Salem's Daughter

by Maggie Osborne

  A grimace of quiet pain pinched Bristol’s expression, and she sought another topic to focus her thoughts. Reverend Cornwell couldn’t hold her attention, or anyone’s, Bristol decided with a small sigh. The congregation was crowded with nodding heads.

  In Salem, a tithingman would have rapped those drowsy heads with a long hard pole. But English custom regarding the Sabbath had proved as different from Bristol’s experience as everything else since she’d left Salem’s shores.

  The congregation slept undisturbed. And the leisure-loving English restricted their preachers to half a day, using Sunday afternoon for idle pleasures.

  Aunt Pru had been appalled to hear sober New Englanders spent their entire Sabbath sitting in hard-backed pews in unheated meetinghouses. “Barbaric,” she pronounced with a sniff. “I see no reason why pews should not be upholstered. And half a day of prayer and goodness is enough for anyone!”

  At last the sermon ended, and Aunt Pru paused to invite the insipid Reverend Cornwell to Hathaway House for Sunday luncheon and a chat with Lord Hathaway.

  “The reverend’s impossibly dull,” Prudence whispered to Bristol before Jean Pierre hefted her bottom into the carriage, “but Hathaway insists on a weekly tot of religion, gout or no gout.”

  During an uncomfortable ride, Reverend Cornwell squatted on the carriage seat next to Bristol, his bandy legs too small for a pear-shaped body. “I can’t understand it, Lady Hathaway,” he complained. “Each time you find enough brilliance in my sermon that you’re moved to take notes, it seems a greater number than usual fall asleep in the pews! I’ve observed this phenomenon for years!” He chewed on a ragged thumbnail and stared at Prudence with troubled eyes.

  Not daring to glance at her aunt for fear she’d explode into giggles, Bristol cast a quick look at Jean Pierre. He met her sparkling eyes with a grin of understanding, and they both felt a need to turn suddenly, peering out the windows with feigned interest; unable to look at Prudence or the reverend. Bristol’s chest convulsed with hidden laughter, and her breath rushed past her lips in small choking gasps. She lifted a hand to the throat of her high-necked gown.

  Aunt Pru pressed the dyed curls pasted to her forehead. She looked at the carriage roof. “I can’t condone such rudeness, Reverend Cornwell.” Her deep voice sounded strangled. Prudence cleared her throat with a booming sound midway between a guffaw and a cough. “I’ve always found your sermons to be most... ah... useful. Unique, in fact.” She coughed energetically into a square of linen, looking helplessly at Jean Pierre and Bristol’s averted heads. “Your sermons are the best of their kind I’ve ever heard.”

  Reverend Cornwell turned brooding eyes to the windows and chewed his other thumb. “I’ve always thought so myself, Lady Hathaway, but it seems you’re one of the few in my flock to appreciate a good sermon.”

  “Oh, I do, I do.” Aunt Prudence collapsed into a spasm of coughing, strangled shrieks emerging from behind the balled linen.

  Reverend Cornwell stared, then looked toward Bristol and Jean Pierre’s blank faces with an expression of puzzlement. Neither moved to assist Lady Hathaway, so the reverend leaned across, and pounded her broad shaking back with the heel of his hand. “Are you all right?” he inquired anxiously, his glance sliding to Lady Hathaway’s purse. The Hathaways had proved exceedingly generous over the years.

  “Yes, yes,” Prudence gasped, puffing for breath.

  When the carriage finally halted and the reverend and Aunt Pru stood outside, Aunt Pru adjusted a mound of orange curls and pushed her head through the carriage door, her breath still unsteady. Her blue eyes sparkled wickedly. “Will you two join us? I’m certain the reverend has some memorable words to inspire our luncheon.” She made a face.

  Bristol’s green eyes danced above the edge of her fan, and she hid a smile while Jean Pierre leaned out the window to call, “Please accept our regrets, Reverend. C’est dommage! It’s a pity, but we have an urgent engagement. Had my cousin and I known...” He shrugged elegantly, conveying the impression he would gladly have canceled anything to share the preacher’s company had he but known of the opportunity in time.

  Reverend Cornwell puffed out his chest and bowed stiffly. “Of course, if you must go...” His voice trailed in obvious disappointment. He nodded to Bristol’s partially hidden face peeking through the window. “It is an honor to meet you, Mistress Adams. And I must add that it is refreshing to meet a young woman of modest demeanor. So many young ladies feel it necessary to wear gowns cut to their navels, exposing their... ah... exposing a lot of... ah...”

  “Décolleté?” Jean Pierre offered, a grin spreading across his chiseled face.

  The reverend looked flustered. “I don’t speak French, sir, I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Breasts!” Aunt Pru shouted, hefting her own massive bosom under the reverend’s nose. Her face darkened, and she snorted. “Breasts, Reverend, breasts!” She pulled his arm and yanked him up the steps. Blushing furiously, the reverend stumbled after her, his bandy legs threatening to crumple at any minute.

  “Driver!” Jean Pierre called. “For God’s sake, get us out of here!” He looked at Bristol and burst into uproarious laughter. “Breasts!” Jean Pierre shouted.

  Dropping her fan, Bristol clutched her aching sides. “Your sermons are the best of their kind,” she quoted, wiping her eyes.

  “I’ve always thought so myself!”

  “Unique!”

  The carriage rattled around a turn, and laughing, Bristol threw out a hand to steady her balance. Her knee rocked against Jean Pierre’s leg.

  It was as if a brand of fire seared her flesh. She gasped and looked into his eyes, the smile fading from her lips. His smoldering stare riveted her to the seat. Neither of them moved.

  “Bristol...” His rich accent caressed her name, and his eyes darkened to slate.

  Eyes that seemed to swirl with molten gray mist probed emerald-green ones. Bristol wet a suddenly dry mouth and felt the rapid increase of her heartbeat. She tried to drop her eyes, but his intense stare would not release her. Her knee trembled against his tensed leg, and she felt her face pale to the color of snow. Weakness spread through her limbs, and her stomach fluttered. “Jean Pierre,” she whispered. “Oh, Jean Pierre.” She heard the anguish in those strangled words.

  His eyes traced the curve of her lips. “I think of you always,” he said softly. He didn’t move to touch her, but Bristol felt his leg against hers, sending waves of electricity through her body.

  “Please, we can’t... we must forget...” Disconcerted, she looked at the scar her fingers had tenderly mapped, the lips her own had clung to, “I...”

  His voice was low and intense. “I want you every waking minute. I think of you lying sweet in your bed, and I must fight not to smash your door and take you.” His eyes flickered with passion and his face was hard as granite, but his voice remained soft. “Take you and make you call my name.”

  Bristol buried her face in her hands. Blood roared in her temples, and her body burned with familiar fires. “Stop! I can’t bear it. Oh, Jean Pierre, I can’t bear it!”

  “Look at me,” Jean Pierre commanded quietly. “Look at me, Bristol, and tell me you want me too. Tell me you lie in your bed and think of me.”

  “I can’t! This is wrong! I... I can’t!” She shook her head in despair, refusing to lower her hands and look at him as he wanted. He asked nothing but the truth, but she couldn’t say the words. Their relationship had to end. Must end... Jean Pierre would marry in a month; it was madness to continue. A dry sob escaped her lips.

  Outside the carriage drifted sounds of a spring afternoon: coach passengers calling to one another, drivers cracking whips and cursing, iron wheels rattling, laughing pedestrians taking the air. Inside, a strained silence held two people in a capsule.

  Finally Bristol lifted her face and pushed back the tendrils of hair dropping from her combs. She chewed her lip. Jean Pierre’s face was composed and coldly distant. “My apologies,” he
said formally. “As you know, I don’t push myself on unwilling women.” He stretched and arranged himself in an elegant sprawl, careful not to brush her skirt. “And I apologize for appearing outside your door. It won’t happen again.”

  Dear God, help me through this moment, Bristol thought desperately. “Jean Pierre, it isn’t that. Please try to understand!” She wrung her hands and felt her heart cracking into little pieces. “The way I was raised...” Her hand rose in a helpless gesture. “What happened on the Challenger—that was...” She wet her lips and swallowed the knot in her throat. She tried again. “But to continue with no possibility of a future, that makes me...”

  He glanced toward the sunny window. “There is no need to explain, Bristol.”

  Moisture stung her lids, and she clasped trembling hands in her lap. “But I need to tell you...”

  Hard gray eyes swung to fix on her face. “I’ve made a mistake, Mistress Adams, and I have apologized. Nothing more need be said.” Ice chilled his words.

  Bristol’s lashes brushed her cheeks, and she sagged against the seat cushion. “Oh, Jean Pierre,” she whispered through bloodless lips. Her arms ached for him, and her body felt as heavy and as hollow as her heart.

  Breaking an uneasy silence, Jean Pierre slid to the window, and his rich voice began an impersonal commentary on the sights warming in spring sunshine. Dully Bristol followed his words, nodding and murmuring in a disinterested voice as the carriage rumbled through the lanes of London, past St. Paul’s Cathedral, past the Royal Exchange crowded with Sunday idlers. Jean Pierre took her to Newgate Prison and insisted she tour the Museum of the Royal Society.

  Bristol marched through the museum listlessly, ignoring the people around her, staring at the displays without seeing. The tanned skin of a Moorish warrior made no impression, nor did a piece of bone voided in Sir William Throgmorton’s urine. Bristol lacked the interest to inquire who Sir William might be or might have been.

  She felt alive only when Jean Pierre’s guiding hand lightly touched her elbow, and then her head spun dizzily with need. She wanted to turn and step into his strong arms. But to what purpose, her mind despaired, to what end? Their relationship led nowhere. Had ended before it really began.

  “Please,” she asked quietly when the carriage pulled from the museum, “may we go home now?”

  “There’s another place I want you to see.”

  They rode without speaking until the coach stopped before massive Bethlehem Hospital. Jean Pierre paid a two-penny entrance fee and led Bristol into the dark, depressing interior.

  Uneasy, Bristol stared at dank stone walls and fouled floors. She darted a questioning glance toward Jean Pierre’s impassive expression, then sighed. His face was set and firm, telling her nothing.

  A weary guide dressed in soiled tunic and dirty breeches herded the crowd together, then removed a torch from a bracket and set off down a reeking hallway. Bristol didn’t want to follow, but Jean Pierre’s hard face moved her forward. He nodded curtly, and reluctantly she trailed the others.

  In the darkness of a narrow corridor, an uncomfortable silence hushed the crowd. Ladies drew long skirts close to their bodies with fearful glances toward sounds of dark scrabbling. The corridor was inky. Filth and excrement oozed underfoot and Bristol’s cloth slippers slid and grew damp. Only Jean Pierre’s firm fingers burning on her waist kept her from fleeing back in the direction they’d come. Every breath filled her nostrils with a terrible stench.

  Bristol cringed in the darkness. Before the hallway opened into a dark cavernous room, she heard the shrieks and howls of human agony. Frightened, she searched Jean Pierre’s face, but she couldn’t determine his expression in the deep gloom. Of all the places in London, she couldn’t understand why he’d chosen to bring her here, to this evil-smelling blackness. Her mind rebelled, and her stomach heaved at the odor of rotting filth. Echoing screams and wails curdled her blood.

  When the silent group moved into a huge room, Bristol gasped and ducked her head. In the dark recesses of a high roof, a flutter of bats screamed and swept through the upper reaches, some diving toward the crowd below. Several ladies dodged and cried out before again lapsing into expectant silence. The guide lit more torches, bringing a welcome flicker of illumination. Assured, comfortable once more, the sightseers moved to a wall of iron bars and peered inside with relieved whoops of laughter and pointing fingers.

  Bristol hung back in shock and revulsion, her heart pounding painfully in her breast. But Jean Pierre’s fingers bruised around her arm. He pulled her forward.

  People were behind the iron bars. Some were chained to the wall with heavy cuffs chafing their arms or legs, others wandered aimlessly across fetid straw, staring blankly at the sightseers and flickering torchlights. Many rubbed their eyes against the unaccustomed brightness.

  Sickened, Bristol stared helplessly at a man standing against the wall, chains circling his legs. Systematically the man pounded his forehead against the stones, blood gushing down his face and soaking into a tattered shirt. He seemed unaware of the blood. At his feet a filthy woman wriggled in the stinking straw and cackled to herself. Seeing the row of onlookers, she hiked a ragged skirt to her waist and drew bony knees to her chest. She dropped her knees wide with a lewd grin and began to stroke the bush of louse-infested hair between her legs. The crowd hooted and laughed. The woman hurled a handful of urine-soaked straw at the bars.

  Bristol turned away, sick to her stomach, but Jean Pierre’s fingers bit into her shoulders and pulled her up, forcing her to see the display of human misery.

  Near the bars close to Bristol a woman rocked on her heels, oblivious of the screams and laughter echoing in the cavernous room. Beneath the dirt and scabs crusting her face lay hints of a once-great beauty. She’d fashioned her arms into a cradle, and vacant eyes stared into the empty nest; she rocked her arms and made thin crooning noises in the back of her throat, lost in a distant world. Hovering above the squatting woman stood a deformed mockery of a man. His matted hair swung beneath a huge mountain of flesh rising from his shoulders, and spittle dropped in a glistening thread from the corner of his lips. He hopped back and forth on spindle legs, dirty hands pulling and stroking a thin white worm sticking rigidly from a hole in his breeches...

  As Bristol’s hands tensed on the bars, the man shrieked and fell upon the crooning woman. He ripped up her skirts, and his hand smashed across her face, knocking her to the straw; he jumped on her and thrust the worm inside her body, making gobbling noises with his mouth. The woman lay as she’d fallen, her legs limp, and she stared blankly at the deep blackness above, crooning softly to herself and rocking her cradled arms.

  Bristol’s head dropped and her mouth soured with nausea. Then suddenly she felt herself being ripped from the bars, seconds before a howling man fell against the spot where she’d stood. Skeleton arms reached through the bars, missing Bristol by inches. The man grinned through rotted black teeth, and his fingers opened and closed near her breast. Bristol pressed against Jean Pierre’s strong chest, and his arms folded around her, guiding her across a slippery floor, away from the leering, screaming man. The man pushed against the bars, shouting, “God has given me dominion over all women! Come to your master!” Bristol stared in horror as the man tore down his breeches and waved a huge scabbed and oozing penis through the bars. “Here is the staff of life! Your salvation!” The crowd roared with laughter, and the man hopped down the bars toward a more appreciative audience. He lunged hard against the bars and urinated, straining to hit the women. They cried out in laughter and backed from the hissing yellow stream. Frustrated, the man screamed and spun from the bars; he directed the bubbling river over a woman laying rigid in the straw. The woman didn’t move or protest or halt an anguished howling she aimed steadily toward the stone walls.

  “Oh, dear God,” Bristol breathed, squeezing her eyes shut. But nothing could blot out the flesh-crawling shrieks and howls. Or the putrid smells and laughing catcalls of the sightseers.
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  Jean Pierre’s hands shook her shoulders. Cupping her chin, he lifted Bristol’s ashen face. Her lips were inches from his, and she felt his warm breath on her cheeks. She looked at him resentfully, her eyes stinging, trying to understand and failing.

  “Can you hear me? Bristol, listen to me! Try to hear what I tell you, try to understand! This is Bedlam. Do you know the term?”

  She shook her head. Her eyes centered on the intensity of his face, the one sane point of focus in this room. Bristol longed to step into his arms and bury her face in his neck; she wanted him to take her away from this godless, evil darkness. She wanted the strength and hardness of his body to shut out her thoughts. It was impossible to have guessed this mockery of life existed. She didn’t want to know of it.

  “Bedlam,” Jean Pierre continued, his voice rising above the screams and wailing, his eyes relentless and insisting. “The insane are imprisoned here. When relatives tire of making excuses for them, when their behavior can no longer be tolerated, when their care becomes too great a burden—here is where they are sent. Abandoned to darkness and filth and the additional torment of each other. Displayed like the animals they become, to anyone with a two-penny price. Look at them!” His powerful hands spun Bristol toward the bars and the blank howling faces distorted in torchlight. A rat ran over the feet of the crooning woman coupled to the hunchback.

  Bristol wrenched her face to the side. Sick, her stomach knotting, she finally understood what her eyes saw, understood why he had brought her here. Tearing from Jean Pierre’s hands, she stumbled toward the yawning darkness of the corridor. Immediately Jean Pierre caught her arm and steadied her, guiding her through the malodorous muck underfoot, leading her out to a lane bathed in the warm golden tones of sunset.

  Bristol sucked deep breaths of London’s poisoned air into her lungs, thinking it fresh in comparison to what lay buried in the stone building at her back. Sober and quiet, Jean Pierre lifted her into the Hathaway coach and took the seat facing her.