by Paul Butler
I hoped he might remain silent for a while. His own words had provoked him to anger just as a gust of wind might tease a flame to the delirious joys of destruction. I watched him shift in his chair, helpless to stall the change coming over him, powerless to prevent him fanning his own flames.
“Do you know what you stumbled across when you ran down that staircase?” he asked in a voice calmer than I expected.
“No sir,” I whispered.
“That place we call limbo,” Mr. Jarvis said, his expression struggling between bitterness and mirth. “Limbo, child.” His mouth turned down at the corners but his eyes formed an odd, teary smile. “You might think this place is merely a prison.” He held my gaze. “Do you think that, girl?”
The question carried such weight, and he seemed so intent to hear my reply, that I hesitated. The serving woman coughed slightly and I took this as a warning to hurry. As there were only two possible answers, I took a chance.
“Yes,” I said.
His lips twitched. “You think yes,” he replied hoarsely. “You think this is just a prison?” Mr. Jarvis cast his gaze around the walls and ceiling. Then his lips and eyes for once synchronized and broke together into a crooked smile. “Well, you are wrong.”
I relaxed a little, knowing this was the answer he had wanted from me.
“Newgate is modelled after the plan of the Almighty,” he continued. “There is comfort for the loved and for the sorrowful, reward and succour for those who grieve. There are chains, whips, and torments for those without remorse. And,” he paused for a moment before whispering, “there is another place. A place for the Jew who circumcises Christians. A place for the pagan who desecrates the altar. A place for the whore who infects royal blood.” Mr. Jarvis’s lips had become wet, and he dabbed them with his handkerchief. “We have done our best here, young woman, to copy the Divine Plan. We could not devise a hell to match the one all men fear, but limbo is our best attempt. It is quite within my power to send you there.”
My knees buckled instantly and I must have been lost for a while. Everything was dim and swirling as though viewed through a fast-flowing stream, and I had the vague idea of scuffing furniture and strong hands about my arms and shoulders. I was on the floor looking up. The pale ceiling swished and circled like an ocean wave, crashing. I was hauled onto feet which could neither feel nor grip the floor, and finally lowered into a chair.
When the pieces of my world reunited into one whole and the room tipped into balance, I found myself looking up at Mr. Jarvis. The governor now stood with his hands behind his back, staring down at me in panicky displeasure. When he saw I was coming to myself again, he stooped forward. From such close quarters I could see his pale eyes were dotted with red.
“I didn’t say I was going to send you there,” he said, exasperated. “I just said it was quite within my power to do so.” The guard and the serving woman were on either side of me again, but I remained on the chair. Mr. Jarvis was breathing heavily. “I know every ploy, young woman, and if I suspect a trick in your fainting spell, it will be the worse for you.”
The unnatural privilege of sitting made me nervous, so when the governor nodded to Gilbert and Gilbert’s hand came under my elbow, I was relieved to stand. “It was no trick, I assure you, sir. I am ashamed of my fall.”
The governor looked at Gilbert as though for confirmation of this. Apparently satisfied, he backed off somewhat awkwardly, regaining his chair without taking his eyes from me.
“You cannot return to your comfortable cell though,” he said after a deep breath, “not without appropriate punishment and conclusive proof of your remorse. You must stare ungodliness in the face and tell your keepers here that you recognize and renounce the works of Satan.” He looked first at Gilbert, then at the serving woman. Finally, his eyes came to rest upon me. “What is the most evil profession in the world, girl?”
I thought back over his previous speech. “A Jew, sir. A Jew who circumcises Christians.”
Mr. Jarvis shook his head as though I were a mosquito trying to land in his ear. “That’s not a profession.”
“A whore, then, sir. A whore who tries to infect the royal blood.”
Mr. Jarvis frowned deeply. “I mean a profession of men, not of women.”
“A priest who defiles his own altar.”
“No!” Mr. Jarvis snaps, springing from his seat in sudden anger. “The theatre, young woman, the theatre! That is the most ungodly profession of them all. The theatre is a place of debauchery and sin, a place where people dance and strut upon the stage.” He cut a rapid two-step caper to make the point. He looked ridiculous enough, but was far too furious to laugh at. “A place where men dress as women and profess their love to other men. It is a place of false oaths and unwholesome stories, a place where commonality drink, fight, and fornicate. It is the theatre that spreads London’s plagues and gives rise to the city’s moral torpor.”
“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”
The governor looked at me, suspicious.
“What would you say, young woman, if I told you of a play recently confiscated, a play depicting rebellion and the assassination of a king?”
“I’d say it was a good thing—”
“What?” he yelled before I had a chance to finish.
“—that it was confiscated!” I stressed quickly. “A good thing you stopped it from being performed.” My heart was thumping. However irrational it was, the governor’s fury could lead me to the hell I had stumbled into when I tried to escape. I knew I would be dancing on live embers until I was safely away from him.
“This play went further than the spilling of royal blood,” he continued, rubbing his hands together. His voice was hushed now and a knotted vein stood out on his temple. Each word he spoke was like a log to a fire, teasing out an anger that was always fresh, always renewing. “In place of Christian worship there was pagan barbarity. Its characters sought advice not from respectable members of the clergy, but from a coven of witches. What do you think of that? What do you think of the fact that such a spectacle might have played out to the masses a stone’s throw from the centre of this great Christian country?”
His lip trembled as he looked up at me.
“I think it a great scandal, sir.”
“A scandal, you say, yes!” His pale eyes came alive in the candle flame. “But worse than a scandal! An outrage! This play is an insult to our dear Sovereign Queen and Defender of the Faith!”
“Indeed, sir,” I agreed. “An outrage to our dear Queen.”
The more his passion rose, the more the governor seemed to forget who I was. He was willing me to concur, visibly comforted when I did.
“And where, I might ask, if you were the governor of Newgate prison, where would you place the villain who had scribbled such a treason and planned for its public performance?”
“In limbo, of course.”
“Of course!” he exclaimed, holding his fists in front of his chest and shaking them in triumph. “In limbo, of course. You have said it!” He grinned broadly at me, his eyes filling with tears. “How correct you are!”
Then his mood changed again. His lips became pursed and he stooped over his desk, shuffling letters. “But I am not permitted. Can you believe that?” He glanced up, sniffed, then sat down. “He has influential friends in the city—debauched and disreputable courtiers who frequent the playhouses, and keep the company of such vermin. My hand has been stayed.”
“It is a great pity,” I said, my confidence growing.
I could hardly blame myself for a little hubris. A few minutes ago I was being threatened with limbo. Now I felt like the governor’s closest confidante. I could feel the confusion of my companions who guarded me.
“My whip is fastened,” Mr. Jarvis added mournfully. He gazed into the candle flame bobbing on his desk. “My claws are pulled. But,” he said brightening, “I can use his presence to reclaim another.”
“A good idea, sir.” I said.
The governor looked up at me and smiled. “I don’t know whether the devil prompts you to such subtle and persuasive answers, young woman. But I mean to find you out.” He gazed at me with the same mild expression for some moments, then continued. “I told you I would make you stare ungodliness in the face and renounce the works of Satan. I need to know there is hope for you, that you are young enough to be purged of the evil that infected you in Ireland.”
“What are you going to do with me?” I asked. My legs began to tremble again and I felt Gilbert move in closer, preparing to catch my fall.
“I cannot send the playwright to limbo. He is in the least comfortable quarters on the master’s side; that is all I’ve dared to do to him. But I could make things less comfortable for him by sending you to share his cell.”
He watched me keenly, anticipation lighting up his face.
I was not sure what to feel and had an idea that lack of protest would disappoint him. So I tried to look worried. And sure enough, he smiled and leaned back slowly.
“You will be in a pit of a different kind,” he said, clasping his hands over his stomach. “No chains, no whips, no living carpet of rats. Just another mind, like yours, infected with witchery and corruption.” He gazed at me a moment longer. “If you can withstand the horrors of his imagination, I will send a satisfactory report to your parents and you might be permitted to remain on the master’s side. If he infects you with his wickedness, you may indeed be sent to limbo.” He nodded to the guard. “Take her to the playwright’s cell.”
CHAPTER NINE
You haven’t been out all day, have you?” The question comes from nowhere, burning its way through my sleep like a comet. I open my eyes to see a young girl staring down at me. My dream—and it was a pleasant dream, full of warm, safe forests carpeted with pine needles, whispering leaves, and the scent of tree bark and wildflowers—fizzles away into nothing.
The girl is holding a candle in front of her face. Her hair is golden, her eyes green. There was a time when I used to see such a creature gazing at me from the mirror of my parents’ house in the Pale.
I know this must be Emma Rose.
“That’s curious, isn’t it?” she continues, while I push myself up from the mattress. I see there is a smaller child next to her. “Everyone else has been frantic.” Emma tilts her head to one side. “What do you think about that, Mary? You and I, Mother and Father, the whole settlement, have been running around, searching and calling, driving ourselves mad while this old woman sleeps in her clothes on her stinking bed.”
Mary looks up at her older sister, her eyes as wide as saucers. She shrinks away from me a little.
“And I heard a curious thing,” Emma continues, clearly not expecting any answer from her younger sister. “Mother telling Aunt about something this old woman said, something about how Sara had never come to visit her. That is odd, isn’t it, since Sara told me she intended to come up here and confront the old witch?”
“How long have you been standing there?” I ask the child, trying hard to sound more angry than frightened. But there is a quaver in my voice.
“Long enough to tire of your snoring,” Emma answers.
Emma, like her sister Sara, shows not the slightest sign of fear or self-doubt. Also, like her sister, she is pretty with perfect rosy cheeks. What I would not give to slap them! But I do nothing; I know she holds all the power.
“What do you want from me?” I ask quietly.
“Information, for a start.”
“Information about what?” I ask.
“Why, about the disappearance of my sister, of course.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” I say quickly. It was convincing enough, but I can feel my heart beating. I am trapped, and merely wish for this all to be over. Burn me, hang me, but get me out of this unnatural situation.
“Oh, I think you do know, old woman.”
Suddenly, my sinews tighten and the fear falls away from me like water running off from a breeched awning. “It’s Sheila, not ‘old woman,’ and I don’t care what you think you know. Get out of my cabin.”
Emma takes a step backwards as though reading my intentions. I was indeed about to strike her.
“There’s no need for that,” she says, smiling. “If I’d wanted to give you away, we could have done so already.”
“What do you want, then?” I swing my legs to the floor and raise myself into a standing position.
“I told you. Information.”
Emma takes a sideways step as I make for my chair. She pulls her sister with her as though she were a rag doll.
“I told you I don’t know about Sara,” I say, lowering myself onto the chair.
“Oh, I don’t care about that, although I have to admit I’m curious.”
I stare at the girl’s smiling face for a moment. Mary is still frightened. She sucks her thumb and nestles into her older sister.
“You don’t care?”
“No, why should I?” she asks briskly. “We didn’t really get on, you know. Well,” she adds with a smirk, her speech slowing, “if I’m honest, it’s not entirely true to say I don’t care. I do, but not in the usual way. I care that she’s gone because it makes my life so much easier. Looking for two wealthy husbands to take on the business will be much easier for my father than looking for three. And as you can see, I’m the older and I’m very pretty, so I should have the best chance.” She smiles a little more broadly and wrinkles her brow. “What are you looking at me like that for?”
I am not aware of looking at her in any particular way, but I know I am in shock, and have been, perhaps, since the moment of my awakening. I never thought I could come across a young woman more arrogant or cruel than Sara Rose. But here is such another before me, in a form even more angelic, the candlelight playing on her golden curls, her green eyes like a calm sea at sunset.
“I know what you’re thinking. What a little monster! Everyone thinks that about me, except for Mother and Father, of course. They adore me. But it’s just as well I am a little monster, isn’t it? If I weren’t, I’d have already told everyone about Sara going to see you last night.”
“You don’t know that,” I venture. She seemed to imply as much earlier, and I don’t want to be at this girl’s mercy.
“Not absolutely conclusively, no. I know she intended to come and see you. And I know she’s missing now. I would be worried about that if I were you.”
“And how will you explain your own silence up to now?”
“Oh, when your name is mentioned, Sheila, you may be sure my father will forget every other detail.”
“Why?”
Already I wished I had not spoken.
“Oh, you’ve no idea! He’s terrified of you! He has nightmares about you.”
Something in my chest rolls like a battle drum.
“What kind of man is terrified of an old woman?” I say. Mary cowers into her sister. Emma merely smiles as before. “What have I ever done to him?”
“Pathetic, isn’t it?” says Emma. “A grown man!” Then she laughs out loud. “And him so holy, so respected … There you go, staring at me again! I’m supposed to live in this place with nothing but rock and ocean and uncouth boys with broken teeth, yet I’m supposed to be sorry when my chances of escape suddenly increase twofold or more. And I’ve got a father who wails in the night of the witch who will destroy him, and I’m supposed to honour him like it says in the Bible. Even you expect me to do so—the witch herself wants me to respect such a man!”
Emma lets go of her sister and collapses onto my bed in laughter, the candle wavering in her hand. Mary comes close to the bed and her sister’s side; she throws me terrified glances.
“You see,” says Emma, noticing this, “Mary’s frightened of you too!” She tugs her little sister’s shawl until Mary sits down beside her on the bed.
“What do you want from me?” I ask, repeating the only question that may get this girl out of my cabin.
Emma stops l
aughing at last. She clears her throat and stares at me hard. “I want to know about Mary and me.”
“What about you?”
“My father is convinced the Roses are cursed, that they will never have male children.”
“Yes,” I say wearily, throwing my eyes to the ceiling.
And as subtle as a twitch of a bird’s feather, Emma catches it.
“You’ve heard this story before,” she says, her gaze steady in the candlelight, her face fixed like marble. “I wondered about that.”
“How could I have done?” I say, but my cheeks are burning and I know it is too late.
“My mother is very nervous, isn’t she? You’d think that would make her more careful to make sure she isn’t followed.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t lie about Mother coming to visit you or I’ll know for certain you’re lying about Sara too.”
I take in a slow breath.
“Well, what about it?”
“The way it stands now, I and my little sister here could do quite well off this curse. It makes us my father’s heirs. We might make some kind of marriage that can get us to another place in return for the business.”
“What are you worried about, then?”
“Oh, we’re worried that the curse will lift, that Mother may be with child already. I have heard her retching in the morning. If she is with child, it’s vital to us the baby not be a boy. A boy would be a little prince, and all Father’s favour and energy would be devoted to him. I could forget about an advantageous marriage then, couldn’t I? Father would already have his heir.”