The Linnet Bird: A Novel

by Linda Holeman

  Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  A Reader’s Guide

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  For Holly Kennedy,

  who had faith in this story

  A LINNET IN A GILDED CAGE

  A linnet in a gilded cage,—

  A linnet on a bough,—

  In frosty winter one might doubt

  Which bird is luckier now.

  But let the trees burst out in leaf,

  And nest be on the bough,

  Which linnet is the luckier bird,

  Oh who could doubt it now?

  —CHRISTINA ROSSETTI,

  Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book

  Slightly smaller than a sparrow, the linnet bird was highly sought after as a cage bird in the nineteenth century for its melodious song.

  Prologue

  Calcutta, 1839

  SMOKING OPIUM IS AN ART.

  I look at my tray and its contents—the pipe covered in finely worked silver, the small spirit lamp, the long blunt needle, the container of chandu, and my row of pea-size balls of the dark brown paste. My lips are dry. I close my eyes and see it: the opium ball at the end of the needle over the flame of the lamp, the bubbling and swelling of that muddy brown until it finally turns golden. Then catching it on the edge of the pipe bowl, using the needle to stretch it into long strings until it is cooked through properly. Rolling it back into its shape and pushing it—quickly, for it must be the right consistency—into the bowl. Now holding the bowl close to the lamp, the flame licking tenderly. I see my lips close around the familiar bone mouthpiece and then a deep pull, another, and another. The sound is the steady unbroken rhythm of a heartbeat.

  I open my eyes, licking my lips. It is early morning. The Indian sun will not reach its zenith for a few more hours; there is time, before the copper rays bake and shrink everything, before the servants have to splash water on the reed screens and close all the shutters. I look back to my tray.

  Not yet. I will not take up my pipe yet. I have something to tell you.

  Through the open windows I can hear the children’s voices from the garden. I go to watch. David is playing with the dhobi’s son. The child’s game, a seemingly senseless galloping about on long sticks, is played with careless, easy motions as only five-year-olds can play. Malti sits on the top step of the verandah. She slowly waves a horsetail whisk in front of her oval, burnished face, wreathed with the pleasure of an ayah watching her beloved charge.

  The boys romp around and around the lawn of creeping doob. The bougainvillea and hibiscus are in scarlet display.

  I never played as my son does today. At a little older than he is now I was employed for ten hours a day, six days a week, at the bookbinders on Harvey Close in Liverpool. I had never felt grass under my bare feet nor heard the song of a bird, and only rarely felt the sun’s warmth upon my face. My son will never know the work I did, not the work I started with, nor the work I did later, when I was still a child but no longer young. That part of my life will forever remain closed to him, but not to you.

  David has stopped, cocking his head as if listening, or puzzled. And then he stoops, reaching beneath the low hedge of plumbago.

  He runs back to Malti, his face a portrait of sorrow, his hands cupping a bird. Even from here I recognize its green feathers, the brilliant red over its beak. It stirs, feebly, but is injured, one wing hanging oddly from its body. A small, common bird, the Coppersmith Barbet. Basanta bauri. Only yesterday I heard its familiar pok-pok from the mango trees. David is calling now, his voice thick with emotion. I see the sun-browned texture of his skin, the way his long slender thumbs crook tenderly in an attempt to hold on and yet not harm the helpless thing.

  I think of my own hands when so young, chapped from the cold wind off the gray Mersey, stained with ink, cheap glue webbing between my fingers. And then, not many years later, tainted with that which I couldn’t wash away. Lady Macbeth and her own dirty hands. And finally, just before I left my youth forever and began my voyage, I remember my hands. Nicked with cuts from paper, dry from handling books, they appeared clean, so clean, although always, at least in my mind, unable to lose the smell of too many men, of the blood. How, you are wondering, have you come from that place and arrived here?

  Beside my opium tray lies the quill and paper I had Malti bring me earlier this morning.

  But before I begin to write, a small time to dream. It is my last. I have made this promise before. I have thought it, whispered it, spoken it, prayed it. But this time I have sworn on my child’s head, in the darkness before morning, sitting beside David’s bed, listening to his shallow, sweet breaths followed by the deep answering exhalations of Malti from her pallet in the corner. I crept in, and knelt by him, and swore, his thick hair under my pale fingers.

  I swore that today will be my last dream that is fed by the White Smoke. And without its aid, I fear my dreams will warp into the old and familiar nightmare, the one I have tried so long to lose.

  I close the shutters tightly, darkening the room, and I light the lamp. There is a whir and crackle as a moth comes to life and flutters about the soft glow. The noise hurts. I have taken opium too many years; my senses are stretched to a thin wire, vibrating to the slightest stimuli—this beat of a moth’s wings, the drop of hot rain on the back of my hand, the unexpected confusion of a patterned sari.

  The opium no longer has the ability to make me happy. It simply allows me to carry on. And today, for the last time, it will still my hand, my mind, long enough to write what I must. So that my son will someday know. For him, I will write only what is important for his future. For you, I will write of it all—part truth, part memory, part nightmare—my life, the one that started so long ago, in a place so far from here.

  Chapter One

  Liverpool, 1823

  I HAD BEEN PUT TO WORK FOR MEN BY DA IN THE WINTER OF MY eleventh year. He was dissatisfied by the small wage I earned at the bookbindery and had recently been laid off his job at the rope makers for turning up tip one too many times and spoiling the hemp in spinning.

  It was a wet November night when he arrived home with Mr. Jacobs. I suppose he met him in one of the public houses; where else would he meet anyone? I heard Da say the man’s name over and over, Mr. Jacobs this and Mr. Jacobs that. One or both of them were stumbling, and the knocking into the few pieces of furn
iture, as well as the loudness of their voices, woke me from my sleep in the blankets I laid down behind the coal box each evening. It was warmer there, close to the fireplace, and I felt I had at least a tiny degree of privacy in the one rented room on the second floor of a sagging dwelling off Vauxhall Road, in a court on Back Phoebe Anne Street.

  “She’s here somewhere,” I heard Da say, “like a wee mouse, she is, scurrying about,” and then, before I had a chance to try to make sense of why he would be looking for me, I was dragged out of my blankets and into the middle of the low-ceilinged, candlelit room.

  “I thought you said she were eleven.” Mr. Jacob’s voice was hoarse, the words clipped with impatience.

  “I told you right, Mr. Jacobs. Past eleven, now. Had her birthday well before Michaelmas.”

  “She’s awfully small. Not even much of a shape to her yet.”

  “But she has a quim, sir, that you’ll find soon enough. It’s just delicate she is, a delicate slip of a girl. And she’s a right pretty lass, you can see that for yourself,” Da said, pushing back my long hair with calloused hands and pulling me closer to the candle in the middle of the table. “Where have you last seen hair like this? Golden and rich as summer’s sweetest pear. And like I told you, she’s pure. You’ll be the first, Mr. Jacobs, and a lucky man indeed.”

  I pulled away from him, my mouth opening and closing in shock and horror. “Da! Da, what is it you’re saying? No, Da.”

  Mr. Jacob’s thick bottom lip extended in a pout. “She’s nothing special. And how do I know you haven’t duped a hundred men before me, you and her?”

  “You’ll know you’re the first, Mr. Jacobs. Of course you’ll know. Tight as a dead man’s fist, you’ll find her.”

  I yanked my arm away from Da’s grasp. “You can’t make me,” I said, backing toward the door. “You’ll never—”

  Mr. Jacobs stepped in front of me now. He had only a ring of graying hair and the top of his head shone greasily in the flickering light. There was a cut, crusted over with dried blood, on the bridge of his nose. “Quite the little actress, aren’t you?” he asked. “You can stop all your bluster now. You’ll not get a penny, you nor your father, if I find you’re not what’s been promised.”

  In one stride, Da took my arm again, pulling me into a shadowy corner of the room. “Now, girl,” he wheedled, “it’s bound to happen sometime. And better here, in your own home, than somewheres out in the rain in a doorway. Many a lass does help out her family when they’ve fallen on hard times. And why should you be any different?”

  Of course I knew a number of the older girls from the bookbinders—as well as those from the sugar refineries and the glassmakers and the potteries—who worked a few hours now and then on the twisting narrow streets down by the docks to bring in extra shillings when money was short at home. But I had always known I was different. I wasn’t like them, I told myself. It was in my blood, this difference.

  “Come on now. He’ll pay handsomely.” Da put his mouth to my ear. I smelled the sourness of his breath. “You know we’ve no other way, what with me put out of the job. I’ve always looked after you; now it’s your turn to bring something in, something more than the few pennies you earn. And it’s no terrible thing. Weren’t I buggered meself, over and over on the ships, when I were not much older than you? And it did me no harm, did it?”

  I backed away again, arms wrapped over my chest. “No, Da. Mum would never—”

  Da grabbed my upper arms, giving me a rough shake. “There’ll be no talk of your mother.”

  At an impatient snick from Mr. Jacobs, Da called over his shoulder, “Now, sir, sit yourself there, on the settle, and I’ll talk some sense into my lass here.”

  But of course there was no talk that made sense, only—when I screamed “You can’t make me” and tried to run for the door—a knock across my jaw that sent me flying. I felt my cheek hit the damp cold of the floor and then I knew nothing more until I was jarred back to consciousness by hot, urgent breath on my face. My shift was pushed up around my waist, and Mr. Jacobs’s body was heavy on mine. His rhythmic rutting scrubbed my bottom painfully against the splintered wood of the settle and the top of my head banged against the wall with each thrust. The searing inside of me was a fresh explosion that matched his grunts, and I saw the corresponding throb of the blue vein that ran down his forehead, thick and raised as a great worm. Sweat gleamed on his upper lip, even though the fire was out and the room cold as a tomb.

  But almost worse than the pain and horror of what was happening at the mercy of Mr. Jacobs was that Da—when I turned my head to look for him, hoping he might somehow be moved to come to my rescue—watched from his stool, his face fixed in a look I’d never seen before, one hand busy under the table.

  I turned away, squeezing my eyes tightly, and lay limp under Mr. Jacobs. I knew I should fight but was strangely detached. My body burned raw at its center and yet my mind tripped and ran, stumbling away from Mr. Jacobs’s pulsing vein and the image of Da staring with that strange attentiveness. And then I heard my mother’s voice, faint but clear. She recited the second stanza of The Green Linnet, the Wordsworth poem that had been her favorite, and from which she drew my name:

  One have I marked, the happiest guest

  In all this covert of the blest:

  Hail to Thee, far above the rest

  In joy of voice and pinion!

  Thou Linnet! in thy green array,

  Presiding Spirit here today,

  Dost lead the revels of the May;

  And this is thy dominion.

  I heard it in its entirety three times, and just before the start of its fourth repetition Mr. Jacobs gave a great shuddering groan and lay still until I feared I would be smothered. I wanted my mother’s voice back, wanted to hear her again, for while I listened my body had become numb, but now she was gone, and with the absence of her voice I grew aware of everything with a terrible clarity. I felt the position of my legs, splayed impossibly wide, torn wetness, pain I had never known or imagined, Mr. Jacobs’s unbearable weight. I heard the fretful wail of the baby in the room next door and the rattly breathing of Mr. Jacobs. I smelled the rankness of his flesh. I kept my eyes closed so that I saw dark starbursts on my inner lids. It seemed that time had stopped.

  Finally he moved off and away but I stayed as I was, eyes shut, unmoving through the rustle of clothing being fastened and the exchange of a few words and then the rasp of the door scraping along the floor as it opened and closed.

  More minutes passed, and I carefully pulled my knees together, my fingers trembling as I pulled down my shift, and still, without opening my eyes, lowered myself to the floor and crawled on hands and knees back to my little nest behind the coal box. The only sounds in the room then were my father’s muttered counting and the clink of the coins and the sputter of a dying candle. I lay on my side and twisted my blanket around me, knees brought up to my chest and hands tucking my shift into the bleeding, sticky mess between my legs, weeping for my mother even though she’d been dead for a whole year, and for what was forever lost.

  LATER THAT NIGHT, when I lit a candle and washed away the dried blood and spunk from my thighs, I swore that I would never again cry over what a man might do to me, for I knew it would do no good. No good at all.

  Chapter Two

  I WAS BORN LINNET GOW, ALTHOUGH KNOWN AS LINNY MUNT. My Christian name was given to me by my soft and dreamy mother, Frances Gow, thinking of the songbird with its twenty-four variations of a note. Munt was the surname of the man who took her in four months before my birth.

  Ram Munt, the man who sold me that first time—and through the next two years—wasn’t my real da, and not even my stepfather, for he and my mother had never married. He was, however, the only father I’d known, although I knew he never looked on me as his daughter. I was simply Frances’s child, a burden, someone who needed to be fed.

  Ram Munt had two favorite stories. The first was about his years aboard ship. He’d been lit
tle more than a boy, come alone to Liverpool from a small village in the north. Looking for a better life, he was caught by a press-gang and hauled aboard ship for an eight-month voyage. There he was introduced to sea life in the cruelest way. When the ship eventually returned to Liverpool and dropped anchor, he tried to run but was caught by another press-gang before he’d even left the docks. He sailed again but by this time he was older and stronger and wouldn’t be bullied. By the time his second voyage was over the sea was in his blood and he worked on board until he had been injured one too many times by rolling barrels and the cruel, swinging hooks and the sudden mishaps on rising and falling slippery decks, and there were younger and stronger and more agile men than he to be taken on. He was hired as a spinner at the ropewalk near Williamson Square after that, his thick, damaged fingers still able to deftly wind the hemp fibers together and walk them down to the end of the room to wrap them around the reel, repeating the process all day. He retained his coarse shipboard language and his back bore the scars of many lashings, and his hands smelled of pine tar from dipping the ropes to make them stronger.

  His other story was about how he’d come to take in my mother and he told it more often than his sailing tales, usually late on a Saturday night after he’d spent all evening at the Flyhouse or Ma Fenny’s.

  He’d pull my mother and me out of our bed—she preferred to share a pallet with me, although Ram still called her to him a few times a week—and make us sit at the table and listen while he recounted his tale of heroism, of how he’d found my mother one wet spring night. With a bully’s thrust of his chest he’d go on about how he’d discovered her, drenched to the skin and wandering in the rain without a penny to her name.