26
Before breakfast the next morning Beatrice dressed herself and Florence in their capes and their bonnets and walked over to the Foundery. No-noh came trotting beside them, with a collar and a lead that Judith had made for him out of an old brown leather knee boot that she had found lying in the street. She had no idea what had become of its fellow knee boot, or the owner of either.
Beatrice took Florence into James’s classroom, where he was teaching the children an alphabet song. ‘E is for Egg and F is for Frog – G is for Goat, you know, and H is for Hog!’
He stopped singing and smiled at her and called out, ‘Just a moment, class! We have a very beautiful visitor this morning!’
Two or three of the older children came out with a mocking ‘Woooo!’ and made loud kissing noises when he said that, but he took no notice and came over to Beatrice and bowed.
‘Beatrice. You’ve brightened my day a hundred times over.’
‘Thank you, James. You flatter me. I have to prepare some tonics in the apothecary and I was wondering if Florrie could sit with you while I do that. It shouldn’t take me long.’
‘Florence is more than welcome,’ said James. ‘And so is No-noh. Eustace, would you fetch a bowl of water, please, for this little fellow?
One of the boys got up and went off to the kitchen. James turned to Beatrice and said, ‘You seem a little subdued, Beatrice, if you don’t mind my saying so. There’s nothing troubling you, is there?’
‘I think you and I should talk,’ said Beatrice.
‘About?’
‘I can’t discuss it now. But I am troubled, yes, and I have nobody else to confide in but you.’
‘Very well. My offer of a supper at the Three Cranes still stands. Would you be free to come out this evening?’
‘I believe so, unless one of the girls falls sick with the whooping cough or tumbles downstairs.’
‘I look forward to it, Beatrice. I will come by at six o’clock if that suits you.’
He brought over a chair for Florence so that she could sit at the front of the class with No-noh sitting beside her, and then he started up the alphabet song again.
‘I is for Ink and J is for Jam – K is for Kitchen and L is for Lamb!’
Beatrice gave Florence a little finger-wave and then went through to the apothecary. Godfrey was talking to an elderly woman with wild white hair and a dusty black cape who was trembling and jolting as if she were sitting outside in a freezing gale. She was toothless, and as soon as Beatrice entered the apothecary she could smell her poisonous breath. Her skirts were draggled with horse manure which made the atmosphere even more offensive.
‘Ah, Beatrice!’ Godfrey greeted her. ‘Is there anything I can help you with? Did you manage to find that pleurisy root at Collin’s?’
‘I wondered if I might use your equipment to test a sample.’
‘By all means. I’ll be attending to this unfortunate woman for a while yet. As you can see she’s suffering from severe tremors, and I’ve recommended that she be rubbed all over with warm ashes and brandy, and then has a tobacco-smoke clyster. Our nurse will treat her, and with luck and God’s help her symptoms should subside.’
‘Thank you, Godfrey,’ said Beatrice. She hung up her coat and went over to the workbench. She lit the whale-oil lamp that Godfrey used for heating chemicals, and then she went over to the shelves and took down a large glass flask and some U-shaped glass tubing, as well as a ceramic dish.
She felt slightly guilty about waiting until Godfrey’s back was turned before she took out her handkerchief and carefully shook the sample of the goat’s beard into the ceramic dish. She was sure that Godfrey wasn’t party to any conspiracy to frighten her, but she thought it sensible not to let him know what she was testing.
First of all, she lifted the dish to her nose and sniffed the hair. She had an acute sense of smell, and her father had often asked her to smell samples that he was analysing because he couldn’t detect any odour himself. The hair didn’t smell of turpentine, which she had suspected it might, but when she closed her eyes and sniffed it a second time, and held her breath, she was sure that she could faintly smell almonds.
She dropped the hair into the flask, and added a spoonful of zinc powder and a measure of sulphuric acid, and gently shook them. Then she stoppered the flask and connected it to the U-shaped glass tube. After only a few seconds she could smell a garlicky gas, so she lit the end of the tube and held the cold ceramic dish over the flame. It took less than a minute for the dish to be stained with a patch of silvery-black.
‘Everything going well?’ asked Godfrey. He had finished preparing the long-stemmed tobacco pipe which the Foundery’s nurse would insert into his trembling patient’s anus. ‘What precisely is it you’re testing for?’
‘Antimony,’ said Beatrice. And please, dear God, forgive me for lying again.
‘Ah! You’re thinking of making kohl for the girls’ eyes, are you?’ said Godfrey. It was a good guess: antimony had been used by women to darken their eyes since the days of Cleopatra, and when it was tested in the same way as arsenic it left a similar black stain.
‘Nothing so flippant, I’m afraid,’ said Beatrice, forcing herself to smile. ‘I’m merely thinking of mixing up a purgative.’ She had often mixed antimony in her tonics because it brought on sweating, vomiting and diarrhoea. It was a drastic remedy, because antimony was so poisonous, but it was less drastic than bloodletting.
She snuffed out the lamp, and then she dismantled the flask and the tubing, washing them out so that no trace of the goat’s hair remained. The ceramic dish she wrapped in her handkerchief and when Godfrey turned his back again she dropped it into her purse. On its own, the silvery-black stain proved nothing, but together with other samples it might make convincing circumstantial evidence.
Most importantly, though, it confirmed her suspicions about the goat’s head, and why it hadn’t started to decay. The gas given off by the hairs from its beard was arsine, which oxidised when burned into water and arsenic. Arsenic was commonly used by morticians to embalm dead bodies, so that they could display them to grieving relatives who had been obliged to travel for several days to pay their respects. Surgeons used it too, to keep corpses reasonably intact for anatomical dissection.
Satan, with his great supernatural powers, would have had no need for it.
*
They walked back to Maidenhead Court, with Florence skipping along, singing the alphabet song.
‘What will you be doing today, Florrie?’ Beatrice asked her. ‘You can come and join my drawing class this afternoon, if you like.’
‘Grace is going to take me and No-noh for a walk and buy some cakes to eat.’
‘That’s very kind of her. I’ll give her some money for the cakes.’
‘I love Grace. I wish I was brown too. Then we could be sisters.’
Beatrice said, ‘The colour of your skin doesn’t matter, Florrie. You can be sisters on the inside, even if you don’t look like sisters on the outside.’
‘Do you think Papa in heaven likes Grace?’
‘I’m sure he loves her just as much as you do,’ said Beatrice, although she felt a dull sense of sadness because she still suspected that Francis wasn’t Florence’s real father. She knew that she shouldn’t let it disturb her, because Florence was a gift from God whoever had caused her conception, but she wished there were some scientific test which could prove her paternity beyond doubt.
When they reached St Mary Magdalene’s and knocked at the door, it was Judith who opened it for them. Once they had taken off their coats, Florence ran into the kitchen to find Grace. Beatrice went through to the atelier to take out all the tapestry frames and coloured silks the girls would need for the cross-stitch class that she would be holding after breakfast.
She was still opening and closing the drawers in the sewing cabinet when Florence came in, looking upset.
‘I can’t find Grace.’
‘Perhaps she went out
shopping,’ said Beatrice.
‘I asked Molly but Molly said she was gone.’
‘She can’t be gone for long, Florrie. She’ll be back in time for breakfast. Why don’t you ask Martha if you can help in the kitchen?’
When she had laid out everything ready for her sewing class, Beatrice went into the drawing room, where Ida was sitting stiffly at her small walnut escritoire, writing a letter. Ida was dressed today in spinach-green silk, and her face looked whiter than ever. If her quill hadn’t been twitching as she wrote, a casual observer might have thought that she was dead.
‘Ah, Beatrice, my dear. How is everything? Is Eliza making a recovery?’
‘I’m going up to see her now,’ said Beatrice. ‘Florence was looking for Grace. Have you sent her out on an errand?’
Ida stopped writing but didn’t turn to look at her.
‘Grace has left us,’ she said.
‘Oh. That’s very unexpected. Poor Florence is going to be so disappointed! Grace had promised to take her out for a walk today and buy her some cakes.’
‘Well, sometimes life can take unexpected turns, as well you know.’
‘So where has she gone?’
‘To a far better life, I hope. George Hazzard has taken her to work at his tobacco factory. He’s been interested in employing her for quite some time, because he believes that darkie women have a natural gift for cigar-rolling. Barbadoes, after all, is where tobacco first came from, before it was all planted for sugar.’
‘Grace was seven years old when she was brought here from Barbadoes. I hardly think that she would have had any experience making cigars at that age.’
Ida pursed her vivid red lips. ‘I’m sorry to lose her, I have to admit. She’s a sweet girl, very hard-working, and it wasn’t her fault that she fell into such bad company. But... he who pays the piper. What George Hazzard wants, George Hazzard must have.’
‘Don’t tell Florence just yet, please, Ida. I’ll tell her myself after breakfast. If she finds out now, I know that she’ll be too upset to eat anything, and she needs her strength.’
‘Very well,’ said Ida. She looked at her hand holding her quill pen as if she had forgotten how to make it write. Beatrice sensed that she was more disturbed about George Hazzard taking Grace away than she had admitted. She could have questioned her further, but she decided that it would be wiser to say nothing, at least for the time being.
‘I’m going up to give Eliza some more tonic,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you at breakfast.’
‘Yes,’ said Ida, and Beatrice had never heard a single ‘yes’ sound so bleak.
27
Before she went upstairs, Beatrice went into the kitchen to see what Florence was doing. She found her kneeling on a chair with a large apron tied around her and her cheeks smudged with flour, rolling out pastry. Martha the cook was standing by the hearth, stirring porridge, and she gave Beatrice a quick, beady look when she came in, but then immediately turned her back.
You served up that goat’s head, Martha, thought Beatrice. And it was you who cremated the pig’s head in the fire to try and hide what you’d done.
‘Did you find out where Grace is?’ asked Florence.
‘Not yet. I have to give Eliza her medicine first.’
‘She probably went to buy some bacon. Martha said she’s used up all the bacon because the girls are so greedy. She said they’re greedy pigs!’
‘Yes... perhaps Grace did go shopping,’ said Beatrice, and again she thought, I’m telling another white lie. What is it about St Mary Magdalene’s that has made me so devious?
She kissed Florence on top of the head and then she climbed the stairs to Eliza’s small room at the back of the house. She knocked at the door but there was no reply, so she guessed that Eliza must still be asleep. When she went inside, though, she found that Eliza’s bed was empty. The sheets were twisted like a rope, and the room smelled of stale sweat, but there was no sign of Eliza.
Beatrice went back out onto the landing. As she did so, three girls came down the stairs, giggling.
‘Good morning, Widow Scarlet!’ they chorused.
‘Good morning to you, too,’ said Beatrice. ‘You haven’t seen Eliza, have you?’
‘’Oo’s Eliza?’ asked Hettie, a short bosomy girl with a mass of blonde hair who had already made friends with Florence by teaching her to dance a very bouncy version of the gigue.
‘That girl I brought her here yesterday. She had a bad cough so we put here in this room, in case any of you caught it.’
All three girls shook their curls. ‘No,’ said Hettie. ‘Ain’t seen her. But she ain’t upstairs, I can tell you that for nothin’.’
The girls carried on downstairs and Beatrice was left on the landing, wondering where in the world Eliza could have gone to. Perhaps she had decided that she wanted to return to her life of prostitution, and sneaked out of St Mary Magdalene’s when nobody was looking. Beatrice wouldn’t have been surprised if she had. Even if she followed a pious and moral life, she would probably die before she was thirty-five, as most women did, so why not enjoy the years she had left?
Beatrice was about to go downstairs herself when she heard coughing from inside Eliza’s bedroom. She went back inside, stood perfectly still, and listened; and then she heard two more spluttering coughs, and a wheezing sound. She picked up her skirts and knelt down beside the bed. Eliza was lying underneath, staring at her wide-eyed like a cornered rabbit.
‘Eliza,’ she said. ‘What in the Lord’s name are you doing under your bed?’
‘I don’t want ’im to take me.’
‘Who are you talking about?’
‘’Im. That George ’Azzard. Is ’e still ’ere or ’as ’e gone?’
‘He’s gone, Eliza. You can come on out. You shouldn’t be lying under your bed with a chest infection like yours. It’s too dusty.’
Eliza crawled out from under the bed and stood up, shivering. Beatrice straightened her sheets and her blankets for her, and plumped up her pillows.
‘There,’ she said. ‘Get back into bed. I’ll give you some more tonic and I’ll ask Martha to warm you up some milk and honey.’
Eliza climbed into bed, still coughing.
Beatrice sat on the bed beside her and said, ‘You know George Hazzard?’
Eliza nodded.
‘How do you know him? And why were you hiding from him?’
‘It was ’im what took me into Leda Sheridan’s ’ouse.’
‘I’m sorry, Eliza. I’ve been away from London for quite some time. Who’s Leda Sheridan?’
‘She runs this knockin’ shop in Drury Lane, by the Theatre Royal. Well, it ain’t really what you’d call a knockin’ shop. It’s rank civil. All dukes and nibs and swells and such.’
‘And it was George Hazzard who took you there? How did that happen?’
‘I was standin’ on a corner in ’Oundsditch sellin’ the pincushions what my aunt makes, and this yellow carriage stops and out steps George ’Azzard. ’E says I’m a real dimber-mort and would I like to come and ’ave a good time.’
‘So you said yes?’
‘’Course I did. I was cold and I was flippin’ soaked because it was rainin’ and I was banded, too. ’E took me in his carriage to Drury Lane and into Mrs Sheridan’s case. I’d never seen nowhere like it in the ’ole of my life. There was carpets and fires burnin’ and girls in beautiful frocks all smellin’ like flower baskets.’
Eliza started another coughing fit, but Beatrice waited patiently until she had managed to get her breath back. She decided that she would make a bolus of rose and powdered frankincense for Eliza to swallow, and before she went to sleep tonight she would massage her stomach with sweet almond oil and syrup of violets, mixed with candlewax, saffron and nutmeg. That should allow her to breathe more easily.
‘What happened when you went to Mrs Sheridan’s?’ Beatrice asked her.
Eliza took a deep breath. ‘A couple of the girls give me a bath, and orange perfume
, and a pretty lace gown to wear. They curled my ’air for me, and tied it up in ribbons, and dabbed rouge on my cheeks. When I see myself in a looking glass, I can’t even believe it’s me.’
‘You must have thought that you were in heaven,’ said Beatrice.
‘I did. I did. That’s exactly what I thought. They takes me down to the kitchen, don’t they, these two girls, and they gives me soup and bread and an apple, and after that they lets me sit in front of the fire and ’ave a snooze.’
‘Did they tell you why they were being so kind to you?’
Eliza shook her head. ‘I thought they was doin’ it out of charity. You know, like sometimes people tip you a mopus in the street for no reason except they feel sorry for you.’
‘But of course they wanted something in return?’
Eliza looked directly into Beatrice’s eyes, and Beatrice could see that as young as she was, there was no innocence there.
‘I falls asleep in front of the fire, don’t I? But when I wakes up, I says I have to go back home to my aunt’s. But Mrs Sheridan she says oh no, love, you’re stayin’ right ’ere tonight, there’s a gentleman ’oo’s got ’imself a taste for young girls like you.’
‘How old were you then?’ Beatrice asked her.
‘Twelve. Six days past my birthday.’
Beatrice took hold of her hand. ‘You don’t have to tell me any more. I can imagine how terrible it must have been for you.’
‘It ’urt, all right,’ said Eliza. ‘’E did it to me front and back, three times that night. But I’d seen my aunt at it with ’er fancy-man so it weren’t no great mystery, like. And ’e was ever so good to me. ’E told me ’ow pretty I was – like a little angel, ’e said – and ’e give me a jogue and a glass of ’is wine.’
‘So what happened after that? Did you go back home, or did you stay there?’
‘I stays there. Mrs Sheridan says I’m a money-spinner. She takes good care of me, and she buys me all nice clothes. Every night there’s another gentleman I ’as to be good to, or some nights there’s two or even three, and I ’as to let them do whatever they pleases, but I soon gets used to it. There’s only one thing that Mrs Sheridan makes me do, on pain of a whippin’, like, and that’s to tell every gentleman that my pipkin ’asn’t been cracked yet, and I was never with any other man before them.’
The Coven Page 19
