Victorian Maiden (10 page)

“No, come back here, Lovegood, damn you.” 

Uncle Alfie rushed forward, and there was panic in his eyes. But by the time they had crossed the marshy hollow in front of them and stumbled up the steep dune beyond, Peter Lovegood had gone, and all they could see in front of them were the empty, black waters of the North Sea slipping silently past.

“There can be no doubt he would have made it across the causeway to the mainland,” Uncle Alfie had said again and again as they waited for the waters to recede. “The water is quite shallow at that point.” 

Mr James and Mr Price had agreed enthusiastically with him.

“But,” Uncle Alfie had said as he looked murderously at each of the children in turn, “You must still take care to hold your tongues. I do not want one, single word of this night's work breathed to anyone. Do you hear me? If you do, I swear I will have Mr Otter strip and flay you all alive. Then he will fetch you back here and he will throw each and every one of you, bound and gagged, into the North Sea for the fish and for the sea monsters to eat.”

Sarah had screamed at that. On the long coach journey up the spectacular Northumberland coast, John had scared them all with tales of the Shoney, a fearsome sea dragon that inhabited those very waters. They had chattered and laughed about it then, and about the great game they were to play. But now, as they made their return in the very same coach, as they stole glances across the very same seas that sparkled now with silver and blue, they were all silent as the grave.

And then she was back in Master John's bedroom, the one adjoining her own, peering into the gloom under his bed. She knew he would be there, safe and cocooned in his own safe and special place.

“You told lies to the policeman, John.” 

She remembered hearing the tone of accusation in her voice.

A stark, white face turned towards her. 

“Shut up and go away, Lizzie.”

“Will you tell that to the Angel of Death when he comes to take you down to Hell? Will you tell him to shut up and go away, John?”

“Shut up; please, Lizzie, just shut up.”

“The Devil punishes you for all eternity in Hell – in the Inferno. I don't want you to be punished, John.” 

She paused. 

“Mr James is like the devil. He punishes you. I've seen him do it.”

Even in the gloom of his safe and special place, Lizzie could see the colour flushing into John's face. 

“He's punished me like that too,” she admitted, feeling the colour tingling in her own cheeks. “It hurts ever so much.”

“What, he's sodomised you too, Lizzie?” 

John sounded incredulous.

“I didn't know that was what it was called, but yes, he's punished me like that, like he does to you. He's sodomised me and so has Uncle Alfie and so have some gentleman at Brimston.”

“It's called sodomy because that's what the people used to do to each other in Sodom and Gomorrah. Those were cities in the Bible before God destroyed them and turned the people into pillars of salt. Its other name is buggery and it's against the law.”

It wasn't until several days later that it struck her as being very odd: If God had turned the people of Sodom and Gomorrah into pillars of salt for being wicked, how could her uncle, in doing to her exactly what they did to each other – sodomising her – help her to be a good little girl? Perhaps, she thought, she needed to pay much more attention at Sunday school.

“I've got Inspector Douglas' prisoner for you, Sergeant; the murderess from Sessrum House. She's an old girl, not what I expected at all. Her name is Elizabeth Beatrice Wilson.”

The constable pulled a trembling Elizabeth alongside him and turned her to face the front desk at Harrogate Police Station.

“She doesn't look capable of murdering a currant bun,” the desk-sergeant observed, laying a thick sheaf of papers onto the blotting pad in front of him.

“Maybe not, but she did for old Alfred Roberts at his house last night – brutally too, judging by the state that his body was in. And she killed him in her bedroom.”

The constable gave a significant nod and tapped the side of his nose.

“She's a queer one, though; she pissed all over the floor of the wagon on the way here and refuses to clear it up. She doesn't speak, she doesn't answer me, she doesn't do anything except for to stare like that and hum that bloody nursery song ‘Hush-a-Bye, Baby' over and over again. I swear, if she doesn't stop, I'll throttle her myself.”

“Is she mad or an imbecile or something do you know?”

“She's reckoned to be an imbecile. Detective Sergeant Hainsworth told me that the man who owns the house – Alfred Roberts' grandson – is a doctor, and both he and two nurses there said that her mind was quite gone. I'm not so sure though… She seemed to understand a lot of what I was saying on the journey here.”

The desk-sergeant shook his head in despairing outrage.

“Why don't they lock 'em up in proper asylums where they belong? But no, they insist on letting them go and live with their families and then what happens? They do someone a mischief. Then it's up to the likes of you and me to go and sort out the mess and lock them up here.”

He sighed.

“What possessions has she got then, Constable?”

 

She watched his hand lift and reach out towards her. It was overpowering, unstoppable. She wanted to beg him for mercy, to beg him not to do it, not to touch her, not to hurt her, but the words she needed to say choked in her throat. She tried to turn; she wanted so much to push him away, but her leaden limbs refused to heed the shrieking, shrieking screams of her brain. Then his hand slipped into the folds of her dress, and she felt his fingers stretching, uncurling and reaching out for her. 

 

The constable pulled his hand out from the pocket of Elizabeth's gown and held out an ancient looking matchbox, and a delicate silver chain with a tiny crucifix swinging from it.

“She has one child's silver necklace with a cross, and an old matchbox with… urgh, a dead moth and an old, shrivelled-up flower head in it.”

He leaned over the desk and dropped the matchbox neatly into a waste paper basket.

“Well, one child's necklace, anyway.”

The sergeant dutifully wrote it down.

“You'd better take her down to the cells, Constable, and be careful of her. You might want to put her in restraints as well, just to be safe. She's killed once and there's no telling what she might do next.”

“Please forgive me for deserting you like this.”

Michael Roberts grimaced apologetically as he plucked an invisible speck of dust from the silk brim of his top hat and batted it away.

“But I really must go and see the magistrate as soon as I can. Aunt Elizabeth isn't strong enough to be held for any length of time in a police gaol, never mind stand trial for murder, and the longer it is before she's released into my custody, the more damage that will surely be done to her mind.”

“Do you really think you can prevent her from being tried?” Lucie asked dubiously.

Roberts minutely adjusted the tilt of his hat in the large hallway mirror and squared his shoulders.

“If there's any justice in this world,” he said to his reflection, “And if the McNaughton rules mean anything at all, then yes, my aunt will certainly not stand trial.”

“But then if they don't try her, they'll surely just have her committed to a lunatic asylum?” Lucie persisted. “She has killed a man, after all.”

Roberts turned from the mirror and looked squarely at her.

“You've seen the Annexe yourself, Mrs Fox. It's perfectly secure and all the facilities of an asylum are there, even so far as the presence of a doctor and a nurse. There would be no benefit, no benefit whatsoever, in committing her anywhere else.”

“Here you are, Wilson.”

The constable stopped part-way along the cramped, narrow corridor and pushed open one of the heavy, black doors that repeated themselves endlessly along its starkly whitewashed length.

“Welcome to your new lodgings. Not as fine as you're used to I dare say, but cosy enough all the same.”

He pushed her roughly into the cell and pressed her down onto a low brick bench that was covered by only the thinnest of straw mattresses. As she sat, a little cloud of dust blew up through the coarse hessian of the mattress cover and hung, twisting and turning, in the latticed stream of sunlight pouring in through a tiny grilled window.

“You heard the sergeant; I'm to put these restraints on you. There's no telling what a lunatic like you might do.”

A heavy chain dangled from an iron ring set into the bricks above the bed. It was drawn tight by thick, iron manacles lying open and ready at each of its ends. The constable lifted each of Elizabeth's unresisting arms in turn and clamped the cold metal shut over her skeletal wrists.

“There, you're safe now.”

He hooked a rusting metal pail from under the bench with the toe of his boot and bent down close to her face.

“If you need a piss, Wilson, be a good girl and piss in there will you, and not all over your mattress?”

 

She felt the cold metal snap shut against her wrists, felt the chain pull her arms hard against the heavy timber of the rack as it was rattled tight. She was pinned fast, she couldn't move, and a suddenly overwhelming, claustrophobic panic made her thrash and writhe to be free.

A pair of bony fingers caught her chin and held it fast. 

“That's it, Lizzie; that's how they'll like it. They'll be queuing up to take their turn at you if you go on like that. I reckon you'll be a proper buttered bun by the time the day's through.” 

The fingers squeezed her face viciously and the long nails bit into her skin. 

“If you're going to be here at Brimston for your confinement, my pretty, we might as well make an extra pound or two out of you while we're at it.” 

She laughed, a cold, humourless laugh.

“Two-hundred pounds to buy, but only two pounds a night by the hire.” 

The fingers were gone from her face but then she gasped in pain as she felt them clawing into the soft flesh of her naked breast. 

“Five pounds when they can suckle some milk out of these.”

She was at Brimston; Mrs Eire's ‘Home for Fallen Women and Girls' nestled deep in the beautiful, rolling hills outside Harrogate. It was far enough away to prevent the good and upright ladies of the town from being corrupted by the moral diseases and easy virtue of the unfortunate inmates, but close enough to be a convenient journey for any of their men-folk who wished to visit, and perhaps to confirm for themselves just how easy that virtue was.

She remembered her first sight of the pretty, little farmhouse with the chickens scratching in the dust of the yard outside. She recalled the little stream tinkling past, sparkling in the sunlight, and she remembered her unbounded joy as she saw the two tiny girls playing contentedly by the road outside.

Sobbing, she had laid her hand on her own tiny bump and imagined the baby growing inside her and being born and playing alongside them in the fresh, vital air of the Yorkshire Dales. She remembered clearly that for the first time since her mama had gone away – and pray God that she had gone to Heaven – she no longer wanted to die. 

Lizzie often recalled the other women and girls who lived at the farmhouse at Brimston. They had all either fallen, or perhaps been pushed, from the path of moral virtue. Whenever she remembered them, she always remembered her astonishment as she slowly came to realise that they weren't nearly as bad as everyone reckoned they surely were. They weren't the very wives and daughters of Lucifer at all. Most were just like her; girls who had been unfortunate or perhaps unknowingly wicked, and she swore that they didn't deserve punishment at all.

There seemed to be no end to the gentlemen who would come over to Brimston to be ‘accommodated' as Mrs Eire called it. They would arrive at all hours of the day or night, sometimes alone and sometimes in raucous, jeering groups. Always, they would choose one, two or even three of the fallen women or girls, and take them for a while into one of the many little rooms of the labyrinthine farmhouse.

There was also a room in the barn. It was a big, special room Mrs Eire called the Dungeon, where she kept lots of curious contraptions. The other fallen women and girls talked about the Dungeon sometimes. They hated going in there. Often, when they came out, they would be crying. Sometimes their wrists and ankles would be ringed with angry, red marks that would turn into great purple and yellow bruises. Sometimes they would have bloody cuts and lashes across their back or their legs. She thought they must have been especially wicked if the men had to come all the way up from Harrogate or across from the great cities of Leeds or Bradford to punish them as thoroughly as that.

Mrs Eire herself sometimes punished grown men who had been wicked. Lizzie had not known for sure that grown men could be punished until she heard Mrs Eire telling a gentleman how naughty he had been and how she was going to have to whip him for it. She had taken him alone into the Dungeon for most of the day and when he came out, he was flushed and limping badly. He gave Mrs Eire ten guineas for her help in correcting him with a promise that he would make it twenty next time if she succeeded in rendering him insensible. Lizzie wondered for a moment if Uncle Alfie or Mr James or even Mr Price had ever been rendered insensible.

Mrs Eire told her that she didn't generally believe in medicine for wicked girls. She said it was an unnecessary expense for all but the very frailest gentlemen. Lizzie didn't really need it now anyway. She had found a way of making it seem that what the gentlemen were doing to her was really happening to a different little girl. 

When she was taken to one of the rooms of the farmhouse, she could think about playing games with John or doing her lessons with Mary or about going to the churchyard to talk to her dead mama and papa in their grave. She could pray to the Lord Jesus and ask him to let her die and be an angel in Heaven. Then the baby growing inside her belly could die too and be a cherub with them all – with her and with Jesus and with her dear mama and papa. It would save it from being born. Otherwise, the baby in her belly might grow to be wicked, just like her and just like her own mama. Then, like her, it might have to be punished too. But then she worried that if she died now, whilst she was still so wicked and sinful, she might not go to be in Heaven at all. She worried that St Peter might know how bad she really was and that he might send her to Hell to be punished by the Devil and his demons for all eternity. 

Uncle Alfie had told her that there was a special place in Hell for seductresses like her. It was called the Eighth Circle and he had shown her it in a poem written by a great Italian scholar called Dante. If she went to the Eighth Circle of Hell, of Dante's Inferno, perhaps her baby might have to go there too. And then, instead of becoming a cherub for Jesus, her baby might become a demon for Lucifer.

But Lizzie worried most of all that her uncle might have been right about her mama; that she might really be in the Eighth Circle of Inferno being whipped by demons and not with the Lord Jesus and her papa at all. Sometimes horrible, horrible pictures of her mama being punished by Uncle Alfie and the gentlemen of the Friday Club would come into her mind. Sometimes she even imagined Uncle Alfie and his gentlemen friends as Lucifer and his demons. She knew Lucifer could change himself into an angel of light. But then, when she imagined that her uncle might be the very Devil himself, she knew just how wicked and ungrateful a wretch she must really be.

Usually, when she made it seem as if the gentlemen were doing things to punish a different little girl, it was easier. The gentlemen that Mrs Eire brought to the Home for Fallen Women and Girls didn't always seem to want to punish her so mercilessly as her Uncle Alfie and his gentlemen friends did. When the gentlemen didn't want to punish her mercilessly, and when they didn't talk so and make a fuss and stop her from going to the special, safe place in her mind, and except from the awful way she felt afterward, it was almost bearable.

But now she was in the big room in the barn with the cold metal shut over her wrists, and her arms pulled tight against the heavy, wooden rack. It was her first time. Mrs Eire had always said that she was excused duties in the Dungeon on account of her uncle not wanting her to be too badly marked. But Mrs Eire had said that today was a day when needs must, and that she had taken the precaution of asking the gentleman to be circumspect with her. 

She was pinned fast to the rack, but she could still move her head. She tried again to go to the special place in her mind where she could make it seem as if it was all happening to a different little girl. But again, she couldn't. She definitely could not. Each time she tried, she remembered how the girls always cried so much when they came out, and she remembered their marks and their cuts and their lashes, and each time she tried, her panic would rise up and spoil it and drag her back to the here and to the now. 

There were two other girls with her here and now, in the big room in the barn. One was strapped to a rack just like hers, but face down, so that she could only see the milk white skin of her back with its faint, pink stripes and her smooth, round buttocks. The other girl she knew was little Sarah who didn't like Vikings, even though she couldn't quite see her. She knew it was Sarah by her gentle, despairing sobs.

And then the memory moved on and became a gentleman who had come up from Harrogate. He had especially picked them out to be punished in the Dungeon. She could hear him speaking to the girl with the milk-white skin and his voice was full of hate and relish. It had that awful catch in it that the gentlemen always had when they badly wanted to hurt someone.

All at once there was the sudden, flat crack of a lash and the shrieking, agonised scream of the girl. Lizzie started at the noise. She had let her eyes open by mistake and the image they let in flooded her mind with horror. The milk white skin of the girl's buttocks was flayed into a mess of bloody, red streaks and the gentleman was standing behind her, like a vengeful demon in her nightmare of the Eighth Circle of Dante. He was standing with a great, many-thonged whip in his hand, ready to strike once more.

Then she could hear little Sarah, who didn't like Vikings. Hers was a scream of terror, not of agony, and Lizzie felt a gush of relief for that. But then little Sarah was begging, begging for mercy; she was begging him not to make her do it. Her pleading was getting louder and louder and more desperate and then, it stopped, and there was silence. There was silence except for sounds that were muffled and gagging, as if little Sarah might be choking on something, and the sounds of the bestial grunts of the gentleman.