Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [435]
“He’s not a man, he’s a bull,” she thought. It was half exciting, half comic. After a time, realising that the huge Fleming was, and would remain, completely out of control, she could do nothing but give in, and, as he crashed with her once more upon the bed, come again and again.
It was dawn when the big merchant rolled contentedly out of her lodgings.
And it was soon after dawn, when Nellie was still asleep, that the group of her neighbours, commandeered by Abigail Mason and led, shame-facedly and unwillingly by Peter, met to discuss what must be done.
At eight o’clock that morning, Peter Mason and his wife made their way to the house of the alderman of the ward and there Peter reluctantly demanded that the shameless harlot whose night revels had shaken the whole tenement and alarmed its neighbours, should be brought before the bishop’s bailiff and the justices.
“You know what this will mean?” the alderman said. Peter looked at the ground.
“Yes,” Abigail replied fearlessly. “She’ll be whipped.”
It had taken her three years to persuade her husband to do his duty; she could have taken the matter into her own hands, but there would have been less satisfaction in that. She wanted Peter to act as a God-fearing man should, not for herself to have to do it for him. And at last, the day before, he had promised after destroying the idolatrous window, to take action at last. If he had had any second thoughts, the incredible racket that the Fleming had made, that had echoed all over the tenement and out into the street had surely sealed the matter.
“It’s God’s law that the harlot be punished,” she reminded him. “And it’s your duty to your wife to have the painted woman put out of our house.” Peter nodded sadly. He supposed that it was.
By noon, the alderman was speaking to the bailiff.
It was at noon also that Piers Godfrey came to the house of his friend Edward Shockley to ask: “Can you save Nellie?”
Edward Shockley had known Piers all his life; the carpenter had often done small jobs in the Shockley house and made the family a fine oak table.
“I’ll do what I can,” he promised. But he was not optimistic.
The penalties for most kinds of misbehaviour were severe. The justices of the peace, that body of local gentlemen who were now taking over more and more of the routine local law and administration that had been done by sheriff and shire knight in the past, had the right to return vagrants to their parishes, put disturbers of the peace in the stocks, even to stop the common people playing unauthorised games. Vagrants, the parents of bastard children and harlots were all liable to a fiercer punishment: they were tied to a post in the market place and publicly whipped until they bled. If Abigail persisted in her complaint the authorities would have no choice but to carry out this sentence.
As he walked quickly to the Masons’ house in Culver Street, Edward wondered what kind of reception he would get. What would it be like to cross swords with the redoubtable woman he admired?
She ushered him in politely. He noticed that Peter was standing by the door, looking awkward, wishing no doubt that none of this business was happening.
He stated his case briefly: Nellie was not a bad girl; the family was poor; in his foolish enthusiasm he even promised to be responsible for her future good behaviour. He could see out of the corner of his eye that Peter Mason was looking hopeful, and emboldened by this, he begged Abigail to withdraw her complaint.
She stared at him as though he were a child.
“Dost thou not know, Edward Shockley, that it is the sin that we punish, not the sinner?”
Yes, he knew it, but in his mind’s eye, he could not help seeing poor Nellie’s magnificent back bared and cut to ribbons at the cruel whipping post.
He met her calm, dispassionate eyes and flushed.
“Perhaps she will reform,