A Taste for Nightshade

by Martine Bailey

  ‘Your eyes,’ I said, musingly. ‘They are a very unusual green; in different lights they reflect brown and blue. Do they perhaps reflect whatever light falls on them?’

  Peg replied that she couldn’t say. ‘Do, please, sit very still.’ I looked very hard, then used my green with a wash of yellow ochre to tint the iris, and a ring of burnt umber. A pinprick of white titanium gave them startling life. I was happy with them; surely even Peg would admire her lively cat-like eyes.

  ‘And your throat now, Peg. Please, pull off your kerchief. You have such luminous skin.’

  She removed her kerchief.

  ‘And that necklace, if you please.’ I pointed at the ribbon around her neck, from which was suspended a metal pendant. On the instant I froze; I immediately lost my capacity for speech. It was a copper disc. It was the convict token.

  Recovering, I stood up and held out my hand. ‘Give that to me.’ A succession of responses crossed Peg’s face: surprise, hostility, and finally, cringing horror.

  ‘Please, Mrs Croxon.’ She grasped the copper disc and hid it in her hand.

  ‘Give it to me,’ I insisted.

  ‘God help me,’ she whimpered, still clutching it tightly. I lifted the ribbon up and over her head, I read the engraving and knew every word of it at once; for it commemorated Mary Jebb.

  ‘Did you take this from my husband?’

  She raised her head, shaking it weakly. ‘No.’

  ‘Stay as you are.’ I rushed downstairs to Michael’s room, grateful he was absent, and hastily rifled through his box. There it lay, the twin to the copper disc that swung in my hand. In every respect of size and pattern, in every crude letter, it was identical. As I climbed the stairs back to my studio I prayed I was wrong, beginning to feel, in little flashes of fear, that my world had been thrown off its axis onto some other crazy course. A few moments later I was back in my room. There Peg still sat, hunched like a beggar before a parish overseer, her face in her hands.

  I sat down before her. ‘Speak the truth. Are you Mary Jebb?’

  She didn’t make a sound; only rocked, with a tiny, childish movement.

  ‘Come along. Why else would you wear such a thing?’ I thrust it before her in my open palm. With her face still hidden, she shook her head.

  ‘Was this your voyage? Were you transported to “the ends of the earth”?’

  Still she sat silent, though breathing harshly. Of course she was Mary Jebb, I told myself. I was a dolt. How had I not apprehended it months ago?

  ‘Mary,’ I said gently. ‘I will judge you only as I know you. Earlier I called you friend. Listen to me. It is better to be truthful than be forever lying.’

  I touched her arm very lightly. A sob emerged from her wet and rumpled face.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she croaked. ‘I will say it. I was a convict.’ She lifted her hand and ineffectually wiped her tears. ‘It were such a small crime, Mrs Croxon. I was but a young girl, new up from the country, whose granny had just died. I see now I was led into bad ways by this man Charlie, who sent me out daily to hawk stuff about the streets. He taught me little tricks; to short-change folk when they wasn’t looking, all that sort of racket. If I didn’t hand over a good sum every day I got a leathering from Charlie – a beating, I should say. He had others in his power – pocket-divers who lifted watches, and harlots who – well, you know, I’m sure. I never had as much money to give him as they did, and he let me know it all right. Then one day I got the chance to lift a whole pound note, from a gentleman who needed change, and so I tried out a sting that Charlie had showed me. My heart was racketing, my nerves was all done in – but I switched the pound note for a blank, and nearly got away with it.’

  She covered her mouth and shook her head miserably. ‘But he come running after me, the gentleman. I thought I’d leg it back to my landlady that cared for me since my granny died. I ran like the clappers, but he wouldn’t give up – not that one. In the end, he chased me up to the rooftop and caught me there like a rabbit. I gave him his pound note back. I got down on me knees. I prayed to him to be a Christian and forgive me. I told him I was only doing it under threat from the ruffian who would skin me alive. And I said to him, I begged him to remember it, his word would send me to the gallows.’

  I shook my head in sympathy, but did not speak.

  ‘He of course was a gentleman, a very handsome, high-speaking sort of gentleman, and once I was thrown in the cells I looked even worse than ever, having to sell the clothes off my back just to stay alive. The day I was up at the Bailey, he steps in as a witness. I had not a hope against him, me in my rags, and him with his dandy rig-out and silky words. Over in no time, it was; the judge puts his black cap on and tells me I’m to swing. And that fellow laughs with the lawyer, like it’s all a jest, sending a poor girl to her death. I was so frightened of that man, Mrs Croxon. He said we was all vermin to be stamped out.’

  As she spoke, another part of me strove to catch up with the facts. Vermin. I had heard that expression very often, and recently.

  ‘Yet you did live,’ I whispered.

  ‘No thanks to him. The day they come to hang me I was nearly dead already, from terror. Then, when I’m standing at the wooden steps, praying to God for forgiveness before I’m to be strangled, a reprieve comes. Me and three other women are wanted to serve the convicts, out in Botany Bay. And so we was, Mrs Croxon, packed off to serve them like a herd of brood mares. Can you imagine that?’ She looked up at me with a ghastly expression. ‘Gangs of murderers and cut-throats, using your body like a—’

  ‘Don’t,’ I said sharply. ‘I understand. But these horrible pendants?’

  She glanced at the object in my hand and licked her lips.

  ‘While we was waiting to board the ships there was an engraver, a decent old cove, convicted of printing tracts against the authorities. It was him who made them. Love tokens they called them. When you think you are going away from all you’ve ever known, your home, children, old folk, sweetheart, you get a pitiful urge not to be forgot.’ She touched the spot on her breast where the old copper penny had hung. ‘Them verses you get scribed – “When this you see, remember me”, and suchlike – it’s all anyone will ever touch of you again. You know you in’t never coming back.

  ‘As for the voyage, I told you the honest truth about that – only I was in irons, of course. So was Jack. But we loved each other, I swear that on the Bible. So we took our chance and bolted from the colony. It were either that or starve, and that’s the honest truth. And I swear, mistress, I come home so grateful for my second chance at life. Every day I thanked God, and swore I’d take the honest path.’

  ‘But your term is not expired?’

  ‘No. And that’s what undone me.’

  I nodded, but by now I no longer wanted to hear any more. Outside, the afternoon light was leaching away, and deep shadows gathered at the corners of the room. Not wanting to break off to make a light, I watched Peg’s face growing indistinct save for the gleam of her fearful eyes.

  ‘When I got back to Manchester, the gentleman that convicted me – he saw me in the street. He followed me secretly and caught hold of me. He told me I must follow his orders. He made such terrible threats I had no choice.’

  ‘What orders?’ I was beginning to feel curiously cold and detached; as if the scene before me was happening to someone else. But Peg, or Mary as I knew her now, would no longer meet my gaze.

  ‘To break the law again,’ she said quickly. ‘To do as he said under pain of being sent back to the gallows. And I would swing this time, with no chance of a pardon. Can you comprehend how that feels?’

  For a moment, I did contemplate the horror of being condemned to death. A death in life, counting the hours and minutes until the barbaric rope choked the life from you.

  ‘Tell me, Mary,’ my voice was unsteady, ‘why does Michael keep your token?’

  Now her words emerged in a breathless tangle. ‘I never had a sweetheart. When the others had their lo
ve hearts made I had no one to remember me. Then I got a fancy. I wanted what that gentleman had done to be engraved on his conscience for ever.’

  ‘Michael? It was him, wasn’t it? The man who convicted you.’

  She nodded, and collapsed into shuddering tears.

  ‘So what does he want you to do?’

  She peered up at me, and I saw, in her sorrowing face, that it was she who pitied me. She spoke in a conspiratorial hiss. ‘He told me he was getting married. And that he had rather have married another, a great beauty. And that I must help him or be hanged. I must come here and earn your trust. Oh, Mrs Croxon, I should rather be struck dumb than have to speak of it.’

  ‘Help him? How?’

  ‘He has not said yet. Only that he needs someone unafraid to break the law.’

  ‘Tell me. Has he given any instructions?’

  She shook her head. ‘Only to be certain you are happy. He wants you to feel – falsely content.’

  ‘I knew it in my heart, I knew it.’ I balled my fists and beat the table. ‘He has used me. What a fool I am.’

  She stood up then, and came to me with her hand outstretched. ‘Mrs Croxon, I swear on my mother’s grave I will never do you harm. You called me friend.’ She laid her work-roughened hand on mine and looked into my eyes. ‘You are good. I have learned from you what goodness is. Not like – that other woman he is enslaved to.’

  ‘Oh God; what should I do? I thought he was starting to care for me.’ I wiped my eyes on the back of my hand.

  ‘Oh no, Mrs Croxon. If you only knew how he speaks of you. He calls you an obstacle, an open purse. He needs only your money; he speaks of it all the time.’

  The pain I felt then was so intense that for a moment I wished I was dead. Then I calmed myself a little.

  ‘And what of you, Peg? He must not be allowed to bully you. I need time to think.’ I squeezed her hand in return. ‘Will you be my ally while I decide what to do?’

  Her green eyes met mine, honest and friendly. ‘I will.’

  Somehow I endured the rest of that day. Questions circled me like snapping dogs: what should I do, or say, to Michael, and how could I hide my distress? I felt tattered and dishevelled, as if a thread of me had snagged and now I was unravelling.

  Michael did not return at six, or seven, or eight. Unable to calm my anxiety, I took a dose of the Poppy Drops at nine. At ten I glimpsed his carriage-light outside. Standing at the top of the stairs, I listened in vain for his voice. Finally, Peg pattered up the stairs to find me.

  ‘He is waiting in the dining room,’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘We must both behave in our usual manner,’ I whispered.

  She nodded gravely.

  ‘Why was he delayed?’

  ‘Something about the mill. Bad news, I fear.’

  When I entered the dining room, Michael was already halfway through his usual bottle. He stood up very flushed and agitated.

  ‘Where have you been? Whitelow was torched at sunset. Just as the housing for the machine was finished. Hundreds of pounds’ worth of materials have gone up in smoke. Come and see it for yourself!’ He grasped my hand and dragged me up stair after stair until we emerged through a door onto a flat part of the roof. The night was biting cold and bitter black, save for an orange fireball to the far west. I grasped the balustrade, lamenting all the stupid loss of it. My grandmother’s kind bequest, I thought, is but kindling on a bonfire of vanities.

  ‘Arson,’ Michael ranted. ‘The cowards crept up just after we left. I was nearly home when the message arrived. Don’t these wretches want to work? We build mills to give them employment, and they make plots to destroy them. And what of me? What do I do now?’

  He fretted, fearing that Whitelow might be attacked again. Such uprisings were spreading across the country. A few weeks earlier Grimshaw’s mill at Manchester had been destroyed by fire; the newspapers told of lawlessness, of machine breaking, of Loom Riots.

  At dinner, Michael’s marrow spoon delved into the stumps of roasted bone, while I pushed a little of the oily stuff about my plate. ‘Did you hear the other news? The King of France is put to trial by his own subjects! That is where we are all headed if the government does not destroy these apes. This attack is only the beginning.’

  Beginning to recover from the shock of the fire, I observed my husband, marvelling at him, seeing him anew. Had I never noticed the lines of cruelty around his petulant mouth? I seethed inwardly with the knowledge of what he had done to Peg, and how he was all the time scheming to supplant me. As for the arsonists, I felt grudging admiration for their pluck. Like me, they had performed a simple mathematical sum; that if Michael’s mill made him rich, it could only be at their expense.

  As Michael’s bottle emptied he grew even more boisterous, and described a comic picture by Mr Gillray. ‘I suppose you have not seen it, though it is all the fashion. It depicts these trouserless French dogs gathered about a table to dine – and what do you suppose they eat?’ He picked a splinter from his teeth. ‘Why, the limbs, heads, and eyes of the French nobility. Their children guzzle a bucket of entrails, while a hag roasts a baby over a fire. That will be Britain’s future, if we let these mobs rule.’

  If I had not already felt sick at the sight of severed bones, I did now.

  ‘I am unwell,’ I said, rising.

  Up in my chamber I locked the door and lay on my bed, too agitated to sleep. Every instinct in my body urged me to get away from Michael, but when I cast about for somewhere to go, no sanctuary suggested itself. Since my father had died, even my dreary room at Greaves was lost to me. There could be no refuge with Anne, either, since she had sailed for Botany Bay. As for John Francis, even if I knew where he was, we could not renew our friendship now he was marrying. I comprehended I was entirely alone, and wondered how this had come to pass? No one had ever called on me here at Delafosse; I had not even the slightest acquaintance here in Earlby. Peg was my only friend and support.

  At some time in the night I slipped my hand beneath my pillow, in search of a handkerchief to wipe my eyes. Instead, my fingers fixed on something else, a strand of hair, very fine but as strong as metal thread. I started to wind it around my hand in the darkness, though it cut like wire into my skin. On and on it wound, as never-ending as that thread of destiny spun for each human soul by the Fates. I held my breath, convinced that the putrid stuff came from no living being, but from the infamous trade in corpse’s hair.

  Then – and at this my senses almost failed – it began to move. It began palpably to grow, with an unstoppable sensation of aliveness. The stuff was on my face, a smothering cushion of soft foulness. I grew burning hot, as if the bed cover too, was of woven hair, the pillow on which my head lay, too. I clawed and fought back. Still it wriggled gently, probing my skin like thistledown tentacles, entering my nose, my eyes, my mouth …

  Next morning, I waited until I saw Peg leave for the village, and then took the pony cart and caught her up. After my nightmare, I had slept little and was light-headed with anxiety. Helping her up beside me, I asked, ‘What news?’

  She shook her head. ‘He said he would miss supper tonight.’

  ‘I know; he is going to a meeting of mill owners. But has he given you no instructions?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I have been thinking, Peg. We can stop him if we go to the authorities together. Would you speak out against him?’

  She pulled back in alarm at my words. ‘Please, Mrs Croxon. Don’t, I beg you. You might as well buy the rope and string me up yourself.’

  ‘Well, is there any written evidence? A letter or document in which he writes of these matters? I could go to the magistrate alone, and you need not be involved. I could lend you money, so you could get safely away and—’

  ‘Mrs Croxon, begging your pardon, I wish I had never told you now. I have had longer than you to think on the matter. If you knew Newgate as I do – the end of all hope, the beatings, the swill of filth on the floor.’ I
looked into her bleak face, not doubting she had survived terrors beyond my own endurance. ‘It’s not like I murdered anyone or committed a mortal sin, is it mistress?’ She turned her head away with revulsion. ‘Them murderesses got it even worse than me, mind. Did you know, any ruffian can tip the jailer for a private visit to any female he fancies violating? On his own or with his chums. They hate the murderesses worst of all – since they have generally killed menfolk.’

  I shook my head; I had never guessed men could be so wicked. For the first time in years I remember my father’s Carceri, the chains and racks and instruments of torture. He had called them the prisons of the mind, but the worse truth was this: men built these places; they did exist.

  ‘If you peach on me, Mrs Croxon, you’d as good as murder me, and that’s the end of it. Don’t send me back there. I’d as soon stab me own heart and be done with it.’

  I gripped her arm tightly. ‘There will be no need to do that. Stay calm, and I will help you. I need to think matters over further before I do anything. I need to know first what I can salvage. It is hard, Peg. Only a few days ago he was so unconstrained with me.’

  ‘Mrs Croxon!’ It was the first time Peg had ever raised her voice to me. ‘Might I remind you, it is only lately he even came to your bed. Consider this: has he extracted anything from you in return?’

  I was too ashamed to reply.

  ‘How much?’ she asked in a tone of indignation.

  I shook my head. It was none of her business. Yet I calculated that over time I had given him all of my £3,000. That was quite a fee.

  ‘Unconstrained, is he? Well, I suppose you have not felt his fist yet,’ Peg interrupted my appalled calculations. She touched her brow where a few months earlier she had borne a purple bruise.

  ‘You said you fell in the dark. Did he strike you?’

  ‘Aye. When I tried to stand up for you, mistress. I didn’t like to say. When I think on it now I should like to see him dead. He deserves it for what he’s done.’