Salem's Daughter

by Maggie Osborne

  Later, when Kitty dashed into the kitchen for a hot flip iron, her thin lips rounded in surprise. She stared at a circle of clean floor, the planks gleaming white next to the untouched blackness of the rest. “Bristol! This is... this is wonderful!” Kitty’s eyes moved to the dwindling supply of fresh snow water, and a flicker of disappointment appeared.

  Bristol’s mouth set, and she looked up defensively. “First the house, then us!”

  Kitty scratched a trail of bug bites along her neck. Then she chuckled. “Good. I’ll bring in more snow.”

  “I’m waiting, slut!” Cutter’s wheezing shout rose over the babble of the regulars. “This flip won’t heat itself and no customer’s going to drink it cold!”

  Kitty’s mouth thinned, and she grabbed up the flip iron and ran back into the front room. Bristol cringed at the sound of a heavy slap. Then Bristol settled her knees on the rutted floor and scrubbed hard, as if that inch of planking was the most important thing in her life.

  Thus passed the first day in a chain of weeks. Bristol worked in the kitchen, her patch of white floor widening until a generation’s dirt disappeared, and Kitty dashed back and forth to fetch flip irons, or clean mugs and trenchers, or bread, or whatever the men demanded. Kitty kept the snow pails filled, gathering water to meet Bristol’s needs, and collected pennies from the men—spending them as quickly as they came in. Kitty bought liquor and coal and cooking wood and bits of meat and packets of flour and limp vegetables when she could get them, and precious oil for the one lamp in the house. And both women worked until dark shadows lay in permanent shadings under their eyes.

  At night, when the regulars returned to their cheerless cold rooms, Bristol and Kitty cleaned the front pub room, washed the trenchers from the day’s use, mended their own clothing and Cutter’s, and visited softly while they wove candle wicks and dipped new candles. Always with an ear cocked to the drunken ranting issuing from the coal-warmed front room.

  Two pairs of women’s hands made a vast improvement over one pair. Slowly the worn planks of the house took on a respectability they hadn’t known in years. A warm, mellow wood emerged from walls never scrubbed in their long history until now. Kitty and Bristol tore down the shredded rags next to the front window and made curtains from Bristol’s green cloak (her cloak was too thin to wear outside for more than display, and she couldn’t leave the Royal Rumm in any case). The pub room looked better than it had in living memory.

  But it was the kitchen that benefited most from an extra woman in the house. Gleaming pots appeared where once had been lumps crusted with grime. It was discovered the fire burned hotter and better when years’ accumulations of ash were cleared away and saved, to make lye in the spring. Brown crocks turned white under Bristol’s scrubbing, and they shone on clean shelves. Candleholders were freed of wax, and one was discovered to be of silver which they sold for a handful of coins and celebrated by buying extra food. When Bristol poked up the fire in the mornings, she looked around her with a grim smile of satisfaction. Even Hannah would find no fault with this kitchen; everything gleamed.

  However, it wasn’t Bristol’s fetish for cleanliness that Kitty most appreciated, but Bristol’s talent for cooking. They quickly discovered Bristol was a far better cook than Kitty would ever be. In her heart, Bristol felt no particular pride in this; she suspected Kitty never had the time or the ingredients with which to learn any culinary skill. Whatever the reasons, Bristol could turn bits of food into savory stews and inventive pies, and Kitty could not. The kitchen became Bristol’s unquestioned domain, and once she had it cleaned, she filled her long days learning to stretch their supplies and turn poor-quality food into something nourishing and palatable.

  Even Cutter showed a renewed interest in his suppers under Bristol’s deft hand. Her failures earned her hard slaps from a quick hand, and twice Cutter took after her with his knife, affronted by something on his trencher he didn’t like.

  Each time, Kitty’s calm voice intervened to confuse and halt the lurching attack. Kitty was somehow able to reach into that gin-fogged brain and inject a grain of reason, a service she also performed on those occasional nights when Cutter appeared at the door of the bedroom, roaring and stumbling and pulling at his breeches. True to her word, Kitty did all her limited circumstances would allow to ease the burden of Bristol’s existence in the Royal Rumm.

  Bristol and Kitty kept Cutter in a state of drunken confusion as to the number of passing weeks. Kitty continued to soothe and assure him there was no hurry to announce any decision. There was no rush to begin selling Bristol to the regulars or to anyone else, Kitty insisted. As the appearance of the Royal Rumm had improved, so had the number of customers. They had more coins now than ever before; there was no hurry for Bristol to earn more.

  Cutter pulled at the bottle, listened, blinked his bleary red eyes, and spit bloody phlegm at the stove. Occasionally, when the gin ran low, he’d sway and roar that it seemed Queenie had been with them for months. Then Kitty would refill his glass, nod placidly, and agree it often seemed that way to her as well. “Odd, isn’t it?” she said, dismissing his questions.

  From the first, Kitty took the hardest tasks on herself. She always worked the front room, dealing with the raucous men, within easy reach of slaps and blows. It was Kitty who emptied the slop basins and cleaned the spit-globbed stove and pub floors. And it was Kitty that coaxed Cutter from Bristol’s pallet and took him into herself, suffering his thrusts and grunts in silent submission.

  She asked nothing in return. Only a roof over her head and food in her belly. And the wonder of Bristol’s companionship, unique in Kitty’s experience.

  For both women, the high point in a long exhausting day came during those quiet moments in front of the dying kitchen fire, when they rested on low stools and spoke softly of the small events which made up their day. And gradually Bristol began to fit into a new hard life.

  By now she knew all the Pudden children by sight, most by name, and she greeted them warmly when they appeared to sell the stolen items that kept the Royal Rumm functioning. She and Kitty talked through the wall to Mrs. Pudden and shared the triumphs and tragedies of that family, worrying over them and interested in them. Now the coal hag had a name to go with her wizened face, and though she never saw them, Bristol could distinguish the voices of the regulars and knew which name matched which voice and discussed them with Kitty as if she’d known them always.

  Which was also how she came to view Kitty—as if she had known Kitty all her life. In some ways Bristol felt closer to Kitty than she had to Charity. Living in two small rooms, they had no secrets and no privacy; they shared everything by necessity, including a common fear of Cutter and the struggle for day-to-day survival. Such bonds were strong and exerted a leveling effect.

  It wasn’t long before the details of Kitty’s life lost the power to shock or appall. Bristol now accepted the facts of grinding poverty as matter-of-factly as Kitty; it was her life too. She listened to accounts of Kitty’s early years with murmurs of interest but not pity; no matter what horror Kitty recounted, they saw worse on the streets every day, heard more terrible stories through the walls.

  For her own part, Bristol talked about the Adams farm and her life from the time of her arrival at the Royal Rumm. The months at Hathaway House stayed buried in a separate part of her heart. Though Kitty’s curiosity was boundless, Bristol gently turned aside the questions. To pull up that life and examine it, even for Kitty, would have been unbearably painful. And she knew what Kitty would have said: “Let it go. Don’t hope. Hope kills.”

  Without hope, Bristol’s life would have been unendurable. To face the weeks flying past, she clung to her slender faith and couldn’t bear to subject her thoughts to Kitty’s sad comment. “Hope kills.”

  Deep inside, she feared Kitty might convince her, and then, how could she go on? So Bristol hugged her inner thoughts to herself, and fed the faint hope, keeping it alive.

  And all her hopes centered on Jea
n Pierre. Bristol had accepted the reality of her situation and no longer plotted impossible escapes. Once, to her shame, Bristol had lain awake several nights planning to steal Kitty’s small hoard of coins and dash out to find a hackney cab. But hackneys didn’t frequent this section of London. And in the end, she’d realized she couldn’t have taken the money anyway. That small pile of silver (Bristol was now privy to the hiding place) was all that stood between the Royal Rumm and freezing. Or starving.

  Still, her stubborn heart would not give up. Somehow, some way, she would leave the Royal Rumm. Deep inside, she refused to accept that God’s plan was for Bristol Adams to live out her life in a pub kitchen. If she ever allowed herself to believe differently, Bristol felt she’d go mad.

  It was difficult enough to stay sane with the constant hard slaps, the bleakness of living, and the fear of the nights. The cold and hunger and rats and the constant itching from heaven knew what bugs. No joy existed in this world, only days that were less bad than others.

  Sometimes, sweating in the kitchen, her hands plunged in bread dough or up to the elbows in greasy water, Bristol yearned for a window. She thought it would ease her mind enormously if she could glance outside and see other people. It would give her secret hopes a focus.

  But the only time Cutter granted her the privilege of looking out the one window was when the weather turned cold and snowy and the regulars didn’t come. Then she invented tasks in the front room, frequently lingering by the window and dreaming of seeing Jean Pierre’s hard strong face in the swirl of flakes.

  “He’ll come,” she whispered fiercely. Against all odds. “One day he’ll come.”

  Cutter’s hand lashed across her cheek, leaving a flaming imprint. “Get ye into the kitchen and help Kitty.” He wrinkled his veined nose in revulsion and spit on the floor in disgust. “Smell that? Smells like she be cooking rat turds! Ye’re the cooker person. Get yer arse in there!” He flipped his knife and dug the tip into the scarred table, glowering into his cup of gin.

  Reluctantly Bristol turned from the window and hastened into the kitchen, so accustomed to heavy slaps that her hand no longer rose to her cheeks. Pausing in the doorway, Bristol smiled at Kitty, who labored to push a paddle through a boiling pot. Bristol’s nostrils crinkled in distaste. Cutter was right, the smell was terrible. “In the name of heaven, Kitty! What are you cooking?” The odor had a vaguely familiar scent, something Bristol hadn’t noticed in antiseptic Hathaway House, but went further back. To home. Now, what...?

  Kitty laughed. “Have you gone daft! It’s the rags!” She smiled at Bristol’s blank face. “The rags! You know.” Kitty pointed to her lower body. “The monthly rags.” Pausing, Kitty wiped a hand across her perspiring forehead. She frowned at Bristol’s odd expression. “You know,” she said thoughtfully, “I don’t recall you using any since you got here.”

  Abruptly Bristol sat hard on a stool, her hands clutching the sides until her fingers turned white against the wood. Of course. The smell was the boiling rags. In Hathaway House Molly whisked away such necessities and folded clean ones in their place. But at home, every month she and Charity and Hannah had...

  Bristol’s face turned white. Stunned, she stared up at Kitty, her green eyes round. Her lips moved, but no sound emerged. “Kitty,” she whispered, her heart racing, her mind counting, I... I...”

  Kitty’s hands rose to her mouth, and her dark eyes widened.

  “Kitty, I think I’m pregnant.”

  22

  They talked of little else. When Kitty ran into the kitchen during the day, she and Bristol exchanged whispers about the baby. They discussed pregnancy and babies at night when they fell on their straw pallets, and they planned and speculated until they dropped into an exhausted sleep.

  Bristol passed through the weeks in a daze, concentrated on the miracle taking place in her body. She developed a habit of touching her stomach, marveling at its new contours. She began snatching brief rests throughout the long days, sitting for a moment and gazing into the hearth. More and more her thoughts turned to Hathaway House, and memories she’d carefully and deliberately hidden in a remote corner bubbled to the surface.

  With each vivid memory, each life contrast, the need to escape built, until Bristol felt wild with frustration. She considered every scheme. For the thousandth time she tore apart the Royal Rumm searching for a scrap of paper on which to scribble a message. But as she’d known before the search began, no paper existed. Nightly she and Kitty plotted how they might extract a halfpenny from their handful of coins, but a halfpenny squandered on paper meant the sacrifice of wood or coal or food or liquor. All of which were needed for survival. And even had they dared, neither could think of a foolproof method of contacting someone without Cutter being aware.

  When finally Bristol accepted the impossibility of sending a message to Pall Mall, she decided her only hope was to escape.

  “Kitty? Kitty, are you asleep?” she whispered. Casting a quick glance toward the door, Bristol reached to shake Kitty’s thin shoulder. “I’m going to leave. I have to go.”

  Kitty gasped and bolted upward in the darkness. “Oh, Bristol, I don’t know... he’ll... Cutter might...”

  Bristol’s voice begged understanding in tones of anguish. “I can’t have my baby here, I just can’t! Help me, Kitty, please tell me how to find Pall Mall!” Her fingers found Kitty’s hand, waiting for an answering squeeze.

  Kitty tensed, straining toward Bristol’s pallet. “When would you go?”

  “Tomorrow night. Here’s my idea...” Her whisper rising excitedly, Bristol detailed her careful plans.

  Kitty listened in silence, her lack of comment saying more than any words. “I don’t know,” she answered finally. “I think you underestimate Cutter.” Kitty sighed heavily. “But I’ll do what I can.”

  The next day passed with agonizing slowness. Listening from the kitchen, Bristol decided the regulars would stay forever—the day had no end. Each time Kitty rushed into the kitchen, Bristol deviled her for weather reports (cold but clear), Cutter’s state of mind (nasty but normal), and how Kitty progressed in getting Rumm very very drunk (coming along as planned).

  When at last the kitchen fire burned low and no sounds had emerged from the pub room for more than an hour, Bristol and Kitty looked at each other.

  “I’ll miss you,” Kitty whispered, moisture sparkling in her lashes. She tied her shabby gray cloak under Bristol’s chin and exchanged sturdy worn shoes for the clogs Bristol wore.

  Bristol swallowed an unexpected lump. Taking Kitty’s hands, she stared into the woman’s thin face. “I won’t forget you,” she whispered urgently. “I’ll send money and food and clothing.” Her eyes probed Kitty’s. “Are you sure you won’t change your mind and come with me?”

  Kitty shook her head and wiped her eyes with the back of a hand. “I can’t, Bristol. He... well, you know.” Sweeping Bristol into an awkward hug, Kitty pressed four coins into her hand. “Go to Mercy Lane, turn right until you find Linton Way, then walk left for about a mile. There’s hansom cars there, and one’ll take you to Pall Mall.” She held Bristol at arm’s length and blinked rapidly. “Good luck.”

  Not trusting herself to speak, Bristol fiercely hugged Kitty, then tiptoed to the kitchen door. Inside the pub room, her eyes swept the cherry glow of the coal stove and Cutter Rumm’s hunched figure snoring over the table. With a deep shivering breath and a last excited glance toward Kitty, Bristol stepped into the room.

  She moved silently, gliding between Cutter Rumm and the stove. Lightly she touched her stomach, pulling the cloak tightly around her body. She would make it! For the baby’s sake, for her own sake, she would make it. Weeks ago she hadn’t known enough to survive the streets, but now... now she understood how to blend into the night scene; she’d overheard Mrs. Pudden discuss it often enough. Dressed as she was, Bristol would pass as a prostitute seeking a late escort; no one would bother her with any problems she couldn’t handle. She fervently hoped. And wi
th the coins Kitty had stolen, Bristol had even a better chance. Home! Her pounding heart skipped a beat. She’d make this up to Kitty—the coins came at a dreadful cost.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, Bristol slid the bolt on the door, listening with each taut nerve for a break in Cutter’s snore. Then her fingers dropped silently to the latch, and she closed her eyes as she applied a slow pressure. In another minute she’d be outside and speeding toward Jean Pierre. Dear God, how she longed for him!

  The door clicked open, and Bristol screamed.

  A knife appeared from nowhere. One minute there was quiet darkness, the next second a knife quivered in the splintered door, pinning Bristol’s sleeve above the latch. She screamed as the blade scraped her wrist, opening a wet stain on her cuff.

  “Going somewhere, Queenie?”

  Eyes wild with fear, Bristol darted a glance over her shoulder as Cutter stumbled up from the table. Her mind shrieked with silent outrage and disappointment too vast to bear. Jerking her sleeve, she ripped free of the knife and clawed at the heavy door.

  But Rumm’s large hand slammed it shut, and a wave of gin fumes crashed over Bristol’s face. Brutal hands caught her bleeding wrist and twisted her hand up into her line of vision.

  “See this here cut, Queenie?” Rumm’s voice wheezed danger. “It could as easily been through yer wrist as well as beside it. Coulda gone through yer ribs as well.” Small red eyes glittered. “If’n ye ever try this again, I’ll kill ye.”

  Shaking, tears wetting her cheeks, Bristol tried to yank free. “Please, please let me go. I beg you. Please let me go!” But she knew he wouldn’t, knew it by the rage deep in his eyes.

  “This here might help ye remember who decides what in Cutter Rumm’s place. Ye’ll go if and when I say so.” His hand lifted then, as rough and heavy as a club, and he beat her. Beat her with drunken calmness, beat her until the red glow of the coal stove flickered in and out in crazy patterns, beat her until Bristol fell to the floor unconscious.