His father, he’d once told me, had been a man of letters. Like my mother, William Pod had been one of London’s celebrated artists. Then his wife, Darcy’s mother, died, and he’d taken to the bottle in an effort to kill his sorrow.
One night, as he returned home from a drinking bout, he staggered out into a street and was run down by a carriage. Abruptly Darcy was left to survive on his own. In spite of William Pod’s astronomical success a few years prior to his demise, the man had died penniless, due to his excessive carousing. The only thing Darcy inherited was his father’s penchant for the beauty of the written word.
One miserably wet day in November of 1840, Sir Harry’s son Charles came to the mines. He was a pale, weak-chinned stick of a man with darting, furtive eyes and the clothes and manners of a London dandy. He slapped a slender black riding crop against his high, polished boot, his eyes raking over each of us as we stood in line for his inspection. When he came to me, I had to struggle not to fidget or stick out my tongue. I was relieved when he shrugged and moved on. Then his gaze fell on Darcy, who at fourteen, even dressed in rags and covered with filth, held the potential of becoming a handsome young man.
Charles Blackwell leaned close to the brutish overseer and spoke in his ear. He pointed the crop at Darcy, the man at his side nodded, and Charles Blackwell left. That night the overseer came and took Darcy from the place where he lay wrapped in his ragged blanket beside me.
“You’ll not be goin’ inta the mine tomorrow, Mr. Pod,” he said, wrenching Darcy to his feet with a giant hand. “Mr. Charles has other plans for you.”
“Don’t whip him!” I cried, leaping to my feet. “He’s done nothing to deserve punishment!”
The overseer, known to us as Simon, was a brute who towered well over six feet in height and weighed more than two hundred pounds. His greasy hair hung in filthy strings about his unusually large ears to frame a drink-reddened and raggedly bearded countenance punctuated with rotting teeth and small black eyes. His clothing stank of unwashed flesh, stale liquor, and putrid food. I loathed and feared the man, but I could not let him take my only friend away without protest.
“You’re getting to be quite a piece of a woman,” he rasped, letting his gaze rove over my coal-blackened body while he held a terrified Darcy by an arm. “Some night soon I’ll invite you up to me digs for a spot of wine.”
“Vile-smelling cur,” I spat at him. “I’d rather die.”
A huge hand hit me across the face and I was sent tumbling back against the hard floor. Stunned, I lay as I had fallen, vaguely aware of Darcy’s cries of rage and a scuffle as he was dragged away.
Simon came for me at dawn the following morning. The other children were headed as usual into the mines, but I was singled out and forced from the hovel before him. His huge, hairy hand, wet with hot sweat, shackled my thin arm in its filthy grip as he half pulled, half dragged me toward his coal-blackened cottage, a distance from the mine.
The single-room shack proved to be a pigsty, raw beamed, smoke darkened, and littered with the filth of months of habitation by a person content to live like a swine. The stench of spoiled food, dirty linen, and the overseer’s own unwashed body mingled to make my stomach heave as he threw me against a wall and turned to shove the door closed behind him.
The room contained a bed blackened by coal and sweat, a scarred plank table piled high with rotting provisions and unwashed tin dishes, and a single ladderback chair with several of the rungs missing. Against the rear wall, on an unswept hearth, the fire that had kept the night’s chill at bay lay dying. I looked up at my tormentor in the gray half-light of a miserable, rain-soaked dawn and felt the panic of a creature destined to be slaughtered.
“Come here, me girl,” he leered at me over decaying teeth, his ugly face a portrait of evil intentions.
“Stay away from me, you great hairy beast!” I spat. “I’ll die before I allow you to touch me.”
“That can be arranged, missy,” he snarled, the horrible grin dissolving into an expression of determined rage.
He started toward me, shoulders slouched, hands outstretched. I had only one chance. Gathering my strength and courage, I bolted for the door.
With a roar of triumphant laughter, he caught me by an arm and yanked me about. When I regained control of my feet, I was against his reeking body, my hands secured behind my back by one of his massive fists.
“Now, me pretty,” he sneered, breathing the odors of stale tobacco, cheap whiskey, and tooth decay over me, “I’ll have a little kiss.”
Too revolted to struggle further, I went limp in his embrace. As his mouth drew close to mine, I retched.
“Why, you arrogant little slut!” he roared, throwing me against the table. A hard, deep pain shot through me as my shoulder hit its sharp edge on my way to the floor. “Try to vomit on me, will you? Well, by the holy saints, I’ll teach you manners!”
He was advancing toward me, a murderous gleam in his small, savage eyes, when I saw the knife, an oversized bread saw with sharp, ragged teeth, at the table’s edge.
I waited until he stood towering over me, legs wide apart, arms akimbo. As he drew back his foot to kick me, I seized the knife and lunged up at him.
My attack caught him unprepared. The knife slashed deep into his right forearm and ripped a jagged, blood-spewing tear down its length.
“Rotten little whore!” he roared and fell upon me.
The impact of his weight knocked my weapon from my hand. It clattered across the floor as he ripped open my bodice and wrenched up my ragged skirts.
“You’ll pay for this dearly!” he snarled, as blood from his wound flowed over both of us. “I swear, you’ll pay dearly!”
I couldn’t breathe. Imprisoned beneath his great bulk, I was suffocating.
“Mr. Simon!”
From somewhere in the nightmare the voice of the overseer’s simple-minded assistant echoed into my ears.
My attacker cursed and ordered the boy away. His free hand was fumbling with the fastenings of his trousers when the simpleton again sought to get his attention.
“But, Mr. Simon, there’s been a cave-in!” the halfwit cried. “There’s screamin’ and cryin’, and Sir Harry is callin’ out for you. He’s in an awful state!”
Simon roared a great oath that sent the boy stumbling back out of the hovel. Eyes glittering wickedly, he returned his attention to me.
The horror that followed would haunt me for the rest of my life. Fighting only spawned more violence, so I suffered his degradations and prayed for death. When finally he staggered to his feet, chest heaving, blood dripping from his wound, he glowered down at me.
“You’re a rotten little piece of baggage,” he snarled. “I can find better than you.”
He grabbed up a rag, wrapped it around his wound, then turned and followed the boy at a shambling trot.
****
When I felt confident he’d gone, I struggled to my knees. I ached in every pore of my body; I was bruised and bleeding. The most unbearable feeling, however, was the sensation of utter filth. I must bathe at once, my disheveled mind told me. I could not bear another moment with that brute’s foulness clinging to me. I forced myself to my feet and staggered out through the doorway he’d left open.
A thin, cold rain was weeping miserably from a leaden sky. I lifted my throbbing face into it and frantically tried to catch enough moisture in my hands to scrub myself clean.
Then I caught sight of a nearby horse trough. In a state of shock that surpassed common sense and the penetrating November cold, I ran crookedly to it and flung myself full-length into the icy water. As I scrubbed savagely at my body, the lines Darcy had once quoted from Shakespeare raced across my confused mind. Like Lady Macbeth, I would never be clean again.
The water began to numb my shocked body. Unable to care, I allowed my hold on reality to slip. I ceased to claw at myself, and let my mind and body go limp. I was drifting into unconsciousness, stretched out full length in the trough, wh
en the halfwit came upon me. He dragged me from the wooden tub and carried me back to the empty hostelry I had shared with the victims of the recent disaster.
It was the following morning before I became fully lucid again. As I lay aching and ill in the eerie emptiness of the hovel, I vowed I would never let another man abuse me again. I would kill either him or myself before I would suffer a repeat of that body-and-soul-shattering experience.
There were no survivors from the cave-in that cold, wet November morning. For days I lay alone and ill in the bitterly cold hostelry and wondered what had become of my friend Darcy and what would become of me. Wrapped in ragged blankets left ownerless by the disaster, I huddled in a dark corner and wondered whether pain and illness or terror and despair would kill me first.
The possibility of a return visit from Simon haunted my every conscious hour. Even in sleep I could find no relief from the horror. In nightmares I relived his heinous assault time and time again. Often I awakened myself screaming or whimpering like a beaten puppy.
Two days after the cave-in, his half-witted assistant began to bring me food and water. My desire to survive returned. I forced down the stale bread and lukewarm water, determined I would not die—not here, not now. Somehow I had to escape and find Darcy. Somehow we had to escape to America.
****
Ten days later, Simon pulled open the door of the hovel and stood on the threshold, silhouetted against a blazing winter sun. A long black whip hung coiled about his shoulder. I shrank into a corner. Cold sweat broke out over my body. He was going to lash me.
“Bring them in here, lad, and be smart about it. The sooner we get this mine producin’ again, the better.”
A group of thin, ragged youngsters began to pour in through the doorway, the new workers for the hell Simon called a mine. The whip, I realized (and almost sighed aloud), was his way of cowing these novices. I was safe…temporarily.
The next day, harnessed at the front of his new group of slaves, I returned to that awful black hole in the earth.
I had feared Simon’s return from his recruiting mission would bring him once more seeking me. It didn’t.
Then I noticed one of the newcomers, a girl of about my age but more physically mature for her years, begin to absent herself from our hostelry at night. At dawn, when we returned to the mine, she would rejoin us. She always looked contented and smug, her workload less than half what was expected of the rest of us. Bold and saucy, she would swagger past us and settle to rest while we were herded into the mine. Simon and his halfwit pretended not to notice and harassed any of us who dared point out Sarah’s leisure.
“You could have had it easy like me, dolly,” she whispered one night as I was preparing for sleep. “Simon told me he once fancied you, but you valued yourself too high and mighty. He wants a willin’ lass, he does, not a bitch what attacks ’im with a bread knife and don’t know when to part her legs.”
“Then Mr. Simon fancies whores like you,” I hissed, and rolled away from her into my blanket.
“Bitch!” Like an enraged feline, the girl sprang at me. Kicking and clawing at each other, we rolled over the earthen floor. The others gathered around, glad for the entertainment, cheering on first one, then the other. Only Simon’s intervention moments later stopped us from doing each other serious injury. Dragging us apart by the backs of our ragged dresses, he laughed harshly.
“Too late, missy,” he guffawed at me through those terrible rotten teeth. “You had your chance. Now Sarah’s me lass.”
I wiped blood from my face and glared up at him in utter disgust. He had no idea what an immense feeling of relief his words cast over me.
****
As I was settling to sleep with the other children one evening when I was nearing my fifteenth birthday, however, Simon did come for me.
“Someone wants to see you,” he said.
“Who?” I asked, getting to my feet.
“Never you mind!” he snapped, and grabbed me by an arm to propel me out into a magnificent May twilight full of singing birds, blossoming greenery…and Darcy.
Impeccably groomed and dressed in the height of fashion, my friend stood in the last rays of a wonderful spring day. He’d grown tall and broad-shouldered. His fair hair, devoid of filth, was golden and curling. He was the most wonderful sight I’d seen in years; only the cruel bite of the overseer’s fingers on my arm kept me from flinging myself upon him.
“Well,” Darcy smiled, and there was a sense of final victory and relief in the word.
“Here she is, sir, although what a gentleman like yourself would be wantin’ with such a bit of trash I don’t know,” the overseer said. With eyes unaccustomed to brightness after years in the mines, he’d failed to recognize his former charge.
“She’s grown too big for the mines.” Darcy affected a superior attitude. “We need a scullery maid at the manor. The two conditions coinciding, Sir Charles has decided she’ll do nicely.”
“Very well, sir.” The overseer, satisfied with the explanation, shrugged and released me. “But mind. She’s a spirited bit of trash. It might be well if you broke her to the bed first.”
“I appreciate your advice, Mr. Simon,” Darcy said, holding his head high. “Come along, young lady. I can see our housekeeper will have a sizable task preparing you for civilized duties. Thank you for your cooperation.” He bowed slightly to the overseer. “I shall inform Sir Charles of your agreeable stance on the matter.”
“A pleasure, young sir, a pleasure.” The overseer stood aside as Darcy put a white-gloved hand gingerly beneath my coal-blackened elbow and led me to where a horse and curricle waited.
When we were safely out of Simon’s sight, Darcy halted the horse and turned to me. “Starr,” he said, his voice trembling. “At last!”
“Oh, Darcy,” I cried, and was in his arms, sobbing as I had not done since my first day in the mines.
“Starr, sweet Starr,” he murmured against my filthy hair. “How I’ve longed for this day!”
“But how?” I pulled back to look up into his face. “How did you come to be freed? How did you manage to free me?”
“I’ve been made secretary to Sir Charles,” he said. “When the scullery maid ran off with an itinerant peddler, I offered to find a replacement. I’m sorry I couldn’t secure you a better position, but at least you’re out of the mines, and we’ll be able to see each other from time to time.”
“I don’t care about the position. To be out of the mines and with you is a miracle. Oh!” I gasped, noticing his smudged cravat and gloves. “Look what I’ve done!”
“It doesn’t matter,” he smiled down at me. “I’ve got a number of better ones at the manor.”
At the mention of the mansion to which I was going, a chill of terror invaded my exuberant mood.
“But what of Sir Harry? Will he not be incensed when he sees me in his kitchens?” I’d told Darcy the story of my mother’s death one winter’s night as we huddled together for warmth.
“Sir Harry died last month,” Darcy said. “Charles has become Sir Charles. Did you not notice when I spoke of him to the overseer? That was the major reason I thought it now prudent to attempt to secure your release. The availability of the scullery position merely facilitated a move I had already determined to make.”
I looked up into his sincere, long-lashed eyes and murmured from my heart, “I love you, Darcy Pod.”
“You mustn’t say such things, Starr,” he said, a cloud descending over his features. “I’m not worthy of your love.”
“Of course you are. I love as I would a brother, a very dear, wonderful brother.”
“Starr, please don’t.” Gently he took my hands from his coat front, kissed each blackened fist in turn, then picked up the reins and clucked to the horse.
Í sat by his side, puzzled and hurt by his rejection.
During the drive back to the manor I told Darcy of the overseer’s brutality. In the gathering gloom, his expression hardened and his jaw
twitched.
“He’ll pay for this,” he muttered. “To think he’d do such a thing simply because you dared to try to defend me is to reflect on an atrocity!”
“But how can you hope to punish him? You’ve said you’re merely Sir Charles’ secretary. Surely…”
“Don’t question me, Starr,” he said, staring ahead between the horse’s ears. “Just rest assured the man will pay for his actions if it’s the last thing I do.” He flapped the reins and sent the mare forward at a gallop.
Within a week of my arrival in the manor house, Simon was dismissed from Sir Charles’ employ. Rumor had it he had been driven from Blackwell lands with the family hounds tearing at his heels.
When Darcy came to see me on the day following Simon’s departure, he was pale and gaunt. He moved slowly, as though in pain, and his voice was hoarse.
“Darcy, are you ill?” I asked, frightened. I could not bear the thought of sickness taking him from me, not when we had just found each other again. I put a comforting arm about his broad shoulders, but he flinched away.
“I’m fine, Starr. I’ve gotten you out of the mines and Simon’s been punished. That’s all I care about.”
He looked up at me, his eyes suddenly filled with tears. “We’re winning, Starr, we’re finally winning.” Triumph echoed through the rasping young voice.
“But how, Darcy? How are you managing to get all these things accomplished?” I knelt before him and took his soft, smooth hands in my work-reddened ones. A cold, nebulous fear wrapped itself around my heart.
“You mustn’t worry about me, sweetheart,” he said gently. “We’re going to be fine, just fine. Wait and see.”
****
I had been a scullery maid in the kitchens for nearly two years when the news flooded the house. Sir Charles was to be married to a wealthy merchant’s daughter. Lady Charlotte, his mother, proud old matriarch of the estate, would be moving into the dower house across the river from Blackwell Hall.
Shadows of Love Page 2
