“A final toast!” said Jay, but they all laughed and jeered.
Lizzie sipped her drink, a mixture of wine, milk and egg yolk with sugar and cinnamon. She was exhausted. It had been a long day, from the morning’s terrible quarrel and its surprisingly happy ending, through the church service, the wedding dinner, music and dancing, and now the final comic ritual.
Katie Drome, a Jamisson relation, sat on the end of the bed with one of Jay’s white silk stockings in her hand and threw it backward over her head. If it hit Jay, the superstition said, then she would soon be married. She threw wildly but Jay good-humoredly reached out and caught the stocking and placed it on his head as if it had landed there, and everyone clapped.
A drunken man called Peter McKay sat on the bed beside Lizzie. “Virginia,” he said. “Hamish Drome went to Virginia, you know, after he was cheated out of his inheritance by Robert’s mother.”
Lizzie was startled. The family legend was that Robert’s mother, Olive, had nursed a bachelor cousin while he was dying, and he had changed his will in her favor out of gratitude.
Jay heard the remark. “Cheated?” he said.
“Olive forged that will, of course,” McKay said. “But Hamish could never prove it, so he had to accept it. Went to Virginia and was never heard of again.”
Jay laughed. “Ha! The saintly Olive—a forger!”
“Hush!” said McKay. “Sir George will kill us all if he hears!”
Lizzie was intrigued, but she had had enough of Jay’s relations for one day. “Get these people out!” she hissed.
All the demands of custom had now been satisfied but one. “Right,” said Jay. “If you won’t go willingly …” He threw the blankets off his side of the bed and got out. As he advanced on the crowd he lifted his nightshirt to show his knees. All the girls screamed as if terrified—it was their role to pretend that the sight of a man in his nightshirt was more than a maiden could bear—and they rushed out of the room in a mob, chased by the men.
Jay shut the door and locked it. Then he moved a heavy chest of drawers across the doorway to make sure they would not be interrupted.
Suddenly Lizzie’s mouth was dry. This was the moment she had been looking forward to ever since the day Jay had kissed her in the hall at Jamisson Castle and asked her to marry him. Since then their embraces, snatched in the few odd moments when they were left alone together, had become more and more passionate. From open-mouthed kissing they had progressed to ever more intimate caresses. They had done everything two people could do in an unlocked room with a mother or two liable to come in at any moment. Now, at last, they were allowed to lock the door.
Jay went around the room snuffing out candles. As he came to the last, Lizzie said: “Leave one burning.”
He looked surprised. “Why?”
“I want to look at you.” He seemed dubious, and she added: “Is that all right?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” he said, and he climbed into bed.
As he began to kiss and caress her she wished they were both naked, but she decided not to suggest it. She would let him do it his way, this time.
The familiar excitement made her limbs tingle as his hands ran all over her body. In a moment he parted her legs and got on top of her. She lifted her face to kiss him as he entered her, but he was concentrating too hard and he did not see. She felt a sudden sharp pain, and she almost cried out, then it was gone.
He moved inside her, and she moved with him. She was not sure if it was the thing to do but it felt right. She was just starting to enjoy it when Jay stopped, gasped, thrust again, and collapsed on her, breathing hard.
She frowned. “Are you all right?” she said.
“Yes,” he grunted.
Is that all, then? she thought, but she did not say it.
He rolled off her and lay looking at her. “Did you like it?” he said.
“It was a bit quick,” she said. “Can we do it again in the morning?”
Wearing only her shift, Cora lay back on the fur cloak and pulled Mack down with her. When he put his tongue in her mouth she tasted of gin. He lifted her skirt. The fine, red-blond hair did not hide the folds of her sex. He stroked it, the way he had with Annie, and Cora gasped and said: “Who taught you to do that, my virgin boy?”
He pulled down his breeches. Cora reached for her purse and took out a small box. Inside was a tube of something that looked like parchment. A pink ribbon was threaded through its open end.
“What’s that?” said Mack.
“It’s called a cundum,” she said.
“What the hell is it for?”
By way of reply she slipped it over his erect penis and tied the ribbon tightly.
He said bemusedly: “Well, I know my dick isn’t very pretty but I never thought a girl would want to cover it up.”
She started to laugh. “You ignorant peasant, it’s not for decoration, it’s to stop me getting pregnant!”
He rolled over and entered her, and she stopped laughing. Ever since he was fourteen years old he had wondered what it would feel like, but he still felt he hardly knew, for this was neither one thing nor the other. He stopped and looked down at Cora’s angelic face. She opened her eyes. “Don’t stop,” she said.
“After this, will I still be a virgin?”
“If you are, I’ll be a nun,” she said. “Now stop talking. You’re going to need all your breath.”
And he did.
18
JAY AND LIZZIE MOVED INTO THE CHAPEL STREET house on the day after the wedding. For the first time they ate supper alone, with no one present but the servants. For the first time they went upstairs hand in hand, undressed together, and got into their own bed. For the first time they woke up together in their own house.
They were naked: Lizzie had persuaded Jay to take off his nightshirt last night. Now she pressed herself against him and stroked his body, arousing him; then she rolled on top of him.
She could tell he was surprised. “Do you mind?” she said.
He did not reply, but started to move inside her.
When it was over she said: “I shock you, don’t I?”
After a pause he said: “Well, yes.”
“Why?”
“It’s not … normal for the woman to get on top.”
“I’ve no idea what people think is normal—I’ve never been in bed with a man before.”
“I should hope not!”
“But how do you know what’s normal?”
“Never you mind.”
He had probably seduced a few seamstresses and shopgirls who were overawed by him and let him take charge. Lizzie had no experience but she knew what she wanted and believed in taking it. She was not going to change her ways. She was enjoying it too much. Jay was, too, even though he was shocked: she could tell by his vigorous movements and the pleased look on his face afterward.
She got up and went naked to the window. The weather was cold but sunny. The church bells were ringing muffled because it was a hanging day: one or more criminals would be executed this morning. Half the city’s workingpeople would take an unofficial day off, and many of them would flock to Tyburn, the crossroads at the northwestern corner of London where the gallows stood, to see the spectacle. It was the kind of occasion when rioting could break out, so Jay’s regiment would be on alert all day. However, Jay had one more day’s leave.
She turned to face him and said: “Take me to the hanging.”
He looked disapproving. “A gruesome request.”
“Don’t tell me it’s no place for a lady.”
He smiled. “I wouldn’t dare.”
“I know that rich and poor women and men go to see it.”
“But why do you want to go?”
That was a good question. She had mixed feelings about it. It was shameful to make entertainment of death, and she knew she would be disgusted with herself afterward. But her curiosity was overwhelming. “I want to know what it’s like,” she said. “How do the condemned people behave? Do they weep, or pray, or gibber with fear? And what about the spectators? What is it like to watch a human life come to an end?”