Victorian Maiden

by Gary Dolman

  laughing faces.

  ‘Please don’t know him. Please don’t let him be your gentleman friend too,’ she begged. But she remembered how her flesh had crawled when the workhouse Master – her master – had first looked upon her nakedness. She remembered the gleam of lust in his eyes, and she knew how it must be.

  “Mr Price,” she whispered.

  “Do ye know t’ O’erseer, Lizzie?” Rachel sounded astonished. Lizzie could feel her intelligent old eyes lying on the back of her head, but the blackness was beginning to bind her once more and she couldn’t speak

  the words.

  Mr Price was talking to Mr Wright, the Medical Officer, as if he were an old friend, and all the while his eyes were searching the ranks of the inmates, surely seeking her out. And then Mr Wright pointed directly at her. Mr Price looked and the black lion rampant looked, and her heart stopped beating.

  “Are ye ailin’, Lizzie? Ye’ve gone as pale as a ghost.”

  It was Old Rachel again, but she could hardly hear the words she was saying for the blood pounding and pounding and pounding in her head.

  “Very well, inmates,” the Master called, and the spell was broken.

  “This day at the Stray races is a reward for your cheerful undertaking of various disagreeable tasks. You will conduct yourselves properly at all times, and normal workhouse rules will apply. Any breaches of those rules will be met with punishment in the usual ways.”

  ‘Will be punished in the usual ways, will be punished in the usual ways, but how can that be?’

  Memories cascaded over her of the way Mr Price usually did punish wicked little girls. She remembered him towering over her as she knelt before him, remembered his arms coiling around her like some huge serpent; remembered his crushing weight and his little, sharp teeth biting into her flesh.

  Something grabbed at her arm and she gasped, crying out in fear. But it was only Rachel, grinning toothlessly, and she breathed once again.

  “Come along, li’le Miss Daydream, we don’ wan’ to be left behin’ now, do we?”

  The two whispering ranks of inmates became two laughing, chattering files. Like one huge family, they began walking up the road behind the Master and Mr Price. Mrs Dixon ambled along just behind them, and Elizabeth walked in silence, just as these days she always walked in silence, with her eyes fixed on the broad back of the Overseer’s frock coat.

  And then they were part of the laughing, chattering crowds at the racecourse, and she could see him no longer amongst all of the other gentlemen in their own frock coats.

  ‘Where did he go? Where is he now? Dear God, where is he now?’

  She had relaxed, just for a second. How could she have let him disappear like that? How could she have let herself be distracted so? How could she have been such a stupid, stupid girl?

  “Miss Elizabeth Wilson, how delightful it is to see you again.”

  Her limbs turned instantly to cold, heavy lead and kept her there, held her there in front of him, trapped in his mocking smirk like a tiny snared rabbit caught in a poacher’s lantern light.

  ‘Rachel!’ she wanted to shriek, wanted to scream for all the world to hear.

  But the word refused to pass her lips, and Rachel was gone. She was alone – alone with Mr Price, amid the laughing, chattering crowd.

  His hand crept around her fingers and held them tight.

  “Your Uncle Alfred will be very pleased indeed that I’ve met up with you, Miss Elizabeth.”

  He squeezed her fingers viciously and then gently lifted them to his lips. She felt the rough scratch of his whiskers as they raked across the soft skin of her hand.

  “He was very concerned indeed as to where you might have got to,” he continued, his tone as mocking as his eyes, “And what you might have said.”

  He squeezed her fingers once more, crushing them cruelly and she gasped.

  “You haven’t said anything, have you, Miss Elizabeth, about Mr Alfred or about the other members of the Friday Club?”

  “No, Mr Price,” she whispered.

  A woman in a fine, silk dress looked inquisitively over at them for a moment. ‘Please come!’ Lizzie tried to beg, tried to plead with her eyes. ‘Please come and help me; please come and make him go away.’ The woman shook her head in contempt and turned away.

  “The Medical Officer tells me that you’re with child again.”

  Price was smiling but he had the smile and the voice of a serpent.

  “Yes I am, if you please, Mr Price.”

  “Have you been whoring yourself since you left Sessrum House?”

  “No, Mr Price.”

  “It is against the law of the land to whore yourself. Shall I call the constable and have you thrown into prison, Lizzie?”

  “Please no, sir.”

  “So you have been whoring yourself?”

  “Yes, sir; I mean no, sir. No I haven’t.”

  “So is the baby mine?”

  She stared at him, not comprehending the words. Surely it was her baby, hers to love and to hold and to be with always.

  “I asked, Miss Elizabeth, if the child is mine.”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  Price crushed her fingers again and she cried out in pain. His smile grew wider and more fixed, like the villain of a magic lantern show.

  “How can you not know whose it is, you stupid child? It must be mine. It must be from the time I took you up to Alfred’s hunting lodge for the week. Hell and Damnation! How could you have been so careless, you silly little hussy?”

  He stared at her for a moment longer and said, “Damnation!” again.

  “Are ye a’right, Lizzie?”

  It was Rachel.

  ‘Oh, thank you, thank you Lord Jesus for sending her to save me.’

  Rachel peered at Mr Price and at his massive hand, as it lay coiled tightly around Elizabeth’s fingers.

  “Lizzie, are thee a’right?” she repeated.

  Price released her fingers but his smile remained.

  “Miss Elizabeth and I were just renewing our acquaintance, pauper,” he said stiffly, “Not that it is any concern of yours. I was assuring her that I don’t need to tell her uncle where she is, just so long as she promises to be very careful.”

  He paused to allow Elizabeth to comprehend the full meaning and import of his words, and in that time, it seemed somehow as if he had to come to a decision.

  “And what’s more, like her uncle, I am a philanthropist. I will personally ensure that she and her baby are cared for properly in the workhouse, and that the child, if it lives, is given every opportunity to better its situation.”

  Chapter 24

  “She’s still sleeping in her chair,” Mary Lovell whispered as she returned to the smoking room of the Annexe, as though her voice might yet awaken Elizabeth.

  “How is she?” Dr Roberts asked.

  He was whispering too.

  “She’s terribly unsettled, Doctor. She’s been crying out for Rachel in her sleep again.”

  “Who’s Rachel?” Roberts asked.

  “She was an old pauper woman who used to help me in the workhouse infirmary at Starbeck,” Mary replied. “She’s long dead now, of course, but she was a good friend to Lizzie in the early days at the workhouse, when it was especially hard for her.”

  Dr Roberts nodded and carefully poured the fresh tea the parlour maid had brought. As the tea tinkled into the fine porcelain cups, the feeling of anticipation around him steadily built.

  “I fear I have a second missing person for you to find,” he announced at last.

  Atticus and Lucie exchanged startled glances and Atticus said: “Another missing person?”

  “Yes, indeed,” replied Roberts, handing him a cup. “I should very much like you to find my cousin. I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting her, but her name is Sarah. Sarah Beatrice Wilson was, or rather is, Aunt Elizabeth’s daughter.”

  “Elizabeth was expecting a child – her second child – when she eventuall
y fled to the workhouse,” Mary explained. “It was born, a beautiful baby girl, a few months later. I delivered her myself, with Rachel helping. Elizabeth named her Sarah, after a friend she had as a girl, and Beatrice, after her late mama.”

  “If Sarah was her second child, what became of her first?”

  Lucie asked.

  “Her first child, little Baby Albert, died at only a few weeks old,” Mary replied.

  She sipped at her tea.

  “I was the one who had to break the news to her.”

  She sipped at her tea again.

  “He was almost certainly murdered.”

  “Murdered?” Atticus exclaimed, his face flushing with alarm, “How do you mean, ‘He was almost certainly murdered’?”

  “I mean it in the plainest sense of the word, Mr Fox. You see, if the gentlemen of the Friday Club had the misfortune to put one of their girls with child, they had them sent straight away to the Home for Fallen Women and Girls at Brimston.”

  “The brothel you told us about?” asked Lucie.

  Mary nodded.

  “Whilst they were there, they would either be given a rough-and-ready abortion, or if they were allowed to have their babies, they would be made to prostitute themselves to Mrs Eire’s gentlemen visitors until they were too far gone. Then, once their confinements were over, their fate was the same as the other girls who’d served their purpose to the Friday Club. They’d either continue to be whored out at Brimston, or they’d be sold on elsewhere. Mr Alfred much preferred them to be sent abroad. He thought it was cleaner that way.

  If the baby was a girl and the mother had been reasonably pretty, the infant would be brought up at Brimston – by its mother if it was lucky – and then sold into the Friday Club at whatever age it was deemed fit. The baby girls whose mothers weren’t so pretty and the baby boys, well, they were generally sent out to a baby farmer.”

  “Oh, dear Lord no,” Lucie groaned.

  “Yes, Mrs Fox, I’m afraid that’s invariably what happened. Mr Alfred or the Club would pay twelve pounds for the infants to be taken care of, permanently. I found out later that most of them would be kept quiet with laudanum whilst they were slowly starved to death on a mixture of lime and water. Elizabeth never knew that that was what almost certainly happened to her baby, to Albert. The coroner’s verdict was ‘debility from birth,’ and she just thought that he had died of natural causes, but even that – even that was enough almost to kill her.

  When she fell pregnant for the second time, she was desperately afraid that her new baby would be taken from her and that it would die too. That was the reason she ran away to the workhouse. She believed they would allow her to keep her baby and to bring it up safely.”

  Lucie shuddered.

  “And did she?”

  Mary pursed her lips.

  “No, Mrs Fox, alas she did not. That is why Dr Roberts’ is engaging you both to find her.”

  She turned her head.

  “Lizzie, have you awoken, my angel?”

  Standing silently in the hallway, her lips forming unheard words, was Elizabeth.

  “Come and have some tea with us, Lizzie, as a special treat. We have guests today. You remember Mr and Mrs Fox don’t you?”

  Mary stood and gently led Elizabeth into the group of chaises longues.

  “Dr Michael has asked Mr and Mrs Fox to find Sarah Beatrice for you, Lizzie. You’d like to see Sarah Beatrice again, wouldn’t you? You’d like to see her before you…”

  Sarah – Sarah Beatrice – Baby Sarah! The other terrible memory stirred once again in its special, secret place and trembled against the fragile bonds that held it.

  “Lizzie, we ’ave a new nurse in t’ infirmary to ’elp Mr Wright.”

  Old Rachel’s eyes were almost bursting with excitement.

  Elizabeth’s own leaden ones crept around to meet them, and she wondered how Rachel could always seem so happy. She was old, and she had been forced to endure so many long years of life, yet still she smiled, still she was able to laugh.

  “It’s someone ye know,” Rachel continued.

  Elizabeth forced a single word through the blackness. It was, ‘Who?’, but it sounded strangely hoarse and unfamiliar to her ears.

  “Ye see, ye’re speakin’ again, an’ I haven’ even told ye who it is yet. She’ll be a-helpin’ me to deliver yer little-un in t’ lyin’-in room.”

  Rachel glanced down at the great mound under Elizabeth’s grogram gown and grinned.

  “Lizzie, it’s thy old governess, Sister Lovell.”

  Sister Lovell? The name sounded strange, but at the same time somehow familiar. Lovell?

  “Mary?”

  The voice sounded much more like hers once more.

  “Mary Lovell?”

  Rachel’s grin widened.

  “Aye, Mary Lovell, but ye mus’ call ’er, ‘Sister,’ now, or ‘Ma’am.’ Come wi’ me; I’ll take ye t’ see her.”

  And then she was back in Sister’s, in Ma’am’s, in Mary Lovell’s arms; sobbing as if she would never stop.

  “Lizzie, you’re huge,” Mary exclaimed, “I can hardly get close to you.”

  Elizabeth nodded.

  “And Rachel tells me that you never speak these days, and that you hardly ever properly eat. All you do is make up brushes out of whin, and then wear them out on the floors.”

  Elizabeth nodded again.

  “Well, we’re together again now, Lizzie, and I promise – I promise you now – that I’ll look after you always. I’ve found a situation here as nurse, so Rachel and I will be delivering your baby and not Mrs Eire.”

  The very worst memory of all; the memory of little Baby Albert also began to twist and tremble against its bonds, and reach out for its twin.

  “They hurt me, Lizzie; all of them. They hurt me just like they used to hurt you and John and all the other children. Then your uncle wanted me to go and find them more girls for the club. They wanted me to become a procuress like Mrs Eire. So I did what you did, Lizzie, and I ran away from there.”

  And then the other, terrible, terrible memory, the one that could never be hidden properly away in the secret places of her mind, broke free.

  Mary and Rachel’s faces were there, brimming with love and compassion.

  “Almost there, my lamb,” Rachel crooned.

  Another great wave of pain engulfed her, overpowering, unstoppable. She cried yet another cry of agony, pain tore once more through her body, and then she gasped, gasped in blessed relief.

  Another cry replaced hers. It was the cry of new life, of a newborn baby; of her baby. Its cries thrilled her, and Mary held out its tiny, perfect form.

  “It’s a lovely baby girl, Lizzie, quite as beautiful as its mama,” she said.

  “Sarah,” whispered Elizabeth, “Sarah Beatrice Wilson; A granddaughter for my mama, and a little sister for Albert. They won’t take her away, Mary; they won’t ever take her away, will they?”

  And she cradled her baby, Baby Sarah, and rocked her just as she remembered her own mama rocking her. And just like her own mama, she sang as she rocked:

  “Hush-a-bye baby, on the tree top,

  When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.

  When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,

  And down will come baby, cradle and all.”

  And then she thought about the words she was singing to her baby and a terrible, visceral chill gripped her. The cradle will fall… and so will the baby.

  Baby Sarah will fall, just as she had fallen, just as her mama had fallen, and had needed to be punished.

  She suddenly wished with all her soul that she had not sung the words because the words were surely a curse. She wished now that they had both died, died as Rachel told her many women did, in childbirth.

  And a second set of words came into her mind, as she sat rocking to-and-fro, clinging to her baby. They were the words that the old crone Leah had sung to her when she was first admitted to the workhouse:

 
‘Hush-a-bye baby, on the tree top,

  When you grow old, your wages will stop.

  When you have spent, the bit money you made,

  First to the poorhouse, then to the grave.’

  The other memory moved on in her mind, and two years flew past in the time it took for her to rock to-and-fro, clinging to her baby.

  “Taken her, taken Sarah Beatrice? Who’s taken her? Taken her where?”

  “Calm yourself, girl, there is nothing to be alarmed over. Your daughter has been taken away to be adopted by a wealthy local family. They will bring her up with every privilege. You should be very pleased.”

  They were the words, the words she had dreaded with each and every one of her long waking hours. She could hear them still, inside her head, filling it, creeping through her body, through her arms, through her legs, turning them to ice.

  “Who’s taken her, Mrs Dixon? Who’s taken my Baby Sarah? Please tell me.”

  The matron’s irritation effervesced and boiled over into anger.

  “Wilson, one of the workhouse overseers kindly took it upon himself to arrange for Sarah Beatrice to be adopted into one of the best families in the whole of the West Riding of Yorkshire. I do not know their name and nor do I need to, but I am assured that they are very respectable indeed. Your daughter will be raised in grace and comfort. That should be more than good enough for you.”

  It was happening once again. Mrs Dixon’s face seemed to drift away as if down a long, black tunnel. Her baby – Baby Sarah – had been taken away and she would never see her again. The worst thing of all was happening again. Little Sarah was going to die. She’d be starved to death and found in the still, black waters of a ditch; wrapped up in an old newspaper, to save the expense of a doctor being called to pronounce that she was properly dead. That’s what the old crone Leah had said had surely happened to her little Baby Albert.

  A picture of little Sarah’s perfect face with her beautiful, beaming smile exploded into Elizabeth’s mind.

  “Mama,” the vision of Sarah said, and giggled.