The Parentations

by Kate Mayfield

The boatmen scurry about, preparing to enter the last three locks before their course veers onto the spur that leads to the Cumberland Basin. The country sky opens here, and beneath it unfolds a secluded, peaceful valley. The change in the air is remarkable.

  The narrowboats settle into the curve of the canal with a short sprint upstream. The evidence of a new town on the edge of London spreads before them. Across the fields, through which the canal navigates, sparsely occupied streets are laid out; a church spire, a sprinkling of commerce, yet Camden Town still sleeps and will only slowly awaken in its development.

  On the northern edge of the new Regent’s Park, the canal cuts in two directions. Here the captain steers onto the canal spur that borders and separates two villages, Park East and Park West, and runs south to the spur’s end at the new hay market in the Cumberland Basin.

  Standing in a slight valley and set in private gardens railed off from the street, a few villas are scattered in Park East in a haphazard way; no two are alike and they are not in line with their neighbours.

  ‘There’s yer castle, madams,’ Captain Emil tells them.

  Tower Lodge looks as if it is on fire. Huge braziers flare with bright flames to light their way from the bank. Men with torches stand in the garden at the ready to help unload. Inside, the shutters are folded back to reveal sparkling, flame-lit chandeliers and candelabra shining through the glass. From the boats the sisters behold the welcome sight of the parlour fire beckoning cold hands and feet.

  ‘I feel I’m eavesdropping on another’s life,’ Verity says.

  A turret rises up four floors to dominate the north side of the house. Torches staggered across the first-floor balcony create jagged shadows that leap around the circular landing. The spectacle renders them silent. Even the great shires stand perfectly still, their feedbags motionless, as they adjust to the towering wall of light that radiates through the tenebrous countryside.

  A figure stands inside the house at one of the imposing Gothic windows, and another waves from the Tower Room. Their petite frames turn away and disappear. The featured, tall chimney stacks lend the house a fortress personality, but the gables and classical design of the main body of the house softens the aspect. When the two young women seen in the windows throw open the garden door, the house seems to invite an attachment, as if it would like nothing more than a long romance.

  ‘These will be the day maids.’ Bertie chuckles. ‘I told ’em they’d be working a long day today. I wanted them here to welcome you. I hope they’ve readied the house as I instructed.’

  ‘Day maids. Two. Think of it, sister,’ Verity says.

  When Verity was nine years old she had asked her father if they were wealthy.

  ‘Yes,’ he’d said. ‘Very.’

  ‘And for how long will we be so?’ Constance had asked.

  ‘With your mother’s help, because she is very clever and holds land and wealth of her own, you will always be secure.’

  ‘Even if we live to be one hundred?’

  His gaze had rested on his daughter’s faces, which seemed to always hold quizzical looks and wrinkled brows.

  ‘Yes, if you should be so fortunate.’

  When the sisters first asked the advice of George Fitzgerald regarding their possible purchase of a ninety-nine-year lease on a house so large and removed from the life they had known, he advised them to follow their instincts because the money was certainly there, and though the well of their fortune was not bottomless, they could easily afford many of the homes in this secluded area in all of their assorted shapes and sizes.

  After they are moored at the bottom of the garden, the unloading begins and everyone has a hand in it.

  ‘Bertie. The champagne, please.’ Constance says.

  In the light of all the fires with the motley group of people standing by, their work nearly done, Constance raises the bottle of champagne and gives it a good whack against the wall.

  ‘Lawless House,’ she says.

  ‘Lawless House,’ repeats Verity.

  When the last box and the last basket are safely delivered into Lawless House, the sisters step on board the captain’s boat once again.

  ‘We wish all of you well and happy in your new home,’ Angela says.

  ‘That we do. That we do,’ echoes Captain Emil.

  ‘Thank you and I shall settle up with you now.’ Constance takes him aside.

  ‘There is this. And there is this.’ She places two pouches in his hands.

  ‘But madam … I …’

  ‘One is the wages, the other is something for the winter. I’ll hear nothing about it. Now, do wave to us on your journeys, and when you have time, a mooring here is always welcome, Captain Emil.’

  ‘Whenever we pass Lawless House we will have an eye out for the boy,’ Angela says.

  ‘Should you ever need anything Angela, come to us. We should like to help.’

  The boatwoman’s eyes glisten and she nods, but is unable to speak.

  ‘We are sincere, Angela. This is not a farewell trifle we offer.’

  Angela nods, her fierce pride momentarily suspended.

  ‘Honoured to have met you, Mrs Fitzgerald.’

  Verity walks along the towpath where the boys, still working, check the horses’ shoes.

  ‘Thank you for being so kind to a boat full of women who are old enough to be your grandmothers. I hope it was not too trying a day for you.’ She offers each of them a small pouch. They stare slack-jawed at the coins, murmuring their thanks.

  The water laps against the hulls of the boats as the men push off and the horses lean into the first big pull away from the bank. A final wave sends them off into the night, enriched by both healthier pockets and wealthier spirits.

  A carriage for Percy, horses for the men, cabs for the maids, the business of travelling home for all those who helped is attended to until, finally, the exhausted women of Lawless House sit in a pile of disarray in the drawing room. They are aching to fall into the beds that await them, made splendidly fresh with new linen by the day maids. They yawn and stretch and feel as if they cannot bring themselves to rise to climb another floor to their bedrooms. Rafe is holding court in his new cradle. The boy is wide awake and chattering to innumerable invisible listeners. Bertie begins to place one tired, leaden leg in front of the other to go to him, but Constance stops her.

  ‘Bertie, you look like death. Go to bed this instant.’

  ‘I will not argue with you this time.’

  ‘You are a treasure. Thank you for everything,’ Verity says.

  Bertie waves off the remarks and slowly makes her way to the second floor.

  Verity lifts Rafe from his cradle and carries him to the windows. Now that he has someone’s attention his babbling lecture continues.

  ‘Look down upon the lovely garden, Rafe. This is your little plot of land. We will play on nice days and wave when the boats pass. We will watch storms in blowy weather and marvel at the snowfall.’

  Below, his body concealed behind the garden wall of the neighbouring villa, Benedikt places his telescope back into his coat pocket. They are safely home. He rests his eyes for a moment and leans against the wall. On this cold night he wipes the sweat from his face with a handkerchief, replaces his hat, climbs the wall, and with a stealth that has become second nature to him now, he retreats along the towpath.

  Verity turns from the window eager now to put Rafe to bed. He squirms and whimpers. She dips soaked bread into a small bowl of milk, but he turns away.

  ‘Rafe? What is the matter poor boy? He is very restless, Constance,’ she says.

  ‘I see he is. Here, I’ll have him for a while. Go to bed.’

  But Constance cannot calm him either. Rafe’s chatter has turned to fussing, his legs kick out and his arms fight the air.

  ‘He is very warm, sister.’ Constance places the back of her hand on his face.

  ‘Oh good great God, Constance. He’s pink all over.’

  ‘And he’s sweating now, it’
s pouring off him.’

  ‘I’ll fetch Bertie.’

  ‘No, let her sleep, the poor dear looked dreadful.’

  ‘I’ll make cool cloths then. Yes? Yes, that’s what I shall do.’

  Constance removes the baby’s outer blanket and gasps. His nightclothes are dripping.

  ‘And bring a change of nightclothes, Verity.’

  ‘I have no idea where they are. They could be in any one of these baskets.’

  ‘A blanket then, anything, he’s drenched.’

  Verity rummages through the baskets and boxes, tossing cushions and clothing until she pauses, exasperated.

  ‘We should have had the priest here to bless the house before the move. I begged you to allow it,’ she snaps at Constance, who ignores her. ‘I fail to understand why you preferred to wait until … This would not be happening if … He would not be ill if only the house had been blessed.’

  Constance closes her eyes, one of which is throbbing, and sighs from weariness.

  ‘Verity. Rafe is not ill because the house has not yet been blessed. Please. Find something to cover him.’

  As Constance pats him down his sweat dampens her sleeves, until they cling to her arms. She lifts him to her cheek and his hands reach out for her face. When his arms flail and brush against her bruised eye she winces.

  ‘Let me have him now,’ Verity says. ‘My God, you are soaked through, too. Constance!’

  She places cool cloths all over Rafe’s body, but he only screams louder. She quickly removes them and he calms a bit.

  ‘He does not like them, Constance.’

  ‘Then just hold him and I shall dig around in the baskets for his clean nightclothes.’

  Moments later Verity too is drenched with Rafe’s perspiration.

  ‘This is not normal. He needs a man of medicine or … do we know where the nearest apothecary may be? The time. What time is it? Oh, sister, what should we do?’

  ‘We shall keep him as comfortable as possible. There is nothing else we can do until morning.’ Her voice wavers.

  ‘I have never seen such a fever.’

  They cannot locate his bedclothes and instead improvise with their shifts, which he promptly leaves sodden, and which irritate him. Not until he is left naked and free to squirm on a blanket on the floor does he begin to show signs of relief.

  In the early hours of the morning Rafe lies perfectly still. Verity lumbers from the sofa.

  ‘Constance, come here.’

  Constance stands at the window where first light climbs across the garden, too terrified to turn her attention to the boy.

  ‘Is he dead?’ she asks.

  Verity clamours to the floor and kneels beside him. She looks up at her sister and smiles.

  ‘It is gone. The fever is gone.’

  She lifts the naked baby and turns him to face Constance. He opens his arms to her and exercises his fingers.

  Constance takes him, holds him to her bosom and again faces the window.

  ‘Look Rafe, the sun is risen.’

  The boy’s sweat has turned them. The doting women will never be the same.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  On any good map of London may be found the evil-looking starfish that appears as if it might actually slither across the paper. Spread like a poisonous flower of six petal-shaped wings, with each panopticon arranged around a single watchtower, the first sight of Millbank Penitentiary has been responsible for the spontaneous soiling of many a man’s trousers.

  The hour is upon them and the open cart bearing the Fowlers, Willa, and Jonesy, approaches ‘the tench’ in fits and starts. In the wake of the pandemonium at Newgate to transport the now notorious passengers, a mistake was made and the new Black Maria police van departed without them. Heads will roll, but in the meantime, the prisoners are escorted through the London streets with as much visibility as those who at one time were paraded to Tyburn.

  They sit on boxes in the crude wagon, cuffed, but without an officer. At the same hour that the wagon nears Millbank, from the outer gates a queue of convicts marches by. Chained together in groups of ten, they shuffle down to the riverside where embarkation awaits them.

  Rather than cast their eyes at the place of suffering that lies before them, the Fowlers crane their necks to soak up the last view of freedom behind them. It is low tide, and an old bargee has run his boats aground, making them the first to form a plank leading to the steam tug that will take the shackled queue of prisoners to the ship. Old Dan has an agreement that allows him this scheme. This morning, as the fog lifts in that religious way it is wont to do, his attention strays from the shackled men and falls upon the ginger-haired prisoner in the wagon who wholly distracts him. He waves at Clovis and puckers, gives the air a big kiss, grabs his crotch, and then laughs at her. Old Dan pollutes her last view of the river before the wagon jerks away.

  The feeling of a dead zone persists. A stagnant moat surrounds the building, most likely meant to enforce its fortress-like position. An unfriendly blanket of low cloud covers the cobblestones, rumoured to protect the bones stacked underneath in one of the pits of the Great Plague. Things do manage to grow in the fevered, waterlogged earth, vegetables in the prison garden and such, but they are seeded adjacent to Millbank’s own recently buried dead.

  During her short stay in Newgate, Clovis gathered information on how to become a model prisoner, if events should turn this way. Her concern is not a question of survival, for that is a given now, her concern is rather, how to survive well. ‘Don’t cry over your hair,’ she was told. ‘Matrons sort out the weak from the strong when they shear women and men like sheep.’ Good to know. ‘Don’t play mad – they is clever, those warders is. They is seen too many and knows those that is false.’ Clovis will use that, too.

  Then Clovis worked up her saliva and in a demonstrative gesture she swallowed her fear. And, when the fright of what was to become of her, of them, had been digested and put forever to rest, she faced the new possibility that had slipped into their lives. The delicious, quicksilver gift, that seems entirely impossible, but nevertheless stares her in the face. It is the thing that she will fiercely contemplate during her days and nights at Millbank – her immortality.

  As the cart wobbles along, Jonesy studies Clovis, perhaps for the last time before they are all gobbled up by the giant starfish. He wonders why her eyes dance and glitter. He is confused that she is not at all panicked, unlike Willa, whose fingers have not stopped tapping against her cuffs. Or why, he asks, is his mistress not comatose with fear and bewilderment like her husband? And what is wrong with her that she, who is supposedly a talent for the magnetism, cannot see the ghost of his ancestors who sit beside him and float above his head? After all, he, Willa and Master Fowler, should all be dead. Perhaps he is actually dead, he thinks, and the messengers are taking him to the god of walls and moats for his preliminary hearing. This seems to be most likely, because in front of them a lifeless moat circles the unspeakably intimidating turrets. Jonesy is certain he is destined for the tenth court of hell for immediate rebirth.

  Clovis, aware that Jonesy watches her, tries to stand but cannot keep her balance without the use of her hands and is thrown back. She recovers and summons his attention.

  ‘Remember what I told you,’ she says.

  Last night, when they were still on the vile plot of Newgate land, she sat with each of them privately, two chairs, one facing the other. First, she made solid eye contact, which drew upon their exhaustion and made them drowsy so quickly that she was taken aback. She held their hands until they tingled and grew warm. The faces and figures of those around them dissolved until they vanished completely and the only face that was in their consciousness was hers.

  ‘Bow your head a bit,’ she instructed each of them.

  When their chins rested calmly on their chests, she leaned into them, so close they could sense her beating heart and the light lift of her breasts as she breathed. She put her lips to their ears and, one by one,
she whispered until the only thing in the world they desired was what she desired. She comforted them with the assurance that they would be together, that she would make it so. The years coming would seem like minutes flying by. They have all the time in the world. She whispered, until she too believed every word she said.

  ‘Something has happened to us. It is a great secret that belongs only to the four of us. You must never tell anyone.’

  And to her husband she said, ‘If anyone asks why you still live, say that you do not know, it surely must be a miracle. When you come back to your senses from your ordeal, and when you are no longer disoriented, you must spend your time thinking of a way to earn a great deal of money. We will need it in the coming years. This time, Finn, within the law.’

  She told them that they must be seen to turn to God. Their time at Millbank will include suffocating religious tutoring and they must bear it and play to it. After a few more instructions, specific to each of them, she awakened them and they remarked that somehow they felt better, and that their world was not ending as they previously thought, but only just now beginning.

  Now they are arrived at the grand experiment atop the marshlands of Pimlico, where the weeds strangle the yellow-tinged building and its walls strangle hopes.

  It is a prison of contradictions: clean, yet so rank with damp that filthy diseases race through the bodies of its convicts. The use of separate cells as punishment drives prisoners to seek company with the force of a magnet, often with violence; and the rule of strict silence is a mocking sort of entertainment, given that the ventilation system allows sound to travel so easily. Convicts will always find the ways and means to communicate.

  The prisoners of Millbank are prohibited any news of the world outside. Visits with family members are carefully monitored. Despite this, the pentagons are full of sharp chatter when the news of the recent arrivals seeps into the prison’s population.

  The Fowlers and their servants are received into the prison and led through corridors into the governor’s room where he sits at his large desk. They take their positions behind the rope, placed as it is across the room to serve as a barrier. The room is cast in almost complete darkness; a dim coating of light crawls through the double set of bars on the single window.