Among the Fallen

by Virginia Frances Schwartz

  Give me a girl with anger rather than sadness. She has the Energy to change her entire life.

  CD

  Mornings, I rush straight to Ivy’s room, lay out her outfit, and lead her down to breakfast as if she needed help. During the day, when she passes by doing her chores, her hand reaches out to mine, giving it a soft squeeze.

  We survived, her touch tells me. We’re together. At last!

  * * *

  One evening, after lingering late in Ivy’s room, I step into our bedroom. Leah is already asleep but Sesina is sitting on my bed, filing her nails.

  “I wouldn’t bother with her, if I was you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Ivy won’t last at Urania. She’s already stolen some lace from the supplies, did you notice? She’s used to better, I can tell. And there’s only one way for her to get that—thieving or lying on her back. Either way, she’ll be back at Tothill.”

  I shoo her off my bed.

  “You could have it all if you come to London with me,” Sesina boasts. “If you stick with her, you’ll just find trouble.”

  * * *

  Alice is absent from meals. Throughout the night, the whole house awakens to her constant coughing.

  Leah prepares a dinner tray of soup and rolls and I carry it to Alice. In her bed, Alice seems to have shrunk down. Her chest barely lifts.

  “I fear I will never leave England,” she moans, “to feel that hot Australian sun they’ve promised me. Or ever forget losing my dignity.”

  “Don’t upset yourself, Alice. Soon you will emigrate with Hannah. Try not to worry when you are so sick.”

  Alice stares out the window, as if seeing far away to London’s past.

  “What little I made from needlework did not take care of Ma and me. When we could no longer afford lodgings, Ma went to a refuge for the aged. I had nowhere to go. So I slept on stoops and in alleyways.”

  “Couldn’t you get work? Your sewing is so fine.”

  “Without a bath or clean clothes, ladies shut their door when I came calling. Once, when I was waiting on a doorstep for work, the maid left the door ajar. I stole a book from the table and sold it for my supper.”

  “What happened?”

  “They reported me! I was sentenced to three months at Coldbath. Dickens found me afterward in my parish.

  “One thing he asked of me,” Alice whispers between coughs, her handkerchief flecked with blood. “Has he asked it of you? If I ever lost my virginity.”

  “What did you answer?”

  “I told the truth. Though I stole to eat, I was never corrupted by a man.” She pauses to catch her breath before reaching out for my hand. “Tell him everything, Orpha…even if it hurts.”

  OCTOBER 1857

  ·• FOURTEEN •·

  It’s very dark when I awaken out of deep sleep to the sound of banging. Sesina stands at the open window, carpetbag in hand.

  “Don’t!” Leah yells, yanking her back.

  “Shush! He’s here, and I’m going.”

  Sesina lifts one foot out the window and then the other, her head disappearing. Below, Reuben is looking up as Sesina slowly descends the ladder he’s steadying. She gasps and teeters as the ladder shifts, then falls into Reuben’s arms.

  “No time for that now. Let’s go!”

  Sesina smirks up at us and waves. Together, they sneak around the side of the house, dragging the ladder behind them.

  “Shall we run downstairs and tell?” Leah whispers in a tiny voice. “They could bring her back.”

  I fold my arms across my chest. “She wanted to go. Besides, she’s broken the rules. What would the committee say?”

  Leah sighs. “They’d kick her out. At once! But if we don’t tell now, what do we say in the morning?”

  “We’ll say we awoke and she was gone, the window wide open. We supposed her downstairs already. And when she’s not—”

  “You can lie like that?”

  “Won’t it be the truth?”

  “You’re clever, Orpha.”

  “I know how to keep secrets, that’s all.”

  Leah grabs my hand. “Then swear you won’t tell and we’ll both stick to our story.”

  I swear it.

  * * *

  The next morning, Mrs. Marchmont rushes to the yard where Zachariah’s ladder was dragged, leaving tracks in the dirt.

  “A girl’s gone! This has never happened on my watch before!” she exclaims, dashing off a letter. “If I call for the constable now, all of Shepherd’s Bush will know what Urania really is. So I’ll wait for Dickens to decide.”

  We pace on tiptoe all afternoon. Leah rehearses her lines over and over like an understudy in training. I tell her she must be firm, for Mr. Dickens can always pick out a liar. Mrs. Marchmont passes by, a handkerchief to her flushed face and neck, as she paces through the rooms.

  This time, Mr. Dickens does not come running; he sends a letter instead. Miss Jane reads it aloud to the matron, her voice startled:

  Don’t bother the Constable. If the girl cannot resist temptation within the safe walls of Urania, then there is no hope for her. I don’t want her back.

  CD

  * * *

  We wait all day for the evening to come. Ivy’s belongings are moved into Sesina’s side of the room after Mrs. Marchmont agrees to our pleading to be together.

  An impossible distance apart before, half an arm’s length in line, yet untouchable, now we stretch our arms out to one another as we lie in our beds. Shoulders hanging off, we reach and reach until our fingers almost touch. Ivy topples to the floor, belly-laughing. I yank her back up to her bed.

  Across the room, Leah yawns, extinguishing the candle. Ivy lifts her covers and beckons me over, finger on her lips. Slipping between the cool sheets, like a letter into its envelope, the two of us stay awake that whole night together, whispering in the dark until the sky brightens.

  “Word spread in Tothill that a baby murderer was coming. That’s the worst! When I looked at you, how haunted you seemed. Someone killed your spirit, is what I saw.”

  We lie face-to-face, stroking each other’s hair.

  “If only we could have spoken freely there.” I sigh. “How much easier it would have been to do the sentence.”

  Ivy shakes her head. “Your face was all I had to read. You recognized my pain and showed me your own suffering too. For that, I loved you.”

  Her warm eyes look into me, to what I have been holding.

  There are circles that bind you to people, linked like chains. Some are clamped upon you like Luther’s iron grip on me. Ours, Ivy’s and mine, entwine like vines, climbing higher together than they would have grown on their own.

  The story falls out with words I believed would scorch my throat with fire and choke me like vomit. But when they pass out of me, it feels right and true, as if I’d saved them just for her.

  Ivy’s tears begin to fall well before I tell of Luther. By the time I’m done, she has drenched a week’s worth of handkerchiefs. Afterward, she hugs me so close, her heart racing against mine, I cannot tell whose heart is whose, whose arms hold the other tighter, whose tears are falling, hers or mine.

  “You weren’t a criminal like me, Orpha. I broke the law again and again to get what I wanted. But terrible wrong was done to you and that led to other things.” Ivy strokes my face. “I hope you told Dickens so. It’s a relief to finally tell someone. Did you?”

  “I told no one. Only you.”

  “You must tell it to him! So you can put Luther behind you. Why didn’t you? Is it because you’re ashamed?”

  I nod.

  “I told Dickens everything. Even plotted to do so, betting he’d help me find my boyfriend. He promises to send me to Tasmania because I am so sure of Jack. If he can find him. Dickens says people can change after
such a shock—being arrested and transported like that. That’s what I want for Jack.”

  “When did you tell Mr. Dickens your story?”

  Ivy shrugs. “At Tothill. First thing he wanted was a confession. So I figured if I gave him what he asked right off, he’d do the same for me. I took a chance he’d bring me to Urania, and to you. And he has.”

  Never could I calculate like Ivy to get one small thing of my own.

  Ivy grabs my hands. “Dickens promised we could become someone new and start all over again once we confess. Isn’t that what you want too?”

  * * *

  The next day, Ivy and I gather herbs for fall harvest: spearmint in armfuls; bee balm for tea; and rosehips, round and rosy, laying them all out to dry on the back porch for winter’s tea. My feet step as lightly as if they touched air, not ground. I follow Ivy as if we were still walking in line. Today, for the very first time, I actually see her smile. It softens her whole face. Girls like us can heal, Miss Jane believes. It’s what Mr. Dickens says too.

  I gave my secrets away. To her. In return, she’s given her tears, falling on me like grace.

  Next to Ivy, Urania’s girls seem ordinary. Gossiping and fussing. Always abuzz. Hissing like snakes. Or clucking like hens. They can say the cruelest things. Even Sesina could be sweet before she suddenly turned on you, dropping your secrets like dirty laundry in front of everyone. Ivy will be true. We shared a foothold in Hell and held on tight together.

  * * *

  All that week, Ivy and I take turns watching over Alice, who does not stay awake long. Sleep seems a potion she is drowning in, her chest lifting like a bird’s breast.

  When Alice finally awakens one afternoon, she pushes herself up in bed on thin arms. “Bring me my sewing bag. And your old dress, Orpha. I’ll teach you both how to make a dress pattern on a new bolt of cloth.”

  We lay out my dress on her bed, pull the stitches apart, and lay each piece, the bodice, sleeves, and skirt, on a roll of plum bombazine, just as she instructed. When we turn around for our lesson, Alice is asleep, her mouth fallen open.

  * * *

  Mr. Dickens arrives very late some days later, his eyes unfocused, collar askew and locks of hair sticking straight up as if he had rushed away suddenly. There’s that scent again—stronger this time—of violets violently crushed and pressed against him.

  I step back from him. The scent is cloying.

  When the matron approaches with a list of Urania’s bills, he plops down in the nearest chair.

  “There, there, Mr. Dickens, you look as if you need a good rest!” She shoos us from the room.

  “Dickens is like a housefly today,” Fanny hisses, brushing past me. “Flitting from this to that. Not landing on a single thing.”

  Hannah corners me in the kitchen. “What’s happened to Dickens? He’s all flummoxed and comfoozled!”

  An hour later, he grabs my elbow, leading me away. “No interviews tonight. Please!” he mutters. “I’m late with a novel installment and must pack for a three-week tour. And I cannot find my speech. Help me look.”

  In the back parlor, he rummages through the desk without finding it, then rushes out quickly at dusk to take the last evening train home, asking me to tidy up behind him.

  Inside the glass case, the Case Book sits on a shelf, maroon leather beckoning. Mr. Dickens once called himself a “rag-and-bone man,” a common street scavenger, plucking stories from everyone. Is he turning me into a character as he did with Alice? If I could peek inside the Case Book, I’d know. My life is set down in that book but it is not true. It is only the story of what he thinks my life was. I rattle the lock but it does not budge.

  On the desk, his private journal lies open in plain view. He’s never left it behind before. It’s too late to call him back, for the train whistle has already screeched. My fingers touch the paper, still wet with blue ink. The page is crumpled in one corner as if his fist clutched it hard:

  I am here, there, everywhere. There has not been a moment’s peace since I met her in August. Nelly is the one spirit I thought I lost long ago.

  Catherine and I are not meant for one another. Never were.

  * * *

  Miss Coutts visits the next morning. The details of her dress escape me, as do her words. How I wish to tell her what I just learned of Mr. Dickens. She once said she hoped to be a friend, my confidante. How sweet to tell her of Ivy. But I can’t tell her this. I was snooping.

  If I don’t think of it, it never happened.

  * * *

  In the weeks that follow, Mr. Dickens disappears on tour in England, Scotland, Ireland, where he reads aloud to audiences. Thousands flock to him, I hear. He’s even read to Queen Victoria. Always he carries fire into any room he enters.

  I should know.

  All those times, I sat down and warmed myself by him. But now he carries the spirit of another with him. One called Nelly. Not his wife, Catherine. My whole body is chilled.

  DICKENS’S CASE BOOK: NUMBER 98

  She may well have drifted into Thievery and Prostitution. Many a girl must do so in order to survive in this harsh city.

  One thing I sigh in Relief of. I have finally located hospital records of Orpha’s admission with a dead baby still attached to her. The Autopsy report, written months after the trial, termed the baby premature. A doctor I consulted said that most likely, the girl being so very young and malnourished, the baby was a Miscarriage, born dead, not the result of infanticide. No one thought to forward this report to Tothill, where it would have reduced her Sentence.

  No one spoke for her in Court either. While she may have wished herself and her baby dead, she did not take the path some do. We hear of their swollen bodies fished out of the Thames.

  CD

  NOVEMBER 1857

  ·• FIFTEEN •·

  For weeks, we’ve been indoors with driving rains. Mrs. Marchmont hands me a note from Mr. Dickens, the first communication from him all month.

  “The play’s the thing!” Mr. Dickens quotes Shakespeare, inviting me to a performance at Tavistock. “My friend Wilkie Collins is writing a new play, The Woman in White, and we are helping him stage a rehearsal in my home to see how it works. Come watch the acting with Miss Macartney, stay the weekend here with the actors. If you wish, join us for a scene. Miss Coutts will be here too.”

  “Yes!” I write back to him immediately.

  Early next morning, Mr. Thompson arrives. “We must make a stop first—to deliver these letters of invitation to the new girls—at Tothill.”

  Tothill! The name stops my breath: the rookery, Devil’s Acre on its rim, where Luther is still at large. My blue dress and bergamot-scented hair are not enough of a disguise. I could be seen!

  The matron bustles over to me. “Orpha! Our Jane was called away quite suddenly by family matters. You can’t travel alone in the carriage. It’s hardly proper. By the time I write Mr. Dickens of it, it will be too late for you to go. Another time, perhaps—”

  “I can’t miss the play. It’s my one chance to act again. Please let me go!” I rush away. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  In my ears, Jemima’s words clang like Westminster bells: Track him down! Chiv him good! Deep in the belly!

  I head straight to the kitchen to choose what I need—the long steak knife, freshly sharpened to slice through the flesh of lamb—and wedge it between ankle and boot. I bustle past the matron, who shakes her head but allows me to leave.

  All through the journey, the air hangs damp and heavy. Coal smoke sneaks inside the carriage. Coughs gag my throat. The closer we get to Tothill, the more my mind scatters. It spreads all over the rookery in a million memory pieces, seeking safety, until it settles on one person: Emma. Perhaps I’ll catch a glimpse of her. Does she still think of me or is it too late?

  At last, Mr. Thompson halts the carriage. “Shan’
t be long, miss. Wait here.”

  Before me, Tothill looms like an ancient castle, facing north. Which room was mine up there and who lives in it now, I wonder. At this early hour, inmates will file down to the oakum room. Rose or Edwina may pass by in the hallway. Surely Hester still lingers.

  My hand clutches the metal handle of the carriage door and my boot is about to slip out when the stink of sewer floats past. A man is slowly climbing Tothill’s steps one at a time, almost toppling, then slowly steadying himself. He stops near the top, to watch and wait. It’s a barrel-chested figure in dark and tattered clothes, hands sunk into pockets, legs planted wide apart like tree stumps. My breakfast rises to my throat.

  He’s come: Luther!

  There could be only one reason he’s standing there like that: he’s looking for me. He must have seen girls released each morning and searched for my face among them, the Valentin in his pocket.

  He’s come for me!

  I lift my voice to scream, then cover my mouth at once. My chest is heaving with screams and my heart pumps loud and hard like a fist.

  If he turns around…if he walks down the steps…if he looks my way and sees me staring out the carriage window…My fingers fall to the cold blade of the steak knife. It seems too heavy to lift. I can barely breathe. Dropping to my knees, pressed to the floor, I curl into a ball, like Jonah in the belly of the whale.

  Then, swiftly, the coal smoke shapeshifts into yellow fog smothering everything. The air thickens. Only the top of the building is still clear.

  Tothill is swallowed by fog.

  I can’t see him anymore.

  Suddenly, the carriage creaks sideways. Someone plops down heavily in the driver’s seat and snaps a whip. The horses jolt and clomp away from Tothill. Back and forth I shift on the floor like a sack of flour, as the carriage turns left, then sharply right. I tell myself to grab the door handle to jump out, but my body won’t budge.