Victorian Maiden

by Gary Dolman

  And then he was.

  “Breathe a word o’ this and upon my oath, I will kill thee. I can see what you’re wearing; ye’re a yellow-jacket slut from the workhouse, so I’ll know just where to come looking for you.”

  The gruff voice drags her back, shrieking again, from her safe and special place. She realises that what has happened hasn’t happened to a different little girl at all. It has happened to her; to little Lizzie Wilson.

  She lies there, not daring to move – not able to move – for an age, thinking about his words. Then she remembers her gown and her nakedness and she pushes its heavy, comforting weight back over her legs.

  He knew how wicked and how sinful she really was. He’d had no learning, no schooling and he was as drunk as her aunt, yet even he knew as soon as he saw her that she was a dirty, fallen slut. He’d said so. He knew to push her into a ginnel and to… She struggled with the words for what he had done. Was it seduction? Was it punishment, or did he just hate nasty, little sluts like her with their yellow jackets and their black hearts?

  He said that he’d kill her if she told anyone. The wonderful, wonderful promise carved into her mama’s gravestone drifted into her mind: ‘And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away.’

  ‘Please, God, please send the man in the waistcoat back – please send him back to kill me. And please let Baby Sarah be dead too so that she doesn’t ever have to fall and have men hate her and punish her and make her seduce them in dark ginnels. Please, please let her be dead.’

  “Where have you been today, Wilson?”

  Mrs Dixon’s waspish tones swept down the long workhouse corridor and stopped her heart.

  “I asked you where you’d been,” she repeated an instant later, “And how in God’s name have you come to be in that state?”

  Elizabeth turned and the briefest expression of shock flitted over the Matron’s face.

  “Please, Mrs Dixon, please, ma’am, I’ve been up to Harrogate. I’ve been looking for my little Baby Sarah.”

  She curtsied and a fresh wave of pain stabbed her below her belly.

  “And who gave permission for you to be up in Harrogate?” the Matron demanded.

  Elizabeth curtsied and grimaced once more.

  “No one, Mrs Dixon,” she whispered, “But I had to find my Sarah. I truly did, ma’am. She’ll be crying for me. She’ll be frightened. She needs her mama to look after her and to rock her and to sing her to sleep.”

  “But I’ve already told you, Wilson; your daughter is with a fine, new family. Why don’t you understand? She will have a proper nursery to sleep in now and not a workhouse ward. You must forget about her because by now, she will surely have forgotten all about you.”

  “No, she can’t have…”

  “She will, Wilson. She has a new mama now. One who can care for her properly and one who isn’t a yellow-jacket inmate in a poor-law workhouse. Now, more importantly, you have broken a thousand rules today in absconding from the workhouse without permission from an officer, and what’s more, you’ve done none of your work.”

  “Please, Mrs Dixon, I was only looking for Sarah.”

  “Don’t take me for a fool, Wilson. Your clothes are dishevelled, you have dirt on your back, and you have a clear hand-print upon your bosom. It’s plain what you were in Harrogate for, and it’s abominable.”

  “But, Mrs Dixon…”

  “You’re a slut, and if another brat results from this day’s escapade, I’m not sure that the people of this parish should be made to pay for it. I thought your mother might have brought you up better than this, Wilson. I’m sure she wasn’t a slut. Or was she? You will spend the night in the refractory cell with the hope that in there, you will have plenty of time to think, and to reflect upon your actions today, and to beg God for forgiveness.”

  “No, please, ma’am, please not that. Don’t make me be on my own. I’ll do anything you want. I promise never to go out again. Please, Mrs Dixon!”

  The door slammed shut behind her and cut off all the light; all, that was, except for a thin, bright strip above the flagstones of the floor. The bleak, whitewashed walls of the tiny refractory cell reflected just enough of this meagre light for Elizabeth to make out a low, brick bench covered by a blanket and next to it, a slop pail. The air was thick with the acrid, gagging odour of sweat and stale urine.

  What light there was would soon be gone, and then there would be only silence and blackness and the horrors of her thoughts. Panic exploded within her. It was panic that would not be stilled however hard she rocked and however loudly she sang, ‘Hush-a-bye-Baby.’ She needed to hurt herself. She needed a different hurt to the terrible hurt in her mind, which would drive her this night to the edge of insanity and perhaps beyond. She needed a different hurt; one she could feel, one she could control and one she could think about with all her might. She might just be able to get through the night then; she might just be able to get through to the morning if she didn’t need to remember the terrible, terrible things.

  And then she looked at the pail again and she sobbed in relief. The jagged, iron edge of the rim was so sharp, and her skin was so soft.

  Mrs Anne Price was already in her drawing room, cocooned under a rug in a large, comfortable-looking tub chair, when the maid showed Atticus and Lucie through. Behind her an empty wicker bath chair stood under a large portrait of a smiling, be-whiskered gentleman. It was the very same man who leered down from the photograph into the Annexe at Sessrum House.

  “Mr and Mrs Fox, please forgive me for not coming straight out to greet you, but as you can see, I am an invalid. I need a bath chair to get about, and that is rather inconvenient inside the house.”

  Mrs Price’s reedy voice plucked their attention from the portrait.

  “Mrs Price, there is no need to apologise. We are very grateful indeed that you have received us today.”

  Atticus felt curiously insincere in his cordiality under the watchful eyes of the monster on the wall.

  Mrs Price smiled warmly.

  “Not at all, not at all; I’m very honoured to be meeting Harrogate’s very own Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, and most especially so as you are real people and not just some ink-and-paper creations.”

  She chuckled infectiously and smoothed out the rug across her skinny lap.

  “I’m leaving to visit my daughter and my young grandchildren in Northumberland tomorrow, so I wouldn’t otherwise have been able to see you until my return. That might have been several weeks from today, so your timing is fortuitous. Now, I believe you have… matters that you wish to discuss with me?”

  The maid entered the room, and Atticus and Lucie smiled and waited patiently as she poured the tea. The smiling and the waiting had become almost unbearable by the time the maid finally curtsied and left and Atticus was able to say: “We do indeed have very important matters to discuss, Mrs Price.”

  “Is it a murder investigation?” Mrs Price asked conspiratorially, her intelligent eyes twinkling with excitement.

  Atticus was completely wrong-footed: ‘She must know about the baby farmer,’ he thought incredulously, ‘And she’s laughing about it.’

  He glanced up at the portrait and her dead husband suddenly seemed to be laughing too.

  Lucie filled the awkward vacuum of his silence.

  “I’m afraid that these particular matters are no more exciting than the simple tracing of a missing person, Mrs Price, but no less important for that. We are trying to trace a missing child who by now will be a grown woman.”

  Atticus relaxed as Mrs Price’s face dropped in disappointment.

  “Not a murder?”

  Lucie shook her head and smiled apologetically.

  “We are only commissioned investigators; we rarely get involved with anything so glamorous as a murder.”

  “I see. Well, never mind; how can I help you b
oth?”

  “I believe that your late husband was one of the overseers of the Starbeck workhouse before it was replaced by the present one in Knaresborough?” Lucie ventured.

  The old lady looked intrigued now.

  “One of quite a large number of overseers, Mrs Fox, yes, but that was over thirty years ago now. Why do you ask?”

  Lucie smiled her warmest and most radiant smile.

  “The lady we have been asked to find was adopted as a small child from that workhouse into a wealthy local family. Your husband was the overseer who arranged it all, but unfortunately there were no records kept. We wondered if you might remember anything about it.”

  Mrs Price turned and gazed for a few moments at the portrait on the wall.

  “Dear Barty,” she said, “Always helping the poor, little children. He was a good friend of Alfred Roberts in his time, and something of a philanthropist in his own right.”

  “We had heard something of the sort,” Lucie said, with a sharp warning glance to her husband.

  Mrs Price took a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes.

  “Please forgive me; Barty and I were together a long time and I do miss him dreadfully. He couldn’t have been a better husband.”

  “Of course,” Lucie threw another glance to Atticus.

  “By chance, it’s Alfred Roberts’ grandson who has asked us to find this lady.”

  Mrs Price looked up, her eyes moist and shining.

  “Really? How strange. Then of course I shall do my very best to help you, although I never really got involved with the day-to-day running of the workhouse. Keeping proper records was never one of Barty’s strongest cards.”

  She made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob.

  “Tell me about this little girl then, Mrs Fox.”

  Lucie looked visibly relieved.

  “She was called Sarah, Mrs Price. Sarah Beatrice Wilson, and she was adopted out at the age of two. It would have been around Eighteen Forty-Eight.”

  Then, after a moment she added: “Her mother is a relative of the Roberts family.”

  Mrs Price stared into her teacup and slowly shook her head.

  “She was a very pretty little girl by all accounts, with fair hair. Her mother was called Elizabeth Wilson – Lizzie.”

  Mrs Price had begun to rock gently backwards and forwards in her tub chair. It reminded them sharply of Elizabeth herself.

  Lucie pressed her.

  “Do you remember Sarah, Mrs Price, or Lizzie?”

  The old lady nodded, slowly and precisely.

  “I remember her,” she said. “Her daughter was born out of wedlock, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes,” Atticus confirmed.

  “Her mother had been taken advantage of,” Lucie added, her eyes sharp, her tone measured and even.

  “Actually, in plain terms, she was raped. She was repeatedly raped by several men over the course of many months. She finally fled to the workhouse to escape them.”

  Mrs Price looked as if Lucie might just have slapped her. Her eyes closed tight and she stopped rocking, and instead seemed to reel against the thick leather sides of the chair.

  Atticus frowned. Surely his wife had been too graphic, too brutal for the old lady’s sensitivities. But Lucie knew well what she was about, and reassured him with the shadow of a nod, and a quick and fleeting smile.

  At last Mrs Price was able to recover herself. But when she opened her eyes once again, some of the pain of the words seemed to have lodged itself deep within them. Her voice too seemed weaker, and somehow diminished.

  “I am truly sorry to hear that, Mrs Fox. But young women of that age do say all manner of things to cover up what they’ve done. As I said, I do remember Sarah, and I do remember her… mother; Lizzie, did you call her?”

  Lucie nodded.

  “Very pretty girl – beautiful even, and quite well spoken too as I recollect. I cannot say where my husband had her girl sent. I only remember now that it was to a respectable, loving home and that they cherished her and brought her up as their own. Any base morals from which her mother may have suffered were thankfully not passed on to her child, and Sarah is a model of respectability. You may tell Mr Roberts’ grandson and whomever else it may concern exactly that, if it will help to settle their minds.”

  “Mrs Price, I’m afraid the reason for our commission is a little more complicated than that…”

  “Mr and Mrs Fox.”

  The old lady’s twinkling eyes and warm smile were gone. She banged her teacup onto its saucer with a clatter.

  “You may have been asked – commissioned, or whatever it is you call it – to find Sarah, but tell me this: How do you know that she actually wants to be found? What if she has a new life? What if she has a husband and a family of her own now? What if she has no notion that she was ever adopted at all, that she’s really the illegitimate child of a workhouse whore? Why, after over forty years, should I turn her life topsy-turvy? My husband was a great philanthropist. If he left no parochial record of where she had gone, then you can be sure it was for a very good reason. It was most probably to remove a lovely, innocent, little girl from the clutches of her harlot of a mother. Now, if you will excuse me, I need to rest now. I have a long journey ahead of me tomorrow and I have said all I wish to say on the matter.”

  Chapter 27

  “I have said all I wish to say on the matter. It’s out of my hands, Wilson. The overseers want you to be a pauper apprentice to Walton And Company, and so that is precisely what will happen. They have just taken over the linen mill at Knaresborough. Mr Walton has grand plans for it and he needs lots of skilled workers.”

  “But please, Mrs Dixon, I need to see Mr Price – I need to ask him about my Baby Sarah.”

  “Not that it is any of your business, Wilson, but it was actually Mr Price who paid them the three pounds they needed to take you off our hands. He paid it out of his own pocket too, hark ye. They usually take smaller girls than you as apprentices, so you can think yourself fortunate that Mr Price is such a kind philanthropist.”

  Her stern expression softened a little.

  “I’m sorry, Elizabeth, but there is no point in you being a burden on the parish when you can pay your own way in a mill. You’ve no daughter to worry yourself about now, so you will leave the workhouse today.”

  And then she had been fetched, along with a pauper boy of around ten who made her think of little Peter Lovegood, by an enormous man called Tom. Tom was the foreman at Messieurs Walton and Company of Knaresborough, and he had a big, round face and twinkling eyes that reminded her of Old Rachel.

  She gasped. Rachel!

  She hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye to Old Rachel or to thank her for being her only friend in the world until Mary had come back to her. Nor to Mary! They had just found each other again; surely they couldn’t be separated now without a word. And she needed Mary; she needed Mary to make Mr Price let little Baby Sarah come back to her, back to her mama where she belonged and back to where she would be safe from all the bad things that would surely happen.

  She turned back, instinctively, desperately, just as the great front door banged shut.

  “Where are ye going lass?” Tom had asked in his deep, measured voice, that sounded to her like the tick-tock of a grandfather clock.

  “I can’t go, I can’t!”

  Elizabeth dropped the brown paper parcel which had her clothes neatly folded inside it and hammered on the solid timber with her fists. She drummed until each blow began to leave a little smudge of red on the fresh, white paint. But the door stayed shut. The mouth was closed. It remained as it ever was; silent and unmerciful. It had witnessed too many tears and too much heartbreak over the years, and now it refused to heed her shrieking, shrieking cries of despair.

  She felt a huge arm encircle her waist and she froze as it plucked her easily away.

  “Come with me, little lassie; you’ll be all right.”

  The huge arm set her gen
tly onto her feet and through the mists of her terror she heard the deep voice speaking once again: “We’re not going to eat you, lass,” it said, “We only want you to come and spin yarn for t’ linen.”

  She stared at him as he smiled amiably down at her, and through the mists of her mind, his words ticked and tocked, and ticked and tocked, and raced, and grew louder and louder and louder.

  ‘We only want you to spin yarn for the linen; we only want you to spin; we only want you; we want you, we want you, we want you…’

  And she could think only of what would happen when the day’s work was done, when it was night. Night was when they would want her, when they would do bad things to her. Night was when the shadows on the door would begin to move, and they would come to her bed. Night was when they would take her away to be punished. Tom was bigger and stronger even than Mr Price, and she was sure that he would punish her terribly.

  She seemed to float down the road to Knaresborough as light as a gossamer thread. In the far, far distance, she could hear the boy who reminded her so much of little Peter Lovegood chattering excitedly to Tom about the Castle Mill; about the spinning machines and the great power-looms and about how he would earn tuppence a week for his very own. She could hear Tom laughing his deep, belly laugh in return. She could hear him as he patiently explained about retting and scutching, about how the spinning machines and the power-looms worked, and how they turned the flax into linen. But she thought she could also hear an echo of Mr James as he made polite conversation with her cousin John in the Annexe, with that awful catch in his voice. And then she heard echoes of her cousin John, screaming and screaming as Mr James laughed and dragged him away.

  “I don’t want to have to repeat myself, Mrs Fox. I’ve told you; that is all I have to say on the matter.”

  Mrs Price carefully smoothed her rug again. Then she looked up and glared at them defiantly, as if daring them to stay.

  It was all or nothing, and with a silent plea to the Fates, Lucie Fox shook the die once again.