After an eternal fifteen minutes the double doors opened and a voice intoned, "Pray stand for 'Is Honor, Sir John Fielding."
As if they had any choice, Juliana thought with a brave attempt at humor, unable to ignore the shiver that ran through her companions.
Sir John Fielding, in a loose brocade chamber robe over his britches and shirt, his hastily donned wig slightly askew, took his seat behind the table. He surveyed the women with a steady, reproving stare.
"Charges?"
"Disorderly be'avior, Sir John," the head beadle spoke ponderously. "Inciting to riot… debauchery… damage to property."
"Who brings the charges?"
"Mother Cocksedge and Mistress Mitchell, Yer 'Onor."
"Are they here?"
"Awaitin' yer summons, sir." The beadle tapped his staff on the floor and twitched his nose with an air of great self-importance.
"Then summon them."
Juliana turned her head toward the door. The two women bustled in. Mistress Mitchell looked like a respectable housewife in her print dress and mob cap; Mother Cocksedge had thrown her apron over her head and appeared much affected by something, her shoulders heaving, great sobs emerging from beneath the apron.
"Cease yer blubbin', woman, an' tell 'Is Lordship yer complaint," instructed one of the constables.
"Oh, I'm ruint, Yer 'Onor, quite ruint," came from beneath the apron. "It's all thanks to those evil girls… them what encouraged the young gennelmen to break up my 'ouse. Flaunted theirselves at 'em, got 'em all excited like, then wouldn't deliver. An' them three…" With a dramatic gesture Mother Cocksedge flung aside her apron and pointed at Juliana, Lilly, and Rosamund. "Them three, what ought to know better, they was encouragin' the others, poor souls what don't 'ave 'alf the advantages, to use my establishment fer himmoral purposes."
Juliana gasped. "Why, you old-"
"Silence!" The justice glared at Juliana. "Open your mouth once more, woman, and you'll be carted from St. Paul's Church to Drury Lane and back again."
Juliana shut her mouth, seething as she was forced to listen to the two women spin their tales. Mistress Mitchell was all hurt feelings and good nature taken advantage of as she explained that she'd allowed some girls to use her best parlor for a birthday party, but instead they'd been preparing to create a riot at Mother Cocksedge's oh-so-respectable chocolate house. They had a grievance against Mother Cocksedge and intended to be avenged upon her by causing her house to be wrecked by a group of angry young bloods.
They were evil, fallen women with no morals, set on their wicked ways, put in Mother Cocksedge, once more retreating beneath her apron. "But me an' Mistress Mitchell, 'ere, Yer 'Onor, we don't think as 'ow they should all be punished as much as them what lead 'em into evil. Them three from Russell Street."
Mistress Mitchell bristled and agreed with a dignified nod.
Sir John Fielding regarded the two complainants with an expression of distaste. He was as aware as anyone of the true nature of their trade. But they were not on this occasion brought before him, and their complaint was legitimate enough. His head swung slowly around the semicircle of defendants, and his gaze rested on the three chief malefactors.
Lilly and Rosamund immediately dropped their eyes, but the bold-eyed redhead met his accusatory glare head-on, her green eyes throwing a challenge at him.
'"Name?" he demanded.
"Juliana Beresford." She spoke clearly and offered neither curtsy nor salutation.
Lilly and Rosamund, on the other hand, both curtsied low and murmured their names when asked, with an "If it please Your Honor."
"Do you have anything to say to these charges?" He gestured to Juliana.
"Only that they're barefaced lies." she replied calmly.
"You were not gathered in this woman's chocolate house?" The justice's eyebrows rose in a bushy white arc.
"Yes, we were, but-"
"You weren't gathered behind a closed door?" he interrupted.
"Yes, but-"
He thumped his fist on the table, silencing her again. "That's all I wish to know. It is against the law for people to gather together for the purposes of incitement to violence and riot. I sentence you and your two companions to three months in the Tothill Bridewell. Those whom you have corrupted are free on payment of a five-shilling fine."
With that he pushed back his chair and rose to his feet, yawning prodigiously. "I sat overlate last even, and then to be dragged from my bed in the small hours to deal with a trio of hotheaded troublemaking harlots is more than a man can abide," he remarked loudly to a somber-suited man who had stood behind him throughout the trial and who now accompanied him from the room.
"Ye'll be showin' a little more respect to yer betters after three months beatin' 'emp,'' Mother Cocksedge declared, coming up to the three young women with a leer in her little pink eyes. "I doubt Mistress Dennison and 'er man’ll be ready to take ye back afterward. We don't like troublemakers in the Garden, and don't ye ferget it, missie." She jabbed a finger at Juliana's chest. Juliana would have retaliated if she hadn't been held so tightly by a constable. The urge to spit in the woman's face was almost overpowering, but somehow she resisted it and looked away from the hateful, triumphant grin.
"Rosamund cannot survive Bridewell," Lilly whispered to Juliana. "I can, and you can. But Rosamund is fragile. She'll not last on her feet for more than a week."
"She won't have to," Juliana declared with a confidence she didn't feel. They were binding her hands in front of her with coarse rope, and with each twist and knot she was secured in the chains of powerlessness.
Lilly gave her a scornful look as if to say "Face reality" and endured her own bonds with tight lips. Rosamund continued to weep softly as she was similarly bound. The other women had been hustled from the room and could be heard across the hall, declaring penitence and gratitude as the two bawds paid their fines. They'd just been given a lesson on which side their bread was buttered, and it would be a rainy day in hell before they would contemplate standing up for themselves again.
"Come along, then, me pretties." A beadle grinned at them and chucked Rosamund beneath the chin. "Ye'll spoil them lovely eyes with yer tears, missie. Save 'em for the Bridewell, I should." A hearty laugh greeted this sally, and Juliana, Lilly, and Rosamund were half pushed, half dragged out of the house to an open cart waiting outside.
Juliana waited in sick dread for them to fasten her bound hands to a rope behind the cart and pull her bodice to her waist. But they were shoved upward into the cart, and her relief was so great that for the first time since this ordeal had begun, she thought she might faint. She put an arm around Rosamund and took Lilly's hand in a fierce grip as they stood in the benchless vehicle, swaying and lurching over the cobbles.
Dawn was breaking, and the city streets were filling with costermongers, night-soil collectors, barrow boys, servants of all kinds hurrying to the market. The nighttime din had died down in Covent Garden, replaced with the coarse cries of the market people, the rattle of wheels and the clop of horses. As the cart bearing the three bound women was drawn through the streets, people jeered and threw clods of mud and pieces of rotten fruit; small boys ran along beside the cart, chanting obscene songs.
Juliana thought of being burned at the stake. She imagined being tied to the stake in front of a jeering crowd. She thought of the noose around her neck, mercifully squeezing consciousness from her body before they lit the faggots. She lived that nightmare and thus defeated the ghastly reality of the humiliating journey.