Gullgrope

One of the three promissories of Parquet, Gullgrope is a woman not well liked for she insists upon the deposit of some small treasure or tool to secure her coin, and almost always without any intention from either part for repayment. In short, she is a pawnbroker, and indeed the pawnbroker for Parquet. A game bird as a girl, Gullgrope was in her youth the youngest Jack at the still young age of (she herself would have to guess) perhaps nineteen. Where there is an element of thievery in most pandies hers was wholly committed to it and so successful was she at placing even the most unlikely treasures other Jacks began to sell on to her the more unique and difficult that came into their hands. Within three years Gullgrope had stopped considering herself a Jack at all, left her bailiwick and purchased the sturdy turnpike house that sits still between the Delves and the Looms and overhanging the Falls. Her business bustling and concerned mostly with smaller debt and promissory, still not an unsubstantial portion of it comes from thievery. Gullgrope’s is a place to sell on the particulars of robbery that either aren’t so easily used or exchanged into coin, or which are so marked or unique that continued possession of them would be unwise. And yet to the people of the Looms, even the fashionable and the quality, what Gullgrope does is to find lost treasures. Where something precious and irreplaceable is stolen then Gullgrope can... find it... for the victim. In a society where many things given up by the sea are unique, or anything of real quality takes time and uncertainty to have made anew, then it is easier and cheaper to simply ask if Gullgrope can find them. No one quite believes this convenient fallacy, but in Parquet it is a necessity. In the Delves something that can be stolen and pawned in such a way is also called gullgrope, and entirely because of Gullgrope herself.

To her face Gullgrope is treated respectfully, for everyone might need her services one day. Indeed, it is well known what happened to the fop Paradis. At a ball for whose hostess Gullgrope had performed some service and been invited in gratitude, Paradis was loudly cutting. Even then it was considered by the dandies to be rude, since the insults were too easy and the subject too obvious. When later Paradis’ prized silver snuff box was stolen and came in to Gullgrope’s hand it was by mistake melted down, gone forever, and made into studs. These sold very well to Barberry and his chums who each wore one to the ball that followed. Gullgrope is not stupid, very far from it. She knows what people say of her but accepts this as part of what she does. Yet her business relies on reputation and the loss to Paradis was a necessity rather than any real revenge.

Comfortably rich, relatively powerfully, and to her face respected Gullgrope is a woman free to indulge herself. Though she dresses well (if without any concern to passing fashions) her wigs are, as are those of all her household, always black. Indeed, those that protect, messenger, or serve Gullgrope are commonly called black wigs because of it. Strictly speaking though without a particular bailiwick they are her pandy, but dress and on her business act more in the manner of a milicio, no matter that they might not possess such a standing. Born to Parquet Gullgrope is a cuckoo in her manner, adopting the ways and even the accents prevalent in the Delves so that for many years she might have been lifted whole from the rookeries of England. No longer in her prime and never having married she favours one or more young men whom she treats as pets and all of whom she calls by the name Pollo (or chicken). They change, appear, and vanish again and no one cares to mention it. Always smiling, never laughing, Gullgrope is rumoured to be so enamoured with duck butter that she covers herself in it each night and which leads to those who really refer to her hatefully as ‘old cheesy’. Starkly, wilfully intelligent if there is one thing that Gullgrope despises it would be the scholars. She has no time for the argumentative fools in their big shirts and uncovered heads, and her intelligence notwithstanding Gullgrope does not pretend to be literate. Her mind capable of remembering any business dealing she lets her bookkeepers deal with ascribing the debt and promissory, chief amongst them Sibert. .