How should Amy begin? Even with the shabby, even cruel treatment, the old woman has obviously received from Eskman, she is his mother and will likely be defensive of her son. Mothers can take bad treatment from their sons and still make excuses for them.
“Lady Eskman, I know you love your son, but there is something I must tell you that you may not know.”
“My name is not Lady Eskman, I am Lavinia Anselan, and I know most of my son’s affairs. My son inherited the title of Lord Eskman from my brother when he died.”
“How could that be?”
“It is a title tied to land, not primogenitor. There are some such titles, you know. The owner of the land has the right to the title.”
Amy decided she would have to ask someone about that later, but she continued, “I’m Amy Sibbridge.”
“You already told me that. Why are you here?
Lavinia Anselan did not sound friendly.
Amy briefly explained about the will and said she needed to have a personal talk to Lavinia’s son about a number of matters concerning it and some accusations people had made against him. She wanted to seek the truth and find out what he had to say. She made no mention of Christine or who had made the accusations.
“He will be home shortly,” Lavinia told her coldly. “Wait here.”
It was not long before she heard the sound of someone entering the front door. Lavinia hurried out, once more commanding Amy to wait. There was a muffled conversation that Amy could not make out and then Eskman strode in with his mother following a few paces behind.
“Well, well, young Amy Sibbridge. This is a surprise.”
Amy aggressively confronted him. She told him what she knew and asked him directly: “Did you try to kill me?”
“Madame, that is an outrageous accusation. If you were a man you would be facing a duel right now.”
She doubted if he would have had the courage to fight a duel.
“I did not accuse you of trying to kill me. I asked you a question. Did you try to kill me? Just give me an honest answer.”
“Certainly not. The very suggestion that I would even contemplate such a thing is an effrontery.”
But when she described her assailants, a grave look came over his face and he turned and looked at his mother.”
“I had to do it, you fool,” she said. “She was going to steal your inheritance that we have fought all these years to get. I couldn’t let her, when we are so close to success.”
A cold feeling of shock swept over Amy, followed by fear when she realized the situation she was in. She must flee.
With Eskman and his mother involved in verbal combat, she took the opportunity to run towards the Eskman front door.
“Stop her you fool,” Lavinia yelled at her son.
The old woman rushed after Amy and threw herself in her path to the front door. As Amy tried to reach for the door handle, Lavinia grabbed Amy’s clothes.
“Help me you idiot,” she screamed at her son.
Belatedly, he joined his mother, and between the two of them they were able to prevent Amy’s escape. Amy struggled mightily. Lavinia grabbed a dusty vase from a hall table and smashed Amy on the head.
Amy dropped to the floor stunned but not unconscious. Lavinia tore decorative strips from Amy’s dress and began to tie Amy hand and foot while her son held her down at Lavinia’s urging.
“Hester, Hester,” Lavinia yelled.
A ragged servant girl emerged from where the kitchen should be.
“Go get Jack. Tell him he better be here quick if he knows what’s good for him.”
As the girl hurried out the front door, Lavinia opened a drawer in the table and extracted a pistol, which she pointed at Amy.
“Stand!” she commanded.
Amy, still dazed, struggled to her feet.
“Now walk.”
Eskman went ahead of his mother around a bend in the hall and opened a door.
“March!”
Lavinia forced Amy to shuffle to the door and then pushed her through it. Amy tumbled down a flight of stairs and the door was slammed shut. Lying on a damp dirt floor she heard them lock the door. It was pitch black in the cellar.
Amy, hurting badly from her fall, forced herself to her feet and felt for the rail at the side of the steps, which she had caught sight of before the door was slammed. Sore and bruised, her hands bound and her feet tied at the ankles, she laboriously dragged herself up the wooden steps feeling her way to the top. When she could see a faint light through the keyhole, she knew she had reached the door.
She was about to pound on it when she heard Eskman and his mother quarrelling. They were a short distance from the door but she was able to just barely make out what they were saying.
“Mother, why did you try to kill her, I could have taken care of this problem in a much better way.”
“How? Marry her? In case you have forgotten you already have a wife.”
During the quarrel, Amy learned much that she did not know since they seemed intent to hurl their entire history at one another. Amy came to realize that Lavinia was the schemer going all the way back to the tragic day Amy’s father and mother drowned in the River Avon.
“What will we do about her?” he asked.
“What do you think? Jack will take care of her.”
“Mother, you can’t.”
“What else is there to do? Do you want to hang, you fool?”
“But mother she’s a nice girl. Please let’s find another way.”
“You’ve done it to enough others, one more won’t make a difference.”
“That was different. They were Frenchmen and had been cruel to their own people.”
“How can I possibly have had a weakling son like you?”
“Mother, you had her parents killed, please don’t kill her.”
More and more dread flowed over Amy as she listened as long as she could until the voices become too faint and muffled as Eskman and his mother moved out of earshot.
Amy sat down on the top step. She was trapped in a damp, dank totally dark cellar save for a pencil of light coming through the keyhole of the door. She was bound hand and foot. Her head was throbbing and she was dizzy. She was trapped and she knew she was going to die. The only question was how soon. It seemed it would be when Jack arrived and that did not seem to be long. There was no way out and no one knew or would even be able to guess where she was. It was totally against her nature and spirit but Amy found tears running down her cheeks. This was the end.
Chapter 36
But her anguish did not last long. Her hands were tied in front of her. She could only move her fingers a little. Amy Sibbridge, she said to herself, you do not allow defeat. There is a solution to all problems. There is a way out. You will not be defeated. They will not win. You will be victorious. She forced this on herself though her body cried out from the pain. She had, at best, minutes. She must act now. She must escape. She wiped the tears from off her cheeks.
They did not flinch at Agincourt,
To face the might of France,
But challenged the iron knights,
To join them in a dance.
And to their foe in burnished steel
Our yeomen would not yield,
And when night had hushed the fray
Their hearts had won the field.
Though sore and uncomfortable and facing whatever would happen once Jack arrived, the desperation of her situation began to sink in. She must do something. She must escape. But that was all but impossible. She was bound hand and foot.
She must try and find a way to get out of her bonds. Great effort at stretching and pulling on them and trying to extract her hands from her wrist bindings only demonstrated that Lavinia Anselm knew what she was doing when she tied a knot. Amy could not get loose. The alternate was to try and cut the bonds. The moment she tried that on the rails proved that it was impossible, unless she could find something sharper. Was there anything in the cellar she could cut them
with? Except for the faint light at the top of the steps the cellar was totally dark. Her only hope was to try and go back down the steps and feel her way around the cellar. She felt her hopes were slight but she must try.
In coming up the steps she had to lean on the rail and exert great effort to drag herself up one step at a time. Going down proved even worse. About half way down she slipped and fell the rest of the way. At this point, lying in pain on the damp floor at the foot of the steps, she could no longer withhold the tears that burst forth once again, this time in earnest. But after a few moments she commanded herself to stop. If she had any chance, no matter how slim, it required immediate action. She did not know how long she had remaining, but she must force herself to act.
As she felt her way through the dark she knew that it was imperative that she not further injure herself, so while speed might be important, so was caution. But when you can’t walk, what do you do? She might be able to struggle to her feet—she was not certain that was possible—but it was probably best to turn over, get on her knees and carefully crawl around the cellar. At this point a second problem emerged. If it’s dark, and you are crawling, which is an unaccustomed position, how do you know where you are going? You might be crawling over the same area repeatedly or missing something important. She decided to try to crawl straight forward, if possible, until she reached a wall and then follow it, because in all likelihood most objects would be against a wall. She considered a number of strategies, as she began her awkward crawl.
She reached the wall sooner than she anticipated. At this point Amy began to come to the conclusion that this wasn’t going to work. She must struggle to her feet and hobble around the periphery of the cellar. With great effort she made it to her feet sliding her back against the wall. As she stood, out of breath, she looked around—as much as you can be said to look around in total darkness. As she looked to her left, she thought she saw a faint glow, but Amy knew from experience that your eyes could play tricks on you in total darkness. Even when it is pitch black your eyes get visual impressions, you just can’t really see anything, and that was true now. She felt she could see light but could not see any object.
Amy stared at the area where she thought she saw light for a little while but still she could not be sure, so since she had no other plan she decided to move toward the area by sliding along the wall. As Amy slid against the wall the glow got brighter. It was really light. It was not a visual trick of her eyes. Working her way past some division in the cellar, probably an inside wall, it became apparent that the light was coming from lines of light, which delineated some kind of a door that obviously led to the outside. It was a cellar door, perhaps two or three feet high and of the same width. She couldn’t tell how far away it was, which made her feel disoriented. She must get to it, but to do that she would have to leave the support of the wall and hobble forward.
Could she move forward with her feet bound tight together? When she tried, she found the answer was no as she fell flat on her face. She felt her nose begin to bleed, with the blood trickling down her lips, and despite her best efforts, seeping into her mouth. To make things even worse, as she struggled and squirmed to get up, she fell into a shallow layer of water. The dirty water was inside her mouth. She turned her head sideways to spit out the mud and water, causing it to soak her hair and ears. She forced herself onto her knees and slowly worked her way forward.
Finally reaching the wall, she found that the door was above the floor of the cellar. But at least her estimate of its size was reasonably accurate. Perhaps she could make it to her feet and if the door was unlocked she maybe could get out somehow and crawl to the street where someone would find her and free her. A brief glimmer of hope was dashed as soon as she came to her senses about her situation. Even if she could make it to her feet, the door was almost certainly padlocked. Who would leave it unlocked in this neighborhood, or really anywhere in London? Even if it was unlocked, how would she get up to the door in order to get out? And if she did, it would probably open into a garden, or what once was a garden, which would have locked gates. And even if she got out to the street, the most likely people to find her would be Ishmael, Lavinia, or the threatening Jack. And even if they didn’t, what would the denizens of the neighborhood do if they found her? Both dread and hopelessness coldly enveloped her, but she did not cry. She was beyond tears.
All during her sad ruminations she had been slowly, laboriously, pushing herself up the wall, but before she could get fully upright, as she strained to push herself erect against the wall, her feet slipped in the mud, and she fell sideways banging her head, neck, and body against some piece of iron equipment. She felt trickles of blood running down her neck.
The pain brought tears to her eyes, but also an idea. If the item that she fell against was sharp enough to cause injury, maybe it would be sharp enough to cut the cloth bands on her hands and feet? She felt for it with her fingers. It did have an edge. Fighting to pull herself into a kneeling position in front of it, she then began to saw the strips of cloth against it.
Amy was able to slowly scrape through her wrist bindings, and then untie her feet. The door was locked but the wood was in a deteriorated condition so she was able with great effort to knock out the lowest plank in the door. That was as high as she could reach. Maybe there was something that could be found to knock out the upper planks and then somehow climb out. Now with light coming in through the missing plank Amy looked around. The metal object that had allowed her to scrape through her wrist bindings was a large piece of rusty equipment. She realized that the missing board from the door allowed in enough light to dimly illuminate the other part of the cellar where the door to the house was located.
While going around the wall to see if she could spot some implement that could be used against the door the sound of voices reached her ears. The voices were coming from the hall of the house. Going quickly up the stairs to try and hear what they were saying, she realized they were outside the door to the cellar. There was the sound of a key in the lock. In panic she looked around. There was no place to go. The handle of the door was turned and it began to open. She stepped back and realized there was a shallow alcove in the wall, which she backed into, as the door opened wide.
Fully open, the edge of the door rested against the stone edge of the alcove. Through the gap she saw a large male figure come through. There was a startled yell of “she’s escaped” when the man, whom she supposed was Jack, saw the light in the cellar and thought the door to the outside was open. He rushed down the steps followed by Eskman and his mother. Amy was sure she was caught because they would see her out of the corner of their eyes, but when their peripheral vision was overwhelmed by the idea of her escape, she took advantage and went around the door and into the hall. The movement did catch the attention of the old woman, but before she could even cry out, Amy was in the hall and closing the door to the basement.
She briefly noted with disappointment that the key was not in the door so she could not lock them in. She ran to the front door of the house hoping it wasn’t locked on the inside. She turned the handle and noted with excited relief that it turned and in a moment it was open and Amy ran out into the street, and straight into the arms of the three men who accosted her when she was returning from her visit to Ben on Wednesday of the previous week. They dragged her back inside the house just as Eskman and the large uncouth man emerged from the direction of the cellar door.
They roughly flung her on the floor. But Amy was tortured by so many aches and pains that she was almost numb.
“Take care of her,” Lavinia commanded, and the meaning was obvious.
But as she was issuing her instructions, Eskman interrupted.
“I need to talk to you, Mother, before we do anything.”
“You’ve done enough, don’t interfere,” she snarled dismissively.
“I really need to talk to you, mother!”
“Oh all right,” she said angrily. “What is it?”
“We must make her sign away her rights.”
“That is totally stupid. What court could you take it to without getting yourself hung for her killing? Getting rid of her will take care of everything.”
“What if another copy of the will exists?”
“It would have turned up by now.”
Even through her pain, Amy recognized that his arguments were strange. She wondered if he wanted in his own peculiar way to save her life, but there was no way that was going to happen. There was no way to tell his motivation.
They argued about what to do. If they got her to sign and let her live, she would inform on them, Lavinia and Eskman went back and forward, while the four toughs waited. One suggestion was that they get her to sign away her rights and threaten her family if she doesn’t cooperate. Finally, they took her into a room, tied her firmly to a chair, and went outside leaving her alone, so they could continue their dispute outside of the room.
When they walked away from the door, she could not make out what the muffled voices were saying, even though they were sometimes raised and loud. For a time it was quiet as they apparently went elsewhere. Amy sat and waited, bleeding and in pain, with her hair wet and muddy, and her face smeared with mud and blood, as she feared what her fate might be, but hoping it would lead to a release. For the first time she felt a faint ray of hope. Maybe they would see it to be in their best interest to let her live, and she could sign away her rights and hope that could be corrected later. In fact, she was sure it could be corrected. She gradually convinced herself she would be all right.
Then the door opened and a man whom she had not seen before walked into the room. A rope was dangling from his hands but she barely noticed the rope. Her eyes were transfixed on the horrible disfigurement on the left side of his face. She realized with a cold chill that he was the villain that killed her parents. He walked over to her and put the rope around her neck.
The Captain's Daughter Page 30