“There. It is done,” said Kat finally.
And it is true that I did find peace of a kind. In the first place Fricker could now do me no harm. And in the second place it drew a line under the whorehouse murder. For though he had indeed set the fire which burned the house and the old bawd in it, neither Fricker nor anyone else knew that she was already as good as dead.
But Kat and I knew, for I had tied her up and Kat had beat her with the poker.
PART ONE
‘H’
1
I was always H. As a child I never wondered whether I was once a Hannah, a Henrietta, a Hephzibah or anything else – H was my proper name as far as I was concerned and in any case I was not encouraged to ask questions. I was born in 1650, the youngest of eight children all told. The first two children, like our mother, survived only in family prayers; the six living were all girls.
As soon as my oldest sisters were of an age, Father was anxious to see them off his hands, and they were equally anxious to escape the parsonage. Generally, Father devoted all his energies to writing his sermons, but a frenzy would descend on the household whenever a bachelor – of any age or disposition – had the ill luck to cross his path. Clarissa and Diana were engaged and married with such dispatch that Diana’s husband always claimed he knocked on the door only to borrow a book and came away with a wife.
So that left four: Evelyn, the twins, Grace and Frances, and me. I now see that Evelyn was spared marriage because we three were too young to be left with our father only. And Evelyn had always been a little mother to me. It was Evelyn I shared a bed with and who sat beside me through all the illnesses which beset childhood. She was, as you shall learn, the best of sisters.
I could never know enough about my mother. Evelyn would hold me on her lap and stroke my hair and feed me the scraps I hungered for: how good and kind she was, and how she would have loved me, had she lived. I clung to these thoughts as my father and grown-up sisters had a particular coldness reserved only for me, which I understood arose from a sense that my arrival into the world was a very poor trade for Mother’s death.
Indeed, I was a naughty child. One of my earliest memories was of when I was very small and our cat, Tibbs, had kittens. Being left to my own devices, I decided to bathe the newborns as I had seen neighbours in their cottages bathing their babies. Our cook had a great ladle, which I fetched from the kitchen, and filling a basin with water (with great difficulty – I remember little of the incident but the trouble I had carrying the basin once it was full), I put each kitten in the ladle and dunked it in the water until, as I thought, it was clean enough; but actually, as one of my sisters observed, until it was dead enough.
I was upset that the pretty kittens had become still and cold, and Tibbs was howling her head off, but my father, when he was summoned, only kicked Tibbs out of the way and scolded me for spilling water on the carpet, swept up the kittens and cast them on the dung heap. He called me “a wicked, unnatural child”, and sent me to my room. But Tibbs slept on my bed that night and purred. I could not understand it at all.
Another event I clearly recall, as though it were yesterday, because of its awful consequence, is my first sight of plays and playing, and it is by this detail that I know it was after the year 1660 and the return of the King. I had learned that a fair was coming to Harlow and I asked and asked and asked Evelyn to take me. She said no, I should stay at home with my twin sisters as she had things to manage as Father was away from home. But I had no mind to this and kept on. When Grace added her voice to mine Evelyn capitulated and we three left Frances climbing trees and set off for Harlow Fair.
I had never seen anything like a fair, I think, in my life. I straightway felt I was not dressed finely enough (though I had nothing fine, had I thought of it) as everyone seemed to be putting their best foot forward: bonnets fluttered with new ribbons, and Sunday bests were given a weekday outing. I saw some Morris dancers and some bell-ringers and we pushed our way through a crowd to discover they were all watching a cockfight, which I did not think nice entertainment, but which Grace affirmed was “better than Morris dancing, and more humane”.
Then there was a tent of curiosities, in which, a man outside cried, there were “abundance of strange and fearfully deformed creatures”, including a dwarf, a mermaid and a human pincushion. I was not suffered to see these wonders, as Evelyn said she did not want to be up all night with me having nightmares. I contented myself with watching the people go in and out, hoping to catch a glimpse of a monster through the curtain.
Evelyn showed me the men standing in line advertising for work.
“See, he carries a crook,” she said. “He does that so everyone may know he is a shepherd, and if they want someone to look after sheep, they may find him. See, he carries a trowel; if someone wants a wall built, they can find him to do it. And he is a carter, for he carries a whip.” And so on she went down the row of men, now making me guess each man’s business by his sign, and as usual I admired her for her great learning in these matters, for Evelyn was not only kind but clever.
At the fair I noticed some young ladies in very fine clothes, but something in their demeanour caused me to look twice. They were wearing fine clothes but did not seem as I had seen fine ladies to behave. They were laughing and talking and looking quite boldly into the faces of the men who walked by, and sometimes called out to them, while some of the men talked back to them as they would not to fine ladies.
“And who are those women?” I asked. “What do they sell?” I could not make out any sign like a crook or a trowel. Evelyn grabbed hold of me more roughly than I was used to and pulled me away.
I think she would have pulled me all the way home except that we came to a troupe of players. I begged to be allowed to stay and watch what was occurring, but Grace wanted to look at some silks a pedlar was selling. Evelyn said Father would not approve of us watching a play, and Grace said Father would not approve of us being at a fair, so in for a penny, in for a pound, and why shouldn’t H have a little liberty now and then? So I was allowed to watch. And my sisters soon forgot the pedlar and the silks and they watched too.
The players were telling an old story called The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare. It was about a maid called Katharina who was proud and strong-willed, shouting and carrying on that she would not marry this man called Petruchio who was also proud and strong-willed and shouting. It was most amusing and we all laughed a good deal, but when it was over Evelyn noticed we had lost Grace and was looking about for her. During the play, Grace had had eyes only for Petruchio, as if she thought he were a real person. “He is so fine! So manly!” she exclaimed. “I would have him for a husband!” Grace had never had much wit about her and I had heard my father say she was gormless, and I remember wondering what gorm was, and why Grace had none. And now she had disappeared.
Evelyn went looking for her among the people watching, but I thought she might have gone to look at Petruchio again, so went behind the stage. You may imagine my surprise when I saw Katharina standing by a tree, her skirts lifted up, passing water like any man. Indeed, she was a man, of course. When he turned and saw me, he noted my amazement and laughed. I said I was looking for my sister and he helped me find Grace, who was indeed talking to Petruchio. Before they saw me, I noticed the tips of their fingers were twined together, as I had seen Diana and her husband do before they were married. My sister looked very happy and her face was all red, also like Diana.