I could not deny the truth of his words, and I feared always that if he were to learn something on his own, he would feel himself compelled to act upon it, heedless of his own good. Instead, I chose to filter the information-for my sake and his.
Thus I told Mr. Franco not precisely everything, but near enough-all that I had told Cobb and Hammond, and much of the rest as well. I told him I suspected Celia Glade to be a French agent. I told him about Absalom Pepper and his two wives. The only thing I held back was the truth about what Forester kept in his secret warehouse. In part, I worried that, even here, the walls might hide the watchful presence of the enemy, and I also feared that we had not seen the worst of what Cobb and Hammond had to offer. How could I be certain they were not above cruel forms of questioning? It would be best, I decided, to keep some things close, even from my friends.
Mr. Franco listened with particular interest to my description of the mystery surrounding Ellershaw’s stepdaughter. “This is the perfect place to find out,” he said. “If she engaged in a clandestine marriage, she would do so within the Rules of the Fleet.”
“Very true,” I said, though without enthusiasm.
“As you are here, perhaps it would be wise to pursue that line of inquiry.”
“I should prefer not to. I am sufficiently aggrieved that I must inquire into the Company. I have no desire to upturn personal lives and heap miseries upon Mrs. Ellershaw or her daughter.”
“Often, in business, it is the circuitous path that is the most expedient. That matter has been raised, and you tell me that this Forester appears to be concealing something from you.”
“Yes, but as he has tender feelings for Mrs. Ellershaw, it seems likely that he conceals to aid her.”
“I see no harm in pursuing the matter, in the event you are mistaken. I do not wish to use my position to influence you, but I would hope you would use every advantage possible to influence those who hold all our fates in their hands.”
It was true enough. The investment of a few hours might yield nothing, and if that were the case I could easily forget I had pursued this course. “Perhaps you are right.”
“Indeed, I may save you some time. I met this morning a priest by the name of Mortimer Pike who told me he lives within the Rules, on the Old Bailey, and he, at least according to his own declaration, is fairly the king of Fleet marriages. He appears rather proud of the claim that he has performed more of these ceremonies than any other man alive. I cannot speak of his veracity, but he does appear to do a brisk trade and, what’s more, knows the other priests.”
I thanked him for the intelligence. And, after visiting for some half an hour more, I set off in search of this servant to Hymen.
IT HAS EVER BEEN one of the most curious aspects of the city that there are small sections in which the normal laws that govern our lives do not apply, almost as though one might stumble into a neighborhood where a dropped object would fly upward rather than downward or in which the old turn young rather than the young old. The Rules of the Fleet, the dense and tangled quarter surrounding the prison, was such a place, for therein a man could never be arrested for debt, and so the most desperate debtors in the city would make it their home, never venturing away except on Sundays, when no man can be arrested for debt anywhere. By similarly curious tradition, marriages can be performed within the Fleet, even marriages of the underaged, without permission of parents or the traditional reading of banns.
Thus I walked the streets of the Rules, in the shadow of St. Paul ’s Cathedral, and listened to the cries of the boys in employ of priests-every one of them impecunious, defrocked, or false. “Marriage, marriage, marriage, marriage!” called out a young fellow from under a shop sign. Another tugged at my pant leg with dirty hands. “Get married, sir?”
I laughed. “To whom? I have no lady with me.”
“We can answer that, for we’ve no shortage, sir.”
Was marriage now like a good meal, something a man must pursue when he felt the need, and if only indifferent offerings were available, he must make do? I told the boy I searched for Mr. Pike’s marriage house and he brightened prodigiously.
“I work for him, I do. Come on, then.”
I could not help but feel equal amounts of amusement and sadness at this mode of commerce, but such is the nature of marriage in our kingdom. Indeed, it is said that fully one third of all marriages that take place are of a clandestine nature; that being the case, it is surely cause to wonder if the rules governing the institution require some revision when so many people are unwilling to comply. Granted, many such marriages were of a kind that no just law could endorse-those between siblings or other near relatives, those between parties already married, those between children or, worse yet, adult and child. And yet the greater part of these secret marriages stood between young people who simply cared not for the lengthy process required of them by canon law.
In light of this demand, it is hardly surprising that officiating over marriages should become a popular means of generating income among indebted priests and, indeed, indebted men who are capable of performing a tolerable impersonation of a priest.
I could not say into which category Mortimer Pike might have fallen, but he clearly operated a profitable business at the Queen’s Fan, a tavern close enough to the Fleet Ditch to be permeated with the stench of that river of offal.
When I walked inside, I observed that the building was no place in which to make one of the most solemn decisions in the life of a man. Here was a poor sort of tavern, an old wooden structure with a low roof, smoky, crowded, and all surfaces sticky. The clock on the wall read shortly before nine, for by law a marriage must take place between 8 A.M. and noon, so here the world was always frozen between those hours.
A goodly number of prospective spouses drank while preparing themselves to enter Hymen’s temple; toward the back, the good priest performed his services in a little alcove decorated with tarnished church vestments. I heard his words before clearly observing the wedding party, noticing he hurried through the service in a haphazard manner, and though I am no expert in Church doctrine, I could not but suspect he read the text unexactly. This little confusion was made clear when I noted a distinctive drunken slur to his voice and saw that the book he held was not precisely ecclesiastical but rather a collection of the plays of John Dryden, and held upside down too.
This little impropriety did not long hold my attention, however, for I noted something far more amiss. The bride was dressed in a most exquisite blue silk gown with a gold bodice and ivory stomacher. She wore about her graceful neck a chain of gold and had all the appearances of a lady of some worth. The groom, however, was dressed in plain undyed wools, was possessed of many scars upon his face, and had the general appearance of a rude fellow. Indeed, the clandestine marriage had been invented in large part to facilitate the unions of those unequal in rank, but something of far greater import transpired here. The bride, elegant in dress though somewhat unlovely in her face, could not stand of her own accord and was held in place by two fellows as rude as the groom. These men laughed to each other and made a great joke of attempting to hold the bride’s head upward, because it was clear to me that she was entirely disordered with drink or some other potion.
Drunkenness at these affairs is to be expected, though not always for the clergyman, and I might not have been alarmed had not, when the good priest asked the lady if she willing accepted her vows, one of the rude witnesses took her head and puppeted a nod, which produced general laughter among the men.
“I shall accept that,” the priest announced, and then turned to the groom.