London - Edward Rutherfurd [201]
After she had said some prayers by his body, Mabel went out to walk a little while in the cloisters. The light at that early hour was uncertain, but as she turned the south-eastern corner, she had no doubt about the figure she saw for a moment at the other end of the walk. The long-tailed demon even turned its head to look at her. She was pleased to see that, having come for its prey, it was slinking away now, empty-handed.
THE WHOREHOUSE
1295
They had promised her she would still be a virgin tomorrow. It was around noon, however, that she began to grow suspicious.
All that dull November morning the girl had sat wrapped in a shawl, on a bench in front of the brothel. Opposite, across the water, were the wharfs below St Paul’s. To the left, between the river and Ludgate, where the little fort of Baynard’s Castle used to stand, lay the huge precinct taken over by the black-robed Dominicans and now called Black-friars. It was a pleasant view, but, to the girl that day, it seemed full of a vague menace. Her name was Joan, and she was fifteen.
She was a neat little person: her brown hair was pulled back carefully to reveal an oval face; her skin was pale and very smooth; her hands and feet were small and a little fleshy, hinting at the modest plumpness of her body which, she realized, men often found attractive. But it was her quiet, rather solemn eyes which told you that she was one of that busy family of craftsmen, descended from Osric, who had laboured at the building of the Tower.
Not that this mattered any more: not since early that morning when she had taken her terrible decision and crossed the river. Her father, as soon as he discovered, would never speak to her again. She had no doubt about that. As for her mother, she was sure it would be the same. Yet even this, she thought, she could bear, for if she had given up her home, her family, and every shred of reputation she possessed, she had done it to save the life of the young man she loved. She was going to save him tomorrow. If she could just last out till then.
There were eighteen stew-houses, as the brothels were known, standing in a long line by the south side of the Thames opposite St Paul’s, along a strip of reclaimed marsh known as Bankside. Some were extensive structures, arranged round courtyards, with pleasant gardens stretching back to Maiden Lane. Others were of a drearier kind – tall and narrow, with overhanging plaster and timber storeys that appeared to be sagging under long years of dingy waterside debauchery. And in these various accommodations, each leased and run by a brothelkeeper, some three or four hundred prostitutes plied their trade.
Halfway along the line, the Dog’s Head, where Joan had just come to reside, was of middling size, its plaster painted red, with a high thatched roof and a large sign hanging over the door depicting a dog’s head with a huge tongue. At the far end, upstream, the brothels ended with a large house, partly of stone. This was the Castle upon the Hoop. Downstream, just past the brothels, lay a large stone building with its own waterside dock and steps: the London manor of the Bishop of Winchester. Within its precincts it included a small but busy prison, known as the Clink.
The whole area, manor house, Clink, all eighteen brothels and the handsome profits therefrom, belonged to and was ruled by the bishop.
The area south of London Bridge had always been a place apart. Since the long-forgotten days of Rome, the road from Dover and Canterbury had met the other roads from the south to cross the river there. Since Saxon times, it had borne the name of Southwark and formed a borough of its own, independent of the city. As such, it had also been a refuge where vagrants and those in trouble with the law were usually left to their own devices. The borough of Southwark stretched