The majority of them donned nuns’ robes and wore little, if anything underneath, their bare legs showing as they moved their brightly coloured slippers oddly at variance with the austerity of their sombre habits, as were their red lips and shrewd greedy eyes.
While Moll helped Clarinda take off her clothes, the Abbess chattered away.
“This place isn’t anythin’ like as fine as Sir Francis Dashwood’s Club,” she said. “He had a banquetin’ ’all and an inner Temple in the very deepest part of the ’ill. There was also a stream filled with what the Brothers called ‘unholy water’ where the newly initiated members were baptised. It was all on a grand scale, but ’ere we have everythin’ lumped together. Not that they spares any expense when it comes to the food and drink.”
Clarinda said nothing an
