"Well," he said. "What say you, William? You've got a glow on, you've seen the sights but haven't touched, you're like a boar held off the swill-pail. On that side yonder, there are the quiet rooms. I aim to spend a little in the dear old way. Will you?"
William did have a glow on. He was almost steaming. Away where Sam had nodded, far side of the courtyard, was a lowish building, but extensive, like living quarters. The windows were mostly dark and shuttered, but some few were open to the air, with lights glimmering inside. A sailor on shore, thought Will. God, this is what the seaman did, that he had once despised. But truth to tell, he was afraid. Drunk though he felt, he could not be sure of reacting in 'the dear old way'. His tongue clove drily to his palate.
"Money," he said. "How much have we spent, Sam? How do we pay? The meat and drink aren't given free. Is there a reckoning?"
"Aye," Sam laughed. "A slate. Pay by the week, the month, the year for all I know; Marigold don't care. Look tonight so far is all on mine, it's little enough in any case; the meat is free, ditto the salt they douse it in to make you thirsty. But if you want to have a maid, it will not cost you much, depending on what you want to do, and who to do it with. But decide, man, soon. I am getting .. . hungry."
Inside the house, Will met Mrs. Putnam "Mistress Margery, to my friends' and instead of acting like a cavalier, became a poltroon, entirely. Samuel, having introduced him, hung at his side out of loyalty for some while, although his impatience mounted by the second. Margery, a comfy dame of fifty at the least, flapped him away from the table where she sat at last.
"Oh dear," she said, to William. "You are not a master in this field yet, are you? You do not have to try your luck, you know. There is no hard and fast rule for a whore though come to that, that's not a bad one in itself! I do a lovely cup of chocolate, if you prefer."
She was a mistress in her field, and that was parting gallants from their money, and training up the young when necessary. She could see that she might lose him if she went too strong, so made it clear the chocolate was a joke (he was far too much a man for that, any old fool could work it out!) unless of course he really fancied ... but no, of course he didn't. She fussed about him like a mother all the while, putting up possibilities as if she were discussing with him whether he should try serge or fustian for his latest coat. And yet the things she said were scandalous, unmentionable, in the normal way of things: the merits and demerits of thin scraggy girls over fat juicy ones, the need for gentlemen to maintain a proper rectitude however wanton the demands put on to them by saucy hussies, the guarantee of complete discretion that made Dr. Marigold's a toast throughout the land.
"Be assured, sir," she told him, 'that nothing said or done within a maiden's bedroom walls in here or thighs for that matter! will ever see the light of day outside. They are the acme of discretion, so they are, the very zenith and the soul. They are respectable! Lord, and now you're laughing. Well, very good."
He was laughing, relaxed enough to be almost open with his fears.
"Respectable for whores," he said, agreeing. "But that's the problem, is it not? They're whores, and we have countless warnings against the breed. On my last ship, women came on board in bum-boats, and our surgeon held a muster every week, a pr He broke off, embarrassed. Margery was not.
"A prick parade, aye, aye." She was a shade abrupt, as if he had offended her somehow. He had, or that at least is what she made him think. She said severely, "Our maidens are not whores, sir, not in that way. They are chosen, hand-picked by Dr. Marigold himself, perhaps with aid from me or Mrs. Lewis, Mistress Pam. If you wish the rough end of the trade you are not in the proper house; sure, Master Samuel would not have brought you here. Our maids go on to great things, some of them; some of them have married out of here, or got protectors of great power. All of them, sir, have mothers, we do insist upon that point. Whores they may be, in a word, but they are not common whores, nor do they spread distemper to men's parts. Why, we have the tableaux, and Greek dancing, some of our girls have taken parts upon the stage, much admired by the public."
In the end, coddled but unsure, Will settled for a type of peep-show, where he could look, and ponder (and anything else he wished to do alone, by implication) without the slightest interference or embarrassment. It was an exhibition set up by Dr. Marigold for just such a case as him, for 'suchlike shy young persons of artistic bent, for the contemplation of the female form and beauty'. Here Mistress Margery nodded very earnestly. The young maiden he could contemplate in silence, in the dark was of the very highest loveliness, most extraordinary, she avowed. And a whore? Nay -she was as virginal as the driven snow, as virginal (said roguishly) as the young gentleman himself. Her face was always covered, and her modesty entirely intact. Dr. Marigold looked after her, and her parts were not for sale. She was destined, said Mrs. Putnam, for infinitely higher things. Before she led him to the peeping point, she gave him a clean napkin, and a glass of port.
It was a room, a small, dark room, and to William's surprise and slight discomfiture, there were already two men in it, one in a wicker chair that creaked noisily as he moved. It was too dark to see them properly, and they were very quiet, so he allowed the firm clasp of Mrs. Putnam, as she led him, to be a comforter. She took him round an angle in the facing wall, so that he could barely see them anyway, and patted a straight-back chair with a good stuffed seat. Beside it was a little table, and before it, in the wall, an eyehole, nearly square, three inches wide or thereabout, two deep. It had a flap on it of polished wood, already open.
"There," said Mrs. Putnam. "You'll be private here, sir. Do keep quiet, though, no speaking is the rule, most particularly no speaking to the maiden. Remember, sir, this is a privilege you enjoy. This is artistic contemplation."
After she had gone, Will waited several seconds before he used the peephole. First he accustomed himself to the feeling of the place, its heavy, perfumed smell, overlaid with tobacco, though neither of the men was smoking at the moment, then to the vague movement sounds, the creaking of the basket-chair, the rather stertorous breathing of one of the watchers, who must presumably be fat. He glanced about him, but the lighting was discreet, just one small lantern, or a candle, behind a thick horn shade. If he craned, he could make out the curved back of a man, but that was all; why should he crane, in any way? But he was reassured. To all intents, he would gaze on this fair form alone.
And, oh God, it was fair. William moved his head at last, and applied his eyes, and had no idea at all why he was doing it, or what sort of sight he'd see. He knew now he'd faced it in himself in talks with Samuel, even that the female form, the very thought of it, could make him ache, but in no wise was he prepared for the reality. He put his face up close, he looked through the wood-framed hole, and he was struck in the belly, it was a blow of concrete physicality, that which he saw quite simply robbed him of his breath.
She was lying, this young woman, on a bank of pure lawn, or it might in fact have been a silken shroud. She was lying on a white bank, a roundish sofa covered in a field of white, and she was facing him almost directly, which is to say one leg was stretched towards him, with the other crooked out at an angle so that the knee was to his right hand, pointing to the wall, and the inside of her thigh, round, cream-white and elastic, led from the bended knee to the fulcrum where her body cleft. It was not the cleft itself, though, that held his gaze, took his gaze and tortured him, it was the thicket of black hair, a gleaming lustrous triangle in the light of the many candles ranged around her bed, of such a thickness, such soft density, that he knew it was the origin of the world, he gasped at the deepness of desire that it hollowed out in him.