William Monk 05 - The Sins of the Wolf

ain’t,” the older woman said wearily. “She don’t even understand yer, Doris.”
    “Are you … related?” Hester asked slowly, including the child in her remark.
    “No we ain’t related, yer dimwit!” The woman shook her head dismissively. “I mean we’re all professionals. Which you ain’t, are yer? Jus’ thought you’d try yer ’and and yer got caught. Watcha do … nick summink?”
    “No. No, but they said I did.”
    “Oh. Innocent, eh?” Her sneer was totally disbelieving. “In’t we all! Marge ’ere didn’t do no abortions, did yer, Marge? And Tilly ’ere didn’t spin no top. An’ o’ course I don’t keep no bawdy ’ouse.” She put one hand on her hip. “I’m a decent, respectable woman, I am. Can I ’elp it if some o’ me clients is bent?”
    “What do you mean, ‘spin a top’?” Hester moved farther into the small cell and sat down on the cot, about two feet from the woman named Marge.
    “You simple or summink?” Doris demanded. “Spin a top,” she said, and made a spiral movement with her fingers. “In’t yer never played wi’ a top when you was a kid? Yer must ’ave seen one, less yer blind as well as daft.”
    “You don’t go to jail for spinning tops.” Hester was beginning to get annoyed. The gratuitous insults were something she could fight against.
    “Yer do if it gets in people’s way,” Doris said with a curl of her lip. “Don’t yer, Tilly, eh? Cheeky little sod.”
    The child looked at her with wide eyes and nodded slowly.
    “How old are you?” Hester asked her.
    “Dunno,” Tilly said with indifference.
    “Don’t be daft,” Doris said again. “She can’t count.”
    “I can so!” Tilly protested indignantly. “I know ‘ow many’s ten.”
    “Yer in’t ten,” Doris said, dismissing the subject. She looked back at Hester. “So what didn’t you steal then, my fine lady wot got caught at it?”
    “A brooch with pearls in it,” Hester replied tartly. “What are you respectable ladies doing that brings you here?”
    Doris smiled, showing stained teeth, strong and regular. They would have been beautiful had they been white. “Well, some of us was letting gentlemen pay for their pleasures, which is only fair, as I sees it. But there was one in me back room as was screevin’, and the pigs don’t like that, cos’ the briefs don’t like it.” She watched Hester’s confusion with evident complacency. “Or to put it fancy like, so your ladyship can understand it: they says I was taking money for fornication, and the geezer in the back room was writing recommendations and legal papers for people as wanted ’em but couldn’t get ’em the usual way. Very good wi’ a pen, is Tam. Write anything for yer … deeds in property, wills, letters of authority, references o’ character. You name it, ’e’ll write it, and takes a good lawyer to know the difference.”
    “I see….”
    “Do yer? Do yer now?” Her Hp curled. “I don’t think yer see anything, yer stupid cow.”
    “I see you in here the same as I am,” Hester said. “Which makes you just as stupid, except you’ve been here before. To do it twice takes a real art.”
    Doris swore. Marge smiled mirthlessly. Tilly slunk backwards and crouched by the end of the cot, expecting a fight.
    “You’ll get yours,” Doris said sullenly. “They’ll put yer somewhere like the ‘Steel’ down Cold Bath Fields for a few years, stitching all day till yer fingers bleed, eating slops, ‘ot all summer and cold all winter, and nobody ter talk ter wi’ yer fancy voice.”
    Marge nodded. “That’s right,” she said dolefully. “Keep yer in silence, they do. No talking. An’ masks, too.”
    “Masks?” Hester did not understand her.
    “Masks,” Marge repeated, dragging her hand across her face. “Masks, so yer can’t see nobody’s phys.”
    “Why?”
    “Dunno. Just to make you feel worse, I suppose. So yer alone. Don’t learn nothing wicked from nobody else. It’s the new idea.”
    Hester’s day was taking on more and more of the proportions of a nightmare. This last piece of information lent it a quality of total unreality. Hester tried to imagine troops of women in gray dresses, silent and masked, faceless, laboring, cold, filled with hatred and despair. In such a world, how could they be anything else? And children who spun tops in the street and got in people’s way. She was choked with a mixture of rage and pity, and the almost hysterical desire to