Victorian Maiden (11 page)

“Who the bloody hell is Sarah?”

The sergeant was standing in the middle of Elizabeth's tiny cell looking down curiously at her as she hung in her chains like some broken and discarded marionette.

The constable's voice, harsh and echoing in the confined space, came from behind him.

“I haven't a bleedin' clue, Sergeant. She kept asking for someone called Albert on the way here, then Tom, and now it's Sarah. It's all part of a game to make us believe she's mad if you ask me. She's just practicing to pass the McNaughton rules and escape the gallows.”

“Is that what you want, Wilson?”

The sergeant's voice was loud and stern and Elizabeth started at the sound of it.

“Who's Albert? Who's Tom? Or do you want Sarah? Who's Sarah? Who's Sarah, Wilson?”

Elizabeth gazed at him and the moisture welling in her eyes seemed to increase the intensity of her gaze. A tear tracked steadily down the line of a deep wrinkle on her face and spread across the corner of her lips.

“Albert Wilson, Sarah Wilson,” she whispered, “Where is Sarah?”

“Her only living relative, now that she's killed her uncle that is, is Dr Roberts so far as I know,” the constable said. “All the rest of her family are long since dead.”

“They're all dead, Wilson.”

The sergeant spoke again in his loud, stern voice and Elizabeth looked at him and nodded. More tears followed the track of the first and they dripped and melted into the fabric of her bodice as she began to rock steadily to-and-fro, her bony fingers whitening as they clung to the chains of her manacles.

“Then to the grave,” Elizabeth said in a curious, high-pitched voice, almost as if she were singing the words and not speaking them at all.

“Dr Roberts has been to see the magistrate for you,” the sergeant continued. “He wants you to go back to live at Sessrum House and not to go down for his granddaddy's murder. Do you hear what I say? He's trying to get you off. You might fool him, Wilson, head-doctor or not, but you ain't fooling McNaughton and you ain't fooling us. You might just be allowed to spend your last few days at home until your trial begins but after that, it certainly will be ‘Then to the grave.'”

He made a silent chopping motion on the back of his neck with his hand and nodded theatrically to her before turning to the constable.

“He's welcome to take her 'til then, I say. Then she can piss on his mattresses instead of ours.”

“We'll need to burn this one after she's gone.”

The constable pulled at the loose sacking at the mattress corner and sniffed his fingers.

“It's piss-wet and it reeks. She's gone and messed herself too, by the stink of her.”

He wrinkled his nose in disgust.

“I know; that's why I'll not be too worried if the superintendant lets her go back,” the sergeant agreed, “At least until she goes in front of the assizes. She'll have good reason to mess herself then, when she follows this Sarah to the grave.”

Sarah, Sarah who hated the Holy Island. 

She was back at Brimston, back at the Home for Fallen Women and Girls. The verdant sweep of the hills replaced the cell walls and Mrs Eire's stony face took the place of the sergeant's.

“Where's Sarah? Where's that little whore got to now? I asked you to fetch her directly, Wilson.”

Lizzie curtsied clumsily. 

“I beg your pardon, Mrs Eire, but Sarah is coming. She can't run fast on account of her just having been patched up again.”

Lizzie could feel the warm sweat trickling down her back with the effort of running with the weight of the child inside her.

“Well I've a gentleman waiting for her in my parlour. He asked for a virgin girl on account of him wanting to cure his syphilis, and Sarah's the nearest I've got to one at the present.”

The sweat lying on her back turned to ice. 

“Please, Mrs Eire, Sarah is still very sore from being stitched back up. The gentleman can have me in her stead if he likes, just until Sarah is feeling better.”

Mrs Eire's hard features twisted into an expression of utter contempt. 

“You stupid, little brazen hussy; how would he believe you to be a virgin with that great lump in front of you and tits like pumpkins? I've told you he needs a virgin to cure his syphilis. You just want attentions from a gentleman like all you sluts. I believe you haven't even fetched Sarah at all, have you? You're hoping for him yourself.”

“I have, Mrs Eire. I have fetched her, just as you asked. Honour-bright I have. Here she is now, but she's ever so sore from just being patched up. The gentleman will hurt her terribly.”

“Well she'll have to bear it. It's supposed to hurt, especially when you're fresh. God made it that way in the Garden of Eden so women didn't become the little sluts that you all have. I'll have those stitches out while the gentleman finishes his tea and muffins and he'll never know the difference, especially if it does truly hurt her and she doesn't need to play act.”

And then she was in the workhouse at Starbeck, in the infirmary, with Mary Lovell the new nurse wrapping a freshly washed bandage around and around her arm. Her blood was soaking each layer the instant it touched the one below.

“You've such beautiful skin, Lizzie; why do you disfigure it so? It'll be a twelvemonth before these cuts turn into silver scars and you'll always be able to see them if you look, especially if the sun catches you.”

“Miss Lovell, we've a syphilitic just come in. I don' think she's got very long an' t' receiving ward's full, so where should I put 'er?”

Elizabeth looked round at the sound of the words and gasped at the sight of the figure shuffling along painfully next to Old Rachel, the ancient pauper woman who helped Mary in the infirmary.

It was a young woman. Or at least it might once have been a young woman. Now it was part woman, part monster. On one side of its face a soft, brown eye gazed out from above a finely sculpted cheek. There was something disconcertingly familiar about it. But the rest of the face was gone, crusted over by thick red lesions that had coalesced into a single, hideous mask. It was just as if someone had plastered it in thick clay and left it to bake in the fires of Hell. Its hands were covered by the same red blisters and by the painful, aching way it moved, so were its legs and its feet.

“Lizzie, is that you?” 

The creature's voice was no more than a muffled whisper, so weak was it and so encrusted its mouth.

“And Mary, Mary the Governess from the Annexe?”

Elizabeth stared, aghast. A crack had opened in the thick lesion by the side of the mouth slit and a thick line of blood inched its way steadily down the crusted surface and dripped onto its shabby coat.

“Sarah? Sarah, is that you?”

The creature nodded. 

“Yes, it's me. Oh, Lizzie, what have they done to me? It hurts ever so much. Mary, dear Mary, please can you make it stop hurting? Please can I have just a little time of peace before I die?”

“Rachel, would you kindly take Miss Sarah to the bathhouse and help her to bathe her sores? Use warm water please and then get her changed into a clean uniform and into an infirmary bed for some rest. I'll attend to her presently.” 

Sister Lovell's eyes were full of anguish but her lips were pursed resolutely.

“Only God can help her now I think,” she murmured to Elizabeth as she tied off her bandage. “Poor Sarah has suffered quite enough. You might like to say your goodbyes to her when she comes back, Lizzie. I fear that Old Rachel is right; Sarah has the next world beckoning for her and I pray that she'll find a little peace there at last.”

“Should I fetch ye some quicksilver for 'er scabs, Sister Lovell?” Old Rachel called back across the infirmary as she led the shambling creature through the doors to the bathhouse.

“Yes please, Rachel, and some chloral hydrate too if you would. I shall need the large bottle today. She needs some relief.”

A little time later, Old Rachel and Sarah returned. Sarah's hair had been cut off and she looked even less human, even more monstrous than before. Between them, they lifted her onto one of the low infirmary beds, although Elizabeth supposed she could have done it easily on her own, so light and frail was she. The warm water of the bath had softened some of the lesions and already the coarse fabric of the workhouse dress was spotted with patches of bright red blood.

Sister Lovell poured out a very large measure of clear chloral hydrate into a tumbler; the neck of the bottle tinkling against the rim of the glass as her hands trembled in their haste. 

“Here, darling Sarah,” she whispered, her voice warm yet strained, “This will help you.”

Sarah seemed to recognise the bitter, oily taste of the medicine. She seemed to know that it would help to drive away the torments of the present, and the half of her face that was still untouched by the disease, that was still beautiful, smiled as her head sank back onto the mattress.

“I'll leave you with Lizzie for now, Sarah,” said Mary. “Rachel, I don't think we'll need the quicksilver after all.”

Old Rachel nodded and understood. She padded to the window and slowly and gently lifted the sash just a few inches. 

“We don' want to be imprisoning any souls in t' place,” she whispered to herself, “'Specially ones as I doubt will be a' peace.”

She glanced across at Sarah and dropped the briefest of curtsies before following Mary wordlessly through the door.

When they were alone Sarah asked: “Did you have the other baby, Lizzie?” 

Her sweet, soft voice was beginning to slur.

Elizabeth nodded. 

“Yes I did. It was a little girl. I named her for you, Sarah. I named her for you and for my dear mama; I called her Sarah Beatrice Wilson.

Sarah smiled again before the eyelid closed over her beautiful, soft, brown eye, and a kind of serenity spread across what was left of her face.

Elizabeth took Sarah's tiny fingers in her own and leaned forward across her chest until she could feel the coarse, grogram cloth of her dress pressing against her cheek. The faint murmur of Sarah's heart was beating slowly against her ear. She studied the ravaged face and bitter tears welled up for her childhood friend: Little Sarah, who had been sold by her mother for a gallon of gin; Sarah who had been condemned to a short, brutal life of accommodating the gentlemen of Harrogate, and Sarah who now lay in a workhouse infirmary, dying of syphilis.

Elizabeth watched as Sarah's head gently nodded with each tired beat of her heart. The lid of the eye that was still soft drifted open just a little and Lizzie was sure that the gaze of the beautiful crescent of brown had settled on her in return. Sarah was going to die. Please God that her torment would soon be over and she could find solace at last. 

The mouth-slit parted slightly and each frightened breath became a rattling, gasping plea to stay in this world rather than the next. 

“Don't be afraid, Sarah,” Lizzie whispered. “You're tired. It's time to go to Heaven now. You're allowed to die. Nothing will hurt anymore and you can be at peace.”

The brown crescent gazed at her in silent assent and a blotch, a single yellow-grey blotch formed on the point of the high, sculpted cheekbone. It was the merciful harbinger of death, and it began to spread relentlessly and unstoppably across the skin of Sarah's face.

And then, as she lay, the nods slowly faded, the gasping breaths grew fainter and at last, the heart beneath the breasts stopped beating. Little Sarah died.

And then the memory moved on again and her bitter sadness became a bitter, bitter rage.

“I don't care if they do find out where I am; my uncle or Mrs Eire can pay for her funeral. It's all their doing and the least they can do to make amends for their wickedness is to give poor Sarah a proper burial. She was only here for a few hours. Why should she be condemned to a paupers' grave?”

“Lizzie, Lizzie,” Mary crooned, “There will be no funeral and no grave for Sarah, pauper's or otherwise. The Master has already sold her corpse to a hospital in Harrogate. They're going to use it to conduct experiments into the treatment of syphilis.”

She pulled a stunned Elizabeth into a tight embrace. 

“I know, Lizzie, I know, it doesn't seem right. But we have no idea who her relatives are, or even if she still has any, so it's the Master's right to sell her. The workhouse gets five pounds for her body and you never know; Sarah's death might just help other girls to avoid the awful suffering that she has had to endure.”

Elizabeth clung to her and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. Then, when she could cry no longer, she stood back and smoothed the tears from her cheeks. 

“At least they've sold her body for the last time, Mary,” she said. “They can't do a single thing more to hurt her and I'll never forget her. She lives on in my daughter. As long as I have Sarah Beatrice, I'll always remember her.”

And then the other, terrible memory trembled in its secret place, deep in her mind. This was an open, raw memory, one she could never fully quieten and never properly hide. It was surely coming and when it did, it would harrow and it would claw, deep into her very soul itself. Her hands were held fast by cold metal bands and here, in this place, in the still and the quiet, where there was no busy, there would be nothing to keep it away. She rocked and she rocked and she tried to sing the lullaby; she tried desperately to sing it away to sleep but the other terrible memory awakened, it trembled and it came.

She was held tight in Mary's arms, in her bedroom in the Annexe. 

“Are you certain, Lizzie? It seems so soon after Baby Albert for it to have happened again.”

She nodded against Mary's bodice. It was safe and warm, just like her mama's had been. 

“I've missed my curse four months in a row now and I'm sure I can feel a little bump Mary.” 

She felt Mary's hand move from her shoulder and push between them, felt her fingers gently probe her stomach. 

“Your uncle will want you to go to Brimston again, before you start to show properly.”

“Oh, Mary, I couldn't bear that, not with Mrs Eire and the Dungeon and all those gentlemen she brings up from Harrogate and not after… after what happened to Baby Albert.”

The warm, safe arms tightened around her once more. 

“But what alternative is there, Lizzie? Only for you to find some other institution for fallen women and hope that they are kinder there than at Brimston. Or you could live on the streets. But then you'd likely have to whore yourself out to get money and you'd be worse off than now.”

“Or there's the workhouse, Mary.”

“Go to the poor-law? Oh, Lizzie, surely you're not thinking of that.”

“But why can't I? I've been thinking about it for weeks now. I could easily run away to the workhouse. It's not far to go, only down the road at Starbeck, and I could have my baby there. They have an infirmary and nurses, and I would be safe. I've seen the workhouse paupers working on the Stray. They seemed happy enough and I can't see why my baby and I couldn't be too.

Mary, I've been thinking about you too and about when I'm gone. I'm certain you would be fine; you're clever and you're pretty, and you could easily get another situation as a governess or find a nice, kind gentleman and get married. Uncle Alfie might even want you to stay here, to help look after the waifs-and-strays. You can protect them from Mr Otter.”

“What your Uncle Alfie might want is just what I'm afraid of, Lizzie.” 

She felt Mary's arms squeeze her until she thought she might suffocate with kindness.

Was it really just the very next day? All she could remember was the sense of release; the wonderful, mounting feeling of exhilaration spreading through her body as she crept across the lawn, wet with early morning dew. She had the tiny silver cross that her papa had given her after she was born held lightly between her lips, because if ever she needed the Lord Jesus to guide and smooth her way, it was now. And then, with her heart pounding in her breast, she had flitted between the big iron gates at the end of the drive. 

And then she was out… Out onto the wide, open freedom of the Stray. It had never seemed so vast. She and her baby were free. Even if Uncle Alfie or Mr Otter saw her now, she could run. She could run and she could scream. They would never catch her, not if they chased her all the way to Hell and back.

She was free and she had a plan. First she would go to visit her mama and papa in their grave. She would tell them what she must do for the sake of her own baby. They wouldn't mind that she had a baby growing inside her, she was sure of that. Accidents happen and her mama never scolded her for accidents; she only asked that she be more careful next time. Her mama only ever scolded her for being bad. But Baby Albert had been an accident – a terrible, terrible accident, and now she was being as careful as her mama could ever wish. 

After she had explained it all to her mama, she would find the main road to Starbeck, to the workhouse, to the sanctuary where she and her baby could be safe at last. Safe from Uncle Alfie, safe from Mrs Eire, and safe from all of their gentleman friends.

 

‘In Loving Memory of Albert Charles Wilson, who died 16th October 1830.

Also, of Beatrice Charlotte Wilson, his beloved and devoted wife who followed him in death, 28
^th
May 1843.

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes and there shall be no more death neither sorrow nor crying neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away.'

 

Her fingertips slowly traced every line of the black, enamelled letters carved deep into the cold marble face of the gravestone. They were St John's words, she knew, from the Book of Revelation. She read and clung to them every single day in her own pocket Bible. How she wished that could be so for her and for her baby too: No more sorrow, no more tears, no more crying… no more pain. 

Then she traced other letters with her fingertip, imaginary ones at the bottom of the epitaph but carved no less deeply: ‘Also in Loving Memory of Elizabeth Beatrice Wilson and of her perfect, unborn baby who died this day.' 

“Amen,” she said aloud, “So be it.”

But then she crossed her fingers because she remembered all at once that she was still a wicked, wicked harlot. She remembered that St John had written those words for the righteous and for the faithful, that he had written them for good little girls who weren't pitiful sluts like her.

Elizabeth reached out and embraced the slab as if it were real, vital flesh and blood, instead of cold, hard marble, and wept. 

She seemed to have been walking for hours down the broad, tree-lined road that led to the village of Starbeck, just to the east of Harrogate. The people going about their business from the farms and houses nearby all seemed to be looking at her. In fact, she was sure now that they were staring at her. The country folk seemed somehow to be able to see deep into her soul; they seemed to know just what a wicked, wicked creature she really was. She could tell by their eyes that they knew exactly what she had made her uncle and the gentlemen of the Friday Club do to her again and again and again. But then they would know that she was walking to the workhouse too. They would surely know that she was walking to the poor-law workhouse with a perfect, tiny bastard baby inside her, and it was little wonder they stared.

The workhouse – but surely she should have got there by now. To quell her mounting panic, she forced herself to count the great beech trees as she passed them at the roadside: ten, fifteen, twenty. Had she missed it? Was there really a workhouse at Starbeck at all? The women at Brimston had said – had promised her – that there was. The icy hand of doubt suddenly gripped her innards. What if they were lying? What if they were just being wicked and really there wasn't a workhouse in Starbeck at all. She couldn't bear the thought of going back to Sessrum House, to her Uncle Alfie and his Annexe, and to the gentlemen of the Friday Club. And she wouldn't, she definitely would not, go back to Brimston and let her baby be taken away again by the baby farmers to die without its mama.

She would have to live on the streets. There would be nothing else for it. But what if she did have to whore herself to live, like Mary had said she would? She remembered how she could make it seem as if the gentlemen were doing things to a different little girl, how she could take her mind, the part that was really her, the real Elizabeth, off to another altogether different place. She could do it if she had to. She could be a whore if it meant her baby would be safe. All of the gentlemen seemed to want her, even the ones at Brimston who didn't say they needed to punish her. They often asked for her by name, which meant that Mrs. Eire could even charge them extra. Just so long as her baby was safe, so long as it could stay with her where she could love it and care for it and be with it always, then that was all that truly mattered.

And then, Glory Be! There it was: the Harrogate Workhouse on the outskirts of Starbeck. She almost collapsed onto the pavement in relief. 

‘Oh, thank you, Lord Jesus, and thank you Mama, if you really are in Heaven with Papa, and not being punished for all eternity in the Eighth Circle of the Inferno. Thank you for guiding my steps to here. As soon as I'm a good enough girl to be allowed into Heaven, please, please let me die. Please come for me and for my perfect, little baby.'

Prayer of grateful thanks said, she opened her eyes once more and looked. The Harrogate Workhouse was a large and ornate building, set off the main road behind a high stone wall. The towering, pointed facade reminded her strongly of the carved African headdress that her uncle kept in the library. He had brought it back from a trip to Egypt many years ago, and it both fascinated and repelled her. Uncle Alfie had said that the Africans believed that it connected them to the ancestors of their family, whose spirits would either haunt them or protect them, or even, as he said with a rare chuckle, do both.

An elderly, tired-looking woman in a shapeless grey dress and poke bonnet was bent over a gorse brush, sweeping the cobbled yard. She seemed to sense that she was being watched and suddenly glanced up. Elizabeth froze as she stood peering at her through the bars of the big iron gates.

“Come t' gawp at t' paupers, have we, missy? I expect we make a fine mornin's entertainment for a young lady such as ye'self, an' no mistake.”

With her heart jumping like a live thing in her chest, Elizabeth walked forward, forward between the gates that magically seemed to part before her, and into the yard. 

She was in.

“Please, ma'am, I beg your pardon. I didn't mean to gawp at you. I should rather like to come and live in the workhouse and be a pauper too. I'm not a wicked girl, I'm really not.”

The woman erupted in a peel of laughter, which made Elizabeth start. 

“Ma'am now is it? Wan' t' be a pauper, do we, with our beautiful clothes and our beautiful hair and our silver necklace around our beautiful neck? It looks like ye've a long way to fall yet, li'le miss, afore ye could ever be a pauper like me.”

Elizabeth curtsied politely, just as her mama had taught her to do. 

“If you please, ma'am, I am already fallen. I have lived at Mrs Eire's Home for Fallen Women and Girls at Brimston, but I couldn't bear it there. My mama and papa are dead and my uncle and his gentlemen friends are cruel to me, although I know that they are just trying to stop me from being wicked. But I'm not truly wicked, ma'am, honest I'm not.”

Something seemed to resonate deep within the world-weary shadows in the old woman's eyes. Her sneer became a gentle smile and she laid her broom down onto the cobbles.

“In that case, come with me, me pretty lamb, and I'll take ye to meet t' Matron. What's thy name?”

Elizabeth stopped to bob a curtsey again.

“It's Elizabeth, ma'am, Elizabeth Beatrice Wilson, but most people call me Lizzie.”

“Well, Lizzie, my name is Rachel, and I've lived as an inmate at this 'ere workhouse since i' were firs' built, so most people call me Old Rachel. Ye don' need t' curtsey for a pauper woman like me but it migh' be as well to do so for Mrs Dixon, t' Matron. She can be stern, but she's a good heart in her. Do ye like hard work?”

“Yes, Rachel, I like hard work very much, thank you.”

“Well in that case, ye should get along jus' fine 'ere. Ye say that ye've lived a' Mrs Eire's place?”

“Yes, Rachel, but not for long; it was just while I… just while…”

“Jus' while ye had ye baby?”

“Yes, ma'am, it was just while I had Baby Albert.”

“And where is Baby Albert now?”

“He's safe in Heaven with the Lord Jesus and my mama and papa.”

“Oh, Lizzie, and ye jus' a child! Who was Baby Albert's daddy, do ye know?”

Elizabeth shook her head quickly and Old Rachel laid her skinny arm across her shoulder. 

“We know all 'bout Mrs Eire 'ere, Lizzie.” 

Her old voice was soothing in a way Lizzie had not truly known since her mama was alive. 

“She used t' come t' workhouse now and again, pretendin' t' be an in-and-out.”

“I beg your pardon, Rachel but I'm not certain what an, ‘in-and-out,' is.”

Old Rachel chuckled. 

“Such nice manners on thee: An' ‘in-and-out's' a vagrant, Lizzie, a tramp, someone who stays 'ere jus' for a night or two and then disappears off on their way. Mrs Eire used t' come in as an in-and-out, lookin' for young mothers and widows, and ‘specially young girls t' turn their ear. They would abscond, or discharge themsens with their silly 'eads full o' promises of work or marriage or money or such like. Mostly though, they'd end up in various gentlemen's beds, or be sent o'erseas to work in plantations and in other gentlemen's beds. Mrs Dixon got wise t' her ways, she did. She sent her off wit' sharp edge of her tongue. Warned all t' other workhouses round abou' here too, she did, Ripon and Knaresborough and Scriven. Many a poor, dizzy-headed girl is a lot better off a-cause o' Mrs Dixon, an' many a gentleman's bed t' colder and t' emptier.”

“Where does Mrs Eire get the girls from now?”