Vice (44 page)

She began to explain her idea, slowly and simply, but soon the images of what she’d seen, the knowledge of what lives these women led, the deep knowledge that she had escaped it by a hairbreadth, took over, and her voice grew passionate, her eyes dashing with conviction.

“It’s not inevitable that we should be obliged to live as the bawds and whoremasters dictate. It’s not inevitable that we should see our earnings disappear into the pockets of greedy masters. It’s not inevitable that we should live in fear of prison for the slightest offense, for the smallest word out of turn. None of this is inevitable if we support each other.” She had instinctively used “we” throughout. If she didn’t identify with the women, she would seem like a preacher, distant on a pulpit. And, besides, she
did
identify with them, even if her situation was vastly different.

She paused for breath and Lilly jumped in, her eyes misty with tears. “We have to have a fund, as Juliana says. We each put into it whatever we can afford—”

“Afford!” exclaimed Tina, coughing into a handkerchief. “That’s rich, that is. It’s all right fer you what’ve got a decent ’ouse an’ all found. But fer us … there’s nowt twixt us an’ the devil but a sixpence now an’ agin if we’re lucky.”

“But that’s my point,” Juliana said eagerly. “Listen, if you didn’t have to pay all those expenses, you would be able to contribute to the Sisterhood’s fund. Those of us who have the most will put in the most—that’s only fair. And the rest contribute what they can. But we’ll find our own suppliers for coal and light and food and wine. If we can guarantee a certain amount of business, I’m sure we’ll find some merchants willing to do business with us. Willing to give us credit to get started.”

“Lord luv us, darlin’, but who’s goin’ to give us credit?” wheezed a woman on the settle, laughing at the absurdity of such a prospect.

“They’ll give Viscountess Edgecombe credit,” Juliana said stubbornly.

A thoughtful silence fell at this. Juliana waited, her blood on fire with her passionate need to persuade them that they
could
take control of their lives. It had to be possible.

“Ye’d be willin’ to put yer name out, then?” Tina looked at her with a sudden degree of respect.

“Yes.” She nodded in vigorous emphasis. “I will put my own money in every week, just like everyone else, and I will undertake to find the merchants willing to do business with us.”

“But, Juliana, they aren’t going to be doing business with
you,”
Deborah pointed out. “You have no need to buy supplies to conduct your own business.”

Juliana shrugged. “I don’t see that that makes any difference.”

“Well, if ye don’t, then us’ll thankee kindly fer yer assistance,” Tina stated. “That so, ladies?”

“Aye.” There was a chorus of hesitant agreement, and Juliana was about to expand on her plan when the piercing squeal of a whistle drowned her words. There was a crash, a bellow, shrieks, more whistles from the room beyond. The young bloods were calling in their high-pitched excitement, furniture crashed to the floor, the sound of blows.

“Oh, dear God, it’s a riot,” Emma said, her face as white as a sheet. “It’s the beadles.”

The women were surging to the back of the room, looking for another door. Someone flung up the casement sash and they hurled themselves at the opening. Juliana just stood there in astonishment, wondering what the panic was all about. The disturbance was all in the room next door. If they stayed quiet, no one would come in. They’d done nothing. They were doing nothing to disturb the peace.

Suddenly a voice bellowed from the open window, “No ye don’t, woman. Y’are not gettin’ away from me. All right, my pretties, settle down now. Mr. Justice Fielding is awaitin’ on ye.”

Deborah gave a low moan of despair. Juliana stared at the
glowering face of the beadle in the window, his rod of office raised threateningly. Behind him, two others were wrestling with one of the women who’d managed to get through the window. Then the door flew open. She had a glimpse of the room behind, the scene of chaos, the mass of grinning or scowling faces lost in a frenzied orgy of destruction. Then she saw Mistress Mitchell standing with another woman in a print gown and mob cap. They were both talking to a constable as his fellows surged into the room where the women were now huddling, swinging their batons to left and right, grabbing the women, herding them toward the door.

Juliana was caught up with the rest. She lashed out with a fist and a foot and had the satisfaction of feeling them meet their mark, but it did her little good. She was hustled out, pushed and shoved by the officious and none too gentle constables. And as she looked over her shoulder, Mistress Mitchell smiled with cold triumph.

They had been betrayed, and it was clear by whom. The whoremasters of Covent Garden wouldn’t see their nymphs escape the yoke without a fight.

T
he duke’s coachman was sitting on an ale bench outside a tavern under the colonnades of the Piazza, pleasantly awaiting the return of his passenger. He could see the carriage and the urchin who held the horses, but he could see little else beyond the sea of bodies eddying around the square. He heard the ruckus from Cocksedge’s as just another exploding bubble in the general cacophonous stew and called for another tankard of ale.

“Beadles is raidin’ some ’ouse,” a shabby bawd observed from the bench beside him. “Daresay some of them varmints from up town are causin’ trouble. Breakin’ ’eads no doubt, drunk as lords … a’course, most of’em is lords.” She cackled and drained her tankard. “Not that that Sir John’ll do much more ’an turn a blind eye to
their
goings-on. It’s the women who’ll suffer, as usual.”

She stared into her empty tankard for a minute, then gathered herself to her feet with a sigh. “That ale does go through a body summat chronic.” She staggered into the road, raising an imperative hand to a flyter, who stood with his pail and telltale voluminous cloak a few yards away. He trotted over to her, and she gave him a penny. The flyter set his bucket on the cobbles and then spread his cloak as a
screen for the woman, who disappeared into its folds to relieve herself in relative privacy.

John Coachman paid scant interest to a sight that could be seen on every street corner in the city. He eyed his carriage in case the disturbance should show signs of coming this way. There were the sounds of running feet, more yelling and cursing, mostly female. With a grunt he hauled himself to his feet and clambered onto the box of the coach to see over the heads to the turmoil across the square.

He could make out little, except a group of constables herding a crowd of women toward Bow Street, presumably to bring them before Sir John Fielding, the local magistrate. Around the beadles and their prisoners surged a crowd of raging women, throwing rotten fruit at the constables, cursing them with fluent vigor. The constables ducked the missiles, ignored the curses, and moved their prisoners along with the encouragement of their rods. The young men from Cocksedge’s roared and swayed in a drunken circle before suddenly affected by a common impulse; like lemmings, they turned in a body and reentered Cocksedge’s. The sound of breaking glass and smashing furniture was added to the general tumult, Mother Cocksedge’s vituperations and desperate pleas rising above it all.

John Coachman began to feel a little uneasy. Where in all this chaos was Lady Edgecombe? Presumably he should have accompanied her on her errand, but she hadn’t really given him the opportunity to offer. A little shiver of apprehension ran down his spine at the thought of the duke’s possible reaction to this dereliction of duty.

He stood on his box and gazed intently over the throng. The party of women and beadles was reaching the corner of Russell Street. He caught a glimpse of a flaming red head in the midst, and his heart jumped. Then he sat down again with a thump. Lady Edgecombe couldn’t possibly be in the company of a group of arrested whores. Presumably she was waiting for the tumult to die down before she came back to the carriage. He couldn’t leave the horses to go and look for her, even if he knew where in this inferno she had
gone. If she came back to find him not there, they would be worse off than they already were. He yawned, sleepy from the ale he’d been imbibing freely, and settled down on the box, arms folded, to await Lady Edgecombe’s return.

Juliana was continuing to struggle and protest as she was borne out of Covent Garden toward Bow Street. She could see only Lilly and Rosamund of the Russell Street girls and hoped that the others had escaped. The beadles couldn’t possibly arrest the entire roomful of women, and it seemed to her that they were somewhat selective in the ones they harried along the street. She noticed that several women at the outskirts of the group were permitted to duck away from their captors and disappear into the dark mouths of alleys as they passed. But there was no possibility of such a move for herself. She had a beadle all to herself, gripping her elbow as he half pulled her along.

Rosamund was weeping; Lilly, on the other hand, cursed at her captors with all the vigor of a Billingsgate fishwife. Her face was tight and set, but Juliana didn’t think she was going to break down. “Where are they taking us?” she asked.

“Fielding’s,” Lilly said shortly through compressed lips. “And then Bridewell, I expect.”

Juliana gulped. “Bridewell? But what for?”

“It’s a house of correction for debauched females,” Lilly told her with the same curtness. “Surely you’re not so naive you don’t know that.”

“Yes, of course I know it. But we weren’t doing anything.” Juliana tried to keep her temper, knowing that Lilly’s impatience was fueled by apprehension.

“We were in the middle of a riot. That’s all it takes.”

Juliana chewed her Hp. “Mistress Mitchell was there, together with some grimy-looking creature I assume was Mother Cocksedge.”

“I saw her.”

“D’you think she put the beadles on to us?”

“Of course.” Lilly turned to look at Juliana and her fear
was now dear in her eyes. “We tried to tell you that it’s impossible to escape the rule of the bawds,” she said bleakly. “I was a fool to be carried away by your eloquence, Juliana. There was a moment this evening when I thought it might happen. We would buy our own necessities, look after each other in illness or ill luck, thumb our noses at the bastards.” She shook her head in angry impatience. “Fools … we were all fools.”

Juliana said no more. Nothing she could say at this moment would improve the situation, and she needed to concentrate on her own plight. She couldn’t admit her identity to the magistrates—neither of her identities. She had to keep the Courtney name out of her own disgrace. The duke, for all his deviousness, didn’t deserve to have his cousin’s wife publicly hauled off to Bridewell.

Hauled off? Or carted? Her blood ran cold, and a clammy sweat broke out on her hands and forehead. Would they drive them to Bridewell at the cart’s tail? Was she about to be whipped through the streets of London?

A wave of nausea rose in her throat. She knew it was part of the customary punishment for bawds. But they weren’t bawds. They were the slaves of bawds. Surely that would be a lesser offense in the stern eyes of Sir John Fielding.

They reached a tall house on Bow Street, and one of the constables banged on the door with his staff. A sleepy footman answered it. “We’ve harlots to be brought before Sir John,” the constable announced with solemnity. “Creating a fracas … debauching … soliciting … inciting to riot.”

The footman looked over his head to the surrounded women. He grinned lasciviously as he noted their disordered dress. Even the well-dressed women had suffered in the arrest and now tried to hold together torn bodices and ripped sleeves. “I’ll waken Sir John,” he said, stepping back to open the door fully. “If ye takes ’em into the front parlor where Sir John does ’is business, I’ll fetch ’im fer ye.”

The constables herded their little flock into the house and into a large paneled room on the left of the hall. It was
sparsely furnished, with a massive table and a large chair behind it, rather giving the impression of a throne. The women were pushed into a semicircle around the table while another yawning footman lit the candles and oil lamps, throwing a gloomy light over the bare room.

Then silence fell, as deep as a crypt—not so much as the rustle of a skirt, the scrape of a foot on the bare floor. It was as if the women were afraid to speak or to move, afraid that it might worsen their condition. The beadles kept quiet, as if awed by their surroundings. Only Juliana looked around, taking in details of the molding on the ceiling, the embossed paneling, the waxed oak floorboards. She was as scared as the rest of them, but it didn’t show on her countenance as she tried to think of a way out of this dismal situation.

After an eternal fifteen minutes the double doors opened and a voice intoned, “Pray stand for ’Is Honor, Sir John Fielding.”

As if they had any choice, Juliana thought with a brave attempt at humor, unable to ignore the shiver that ran through her companions.

Sir John Fielding, in a loose brocade chamber robe over his britches and shirt, his hastily donned wig slightly askew, took his seat behind the table. He surveyed the women with a steady, reproving stare.