The Betrayal by Mary Hooper Read Free Book Online Page B

rapscallion!’ she roared. ‘Weren’t you born with any sense? How are we supposed to get in?’
    Whistling, careless, he removed the boxes and Mistress Midge produced a key which opened the front door. Inside we found a dusty, cobwebby hall. This gave way to rooms which, although fair-sized, were piled high with empty crates, husks of corn and rotting cabbages. These stank abysmally, causing us both to hold our noses. My heart sank. It was a long way from how I’d envisaged living in London.
    ‘Dr Dee told me that the house had once been home to a family who bought and sold vegetables,’ Mistress Midge said. She nodded sagely. ‘And here’s what they did with those stuffs they couldn’t sell …’
    There were smaller rooms at the back of the house, one of these a kitchen with a range, oven and turning spit. Outside was a courtyard shared between the row of houses, a soakaway for the emptying of chamber pots, a well and a privy to be shared with the neighbours. In all the rooms, upstairs and down, broken furniture, gnarled, stinking vegetables or rubbish lay on the floor. The walls were so damp that mildew and fungi grew on them and the windows, if not broken, were grimy. To top it all the husky smell of mouse hung in the air.
    Mistress Midge observed these rooms, taking a horrified breath in each until finally she was as puffed up as a pigeon.
    ‘Good God alive!’ she finally exploded. ‘What are we supposed to do with this filthy piggery? Does he really think we can turn this hole into a place a lady would want to live? What if Her Grace came to visit, as she did in Mortlake?’
    ‘Perhaps we won’t find it so bad once we start work,’ I said lamely.
    ‘Not so bad! It’ll be worse, you mark my words! This is a rat hole, a kennel, a fly-bitten pigsty of a place!’
    Shouting and muttering by turn, she paid the carter and then the three of us set about clearing the fireplaceso that we could light a fire and warm ourselves. At least we could do that, I thought, for there was rubbish aplenty to burn. And in the morning, perhaps, things would look better.



Chapter Six

    Of course, things did not look better, for the day dawned mild and clear and the bright morning sunshine streaming into the rooms showed up the squalor even more. The three of us spent several hours clearing two rooms, piling up the few things that were worth saving (a chair, an oak chest, some bedsteads with old straw mattresses and a few blankets) and putting all the rest of the rubbish in the yard at the back ready to burn. Sonny worked very hard, for of course he was hoping to make himself so invaluable to us that we’d keep him. Come the afternoon, however (finding Mistress Midge’s continual muttering and grousing most wearying), I offered to go out for provisions and take Sonny back to Christ’s Hospital at the same time.
    ‘Oh, no, Missus!’ he cried, looking very anguished.
    I shot him a sympathetic smile, for I own I felt sorryfor the little lad. I wished that he didn’t have to be returned, but Mistress Gove’s words had hit hard and we were uneasy in our minds about having him there if it meant we were to fall foul of the law.
    We tidied him as best we could and, though he would not suffer his face to be washed, I brushed off an amount of dust that had accumulated on his black funeral clothes and made him polish his shoes. Before we set off he had a large wedge of pie that had been left over from our tavern meal of the night before, and Mistress Midge also wrapped up a large piece of cheese for him to take.
    Asked where the foundlings’ home was situated, Sonny answered in a gloomy voice that it was at the old Greyfriars Monastery in Newgate Street. ‘But if you take me back I’ll only run away again,’ he added.
    ‘And where would you be, then?’ I asked. ‘Out on the streets with no shelter and no one to feed you.’
    ‘I’d fend for meself all right. I’d hold horses for gents or card wool. I’d beg on the