by Sonia Velton
Moll and Monsieur Finet were there, busy clearing up the Thorels’ dinner. I ignored their reproachful glances and went to cut myself some bread. Moll picked up a platter scattered with pie crusts and pieces of ham fat, then blew out her cheeks.
“Is that too heavy for you?” I asked.
“Nothing I couldn’t manage with a bit of help,” she muttered, then set about scraping the scraps into a bucket while the cat rubbed hopefully round her skirts.
Monsieur Finet finished wrapping the leftover pie, then went to put it away. “You’ll be finding somewhere else to live soon, I suppose,” he said, into the cool darkness of the larder.
“Is Moll moving on, then?” I asked drily, when he turned. Moll glared at me and Finet clicked his tongue in annoyance. I refused to take their bait. Why should I be the one to leave? How many times had Moll betrayed her mistress and laughed as she did so? What kind of loyal member of the household had Monsieur Finet proved to be when he ran up the steps in the wet kitchen and rolled out of the window, leaving three women to fend for themselves against a mob? But I knew better than to hold up a man’s failings before him. I had learned that at Mrs. Swann’s. So I just smiled at Monsieur Finet and cut myself a slice of cheese from the leftovers.
Moll wiped her hands on a dishcloth and sat down next to me at the kitchen table. I had not left the house in days. Much as I didn’t want to make her feel any more important than she already did, I relied on her for information.
“What news of Bisby Lambert?”
Moll smiled. “Why are you so worried about him? Don’t you know who was arrested with him?”
“Who was it?”
My voice was urgent, but Moll relished the moment, taking the opportunity to brush some crumbs from the table before she said, “Why, it was your friend John Barnstaple. They’re at Newgate jail, I’m afraid, and from there they’ll be going to the gallows.” Moll gave a little stretch and a delicate yawn. “Unless Newgate kills them first.”
I turned away from her and jabbed at some ham with my fork. I thought of Barnstaple with his flintlocks and rash words. Look where they had landed him. In Newgate. I did not feel sorry for him, I felt angry that he had cared more for his cause than he had for me and our child.
I didn’t want to carry on talking to Moll, but she seemed reluctant to leave me to my dinner. There was something sly about her pretty, pointed features as she watched me eat.
“They won’t let you keep it, you know.”
The cheese curdled in my stomach.
“I heard Madam talking to Mrs. Arnaud. The Foundling Hospital can’t be doing with feeding their babies pap through a cow’s horn. They need you to feed it, but once it’s weaned they’ll still take it away.”
For the past few days I had been left alone with my baby. That little attic had become womb-like, protecting us from the grim reality that I was no more than wet nurse to my own child.
“The baby’s crying,” I said, although it was silent in the kitchen save for the sound of the clock on the mantel and the lazy purr of the tomcat. I scraped back my chair and took my plate to the dresser. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Moll glance at Finet and smirk.
Esther
The turnkey grinned as he unlocked a huge wooden door run through with metal bolts. “Been here before?” he asked, as his keys jangled in the numerous locks.
I shook my head, mute with apprehension.
“Prepare yourself,” he said. “It ain’t pretty in there.”
But nothing could have prepared me for what I saw as the heavy door swung open to reveal Newgate jail. Straight ahead of me was a narrow corridor running parallel to the enclosure for the male felons. I tried to keep my eyes straight ahead as I followed the turnkey, but I could still see them. Hundreds of men packed into one vast room, shouting and calling to each other, unkempt and emaciated. I fumbled in my sleeve for my lavender-scented handkerchief and held it against my face, but still every human stink imaginable crawled through that thin material. Wild faces appeared alongside me, pressed like lunatics against the bars, calling sweetly to me, then laughing and fading away. Their screams and moans burrowed into my head, like woodworm.
At the end of the corridor two metal grilles, spaced a good yard apart, separated me from the inmates of Newgate jail. I stood behind one and waited. The turnkey disappeared through another door into the throng of the enclosure. After a minute or two, I saw him walking toward the inmates’ side of the partition with Bisby. How altered he was. How different from the man who had sat with me all those evenings, so in command of the loom. Close up to the partition, his face was like a jigsaw puzzle, hatched by the bars of the grille and put back together into some tragic semblance of himself.
“You shouldn’t have come,” said Bisby. “This is no place for a woman like you.”
“But I wanted to. I needed to.”
“Does Mr. Thorel know you are here?” He was practically shouting, but still I could barely hear him. I said nothing, letting my silence be sucked into the chaos of Newgate.
“Please go,” he said. Then he turned as if he would walk back into the melee of humanity behind him.
“No,” I shouted, gripping the bars and rattling them in furious frustration. “Don’t walk away from me. You owe me that much.” It was an extraordinary display. Anywhere other than in that place, it would have stopped people in their tracks and prompted whispers behind fans. But inside Newgate every human emotion was laid bare. I could have screamed from the rafters and my cries would have floated like dust into the pit below.
But it stopped him. He rotated back toward me and placed his own hands on his side of the grille.
“What do you want from me?” he asked, his voice cracking.
“I want the truth,” I said. “I want to know what happened that night in the garret.”
“I didn’t cut the silk, Esther. You must know I didn’t.”
I nodded, kept nodding, because I wanted him to know I believed him and there was no other way to tell him among the sickening clamor of that foul place. “Bisby, you must tell them who did it. If you do, they will set you free.”
Bisby smiled, a wry, futile smile, then shook his head. “If only it were that simple.”
“What do you mean? Just tell them!” I was shouting again, but Bisby was being pushed to the side by other inmates. On my side of the grille, mothers and wives of incarcerated men were jostling for position, forcing me backward. I lifted my hand to him in a final gesture and he tried to lift his in return, but heavy chains circled his wrists. In a moment, he was swallowed into Newgate’s teeming belly.
* * *
The keeper of Newgate looked at me over his spectacles. He was a large man and gave the impression of having sat there so long he had expanded into his chair. I wondered how quickly he might be able to get up again.
“He is in chains,” I said. “He does not have enough to eat. How can this be right? Please take the chains off.”
The keeper swiped his spectacles from his nose and rubbed at his face. When he had put them back on he regarded me with a bored expression. “There is a fee for the easing of the irons, just like everything else.”
“A fee?”
“There is a fee for everything. If you don’t pay, you stay in chains in the main enclosure.”
A thought occurred to me. I had not seen Barnstaple in chains among that pitiful throng.
“Where is John Barnstaple being held?”
The keeper sat back in his chair, and let out an exasperated breath, which clouded the bottom of his spectacles.
“Now I cannot tell you that, can I, Miss?”
“It’s Mrs., and why not? Is there a fee for that too?”
The keeper chuckled and leaned toward me, putting his elbows on his desk and steepling his hands under his chin. “I see you’re beginning to understand how things wo
rk here.”
I searched in my skirts for the drawstring purse that hung from my waist. Inside there was about three shillings. A shilling for each of the things I was going to ask him to do.
“Here,” I said, pushing the money toward him. “I want you to tell me where John Barnstaple is, and I want you to take Bisby Lambert’s chains off and give him a good meal. Is that enough?”
The keeper eyed the coins. Then he twisted his mouth and looked at me. He nodded. “It’s enough …” he said.
I sighed in relief.
“… for this week. You’ll have to bring more next week.” He cupped his fat fingers together and reached for the coins.
I put out a hand to stop him. “John Barnstaple?”
“Ah,” said the keeper. “He seems to have his own benefactor, although not, I should say, one as fetching as you.” He grinned at me, then gave his hand a flick as if dismissing the importance of his own information. “He has his own room and regular meals.”
“Who pays for the room?”
“That, ma’am, I couldn’t tell you. Even for a fee.” He put his hand over the coins and slid them off his desk.
34
Sara
My daughter completed me. When I put her to my breast it was like fitting a lid to a pot or stopping a bottle with a cork. We were connected. Airtight. This was my purpose now. For as long as I fed her, she would stay with me. But I could not bring myself to name her. A name is ownership and she was not mine to keep.
I cradled her with one arm and with my free hand made little swirls out of her impossibly fine hair. It was darkening already, turning an earthy brown. It was the same color as the mice that crept out of holes in the skirting board into a room so quiet they thought it was empty. Nothing from the outside world reached us in that little room. Even the endless chatter of the loom had quieted since Bisby Lambert had been arrested. In those moments, I dreamed that we could stay like that forever, but the fantasy was as fragile as the tiny fingers that pawed and kneaded at my flesh as the baby suckled.
“Rock-a-bye, baby, On the tree top …” I sang softly.
Until the baby is weaned. That is what they have told me. I had spent weeks with nothing to look at save the almost translucent whiteness of my own breasts and my daughter’s midnight blue eyes beyond them, fixing me with an unblinking stare.
“When the wind blows, The cradle will rock …” The baby’s eyes were closing, the tiny lashes fluttering as she sucked.
She was already needing me less. Madam had started expecting me to be there to dress her in the morning, to clean her and help her into bed at night. As if I now wanted to do that for any human being other than my daughter. And all the while, the existence of my child hovered between us, unspoken amid the chatter about dinner and gowns and church.
“When the bough breaks, The cradle will fall …” I was still singing even though she was asleep. I stroked her cheek with the back of my finger until she started sucking again.
No one told me exactly when I would have to give up my child. I carried on as before, sweeping and sewing and cooking, then escaping up to her when I could. It was easy to pretend that this could go on forever, but how long is a mother alone enough for her child? Weeks or months? A day of reckoning was coming, even as I sought to ignore it. Not just for me, for us all.
“Down will come baby, Cradle and all.”
Esther
“The blue, perhaps? Or the green?”
I stood in front of Elias with a sheet of wallpaper over each arm. I raised each in turn, trying to interest him in either the green flock with a pattern of stylized flowers, or the blue and white hand-blocked chinoiserie. The riot had provided the ideal opportunity to redecorate the parlor—if only Elias would make a decision.
“By God, woman, can’t you see I’m busy?”
His anger took me by surprise. Even for Elias it was an uncharacteristic outburst. I lowered my arms. The wallpaper hung over them like ridiculous sleeves, making me feel even more foolish.
Elias sighed and put down his quill. He glanced over at both the sheets then said, “They are both lovely. I would be happy with either and so really it is your decision.”
I nodded, but he had already picked up his quill and bent back to the page, which he was rapidly filling with words. What was there to write about silk that would fill pages?
“What preoccupies you, husband?”
“The trial,” he said flatly, without looking up.
“What trial? Why have you not told me about this?”
“Because, Mrs. Thorel, I do not bother you with the concerns of men. Unlike you, who seems to think that I should be involved with the trivial matters of women.” He gestured toward the wallpaper and a small drop of ink landed on his page. He tutted and blotted angrily at it.
“When is the trial?”
“Next week, so clear your days of wallpapering as I expect you to attend. The whole household must be seen to be there with me.” He was looking right at me now, searching my face for any kind of reaction. But I had learned to paper over my emotions as if they were the parlor wall.
“You might even enjoy it,” he continued, putting his quill down and leaning back in his chair. “Most of Spitalfields will be there. Who can resist the prospect of a man being sent to the gallows?” He let the thought linger a moment before he picked up his papers and shuffled them officiously. “Now, if you don’t mind, I need some time to prepare my case.”
35
Sara
On the morning of the trial we dressed Madam in plain blue damask with white lace edging. She asked me to draw her hair away from her face and put on her finest wig. I curled the ends into ringlets and added dark blue ribbons. She looked very beautiful, if a little severe.
She had hardly spoken of the trial, while Moll and Monsieur Finet had talked of little else. I tried to ignore their gossip. They cared as much about the lives of the journeymen as they did about the chickens whose necks Monsieur Finet wrung, then handed to Moll to pluck.
Madam held up her pot of rouge as a question. I gave a slight shake of my head. “You’re right,” she said. “It would not do for me to look so brash. I am a good Huguenot wife, after all.”
“Is the master ready?”
“He should be,” said Madam. “He has spent enough time pre-
paring.”
“What has he to prepare for?”
“Why, the whole case, of course,” she said, peering closely at her reflection in the looking glass and brushing loose powder from her face. “The allegations are his so it is for him to make the case against the journeymen. He is both the victim and prosecutor.”
“It sounds very personal.”
She glanced up and caught my eye in the mirror. “Indeed,” she said.
* * *
We followed them out to the coach and horses, the master holding out his arm for my lady, dutiful and solicitous. She, elegant and gracious, the kind of wife you might see in a painting, sitting with her silk skirts spread around her, surrounded by wealth and children. A year ago, just the sight of them would have been enough to twist my guts with envy—but that was before I knew what lay behind their charade. They climbed into the coach and sat down facing the horses. Monsieur Finet struggled up next, the coach tilting under his weight, and sat down opposite them. I clutched the baby to my chest and followed him in, while Moll swung herself up as if she rode in coaches as often as she scrubbed pans.
We sat in uncomfortable silence, unused to being pressed together, thigh against thigh, in this manner. It was odd to think of the intimacies and confidences that might have passed between any two of us and yet could not be spoken of in front of the others. The only noise came from the rattle of the coach wheels over the cobblestones and the baby’s occasional startled cry. I held her against me and bounced her in my arms, whispering shushes and non
sense into her ear. Moll sighed and shifted closer to the window as if even my arm against hers was a great inconvenience. I did not care: I enjoyed being my baby’s creature. No one had needed me before. My father had left and even my mother had sent me away. Not one of the men at Mrs. Swann’s had needed me above ten minutes, and Madam could have her nose powdered by anyone. I felt a raw love for my child that I had not felt for her father. I was a puppet on a string for my baby, her every whimper sending me this way and that. What terrified me was what would happen when those strings were cut and I crumpled into a heap without her.
Those thoughts went through my head every day. Now that my baby was here, I could not contemplate life without her. I had tried to stop thinking about my mother over the years. Indeed, every man at Mrs. Swann’s had pushed the memory of her further from my mind, but this tiny being, nuzzling at my neck and chewing at her fists, had opened the memory like an old wound. If I could not bear to part with my daughter, how could my own mother have parted with me?
Esther
I had never been inside the Old Bailey before. It was like the nave of a church. Huge white pillars flanked either side of the vast courtroom. I sat beside Elias in the central seating in front of the bench. Behind the pillars, a gallery was wrapped around the walls of the court. It was full of people, chattering and fidgeting, rustling papers and sharing food, as if they were at the theater. Sara, Moll, and Monsieur Finet were among them, but I did not crane my neck to try to spot them. Most of the rest were journeymen weavers. I wondered how many had been part of the riot that night. Who among them had forced their way into my parlor? Whose pocket jangled with coins made from selling my trinkets?
The judge’s seat remained empty and the courtroom was restless, waiting for him to enter. A large sword was mounted on the wall, pointing down toward his chair as if reminding him where to sit. Above it the lion and the unicorn of the royal arms stood on an elaborate architrave, their tails curling elegantly up the walls. Elias was reading a pamphlet, The Proceedings at the Sessions of the Peace, and Oyer and Terminer. It claimed to be the truest news about the sessions and an exact account of the trial and condemnation of some fellow for murder. Would Bisby’s life be reduced to a sixpenny yarn?