“I was born here.”
“And Griffin?”
“He was born in London. When his father died, Mama married my father. He was from here but had been working in the shipyards in Greenwich. There was too much sickness in London so they came back here and I was born. My granddad had been a porter, taking the cargo between the merchants and the harbour. By the time he died, he was bent double like a cartwheel. Even still, my father became a porter too, but the harbours were quieter then. Soon there was little for him to do. He could claim any goods he found in the street, but where there’s no money, there’s nothing to take.”
“What did he do?” I asked.
“He went back to London.”
“Was that better?”
Gina shrugged. “We don’t know. We never heard from him again. He left no money for us and Mama couldn’t marry anyone else because we had no word that my father was dead.”
“Where’s your mama now?” I asked.
“In the cemetery.” She took my arm again, gripping it tighter than before.
We walked past the Watergate, the way to the main wharf, and then back along English Street.
“There’s one last place to look,” Griffin said.
Gina pulled me closer to her. “We don’t have to.”
We had arrived by the big stone gate that was the main entrance to Southampton. I now know that it was called the Bargate. I hadn’t noticed the pillories before, perhaps because they had been empty. Of course, it wasn’t the first time I’d ever seen pillories. No one can live in Southwark and not meet someone who’d spent time in them.
Today it was a woman in them. A small crowd had gathered around her, laughing and shouting insults. She was perhaps the same age as my mother. Her bonnet had been lost and her hair was loose and wild about her neck. Then I saw it. Of course, I knew that it happened, and I must have seen it before, but I’d always looked away without thinking. This time I could clearly see that the woman’s ear had been nailed to the pillory post. I’d seen men and women in Southwark who were missing an ear, sometimes two. They lost their whole ear when the sheriff didn’t want to waste time unpicking the nail so used a sword to free them instead. A piece of paper was stuck to her forehead. This would have told me her crime – if I’d known how to read it.
An apple core hit her cheek. The woman’s eyes swivelled to seek out who had thrown it. She opened her mouth and let out a string of blasphemy so strong that my mouth dropped open in shock.
Griffin was behind me. He bent low to make sure I didn’t miss his words.
“Danger is everywhere, Eve. I want you to know that.”
A man close to the prisoner hurled the dregs from his tankard. The slops hit the cobbles just in front of her, and a little splashed up on to her hem. Her dress was torn and stained. One of her feet was wrapped in wool, the other jammed into a tight leather pump that sagged at the seams.
“She’s a thief,” Griffin said. “And a beggar. The councillors here are quite lenient and the crowd is tame. Perhaps they know her. They are harsher to strangers. I’ve heard that they gather the dung and the slops left over from the fish market, then search their pantries for rotting cheese and meat. They bring the stinking mess to the square, ready for the spectacle.”
I shivered. The same was true in London. Stones were forbidden, but they were hidden in rotting food and rags.
I turned to look him in the eye. “Mama and I are not beggars. We haven’t done anything wrong. There’s no reason for us to be in the pillories.”
“Is that so? What do the townspeople know of you, Eve? What do you think they will believe about you? You’re foreigners.”
“I know we’re foreigners,” I said. “But we’re lodging with Widow Primmer. We’re not begging or sleeping on the streets. She can vouch for us.”
“You know well that there are many reasons why women end up in the pillories. If you’ve committed a crime, even Widow Primmer can’t save you.”
He nodded his head towards the pillories. I didn’t want to look at them again.
“Sometimes it’s a mother who has a child without a husband,” he said.
Mama had a husband. She told me about him. He was called Joseph Cartwright and she met him soon after arriving in London. He died when I was a baby and was buried in a pauper’s grave with no possessions to bequeath to her.
“Do you and your mother attend church, Eve?”
“Church?”
Some Sundays we attended, some we did not. Mama slept through the sermon and didn’t know the words to the hymns.
“There’s a prison below the Bargate,” Griffin said. “It’s where they keep the people who don’t attend and those who stick to the old faith. Perhaps the townsfolk will suspect that your mother still takes mass as a Catholic. Can you prove that she doesn’t?”
The woman had stopped shouting. Her eyes drooped like she was trying to stop herself falling asleep. Her head jerked a little. If she slumped forward, she would lose her ear.
“I have to return home,” I said.
I freed my arm from Gina’s and tried to push past Griffin. He held my shoulder.
“There’s one last thing you should know.”
“Don’t!” Gina shouted.
“I would be doing Eve a disservice if I didn’t warn her, Gina.” His pale-grey eyes reminded me of ashes. “There’s a special whipping post for flogging witches.”
“My mother is not a witch!”
“I’m not saying that she is, but the townspeople will be watching. Claire has been the same way for many years. If she improves … if she worsens … that would be witchcraft.”
“My mother is not a witch!”
“There were two cats at your mother’s door today—”
“That does not make her a witch!” My voice was louder.
“Who knows what the townspeople
