by Annis Bell
Tim had covered their mother with a sheet and drummed it into his sister not to say a word to their neighbors, or both of them would be taken away. He was a good brother, but just six years old. How was a six-year-old supposed to feed his little sister and a baby? He had pillaged the neighbors’ garbage, stolen, and begged. But the baby needed milk and soon grew weaker and weaker. Finally all she did was whimper and make small smacking sounds. Like a little bird, thought Mary, and cried.
It was her fault that the baby had died. She had promised her mother that she would look after the baby. In desperation, she had given the child her finger to suck on. When the little girl died, she laid her beside their dead mother. That same evening, the landlady had come to collect the rent. She saw immediately what had happened and called the police. Mother and the baby were thrown into a pauper’s grave, and the people around them talked in whispers about her and Tim as the children of the devil.
Then the man who had fathered the baby appeared. All she could remember of him were his sideburns and the smell of tobacco that clung to his clothes. He paid off the landlady, who had wanted to sell the children to recover the rent she was owed. Then he sat Mary and her brother in a coach. When, after a long journey, she awoke, Master Ledford lifted her out of the coach and took her into the orphanage. She had been there ever since.
Mary looked up through her tears. A bat flitted over the garret window, a tiny, dark shadow. When she and Tim first arrived, the people at the orphanage had immediately separated them. That was what had hurt the most. She had been so alone, alone and frightened.
Polly was the same age as Tim, a beautiful blond angel. At the start, Polly had had little time for the small girl who followed her wherever she went and said nothing. The other girls laughed and made fun of Mary, but she stayed at Polly’s side staunchly until Polly gave in and held out her hand to her. From that moment on, they had been inseparable.
In the dormitory, their beds stood side by side, and when the light was put out, Mary crept across and slid under the coverlet with Polly and snuggled close to her. Polly had whispered stories in her ear, stories about princesses and talking animals, about dragons and evil wizards. When Mary learned to read, together they read the books that Mr. Gaunt lent them. Polidori’s The Vampyre had been Polly’s favorite, and the teacher had given it to her when she left.
Polly had known that the time had come for her to leave. She was pretty and had a school education, so she got the chance to work in a grand house. Master Ledford had no doubt received a decent sum for Polly, but he said that raising, clothing, and feeding the children cost him a lot of money. It was only right and proper that he be reimbursed for that when they left.
Polly had been put in a coach, and then she disappeared. She had promised to write, but in the eight months that she had been gone, Mary had not heard so much as a word from her. Something was wrong, Mary was certain. But the moment she asked the master about Polly, he turned on her angrily and shouted that the girl was doing well, too well, in fact! It was always like that, he said. The moment the bird flew the nest, the past was forgotten. Mary should just get used to it.
A soft scratch at the door startled her out of her thoughts. “Is that you, Fiona?”
“Yeah. Come ’ere. I’m pushing some cheese and bacon under the door.”
Mary jumped up immediately and kneeled by the door, under which, one after the other, slices of cheese and—a wonder!—a piece of bacon appeared. Mary greedily stuffed the food in her mouth. All they’d fed her since locking her in there was water and dry bread.
“That’ll make you thirsty,” Fiona whispered, “but I couldn’t steal anything else.”
“Mmm, it’s all right. Thank you, thank you!” Mary murmured, and swallowed the delicious morsels.
“Psst, ’ush for a second!” Fiona hissed.
Mary held still and listened to the night-shrouded house. They were in the girls’ building, with the classrooms and workshops on the ground floor and the dormitories upstairs. There were two large dormitories and two smaller ones, the sisters’ room, a bathroom, and a laundry. Mary’s cell was set above one of the smaller dormitories, from which light shone up between the floorboards. Now, she could make out muffled voices and groaning, then a smothered cry.
“The men are here. You’re lucky you don’t have breasts, Fiona,” Mary whispered.
“Is that Sister Susan?”
“She takes the money and decides whose turn it is.”
“Jeez, were you ever . . . ?”
“No. Nor Polly. They only take the ones who aren’t supposed to go into service.”
“It’s filth. It’s a ’orehouse, is what it is. I know, Mary. I lived in one once.”
“I thought . . .”
“That I lived on the street the ’ole time? No, my mother’s on the game, but she never forced me to be. I joined up with the kids on the streets and learned to pick pockets. That’s useful to know.” Fiona smothered a giggle behind her hand. The girls heard a thumping on the stairs, and Fiona gathered up her skirt. “Someone’s coming. I ’ave to go. Tomorrow, Mary!”
Mary hurriedly jumped onto her sack of straw and pulled the blanket over her. When the door swung open and Master Ledford shone a lamp in her face, she squinted sleepily.
“Well. Thought it over, have you?”
“What do you mean?” she mumbled, rising to a crouch and pulling the blanket around her.
His hand swung around hard and hit her on the side of her head. Mary cried out in pain. Tears came instantly, and she slumped onto her side. Her cheek burned, but her ear hurt like it never had before.
“Stop being contrary! Talk! Am I supposed to beat the words out of you one at a time? Where’s your damned brother? I saw you talking with him!” Master Ledford bawled.
In the flickering lamplight, his face, contorted with rage, was a diabolical sight.
But the pain in her ear was so overwhelming that Mary forgot her fear of her tormentor and rolled back and forth, wailing. It wasn’t long before Sister Susan was there, too.
“What’s going on here?”
“A little clip on the ear and look at her! She stays up here until she’s had time to think about it!” the master barked, and stamped away.
The sister looked at Mary doubtfully. “Let me see that ear.”
“No, no, it hurts so much!” Mary pressed her hand to her ear and felt the warm liquid. “It’s bleeding!”
Sister Susan’s forbidding expression softened. “Stand up! Mary, try to stand up.”
When Mary tried to push herself up from the straw sack, she immediately grew dizzy, stumbled forward, then sank back.
“Lie down again!” Sister Susan ordered, then left. In a few minutes, she returned with her medical bag. First, she took out a bottle of laudanum and gave Mary two spoons of the numbing liquid. Then she swabbed the blood from her ear, dripped some liquid onto a piece of gauze, and stuffed it into the ear canal.
“I’ll talk to the master. We’ll put you back in your bed tomorrow. Why do you have to be so stubborn? Just tell him what he wants to know.”
But Mary, her eyes closed, just wailed, “But I don’t know, I don’t know! Tim is just gone. He left me here alone.”
There was a roaring in her head and the pain swelled again, but the laudanum began to take effect, sending her sliding into a bearable half sleep.
8.
Fearnham, County Wiltshire, February 29, 1860
The small parish church huddled beneath the protective branches of a mighty chestnut tree. In summer, the villagers gathered beneath the broad leaves offered by the old tree. Now, the bare branches presented a more sobering sight, and the plain little house of prayer looked unprotected. In the lee of the church stood the parsonage, built, like the church itself, from gray stone. Enclosed by a low wall was a garden, where the vicar’s housekeeper was picking herbs.
“Dora!” Jane called and waved to the stout woman, who straightened up slowly and painfully.
“Lady Jane! How nice of you to drop by. Come in, the vicar’s here.” Dora trudged heavily through the snow and waited for Jane at the front door.
“How is your back, Dora?” Jane asked sympathetically.
The housekeeper, who had seen a lot in her fifty years, dismissed the question with a wave. “It pinches, and my legs hurt sometimes, but I can’t complain. I’ve got a roof over my head, and you could not ask for a better master than the vicar.”
The woman made her way down the narrow corridor with practiced ease until she reached the roomy kitchen. Jane had drunk tea there many times with her uncle and the parish priest after the Sunday service.
“I’ve just made some tea. Hettie, give us a hand. There’s some cake, but watch out for your nice coat.” Dora, with a slightly waddling gait, the legacy of her considerable weight, went to the door and called, “Vicar, we’ve got company! Lady Jane is here!”
Jane unbuttoned her coat and sat on the proffered chair. “I don’t mean to disturb you, Dora, but I can’t stop thinking about the poor girl we laid to rest here so recently.”
Dora prodded at the coals in the stove, making the fire flare. Her cheeks were red when she looked up again. Using a potholder, she lifted the cast-iron teapot from the stove. “A sorry story. Such a lost soul. What must she have gone through before she came here?”
While Hettie set a milk jug and plate of fruitcake on the table, Dora poured the strong, dark tea into four cups. Her graying hair was covered with a white bonnet, its ruffled brim bouncing with every movement. “There are so many girls who run away. My sister told me that another one’s run off from Luton House. You know that’s close to Exeter, my lady.”
Jane nodded and accepted the tea gratefully. Coat and gloves could not keep out the cold, which had settled into the tight folds of her clothes. “Luton House? Is that a workhouse?”
The conditions in the so-called poorhouses or workhouses—little more than labor camps for the poorest of the poor—were notoriously appalling. Those who sought refuge there usually did so only as a last resort. They were referred to as inmates and treated like prisoners. Children, men, and women, all of them, without distinction, had to work for starvation wages. Most of their work was in manufacturing textiles. An eleven-hour day was the norm, with perhaps half a Saturday free and Christmas. Poor nutrition, cold, and abuse led to a high level of disease and mortality. Among the general populace, the workhouses were often compared to purgatory. Jane had never visited such a house, for her uncle had wanted to spare her having to face such misery.
The vicar, Herbert Smith, a slim man with a fringe of silver hair and friendly eyes behind round spectacles, entered the room and gave Jane a slight bow. “What an honor, my lady, to have you pay us a visit. Hettie, my dear, you look so full of life! Who would ever remember that skinny girl from Cornwall climbing out of the mail coach, so shy she spoke to no one?”
Hettie reddened slightly. “Oh, Vicar, that was a very long time ago.”
“Did I hear someone mention Luton House?” the vicar asked, and sipped the tea that Dora pushed over to him. His black suit was clean, although the sleeves were worn and the collar frayed. Fearnham was one of those small village congregations that survived on contributions from local residents and the generosity of the patron. Under Matthew’s patronage, Jane feared, the vicar could hardly count on any economic improvement.
“It is about the girl, Vicar. I am still thinking about her. Hettie believes she might have been her cousin, but she is not certain. What if she was a girl who ran away from a workhouse?” Jane asked, taking a small piece of cake. She sampled it and raised her forefinger approvingly. “It’s wonderful, Dora!”
The housekeeper beamed and encouraged Jane to take another piece, but Jane thanked her and declined.
“It’s difficult, my lady. The constable in Whiteparish went to some trouble. He telegraphed every police station in the district. You really can’t do much more than that, unless you’re prepared to ask every single person for ten miles around. She could have run away from almost anywhere.” The vicar broke off a piece of cake, thought for a moment before popping it into his mouth, and said, “It happens all too often, I’m afraid, that children run away from homes and institutions like the Brentwood School.”
Jane nodded. The scandal surrounding the Brentwood School in Essex was still fresh in her memory. “That was terrible!”
“What happened there, ma’am?” Hettie inquired.
Dora, puttering away at the stove, snapped disdainfully, “That’s not something a decent young thing needs to know anything about.”
“Well, I guess I’ll just ask someone else,” Hettie grumbled.
With a smile, Jane said, “Would you tell her about it, Vicar?”
The priest, well liked for his entertaining Sunday services, didn’t need to be asked twice. He stroked his bushy sideburns and began, “It is sad enough that those in charge of such places repeatedly fail in their duties and betray the faith of those entrusted to them. Some people are simply too weak, and not up to the demands of the task. Caring for young, hungry, neglected children is a challenge each and every day. But . . .” Vicar Smith paused dramatically. “They have chosen the task, and they should complete it in a way that would please God. Now, without getting carried away with a sermon, I’ll get to the school at Brentwood. The institution is both a home and a school for orphans, and was led by a very strict mistress. Punishment for disobedient children was always physical, and consistently more violent than anywhere else. Worst of all, apparently, was the nurse. I believe her name was Elizabeth Gillespie, yes . . .”
Mesmerized, Hettie listened to the vicar’s tale. He took pleasure in building up the tension for her. “Miss Gillespie beat the children with a ruler, and black eyes and broken bones were an everyday occurrence. One day, a young girl fell down the stairs in the home and suffered such serious injuries that she had to be taken to an outside hospital. It was this ‘accident’ that led to the revelation that the girl had been pushed by Sister Gillespie!”
“No! The nurse did that?” Hettie cried in horror.
“It gets worse,” the vicar continued in a grim tone. “The girl only dared to talk about the conditions at Brentwood once she was in the hospital. She was asked why no one complained about the beatings. All she said was that the girls knew that if the men went away, it would get even worse, so they held their tongues and put up with it.”
“‘The men’?” Hettie opened her eyes wide in confusion.
“It means the poor girls were rented out as prostitutes by Miss Gillespie, and that being a prostitute seemed more bearable to them than the beatings and abuse handed out by the sister,” Jane explained, brushing some nonexistent crumbs from her coat.
Dora set the kettle down on the iron stovetop with a loud clank. “Now that’s enough! Poor Hettie will have it hard enough tonight, trying to sleep. Brentwood was an exception. And that Miss Gillespie was a devil through and through. Something like that doesn’t happen every day.”
The vicar tugged at the hairs of his beard. “One would think so, yes. And we hope it’s true, dear Dora. But there are also jobs from which the girls run away. Some of them are simply homesick.”
Although Jane knew very well that this was not the case with Rosie, she only said, “Maids are also beaten by bad masters. Vicar, is there a house in your parish where that might be the case?”
“If there were, I would not be permitted to speak ill of it. But I honestly have no knowledge of such a situation. The usual small incidents, that goes without saying, but nothing particularly outrageous,” the vicar assured her.
Jane realized that she would find no useful information here, and soon said a polite good-bye. With Hettie at her side, she walked down the main street of the village an
d, on the spur of the moment, stepped into the shop of the seamstress, Verna Morris.
V. MORRIS stood in curving letters on a sign above the shop, and Jane had often wondered why this elegant woman was here in remote, provincial Fearnham. The melodic tinkle of the bell on the door announced her entry.
Hettie sighed happily. “Isn’t this pretty? I wish I had a shop like this!”
She ran her fingers over the bolts of fabric that lay on a long cutting table. On the shelves against the walls, all kinds of fabric were stored, and the choice quality of the material never ceased to amaze Jane. There were rolls of silk, linen, and expensive blended fabrics, the kinds one might find at an exclusive tailor in London. But there was simpler broadcloth as well, for the rural population could only rarely afford anything fancy.
“Be with you in a moment!” the seamstress called from the back room.
Jane examined a cream-colored silk cloth that would be suitable for a wedding dress, and she looked up when Mrs. Morris hurried out from behind the counter in a rush of skirts.
“Oh, my lady! What an honor! Is there anything in particular I can show you, or have you already found something special?”
Verna Morris was very thin and in her late forties. Her face was striking, with high cheekbones and slightly angular green eyes. She had dark hair parted in the middle and pinned at the back of her neck. In the bloom of her youth she must have been beautiful, and there were a great many rumors about her past.
Although Jane was happy to buy cloth in Mrs. Morris’s store, she could never shake off the feeling that the woman looked down on her. But that might have just been the pride of a woman who had once occupied a better position. Jane smiled. “I’m looking for something for a wedding dress. But please keep that to yourself. No one knows about it, and that’s how it should remain.”
