Neither of them looked at me. I might as well have been a hat stand in the corner. Only the black girl shot timid glances in my direction, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes.
Mrs Metyard sighed. ‘Well, Butterham. It puts me out. I won’t lie to you – it’s wretchedly inconvenient on my part. But I could, out of the goodness of my heart, turn you a favour.’ Ma held her breath. ‘I’ve been considering another apprentice. Usually they would pay me for the chance but . . . Say I add the fee on to what you owe? The child works here, wages withheld, until her earnings pay the debt?’
A single word wrestled its way out of my mouth. ‘Ma!’
She ignored me. Her decision had been made, swift as a blade cutting through cotton. ‘But Ruth could live here. Eat here. She’d be safe and warm?’
‘Bed and board would of course be deducted from the wages, before they settle your score. Undoubtedly, it will take a long time for her to repay. But your daughter won’t starve.’
‘Then you must do it, Ruth.’ At last, Ma turned her glassy eyes my way. ‘At least then I’ll know that you are well.’
I gripped her hands so tight that the very bones shifted. ‘No. You can’t . . .’ Excuses crowded to the tip of my tongue. I wanted to tell her that the thought of staying with Mrs Metyard was worse than the prospect of living on the streets; that I’d lost everyone dear and couldn’t lose my ma, too. But then I thought of the alternative.
For we wouldn’t be on the streets, would we? This bitch would have us locked away. I imagined Ma, slowly wasting in a dank cell. She had no money to bribe guards or buy food. She would be penned in squalor, an unprotected female. God only knew what horrors she would endure before death finally took her.
‘Don’t fret about me, Ruth. I will manage by myself.’ Even now, a lie. The bright, false tone she’d used throughout my childhood resurfaced. ‘I will write to you when I find a lodging.’
Write? She couldn’t see to write, even supposing she could afford pen and paper!
‘It is the only way, you know,’ Mrs Metyard said. She raised a hand to inspect her nails. A signal that she was bored of us, of our sordid little lives. ‘If you don’t, your mother will face gaol.’
‘For me, Ruth,’ Ma pleaded. ‘Do it for my sake.’
Conscience ambushed me. If my mother was blind and widowed, whose fault was that?
‘It’s agreed,’ Ma said abruptly. ‘If you give me a paper, I will sign it.’
‘Good. I trust you will not forget this kindness, Butterham.’
Mrs Metyard went to the living quarters to draw up the document, but she returned with surprising speed, as if she had such a paper ready-written in her desk. I recalled what she’d said about Ma’s sloppy stitches. What fools we were, not to notice before.
An embroiderer’s hand is as distinctive as a scribe’s. Mrs Metyard must have known there were two hands, not one, sewing over the last few months. She’d seen Ma’s stitches, and mine. Knew there was a daughter at home. She’d always planned to get me.
‘Come along then, witness the document,’ Mrs Metyard barked at the black girl, who’d waited there, as if expecting the duty.
The girl stepped forward, held the pen awkwardly in her left hand and made a cross where her mistress pointed.
I wasn’t asked for my signature. Gripping a brass rail for support, I watched the scene play out in silence.
The corset clutched at my torso, protective. I felt its dark power flare within me. Swallowed. My stitches had already taken the lives of two people. Now they would be unleashed upon the ladies of Oakgate.
* * *
I won’t recount the parting from my mother. I can’t. So much of it was blurred, unreal. Nothing could convince me she was actually leaving, repeating her ridiculous promise to write.
If I’d had time to think about it, I would have told Ma that I understood. Because I do, now. She thought she was saving me; she had no idea what was going to happen. And I would have held her a little tighter, impressed upon my memory the scent of her skin and the sound of her voice. But it’s too late for regrets.
The moment Ma left, Mrs Metyard seized me by the shoulder and steered me away from the lumber room.
‘Kate!’ she boomed. ‘Kate, where are you?’
‘I’m rolling the ribbons, Mother.’ The voice that answered was that of a young woman, slightly nasal. I recalled Ma mentioning Miss Kate, the daughter of the house.
‘Turn the sign to Closed,’ Mrs Metyard ordered.
We made our way through a corridor and up a short flight of stairs. Mrs Metyard’s grip didn’t let me turn my head, but I couldn’t hear footsteps behind us, so the girl must have gone.
There was no dust here. The walls were newly painted, the air warmer. It felt like emerging above ground.
We came up short against a door. With her spare hand, Mrs Metyard turned a brass knob and revealed the showroom.
I’d been enchanted looking in from the street, but that was nothing compared to what I felt staring through that doorway. The space was twice as large as my old classroom; palatial, by my standards. A carpet of cream stretched out to where three circular tables stood, covered in lace doilies. Cheval mirrors reflected the pots of feathers and boxes inlaid with satin that sat on top. The walls were painted duck-egg blue. Here and there were alcoves displaying hats or an array of gloves and scent bottles. Glass chandeliers hung from a pure-white ceiling. My eyes ran past a dressmaker’s dummy, past the bolts of silk and velvet suspended in rolls upon the wall, to a glass counter on my left. It displayed ribbons, trims and buckles of all sorts. Behind it stood a young woman, winding a reel.
You won’t believe me, but it made my heart lift to look at her. It was like seeing a bird fly, or the sun setting over rooftops.
A bunch of dark curls fell over either ear. The face beneath was heart-shaped, gently pointed at the chin. Her small nose tilted up towards the end. What struck me most was her complexion: spotless and even, the hue of that scrap of peach sateen I had so treasured. Her eyes gleamed like spangles sewn on a gown.
Kate wore a high-necked dress, striped black and white. Even from this distance, I could see it was laced tight, no more than twenty inches at the waist.
In that moment, we could’ve been anything to each other. Our relationship was a bolt of cloth spread out wide, full of endless possibilities. The pattern hadn’t been chalked. I could have loved her. I could have taken the scissors and cut panels of friendship, sisterhood. But she made the first snip.
‘What is that?’ The sparkling eyes grabbed mine. Their expression wasn’t kind.
‘Lindsay gloves. Told you I would get her cheap.’
A grunt. Not the noise I expected from a young woman in her position. ‘Starting when?’
‘Now.’
‘Fine.’ Kate replaced her coil of red ribbon under the glass counter. I expected the daughter to seize me, as her mother had, but instead she pushed past me on the threshold and turned right.
Mrs Metyard chivvied me out and shut the door to the showroom. The corridors seemed dark without the light of the bow windows. ‘Come on, then. What are you about?’
We didn’t mount the wide stairs, carpeted in claret, which led up into the light. I turned and followed Kate’s black and white skirt. Instinct told me I couldn’t walk by her side. I must trail her, watching the fabric of her gown swish and her tiny waist bob. Visually, she wasn’t hewn from the same stone as her mother, but I could tell from the way she carried herself, the way she lifted the hem of her skirt, that she was proud.
In this part of the house, there were no cream corridors. Paint peeled from the walls like patches of dry skin. Kate produced a key from her pocket and opened a door that looked like a cupboard.
Chill air reached across the threshold to touch my ankles. An ancient moss smell, close and stale, came with it. Peering forwards, I saw wal
ls of rough grey stone. Wooden stairs yawned beneath.
‘Mind,’ Kate said. She lifted her humbug skirts another inch and descended.
Warily, I followed, my feet creaking on the wood. The third step was half-rotten, which I suppose was what Kate meant by her warning. I wobbled but didn’t fall, continuing slowly down, down into the grey depths. After my walk across town in the heat, I should’ve been glad to enter a space so cool and shadowy, but it was no relief at all. The skin on my arms crawled. My body knew something about that place that my mind didn’t – not yet.
Damp crept through the floor. At the base of the steps, four mushrooms grew.
‘This one’s you,’ Kate said.
Her voice drew my attention away from the mushrooms. I looked up, felt my stomach plunge when I noticed that there were straw pallets arranged against the wall. Somewhere, water dripped.
‘To . . . sleep?’
The look she gave me could wither the leaves off a tree. Rather than answering, she kicked the pallet, second from the left. ‘You share. Her on the left, you on the right.’
On the right of the pallet lay a neatly folded grey nightgown. Waiting in expectation, as if it knew that I would come.
Kate put her hands upon her hips. They were slight, like the rest of her. ‘I’m in charge here. Do you understand?’
‘Yes. But—’
‘What?’
I fumbled. ‘But what shall I do? Do I work in the showroom, or—’
‘No. Not today. Today you sleep.’
I stared at her. It sounded like a gesture of kindness, yet there was nothing kind in her face. ‘Sleep? But it’s only four o’clock and Mrs Metyard said—’
‘Never mind that, what did I just say?’
Resentment swelled in my chest. She wouldn’t let me finish a sentence. She had to stick out her leg and trip me up at every step.
‘You said . . . you said that you’re in charge.’
‘Right. And I’m telling you to sleep.’ She fixed me with a cold, hard look. ‘Trust me, you’re going to need it.’
* * *
When all’s said and done, this prison cell is comfortable. It didn’t scare me half as much coming here to New Oakgate Prison as it did to be locked up in that dreadful cellar.
I lay flat on the straw pallet. It might as well have been stuffed with glass. Only the reinforcement of my corset stopped it from scratching the skin on my back to pieces. Somewhere out there, another person was sleeping on my old mattress, which the bailiffs had taken. I’d whined about that mattress. Now, by comparison, it seemed like a cloud.
My new bedroom was loud too. Muffled sounds came from above. Some were in the house, others in the street; wheels rolling, the tap of determined footsteps. A narrow strip of glass on the wall above my head admitted a leprous, diseased light. Through it I saw a flurry of movement. No one could look down and see me; only if they lay flat on the pavement, their bellies in the dust.
My treacherous mind tried to creep back into the past, but what use was that? It had gone. I’d stitched the shroud for my family’s old life, and this was my punishment. A dank cellar and the snipes of Miss Kate.
It was freezing. Colder than a summer should ever be. Above my head, the sky burnt blue and pedestrians sweated in the heat. But beneath the ground, I trembled. The blood in my veins became ice. My heart rusted in its cage and somehow, amidst the stench of wet straw, I managed to fall asleep.
Only once in the night did I wake. Darkness pressed on my face like a hand. I heard shuffling feet, sighs, and then there was a real hand, beneath my shoulder, shoving me to the right.
I nearly forgot. I nearly cried out for Ma. But the pallet squeaked and sagged, and then the whole sorry day came back to me. Flashes of gowns, ribbon, Ma crying. I heard Kate’s cut-glass voice. Her on the left, you on the right. I didn’t sleep alone.
The girl sharing my bed had a scent to her – not unpleasant, but foreign, a skin I didn’t know. I wondered what she’d do if I started up in the night with one of my terrible flashes of blood. From what I’d seen that day, I didn’t expect any sympathy.
Gradually, the air warmed. Female breath, female snores. Half a dozen, perhaps? It was hard to tell. All nameless, faceless girls. I could think kindly of them, in the dark.
The girl beside me didn’t snore. She didn’t seem to move. All I heard was a gentle click, regular, repetitive, as if she was grinding her teeth in her sleep.
Carefully, I shifted my shoulders and lay as I’d begun, flat on my back. From the corner of my eye I made out her figure, lying there like an effigy: hands at her breast, gaze on the ceiling. The whites of her eyes shone.
Click, click. What was it? Her shadowy fingers moved, turning the same object again and again. Not a coin. It was white, even in the dark. Not round. I couldn’t make out the shape, but I thought I recognised the substance as it flashed between her fingers quickly, deftly.
Bone.
15
Dorothea
Today, I received an early gift for the anniversary of my birth. Like Salome, I requested a head on a platter – and that head shall be Ruth Butterham’s.
Despite a vexatious cold and stomach complaint that have troubled me for days, I wrapped up in furs and called at New Oakgate Prison. The exterior looked pearly and clean beneath the April sun. Inside it was a different story: the brighter light showed up every cobweb and dust mote. I will tell the committee to have the floor re-sanded, and the walls washed with lime again before the summer . . . but that is by the by.
When I arrived, the women were out in the yard taking their exercise and keeping Matron occupied, so I was left to the entertainment of Mrs Jenkins, a turnkey, while I waited for Ruth. This was a stroke of luck. A turnkey is always an excellent creature to pump for gossip, and there is none better than dear old Mrs Jenkins. She told me more in those fifteen minutes together than Matron has revealed in our entire acquaintance, and she did it with relish.
From Jenkins, I discovered that Ruth has consented to the visits of the prison chaplain. What hopeful news for the salvation of her soul! I flatter myself that my influence has played no small measure in bringing this about. However, knowing girls of Ruth’s age to be sensitive about the interference of their elders, I did not mention it the moment I greeted her, but allowed her to continue her recitation of her past life as usual. Her tale interests me more and more. She has introduced the infamous Metyards and I like her depiction of them exceedingly: the cruel, superior mother and the insolent daughter. How much of it is true, I cannot say at this stage. I do not know what quantity of her brain is given over to deceit.
While she spoke I watched her, eager for clues. She has what the physiognomists would call a ‘tiger’ face: large-mouthed, eyes far apart but slanting down towards the nose. ‘Tigers’ are considered domineering and revengeful, and this accords with what I can see of Ruth’s head: it is wide, like all with a ferocious disposition.
Dark eyes and dark hair suggest power, but also coarseness. Those wiry locks that spring from her scalp reveal the texture of the feelings within: rough and uncultivated. I wonder how they would feel, under my hand. Whether they would be hard or soft, like crows’ feathers.
It was only when I stood up to leave that I ventured to say, ‘Ruth, I hear you have been speaking with our chaplain. How do you get along?’
She shrugged. ‘All right, miss. He’s not . . . he’s not like you.’
A warm glow in my stomach. I should be above such pettiness, I should not want the child to prefer me to a man of the cloth, yet I do. ‘How do you mean, he is unlike me?’
‘He doesn’t listen. It’s all talk. I think he says the same thing to everyone. Maybe he gets bored, with so many of us.’
‘Bored? I should hope not! It is his vocation, a precious charge, not some mundane task.’ I became conscious, then, of my own neglected women,
those who in truth I have grown tired of now that I have Ruth. ‘What is it that the chaplain says to you?’
She frowned. ‘There was one thing. A thing about bitterness.’
‘Yes?’
‘He says . . . I must let it go.’
Suddenly she looked her age. I saw what her face might be without its habitual scowl and it was vulnerable, bereft.
‘Well,’ I said softly, ‘and do you not feel that he is right? What use is your anger in here?’
‘Sometimes you embrace anger, because . . . because it’s warm, when all around you turns cold.’
She sounded pitiful.
‘It is an old friend,’ I guessed.
‘Yes.’
Our eyes met and there I was at the age of seven, robbed of my mama and alone, just like Ruth. Of course I had Papa and Tilda; I was not shut up inside a cell, but nonetheless I was alone in that house. No other had witnessed the heartbreaking scenes that waltzed round and round in my head. There was no friendly face to discuss Mama’s last hours with, no bosom I could confide in. I was utterly lost. Providence saved me, I was fortunate enough to find my faith, but Ruth found . . . something else. And I fear it has driven her to the limit of her wits.
‘Ruth, will you allow me to do something for you? The next time that I call?’
Quick as a blink, the guard came up. ‘What?’
‘I would like to study your crania.’
It is better to say crania, I have found. People are apt to turn peculiar if you talk about their skull. But I mistook my audience in Ruth, for her brow furrowed as she repeated the word.
‘Your head,’ I explained. ‘The palace of the soul. You see, there are chambers in your mind, each for a specific purpose. Some think we are born with them fully developed. But I believe each organ will grow, depending on how much you use it.’
I am not sure how to describe the look she gave me, but it was certainly not one of consent.
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