Blackberry and Wild Rose

by Sonia Velton

  She was down in the cellar, sitting behind her desk, the place where I now knew she had recorded her inventory of charges, with every entry spinning a web from which she thought I would never escape. I clutched the coins Mrs. Thorel had given me and approached her. “I have your money.” I placed them in a neat pile on the desk, with the sixpence on the top.

  Mrs. Swann’s eyes grew wide and black as coal in the half-light. “Where did you get that?” she snapped.

  “That is not your concern,” I replied. “I have paid my debt and now I am free to leave.”

  Then she laughed. Proper threw back her head and chortled as if I had made a great joke. Then, as abruptly as she had started, she fell silent. There was a dank feeling in the cellar. It was cold and poorly lit, and something about the exposed brick of the walls made me think of a prison. I half expected Nathanial to loom behind me, his towering bulk blocking the door.

  “What’s in your bag?” she asked.

  “Nothing but what I brought with me.”

  “Show me.”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  Mrs. Swann drew a deep breath and released it slowly so that it came out as a long sigh. “He must have been right, then.”

  “Who? What do you mean?”

  She got up and walked round her desk to stand beside me. When she was as close as she could get without actually touching me, she said, “That man you lay with last night. Do you know who he was?”

  I did not because I did not care who any of them were.

  “He was the new parish constable,” she continued. “He came to me after and said that his pocket watch was missing. I didn’t want to believe it of you, I really didn’t. One of my sweet girls a common thief? But it’s in that bag, isn’t it?” She poked at it with a finger, making it swing around my legs.

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “Ah, then you sold it, didn’t you? That’s where the money came from.” She jabbed toward the coins on the desk.

  “This is nonsense, Mrs. Swann. I haven’t done anything wrong.” I realized then that I just had to leave. Her words, like the numerous entries in her ledger, were little strings she tied me with.

  I was halfway up the cellar steps when she said, “Did I never tell you about young Biddy Armstrong?” I stopped but did not turn.

  “One of my best girls, she was, the Lord rest her soul.” Her voice was strangely disconnected, coming from the gloom of the cellar below. “Pretty as a daisy and sweet with it. Then one day she started talking about leaving me, and the next thing we knew, the local magistrate walked out of here one night five shillings the lighter. Well, what to do? I tried to help her, but she kept insisting she was going to leave. Strung her up, they did. I’ll never forget the sight of her swinging from the Tyburn Tree, her little feet kicking out from under her petticoats. Problem is, when something like that happens, who do you think they believe? The magistrate or the whore?” My whole world seemed to shrink to the step I was standing on. I clutched at the wall to steady myself as my heart clattered in my chest. Mrs. Swann appeared at the foot of the stairs, her face as stony as the walls around us.

  “Just go back upstairs, Sara, and we’ll forget all this unpleasantness.”

  And I truly believe that she thought I would do it. But instead I gripped my bag even tighter and placed one foot steadily in front of the other, climbing the steps away from her.

  “You’ll never get away from me, you wretched girl!” she screamed. She even tried to run after me but stumbled on the first step and fell heavily on the stone. She cried out in pain and frustration, but I did not look round.

  “You wretched, wretched girl!”

  It was only when I was at the very top that I felt able to turn and look at her. She sat crumpled and sobbing at the bottom of the steps. Then she turned a bitter, tearful face toward me. “If I ever see you again, I’ll call the constable and you’ll hang for what you have done. D’you hear me? You will hang!” I did not reply. I just left her sitting there, an old woman crying like a little girl.

  Esther

  The first pulse of the loom above me was like the quickening of an unborn child. It made my hand still as I turned the page of my book and knotted my belly with excitement. The muffled clack-clack-boom announced a new presence, resetting the rhythms of our household to its strange meter.

  I tried to ignore it, concentrating on my book, then picking up my sewing, but it was like a constant tapping on the door. I fretted about disturbing him if I went up there but felt rude not to have welcomed him to our household. Finally, curiosity got the better of me.

  He didn’t notice me at first. The noise of the loom masked the creak of the trapdoor and he was concentrating so hard on guiding the shuttle through the warp that I was nearly beside him before he saw me.

  “Ma’am,” he said, standing up, flustered. The shuttle clattered against the loom, dangling forlornly from the weft.

  “Here,” I said, bending to pick it up and handing it to him. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “I thought it was the master,” he said, taking the shuttle from me. “I was not expecting …” His words tailed off.

  “But you are not French!” I said.

  “No,” he agreed. “I’m English.”

  I laughed. “I brought you flax for the linnets. But perhaps you don’t want the songbirds?”

  He smiled then, glancing at the cage hanging by the window. “Did you put them there? No, we’re enjoying them, aren’t we, Ives?”

  A small head peered up from behind the weaver’s bench. A boy of about twelve, sitting cross-legged on a straw pallet alongside the loom.

  “This is Ives, my drawboy,” said the weaver, “and I’m Bisby Lambert, ma’am.” He bowed his head and I inclined mine in return.

  “Mrs. Thorel,” I began to say, but he nodded before I had finished, leaving my words redundant. It felt a little odd to think that this man I had never met knew who I was. Had he seen me as he came and went from my house? He looked at me with intense blue eyes, their color made almost translucent by the long lights.

  “So, you are here to weave your master piece, Mr. Lambert?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m very grateful to Mr. Thorel for letting me use his loom.”

  “What are you weaving?” I walked round the loom, inspecting the threads as if they were as familiar to me as the stitches of my own embroidery. The drawboy shifted on his pallet, retracting like a snail as my skirts brushed past him.

  “Figured silk, ma’am. A brocaded lustring.”

  “Well, I am sure it will be beautiful.” He said nothing, just watched me as I went over to the birdcage. The linnets hopped on their perches, cocking their heads as I clicked my tongue at them and sprinkled the seeds through the bars.

  The weaver stood awkwardly by his bench until I had left, while the boy knelt by the loom and took up his bundles of threads. When I was back in the hallway, I heard the noise start up again, the slow resonance of the working man.

  * * *

  I have a memory from my life before everything changed. It is like a trinket to me, something treasured to be taken out occasionally, then put back in its box. It is Elias asleep beside me, the weight of his arm across my waist and the warmth of him behind me through my shift. Even when I turned over he did not stir. For a moment I looked at his face in a way that I never could if he were awake. When he is dressed, with his wig on and his brow set into its permanent furrow, Elias appears older than his years. He likes it so: he is able to conduct his business with the gravitas of a man twice his age. But in that moment, he looked like a boy, smooth-skinned and vulnerable, still sleeping peacefully as the light and the birdsong streamed in through the gaps between the shutters. It was a moment of absolute tranquility, like a still pool before a pebble is thrown into it.

  6

  Sara

 
Flicking her fingers with the dismissive confidence that only the privileged and wealthy have, my new mistress almost laughed when I told her about Mrs. Swann.

  “Well, did you take the watch?” she asked.

  “No!”

  “Then what have you to worry about?”

  I tried not to sigh in frustration. I had been in my new position of maidservant for only ten minutes and it would not do for me to be squabbling with the mistress already. But, really, she was infuriating. Or, at least, it infuriated me to be sitting in front of my betters explaining how the world really worked.

  “Madam, the point is not whether I took the watch or not. If the constable says I took the watch, how can I gainsay it?”

  “But why would he, if you did not?”

  I stared at her, thinking that she would come to her own realization. She did not.

  “He is a man of standing, of good repute,” I explained. “Once a man like him spends time at Mrs. Swann’s, she has something over him. If she tells him to say that I took the watch, he will say it rather than risk the trouble Mrs. Swann could make for him.”

  Esther Thorel gave a slow nod. “But you are here now,” she said. “She will not find you here.”

  I nodded back out of compliance, not agreement.

  It would not have been polite to talk about money. Mrs. Thorel busied herself showing me the house and introducing me to Moll, the maid, who smiled pleasantly, then threw me a furious glare as soon as Madam turned to peer into the scullery as if she might actually know what was in there. I wanted to ask Madam how much I should be paid and how long it would take me to pay back the money she had given me, but there never seemed a chance, between the detailed explanations of their daily routine and the instructions on how long to boil her egg in the morning.

  I wanted to return to my mother. I wanted Madam to wipe my slate clean, to brush over my past life with her respectability and status. It was not just Mrs. Swann taking my money that had stopped me going home. Who would want to return to their mother a whore? I would earn more than just an honest wage in Mrs. Thorel’s household: I would earn back my reputation.

  * * *

  “And what shall my wages be, madam?”

  I decided to ask her later that afternoon, as she was reaching for the silver candlestick on the mantel, no doubt about to tell me how to bring out its shine. She paused fleetingly before turning to face me with it in her hand.

  “A crown,” she said, neither asking me nor telling me. I was a little taken aback. I would now be earning in a week what I could have earned in a night at Mrs. Swann’s.

  “And you will have your board and lodging, of course.”

  At least there would be no inventory of charges as there had been at Mrs. Swann’s. At least no one’s hands would be tightening around my neck.

  “My mother showed me how to clean silver,” said Madam, flourishing the candlestick at me. “You must rub it from the bottom to the top, not crosswise.” She was looking at me to check that I was listening. “And never, ever use salt or sand. Do you understand?”

  “Of course, madam.” But I wondered how Madam’s mother might have learned that skill. I had assumed that such women scrubbed at nothing more than their own faces. She must have known I was wondering, as then she said, “My mother was not always a lady, you know.”

  I said nothing, wondering what this had to do with cleaning silver.

  “She worked in a tavern.” Madam caught the lace fringe of her sleeve between her fingertips and the bottom of her palm and started to rub at the candlestick. “A little like you, perhaps.” She clouded the silver with her breath then worked the lace slowly upward, from the bottom to the top. “Then she became a singer and an actress and married my father.” Madam beamed at the shiny candlestick as if it were personally responsible for her mother’s success, then turned to me again. “So, you see, with God’s help, there is always another path to take in life.”

  What did she mean, a little like me? Was she implying that her own mother had done more than polish the silver at that tavern? Yet she had not done so forever. I looked around me at the arch of carved marble over the hearth, the richly embroidered upholstery and the elegant sashes. Madam was standing there now, with a pound or two of solid silver in her hand, only because her mother had left the tavern she worked in.

  She replaced the candlestick, then reached over to pick up its twin from the other end of the mantel. When she offered it to me, I took it with a smile.

  From the bottom to the top.

  Esther

  If you pick up a pot of honey then, sure as eggs are eggs, the wasps will follow.

  That is what happened when Sara Kemp came into our household. I behaved as if her concerns about Mrs. Swann and the constable were trivial because I didn’t want to worry the poor girl. The truth was I had heard of girls much younger than Sara hanged for the sake of a loaf of bread. The world she had left seemed to trail behind her, like straw caught under the hem of her dress. If they ever found her, I was not sure I would be able to protect her from what would follow. She was right about the constable, of course. What man would not think his reputation worth the life of a harlot? “You are here now,” was all I could say to her. “She will not find you here.” But the Wig and Feathers was only streets away from Spital Square. Just a few streets, but a whole world away.

  I tried to make her feel welcome. I told her all the little details of our lives—hot rolls in the morning, toast at supper—so she would feel part of it, even if she was only to be here for a short time. Perhaps I told her too much because at times she seemed overwhelmed, looking almost tearful when I said that I preferred chocolate at breakfast, not tea. I supposed it was because she had not had to remember much in her previous position. I even wondered whether she could be taught, such was the glazed look on her face, so I took a candlestick from the mantel myself and showed her how to polish it properly. When I told her she could earn a whole crown with us, she looked quite taken aback. I suppose she wondered what she might do with a crown to herself every month.

  There was a reason I felt drawn to Sara and could not stand by and watch her ears boxed by Mrs. Swann or turn my back on her when she came to ask for my help. My own mother had come from the same place she had. Not the Wig and Feathers, of course, but there were a hundred bawdy houses just like it, all offering the same mix of desperation and opportunity. If no one had given my mother a chance, she would have stayed doing it until too old, or pox-ridden, to carry on. I felt it my duty to pass on to Sara a few skills: knowing how to polish the silver or darn a shirt would mean she had another way to earn a living for the rest of her life. I was struck by the smile she gave me when she took the candlestick from my hand, such was her gratitude for the opportunity to do some honest work.

  Then there was Elias. The man whose affections had frozen like ice when he heard tell after we married of what my mother had been years before. It was as if he had discovered it had been me, not my mother, who had sold sweet favors to sailors. But then she had stumbled past Drury Lane and stopped in the gush of warm air from inside the Theatre Royal and smelt the chemical burn of the stage lights. It wasn’t long before my mother persuaded someone to allow her inside. She must have looked well, standing under the dazzling lights, because they began to let her sing to keep the audience quiet before the curtain went up. Soon she was all alone up there, singing and dancing among the boards painted with colorful scenes sliding on and off the stage. My father fell in love with her elegant step, as she moved round the stage, and the sweet voice she cast out to her audience, as though she was scattering petals. When they married, the sailors were left far behind her. But my husband does not believe in redemption: Elias thinks that people are molded like jelly by their choices and, once set, they can never be anything else.

  If Elias abhorred the thought that such a woman could be connected to his family, what wou
ld he think if he knew one was living under his own roof? I told myself he would never find out, that she would stay just long enough to pay back her debt and earn a few skills. But the world turns on a sixpence and our lives shifted the moment she walked through the door. She was like a cat sidling in uninvited and looking about. You don’t want to turn it out straight away, so you offer it a scrap of food. The next thing you know it’s curled up on your favorite chair, watching you with unblinking elliptic eyes.

  7

  Sara

  It was a beautiful thing: delicate white porcelain with a large scroll handle on one side, covered with a whimsical painting of lovers frolicking in a garden.

  “Well, go on, then,” urged Moll, her hands on her hips and a cocky expression on her face.

  It was perfectly clear to me that Moll was giving me all the worst jobs. I had already scrubbed the scullery floor until my hands were raw and scraped so much coal dust from the hearths that my tongue felt like leather. Now she wanted me to empty the mistress’ chamber pot.

  “It won’t bite, you know,” said Moll. “Or have you never emptied the slops before?”

  The truth was, I hadn’t. Mrs. Swann prided herself on never letting any of her “daughters” go. Once they were all used up she put them to work doing the tasks that went unseen to everyone else. As my hand closed around the elegant handle, I’ll own that I wondered why I had given up that life to stand, chamber pot in hand, at the edge of a privy pit.

  * * *

  It was relentless. No sooner had one pot been emptied than another was being filled. While one grate was being cleaned, the coal in another was burning to ash. Once the outdoor steps had been scrubbed, the wooden staircase needed to be swept, then buffed with linseed oil. And while I did all this, that snip of a girl sat and watched me, sucking marzipan she’d stolen from Madam’s epergne.

  Unless Madam was watching, of course, in which case her smile was so sweet you’d have thought the marzipan was still stuck in her mouth. She’d pluck up her skirts and kneel beside me, as if the hearth was an altar and we were joined in mutual devotion. Once Madam was out of the room, she would sit back on her haunches and watch me as I scrubbed the floorboards with sand, throwing out occasional questions about who I was and where I had come from, which I tried to ignore, along with the aching in my knees.