She let the broad frosted river of humanity that was the Strand take her all the way, up Aldwych and Drury Lane. From a basement door she heard the sharp chatter of the dice, the roars of winners and losers. Two mollies slipped by in taffeta skirts, arm in arm; their stubble showed through the powder. Men of their kind weren't safe on the streets, but who could stay home on New Year's Eve? Down High Holburn, and Mary was nearing her own parish of St. Giles now; she knew every stinking cobble of it. The Seven Dials at last: the spinning centre of the world.
The Misses were out in force tonight; Some whores just don't know how to take a holiday, laughed Doll in Mary's head. There was Nan Pullen in one of her mistress's well-made silk mantelets, pacing to ward off the cold; she nodded back at Mary and covered a yawn with thin fingers.
What was Alice Gibbs doing here, so far from her beat on Downing Street, in such a faded old wrapping gown? 'Will you give me a glass of wine, sir?' she called out to a passing lawyer, shrill as ever, but he turned into Short's Gardens instead. Mary nodded at Alice as she passed, but the older woman's eyes had unfocused already.
A stumbling baker, flour-dusted, paused to look Mary up and down. He pursed up his mouth as if to guess a price. She'd forgotten the manners of the trade; she almost blushed. For a moment she was filled with an absurd regret for the plain brown gown and apron she'd left crumpled on her bed in the Magdalen Hospital; for the wide straw hat that had sheltered her from strangers' eyes, and the unpainted face, which was its own kind of mask. It seemed years, not months, since she had been a stroller, and all at once she began to doubt whether she could take up her old life where she'd left off. Maybe what she'd told the Matron was true; maybe she wasn't a whore anymore.
The moon was full over St. Giles-in-the-Fields, spiked on the gold weather-vane like an apple. Tiny spears of ice frilled the high railings, and the trees were covered in soft white spines. Mary took gulps of the frozen air; it weighed on her lungs like stone. She was shuddering with weariness; she couldn't think of anything but her bed, hers and Doll's. The merriment and stale warmth of it. She wanted to share her first fingerful of snuff in months and tell Doll all about the Magdalen, shake off the weight of the place at last. She planned to show her friend what penitence looked like, and how to behave as a Presidor should; she'd make Doll laugh till she clutched her stays and gasped with pain. If anyone could remind Mary why a harlot's life was the only true liberty, Doll could. If anyone could restore her to herself, it would be Doll Higgins.
Mary crouched to look in the ice-pocked window of the cider cellar. A few pickpockets she knew, or knew of—Scampy, Huckle, Irish Ned, and Jemmy the Shuffler—as well as a handful of St. Giles blackbirds with their ebony faces glowing against white shirts. No sign of Doll playing a game of brag in her usual corner. The door spat out a pair of sailors, and a song leaked into the street, in a rumbling bass.
My thing is my own
And I'll keep it so still,
Yet other young lasses
May do what they will.
Mary hurried on, past the night-soil men, who wheeled their foetid barrows with blank faces. Maybe, she thought, in time you grew accustomed to your toil, whatever it might be. She ducked through an arch. Rat's Castle was a good name for the worst pit she'd ever called home, but how glad she was to reach it. And a little surprised to find it still standing, its stained timbers clinging together like drunkards. Every time she'd ever climbed these stairs, she'd wondered when they were going to splinter under her.
Without a candle, she had to feel her way up the damp walls. As she passed Mercy Toft's door, she could hear the funereal thump of one of the girl's cullies. At that pace he'd never finish, Mary thought professionally. On the third floor a door hung open, creaking in the icy draught; that forger whose name Mary could never remember was asleep on his papers, his wig half off. She stumbled through a pile of rubbish. In the rot she smelt something peculiar: an orange? She was no longer accustomed to dirt; the clean vinegar-rinsed floors of the Magdalen had softened her senses, left her open to every passing stench. She bent her head as she mounted higher and the walls closed in.
The garret seemed empty, filled with a greasy darkness. There was a long lump on the mattress, and Mary bent to touch it lightly, but it gave under her fingers: not Doll, only a knot of blankets.
Mary had come a long way. She lay down and was asleep before she could shrug off her shoes.
She dreamed the best dream she'd ever had. She was on horseback, cutting through the crowd, her heels higher than their heads. The pale back of the stallion moved under her like fresh cream; plaited in its mane were ruby ribbons. Mary's powdered wig was topped with a tricorne; her cheeks were untouched snow. The white velvet of her riding-habit flared from the side-saddle like a river in spate. A balladeer began a song about her, but she couldn't make out the words. She pretended not to hear; she smiled to herself, and stroked the pulsing neck of her horse. Now the whole crowd was shouting out her name: Lady Mary! Lady Mary!
It might have been the cold that woke her, or the skittering of a rat in the corner. It was still dark—about four in the morning, she guessed—but now her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and she could see that the room was absolutely bare. Disgust rose up in her stomach. At least in the Magdalen there were chairs to sit on; here the floor was sticky with nameless dirt. This wasn't a home, but a sty. The nails stuck out of the wall, but there was nothing hanging on them. It occurred to Mary now to wonder where all her things were—her bit of looking-glass, for instance, and her clothes, that Doll had promised to keep safe. Could the greedy jade have pawned them? Gambled or drunk them all away?
Mary stumbled to her feet; her thin shoes felt full of stones. She wrapped a blanket round her and clambered downstairs through the silent house. Cold hit her a blow as she stumbled into the dark street. Only as she caught a stale whiff from the chop-house on the corner did she realise how hungry she was. The last thing she'd eaten was dinner in the Magdalen: boiled buttock of mutton at three o'clock yesterday.
She stuck her face in the window of the gin-shop where four or five men nodded over their mugs; no sign of Doll. Then Mary remembered the alley behind Rat's Castle. If Doll was working all night, there was a good chance of finding her there, having a rest between cullies.
Mary's steps quickened as she reached the alley. 'Doll?' Her voice was hoarse with sleep. No answer from the bottom of the alley, but the moonlight caught something. Mary strolled down, a smile beginning to twist her mouth. The walls were furred with frost, white as mould. 'There you are, old slut,' she called out.
The woman sitting on the heap of rubble against the wall didn't stir. Her feet were drawn up under her gauzy blue overskirt which shifted in the night breeze. The tops of her breasts stood out like wax pears. Her hand was curved around a bottle of gin. The scar on her cheek caught the moonlight.
It must have been the cold that was slowing Mary's thoughts. She stared at the small movements of the sky-blue gauze. Her mind dragged along like a mule on a tether. First she thought, what a blunderbuss was Doll Higgins to snooze on stone on a night like this.
Dead drunk, probably.
Only then did it occur to her: dead.
She stepped close enough to register the signs, the blue showing through the lead-whitened skin. There was no stink; it was too cold for that.
Mary swayed as if a sudden gale had filled the alley. She tasted blood, salty on her tongue. What she did next shocked her a little, afterwards. She stepped forward until she was near enough to touch her friend, to say the word that would wake her. Instead she reached for the bottle. It came away from the dead hand with a twist and a tug. Mary heard a little cracking sound like an icicle dropping from the eaves. Eyes shut, she put the bottle to her lips. Its rim was scaly. The perfumed gin made her gag but she swallowed it down, and kept swallowing until the bottle was empty. When she could bear to look again, the hand was poised, cupping air, like a guest at an imaginary banquet.
Breach
in the hull; all hands to deck.
Mary wouldn't be sick; she'd never had any time for pukers. She set the empty bottle down, and the glass clinked against the stone. She made herself look. No blood, no fresh bruises on those crimsoned cheeks, nothing out of the ordinary. The silver horsehair wig, ornamented with a limp red ribbon, was only slightly askew; from underneath, a strand of pale brown hair escaped over one ear. The broad lips were flaking under their traces of scarlet. Doll leaned back against the wall as if taking a little breather, snatching a moment's tête-à-tête with Madam Gin, as on any other night of her life.
And it could have been any night during this long cold snap when she'd fallen asleep and never woken up. There was nothing to tell Mary how long Doll had been here, waiting with this ironical curve to her lips. Had she been hungry? Feverish? Too drunk to remember to go home at the end of the night? Too cold to feel how cold she was, or too old to fight it off any more? Had she not a friend in the world to come looking?
Mary could have bawled, but she feared Doll might laugh.
What's to do, lovey?
Mary had to try to be the clever one, now. But she didn't know how to begin. This much she remembered, that when a body was found in the streets of London, it was put on a hurdle and dragged to the nearest churchyard and thrown in the Poor Hole. Not a scatter of earth went over it till the pit was full up with nameless corpses at the end of summer. Mary, my sweet, Doll once said, holding her nose, never go within sniff of a churchyard till the first frost.
How strange to see her sit so still now, Doll Higgins who couldn't even sleep without heaving and thrashing, who moved along the Strand like a posture girl would dance on tables, all legs and jutting breasts, jiggling at the punters. There was a curious kind of modesty about her last pose: her azure skirt pulled well over her ankles, her carmined mouth wearing only the ghost of a smile.
Mary shut her eyes for a moment and pictured the excessively splendid coffin she would buy, if she were a lady, and the milky horses that would pull Doll to her marble tomb. She knew this much: it was no use to run screaming for the parish men. Doll Higgins would never agree to lie on her back in the crowded Poor Hole. Mary would have to leave her here for a few more days, just until she'd earned enough to buy her friend a decent burial.
Her stomach was lurching with cold. Her lips moved but no sound came out: Won't be long, dear heart. It occurred to her to kiss the taut scarred drum of Doll's cheek, but she found she couldn't. The lightest touch might keep Mary there, rooted in this frozen alley. Instead, she stretched out her hand to the worn red ribbon in Doll's wig. Was it the same one, she wondered, the first one, the ribbon the child Mary had set her eyes and heart on at the Seven Dials, three long years ago?
After a moment of resistance, it released its bow and slid free. Its edges were stiff with frost. Mary stuffed it down her stays. It made her shudder.
In exchange she pulled off her blanket and laid it over the dead woman. It covered the hump of her head, the bulge of her empty hand. Surely no one would disturb her before Mary could come back.
From the top of the alley, it looked like a sack, tossed on a pile of stones.
Mary ripped balls of frozen paper out of the garret window, letting in grey dawn and sharp air. There was no sign that anyone else had ever lived in this room. Not a scrap of clothing, not so much as a crust of bread. It was as if Doll had wiped away all marks of her presence before walking out into the night.
But there was that gap under the cracked floorboard where the two of them used to keep their money in a little tinder-box, when they had any. On her knees, Mary prised up the wood with her filthy nails. Relief, like Canary wine flooding her mouth: not the box but her clothes. Folded still, lying in layers and rolls between the rafters, starched with cold. She began wrenching them out. It was all here, Mary's whole stock of bodices, sleeves, and stomachers. There was her bag, crammed with linen, petticoats, and trinkets. Her snuff-brown mantee was as good as ever; that length of oyster grosgrain still flowed like cream. She touched them shyly, like old friends after a long absence.
There was that bit of mirror she'd got from the house that burned down in Carrier Street. She powdered her face till it looked back at her from the glass, as white as chalk; she needed the full mask today. She reddened her lips and two spots high on her cheeks. Little worms of black hair escaped from her cap. Only cullies had ever called Mary beautiful. Come here, me beauty, they mumbled. And why should she have believed them, since they were only spurring themselves on, convincing themselves that this girl was worth the shilling? Mary was handsomer than some, though, she knew that much. And she was only tired, today; she couldn't be losing her looks yet, not at fifteen. She pulled on her crumpled felt slouch hat, breathed in to puff up her cleavage, and tried a dirty smile. But her dark eyes wouldn't join in.
Between the layers of damp cloth she found the little tinder-box. Not a brass farthing in it; Doll must have been down to the bone. Had the woman been starving, then, by the end, and would she still not pawn any of her friend's clothes? Mary felt her throat swell up as if she'd swallowed a stone. She should have known to trust her. And she should have seen past Doll's bluster about needing no one, her fine talk of liberty and every girl for herself. Mary should never have gone off and left her alone.
She replaced the box in the hole, though she couldn't have said why. The thud of boots on the stairs; only when the door crashed open did she turn. Mrs. Farrel's nose was even smaller than she remembered. The landlady shook her nest of keys like a rattle. As always, she was in full flow: '...and you can be telling your scar-faced crony that no one bilks Biddy Farrel and lives to boast of it!'
Mary gave her a cold stare, and then bent to scoop up her clothes.
Mrs. Farrel snatched a bit of lace from her hand. 'D'ye hear me, hussy? The cheek of ye, to come sneeviling in here in the night, removing property, with so much owing on it!'
'I owe you nothing.' Mary seized the lace.
It ran taut between them. 'Then the other hoor does, sure.'
Mary let go of the fabric. 'What's that to me?' she said after a second.
'Five days running she's after giving me the slip now, but I'll sniff her out, wherever she's hiding herself, so I will. You can tell her she pays up or I'll have the rest of her face cut off of her.'
A wave of nausea started in Mary's stomach. She had a feeling she was going to take this woman by the throat and press her thumbs in hard. 'Go look in the alley for your rent,' she could tell her then. But no, Mary wouldn't let anyone find Doll before she'd scraped together the price of her burial. She folded her arms tightly. 'What's the reckoning?'
A flicker of hesitation in the purple face. 'Ten shilling.'
'Damn me if it is!'
'Not a farthing the nasty drab give me for a fortnight. No, nor a month past,' added Mrs. Farrel, smoothing her oxblood skirt over her bulky improvers.
Was the woman lying? Please let her be lying. The thought of Doll, hungry for the whole month of December—'Half a crown for your trouble,' offered Mary coldly, reaching into the waist of her skirt to pull up her pocket.
'Half a crown up your arse.' There were specks of froth on the older woman's lips.
Mary shrugged and began stuffing her clothes into her bag, on top of her linen.
'Leave all that down where you found it now.'
'Every shred of it's mine,' said Mary softly. She kept packing at top speed. 'Whatever wasn't, you've flogged already, ain't you? Bet they're scattered across the stalls of Monmouth Street, all Doll's clothes.'
'Little I got for them, then, if they are,' spat Mrs. Farrel.
'What about her cameo bracelet? And her French cloak with the fur robings?' Mary edged across the room.
Mrs. Farrel extended herself across the door like a spider. 'There was nothing worth tuppence. Put down that bag now or I'll call thief.'
Mary let out a contemptuous puff of air. 'And what good would it do you, in this part of town? D'you think you'll ge
t Bow Street Runners racing into the Rookery?'
'I've a fellow in my pay that'll put manners on you,' said Mrs. Farrel, her voice rising to a whine.
Mary put her face very close to the other woman's. 'Get out of my way, old bitch.'
For a moment she thought she'd won. Mrs. Farrel scuttled away—but only as far as the window. She stuck her head between the bars. 'Caesar?' she shrieked down, loud enough to be heard at the Dials.
Not him.
'Caesar!'
It couldn't be. There had to be other men with that name. The Caesar Mary knew of was his own master, wasn't he? Surely he wouldn't hire himself out as a hunting dog to Mrs. Farrel? Not even for the kind of wage that only the richest woman in St. Giles could pay?
'Come up this minute, man!' Mrs. Farrel bawled down.
But he'd worked for Mother Griffith once, hadn't he, the time he'd come after Doll with his long knife?
'There's a girl wants cutting, so she does,' Mrs. Farrel screamed with satisfaction.
Oh Christ Almighty. It was him.
Mary crossed the room and shoved Mrs. Farrel so hard her head cracked against the window-frame. The two of them stared at each other in shock. A trickle of blood zigzagged down the Irishwoman's wrinkles.
'I'll have him slice the lips off of you,' gasped Mrs. Farrel.
Mary seized her bag and bolted for the door.
'Caesar!' came the long wail behind her.
Mary got as far as the second floor before she heard the front door crash open. For a moment she paused on the balls of her feet. The bag of clothes hung like lead from her arm, and she felt her life like a thread stretched to breaking. She was turning to run back the way she'd come, when her eyes fell on Mercy Toft's door, and she remembered that the silly slut never locked it.
Mercy's room was empty. Mary shut the door with quiet, shaking hands and flattened herself against it. She stopped breathing.