Paul Lawrence: The Sweet Smell of Decay

We walked the streets towards the west, for the City had choked up already, such that walking was the quickest mode of transport available. Dowling strode down the middle of the road by himself, oblivious to the evil broth that splashed about his legs, body and ears, while I trod the higher ground with those that knew the difference between man and dog. So it was that he crossed the bridge at Fleet Ditch before me, the filthy stream that served the slums of Alsatia and Bridewell.

Tiny, dark, airless alleys branched off Fleet Street like dead twigs, every one of them a choking rotten tributary of streaming slops that crept slowly down to the river. Most of the ramshackle buildings were built of wooden planks nailed to posts, covered with pitch and roofed with rough tiles. The only warmth in those hovels was generated from the bodies of those that lived there, nested together many to a room, like rats in a nest. The stink was the foulest stink in the whole of England, a poisonous cloud fed by the soap makers, dye houses, slaughterhouses and tanneries. The curing pits of the tanneries nestled alongside the outside of the city walls and were full of dog shit, a key ingredient in the tanning process.

The house that Mary Bedford lived in was tiny and unsteady, tucked in at the top of one of the foul alleyways just behind the much grander half-timbered houses of Fleet Street. It was closed up and the door was shut.

Dowling looked at me and shrugged, his mind back at his shop I reckoned, but given the rector’s ramblings about witchery we were committed to make greater efforts to find her, fearful of what might become of her were others to discover her whereabouts first.

The first house we tried was a large family house on Fleet Street. We didn’t hold out much hope of getting sense from the master of the house, for what man of standing would admit to noticing a poor wretch of a woman that sold meats on the street? But we hoped to find out something from the servants. The one that opened the door stared at us uncomprehending and unspeaking, even after we had explained our objective three times, ever slower and clearer. Finally he shook his head in bewilderment and wandered off into the house to find someone else. An imbecile. London was full of them — they came in from the villages, like Dowling. A short time later he returned, accompanied by a middle-aged woman wearing a coarse brown dress and white apron, with a white hood tied around her head. Her face was ruddy and rough, her expression impatient and puzzled. Another imbecile. She listened to Dowling’s questions, mouth agape and hands on her hips. Then she closed the doors in our faces. Washing day, as Dowling pointed out brightly.

We moved on to the next house and another street full after that.

‘Good morning to you.’ A grizzled face looked out through a ground floor window, a man maybe forty years old with a thick welt on his nose and one eye missing. Dowling recited his introduction for perhaps the twentieth time while I stood with my hands in my pockets. It was past lunchtime and my stomach wailed pitifully. The man leant on the sill with his arms crossed, chewing the inside of his cheek, apparently in the mood for a conversation.

‘Aye, I know Mary Bedford, Old Mary. Known her since she was a child.’

‘Have you seen her today?’ I demanded, astounded.

‘Not today. But she’ll be around.’

‘Around where?’

‘Somewhere.’

‘You know why she doesn’t go to church any more?’ Dowling probed.

The man nodded. ‘Same reason I don’t go no more. She asked to be put on the pensions list after she couldn’t stand her giddiness no more, but the new man told her she was lazy. She was ashamed. I had to tell her not to pay no heed, but she’s afeared to go back. Meantime she has to sell meats or else starve. If she’s not been home, then likely she’s lying on her face in a gutter somewhere. She’s too ill to be out working.’

‘Where does she sell?’

‘She won’t be far away, doesn’t like to wander. Shy of strangers too.’ His eyes were suspicious. ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘We want to make sure she’s safe,’ I replied. The man shook his head and emitted a sorrowful cackle before closing the window. Dowling tutted sorrowfully, sighed and walked off.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ I asked the back of his head.

He turned to regard me solemnly. ‘The notion that a man wearing your fine clothes is likely to have an interest in the fate of one such as Mary Bedford is not to be believed.’ One of his big dirty hands landed on one of my finely clothed shoulders. He was right, of course. I tried not to look too disappointed, hopeful that he would relieve me of his filthy great paw.

The next house to yield an answer was dark and unlit. All the windows were closed and there was a smell like liniment, sharp and acidic, with perhaps a hint of alcohol and fruit. The man that lived there was no less unattractive than the one we had just left, though he did have two eyes. His pupils were locked up tight like pinholes and the whites were covered with scabrous yellow patches. His nose was red and his eyes flowed. He twisted a piece of cloth between his fingers, which was clearly what he used to clean his nose. Poisonous green gases seeped from twixt his lips. He also knew ‘Old Mary’, but less intimately.

‘There’s some say she’s a witch,’ he told us through weeping eyes, in between sneezes. ‘She suckles the Devil, so it is said.’

‘Who says so?’ Dowling asked gently.

‘Folks,’ was the only reply we got, and nothing else of any use.

By seven o’clock that night we were practically in Whitefriars. Some people spoke to us but we learnt nothing new. Confirmation of her poor circumstances, more loose speculation as to whether or not she might be a witch. This was nothing very interesting, since all old women living by themselves elicited images of witchery in many folk’s minds. As darkness fell we made our final house call. A woman pushed open the top half of a door and stood there simpering. Her face, body and limbs were shrunken and wrinkled like an old, dry apricot. She smiled sweetly and broadly and her eyes shone bright. We’d spoken to a few like this, this endless afternoon.

‘Ye-es?’ The old lady smiled so broadly that her eyes threatened to pop right out. It was a frightening sight. A tiny spittle of saliva trickled down her chin that she did not seem to notice. Dowling started to describe Mary Bedford using information that we had gleaned from others that day.

‘Ye-es. Mary.’ Smiling and staring into Dowling’s eyes she nodded slowly. He didn’t seem to mind. Probably used to it, being a Scot.

‘Tell me about her.’

‘Mary is my frie-nd.’ She continued to smile and waved her head from side to side like a snake, paying us scant attention. She seemed more interested in the darkening sky above our heads. Then she suddenly announced, ‘She is a witch!’ She said it quietly, melodically, as if she was talking about the weather, as if she did not understand the import of her words, which I suppose she didn’t. At that Dowling relaxed, as if he had seen it coming all along. When I quizzed him afterwards he told me that in his unfortunate experience living in the country, witches were always accused in pairs, never alone. Whilst I had never heard it said before, it explained Dowling’s persistence that afternoon, and his excitement in finding this woman, for she was, he told me, ‘the sort’.

What followed then was deeply disturbing. She told us tales of the two of them suckling children with their old dry breasts. How they would change their forms at night and visit children that mocked them during the day in the form of great toads. They had the power to cause children to die if they were too wicked in their ways, she claimed. We shouldn’t worry too much about Mary Bedford, she assured us, since being denied her pension she had subjected herself to spells that enabled her to walk freely again. She talked of how they were able to play with men’s senses, remove and bestow at will hearing, sight and the use of limbs. And the more that she spoke, the more miserable I became. Not because of the words themselves, for I had no doubt that the woman was speaking nonsense. No, this was not my source of dread. What disturbed me was that I had heard these tales before, that they were in fact very well known. Two years before, two old women, Rose Cullender and Amy Denny, had been tried by the Lord Chief Justice himself, and were found guilty of witchery. The tales that this old woman was relating to us were clearly lifted from the account of their trial, which was printed and widely distributed and read. This old woman was clearly bucket-headed and weak minded, but her state of mind would be held as proof, not as grounds for dismissal. And so long as she was disposed to stand at her door and talk such nonsense to strangers such as us, both her life and the life of Mary Bedford were in very great danger should the rector take steps to pursue his theory. The Lord Chief Justice Keeling himself had tried the Lowestoft witches in his previous role as Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer.