I knew this was goodbye.
At last, I was permitted to climb the carpeted staircase up to the living quarters. The tray wobbled in my hands as the scents flooded back: lily of the valley, violets, wood and coal. No longer pleasant fragrances. They put me in shackles, in the captain’s room, even though that door was closed and locked.
Food and drinks were served in the drawing room. I’d never been in a space so fine. Beeswax candles blazed from sockets on the walls, the light gleaming on the mirror and the mahogany mantelpiece. Warm paper, patterned with poppies, covered the walls. Marble-topped tables stood waiting for the food, while here and there were sofas for the guests to sit. Kate had filled vases full of hothouse flowers. It was perfect: a stage, ready for the actors to arrive.
I stood by the wall, watching the wings, twitching the curtains.
Waiting for one player to depart.
32
Ruth
‘We were blessed once, so we were, a long time ago, but the angels took the poor dear home. Ah, it was a sad thing. But when I first saw Billy! Lord love me, I says to Mr Rooker, if he hasn’t just the look of our Alfred about him.’
Billy’s adopted mother wasn’t what I expected. She was Irish – and it occurred to me that Billy did have a turn of phrase, and an Irish way of speaking, even if he didn’t have the accent. Mrs Rooker was also fleshy, with apple cheeks and a bosom that could knock you for six if she turned around too quickly. She chattered happily to the guests, waving her hands, while her husband – a small, balding man with spectacles – smiled fondly on.
‘Why yes, to be sure, we were surprised when the young people took it into their heads to marry. But why shouldn’t they? He’s every bit her equal, and,’ dropping her voice, ‘a bit more so, between you and me.’
From my position, pressed like a piece of furniture against the wall, it looked like a jolly party. People drank champagne, smiled and laughed. Kate shone at the centre, a different creature to the one I saw by day in the shop. Her skin had lost its tension. Paste diamonds sparkled at her neck and lit her eyes. The dress, which had so disgruntled Mrs Metyard, proved to be made in midnight blue, spotted with silver. It complemented her dark curls, now bound up with silver ribbon, and made her complexion more brilliant than ever. She was perfect, from the bones in her bare shoulders to the toes of her slippers.
My old, relentless yearning flared up. Envy is too weak a word for it. I didn’t want what she had, I wanted to be her. If I could have taken Kate’s soul from her body and replaced it with mine, I would have done it in an instant.
To look as Kate did now, as she raised her glass and smiled at Billy, was to be invincible. Nothing could touch her.
Meanwhile, I sagged and shifted the weight between my aching legs, unused to standing for any length of time.
The hour was late, but the guests showed no sign of leaving. One of the lads from church struck up a tune with his fiddle. There was no space to dance, yet gentlemen hummed and tapped their feet.
Billy caught my eye and tipped me one of his winks. It didn’t look like him, standing there. A starched collar rested its points upon his cheeks. He wore a frockcoat and a plain, velvet waistcoat instead of his usual checks and stripes. His hair, which I loved to see tumble about, had submitted to the comb and grease. He was still charming, but he wasn’t Billy.
Ivy’s sour face glared at me from across the room. Nell, Daisy and Mim had been down the stairs a few times to fetch bottles and remove plates, leaving the pair of us to attend the guests. But how closely did Ivy look?
Had she noticed the determination in Mim’s chin? How long it had been since Mim last came up from the kitchen? I would have given much to know what Ivy thought. Something in her brow made me shiver.
When the clock struck three in the morning, people finally began to take their leave. Whoever dreamt they’d stay so late? Nell and I were sent to gather up armfuls of the guests’ shawls, wraps and overcoats. On our way back to the drawing room, we passed the twins. Ivy frowned at the sight of us, as if something were amiss, but she didn’t speak.
I thought I might be sick.
Downstairs, all lay in silence. Mim wasn’t in the kitchen. She wasn’t in the house – I could feel it.
Too late to cry. I made myself walk with a steady step, back to face the guests. Without the fiddle and the clink of glasses, you could hear wind howling through the streets, rattling at the windows.
She didn’t have a cloak.
I handed out shawls to young ladies and tidied up the glasses in a kind of panicked alert. Any minute, I thought. Any minute now, someone will ask me where she is. Someone will raise the hue and cry, and they’ll fly after her like a pack of dogs.
But when I left the drawing room to take the glasses downstairs, Mrs Metyard was still smiling.
On my way to the kitchen, I stole a peep out of the window. A full moon glowed through tatters of grey cloud. Stars shone, bright as needle points in the cold sky. Snow dusted the ground.
She was only wearing thin shoes.
One by one, the company departed. I shivered, ever fiercer, as the seconds ticked away.
Finally, Nell stacked some plates in the sink and asked, ‘Have you seen Miriam?’
I shook my head. Too fast.
* * *
We hadn’t even gone to bed when the blows fell on the showroom door: not in pairs or trios, as knocks often are, but a steady barrage of open-handed slaps.
I felt them on my body.
‘Who can that be, at this hour?’ asked Nell, up to her elbows in suds.
My temples pounded from lack of rest. ‘Probably some fool in his cups. We should ignore it, they’ll go away.’
They didn’t go away. They didn’t stop to rest their arm but hit louder and louder until I thought my brow would split.
‘You’d better answer the door, Ruth.’
I took a few hesitant steps out of the kitchen. Kate ran down the staircase at full pelt, skirts hitched up her calves, her curls tumbled from their ribbons. Mrs Metyard followed at a slower, more ominous gait, each footstep resounding.
Billy and the other guests were gone. There was no one to see me slink after them, silent in the dark.
I stood as I’d done on that first day: at the threshold of the showroom, peering in. It wasn’t light and heavenly now. The poppets and dressmakers’ models loomed, ghostly in the shadows. Coloured feathers became the plumes of carrion birds. The glass counters winked, malicious.
Kate unbolted the door.
Freezing wind rushed inside. Ribbons flailed, feathers flew. Then I saw the man standing upon the steps, and the writhing figure that his arms struggled to restrain.
‘Found something that belongs to you, Mrs Metyard.’ It was our milkman, Mr Brown: a bull-necked, florid fellow. ‘I says to myself, that’s the dressmaker’s Negro all right, by the coaching inn. We don’t get many of them in these parts.’
Mim’s dress clung to her tall frame. She was bedraggled, cold and her cheek bled – yet for all this, she’d never looked more beautiful.
‘Thank God,’ Kate babbled, ‘I thought we’d never find her. My mother only just noticed . . .’
‘Silly mare wouldn’t get far, not on a night like tonight.’
Mim twisted in Mr Brown’s grip, gasping for liberty.
‘Fierce one, ain’t she? Nearly gave me the slip. Have you something to tie her, miss?’
‘I think – yes, here’s some cord.’ Kate shivered as she moved, her shoulders bare in her evening dress. ‘Help us, Mother.’
Mrs Metyard didn’t speak. Didn’t move. In the midst of the foraging wind and Mim’s desperate bids to break free her stillness was appalling.
‘Careful, miss, she’ll catch you.’
Together, Mr Brown and Kate bound Mim’s wrists. Her skin paled where the cord tightened.
&n
bsp; ‘Let me go!’ screamed Mim. ‘You don’t own me!’
‘I’ve got papers here that say otherwise.’
Had it been worth it? The fear and the pain for an hour of freedom? I should’ve stopped her. A true friend would have stopped her.
‘I can’t thank you enough, sir. You’ve been my saviour.’
Mim’s scoff covered my own. Why couldn’t the bastard mind his own business? Why couldn’t he look the other way?
Silently, Mrs Metyard moved behind the counter and reached for something. A purse. She opened it, produced a coin and gave it to the milkman.
‘That’s mighty decent of you, ma’am. I was just doing my duty. But I can use this for a spot of rum to drive out the cold.’
‘You’ll have breakfast here when you deliver the milk next,’ Kate promised. ‘Miriam might have frozen to death or been attacked by desperate types if it weren’t for you.’
He laughed. ‘Not her, miss. She’d fend them off.’
Mrs Metyard stepped forward. Between them, she and Kate took hold of the hostage.
‘Thank you again.’
It was only when the door was shut on the milkman and the wind died down that Mrs Metyard uttered a word.
‘Deserter.’
It came from the chafed red lips and the bracketed mouth, but it wasn’t Mrs Metyard’s voice. This was deeper.
‘I ought to have you stood against the wall and shot.’
She dragged Mim into a pool of light from the streetlamp outside. My stomach clenched.
He stood there, clutching Mim.
The captain had returned.
33
Ruth
First, they beat her with the broomstick. The captain held her by the hair while Kate administered the blows. With every swing, her sapphire ring flashed. Mim refused to cry out.
When the hollow thwack of wood had faded away, we were sent to bed: the twins, Nell and I. My pallet felt large and achingly cold without Mim.
‘What was she thinking?’ Nell said into the darkness. ‘She must have known she’d never make it, especially in the frost.’
Daisy cleared her throat. ‘I don’t think blackamoors feel the cold. Not like we do . . .’ But you could tell that even her spiteful soul didn’t believe it.
Very soon, the sun would rise again. None of us pretended to sleep. We lay there, staring at the mouldy ceiling, wondering what was taking place above our heads. I listened to the house, every creak and every groan, but I didn’t hear Mim. Whether that was a good sign or not, I couldn’t decide.
In the days that followed, Nell abandoned the attic to take over the cooking and the cleaning. She was good at it. If I’d had anything but bile in my stomach I would have appreciated the stronger tea and the eggs that didn’t run. But now every moment only served as a reminder that Mim wasn’t there: not in the sewing room, not in the kitchen, not in my bed.
We were all of us stunned by the loss of her. Even Ivy and Daisy fell quiet. I missed their barbed glances, their astringent remarks. At least they’d made me feel alive.
Now I only had Rosalind’s corset to punish and I did it with relish – but upstairs, with the others, rather than down in the showroom. By the time Rosalind’s trousseau was complete, all our nails were yellow, stained from the emerald-green dyes.
‘I hate all the brides,’ Ivy flared, ‘but I hate this one most of all. Look what she’s done to me! I hope the gowns rot her skin off.’
I smiled.
I suppose it was a week after the party that Kate brought us all down to the showroom, to pack up Rosalind’s dresses in boxes and tissue paper. She’d never done such a thing before.
She was wearing her striped humbug gown and looked, in all honesty, dreadful as she stood amongst the fine silks and parasols. Her nose seemed to tilt even higher, as if she had dung stuffed up it. Grey shadows sat beneath her eyes. Her waist, always tiny, had shrunk again. I didn’t feel any pity.
‘Come on then,’ she barked. ‘Ivy folds, Daisy – tissue paper. Ruth, you put on the lids.’
‘Green tissue,’ muttered Daisy. ‘Green ribbon. What a surprise.’
Kate pinched her. ‘Get on with it.’
In fairness to Rosalind, she always had taste. The cuts were à la mode: tight sleeves, long bodices, all manner of intricate pleats and flounces. As Ivy fussed over the arrangement of a neckline, I wondered what Billy would think of the Oldacre trousseau and my serpent-green corset.
Why hadn’t he delivered to Metyard’s since the night of the party? If there was ever a time we needed him to come and rescue us, it was now. He’d lived in this house. He must have known the horror of the captain’s room.
All I could think was that Kate had written and told him not to come. But surely he must suspect something was wrong? I didn’t like the idea that he was falling under Kate’s power and doing her bidding despite his better judgement. Becoming one of them, instead of one of us.
My work continued while I thought about Billy. Pale blue boxes, olive ribbon. Last in the line, I secured the lids and tied the bows. Throttled them.
For a time there was peace: the rustle of material and tissue, the slide of my ribbon against the box. The carriage clock ticked. But then the inside door opened, and Nell’s freckled face appeared.
‘She’s not moving.’
‘What?’ Kate snapped to attention.
‘I went to fetch her chamber pot. There’s black in it and . . . she’s not moving.’
All hands fell still.
Something curious was happening to Kate’s face. Her skin wasn’t peaches and cream now: it was old milk.
‘I’ll make her move.’
She flew around the glass counter in a whirl of black and white stripes. Pushing past Nell, she stomped up the carpeted stairs. A door slammed above us.
‘Who, Nell?’ I demanded. ‘Who hasn’t moved?’
Her throat worked beneath her high collar. ‘Miriam.’
Of course there must have been someone going up to the living quarters day by day, to empty the pots and fetch the food. Nell. Nell had seen Mim and Mrs Metyard, on a regular basis, ever since the escape – yet she’d said nothing.
‘Why didn’t you tell me that you saw her?’ I cried. ‘Why didn’t you offer to pass on a message?’
Nell shifted against the half-open door. ‘You know why.’
‘Because you’re a coward.’
Hurt in her eyes. I remembered then what she had risked to bring me the pail of water that night I’d emerged from the coal hole. ‘Go ahead and think that, if you like. But if you were up there every day, Ruth, watching that woman strut around in men’s threads, you wouldn’t say a word either.’
‘She’s still dressed as the captain?’ Ivy asked.
‘All week. Why do you think she hasn’t been down here? She’s not fit to see the customers. She’s cracked.’
‘But what about Mim?’ I insisted. ‘What have they done to her?’
Nell blinked her pale lashes. ‘God, but it’s terrible,’ she whispered. ‘They won’t let me give her any victuals. The way she’s tied, she can’t sit, but she can hardly stand either . . .’
I wanted to brain her, I wanted to shake her until her cinnamon head rattled. ‘They won’t let you? What, and you obey them? You can bear to see her like that, starved to death, and not slip her a cup of water?’
‘I can’t!’ Nell cried, slapping the door. ‘Every time I go in, she’s there – he’s there – with that bloody great sword . . . There’s nothing I can do.’
Behind me, Daisy rustled some tissue. Carrying on with her work, as though Mim were nothing.
I rounded on her. ‘I suppose you’re about to tell me blacks don’t need food, aren’t you? They don’t feel starvation?’
All those lustrous gowns hanging in the showroom; the white gauz
e spread out across the counter like gossamer: they made me sick. Could nobody see the brutality that lay beneath the stitches? Didn’t the customers realise that death lurked under every hem?
Daisy cast me a venomous glance. ‘Careful with your mouth. If Miriam kicks the bucket, the captain will be after fresh meat. I tell you now, it ain’t going to be me.’
‘Nor me,’ Ivy spat. ‘Devil take the hindermost.’
Nell rested her head against the door. At least she had the decency to look tearful.
‘There’s nothing we can do, Ruth,’ she repeated.
But of course there was.
* * *
Mrs Metyard in the regiment, Kate in the showroom, Nell all about the house. There was no one left to lock drawers. There was no one to notice if I slipped a few needles up my sleeve at the end of the day. I took three.
The sun set early, as it does in the winter. Black as the coal hole, black as Mim’s hair. We finished sewing at eleven. Kate appeared in the attic, gaunt by the light of the lace-maker’s lamp, and took us down to our chill, dank beds. I dressed in my nightgown, lay on my back.
Then I waited.
I waited a long time, staring blindly into the dark. Little by little, my eyes adjusted. Grey, fuzzy shapes showed me where the steps were and where the twins slept.
Rain tapped at the windowpane above my head. I heard it trickling down the street outside, trickling down our walls.
The air felt poised, as though it were waiting with me.
At last, I shuffled across the pallet and rose to my feet.
The snores carried on.
I wound my way carefully across the cold floor, making sure to avoid the chamber pots. The needles were tucked in my right hand, warmed by my flesh; I used my left to feel about me.
Scratches on my palm: the wooden steps. There was no banister – I would crawl up, for safety. What a notion: safety. When I was going straight into the lion’s den.
The Poison Thread Page 22
