I try to twist out of the woman’s hold, but she is strong. She grips me so hard, I fear she might squeeze the breath out of me. My feet barely touch the ground as she whisks me down the stairs. The man, Dr Fox, is striding ahead. ‘Discretion, Mrs Abbot,’ he says over his shoulder. ‘Remember. Swiftness and discretion.’ Although he is quick and wiry, he doesn’t take after his name. He is more like a pigeon, with his grey suit, beady eyes and bouncing head. Then we are outside and there is a carriage waiting at the pavement, with its doors already open.
‘Where are you taking me?’ I manage to ask. But before the words are out of my mouth, I have been thrown into the carriage. ‘Stop!’ I shout. But the doors are banged shut and in a blink I find myself huddled on a hard wooden seat with the looming figure of Mrs Abbot sitting opposite me.
‘Tis no use carrying on,’ she says. ‘What’s done is done and you might as well sit quiet now.’
I look around frantically. The curtains are drawn, but not tightly, so daylight filters through and I see the interior of the carriage is shabby, the walls scuffed and the floors covered in dirty straw. The air hangs heavy and hot and is filled with the odour of Mrs Abbot. The carriage jerks forward and I grab the leather hand strap to steady myself. Mrs Abbot grunts as the horses take up a steady pace, and her chins jiggle with the motion.
‘Where’s Dr Fox?’ I demand, trying to keep the fear from my voice. ‘Where are you taking me?’
‘He’s up top with the driver. He doesn’t like to ride with his patients.’ Mrs Abbots blows her nose noisily on a large, grey handkerchief. She inspects the contents, and then looks to me as though I am of much less importance than what has just come out of her nose. ‘Anyway, it is no concern of yours. Just settle quietly. We have a long way to go.’
The terrible truth hits me hard in the stomach. ‘This isn’t meant to happen!’ I scream at her. ‘Papa died so I wouldn’t be sent to the asylum!’
‘Did he, dear?’ she says. ‘Yes, yes. Well, I’m sure we’ll soon cure you of that notion.’ She smiles to herself.
‘I am not mad,’ I say firmly. ‘I am not mad.’
Mrs Abbot fumbles in her skirts and takes out a small silver flask. She eyes me as she unscrews the lid and takes a sip of whatever is inside. She licks at the corners of her mouth. ‘That’s what they all say, dear,’ she says. ‘That’s what they always say.’ She folds her arms under her bosom and purses her lips.
‘You can’t do this,’ I plead. ‘You can’t just take me from my home!’ Mrs Abbot blinks lazily and purses her lips tighter.
I gesture to my mud-stained gown. ‘Look at me,’ I shout. ‘I have just come from my father’s funeral. I need to be with my family!’
Suddenly, Mrs Abbot leans forwards and slaps me hard across the face. ‘Shut up!’ she hisses. ‘Or there’ll be worse to come.’
I hold my hand to my face. My cheek stings with heat and furious tears; I am too angry to speak. Mrs Abbot holds out her grey handkerchief to me and I shake my head dumbly. ‘Perhaps,’ she says,‘we can have a peaceful journey now.’ She shifts about in her seat, then sighs, as though she has found a comfy spot. But then the carriage swings around a bend and I am flung to one side, and Mrs Abbot is nearly thrown from her seat. ‘Gently! Gently!’ she screeches and reaches up to thump on the ceiling.
I stay in the corner of the carriage with my head knocking against the curtained window as the carriage lurches its way onwards. I watch Mrs Abbot settle down again. She folds her hands in her lap and rests her chin on her bosom. Then she takes out her handkerchief again and dabs at her forehead and at the crease under her chin where its folds meet her neck. ‘Beastly hot, int it,’ she mumbles.
I turn away from her and try to put from my mind frightful images of darkness and filth and cold stone; I want to close my ears to the dreadful screams of lunatics and madmen. It is as though I am falling down the deepest darkest hole and there is no way out. This is my punishment. The price I have to pay for wickedness, for being the wrong person and for letting Papa die. I press my head hard against the carriage wall, desperate to banish all these thoughts. The curtains hang in front of my nose, and I realise that from where my head rests, I can see a sliver of the outside world through a gap in the side of the worn velvet. There is an edge of blue sky, which disappears and reappears with the motion of the carriage. I see marching chimneys and pieces of rooftop. Then underneath all that are glimpses of brick, shop windows, the flick of a horse’s tail, the shocking green of summer leaves and the passing faces of people I will never know.
I inch my fingers towards the curtains and lift a corner. A shaft of sunlight darts across my skirts. I see we are passing the town square, which is milling with people.
‘Shut that curtain!’ Mrs Abbot suddenly bellows, and my hand drops to my lap as though burned. I have only been in this carriage a matter of moments and already I have had more than a taste of what is in store for me. I lean back on the seat and close my eyes. If I can sleep, maybe I will wake up and all this will be a bad dream. The carriage rattles onwards, but of course, sleep won’t come. Mrs Abbot’s wheezy breath, the stench of her and the closeness of the air, remind me all too clearly where I am. Is the town square to be my last glimpse of Bridgwater? I think of Henry Prince, and I wonder if he was still there. My skin prickles as I recall his face, and how I seem to have known him before I even saw him. How could that be? And why? I puzzle over these questions and try to remember what Henry Prince said on the day that Papa died. What was it he wanted me to hear?
RECEIVE ME AS THE SON OF GOD AND YOUR FLESH WILL BE LIBERATED FROM SIN IN THIS WORLD!
The remembered words spark a flicker of hope deep in my belly. I think of the girl too, the one with the freckles. The one who had stood in front of Henry Prince and looked at him with such light in her eyes. Our Beloved, she had called him. Our Beloved.
I know what I have to do now. There is only one place I can go. And it won’t be to the madhouse.
There is a low rumble from Mrs Abbot. I look across to see that her head has fallen into her bosom and the slack skin of her cheeks is jiggling to the rhythm of the carriage. I keep my eyes upon her as I dare to sneak my hand to the curtain again. I tweak it open. Mrs Abbot doesn’t flinch. I turn to peer out of the corner of the window and I see we have left the town now. The horses have picked up their pace and we thrum past fat hedgerows and fields of wheat baked golden. I wonder which field of grain is destined for Papa’s mill. Then an ache grows behind my heart as I remember it is now Eli’s mill.
Time passes and Mrs Abbot keeps snoring. I can’t sit still. The further away from home we travel the more my insides seem to fall apart and the more my head fills up with fragments of memories and lost things and broken hopes. My feet tap insistently on the floor, scuffing around the old bits of straw. My hands twist in my lap or fly upwards to grab strands of my hair that I pull and wind round and round my fingers. I am leaving myself behind. That is what it feels like. I hear Dr Fox shouting something to the driver. I hear the crack of a whip. Then I hear a low humming, a flat desperate sound that I realise is coming from my own throat. I clamp my hand to my mouth, not wanting to disturb the slumped form of Mrs Abbot.
I can’t bear it any longer. I feel like Papa must feel, alone in the darkness, buried deep in the cold ground with the weight of the world above, and a mountain of earth pressing down on him. I want to escape. I want to smash through wood and stone, and claw through the earth to reach the light. I look out of the window again and see the hedges have flattened out to moorland and ditches, and there is a flock of birds wheeling and diving high up in the still, blue sky.
It is then that I do it. There is no moment of decision. There is just my hand twisting the brass door handle and pushing open the carriage door. There is the unsteady hovering of my boots on the edge of the doorway and a great rush of warm air on my face. There is a roar from Mrs Abbot and a roar from me as I throw myself away from the great snarling wheels of the carriage and lan
d with a sickening thud on a grassy bank. There is silence and panic as the breath leaves my lungs and there is none to replace it. There is the clattering and skidding of hooves and the creaking and squealing of wheels. There is shouting and cursing. There is a huge pain in my chest as I manage to steal a precious swallow of air. Then there are my legs and tangled skirts, and running and running, and more pain in my chest and the distant figures of Mrs Abbot with her hands on her hips and Dr Fox waving a walking stick in the air.
Twenty-one
It was Eli who received the news from a red-faced Dr Fox. ‘What do you mean, she’s gone?’ he asked. ‘Gone where?’
‘She threw herself from the carriage. There was nothing we could have done.’ Dr Fox unconsciously straightened his bow tie and wished he was back in the sanctuary of his office at Brislington House. ‘She is obviously in a far worse state of mind than we at first presumed, but I have every faith that she will be back here by nightfall. After all, where else has she to go?’
‘And if she doesn’t come back?’ Eli was at a loss. It wasn’t right that he should bury his father and lose his sister all in the same day.
‘She will,’ said Dr Fox. ‘And if you could see your way to allowing myself and Mrs Abbot to stay here this evening, then we will make sure this doesn’t happen again.’
Eli installed them in the drawing room. Dr Fox sat gracefully in a chair by the window and picked up a discarded newspaper to read. It was, Eli realised with a pang, the last paper his father had ever read.
Eli wondered, in hindsight, whether it would have been best to have Mrs Abbot wait in the kitchen. She didn’t belong in a drawing room. It was fortunate that Mama was indisposed. The sight of Mrs Abbot seated broad and heavy on the delicate cream sofa would have proved the final straw for her.
The house was quiet and smelled of sadness and decaying flowers. Temperance lay in her darkened chamber, overcome with shock and shame. A small draught of laudanum had calmed her enough for Jane to help her out of her mourning gown and into a robe.
How could Alice have done such a vile and wicked thing? Every time Temperance closed her eyes she saw the same thing; Alice plunging headlong into Arthur’s grave and the expressions of horror on the faces of the gathered mourners.
Temperance whimpered and tossed her head from side to side. Even the cool cloth that Jane laid upon her forehead did nothing to banish the terrible images from her mind. At least Alice was out of the way now, locked up safely, hidden from prying eyes and the gossip-mongering. But even so Temperance wondered, with fear clutching at her heart, could she ever undo the damage? Would Bridgwater’s finest ever grace her drawing room now?
Eli thought it would be better not to inform his mother of Alice’s disappearance. Not yet anyway. Alice would be back soon. Dr Fox seemed certain of it. And what was the point of distressing Mama further, if the problem could be dealt with quietly and discreetly?
Eli paced the house. He couldn’t settle. He couldn’t find a place to be. It was too lonely in his bedchamber, knowing that apart from Mama’s room, all the others along the corridor were empty now. The library reminded him too much of Papa, with the cracked leather armchair still bearing his shape, and the books, half read, still open on the table. He couldn’t bring himself to open the door of the study, knowing that inside would be the whole essence of his father: the sweat of him, the echo of his voice in the corners of the room, and the marks of his pen on a hundred sheets of paper. Eli couldn’t bear the thought of the drawing room either; he had nothing to say to Dr Fox and Mrs Abbot.
So he found himself in the kitchen, sitting at the scrubbed wooden table, watching nameless servants going about their work. He was amazed. Life had come to a standstill upstairs, but down there, amidst all the scurrying and washing and kneading and stirring, you would never know the house was in mourning. He took some comfort in that, and tried for a while to imagine that nothing had changed, that his life was still as easy as it always had been. He ate a slice of sweet gooseberry pie that someone placed in front of him and drained a jar of beer. He wished he could escape on horseback to the moors and ride forever, and never have to face this new way of living. He knew that soon there would be lawyers and business meetings and he would have to prove himself in a man’s world.
But for now, the kitchen was his haven, and he sat and watched the comings and goings and waited for Alice. The hours passed. The afternoon drifted into evening and still there was no sign of Alice. Candles were lit and the servants sat warily at the table and shared their supper of cold meat and pickles with Eli.
The kitchen quietened, and gradually emptied, until only a couple of servants remained, stoking the fire and scouring pots. Eli knew then that he couldn’t hide any longer. With a heavy heart he climbed the stairs to the main house and made his way to the drawing room. Dr Fox was asleep in his chair, his legs still neatly crossed, his hands folded in his lap and his trim beard resting on his chest. Mrs Abbot was asleep too, sprawled out on the cream sofa, her chins shuddering with every snore.
Eli coughed loudly. Dr Fox’s head jerked upright. ‘She is back?’ He looked hopefully at Eli.
‘She is not,’ said Eli. ‘And I would like you both to leave now.’
Dr Fox raised his eyebrows. ‘If … if you are sure,’ he said. ‘But is there nothing else we can do to help?’
‘You have done enough,’ Eli said. He was trembling with the effort of keeping his temper. He felt like a young boy again, who hadn’t got his own way. He wanted to stamp his feet and yell loudly, then run to Mama so she could sweet-talk him and tell him everything would be all right. But he wasn’t that boy any more and Mama was the one who needed him now. He reached for the decanter that sat sparkling on its silver tray, and splashed an inch of amber brandy into a glass. He took a deep breath and poured the burning liquid down his throat. He gasped, then turned back to Dr Fox. ‘You have lost my sister,’ he said, ‘and unless you are going to search the streets and back alleys and poorhouses yourself, then I would like you out of my house!’
My house. It was his house now, Eli realised: the bricks, the mortar, the furnishings, the servants – all of it. He was responsible now, and the knowledge of that made him nauseous. He nodded to Dr Fox and glanced over at Mrs Abbot, who was struggling to her feet. ‘You can see yourselves out,’ he finished. Then he dashed from the room and just made it to the potted fern that sat at the bottom of the stairs as the brandy surged from his stomach.
Twenty-two
There is just the quiet of this barn now, and the warm, dry, sunshine smell of straw. I have left Dr Fox and Mrs Abbot far behind and all that matters is that I am here, in this small dusty corner. I want to sleep, and so I do, burrowed safely under the straw. It is a dreamless sleep. When I wake the light has changed to a dusky orange and I am so hungry I feel my stomach has been ripped from me. I wince as I stand. My hip is bruised where I jumped from the carriage and my bones are stiff. I brush powdery stalks of straw from my gown and poke my head around the barn door. The farmhouse across the yard glows warm in the evening sun. I imagine a family inside sitting down to a supper of bread and pork and hot potatoes, and my belly growls.
I have no money, nothing to purchase food with. The only thing of value I have is the gold locket around my neck that Papa gave me for my tenth birthday. And I would rather starve to death than part with that. As I look out into the quiet of the farmyard, I realise that for the first time ever, I feel at peace with myself. Despite being dressed in a filthy gown, with nothing to eat and no place to sleep, I feel calm and full of purpose. I know where I am going now. I just need to find my bearings.
I limp across the yard and knock on the farmhouse door. As I wait, I hastily check my hair for any stray pieces of straw. A woman eventually answers. She is ruddy-faced but kindly looking. She looks me up and down and waits for me to speak.
‘Good evening,’ I say brightly. ‘I wonder if you can help me. I am travelling to the village of Spaxton and I seem to have los
t my way. Could you … could you point me in the right direction please? If … if it isn’t too much trouble?’
The woman raises her eyebrows at me and considers for a moment. ‘George … George!’ she shouts over her shoulder. ‘A young lady here wanting directions.’ She leans on the door frame, waiting, her eyes flicking from my boots to my hair and back again.
Eventually, a man appears at her side. He is wearing thick brown trousers and a grubby shirt rolled up at the sleeves with a pair of braces dangling loose at his sides. ‘What you hollering me for?’ he says.
‘This young lady,’ says the woman, ‘wants to know how to get to Spaxton.’
‘Oh, yes,’ he says. And he brings his face close and squints at me. He smells of tobacco and the edge of his white moustache is tinged with yellow. He reminds me of Papa until he coughs thickly and shoots a gobbet of spit out into the yard.
‘If you don’t mind me saying so,’ he says, ‘you don’t look like the sort of young lady who ought to be out on her own at this time of day. And what do you want to be going to Spaxton for in any case?’
Although it is none of his business, I don’t wish to offend him, so I think quickly. ‘It is my sister Sarah,’ I say. ‘Yes, Sarah. She lives there you see, and … and she is not well. So I am going to visit, and … and help with the children.’
‘Oh, yes,’ he says again. ‘Right you are then.’ He glances at the woman, who I presume is his wife, then he points his arm in a vague manner to somewhere behind me. ‘Spaxton’s about twenty miles over that way,’ he says. ‘Four miles or so past Bridgwater.’
I look behind, then back at him again, and he notices the confusion on my face.
‘Bottom of the track,’ he says, ‘You’ll see the milestone for Bristol and Bridgwater. Fifteen miles to Bridgwater, it says. Just keep on the main road an’ it’ll take you straight there. Anybody in Bridgwater will tell you where to go next.’ He scratches his head. ‘You planning on walking through the night, are you?’
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