Winchester Geese

Winchester Geese.

Copyright oggbashan October 2021

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.

Historical Background: Even before the Norman Conquest, the City of London had its own rules and regulations within the so-called City Liberties. Among other things it banned anything deemed sinful like the theatre, bull baiting, and in theory, prostitution, except there were small streets in the City that were wholly brothels.

At the time, and for hundreds of years afterwards including Shakespeare’s time, Southwark, south of the River Thames, was outside the City’s laws. That is why the Globe theatre was built in Southwark.

In 1161, the Bishop of Winchester, who had his London Palace in Southwark, was granted “The Liberty of the Clink”. That ordinance as signed by Thomas A Becket before he became Archbishop of Canterbury. That allowed the Bishop of Winchester and his successors to licence and claim a fee from various places of entertainment and more to the purpose of this story, to regulate brothels and prostitutes in Southwark. The prostitutes were known as ‘Winchester’s Geese’. Apart from his license fees he collected fines if a prostitute broke the rules for example by pulling a customer off the street by any of his clothing.

But because not just the prostitutes but anyone involved with the theatre or bear baiting etc. was assumed to be living in constant sin, if they died, they could not be buried in consecrated ground. They were buried in a large plot of unconsecrated ground called Cross Bones. It is estimated that over 500 years more than 15,000 bodies were buried there.

In the 1990s the London underground lines were being extended and a route passed under Cross Bones. That is where the story starts.

Some conservations are assumed to be in the English of Chaucer’s time, retold in modern English.

+++

I am a lecturer in Archaeology at the University of London. During the summer vacation and beyond I have been employed by Transport for London (TFL) to lead a team of archaeologists working along the route of the extended underground line. Normally I would come to the site each day and go back to my flat at night. But my flat is empty. My girlfriend, Gail, had decided our relationship was going nowhere, despite my frequent proposals of marriage and has gone to Thailand for six months ‘to sort my head out’ as she said.

Gail’s decision was a painful reminder that my wife had divorced me because I preferred to spend my holiday times as an archaeologist, often staying in a draughty tent instead of travelling the world as my wife, and now Gail, wanted to do.

TFL wanted someone on site overnight and offered me more money than I earn as a lecturer to live in a caravan on site. It is a large modern residential three-bedroom caravan with all facilities, even better equipped than I am at home, so it is no hardship to live there. I have to patrol the site about midnight and listen for any sounds during the night. That’s all. It seems and easy way to earn money.

Today, the 31st of October, we started to gradually remove some of the bodies from Cross Bones. We won’t need to move more than a small percentage, only those which would be in the way of construction traffic. Even so, that might be five hundred bodies at least. Though it was Halloween, I wasn’t worried about ghosts. I had handled too many burials to be afraid of ghosts walking.

After my evening meal I opened the box which contained our first complete skeleton, spread an old sheet across the table and started to arrange the bones as they should be. It was the skeleton of a woman, probably in her 30s, but her skeleton showed signs of poor nutrition, early hard labour and a leg had been broken and not reset properly. Infection from that broken leg might have killed her. There were no obvious signs of any other trauma that could have caused death. I turned on the voice recorder on my laptop and dictated notes to myself.

The students had carefully washed the bones. I was handing them carefully wearing cotton gloves and marvelling at how complete she was even after hundreds of years. When I had all the bones in the right places, I stood back to take many pictures, with a measuring rod beside her.

She had been about five feet four inches tall, tallish for a woman of her time, and had a slim torso, elegant limbs, except for the broken leg, and must have had a regular face. On my laptop I had tools to reconstruct a face from just a skull, but I thought I’d just let the bones speak for themselves first.

I sat down and looked carefully. I picked up a magnifying glass to look more closely at the fractured leg. It had splintered badly and showed no signs of regrowth, just traces of infection. If so, she must have died within hours or a couple of days of the break.

Suddenly I was aware of a very strong smell of rancid sweat and musty clothing. It was so strong that I sneezed and couldn’t stop myself for a few minutes. I held a handkerchief to my nose before the sneezing stopped.

“OK, now, Alan?” A female voice said from behind me. I swung my chair around.

Standing just inside the caravan’s door was a woman. She was wearing a floor length faded black skirt, ragged at the hem, and an equally threadbare cloak falling to her knees. Her face was grey with ingrained dirt. Her shoulder length hair was greasy, lank and looked as if it had never seen a comb for years.

“Who are you?” I asked cautiously.

“I’m Molly, one of the Winchester Geese,” She replied. “You have been studying my bones. Thank you for treating them with respect. I never had such gentle treatment when I was alive. But…”

I had to adjust my understanding because she spoke Chaucer’s English. I had studied Anglo-Saxon and Middle English as subsidiaries at university and the Professor had insisted that we should be able to speak those languages. Molly spoke Middle English.

She walked past me. The smell was almost intolerable. I picked up my mobile phone and took a few pictures of her. I was surprised that they registered. How could I take pictures of a ghost? But it seemed that I could.

“There.” She pointed. “Two finger bones are in the wrong place. That one is part of my middle finger, not my index finger.”

She swapped the two small bones over.

I started sneezing again.

“What’s wrong, Alan?”

“Your smell is too strong for me. When did you last have a bath of a change of clothes, Molly?”

“A bath? Never. Except perhaps as a new-born baby. A change of clothes? I’ve been wearing these for three months. But in my time, everyone smelled like me. We didn’t notice.”

“If we are going to continue to talk, without me sneezing all the time, I think perhaps you ought to have a bath and clean clothes, Molly.”

It wasn’t as easy as that. It took me sometime to persuade Molly to have a bath, and when she did, I had to wash her. She didn’t mind the nudity. After all she is a prostitute and by seeing her bones, I had seen her more naked than she had ever been in life. Once she was over her fear, she enjoyed herself and there was a lot of giggling. I had to change the bath water twice because it got so dirty. I had put her clothes in the washing machine for the hottest wash, with added disinfectant because they were crawling with lice and fleas, as was her hair. I shampooed her hair three times over. Instead of greasy black her hair was a nice deep brown. I was worried that her clothes might not survive the wash.

I offered her a tracksuit. She wouldn’t wear it because of the trousers until I added a long dressing gown that fell to the floor. We went back into the living room and sat down facing each other with Molly’s bones on the table in the dining area.

Molly stretched herself like a cat waking from a sleep.

“Thank you, Alan. I don’t think I have felt so nice, and sweet-smelling, ever. I appreciated your personal attention, and I would like to repay you in the only way a Winchester Goose can. But the regulations say I can’t give services for free. Have you got sixpence?”

“Yes, I have, but my sixpence would be no use to you, Molly. It is from a different time when sixpence buys very little. But can a ghost, even of a Winchester Goose, do anything?”

“You ought to know, Alan. When you were giving me a bath and cleaning my hair, your hands felt all of me, didn’t they? And, even through your clothes, I could see a very satisfactory erection which I want. But no sixpence? That could be a problem.”

“I night have a solution, Molly,” I said.

I opened a drawer and rummaged inside. As I thought, I had a small silver ingot found on the Thames foreshore. I had declared it to the Museum of London, and they had told me I could keep it because it had no maker’s marks and no provenance.

“How about this?” I showed the ingot to Molly.

“What is it?”

“It is an ingot of solid silver. Even in your time it should be worth more than sixpence.”

“Silver? Yes, I could trade that in. One of my regulars is — oops — was a silversmith.”

She weighed it in her hand.

“I think, not only is it worth more than sixpence, but possibly more than twenty shillings. That would be forty couplings, Alan. Are you sure you have the stamina?”

“That depends, Molly. Over a period of weeks, perhaps. But will you stay around that long, or are you just here because it is Halloween?”

“I have no idea. I have never been a solid ghost before now, Alan.”

“But as a solid ghost I have touched can you eat and drink? Are you hungry?”

“Thirsty, perhaps. Have you any small beer?”

“Small beer? No. I have water, some soft drinks…”

“Water? I have never drunk water. It is unsafe and gives you all sorts of problems. That is why I drunk beer.”

“Water today is safe to drink. You saw how clean it was when you had a bath. But — I have some low alcohol lager. Would that do?”

“Lager? What’s that?”

I poured two cans of lager into glasses and gave Molly one. She drunk about a quarter of the glass.

“That’s nice,” she said. “And I have never drunk from a glass. We only had pottery beakers.”

“So, Molly, can you tell me your full name, your parents’ names, and when and how you died?”

“My full name? As a goose I didn’t really have two names. I had been called Molly Brown because of my hair. I have no idea who my father was because my mother was a goose too. She died when I was eight and I don’t remember much about her except her name — Sarah.”

I looked at my laptop. It was still recording.

“What happened to you after your mother died?”

“The madam of the brothel kept me on as a kitchen skivvy. I had a bed in the scullery, food, basic clothing and a roof over my head. I was much better off than most orphans but I had to work. I kept the kitchen fires burning, cleaned, prepared vegetables, went shopping and never went upstairs to the main brothel. I was even more fortunate. One of the regulars was a goldsmith. From time to time he wanted adult virgins, and he would pay a fantastic amount for them. He paid the Madame to keep me as a virgin until I was twenty-one. As my first, he was very gentle but after that I was registered as a goose and worked in the brothel.”

“Your death?”

“It was an accident with a horse and cart. They were unloading the cart, but a barrel slipped from its sling and fell behind the cart. That startled the horse who bolted and run into me. I was knocked to the ground and a cartwheel went over my leg. Apart from that I had multiple cuts and bruises. I was taken to St Barts Hospital, but they couldn’t set my leg and I developed a fever which killed me three days later on 31st October 1410. I remember that a clerk asked me for details which he entered in a large book. I don’t know what he wrote. I can’t read.”

“That might be useful, Molly. Later I’ll see if I can find out whether the records survive. But now? Do you mind if I leave you alone for about half an hour? I think I can get you some better clothes. My former girlfriend, Gail, left some in my flat.”

“Won’t she object?”

“Probably she’ll never know. I can wash them and put them away long before she returns — if she ever does. I’ll have to go soon. Two students are staying late, cleaning two more sets of women’s bones. When they go, I have to be here as the nightwatchman.”

I checked with the students Robert and Jane. They would be around for the next half hour at least and would hang on until I came back. They didn’t want to stay long. They weren’t happy at being in the middle of a graveyard for 15,000 people on Halloween.

Gail had left her clothes in a large, wheeled suitcase. I also put some instant frozen meals in a cool box. I had intended to go shopping tomorrow and didn’t have much food in the caravan. I was back in the caravan within twenty minutes.

“Molly? Beef or chicken for dinner?” I asked.

“Beef, please. I don’t think I have ever eaten beef. It was too expensive.”

I put the meals into the microwave and started to pack away Molly’s bones, wrapped into the sheet and put into the cardboard box. The box had notes in Indian ink with the number 0001, date of excavation and precise location. There were refences to the photos taken of the bones as uncovered and as I had arranged them.

“What will happen to my bones now?” Molly asked.

“They, and all the bones we move, will be boxed and stored at the Museum of London. There they could be examined again, but as yours is the first complete skeleton it might go on display.”

Using a 2B pencil, I added Molly’s name, that she had been a Winchester Goose, and her dates for the accident and death at St Barts. I used a pencil because as yet I couldn’t prove the statements. I couldn’t say I had a ghost’s word for them.

“How old we you when you died, Molly?” I asked with my pencil still poised.

“I’m not sure. I was told my mother died when I was eight, but I never knew my birthday. I could have been just eight or nearly nine. I have no idea except that I was old for a Winchester Goose in my thirties. Most didn’t survive until thirty.”

“OK. I’ll put mid-thirties.”

“Why are your writing with a pencil and not ink, Alan? I don’t know what you are writing.”

The ink is things we know. The pencil? Things you told me, but I can’t prove them, Molly. How can I say a ghost told me? Maybe the records of St Barts hospital might help but how do I identify one set of bones out of fifteen thousand? I can’t — yet.”

I sealed the box and put it on the settee. When I served the meals, I gave Molly a knife and fork. She didn’t know what to do with a fork but ate daintily with her fingers. Toward the end of the meal, I tried to show her how to use a fork which ended up with both of us giggling.

“I have never used a fork, Alan, nor have I seen anyone use one before you. Perhaps some of my customers, like the silversmith, might have done, but they never ate when they were with me. They had more immediate things to do.”

After the meal I put Gail’s suitcase on the table and opened it. Molly was reluctant at first to touch the clothes inside. They were clean and showed no signs of wear and tear. To Molly they looked new. I showed her how to put a bra on. Molly had never had one. Gail’s bra went around but the cup size was slightly too small. I made a mental note to buy some in a C cup, not Gail’s B.

When I showed Molly an ankle length slip, she was astonished. She had never seen material that thin and sensuous. When she put it on, she wriggled and jiggled to feel the slip moving around her. I found a long sparkly T-shirt and a floor length denim skirt. As she walked around, I took movies on my mobile phone. She was wearing very worn rope sandals on her feet. She admitted that most of the time she went barefoot. But Gail’s trainers, even if slightly too large, fitted Molly and she could wiggle her toes in them. She found the trainers even more amazing than the slip.

While she enjoyed her new clothes, I started searching on my laptop for records of St Bart’s hospital. Eventually I found the notes of admission, written in Latin, of course, but some researcher had provided a translation.

On the 28th of October 1410, Molly Brown had been admitted to Barts after an accident with a runaway horse and cart. Her leg was beyond the skills of the infirmarian to set and the notes said that they had considered amputation, but Molly was running a fever and was delirious. Until the fever had gone, they wouldn’t operate. They had given her opium and feverfew, but the fever got worse, and she died just before Terce i.e.,9 am on the 31st of October 1410. What was amazing was that someone had made a sketch of Molly’s broken leg. It matched exactly with what I had seen on her bones so I could identify Molly positively. They had also recorded Molly’s age, given to them by the brothel owner. Molly had been 34 and had been born on the first of April.

There was a final note. When they knew Molly was dying, they managed to get her to repeat the words of the general confession and had given her the last rites for which they were later reproved by the Abbot. A Winchester Goose should have been beyond the reach of the church. The brother who had given the last rites suggested that since Molly hadn’t been engaged in sin for the previous three days since the accident, and had confessed, she shouldn’t have been denied the last rites. But even so, she was still buried in unconsecrated ground at Cross Bones.

I showed the screen to Molly. That was pointless because Molly can’t read, so I read it to her. She was surprised but pleased that she had been given the last rites.

“The brothers at St Barts treated me well,” she said. “They couldn’t have done more for me if I had been a noblewoman. I will pray for them.”

“And now, thanks to the sketch of your injuries, I can print off the record and positively identify your bones. Your skeleton won’t be anonymous. They will be recorded for ever as the bones of Molly Brown, Winchester Goose.”

“That will be nice, but not as nice as Gail’s clothes. I never knew anyone who dressed as well as this, and there are several changes in the suitcase. How could Gail leave them behind?”

“They were more than she wanted to take. She took her best clothes. If she runs out, she could easily buy more Molly.”

“More? In her case is enough to dress at least four Geese, far better than their usual wear. And what’s this?”

Molly held up a baby-doll nightdress.

“It’s a nightdress that Gail would have worn in bed.”

“In the summer I would wear nothing. In the

colder weather I would wear whatever I had on in the day. But this caravan is so warm, I think being nude would be comfortable, Alan, particularly if I am going to earn the silver ingot.”

“You don’t have to, Molly. It’s your choice.”

“As a Goose, even if a long-dead Goose, I have to provide value for money, Alan, and I’ll start tonight…”

+++

She did. She was obviously a skilled and experienced Goose. Despite my age, she played me like a skilled musician, bringing me close to ejaculation time and again before I finally came into her and almost immediately went to sleep, waking again for Molly to ride me. At dawn she brought me back to a third erection which I didn’t expect. She left me sleeping while she dressed herself.

She couldn’t make breakfast. She had no idea of what to have, what equipment to use, or even how to use it. The range of foodstuffs in my cupboards, poor though I thought they were, was a revelation to her. We had Muesli and milk. She liked it but wasn’t convinced by coffee which she had never heard of. She was happier with a can of low-alcohol lager.

Over the next hour I showed her how to fill and use the electric kettle, how to turn taps on and off to get hot and cold water, and how to turn the lights on and off. Even that little was a revelation to Molly.