London - Edward Rutherfurd [215]
“Seems I got in first,” he said bluntly.
“You cur!” Barnikel cursed the brothelkeeper. “This is how you treat a good customer. I’ll go elsewhere in future, by God I will.”
“So you don’t want her?” Bull asked.
“No more than I want a dog!” Barnikel roared. And then paused, uncertain what to do next. He had come there to celebrate, and quite emphatically wanted a woman. But seeing the girl standing side by side with his old enemy who, he now knew had got there first, his pride would not allow him to touch her. What should he do?
Just at this moment he noticed the Dogget sisters, who had now arrived.
“I’ll have the Dogget girl,” he said gruffly. “The one I always have.”
“Which is?” The brothelkeeper was so alarmed by the turn of events that, for a moment, he had forgotten. Barnikel glared at him.
“Margery, of course.”
The sisters looked at each other in consternation. They had but one thought in their mind. If the alderman caught anything from Margery there would be all hell to pay. He’d tear the brothel down. They would probably both be thrown out. There was no time to talk. One of them stepped forward.
“It’s always me he wants, never my sister,” she said with a smile. “Come on up, big boy,” she cried.
There would be no problem. Margery had told her, long ago, exactly what it was he liked.
But for the real Margery, remaining below, there remained one puzzle. She had been preparing herself hastily to apologize to poor Joan. They had promised to protect her. And look at what had happened.
Yet now, amazingly, there was no reproach in her eyes. In fact, she was laughing. And as Margery Dogget stared at her, Joan smiled up at Bull and kissed him on the mouth.
“Shall I walk you to the bridge?” she said.
Joan parted from Bull just before the bridge, knowing that she had been lucky. More than lucky. Many men, having heard her story, would have laughed, or frankly disbelieved her. But Bull had done neither. At first he had stood there, stunned. Then he had shaken his head and told her: “That’s the bravest thing I ever heard of in my life.” Then he had chuckled. “All right,” he said. “I’ll help you. Do you really think you can get away with it?”
“I must,” she said quite simply.
The law was clear enough. There was only one way, short of a pardon, that a condemned man in London could escape the hangman’s noose. And that was if he was claimed by a whore.
There was a precise ceremony to be followed. The woman must appear publicly before the justices, dressed in the striped white dress and hood which were the official garb of the profession, and carrying a penitential candle in each hand, and offer herself as the prisoner’s bride. If the condemned man in London agreed to marry her, he was set free and the marriage took place forthwith. The Church, though it ran the brothels, applauded the saving of a life from sin; the authorities doubtless took the same view. Few cases are recorded of this happening, though whether the prostitutes were unwilling to leave off a profitable occupation to be the wives of paupers, or whether the men preferred to swing rather than marry such women is unknown.
The Dogget girls’ scheme was to do precisely this. Joan must become a prostitute for a day. She must be taken in properly at the Dog’s Head, her name registered with the bailiff. Then she could claim her man. They had thought it the greatest adventure they had ever come up with in their life.
“But I can’t actually go with the men,” the girl had objected. “I just couldn’t.” She had shaken her head. “As for Martin . . .” This was why she had not dared tell him the details of her plan. He would certainly have refused, and given the game away. She thought of her betrothed’s sad yet fiercely proud little face. “If he even thought . . .” her voice trailed off.
“We’ll protect you,” the sisters had promised. “We can get you through a night untouched.” They had gone into fits of giggles at the thought. “What a joke,” they had cried. “What a trick.”
But Joan’s objections were also the potential weakness of the plan. She did