Alias Grace (2 page)
Authors: Margaret Atwood
I watch the peonies out of the corners of my eyes. I know they shouldn’t be here: it’s April, and peonies don’t bloom in April. There are three more now, right in front of me, growing out of the path itself. Furtively I reach out my hand to touch one. It has a dry feel, and I realize it’s made of cloth.
Then up ahead I see Nancy, on her knees, with her hair fallen over and the blood running down into her eyes. Around her neck is a white cotton kerchief printed with blue flowers, love-in-a-mist, it’s mine. She’s lifting up her face, she’s holding out her hands to me for mercy; in her ears are the little gold earrings I used to envy, but I no longer begrudge them, Nancy can keep them, because this time it will all be different, this time I will run to help, I will lift her up and wipe away the blood with my skirt, I will tear a bandage from my petticoat and none of it will have happened. Mr. Kinnear will come home in the afternoon, he will ride up the driveway and McDermott will take the horse, and Mr. Kinnear will go into the parlour and I will make him some coffee, and Nancy will take it in to him on a tray the way she likes to do, and he will say What good coffee; and at night the fireflies will come out in the orchard, and there will be music, by lamplight. Jamie Walsh. The boy with the flute.
I am almost up to Nancy, to where she’s kneeling. But I do not break step, I do not run, I keep on walking two by two; and then Nancy smiles, only the mouth, her eyes are hidden by the blood and
hair, and then she scatters into patches of colour, a drift of red cloth petals across the stones.
I put my hands over my eyes because it’s dark suddenly, and a man is standing there with a candle, blocking the stairs that go up; and the cellar walls are all around me, and I know I will never get out.
This is what I told Dr. Jordan, when we came to that part of the story.
ROCKY ROAD
On Tuesday, about 10 minutes past 12 o’clock, at the new Gaol in this City, James McDermot, the murderer of Mr. Kinnear underwent the extreme sentence of the law. There was an immense concourse of men, women and children anxiously waiting to witness the last struggle of a sinful fellow-being. What kinds of feelings those women can possess who flocked from far and near through mud and rain to be present at the horrid spectacle, we cannot divine. We venture to say they were not very
delicate
or
refined
. The wretched criminal displayed the same coolness and intrepidity at the awful moment that has marked his conduct ever since his arrest.
–
Toronto Mirror
,
November 23rd, 1843.
| Offence | Punishment |
Laughing and talking | 6 lashes; cat-o’-nine-tails |
Talking in wash-house | 6 lashes; rawhide |
Threatening to knock convict’s brains out | 24 lashes; cat-o’-nine-tails |
Talking to Keepers on matters not related to their work | 6 lashes; cat-o’-nine-tails |
Finding fault with rations when required by guards to sit down | 6 lashes; rawhide, and bread and water |
Staring about and inattentive at breakfast table | Bread and water |
Leaving work and going to privy when other convict there | 36 hours in dark cell, and bread and water |
– Punishment Book,
Kingston Penitentiary, 1843.
THE MURDERS OF THOMAS KINNEAR, ESQ.
AND OF HIS HOUSEKEEPER NANCY MONTGOMERY
AT RICHMOND HILL
AND THE TRIALS OF GRACE MARKS
AND JAMES McDERMOTT
AND THE HANGING OF JAMES McDERMOTT
AT THE NEW GAOL IN TORONTO, NOVEMBER 21st, 1843.
Grace Marks she was a serving maid,
Her age was sixteen years,
McDermott was the stable hand,
They worked at Thomas Kinnear’s.
Now Thomas Kinnear was a gentleman,
And a life of ease led he,
And he did love his housekeeper,
Called Nancy Montgomery.
O Nancy dear, do not despair,
To town I now must go,
To bring some money home for you,
From the Bank in Toronto.
O Nancy’s no well-born lady,
O Nancy she is no queen,
And yet she goes in satin and silk,
The finest was ever seen.
O Nancy’s no well-born lady,
Yet she treats me like a slave,
She works me so hard from dawn to dark,
She’ll work me into my grave.
Now Grace, she loved good Thomas Kinnear,
McDermott he loved Grace,
And ’twas these loves as I do tell
That brought them to disgrace.
O Grace, please be my own true love,
O no it cannot be,
Unless you kill for my dear sake,
Nancy Montgomery.
He struck a blow all with his axe,
On the head of Nancy fair,
He dragged her to the cellar door
And threw her down the stairs.
O spare my life McDermott,
O spare my life, said she,
O spare my life, Grace Marks she said,
And I’ll give you my dresses three.
O ’tis not for my own sake,
Nor yet my babe unborn,
But for my true love, Thomas Kinnear,
I’d live to see the morn.
McDermott held her by the hair,
And Grace Marks by the head,
And these two monstrous criminals,
They strangled her till dead.
What have I done, my soul is lost,
And for my life I fear!
Then to save ourselves, when he returns,
We must murder Thomas Kinnear.
O no, O no, I beg not so,
I plead for his life full sore!
No he must die, for you have sworn
You’d be my paramour.
Now Thomas Kinnear came riding home,
And on the kitchen floor
McDermott shot him through the heart
And he weltered in his gore.
The peddler came up to the house,
Will you buy a dress of me;
O go away Mr. Peddler,
I’ve dresses enough for three.
The butcher came up to the house,
He came there every week;
O go away Mr. Butcher,
We’ve got enough fresh meat!
They robbed Kinnear of his silver,
They robbed him of his gold,
They stole his horse and wagon,
And to Toronto they rode.
All in the middle of the night,
To Toronto they did flee,
Then across the Lake to the United States,
Thinking they would scape free.
She took McDermott by the hand,
As bold as bold could be,
And stopped at the Lewiston Hotel,
Under the name of Mary Whitney.
The corpses were found in the cellar,
Her face it was all black,
And she was under the washtub,
And he was laid out on his back.
Then Bailiff Kingsmill in pursuit,
A Charter he did take,
Which sailed as fast as it could go
To Lewiston, across the Lake.
They had not been in bed six hours,
Six hours or maybe more,
When to the Lewiston Hotel he came,
And knocked upon the door.
O who is there, said Grace so fair,
What business have you with me?
O you have murdered good Thomas Kinnear,
And Nancy Montgomery.
Grace Marks she stood up in the dock,
And she denied it all.
I did not see her strangled,
I did not hear him fall.
He forced me to accompany him,
He said if I did tell,
That with one shot of his trusty gun,
He’d send me straight to H_ll.
McDermott stood up in the dock,
I did not do it alone,
But for the sake of her person fair,
Grace Marks, she led me on.
Young Jamie Walsh stood up in court,
The truth he swore to tell;
O Grace is wearing Nancy’s dress,
And Nancy’s bonnet as well!
McDermott by the neck they hanged,
Upon the Gallows high,
And Grace in Prison drear they cast,
Where she must pine and sigh.
They hanged him for an hour or two,
Then took down the body,
And cut it into pieces
At the University.
From Nancy’s grave there grew a rose,
And from Thomas Kinnear’s a vine,
They grew so high they intertwined,
And thus these two were joined.
But all her weary life Grace Marks
Must in Prison locked up be,
Because of her foul sin and crime,
In the Kingston Penitentiary.
But if Grace Marks repent at last,
And for her sins atone,
Then when she comes to die, she’ll stand
At her Redeemer’s throne.
At her Redeemer’s throne she’ll stand,
And she’ll be cured of woe,
And He her bloodied hands will wash,
And she’ll be white as snow.
And she will be as white as snow,
And into Heaven will pass,
And she will dwell in Paradise,
In Paradise at last.
PUSS IN THE CORNER
She is a middle-sized woman, with a slight graceful figure. There is an air of hopeless melancholy in her face which is very painful to contemplate. Her complexion is fair, and must, before the touch of hopeless sorrow paled it, have been very brilliant. Her eyes are a bright blue, her hair auburn, and her face would be rather handsome were it not for the long curved chin, which gives, as it always does to most persons who have this facial defect, a cunning, cruel expression.
Grace Marks glances at you with a sidelong, stealthy look; her eye never meets yours, and after a furtive regard, it invariably bends its gaze upon the ground. She looks like a person rather above her humble station.…
– Susanna Moodie,
Life in the Clearings
, 1853.
The captive raised her face; it was as soft and mild
As sculptured marble saint; or slumbering unweaned child;
It was so soft and mild, it was so sweet and fair,
Pain could not trace a line, or grief a shadow there!
The captive raised her hand and pressed it to her brow;
“I have been struck,” she said, “and I am suffering now;
Yet these are little worth, your bolts and irons strong:
And, were they forged in steel, they could not hold me long.”
– Emily Brontë,
“The Prisoner,” 1845.
1859
.
I am sitting on the purple velvet settee in the Governor’s parlour, the Governor’s wife’s parlour; it has always been the Governor’s wife’s parlour although it is not always the same wife, as they change them around according to the politics. I have my hands folded in my lap the proper way although I have no gloves. The gloves I would wish to have would be smooth and white, and would fit without a wrinkle.
I am often in this parlour, clearing away the tea things and dusting the small tables and the long mirror with the frame of grapes and leaves around it, and the pianoforte; and the tall clock that came from Europe, with the orange-gold sun and the silver moon, that go in and out according to the time of day and the week of the month. I like the clock best of anything in the parlour, although it measures time and I have too much of that on my hands already.
But I have never sat down on the settee before, as it is for the guests. Mrs. Alderman Parkinson said a lady must never sit in a chair a gentleman has just vacated, though she would not say why; but Mary Whitney said, Because, you silly goose, it’s still warm from his bum; which was a coarse thing to say. So I cannot sit here
without thinking of the ladylike bums that have sat on this very settee, all delicate and white, like wobbly soft-boiled eggs.