by Ian Mortimer
She notices my attention, and sees that I need help. She points to the wool basket and holds her hands apart to show me how much wool I need. Taking a piece of her own yarn, she shows me how to tie the wool on to the spindle, demonstrating how to pull the yarn through the hole, and wind the unspun wool around it. She points to the foot mechanism for making the wheel rotate. My first attempt is unsuccessful: I get the tension wrong, and the yarn breaks. She touches my hand and shows me how to twist the wool back in, as if there were no break. After a while she leaves me to continue and returns to her own spinning.
I work badly, half attending to what my clumsy hands are meant to be doing and half looking at her, pretending to be studying her skill. In truth, I am struggling to come to terms with the fact I am sitting next to a ghost who is more alive than I am.
People come and go around us, collecting wool, carrying spindles to the pile at the end of the room. All the time there is a rattling of the foot-levers turning the wheels, and a creaking of the machines. No one talks to us. Neither Hettie nor Rose seeks to communicate with me beyond what is necessary for the work. But Mister Rogers and his colleague walk through the hall, inspecting our diligence.
As the last light fades and we strain our eyes in the candlelight, the yarn on my spindle grows into a swollen bulb of thread. I take it to where Rose and Hettie leave their spindles, take another empty one and return to my seat. Rose shows me how to fit the spindle into the machine. I hardly breathe as her body comes close to mine; if I were to smell the aroma of Catherine’s body on her too, I know it would pull hard at my feelings. When I do inhale, her smell is sufficient to confirm and amplify the closeness. She sits back, and once again we start spinning.
My hands fumble, the futility of my task making me a slow learner. I pause regularly. Why am I working for the people who are about to flog me? Where is the goodness in this? Does the acceptance of persecution amount to doing a good work, as I believed it did when I helped break stone at Watern Tor? One look at Catherine, however, and my heart is touched. There is nowhere else I want to be. Even though she does not recognise me, and even though she is just fourteen, I know her kindness, and I know that her kindness is the only kindness I have come across in this whole city.
Suddenly I hear a voice behind me. ‘Why are you dawdling?’
I turn. In the dimness between the glow of the candles I see a man in his early forties, with dark hair, a low forehead and a cold expression. His face is long and his chin even longer, so he reminds me of a horse, and there is an abnormally large gap between his upper lip and his nose, which is covered with hair. His black tunic is like that worn by Mister Pethybridge.
‘I said, “Why are you dawdling?” nocky boy.’
I say nothing.
‘You’re the new one – the one we’re going to give twenty lashes to, aren’t you?’
I turn back to my machine, repelled by the sight of him. I glance to my right. Rose’s shoulders are tensed together, with her arms clasped over her breasts. The wheel of her machine has stopped. She is staring downwards.
‘And why have you stopped spinning, my rum-princess?’ he says, turning to her. ‘Are you cold?’ He grabs her shoulders and shakes her, then leans over, and forces her arms apart, so he can clutch her breasts in his hands. ‘I’ll warm you up handsomely. You’re certainly my favourite – because you never complain.’
I watch his lank hair falling down over the side of her face as he bends forward to kiss her neck.
He notices, and turns towards me. ‘What are you staring at?’
Again, I say nothing.
‘Are you as dumb as this doxy?’
And then there is a locking of our eyes on each other, and the acknowledgement of disgust. I stare at the veins in his neck, the slightly flared nostrils and the cruel mouth. One of his front teeth is missing.
He turns back to Rose, and runs his finger slowly down the side of her neck. She flinches again, but does not drive him off.
I feel sickened and angry. But striking him now will not help her.
‘Be good, my Rose, be careful with your thorns,’ he says, twisting a lock of her hair between his fingers and pulling it, drawing her head back. Then, suddenly, he lets go of her. He is looking at my hand. ‘That ring, give it to me.’
I lean forward and start the wheel on my machine revolving.
‘I said, “Give it to me.” ’
I shake my head.
He spits on the floor and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. ‘That’s it. Keep on spinning, nocky boy,’ he says in a different tone of voice. I hear slow footsteps and another man approaching. Rose’s molester leans over me and whispers aloud, ‘If you don’t give it to me when we whip you, I am going to cut it off your bloody finger.’
With those words, he strides away down the hall.
‘What is that man’s name?’ I say, watching him go.
‘Michael Kinner,’ answers Hettie, as Rose just stares at her lap. ‘The way he handles Rose, it makes yer want to shit through yer teeth. He does it to all the young ones. He’ll have your ring too. I heard what he said. He doesn’t make idle threats.’
‘Why does no one report him to Mister Pethybridge?’
‘They’re all at it. As long as there are enough bobbins in that pile by the door at the end of the day, no one will say the warders are doing anything but a good job.’
‘Why not leave?’
Hettie glances at me while she spins. ‘I’ve nowhere else to go. As for Rose, she’s an orphan, and stuck here until she’s twenty-one – unless her next of kin come to take her away, or the mayor orders it.’
‘Then . . . is there not something that discourages the wardens?’
‘The only thing they’re scared of is the pox.’
‘The pox?’
‘The young ones are less likely to be diseased.’
I see that Rose still has not started working her wheel again. It is not the cold that makes her shiver. I reach out and put my hand on her shoulder, to reassure her. She flinches away.
‘I am sorry.’
She does not respond.
I turn back to Hettie. ‘Is it common, this pox?’
She gives a mock-laugh. ‘Common? Where’ve you been? If it was any more common we’d all have it. How many of those silver-wigged men have lost their hair because of mercury treatment? How many of the fine ladies you see in the street wearing long gloves and high-necked dresses have hands blotched with red sores and backs pock-marked with the signs of the disease? Every whore in England must be carrying it, and thus every man of wayward enterprise, and thus every wife.’
A bell rings. All through the hall, the wheels stop, the rattling stops, and the tone of a hundred conversations starts to rise. ‘That’ll be supper,’ says Hettie, getting up, letting her machine slow to a standstill.
The workers file out of the hall. Rose nudges me and points to the door. Slowly we all shuffle into the dim corridor. At the foot of a staircase we are joined by another crowd coming down from upstairs. In this larger group we move through to a stone-floored dining hall. It smells of rotten vegetables. There are candles to illuminate the room but no more than two or three on each long table. Children run around their mothers’ skirts in the shadows. I cannot see the ceiling: it is lost in the darkness. I follow Rose’s example in taking a wooden platter from a pile and queuing up for the small piece of cheese and the hunk of bread that we are allotted, and the mug containing a pint of beer. We sit side by side on a bench, in the darkness between two candles.
As I pick up my mug, two men make their way between the tables.
‘On your feet, Simonson. Leave your drink and come with us.’
I take a deep breath and get up, pushing my food and beer in front of Rose. Mister Kinner spins his knife in his hand and catches it by the handle, and then points with it, directing me to follow Mister Pethybridge. ‘Good thinking. You’re about to lose yer appetite.’
The moon is in its last quarter: a semi-c
ircle of silver light low in the sky. Two flaming torches are set in tall brackets in the ground. Mister Rogers is waiting beside the whipping post, together with his unpleasant-looking colleague. Their faces gleam in the light. Mister Kinner and Mister Pethybridge seize me and manhandle me up to the post, locking my wrists into iron bracelets at the top, so that my arms are forced to hug the wood. One of them threads a lace around my neck and tightens it, drawing my cheek against the oak. How many unfortunates have been forced to kiss this same dull timber. Someone tries to pull William’s garnet ring from my finger but I make a fist with my hand and do not let him. I catch a glimpse of Mister Kinner glancing at Mister Pethybridge. Without a word, he takes his knife and stabs the back of my hand. I feel a surge of pain and cry out; I cannot stop him spreading out my fingers, holding my hand flat by pushing the knife against the post. Twisting the ring, he draws it from my finger. Then he pulls the knife out of my hand and uses it to cut the tunic, jacket and shirt off my back, tearing off the sleeves and leaving me half-naked and shivering.
When the first lash strikes my back it feels as though the leather of the whip sticks and lifts the skin away from my body. With the second I hear the breath in my lungs suddenly forced out of me. The third and fourth come so close together that I know there are two men flogging me, one on either side. I bite my lip and close my eyes. Soon the repeated strokes have ripped so much skin that each lash is worse than the one before. And then they start delaying them, so that I fear the stroke as well as feel the pain. After fifteen, each one is beyond agony. At twenty, they pause. I can hear them panting. I taste the blood where I have bitten my lip. And then comes another flesh-ripping lash. And another. I know they want me to complain – so they can punish me more. So I say nothing. But not knowing how many more blows I might receive makes every one of them worse.
I see Michael Kinner’s face, mouth open. ‘You know what that was for?’
I cannot speak.
‘You know what those extra ten lashes were for, nocky boy?’
‘What?’
‘They were for nothing. So just try something. Next time I’ll beat you until there’s no skin left.’
There is a moment’s pause and I feel a pail of freezing water suddenly thrown over my back. But it is not water, it is brine – and the salt jabs its clawlike sting into my skin as Mister Pethybridge unlocks my wrists. I cry out, gasping, and crouch down, but the tension in my back as I lean over makes the skin tear further.
‘Stop your moaning,’ he says. ‘The woman we beat yesterday took thirty lashes better than you.’
I turn and walk slowly back to the door.
‘Pick up your clothes,’ shouts Mister Pethybridge.
I return to the whipping post and pick up the torn scraps of cloth with my left hand. Bundling them together, I carry them inside, my whole back pierced and burning, and my right hand skewered with pain.
In the candlelit dining hall, I see a few people in the shadows. Most have left. I sit on a bench, still holding the clothes, and I stare into space.
Other inmates look at me. No one comes close.
I look at my cut hand, and the empty ring finger. It is like another lash. The worst.
I think of Catherine. The one thing that I treasure, my memory, is what causes me pain. I try to stop remembering and try to think of mercy, but the very idea seems like a delusion.
‘Man is a devil to man,’ I whisper to myself, rocking to and fro, clutching my cut-up clothes. ‘Homo homini daemon.’
So absorbed am I in this thought that I do not notice the figure approaching. Only when she waves her hand in front of my eyes do I realise there is someone there. I look up, startled. At first I see Catherine’s face. Then I realise it is Rose. She is holding some bread and cheese – my supper – and offering it. She kept it for me. I thank her with a smile, and put my old clothes down on the bench. Taking the cheese, I break it and pass half of it back to her. She declines, holding up her hands, but I press it on her, and she accepts.
I put my piece of cheese in my mouth, and savour it. It tastes of kindness. If all the world were to turn bad, and everyone were to be touched by evil, just one good act would restore my hope in mankind.
I let her eat the bread. I have no stomach for it. I am shivering with cold and the pain of the beating. The only good I can think of is her presence.
I ask her where she is from.
She points at the ground, then holds her hand flat at a low height.
‘You’ve been living here since childhood?’
She nods.
‘Will you ever leave?’
She nods, vigorously.
‘Is it always as bad here as it seems today?’
Again she nods, slowly, and makes the gesture of the whip. Then, with her right hand, she squeezes her left breast and points back to the door.
‘Listen, Rose. In the parish of Dunsford, which is only five miles or so to the west of here, there stands a very out-of-the-way house called Halstow. The farmer there is a good man, as far as I can tell, called Hodges. He has daughters and a maidservant, Kitty, who is kind, but he has need of another maidservant. They’d look after you, if you were to run away and go there.’
She shrugs. Her face is in shadows, staring into the dark corner of the dining hall.
‘Do you remember your parents?’
She shrugs again.
‘Brother? Sister?’
She shakes her head.
I start to tell her about William, for no other reason than the companionship of talking to her. She watches me as I tell her about how he was caught with a crucifix that had belonged to me, and coins that had the Pope’s head on them. I get as far as telling her that my sentence had been to act as his executioner, and how he had given me his ring.
We both look at my cut hand and my bare finger.
With a quick look around to see who is watching, she makes the sign of the cross.
I smile at her. And as I do, she smiles at me. The most beautiful smile.
A bell rings out, and she rests her face on the pillow of her hands.
We leave the dining hall and walk to the stairs. Here there are no candles but many other people, and we merge into the group in darkness. I still have my cut-up tunic, held in a bundle before me. I cry out when someone bumps into my raw back, and thereafter try to walk along near the wall. Soon Rose is lost to me. On the first floor I sense the men moving in the direction of a candle at the end of the corridor, while the women walk up another flight of stairs to the attics. No one speaks. I follow the men into a dormitory. There is a single small light burning in here. I can just make out the mattresses on the floor, and the blankets. Not knowing who is sleeping where, I leave the others to take their places. I finally lay my rags on the floorboards near the door, and lie on top of them, face down.
In the hours that follow I think of William turning his face upwards to God and resigning his life, without saying another word. And of Rose, making the sign of the cross.
I wonder what tomorrow will be like – whether the punishments of the landless and destitute will be even worse, and the haughtiness of the wealthy even greater.
I recall little Lazarus, burning on the fire. I think of the baby, the plague marks, the flames and Susannah’s scream. William once said that he was seeing his life passing before his eyes. These last days of my life – I do not wish to see them again.
I drowse, and wake with the pain of my lashed back and the cut in my right hand. But something else has woken me: the sound of a woman’s scream. I hear other yells of alarm, upstairs.
People stir uneasily around me but they do not get up, even though there are many women shouting now. I rise and go to the door, but there is no latch, only a handle. It doesn’t open.
‘Door’s locked,’ someone says nearby.
‘Do you not care what is happening up there?’
‘Go back to bed.’
I pull the door again. I hit it with my left hand to see how solid it
is. It is hollow, made of two panels set into frame. I tap at one with my boot: it feels solid enough, so I test it with a hard kick. Something cracks but the panel does not give.
‘Get back to your bed,’ urges a voice in the darkness. ‘Do you want Kinner and Pethybridge coming in here with their batons?’
‘They’ll thrash you for a disturbance,’ says another.
There is still more shouting from upstairs, and the sounds of a man yelling at the women, and someone screaming. I give the door another hard kick, and something splinters. I kick it again, harder. The door pane is too strong but the door frame is coming away from the wall, which is not stone but merely a partition. After ten kicks, I lurch forward as it gives way to my boot, and I find myself on the dark landing.
A hurrying lantern appears further along the corridor, throwing a little light against the walls and ceiling. The bearer pauses, as if uncertain about his direction. He decides to go upstairs. I hasten after him, hearing the sound of women crying and shouting.
There are figures in the shadows, flitting this way and that along the corridor. All around there are people speaking hastily in whispers. The lantern enters a dormitory and I follow, pushing past the women, feeling children passing between us, and trampling over mattresses to get to the source of the commotion. There is a second light at the far end. Some women inadvertently touch my back and cause me to flinch with pain, but the agony acts as a sharp reminder of how much I hate the men who run this workhouse.
‘What has happened?’ I ask. ‘Tell me what has happened.’
‘Someone’s stabbed Mister Kinner,’ replies a female voice. ‘She stabbed him in the heart with a spindle.’
‘Be quiet, or I’ll have you all flogged,’ shouts a man at the far end of the dormitory. ‘Ah, thank goodness, Mister Rogers,’ he says when the man I followed approaches him. ‘Look what one of the bitches has done.’
‘She got that bastard Turner in the throat,’ hisses a second woman to my side.
‘No more than what he deserved.’
‘She’ll be hanged, poor mite.’
