When next she peeked at the Gladstone table, she saw the gaunt Mrs. Butler close her eyes and press her lips together. The other lady, Mrs. Crewler, shook her head, frowning, as though in denial of something.
Last summer, Olivia had barely been conceived. Morrigan had fancied herself in love with Kit. Nicky and Douglas were very much alive, and she’d been certain her tiresome daily routine would never change. How wrong she had been. She’d married, become mistress of a grand manor, given birth, and fallen under the spell of a selkie. And here she sat, at one of London’s foremost eating establishments, within speaking distance of the Prime Minister of England. Any moment now, Queen Victoria would enter and complete the scene.
“I do not understand you, Mr. Gladstone,” said Mrs. Butler as she rose. “Our cause is decent. You’ve shown an interest. We were certain you would help. This is most disappointing.”
She pressed a handkerchief to her lips. Mrs. Crewler took Mrs. Butler’s elbow and guided her from the restaurant.
Gladstone and his wife spoke in hushed voices, shaking their heads.
Whistler left soon after. Morrigan’s eyelids felt heavy as sinkers; she tried to hide a second yawn behind her hand, but Curran noticed. He instantly rose, holding her shawl for her, and they went out into the night. The lively hum of countless conversations and clink of glassware faded into the soothing drip of an earlier rain shower. London’s streets loomed dark and empty; the air felt cool and fresh.
“Shall we walk halfway?” Curran asked. “It’s a beautiful night.”
“A Whistler night,” Morrigan agreed. “I’ll wager he’s gone right back to the Thames to continue painting. Curran, how do you know these folk?”
“My father struck up many alliances during his lifetime. I merely carry on tradition. The queen, for instance, favors the portraits of my ancestor, Allan Ramsay. It’s given us something to discuss.”
She stopped. “You’ve spoken to the queen?”
“A few times, at Braemar. You’d think she would appreciate Gladstone. They’re more alike than different, but she hates him. It’s peculiar. Propriety is so important to her, and she strictly observes class distinctions. Yet at Braemar, I saw her allow her Scots ghillie all sorts of indiscretions. He spoke to her like a sailor and she simply blushed and giggled. May I smoke?” He lit a cigar at her nod. “The papers constantly lampoon them.”
“They’re lovers?”
“Who knows?”
They hailed a cab and soon arrived at Richard Donaghue’s tall white mansion.
“I’ll see to Olivia,” Morrigan said. Curran nodded and followed the sound of male voices into the smoking parlor.
The child was fast asleep, thumb hooked in her mouth. Morrigan started to her own room but as she passed the stairs, she noticed Lily welcoming a group of women in the vestibule below.
Gwyneth Osbourne was there, and behind her, Morrigan was astonished to see one of the ladies who had fled Rules after being snubbed by the Prime Minister. All were speaking at once, making it impossible to decipher anything but a word or two.
Lily spotted Morrigan as she handed a wrap to the maid. “Here is Mrs. Ramsay,” she said to the group. “Morrigan, join us, please.”
“Well,” Morrigan replied, a little unsettled by the anger she sensed. “I….” She descended the staircase hesitantly.
“Mrs. Crewler.” Lily placed her hand on the woman’s arm. “This is Mrs. Ramsay.”
“I saw you earlier tonight,” Morrigan said. “At Rules.”
The lady looked surprised. “Oh, were you there? You witnessed our humiliation, then. Josephine and I failed to accomplish anything with Mr. Gladstone. He’s spent hours on street corners, personally attempting to reform prostitutes. He established a refuge for them in Soho. I believed he would back us. This is a severe defeat.”
“Shall we, ladies?” Lily gestured to the open door of a nearby drawing room. Everyone settled into comfortable wing chairs and loveseats, with cups of tea and plates piled with their choice of biscuits, wedges of cake, or pastries.
Lily introduced the other women to Morrigan, who almost instantly forgot most of their names.
“If you ask me, it’s hypocritical,” said one, a stout matron dressed in the same shade of half-mourning as Morrigan herself wore. “Why does he not want to help?”
“If we were a group of crusading men,” Lily said, “he would have already thrown all his weight behind us.” But she waved a hand, adding, “Oh, that isn’t fair. We do have a large number of valuable male allies.”
“What do you want from the Prime Minister?” Morrigan asked.
“His endorsement,” said Gwyneth. “It would help so much if we’re to have any hope of success.”
At Morrigan’s puzzlement, Lily said to the group at large, “We have all heard how much more advanced they are about this issue in Scotland. Please, enjoy your tea while I catch her up.” As the others chatted, she said, “These women and I, and many others, are members of the Ladies National Association. We work with child prostitutes and orphans, and we’re fighting for women to be given the vote. Tonight we’re discussing the Contagious Diseases Acts. That’s a set of laws Parliament passed about ten years ago. It’s the goal of the LNA to have these laws repealed.” She added, lower, “Speaking for myself, I often feel we accomplish little more than beating our heads uselessly against the walls raised against us.” She sighed wearily. “It has been a very long battle, and we’ve made hardly a dent.”
“You want to disband laws against contagious diseases?” Morrigan shook her head, baffled.
“Yes. They are cruel, unjust, and… silly! The truth is as slimy as the bottom of the Thames. In the beginning, the Acts were only enforced in a few military towns, because the surface aim is to halt the spread of venereal disease, which obviously runs rampant among soldiers. But, much like the diseases, the laws keep spreading, engulfing more places, and ever more women.”
Lily gave Morrigan a perceptive glance. “Do you know what venereal disease is?”
Morrigan reluctantly shook her head. “Ague?” Thankful she had her fan, she employed it to cool her embarrassment. She hated being so unworldly. Once she’d been proud of having gone to school. The dominie had praised her and told her it was a shame she couldn’t attend university. She’d thought herself quite stuffed with knowledge, but since coming to London, she’d been forced to realize she actually knew very little about anything.
“Do you see?” Mrs. Crewler had overheard. She nodded at Lily, who shook her head. “She doesn’t even know what this crime is for which she could be imprisoned.”
“Don’t be ashamed,” Lily said to Morrigan. “You aren’t the only woman who has never heard of it. Most gently brought up ladies haven’t, by design. I will explain, but you must prepare yourself. It’s indelicate.”
Morrigan nodded.
“The most serious disease in question is syphilis. It is passed along somehow between couples during the act of love. It’s very bad— mortally so, in fact.”
Half-suspecting they were playing a joke on her, Morrigan glanced around at the other ladies, but every expression was somber. “And women cause it?”
“No, no.” Mrs. Crewler’s voice was slightly hoarse and her nose was red, suggesting a recent bout with illness. “I suspect it is quite the opposite, though I keep that opinion to myself, for we need the good will of men. Only women are held to blame, which is a different thing altogether.”
“No woman is safe any longer,” said one of the other ladies, dressed in muted beige. “No woman, except perhaps the queen herself, and her daughters. Any of us can be arrested with impunity and coerced into the most humiliating physical examination you can imagine. We can be locked away on a doctor’s say-so, against our will, without warning, and kept imprisoned for as long as they decide, undergoing their forced treatments.”
“But why would they do that?” Morrigan asked. Inside, she wondered, What is this disease? Do all women have it? Do I have i
t?
“You must understand,” Lily said. “Men are not held accountable in the slightest measure. They are never locked away, infected or not. They are never examined or questioned. We did everything we could during the last Royal Commission to rectify this injustice, but they would not listen. They stubbornly cling to the idea, whether they actually believe it or not, that ladies of the night alone cause these diseases, and that controlling and locking up the women— alone— will solve the problem. At first, years ago, it was the intent to examine and treat the soldiers as well, and had they done so, they might have accomplished something. But the men protested and refused, and so that side of the matter was simply dropped.”
“Ladies of the night…” Morrigan said. “You mean… fallen women.”
“Oh, I didn’t make that clear, did I?” Lily said. “Yes. I mean prostitutes.”
“You would think our learned governors would be wise enough to perceive that all who engage in these unsavory pastimes play an equal part in spreading the diseases,” the woman in half-mourning said. “My husband says that when both are infected, either one will give it to the next person they are intimate with, including their wives. He is a physician,” she added with some pride, “specializing in women’s ailments. He is not afraid to support us.”
“If men were suddenly subjected to such examinations,” said one of the others, “you can be certain these laws would be instantly repealed. Instead, they claim that prostitution is a necessary part of a soldier’s life. They do nothing to one half of the equation, and treat the other half like little more than animals or slaves. The prostitutes are condemned as degraded human beings with no rights, evil in fact for what they do, while the men are allowed to believe their use of a prostitute is completely natural. Ah, it irks Josephine to no end, no end!”
Morrigan thought of beloved Diorbhail and her sad-faced daughter. Stranraer’s righteous populace had vilified them. No one had been punished for the child’s murder. And she hadn’t been a prostitute. Simply being called one was enough to cast her into a wasteland where anything could be done without repercussion.
Lily went on. “The laws began as a way to inspect and restrain only those who were infected. But they have expanded to a fearful degree. Now policemen walk around in anonymous clothing, granted complete authority to apprehend any female they wish, because according to them, every woman who steps outside her home might be a prostitute.”
“It would be so easy to falsely accuse an innocent woman, just to make her suffer for some slight or rejection,” said the lady in beige. “And I am quite sure that has happened.”
“But it isn’t only the wrongdoing towards decent wives and daughters that appalls us,” Mrs. Crewler said. “This is just as despicable when it’s done to a prostitute— to any person in a supposedly free society.”
A woman who had been quiet spoke up. “But the stories of what’s done to decent women and children will have the most impact.” She was young and pretty, with thick blonde hair and blue eyes, but they were unquiet, and her hands trembled.
“Tell her, Honoria,” Lily said, gently.
The lady set her teacup on a table and placed her hands on her lap. “I grew up in Portsmouth,” she said. “When I was fourteen, my mother gave me a shilling and sent me off to purchase thread. The police surrounded me as I was entering the dressmaker’s. They asked me questions I… I had no answer for. They bound my wrists and made me go with them to a nearby building, where they laced me into a straitjacket and… and performed this examination of theirs. I cannot describe it. I cannot tell you.”
Mrs. Crewler rose and crossed to the girl, who had begun to weep. She said, over her shoulder, “She should have been taken to a magistrate, who might have had the intelligence to see she was no prostitute, but that part of the law is often ignored. In Honoria’s case, one of the policemen who arrested her has been suspected of other crimes against women.”
“They restrain the woman on a table,” Lily said, low. “They clamp her legs apart, making her absolutely helpless. Then they examine her with instruments, looking for symptoms of disease. In Miss Collins’s situation— Honoria’s— they discovered, of course, that she was innocent, a virgin. She was given a few shillings, a bribe, to keep her quiet. She has never recovered, though four years have passed. Her parents cannot convince her to have a season. Instead she has committed herself to our cause.”
Morrigan opened her mouth but couldn’t speak. The story brought back in horrible clarity what had happened when she’d taken witch’s cap. She heard the grate of the rope through the pulley, felt the leather straps tightening on her legs, the cold iron and sharp prongs of that nameless device Heinrich Baten had shoved into her.
She almost felt it now, tearing and stretching. Sweat broke out on her palms and temples. Hoping to conquer the vertigo swirling behind her eyes, she took several deep breaths.
“There are many other stories. I have heard of women having cloth shoved into their throats to stifle their screams, and I know of at least one woman who killed herself after being examined. It is rape, no matter what lofty medical name they give it.”
Last August, Morrigan and Louis Stevenson sat on the ground by the pond near the Wren’s Egg. She had asked him, Why do folk hate weans who have no say in being born? Hate women who mean no harm?
But of course, those who wrote these laws did believe women meant harm. Maybe they were right.
“Didn’t Ramsay tell you?” Lily met Morrigan’s gaze with cool composure. “I come from Windmill Street. I was nothing so fine as a member of the demimonde. I was a whore who gave myself to men in alleys for the price of bread. My mother was strangled by a drunken stevedore. I never knew my father. London teems with such children. There isn’t much they can do to survive but sell their bodies. It’s the only thing they own. I was twelve when I sold myself the first time— old by some measures. Imagine your Olivia, accidentally separated from you in the street. She could be snapped up before you could find her and carted off to a brothel. There, men might offer a hundred pounds or more for the privilege of being the first to have her. This fair city boasts many such places.”
Morrigan’s teacup fell as though in a dream. Tea splashed over Lily’s slippers and the carpet. “Oh! I’m sorry,” she cried, seizing a napkin to wipe at the spill.
“Leave it.” Lily grabbed Morrigan’s hand. “That was cruel of me. I wanted you to feel it as I do, but I should not have used Olivia as an example. Forgive me, cara mia.”
“I didn’t realize.”
“Of course you didn’t. Who knows where I would be now, if not for Donaghue? Prostitutes, contrary to popular moral sentiment, are people. If they could conjure another way to put food in their stomachs, they would do it. Each morning my first thought is to thank God for Richard— Richard is my god, really. He’s suffered abuse for being my champion, yet he shrugs it off. He’s even had to give up his dream of having children, for I cannot conceive, probably due to one disease or another I had when I was on the streets.”
“Lily….”
She smiled sadly. “He is the dearest man, along with your husband. Donaghue has a saying for those who chastise him: advienne que pourra. ‘Happen what may.’ You cannot fathom the depth of what that means to me, the knowledge that he will always stand by me.”
“I thought you a born aristocrat.”
Lily laughed. “Truly? I don’t fool many so easily. Does this change your opinion of me? Can we still be friends?”
There was the barest hint of forlorn resignation in her voice, making Morrigan wonder how many others called “friend” had abandoned her.
Morrigan again saw Diorbhail’s face. I love you, she’d said. I’d die for you.
She put out her hand to cover Lily’s. “Je t’aime,” she said ardently. “Crevettes et toujours.”
“Très bien.” Lily tried to stifle a smile. “I’m not sure about the reference to shrimps, though, darling.”
“Bloody hell!” Morr
igan cried, before remembering where she was. She asked their pardon, adding to Lily, “I should give up trying to learn that language.”
Lily brushed at her eyes and leaned closer. “I treasure your friendship too,” she said. “Aujourd’hui et toujours.” She pressed her cheek to Morrigan’s.
Morrigan felt the wetness of her hostess’s tears and experienced an instant of enraptured fulfillment. Romance was fine and exciting, but nothing satisfied as much as being understood, or being able to give one’s trust and know it would never be betrayed.
Lily sat up and smiled mistily. “Miss Collins and I have opened two homes for orphans,” she said. “We feed and clothe about three hundred children a year, and we have several ladies who teach them various ways of earning money so they don’t have to resort to selling themselves.”
“How do you pay for it?” Morrigan asked.
“Investors. Donaghue contributes of course, and he has brought in others from his club. Miss Collins has a brother who is set to inherit. He also makes generous contributions.” She smiled again. “I can see you did not know your husband is one of our investors. It’s so like him, to keep his good works quiet.”
Morrigan pondered all this as Lily returned her attention to the others and revisited the business of the evening. “So. Gladstone will not help. Does Josephine have another plan up her sleeve?”
Mrs. Crewler bunched her handkerchief in a fist. “She never loses heart. She will probably dash off another colorful speech, and rally a thousand new recruits to the cause. I wish I had her optimism. I confess I often feel we are mere objects of ridicule, a pitiful band of women shouting into the darkness, ignored or laughed at by those we must persuade.”
“Why has this been done?” Morrigan asked quietly.
“Men create regulations to benefit themselves,” Lily said. “You are aware that Ramsay enjoys complete legal authority over you and Olivia? You are his property, though he might never intimate such a thing. Were he so inclined, he could take Olivia from you, using almost any reason, and you would have very few legal means to fight him. This is what happens when women are excluded from lawmaking and the vote.”
The Sixth Labyrinth (The Child of the Erinyes Book 4) Page 67
