I said nothing. My feet seemed to have rooted to the floor. My heart in my chest was beating so hard that I was sure she might hear it. Could I give her what she wanted – whatever that might be? And what did I want? Love? Affection? I had those from Will. But did I not long for intimacy, for passion, for the physical touch of another? I did. Oh, I did.
She stood tall and straight before me, her arms long and slender. The legs beneath her dress would be lean and slim too, her waist narrow, her stomach flat and muscular. Her face was a perfect oval; her eyes a deep blue-grey, the dilated pupils lending her an extraordinary and luminous beauty. I could not believe that I had once thought her plain, that I had once looked upon her fair hair and composed features and thought nothing of her. I thought of how she endured her father’s ludicrous orders and cruel remarks, and I felt humbled by her fortitude. And yet her replies had always been spiced with humour, so that although she spoke with every appearance of obedience she was, to anyone wise enough to listen, a woman who knew her own mind. What a companion she would make for anyone lucky enough to have her treat them as an equal. And now here we were, she and I. Were we not as much flesh and blood as men? Were they alone in having desires that demanded satisfaction?
I kissed her on the lips. ‘In here?’ I whispered. ‘Now?’
She nodded. ‘But fast. There’s not much time.’
I tore my waistcoat and shirt off and tossed them aside. She unpinned my bindings, examining the manner by which they were fastened. ‘Does it hurt,’ she said. ‘To be wrapped so tightly?’
I shook my head, unable to speak as her hands brushed against me.
‘I could do this too,’ she whispered. ‘I could live as a man. I am plain and unnoticeable, as tall and thin as you.’ She pressed her hands to my breasts, crushing them against me. ‘What freedoms it gives you!’
‘It’s a lonely road,’ I said. ‘There are few of us on it and our paths rarely cross.’
‘Lonelier than the one I am on now?’
‘It’s a different loneliness. And there’s always the fear of discovery.’
‘So I own your secret?’ she whispered. Her hands moved against me. ‘I alone?’
I felt a pang of unease. ‘I would be grateful if you would keep it out of your notebook.’ I kissed her again then – I did not want to think about how casually I had just thrown away my identity – and worried at her dress with urgent fingers.
‘Pull it down,’ she whispered. ‘It will never come off in time if you undo all the buttons.’
I did as she directed. The collar of her bodice was wide, and having managed to undo a few of the buttons I brought it down easily enough, so that her breasts and shoulders were exposed, rising from that a mass of navy blue fabric and white foaming underclothes as though she were a mermaid emerging from the sea. Her skin was pale and flawless and silky to the touch, her breasts small, as small as my own, soft and perfectly filling my palm. Standing beside her I opened my britches, took one of her hands and guided it between my legs. I could not stifle a cry – how long it had been, and how cold and lonely and without comfort I was.
My head cleared. I could hardly believe what I had done. What I was doing still, for there was Miss Mothersole, sprawling upon the bed of hop sacks, her face against my breast, her fingers between my legs. I pulled her hand out.
‘What is it?’ she said. ‘I thought that was what you wanted?’
‘I did. I do.’
‘Then what—?’
‘I have something for you too.’ I knelt before her and pulled up her skirts rummaging through the swathes of fabric and layers of petticoats, the folds of linen and lace. I found her at last, like a jewel buried within the soft and silky flesh of an oyster. I pushed her legs apart and buried my face between them until I drew from her a cry as sharp as my own.
Chapter Twenty-One
I had not been out at night on my own for a long time. Usually, if I was out after nightfall Will was with me, and I had to confess that I would have preferred it if he had been at my side. I had agreed to go up with him to the library at Angel Meadow the following day to find Miss Mothersole’s notebook. Gabriel was still shaken, though he pretended he wasn’t, and we did not want to leave him that evening. But I had been unable to sleep, and, eventually I had got up, dressed and slipped out, determined to retrieve the notebook and return home with it before anyone else was up.
The night was as black as molasses and choked with fog. The air tasted abominable, coating the inside of my nose and mouth with a poisonous layer. Something squelched beneath my soles and I felt a rat running over my shoes. I could see nothing – not where I was going nor where I had been. I had a lantern, though it offered me little illumination. The lamps in the street were no more than dim fuzzy orbs, and my own was hardly better, huddled within its squat glass prison as if in fear at the dark world that surrounded us. I hid my face in my handkerchief and hurried on.
The fog has a curious effect upon the senses. Unable to see, we have only sound – muffled and disembodied as it is – to keep us safe. Usually I paid no attention to the sound of my feet on the pavement. Now, they sounded a ringing declaration of my approach. My muttered curses echoed about me as if spoken by another, so that anyone standing still and silent would know exactly where I was, though I would have no idea at all where they might be even if they were right beside me.
I was passing St Saviour’s church when I had the feeling that I was being followed. I stopped walking and held my breath – but there was nothing. Who might be out on a night such as this? I sighed at my own foolishness and suggestibility, and carried on. But there it was again – footsteps moving in time with my own; breathing, measured and controlled, coming from the gritty darkness somewhere behind me.
‘Who’s there?’ I held up my lantern. But its feeble light could do nothing against the fog, and I could see only a dense sea of whirling brown particles, opaque as a jar full of smoke. No one spoke; no one strode forward out of the gloom or hurried past. I took a step back the way I had come, listening for . . . what? A sigh? The rustle of clothes or the echo of retreating footsteps? My eyes stared in my head, my ears straining. I felt the skin on my back grow chill, as if my flesh had been stroked by an invisible hand. All my instincts told me to move, to run as fast as I could away from that place – away from that invisible looming archway, from the silent church hunched resentfully at its foot, from the crowded, forgotten graveyard beyond the wall. I had known St Saviour’s Street my whole life, had walked down it a thousand times. What had happened to me, to the city, that I now felt so affrighted by it? The fog was enough to unsettle the strongest of hearts but I walked on, briskly now in the long fast stride I had inherited from my father. Let anyone try to catch me, I thought. I could outrun all of them, even on a night such as this.
A brazier in the shadow of the asylum wall gave off a dim glow. Ragged figures huddled around it, coughing and hawking. A chestnut exploded like a pistol shot and a scrap of hot shell grazed my cheek. I held my keys close in my hand, stifling their jangling with my fingers. Would Pole be lurking in his burrow beside the door? I hoped not. It had been after midnight when I’d left the apothecary, I knew it could not be much later. I had left it until after lights out so that I might reduce the chances of bumping into anyone. I had never felt at home at Angel Meadow, its associations were, for me, too brutal, too immediate, to allow me any peace of mind while I was in the place. Walking towards it I had felt a deepening dread, not for fear of what I was about to do, but because of the utter hopelessness the building represented to me. Cure, for the most part, was illusory. Certainly some of the inmates made a recovery, but in the main it was a prison for those who could not be cared for anywhere else. I extinguished my lantern, and unlocked the door.
Inside, the darkness was complete, for without Pole and his lantern there was no light to guide me. Pole’s den, behind the door, was empty, the fire in the grate no more than a small pile of clinker. I blew upon it, drawing fro
m the cinders a red glow. I plucked a taper from the earthen cup on the mantel and, certain that the building slept, re-lit my lamp.
I was no stranger to long, gloomy corridors, to reflections from windows that showed me my own crimson-stained face, to the creaking of floors and walls, or the almost-human sounds made by the wind. The fog outside showed black and gritty against the windows, the shadows from my candle jumping and dancing, so that I had the impression that something dim and formless was waiting just out of sight behind and ahead of me. As a child attending my father on his evening rounds about St Saviour’s Infirmary I had seen terror in every shadow. My father had cured me of my foolishness by locking me in a windowless storeroom beneath the foul ward. There, with only a candle-end to light my prison, the shadows had loomed, the lumber of past generations – a headless skeleton, a stack of broken chairs, a pile of mouldering blankets – transformed into rearing terrors. Overhead, the sounds from the foul ward – the murmur of voices, the thump of footsteps, the dim sound of sobbing, retching, and spitting – had sounded in my childish ears like the ghosts of St Saviour’s dead. After an hour, when my cries and shrieks had stopped, my father had let me out. The shadows at Angel Meadow were nothing compared to that. And yet something troubled me. Once more I stood stock still, my lantern held high, and listened. Around me the asylum held its breath.
The library was as dark and silent as a glove. Since the students had left to follow St Saviour’s across the river it had seen far less traffic. Dr Hawkins and Dr Christie had their own libraries – in their homes and in the rooms they kept at the asylum. Dr Golspie had used it, but he had found its books to be stale and antiquated. The methods detailed between their pages were from a different world, he’d always said, a cruel world where treatments meted out upon the mad amounted to little more than torture.
‘Look,’ he had said to us. ‘See the whirling chair? And Ramsay recommends cold wrapping and ice baths. Then there’s the distaff. The chains and weights. The iron collar! Can you believe it? Even Rutherford wouldn’t recommend such methods.’
Dr Golspie had removed some of the more alarming books altogether, so that here and there the shelves bore crooked gaps. The place smelled stale, of passed time and abandoned ideas. The floor creaked beneath my feet like the deck of a ship. I held my lantern high. The library was small, no bigger than the apothecary, but its walls were taller, lined with books, some accessed by a pair of thin ladders attached to the walls like rigging. A narrow staircase of wrought iron coiled upward to a mezzanine and a narrow gallery. Where would Constance have put her notebook? She had not said. Perhaps under ‘M’ for Mothersole? It was the most likely place, and she would surely not have expected me to look through every shelf? The shelves were inlaid with tarnished brass letters. I traced through the alphabet. Montague. Morton. Mosley—
I snatched a book off the shelf and flipped it open. Page after page of Constance Mothersole’s small pencilled scribble proclaimed it to be hers. My heart beat against my ribs. I was certain, nearly certain, that I knew who had murdered Dr Rutherford, and who had murdered Dr Golspie too. I had little proof, other than my own deductions, and I had told no one, not even Will. For how might I prove it? Without proof there was no certainty. To accuse without evidence would simply galvanise my opponent and I had to be sure, so sure. Within these pages I might find what I needed to confirm my suspicions.
I took the book to the table, flicking through the pages – 10th September, 11th September, 12th September – each line was densely covered with tightly pencilled letters. I should have taken it home, should have stuffed it into my satchel and left that horrible place without looking back, but I did not. What stopped me? Curiosity? Impatience? Complacency? Whatever the answer, I remained where I was, poring over those scribbled pages, my mind focused on nothing but what Constance Mothersole had written. I did not hear the door open behind me; I did not see my assailant’s face reflected in the dark mirrors of the library windows, and I did not feel the stirring of the dry and book-parched air as they drew back a hand to strike me down.
At first I was conscious only of the sound of voices – muffled and indistinct. Did I hear crying? I was not sure, but I had the sensation of bobbing upon a gentle sea. Then I jarred and jolted. I listened again. My head ached, and I could tell from the way it throbbed that I had been knocked out. But my head hurt on the inside too. I felt groggy, almost drunk, my mouth as dry as if I had spent the night drinking Sorley’s ale.
I must have blacked out again, and when I came to once more I could hear only one voice, at once comforting and familiar. I felt my berth move, the motion leisurely, rhythmic and soothing. I opened my eyes, but I could still see nothing, the darkness that surrounded me filling my eye sockets, my mouth, my nostrils so that I felt as if I might choke upon it. My head still throbbed, but this time I was less confused, and I recognised on my tongue the sweetish musty taste of chloroform. I tried to sit, but I could not. I tried to move, but still I could not. Fear scalded through me, and a scream rose and boiled in my throat. But I was bound and gagged, my eyes staring but blind, my mouth stoppered, my ears the only sense still in my possession. I felt myself tip and sway, heard again the dull intonation, then a wettish thunk and a sound like the scattering of seed or small stones. It sounded close, though I could not say how close, and it brought with it a damp chill and the smell of earth, of rotten flesh and worms. I heard the sound again, that dull thunk and a sound as if of scattered stones. I heard it again, and again, over and over but growing fainter, until in a short while there was nothing. Nothing in my ears but a terrible silence, and nothing in my eyes but darkness.
Angel Meadow Asylum, 18th September 1852
We left from Millbank, some two hundred of us, dressed in prison grey with what possessions we had bundled at our feet. One of the girls I had known in the Rents brought me one of Miss Day’s dresses that I had kept well hidden – the other I let her have. I took the blue one, I was very clear about that, for I had sewn some of Mr Day’s sovereigns into its bodice. I had done this well before Goblin and I were caught, for I am cautious by nature and wanted something should I need it.
It was at Millbank that I was to meet the man who was to make my life as much a torment on the other side of the world as it had been on this. We were shuffling our way up the gangplank, shackled together in twos, those ahead disappearing into the shady belly of the ship. Behind us, on the dockside below, something heavy crashed to the ground. The convicts who were still ashore, as well as those of us who were not yet aboard, stopped to look over at the commotion. A large box of some kind – made of a polished wood, with a rich patina and a brass eye projecting from one side of it, was lying upon the ground. Its owner was a thin man in a tall hat, long coat and white neckerchief. He carried a cane – I could tell by the swing of it as he shouted at the stevedore that it was weighted.
‘If you have broken it I will flay the skin off your back with my own hands. ‘His voice was tight with fury.
I exchanged a glance with the woman to whom I was chained.
‘Who d’you think he is?’ she said. She grinned. ‘Sounds like my da] though he’s long dead.’
‘I think he’s the surgeon,’ I said. ‘See his bag?’
‘P’raps it’s not his.’ She sounded hopeful. ‘P’raps he’s not on this transport.’
The man turned and seized the brown doctor’s bag. He pushed his hat to the back of his head and looked up. His eyes were deep set, his cheeks sunken, his mouth an angry line. He stared at us, at my companion and me, and in his face I saw nothing but loathing and contempt.
The Norfolk carried prisoners, both men and women, as well as free passengers, in addition to sailors and soldiers, so there were lots of us on board. I was used to crowds and small spaces, all of us were, but I could not believe how many hundreds of us were to be crammed inside that wooden prison. Some of the women said it had been a slave ship once, and when we were herded below into the terrible hutches where we were to
spend much of our journey I could well believe it. We were berthed in two rows of bunks, double height, hard against the creaking hull of the ship. A narrow walkway ran in between, and iron gates divided our prison into sections. The place was airless and dark, noisy and stinking, so that many of us were sick straight away, for we were none of us used to the rolling, heaving movement of the waves. But there was little that might be done about it for the captain had his orders, and we were kept down there, ironed to our berths, for many days until we had left England far behind.
At last, after a week or more of being close quartered, we were taken on deck, where we were lined up to be inspected by the captain and crew, the soldiers and officers, and the ship’s surgeon. This last was a man of some influence, the captain being a rough man more interested in the seas and the wind than with the well-being of his passengers, and concerned only that we got to the Bay without mutiny or loss of life. He said as much, and told us we might have a peaceful journey if we kept quiet and caused no trouble. He showed us the cat – a fearful tangled whip of knotted hide – and pointed to the triangle where we might be bound, and the cramping box in which we might be crushed should we choose to ignore his advice. Our transport was to last one hundred days, the captain said, perhaps more but certainly no less. He set out what was expected from us, namely – obedience and hard work. We would do the laundry, scrub the decks, and lay down lime in the privies. If we behaved well we would have exercise about the deck, as we would have our irons removed once we reached blue water.
We settled into our tasks well enough. At first we were kept under close watch; the convict men were put below decks when we were up, and we went below when they were up. Once our irons were removed we moved about more freely, and many of the women took up with soldiers or sailors, or even the male convicts. The free passengers were told not to mix with us, but they hardly cared where they went and associated with whomever they pleased. Rations were dull but adequate, and we were lucky to be travelling on a ship that gave us a half-pint of port wine nightly. Discipline was kept easily enough, for the threat of the removal of this luxury was sufficient to make most behave themselves. We were punished with irons, and the cramping box, the men with lashes too, though not above two dozen, and nothing like the two hundred or so we had heard about on other vessels, though the screams of the men as the cat cut away the flesh from their backs was pitiable nonetheless.
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