Sally had treated him as she might a cat, petting him and even calling him “puss” when the mood took her, then ignoring him for weeks at a time. Molly kept her distance from him; he looked a bit like one of her nephews and she disliked any reminders of the family she’d left. There was no knowing what Mrs. Stanley thought about Sammy, even though she’d been in charge of him and was the only one who required that the house be kept clean. By the time Sammy left, her interests and attentions had narrowed to keeping a reliable stock of rum in her house, and for that, all she needed was John Stanwood. “Such a nourishing beverage,” she said every time he brought her a bottle. “You know that molasses is excellent for the digestion.”
That the house was known by Mrs. Stanley’s name
testified to her expansive sense of herself, and to the effect she had on men. Few people remembered that Molly and Sally had been doing business under the same roof for several months before she even appeared. But
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then, neither of them was in any way as memorable as Mrs. Stanley.
Molly and Sally were certainly nowhere near as pretty, nor had they been, even as girls. Molly Jacobs had once owned a beautiful head of raven hair, which helped soften the downward turn of her thin lips and the birdlike effect of close-set eyes arranged beside her long, narrow nose. She was thin in every aspect, with arms that seemed oddly short for the rest of her.
The fifth of six daughters born to a hardscrabble Plymouth farmer, she understood early that she was unmarriageable and doomed to serve as a permanent nursemaid to her sisters’ children. Once they grew up, she’d be the kind of maiden aunt that no one needed or wanted underfoot.
After her second sister bore her third son, Molly realized she didn’t like children, so at fourteen, she ran away to Boston and got her living the only way she could. She walked the streets near the waterfront and made a little name for herself as mistress of the French trick, which she learned from an older member of the sisterhood, as a sure way to keep from getting the clap or, just as bad, a baby.
Molly had been at it for a few years when she crossed paths with Sally Phipps. The barman, who kept an eye out for his regular girls, motioned her over and said, “Watch out for that ginger-haired bantam over there.” He nodded at a potbellied fellow who was drunk as a fiddler. “He’s under-selling you something terrible, trading his poor little niece for the price of a rum punch.” Adding, “Niece, my arse.”
A moment later, a sailor slammed the door wide and said, “Set the fellow up.”
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A slip of a girl crept in and stood in a corner, where she could lean up against one wall and stare at the other. Her white-blonde hair was wet from the rain, slicked down to her skull. Her chest rose and fell quickly, as though she’d been running, and Molly noticed the unmistakable swelling at her waist. When the red-haired “uncle” went outside for a piss, Molly hurried over to the pale, soaked girl and said,
“Follow me.”
Sally looked into Molly’s sad face and considered the invitation. Ned had taken to slapping her for just about anything, including talking to strangers without his say-so.
But he was out of the room, and she sure as hell didn’t want to lie down for anyone else that evening.
“Aw-right,” Sally drawled, and turned on a smile full of milky teeth and blind trust.
Molly led her out the back door, down the alley, and up a flight of stairs into her room, which was bare except for a plank bed, a stool, a couple of pegs, and a chamber pot. Sally headed straight for the cot and within a minute, a soft whistling sound came from her upturned nose. Sleep was by far the best time of the day for a streetwalker.
Poor thing, Molly thought and sat beside her, trying to decide on a next step. The barman wouldn’t tell the pimp where she lived, but there were others who might. Once that Ned sobered up, they might want to be somewhere else. Maybe this was the sign that she ought to leave Boston.
When she first left the farm, Molly had loved being on her own. Her sisters had made her feel invisible and un-important. Being a woman alone—even a bad woman—
meant that she could claim her own time, as well as her price. She’d chosen a
new name, too—switching from Mary
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to Molly—and had picked out “Jacobs” as a surname, from the store where she had her first taste of pineapple.
But she’d turned against Boston, which now seemed nothing but dirty and dangerous. She’d heard it was quieter up in Portsmouth and the prospect of a traveling companion made the journey suddenly seem more like a holiday than a retreat.