Paullina Simons - A Beggar’s Kingdom

“May I make up your room, sire … please?” She averts her gaze.

He watches her as she scurries and hurries in her maid’s clothes, a long black skirt, a gray workman-like bodice, a black apron. That is not what she looked like last night, sumptuous and inflamed. Her hair, once so wonderfully down, is tied up and hidden in a white bonnet. She is less hourglassy than Mary was, perhaps because she toils all day and has less to eat. And whereas Mary was a newborn soul that hadn’t learned to smile, this Mallory doesn’t smile perhaps because there’s less to smile about. Her delicate life is rough with work. She is efficient. In five minutes, the bed is made up, some ale is in a silver decanter, yellow lilies are by the open window. Julian condemns the yellow lilies but says nothing. The girl doesn’t know they stand for falsehood. He’ll replace them when he goes out, perhaps with red tulips for desire.

“Will that be all, sire?”

“The Baroness said you might have some clothes for me.”

“Yes, pardon me. I forgot.” She returns with some faded breeches, a frayed tunic, and a pair of old shoes. “If there’s nothing else …”

“Oh, but there is.” He reaches for her hand.

She retreats. “I’m very busy, sire. I’m not … I’m the maid, that’s all I am.”

“That’s not all you are.”

“Last night was an aberration.”

“It wasn’t.”

“You heard the Baroness. Me, Carling, and Ivy got ten rooms to clean and the downstairs to sweep and get ready for lunch. There’s only three maids cleaning, and you saw, the Baroness is already upset with me.”

“I don’t much care what she thinks.”

“I don’t have that luxury, not to care what she thinks, sire.”

From the floor below, Julian hears Tilly calling Mallory’s name. He tuts. “You’re making me forget everything, Mallory. The Baroness said someone named Gasper is downstairs for you.”

Mallory hardens.

“Who’s Gasper, your father?”

“No, sire, I don’t think my mother knew who my father was.”

“So Gasper could be your father?”

“Well, I suppose so. Anything is possible.”

“That’s true. I know for a fact,” Julian says, “that anything is possible.”

“But since Gasper was married to my aunt, I’d say it’s not very likely. He’s come to collect.”

“Your Aunt Tilly, the Baroness?”

“No, my mother’s other sister. She’s dead.”

“And your mother?”

“She is also dead.”

“Oh.” Julian can’t take his eyes off her pale, diffident, serious, beautiful face, with pursed lips and moist eyes. “Where are you from?”

“Clerkenwell.”

His expression must fall, because Mallory softens. “Did you perhaps know my mother, sire?” Almost imperceptibly, she smiles.

“No.” Circling his arm around her waist, he brings her to him. “Oh, Mallory,” he whispers.

She lets him embrace her, as if it’s her duty.

“Mallory! Gasper is waiting!”

Julian doesn’t want to let her go.

“That’s my cue, sire,” she says, easing out of his arms, her breathy voice low. “Gasper’s waiting.”

“What’s another minute? I’ve waited too, and longer than he has.”

“Have you also come to collect, sire?”

“What? No.” Julian raises her hand to his lips, kissing the inside of her wrist. “Come back tonight.”

“I can’t. Aunt Tilly forbids it. Besides, I’m busy tonight. Perhaps Margrave …”

“No,” Julian says. “Not Margrave. You .”

“Believe me, I promise you, swear to you, I’m not the girl for you, sire …” She stands stiffly.

“You are.” Their eyes lock. Pulling away, she hurries out, but the relieved and excited Julian is not put off by her daytime restraint. Her nighttime body is fresh in his memory and visceral in his loins. He has found her again, his garden of pomegranates, his orchard of new wine. He’s elated, not afraid.

It is thus that Julian becomes the landlord of a brothel. It’s an excellent job, one of the best he’s had, better than substitute teaching, better than working for fucking Graham. If only Ashton could see him now. No one would appreciate the multi-layered delights and ironies of Julian’s new position better than Ashton. The job allows him to make money and be surrounded day and night by sexy, enthusiastic women. Nights are busy, but it’s quiet during the day, and he can catch up on his sleep or read or go out for a walk to buy flowers and candles. In the mornings, Julian sends Ilbert to the butcher and the coal boy. He supervises the maids and the girls himself (of course) and selects his own roses and lilies.

Fresh flowers must be in vases in all the rooms, everything must be stripped and washed from the night before, the chamber pots emptied, the floors swept and mopped, beds made, windows opened, and rooms aired out. It’s like running a naughty bed and breakfast. Once a week Julian pays off the parish constable, a solid, likable chap named Parker.

Every morning, the Baroness and Julian count the silver, mostly pennies and farthings, and a few shillings. He helps the madam separate the operational coin from the profit, and at noon leaves for King Street to deliver the bag of silver to Lord Waas, the owner of the Silver Cross.

The London of 1666 isn’t quite what it was when Julian was last here in 1603. Yes, the roads have widened, and the trees have grown. But the city has been decimated by wholescale death and hasn’t had time to recover. The fear of the plague is apparent in the diminished bedlam on the streets and in the caution of the people who scurry past him, covering their mouths and faces. One afternoon, Julian takes a long aching walk all the way to Clerkenwell. The Fortune Theatre has been dismantled. The brothel quarter is shuttered. The Collins Manor with its stables and grounds is gone. Five new homes have been built in its place.

But even with London thus reduced, the clatter and cry of every living thing remains unending. The blacksmiths are the loudest of all, for they make things everyone else uses in their trades, so the blacksmith’s trade never stops, even at night. There are a hundred parishes within the City gates and another thirty scattered without, and every parish has a church and the belfries ring on the hour and half-hour and quarter-hour to announce the time, and the blacksmith foundries make the bells, and to make them they must test them, and every time they test them, the bells toll, and there are a hundred foundries, a hundred churches, and a million bells, over spires and doors and horses’ necks, and the metal against metal rings and rings and rings, far away, nearby, nonstop, even when Julian sleeps.

Aside from the relentless tolling of the bells, the job brings Julian happiness. Not only is he in the daily proximity of his beloved, but he is surrounded by other attractive women, more playful than she, women who defer to him and flirt with him. The visiting men seek no trouble except when they’re blind drunk and then a not so gentle shove from Julian into the street is enough for them to return sober and chastised the following evening.

It’s boisterous at night—like Normandie, the street where Josephine used to live with Z—but with more sex and less hip hop. There’s plenty to drink, and if Julian wanted to have a social life on the side, he could. Margrave (though not Mallory) has bragged to the other girls about the unrestrained bounty that is Julian. “His blood boils with such excess!” Margrave tells the other girls. “Mal and I feared there wouldn’t be enough of him for the two of us, but it turns out there wasn’t enough of us for the one of him! There’s enough of him to board all ten of us, isn’t that right, sire?” Occasionally in the late evenings, especially if it’s slow, he hears the patter of their feet outside his door, their low whispers, seductive warbles, spicy pleas. One kiss, sire, one bob, sire, one bout in the bowl, sire. He’s grateful the girls are often too tired if not too proud to beg. Grateful yet regretful. Now that he is landlord, the Baroness has commanded him to keep away. “They need to be fresh for the next day, Master Julian, no sense tiring them out unnecessarily.”