by Sam Thomas
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Contents
Copyright Notice
Title Page
Author’s Note
Epigraph
I
II
III
Excerpt from The Harlot’s Tale
Also by Sam Thomas
About the Author
Copyright
Author’s Note
In the process of writing The Midwife’s Tale, the first Bridget Hodgson mystery, I created Bridget’s nemesis, a malevolent woman named Rebecca Hooke. As I wrote, I found myself fascinated by how much Bridget and Rebecca had in common: both were strong women trying to make their way in a world dominated by men; both had married foolish men; and both had – at some point–practiced midwifery. Despite these similarities, these women found themselves living very different lives. Bridget used her power and knowledge to help the women around her, while Rebecca used hers to destroy her enemies and advance her own interests.
The question that his raised in my mind was simple: How did Rebecca end up such a hateful woman? “The Maidservant and the Murderer” is my attempt to answer that question.
Give me mine angle; we’ll to the river: there,
My music playing far off, I will betray
Tawny-finn’d fishes; my bended hook shall pierce
Their slimy jaws; and, as I draw them up,
I’ll think them every one an Antony,
And say ’Ah, ha! you’re caught.’
—William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, II, iv.
I
If the Hookes expected me on that day, they made no sign of it, and Mrs. Hooke did not even pretend she was glad I’d come.
“You must be Rebecca,” she declared when she opened the door. “Why are you just standing there?” She dropped a newly used chamber pot at my feet, and its contents slopped out and soiled the edges of my skirt.
“Clean that up,” she barked.
And so, on a fall day in the year of our Lord 1620, I began my time in service.
* * *
I hadn’t expected such rude treatment, of course. I hadn’t known what to expect. I was seventeen and had left my mother’s arms a week before as I traveled to York. The harvest had not been as bountiful as we had hoped, and my parents worried that when winter came, some in the family would go hungry. As the oldest child, it made sense to send me out, and a cousin in the city said she could find me a place as a maidservant. What more could we have asked of God?
To this day, I remember when I first laid eyes on York. I had been riding in the back of a farmer’s cart for near two days, stuffed in among sacks of grain and vegetables. We were still some miles away when we crested a hill and the city came into view. Even from such a distance I could not but be amazed. The Minster towered over all else, higher than anything I could have imagined, and smoke hovered over the city, spurged there by thousands of hearths. And once we passed through the city gates, the smell, God in His heaven, the smell. Of course a city arse stinks no worse than its country cousin–but in York there were so many gathered so close that the stench was inescapable.
The farmer laughed when he saw my face.
“They say you get used to it after a while. I never have, but I never stay any longer than I must.”
When I arrived in the city I sought out my cousin, who had made good on her promise to find me a place. The Hookes had recently dismissed one servant and were looking for a replacement. After a night’s sleep, I repacked my bag and walked out Micklegate Bar toward the Hookes’ farm. Before leaving, I helped myself to a few shillings I’d found in an unlocked chest. I knew that my cousin would be blamed, and said a prayer that her master would not beat her too badly.
There were just three members of the Hooke family still living in the house when I arrived. Mr. John Hooke was my master, and his wife, Grace, was my mistress. Together they’d had a half-dozen children, though by the time I came to them all but one had died or left for London. Their son Richard had stayed, in part because of his youth–he was not yet twenty–but mostly, I thought, because of his foolishness. It was a hard world for the weak and the stupid, and Richard was both. His parents could afford to keep him so they did. I tried not to begrudge him that luxury, even as I emptied his piss-pot every morning.
For the most part, Richard avoided me as much as he could. At first I thought it was out of fear of his mother, for when she became angry at me–as she often did–her rage knew neither direction nor discretion. Anyone in eyeshot, whether husband, son, or neighbor, risked joining me among the wounded unless they fled the battlefield. But as I grew less anxious, or perhaps became inured to his mother’s rages, I realized that I was wrong. Richard didn’t avoid me; he just followed me from a distance. Indeed, once I became aware of his presence, it could not be missed. When I milked the cow, he wandered in to the barn in search of his hat. When I was in the buttery, he would come to the kitchen for some cheese. And when I had to go into the city, he would volunteer to accompany me. Richard never spoke to me during these long walks together, but in time I realized that he had fallen quite in love with me.
And to speak God’s truth, it made me happy, for whatever his flaws, he was a kind lad. Some nights as I drifted off to sleep I wondered if we might someday marry.
Richard’s parents were of another sort entirely, so different from Richard that I could not see how he was their son. At first Mrs. Hooke was the hardest of the two, for she would beat me sore for the slightest offense. Whether it was how I churned the butter, washed her skirts, or milked their cow, Mrs. Hooke found some fault and commenced to clouting me with whatever she had at hand. For a time I kept a list of all the weapons she used: soup ladle, broom, milking stool, churn-staff, rolling pin, barrel stave, and one time the dull edge of a knife. After half a year, I gave up my list. It would have been easier to name the weapons she hadn’t used. All this time, I could not help thinking that she hated me, and I spent many cold and sleepless nights searching my conscience for some secret sin I had committed against her. But one afternoon, when the Hookes thought I was busied elsewhere, I learned the true reason.
I’d just finished hanging the laundry when I slipped into the kitchen and heard Mr. and Mrs. Hooke talking in the dining hall. I’d developed a talent for moving about without making much noise–so much the better for avoiding Mrs. Hooke’s wrath–so they did not hear me enter.
“I see the way you look at that new whore, and I’ll not have you lechering about yet again.”
“Grace, I never would,” Mr. Hooke objected, and for a moment I wondered who this new whore was.
“Oh, Rebecca, that dress favors you. Oh, Rebecca, bring me some bread. Oh, Rebecca, bend over and pick up that pin for me.” She aped his manner of speaking perfectly, and if she’d not just labeled me a whore I might have laughed.
“Bend over and pick up that pin?” Mrs. Hooke was in a boiling rage by now. “What, so you can better rut with her? Why so subtle? Why not, Oh, Rebecca, lie back and draw up your skirts, I can’t seem to find my pintle.”
Mr. Hooke said something about his lost pintle being her fault, but by then my blood so roared in my ears that I could hardly understand a word they said. I was brought back to my senses when Mrs. Hooke hurled a pewter plate through the window and into the yard.
I dashed out of the kitchen and ran until the hedges stopped me. I gazed out over the moors toward
the home that I had left. I knew I could not go back, not ever, and at that moment I lamented it more than on any day before.
Once my tears had dried I went back to the house and washed out the chamber pots.
* * *
Perhaps I’d not recognized Mr. Hooke’s lustfulness because of my youth, but once I heard Mrs. Hooke’s words, I could not avoid it. While Richard hovered about, hardly daring to speak to me, his father sought every opportunity to call me into the parlor or–worse–into his chamber. When he passed through the kitchen, he would trip and his hands would find their way to my hips (“I am sorry, Rebecca! I just caught my toe on something.”), and he would run his finger along my hand when I brought him his ale.
And so I was not surprised when Mr. Hooke, upon finding me alone as I dressed his bed, pushed me onto my back and began to pull at my skirts. He whispered fair words in my ear as his fingers worked to unlace his breeches, but his rank breath was a better sign of his spirit. When his pintle finally sprang free, I seized it with both hands and wrenched with all my strength. I imagine the Scots and perhaps even the French heard his cries, and it was nearly an hour before he came out of his room and gave me the beating that he felt I deserved.
I wish I could tell you that this early defeat put a stop to Mr. Hooke’s assaults. But like the Devil himself, Mr. Hooke would not leave me be. He continued with his caresses, though rougher now and coupled with pinches. With each one, he told me, You belong to me, body and soul. Except, of course, he had no interest in my soul. And so it was that some weeks later, Mr. Hooke caught me unawares. I fought him with all my strength, but in the end he used me most horribly.
From that day forward, Mr. Hooke and I engaged in a terrible game of catch-me-not, as he sought to find me alone, and I worked to ensure that it never happened. But whenever Mrs. Hooke went to York, and during one terrible week when she took Richard to visit her cousins in Halifax, where could I hide? I knew that Mr. Hooke’s assaults could get me with child, and I did my best to stave it off, but eventually my monthly courses stopped. I prayed for hours on end that the Lord would not ask me to bear this burden, that my courses would return of their own accord, but He denied me. When I missed them a second and then a third time, I stopped praying, and tried to find my own answer. I couldn’t seek out a midwife, for fear she would balk at giving me the medicines I needed, but an herborist sold me some dittany, which she said would restore me.
I drank it down, but to no effect.
To hide the child growing within me, I started adding layers to my skirts and keeping a towel on my apron. I was thin enough that such a ruse would not work forever, but it would help for a time. Mr. Hooke must have noticed, but he carried on with his assaults just the same.
But the child was not the only thing growing within me. With every passing day, and with every foul usage that Mr. Hooke visited upon me, I felt hate growing alongside my child. There were nights that I dreamed that my child–a son, I decided–was hate incarnate and would be born into the world howling and gnashing like a beast. Other times I worried that my wrath would so mark the child that he would be born with a wolf’s teeth and a wolf’s appetite for blood. After a time, I noticed another change, this one in my own nature. I had always been a willful and contrary child, but now I felt my mischievousness turning to malice. I had not known this Rebecca when I was young, but welcomed her arrival, for she was well-suited for Mr. Hooke’s service. Every time he visited my bedroom and every time he summoned me to his, my wrath grew stronger and purer, as a steel blade drawn from a blacksmith’s forge. And each night as I lay in my bed I honed my rage a little more. Soon my weapon was ready. Now all I lacked was a time and place to use it.
The answer came to me when we visited York in the midst of the Assizes. For days a parade of country folk had been walking past the Hookes’ house making their way to the city. Some had business before the court, some went to sell their wares, others went to see the hangings that would surely come. Near the end of the session we joined the crowd, and I could not help staring in amazement as we passed through the city gate, for it seemed as if the number of residents had doubled since the last time I’d been there. People thronged the streets, weaving between stalls that the city’s merchants had put in front of their shops. Striped awnings rippled and snapped in the wind, filling the air with sound and color, and it seemed as if every shopkeeper in the city stood on the street crying up his wares.
With Mr. Hooke in the lead, the four of us made our way down Walmgate Bar and out the gate to St. Leonard’s Green Dykes. Once there I saw why we’d come. A gallows had been built on the green and we would watch them put it to use. We arrived early enough that Mr. Hooke was able to find us a spot on the green, and we laid a blanket on the ground. I had packed dinner and–to be truthful–we spent an entirely pleasant morning together as we waited for the hangings to begin. Victualers did a fine business, as the crowd’s appetite for blood was matched by its desire for a good meal. But the true profits were had by the ale-sellers who had carried their caskets out of the city. Full of meat and drink, the crowd was in a festive mood, and from time to time they would break into ribald song.
I do not know how anyone could tell that the time for the hanging had drawn near, but while we were in the midst of eating, the crowd started to buzz and seemed to grow threefold. There could be no mistaking that the hour had come. We all stood and peered toward Walmgate Bar, and within a few minutes two carts came through. I could hardly see the prisoners, but the hangman towered above them, his head already covered by his black mask. Members of the Town Watch cleared a path through the crowd, and soon the carts reached the gallows.
I had thought that they would proceed straight to the hangings, but while the hangman busied himself tying nooses, another figure stood on the cart and began to preach to the crowd. I could hear snatches of the sermon–words such as sin, damnation, and perdition–but the crowd soon grew restless and shouted for the hangman to get to business. When an apple flew past the minister’s head he hastily concluded his sermon and stepped down.
The first two to be hanged were notorious robbers who–according to the hangman–had committed a barbarous theft, breaking into a gentleman’s house and helping themselves to his silver plate. I did not see the barbarity in mere theft, but the crowd did not seem to mind. The condemned tried to speak, but the crowd would have none of it, and they were shouted down with even more gusto than the minister had been. The hangman turned them off their ladders, and after a few minutes of jerking back and forth both were still, the life choked out of them.
The next man to be hanged was one Henry Ash. According to the hangman, he had been convicted of raping a maiden as she traveled on the highway from York to Hull. I watched in awe as the hangman dragged Ash up the ladder, set the noose around his neck, and unceremoniously pushed him off.
I cannot adequately explain the sensation I felt at the moment the rope snapped tight. The very second that Henry Ash began to die, the child within me began to live. Miraculously, Ash’s first kick was entirely coincident with my child’s quickening, and Ash’s last moments mirrored my son’s very first. But the effect was more than this. It was not just my child who was quickened at that instant, but also my plan to escape Mr. Hooke’s ravishment and see justice done. If Henry Ash should die for the rape that he had committed on the highway, shouldn’t John Hooke die for the dozens he’d committed in his own home? Did the law stop at the Hookes’ gate?
A few more felons were hanged that afternoon, but I paid them no mind. Rather, I told the Hookes I felt unwell and slipped out of sight. I circled through the crowd and made my way to the carts where the prisoner’s bodies had been put. Henry Ash lay next to the two robbers, his face now purple, his half-lidded eyes bulging from their sockets. A well-dressed man stood next to the cart haggling with the hangman.
“I’ll give you a penny more than the last time, but that is all,” he insisted.
After a moment’s thought, the hangman
agreed, and the gentleman waved to two lads behind him. The youths stepped forward, took Ash by the arms and legs, tied him to the back of a sad-looking mule. Once their load was secure the boys led the mule toward the gate and back into the city.
I looked at the gentleman who had bought Ash’s body. He read the question in my eyes.
“I am a surgeon,” he said. “The court said I could anatomize him once the hangman was done with him.”
“Anatomize?” I asked. I thought I knew what he meant, but it seemed too terrible to be true.
“I’ll cut him open and examine him on the inside.”
I continued to stare at him. Why in God’s name would someone do such a thing?
“I’m exploring,” he announced. “With enough hangings, I’ll be able to map the muscles, sinews, and arteries of all mankind.” The surgeon’s voice rose with excitement as he spoke. “You cannot fathom the discoveries that we are making every day. The world’s greatest anatomists–Andreas Vesalius! Helkiah Crooke!–have remade the human form. We live on the edge of a world that is new and utterly unexplored. The body is a grand thing, encompassing worlds of its own. And I will discover its secrets.”
“And then what?” I asked.
The surgeon looked at me blankly. “What do you mean?”
“What will happen to his body after you’ve cut him up?”
“He’ll be buried I suppose. I hadn’t thought much of it.” He looked at the sun, which now hung just above the horizon. “I must begin my work. The brain is the first organ to rot, and I should like to have it out as soon as possible.”
With that, the surgeon turned on his heel and strode off in the same direction that the mule had taken Ash’s body.
As awful as it sounds, my body shivered with excitement at what I’d seen and heard. I felt a terrible joy that Henry Ash, a man who was joined to my own master in his depravity, would not only hang, but be subjected to the indignity of anatomization. The anatomist said that we lived on the edge of a new world, and in an instant I felt as if I had joined him on the precipice. The only question was whether I had the courage to step into the wilderness and do battle with the savages that lay in wait.
