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Overview
One freezing May morning, two veiled women step off the boat from Holland. A French lady, calling her Mrs Fox, and her maid: they are on the run. Fearing for her life, Mrs Fox must make her way in a strange new city . . . but both her past and present crackle with danger.
Immoral and beautiful, Mrs Fox has always used men to support and amuse her. Trusting on her wits to keep ahead of the hangman, she manipulates others to survive: gullible Lord Danceacre; sweet Violet Denyss; and degenerate predator, Earl Much.
Yet in the Earl, Mrs Fox has met an adversary whose sadistic viciousness is a match for her own attempts to destroy him. Games are played with ever higher stakes, until someone must pay the penalty - but will it be the innocent or the damned? Through a dark, quick world of liars and lechers, where infidelity and intellect cross swords with desire or death, Mrs Fox hurtles towards a horrible climax.
Here is London, 1784 . . . Welcome to a factory of cunning.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781448208494 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Publication date: | 04/16/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 377 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
She studied English at Oxford, then clothing history at the Courtauld Institute where she wrote a thesis upon costume in the novels of Fielding and Defoe, giving her an introduction to the background of her second novel, The Factory of Cunning.
Philippa Stockley has reviewed for The Sunday Telegraph and Country Life, and written for The Evening Standard, RA magazine, and Cornerstone.
Having had her first novel rejected by Faber when she was eight, Philippa Stockley worked variously and often simultaneously as a painter; a clothing-, set-, costume-, interior- and graphic-designer; a window-painter; journalist; newspaper-page-designer; editor, columnist and reviewer, before publishing her first London-set novel, The Edge of Pleasure.
She studied English at Oxford, then clothing history at the Courtauld Institute where she wrote a thesis upon costume in the novels of Fielding and Defoe, giving her an introduction to the background of her second novel, The Factory of Cunning.
Philippa Stockley has reviewed for The Sunday Telegraph and Country Life, and written for The Evening Standard, RA magazine, and Cornerstone.
Read an Excerpt
Journal
April 25, 1784
Two Gentlewomen from La Manche
If I ever travel to a strange country again it will in a straight-sided box. Not tossed up and down in a hold full of nutmegs, trapped with a Flemish Harlot and a pinchbeck Lutheran -- and the fear of capture, which has a stronger stink.
It had been bad enough beforehand, grinding along in the stage from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, avoiding the curiosity of such unchosen chaff, diverting their attention from me to their stomachs and a growing interest in the ungodly welfare each to the other. Money laid out to keep them fed and sleepy was worth spending many times over. All to be crammed afterwards into the gut of a leaking tub, with shouts of "no room on deck, whores and godsods below the waterline!" lumping us together. We were bullied through a hatch so steep-stepped that the red-haired whore fell on top, tumbling us into a sump of stinking water.
She helped me up, professing to wonder if anything was broken while having a good grab at what was not, until my maid came between us. The priest was making flourishes with his stick, prodding at the sacks whilst trying to smooth his crust of a wig, as if he had been bred on this fine ship that will have us safe to London in no time. Ship? Bitch. Water leaking in where the tar was peeled, the stink of piss to make the strongest sick which, with a clogging dose of damp spices, increased at every shuddering roll.
We were so troubled with discomfort, banged from one side to the other while ropes slapped at our heads, that we were at each other's throats. I was hard put not to grab one of the cloth-wrapped bottles the priest had wedged between two bales (for him and the woman from the Low Countries, though we had paid) to pacify them. After several expeditions behind the nearest bale to unflap himself and leak out against a sodden bulkwark what the sea oozed back, he lolled placidly against his Friesian cow, his hand no longer on his Bible. There is nothing squares the sexes in stupidity so much as a constant need to vomit. I do not know how long the journey lasted; limping in endless dark through the weft of spit-coloured water, grunting forwards, to be pushed back by currents as strong as they were sluggish. Towards the end of a cold, flat night, shouts from above told us we must be near landing.
My maid and I, not willing to witness a renewed twining of our companions, made quietly on deck, pulling our dismal clothes close and shrinking to the side, so shrouded that it was a wonder the captain had taken our word for our sex, when the Harlot must give us the lie. Yet we seemed luminous as Spanish Fly. Hands better put to hauling ropes were everywhere, instead of keeping us clear of the scum of craft ramming our overladen coffin that the merest tap would set flying to a colander.
Bellowed at to make shift, the sailors left off. We crouched to one side, rounding the great bend that a leering hand called Cuckold's Point, where the sky lost its cloud. I huddled against Victoire, watching the dank air throw out a few stars. Paler than the glitter that once lit my native Place Royale, these feeble planets pricked at mean buildings cringing from the water like muddled pigs. No wonder England's famous captain, Cook, took murder over such a homecoming. It may be that he sent back a fiction of death, to stay basking with the great winged dolphins of the Hawaiian Islands.
*
Already disheartened by such ugliness, commotion drove us back from the side: an East Indiaman set to nudge us under with its towering walls; merchant ships knit with dots and dashes in the rigging; sloops; fishing boats; coal-ships from Newcastle, so loaded that each swell must drown them; row-boats; skiffs, and sailboats hooped with canvas over brazier and meagre cargo. In every cross-hatched snatch of waves lightermen darted, pitch torches breathing and sucking fire, hustling reckless between merchantman and frigate for an illicit bargain. A hundred ships, if one.
Languages pelted from each side as if the world wove the wet air: shuttles of every tongue flinging laughter and curses, crossed with the shriek and crack of tarred rope and sail. Shouts of sailors clipped our low-slung sea-horse, close enough to smack spray up our sides.
Accustomed to it at last, we dozed, until far-off thunder woke me. A bright-grey sky held no rain, only frost and dawn. Someone shoved us. Roused up like rolls of Holland, we were manhandled to where the captain and first mate talked to a man in a short brown coat, who broke off, to offer to help us over the side.
"We are in deep water, would you kill us?" I gestured towards the far-distant bank. The pilot made me lean over and see where a row-boat grated on the broken river, lit by a hooked lamp whose flickering threw the water into sharp flakes like flashes of a giant fish bursting the surface. In such a perilous spot, hemmed by masts and sails, so tiny a craft would be sucked back and crushed beneath our ship's belly.
With our passage in his pocket, imagining what pleasures he would get in Redriff, or along Wapping High Street, the captain was keen for new cargo and men. "I unlade you here," he said in Dutch English, with neither warmth nor interest, as if we were baggage. "Here, you see for yourselves. You are lucky we don't drop you over, and you swim."
"Barbarous -- ," I began in lively expostulation, when the trollope's face, dabbed with drunken red, popped up from the lip of the hold, as if a whiff of Wapping had got her by the nostrils. That devil's face made me uneasy; her paramour most likely knocked senseless, pockets empty. If the captain and his crew didn't get a lick of what they were longing for, they were cheated. Skirts round her knees, breasts dangling, she laboured out. A squeal from Victoire impressed the captain that, in contrast, we promised neither ingress, nor income. He did us the brisk honour of helping us on to the ladder himself.
"Keep your wits, ladies. There are plenty here who will have your money and anything else they fancy. Nor pay a penny on the steps, or they may throw you back in; no, not till your feet are high and dry. I have seen these ugly men before, and they know it. May God go with you."
Journal continued
Morning of April 26, 1784
That slippery slattern from the Lightning Bolt got my pocket book and bills of lading, not to mention other papers. After stamping on my skirts going down into the hold, she had it feeling me for injuries. My pocket slit had seemed too narrow for such common hands -- which mistake many women make.
With just the small gold Victoire has knotted in a thin silk tied about her waist, and various items around mine, we are in a bad way until Hubert sends fresh supplies. I can remember only two of the addresses on the list that I had brought for introduction, out of seven that all smelled of money. God willing the harpy can't read French; not so much for those, but for what else was concealed in the purse besides.
I discovered the theft the moment the lightermen set us down on the steps, checking that we were secure against any harm they might propose. Too late! Sneering, not offering to take us back to challenge that grease-handed doxy, they asked if we would like to lose what else we had.
We were at Iron Gate Stairs, they said -- 'tho one slimy stair is like another -- and if we wanted a bed, a kiss gave the address of a Jewess in the Minories who would look after us properly -- making me certain we must quit that neighbourhood as seemly as our legs would carry us. I charged the quietest among them to carry a note to the ship's captain, with another inside, for Hubert. Which transaction cost dear.
Above, the Tower rang five. The Harlot had called it a fine spot to live, a Lady would want for nothing, she said, and have the High Life. This was at odds with what I knew: too many heads had been sliced there for comfort -- my own, after our recent loss, felt likely to slip free of my shoulders at the barest touch.
I thought of our precarious state; of the Harlot's way of staring rudely in my face, however close-pulled my veils, as if to mark me, which boldness should have been warning enough. I recalled the notice she took when I paid for provisions -- not to see how much money, but where it went after.
Parts of her loose conversation came back: her boasting, with a pretended fineness, to the clergyman (in which he had no interest, consumed by his own bluntness). He had let her run, whetting her with the fascination of her tongue. She spoke of having an important relation (procuress or fellow criminal, most like) an hour and a half's walk from the quayside, and gave the name of this place as Spittle Field, or Fields, exactly like spittle; of which, along with hot air and other queasy humours, she was full. Her distant Cousin was Irish, and she claimed some of that romantic blood herself.
*
Nevertheless I noted the name, Spittle Field, in case it was countryside, like my once-familiar Bois de Boulogne, where we could look about and find our bearings. But as the lovers talked on, it grew clear that Spittle Field was a bustling part of the town, favouring silk-weaving and finishing; mantua-making, and the arts that go with it. Then I pricked my ears, since she said there were many French as had escaped persication in the last century -- Huge-Nots - to make fortunes in all parts of Commerce. She scorned them as Catholics, showing off her ignorance and bigotry. Given her head, there should soon be murderous tales of Blackamoors, Musselmen, and Jews.
I flattered her that she must live in a grand house, although she was the commonest sort of twopenny standup -- if she could keep to her hind legs long enough. Baited, she fell to preening, arranging her neck-handkerchief in a disgusting manner for her neighbour's benefit. There were mansions of many storeys where master-weavers lived, she went on, while God's handservant drooled down her, in Church Street and Princes Street and Browns Lane. Repeating those names soft under my breath I gave a rousing kick to Victoire who, long inured to the discomforts of coach travel with vermin for company, has the art of dropping off so gently you would think Mrs Agnostic at prayer.
*
Even with the sun only half up, the quays were bursting. Voices bounced off the cobbles in slangs and shorthands that could have been Mandarin, which hubbub confused us. The women of the town, uncorseted cocked pistols, were so flagrant they made the ship's whore look convent-bred. Brisk trade was conducting in open view, while others dragged hiccuping culls to get poxed and robbed in a nearby tavern. Packets flew hand to hand quick as eye-bats, to thunder from barrels and carts. Had we not been robbed already we should have been then: turned, trimmed and tossed aside.
We had one bundle apiece, poorly tied in a shawl at which, compounded by our water-draggled clothes, chairmen took one glance and did not uncross their legs where they lounged against a wall drinking, or rested, curled up inside their boxes.
After seeking directions, we took the road alongside the Tower, having been told to continue until we reached White Chapel, a part of the city named after a church so white it could blind. From there, we learned we might ask our way to Spittle Fields.
*
Trudging along the Minories, watching out for a constant stream of wagons, persistent rain began. Our clothes dragged in the wet making every step two or three. This stretch of highway left me uneasy, with its ugly, poor houses, some with overhanging floors on the brink of descending to the lower, others that looked thrown up on a whim that might as easily have them down again; a street uncertain of coming or going, murky and dangerous, the air itself festooned with bad intentions. Who would stay except felons and sharpsters, jacks and jades, in the hope that the Light of Law might lose them up an alley? In passageways so narrow the occupants could touch across the casements, we glimpsed men in layered garments, Turk or Levantine, that I had thought left behind in Amsterdam. Others, more rat than human watched from the shadows in hand-me-down waistcoats prinked with blackened tinsel and overcoats thirty years old, the skirts sticking out and blades shining out too.
Lingering in a place that recognises refinement as a purse tempts tragedy. Appraised from every side, only exhaustion stopped us breaking into the trot that would be our undoing.
There was not one trace of powder in this unending hell-hole except on the head of a black man with a tanner's apron and fearful knife, who bowed as he passed, from whom we shrank for fear of skinning.
The stink of tanning blowing in from one direction and yeast from the other, with only rain and wind to wash away their cling, defeated us. Poverty soured a running gully and the mud beneath our feet.
Finally, too worn out to care if we sat down and died, we stopped at a cross-roads, until a passing carter offered to drive us. Our protector, John Settle, said he would take us to Browns Lane, not far off, where there were houses with rooms.
"You are certain," I demanded, since by his voice he too was a stranger to London.
Settle said he had once lodged there -- in a big house, he added. He was just arrived from Sussex, having just dropped off a load of earth to the place that made the bells. This explained traces of soil and a damp shovel in the back, where Victoire was now jouncing, swearing quietly. At other times, he said, since that trade (of providing dirt for bell-making) was irregular, he was a common carter, bringing hay to the Hay Market, or droving.
He wanted compliments for his industry. I stayed silent.
"You are not from England, Madam?"
We were not going along quick enough.
He tried a few countries -- Peking and the Ivory Coast -- before landing, by some calculation of his own, on Holland. He would not go unsatisfied. No, I lied, I was English, but had long lived in Holland, which had flavoured my voice, as he so cleverly understood. He beamed. "Then you will be content that it is an English house you are coming to. There's plenty of damn Frenchies round these parts, as have lived here so long they don't think we can send 'en back, about which they are grievous mistook. You might wonder sometimes that you aren't in Paree itself."
The mere word lifted my heart, while his sad horse stumbled on. Settle was in a mood to talk to anything that did not eat grass.
"The houses where we are going," he continued, giving the bay a tap, "Frenchy all through, you can smell 'em. It's a funny froggy scent they give out, just walking past, I have never tried it but my horse likes it. Worse than that, there's women as gives out a funny scent, too. But you wouldn't want to know, being ladies."
"The whole street?"
He saw my expression.
"Don't be alarmed. Only here and there. You'll know the bad ones straight off, they have a very high colour, and a very high -- ."
"Thank you." I said.
"Fear not, Madam, they won't bother you, they've got other game -- although watch out for the old ones."
We had slowed down, he was looking for the turn.
"There are evil places near by here, Warp Lane and Frying Pan Alley. Never set foot there if you want to keep your honesty."
Beneath my skirts, my sopping petticoat-skirts were brown to the knee.
"Perhaps, Sir, you also mistake us for ladies of that other kind?"
Settle backed against his nag and set off, with an aside to Victoire that if she was in need, to send word at the Bell Foundry. All sorts of Bells; church bells, wedding bells. He had a taste for her. Not surprising in a man of earthen compass, who had never set eyes on the genuine French article.
"Warp Lane and Frying Pan Alley," I repeated carefully under my breath, tasting the names and feeling, for the first time, that our feet were about to touch dry land.
We had arrived.