The Linnet Bird: A Novel

by Linda Holeman

  He put his arm around my waist, holding me until the sensation lessened. “I suspect it’s not your back, miss, but something else,” he said, not meeting my eyes, but fixing his stare on the braided, wrapped topknot of my apollo.

  I felt his fingers spread over one side of my abdomen. They pressed gently through my corset, as if probing. “Please,” I said, softly now. “I just need to get home. If I can only—” But the wave crashed into me again; this time I had to bend over and the sound that came from my lips was animal-like, almost a grunt.

  He picked me up, then, with one quick swoop, and the pain at that moment was too intense for me to object. He made his way through the lurching crush of bodies as I leaned against his chest, keeping my eyes shut tight. I couldn’t bear to think of what was happening, what I had started to suspect, but now knew, with certainty. It was wee Frances, shaken from her warm home, shaken loose and wanting to be born. Too early, far too early. There would be no chance she would live if she came now.

  Chapter Ten

  I WAS ABLE TO STAND BESIDE HIM, WITH HIS SUPPORT, AS HE HAILED a carriage, and he helped me inside. “Where shall I direct the driver?” he asked, leaning in the open door. “Where is your home?”

  I thought of the stifling, airless closet. The girls would be out at work for the next four or five hours. I would have to do this, alone, on the pallet on Jack Street. I felt my lips shaking as violently as the hands of the man who called himself Shaker. No. No no no. My head wagged with each inner no.

  Shaker misinterpreted what he saw. “It’s all right. Look.” He pulled a few coins from his vest pocket. “Here. It’s enough to pay the driver.”

  I couldn’t say anything, just kept my eyes fixed on the faded wine-colored curtain over the window.

  Shaker waited until the carriage jolted with the impatient shifting of the horses and there was a rough question from the driver. Finally Shaker answered and climbed in beside me.

  Neither of us spoke. I concentrated on the swaying curtain, biting down through each fresh assault of pain. It was no longer only in my back, but around the front and radiating down my thighs. Within ten minutes the carriage stopped, and Shaker helped me out.

  “Where are we?” I asked, looking around the dimly lit street with its row of neat two-story terraced houses sharing common walls and brick façades. I recognized traces of simple elegance in the doorways and windows, which were tall and well proportioned. I could see that the doorsteps and windowsills were well scrubbed and whitened. I cupped one hand under the rise of my abdomen in an attempt to ease the pressure.

  “We’re in Everton, north of the city. This is where I live—Whitefield Lane.” Shaker opened the unlocked door and led me inside. All was in darkness but for the red glow of a dying fire in a room to the left. Urged by the press of Shaker’s hand on my back, I slowly made my way up a flight of narrow stairs toward a landing. A sliver of light showed under one of the two doors there. He hesitated, and in that moment the door opened and a gaunt, gray-haired woman holding a well-thumbed Bible in one hand and a candle in the other stared at us.

  “What is all of this?” she demanded, her voice querulous, holding the candle in my direction. The flames cast craggy shadows on her scowling features. “Who is this person?” I saw her sharp eyes taking in the cut of my dress, my apolloed hair. I knew the odors of the alehouse—spirits and tobacco and sweat—emanated from us.

  “It’s a young woman in distress, Mother,” Shaker said.

  I didn’t think my legs would hold me any longer. I clung weakly to Shaker’s sleeve, and he put his arms around me to help me stand. I leaned my forehead against his chest.

  “Distress? Distress?” the woman repeated. “From where I’m standing, she’s just drunk. You dare to bring home a drunken whore?” I turned my face to look at her, and she stepped so close that I felt the fine spray of spittle that flew from her lips. “You disappoint me, my boy, and, much worse, you disappoint the Lord with this type of behavior.”

  “Mother. You don’t at all understand the situat—”

  “No. I don’t. But I do know that I can’t abide to see such a one as her under my roof.” Her head swiveled on her thin, wrinkled neck as she bent to speak into my face. “Fornicator.” The word came out a harsh whisper.

  Shaker ignored it. “And it’s our roof, Mother. Our roof, not yours.”

  “You give me one good reason why I should allow this, Shaker. One good reason.”

  “Christian charity, perhaps?” Shaker enunciated, a sarcastic impatience in the words.

  This changed the woman’s expression, and she stepped back.

  The agony made my knees buckle, and I moaned now, feeling tremendous pressure. I held tightly to Shaker’s jacket so I wouldn’t fall. In the circle of his arms, I felt the tremor of his hands on my back become more violent as he spoke up to his mother.

  “The young woman is about to give birth, Mother. She needs help.”

  Heard out loud—give birth—the words were horrifying.

  “She doesn’t look with child. Although it could be because she’s skin and bone, worn down by her frenzied fornicating.” The woman moved closer to me again, peering first at my belly and then at my ringless fingers and then into my face. “And why, I ask, have you brought her here? You’re not . . . connected with this girl, are you?” Her rheumy eyes were boring into mine; now they grew suspicious and fearful. “Do you bear some responsibility for her state? Son? Tell me you have no responsibility toward this woman. Please.” The final word was pleading.

  I echoed her word as the pressure felt like iron tongs, forcing my very bones apart. “Please,” I moaned to Shaker. “Please. Help me.”

  He dragged me into a dark room, half carrying me. His mother was relentless, following us. Wavering, monstrous shadows created by her candle danced on the walls. “Why doesn’t she go home, where she belongs?”

  “She’s been robbed of all her money. The crowds tonight . . .” Shaker trailed off. “And she needed help,” he said for the second time. “Now go, Mother. Go back to your room.” His voice was low but strong. “I insist. This is not your business.”

  Finally, the woman said nothing more. She left, taking the candle and closing the door behind her.

  My body was no longer in my control. In the darkness I heard my voice rising in a spiral, a strange, warbling call, and Shaker laid me gently on a soft surface. There was the rasp of a congreve and then the flare of light as he touched the match to the wick of an Argand lamp. In its glow I saw I was on a narrow mattress on a rope-slung frame. It seemed the pains were building on each other, the time between them shorter and shorter. Explosions of noise in the distance signaled the height of the Bonfire Night fireworks. I was being torn in two.

  “It’s too early. It’s far too early,” I whispered, drawing my knees up and apart as Shaker lit a fire in the small fireplace.

  “Yes, I know,” he said, almost as if to himself. “And it appears to be too far along to stop.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” I said, panting now. And I’m afraid.

  Shaker’s hands were jumping wildly as he washed them in a basin. Water splashed over the front of his coat and he removed it. Booming and crashing rattled the glass pane of the window. “I do,” he said, and then came to me.

  “LET ME SEE HER.”

  “You don’t want to do that, miss. It will only upset you.”

  “I said I want to see her.” My words hissed as if filled with venom.

  It had been over quickly; I didn’t question anything Shaker had told me to do as he pushed up my dress and undid my stays and tucked my chemise up out of the way and then placed his large knuckled hands on my abdomen and began murmuring instructions. He gave me a clean pad of cotton to bite down on when the worst of the pain came. Afterward, he pulled the stained sheet from beneath me and spread a fresh one, then brought extra cloths for the bleeding and warm water and a soft flannel for washing. He left me alone and I took off my dress and corset
and cleaned myself, slowly, all over. My movements were slow and heavy, and when I was done I lay back on the bed.

  Morning hadn’t yet come, although the light in the lamp seemed dimmer, and the darkness in the corners of the room was fading. Wind whistled at the window.

  “It’s my baby. You can’t tell me that I have no right to see her.” I tried to keep the command in my voice, but I shivered even with the blanket wrapped around me, and the last of the words fell off weakly. Shaker had opened the window a few inches, and the cool air rushed in, bringing fresh, somehow green-smelling air. The air I had breathed for so long had the heaviness of gray. The fireworks had long been over, and there were no sounds from outside. Used to the endless clatter and shouts of Jack Street, I found this room eerily quiet.

  He studied me for another moment and then went to a washstand that held a porcelain basin. “Wait, then.”

  I closed my eyes, hearing small splashing sounds, gentle rustling. “What are you doing?” I finally asked, opening my eyes and trying to find a comfortable sitting position, pulling the blanket firmly around my shoulders.

  He didn’t answer but finally came to the side of the bed. He squatted beside me, lowering the decorated porcelain basin, and I looked at the tiny shape under the clean linen handkerchief that had been carefully draped over it. A miniature winding sheet.

  I moved the handkerchief aside with my index finger.

  She lay on her side. Shaker had washed her; her skin was clean, the soft gray-blue of a mourning dove’s breast, and a fine down covered her entire body. She was perfectly formed but unbearably tiny, transparent eyelids and fingernails.

  I reached out and stroked the cool velvety forehead, the arm, the back. My fingers were trembling, or perhaps not, perhaps it was the baby trembling from the vibration of the basin in Shaker’s hand.

  I wanted to weep. I tried, for it was as if the lining of my throat had swelled to an unbearable size, so thick and membranous that it was difficult to swallow. Saliva filled my mouth, my nose ran, but still, no tears came to my eyes.

  “I’m sorry. I knew it would do no good for you to—”

  I had to work at my throat and finally my voice returned, although it was only a dull croak. “Her name is Frances.” I took my hand away from the baby and put it into my lap, where the other hand clenched it. “And I’m glad she didn’t live. Glad, for what kind of life is it for a girl in this world? What kind of life for a girl?” I believed it at that moment.

  Shaker gently set the basin back on the washstand, looking down at the baby.

  “You won’t dump her down a midden, will you? Give her to me and I’ll take her and bury her myself.”

  Shaker continued to look at the dead child.

  “If you want me to leave, I’ll leave right now. I’ll take her and go,” I said, somehow angered by Shaker’s stooped shoulders, his trembling hands, the sorrow that seemed to be a part of him. What right did he have to grieve for her, for my Frances? He had no right at all. He knew nothing of me, nor I of him.

  I tried to swing my legs to the floor and involuntarily cried out at the sharp dark pain. The blanket fell away.

  “I’ll let you do whatever it is you wish with her, of course,” Shaker said, turning to me now, standing so still except for the fluttering hands, which he eventually tucked under his own arms. “What is your name?”

  “Linny Gow,” I said, sitting there, naked but for my thin chemise. I put my palms on either side of me on the bed, preparing to push myself up. “I must go,” I said.

  “Why?” Shaker asked.

  I didn’t have an answer. My eyes went to the basin.

  “Would you like to lie here, for a few hours at least, until the worst of the bleeding stops and you have enough strength to get home?” He came closer.

  When I didn’t answer, he continued. “You know you mustn’t go right back to work. At least not for a few days. Your body needs time to heal.”

  Of course he knew what I was. He hadn’t needed his mother to point out my occupation. He’d known right from the first moment I stepped beside him in the public house, although his manner toward me had been so respectful that I had actually believed that he might have been fooled for a short time.

  At his mention of going back to work I was overcome with exhaustion. The thought of going out into the cold pre-dawn and walking all the way back to Jack Street seemed, suddenly, completely impossible. “I’ll rest for an hour at the most,” I told him. “Only an hour.” I lay back down.

  Shaker rearranged the thick wool blanket over me, and as he did so, his eyes flickered over my scar, and I heard an almost imperceptible sigh. Then he closed the window, stoked the fire, turned out the lamp, and left.

  As I lay there, warm, sleepless, in the first pale rays of morning light, I looked away from the basin, toward the window. A bare wet branch touched the glass cautiously in the remains of the wind that had now died away. The sky was pearly. I thought about Shaker and for the first time wondered that he had known what to do. I thought of the sadness on his face as he held the washbasin toward me, and then later, as he stared down at my dead baby.

  I AWOKE TO BRIGHT SUNLIGHT streaming through a window that was clean as any I’d ever seen. I threw back the blanket and sat up, stiff and aching everywhere, as if I’d been beaten far worse than the few blows from the Scot in the carriage. I felt skinned, both inside and out, as if even a word would produce pain. I stood slowly, my legs shaky, and dressed.

  As I let down my tangled apollo and struggled with the matted tangles I looked to the washstand. In place of the basin was a small tin-plated box no longer than two of my hand lengths. Shaker must have come in while I was asleep. A box for storing jewelry was my first thought, or for special keepsakes. I went to it and ran my fingers over it, realization striking, and then opened the lid a tiny bit. I saw the crisp white of the linen handkerchief, touched it and felt the small curled contents. I closed the lid.

  The rest of the room contained a broad, austere desk and a straight chair. Stacks of books were piled on the desk and one lay open. On the wall over the desk was the drawing of a man with no flesh, just muscle, sinew, and veins. There were other drawings of bones, one of a skull, split in half, with a wormy mass showing on the open side. And then I saw them, on the floor beside the desk. Jars.

  For one horrible moment I was back in the brightly lit room with its terrible collection.

  I went closer, afraid of what I might see. But these jars didn’t contain hair. At first I thought the contents to be food storage, for shapes that I had only seen in a butcher’s stall floated there. Then I realized they were organs, parts of the body, preserved, obviously, by their white, waxen appearance. Some I didn’t recognize, although I did see kidneys. A heart. A liver. Looking into the last jar, I put my hand over my mouth to stifle the sound, but I wasn’t fast enough. The door opened and Shaker hurried in to find me backing away from the desk.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think . . .” He was stuttering, snatching up the jar so rapidly that the large-headed fetal beginnings of a human surged and bobbed in the eddying formaldehyde.

  I stared at him, stricken, feeling my own face as lifeless and bleached as the contents of the jars.

  “I study the human body,” Shaker said, too quickly, as if guilty. “I . . . I wanted to be a physician. Of course it’s impossible for me—a physician, or even a surgeon, even the most rudimentary of barber-surgeons—like the one who once attended to you.” His eyes rested on my scar for the briefest of moments, then he shook his head. “Impossible, being the way I am—my hands,” he continued, as if he needed to clarify, “but it remains a passion.” He had managed to hide the jar behind his back as he spoke. “I’ve made some beef tea,” he said, “and you should have some tartar emetic, for making the blood stronger. But you need a physician’s recommendation; it’s only available at the dispensary. Are you feeling terribly indisposed?” He was babbling, his tongue tripping over the words in trying
to explain himself.

  I had lowered myself onto the ladder-back chair at the desk. “I just became lightheaded from standing too quickly,” I lied, not wanting him to think me weak. “I’ll be on my way in a moment.” I looked toward the pretty box on the table. “Will you be wanting your box back?”

  “Oh, no. Please. You had said you wanted to bury it—her, and I thought . . .”

  I studied the box, not wanting to look at Shaker as he backed out of the room. He reappeared, carrying a shawl, in less than a moment. “I’m so sorry to have upset you, Miss Gow. Please.” He handed me the shawl—his mother’s, of course. I put it around me. “At least have a cup of the beef tea I’ve prepared. It’s across the hall, in my mother’s room. She’s just returned from church, and her room is warmer. The fire hasn’t been laid downstairs yet; Nan will arrive shortly and see to things. Come and sit in the other room. Please,” he added, again.

  The suggestion of the meaty drink made saliva rush to my mouth. “All right. Thank you, Mr.—”

  Color spread upward from Shaker’s neck. “Oh, it’s just Shaker, as I told you last night. Started as an unfortunate jest while I was at school but it stuck, and so it remains.” He smiled briefly, revealing slightly crooked teeth, but it was a natural smile and it warmed his plain face. It crossed my mind that I hadn’t seen this kind of smile on a man’s face for a long, long time. Not from any of the men who looked at me. “My surname is Smallpiece. But please. I’d prefer if you’d call me Shaker. If you don’t mind the informality.”

  “Thank you, Shaker,” I said, realizing that it would indeed be ridiculous to carry on with any pretense. “For . . . last night. For helping me.” I studied his trembling hands. Did they ever stop their dance? Had they shaken as he gently guided the tiny blue girl out of me?

  He balled them into fists, then, and I was ashamed for staring.

  “You must think me a right ninny,” I said, raising my eyes. “To be robbed like that. Me, of all people. I should know the games of the street.” I shrugged. “There’s no way I’ll ever get my money back, I know that.”