"Well, let's 'ear what ye've to say," Tina said, still belligerently. "We ain't got all night. Some of us 'ave a livin' to earn."

Juliana decided that attempting to justify her own position would be pointless. Let them believe what they would of her. She had more important matters to concentrate on. The street women were harried and thin-faced, their clothes shabby finery that she guessed had been on other backs before. Beside them, the girls from Russell Street and similar houses looked pampered and affluent, but they all shared something: A wariness, a darting mistrust in their eyes, an air of resignation to the vagaries of fate, as if what security they had today could be gone tomorrow and there was nothing they could do about it. Beside them, the safety and permanence of her own situation must look like heaven. And these were not the poorest of the women out there. There were women and young girls, little more than children, lying against the bulks, winter and summer, with whoever could give them a crust of bread or a sip of gin.

She began to explain her idea, slowly and simply, but soon the images of what she'd seen, the knowledge of what lives these women led, the deep knowledge that she had escaped it by a hairbreadth, took over, and her voice grew passionate, her eyes flashing with conviction.

"It's not inevitable that we should be obliged to live as the bawds and whoremasters dictate. It's not inevitable that we should see our earnings disappear into the pockets of greedy masters. It's not inevitable that we should live in fear of prison for the slightest offense, for the smallest word out of turn. None of this is inevitable if we support each other." She had instinctively used "we" throughout. If she didn't identify with the women, she would seem like a preacher, distant on a pulpit. And, besides, she did identify with them, even if her situation was vastly different.

She paused for breath and Lilly jumped in, her eyes misty with tears. "We have to have a fund, as Juliana says. We each put into it whatever we can afford-"

"Afford!" exclaimed Tina, coughing into a handkerchief. "That's rich, that is. It's all right fer you what've got a decent 'ouse an' all found. But fer us… there's nowt twixt us an' the devil but a sixpence now an' agin if we're lucky."

"But that's my point," Juliana said eagerly. "Listen, if you didn't have to pay all those expenses, you would be able to contribute to the Sisterhood's fund. Those of us who have the most will put in the most-that's only fair. And the rest contribute what they can. But we'll find our own suppliers for coal and light and food and wine. If we can guarantee a certain amount of business, I'm sure we'll find some merchants willing to do business with us. Willing to give us credit to get started."

"Lord luv us, darlin', but who's goin' to give us credit?" wheezed a woman on the settle, laughing at the absurdity of such a prospect.

"They'll give Viscountess Edgecombe credit," Juliana said stubbornly.

A thoughtful silence fell at this. Juliana waited, her blood on fire with her passionate need to persuade them that they could take control of their lives. It had to be possible.

"Ye'd be willin' to put yer name out, then?" Tina looked at her with a sudden degree of respect.

"Yes." She nodded in vigorous emphasis. "I will put my own money in every week, just like everyone else, and I will undertake to find the merchants willing to do business with us."

"But, Juliana, they aren't going to be doing business with you," Deborah pointed out. "You have no need to buy supplies to conduct your own business."

Juliana shrugged. "I don't see that that makes any difference."

"Well, if ye don't, then us'll thankee kindly fer yer assistance," Tina stated. "That so, ladies?"

"Aye." There was a chorus of hesitant agreement, and Juliana was about to expand on her plan when the piercing squeal of a whistle drowned her words. There was a crash, a bellow, shrieks, more whistles from the room beyond. The young bloods were calling in their high-pitched excitement, furniture crashed to the floor, the sound of blows.

"Oh, dear God, it's a riot," Emma said, her face as white as a sheet. "It's the beadles."

The women were surging to the back of the room, looking for another door. Someone flung up the casement sash and they hurled themselves at the opening. Juliana just stood there in astonishment, wondering what the panic was all about. The disturbance was all in the room next door. If they stayed quiet, no one would come in. They'd done nothing. They were doing nothing to disturb the peace.

Suddenly a voice bellowed from the open window, "No ye don't, woman. Y'are not gettin' away from me. All right, my pretties, settle down now. Mr. Justice Fielding is awaitin' on ye."

Deborah gave a low moan of despair. Juliana stared at the glowering face of the beadle in the window, his rod of office raised threateningly. Behind him, two others were wrestling with one of the women who'd managed to get through the window. Then the door flew open. She had a glimpse of the room behind, the scene of chaos, the mass of grinning or scowling faces lost in a frenzied orgy of destruction. Then she saw Mistress Mitchell standing with another woman in a print gown and mob cap. They were both talking to a constable as his fellows surged into the room where the women were now huddling, swinging their batons to left and right, grabbing the women, herding them toward the door.

Juliana was caught up with the rest. She lashed out with a fist and a foot and had the satisfaction of feeling them meet their mark, but it did her little good. She was hustled out, pushed and shoved by the officious and none too gentle constables. And as she looked over her shoulder, Mistress Mitchell smiled with cold triumph.

They had been betrayed, and it was clear by whom. The whoremasters of Covent Garden wouldn't see their nymphs escape the yoke without a fight.

Chapter 24

The duke's coachman was sitting on an ale bench outside a tavern under the colonnades of the Piazza, pleasantly awaiting the return of his passenger. He could see the carriage and the urchin who held the horses, but he could see little else beyond the sea of bodies eddying around the square. He heard the ruckus from Cocksedge's as just another exploding bubble in the general cacophonous stew and called for another tankard of ale.

"Beadles is raidin' some 'ouse," a shabby bawd observed from the bench beside him. "Daresay some of them varmints from up town are causin' trouble. Breakin' 'eads no doubt, drunk as lords… a'course, most of'em is lords." She cackled and drained her tankard. "Not that that Sir John'U do much more 'an turn a blind eye to their goings-on. It's the women who'll suffer, as usual."

She stared into her empty tankard for a minute, then gathered herself to her feet with a sigh. "That ale does go through a body summat chronic." She staggered into the road, raising an imperative hand to a flyter, who stood with his pail and telltale voluminous cloak a few yards away. He trotted over to her, and she gave him a penny. The flyter set his bucket on the cobbles and then spread his cloak as a screen for the woman, who disappeared into its folds to relieve herself in relative privacy.

John Coachman paid scant interest to a sight that could be seen on every street corner in the city. He eyed his carriage in case the disturbance should show signs of coming this way. There were the sounds of running feet, more yelling and cursing, mostly female. With a grunt he hauled himself to his feet and clambered onto the box of the coach to see over the heads to the turmoil across the square.

He could make out little, except a group of constables herding a crowd of women toward Bow Street, presumably to bring them before Sir John Fielding, the local magistrate. Around the beadles and their prisoners surged a crowd of raging women, throwing rotten fruit at the constables, cursing them with fluent vigor. The constables ducked the missiles, ignored the curses, and moved their prisoners along with the encouragement of their rods. The young men from Cocksedge's roared and swayed in a drunken circle before suddenly affected by a common impulse; like lemmings, they turned in a body and reentered Cocksedge's. The sound of breaking glass and smashing furniture was added to the general tumult, Mother Cocksedge's vituperations and desperate pleas rising above it all.