said, ‘but nevertheless it looks a great deal of fun and I shall come back another time and watch. If I do, I shall dress discreetly and conceal myself behind the largest gentleman I can find,’ I assured him.

We went on towards Christ’s Hospital, and with every step Sonny’s feet trudged ever more slowly and his head drooped further on to his chest, so that I had to remind myself continually that he was a professional mourner and had been trained to turn the melancholy on and off as simply as one could turn a handle. As we neared Newgate, I began to see some young boys wearing long, heavy, blue cassocks shaped with gathered skirts such as a parson might wear, together with bright-yellow woollen stockings. I asked Sonny what these signified and he, sighing, told me that this was the uniform for Christ’s Hospital and he would be required to put his on as soon as he arrived back.

‘It looks very smart,’ I assured him.

‘D’you think so? The yellow is to keep the rats from
biting us – for they don’t like the colour – and the blue coats are to mark us out from the rest of society and are monstrous hot in summer. D’you see those white bands about the boys’ necks?’

I nodded.

‘They must stay white at all times. If we are seen with one spot o’ dirt on them, we get a beating.’

I changed the subject, telling Sonny that Mistress Midge and I would visit him and bring him food.

‘Ah, but you won’t be living in London long, will you, Missus?’ was his response. ‘And what will I do after that?’

‘But you
are
fed regularly there.’

He nodded. ‘Black bread three times a day. Meat once a week if we’re lucky.’

I had no way of knowing if he was telling the truth, but assured him again that, while we stayed in London, Mistress Midge or I would bring him food whenever we were able.

The old Greyfriars Monastery was an imposing place and Sonny, usually so cheery and self-possessed, shrank against me as we walked into the quadrangle. I explained to a man wearing the same blue uniform that I was returning a lost boy and was directed to the grammar master’s office. Crossing an expanse of muddy grass to reach this, I looked through a window and saw rows of boys kneeling in prayer, all wearing the same identical yellow socks and blue cassocks (for which reason Mistress Midge told me later they were
sometimes called the Bluecoat Boys). From the grammar master we were shown to Matron’s room, and then on to the bursar. He was a fierce and angry sort of man, who, seeming to take me for some sort of orphan as well, roared at me to take Sonny to the boys’ dormitory and then to go to the girls’ workhouse.

I couldn’t help but be a little horrified at all this, for I’d told myself that there would be at least one person pleased to see Sonny back – to welcome him into the fold – but if there was, I’d not found them. Moreover, it seemed that no one even knew nor cared that he’d been missing. Perhaps Mistress Gove had been wrong.

‘What did you think, then, Missus?’ Sonny said when I mentioned my puzzlement. ‘There are more than four hundred boys here. Who is there to mark
my
absence? No one cares a jot whether I live or die.’

I suddenly thought of my own ma and her sorrow when we’d parted, and could not reply straight away because of the lump in my throat. ‘Someone cared enough to name you well,’ I said when I could speak. ‘For Sonny is a good and merry name. And Sonny Day is even better,’ I added, for he’d told us that this was what he was known as at the Hospital.

‘Do you think so, Missus?’ Sonny blew out his cheeks in derision. ‘I was named so because when I was dumped outside the gates it was a sunny day. And others are named according to where they’re found.’

‘What are you saying?’ I asked, puzzled.

‘Just this, one boy’s called James Storm because he
was chucked out in wet weather. Another’s called Peter Back-stairs. Another is John Doorway.’

I looked at him in dismay.

‘We are waiting for a boy to be abandoned in the privies,’ he said, at which statement I did not know whether to laugh or cry.

The boys’ dormitory was up a twisting stone staircase which grew steeper the higher we went, and at the top opened out into a long alleyway of beds stretching the whole length of the building. The beds were narrow with wooden sides, so that they looked like small coffins. They were a regulation distance from each other, and each had a layer of straw and a neatly folded grey blanket at the bottom. There was just space enough for an upturned wooden crate between each bed and these, I could see, held the boys’ clothes.

‘Which is your bed?’ I asked. ‘You had better change into your blue coat.’

He scratched his head. ‘I sleeps somewhere ’ere,’ he said, his brow creasing as he walked along the line. ‘I bunks in with a bigger boy; we tops and tails it. Though he always gets the blanket,’ he added. He sat himself down on a bed. ‘This is the one.’

‘Very well, but if he hogs the blanket then you must ask whoever is in charge of you for another. One of your own,’ I said, but he gave me such a scornful look that I knew I’d said something absurd.

Looking round then, the empty room faded away and I had a sudden vision of the dormitory at night:
poorly lit by tallow tapers, the boys lying in their allotted spaces two to a bed. I saw they were of all ages: near-babes sharing some bunks, full-grown boys of twelve in others. Sonny, blanket-less, was staring up at the ceiling, arms around himself to keep warm. I saw a stoutly built boy, a V-shaped scar on one cheek, kicking out at Sonny’s bed, then bending forwards, pulling at Sonny’s ears and then pinching him hard on both cheeks so that he cried out and sat up. The boy pulled Sonny to his feet by the neck of his nightshirt, then slapped him – and at this point I shook my head to drive the vision away, because I couldn’t bear to see any more.