Chapter 3

At first Aphra merely provided the flimsy blossoms decorating what Penitence saw as her life, a plant whose centre was rotten. If, in the course of their games, she forgot for a few minutes that she had pleasured and would have to go on pleasuring George or be thrown back into Flap Alley, some word, a glimpse of a bed, would spit her like a spear through the stomach.

Disgust at herself coloured everything. George she regarded not so much a person as a phenomenon, like Newgate, which was happening to her. Her mind screamed 'Whore' at her by day and the Reverend Block came into her dreams thundering exultant damnation. 'I could have said yes to you and avoided the whole bloody business' she told him wearily. She felt physically and continually nauseated.

When Dorinda brought Benedick on a visit after Penitence's first encounter with George, she was reluctant to hold him. 'I feel so dirty,' she said, 'I feel dirty all the time. Didn't you?'

'Not after that old bastard,' said Dorinda of her grandfather. 'You'll get used to it, Prinks. I never had a choice and you ain't neither if you don't want to go back to the Alley. And you don't. My ma died there.'

'Did she?' Penitence had never heard Dorinda mention her mother.

'I think it was my ma,' said Dorinda, doubtfully.

Penitence knew she would never get used to it, and didn't. On the second, third and fourth nights when the turnkey came for his rent, she was vomiting even as he led her to the empty cell which, for some reason, he felt to be appropriate for their assignations. She was grateful he didn't insist on using the room she lived in and equally found the condemned cell appropriate in that what went on between them there was in itself a form of death. But a better form of death in that she passed through it and was alive again.

She had the choice of going mad or rationalizing her harlotry. 'Better than death,' she kept telling herself. 'Better than Flap Alley.' It was a form of professionalism; she couldn't do as Dorinda and the others at the Cock and Pie had done and regard whoring as a job like any other and forget about it when she was off duty, but the knowledge that it was essential if she was to stay alive stopped it overwhelming her.

Dorinda was helpful on procedure. 'Oh, a fumbler,' she said as Penitence reluctantly described George's sexual proclivities. 'That's easy. Brim him early.'

It added to her self-contempt to employ the art of early- brimming - playing more elaborately to his fantasy, embroidering to absurdity the character of the despising aristocrat, allowing her disgust to display as he fumbled and sucked at her breasts — but it was so effective that sometimes his ejaculation occurred before they reached the bed, and he was too old and usually too busy to insist on another turn.

She became skilled at it. It took on the aspect of work, a filthy job which could be ameliorated by expertise. 'Better than Flap Alley' became an incantation.

She had discovered the truth women in her position had known through the ages: there is no fate worse than death when you have a child to live for and when death is the only alternative.

She refused to allow the gaoler humanity since he had shown her none, but she had to admit he played by the rules.

His power over her was absolute; he could have summoned her to the condemned cell every time he came on duty, but he'd reckoned the cost of her room over Press Yard to be worth £20 a week to her and the price of her service to him at £10 and, on this accounting, only called her out twice in every seven days.

Since he was a permanent night gaoler, they rarely ran into each other during the day, but on the one occasion when they did, his thumbs-up and winks sent her into a frenzy of fear that everybody would guess their relationship. Sensitized, she read into the other gaolers' every smirk that they were aware of what was going on. She was sure that Aphra did, although her friend never mentioned it; the woman's especial kindness on days after the nights in the condemned cell suggested she had heard Penitence's dragging footsteps follow George's excitedly pattering boots past her cell door.

She was paying for her room not just with her body, but with her youth. Her face took on the expression of one who in the extremes of need had asked for God's intervention and, receiving none, would never ask for it again.

The Assizes were still trying to catch up on lists interrupted by the Plague, so that the numbers hanged on execution days tended to be large, while spectators, deprived of their amusement for so long, turned up in their thousands. Aphra's mother and brother followed the carts to Tyburn and on their next visit were full of detail which Penitence refused to hear. She didn't want to know how long it had taken Mary Moders to die. What interested her was Peter Johnson's account of how the Ordinary's 'confessions' had sold. 'He'd got six or more barkers shouting 'em at thruppence a sheet and they went like hot cakes.'

'He ordered eight reams p-printed,' said Penitence, who'd taken the trouble to find out.

'And they all sold,' said Master Johnson. 'You never seen such a crowd. There was more died in the crush than on the gallows. Gawd knows how much he'll make from Swaveley's confession if he gets it. That'll fetch 'em. There ain't been a pressing in years. He could sell that at fi'pence.'

'Sixpence with a nice woodcut,' said Penitence, thoughtfully.

When Mrs and Master Johnson had gone, she said: 'Aphra, you know my printing press .. . and you know Swaveley ...'

Aphra was ahead of her: 'How many sheets in a ream?'

Penitence smiled. 'Five hundred and sixteen.'

'So he sold ... what's eight times five hundred and sixteen?'

With difficulty they worked out that the Ordinary had, not counting the cost of paper and barkers, raked in an astonishing £51 14s 4d in the course of one afternoon. They got carried away with calculation: if they printed ten reams ... if they sold at sixpence a copy ... if they had a nice woodcut ... if Swaveley would agree.

'Will he?'

'It would be base for us to do it if he will not,' said Aphra, firmly. 'On the other hand, he is intent on his course, one is favourable to him, and one can wipe the floor with the Ordinary when it comes to syntax. Did I tell you I was writing a play?'

'Yes,' said Penitence. She still didn't believe it. 'Aphra, what we'd want is not so much literature as sprightliness.'

'One can certainly be sprightlier than the Ordinary.'

Penitence sat back. This unsuspected business sense of Aphra's, while most welcome, was still surprising in such a fantastical woman. 'I thought you'd despise the enterprise.'

'Dear one,' said Aphra, 'one does not intend to pass one's life in Newgate. One intends to get on. Ah, if one could live on love for love. But the world is against it, alas.' She patted Penitence's knee. 'There are occasions when we poor women must stoop, however against our nature, if we are to win our freedom.'

Penitence felt tears come into her eyes. 'Thank you,' she said.

In a way it was as much a fantasy as one of Aphra's. She didn't really think it would succeed. It was men who thought up schemes to make money. Women didn't initiate things: they reacted. Everything that had happened to her had been in response to an act of God or man. Her enterprise in liberating the printing press had only come about because it had been going begging ... it was hopeless, They would foil the plan, whoever They were, it wouldn't succeed.

But it began to. Swaveley said he'd be damned if he confessed, but he'd tell Mrs Behn his life story if she wanted to publish it, and proceeded to do so with a frankness, especially on the subject of his sexual prowess, which raised a flush on even Aphra's cheeks.

'On horseback?' repeated Penitence incredulously. 'You can't.'

'He assured me that he did,' said Aphra. 'And performed the same exploit with the lady in the next coach he robbed. He tells me both were willing. And enjoyed it.'

'B-Bartholomew me.'

'Exactly,' said Aphra. 'Master Swaveley's life may be short but it has most certainly been full. And, one imagines, will sell.'

'It'll burn the paper,' said Penitence. 'We'd better print on tin.'

While Penitence visited the cell of the little man who had complained of the pork in the dining-hall and turned out to be an engraver, Aphra demanded, and got, an interview with Newgate's Keeper for permission to attend Swaveley's hearing at the Old Bailey the next day.

She came back fuming. 'The nauseous old fool said i'faith and diddums a delicate young thing like oneself would faint at such things as I should see there.'

'So you said ...?'

'One told him the late Mr Behn had fought for the return of English justice and it was a poor thing if his widow was to be denied the chance of seeing it in action.'

Aphra, Penitence noticed, used the late Mr Behn like an umbrella, wielding him when necessary, raising him to protect herself from charges against her respectability, and forgetting him when he wasn't of use.

'Did he fight for the return of English justice?'

'That's neither here nor there,' said Aphra. 'That they shall not see it because they are women is the point.'

'But the Keeper refused permission.'

'Oh, he gave it,' said Aphra. 'Eventually. It's the obturation one had to fight through to get it that puts one out of countenance.'

She came back from the Old Bailey pale and feebly flapping. 'The flies, my dear, and the people.' Penitence had to fetch her a restorative from the tap room before she could give her account.

Swaveley had persisted in his refusal to plead and the judge had passed his sentence. 'You, Richard Swaveley, shall be sent back to the prison from whence you come and lie naked on the earth, without litter, rushes or raiment save that for decency, and one arm shall be drawn with a cord to one quarter, the other arm to another quarter and in the same manner let it be done with your legs, and let there be laid upon your body iron and stone as much as you can bear or more, till you die.'

'Should we be doing this?'

But the Ordinary was going to, even if they didn't. Unaware of competition, the man was boasting that he was preparing for publication an Awful Warning as Evinced by the Wicked Life of John Swaveley, Highwayman.

'He'll make his up,' said Aphra. 'Ours will be the real thing. And Awfuller.'

The anti-pork engraver, whose name turned out to be Clarins, agreed to wait for his fee until the bills should be sold, but they couldn't expect the same patience from the paper suppliers who would want cash on delivery.

MacGregor and Dorinda came in for a consultation, leaving Benedick in the care of Mistress Palmer. 'We made a wee profit from the Fifth Monarchist madman,' MacGregor said, 'but not enough to buy ten reams, leave alone the ink. Have ye no more assets to sell, Penitence? I'd pawn my pipes, but the dear things are long gone, long gone.'

'While we're on the subject,' said Penitence, 'there's to be no more p-printing for Fifth Monarchist or any other madmen. We don't want trouble from the authorities.'

'We'll maybe get it anyway,' said MacGregor, examining the confessions of James Spiggot and Mary Moders. 'This was set by Catnatch of Seven Dials. He's a licensed printer. We're not.'

'Our bills won't carry our name.'

'Aye, maybe, but we'll be needing barkers with a good turn of speed not to be caught.'

Penitence's eye met Dorinda's. Together they said: 'Tip- pins.'

MacGregor nodded. 'Ye'll no' catch the Tippin lads. But there'll be precious little to catch if we don't get the siller.'

There was silence as they racked their brains.

'Oh, that one hadn't been forced to sell one's rings,' said Aphra.

'Oh, if one had kept one's ballocking diadem.' Dorinda was jealous of Penitence's friendship with Aphra Behn and mocked her continually, though Aphra herself took no notice. 'Here,' she said, throwing something into Penitence's lap, 'why not sell that? You paid enough for it.'

It was a silver oval. A gentleman's embossed travelling mirror.

Damn.

She had put it away in the attic and tried to forget it, like everything else about him. The hurt and anger at his manner of leaving had redoubled, tripled, at finding herself carrying his baby, to say nothing of the realization that, by the act of bearing the child, she was, in the eyes of the world at least, the whore he thought her to be.

She'd railed against it over and over. 'It's unfair.'

Dorinda had shrugged. 'Fairness ain't life's speciality.'

They had tried to abort the baby by every way Dorinda knew. On her instructions, Penitence had drunk gin, taken hot baths and jumped from the clerestory - ending up with a hangover, a sprained ankle and still pregnant.

'Old Ma Perkins over in the Cut used to do it for us with a knitting needle,' Dorinda said, 'but the Plague got her.'

It was as well this option was closed to Penitence because otherwise she would have taken it. She was desperate; she

didn't know how to support herself, let alone a child. She was ashamed and frightened. Badly she wanted Her Ladyship, except that the thought that she was following her mother's path down to Hell loaded her with such depression that she had moved into the fog which was only now beginning to disperse.

Her one advantage had been that she was among the sinners of the Old World rather than the saints of the New who would have cast her out, as they had her mother. The Rookery didn't give a damn that she was unmarried; most of its mothers were unmarried. Indeed, it made her more one of their own, and, with the occasional nudge and wink, it supported her in a way for which she was to be grateful to the end of her days.

Now, regarding the mirror in her lap, she found that she could tolerate the memory of the actor. She could hardly blame him for giving way that night to a passion against which she herself had been helpless, and of which she had been as much an instigator as he was. And as for his persistence in thinking her a prostitute ... well, he'd had plenty to go on, and she'd never been able to tell him she wasn't. And I am now, anyway.

She remained still for so long that MacGregor took up the looking-glass and opened it. 'Ah, Master King,' he said, to the portrait inside, 'I wonder what's happened to you, laddie. I liked ye fine. You gave us joy.'

'Some of us more than others,' said Dorinda, tartly.

Joy. But perhaps MacGregor was right to use the word. Her very speech was the actor's gift. Like her son.

One day she might even forgive him.

MacGregor bit the edge. 'Fine siller,' he said. 'Aye, the bauble will fetch a good penny or two.'

Aphra Behn stretched out a limp hand. 'May I?' She looked at the portrait and her eyes widened. 'Did you say "King"?'

She knows him. Suddenly Penitence could bear no more discussion of the man. She hadn't got over him that much. Find out later.

She took the mirror and handed it across to Dorinda. 'Sell it.' She could trust Dorry to get the best price, whereas though MacGregor was better than he used to be and turning out to be a good printer, his money still tended to transmute itself into ale.

Later, as usual on fine evenings, Aphra and Penitence strolled together round Press Yard to avail themselves of what little air there was. Press Yard was deep, like a lidless box, and the attentions of the Piddler and several cats had not enhanced its atmosphere, but the sky above it was turning gold, while a lilac straggling over the wall from the Keeper's private garden attracted peacock butterflies.

It was the prison's quiet time. The habitues of the tap room who made the place a tumult by day and dangerous by night were sleeping off the afternoon session in preparation for the evening's, and Press Yard was left to the sober and harmlessly eccentric. An elderly debtor who had computed how many turns of the Yard made up the distance to Hampstead was religiously walking them as if he were taking a constitutional, as he had in the days before debt took away his freedom.

He swept off his hat. 'Good evening, ladies, a pleasant evening. Forgive me not pausing, but I must save my breath for the hill.'

'Good evening, Master Salter.'

'Aphra.'

'My dear?'

'Aphra, that portrait this afternoon. You recognized it, didn't you?'

'I wasn't sure and didn't pursue it since you seemed bent on not having the matter mentioned, but . . . and, of course, he was younger then though the likeness was remarkable, but again . . .'

'For God's sake, Aphra, who was it?'

'Sir Anthony Torrington.'

Anthony Torrington? She tried squeezing her memory of Henry King into the new name. It didn't fit. Neither did the 'Sir'. Too respectable, too reminiscent of the squirearchy. 'Are you sure?'

'One wouldn't wager one's life, but it's not a face to forget.'

'Where had you seen it before?'

'In the chambers of Sir George Downing. Somewhat fleet- ingly, but I made enquiries ...' Aphra fluttered her eyelashes. '... to discover that he was the King's secret emissary to Prince William of Orange.'

'When was this?'

'When I was in the Netherlands. Sir George is officially our ambassador to Holland, less officially the King's Scoutmaster- General.'

'A spymaster.'

'Certainly Downing sees it as part of his duties to gather intelligence. There were those of us out there who knew that keys were removed from the pockets of the De Witt brothers while they were asleep, papers taken from their closet, left in Downing's hands for an hour, and returned without anyone knowing they'd gone.'

'Ah, ladies, how beautiful the Heath is on a June evening.'

'Indeed it is, Master Salter.'

'One was of considerable assistance to Sir George,' continued Aphra as they strolled on, 'and warned him that the Dutch were impudent enough to consider invading my own dear Surinam and even had plans to sail up the Thames. He was good enough to congratulate me most handsomely, though without the financial reward one could have wished. "Madam," he said, "we'll pass it on, but our royal master knows better how to use what comes out of his arse than his agents." A forceful speaker, Sir George.'

Penitence persisted. 'So this Torrington was a royal spy?'

Aphra shrugged. 'How you do use the word. It was rumoured that Sir Anthony was received into every court in Europe and spoke the language of most.'

'But if he was in the Netherlands when you were, he can't be the Henry King who was in the Rookery during the Plague.'

'Ah,' said Aphra, 'but he could. He left shortly after I arrived. A little bird told me that the dear King and Sir Anthony had a falling-out. Something to do with the French. He was recalled in disgrace.'

In a winter's alley in the Rookery a drunken voice had once suggested they sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings. 'And how you can't trust any of the buggers.'

And she thought she'd known him.

'One doesn't wish to pry,' said Aphra, delicately, 'but do I gather there was an understanding between you and this Henry King?'

'No understanding at all.' And because Penitence was weary of people who pretended to be one thing while being another, she told Aphra her whole story. The butterflies retired to wherever butterflies retire to, Master Salter returned from Hampstead Heath, sounds of roistering grew from the tap room, a star appeared in the darkening square of sky, and strollers in Press Yard were encouraged back to their cells by turnkeys' shouts of 'All in, all in'.

Excitedly, Aphra clasped Penitence's hands. 'What romance. My dear, my dear, such star-crossed drama. And all enacted from balconies while the Plague raged. The Muses couldn't do it justice.'

'Don't tell 'em then.' Penitence was alarmed. She had expected some reaction, but not this rapturous twittering.

'All in, I said.' The turnkey was becoming agitated. 'Didn't you bloody women hear me say All in?'

'They heard you, fellow,' said Aphra, 'down in Cheapside. One will go when one's ready.' She took Penitence's arm to saunter to the steps to their room. 'What a play it would make.'

The gush of her enthusiasm took hours to subside. 'Romeo and Juliet, Pyramus and Thisbe, King Cophetua and Zenelophon. In faith, my dear, if I had a lyre I'd sing the lay of Sir Anthony and Penitence.'

'It wasn't like that,' said Penitence, wearily.

'But it was, my dear. It is. He'll come back, don't you see? He'll find the truth of it and return to you, swim across the Hellespont, like Leander.'

'I hope he drowns. I don't want him back.'

'Of course you do.' Aphra brushed aside detail. 'The Torringtons are wealthy, or were. An old Cavalier family with

acres and acres in Somerset. I believe Augustus, the father, was even sheriff at one time, but they lost everything under the Protectorate when they went into exile with the dear King. I think they have it back now.'

'Cavaliers,' disapproved Penitence.

'Of course Cavaliers,' said Aphra. 'Would you have your lover a damned Roundhead? Oh, forgive me, dear. One forgets your provenance.'

'Henry King hadn't a penny to bless himself with.'

Aphra pressed her fingertips against her forehead. 'There was a quarrel. Some disagreement over politics. I seem to remember his father disapproved of his ma— Oh dear.'

'His marriage?'

'Well, yes.' Aphra was crestfallen, then perked up. 'But it was a long time ago, and I seem to remember she died, or there was a scandal, something.'

'This Sir Anthony seems unfortunate in his relations,' said Penitence. 'A quarrelsome fellow.'

'High-spirited,' said Aphra, automatically. 'But think, should his father die he will come and claim you, and little Benedick will be heir to a fortune.'

'Should his wife die, and his legitimate children die, and if 1 don't spit in his eye. Look at me, Aphra, I want you to p-p- promise that you will never, ever, repeat what I told you tonight.'

Aphra sobered. 'Has it been so terrible?'

'Yes, it has. Benedick and I will manage without him.'

'But...'

'If, if we get the Swaveley bill printed before the poor man's buried.'

'As good as done,' said Aphra. 'It only remains to be written.'

'Then write it.'

Left alone, Penitence stayed at her window. The warmth of the June night managed to overlay the staleness of Press Yard with the scent of lilac. Aphra had taken Henry King away and replaced him with an unrecognizable person from a world for which Penitence had only contempt. The funny, gangling,

attractive man had gone, had never existed. He'd worn a mask and been somebody else underneath it. Well and good. All the easier to dismiss him.

She could almost smile at the romance Aphra had made out of their pitiful affair. If Aphra Behn had charge of the world it would be more entertaining than the squalid feculence it was. Tomorrow was the night George came for his rent. A week after that a young man would be lain on the cobbles below and crushed to death.

And not a Leander to save either of us. Whoever he was.

There hadn't been a pressing at Newgate since the execution of a Major Strangeways for the murder of his brother-in-law eleven years previously, so the prison went en fete for Swaveley's. All those with rooms overlooking Press Yard were turned out of them for the day to accommodate the Quality, who were paying high prices for a good view. A grandstand was erected in the Yard itself for judges, aldermen and other dignitaries. It was rumoured the King might attend, or at least send one of his mistresses.

Quakers and hard-core criminals kept in the limbos were transferred to a deeper dungeon where their cries would not disturb the occasion.

There was even an attempt to clean Newgate in the unlikely event that the authorities might wish to inspect it, but that petered out after the Yard had been scrubbed.

'I wonder they don't put up bunting,' said Engraver Clarins, bitter at having to vacate his room on the men's side.

Aphra's complaints at having to vacate her room included several references to the patriotism of the late Mr Behn and her own services to the King and secured her, Penitence, Mrs and Master Johnson a place in one of the attics high under the roof of the Keeper's own apartments, the servants whose room it was having been impressed to wait on visitors for the day.

Aphra had attended the early morning service to which Swaveley was dragged for his last communion. 'Poor boy, he looks so pale and that poxy Ordinary continually dunning him to repent. As they took him out I managed to tell him where we'd be. One said we'd wave.'

'That should keep his spirits up,' said Penitence. There had to be executions - her grandfather had taken her to a few in Springfield in order to impress on her the fate which awaited sinners - but this air of holiday was getting on her nerves. The colours of the scarlet-robed judges, the gold chains of the aldermen, servants' liveries, the ladies' hats made the stand into a tapestry depicting knights and ladies watching a tourney.

On a trestle gallery the small band of musicians had exhausted all the sacred music it knew and fallen back on the profane played slow.

She noticed that everyone was carrying one of the Ordinary's bills. 'Complimentary copies,' said Aphra. 'That should cost the swine.'

Their own had been on sale all over London for two days and, such was the interest, the Tippins were reporting a good response. At this moment Dorinda, MacGregor and other Dog Yarders were selling them to the large crowd at the prison gates. They were ready to run another reprint which would include Swaveley's last exclamations. The Ordinary hadn't bothered to wait to see what they were, and his carried Swaveley's supposed, suitably penitent, final words.

Swaveley had done them proud, but Aphra had done them prouder, drawing a nice line between the racy and the improving. 'You can head others off following my example,' Swaveley had told her, and then smirked, 'always supposing they could.' She had put his seduction of his employer's wife while he was yet an apprentice into the first paragraph. For his woodcut Clarins had enquired of old turnkeys the procedure followed in a pressing and his picture of a prone man with a heavy weight being placed on his chest gave their bill a graphic drama lacking in the Ordinary's.

Voices, two of which Penitence recognized, carried up to their attic from the Keeper's apartments below, complaining at the wait.

'Where is the rogue?' asked a woman's voice. 'He's damned late.'

'And him with a pressing engagement,' answered a male's. The court rakes had arrived, with female companions, and were employing their wit.

'Rochester and Sedley,' said Aphra, 'and, if I'm not mistaken, the Duke of Buckingham.'

The door to the cells opened. There was silence. Swaveley appeared, naked except for breeches, a turnkey on one side, the executioner in his mask on the other. The Ordinary followed, intoning.

'He's so frightened,' said Penitence. The boy was having to be supported. That's enough. He's learned his lesson. Let's all go home.

'Whoo hoo.' Mrs Johnson was leaning out of the window and had to be dragged back by her daughter. 'Mother!'

The band began playing Blow's requiem as Swaveley was led to the middle of the Yard and laid down, and the irons on his legs and wrists attached to stakes.

Executioner and turnkey stood back to attention while another turnkey came into the Yard pulling a low trolley containing a large piece of stone. They've rehearsed this.

The executioner looked towards the stand, a judge stood up and nodded. There was a drum roll. The three men around the spreadeagled figure stooped and, with an effort, lifted the stone off the trolley and on to Swaveley's chest.

Air left the boy's lungs in a whoomph heard all over Press Yard.

The executioner regarded the stone critically, like a bricklayer, then straightened his back. 'Three hundred pounds,' he called. The Ordinary was on his knees, hands steepled in prayer.

It's a stone specially made for this. What was the matter with the mind of man that it could put such care into cruelty?

'I can't bear it,' she said quietly to Aphra, 'I'm going.'

Aphra took her arm in a surprisingly strong grip. 'He's bearing it, and we're profiting from it,' she said. 'We stay.'

She stayed. Master Johnson was bemoaning his lost bet. Below, other wagers were being laid: 'Three and twenty-five.' 'Three and fifty.'

Aphra quoted:

At Golgotha, they glut their insatiate eyes With scenes of blood, and human sacrifice.'

'Who wrote that?' asked Penitence.

'I did. In Surinam. There was a slave there, a negro they'd shipped from Africa. He became our friend. His name was Caesar.'

Penitence stared at her. Aphra was astonishing; the memory of the slave was causing her pain. All artificiality had dropped away. 'What happened?'

'They killed him. They took his wife from him. Sold her to another plantation. He set up a revolt with other slaves.' She shrugged. 'He was defeated, of course. They tied him to a stake and hacked him to pieces.' 'Oh.'

'He was my friend,' said Aphra.

Yawns issued from the window below where the rakes and their women were becoming bored. 'He's just lying there,' complained a female voice.

'True, he's very flat.'

Penitence had hoped for Swaveley that the stone would be dropped on him, killing him instantly; instead he was slowly being asphyxiated as it crushed his lungs. Head arched back, his mouth opened and shut like a fish's to snatch shallow, panting breaths.

'Tell them to hasten the matter, my lord, I beg you,' said a voice, whether from humanity or impatience.

Some signal passed from the Keeper's window to one of the judges on the stand, who nodded, and raised a hand to the executioner. The trolley was taken to fetch two smaller stones. 'Three hundred and twenty-five pounds,' announced the executioner.

Swaveley's mouth opened wider. The judge signalled again.

'Three hundred and fifty.'

Stop it. Get it over with. Stop it.

Swaveley's left hand struggled against its manacle. He was

trying to speak. The Ordinary was alarmed and shaking his head, but the executioner bent down to Swaveley's mouth and looked to the judge. 'He wants to plead guilty, my lord.'

The Ordinary was protesting; his Awful Warning was being spoiled. But the judge - after a glance at the Keeper's window - signalled that the stones be lifted. Swaveley's feet trailed on the ground as he was dragged away to face trial and hanging.

On their way down the backstairs, the party from the attic encountered Sir Charles Sedley. 'Mistress Aphra, Mistress Penitence,' he said, 'one was hoping the occasion would ferret you out. We are downcast by its dullness and beg you to enliven us. Your friends too.' He bowed to Mrs Johnson.

Penitence was surprised he had remembered their names, but was in no mood to make sport for the likes of him. 'Forgive me,' she said, and hurried on, hearing Aphra make introductions.

Gaining her room, she shut the door. She wanted quiet.

An hour later there was a tap on the door. 'Beg your indulgence, madam,' said Sir Charles Sedley.

Since Penitence didn't ask him to sit down, he lounged against the dirty wall, the sun from the window shimmering on his silk coat and the gloss of his wig, intensifying the perfume he was wearing, glancing off his rings as he flapped his hands and commented on the heat and went through the procedure of taking snuff. If she hadn't been sure he had been sent as the result of some bet, Penitence would have thought him unsettled. He unsettled her; she wanted rid of him. 'What is your b-business, sir?'

'My b-business, ma'am. My b-business is with your eyes. I wished to assure myself they were as astonishing as I remembered and, behold, they are.' As Penitence's lips tightened, he added: 'Though one has seen kinder over a duelling pistol.'

His own, which watched her carefully, were bloodshot. He wasn't much older than herself and had excellent baby skin with a bloom on it. It oozed perspiration in tiny bubbles of the fat which would one day overwhelm him.

'Since that's settled,' she said, 'I wish you good-day.'

'Cruel charmer, would you banish me so soon?' He had a slow delivery; words drooped out of his mouth to make everything he said sound like a jeer. 'I await Rochester and Buckingham who are much taken with Mistress Behn. At this moment the three of them discuss the art of writing and the beginning of her play. It seems we have another Matchless Orinda on our hands.'

Refusing him the satisfaction, Penitence didn't ask who the Matchless Orinda was.

'But you, mistress, are more intriguing than she — of Puritan persuasion, I gather, with leanings towards the stage. One has one's own connections with the theatre, and it might be that one could assist the latter aspiration.' His eyelids drooped. 'Though certainly not the former.'

damn Aphra. Must the woman blab everything? 'I have no aspiration, sir, except to be left alone.'

'You should, you should. Those eyes could conquer an audience as they have conquered me. But give me a kiss and I shall wing to the errand.'

The only winging he'd do would be back to his friends to tell them he'd seduced the poor slut in the cell. There was too much silk here, an overwhelming plumpness like an eiderdown filling the room; she wanted to claw her way out.

The door opened. 'I say, Penitence, do you want a woodcut done of the hanging?' Clarins, lovely, unprepossessing and cloth-coated, had come to discuss important things in plain language.

Sir Charles bowed and withdrew.

The next day, returning from the dining-hall with Aphra, she found her cell full of roses, pots of them, so many she couldn't reach her bed. 'My dear, how charming,' said Aphra, regarding the petalled sea, 'I knew he was much taken with you.'

Penitence was furious. 'Do you realize the money these cost could nearly pay off my debt?'

And then she realized. Sir Charles was offering to get her out, had offered, and she'd snubbed him. She'd had no idea. Penitence Hurd, you'll never make a whore.

She considered it. After all, having put her foot on the ladder of harlotry, she'd be a fool not to climb to its higher rungs. Satin sheets instead of dirty blankets. Mistress to a rich young man about court rather than the twice-weekly drab of a prison turnkey. She'd acquire connections, enter Benedick into a good school when he was old enough.

Logically, her next move was to send a note to Sedley. It only needed to say 'Yes'. She couldn't hate bedding with Sedley more than she loathed those moments in the condemned cell with George. But I can control George.

Illogically, she didn't do it. For one thing, when it came to the point of asking Aphra for ink, quill and paper, she was overcome with a fit of gasping as if, like Swaveley, she was being asphyxiated by a great weight. For another, she was optimistic about her chances of paying off her debt by herself.

No more flowers arrived either, so that was that.

The profit to Aphra and Penitence from Swaveley's Last Exclamations, combined with that from his Positively Last Exclamations, which went on sale at his hanging in August, came to £94 6s 10d, nearly fifty pounds each.

They couldn't believe it. 'Is that with all paid?' asked Aphra.

'Aye,' said MacGregor. All paid. We had to rush a reprint of the reprint for Tyburn.'

'The Tippins reckoned the crowd above six thousand,' Dorinda told them, 'and I hope Swaveley was grateful for all we done to get 'em there, though he didn't look it. All the stuffing gone out of the poor ballocker. The Tippins lifted so much blunt out of the crowd's pockets as they refused to take wages.'

'All we need now is more executions,' said MacGregor.

Penitence winced. 'We'd better call ourselves the Vulture Press.'

'That's a terrible bad name,' said MacGregor, 'but as we're not likely to display it, it'll do for the now.'

'What'll we do with your share, Prinks?' asked Dorinda.

'Pay the b-bills. Buy B-Benedick what he needs. Keep some for housekeeping and pay the rest towards the debt. Deposit it with a lawyer called P-Patterson in Leadenhall Street. He was Her Ladyship's man and he can pay the debtor when we've got enough.' She winked at MacGregor. 'Another Scotsman, but I trust him.'

The load was lifting. She was going to get out of Newgate. By her own enterprise.

Newgate's Ordinary went to the Stationers' Company to complain about the emergence of the mysterious and illegal press which had taken away his business. The Stationers promised to try to track it down, but in view of the number of unlicensed presses in operation they weren't sanguine of success.

However, the Vulture Press laid low for a while. There would be no more hangings until the authorities had accumulated enough death sentences to make the spectacle at Tyburn worthwhile.

There was nothing for the two young women to do and Aphra, who had been in prison the longer, began to decline. The staple food given to those who couldn't afford to pay proved unfit to eat more often that not, and Aphra, always fastidious, was unable to keep it down.

Penitence begged her to draw on the money lodged against their debts, but Aphra refused to eat, literally, into it. 'One will never get out if one does.' Penitence began to be frightened that one would die if one didn't. She suspected Aphra's lassitude to be the first stage of Whitt fever which carried off so many in Newgate. 'You can't give way now.'

Aphra closed her eyes. 'Send The Young King to Rochester and Buckingham,' she murmured. 'Perhaps they will find it worthy to finish it for me.'

'You'll finish it. And what about that slave? Weren't you going to write his story?'

Tears oozed out of Aphra's eyes. 'Ah, poor Caesar, both of us doomed to oblivion.'

'Damned if you are,' said Penitence, irritably. She didn't send the play, but she wrote notes to Buckingham and Rochester informing them of the situation. If Sedley had told her the truth, they might be interested enough in Aphra to save her life. What they pay for blasted ribbon in a day would keep her alive for a month.

That night, in the condemned cell, she asked George to bring in some decent food. She knew enough not to plead for it. 'I want cheese, good bread, fresh milk and I want it tomorrow,' she commanded, as she stripped. 'And some wine.'

'You lady-ins,' admired George, 'Whitt fare not good enough, eh? Tell us what you eat in that mansion of yours.'

What do the rich eat? She could only think of the meals her grandmother had served up in her forest kitchen, and hoped their unfamiliarity would sound sufficiently exotic. 'Pumpkin pie,' she said.

'Oooh. Pumpkin pie.' He was snuffling at her thighs. 'Oozing gravy.'

'Lots of gravy. Wild turkey stuffed with blueberries. Chowder...'

It was gastronomic pornography, and effective. George brimmed earlier than ever. But there was a price. As he left her, he said: 'Ready yourself for tomorrow night. Good food's extra.'

Aphra was too poorly to ask where the provisions came from, but they improved her slightly. Since she wasn't well enough to leave her bed, Penitence sat and read to her: 'Me, too, the Pierian sisters have made a singer; I too have songs; ay, and the shepherds dub me poet, but I trust them not. For as yet, methinks, gooselike I cackle amid quiring swans.'

'Oh Virgil,' sighed Aphra, 'if one could but cackle like you.'

Aphra's hunger for literature was greater than for food. Through reading to her the library she had brought into Newgate with her, Penitence was acquiring a culture she hadn't dreamed of. It still wasn't enough for Aphra: 'Alas, that our sex is denied the teaching of Latin and Greek so that we are barred from the originals. That my eyes could drink in the Greek of Homer.'

Penitence found some of the English translations hard enough, but she would read on long after Aphra slept, fascinated by Socratic argument, or listening as the bronze trumpets blared their challenge over the walls of Troy, or softly repeating again and again a honeyed Virgilian phrase. If Newgate took her to the depths of human abasement, it also, thanks to Aphra, showed her the heights of human achievement.

And woman's. She had never heard of the poetess Aphra always referred to as 'Sacred Sappho' — she understood, when she read her, why the Puritans had ignored her existence, nor did the Lesbian's sexual proclivities agree with her own, but she was spellbound by the lovely, feminine fragments of verse that sang themselves into a prison cell with such immediacy from another country twenty centuries away.

She still doubted whether Aphra's ambition to put her play on in a public theatre was feasible. But at least there was a precedent for a woman to be something more than a writer for purely domestic consumption.

Who's the Matchless Orinda?' she asked, remembering Sedley.

Aphra's stricken eyes gained a touch of frost. 'Ugh.'

'Who?'

'Mention the fact that one aspires to write,' said Aphra, 'and that's all one hears. "Another Matchless Orinda." If I thought I was to be bracketed with that vapid, watery, flatulent female, I would cut my wrists here and now. Ugh one said, and Ugh one meant.'

Little wiser, Penitence was not sorry she'd asked; Aphra's flash of spirit had been her first in days.

But the real panacea was delivered to Newgate late in the evening on the first day of September in the shape of a young man whose eyes seemed too lively for his sober, elegant, clergyman's cloth.

Penitence collided with him as she ran into Aphra's cell, hearing the screams. She nearly punched him. He held her off, apologizing. 'I assure you, madam, Mistress Behn's cries are of a rapturous nature.'

Aphra lifted her head. 'Penitence. Oh my dear, we're free.'

'Ah well...' said the young clergyman.

'Two hundred guineas. We can leave this minute. This beautiful deliverer, this Mercury—'

'Sprat,' smirked the young man, 'Thomas Sprat.' '- our benefactors, His Grace of Buckingham—' 'An anonymous gift,' said the Reverend Sprat. '- and the Earl of Rochester. How can words—' 'I was to say it was an appreciation from the Muses,' said the Reverend Sprat, delicately, 'and while 1 am sure that, were the anonymous donors aware of this lady's plight, they would be only too happy .. . but the gift is to liberate you, Mistress Behn.'

Through tears and tangled hair, Aphra looked at him straight. 'If Penitence isn't freed, neither am I. There's enough now to pay both our debts.'

So it was arranged. There were comings and goings. A disgruntled Lawyer Patterson was called out from a musical evening at his home to sign notes and swear oaths. Warrants were withdrawn, creditors paid, and in the early hours of the morning a bemused and still-unbelieving Penitence had settled herself alongside Aphra in a carriage which carried a crest it was too dark to see, and was driven to Aldersgate where the young Reverend Sprat, his duty done, delivered them to the cheap lodgings of Mrs and Master Johnson, which, cheap as they were, beat seven bells out of Newgate.

And half a mile away, a spark from a carelessly left baker's oven in Pudding Lane ignited a pile of faggots lying too near it.

A red cinder from the burning shop fell on to a pile of hay in a nearby inn yard. The inn caught and the flames ran into Thames Street lined by warehouses stacked with tallow, oil and spirits.

The new Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bludworth, was woken up and chose to ignore the fire as just another outbreak; the City had them all the time. This one, however, coincided with a dry spell and a strong east wind. Pitch-coated, thatched, closely packed timber buildings fired up like torches.

The usual teams of men with buckets of water, long-handled fire-hooks and hand-squirts tried dealing with outbreaks as they occurred and then gave up. The only way to fight a fire of these proportions was by wholesale demolition of the houses in its path, and Sir Thomas Bludworth was too concerned about the compensation which would have to be paid to give the order which would have saved London.

By the sunny, blowy, Sunday morning, crowds of frightened Londoners were evacuating their homes, flinging their goods into boats moored along the north bank, clambering down the steps to the waterside. Some people stayed in their houses until those, too, caught fire, and then ran in panic. Bewildered pigeons remaining overlong on the rooftops before taking flight fell with singed wings as the flames whipped a hundred feet into the air.

Refugees, Aphra Behn and her family among them, abandoned the City in terror. Some swam the river, others silted up at the gates or queued to cross the mercifully unburned Bridge. The price of a cart went up to £40.

Not until Monday, when the King and his brother James, Duke of York, took charge, was there any decisive action.

By then Aphra and the Johnsons were safely ensconced at the Cock and Pie and, like the rest of the Rookery, had a grandstand view of London as it burned to death.

Smuts stung their eyes, but they couldn't look away from the corona of near-invisible flame that shimmered above the City. Smoke streamed from it over the countryside like the hair of a giant hag. More appalling even than the sight was the noise, the huge, self-satisfied roar of fire punctuated by the crash of avalanching buildings, the percussion of explosions that shook the balcony they stood on as seamen, drafted in from the dockyards, began the systematic destruction of whole streets with gunpowder.

The history, oh, the history,' cried Aphra.

Penitence was remembering her walks with Peter Simkin through the carved gateways into the Middle Ages. His ghost, like Aphra, would weep for the streets that had seen Chaucer's pilgrims set off for Canterbury, and cheered Elizabeth's coronation procession.

There were no tears in her eyes. Aphra's brother, like some of the Rookery men, had gone to help the evacuation and came back with the news that, though five-sixths of the City was lost, nobody had yet reported a death.

'And Newgate?' she asked him.

'Gutted.'

Cleansed. The past of a city was burning, much of it as filthy as her own in it had been. The condemned cell was cauterized by flame. She and London, the two of them, could start again.

She put her arm round the weeping Aphra and went on watching the holocaust.

'Good,' she whispered.