The Death of Lucy Kyte

by Nicola Upson

  6 January, 1833

  We have a little girl. I have never known such pain and joy as she fought her way into the world. Samuel says that I am to name the girls and he will choose what the boys will be call’d. So she is Maria, and I hope she will have a long and happy life.

  9 February

  I can still barely write these words. My small, beautiful child was taken from me a week past. The ground is still frozen and we cannot bury her. She lies at the foot of my bed in the cradle that Samuel made for her. I want to look on her face, but my heart is broken. Samuel begs me to return to his bed where I will not be so sad, but I will not leave my little Maria until she is laid to rest.

  Born in that room, carrying that name – it was hard to see how things could ever have turned out differently for Lucy’s first-born, and the desperate sadness of both mother and child found Josephine easily across the years. She read on, and the diary became a mockery of its original purpose; there were very few precious days in Lucy’s married life, and the pages recorded a series of miscarriages and bitter self-recrimination rather than happiness and fulfilment. Lucy’s relationship with her husband and her stepdaughter seemed to deteriorate with each new loss, and Josephine felt desperately sorry for all of them. There were no villains here except circumstance and luck – but Lucy’s continued obsession with Maria blighted the whole house, making her overprotective of Molly’s childhood and driving her and Samuel apart.

  17 July, 1835

  Samuel has taken Molly to the Cherry Fair as a birthday treat. She will be twelve next week, and I know that he will spend money we do not have and spoil her as he always does. I can do nothin’ with her. The parson has said there is a place for her at the doctor’s house in Layham, which is a good position, but Molly does not want to go and Samuel will not make her. She is a lazy girl and can play him for a fool whenever she chooses.

  15 February, 1836

  Phoebe Stowe call’d at the back door today and told me that the Missis is married again to a man called Harvey, and has been taken to court by William’s wife. She is askin’ for money for the child, who will never work because he has a wither’d hand. The court has said she must pay the boy what is due to him.

  The description of William Corder’s son jumped off the page at Josephine – it was the same genetic defect that she had noticed in John Moore – but she was too absorbed in Lucy’s pain to give it much thought.

  Hannah came later with a pie for dinner. I know she thinks I cannot feed my family and manage my house. She said Samuel needed lookin’ after, as he is tired and worn out. We are all tired and worn out, and what she knows about keepin’ a man happy when she c’d never get one is more than I can think of.

  In the past, Josephine had enjoyed Lucy’s barbed asides, but they carried a bitterness now that saddened her. She longed in vain for some joy, but she knew there would be no change of fortune with the next child. This time, out of superstition or resignation, Lucy did not even mark her pregnancy, and the child’s name – Daisy, Josephine remembered from the parish register – was not recorded either.

  21 June, 1837

  Samuel says I held my baby, but I have no memory of her. I was taken with fever after she was born, and he told me today that she died three days ago, before she was even a week old. He has taken her to the churchyard to lie with her sister. I am no good to him as a wife, and I cannot bear him children.

  From now on, the entries became sporadic and unconnected, as if Lucy could not bear to weave the bleakness of her life into a pattern, or to see it written down. Josephine knew that Molly and Samuel had less than two years to live after the next date, but the funeral that it recorded harked back to the past.

  10 September, 1841

  Went to the churchyard today to see the Missis laid to rest with her men. It was a sad day, as she was always good and fair to me, but most of the folk there were happy to see the last of the Corders put in the ground. Thomas Henry stood by the Gospel Oak, near his mother’s grave, a fine lad of seventeen. She w’d have been so proud of him, but I wonder how much he remembers of her. I miss him comin’ to the cottage as he used to when he was a boy. I hop’d once that he and Molly would grow to care for each other, but she will have nothin’ to do with the Martins.

  13 June, 1842

  Molly has been sent to stay with Hannah. Samuel found her in the barn with Tabor’s stable lad. After all that has happen’d, I cannot understand why she w’d go there, but she is not the only girl to do her courtin’ in the Red Barn. It is time the master pull’d it down, as no one will learn from Maria’s mistakes, but Samuel says it is needed. There will be no good come of this, but it is the first time that Samuel and I have agreed on anythin’ to do with Molly for as long as I can remember. She will bring shame on us if no one puts a stop to her nonsense, and I will not let her go the same way as Maria. Samuel is thinkin’ of sendin’ her away to service now for her own good, and for ours. It cannot come a day too soon for me.

  Josephine looked at the date and tried to remember exactly when the Red Barn was burned down. A thought had crossed her mind, but she dismissed it as too fanciful and read on.

  23 July

  I have fallen again, but there is no joy in it this time. I am too old, and if God had wanted me to have a child of my own, he w’d have bless’d me when I was young enough to bear it. Samuel still hopes for a son, as he grows old, too, and will not be able to go on for ever as he does. Then I do not know what will happen to us. We will not be able to keep our home if we cannot work for it.

  There is much anger on the farms among the workers, who fear for their livelihoods. They have been settin’ the hayricks alight and burnin’ the farm buildings. I do not understand what is happenin’. It is no world to bring a child into. Molly has found a good place at last in Boxford, so that at least is a blessin’ and one less mouth to feed.

  1 October

  Samuel brought Molly home today. She has lost her place for cheekin’ her missis and makin’ eyes at the master. Samuel is in a rage and will not trust himself to talk to her. She has lock’d herself in her room and will not come out.

  3 November

  Hannah has been laid low and I have sent Molly to sit with her. The fields are full of water, and I doubt the rain will ever stop. Samuel has caught a chill and is not fit to work, but says the master needs him to move the animals from the fields. It is all I can do to drag myself from my bed. This child makes me so sickly, worse even than before. It is a wicked thing to think, but I wish nature would take her course as she has in the past. Then I c’d be well again.

  A loud thud outside the window startled Josephine until she realised that it was just the snow, falling off the roof where the heat from the chimney had melted it. The noise broke the spell for a moment, and she poured another glass of wine and flicked back through the pages. It was taking her much longer to decipher Lucy’s actual entries than it did to read Hester’s transcript, but still she felt the rapid disintegration of a life, of all the ordinary hopes and expectations that any woman was entitled to have. Lucy was special to Josephine – as she had been to Hester – because of her connection to Maria Marten, and because she had faithfully testified to a series of extraordinary events; even so, this part of her life was in no way unique, and it pleased Josephine to think that – if and when her story was published – it would speak for so many women whose struggles had gone unrecorded.

  5 November

  We are in mournin’ again. Hannah was taken in the night, and Samuel has gone to see the reverend about her buryin’. Molly was with her when she went, and has surpris’d us all by carin’ for her aunt to the end. We have had our differences, but Hannah had a good heart and I will miss her. I am fearful of havin’ this child without her, but am glad now that Molly is home.

  12 November

  The floods have gone but the air is full o’ frost. Molly is courtin’ the lad from the stables again. He came sniffin’ round like a dog as soon as she was back, and I hav
e seen them goin’ to the Barn again. If she carries on so she will be ruin’d, but she will not listen to me and I dare not tell Samuel for fear of what he may do. He spends more time at the Cock than by his own hearth, and when he is in drink I do not know him. He is tired of me and this life, and I can neither help nor blame him.

  2 December

  I fear the child will not be long. I have gone to the small room again, as Samuel needs his rest. It is so cold, and there is no comfort.

  9 December

  It is late, and very cold. Samuel is not home, and Molly left her bed an hour ago to go to the barn. I watch’d her lantern move across the field, and thought of Maria. It is so long ago, and nothin’ has chang’d. There is only one way this will end, and I cannot bear it.

  13 December

  Samuel says Mr Hoy’s cottage has been raz’d to the ground. They think it is arson, and part of the recent troubles. The master has told us all to keep watch on the barns and cottages, for fear that it will happen again. God forgive me, but I wish they w’d set light to the Red Barn and take this evil from my sight once and for all.

  In her heart, Josephine had known earlier that Lucy was going to do something terrible, and although she had suspected what it would be, the next entry still stunned her, its consequences more catastrophic than she could ever have imagined.

  28 December

  Two days on, the smell of smoke is still strong in the cottage and I cannot bear what I have done. Molly lies close to death, and I know that bathin’ her wounds will make no difference. The men from the village did their best to save the barn, but the wind spread the flames faster than I c’d ever have thought, and in the end it was too fierce. It was ablaze in minutes, and burnt long into the night. Samuel and some of the others climb’d onto the roof of the cottage and threw off the burnin’ embers as they lodg’d upon it. Molly and I pull’d the blankets from our beds and soak’d them in the pond to dampen the thatch. Then she went to help the lad from the stables with the barn, and Samuel c’d not stop her. She was caught in the flames and they brought her back cover’d in burns. And it is all my fault.

  I cannot tell Samuel what I have done, and I pray for a miracle so that Molly may live. I thought that by burnin’ the barn I would be savin’ her, and my life with Samuel, but I have brought misery and sorrow on us all. There is nothin’ left but blacken’d earth, but the grief is still here, worse than ever. And this time it is my doin’. Samuel can only watch as I tend his daughter. He thanks me for what I do, and I want to scream at him to stop.

  So history was wrong. The Red Barn had not been destroyed by an anonymous hand in a political act, but by a woman whose personal pain had become too much to bear. Lucy had been damned from the moment that Maria Marten left her cottage to walk to the Red Barn, and although there was an inevitability about the sequence of events, Josephine was horrified at how many lives had been shattered by the murder. Samuel and Lucy might have borne the intimate tragedies of their life had they not been forever separated by Maria’s shadow; Molly would have grown up as a carefree little girl, able to make her own mistakes without being continually reminded of others’; and the village could have moved on, creating its own ordinary, quiet history. Instead, on what should have been the happiest of days, the anniversary of her wedding, Lucy had taken fate into her own hands and confined the rest of her life to ashes along with the barn.

  31 December

  Molly lingers, but there is no savin’ her. Phoebe Stowe came to sit with her while I tried to sleep, and brought some salve for the burns, but she cries with pain when we try to put it on her. Phoebe says they are offerin’ a reward of a hundred pounds for the Boxin’ Day fire at the Barn and for Mr Hoy’s cottage. They think it is the same hand, but it is not. I may not answer to the law, but God knows what I have done.

  Josephine knew that Molly would die, and could imagine that grief might have destroyed Samuel, but she still had no idea what Lucy’s fate would be, and she feared the worst: if she had been hanged for what she had done, that would explain her absence from the churchyard. Or perhaps the guilt had forced her to take her own life. That, too, would deny her the peace of consecrated ground. She read on, conscious that very little of the diary was left and desperately hoping that it would not end without giving her the answers she needed.

  2 January, 1843

  The new year has brought grief, as I knew it w’d. Molly died early today, and she is at peace. Samuel has not left her side these past two nights, and this book that was so full of hope must now be my confession, for I cannot find the words to speak.

  3 January

  Nan Martin brought some holly thick with berries for Molly. They will bring her coffin tomorrow, and she is to be buried on Friday. I fear that Samuel will not let his daughter leave the house, he is so wretched with grief. He will not eat, and stares into a distant place where I cannot reach him.

  2 February

  The child is comin’ now, I know. I cannot bring a new life into the world with this in my heart. I must tell him. Please God, let him forgive me.

  Lucy’s desperate plea marked the end of any coherence in the diary. There was nothing dated or ordered on the pages that followed, only single words or very short phrases, barely legible and obviously written while she was in great distress, physically and emotionally. Slowly, Josephine deciphered the scrawled, violent letters. Samuel. He will not come to us. My beautiful boy. Cannot feed him. Too weak . . . There is no hope. Who will help us? Beg him . . . No one comes. Forgive for his sake. The last thing that Lucy wrote was please. The ink was faint, a sign of how weak she had become, but to Josephine the word screamed from the page. It was all the narrative she needed to piece the story together image by dreadful image: she saw that bleak, desolate room in the depths of winter; Lucy terrified and in pain, struggling to bring a child into the world on her own, then watching him fade as her husband abandoned them both, unable or unwilling to forgive what she had done. For the most fleeting of moments, Josephine felt Lucy’s grief – her wretchedness – in her own heart, not as a gesture of sympathy but as something that truly belonged to her, something that she had experienced for herself – and she knew, even before she turned to the last page of the journal, that the house had yet to reveal its final, dreadful secret.

  Lucy’s diary, her solace and her sanctuary for so many years, was completed by another hand, and that in itself seemed to Josephine a desecration. The words were poured onto the page with no sense of reason or control, and she could feel their anger, even after so many years. You will rot in this room for what you have taken from me. I will not let you lie with Molly. You are not fit to share her earth. May your soul never rest, and God forgive me for the death of my son. The desperate, raw emotion in the letters echoed the request for forgiveness on the window seat, and Josephine understood now that Samuel – not Lucy or Hester – had carved those words; she imagined his remorse when the red film of rage lifted and he faced what he had done to the wife he had loved. By Lucy’s own testimony, he was a sweet and gentle man, and – although she could not be certain – Josephine found it easy to believe that he had punished himself in the way he had punished his wife, by simply allowing himself to die. She looked down at the journal in her hands, and wondered if Lucy had used it as her vehicle of confession, if she had found it easier to show Samuel her diary rather than speak the words herself. It was impossible to know now if Lucy had read her husband’s response; if she had, Josephine could only begin to imagine the horror and fear that must have clawed at her heart in those final days, and she cried for her as she would have cried for a friend.

  The cottage taunted her with its silence, goading her to open the chest again and prove herself right. She knew she had no choice – there was nowhere to turn for help on a night like this – but it took her a long time to find the courage to go back upstairs, and the only thing that forced her to her feet in the end was a dread of what might happen if she stayed where she was. Back in October, when she had f
elt Lucy’s presence so strongly in the cottage, there had been no sense of anything to fear – but that was before she knew what had happened; now, as hard as she tried to picture that harmless face at the window, the Lucy that filled her mind was a malevolent force, the restless spirit of stories and nightmares, and her ghost frightened Josephine even more than the thought of her physical remains. She took another lamp, glad that she had left the candles burning upstairs, and returned to the room whose horrors she thought she had banished. Her courage left her completely the moment she stepped through the door. The chest, which she was sure she had closed, stood wide open now, its lid thrown back against the wall. The contents were in shadow, and Josephine made no attempt to illuminate them; without thinking, she stepped forward and slammed the lid shut again, feeling the tremor of her fear in the floorboards as she backed away. She stood rooted to the spot, reluctant to take her eyes off the trunk but unable to find the strength to face her fear and open it.