Gillian Bagwell - The Darling Strumpet

In that moment of desperation and hopelessness Nell awoke and found herself alone in her bed. She was cold, and clutched the covers around her. She longed for someone to hold her and make all well. Her thoughts went to her mother, and she began to weep.

Erratic, frequently drunk, and occasionally violent though her mother might be, she was the only parent Nell had ever known, and she found that the loss of her mother terrified her even more than the unpredictability that living with her had meant.

She clung to her pillow and sobbed. All the bravery and cheer she had thought she had was hollow. She felt ashamed and an utter failure. In the endless watches of the night, with the world in cold blackness outside the window, she was only a frightened and wretched child.

She went from her room, pushed open the door of Rose’s little chamber, and slipped to the side of the bed. Rose was alone, and Nell crept in beside her. She had shared a pallet bed with Rose for most of her life, until Rose had struck out on her own, and it was immeasurably comforting to feel the warmth of Rose’s body and smell her scent. Rose stirred.

“What’s amiss?”

“I was afeared. A dream.”

“All’s well. Come to sleep now.” Rose drew Nell to her and draped a protective arm around her. Nell nestled closer. Safe in the snug cocoon of the shared bed, the demons receded and her shivering ceased, and soon she was asleep.

IN THE BRIGHTNESS OF THE MORNING SUN, NELL’S FEARS OF THE PREVIOUS night lost their overwhelming power. She would not go back to live under her mother’s thumb. She would see her mother when she could stand proudly, and prove that she had done well for herself. What that might mean, Nell had no clear idea. But she had a new determination. She would be someone to be reckoned with.

THE SUMMER BROUGHT BRILLIANT BLUE SKIES, SUNLIT DAYS, AND balmy evenings. Although the long hours of daylight meant that the crowds at Madam Ross’s stayed late, and the hours of sleep were fewer, Nell woke with the dawn. The house was quiet then and the glorious new mornings held the promise of adventure.

One sparkling August morning it occurred to her that she missed the river. She hadn’t been near it since her daily sojourns to Billingsgate fish market to buy oysters, and she made her way toward London Bridge. She didn’t mind the long walk into the City-she had made it often enough pushing the oyster barrow, and it was unutterable freedom to dance along unencumbered.

Shopkeepers were just opening for business, folding down the bulkheads that served as counters by day and shuttered up their shops by night. Street vendors were out in great numbers, their wares fresh and their spirits not yet worn down.

“A brass pot or an iron pot to mend!” called a man with a bag of tools slung on his back, beating the butt end of a hammer on the bottom of a pot.

“Knives or scissors to grind!”

“Delicate cowcumbers to pickle!”

“Fine ripe strawberries!”

The cries of the hawkers rose and mingled in pleasant chaos. A man and a boy sang out in harmony, “Buy a white line! Or a jack line! Or a clothes line!” their words cascading in a catch.

“Buy a fine singing bird!” Nell stopped to admire the pretty little finches a small boy carried in a wicker cage. She was hungry and her attention was momentarily caught by a middle-aged woman balancing a great basket of green muskmelons atop her head, but instead she bought a dipper of milk from a milkmaid, whose buckets were suspended from a wooden yoke over her shoulders. Nell could imagine too well the weight and was grateful she had no buckets, baskets, or barrows weighing her down.

She made her way onto the bridge. She knew of a child-sized gap between two of the houses that crowded the bridge’s span, and from this secret perch, she surveyed the scene. London stretched away to the west, its fringes fading into green countryside. The river surged beneath her, the high tide creating powerful eddies around the great starlings that supported the bridge. The boats traveling downstream glided easily, while the boatmen making their way upstream against the current pulled and strained mightily.

Nell watched the passengers in the crafts with a mixture of curiosity and envy. She had never been in a boat. Quite apart from the cost, she had never had reason to go anywhere that her own feet could not take her.

She watched two gentlemen getting into a wherry upriver at Three Cranes Stairs. Several more watermen waited for passengers, and Nell made up her mind that she would go down there, and perhaps even get into a boat.

As she made her way to the landing stairs, the scent of the river, fresh and alive, stirred her excitement. Three burly watermen were gathered on the stairs, their tethered boats bobbing in the current. A leaping fish broke the surface of the water and then disappeared once more into the greeny depths. The youngest of the men, his dark hair tied into a queue at the back of his head, squinted into the sunlight as he lounged on one of the steps. He cocked his head to the side as Nell approached, and the two others broke out of their conversation and turned.

“How much does it cost? To go in a boat?” she asked.

“That depends!” laughed one of the fellows, his face a deep red-brown from years of working in the sun. “Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know,” Nell said. “I’ve never been anywhere.”

“It’s sixpence for a pair of oars,” he began.

“That’s ‘oars,’ now, mind,” put in another of the men, “not ‘whores.’ But perhaps you’d know better than I about the socket money for a brace of bobtails?” The others laughed, but the first waterman swatted the joker with his cap.

“’Ere, leave the girl alone, Pete.” He turned back to Nell, his blue eyes startling against the mahogany of his skin. “Pay no mind to ’im, sweeting, ’e has the manners of a dog. It’s a twelver to Whitehall, eighteen shillings to Chelsea, three bull’s-eyes to Windsor. Half again as much if the tide’s against you.”

It seemed silly to spend money to get to the other side of the river or to the palace, and even if she had the five-shilling fare to Richmond, what would she do there?

“Another time,” she smiled. “I’ll take shank’s mare today.”

“Another time then, sweeting,” the man grinned. “When someone else is paying.”

IN OCTOBER THE EXECUTIONS OF THREE OF THE MEN WHO HAD instigated the execution of the king’s father, King Charles I, were to take place at Charing Cross. The king had spared the lives of dozens, but the few who had been directly responsible for his father’s murder would die the terrible death reserved for traitors. A blood thirst seized London, and Nell listened to some lads in the street describing what would happen.

“They’ll hang them first,” one said. “But not until they’re dead-only insensible, like. Then they’ll cut them down, still breathing, and carve out their guts and hearts. And then they’ll hack their carcasses into quarters, coat them in tar to make them keep, and post them on pikes at all the gates of the City.”

THE DAY OF DEATH ARRIVED, AND NELL AND ROSE JOSTLED FOR standing space around the scaffold. The crowds reminded Nell of the throngs that had welcomed the king only a few months earlier, but the mood was savage and sour. Packs of drunken lads roved, as they had on that spring day, but today they seemed like feral dogs.

Surrounded by tall strangers, Nell could not see anything but a patch of sky above, and suddenly she began to feel that she couldn’t breathe. She clutched Rose’s hand, fearful of losing her in the crush, and to her shame, she began to shake and cry.