‘I had not thought any body would know you,’ says Mr Trevithick, and he pulls the blind down.
‘If you know me, they know me,’ she snaps. ‘Besides, any woman they see escorted to the pillory, they will draw their own conclusions. Hypocrites!’ she exclaims. ‘Who let their own daughters starve almost to death, or put them in cruel marriages, or slake their lust upon them most unnaturally. To think I do any worse by them. ’Tis an insult! The girls that come to me – and, mark me, their own parents bring them often enough – suffer worse abuses in their own homes than they ever will with me.’
‘Now, but not all parents are bad parents! You must understand their outrage …’
A muted thump without; somebody has brought their fist upon the window, but provoked more by opportunity than strong principle. The groom calls, ‘Hi, no more of that! My horses will take fright.’ And there are apologies, diminishing as the vehicle moves onward. Mrs Chappell groans.
‘At moments such as this I feel my years,’ she says. ‘Had I the money I’d retire tomorrow.’
Mr Trevithick laughs. ‘I think you’ve enough, dear lady!’
‘Enough for today. One can never be certain of the future – and who have I to depend on but my own self?’ The road widens and the carriage passes beneath the blind eyes of some dead king, mounted for ever on his horse. A great hammering on the body of the carriage makes them both leap from their skins. ‘Heavens! How dare they!’
Mr Trevithick raises the blind an inch and, having peeped out, immediately reels back.
‘What is it?’
He mops his brow. ‘There are a great many of them out there,’ he says faintly. The whisper has spread that a monstrous bawd has been apprehended, aye, that squelch-gutted sow who in her youth turned the heads of half of London and who, in her vile dotage, pimps the virginity of decent girls to fill her own coffers. Not only that, but this superannuated harridan, no good now for rutting or for childbearing and thus superfluous to society, has the sympathetic ear of politicians (and even more sensitive parts of them besides), and an establishment where gadabout princes fritter away the allowances paid from the pocket of John Bull himself.
‘Well, what’s to be done?’
‘Nothing, madam, nothing – they will tire, I am sure.’
‘A disproportionate response,’ says Mrs Chappell. ‘As if there were a man among them who had not paid for it once in his life, or a woman who has not taken money.’
But a thundering breaks out on either side of the carriage, and all about it, and it shudders and rocks this way until it is fairly fit to overbalance. Men’s hands slam against the window glass, and their voices are loud and harsh: ‘Bitch! Bitch! We know what you are.’
‘Can we not drive on?’ Mrs Chappell has drawn her manacled hands up to her face, clinging at her shawl.
‘We are blocked in,’ he says. ‘There is nowhere to go.’ But because he is more heroic, or less wise, than he looks, he opens his door and leans forth. ‘Gentlemen!’ he cries. ‘Gentlemen, please! I see that you are angry.’
‘Give us the woman!’ shouts one man.
‘Give us the bawd! She wants setting to rights.’
‘Now, gentlemen, I – I – I – do you see that she is being at this very moment brought to justice? Get back – get back – let us pass—’
But a great howling and jeering and booing rises up. The men’s faces are purple with rage, and they are men of every sort – not only toothless and scabbed beggars but journeymen in decent clean shirts, and clerks, and fathers with their children on their shoulders, shaking their fists and shrieking along. ‘No justice! A fine – a moment’s glimpse on the pillory – what’s that to her?’
‘You protect her!’
‘Who protects our daughters?’
‘Please! I must assure you—’
‘Let’s hear no more of this,’ says a young man standing nearest, and he knocks Mr Trevithick down into the dirt. Then all the mob crushes about the open door of the carriage, a hydra of snarling spitting yellow-teethed faces that burst in upon Mrs Chappell, and their hands seize upon her.
At first she does not move much, for her great weight keeps her pinned to the seat. Merely, as they drag at her, her clothes are superficially rent. ‘Off!’ She slaps at their hands. ‘Begone!’ But first their force is such that she topples sideways onto the seat, and then it is a small matter of seizing at her wherever she can be seized – her elbow, her upper arm, in the finger-hold ribs of her stays – and although she struggles, she is hauled out into the street.
She falls immediately to her knees, her hand palm down in the warm shit of some lately herded creature; struggling to her feet she cannot put weight on the swollen one; she grimaces but does not make a sound. There are razor blades in her ankle, she feels, pins riven deep into the joint of her toe, and every part of her body has men’s hands on it, who shove and drag and pinch.
‘To the pillory with this fat bitch,’ somebody cries, and it is with their cruel assistance that she rises; she stumps and totters like a captured bear, swinging her head first this way, then that. ‘Move!’ and somebody slaps her about the head. ‘Faster!’ but her thighs obstruct one another, her lungs burn, she cannot breathe. Somebody boxes her ears, and off comes her wig, to the roar of the crowd. Her scalp gleams through meagre wisps of grey hair.
‘Have mercy,’ she mumbles, ‘have pity. I have done nothing.’
But they are a great glee of noise; they pummel and shove her off the road and into the square. More and more are following now, women too, with their babies on their breasts, cheering and whooping.
‘We are taking her to the pillory! Come, come, see her punishment.’ A rotten plum is flung; it bursts upon her temple into a tawny sludge, and its vinegared juice drips down into her eye.
Somewhere far away Mr Trevithick is shouting, ‘No, no! I demand you cease this at once!’ but it is to no avail. The first thing being flung signals for a veritable hail of objects: apples clout her, an egg explodes into shards upon her shoulder; there are pebbles, and her blood is gummed upon her. A flower-girl’s rush basket pounds her temple; it smells of violets but sends her staggering, and she is afraid. She cannot control the momentum of her own feet; her limbs untrained in flight are heavy and weak, and will not do as she bids them. All about her is a rage of laughter, and darkness intrudes on the corners of her vision; there are white sparks dancing before her eyes; her chest is rent by sawing breaths which seem to bring her no air at all. And her foot, oh, her foot, the fire in it is white hot, and it will find no purchase and support none of her weight. She stumbles, slips, is face down, eye to eye with the toes of many shoes. She has ceased to think, only to do; her blood is composed of pure panic.
But being old, and fat, and sick, she moves slowly, like a snail when it is trapped by a child, which casts its head about stupidly to taste the air or see an escape, and rears its heavy body up. She rises from her knees, hands out, groping, but somebody kicks her in the flank and she falls down again, slack cheek grating in the dirt. By some miracle of effort she rises again, to her feet this time, and totters blindly through the crowd, as if there were any escape to be found.