by Valerie Wood
‘What! Leave me?’ Hugo’s face drooped. ‘Out of the question, I’m afraid. Whatever would I do without her? Besides, I’m buying her a new house! We went to see one in Hessle the other day and decided that would be just the thing. Good air – river breezes.’ He patted Deborah’s cheek. ‘Deborah has to choose curtains and carpets and furniture before we can move in, haven’t you?’
Her face became a little brighter, but still she was confused. ‘If you say so, Hugo.’
‘I do say so,’ he smiled. ‘And then –’, his voice dropped as he turned to his father-in-law, ‘we have this other nasty business coming up soon. I’m afraid that Deborah will be wanted as a witness at the hearing.’
Chapter Twenty-One
The weather suddenly became colder and down in the depths of the gaol the inmates shivered. Their toes and fingers turned blue, for few of them wore stockings or shoes and their food, barely warm when sent down to them, was usually covered in a skin of cold fat by the time it reached them.
Emily shivered by her small fire, which was always lit when the warders, in expectation of a gratuity, thought she expected visitors. At other times, they forgot to bring her wood to light it, even though she asked them several times. Mary came one day and had snow on her boots and she exclaimed at how cold it was in the cell.
‘Do you know what day it is, Emily?’ She put down her basket, which seemed fuller and heavier than usual.
‘I’ve lost track of time,’ Emily said wearily. ‘I seem to have spent the whole of my life in this place.’
‘It’s Christmas Day,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you hear the bells ringing?’
Emily shook her head. ‘Christmas Day! Have I been here so long?’ She started to weep. ‘If only the hearing would start. I feel as if I have been forgotten.’
‘Not forgotten, Emily,’ Mary said, a shade reproachfully. ‘Your friends think of you constantly.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she snuffled. ‘I didn’t mean you, Mary, or Mr Francis. You have been so good to me. I meant the authorities. Why don’t they bring me to court and let me know the worst?’
‘Mr Hibbert says the magistrates’ hearing will be after the Christmas recess. So not long now,’ she added, trying unsuccessfully to bring cheer to Emily. She started to unpack her basket. ‘I’ve brought slices of goose, straight from the oven, and stuffing, roast potatoes and parsnips. I told the cabby to drive as fast as he could so that it wouldn’t go cold before we ate it.’
Emily stared at her. ‘Do you mean that you are going to stay and eat here?’ she asked in amazement. ‘But you must go home! If it’s Christmas, you must have friends who want you with them. You can’t spend Christmas here!’
‘I can and I will,’ she said, unwrapping plates and parcels. ‘I do often spend Christmas with friends, but sometimes I spend the day alone, because that is how I like it – when I can’t be with the one I want to be with. But this Christmas I want to spend with you and we shall pretend we are somewhere else. Where shall we be, Emily?’
Emily wiped away her tears. ‘Tell me about your little house behind the shop. That’s where I should like to be, so that I can smell the perfume of flowers drifting through.’
So in the cramped and cold cell as they ate their Christmas dinner, Mary told of her cosy house behind the flower shop with the heavy curtains to keep out the draughts and the bright cushions on the chairs and the rug in front of the fire, and Emily imagined that she was there and not incarcerated in a damp prison cell awaiting trial for murder.
‘You must have missed Sam very much when you first went away,’ Emily said. ‘How could you bear it? I felt sad for my poor dead baby, even though I hadn’t known him. But I cradled him in my arms and knew that I would have loved him.’
Mary was silent for a moment, then said softly, ‘I have missed him every day of his life, though I’m sure he doesn’t think about me. He won’t even remember me. But’, she sighed, ‘I had to go. Roger was promised to someone else and his father told him he would disinherit him if he married me. I couldn’t let that happen, he loves that place, that land, and I knew that he would always look after Samuel and my mother, which he couldn’t have done if I’d stayed. It would have been such a scandal if people had found out. But’, she said, ‘if we had known what unhappiness lay in front of him, then perhaps we would have taken a chance and stayed together.’
‘Unhappiness?’ Emily queried. ‘You mean because he didn’t love his wife?’
‘Not just that. You realize that Samuel is a – little slow?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Granny Edwards always said he wasn’t right sharp. But he’s clever in other ways,’ she added defensively. ‘He knows how to fish and trap.’
Mary smiled. ‘I’m sure he does. Not like his step-brother and step-sister. Theirs is a more serious situation.’
Emily put her hands to her mouth. It hadn’t occurred to her that Sam was related to Deborah Purnell and her brother. ‘Oh,’ she murmured. ‘They say that the poor boy is insane. He’s in an asylum. And Miss Deborah, she’s, well – she’s a little excitable!’
‘Yes. Roger didn’t know that derangement ran in his family. His father knew, for he had had another child before Roger, but he chose not to tell him. Not until it was too late. My Samuel was lucky,’ she spoke softly and slipped into her native Holderness tongue, ‘not like them other poor bairns.’
As they finished a portion of Christmas pudding and put away the dirty dishes into the basket, they heard footsteps coming down the passageway and Ginny appeared at the gate, clutching a basket. ‘Oh, Emily,’ she peered at her through the bars, ‘I’ve been that worried about you.’ The warder unlocked the gate and let her in and Emily introduced her to Mary, saying only that Mary used to know her father.
‘I haven’t been able to come before,’ Ginny said. ‘Mrs Marshall heard that I’d been visiting you, I don’t know how, one of ’other maids I expect. Anyhow she said I hadn’t to come again. She said she didn’t want anyone from her house becoming involved. But then after dinner today I appealed to her and asked if I could bring you some victuals that were left over. They’ll only be wasted, I said, and it is Christmas and Emily is half-starved in that place. So she said I could and that I had to report back to her and tell of what went on in these places.
‘Old cow!’ she said bitterly. ‘Her and her cronies, they can’t wait for you to come to court.’
‘Well, it seems they won’t have to wait long.’ Emily’s meal suddenly turned sour as she thought of what was to come, then she said, ‘Ginny! As I’ve eaten well today, dare you ask ’warder to take you down to the other cell, where I was before? There’s a woman there called Meg, she doesn’t get any visitors and I know she won’t have any extra food, so she’ll be glad of mine. Will you do that for me?’
‘But Emily,’ Ginny objected, ‘it’ll keep. It’s cold turkey leg and a bit of ham. Tomorrow you might be glad of it!’
‘Tomorrow I’ll think of how Meg would have been glad of it. She was kind to me in her own way, Ginny. I’d like her to have it.’
Ginny bent over and kissed her. ‘You don’t deserve to be in here, Emily. God must have been looking ’other way when all this happened. I hope Hugo Purnell rots in hell.’
The following weeks leading up to the court hearing passed very slowly. It was so cold. The wind whistled down the passageway and the damp walls had a thin layer of ice on them. Mary brought in extra blankets and a warm bonnet for Emily, and when Mr Hibbert the lawyer came to see her, his greatcoat buttoned up to his chin and a warm scarf over his ears, his voice echoed through the gaol as he complained of the cold, and he never stayed long.
Then one day Mary brought her a new skirt and woollen shirt and said she would take Emily’s clothes home to wash. ‘It won’t be long now, Emily,’ she said gently, ‘and we must have you looking presentable.’
‘How do I look?’ she asked.
‘Pale and thinner,’ she said, ‘but that is hardly surprising. But’, she stroked her cheek,
‘still beautiful.’
Emily knew that she didn’t speak the truth. She knew from the way her skirt twisted around and her shirt hung on her that she was very much thinner. She felt dirty, even though she washed every day in a bowl of cold water. And when she looked down at her hands they seemed to be ingrained with grime, for everything she touched in the cell was flecked with soot and the dirt of many years.
A few days later she was surprised to hear Meg’s voice as she was led past her door. ‘Cheerio, my lovely,’ Meg called. ‘I’m off out again. I’ve served my time.’ She grabbed the bars to Emily’s cell and peered in. ‘I’ll not forget you and what you did for me,’ she whispered. ‘Saved my miserable life you did.’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘I didn’t think there was any kindness left in ’world, but I was mistook.’ She swallowed hard and shook off the warder’s hand as he tried to move her on. ‘It wasn’t just ’food that you sent,’ she said, ‘it was ’thought that somebody was thinking o’ me. God bless you. You’ll get what you deserve one day.’
Emily thought of her words as two constables came the next day to take her to the magistrates’ court. Once again handcuffs were put on her and a rope was tied around her waist. Only this time she didn’t walk, she was bundled into an open wagon with other prisoners, ready to be driven through the thronging streets of the town to the court-house.
The sharp bitter wind caught her breath and she screwed up her eyes against the brightness of the morning, used as she was to the gloom of her cell, and she thought she would never again know such shame, as the crowds and market traders shouted abuse at the prisoners as they were driven past them. Someone threw a rotten apple and the wagon was followed by jeering children and laughing youths. Emily was shackled by the rope around her waist to a painted whore with dyed red hair, who shouted obscenities at the onlookers and made indecent signs with her fingers. Next to her was a thief with a scarred and evil-looking face and on Emily’s other side was a ragged young boy who cried constantly for his mother. If she could have sunk to her knees in prayer she would have, but the prisoners were packed so tightly together that they were kept upright by the press of each other’s bodies.
Still shackled, she was put in another basement cell at the courthouse. ‘Will it be today?’ she whispered to one of the guards. ‘Will the hearing be today?’ But he was busy coping with the louder complaints of other hardier prisoners and didn’t hear her.
‘You’ll have to shout up if you want to be heard, dearie.’ The whore leered at her. ‘Nobody listens otherwise. What you up for?’
Emily couldn’t say the word. It wasn’t true. She hadn’t murdered the baby. ‘I’m accused of – killing a newborn baby.’
‘And they caught you?’ the woman said as if amazed. ‘By, there’s many a woman should be here then! Who can afford to bring a bairn into ’world? Who’d want to anyway?’
‘But I didn’t!’ Emily was shocked. ‘And it would be a sin if I had! A child has a right to life.’
The whore laughed. ‘You’re a little innocent aren’t you? Don’t know much about ’world that’s for sure!’
‘I know more now than I did,’ she murmured miserably. ‘More than I ever thought I would.’
‘Some man’s brought you down, I bet. Did he promise to marry you?’ The woman scratched vigorously at her body.
Emily shook her head. She wouldn’t discuss it, especially not with such a woman as this.
‘Took you then?’ the woman persisted. ‘And then left you to carry ’burden? I know all about that,’ she snarled. ‘See it every bleeding day that dawns. Two-legged scorpions! Lechers! Destroyers of women!’ She cursed and ranted, then pointed a dirty finger at Emily so that she cringed away, ‘Tek my advice. Name him! Let his family and friends see him for ’thief that he is for tekking your virtue!’
‘Emily Hawkins! Emily Hawkins! Come forward.’ She jumped as she heard her name being called. This was it, then. The time had come. Frightened and trembling, she was led up stone steps, down a long gloomy corridor which was thronging with clerks carrying piles of parchment, young bewigged counsellors lounging idly against the walls and constables with prisoners shackled to them waiting impatiently for their turn to be called, and through heavy wooden doors into the courtroom.
She was only vaguely aware of the silence which descended on the room as she entered. A few murmurings and tut-tuttings as she was led toward a partially enclosed wooden dock where she was brusquely told to stand. One constable remained fastened to her by handcuffs and two more stood behind her. She turned her head. To the side of her, sitting on a long bench, was one of the constables who had arrested her. She saw Mr Hibbert dressed in his court robes and another ferret-faced man who sniffed down his long nose and shuffled his papers and scratched at his wig.
In the main area of the courtroom there was a great press of people, strangers to her; but no, there was Ginny, who gave her an encouraging nod. There was Mrs Anderson too, sitting next to her; she didn’t acknowledge Emily but sat with her head down and her mouth in a thin line. Behind her was a young woman wrapped in a thin shawl with a mewling child on her lap and Emily wondered if it was Mrs Anderson’s niece who had also fallen to Hugo Purnell’s advances.
She lifted her eyes to the balcony above. There was Mrs Marshall with a handkerchief to her nose, the feathers in her hat bobbing as she chatted to other well-dressed ladies of society sitting beside her. There was no sign of Mrs Purnell, but Emily’s eyes filled with tears as she saw Mary Edwards in a long grey cloak with a hood over her head, taking her seat.
After the silence which had greeted her, there rose a hubbub of noise and laughter as if the audience were waiting to be entertained at a theatre show, but this died away again as the doors once more swung open and all eyes swivelled to see Hugo Purnell with his wife by his side being escorted in.
Emily drew in her breath. Why did he have to bring Miss Deborah? She didn’t look well. She was pale and trembling and stumbled as she took her place besides the long-nosed man, who, Emily now surmised, must be their lawyer.
‘All rise!’ called the clerk to the court and Emily’s eyes were transfixed on the bewigged and black-robed justice who entered and took his seat at the bench. She looked on his face for a sign of warmth and human compassion, but saw only an austere and authoritarian resolve. This man then was to judge her. This man with the forbidding frown on his forehead would decide on her future, whether she should live or die.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sergeant Harris, who had arrested her and who had also been sent for by Hugo Purnell, was the first to give evidence. It was his opinion, he said, that the child was stillborn.
‘Have you seen a stillborn child before?’ asked Mr Sneepe, Hugo Purnell’s lawyer.
‘No sir, I haven’t,’ the sergeant admitted, ‘but I’ve seen children who’ve been murdered, and I know this one wasn’t.’
‘But you have never seen a stillborn child,’ the counsel persisted. ‘Therefore you couldn’t be sure.’
‘No, sir.’
‘And you saw the damaged painting? Did you assess whether the damage was deliberate or accidental?’
‘It appeared to be deliberate, sir.’
Hugo Purnell was called next to give evidence on finding the dead child and the damaged painting.
‘What was your reaction, Mr Purnell, when you came across this poor dead child?’ Mr Sneepe rubbed his hands round and round in an unctuous manner.
‘I was shocked,’ Hugo said smoothly, ‘and horrified’, he added, ‘that such a thing should happen in my home. I tried to keep the discovery from my wife –’, he spread his hands wide ‘but too late, she had seen both the child and the burnt painting.’
‘And did you know whose child it was?’
He shook his head. ‘Not until I was told by my mother’s housekeeper that one of the maids had become pregnant and that it was probably hers.’
Mr Hibbert stood up to question him. ‘Did you call a doctor to attend t
he child?’
‘I did not.’ Hugo stared defiantly at him. ‘I could see the child was dead, therefore I called the police. I understand a doctor was in attendance later to examine the child.’
‘Do you have any idea why the child should be left on your bed? Was there an implication that the prisoner, Emily Hawkins, might have been suggesting that it was your child?’
Hugo indicated towards his wife in the court. ‘I am a newly married man. Is it likely that I would dally with a young maid?’
There was a sudden guffaw from the balcony, where some of Hugo’s friends had gathered. He stared stony-faced up at them. ‘There has never been any such suggestion. Nor is there any reason why there should be.’
The doctor who had examined the child’s body was a thin, nervous young man who answered in a low and hesitant voice when asked his opinion on the child’s death. ‘It was probably a premature birth,’ he said, ‘and therefore the child was unlikely to survive.’
There was a great sigh as if of relief from the main body of the court and the justice frowned impatiently. ‘In your opinion, doctor,’ he asked, ‘would this child have survived with medical care?’
‘It is possible, though unlikely,’ he answered slowly, ‘and it would depend on the mother’s state of health and the conditions at its birth.’
‘You mean if the mother had had medical attention?’
The doctor agreed and started to say something to the effect that many mothers were not able to afford a doctor, but the magistrate cut him short.
When Emily was called she could barely stand and had to hold the side of the dock for support. She answered to her name and agreed that she had been in Mrs Purnell’s employ.
‘You gave birth to an illegitimate child. Is that correct?’ Mr Sneepe asked.
‘Yes, sir,’ she whispered.
‘Was this your first child?’
She gasped. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘When discovering that you were with child, did you consult a doctor?’
