Song of the Sea Maid

by Rebecca Mascull

  ‘A fine gentleman!’ jests the founder, his eyebrows arched. ‘Named for a very good friend of mine, also a fine gentleman. If you honour that name, you will go far in life. So, child, welcome to your new abode. All who enter here are fortunate base-born objects. Those who have been saved from the streets, alleys and rubbish heaps of London, the abandoned vagabonds of the poor. Here you will be provided with shelter and sustenance. And furthermore, a virtuous education to make you useful – on the land, on the sea or in the home – instead of falling into rough ways and becoming swindlers and cutpurses, or else molls and jades, ending your portion shackled in a coffle of prisoners shuffling through the streets to be transported on ships to foreign lands or to break your necks on the gibbet. Is that what you want, child?’

  I have listened to each word and surmise I understood perhaps one quarter. But I know what the gibbet is and shake my head.

  ‘I do not want to hang, sir.’

  ‘Quite. But there are fates worse than death, Dawnay Price. If you were not the luckiest wretch alive to be found by my good friend and brought to this sanctuary, it is likely you would have ended up in the hell they call the workhouse, that den of disease where the weak go to die in misery. You are fortunate that I have saved you from such a fate and you will work hard for me every day you pass here, Dawnay Price, to thank me for my charity. Here you will learn a trade and your catechism. We will prepare you for a life of service to society, where instead of fouling the streets with your poverty, you will be reformed. All children come into the world unblemished. It is the cruel world itself that stains the child and turns it to roguery. We are here to save the child, turn it from sin and render it beneficial to the public. Do you understand me?’

  I have been looking at the feather on the table. Beside it is paper and a pot of black liquid. On the paper are words, black words. Beneath it is a board stretched with cream-coloured paper with dark stains on it. On a side table behind the founder there are more pots and feathers too, stacked in a vase. What can they possibly be for? I have never seen such curious and lovely things.

  I ask, ‘What does the feather do?’ I feel a sharp cuff to the back of my head. I forget myself and try to sink, this time tripping forward and almost knocking the founder’s knees with my head.

  ‘It is a fool!’ he cries and I am swiftly removed from this handsome room.

  In the months that follow, I become accustomed to our rigid routine. After breakfast, we spend the morning in the schoolroom on the ground floor. Our schoolmaster is a young man I discover is Matron’s nephew, who also looks to the welfare of all boys in this institution, as Matron does with us girls. We are put to school in a trifling manner, with reading and arithmetic. Once I learn my letters, I can read my brother’s note and I know then that Matron was right. But I am grateful to him for his kindly deception. I look it over often and if I squint hard and long enough, I believe I can see the words he spoke writ on the paper and it comforts me. At the very least, his hands have touched the paper I touch. At times I weep over it for so long that my eyes smart afterwards and my head aches like a beating drum. I hide the note from the others in a crack in the dormitory wall behind my cot.

  I consider my brother often, or the fact of him. After all, he claims all my infant memories. I call him up into my fancy and recall his features or a kind word. I picture him aboard ship, a resourceful sailor I imagine, considering how he kept us thriving in those early days. Perhaps he was drowned at sea or caught the yellow fever in some distant port. If he lived, I hope he resides in a warm place, with victuals and drink and some portion of love or friendship. I want that at least for the one who fed me, who told me to run those many moons ago. He was a boy of a free and merry turn and I loved him.

  Every Sunday, we gather in the schoolroom for a lengthy sermon by our founder. Here we are read stories from the Bible and are taught of hell, omens and to be suspicious of fanatics, as they began our civil war after all, not so very long past. He makes quite clear to us his views on the poor.

  ‘When you leave this place in apprenticeship, we will have chosen a place for you in a respectable and useful profession, to be nurtured by those of the working classes who appreciate religious moderation and our noble nation. Together we will make good citizens of you and force the kingdom of darkness to totter. And hear this: never shall a child from my institution be sent to fester with porters, higlers, chair-men, day-labourers or market folk, as these people are one and all an insolent rabble who encourage revolt and, what is more, they never go to church on Sundays.’

  I ask Matron afterwards if poor people have a day off from work.

  ‘Sundays for some.’

  Say I, ‘No wonder they do not go to church if it is their only day free from work. They might want to go for an airing or sport and play.’ I am smacked on my leg for this, for blasphemy and cheek. But I notice Matron fidgets during churchtime and always disappears after for a little and I wager she would welcome the extra morning of freedom.

  Lunch is the same as breakfast – bread and cheese – for five days of the week, with boiled tripe on Saturdays and some sort of brown soup on Sundays. Supper is bread and cheese again, though at times we have boiled greens if someone has found some dandelions to pick. Once a month we have one small potato each with our Friday supper. After lunch, we are given a brief period of fresh air, whatever the weather may bring, in the walled yard behind our building. There are grey walls and a dusty floor to it. Not quite room enough to run and jump, so some of the girls skip about, little ones play pat-a-cake, and the older boys form animated knots and brag of exploits. Sometimes I creep along each of the four walls, counting my steps, and thereby roughly calculate the area of the yard. Most often, I find a corner and watch. I am alone, yet surrounded by others. From my first day, I continue my silent stand against them and feign to revel in my solitude. The boys ignore me anyway, and the older girls ensure the younger ones have nothing to do with the street rat. One time in this yard I find a magpie with a broken wing. I cup it in my hands and take it to Matron who says, ‘One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding and four for death,’ and promptly breaks its neck. ‘You orphans have enough room for sorrow in your lives, without inviting it in.’

  In the afternoons, we are instructed in trade. The girls are split into small groups and assigned to a maidservant, where we are taught the art of domestic service, the hundred small skills it takes to become a charwoman or laundry maid. The boys are permitted to leave the building to pursue grander trades, such as boot black or sweep. It is hard, busy work and the only junctures at which we stop are mealtimes, but I am so empty when I sit to eat that I do not enjoy this moment of stillness but think only of my belly and the food that barely fills it. It is never enough and we are always hungry, all of us.

  Our only moments of rest are the minutes in bed before sleep steals our minds till morning. I lie and think of my brother and where he may be; I think who my mother and father might have been and if they are dead or in the workhouse or hanged from the gibbet; I think of how the window in our dormitory is split into four squares and that each pane has four sides and I multiply the four sides by the number of panes and I imagine if the room had four windows or eight or sixteen or thirty-two windows how many panes of glass there would be altogether and how such as glass is manufactured and what ingredients might be needed to make glass and whether it is a material one finds in the ground or the fields or the mountains or if it is something that is made by the hands as bread or cheese are and how light and cheerful our room would be with such a prolific number of glass panes letting in the sunlight all the long day. This is but one of the many ruminations my mind considers each night in the quiet and the darkness before sleep. Yet these thoughts move so fleetly I never have the chance to grasp them and by the next night they are gone and replaced by more and new ones, so many it hurts my head.

  One evening after dinner, Matron summons me to the kitchen and bids me sit before the fire, as I d
id that very first day with her.

  ‘You have been with us for one year now, Dawnay. We ask each of our new arrivals how they are settled in their new life after this period. ’Tis part of my role so I do it. How is it with you, child?’

  ‘What is the feather for?’

  Matron’s eyes grow wide. ‘Still harping on this?’

  ‘Is it for writing? I think it must be for writing.’

  ‘Yes, for writing. ’Tis named a quill.’

  ‘Quill.’

  ‘Quill,’ says Matron.

  ‘Do we learn to write? Will we learn to use the feather, the quill?’

  ‘Oh no, child. You do not learn to write here. Reading and numbers is all foundlings need. Writing is not necessary in your future forms of employment. Whoever heard of a cabin boy who could write, or a milkmaid? A charwoman does not even need her numbers, as she is not paid in coin but in broken meat and cinders. What need has she for a quill?’

  ‘I need one.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘To write down my thoughts so I cannot forget them.’

  ‘And what does an orphan need to think about?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Yes, Matron.’

  She is frowning at me. She is thinking. ‘I said you were a clever one. My nephew says it too.’

  ‘That I am clever?’

  ‘Indeed.’ I grin. Matron cannot help herself and she smiles also. Yet she stifles it. ‘But there is nothing to be done about it, child. The founder is resolute on the matter. Orphans are not to learn to write. And the idea of a girl receiving an education would never be borne. He has three daughters himself and no sons and has given them all the same sage advice in order to secure matrimony, namely, that they should hide any vestige of a lively mind if they are to catch a husband. Wives who are cleverer than their husbands are unnecessary, as are clever servants likewise. Thinking never cleaned a floor. Better put it out of mind.’

  But I do not put it out of mind, as I cannot. The following morning I hide a reading primer from the schoolroom inside my jacket. I carry it round all day – its weight a delicious secret against my heart – and hide it beneath my bedclothes that night. I wait in bed while the other girls whisper, then, one by one, their whispers cease and they all breathe heavy. I get up and creep across the room; the floorboards creak but everyone is too spent to waken. I fetch the candlestick from the stool and use the fire’s embers to light the wick. I make my way downstairs and along the hallway to the grand door and listen carefully. No sound emits, thus I deduce it is empty. I turn the handle to the court room and enter. There is no one inside, yet the dying fire throws shadows dancing on the walls that make me start. I am watched by the exalted ones from the wall paintings as I go to the side table and remove one quill from the vase, take one of the two inkpots and retrieve sheets of paper from the large table.

  For a moment, I consider staying in this room to do my work, but cannot risk the double punishment for not only thievery but also inhabiting Eden when God has banished me from it. I carry my treasures back up the staircase and into the dormitory. There is a table beside the fire where our water jug is stored. I remove it to the floor and set up at the table, using the candle stool to sit on. The stolen book open before me, I dip the stolen quill in the stolen inkpot and try to imitate the shapes I see on the pages. My first attempts at writing are poor, scratchy efforts. The ink splashes and spills and resembles the murder of a pen across the paper. But I persevere and make a passable letter A through to E, after much effort. I look at the quill and think of its life as a feather, which bird dropped it in its moulting – perhaps a goose – and what sights this feather saw on its journeys across the skies, winging past treetops below and clouds above.

  I work every night for weeks and teach myself to write. If the embers are not warm enough to light a candle, I write by moonlight if it be full. I hear the night soil collectors on their jolly route from pit to pit. Twice, I see a cartload of people pass by on the road, who all stand shoved together in the cart’s bed; by their clothes they look very poor, all rags and filth, as I was when found. Yet on their sleeves each wears a matching badge, with the letters SG sewn on. They trundle past in the middle of the night, one calling, ‘Where do we go?’ and I ponder this myself. I tell Matron it woke me one night; she explains they are the paupers of our parish of St Giles. These poorest of the poor are entitled to some paltry handouts only if they reside in the area, thus the parish regularly deserts cartloads of paupers outside its boundaries so that it has no responsibility for them. One woman she heard of was heavy with child and the parish did not want another pauper child born within its boundaries, says Matron, ‘and when the big-bellied woman was abandoned beyond the parish border, she fell to pieces and died moments later.’ On these long nights, I think of the woman who fell to pieces and comfort myself that by learning to write, I obtain a skill that could make me a living one day, and thus will prevent me from riding that benighted cart. I listen for the Watch as he passes our windows and I count the hours down. I leave three hours at the end of the night to pack away my tools and sleep till dawn, so that I receive the minimum of rest to feed my body what it needs.

  The days pass in routine: schooling, meals, service. Some of the orphans leave us, three boys and two girls, apprenticed to those in trade. One girl is thirteen years, a lumpish thing who no one would take for a time, yet the others are much younger, from ten down to one of seven years only, the brightest boy here. The gifted ones go soonest. Matron holds a solemn ceremony of farewell to mark each orphan’s entry into apprenticeship, the boys to a cobbler, butcher and calico printer, the girls to household business. The best thing is that the leaver is given a final meal of fat bacon and the rest of us watch with wet mouths; the worst is that none of us knows how our new master or mistress will treat us. There are frightful stories whispered of apprentices beaten, starved, bound and worse. It fills me with shuddersome fear.

  I estimate I have at the most three years left before I am apprenticed – nobody knows my precise age, but Matron estimates gone six or seven years by now. Perchance I have fewer years remaining here, as they say I am very sharp and forward, so I must make progress with my writing before I am gone and have even less freedom than the wretched amount I have now, the portion I steal of it after dark. The nights are where I become myself. In the long days, I have come to an unspoken truce with my fellow occupants and they leave me be, though I sometimes find one or two staring at me at bedtime. Perhaps they know what I am about in the night. I hide my scribblings, the quill and the inkpot beneath my cot. I am forced to steal again, as my quill needs sharpening, and thus I pilfer a knife from the kitchen. Nobody has discovered my treasures, or, at the least, disturbed them. But I cannot sustain this progress with so little sleep. During the day, I am chastised for falling asleep at my desk in the schoolroom, falling asleep at the needle when practising my stitches, falling asleep even at mealtime over our long-awaited weekly soup. And finally one night I fall asleep at my writing and am awoken with a clout about the head and a clump of crowing inmates surrounding the furious face of Matron, who hits me again and cries, ‘Get up, girl!’ I am made to stand facing the corner of the room while I listen to the others dress and wash their faces without a word and leave.

  Once we are alone, Matron says in a quiet, cold voice I have not heard her use before, ‘I fear the founder will send you to the workhouse for this.’

  I turn from my corner and cry, ‘Oh please, Matron. Not that, please!’

  ‘No use in begging me. You should have thought ere committing the crime of theft. And from the founder himself? ’Tis unheard of. I know not what he will do.’

  ‘Will you not help me, Matron?’

  ‘I have tried, believe me. When you slept at your work, the other girls knew I would have beaten them about the ears for less, but I let you go with a harsh word. And there are things of which you know nothing. I have argued for you, m
ore times than you could imagine. When I saw your hunger for learning, I went myself to the founder and asked him, Cannot the Price child have a little extra time for school work? My nephew I persuaded to give up his free time to help you, but the founder refused. No foundling would waste the precious God-given day on learning to write when there is real work to be done. He knows wastage of time is a sin and would not have a wretch wasting its time under his beneficence. But I asked again, another time, and another. The Price child is a prodigy, sir, and would perhaps do better in life with some learning to quiet her restless mind, but no. He is adamant and I cannot tell you how far I pushed his goodwill to me as his employee, to the point where he raised his voice to me and said that no girl ever possessed a brain for learning, no more than a bear that performs tricks, and that I must stop this minute from asking and asking for such a wretch or he would have to find another housekeeper. There, you had no idea of that, did you, girl? And now this? Oh, what is to be done with you?’

  ‘Keep my secret, Matron. Please. Keep it our secret and do not tell the founder.’

  ‘You are crack-brained! An inhabitant of Bedlam stands before me! Every orphan in this place knows about it by now. The founder would hear of it ere luncheon. And how long do you think my post here would be mine if he knew I sanctioned theft from his room and hid it from him? And a knife too? What havoc did you plan with that?’

  ‘To sharpen my quill, that is all. I had no evil intent. Believe me, I beg you! Protect me!’

  ‘No, you are discovered and that is the end of it. Get dressed now and prepare yourself for what is to come.’

  Matron turns to leave the room but I touch her arm.

  ‘Thank you for all the times you spoke for me.’

  ‘You must stay here in this room until you are called for. Sit on your bed and do not move one inch.’

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