Book Two: Return of the Sea Wolves

“Hurry up you poxy drab!”

Mary slammed the pewter mug down onto the table, uncaring that the hinged lid jumped and splashed bumboo across the scrubbed table top. The man who had shouted for it did not seem to care much. He was very fat; of the four nacre buttons that were undone on his waistcoat, a fifth pinged away from his swollen bulk as she watched him heft himself about in his chair.

A tallow candle spat wax, causing Mary to hiss as a boiling droplet splashed her hand. The rest dripped gloopily down onto its stand and the table. The parlour was smoky from the dozen or so smelly candles that were dotted around room, and from the large lantern nailed to the lintel above the door. Together they bathed the room in gloomy light. It was enough for everybody to see where they were going but let there be a cloak around the edges. A couple were taking advantage of it as Mary looked over, sighing and thinking.

“You know,” someone said behind her in an educated but somewhat crocked voice, “pretty as you’re not, I think I might ‘ave a use for you…”

She glanced over her shoulder with a sense of dread welling up inside of her. The man to whom she had just served more alcohol had slumped forward in his chair. His breeches were done up all wrong from some earlier activity, be it pissing in the side alley or shagging one of the whores. He was looking at Mary rather cross-eyed as he shifted his pelvis in what he thought, with his drink befuddled mind, was a seductive move, but with his obesity and the paint still clinging to his face, she felt like vomiting. His dirty leer burned into the back of her head as she ran. She threw down her platter on the bar as she passed it and burst into the kitchen, where she did not stop, even as Betty the maid gave her a disgusted look. She was carrying a tray of hot chocolate and wine that had been specially brewed; thanks to Mary rushing by, she nearly spilt the piping liquid.

The brunette raced into the scrubby yard out back. It was rather large, but grass grew through the worn cobbles and around the cesspit where the chamberpots were emptied. A bronze goat stood tethered beside an old vegetable patch, and there was cistern sunk into the middle of the yard as a heavily pregnant young woman sat on a large, upturned wooden tub.

“Did that fat manatee of a militia cap’n start warbling fer a free favour again?” She asked with a wry smile.

Mary wondered who her sister Anne was calling fat, for she was no slender thing herself. She was swollen with child and portly by nature from feasting on beef. She had inherited the short and fat built from their mother, who, skinflint though she was, had paid for a new dress for her eldest daughter. Anne was wearing the spring-green gown quite proudly, although she had already stained the white apron with tobacco and gotten the rest of it grubby from sitting around all day.

“Mother should throw him out!’ Mary shouted, pointing an accusatory finger into the building, “’E never pays his tab, ‘e abuses the women and ‘e-!”

“If ‘e was thrown out, Mary, we would all be thrown in with the Deadmans.”

The brunette floundered, her hollow cheeks flushed pink.

‘One day ‘e will be made to pay,” Anne nodded shrewdly, “mother knows ‘e owes ‘er nearly thirteen guineas just this year already! It’s only Feb’ry!”

And a warm one at that, for Mary had to fan herself as she looked up at the starry night sky.

“Mother’ll get ‘er money,” Anne went on, “she always does. Why, look what she did when our grandmother died. She sold off everything that poor woman had, right down to her clothes and had her corpse chucked in a pauper pit. She did the same with our Great Aunt Charlotte, ‘cept you’re too young to remember that-”

“Am not,” Mary groused darkly.

Her memories were vague as she had only been about five years old when a bent, ragged woman was dumped on the doorstop by some ferocious landlord who had scared her half to death. He was huge compared to her tiny child-like self, and she remembered scurrying back inside, crying as he bellowed at the top of his voice for her mother to pay the backlog of rent.

It was a fee that Margaret Turner had coughed up rancorously. She then had their batty aunt dragged out back via the side alley, as the bawd shouted loudly that she did want to have to air her house out. The old woman was put in an empty stable not half and hour later and left there, drooling and muttering to somebody none of them could see.

Mary recalled sneaking out once to see her. She had gripped Anne’s hand as her bigger sister had come home from the Anchor Inn that the Sunday, the day after the madwoman had been brought to their house. She had dared to go close to her although Annie had warned her not to.

-A pair of confused silver eyes looked up from the cobbles as Mary padded over to the gabbing woman and came to stand a bare foot from her.

“Come ‘ere!” Her sister called to her, sounding afraid.

“Mar’Anne?” The madwoman croaked. Her black hair was grizzled and she was a bit leaner than her mother was in build, and probably taller had the dirt clinging to her skin and clothes weighed her down, “Mar’Anne?”

“I’m Mary,” Mary said with the puerile naivety of a child her age. She had picked up a bit of straw and playing with it, heedless of the danger.

“Mother!” Anne shouted in alarm.

A toothy grin broke and spread on the bloodless face; with agility impossible to imagine that the old woman was capable of, she sprang forwards and grabbed the little girl by her apron.

Mary screamed and fell over in her fright. She could feel her Great Aunt clawing at her petticoat as the madwoman dragged her across the mucky stones, crying joyfully, “Mar’Anne! Mar’Anne!”

The bawd came hurtling out of her brothel with a fierce maternal scream and a broom gripped in her hand. She used it to beat the old woman over the head with, not stopping until Charlotte had let Mary go, at which point Margaret swooped and grabbed the terrified child by arm. She thrust her toward her eldest daughter and kept on hitting the snivelling simpleton, who balled herself up with her arms over her head.

“And let that be a lesson to you-both!”-

Although terrified by the experience, Mary had stuck her head into the stable-yard the very next day. It was a cold afternoon, and Great Aunt Charlotte was gone; only the ghost of her genever smell lingered, and only for a week.

“Mary? You still in there or ‘ave yer gone loopy too?”

Anne’s piped seemed to be dying out, she noticed, as she jerked out of her reverie. Her sister appeared not to care, however, as she waved irritably at a large moth that was flitting about her head.

“No,” she replied, a little sadly, “I’m not our great aunt yet-”

“Then go get me some small ale instead standing there like a dead tree. Make yerself useful for once-!”

Rolling her eyes, Mary went back inside and fetched a leathery tankard. She used ale from a barrel standing in the kitchen and poured water from a jug into it before taking it outside with her and handing it to her thirsty sibling. Anne snatched the stingy measurement of liquid from her and gulped it down; above them, the moth was still fluttering.

“Yer better go back and serve his high ‘n’ mighty fatness before ‘e shouts the place down,” Anne said gravely after a while in silence, “That or ‘is guts’ll smash the place up-”

Her brunette sibling stared at her, horrified and revolted.

“You go in there!” Mary cried loudly. She pointed into the gloomy building again and added, “nobody ever tries any funny business with you-’

“Because few men dare bother a big woman,” her sister muttered, almost sounding envious.

She raised the tankard again and drank as Mary sighed, aggravated. The brothel rarely made much of a profit and wages were budgeted accordingly. She had personally never received a penny for anything more than buying food or candles and had taken on more drudgery over the years as her mother let off maid after maid. The only two that were left-the Bolt sisters-only remained because their father supplied the Calico Cat with alcohol from the distillery he helped his brother manage. She remembered her mother once condemning Woodes Rogers to Hell for hanging all the pirates and pardoning some more; their absence meant that there was a big hole where their reckless spending had been.

“You’d be inundated with ‘em,” Del Turner sighed, “each seemed to bring a £100 guineas worth of gold coin and silver plate and jewellery dripping in stones-by the day they’d lost it all, on cards, women and drink.”

The bawd sighed.

“Many tell me that I’m lucky. I get the militia in ‘ere and the navy sometimes, but what people don’t realise is that they are the sort of man ‘oo keep tabs. I barely know a sailor that ‘as given me money up front; they make and debt and die with it unpaid. Does the Admiralty care that I’m out of pocket?”

She snorted.

“Hardly.”

Mary herself had helped the whores rob a sleeping drunk of every ha’penny in his pocket when times were particularly dearth.

‘Wench!’

His shout carried through the establishment, causing Mary to groan. She looked to her sister for sympathy, but Anne merely jerked her head, chuckled and thrust the empty tankard at her.

She dropped it in the same tub that was full of plates and other dining ware as she passed on her way into the shadowy parlour. The couple in the corner were bundling energetically whilst Captain Gershwin, who had his arse facing the fireplace, had slouched in his seat and flung the two halves of his regulation red frockcoat open. He had loosened his ruffled cravat too, Mary saw, to let his fat neck breathe as a ring of keys and a metal crucifix hung vulnerably out of a previously hidden pocket. His bugging eyes roved over her as she re-entered the room.

“Yes?” She said, trying to sound cool and unconcerned.

He held up his tankard wordlessly. Mary took it, too aware of his leer as she walked away and filled it up with bumboo again from the keg in the kitchen. She was hidden from him by a wall to her immense relief, and as she straightened up, she was transported by a wicked idea that had her smirking to herself.

Without further ado, Mary spat in the captain’s drink, and feeling pleased with herself, she returned the tankard to the moneyless soldier, who rolled forwards and wrapped a flabby arm around her narrow waist and she turned to leave.

“Let go of me!” She shrieked, roused by anger and fear. She tripped backwards as she fought her assailant, who, to her mortification and his delight, she fell on.

Gershwin leered and held her to his belly. He took her face in his thick, white hand, squeezing until numbness seized her chin, when he murmured dirtily, “The company ‘round here is poor, I find. Keep me company tonight, would you, little lamb?”

She shouted in his ear and struggled off of him into a stoop, for his arm was still around her and his hand crushed her bony wrist, so much so that she winced violently. Her eyes watered.

“This is improper!” Mary told him, trying to keep the panic out of her voice, “If you want company, then go upstairs! My mother will throw you out for this-!”

He jerked her closer; hot puffs of beery breath made Mary screw her face up in disgust as he told her, “If your darling mother was to throw me out, I would personally make sure that she was reported to the creditors and made to pay for the bills that my fellows have left for her.”

Gershwin bent her backward over his knee, adding gleefully, “Once her secret coffer is empty and she still has not enough money, even after having to auction her belongings, sack every maid and have every whore work night and day, I would send her, your sister and you to the Deadmans,” he leered, “for a very long time…”

There was a steely glint in his eye and he pulled Mary completely onto his lap without another word. She cringed as the wet patch on the front of his breeches soaked through her skirt, but bit her lip to stop herself from retching as he began to paw her through her clothes. Closing her eyes for a moment, she opened them to see Jenny, a thin waif done up in paint, looking at her with pity. Her own partner, the butcher’s boy, had his face burrowed in her bosom where he was making noises that sounded as though he had bad indigestion.

Mary shuddered as the hand on her knee clenched and slowly started to pull back her grey skirt with it. The hem rose from her ankle to her shin and was not far from being shamefully rucked above her knees when the door banged open, causing the candles and fire to gutter.

“Sir!” A bright young man cried, “Commodore Loche commands your presence, sir!”

“God curse you, Henry, I was busy!” Gershwin dislodged his mouth from where it had been clamped to his Mary’s neck. A large red mark bloomed and throbbed there on her pallid skin as he shouted at the messenger boy, “What the Devil does Commodore Choleric want now?’

“Sir, there is a suspicious vessel in the harbour, sir!”

“Stop ‘sir-ing’ me boy! You sound like a jumped up valet, not a lieutenant!”

The young officer, Henry, tentatively lowered his hand from his forehead.

“Now what the Hell does the Commodore want?” Gershwin rumbled, “Speak up!’

“He wants you to lead a search party onto this suspicious vessel, sir. The captain refused to pay the port tariff, pilotage and berthing fee, sir. He says he is bringing slaves to market, sir, and-”

The obese militia captain had a dangerous tic in his right temple every time the lesser man kept on saying “sir”. He was distracted enough to let go of Mary’s skirt, which she smoothed down with a hot, red face. His heavy arm was still around her waist, holding her, whereas his attention was focused on the pert lieutenant, whom Gershwin squinted at.

“Slaves are slaves, Henry,” he said, trying and failing to sound wise, “We would be nowhere without ‘em; they harvest out coffee and cotton. God created ‘em for that purpose, an’ good on this captain for bringing more, I say! Slaves mean money, Henry, for your family as much as mine. We’d be poor tailors otherwise! I say ship them Negros here an’ work ‘em hard! Who cares if this captain’s a cannibalistic sodomite of a pirate-?”

“He may be into buggery, sir,” Henry swallowed nervously, half raising his fisted hand, “but the Commodore still wants you to search his ship and seize any unpaid-”

Gershwin, who had been supping his drink, slammed the tankard down hard enough to slosh some of the bumboo out of it. Inelegantly, Mary found herself shoved off of his lap and onto the grimy stone floor, where she was nearly trampled underfoot as he stood and hoisted his breeches up. He pulled his frockcoat back into place as well and left with the lieutenant; one stepped high and the other moved with an affected waddle. The door swung shut behind them, rattling the lantern and the glass set into the painted wood.

Mary, who was left in the dirt and reeds, slapped her palm against the floor with an angry, frustrated shout, and raised her hand to cover her face. The butcher’s boy looked at her, bewildered, whereas Jenny looked away, flushed with an empathy that coloured her face more prettily that her toxic rouge did.

Mary carefully picked herself up off of the grimy floor and brushed herself down. She glanced at blonde Jenny, who finished up with her glassy-eyed client to the tinkle of pennies on the tabletop. She ushered the boy out and locked the door after him before following the brunette, who reached the space between the kitchen and parlour. It was like a short, narrow corridor, and in it she forced herself to be calm and cool, but humiliation and rage flowed together like magma beneath her blotchy skin.

“I’ll start…” jenny said weakly, pointing at the kitchen as she stood in the light.

“Put the candles out first,” Mary instructed her, inwardly groaning at how much she sounded like an old maid, “An’ put the stubs in the cupboard.”
The young whore made to do and Mary plucked a lit candlestick out of an alcove as she climbed the creaking stairs. The first floor was occupied by six suites readily available for renting if a customer desired privacy, so it was in the attic that Margaret Turner, her family and the help, came to live. Her youngest daughter crossed the landing, which had been painted a vivid burgundy in the past. The edging was done in gold leaf like a picture frame and there was a sad old maroon carpet underfoot that had been worn until threadbare in places. The light cast shadows as she walked along, surrounded by flickering demons cast by the flame; turning left, she went down another corridor with the same decoration. It led to a plain door; behind it was another staircase, but one bereft of anything but bare wood, brick mortar and some old plaster.

“Mother?” She called, climbing up into the darkness. She found herself in a third corridor and instinctively turned right, which took her to a warren at the very end. She stopped outside of the largest room and knocked, but even though nobody had bid her to, Mary entered it, finding herself face to face with the drapes of a four-poster bed.

“Mother?” She repeated, stepping forward.

A thick hand pulled the green linsey-woolsey curtain back so that a largely bedridden woman with pale yellow skin could stare out suspiciously.

“I thought I told you to watch the customers?” Del Turner said with narrowed eyes. She pulled a face as she struggled to pull her corpulent body into a sitting position. Her movement awoke her shaggy old Monkey Terrier, which had been sleeping beside her gouty foot. The physician had had put her painfully swollen foot on a cushion, which Avery, the dog, had taken to lying on. He sneezed as Mary looked at him, and stood. He did a circle before balling up again on her mother’s foot and soon dozed off again.

He had nearly gone as grey as his mistress had under her henna dye, which had turned her once black hair a sort of puke brown colour with visible pads of horsehair to plump out her hairstyle. Her topknot was some four decades out of style and wobbled dangerously as the bed creaked with her weight. She narrowly missed setting herself alight on the candle above her head.

‘Gershwin!’ Mary snapped, pointing out of the door, “he tried to use me again-!”

“Provided he paid,” Del replied succinctly, “which ‘e prolly did not knowing ‘im, you should not mind. Money is thin on the ground these days-”

“You always make me serve ‘im!” Her child shouted, “Never Annie! What are yer up to? Yer want to tempt ‘im ter cough up ‘is money or ‘ave ‘im propose so yer can pinch ‘is measly-?”

“I don’t want a marriage,” the woman answered, frowning, “but some civility would be nice.”

She leant over and picked up an empty tankard from the floor, adding, “Don’t you give me that look, girl! You’re prettier than yer sister-look ‘ow fash’nably slim you are! Annie is a capon compared to you, and men don’t like that, which you know full well. Yer a better sign ter ‘em than yer sister ever would be, an’ that’s what I need-”

Mary took the tankard that was held up to her and wondered what her mother meant by her being prettier than Anne. For sure, her sister was short and fat with unattractive gold skin and black hair like straw, but she herself was hardly any better.

She had blotchy skin and her hair straggled a little. It was the colour of bad ink and she had a wonky bottom lip. Her figure was, admittedly, skinny, but she was flat-chested and her mother often called her ‘unprepossessing’, which made Mary sound, she thought, like a badly bred horse. The only remotely fetching thing about her was her eyes; they were large and such a shade grey that one sailor with whom she had been half-heartedly flirting had remarked that they reminded him strongly of the sea in a squall. She had unnerved the poor fellow so much that he had backed up quickly, tripped over a chair and nearly took it away with him, entangled as it was in his long legs.

“Besides,” her mother’s voice broke in, “Gershwin would never marry you. He’s middle class; they marry for money and property, not drunken lust!”

“That’s comforting,” Mary grumbled, feeling somewhat demeaned. She only perked up again when she remembered something.

“Sally and Nancy never came in for work today,” she told her mother, who had retrieved her walking stick and was attempting to jab it into the floorboards for support, “they left a whole pile of dirty dishes in the tub-”

“I laid them off.’ Del butted in shortly, “They got three weeks pay each last night. I sent them home whilst you were out with Anne.’

Mary stared at her.

“You-” she mouthed, “You sent them home? But we need them-!”

“No we don’t-not with you around,” her mother replied, smiling slightly, “Nancy’s about to marry ‘er suitor an’ ‘e’s found Sally maid’s work with a friend or relative,” she paused, “they pay better, that bitch told me smugly.”

She fished around in her haphazard bedding for something before pulling out a moleskin bag that she threw at her youngest child.

“You’d better make a start on those dishes before the stew crusts on ‘em,” Del continued, “I swear that Betty uses hoof glue for the stock! And whilst you’re at it,” she jerked her head at the purse of money, “tell ‘er that’s for the baby. She can stay overnight if she wants, but I want her out by tomorrow noon!’

Sensing defeat, Mary sighed and bowed her head dutifully. She heard the bed creak once more as her mother snuggled down comfortably; glancing up, she saw the gluttonous bawd wave for her leave, every bit as imperious as a high-born lady.

Taking the hint, the brunette left. She clambered down through the dark until she reached the ground floor again, where Betty came bustling out of the yard with Anne leaning on her. It was almost comic to see them, but handing the tankard to Jenny and pocketing the money, she helped the tiny maid haul the pregnant woman all the way up to the attic.

“Here,” she said, once Anne was put to bed, “for the baby.”

Betty gave her a snooty, if surprised, look, but took the purse anyway and went to bed. She left Mary to go back to the kitchen, where she sent Jenny away against her will; dishpan hands did not befit a working whore.

Nobody else in the house came to help Mary. There were three whores, including Jenny, and there had been three maids other than Mary herself, but with Betty’s dismissal, there was only her left to do the cleaning and washing. She had to fetch water from the cistern by herself and then stand alone in the gloom with the stubbiest candle left out for light. The pewter and wood and leather keep her company, as she scrubbed and scrubbed them all until the moon hung high in the indigo night sky.