by Gary Dolman
Roberts shook his head despairingly.
“When my Aunt Elizabeth came to live here directly after her mama’s death, she was thirteen years of age. My grandfather was her only living relative. He couldn’t believe his luck. His niece, his sister’s daughter, a beautiful, young, innocent girl, had been dropped completely into his power. In his own words, she would have cost him a clear two hundred pounds if he’d bought her from a procuress but there she was, a free gift of the Fates.
Forgive my indelicacy, Mrs Fox, but he used her wretchedly. Her mama hadn’t even gone cold in her grave before he took Elizabeth’s virginity, and for the next two years, he used her as nothing more than a plaything. Worse than that, he allowed, in fact he encouraged, the other gentlemen of his Friday Club to do the same. Often they would sedate her with chloral hydrate or laudanum to prevent her resisting, especially if one of the older, frailer gentlemen was having a turn at her. Perhaps in coming back here, to this house, to this Annexe where much of it happened, it triggered memories of her life of Hell here. Perhaps that’s why she killed him.”
Lucie was the first to recover and her voice was both steady and calm.
“Then that would certainly explain her apparent battle fatigue, but if she left before you were born, Doctor, how is it you know all of this?”
“There was the inevitable talk amongst the servants. My grandfather thought it was all a closely guarded secret but they knew; they knew or at least they suspected what was going on. I overheard their conversations many times as I played here.”
“But I knew for certain.”
Sister Lovell turned back at last from the tray and her face was ashen white.
“I was Elizabeth’s governess. I knew that he, and the beasts-of-the-field he called his gentlemen friends, were taking advantage of her, and of all the other poor young girls that passed through this wretched Annexe; the girls the whole world thought he had rescued from poverty and was sending on to a better life.”
She turned and stabbed a finger at a large tapestry hanging on the wall opposite.
“Freya, Mr and Mrs Fox, was the Viking goddess of love and beauty.”
She stared at it in contempt.
“Beauty certainly; they much preferred their girls, and occasionally boys, to be beautiful, but love – hah – the only grains of love they had were for themselves. And people thought them philanthropists! Dear God, what philanthropy is there in procuring virgin girls from the streets and from the workhouses and even from their own poor mothers, and in plain terms, bringing them here to be raped? Tell me that, Mr and Mrs Fox.”
“And not just raped.”
Roberts’ voice broke the ringing silence that followed Mary’s words.
“They were raped as violently and as painfully as possible. Do you remember the words carved over the door downstairs: ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here’?”
Atticus and Lucie nodded together.
“They used to show them those words as they brought them in. They wanted the girls to be terrified even before they began. And when they did begin, when they viciously and sadistically deflowered them, they would delight in being as hard and as brutal as they could – just like the Viking barbarians they idolised. That, Atticus, and that, Mrs Fox, is why the walls and the doors of the Annexe are so thick, and why the carpets are doubled. It was to muffle the sounds of the girls as they screamed and begged for mercy, and it was to deaden the sounds of the boys being buggered.”
The ringing silence enveloped them once more.
“What happened to the girls… and the boys then? What happened after they were finished with them?” Lucie whispered, aghast.
Mary Lovell answered.
“Any number of things, Mrs Fox. Many of the girls were taken to a farmhouse not far outside of the town, at Brimston. It was run by a procuress who called it a Home for Fallen Women and Girls. But don’t be fooled for a moment by its charitable name; it was really nothing more than a brothel. She would use the women and the girls she kept there to accommodate a gentleman’s every desire, his every fantasy, no matter how depraved that might be. Mr Alfred also used the procuress – Mrs Eire she was called – as an abortionist, and to sew the girls’ maidenheads up again after they had been deflowered so that they could be violated once again. She would sew them up again and again until they were too cut up to allow it any more.
Other girls were sent to France, to work in brothels there, and others to the Orient. One of the Friday Club gentlemen – Mr James – was a ship owner you see, and he would transport them like slaves with no questions asked. The Arabs in particular prized them for their fair skin and for the fact that they were British. They fetched an excellent price in the slave markets. Mr James wasn’t averse to buying up native girls there either, and bringing them back to Harrogate. The boys were generally thrown out onto the street.”
“Did they never say anything? Did they never tell anyone?” Atticus asked.
“No, Atticus, they never did.”
Roberts took up the tale once more.
“Remember that these were young girls and boys, anywhere from ten years of age upwards, who had been separated from their families, or who never had any families in the first place. They had been sullied and they had been brutalised. Society’s attitude towards unchaste girls is bad enough now; forty or fifty years ago it was harsher still. And if they had managed to speak out, if they had told someone about any of it… Who would have believed them anyway? What would the word of one little whore girl have been worth against the solemn oaths and reputations of some of the great philanthropists of Harrogate?”
He laughed, harshly and mirthlessly.
“And the boys would always stay silent.”
He nodded his head towards the door to the stairway.
“And do you remember the words written above that door there?”
“I do,” Atticus replied, “‘Freya is the receiver of the slain. Lördag cleanses your body and your tongue,’ or something very much like it.”
“That is exactly correct, Atticus,” Roberts confirmed. “Your memory remains quite excellent. Those words were put there to remind the children – and the gentlemen of the Friday Club themselves – that anyone who breathed a word of what went on in this Annexe to the world outside would be in mortal peril. Lördag is Saturday; it was the traditional Viking day to bathe. Not only were the gentlemen supposed to cleanse their bodies of the debaucheries of the night before, they were supposed to cleanse their minds too. They were supposed to wash away even the memories of what they had done, so that they could never spill the awful secrets afterwards.”
“Did they never tire of Miss Elizabeth, once they had deflowered her?” Lucie asked.
“Far from it,” Mary retorted. “She was a very beautiful girl and that held their interest all the while she was here. And because she had perfect manners and spoke very well, she would always be the one they took back to their houses and their hotels rooms with them, passing her off as their niece or their daughter or some other relative to anyone who bothered to enquire.”
“What about Mr Alfred’s wife?” Lucie asked Roberts. “Where was your grandmother when all of this was happening?”
“She was where she always was, Mrs Fox – alone in her bed with her green faeries – her bottles of absinthe. My grandmama was another of my family’s sordid secrets; drunk, incapable of coherent speech most of the time, and on the brink of madness. It was how she dealt with it all you see. It was the only way she knew of coping with the terrible knowledge of what my grandfather and his friends were doing.
A chambermaid was well paid to tend to her. In other words to feed her and to fetch her drink, and to empty her chamber pot. But most of all, to keep her mouth shut.”
“But the servants knew, or they suspected anyway,” Atticus countered, “And you knew, Miss Lovell; you said so yourself.”
Mary was staring again at the tea tray the parlour maid had left for them on the side table. She reached over and turned
the teapot a fraction, and three sets of eyes silently followed the movement.
“Yes, Mr Fox, I did know. I cannot deny it. Lizzie confided in me exactly what her uncle and his friends were doing to her and to all the other children. But I knew anyway; the screaming and crying, the begging to be out was quite harrowing. There is not a day that goes by when I don’t hate myself for my cowardice in not speaking out.
Dr Roberts is kind. He reminds me that I was hardly older than Lizzie myself at the time and I suppose if truth be told, I was afraid for my life too. Maybe I convinced myself that if I had told someone, I would have brought shame on Lizzie; that she would have been blamed as being the seductress of the great, good Mr Alfred Roberts. Perhaps, if I had said what was going on in here, people might have guessed that they had deflowered me too.”
“Oh, Mary,” Lucie cried.
“You don’t need to tell, Mary,” Dr Roberts said gently.
“I do, Doctor, I do,” Mary replied, dabbing her eyes with a pocket handkerchief. “Mr and Mrs Fox need to know exactly what it was like here in Alfred’s day.”
She dabbed at her reddening eyes a little more and said: “Mr Alfred usually told the other gentlemen and that ogre of a steward he had to leave me alone. He was afraid that, because I was a servant of sorts, then if they attacked me, word would get out to the rest of the household. But one night, in August I think it was, they got especially rowdy and very, very drunk. Mrs Eire had only managed to procure one or two virgin girls that week, so once they had finished with them, once they had ‘buttered’ them as they used to call it, they were still howling and shouting for more. Lizzie had run away to the workhouse by then, or she surely would have been ‘buttered’ too.
Then they saw me, finishing off some dainty-cakes for them in the scullery.
‘Why you’ve a lithe, tender young lamb tethered over there, Roberts,’ roars Mr Price, pointing at me through the door. ‘The hounds are still ravenous hungry, so how about throwing your pretty young governess to us then?’ The others started shouting and crying, just exactly like dogs baying at a fox-hole, so I dropped my dainties there and then, and ran out towards the main house. But the steward, Mr Otter, was blocking the way, and he caught me before I was even half way down the hall. I was picked up and thrown onto Lizzie’s old bed, held down whilst I was given a dose of chloral hydrate to stop me struggling, and then, Mr and Mrs Fox, then I was stripped of my clothing and brutally deflowered. I was raped by each and every one of them in turn – including Otter – while the rest of them looked on and jeered.
I resigned my position the very next day of course and fled the house, but even now, I still wake in the night feeling them on me, hearing their jeering and having that awful, bitter taste in my mouth.
Mr Alfred naturally tried to stop me from leaving. He offered to pay me handsomely if I would stay and take up procuring girls for them in place of Mrs Eire. He said that Mrs Eire hadn’t really been much good since she had been indiscrete and was barred from the workhouses. When I refused – I could never put another child through what I’d suffered – he promised that if ever I breathed a word about them or about what they did to a single living soul, he would send Mr Otter to hunt me down and rip my tongue from my head. I heard afterwards that he’d spoken to Mr James about having me drugged and shipped out to the Sudanese slave markets, but I never gave him the chance.
I knew that when Elizabeth ran away, she would have likely gone to the Harrogate Workhouse, which was in Starbeck at the time. It was before the parish unions, you understand. More than ever, I was racked with guilt that I had never said anything to help her, so I determined to track her down.
She had indeed gone to the workhouse as I thought she would. I sought and was given a position there as nurse, and I’ve spent the rest of my life watching over and caring for her and the other little children. It’s my penance you see. It’s the very least I can do to make amends for my months of silence.”
“Did you tell the magistrate any of this?” Atticus asked.
Roberts looked horror-struck.
“No, Atticus, and please, I would greatly prefer not to. The scandal, you know, and the shame on Aunt Elizabeth and Mary and… Well, the scandal would be unbearable.
I can only hope that if my lawyer can’t persuade that fool magistrate to reconsider his decision, then surely the judge will see that her trial is a mockery of justice. If that fails and the trial goes ahead, then I’ll say that in killing my grandfather, Aunt Elizabeth was acting, in a way, in self defence; that it was a natural reaction to the two years of horror she suffered at my grandfather’s hands.”
“And then what, Doctor?” Lucie asked.
“Then I’ll press to have a guardianship order passed to deliver her back into my care and keeping. Mary can continue her life’s work in caring for her and yes, she can be seen to be guarding her too, if that’s what they want. Aunt Elizabeth in her current state will know no difference anyhow and she can eke out her few remaining years in comfort. It’s the only just and fair way.
Aunt Elizabeth might be locked in this Annexe awaiting trial for murder, but for the first time in nearly half a century, she’s free, just as Mary and I are now free. Did you see how content she looks? She knows that he’s dead; that he’s gone forever. One part of her torment is finally over.”
“One part of her torment is over?” Lucie repeated, “You mean there is more to it yet?”
“Oh, yes,” Roberts said quickly, as if he had been expecting, maybe even hoping for the question. “There is much more to it yet. Do you recall when you first brought Aunt Elizabeth back here, that I said I had two further tasks for you? The first was to restore her mother’s inheritance to her. The second, however, is of much greater importance given the present situation. I’ll ask the parlour maid to bring us some fresh tea whilst Mary checks on my aunt. Then, I shall tell you all about it.”
Chapter 23
“Ye’ll be able to see t’ magpies on t’ Stray, Lizzie. Ye like to watch t’ magpies, don’ ye?”
Elizabeth turned and looked into Old Rachel’s eyes, full as they were of concern. She desperately wanted to speak, desperately wanted to say, ‘Yes, I love to watch them. I’d love to be a bird myself, free to fly wherever I choose, free to fly to my mama,’ and, ‘Thank you, Rachel, for being so kind when the rest of the world despises me for being a whore.’
But the blackness, the deep, impenetrable blackness, held her fast.
“It will be a lovely day, Lizzie, wit’ t’ fine racin’ hosses gallopin’ across t’ Stray.”
The blackness pressed still closer.
“An’ t’ overseers ’ave said ye may take yer yellow jacket off while ye’re out.”
The blackness dissolved just a little, became perhaps a fraction less dense. It eased just enough for her to whisper “Thank you,” and for her almost to fall to the floor in relief.
“Tha’s better, Lizzie; I thought t’ cat ’ad run off wit’ ye tongue. Ye need ’ave no jacket on so there will be no-one a-calling ye names.”
Lizzie nodded, and the sneering, disdainful faces of the other inmates flashed through her mind, one after another, like so many magic-lantern slides. In public, they all taunted her, mocked her, calling her ‘hedge whore,’ ‘trollop,’ and ‘Lizzie-leap-a-bed.’ They would bump into her in the corridors, and knock her brutally against the hard walls; they would spit onto her newly polished brass, or smear mud across her clean-swept floor. In private though, when she was alone, the men would creep near her and brush against her. They would push their rough, dirty hands into her shift and whisper. They would whisper the things, the horrible things, that they longed to do to her, into her ears, and leave them to seep into her mind.
And then she was outside the workhouse, jacketless, in her best gingham dress.
The sun was shining. It was shining brighter than the yellow jacket, brighter even than the whitewash of the walls, now that the blackness had dissolved, and the other paupers, even th
e men, were just ignoring her; all, that is, except Old Rachel.
“Ye look as pretty as a picture, Lizzie,” she said. “Ye’ll be a match for any o’ them fine ladies o’ Harrogate.”
“She’ll be hoping that she gets ridden as well as the horses, Rachel,” a woman’s voice cackled from behind them.
“Don’ mind wha’ she says, Lizzie,” Rachel retorted, her voice raised and her tone acid, “She’s jus’ envious o’ how pretty ye are.”
Lizzie waited for the woman’s own retort, waited to hear more of how slatternly even the paupers thought she was. But it never came. Instead, the two short lines of inmates suddenly straightened and stiffened, as rigid as the ash-wood handles she spent so many hours binding with whin bush to make brooms. A smart black carriage with two liveried coachmen swept between the stone gateposts and arced gracefully to a halt outside the workhouse porch.
“It be one o’ t’ overseers,” Old Rachel whispered.
Lizzie didn’t reply. Her whole body, and the very spirit within it, was trembling uncontrollably. She knew that glossy black carriage only too well, as too she did the arms painted proudly below the window; the gold shield with a black lion rampant. One of the coachmen clambered from his seat and pulled the carriage door respectfully open. The black lion moved and seemed suddenly to be stalking her. A walking cane appeared – a familiar, black walking cane – followed by an even more familiar arm. It was an arm she knew, only too well, was overpowering and unstoppable, and her trembling grew worse. She wanted to cry out, she wanted to beg someone – anyone – for mercy, but the words gagged in her throat. She wanted to turn, wanted to flee to the sanctuary of her bed, but her limbs had turned to cold, heavy lead, and they refused to heed the shrieking, shrieking screams of her brain.
‘Oh Lord Jesus, please don’t let it be him; please let it be someone else, anyone else. Please don’t let them have found me at last.’
But even the Lord Jesus refused to hear the anguished cries of her mind. It was him; it was another of the great philanthropists of the Friday Club, greeting the Master and his wife, and all of them had smiling,
