4

Keeper of the Brothel

THE ALE IS A COVER. ALE FOR BREAKFAST, ALE FOR DINNER, ale for supper. It’s a euphemism for the other things that go on at the Silver Cross. Yet downstairs, the wood-paneled restaurant-bar appears as just that: a well-to-do tavern, patronized by connected and wealthy men (much as in the present). The ale is top-notch, Baroness Tilly tells him, the food superb.

Naked underneath a black velvet robe, Julian sits across from the Baroness, feeling ridiculous. Tilly’s pink robe has been replaced by hooped petticoats and gaudy layers of sweeping silk ornamental fabrics with puffy sleeves and lace velvet collars. She wears a huge blonde wig, her eyes hastily drawn in black and her oversized mouth made ever larger by smeared red cake-paint.

The pub is narrow and tall, with flagstone floors and tables of heavy oak. It’s upholstered in leather, draped with blue velvet curtains, and set with crystal and fine china. The breakfast tables are lined with white napkins.

“It’s a beautiful place, wouldn’t you agree,” the Baroness says. After colorfully describing what’s expected of him (the daily inspections of the girls before they begin work is one of Julian’s more intriguing duties), she offers him a salary and only as an afterthought inquires about his experience, which he recounts to her just as colorfully—parroting her own words from minutes ago (taking extra time to detail how he imagines the inspections of the girls might go). He would like to begin immediately. Where are these girls? When can he inspect them, so he can find his girl?

He and the Baroness have a sumptuous breakfast of porridge and milk, smoked herring, spiced eel pie (“caught fresh from the Thames just yesterday!”) and bread and marmalade. And ale. The Baroness lingers over breakfast as if starved for some normal company, entertaining an increasingly impatient Julian with stories about the Silver Cross. A hundred years earlier, a man named Parson from Old Fish Street was paraded in shame down Parliament Street for selling the sexual services of his apparently accomplished wife. After spending years in prison, he opened the Silver Cross in revenge, and his wife became the cornerstone of his business.

Julian tells the Baroness he’s read somewhere that a prostitute was murdered in the Silver Cross, and it’s been haunted ever since.

“I don’t know nothing about that,” the Baroness says, frowning. “Where did you read that, the Gazette?” Grudgingly she admits that the Silver Cross has only recently reopened, having been shuttered for the better part of last year, “because of the horror that befell all London. But we’ve had no recent murders here, sire, I can assure you. Murder is very bad for business.”

“What horror?” Julian asks and instantly regrets it when she stares at him suspiciously. He clears his throat. “I meant why stay shuttered for so long?” His eyes dart around, trying to catch the date from the newspaper lying on the next table.

“Where are you from, good sir, that you don’t know about the terrible pestilence that destroyed our town?”

The unknown forest, Julian tells her. Wales. Largely spared from the plague. One of these days, Julian will meet an actual Welshman and be promptly pilloried on Cheapside.

“I thought you’ve just come from across the river?” She lowers her voice. “You know, that’s where the Black Death took wind. From south of the river.”

Julian nods. It’s common knowledge—everything is worse south of the river.

“It got so bad,” the Baroness says, “death galloped in such triumph through our streets that King Charlie himself had had enough. He packed up his court and fled the city! That’s how we knew we was all doomed. When our own king abandoned us. His Majesty’s Government didn’t meet for a year.”

Julian commiserates. In 1665, the plague had reduced London to a wasteland. He hopes it’s a few years later, the worst behind them. He tries to make out that elusive date on the newspaper. LONDON GAZETTE, it reads. PUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY. What year does it say?

“Yes, our once lively city has become a graveyard,” the Baroness goes on. “Nothing but a field of dismal misery. There was nothing open because there was no one alive.” She dabs her eye. “I’ll confess to you, sire, the plague has been absolutely terrible for business!”

“One hundred and thirty parishes in London,” Julian says. “Surely there are still men left. The bells still ring.”

“Oh, even more than before, because now they ring for the dead. But the dogs don’t bark. Because they’re also dead. Dead with all the honorable deep-pocketed gentlemen!” She sniffles.

Good God, what year is it? He squints at the Gazette, adjusts in his seat. “Does that say July 1666?” he asks, something inside him falling.

“Yes,” the Baroness says slowly. “Why?”

“The Silver Cross survived the fire?”

“What fire?”

“The one near Pudding Lane.”

“Pudding Lane? All the way down there by the bridge, inside the wall? I wouldn’t know nothing about that. I don’t go down there. We always have fires in London, good sir. Too many candles.”

“You’d know this fire,” Julian says pensively. “There won’t be a house left standing between Temple Bar and London Bridge. Pardon me, I’ve been traveling so long, I’ve lost track of my days.” Maybe he’s wrong about the year. He’s never been good with dates. What a failing to have when dates are of the essence. Cromwell, Puritans, beheadings, republic, Charles I, Charles II, when was the Glorious Revolution? Was the Great Fire of London before it or after? A little knowledge is an awful thing—

“It’s a Tuesday. Second week in July. We just finished the beer festival for the Feast of Saints.” The Baroness smiles. “That was very good for business.”

“I’m sure.” Julian shifts in his seat. “Can I get a small advance on my salary so I can buy myself a wardrobe befitting a tavern keeper? You said we needed fresh flowers. Perhaps I can take a walk to the market. Is Covent Garden open?” He wants to walk to Clerkenwell. He needs to see what’s become of the life he once lived with her.

The Baroness agrees to an advance. “Usually I send Ilbert to the market, but frankly, he has appalling taste in flowers. He always manages to get the ugliest ones. When you see Mallory, remind her to lend you something to wear. And tell her Gasper is here. The girl needs to be told everything three times. He’s been waiting an hour.” Gasper is a skeletal man in the corner by the open door, a stinking man in rags with flies buzzing around him, his head tilted and trembling.

As Julian walks up the main stairs, he hears the Baroness berating a humpbacked imp. “Ilbert,” she yells. “How many times must I tell you—it’s against the law to wash the entrails of pigs in the local waters!”

“I’m not the only one that breaks the laws, madam. The alley is slippery with refuse. It’s hard to carry the carcass to a less local water.”

“Oh, Holy Helpers, Ilbert, you are but an arsworm! You know Scotland Yard is next door! One of them clappers saw you. He told me you was throwing coal ashes right into Parliament Street. Have you no mind, scoundrel? We’re in front of the Palace of Whitehall, the residence of our king! You can’t keep breaking the laws of men.”

“But all the men is dead, madam. You said so yourself.”

“The few that are left will stone you to death, you scoundrel! I will celebrate when that day comes. Until then, stop mouthing off to me and go sweep the stones outside, as decreed by the Commissioner for Streets and Ways. And stop hooping the barrels on the sidewalk and sawing timber on the street. I can’t afford another fine because of you.”

“Where would you like me to saw the timber, madam? In the palace gardens?”

“You are an annoyance and a disorder, Ilbert, in desperate need of reforming. They will dispose of you with the ashes, dust and dirt, and I shall have nothing whatsoever to say about it except hallelujah.”

Tucked into a dormered corner on the second floor, on the other side of the house from his favorite room, Julian’s quarters are spacious and sunny. From his two open windows he can see the eastern Thames, curving toward Blackfriars, toward the direction of the slate-colored Globe, he can hear the bells of a hundred churches. His room has a four-poster bed with a heavy canopy, an intricately carved armchair, a walnut cupboard, a small table under the windows where he can eat or write, a wardrobe where he can hang his clothes once he gets some, and a washing station in the corner by the fireplace that includes not only a basin, but also a bathtub with a stone hearth. He could use a bath after last night’s steamy banquet. Perhaps the girls could come and wash him as they had so kindly offered.

In the desk he finds a quill with a bottle of ink. Julian remembers Devi’s instruction to count the days. Opening the bottle of ink, he dips the quill into it, pulls up the sleeve of his robe, and with the quill tip punctures the inside of his forearm, near his wrist, tapping a dot of ink into the wound. One.

When he turns around, a girl stands silently in the doorway, towels and sheets in her hands, her expression wary, her brown gaze on his arm. It’s Mallory.

“I can explain,” he says, putting the quill away.

“No need, sire.” He can barely hear her voice.

“I’m marking the days.” He steps toward her.

“Aren’t we all. May I make up your room?” Her gaze is on the bed.

“Mallory …”

The girl can’t look into his face. It’s either shyness or embarrassment. She stares at the periphery of his ear, at a slice of his beard, at his black robe, at anything but him. When he tries to touch her, she flinches from him. Holding her by the flesh of her arm, he lifts her chin to him. His eyes meet hers.

Mallory is his girl.

Julian fills to the brim with the wine of his ravished heart. He searches her face for a flicker of familiarity, of recognition and finds himself faintly disappointed that he can’t find any. She doesn’t fight him or move away. In her deep brown eyes there’s a hint of morning shame at the memory of their shameless night. Her full red lips are slightly parted.

“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.”

Every single day, the Right Reverend Anselmo arrives before the evening rush and stands in the middle of the restaurant downstairs, loudly sermonizing their sins away. “Constable Parker says we must put up with him to stay open,” the Baroness tells Julian. “The reverend is sent from the deanery of Whitehall to maintain something called prima facie decorum.” The Baroness swears. “Royal prerogative and all that. We must be mindful of our hallowed location. If it was up to me, I’d have that eunuch Anselmo castrated again. He calls my beautiful home the shambles! Can you imagine!”

Julian doesn’t have to imagine. Nightly he hears the vicar’s clarion call.

“He says the devil slaughters the souls of Christian men in our humble tavern!” The Baroness spits like a man. “In infinite ways, the devil butchers men’s souls at the Silver Cross, he says. Ah, yes, that Anselmo is a British treasure. He’s a convert, you know. He used to be a Catholic. Now he’s a reformed Puritan. And you know what they say about reformed Puritans.”

“That there’s nothing worse than a reformed whore,” Julian says, and the Baroness howls with laughter and for weeks repeats the line to everyone she greets.

One afternoon, while eating and socializing with the girls, amusing them by garbling their names, Julian makes the mistake of calling the one who’s named Jeanne “Saint Joan of Arc.” Immediately the banter stops. The Baroness steps forward from her table in the back corner. She hears everything. “Why would you call the Maid of Orleans Saint Joan?” the Baroness asks. “She was no saint.”

“My mistake. Wasn’t she canonized?”

“Canonized?” The Baroness doesn’t laugh. “She’s a rebel burned for heresy, for slaughtering the English, for impersonating a man, for saying she heard the voice of God command her to raise an army against the Crown. She was burned at the stake as a witch, not a saint.”

“My mistake, Baroness.” Julian must be more careful. Sometimes he forgets that beheadings and burnings aren’t just facts in history, but are real blood and real hatred. But wasn’t Joan of Arc canonized, though? Why is it, no matter how much Julian thinks he knows, it’s never enough?

He tries remembering the names of the girls by height, but four of them are the same height, and he tries remembering them by age, but eight of them are under twenty, and he tries remembering them by hair color, but all ten of them are some shade between brown and black. Six of them are bosomy, eight of them are hippy, two of them have barely any breasts at all, and their clientele is limited and specific. The Baroness tells Julian that there’s only one way he must rank the girls, “And that’s by how much money they bring in. That’s your only yardstick as the keeper of this house.”

“That is not his only yardstick, Baroness,” Margrave says, and the girls titter.

“Hush, Margrave. Stop wearing him like a medal.”

The madam is right. Julian learns their names much faster using her method. Brynhilda, a large, buxom lass of Germanic origin, is first. The men wait hours for her. Mute Kitty is second because she’s quickest. Beatrix and Millicent are sisters, work in tandem, and are three and four. Brazen Margrave is five, Ru is peppy and six, and French Catholic Severine is seven. The girl who’d been calling herself Jeanne before Julian ruined it for her, and who now must refer to herself as plain Joan, is currently underworked and number eight, boyish Allie is nine, and Greta is last. Greta is skeletal and at almost thirty has outlasted her usefulness. But her great-grandfather is rumored to be Parson, the man who founded the Silver Cross, so she’s not going anywhere.

The ten bedrooms and ten girls mix and match depending on the workload. The rooms are strictly for pleasure, six on the second floor, four on the third. The girls sleep high up on the fourth floor, in the stifling attic rooms by the dormers, five ladies to a cubby. The three maids, including Mallory, are segregated down on the ground floor, in the back by the servants’ kitchen. They mix with no one.

Except for Mallory—who is the prettiest of all the girls at the Silver Cross—the cleaning girls are desperately unattractive. Carling is lame and Ivy is scarred. Carling and Ivy loathe Mallory, because she’s the Baroness’s niece and “not nearly ugly enough.” Though she’s not allowed to sit with Julian and the regulars while they have their dinner of spiced eel and fish pies, all the girls, the maids and the molls, resent Mallory for having too many privileges. The main complaint about her is that she never gets punished for the things she does wrong. Julian doesn’t dare ask what she does wrong, lest it reveal how he feels about her.

The girls don’t stop complaining about one thing or another. Nothing is so trivial that it won’t cause offense. Yes, on the one hand, Julian is surrounded by women. But on the other, Julian is surrounded by women. They’re soft and busty, flirtatious, voluptuous, and their erotic inclinations know no bounds. But when they’re not arguing with him over the house-set price of goods and services, they’re bad-mouthing each other. They’re also not above blatant mendacity. They ascribe to each other all manner of vice and malice, they saddle one another with the lies of the most hideous contagious diseases. They often accuse one another of attempted murder through poison and infection. It’s astonishing. They are beautiful but venal.

Fortunately, it’s the Baroness not Julian who deals with the bulk of their grievances. When he asks her how she sustains herself, she laughs. “Oh, dear boy,” she says. “Margrave is right about you. You’re too good a man. She says you may be of noble blood. Eventually you’ll learn how to handle the commoners.” A commoner is another name for prostitute. “Rule number one: You must stop being so respectful. Do like me and pay them absolutely no mind. I pretend to listen, for they need to complain. It’s about seniority. It’s about money. It’s only when they don’t complain that they worry me. And by the way, do you know who never complains? Mallory. And she’s the one who’s got the most to complain about, for the other girls are simply dreadful to her. But she never disparages them in return, she never whines about the cleaning, or being overworked, and she never says a bad word to or about anyone. Or a good word, for that matter. She’s my niece, and I love her like family, but frankly, she is too tame! She’s the one who vexes me the most with her unspeakable silence. Oh, how she vexes me!”