by Kim Wilkins
Sunday, 28th December 1794
There can be no doubt: even in my stupefied state I can see that I am no longer welcome in Solgreve. Reverend Fowler rejected my request for parish relief outright. “Perhaps you would be better served in another parish,” he said. And he, supposedly a man of God, asked me to leave the church, even though I had Henri puling in my arms – the poor child is too thin, I know he is.
Upon my return to the cottage, I passed the glass man leaving my front path with a large basket in hand. I asked him what he wanted, but he merely grunted and walked away. I soon found out why. He had taken all the last of my plate, a number of my remaining books – in fact, everything of any value in my house! Yes, we owed him money, but I am a poor widow with a young son. How am I supposed to live? Everything I have that is dear I hold in these two hands: my wedding band, and my Diary –
How could I have forgotten Virgil’s letter? Why it just occurred to me upon the last lines I wrote. Of course it was still there, tucked into the back of my Diary, its seal still intact. I am now faced with the decision about what to do with it. Curiosity burns in me, but I am afraid of Flood. He seems capable of reading my mind – what if I read the letter and he somehow knew, and then sent the Wraiths to injure me or, worse, to injure Henri? The implication in his last statement to me was that I must take care of my beloved son.
No. I simply must read it, for Virgil died because of the contents of this letter. This afternoon, while there is still a little light, I will go to the village and borrow money against my wedding ring. I would dearly love to keep it, but I must have the coach fare to York. Edward, I know, will lend me the money to buy it back, perhaps within a week or two. I will read the letter this evening when Henri is asleep, and tomorrow I will travel safely to York.
Monday, 29th December 1794
My hand feels light, naked, without my wedding band.
It is unthinkable, really, that I should write something so ordinary as how the weight of my hand has changed, after what horrors last night held for me. I think, Diary, that I may be beginning to lose my mind. The world seems now as though shrouded in darkness for me, and while others may see and hear and understand what happens around them, I feel it all as if at one remove. I see my handwriting certainly appears to be that of a madwoman, but that is due to the motion of the carriage. I have all perched precariously in front of me, my ink well locked between my knees. I have twice already dribbled ink upon my dress, but nobody will notice if a pauper is dirty as well as ragged, so I care very little.
A most unpleasant woman and man were our companions for the first part of our journey, but they have now left and it is only myself and Henri in the carriage. He is awake and looking around, dear boy, and occasionally stretches one of his little arms out to me for reassurance. Oh dear, I have just noticed he has ink upon his pink hand – I really am making quite a mess. But there are many hours to fill on this journey, and I have an awful tale to tell.
Hands and ink and fire. I will not lose my mind.
Virgil was not asking idly when he begged not to be buried in Solgreve. This was not the request of an addled mind. I have read his letter and, God help me, I know what happens in Solgreve.
Last night, Henri took so long to go to sleep. The poor child is hungry all the time now, as am I. Why, I have scarce eaten more than stale scraps for a week, and I feel light-headed if I must rise too suddenly.
It was very late when I picked the seal off the letter. I read through it once, then twice, and all the tremors of fear and horror traced patterns on my skin but I still had to read it a third time to comprehend it fully, if one can ever truly comprehend something so cruel.
And then I knew, Virgil could not stay in the ground. The fires of Judgement Day would not have convinced me to leave him there. I was desperate. My fare was booked for this morning and I had only one night in which to decide what to do.
The decision, however, was inescapable. If I tarried, or waited for Edward to come and help me, the pit might be filled and the task made impossible. Simply, I had to go to the cemetery and retrieve my husband’s remains.
I waited until midnight. It makes me shudder now to remember that I did not give a thought to the Wraiths. This is how clouded my thinking has become. In any case, I was probably not at the cemetery for more than ten minutes, though it seemed an eternity.
I left Henri sleeping in his cradle, soothed on a few drops of his father’s opium. I wondered whether I should tell him one day where Fate led me that night, and decided that, no, my life from this moment on would be all to do with protecting the child’s innocence. I care not what kind of a man this will make him, I will die before I allow his innocence be sullied.
Where was I?
Yes, I crept from the cottage with a long length of rope. I was wrapped as warm as a poor woman can be. My gloves are nearly worn through, and there is a hole in my left shoe. A light breeze grazed my ears, icy and full of the scent of the sea. I stayed close to shadows as I made my way down to the cemetery, across and towards the poor’s hole, which is at the far end near the cliff-top.
I had not been to the site of my husband’s interment before this time. A physician and one of the Reverend’s helpers from the church had been to collect Virgil’s remains and no doubt had placed him in the pit without ceremony shortly thereafter. As I stood on the wild, windy cliff-top, I thought perhaps it was a fitting place for a restless soul such as Virgil to be buried, were not such a diabolical secret being kept in the village. I braced myself against the horror of the task and looked down into the pit. A number of bodies, anonymous beneath their winding sheets, lay jumbled against one another. I did not know which one was Virgil.
Although the weather was cool and the uppermost bodies not too much decayed, the smell from the bodies at the bottom of the pit was unbearable: a pungency made somehow more offensive by its unexpected rotten sweetness. I wrapped my scarf around my nose and mouth and lowered myself into the pit, my feet finding cringing purchase along yielding limbs. I bent and examined the two bodies closest the top. One of them must be Virgil, but which? The body dimensions were similar, both were clearly male. I knew that I must pull back the shroud and identify him, but I could not bear to think of Virgil’s face misformed or putrefied. I did not want the last image I carried of him in my mind to be the stuff of nightmares.
I found myself crouching in the pit, rocking to and fro, shuddering violently in the cold, with no idea at all what to do, yet knowing I had to do something. An old rhyme I had heard once as a child came back to me. A pauper funeral near Hattie’s house, the body wrapped and loaded on to the cart, and three small children dancing alongside it on its way to the churchyard, singing:
Rattle his bones
Over the stones
He’s just a pauper
That nobody owns.
The song repeated over and over in my head as I tried to decide how I was to identify Virgil. Then I remembered – my memory is so vague at the moment – that Virgil had written a great deal before his death. And when Virgil wrote, he always did it with such passion and vigour, that he would splatter ink all along his first two fingers. So, it was really only a matter of identifying him by his right hand.
I looked from one of the shrouded bodies to the other, then reached towards the one on the left. I tore open the shroud near the right wrist and poked inside to pull out the hand. The flesh felt spongy under my fingers. In the dark I could barely see what I was doing, so I had to lean very close.
I could not but notice that despite the many dead bodies in the grave, there were a disturbing amount of live insects and wriggling worms. They feasted on the flesh at the bottom of the pit, but were slowly working their way up towards the fresher food. I tried to ignore them, but one or two brushed my hands or skittered across my toes. And was that a dismembered limb I could spy below me? I recalled that Flood’s experiments were disposed of in the pit. What other horrors hid in the dark? I shut off my imagination, and ret
urned to my grisly task.
There is a strange, heavy coldness about dead limbs, and the memory of that coldness still resides in my own hands. I closed my fingers around the wrist and held the hand up to my face. There, along the index and middle finger, were two clear black splashes of ink. This, indeed, was my husband’s hand.
The identification made, I now had ahead of me the task of pulling him from the pit. I am not a large woman, Diary, though you would not know for you have no eyes with which to see me. And Virgil, though slender, was tall and muscular. I struggled with him to prop him into an advantageous position, then wrapped the rope about his shoulders and climbed out of the pit. I looped the rope around a nearby tree and pulled as hard as I could. It is said in times of desperation that even the weakest mortal can display strength not ordinarily possessed of them. Nobody was more desperate than I was last night. With every heartbeat, with every thrum of the blood pacing through my veins, I had but one thought: Virgil must not stay in the ground. He emerged from the pit, jerking along the grass in a horrible, unnatural fashion. I wound up the rope and then half-dragged, half-carried him back through the cemetery and towards the cottage.
In my addled state, I hadn’t really decided what I should do with him once he was retrieved, and I got as far as the front path of our house before it occurred to me where I should properly dispose of his remains. I laid him carefully upon the ground and went inside. I checked on Henri, who was still sleeping, and went to the fire. I gathered firewood in a basket, and lit a lamp to hang over my wrist. I found the last of an old bottle of brandy which I tucked into the basket also, and went back outside.
My ability to carry Virgil was now even more limited. It must have taken me half an hour to drag him through the wood. Halfway to the cliff, I stopped to rest, laid all my goods upon the ground and caught my breath. It was then that I became bothered by the suspicion that I did not, indeed, have Virgil with me, but some other fellow who used a pen and ink for a living. And if I did not check, I knew the uncertainty would haunt me for the rest of my days.
I sighed, because there was nothing for it. I picked at the shroud, unwound it slowly from the top of his head and, by lamplight, beheld my husband’s face.
Of course it was him, and had I been thinking straight, I would have known it by the mere shape of his dear hands, those fingers which I had seen too many times pressed together in thought, or fluttering with anxiety. As it was – and I am eternally grateful to whichever angel was responsible – Virgil’s face was not horribly disfigured by decay yet. He was grey, his skin slightly pulpy beneath my fingertips (which, of their own accord, had flown to his cheek), his lips were white and his eye sockets seemed curiously hollow. I did not attempt to pull back the lids and gaze at his eyes once more, as they were probably sunk far back in his head. But he was still my Virgil, my beautiful husband, and I sobbed greatly to look upon him. I fell back on my haunches and dragged my fingers in the icy ground and sobbed until my body shook, and then I collected myself, carefully covered him again and went on my way down to the beach.
Our little fishing boat was there, and as I dropped my load upon the sand and gazed out to sea, I remembered the time we two hopelessly happy newlyweds had made love in the boat, our Good Ship Sweetheart. The keen scent of rime on the air was bracing, and there was something regular and rhythmic about the waves: here and away, here and away, over and over, ponderously. I turned my back on my task for a few minutes and breathed in the sea, and felt a glimmer of happiness that this would be Virgil’s final resting place.
But I could not spend so much time away from Henri. What if he was awake and crying for me? I could not bear the thought of his fear in the empty house, so I hurried. I dragged Virgil aboard the boat and I laid around him firewood and bits of dry driftwood I found upon the shore. I doused it all with brandy and set it alight from the lamp. It blazed into life.
I kicked off my shoes and got behind the stern of the boat, pushed it with what little strength I had left out into the cold ocean. I waded out deep, for I didn’t want the waves close to the shore to bring it back to Solgreve. The water rose up and up my body, and the firewood around Virgil had started to burn. When I was chest deep in the water, and could feel the edge of some dark current pulling this way and that at my skirt, I gave him one last mighty push and headed back to shore. I collapsed upon the beach, exhausted, freezing and soaked, to watch. The current pulled the boat out further into the distance. By now it was ablaze. Then, as I waited, shivering on the shore, the fire began to dim. The leak in the bottom must have allowed in enough water to douse the flames. Lower and lower the fire faded, until it had gone out completely. The boat was far from the shore now, just a black shape against the sea. I lost sight of it in an eye-blink. Virgil sank to the bottom.
Farewell, my beloved. Wait for me.
Now I am off to York, perhaps to make a whore of myself. It is no matter, my heart is far away, deep in the briny depths of the ocean.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Friday, 2nd January 1795
A week in relative Comfort has made me lazy as you see, Diary. I am in York. Edward has a small apartment above his shop, and while he is downstairs at work or out on house calls, Henri and I try to stay warm and fed, and recover from the loss of our dear Virgil.
I arrived in York late on Monday evening. Along the way, Henri and I had eaten, thanks to the money left over from the pawning of my wedding ring, so we weren’t too uncomfortable when I alighted the coach. York was under a fine layer of snow, but the weather was quite still as I cradled Henri in my arms and began to search for Edward’s residence. I liked being in a large town. Solgreve is so small and lonely, but here I could see lights burning in windows and knew that others were awake and warm and comfortable. It helped me to imagine that I, too, may be like that one day.
I found Edward’s shop thanks to the help of a gentleman passer-by. I am forever grateful that he did not look upon me with loathing, as so many who saw me did. He was kind and asked after the comfort of the infant, saying it was a cold night for such a young babe to be out. I suppose it was, though I don’t seem to feel it any more. Perhaps cold is a condition one can only experience by contrast, when one’s heart is warm.
The shop was closed, but I rang several times at the bell and finally Edward heard and came to the door. As he opened it and caught sight of me, he smiled affectionately.
“Gette,” he said, ushering me in. And his use of Virgil’s name for me undid me. I trembled and began to sob, and the next half hour is all confusion. I know he took Henri and my case from me; I know he led me up the stairs to his rooms and sat me before a fire; I know he gave me brandy, but the smell too keenly reminded me of the previous night’s endeavours and made me cry all the worse; I know that I told him about Virgil’s death and that he drew quite pale with shock; and I know that he held me in his arms and I clung to him like a tiny child and sobbed until my heart felt bruised. But when I remember all this now, it seems to have happened to somebody else. Perhaps it was the dose of laudanum that he gave me to sleep which renders the whole evening as though a dream. Feeling safe in Edward’s good care, I slid between warm covers and, for the first time since Virgil’s death, slept soundly.
It wasn’t until the following morning when I awoke, comfortable and refreshed, that I realised Edward had given me his bed. I stumbled out into the sitting room and found him curled on the floor before the fire. He had opened the bottom drawer of a large chest and filled it with blankets and soft things for Henri to sleep in. The child slept peacefully, but Edward woke the instant I came into the room. His hair was all messed with tossing and turning, and his eyes bleary.
“Gette, did you sleep well?”
I nodded and sank into a chair. “For the first time in forever.”
“I’m glad.” He sat up and stretched his arms over his head, yawned. “I know this is not how one should greet a lady, but your appearance is shocking.”
“I’m hardly a lad
y.”
“Last night, I thought you a phantom. You are more bone than flesh.”
“I give as much food as I can to Henri. I believe he is too small for his age and I’m desperately worried for him. It means I have sometimes gone without.”
As if he had heard his name, Henri began to grizzle in his drawer. Edward glanced in his direction then turned back to me. “Allow me to make you both some breakfast, and then today we shall buy you new clothes. You look like a beggar.”
I smiled a bitter smile. “Edward, why am I here with you if not to beg?”
“Perhaps you are here with me because I am your friend.”
His kindness touched my heart and I dropped my head to hide my foolish tears.
Edward is not a rich man, but he has no wife or family upon whom to spend his money. So he bought me two new dresses, both black because I insisted upon proper mourning wear. Neither was very expensive, but I felt his generosity was too great. Henri also had new clothes, and he looks not so sick and poorly now he is well-dressed and properly fed. I supposed I should have felt uncomfortable that Edward, while being so charitable, should sleep on the floor to accommodate me, but grief makes people selfish and thoughtless, and so I was.
New Year’s Eve arrived, and brought with it all the fears and uneasiness that the prospect of facing the future can bring. 1795. I would soon be twenty. The end of the century approached, and I tried to imagine how I might feel on the night before the calendar turned and I found myself in the nineteenth century. It seems so impossible, so strangely modern. By then, I shall be nearly twenty-five, and my life, I hope, will be greatly changed. I do not like to think upon it, but these are the thoughts that a New Year can arouse in one.
