The cross had been there only some five years, since King Edward’s wife, to whom, most unusually for a monarch, he was both devoted and faithful, had died in the north. A great cortège had set out to bring her body to Westminster, and twelve nights it had rested on the way: the last stage, before its formal entrance to the Abbey, had been here, at the road’s turning. So great was Edward’s devotion, that he had ordered a stone cross erected at each stopping place. There was another, in the West Cheap, by Wood Street. And since this spot was known by its old English name of, roughly, Charing, meaning the turning, this touching little monument was known as Charing Cross.
Barnikel had respected the queen; but he paused at the cross because, on the day it was erected, his own dear wife, having given him seven children, had died in childbirth with the eighth. It was because he had never found a replacement for her that Barnikel had not remarried, but preferred instead to go to Bankside once a week. As he always did, therefore, he said a prayer for her at Charing Cross and then rode on for his rendezvous. He had no qualms of conscience as he did so. His wife had been a cheerful soul. She would have approved. He pushed his horse into a canter.
As they approached the Dog’s Head, Isobel and Margery were still not certain what to do. They had visited a doctor in Maiden Lane who was said, for a bribe, to keep his mouth shut, and he had confirmed their fears at once. “It’s a leprosy,” he said. So all such contagious sores were called. After bathing it in white wine, he had given Margery an ointment which, he swore, would cure her. “The chief ingredient,” he remarked cheerfully, “is the urine of a goat. Works every time.” She thanked him, doubtfully.
“I could go away for a bit I suppose,” Margery said. She had never been away from her sister before. “I can pay the rent, and we’re supposed to be closed tomorrow anyway, because of Parliament.” In fact, the brothelkeeper usually arranged some discreet services for which he required the sisters. “I shall pray,” said Isobel.
Isobel was religious. The dispensation allowed to its prostitutes by the Church was uneven. They could receive communion, for instance; but they must be buried in unconsecrated ground. Though whether this meant that the dead were more liable to moral contamination than the living Isobel did not know. Even so, she believed that God might forgive her sins in this harsh world and that, in the end, she would be saved. But she knew that Margery’s condition must not be discovered. “You’d better not work tonight,” she said. “We can decide what to do in the morning.”
With such urgent affairs on their mind, they still had not remembered about little Joan. As they drew near the stew-house, they did so, with some shock. For the girl was standing outside, between two men and the brothelkeeper. Something, clearly, was badly wrong.
Waldus Barnikel was very angry indeed; Bull was smiling blandly and the brothelkeeper was looking embarrassed.
“You offered me a virgin,” the new-made alderman thundered.
“She was, this morning,” the brothelkeeper apologized. “I thought you’d come sooner, sire,” he added.
“And so I would have done,” the alderman declared, looking contemptuously at Bull, “but I have been with King Edward. He was speaking to me about the Parliament,” he explained as a final reminder of his superiority to the patrician.
“She’s only been had once,” the brothelkeeper said, with a nervous glance at Bull.
“By me,” Bull remarked with quiet satisfaction.
The new-made alderman and Parliamentarian glared.
“You think I would want her after that old fart?” he cried, glowering at the hated patrician; and the brothelkeeper wondered if this would lead to blows. But Bull seemed content to witness the fishmonger’s fury.
“Seems I got in first,” he said bluntly.
“You cur!” Barnikel cursed the brothelkeeper. “This is how you treat a good customer. I’ll go elsewhere in future, by God I will.”
“So you don’t want her?” Bull asked.
“No more than I want a dog!” Barnikel roared. And then paused, uncertain what to do next. He had come there to celebrate, and quite emphatically wanted a woman. But seeing the girl standing side by side with his old enemy who, he now knew had got there first, his pride would not allow him to touch her. What should he do?
Just at this moment he noticed the Dogget sisters, who had now arrived.
“I’ll have the Dogget girl,” he said gruffly. “The one I always have.”
“Which is?” The brothelkeeper was so alarmed by the turn of events that, for a moment, he had forgotten. Barnikel glared at him.
“Margery, of course.”
The sisters looked at each other in consternation. They had but one thought in their mind. If the alderman caught anything from Margery there would be all hell to pay. He’d tear the brothel down. They would probably both be thrown out. There was no time to talk. One of them stepped forward.
“It’s always me he wants, never my sister,” she said with a smile. “Come on up, big boy,” she cried.
There would be no problem. Margery had told her, long ago, exactly what it was he liked.
But for the real Margery, remaining below, there remained one puzzle. She had been preparing herself hastily to apologize to poor Joan. They had promised to protect her. And look at what had happened.
Yet now, amazingly, there was no reproach in her eyes. In fact, she was laughing. And as Margery Dogget stared at her, Joan smiled up at Bull and kissed him on the mouth.
“Shall I walk you to the bridge?” she said.
Joan parted from Bull just before the bridge, knowing that she had been lucky. More than lucky. Many men, having heard her story, would have laughed, or frankly disbelieved her. But Bull had done neither. At first he had stood there, stunned. Then he had shaken his head and told her: “That’s the bravest thing I ever heard of in my life.” Then he had chuckled. “All right,” he said. “I’ll help you. Do you really think you can get away with it?”
“I must,” she said quite simply.
The law was clear enough. There was only one way, short of a pardon, that a condemned man in London could escape the hangman’s noose. And that was if he was claimed by a whore.
There was a precise ceremony to be followed. The woman must appear publicly before the justices, dressed in the striped white dress and hood which were the official garb of the profession, and carrying a penitential candle in each hand, and offer herself as the prisoner’s bride. If the condemned man in London agreed to marry her, he was set free and the marriage took place forthwith. The Church, though it ran the brothels, applauded the saving of a life from sin; the authorities doubtless took the same view. Few cases are recorded of this happening, though whether the prostitutes were unwilling to leave off a profitable occupation to be the wives of paupers, or whether the men preferred to swing rather than marry such women is unknown.
The Dogget girls’ scheme was to do precisely this. Joan must become a prostitute for a day. She must be taken in properly at the Dog’s Head, her name registered with the bailiff. Then she could claim her man. They had thought it the greatest adventure they had ever come up with in their life.
“But I can’t actually go with the men,” the girl had objected. “I just couldn’t.” She had shaken her head. “As for Martin . . .” This was why she had not dared tell him the details of her plan. He would certainly have refused, and given the game away. She thought of her betrothed’s sad yet fiercely proud little face. “If he even thought . . .” her voice trailed off.
“We’ll protect you,” the sisters had promised. “We can get you through a night untouched.” They had gone into fits of giggles at the thought. “What a joke,” they had cried. “What a trick.”
But Joan’s objections were also the potential weakness of the plan. She did not think the authorities would enquire too closely about the short time she had spent in the brothel. After all, the dishonour of appearing in the despised dress, even once, as a registered whore was enough to brand her fo
r life. But she supposed that if they discovered she had never acted the part at all, they might take a different view. She had worried about this also, all morning, but could not see what to do.
As she faced the florid-faced merchant in her little attic room, the idea came to her. First, if she told him everything, would he take pity on her instead of forcing himself upon her? And secondly, ingeniously, would he let the brothel-keeper and if necessary the authorities believe that she really had played the part?
For William Bull, gazing at this strange, solemn little person, the affair had been astonishing. That she would even dare to do such a thing! “My God,” he said, after agreeing to help, “your young man’s a lucky fellow. Mind you,” he added, thinking with sudden embarrassment of his wife, “if it ever came to the question, I’d prefer to tell the justices in private that I’d had you. But I dare say that could be arranged. If the brothelkeeper thinks I did, that should be enough.”
“But there’s one other thing,” she said. “After they’ve released Martin, you must tell him what really happened. I wouldn’t want him to wonder . . .”
Bull grinned. “Of course,” he said. But even he had not dreamed of the wonderful coincidence when, at last, he and the girl had come down. There was that cursed fishmonger Barnikel, puce with rage at finding that Bull had been there before him.
So extraordinary was the whole business, so sweet the revenge on Barnikel, that Bull found as he returned across the bridge that he felt quite as contented as if he had had a dozen virgins.
I might even go to bed with my wife, he thought, so happy was his mood.
Joan, meanwhile, equally contented, had been in no hurry to go back. First she had walked a little further along the river; then wandered about by the market; she had gone for a while into the church of St Mary Overy, and said a little prayer for Martin Fleming, before a statue of the Virgin. Then, taking her time, she had returned towards the Dog’s Head.
No one, she felt sure, would bully her any more that day. Besides, the Dogget girls were there to protect her now. An early November dusk was falling as she approached the brothel door.
Dionysius Silversleeves stared at the lion and snarled. The lion shook its shaggy mane and snarled back. Silversleeves went a little closer and snarled again. Then, taking a deep breath and drawing back his thin head like a snake about to strike, he darted his long-nosed face forward, yellow teeth bared, and let out a sound which was somewhere between a roar and a screech.
The lion became furious. He batted the bars of his cage with his forepaws, gave another, huge snarl of rage and finally, in vexation, emitted a roar that echoed all around the precincts of the Tower.
Silversleeves squealed with delight. “You’re not playing, are you?” he said. “You’d really like to eat me, wouldn’t you?” It was a ritual he went through every evening when he had finished work; and few things in life gave him greater pleasure.
Dionysius Silversleeves was twenty-nine. His hair was dark, his nose long, his body thin; his cheek was red, his eyes were oddly bright, and he had acne.
The fiery pimples were everywhere: on his neck, on his forehead, on his shoulders, around his chin, and all over his long nose which, after he had been drinking, glistened with them. When he was young, his parents had told him that these would pass; but now not even the passing of the centuries could calm these eruptions. “It’s the humours in my body,” he would cheerfully grin. “Hot and dry. Like fire.” Perhaps, who knew, it was this same unbalanced combination of the elements that compelled him, every evening, to tease the lions.
The first London zoo was situated at the outer gateway, just above the river on the western side of the huge complex of the Tower. Begun in the last reign, it consisted of a number of those wild animals which it then amused the monarchs of Europe to give each other as presents. Years before, there had been a polar bear on a chain, a gift of the King of Norway. The Londoners used to watch it catching fish in the river. There had been an elephant, too; until it suddenly died. But there were always lions and leopards in cages beside the bastion near the entrance, known as the Lion Tower.
The menagerie was not the only innovation. In the last two reigns, a huge transformation had taken place at the old fortress by the river. The Conqueror’s square keep now stood in the middle of a great open space. Around this was a massively constructed curtain wall with battlements and a series of bastion towers, several like miniature castles themselves. This was the inner ward. Outside it, on the three landward sides, was a broad corridor – the outer ward – enclosed by a second splendid curtain wall. And around that was a huge moat, broad and deep, which turned the Tower complex into an impregnable island that could be reached on foot only by drawbridge and a series of enclosed yards and towers, including the Lion Tower at the south-western corner. It closely resembled the great castles with their rings of walls that Edward had recently built to hold down Wales. So powerful and impressive was it that the overall layout would never be changed again.
Pious King Henry III had decided that the great Norman keep at its heart should have its appearance altered, and had accordingly insisted that its entire outer surface be given a limestone whitewash. Now, instead of grey stone, the Londoners saw a great, white castle, staring pale and luminous out over the river. Long after the whitewash had worn away, it was known as the White Tower.
Only a decade before, the royal Mint had been moved from its ancient quarters below St Paul’s to the Tower, and it was now housed in a series of brick workshops in the outer ward between the walls. Here Silversleeves passed his days. He was happy. The Mint at the Tower was one of only six mints in the kingdom, and it was by far the most important. Apart from ordinary wear and tear, and the needs of ever-expanding trade, the old coinage of the previous reign had been debased and King Edward was determined to establish a coinage that would enhance his kingdom’s trade and repute throughout Europe.
As clerk to the Mint, Silversleeves came to know every one of its activities. There was the assay, where the coins were tested for the Exchequer men. This was done by careful weighing, melting, and then mixing with molten lead, which carried any impurities to the bottom and allowed the true silver content of coins and bullion to be checked. There were the huge vats of molten metal that made his red face glow brighter than ever; the moulds for making the blank coins, and the dyes which the moneyers would strike with a single, clean blow of a hammer. “One blow, one new coin,” Silversleeves would contentedly muse as he walked through halls that rang with the sound of tapping.
Then there was the room where the coins were counted – the farthings, four to a penny, the silver pennies, and the newest addition to England’s coinage, the special and rare heavy fourpenny piece called the groat. Whether it was because of the heat, the noise, the constant business, or the fact that it was money, which he so loved, that was being made, Dionysius Silversleeves counted himself lucky in his work and a happy man.
Best of all, when he came away from his work, he had not a care in the world. He had two elder brothers to carry on the family line. They were far less rich than a few generations ago, and had abandoned the former family wine business. But they had more than enough money to care for their widowed mother.
So when Dionysius left work in the evenings, he was free to do the one thing he enjoyed best of all: he pursued women.
Of course, they were always whores. Most other women, though he sometimes tried, would not look at him. But in his pursuit of the former he was relentless. There was not a stew-house on Bankside, nor in Cock’s Lane, that did not know him. Even in a little alley off the West Cheap, known as Gropeleg Lane, where some unlicensed prostitutes resided, he would turn up every month or so, “like a bad penny,” the women would remark.
And now Dionysius was going off to Bankside as usual. But tonight he was looking forward to something special.
A virgin at the Dog’s Head.
It had been an afterthought on the part of the brothelkeeper to send him
a message and Silversleeves had guessed as much. But it did not worry him. With a laugh, he moved close to the cage of the irritated lion.
“I’m going to have a virgin tonight,” he told the beast. “Which is more than you are. So there!”
She won’t be a virgin by now, he thought to himself – but never mind. After all, what was the point of a new-minted coin if it was never used at all? Moments later, crossing the drawbridge out of the Tower, he was on his way.
Darkness had fallen. The curfew bell had sounded. The ferry-boats had all withdrawn across the river and tied up on the London side – this was the rule, so that no Southwark thieves could slip across the water into the city. The watch was posted on London Bridge and the city prepared to pass another quiet night under the protection of the king’s ordinances.
They were lighting the lamps at the Dog’s Head. The red-painted plaster walls appeared ochre by the lantern’s light, and the wooden sign was creaking in a breeze that had just got up as Silversleeves arrived.
The brothelkeeper had forgotten about Dionysius until that moment. He was standing, warming himself by the charcoal brazier in the middle of the long, low-ceilinged room where the girls met the customers. Nearly all the girls had already gone up, for in the late afternoon a number of men had arrived, including two burgesses up to London for the Parliament, in order to enjoy a last fling before the place officially closed. Only two girls remained in the room, including Isobel Dogget, who was sitting alone on a bench, as Silversleeves strode in, looked right and left, grinned and demanded:
“Where’s your virgin, then?”
The brothelkeeper seemed doubtful and glanced at Isobel, who shook her head.
“I’m sorry, sir, but she’s not available,” he said. “And curfew’s sounded. You’re too late.” This was a significant point. Once the bell had gone and the ferries withdrawn, customers with the girls were supposed to remain with them until dawn, to prevent their roaming about the streets. If Joan had a customer, then she was taken for the night now. “How about one of the other girls, sir?” he suggested.