The Conviction of Cora Burns

by Carolyn Kirby

  Cora wiped hot sweat from her eyes and sat back to look at the new baby. The slice of light from under the door fell across the wiggle of white, rubbery rope that fastened her boy’s soft belly to the other child. But while the first boy lay peaceful and perfect at one end of the rope, his twin, at the other, was nothing more than a ghastly lump of bloody brown meat.

  In that instant, everything was spoiled. Cora rocked back and forth over what she had produced, shaking her head and moaning. But how could she have expected to create anything good? Her offspring were always bound to be as disgusting, in body or in spirit, as she was herself. None of them would ever have a life worth living.

  Why didn’t Mary Burns, when she’d had the chance, put a bootlace around newborn Cora’s neck and pull it tight? That quick act would have prevented an ocean of heartache. And it would have meant that Cora’s whole life, even if it had only been a few breaths long, would have been entirely spent with her mother.

  Tears fell on to Cora’s soiled boots as she began to untie the laces. It was a struggle, shot through with stomach-churning pain, to pull her feet free without disturbing the loosely aching softness underneath her. One black lace would be for the boy, the other, once he was gone, for herself. She longed to feed him again, for one last moment of bliss in this world but if they were found too soon, she would not get another chance to do what she must.

  Keeping clear of the dead meaty thing and the white rope, Cora threaded the bootlace behind her baby’s downy neck and tied it in a loose knot. Again, she kissed his cheek, smooth and glossy as silk and found his tiny seashell ear with her lips.

  ‘I’m your Ma and your Ma loves you more than anyone ever loved anything.’

  Then, she pulled both ends of the bootlace with all her strength.

  At that moment, someone cried out. But it was not the child. Cora was suddenly blinded by a hard wall of light as the cupboard door opened. In the brightness, a woman’s dark silhouette spoke with a West Country voice.

  ‘Oh, my sweet Jesus!’

  Cora blinked up, numbed. But the woman was already on her knees, flinging away the bootlace and scooping up both the child and his meaty skinless twin into a white sheet. Deftly, she wrapped them tight. The smeared yellow head of the tiny boy poked out. His eyes were fixed shut. Then, with the darkly leaking bundle in her arms, the woman gave Cora a swift blank look and started to run. Feet pounded the corridor. A door slammed. And, apart from the gurgling of the hot water pipes, Cora could hear only silence. Her child was gone. Gone forever. And she’d never even called him by a name.

  She should do it now; knot both bootlaces around her neck and tie them somehow to something. If only she had the strength. But what did it matter? She could finish herself off any time. For now, she felt capable of nothing but sleep. She managed to raise herself on to her bare feet and limp along the corridor leaving a trail of bloody footprints on the grey linoleum. As she opened the bedroom door, a shriek from inside echoed down the corridor. Jane’s stricken face was as good as a mirror. Cora said something about her courses being bad this month, and then fell on the mattress into a stupor.

  It can’t have been for long. Hands were on her arm, shaking her, shouting things at her. Through the veil of her eyelids she saw a mouth moving inside a grey beard. And behind that, a domed black helmet. She tried to ask for a drink but her lips were too dry to speak. Then Dr Grainger’s words became loud enough to make sense and a deep black pit opened.

  ‘Wake, girl. Wake up. You are to be taken to the Bridewell.’

  Twenty-Seven

  December 1885

  imaginem

  The moon killed any chance of sleep. From Cora’s low bed, the kitchen seemed drained of colour but brighter than it had been by day. Sharp silver light picked out the edges of every funnel and ladle hanging from the dresser. But when Cora closed her eyes, she saw only Mr Bowyer’s dismal face sneering at the idea that little Cora might have had a companion.

  She clamped her eyelids tighter into darkness. How could Alice Salt not exist? It was true that Cora had no exact recollection of Alice’s arrival at the Union house. Alice had slipped in, somehow, when Cora had been standing at the front the school room and Mr Bowyer had rapped his cane on the blackboard. That’s not how any other child was ever admitted. And no one seemed to notice her except Cora. It had been odd too, that Alice was never given her own tasks in the work room, she always just helped Cora. Even the Bolger girls never goaded Alice directly. Cora alone had been the object of their torments.

  Cora pulled the dense grey blanket over her head. She seemed to have learnt so much from Alice; about the japanning workshop, the dressing of little brothers, the killing of small animals. Where had all that knowledge come from if not from her workhouse sister? Perhaps Cora had simply overheard the conversations of the other girls as she wandered, friendless, around the schoolyard or lay silent in the night-time dormitory. The other girls in the Union house came and went as their families’ fortunes changed but all of them, old-hands and new-girls alike, seemed instinctively to think that Cora was odd. Even those other orphans and foundlings who knew only the workhouse as home shunned her. Cora was too solitary, too clever, too unpredictable.

  Whipping the grey blanket away, Cora leapt off the bed. She pressed her bare feet on to the icy tiles and breathed a shuddering lungful of braised air. Her own thoughts must have brought Alice Salt to life, but when faced with the stark reality of a small dead boy, imaginary Alice had evaporated.

  The half-medal shifted on Cora’s chest. She dragged the twine over her head and padded to the window. The moon hung silver-white behind a tangle of naked branches and beamed its harsh light across the engraved metal: IMAGINEM SALT… And so, it seemed, Cora had. Was it just a coincidence that the name she’d given to a made-up sister was the same word that appeared here, on a token that she did not see until years after Alice had gone? Perhaps she’d been shown, at some blanked-out point in her childhood, the strange token that was her only possession. From where she used to stand at the blackboard, she’d certainly seen the stamp of Salt & Co on Mr Bowyer’s japanned inkwell. But now she’d no doubt, that her own half-medal had been made, like its close relatives upstairs in the medallion collection, in the factory of W Tonks and Sons.

  Cora brought the half-medal closer to her face and angled it into the moonlight. At the edge of the word SALT, the moon’s glassy brightness revealed a small notch that might be the corner of another capital letter. An E probably. Perhaps SALT had been formed simply by a random cut through the centre of the medallion. At any rate, it had nothing to do with Alice, because she’d only ever lived in Cora’s imagination.

  Coolness trickled down Cora’s back. What was this thing in her hand? Where had it come from? She’d used it for so long to conjure up false memories of a girl who never existed. Yet someone had left the half-medal for her. Someone real.

  Cora went to her mattress and pulled up the grey blanket to wrap around her shoulders. The kitchener was still blood-warm as she sank into the Windsor chair and pulled her feet underneath her. From here she could look the white moon in the eye. The blank round face did not seem to care that she had murdered one child and tried to do the same to another. It shone as fiercely on her as it did on everyone. Cora saw that the pattern of her existence had been determined by her birth and by all of the circumstances that had surrounded her since. So she understood now that if she was ever to have a life better than the one she had so far endured, she must make herself into someone else.

  closed carriage

  The outdoor pump ran sluggish with water about to freeze. Cora cupped her hand and gulped a searing mouthful of it, then patted her cheeks and brow with cold wetness. She was still awake, still alive. No one had noticed any change in her despite what she now knew about herself. Only Cook had raised an eyebrow and asked that morning if she was feeling peaky. But Cora had shaken her head and let Cook
explain how to sort broken laboratory glass and other gainful rubbish into piles for the rag-and-bone man, and how what he paid would go toward the servants’ Christmas dinner. Perhaps Cook would not have been surprised to hear that Cora was a murderess.

  Smashed glass and tin cans were now sorted into neat piles by the yard. Grey mist coiled though bare trees as Cora threw a last shard on to the heap. Crows shrieked and rasped. Then, out of sight, fast hooves pounded on the carriage drive. The sound was too impressive to be the totter’s cart, and he was not expected until tomorrow. The wagon, if that’s what it was, seemed to pull into the turning circle at the front door and the hooves came to a stamping halt.

  As Cora went indoors, cold air gusted through the passage from the front door. There were voices in the main hall but she went to the scullery without glancing their way. The sink brimmed with pots and plates, gravy stagnating into white spots of fat. She struck a Vesta and lit the burner, staring at yellow tongues of flame that pushed a skin of dull moisture over the copper. She knew what a good person should be; someone like Cook perhaps; not always friendly, but calm and kind and honest. Although a person like that living inside Cora’s skin would have been trod into the dirt long ago.

  The scullery door rattled and Cora sensed a commotion somewhere in the house. Then with a crack of air, the door burst open and Mrs Dix filled the doorway, crow-black apart from the pallor of her face.

  ‘Bring a bucket of water and rags to the hallway. Directly, if you please.’

  Cora nodded and reached for the leather bucket below the sink and some floor cloths. Something must have spilled badly.

  She followed the housekeeper towards the hallway and into a wintery draught that carried a nasty, familiar stench. As they approached the bottom of the main stairs, Cora saw that the front door was wide open. Outside, a driver stood between two harnessed carriage horses, struggling to keep a grip on their bridles. The entrance hall was full of people; a burly fellow in blue calico fatigues, a taller, younger man with a dark beard; and, slumped on the bottom stair and covered in pale reeking vomit, the missus.

  Mrs Dix stood back to let Cora pass. ‘Come, Cora. Wipe her clothes down first. The carpet can wait.’

  Cora took a gulp of air before she stepped forward. Trying not to tread in the sour lumpy puddle around the newel post, she pulled a cloth from her apron and doused it in cold water. Bending down, she began to wipe at the mess on the mistress’s skirt. The sick was slimy and wiped easily from the dense wool but it left a dark stain curdled with a pungent alky smell. Cora shot a look at the man in blue standing with one hand on his hip and the other on the banister. Her heart skipped faster as she put the smell of the back wards together with the asylum blue. And as her damp rag moved up from the skirt, Cora saw that Mrs Jerwood’s arms were strapped into a canvas straitcoat.

  Vomit was pasted into the buckles and folds of the restraint coat and spattered through the mistress’s wiry hair. Cora did her best to wipe and scoop it away, rinsing the rag as she went. She could not help catching the lifeless stare of the missus’s dull eye.

  Cora slopped the rag back into the bucket. The tall bearded man was frowning at her so intently that his eyebrows had fused almost into one. Cora coughed. The water might as well be sick.

  ‘Shall I empty the bucket, ma’am?’

  Mrs Dix leaned her head against the closed door of the morning room.

  ‘All right. But take it outside this way. And use the outdoor pump.’

  Cora nodded and held her breath until she was over the threshold. Outside, the air was threaded through with wood smoke and frost. The carriage horses, heads lowered and flanks steaming, were harnessed to a windowless van entered at the rear by a set of fixed steps.

  Cora breathed deeper as she strode across the gravel, and felt herself lighten. She might have been a workhouse pauper and a felon but she was not, thank God, a lunatic. Her occasional queer turn didn’t really count. The life she’d lived would have tested the strongest of minds. And if what she’d been through had not already sent her completely mad, nothing ever would. So she’d be spared, at least, the tortures that the missus was about to endure: the straitcoat, the padded room and the mind-deadening chloral. Any life was better than that.

  At the paddock fence, Cora swung back the leather bucket and sprayed its foul contents across the yellow grass. The alky smell was overpowered by earth and smoke. Behind her on the drive, heavy footsteps crunched and she turned to see the tall bearded man coming her way. He seemed to smile as he caught her eye but an uncertain frown remained uppermost in his expression.

  Cora walked on but he caught up and fell into step beside her.

  ‘I beg your pardon, miss. Please, excuse me while I take the air for a few moments. I must travel back on the inside of the closed carriage and need to fortify my constitution if I am not to suffer the same misfortune as our patient.’

  His voice had a friendly lilt to it, Scottish perhaps, but his features still looked perplexed. Cora wasn’t sure if she was meant to reply. But the man continued to speak.

  ‘Forgive me, but I overheard the housekeeper call you Cora, did she not?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Cora Burns, is it?’

  Her heart missed a beat, and then another. She stopped to face him.

  ‘Who wants to know?’

  ‘Oh, I do apologise. I should have introduced myself. My name is Dr Farley. I am the assistant medical officer at Birmingham Asylum. Would I be right in thinking that you were employed in a situation there some… time back?’

  Heat pulsed through Cora’s neck. ‘I don’t remember you.’

  She turned and walked on past the back door as Ellen pulled her head away from the scullery window. Dr Farley cleared his throat as he hurried to keep up.

  ‘Oh no, that’s right. My employment there is relatively recent. So, you are Cora Burns?’

  A tickle of irritation wormed through her gut. ‘Do you want something of me?’

  ‘There is a patient of mine to whom you may have a connection. And having now met you, I feel sure of it.’

  They were at the pump. Cora held the leather bucket and began to crank the handle. Dr Farley stood awkwardly to one side, watching. Water sloshed and spat as it swirled around the bucket. She would have happily tossed the swill over the doctor’s soft tweed jacket and loosely knotted tie.

  ‘I’m not an educated person, sir. So I haven’t the foggiest what you’re on about.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Here. This will explain.’

  He reached into the jacket and pulled out a white envelope. She felt her eye twitch as she glanced down. Miss Cora Burns. So he really had known who she was before he came here. Cora hung the bucket’s handle over the spout, metal screeching as she pumped. The envelope quivered like a funeral lily in the doctor’s hand. His brow furrowed deeper.

  ‘Oh, I do beg your pardon if you are not able to…’

  Cora let go of the pump and snatched the stiffened paper from his hand.

  ‘I can read.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I hope I did not insult you.’

  ‘I must get on.’

  She reached forward and lifted the bucket from the pump, water sloshing on to his unpolished shoes.

  ‘Oh, of course. Good day, Miss Burns.’

  He bowed his head slightly and turned, walking with long uneven strides into the deepening darkness.

  coals

  21st Dec 1885

  BIRMINGHAM ASYLUM,

  WINSON GREEN, WARKS.

  Dear Miss Burns,

  Do forgive my forwardness in addressing you directly, but I am hopeful that you may be the person who might provide great assistance to a patient of mine and perhaps learn something to your own advantage. If you are not the Cora Burns who was born to Mary Burns in the early part of 1865 in Birmingham Gaol, then destroy this letter fo
rthwith. If you are that person, please read on.

  Your mother, Mary Burns, was admitted to Birmingham Asylum from the gaol in June 1865 and has remained here ever since. Do not be alarmed; she is a most pleasant lady and much recovered from the time of her first admission. Her most obvious remaining symptom is an inability to speak. Her only known utterances have come during sleep or under hypnotic trance. At these times she has been heard to mention, most affectingly, her lost ‘babe’. It is this child whom I take to be you.

  If you have no interest in meeting your mother, I cannot apportion the slightest censure. A reunion would undoubtedly stir up strong emotion for all concerned. I am, however, very hopeful that this emotion on Mary’s part could be powerful enough to reignite conscious speech. Should you be kind enough to agree to my proposal, you may find that the encounter produces perhaps unforeseen satisfactions.

  I would be more than happy to reimburse any expenses (travel etc) which you may incur. I also understand that the asylum may not be the happiest location for a reunion and you may prefer to join Mary and myself on an outing. I would suggest the terrace of hothouses at the Botanical Gardens as a pleasant spot at this time of year.

  Should you feel able to accede to my suggestion, kindly reply using the enclosed stamped and directed envelope suggesting a date and a time at your convenience.

  Yours most sincerely,

  David Farley MD

  Assistant Medical Officer

  Cora read the letter again, more slowly, but her heart raced faster. It could not be so. How could her own mother have been living mere yards away during all of the time that Cora had worked at the asylum? It was too far-fetched to believe. Yet she felt, despite herself, a tightening in her throat and a warm gathering in her chest like the beginnings of a sob.