Page 33 of The Cheapside Runners
The way she said it with a flourish, Mary wondered if that was just showmanship, or she was actually proud of her accommodations.
“I see most of you look down on my abode, and I cannot rightly blame you for it; but I can assure you that delivering a child in the mud in a tent in the rain is nothing to aspire to. This is luxury!”
They all gasped in horror, though Mary wondered if she was being truthful. The lesson Mrs Black was imparting seemed clear enough to get through to even Lydia, though it never paid to underestimate her sister’s wilful intransigence.
Over a quarter-hour, the matron told the story of her life. She fell in love with a dashing lieutenant at fifteen, was caught in a compromising position, and made to marry. She had not the slightest objection to being married to her handsome beau at the time, but that was just because she knew nothing about anything, having never been educated in the harsher side of the world.
She then gave a brief accounting of the years leading up to her present agreeable situation in life. Two children had died, though nobody could say for certain if they might have lived if they could afford an apothecary. Her story of delivering a baby in a tent in the rain was true, and to make matters worse, that tent was in Portugal, the midwife spoke not a word of English, and her husband was fighting a hundred miles away.
The baby started crying in the middle of the story, so MrsMason picked her up, unlaced her dress, and started feeding the child without the slightest hint of remorse or embarrassment. She relented and covered herself with a blanket after half of the students looked like they might feint, but Mary was nearly certain she did that just for her own amusement. The small smirk on Mrs Black’s face confirmed the thesis.
A half-hour later they exited, and Mrs Black ushered them into a small alleyway where she could speak without being overheard.
Mrs Black’s accent became more pronounced when she was speaking emphatically, and Mary wondered if she would ever learn where the woman hailed from, since it was clearly not England.
“That is lesson one. She is incredibly lucky, but you can see how she lives. She was raised in similar circumstances to most of you, but you can see what her choices led to. Who wants to guess how old she is?”
Miss Green guessed thirty-five, and every other lady made a guess between thirty-five and forty.
“She is twenty-six,” Mrs Black stated, then continued relentlessly, “She married at fifteen, had her first stillbirth at sixteen, lost one child at around two years of age, has moved house thirty or forty times, some of those homes being tents, and barely keeps her children fed. I pay her to let you gawk. She feeds her family for several months on less than most of you spend on ribbons in a quarter.”
The lesson was stark and seemed clear enough, though whether it was enough to bludgeon some sense into her younger sisters, Mary had no way of knowing.
Jane was appalled, but really did not know whether she was more appalled that the woman lived like that, or that she had been forced to witness it. The poor were far easier to understand in the abstract than when they were feeding a baby right in frontof you, hoping it would survive to run around his hovel shoeless until it grew into… what, exactly?
The poor woman was less than Charlotte’s age and practically worn out… all because of a poor choice she made at Lydia’s age.
Miss White was appalled and frightened but was still having trouble seeing how that applied to her situation.
Miss Green wondered if she was seeing Mrs Forster in a decade, and it gave her something to think about.
~~~~~
The next stop was the home of a lieutenant, similar to what could be expected for a militia officer, and they began to see why Mrs Mason felt like bragging about her situation. A house the size of Colonel Mason’s contained three families, and all looked like they were on the ragged edge of starvation. Two more worn out wives told comparable stories. They came to it from different places, though similar, which seemed to be the point of the exercise.
One had eloped with an officer by choice, thinking it quite a lark. One had simply been incautious with her flirting and found herself in a dire situation. The third had done nothing particularly wrong but was forced against her will. All were in even more dismal situations than Mrs Mason, and all worked hard at jobs outside the home to keep them fed while one wife tried her best to keep all the children out of trouble as much as possible. It was brutal, and that did not even count the very real possibility of becoming widowed. Considering they were in the regulars, that possibility was not the least bit abstract.
It was heartbreaking, and the amount Mrs Black gave them would feed all three families for months, but it would run out soon after they moved on with the regiment.
~~~~~
They paused in a small open spot near a fountain that mighteven have worked sometime in the sixteenth century. A couple of ragged beggars saw Mrs Black signal, and they brought a couple loaves of stale bread that was at least a day old, and probably more like a week.
One boy had a wooden board and a knife, and he carefully cut one slice of bread for each lady and handed it to them with a bow. Then he poured some less than pristine ale from a pail into a single large flagon and suggested they share it around.
Mrs Black said, “That boy would kill to have a whole slice of bread for himself for lunch every day, and you may have noticed how careful he was with the crumbs. We shall not embarrass him by watching him eat your leavings. Eat up. It is the last you will have before supper.”
The lesson may have stuck, or not, but nobody had the strength to argue with her.
As they left, Mary looked around for the two rough men she assumed were her guards and saw nothing. She wondered what it meant, but suspected they were just being unobtrusive.
~~~~~
They had walked a few hundred yards bunched up like scared sheep when a large, fat, rough-looking man sauntered up to Miss White, and spoke loudly in a heavily accented, lower-class cant.
“Oy, love, fancy a bit o’ sport? What’s the damage for a roll in the hay?”
Miss White’s face changed colour to match her name and backed up, only to be blocked by her companions. The man kept pressing forward and even reached out to pinch her cheek.
