by DM Bryan
“No, Mrs. Malcolm, you most certainly do not,” said the gentleman, and he turned to Glossolalia with such rapidity that the queue of his wig briefly took air. “The best of our housekeepers,” he told that lady in a stagey whisper. “I leave you in very good hands.”
“But—”
“She is most powerfully attached to the children’s wards,” said the gentleman, holding up his finger. “You will be well advised by her, if you but listen.” Then he patted Glossolalia’s hand, as if to reassure her that he could do nothing more. “I am, madam, your delighted servant,” said he, and with that he bowed and vanished, the heavy wooden door falling closed behind him.
Glossolalia stood in the dark with a pair of fingers pinching her shoulders. “Well,” said the firm voice that belonged to the grip. “Shall we go up?”
A long corridor led to a flight of timber stairs, rising overhead in the half-light. As they climbed step after step, Glossolalia attempted to explain that she suspected some other lady was the person expected, and that they were all mistaken with respect to her reasons for being in that place. She told Mrs. Malcolm that she had been seized by a charitable urge to come to Bridewell and arrived without an appointment, but had been greeted so kindly by the gentleman outside that she followed him in and oh—she did not understand why they must climb so many stairs. This last utterance Glossolalia delivered while bent nearly double for want of breath, and each word came as a gasp. By some miracle of persistence, she stood near to the top of the last flight, but she doubted she could go any further. Mrs. Malcolm heard her out but made no reply, except to urge her onwards, saying, “The child waits upstairs.”
“I do not. Want. Child,” said Glossolalia, still struggling both to speak and breathe.
Mrs. Malcolm turned and resumed her shuffling ascent, and for all she had complained of the stairs, she neither puffed nor panted. “See the girl before you make your decision,” she said, speaking distinctly, and then she increased her pace so that she was climbing steadily, measured tread by measured tread. Soon, the woman quite disappeared.
The stairs ended in a mean sort of landing that opened into a long passage. At one end, a door stood ajar, daylight illuminating plaster walls and bare boards. Still breathing heavily, Glossolalia made her way down the passage and into that small chamber. Overhead, a high window emitted a shaft of daylight that glittered with motes of dust. Straw lay everywhere at her feet, loosely distributed between wooden partitions a few boards high. Woollen blankets showed that each of these was a sleeping place and had been recently used, but at this time of day, the room stood empty. The only figures were those of Mrs. Malcolm and, standing on her either hand, a pair of children, a boy and a girl.
“This is the one,” said Mrs. Malcolm, her hand upon the girl child’s head.
Glossolalia, approaching, glimpsed a nose, eyes, a spray of yellow hair under a tilted cap. Then she looked at the boy. Of an indeterminate age, he wore an oversized coat and breeches rolled at the waist so that they might not slide to the ground. White stockings, but not clean, stained with rust, or something of the same hue.
“Who is the boy?” she asked, for something in the child’s face recalled to her mind—who exactly?
“Better ask what is the boy,” said Mrs. Malcolm, placing her other hand upon his shoulder, for he was quite as tall as she. “What is he, girl?”
The girl said at once, in a lisping, little voice, “a prig, a file, a lift, Missus Malcolm.”
To this answer, Mrs. Malcolm shook her head. “You’ve not learned your lessons,” she said. “You must talk to the lady as you would the parson, or else she will not take you away with her.”
The girl stared hard at Glossolalia, and then at Mrs. Malcolm, taking the measure of each.
“Mrs. Malcolm,” said Glossolalia, “I have not come about this girl. And I do not care how she speaks, although I’m sure I did not catch a word of what she said.
“Why, missus,” said the girl, “that’s all cant. It’s just the way we talk. A lift is a pickpocket—that’s simple enough.”
“A thief,” said Glossolalia.
“The boy’s the thief,” said Mrs. Malcolm, pushing him a step forward. “If it’s a thief you want.”
“I don’t want a thief—I don’t want a child at all.”
“You’ll only find children here,” said the girl. “Those older than us must go to Newgate. In Bridewell, we are only women, girls, and boys.”
Mrs. Malcolm said, “The child’s knowledge of such things does her no credit,” but she kept her hand upon the girl’s head.
“If it’s a Newgate sneak you want,” said the girl, “you’d better go quick, for those High Court judges hang ’em as fast as they catch ’em.”
“Oh, for goodness sake,” said Glossolalia. ”I want neither girl nor boy. And, I don’t want a thief, or a Newgate sneak, or a lift, or a file, or a—I have forgot the last.”
“A prig,” said the girl.
“Thank you,” said Glossolalia. “I want none of those.”
“No, indeed,” said the girl, “nobody wants a pickpocket.” And pointing to the boy, she added, “Tell the lady—you’ll be a Newgate sneak yourself, the next time you’re taken. Admit it.”
The boy shrugged.
“He will,” said the girl, “for I heard them constables arguing on the cart that brought us. One said he was too big and old, but the other said he had not a hair on his chin and so must go to Bridewell with the other babies.”
“I’m sick of hearing about my chin,” said the boy.
“He has hairs enough on his upper lip,” said the girl. “I’ve seen them myself.”
“Are you sure you won’t take the boy, madam?” said Mrs. Malcolm. “He’s a sharpish lad, for all his thieving, and will make an illustrious man an industrious apprentice. He can reckon in his head and might be indentured to a mercer, or perhaps a grocer, for there’s money in foodstuffs.”
“I’ll be a printer,” said the boy, “or I’ll hang.”
But Glossolalia heard little of this. Instead, she was reflecting on her reason for visiting Bridewell. The idea had seemed such a good one when first conceived. Despite the loss of her fortune, she had enough remaining to donate a sum to educating deserving children in some useful skill, like sewing or—well, sewing was as far as she’d got. Glossolalia looked at the girl and boy standing amid the straw and slanting sunlight. Were they sufficiently deserving? Who was she to decide?
“Do you like to sew,” said Glossolalia to the girl.
The girl looked at Mrs. Malcolm, who nodded. “Oh, yes,” said the child. “Very much.”
“And what about your alphabet,” said Glossolalia. “Have you learned your letters?”
“Mrs. Malcolm said, “The girl’s got her letters to heart already. Though I don’t fully know how she learned them.”
“He taught me,” said the girl, pointing at the boy. “I can read too. Show her the book.”
The boy shook his head, but at the girl’s insistence, he reached into his coat and took out a folded bundle. This he passed to Glossolalia, who took the pages between her fingers.
“What’s this?” she said, unfolding the pamphlet and reading the words Newgate Calendar on its front. She turned back the first page and found a printed grid, each square holding a letter of the alphabet and a list of those sad souls doomed to execution. “John Annin, Mary Bosworth, Thomas Cappock,” she read aloud. “This is your alphabet?”
“ABC,” said the girl. “I got the whole book by memory.” Then, the child put her hands behind her back and recited: “A is for Annin, John, from Woodstreet-Compter, Committed by Mr. Alderman Winterbottom, on the Oaths of Mary Cannier and John Jeffreyson, on Suspicion of stealing Ten Pounds and upwards in Gold, Silver, and Half-pence. That’s all, but I wish I was John Annin’s little girl, for that’s a fine swag he took there. But
he got taken, so that’s that.”
“Quiet, Doll,” said the boy.
“It doesn’t matter what I say. The lady doesn’t want me, as anyone can see.” Doll smiled.
“Never you mind,” said Mrs. Malcolm, putting her hand beneath Doll’s chin and tucking a few strands of hair beneath her cap.
Glossolalia stood in the prison room, watching the tenderness with which Mrs. Malcolm tended the child. The light through the windows shone brighter, making the straw dust glint. Glossolalia said, “It matters little whether you come with me or not, Doll. As God is good, you are worthy of love.”
“No,” said Doll, “I shall never deserve that happy state.”
“I do not think,” said Glossolalia, “you have been as naughty as that.”
“Nay,” said the girl, “I know what I am.”
“This is not sound doctrine,” said Glossolalia, looking at Mrs. Malcolm. “Such a lesson is not meet in one so young.”
“It’s none of my teaching,” said that lady.
“Doll,” Glossolalia said to the child, “people come to Bridewell in order to do some good. How can you say you do not deserve to receive what they choose to give?”
“I know what I am,” said Doll again.
“What are you then, child? You have some story, I perceive.”
When Doll did not answer, Glossolalia sighed. The lady spread her skirts and sat down on a battered block of wood that served as a stool, bidding the others to make themselves comfortable. Then she said, “I did not come to Bridewell for this purpose, but I fear I am less the master of my days than I imagine. Fate makes me an accidental collector of tales. I have told my own and heard several: one from my young friend Morris, and one belonging to the laundress Betty. Now I would hear yours, Doll, and if I am to be made mistress of enough stories to fill a book, how can you refuse to make me a chapter? Isn’t that right, Mrs. Malcolm?” Glossolalia looked to the other woman for support.
“There’s many fine books that have no chapters,” said Mrs. Malcolm.
“You are very honest, dear lady,” said Glossolalia. But hardly helpful, she did not say.
“I should hope so, and I am bound to observe that Mr. Swift has them, while Mr. Defoe does not.”
“You are also a great reader, Mrs. Malcolm.”
“I do not read but am content to be read to. Thus I know that Mr. Gulliver’s tales told us where to stop, but in Robinson Crusoe’s narrative, we were as lost as he.”
“And have you heard this child’s history yet?” said Glossolalia.
At first Mrs. Malcolm made no reply, and then she said, “I have not,” in such a soft voice that Doll looked up, searching the lady’s face.
Glossolalia said, “Doll, I had a daughter. You are younger than she would be now.”
Doll turned from her scrutiny of Mrs. Malcolm to ask, “Where is she now, missus?”
“To preserve her life, I left her in care of another, but alas the stratagem did not succeed.”
“I am very sorry for you.”
“Yes,” said Glossolalia. “I would not have lost her for the world.”
“Was she a good girl?”
“She was like you, Doll—a good and loving child.”
Doll looked from Glossolalia to Mrs. Malcolm. Then, she looked at the boy, who said nothing. All at once, the girl made up her mind. She straightened, and her air of childish innocence fell from her face, like she had removed a mask. She looked not older, thought Glossolalia, but old.
In a voice that no longer lisped but spoke clearly and a little sharply, the girl said, “You asked me for my tale, missus, and so you shall have it. And when I am done, you will certainly turn away and ask no more. I will not tell you in what parish I was born or who were my parents, for those details no longer matter. Instead, I will start my story at the moment I became the child I am now—the night I awoke to find my brother’s hand over my mouth, his breath warning me of men at the door and telling me to keep quiet.
All this took place in a poor London room, where we shared the only bed—my brother Nat, myself, and my mama, when she was at home. But that night, Nat and I were the only two huddled beneath the blanket. Then, I too heard noises outside the door, although I could not guess what they might mean. I did not understand much of what happened next: the drumming footfalls, the splintering of our door, cries, and a link flaring bright in the night.
At first, I could not see the men who entered, for their light dazzled. Then one of them stuck his face very close to mine, and I could smell the herring he’d had for supper. He wanted to know where my mother was, but I could not tell him, for she was not in the bed, and more than that I did not know. Nor would Nat say a word, so they swore at us, and pressed us until we were so frightened we could not speak.
Then those men extinguished their links, and sat themselves down to be very quiet. One sat on the bed where we lay. “To keep them from warning the whore,” he said. And the other perched on the chair, across from the door.
They were constables—I could see that now. They wore black coats and carried cudgels in their fists. The one on the chair had a terrible face, red and bent like the man-puppet’s phiz. I could not look away from that fearsome countenance, but neither could I meet its gaze. And while I cast my eyes wildly about me, I noticed the very object I most wanted to see: my mother’s gown of green wool. Her stays and hoops and petticoats were not in the room, but her sea-coloured mantua lay folded over the chair back, pressed under the buttocks of the second constable.
At last, I understood something, for I knew what the constables did not. Since coming to London, we’d fallen so low my mother had pawned her second-best gown of brown wool. I’d held her hand beneath the sign of the three balls, while she haggled the best possible price. That was the night Nat and I had fresh baked bread to eat. For herself, she bought a bottle of brownish glass. She sampled its contents while she dressed in the only gown she still owned—the green mantua she wore to go out in the street.
Now, I cried “Mama” at the sight of that gown, and Nat pushed my face hard into the straw ticking. From inside the mattress came the scurrying sound of all those creatures that live there, the mice and the beetles. I struggled under Nat’s hands—I wanted so badly for my mother to hold me. Of late, she came home so soft and sleepy, fumbling to bed in her petticoats and blanketing me in sharp-scented warmth.
I pulled loose from Nat’s hold and cried for her again. For my trouble, Nat pushed me down, holding me even harder against the bed. I writhed and tried to bite, and so I struggled until I tired myself. Then I lay on my side, perfectly motionless, my ear pressed to the mattress. In that position, I could not help but hear the single sound made beneath the bed. It was only the brush of flesh on flesh—her hand dislodging one of the inhabitants of the mattress above, but still I heard it. And I marked it, twisting free from Nat’s loosened grip to scramble from under the blanket and down to the floor. I sought my mother in her hiding place: behind the wall of objects, beneath the bed.
Alerted by my noisy scrabbling, the constables leapt up. They pulled me out from under the bed and began to tear at the old wig box, coffer, bedpan, and broken stool that hid my mother. And when they found her, they yanked her arms and legs, pulling her along the floor so that her wails joined mine. Even Nat had begun to scream, as only a boy can.
Our room was a bedlam of cries and shouts. Free of the bed, my mother broke away from her captors, scuttling to the corner of our room, and when they tried to take her again, she stopped them with kicks from her bare legs. The constables backed away, leaving her to curse them at her leisure. One man put his back to the door, trapping us. The second, the one with the puppet face, had out his tinderbox and was relighting the link he’d extinguished when they thought to surprise her. Flame set the room leaping around us, and at the sight of the constables all the fight went out of my mother. S
he stopped cursing and kicking and a look came into her face I did not like to see. I went to comfort her, but the constable reached my mother first. He put his hand to her hair, and she came up, limp as the doll I’d seen at Bartholomew’s fair.
“Here is your mama,” said the constable to me. “Take your last look.”
At this point, Glossolalia interrupted Doll, saying, “You were but a tiny child—you cannot imagine your artless cries sent your mother to Bridewell.
“Nay,” said Doll. “No one sent her to Bridewell. When I exposed my mother, I condemned her to a different place and another end.”
Glossolalia said, “Mrs. Malcolm, help me convince this child of her innocence,” but the housekeeper had turned away from the company, and would not look back.
“Let Doll finish,” said the boy to Glossolalia. “You have heard but the beginning.”
The girl said, “You shall know the whole story. The constable lifted up my mother and took his link, holding it so close he seemed to wish to set her on fire. He leered at her teary face, and then used his light to examine her person, from her shift to her stays and hoops askew. His puppet-mouth pursed.
“Mr. Bogus,” he said, as he bent to my mother’s petticoats. “I’ve discovered a fact material to our case.”
“Have you, Mr. Janus? And what might it be?”
“The person,” said Janus, “has a quantity of blood on her skirts.”
Bogus contemplatively spat at his feet. “Show me.”
In the uneven flare of this link, Janus spun my now unresisting mother around so that some dark stain showed unevenly on the back of her outermost petticoat.
“I’ll stand evidence to that,” said Bogus. “Does she have an explanation.”
Mr. Janus shook my mother, and she came a little alive. “Blood on your skirts,” he said. “You cut the old woman’s throat, didn’t you? You robbed her and sliced her from ear to ear.”