The Foundling

by Halls, Stacey

  Lyle gave me a look, removed his cap and crouched to Charlotte’s level, but she said nothing. He grinned, and straightened. ‘It stings a man, to be rebuffed,’ he said. ‘First your mother, now you.’

  Your mother. I had not heard it before, and it felt strange, and wonderful.

  ‘Thank you, Lyle.’ We stared at one another for a moment in the black mouth of the court. ‘You won’t tell a soul, will you?’

  ‘I ain’t leaky. You have my word. Bess who?’ He winked. ‘Right. I’m off to find an old boozy who’ll snore all the way home in his sedan. Until next time, I wish you bene darkmans, Misses Bright.’

  ‘Goodnight, Lyle. Thank you.’

  I did not know when I would see him again, or how he would be able to find me. Perhaps it was better that way. I stood on my toes and kissed his cheek, and breathed in his smell: of pipe tobacco, and something sweet, like herbs, or soil. Before I could draw away, he took my cheek in his hand, bringing me towards his face. His lips were inches from mine.

  ‘Laku noc´,’ he said, and with that he dissolved into the night.

  CHAPTER 16

  The court was empty, and we scuttled across it to the main door, which opened easily into the pitch-dark hall. Though I could see nothing I knew instinctively the distance towards the stairs, and found them with my foot. Holding Charlotte’s hand, I felt our way to number three, set the sack down on the floorboards and fingered for the key inside it.

  ‘Eliza?’ came a whisper in the dark.

  ‘Yes, my love?’

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘I told you, we’re at my house now. This is where I live.’

  ‘Why is it so dark?’

  ‘There’s no oil lights, we use candles here. And I ain’t got one. We should have asked Lyle for a rush, shouldn’t we? You ain’t scared, are you? Remember Biddy Johnson. She wasn’t scared, was she, even when that gang of ruffians came after her?’

  The terrified silence that followed told me I’d said the wrong thing. ‘Only there’s no gangs here,’ I whispered. ‘Everyone’s asleep – that’s why it’s so quiet and dark. You won’t believe the noise in the morning, with everyone fetching water and bumping about. You won’t be able to hear yourself think! Thank heavens . . .’

  I found the key and groped for the lock, and held my breath until I heard the familiar clunk, then picked up our things and ushered Charlotte inside.

  The sitting room was freezing cold. The thin curtain was open, and moonlight soaked the floorboards. The fire was out, and dirty pots and pans littered the hearth. The faint smell of fried fish turned my stomach. I glanced over at Abe’s bed, at first thinking it empty. He barely made a shape under the blanket, hunched on his side in his nightcap, facing the wall, snoring gently. I decided not to wake him, and crept with Charlotte through to the bedroom.

  ‘Here we are,’ I whispered, setting down the sack. Charlotte swayed slightly on the sunken floorboards. I had a month’s wage from Mrs Callard to add to my savings, and knelt beside my bed to feel under the straw mattress for the domino box.

  It was not there.

  I hauled the mattress off completely, exposing the ropes beneath. There was nothing on them, or under them. I did the same with the other bed, listening for the clatter of wood falling to the floor, but there was only straw and rope and the wooden bed frames, which were bare. I looked desperately about, for the curtain was open here, too. That was when I saw it, on the dresser beneath the window, next to the chipped jug I used for washing. Lying open, the lid pushed all the way out. I knew it was empty from across the room.

  My breath came out in quick little clouds. Abe still snored in the other room, and I heard the creak of floorboards as Charlotte shifted uncomfortably. A cold, sick panic began spreading from my stomach, and made me lower myself down onto the mattress. I was oddly clear-headed. The box had been here when I came on my half-day, a little over a week ago; I had checked. But had I opened it? That morning I’d been happy and distracted, and impatient to get back to Devonshire Street. I’d gone, too, to Ned’s, but he was out, so I’d spent a half-hour with his wife Catherine and the children, holding the baby while Catherine chopped vegetables for a broth. Her face was drawn, her jaw a tight line, as she told me he had not been home since two nights ago. I was worried but not frantic, in a vague, manageable sort of way, like hunger before it slides into starvation. I’d told her he would be back, and she nodded, because he would be, but we both knew the problem was more serious than that.

  I went into the other room to wake my father. ‘Abe,’ I said, shoving him firmly.

  He woke instantly, mid-snore, pushing himself up in bed and frowning in the darkness. ‘Bess, is that you? What you doing here?’

  ‘I’ve come home,’ I said. ‘When was Ned here?’

  ‘Ned?’ He took a moment to respond, his voice cracked and growly. ‘A week, p’raps? But why are you home? I thought you was—’

  ‘Did he go in my room?’

  Abe’s face was scrunched in confusion. ‘He might have, I don’t remember rightly.’ He gave a great yawn and sat up straighter. ‘He’s in trouble, Bess.’

  ‘The filthy cheat! What do you mean? What kind of trouble?’

  The bed creaked beneath him. ‘He has the body snatchers after him. He might be in the clink now, all’s I know. Or the pillory. I’ve no way to help him and he’s past helping himself.’

  I had the sensation that, one by one, the floorboards were vanishing beneath me. Charlotte stood watching from the bedroom doorway, stiff and mute, out of Abe’s sight. I knew I should have comforted her, brought her to meet her grandpa, but I couldn’t move an inch.

  Sleep did not come that night, but guilt and fear nestled either side of me and rested their heads on my pillow. With the money gone, it was impossible to pretend I wasn’t done for. In the morning I’d have to tell Abe what I’d done: thieved a child, who I planned to hide with at some shabby lodging in the lawless burrows between the Fleet Ditch and St Paul’s. But now, with my savings gone, I could barely afford that. That money had meant I didn’t need to find a job straight away, but now we both would. And staying here at Black and White Court was not an option, for as soon as the magistrate was told . . .

  I shuddered. The bedroom was icy cold, and I’d put Charlotte to bed on the narrow mattress beside mine. She was used to feathers not straw, and the single, clammy blanket hadn’t been washed in a long time. She was pretending to sleep, her dark hair falling over the pillow, her white face still. I lay next to her in my dress and boots, watching her closely, rubbing her arms and legs and singing to her, and breathing in her soapy smell. I held her lily-white hands and wondered how I could send them to work, those hands that had only ever tied silk ribbons in her hair and turned the petal-thin pages of books.

  I shifted on to my back, and my breath clouded in the moonlight. It was too great an effort to close the thin curtain, and I looked out at the rooftops and wondered if Mrs Callard was awake, or if she would not realise we were gone until the morning. I could not imagine how she would react: with white, silent astonishment or violent rage, now that I had seen her tidy disguise slip. My taking Charlotte would tip her orderly life into chaos. No doubt she would tell the servants first, and send Agnes to fetch the watchman, who would in turn tell the magistrate. But how was I to escape an enemy I did not know? The search would spread in an inky pool through the city, starting in Bloomsbury and leaking out, east, south and west, filling the alleys and parks, whispered over gloved hands and gossiped about by laundrywomen pegging out sheets. She had the money to spread the news to every inch of the city, and comb it, too. It was the greatest difference between us. To her, money was a pool to drink deeply from. Me, I was parched.

  I felt a stillness beside me, and turned my head to see Charlotte watching me in the darkness. We stared at one another, and her eyes were unreadable.

  ‘Are you really my mother?’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered back.

&nbs
p; ‘Is that my grandpa?’

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘You’ll meet him tomorrow. Now, it’s time you shut your eyes, and in the morning I’ll go and get us a fresh loaf, and some milk we can warm in the pan. You’ll like the milkmaids. They carry it on sticks over their shoulders, and wear frilly caps the colour of cream.’

  She complained she was cold, and I rubbed and rubbed her arms again. All that wood and coal at Devonshire Street and now we’d none of it. She closed her eyes, and I hummed her gently to sleep, like when a bad dream woke her. Now she lived in one. From Devonshire Street to Black and White Court; Bloomsbury to the Fleet. It was like something from one of her children’s books. But it went the other way, in the stories.

  By the time dawn broke over the rooftops, the other room was silent; Abe had left for the market. I decided he was better not knowing Charlotte was here – that way he had nothing to hide. Once he returned we’d be gone with our things to a new lodging, and there I could invent a plan. Guilt tugged at me; there was much that needed doing here and nobody to do it with me gone. The floors and hearth were thick with grime and coal smoke, the windows, too, and a new bucket of lye needed making for Abe to clean his clothes. But there was no time, and he would have to do without me.

  ‘I’m cold,’ Charlotte said again, moving next to me in bed. I dropped a kiss on her head and threw my blanket over her, tucking her in tightly.

  ‘Oh,’ I said suddenly, remembering. ‘I’ve been saving clothes for you all this time. Do you want to see them?’

  Only half curious, she watched me go to the chest in the corner of the room and unload piles of linen and cotton and wool. It did not take long to empty, and I held up the nicer things to show her – an oat-coloured gown that nipped beautifully at the waist; a smart felt jacket with only one small hole beneath the armpit.

  ‘Do you like them?’

  Her face was smooth as marble. Of course she did not like them. She was used to Spitalfields silk, and here I was showing her linsey-woolsey, worn by someone else: a child who had died, probably. The clothes felt heavy with their old lives, and I folded them and put them away. She looked as though she might cry.

  There was a banging at the door, and our eyes met in mute shock. I had not told her we were hiding, but somehow she knew. The knocking came again, rapid and impatient.

  ‘Abe, you in there?’ It was Nancy Benson from downstairs. I held my breath, not daring to make so much as a floorboard creak. ‘Abe? I thought I heard feet on the dancers last night – jess thought I’d look in.’

  The door to the other room was closed, but what if she had a key? If she walked in here and saw us . . . I felt her presence behind the wall, imagined her plump fingers on the handle, and willed her away. After a minute or two she gave up, and the stairs creaked as she shuffled back down. That put paid to me fetching water from the pump in the court; I couldn’t risk it with Nancy sniffing around like a bloodhound. We would not wash, then, so there was no point building a fire.

  I dressed quickly and threw the windows wide to let out the stale air, thinking of Agnes, who said a ventilated house was a healthful house. With a twist in my stomach, I realised 13 Devonshire Street would certainly be awake now. No doubt Agnes would be wringing her hands, her kind face made simple with confusion. She would not believe me evil enough to take the child. Only weeks before we had sat at the kitchen table long after everyone had gone to bed, a single candle between us and a glass of sherry at our elbows.

  ‘The child ain’t hers,’ she’d whispered, her lips glistening with liquor.

  I’d been very silent, and listened to the wind sigh around the yard outside. When I trusted myself to speak, I tried for a mixture of astonishment and disbelief. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘She weren’t big,’ she said. ‘Her belly was tight as a drumskin. Her appetite was the same. And . . .’ She shifted her light blue eyes to the room’s black corners, as though Mrs Callard might be folded into them. ‘She bled every month. Then, one day, a few months after the master dies, a cradle’s delivered and put in the nursery. It weren’t a nursery then, of course; it was a bedroom. The master used to sleep in it sometimes if he’d been out late, and he was staying in it more and more afore he died – if he came back at all, that is.’ She paused, relishing her diversion, enjoying her audience. Maria was not one for gossip, and Agnes was pleased she had someone to chew the fat with. It had not been hard to get her to speak.

  ‘Where was I?’

  ‘The cradle,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, yes, the cradle. I says: “Who’s that for, madam?” And she says, clear as as bell: “My child. I am expecting a child.” Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather. At first I thought – and don’t tell Maria I said this – I thought she’d met someone else, so soon after the master’s death. Terrible of me to think that, I know.’ Delicately, she took another sip of sherry and grew confidential, leaning in so I could smell it on her breath. ‘I didn’t expect she meant it would arrive the same day.’

  I arranged my face into a picture of surprise.

  ‘She sent us out on errands – me to the haberdasher’s, though we had plenty of everything, and Maria to pay a bill. And then, when we got back, there was this strange noise. At first I thought a cat had got stuck somewhere. But I goes upstairs, and there it is, lying in the cradle. A baby. Now, I don’t know how all that works, I don’t have children myself. But I’m sure as my name is Agnes Fowler that babies aren’t born in the amount of time it takes to buy buttons. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought she’d bought it at Fortnum’s emporium.’

  ‘Perhaps she did,’ I said, and we’d laughed. I poured us another measure from the bottle, though Agnes pretended to resist. I was growing fond of her, with her bright blue eyes and white hair, her gentle, powdery skin. She was plump as a cushion, and indiscreet as a bawd. A throwaway ‘good morning’ could fix you in a room for fifteen minutes while she made her way through some tale or other, and a ‘good night’ could leave you in deep admiration at how two words could lead her to a story about a Newcastle sailor who had tried selling her a goat in Spitalfields.

  ‘She didn’t feed the child herself, then?’ I asked.

  ‘Heavens, no,’ said Agnes. ‘Swells don’t, of course. A wet nurse arrived later that night and stayed about a year. Belinda, her name was. A young thing like yourself.’

  I’d heard of wet nurses, but didn’t know anyone who had used one or, more likely, anyone who was one, as the rich sent their babes outside the city for suckling. I watched the candle dance in the darkness and imagined another woman feeding Charlotte, and rocking her at night. And then Mrs Callard had interrupted us, drifting into the kitchen like a raincloud.

  The next day, I asked Maria what she knew about Charlotte’s birth. From behind a veil of flour, she gave me a hard look. ‘No different from any other, I should imagine,’ she’d said, and picked up her rolling-pin.

  I had been glad Agnes hadn’t minded her business that day, for she was a trusting lamb. With a pang of shame I wondered what she thought of me now.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Charlotte asked weakly, as the clock struck eight.

  ‘We,’ I said, pulling up her drawers, ‘are going to find Uncle Ned, to get our money back. Hold your stampers, and we’ll put them on at the bottom of the stairs.’ I handed her a pair of sturdy boys’ boots that were well worn in, and would not hurt her feet.

  ‘Where does he live? I’m cold.’

  ‘Not far from here. Now, don’t you look a picture in your new things?’ I had dressed her in a brown printed cotton dress, with a warm wool shawl and grey wool stockings. With her dark hair tucked into a white cap, I had wiped every trace of Bloomsbury from her, and made her a child of the courts.

  Together, we went silently down the stairs, passing Nancy’s door with our fingers over our lips before hurtling out of the back entrance of the court into Fleet Lane. Making our cautious way north and avoiding the thoroughfares, I told Charlotte to k
eep her eyes on the ground as we walked, but she gazed agog at every man, woman and child we came across. Every painted street sign was stared at, every pile of horseshit examined and hawker looked in the eye.

  Nobody wanted to live somewhere worse than where they came from, but that was what had happened to Ned. Three Fox Court was half a mile north, on the edge of Smithfield meat market, a place so dank and narrow the sun never reached it. Trapping the fearful stench of cattle and backing on to a slaughterhouse, it was rich with rats and flies, and the ground washed daily with blood. It made you feel drunk to stand in, with all the buildings leaning, threatening to topple over. A litter of children crouched in the darkest corner, barefoot despite the cold puddles. Their wizened faces gave them the look of organ grinders’ monkeys, and among them, the most pinched and sour of the lot, was Ned and Catherine’s eldest, Mary.

  ‘Mary Bright, what are you doing down there?’ I said, approaching their hostile little party. They had been playing with bits of rubbish they’d collected: fish bones and what looked like a rabbit skull. One of the smallest girls lifted her skirts and began pissing. I moved so it wouldn’t touch my boots and took Charlotte by the shoulder. Mary stared at her, her expression pure spite. Named for our mother, she was four years old, but looked forty. She wore no cap, and her mouse-brown hair was cut blunt like a boy’s. She had none of Ned’s smooth features, nor his carrot pate; she was all Catherine – narrow eyes, a long, pointed nose and freckles. Her shapeless dress was the same colour as the wall. She might have been born of the grime and shadows of Three Fox Court, a creature of Smithfield, made of leftover bones.

  ‘I’m here to see your pa. Do you know where he is?’

  Her eyes were two arrow slits, and she jerked her head at the house with a wariness beyond her years. The others watched with suspicious eyes. I let myself in the door at the bottom and climbed the two flights of stairs to Ned’s rooms, ducking under mildewed washing and passing a child of two or three, sitting on a stair and screaming fit to burst, its face the violent purple of a turnip. A rich black bruise blossomed beneath one eye. Charlotte clung to my skirts as I banged on Ned’s door. From behind it came the sound of shouting, and the baby crying, then an urgent shushing. I banged again and Catherine’s voice came: ‘Who is it?’ I called out, and the door flew open.