Chapter 4 #2
No, it wasn’t fraternal care she wanted from Joseph Illingworth.
Inez flounced away from his house in high dudgeon every time—every time—because her pride couldn’t tolerate that he did not see her as a woman.
And why not? Other men found her alluring.
They praised her large, dark eyes, her graceful bearing, the generous curves of hips and bosom that filled out the fashions of the day.
She’d been longed for. Desired. Many a man offered a quick tumble, if not an enduring devotion.
So what was wrong in the head with Joseph Illingworth that he had not once gazed at her with open appreciation, if not outright lust in his eyes?
Inez held her head high as she wove up Threadneedle Street, past the imposing temple that served as the Bank of England, and along Bishopgate Street, where the medieval gate had been demolished, the city having long outgrown its ancient footprint.
She passed the fields surrounding Devonshire Square and turned from Petticoat Lane, the clothing market, into the smaller Smock Alley, sure of herself now and stepping confidently among the flow of traffic, carters and porters and chairmen and so very many women like her, women in search of employment to keep body and soul together.
There were so many beggars, children lacking eyes or limbs, soldiers and sailors too worn and broken for service, old women who had lost the families who ought to have given them shelter.
Inez put a hand over her apron, guarding against pickpockets, and slid her eyes away.
She’d help if she were able, but right now, she was a beggar herself. And Joseph Illingworth had made her so.
She, Inez da Costa Shirodkar, reduced to begging.
Better that than stealing, of course. Less dangerous.
She turned down the small outlet known to locals and denizens as Dark Lane, a narrow tunnel of tall houses that gradually opened into a sort of courtyard, not quite square.
This gathering space had many names. The Abbey.
The School. Gropecunt Alley, given the services that drew most of the visiting men.
Inez had made a solemn vow to her mother on her deathbed that she would never trade her body for coin, and here she was, seeking lodging from whores.
A fountain stood in one corner of the dirt-packed square, the source of clean water for the inhabitants of Dark Lane and a holdover from when this area had been part of the ancient St. Mary Hospital, or Spital, as it was called, because the British were too lazy to pronounce all of their words.
The area had become prosperous from the clothing trade, especially when the Huguenot weavers took up residence nearby and, free of the guild restrictions that prevailed in the confines of the city, added silk to the English costume of cotton, worsted, and wool.
Inez sat on the lip of the fountain and touched her finger to the water, piped from a cistern some distance away and kept a closely guarded secret.
She would take up weaving if she had any talent at it, or the slightest skill.
But she found her mind wandered too easily at the repetitive tasks, and then she dropped stitches or lost the thread of warp and weft, and her results were crooked and uneven.
Her one skill was looking after people, and she had a bit of her mother’s talent at baking, when she was allowed to work in peace.
She was a social creature, liked being around people, and wasn’t suited to employment that left her for long stretches alone.
One reason she kept returning to the little house in George Court.
There was always someone coming in and out of the Illingworth premises, if not pupils or friends of Joseph’s then the servants’ friends, the neighbors, and the neighbors’ friends.
Miss Amaranthe, when she lived there, had been known never to turn away someone in distress.
One day, three children of a duke showed up at her door, and thus was her fortune made.
But the house in George Court held Joseph Illingworth, and Inez was done hanging her hopes, and her heart, on foolish men.
So she came here, the one other place that had never turned her away, a place where women leaned on one another as they all did their best to survive in the world.
Across the square towered a black mulberry tree, said to have been planted at the time of King James.
A brace of girls sat in the shade, with aprons and tuckers over their wrapping gowns, one reading from a book as another wrote on a slate.
A kitchen maid walked through with a bucket of kitchen slops to feed the chickens kept in the mews, which sat behind the building they called the Temple.
Most of the girls inside this old, medieval-looking building would still be abed, resting after the business of the night.
A chambermaid with mop and bucket emerged from the side door and walked across the square to knock at the kitchen entrance of the building they called the Factory, where the seamstresses, who slept at night, would be toiling by the light of day.
Inez wondered who might remain who knew her here.
Many residents of Dark Lane came and went, taking shelter in this secret courtyard as circumstances demanded, then moving on and upward as chance allowed.
One woman could be depended on, and that was Mother.
While her girls slept, Mother would observe her usual ritual: a Spartan breakfast, a careful accounting of the previous day’s income concluding with an update to the household ledgers, then the task of dressing and preparing for her morning calls.
Soon enough a woman in a sober silk robe stepped from the front door of the Temple.
With her tasseled shawl, a sheer apron pinned to her bodice, her jaunty hat, and pattens on her shoes, she could be anyone from a tradesman’s wife to the Queen.
Indeed she was a queen, at least in this domain, and Inez scrambled to her feet to join her much like the little maid jogging at the woman’s heels.
“Mother Vesta,” Inez said, using her title.
Very few in Dark Lane used their names. The madame who oversaw the girls nicknamed the Vestals was referred to by the name of the Roman goddess of hearth and family, and most of the others who came to live in Dark Lane set aside their old identities for new.
“Inanna,” Mother said, regarding Inez with surprise. Inanna was the name of some powerful and ancient goddess of love, war, and fertility. Not an apt name, since Inez had none of those things in her life. She had spinsterhood, solitude, and deceit.
“What brings you back to us, m’dear? A visit to show off your good fortune? Someone is keeping you quite fine.”
“I am looking for work, Mother,” Inez said meekly. “Again.”
Mother looked her up and down, taking in the changes Inez had seen in her own small hand mirror.
A new fullness to her cheeks and a sparkle in her eye when she was well-fed and happy.
She’d lost the ragged, hunted look she’d been wearing the last time she returned to George Court, and in the weeks since Joseph’s return from his Grand Tour, she’d become as sleek and contented as a well-fed lap cat.
Mother’s darkened eyebrows rose in interest. “As a Vestal?”
Inez pleated the sides of her apron with her fingers. “I’d hoped as a housekeeper. Or a nurse to the youngers. I would work in the Factory. Or teach in the school?”
“Sure and you’d earn more coin in the Temple,” Mother said.
Inez shook her head. Dark Lane was more than just the service referred to by its patrons and workers as the Vestal Temple.
The Dorter, the old house where the medieval nuns had lived, now sheltered women who hailed from all strata of society and needed a place of safety before they could brave the wide world.
Orphans, mostly girls, were taught at the school, if teachers could be found, then apprenticed to trades.
No one hungry was turned away, and most all of it was paid for by the work of the Vestals and the canny management of Mother Vesta.
Not for the first time, Inez wondered what had brought a woman of clear breeding and likely a gentlewoman’s status to be the madame of a brothel tucked into a corner of Spitalfields and kept a secret from the world, as much as could be.
Inez didn’t know all the dialects of England, not like she could listen to Portuguese and know exactly where a speaker was from, but she thought Mother Vesta might have come from the north.
Mother nodded toward the building behind her, once part of the old medieval hospital, then redone as a rich merchant’s house, now home to the kind of activities that would have had the poor nuns crossing themselves and saying prayers for their souls.
“I’ve a tom who likes the ones he thinks is exotic.
We can tell him you’re Spanish. Or Chinese. ”
“Portuguese,” Inez said, slightly offended. Her father was from Goa, a place many English had heard of but couldn’t locate on a map. Inez knew where it was, and her father’s island home was still a turn of the world away from the reaches of the Far Eastern Orient.
Mother waved a hand to invite Inez to walk her survey of the square with her. “He won’t know. Whisper to him in whatever language he likes, swat him on the arse with a stick, and he’ll give you an armload of guineas. He’s one of those,” she said with a knowing nod.
Inez was aware that the Vestals catered to all manner of tastes, and the stranger the request, the more the man paid. She had seen the same with her mother.