The Poison Thread

by Laura Purcell

‘Suspicious. And the questions she asks. Did I know it was going on? How long? Had Mother ever hurt my boy? I can’t face her, Billy. I can’t.’

  Billy sighed, removing his hand from Kate’s head and placing it on the back of his own neck. ‘This is my doing. I should have gone to the police the minute I got out of there. I should have told my parents how it was at Metyard’s. It would have spared you all this. It might have spared Miriam . . .’

  ‘It’s not your fault. You were just a boy.’

  ‘I still knew it was wrong. I should have told my parents what I suffered. But I didn’t want them to think . . . differently. About me.’

  ‘I was young too. If the police had come back then, I would have lied for her. I know I would.’

  I gave Kate’s pillow a hard thump.

  True, Billy did share a small portion of the blame for Mim’s death. But if he’d told someone what went on at that shop, who would have believed him? There was no evidence, before the body in the coal hole. And wasn’t it legal for a mistress to beat her apprentices? I doubt the police would have done anything.

  ‘I’d best be getting on. My father needs me.’

  I stooped to pick up Kate’s chamber pot. Only a dark trickle swilled inside.

  ‘Lucky you. I wish I was needed. Tell Nell I will take my breakfast up here,’ Kate called to me. ‘She can bring it on a tray.’

  Curtseying, I left the room.

  Anger pushed my feet down the stairs. Did Kate really think she was suffering? Sitting about all day, ordering me and Nell around like some kind of lady. I thought of those days I’d spent after her marriage, locked in the captain’s room. God above. My corset couldn’t kill her fast enough.

  I had to pass through the kitchen to reach the privy at the back of the house. Little blue dishes sat on the windowsill, each containing a square of flypaper. There were perhaps two dozen corpses stuck on their backs. One of them twitched.

  Nell bent over the sink, scouring pans. Her cheeks were already flushed, hiding her freckles in a blaze of red.

  ‘She wants breakfast upstairs,’ I told her.

  Nell rolled her eyes. ‘Of course she does.’

  As I opened the door, a fly drifted up to me, spiralling around Kate’s chamber pot.

  ‘Bad luck,’ I laughed. ‘There isn’t much for you, Mr Fly.’

  ‘Isn’t there any . . . red in it?’

  I looked over my shoulder at Nell. ‘Red? What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, blood.’

  ‘No.’

  She frowned at the soapsuds. ‘Don’t you think that’s odd? We’ve been here for months. I haven’t had to wash a clout once. Have you?’

  ‘You don’t think . . .’ I didn’t finish my sentence. The unspoken words clanged around the kitchen, making me totter on the doorstep. I thought of yesterday morning, when Kate had complained of nausea.

  ‘It must be, mustn’t it?’ She gave the pan a particularly furious scrub. ‘I hope Billy doesn’t think I’m going to look after his baby too. Can’t you imagine it? A puling brat with Metyard blood in its veins!’

  I couldn’t answer. Leaving the door swinging open behind me, I stumbled outside on to the mud and reached the privy just before the vomit came.

  A baby.

  In my mind, every infant looked like Naomi, the child I’d loved and unwittingly killed.

  It didn’t matter who the mother was. Billy’s baby would be a bonny thing, with his sunny face. Innocent.

  I retched. The chamber pot sat on the bench, Kate’s discoloured urine on the bottom, a reproach to me. Another fly swooped in.

  My corset was working. Her hair was falling out, her bones were rising up.

  But was it killing Billy’s child too?

  45

  Ruth

  Another few days passed before I gathered the courage to ask her.

  We were at the dressing table: she on the stool, me behind, brushing out her hair. How brittle it was in my fingers, like spun sugar. Beneath the swoosh of my brush, I heard her breath. She smelt strange; less like lily of the valley, more like . . . garlic.

  ‘Perhaps we’d better leave your corset off today, madam,’ I said. ‘Maybe lacing too tight is causing your dizziness and your headaches.’

  ‘No. We’ll just fasten it a bit looser.’

  Reluctantly, I moved to the press and drew out an old corset of hers, worked in coutil.

  ‘No.’ She waved her hand at me. The sapphire ring rattled on her finger. ‘The one you made.’

  I pulled my corset out by the tips of my fingers. It wasn’t pleasant to touch the blue now. I could feel the death on it.

  ‘I just thought . . .’ I began.

  ‘For goodness’ sake! What’s the matter?’

  ‘I . . . I think you’re keeping a secret, madam.’

  Her jawbone jerked. A world of guilt simmered in the look she returned. ‘About?’

  ‘About . . . why you haven’t bled. Your nausea and your trips to the privy. I am your maid, madam. I notice these things.’

  A frightening hush fell between us. All I could hear was my heart, pounding in my throat.

  Kate burst into tears.

  The sight of it stunned me. The corset dropped to the floor. I thought I wanted to see her broken, in pain, but this was horrible. She wasn’t a pretty crier. Her face became a blotchy, shining mess.

  ‘Oh, Ruth? What will I do?’

  ‘Do, madam?’

  ‘I don’t want it!’

  So it was true. I stared at her in blank panic, watching her tears splattering on the dressing table. No sign of a burgeoning stomach, but that didn’t mean the seed wasn’t growing.

  I had to protect it.

  ‘I don’t want a baby,’ she repeated, and only then did it dawn upon me what she was saying: that I cared more for Billy’s child than she did.

  I had a mind to box some sense into her. Any woman on earth would be proud to carry Billy Rooker’s baby. Although . . . Naomi’s birth had been terrible, hadn’t it? The way Ma lowed like a cow. Anyone would be scared by the prospect.

  ‘Look,’ I said, as kindly as I could manage. ‘I thought that, before my sister was born. I didn’t want her at all. But in the end, it wasn’t so bad. She didn’t cry a lot, really.’

  ‘No! It doesn’t matter if it’s an angel, I don’t want . . . any baby. It’s not about the baby, it’s about me. What it makes me. I cannot . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I cannot be a mother.’

  Her narrow shoulders shook. She sobbed harder than ever. But I was relapsing, reheating all my former scorn. ‘Why did you get married, then? Didn’t you think this might happen?’

  ‘No, I . . . I don’t know.’ Her hands covered her face. ‘I just want it to be me and Billy,’ she cried.

  How could she weep like that? A baby, with Billy’s blue eyes! Who wouldn’t want it?

  I left her to cry it out and began tidying up her food tray. Half of her cocoa lay cold at the bottom of the cup. The milk was curdling, leaving a sediment. Perhaps Nell had left the bottle sitting in the sun for too long.

  ‘Please, Ruth, don’t tell Billy. Not yet.’

  ‘It’s not my place,’ I said, with a sniff. ‘But I won’t lace you into that corset any more. Not with a baby on the way.’

  ‘You’ll do what I tell you to!’ She whipped around on the stool. For a moment, she looked just like her mother. Fanatic eyes. The fear of losing control. ‘I’m in charge.’

  ‘No you’re not. Not of this.’

  I stormed out of the room. My hands were trembling.

  God above. What was I going to do?

  * * *

  No answer presented itself. October passed to November and still there was no happy announcement to the household. I didn’t think Kate would be able to hide
her secret much longer. But it turns out she was pretty good at concealing things, actually.

  The day after I turned sixteen, I was scrubbing the floor in the downstairs hallway, when I was suddenly arrested by the sound of Billy’s voice.

  ‘Ruth! Ruth!’

  Warmth on my back. I looked up from my brush and the suds to see him bending over me, his hand on my spine. The expression in his eyes was so intense, it seemed to press me into a small space.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Will you go and sit with Kate, Ruth? My mother will come and relieve you in a while.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. Too fast. I might as well have the word guilty branded on my forehead.

  ‘She’s in a bad way. Her gums are bleeding, and the whites of her eyes are all yellow. Maybe it’s the jaundice.’

  Slowly, I straightened my back and threw the brush into a pail of water. I might wash the flags, but I’d never scrub the guilt off. Those stitches sewn in the past, never to be undone. In my mind, the child Kate carried was a replica of Naomi, except she gazed at the world through Billy’s stunning eyes. I was killing her – killing her all over again.

  And for what? Kate’s pain didn’t bring Mim back. It didn’t reunite me with Ma. My revenge was hollow. It tasted like gall.

  ‘Are you going for the doctor?’

  ‘Maybe.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Kate says she doesn’t want him to come . . .’

  His face. I could have borne any pain but that. I’d never seen his dear face alive with so much emotion before.

  I’d broken his heart.

  ‘You must fetch the doctor,’ I blurted out. ‘Whatever Kate says, you must go for help at once.’ He blinked at me. I took a breath. ‘She’s with child, Billy.’

  I might have smacked him in the stomach with a crowbar.

  ‘I didn’t know. I didn’t know,’ he spluttered, aghast. ‘I wouldn’t have . . .’

  No. Neither would I.

  ‘Are you sure, Ruth?’

  ‘She hasn’t bled in months.’

  ‘Does Nell know?’

  I paused. An odd thing to ask. ‘Neither of us knows for certain. But if she’s not bleeding and she’s being sick . . .’

  He swallowed my words, nodding. His gaze fixed elsewhere.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Aye. Right you are.’ Patting me on the head, as though I were a favoured dog, he hurried away. The door slammed behind him.

  Monster. The word followed me up the stairs. Mrs Metyard in her captain’s room, flashing the whip. Me, behind the curtain, sewing, my needle squeaking through the cloth. Both of us, monsters.

  Kate lay on top of the coverlet, perspiring, the roots of her hair dark with sweat.

  She was wearing the corset.

  It blazed brighter than Kate, a mass of peacock eyes watching me. I’d been foolish to think it was a weapon. The corset was me: my bitterness, my pain. My true self, as Pa would say: a killer of unborn children.

  ‘My hands,’ she gasped. ‘Ruth, they burn.’

  Fetching a ewer of water and a cloth, I returned to her side. I dabbed at her forehead and the palms of her hands. She was clammy, not hot at all.

  The sapphire ring slipped from her finger and clattered on the floor. I picked it up, set it on the dressing table, where it broke the light streaming in from outside.

  ‘I need to bathe,’ she said.

  Was that wise? Maybe I should wait for the doctor. But if I ran her a bath, at least I could get her out of the corset straight away . . .

  ‘Please, Ruth!’

  ‘I’ll go and fetch the water.’

  Nell was making breakfast in the kitchen. She stirred a cup slowly, concentrating on the liquid within. Flies hovered, torn between the smell and the deadly allure of the papers.

  ‘She won’t want that,’ I said. ‘She’s in a terrible state. A physician’s coming.’

  Nell let her spoon fall. ‘A physician? Really?’

  I grimaced. ‘I think so. I told Billy about the baby . . .’

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’

  ‘Why?’

  She shrugged. ‘Kate won’t be happy. It wasn’t your news to tell.’

  ‘I think we’re past that, Nell. Come and help me with this water.’

  Between us, we managed to fill the iron tub. The bath was only tepid, so as not to raise Kate’s temperature. Three shapes shimmered on the surface of the water: Kate, Nell and me. Broken. Undulating. We might have been three witches around a cauldron.

  Nell wiped her forehead with the cuff of her sleeve. ‘I’ve got to get back to the kitchen.’

  I didn’t want her to leave me. Didn’t want to be alone with Kate while her skin was so slick and she babbled nonsensically to herself.

  For all the time that I’d known her, I’d imagined Kate’s body to be pristine beneath a peacock-blue gown. But now I feared to see under her shift. No breasts pushed out from the white linen; it hung awkwardly from bony shoulders. Where the sweat gathered above her top lip, I noticed a fuzzy down.

  ‘Thank you, Nelly.’ As Nell turned for the door, Kate seized her hand and clasped it in a skeletal grip. Her veins were close to the skin, straining.

  ‘Madam.’ Nell shook her off and strode away.

  ‘Nelly doesn’t forgive me, she’ll never forgive me,’ Kate wailed. ‘She doesn’t understand.’

  It was worse than looking after an infant. ‘Never mind about that. Do you want me to help you—’ Before I could finish, Kate had swung a scrawny leg over the side of the tub and plunged herself in.

  Her hair spread in the water. Her shift swam about her knees, ghostly.

  ‘It hurt less if I did it. I always offered to do it.’

  She’s hysterical, I thought. A fever in the brain. The ends of her hair were lank and dripping, her teeth had started to chatter. At least that might bring her temperature down.

  ‘Try and sit still, madam. Don’t splash about. I’ll warm some towels . . .’

  I might have been speaking Dutch for all the heed she paid. Her glassy eyes peered around, bewildered.

  ‘You forgive me, Ruth? Say you do?’

  Hang this, I couldn’t watch her unravel into madness. I took a step away from the tub but her wet claw was there, grasping me, tethering me to her.

  ‘I had no choice. Forgive me!’

  How could I ever do that? I turned to look at her, shivering, pathetic. White ridges marked the nails that pressed into my arm. The shift plastered itself against her body, revealing the dip of her belly button and the hint of her nipples.

  And then I noticed.

  ‘What’s that, madam? On your back?’

  I pushed her head forwards, so the hair slapped over her face.

  Stripes. Diagonal, jagged, some double-scored. Had my corset done this? Surely it couldn’t . . . I lifted the neckline of her clammy shift away from the skin to see clearly.

  Everything moved.

  Silvery marks cross-hatched her spine. The uniform we all wore at Metyard’s. But Kate had twice as many lines as ever Mim did. Shining, burnt patches too.

  She laughed, pitifully. ‘I was glad, so glad when Nell came! She’ll pick on someone else now, I thought.’

  It couldn’t be true. But then . . .

  ‘Mrs Metyard . . . hit you too?’

  The pieces began to slot together, each with a painful click. Kate pushing in front of Mrs Metyard that night, with the poker. The way she’d shoved me down into the coal hole, quickly, before her mother came upstairs. Kate in the captain’s room at night, crouching beside Mim.

  Not hurting her. Trying to help.

  ‘No.’ I closed my eyelids but the proof was seared on to the back of them. ‘No, I don’t believe it.’

  ‘I betrayed Mother.’ She squirmed beneath my
touch, cold like a fish. ‘I’ll pay for it now.’

  The room spun. I must have caught her fever for I was hot, so very hot. I pressed my damp hands to my temples, trying to hold myself steady. She was mad, it was nonsense, she couldn’t have told the police where to find Mim.

  ‘The captain . . . You were lucky, Ruth. You never saw . . . not in the flesh . . .’

  The door burst open. Old Mrs Rooker’s bosom bounced in, followed by the lady herself, clutching a bottle of Fowler’s Solution.

  She took one look at us and her eyes seemed to pop. ‘Lord bless me, Katie! Get her out of that water!’

  I tried, but my hands were shaking. Where could I touch her? She was sure to break.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ chided Mrs Rooker, taking my place. ‘You build up the fire. Go on with you, go!’

  Numb, I stumbled from the room to fetch the coal. Billy and Nell stood on the landing in whispered consultation, his hand over his eyes.

  My stomach flipped inside out.

  What had I done?

  46

  Dorothea

  The prison chapel is a drab, plain room, without the sacred feel of a church. No stained glass, no icons lend their charm. Even the cross on the altar is made of polished walnut rather than gold. Well, you cannot blame them overmuch for that.

  I find it a great difficulty to turn my thoughts to God, sitting in such an environment. Everything carries a weary air. Religion institutionalised. There is no spark of the world beyond ours, nothing to lift the spirit from the body.

  On Sundays, Papa and I attend St Helen’s, a Church of England chapel. It is pleasant in its own manner, a great improvement on this place. Yet my soul yearns for the rare occasions I can slip inside a proper church, where there is incense, where I may hear the prayers in Latin and confess my sins to a priest. The opportunity offers itself perhaps only twice in an entire year.

  This circumstance alone should be sufficient inducement to leave Oakgate. I cannot be myself, I cannot be the woman I long to be, while I remain under Papa’s roof. His roof, when it was my mother’s house! Soon it will also be hers.

  ‘Do not concern yourself with any changes to the household,’ Papa says to me on a daily basis. ‘If you are patient, I believe you will soon hear something to your advantage.’ Then he gives me an odd, knowing smile, and everything behind my ribs seems to crumble.