by Jean Plaidy
The guard laughed softly, wickedly. He gave all three a push, Kitty first; Millie next; then Carolan.
“There you are, my beauties! New lady friends to join you!” What a queer silence it had been! Tense and dramatic! Then, from somewhere among that crowd of sub-human creatures there came a wail that was like a battle-cry. One creature, a head taller than the others, came swinging towards the newcomers. She was hideous; she was something Carolan had dreamed of in the days of childhood at Haredon. A nightmare… something that lurked in the darkness. She laid filthy hands on Kitty.
“Garnish!” she muttered.
“Now, lady, pay up and be cheerful!”
“Listen!” shouted Carolan.
“We have no money!”
The woman was pulling at Kitty’s cloak; and watching, while a red mist swam before her eyes, Carolan remembered now that as she lay back only partly conscious in the van which had brought them to Newgate, Jonathan Crew had leaned forward and taken the sapphire brooch from her mother’s dress.
Kitty screamed. There was the sound of tearing cloth. Carolan tried to get to her, but she was surrounded.
A face close to Carolan’s, a face with yellow fangs in a mouth through which came the foulest of breath, chanted “Garnish!” And the rest of them took up the cry till it was like a barbaric chant echoing through the place.
Carolan tried to repeat that if it was money they wanted, neither she nor her mother had any; but she could say nothing. She saw Kitty go down; she fought them as desperately as she could. She hit out at the yellow fangs, and the things swayed and fell before her. She turned, her eyes blazing, and saw Millie laying about her with a strength that was astounding. For these creatures, these ugly, gaunt things that inhabited this vile underworld, had not much strength left in them; their poor stinking bodies were lacking in vitality. Carolan and Millie were young and strong; it was only Kitty who had gone down before them. They fell back from Carolan. They were falling back from Millie. There was the big woman, who had started it, facing her now, and she fought but half-heartedly, for her thoughts were with Kitty, that easier victim, who lay on the floor with a crowd round her stripping her of her clothes. But whereas the thought of Kitty weakened her opponent, it strengthened Carolan. She gave the woman a blow which sent her sprawling against the slimy wall; she clutched at it for a moment, then her eyes slewed round to where Kitty lay. She got up and, looking over her shoulder to see if Carolan followed her, she loped over to the crowd round Kitty.
Carolan was there as quickly as she was. Millie came leaping up, her eyes ablaze with the light of battle won, alive as she had never seemed to be before.
“Get away!” cried Carolan.
“All of you!”
She seized a woman by the shoulder, and part of a dirty shift came away in her hands. The woman wore nothing but the shift; beneath, her skin was rough with gooseflesh where the dirt allowed it to be seen. Her breasts were full, and it was obvious that she was a nursing mother. Carolan felt sick.
Someone tittered, and in a second the crowd had dispersed, leaving Kitty there, stark naked, her eyes tightly shut, and blood running from her mouth.
Carolan’s eyes were blinded with tears of rage. She wondered what she could take off to cover Kitty, for her own garments now hung upon her in ribbons. Millie plucked at her arm and pointed to a corner where a big woman was squatting with Kitty’s cloak wrapped round her.
Carolan, too angry to feel any fear, strode over to the woman. Eyes followed her; jeers escaped from the lips of many.
“A fight!” said one.
“A fight between Poll and a lady of the quality what’s come to stay a while!”
But Poll quailed before the wrath of Carolan. Poll, after a year in Newgate, knew the weakness of her body when matched against one well-fed; when the girl had a month in the place, she would get the cloak back again; she would half kill her for this night; but in the meantime it would be better to hand over the cloak.
She took it from her shivering body and threw it from her. Carolan picked it up and ran back to Kitty, put the cloak about her, and then, turning away, was violently sick.
She thought of all this as she lay there, and as she was wide awake now, she was fully aware that this was no evil dream.
Yesterday this place had been only a name to her; she had heard whispers of its horrors, but had she ever really believed them?
Had she ever bothered to inquire what happened to people who were brought here, some of them as innocent as she was herself?
She closed her eyes and saw the face of Marcus clearly. Some time-she did not remember when-he had said to her: “It is a mistake not to be interested in your fellow men!” Was it? she wondered. Was it better to have known nothing of this, so that when ill chance brought her here it should find her bewildered and unprepared? But. she thought, had I known of it I should never have been at peace. I shall always, at a moment’s notice, be able to call up this frightful stench and remember Newgate.
She raised herself with an effort and leaned over Kitty. The faint light from a whale-oil lamp on the high window-sill showed her vaguely the outline of Kitty’s face.
“Mammal’ she whispered.
“Mamma!”
There was no reply. She put her hand on Kitty’s heart; it was fluttering feebly.
There was a movement close to her, and turning sharply, filled with suspicion, for it seemed to her that all were her enemies in this evil place, but Kitty and Millie, she saw a shape rise up close beside her. She stared. It was a girl, and all she wore was a bit of rag wound about her like a loin-cloth. The light was dim, but Carolan could see a youthful, shapely outline and a mass of waving hair.
Carolan sprang to her feet with an effort, her fists clenched, anger, which now came so easily, rising within her.
“Please,” said a voice that was neither strident nor cruel, but gentle and cultured.
“I… I would like to talk to you.” The girl sat down: there was something so disarming about her that Carolan’s suspicions gave way to curiosity.
“What do you want?” she asked ungraciously.
“Only to talk to you. Is… she… your mother?”
“Yes.”
“Poor soul. She is of gentle birth, I see. This must have been horrible… horrible… for her!”
“Yes,” said Carolan and moved closet to the girl.
“Have you no clothes?”
“No. They took them. I could not pay garnish. Besides…”
“Are you not cold?”
“At first I was very cold; you do not feel it so much after a while.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I do not know for certain. As far as I can calculate about a month.”
Carolan shivered.
“How do you endure it?”
“God helps me,” said the girl.
“He gives me wonderful comfort.”
“Comfort?” said Carolan.
“Spiritual comfort.”
Carolan laughed bitterly.
“I will give you more than spiritual comfort. I with give you my petticoat.”
The girl did not answer and Carolan moved closet to her.
“Did you heat me say I would give you my petticoat?”
The girl was weeping softly.
Carolan, tactless, impulsive, and ready to suspect all, said harshly: “Now what does this mean? You are happy when you are given comfort which is cold, hunger and other frightful things I have yet to discover, but the offer of a petticoat sets you weeping!”
“Forgive me!” whispered the girl.
“It is so long since anyone has been kind.”
Now Carolan was ashamed, for she saw that the girl was very frail. She stood up, slipped off her tattered dress and the petticoat beneath.
“There!” she said in an outburst of generosity.
“You have the dress; the petticoat will cover me.”
“I cannot take either.” said the girl.
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br /> “You are a fool; you will freeze to death!”
“Yes,” said the girl slowly, ‘in the winter, if I am still here, I shall freeze to death. I shall not be the first.”
“You may not be here,” said Carolan, her spirits rising through contact with someone more wretched than herself, new strength coming to her at the sight of another’s weakness. There is no point in freezing to death before winter!” The girl put out eager fingers and stroked the petticoat.
“If I had it.” she said, ‘they would have if off me tomorrow. I saw the way you stood up to them; you were magnificent; I cannot tell you how I admired you. You got strength from God.”
“No,” said Carolan, ‘from a more reliable ally anger!” The girl caught her breath, and folded her arms across her bare breasts. She looked, thought Carolan, like a saint, and felt humbled and feigned anger to hide her shame.
“Now do not be so foolish,” she said.
“Put on this petticoat at once. And if they try to take it from you tomorrow, they will have me to deal with.”
The girl raised her eyes to the oil lamp, and Carolan saw that she was beautiful.
“I prayed this day for a miracle,” she said.
“I believe it.has come.”
“Rubbish!” said Carolan.
“And if you think that my coming with my mother and our poor serving-maid to this hell is a miracle, I can tell you we do not look on it as such. There, are you warmer?”
The girl looked up at her shyly, for Carolan was several inches taller.
“How kind you are!” she said.
“It is wicked of me to be glad you have come to this dreadful place, but I cannot help it.”
Carolan was happier then than she had been since that nightmare moment when she had stood on the threshold of the shop parlour and seen her father lying on the floor.
There is not much warmth in that petticoat, I fear,” said Carolan.
“There is a good deal of warmth in it. And will you really let me keep it? And will you stop them from taking it from me?”
“I will!” said Carolan.
“Sit down beside me.”
“I… I am unfit to sit too close.”
“Come close.” commanded Carolan.
“Is there nothing we can do for your mother?”
“What can we do? I would bathe the blood from her face, but there is no water. I would like a little spirit to revive her, but where can I get it?”
“You cannot get these things if you have no money. Have you friends … outside?”
Carolan said: “Certainly I have friends friends who will see that justice is done. But they are far away in the country. I must get a message to them.”
“How will you get a message to them without money?”
Carolan said in a frustrated tone: “Do not let us speak of my distressing affairs! Tell me of yours; what is your name?”
“Esther March. What is yours?”
“Carolan Haredon.”
“May I call you Carolan?”
“Of course!”
“Why are you here, Carolan?”
“On a false charge,” burst out Carolan.
“I would not have believed there was such wickedness in the world!”
Esther touched Carolan’s shoulders timidly, “Do not despair.”
Despair!” cried Carolan angrily.
“How can one but despair of this wicked place; in the country it was so different …” She stopped. Was it so different? She thought of Jim Bennett, the farm labourer who had stolen a rabbit from Squire Haredon’s fields. What had happened to him? She had heard vague talk of fourteen years … Transportation of course; there had seemed nothing unusual about that; she had not given the matter a thought. There was a sob in her throat now.
“I have been blind,” she said.
“Blind!” She cried out: “Do not talk of me! Later I will tell you; but now I would hear of you. What brought you here? You stole nothing! You did no crime!”
“It is good of you to believe that, and even before I have said a word.”
“I am no fool!” said Carolan, and laughed inwardly at herself, for was she not the biggest, the most easily duped of all fools who had ever led themselves and others to destruction!
“I would like to tell you of myself,” said Esther.
“It is an ordinary enough little story, I fear. My father was a curate, and we were very, very poor. There were six of us. But he taught me, and when I was sixteen I was given a post as governess in the family of a squire… and the squire had a son.” She looked down at her hands, and Carolan was aware of the deep shame that beset her.
“He … made advances … which I could not accept, and that made him very angry. I did not know what to do, and I sought the protection of his parents. They did not believe me … and when the squire’s lady lost a valuable ring she accused me … and the ring was found in my room, and I was brought here. But I swear I knew nothing of the ring!”
“But did you not explain?”
The ring was found in my room.”
“She put it there that wicked mother of a wicked son! Oh, how I hate this world!”
“Whom the Lord loveth He chasreneth. We must bear our sufferings with fortitude. That is what my father used to say. They were sent us for a purpose. We must be meek, for it is the meek who inherit the earth.”
“That is a doctrine I will never accept. I will tell you something; I am going to marry a man who is a parson.”
“Oh!” Esther exclaimed with delight.
“I am glad … Carolan.”
“But,” said Carolan, ‘there are matters on which we cannot agree. I do not think we should accept our sufferings and the sufferings of others. Everard and I almost quarrelled about that. He said I was headstrong, illogical. He believes that people should be contented with their lot in life because that lot has fallen to them through God’s will. I do not! I never will!”
“Godliness,” said Esther, ‘is humility!”
“Then I’ll have none of it!” cried Carolan.
“When I think of what has happened to me … and my poor darling Mamma … and Millie there … and what has happened to you, I want to set faggots in this place, and pour oil on them, and I want to see this evil place go up in smoke. And yes … I would throw Jonathan Crew, who betrayed my father, into the flames … and with him your wicked squire’s son and his mother …”
“Ah, Carolan, you must not say such things, for truly it is the will of God that we are here.”
“Since you are obviously a saint, you had better steer clear of me.” said Carolan.
“I love the fire in you. It warms me. And I am so cold, so lonely and so frightened! I am wicked too, for I have had more comfort from your presence than from my prayers. There! That shows how wicked I am, does it not? Are you crying too? We must not cry, Carolan. This is our cross, and we must bear it. You see, I who have been so wretched, Carolan have had my prayers answered. I have now a friend, someone who talks to me, listens to me, who doesn’t laugh at me, who does not pinch me and kick me and scratch me, who gives me clothes to covet me.”
“Why did they take your clothes … all your clothes?” demanded Carolan. The others have some rags to cover them.”
“When I came in,” said Esther, ‘they cried at me, as they do to all, “Garnish!” I had no garnish. I had nothing … nothing but the clothes in which I stood. What could I do, therefore? They tore them from me as they did from your mother. But they left me my shift. And that night I knelt down and prayed, because my father has always said to me, “Never mind where you are, whatever you are doing, you must always kneel down and say your prayers.” I always had; and I did. And as I prayed they crept closer to me. Carolan, I am so feeble; I have no godliness in me, though I try to be good like my father. I knelt over there; you see, near the sill there. Through my closed lids I was aware of the flickering light from the whale oil lamp, and, Carolan, I tried so hard to go on with my prayers and
not notice them. But I was afraid; I was more afraid than I had ever been before in the whole of my life. I could feel them creeping up to me; I did not know what they would do to me. I could smell their mingled breaths very close to me, and it was horrible, horrible, Carolan. You who are so brave could have no idea. Closer, they came; they were all round me; then one of them laughed. It was terrible laughter, Carolan. I trembled; I stopped praying; I covered my face with my hands, for I knew that the most terrible moment I had ever known was upon me. There I knelt in my shift, saying under my breath, as my father had taught me, “Courage, O Lord; give me courage!” Then they started.” She stopped, and covered her face with her hands; she began to sob.
“Silence there.” snarled a drunken voice in the darkness.
Carolan whispered: “Don’t cry. Don’t think of it telling it brings it back.”
“But I want to talk to you. I have talked to no one for weeks, and the silence is more than I can bear. I must tell you what I had to suffer here; I must make you understand why I could not be brave. I did not kneel again, after that night. I prayed silently. You see. Carolan. I denied my God. That’s why He had forgotten me.”
Carolan said: “When I was little, my half-sister and I used to go to the curate for Bible lessons; he was the curate to the father of the man I am going to marry. I never listened to those lessons; my cousin Margaret did though.”
“Poor Carolan, then you have been denied the comfort of God.”
“I.” said Carolan, ‘would rather rely on the comfort of my own ability to stand up to these beasts! Tell me more, if it does not distress you too much.”
They jeered at me, Carolan. That was not all; they … took my shift, and when I stood before them in terrible shame, they laughed at me. They touched me, Carolan … they did obscene things to me, Carolan. They said things that were coarse and horrible; I cannot talk of them; I cannot tell you. And next night I… did not kneel and pray. They would not give me any clothes to cover me. I have found pieces of old rag and tied them about me, and worn them for a day or so … perhaps longer … until they notice and remember, and then the rags have been torn off me…”
