Rebels and Traitors (92 page)

In 1650, the Six Windmills was becoming known and had embarked on what would be a long period of secure notoriety. The place hummed with excitement. Priss was creaking with the pox, which could never quite be cured even by mercury, but in those days she remained full of energy and managed her girls in a grubby style that the shameless men who trekked out to Moorfields deemed to be a fine welcome. When they called her ‘Mother’ Fotheringham, it sounded as if she were some homely body who might offer tureens of nourishing soup and prayers before bedtime — although once her establishment became known as the Half-Crown Chuck Office, all suggestion of gentility was dropped. Anyone who knew that name knew into what moist and mysterious cavities the money was thrown.

Only men with a healthy disposable income, perhaps acquired illegally, could afford to throw away half a crown. Half-crowns — two shillings and sixpence — came in all shapes and sizes since the war started. Two-and-six would buy you a bedstead, a stack of bees, a hammer, a yard of kersey or a barrel of oysters, pretty well fresh. Half a crown was the going rate to place a high-class advertisement in a news sheet, or to buy a reading from the astrologer William Lilly.

At the Six Windmills, half a crown was what had to be tossed between the spread legs of Priss Fotheringham when she stood on her head with her feet wide apart, showing her bare belly and breech. The whooping culleyrumpers then
chucked
their coins into her vagina until the cavity was filled. It was reckoned there was space for sixteen standard half-crowns, which would pay a whole year’s wages for a live-in household maid. French dollars or Spanish pistolles were an acceptable alternative if the customers were foreign. The sought-for coins were the various official’ issues of the Tower Mint in London that was controlled by Parliament or from the now-defunct Royalist Mints of Shrewsbury and Oxford. Through having to assess more dubious offerings, Priss had become curiously expert in the irregular coins issued by besieged garrisons during the civil war — the triangles and rectangles showing castles and fortified gateways that had come into general circulation after being cut from donated tankards, trenchers, salts, bowls and apostle spoons in Beeston, near Chester, Scarborough and Colchester, the diamonds with jewelled crowns from the great Royalist cavalry station at Newark, the octagons from Pontefract. Since Cromwell’s return from Ireland, she was familiar with coinage from Kilkenny, Inchquin, Cork; the Youghal copper farthing; the blacksmith’s half-crown that was crudely executed yet bore an ambitious equestrian portrait of the King; the round coins issued by the Marquis of Ormond, with crowns, harps and beaded rims. Priss accepted them all if the metal in them was good, though for reasons of personal comfort, she preferred that diamonds and other parallelograms with sharp corners were not thrown at her privities in the Half-Crown Chuck.

At her best, Priss could do the chuck without assistance, and several times a night. As hours passed and she gulped aqua vitae — not easy, when you are upside down — she might need the whooping customers to hold her spread legs steady, but she kept going. On some occasions Rhenish wine or sack was poured in. Even the most athletic whore could not then drink the wine or sack herself — though others might, if they were not too squeamish. To imply that chucking came from a cultured tradition, it was always said to originate with the ancient Romans. ‘Well, they were noble!’ Priss would roar. ‘Let’s have an orgy in their memory …’ Riotous roistering then ensued, with rudely skimpy costumes that no one bothered to check for classical authenticity. Inevitably, there were men who boasted they were experts at the chucking. The most intense of these dab hands would expound boringly on the best method to ensure insertion. Only complete rogues offered to sell their knowledge, even for the price of a cup of sack.

By those of a whimsical nature, the Half-Crown Chuck might be described as an early form of slot machine.

Friday the 15th of September 1650 was decreed by Parliament a Day of Public Thanksgiving. Such days had been regularly held throughout the previous decade, to celebrate military victories. This one was for the subjugating of Ireland by Oliver Cromwell, who was now subjugating the Scots too, in driving rain. Public thanksgiving took the form of sermons. Not many customers at the Six Windmills bothered to attend these sermons, or read them when Parliament subsequently had them printed — though some did, because, as in all walks of life, Ma Fotheringham’s clientele included a number of hypocrites. Even by the management and generality such occasions were always marked, however. Celebrations were eagerly held in brothel premises. To enter into the spirit, extra drink was ordered to accompany a raucous performance of the famous Half-Crown Chuck ritual.

Parliament had in previous months passed a brisk sequence of reforming Acts and Ordinances: against Drunkenness; against Swearing and Cursing; against Immodest Dress, which specified the deplorable habits of painting, wearing black patches, and lewd dress in women; against the importation of French wines — unless captured by Oliver Cromwell as booty at Edinburgh, which was given a specific exclusion so he could sell it to pay soldiers; against the import of French silks and wool; against the import of foreign hats and hatbands. None of those Acts and Ordinances was observed at the Six Windmills. The men were blasphemous and drunk, the women were immodest. However, Priss coarsely conceded it was not obligatory to wear a foreign hat to fuck.

During the extremely noisy evening of the 15th of September, a group of sailors arrived from a ship called the
Emerald.
Sailors were always attended to kindly. Whores appreciated the danger of their adventurous lives at sea, not to mention their desperation for female company the minute they made land and the fact they would have just been paid, possibly with extra prize money. A sailor with a wooden leg posed a special challenge for a whore too.

Safe harbours for that evening’s wind-blown matelots were at once provided. Only officers were permitted entry to the chuck, however, since it was understood that only officers would be in possession of the correct coins. The concept of having the right money ready, please, has older origins than may be supposed. Little interrogation was needed; experienced women could tell at a glance from a man’s dress and attitude whether he was a basic pug-nosed seaman or an uglier, ruder specimen but of higher status with a heavier purse. The lower ranks were peeled off slickly to the basic booths, without offence being intended or taken.

Sailors were generally faithful to the King, but at least one crewman off the
Emerald
held libertarian ideals. Unimpressed with the elitist entry-rules Ma Fotheringham had imposed for her own performance, one toprigger loathed being excluded. He did not claim that the world was a treasury for the common man, he just shouted repeatedly that barring him from the chuck was unfair. During this unpleasantness he was threatened that the hector would be called from doorkeeping to expel him. His outrage continued, but he simmered down. The girls, who had heard blustering before, let him mooch off on his own; they had their hands full with other people anyway, for it was a busy night.

The grumbling sailor rambled about in quieter areas of the brothel, searching for a free girl, or a free supper, or at least a free drink. He passed various small cells where men who were more willing to spend money than he was were hard at it. He stepped over one or two who had collapsed in passageways, overcome by one kind of excitement or another. As he roamed and muttered, he saw another man emerge from what must be a privy. The landbird had a confident swagger, and looked as if he knew what he was about. The sailor followed him.

Appearances were deceptive, as is so often the case when much drink has been consumed. In the cavernous interior, the swaggerer soon lost his way. By accident, he lurched into the kitchen. The brothel might be mostly taken up with parlours and bedrooms but, once the long night ended, every tired whore liked to sit down with a slice of smoked gammon folded in a piece of bread and butter, then wash it down with a tankard of small beer while complaining about that day’s customers. There was a kitchen, therefore, one remarkably well stocked with gleaming copper pans, bright slipware bowls and organised knife boxes. It had bunches of dried herbs, smoked meats hung over the hearth, even jelly moulds though they were rarely used. Clean wash-cloths and pan-holders hung neatly on a string on the mantel-beam. The fire was leaping cheerily. The mousetraps were all set.

This warm nook was the province of Mrs Mildmay — a perfectly respectable cook-housekeeper (or so she maintained) who came in from Moorfields on a daily basis, bringing a ten-year-old washer-up and a coal-scuttle boy. Like the brothel’s doctor, wall-painter, scrivener and doorman, she was an expert professional. She could have worked in a duke’s mansion, had dukes not preferred to use illegitimate offspring of their own and had the House of Lords not been abolished anyway the year before, on grounds of being useless and dangerous.

Of course the brothel doctor was a quack, but he was a
good
quack, one of the best fake physicians in London. Of course, too, the doorman was a pimp; he was the bawd’s own pimp, hectors always were.

The point was that running a good brothel required high standards of domestic comfort. Men might as well remain at home, unless they were pampered, fed and entertained here decently. It was not enough that the girls knew their stuff — though if girls worked for Priss Fotheringham, they certainly did. Gentlemen expected that there would be meat pies in a choice of flavours, dishes of oysters, fine wines, footstools, someone who could play a flute, books of undemanding love poems, and up-to-date copies of news-sheets, with both Royalist and Parliamentarian points of view.

Expensive claret was available to be taken on silver (well, pewter) trays to the finest rooms — claret which was more overpriced than ever, now that imports had been banned. For the half-hour, pay-a-few-pennies booths where the antique hags and girls who were just learning their trade worked, there was beer. It was brewed on the premises, brewed in fabulously large quantities by a waiflike solitary brewster. She kept to herself. She never went with men, regarding men as trouble. She had stayed here in the brothel because she believed she owed Priss something for extracting her from prison. Anyway, it was a job.

That evening she was alone in the kitchen. While the house was busy but all the men and girls were concentrating on the Half-Crown Chuck, or on more straightforward entertainment, and after Mrs Mildmay had gone home, this became the brewster’s kingdom. The banked fire flickered on the whitewashed walls and glittered on the copper pans. It was warm; it was peaceful. It reminded the young woman of a kitchen in Birmingham where she had once been shown kindness. For company, she could hear the low hum of distant voices, congenial thumps, occasional bursts of music, soaring cheers and laughter. She was surrounded by happy people, yet had no need to interact with any.

Until now.

The bastard in the green velvet coat and gold-laced boot-hose had an arrogant strut and was more than tipsy. He wore an eyepatch shoved askew up on his forehead and tossed his blond ringlets in a way that she instantly recognised. He was foolishly proud of his luxurious coiffure and so sure of himself she almost laughed out loud. He made a dramatic start. ‘What have we here? A choice morsel!’

‘Not for you, Jem Starling!’ riposted the brewster instantly. She would have kept quiet, but she saw that through his befuddlement he realised he knew her.

‘Eliza!’

‘Mistress Pernelle now’

‘A good whore’s name —’ Jem lunged towards her, falling over a joint-stool. ‘You owe me a thrust, for giving me up to the constable — I’ll have my revenge this minute —’

‘You will not.’ She felt oddly calm. That had something to do with three pints of her own brewed beer inside her. Since she last saw him, she had come through many experiences. She was like a forged sword: hammered, quenched, tempered, sharpened and polished; brought through fire and water to great strength and perfect balance. When she spoke, it was to her ears like the whip of a good weapon through the air. ‘Take yourself off and forget you saw me. I have my own life and will not be bothered.’

‘Damme, you’ll repay your debts!’

‘I owe no debts to you,’ answered Mistress Pernelle, jumping up from the settle where she had been so cosy. She lost her temper, which seemed a good reaction to the possibility of losing everything. Why could men never leave a woman quietly by herself? Why must their uncontrollable jockums always drive them to impose themselves?

She snatched up a spectacular brass bed-warmer that had been preparing on the fire. Five foot long in the handle, the implement was burning hot and heavy with live coals inside it. She put all the effort she could into a mighty swing, expelling all her years of grief in the action. The great implement cracked Jem Starling’s skull. He fell down without a cry and did not move. The warmer clanged to the floor, badly dented.