A Bouquet of Thorns

by Tania Crosse

  They sat for some minutes in relaxed companionship, worshipping the minuscule human being in their care, cherishing every detail of her curved chin, her toothless mouth, her button nose, both enthralled and seduced by her charms. They fell into a silent adoration, a deep contentment only two soulmates can know, Molly instinctively rocking Alice against her shoulder until her little head drooped and she drifted asleep. With the practised skill that came from being the eldest of a large family, Molly laid the slumbering child back on the blanket, and the two friends joined in besotted veneration of their darling treasure.

  ‘Will . . . will you and Joe have children, do you think?’ Rose asked dreamily, hesitating only minimally before broaching such a personal subject.

  Molly’s pretty face coloured. ‘Oh, well . . . I, er . . . I hadn’t said ort, cuz I thought, with Alice and everything else . . . but . . . I’s already expecting. We didn’t want a babby yet, and we had tried not to . . . but not too well.’

  Rose felt her spirits lift. ‘Oh, Molly, congratulations! ’Tis fantastic news!’

  ‘Well, I’s not too certain about that,’ Molly grimaced. ‘’Twill really stretch what Joe earns—’

  ‘Don’t you worry none about that!’ Rose fairly rounded on her. ‘One thing I cannot complain about in Charles is his generosity. I have a personal allowance I really don’t need, and . . . well, you’re like a sister to me, and so ’twould not be charity if I were to share some of it with you. I shall be like an aunt to your baby, just as I consider you to be Alice’s aunt.’

  This time Molly had to lower her eyes, and if anything, her cheeks blanched. ‘’Twould be more than kind of—’

  ‘Nonsense. I want you to know the same joy as I have with Alice without having to fret about money! And Joe must be thrilled, too. It must . . . it must be so good to . . . to be in bed with someone you really love.’

  Her words had ended in a bitter trail, and Molly cocked one sympathetic eyebrow. ‘Rather than have to suffer it with someone you doesn’t,’ she finished for her.

  Rose’s chin quivered and she bit her lip. ‘I just can’t love him any more. If I ever did. And since he sold Gospel, well . . . And though I suppose Charles isn’t a bad man, I’m sure he thinks of me as a possession rather than a person. Not like . . .’ She stopped abruptly, rearing away from the thought that had hit her like a thunderbolt and set her heart racing.

  ‘Not like your convict, you mean?’ Molly said softly.

  Rose felt the blood rush from her head and her senses swooned. ‘Oh, Good Lord, not like that!’ she corrected awkwardly. ‘But we did seem to share a lot in common.’ She swivelled her eyes to glance sideways at her friend. ‘Did your father say anything about him? Florrie found out he was almost better, but that were nearly two weeks ago now.’

  ‘Father said he’s doing boot-making for now, till he’s fully fit. Then he’ll be put to summat harder.’

  ‘Oh, Molly.’ Rose breathed in deeply and then exhaled in a long, weary stream. ‘I do hope he’s going to be all right. He shouldn’t be in there at all. Could you ask your father, if he has the chance, to tell Seth that I said to take care? He might be put on the building works. And a prisoner fell to his death not so long ago, they’re getting so high.’

  Their eyes met, but not a word more was exchanged as Alice chose that moment to wake up, her little face wrinkling and her pink fists flailing as her feeble cry demanded a feed.

  Nine

  Rose lay in bed, her fingers entwined in the top of the sheet as they pressed against her breastbone. Her eyes moved about the pale shadows of the room, scarcely taking in the soft velvet curtains and the fine furnishings, for her mind was miles away. Where on earth was Gospel? Her lips were drawn into a seething pout, because the man who had caused her such devastating heartache was in the dressing room, changing into his nightshirt. Damn him to hell!

  She heard him coming and quickly turned on her side, pretending to be already asleep. Was this to be her life from now on? Thank God she had Alice to lavish her love upon and help ease her own misery. But she didn’t think she would ever recover from the loss of the spirited horse who had been a part of her life for so many years.

  She listened to Charles padding around the bed in his bare feet, the puff of breath as he blew across the mantle of the oil-lamp to extinguish the low flame. She felt the blankets and the mattress move as he slid in beside her, and she screwed her eyes even more tightly shut, her heart trembling. Dr Seaton had been to examine her that afternoon, and she had heard her husband waylay him afterwards in the hallway. The recuperation period was over. She could be a wife to Charles again.

  He snuggled up to her back. She could feel his breath on her neck, and a shiver of horror shot down her spine. The agony of the nightly ritual flooded into her stomach, cramping it with fear and revulsion. Please God, make him think that she was asleep and be spared for just one more night.

  He moved her hair, exposing the side of her neck, and he kissed her skin, his lips leaving a drooling patch of saliva. She felt him prop himself on one elbow, the fingers of his other hand creeping across her shoulder and down, cupping her breast almost imperceptibly through the light gauze of her nightdress. He leaned over then, his tongue leaving a moist trail across her collarbone as he carefully unfastened the top button, and then the next. She hardly dared move, exhaling heavily as if she was in a deep slumber. His mouth followed his fingers, stroking her flesh, licking. Surely he must taste the sweat that oozed from every pore. And then he gave a muted grunt of pleasure, and moved away, settling down beside her.

  She held her breath. Was he deliberately teasing her? Letting her think she was safe, only to be accosted fully a few minutes later? Oh, he was so vile, always forcing himself on her, taking his own pleasure without a thought for her feelings. There had been a time, up until not so long ago, when she had considered that he might be able to coax her gently to some excitement in the sexual act of which she had been totally ignorant until their wedding night. But now that he had betrayed her so deeply, all she could ever feel towards him was resentment.

  She waited, immobile as a stone. Ten minutes, half an hour. Charles was breathing heavily, and she began to relax. He was asleep. But first thing in the morning, she knew what would happen. His groping had been but a prelude to tantalize his senses.

  There was no way she herself could fall into the slumber her body craved. As the hours passed and she listened to the silent house, she wondered how Seth was passing the night. In an exhausted sleep, she imagined, for by now he must be back on some exacting labour, his aching body only too happy to rest on a hard, plank bed with only a thin, dirty mattress for comfort. Oh, Seth!

  She sighed with a tormented tangle of wistfulness and frustration as she recalled the time when Charles had been away in London and she had despatched Ned one morning upon some fool’s errand that would keep him away for some time. Using the danger to the pups as an excuse, she had told Ned to put Gospel temporarily in another stable. And knowing that Ned’s main interest in life was seducing young maidens and not caring for scruffy, mongrel puppies, he would therefore have no reason to enter the loose box where Seth was concealed.

  Rose had gone out to clean up after the puppies and spread clean newspaper on the floor, and then sat down on a bale of straw to watch the little bundles of fur take their first enquiring, uncontrolled steps. Seth was hobbling around the confined space of the dog leg of the loose box in an attempt to take some exercise while Rose was on guard. She had felt relaxed and happy, just wishing that Seth would always be there and hardly daring to think of the future without him.

  They had chuckled together at the comical antics of the pups and Seth had asked when her own little one was due. She must be very excited about it, he had said.

  ‘Oh, yes!’ she had answered, although in her heart she hadn’t been sure. The child was Charles’s, after all. ‘I’m hoping ’twill bring Charles and I . . .’ She had broken off abruptly, realizing she had said t
oo much. But Seth was shrewd and his eyes had seemed to bore into hers.

  ‘Bring you closer together,’ he had finished for her. ‘Because you don’t really love him, do you, Rose?’

  She remembered it so clearly, his arresting, hazel eyes intense with compassion. She had wanted to tell him how Charles treated her like a slab of meat in their bed, but somehow, without her saying anything about it, he had understood her wretchedness, and she had cried in his arms. His strong, gentle arms that had made her feel so safe. And now he was gone, and the horror of Charles’s onslaughts was upon her once more.

  A frantic knocking on their bedroom door in the middle of the night roused them both with a start, and almost before Rose’s heart began to crash against her ribcage, Florrie burst in without waiting for an answer. She stood in the doorway, her white nightdress voluminous in the flickering light from the candle she held in her shaking hand, and her silver-threaded hair wild and unkempt about her agitated face.

  ‘’Tis the babby, Rose!’ she cried, her normal reluctant deference to Charles completely forgotten in her frenetic distress. ‘She’s a fever and—’

  She had no time to finish before Rose fled past her, almost knocking her aside as she careered blindly along the landing and up the stairs to the nursery. She felt sick, her stomach cramped with a bottomless dread. Alice! So tiny. So helpless. It wasn’t possible. She had been doing so well. But Dr Seaton had warned them . . .

  She virtually snatched Alice from the wet nurse’s arms. The child was on fire, weakly fretful, and her cry no more than a feeble whimper. Rose felt strange, as if she could feel the blood coursing in aimless frustration about her limbs. Oh, Alice. Darling little Alice. With a mother’s instinct, she laid the infant in her cot and tore the clothes from the bundled form, somehow knowing that her daughter’s temperature must be lowered. But before she could begin to bathe the minute body with tepid water, the thin limbs went rigid, the spine arched, and the scrap of life jerked and gyrated in a violent paroxysm. Rose stood back, thorns of terror in her heart, and feeling as though she might crumple to the floor. Oh, Good God. And there was nothing she could do as Alice’s tiny form shook until she suddenly turned as limp as a rag doll.

  Rose stared, transfixed with horror as she gazed on her beloved daughter. No! . . . But there was still life!. . . The breath was crackling uncertainly in and out of Alice’s lungs, and Rose grasped her in her arms again as she heard Charles enter the room behind her, bleary-eyed with sleep.

  ‘She’s had a fit,’ Rose all but screamed at him. ‘Go and tell Ned to ride for the doctor! Tell him . . . Oh, God . . .’

  Her eyes rolled savagely. She was about to tell him to take Gospel, for surely no other horse could fly over the moor in the dark at such speed. But Gospel wasn’t there, was he, and he wouldn’t have allowed Ned on his back anyway. But by comparison, Tansy was so slow . . .

  ‘I’ll tell him to fetch Dr Ratcliffe,’ Charles said efficiently. ‘He’ll be quicker than the old man.’

  ‘No. Dr Power. ’Twill take half the time.’

  Rose met Charles’s gaze challengingly. She knew how he felt about the prison surgeon. But Charles nodded and then turned and she heard him hurry back down the stairs. She looked down again on Alice who, though her eyes were shut, seemed to be struggling for breath. Rose held her gently against her, like fragile porcelain, keeping her upright to assist her breathing, and feeling the tiny heart fluttering pathetically against her own breast. She paced up and down, hushing her though the child was unconscious, in a demented effort to staunch the flow of life from her, to pour her own strength into the failing fragment of existence.

  Charles didn’t reappear, but the gall barely stung Rose’s throat as Alice faded in her arms. The rattle quietened to a wheeze, the wheeze to a whisper, and Rose herself hardly breathed as the room fell silent but for Florrie’s muted sobs as she rocked herself in the chair.

  Little Alice had gone.

  And Rose slumped forward. Drained. Numbed. Empty. With no one to lean on. No one to hold her. Charles . . . Oh, how she longed for those other arms. Seth, she knew, would have known. Would have understood her pain. Seth who . . .

  She jolted, her shoulders suddenly braced. The runt of the litter had apparently been dead, but Seth had breathed life into it. Literally. So could she possibly . . .? It had been like a miracle, but . . . she could never forgive herself if she didn’t try.

  She blew softly into the still, blue lips. And her heart soared as Alice’s chest lifted. Yes! If she could just keep her alive until the doctor arrived . . . He shouldn’t be long. It would take twenty minutes or so to rouse Ned, get him to saddle Tansy and ride to Dr Power’s house at the prison, the same for Dr Power to answer the desperate call and arrive at Fencott Place. The intense darkness of the cruel night was already lessening, and dawn would soon be breaking over the craggy ridges and open wilderness of the moor. And Rose’s very soul strained with a fearful trust.

  Her ears pricked as she caught the thrumming of horse’s hooves and the clink of gravel scattering on the drive. Thank God! She was exhausted, her neck aching from bending over Alice’s motionless frame. But she mustn’t stop. She couldn’t. She must give of her own life. She didn’t care what became of herself. But Alice must live.

  She barely glanced up as Dr Power strode urgently across the room, his face in a deep study. She mustn’t stop. Must not stop . . .

  ‘Mrs Chadwick – Rose – let me see her,’ the physician pleaded.

  She raised her head, took a breath and bent again to transfer her own breath to her daughter. The doctor caught his bottom lip between his teeth, felt for a pulse at the tiny wrist, took the stethoscope from his bag and listened intently to the infant’s chest.

  ‘A light, please, Mrs Bennett,’ he called over his shoulder.

  Florrie obeyed at once, her face taut with distress. Dr Power took the nursery lamp from her, held open each of Alice’s eyes in turn, and waved the source of brightness in front of them. There was no reaction.

  The doctor sighed regretfully as he folded the long tube of his stethoscope and replaced it in his bag, then his eyebrows swooped as he contemplated the new mother as she breathed tirelessly into her baby’s mouth. He shook his head, putting out his hand to touch her arm.

  ‘Mrs Chadwick, I’m so sorry, but your daughter is dead.’

  Rose blinked at him, the blank look in her haunted eyes slicing into his soul. ‘No, no, look!’ she stammered, her voice vibrant. ‘She’s breathing—’

  ‘No,’ he repeated with firm compassion. ‘You are breathing for her. There’s no pulse, no heartbeat. No eye movement. She’s turning cold. I would say she’s been gone a little while.’

  Rose stared at him, her head tilted and her brow corrugated with incomprehension. Slowly, very slowly, she lowered her gaze to Alice’s motionless face as the horrible, vile, crucifying truth slithered into her rebellious, unaccepting mind, and her lips rested on the tiny marble forehead.

  ‘From what your husband said, I think it must have been some sort of chest infection,’ the doctor whispered reverently. ‘I understand she was born quite early, and Dr Seaton was concerned that her heart and lungs were not strong. So this sudden illness, it was just too much for her. Nobody’s fault. No medicine we have could have saved her.’

  Whether young Mrs Chadwick heard or not was debatable. She began to rock back and forth, crooning to the child in her arms as if she were soothing her to sleep, humming softly, her face translucent like some serene Madonna. She scarcely flinched when her husband came and sat beside her on the bed, not until he put his hands about the diminutive corpse.

  ‘She’s dead, Rose,’ he said without expression. ‘Let the doctor take her now.’

  She flicked up her head like a lioness, her raging eyes flashing dementedly as she hugged Alice tightly against her. ‘No!’ she wailed, lashing out at Charles, and when he tried to take the child by force, she bit into his hand and began to scream, a deep, howling, unearth
ly lament that made his blood run cold.

  ‘For God’s sake, man, isn’t there something you can give her?’ he demanded.

  Dr Power considered the broken, grief-stricken figure before him. What she needed was time. Time to say goodbye to her child. Time her husband was unlikely to grant her. And so Dr Power reached sadly into his bag.

  The warder strode across the prison yard. He had just returned from three days’ leave, two because he had worked two six-day shifts back to back and one in lieu of the August bank holiday. What good the break had done him, though, he didn’t know. With eight offspring all under twelve years old, they couldn’t even afford to take the carrier into Tavistock for the day. So he had spent the days at home with the children under his feet, walks on to the moor being the only respite from their cramped flat. He had returned to duty in a dark mood, to be told he was to be in charge of boot-making. It was considered a fortunate post so he should have been pleased, but he wasn’t. Convicts should all be put to hard labour, in his opinion, even if they had to earn the privilege of being in one of the workshops. Scum, they were, the lot of them.

  He nodded at the other warders as he entered the building, enjoying his recently elevated status to senior officer. He walked menacingly up and down the rows of work benches, burly arms crossed over his intimidating uniform. The inmates had their heads down as they worked in silence, since any exchange of words was punishable, each man shuddering as the principal warder passed. He picked up a half-made boot, inspected it and replaced it with a grunt, irritated as there was nothing he could criticize.

  And then he spied him. The yellow particoloured uniform of the escapee made him easily distinguishable from the others who wore the garb of more trusted men. The felon glanced up as more pieces of leather were added to the pile before him, and the warder glimpsed his face. He recognized him at once. The bastard who had run off in the fog and forced a young woman to hide him when he broke his ankle. The warder had been delighted to be chosen as the one to administer the flogging, as his colleague who had been guarding the scoundrel when he had made his escape had met with instant dismissal. He and his family had been evicted from their home the very same day. They had been next-door neighbours, friends. Though he had put his full and considerable force into each stroke, the warder had been devastated when the bugger had only been given a few lashes. Well, now it was time to make up for it.