The Midwife and the Assassin (11 page)

Within an hour a woman stumbled out of the brothel and wove her way to the alehouse. She was so drunk it seemed a small miracle that she found her way through the door on the first try. Will waved her to our table as soon as she entered.

“D'you have my tuppence?” she asked as she sat. I gazed at her face in amazement. The pox had taken a terrible toll on her. If she was half so old as she appeared, she was an ancient whore indeed. I wondered what kind of man would willingly lie with such a woman. One who was no less cup-shot than she, I supposed.

I put two pennies on the table, and—as I expected—she tried to take them at once. I seized her wrist and squeezed.

“You must answer our questions first,” I said. “And if we are pleased, you'll have your tuppence.”

The whore's nostrils flared in either anger or fear. She pulled her hand back but did not try to take the coins.

“Just tell them what you told me,” Will said. “Then you'll have your money and be on your way.”

“Buy me an ale, too,” the woman said. “I'm too thirsty to talk right now.”

Will and I exchanged a glance. We had no choice, so Will waved his cup at the bartender.

When the slattern had her drink she drained it at a draught and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “Very good,” she said. “A woman came here a few weeks ago. She said she was a midwife and that her husband was a physician. She said the two of them, her and her husband, were trying to help mothers save their children from dying young.”

“And what did she want?” Katherine asked.

“She said they needed a baby who had died. They would examine his body and learn from it.” The whore shook her head in wonder at the idea. “She promised an entire shilling to the mother, and she said she'd give the child a Christian burial after they looked at it.”

“Who was she?” I asked.

“I don't know,” she said. “I wasn't with child, so she had no interest in me.”

“Tell her the rest,” Will urged her.

“This other doxy I know, Isabella Wroth, she had a child born dead. She sent for the woman.”

My heart leaped in my chest, and I looked from Katherine to Martha. Could we be so close to finding the mother of the dead child? The quean saw the look in my eye and in a blink the coins on the table disappeared.

“Where is she?” Katherine demanded. “You must tell us.”

I despaired to hear Katherine's tone, and a pained look crossed Martha's face. Unless this whore was a complete fool, we'd have to empty our purses to find Isabella Wroth. And from the light that now shone in her eyes, I knew she was no fool.

“That's what you
really
need to know isn't it?” she asked. “It will cost you.”

I ground my teeth and reached deep into my purse. When the whore had the last of my coins she reached across the table, plucked Will's ale from his hands, and drank it down. She belched loudly and smiled at us. “Follow me.”

The doxy led us into a maze of streets and alleys. Our path seemed so crazy I wondered if her goal was for us to become so lost and desperate that we would pay her to lead us back to London Bridge. If so, she would be disappointed, for she'd already taken every penny we had. Eventually we reached an aged tenement and climbed three sets of stairs to the top floor. There was just one door, and when we knocked a woman's voice invited us in.

 

Chapter 9

The scene within was just what I expected. The apartment contained so little that it made our rooms at Mrs. Evelyn's seem like Whitehall Palace. A bed, a clothes chest, a candle, a small unlit stove, and nothing else. Isabella Wroth lay on a small bed; two other women sat next to her. Even a penniless doxy had her gossips.

Isabella's welcoming smile faded when she saw that our guide had brought strangers with her. She could not have guessed why we had come, but she knew an ill wind when she felt one.

“These ones want to speak to you, Isabella,” our guide announced before scampering down the stairs. I had no doubt that within minutes our money would be poured down her throat. Isabella and her gossips looked at us warily, wanting to know why we had come but afraid to ask. Even in the guttering candlelight I could see that she was far younger than the whore who'd brought us here. She had not been in the profession for long, and the pox had not yet begun its slow destruction of her face.

“We must speak to you alone,” I said as gently as I could.

Martha stepped forward and knelt at the side of the bed. “We are here about your baby. We know what happened and must talk to you about it. You are in no danger.”

After a moment Isabella nodded, and her gossips slipped out of the room, with Will close behind.

“Your friend said that a woman came to you in search of a stillborn child,” Martha said. She took Isabella's hand just as she would take a mother's, comforting the girl and easing her fears. In that moment, Martha was doing the work of a midwife.

“That quean is not my friend,” Isabella noted. “Not if she brought you to me for a few pennies.”

Martha smiled and waited while Isabella calmed herself. “Tell me about your child.”

“A woman did come here,” Isabella said at last. “She was a midwife, and wife to a physician. She said that if I let her have my boy, she would find a way to save other little ones. And she promised that she'd give him a decenter burial than I could afford, with a sermon and bells.”

Martha looked up at Katherine and me, unsure what to say. The truth of what had happened to her child—that he'd been used in Grace Ramsden's lunatic scheme to feign childbirth—would hurt Isabella far more than Grace's ingenious lie.

Katherine stepped forward and joined Martha at Isabella's bedside. “And Mrs. Ramsden did all that. But the sheriff does not believe her. He has accused her of stealing your son and murdering him.”

“What?” Isabella cried. “He was dead-born, so she couldn't have killed him. And she never would! She was kind to me when nobody else would be.”

“And now she needs your help,” Martha said. “You must tell the jury that the child was stillborn. If you don't, Mrs. Ramsden will hang.”

Fear swirled into Isabella's eyes. “Will I be whipped as a bastard bearer?” she asked. “I knew a whore who died of her whipping when she got a fever from one of the cuts.”

Martha offered the girl a conspiratorial smile. “The child was born in Southwark, wasn't he?”

Isabella nodded.

“And Mrs. Ramsden will be tried in London,” Martha said. “Another city, another law. Nobody there will have the right to whip you for something that happened here.”

Isabella smiled faintly. Sometimes—not often, but sometimes—the space between what was right and what was legal could work to help the poor. “What do I need to do?” she asked.

With the trial only a few days away, it seemed best for Isabella to accompany us to London. No good could come from trying to find her a second time on the eve of the trial.

“You can stay with me,” Katherine said. “There's room enough with my other maidservants, and we have coal for the stove. You will be much more comfortable there.”

Isabella nodded. I supposed that leaving Southwark and losing her place at the brothel could not be counted as too great a loss. How much worse could things be north of the river? She collected her belongings and we went outside to find Will waiting on the street. The five of us began the long walk back to the Cheap. It was a hard journey for Isabella so soon after her travail, but we had no money for a hackney or a wherry so we had no choice but to walk. With such a large party we worried more about being taken by the Watch than being accosted by thieves, but the journey proved uneventful. Nevertheless, it was past midnight when Martha and I hauled our weary bones up to our room and into bed.

*   *   *

When the morning of Grace Ramsden's trial came, Katherine, Martha, and I accompanied Isabella Wroth to Newgate gaol. As with so many notorious cases, the scene seemed more appropriate for a carnival than a court. Victualers and ale-sellers had found their places outside the jail walls, and were doing a fine business despite the early hour. Chapmen walked up and down the streets shouting their pamphlets, and a few particularly daring whores plied their wares.

We found the room where Mrs. Ramsden would be tried and discovered that she would soon be brought to the court. We told Isabella that, as a witness, she must wait outside. It was not true, but she still did not know the truth about why Mrs. Ramsden had taken her child and I did not want to dispel her illusion. She looked nervous until Martha offered to stay by her side.

I took a deep breath as I entered the courtroom, for I knew that if we failed to prove Mrs. Ramsden's innocence she would hang before dinner. In keeping with the prison itself, the courtroom was a cramped and rank space, made all the more so by the crowds that had filled every seat and aisle. Indeed, it was hard to tell which men were there as jurymen, which were witnesses, and which were merely curious.

Eventually a guard led Grace Ramsden into the court, and she stood next to the judge's raised table; she had shackles on her wrists, but I was relieved she'd not been laid in double-irons. I also said a prayer of thanks that she seemed healthy enough, for gaol-fever took as many prisoners as the hangman.

The constable who had arrested Mrs. Ramsden spoke first, explaining to the jury what had happened on the night of her “travail.” He went into great and lurid detail—far more than was necessary—and from the look in the jurymen's eyes it was clear that he'd convinced them to hang her. Katherine and I had a difficult task ahead of us.

As Mrs. Ramsden's midwife, Katherine spoke next, telling the jury
why
she had done such a terrible thing. It would not speak to her innocence, but we hoped it would make her seem less monstrous. She went on to tell the jury that the child had been born small, and had neither hair nor fingernails. These were lies, for the child had had both, but we were more interested in saving Mrs. Ramsden's life than telling the narrow truth of the matter; we would have our justice, even if it required perjury.

A few of the jurymen looked confused at Katherine's description of the child's body—what had hair and nails to do with anything?—so I stepped forward to ask her to explain.

“If he was born without hair and nails, it means he was born well before his time,” she said. “And if he was born so early, he likely was born dead.” The jurymen nodded, and for the first time I thought we might have a chance of convincing them.

Finally, it was Isabella's turn to appear. She was obviously frightened as she made her way to the front of the court, and I could not fault her for that. What girl would feel differently if she found herself in such a situation? Since Mrs. Ramsden had no advocate and Katherine had already spoken as a witness, the judge allowed me to put the questions to Isabella. I avoided any mention of her work as a doxy, and in the maidservant's dress Katherine had provided, there was no reason anyone on the jury would guess.

Isabella told the jury about meeting Mrs. Ramsden when she was with child, and about Mrs. Ramsden's strange and unsettling request.

“She told you she
wanted
a stillborn child?” I asked, feigning confusion.

“Aye, she told me that she would learn from his body. She said that if she could learn how my son died, she might help other children to live. I thought that giving her my son would help. She meant no harm.”

Some of the jurymen nodded and looked more closely at Grace Ramsden. At least now their faces showed puzzlement rather than cold fury. I knew that justice still could miscarry, but it seemed likely that thanks to Isabella's testimony, Katherine and I had just saved Grace Ramsden from hanging.

An hour later, my hope was borne out when the jury found Mrs. Ramsden not guilty of infanticide. The judge and jury were horrified by her actions, of course, and the judge lectured her on the evil that she had done, but since there was no crime, he had no choice but to set her free.

When the judge announced his decision, Katherine, Martha, and I embraced, and immediately began to search the crowd for Mrs. Ramsden. By the time we reached the front of the room, she was gone.

“Taken to have her irons knocked off,” a guard explained.

“Where will we find her?” Katherine asked.

“She'll come back here if she wants.” The guard shrugged. “If she doesn't there are other doors she can use.”

Katherine, Martha, and I waited in the courtroom for nearly a half an hour, but Grace Ramsden never appeared. With nothing else to do, we returned to the Cheap, our victory hollowed out by Mrs. Ramsden's disappearance. That night Mr. and Mrs. Ramsden emptied out their tenement and left the Cheap, never to be seen again.

*   *   *

With that, Katherine, Martha, and I became famous throughout the Cheap, now known as the midwives who had saved Grace Ramsden from hanging. What other midwives had done
that
for a mother? In a happy coincidence, the following day a boy delivered the sign Martha had ordered for us to hang above our door. Within days, Martha and I had mothers from throughout the Cheap—including many of Mrs. Ramsden's former clients—calling us to their bedsides.

With the mothers came money, of course, as parents and friends rewarded us handsomely for our work, and we were able to purchase a few of the goods that I missed most from my life as a gentlewoman. We could not buy anything too grand, of course—I continued to dress in wool—but we purchased new linens for the bed, furniture that was less likely to collapse, and even a feather mattress. (Martha agreed that feathers were far superior to straw, and vowed never to go back.) I continued to exchange letters with Elizabeth—hers still bitter, mine as loving as I could make them. Each night I prayed that the Lord would both soften her heart and see our little family reunited.