Marsh, who keeps a nunnery where the vows ain’t so strict, if you know what I mean, sir. Just ask one of those other bunters if you want to find the place.”
The Fleet Alley was an unsavoury sort of place, though I knew it well enough from the time when I had read for the Bar. As well as being the location for many marriage houses where couples went that thought to avoid paying as much as a guinea’s tax for the privilege of getting married in a church, the Fleet was a popular area with prostitutes, especially at night, when the trade in illegal marriages dropped off a bit. Even as I walked up the alley, severaljades drew open their dresses most brazenly and, showing me their cunny parts, invited me to partake of their frowzy-smelling flesh. I have seldom cared for a threepenny upright, not even when money was scarce, for thissort of buttock often works with at wang to rob you when you are engaged with cock in cunny, so to speak. But I jested with these squirrels awhile until one of them directed me along the cobbled alley where, next to a most boisterous tavern, was the jettied frame of a house whose double-height windows, separated by friezes embellished with a number of indecent grotesques, lit up the whole alley like a giant lantern.
I was divided in my own mind as to whether or not I should go in; but finally I decided that it was safer in than out and knocked upon the door, in which, after a moment or two, a lattice opened to reveal a woman who asked me my business. This was a common enough precaution in London. At that time it was not so very long since a Shrove Tuesday riot when some of London’s apprentices had pulled down a bawdy house with ropes, and most cruelly beaten the jilts that poured out of it like rats. But I knew the code well enough. Better than I could have described the importance of a judgement in any case at law.
“I hear you admit of very few,” I said, with no small humility, for some of these pussies do think most highly of themselves and the power they possess between their legs. “But I am a gentleman and can present expense in advance should you wish.” And so saying I held up my purse and jangled my coins with much intent.
“Five shillings,” said the whore. “To do what you would.”
I handed over my ounce and waited for the jilt to draw the bolts. After a moment or two the door opened and I was admitted to a small hall by Mrs. Marsh herself who, though quite presentable, was, like many of her kind, the strangest woman in her conversation. Helping me off with my cloak—which she called a toga—and taking my hat —which she called my calm—she then pointed to my sword.
“You had better leave the tail as well,” she said. “And the brace of wedges,” she added, meaning my two pistols. “Here, have you come for a fuck or a fight?”
Having assured her that my intentions were strictly amorous, I enquired of her as to whether my friend Major Mornay was already in the house.
“If you mean that officer of Guards, yes. Only we call him Monsieur Vogueavant.”
“Why? Is he so much in the front of fashion?”
“No, it’s on account of his little partiality,” said Mrs. Marsh.
“I confess I did not know he had one,” said I.
“Then you don’t know much about your friend,” she said.
“In England,” said I, “I believe that is how one remains friends with someone.”
“True,” she admitted, with a smile.
I followed her through to the parlour, where all sorts of girls sat and lay around in various stages of undress. Mrs. Marsh offered me a chair and fetched me a glass of ale. But looking around the room I could not see the Major and asked her where he might be.
“Upstairs, I’ll warrant,” she said. “See anything you fancy, dear?”
Even as she spoke, a servant came into the parlour carrying a large silver plate which he placed upon the table, and a young girl, having made herself naked, lay upon it and struck indecent postures for my amusement. It is certain that life has some strange tricks up its sleeve to play upon us for our general confoundment. If there be such a thing as the devil, he knows how to make sport of our inmost thoughts and feelings. For it could hardly be ignored that the girl who struck these wicked postures, and showed me her bumhole and the inside of her cunny, was like the very twin of Miss Barton, and I was repelled and fascinated by the prospect of her nakedness. This was the same sweet girl that I loved; and yet it was not. Could I ever look upon Miss Barton again and not remember this brazen whore that touched her own bubbies and rubbed her cunny parts so lasciviously? But things were about to become yet more vexatious, for, seeing my interest in the girl that postured, and thinking that by affording me the liberty to do what I wanted with her she might get me out of her house all the more quickly, Mrs. Marsh took the girl by the hand and raised her up from the silver platter and brought us both upstairs, where she left us alone in a bedchamber.
The girl, who told me her name was Deborah, was most lovely and, drawing back the bedclothes, invited me to lie with her; but I had no courage to meddle with her, for fear of her not being wholesome, until she sold me a length of sheep’s intestine with which I could sheath my manly parts, whereupon I fucked her. It was most ignoble of me, but all the time I stayed mounted upon her and gazed upon her face, which demonstrated much enjoyment, I told myself that this was indeed Miss Barton and that I was taking my carnal pleasure of her flesh. So that when at last I ejaculated within her, it felt like the best I had ever had, and I shuddered all down my shanks like some horrid dog, before collapsing upon her breast in the manner of one shot through the heart.
For a moment the whim of doing it thus amused me greatly.
“Want to go again, dear?” asked Deborah.
“No,” I said. “Not yet.”
And then the sadness came. Of course, it is normal for a man to feel this way. But this was a sadness like no other I had ever felt, for I sensed that I had somehow tarnished the bright perfection that was the regard I had for Miss Barton. And I felt the remorse of it most acutely. So that when I heard a man cry out in pain, I almost thought the sound came from within my own breast. It was Deborah’s laughter that persuaded me the sound had come from somewhere else; and when I heard the man cry out again, this time he seemed to have been prompted by another, sharper report.
“Why does that man cry out?” I asked.
“Oh, that’s just Monsieur Vogueavant,” said Deborah, trying to coax my cock to crow again. “Vogueavant’s French for ‘stroke.’”
“I had quite forgotten him,” I confessed.
“And he is beaten with a whip.”
“A whip? Good Lord, where is there pleasure in that?”
“Not so as you would notice. I’ve beaten him myself upon occasion. But I care not for it. It’s warm work. Warmer than this. For Monsieur Vogueavant has a tolerance of pain like no other man I have ever met. And one must lay on hard to please him. The English perversion, they calls it, but Monsieur Vogueavant learned his taste as a galley slave on a French ship. His back tells the story well enough, for I never saw the like.”
Once again I heard Mornay cry out in response to the sting of the whip.
“And the Major has himself beaten in order that he should recollect his experiences? How monstrous.”
“I believe that it is more confused than that. He himself told me that he is beaten so that he will never forget his hatred of the French, and of Roman Catholics in particular.”
I was properly confounded by this information, which at least served to take my mind off the insult I had privately done to Miss Barton, and would have said more about the disgusting things men will have done to them in pursuit of pleasure, yet I feared Deborah’s abusing me for a hypocrite and so I kept silent. Which was more than she did, for momentarily she was troubled with some wind in her cunny parts, and I was moved by her farts to take my leave of her bed.
I had just started to piss in her pot, which be another good precaution against the clap, when I heard Mornay’s door open, followed by the sound of his boots stamping downstairs; and I made haste to dress and go after him.
“Why do you rush so?” asked Miss Barton’s facsimile.
“Because he does not know that I am here. And I know not where he goes now.”
“Oh, I can tell you that,” said Deborah. “He goes over the water to the Dutchman’s house in Lambeth Marshes.”
“To do what, pray?”
“It ain’t to have his fortune told by gypsies. It’s a wicked place he goes. What a man with money cannot obtain there, let him not search for it anywhere else in this world of ours. He wanted to take me there once. Offered me a guinea to go with another woman, he said. Well, I don’t mind that so much. It’s safer than going with a man.
