The Unseeing

by Anna Mazzola

  “Edmund, we have discussed this before. It is more than adequate.”

  Edmund wanted to say something further, harsher. He wanted, in fact, to shout in his father’s face: tell him what a mean-spirited, selfish blackguard he truly was. And yet there was still something of his schoolboy’s fear in him. He felt the ghost of an old pain, the edge of the cane, the burn of wood on flesh. “You will do as you are told. You will not answer back.”

  “Now,” said his father, turning to the door, “I have a court hearing to attend. And you, of course, have work to do.”

  • • •

  As Edmund followed the warder along the winding corridors—corridors that should have become familiar, but which still filled him with a vague dread—he rehearsed in his mind the questions he needed to ask Sarah. They had run out of time. He needed her to understand that he could not gloss over the truth. As things stood, he could not recommend that she be pardoned, no matter how much he might want to.

  When Sarah arrived, she did not greet him, but said, “There’s a girl in the cell next to me who’s accused of killing her own baby.”

  Edmund put down his papers. It was the first time in all their meetings that Sarah had initiated a conversation with him about life in Newgate.

  “I think I’ve heard of her,” he said. “This is the girl said to have murdered her child in order to keep her position?”

  “Yes. Will they hang her for it?” Sarah asked.

  “I doubt it. If it’s deemed to be murder the judge may hand down the conviction, but in the vast majority of these cases the Home Secretary grants a reprieve. There’s considerable sympathy for women in her situation. If she’d kept the child she would have been cast out from her job and had no means of feeding herself and her baby. There was an awful case last year of a woman who killed both herself and the child as she couldn’t bear to have it taken from her.”

  “What would have happened if the baby wasn’t quite dead when he was born, but she didn’t call for a doctor?”

  “There’s a distinction between allowing someone to die and helping them die. If she’d purposefully left the baby out in the cold to die of exposure, as often happens, then that would be murder. But if she failed to fetch a doctor directly upon seeing that the child was in distress, I doubt that would do it. Ironically, in English law, to stand back and watch someone die without fetching help is not a crime.” He paused. “Does she claim that is what happened?”

  “No, no. This is all conjecture on my part,” Sarah replied. “Please forget that I said anything.”

  “Yes, well, she may wish to think carefully about what she says. She has no lawyer, I assume?”

  “She has no money.”

  “No. She may be given a dock brief on the day of her trial, but that will be all. She certainly won’t want to confuse the man with complicated defenses. The jury probably won’t convict her of murder, anyway. They rarely do in infanticide cases. The most she’ll get is manslaughter or concealment of the child.”

  “Concealment of the child?” said Sarah. “As far as I know she didn’t actually hide it.”

  “Perhaps not, but she didn’t report the birth or the death, did she? Legally, it amounts to the same thing.”

  He looked at Sarah. Why was she asking him this, now? “You mustn’t concern yourself about her. You have your own worries.” He picked up a copy of the statement Pegler had given him and put it on the table before her.

  “You made this statement to the police just after you were arrested. In it, you said that you had last seen Hannah Brown on the 20th of December.”

  Sarah looked at the statement and then at him, her dark eyes seeming to reproach him. He picked up the second statement and placed it alongside the first.

  “In this statement, made only a few days later, you had suddenly remembered that you saw her on the morning of the twenty-fourth, the day she was murdered. Why did you lie originally?”

  Sarah said nothing.

  “Well?” Edmund said.

  “James told me to say that. He said they were trying to trap him.”

  “You must have realized when Greenacre told you to lie that he had done something.”

  “I thought he’d defrauded her in some way. Not that he had killed her.”

  “So you were willing to help him cover up fraud, but not murder. Is that it?”

  “No! No, that’s not what I meant. I was confused. I didn’t really understand what was being asked of me. It all happened so quickly. James said they were just making trouble for him for political reasons and that I should stay out of it. He would deal with it.”

  “Did he tell you what to say in the second statement as well?”

  “No.”

  “That’s odd, because I’ve looked carefully at the statements you made and several sentences in your statement are almost identical to what was written in his.”

  Sarah said nothing.

  “You knew by that point that he had murdered her.”

  “I knew she was dead. He said it was an accident.”

  “So you continued to back him up.”

  “No.”

  “You see, Sarah, the problem is that these statements appear to confirm that you were willing to change your story in accordance with what Greenacre told you. How, then, do I know that you did not conceal the murder simply because he instructed you to?”

  “Because I could never have done something so terrible for him. Do you really think I could have continued to live within walls that I knew were marked with a dead woman’s blood? Do you really think I could have continued to share a bed with a man I knew to be a murderer? I did not know!”

  “Why should I believe that when the jury did not?”

  To his horror, Sarah covered her face with her hands and began to weep, her body shuddering.

  “Please, Miss Gale.” Edmund leaned forward and touched one of her shoulders. He could smell her: a rich smell of salt and ripening fruit. “Help me help you. I must complete my report by this Friday. If Greenacre forced you to act as you did, you may have a defense. Just tell me what happened that night.”

  “I have told you everything I can,” she said, her voice hoarse. “The only way you can help me is by believing me.”

  20

  “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”

  —Works of Love, Søren Kierkegaard, 1847

  Sarah woke to a howl of rage. Somewhere on the ward a woman was screeching and shouting. She sat up in bed, drawing the covers around her shoulders. It was that cold sharp time between night and morning and a pale, gray light filtered through the greasy window.

  The noise intensified, as though a door had been opened.

  “Damn you!” she heard. “Damn your eyes!”

  The shouting became more muffled as the woman moved farther away and, after a minute or so, Sarah heard a scream far off followed by the clang of a door being shut.

  Sarah sat tensed, but no further sound came, only the whispering of the women in the nearby cells. She stepped gingerly out of bed, the cold stone chill against her bare feet, and moved over to the basin. “Lucy?”

  “I’m here. You reckon it’s a breaking out?”

  “Breaking out” or “smashing up” were the terms the warders used for when a convict ran mad. It made it sound like a sport, Sarah thought. A blood sport. Breaking out was not unusual. After weeks of deprivation and silence, women on Sarah’s ward occasionally exploded in anger and frustration, some beating their heads against the stone walls, others tearing at their own skin with their teeth. This was the third time Sarah had heard a breaking out, but it was no less terrifying for that.

  “It might be Eliza Sharpe,” Lucy whispered. “Apparently they told her yesterday she was for the rope, and her with all them littl
e ’uns. No wonder she’s telling them to damn their eyes. I’d tell ’em a deal worse if it were me. They’ve no heart, no heart at all.”

  Sarah was silent but her heart raced. Eliza Sharpe: convicted of robbing a milliner in order to feed her children. She had petitioned for mercy shortly before Sarah had. No one had expected she would hang.

  • • •

  Later that morning, when she came to inspect Sarah’s cell, Hinkley confirmed it. “Yes, she found out last night that her petition had been refused. She’s for it next Monday. You’d have thought they’d have had some pity for her, what with the young ones, but they’ll be for the workhouse now.”

  “Is there really no one else to look after them?”

  Hinkley shook her head. “The father’s dead long ago and, so far as I know, there’s no one else will take ’em. It ain’t right, Sarah. I suppose it’s no wonder the poor woman’s gone off her head. She was quiet when she received the news, but then early this morning she fell into a real frenzy. Nearly frightened me out of my five wits when I heard her.”

  Sarah was thinking, still, of the children.

  “And you should see her cell,” Hinkley continued. “She’s destroyed everything: bed, trencher, Bible, even her own clothing and bed sheets. All in strips and fragments over the floor like some wild beast’s been in there. It sends a shiver through you to look at it.”

  “Where is she now?” Sarah asked.

  Hinkley averted her eyes. “She wouldn’t quieten down so they took her to the dark cells.”

  Sarah felt a shudder pass through her. She imagined Eliza shackled to the wall and screaming into the blackness.

  “Is there no chance,” Sarah asked, “that they’ll reconsider? That they’ll pardon her?”

  Hinkley shook her head again, sadly. “I shouldn’t think so. It’s too late. All she’s got now is prayers.”

  • • •

  The news of Eliza Sharpe’s imminent death cast a shadow over the whole of the women’s side that morning. There was little communication over breakfast and the warders went about their duties somberly, without speaking to or even looking at the women. Hinkley’s eyes were red from crying, as were those of several of the younger prisoners. Even Rook and Boltwood left off their usual taunting.

  Eliza Sharpe had not been particularly liked. It was more, Sarah thought, that each prisoner could imagine being in her place—could feel her silent scream of pain searing through the darkness below them.

  As she sat at her sewing, Sarah thought about the people who had been hanged since she had arrived. In the ten weeks she had been at Newgate, she had seen four men led to the scaffold. On Monday mornings, the women watched through the dining room windows as the condemned left the prison and walked the short distance to the gallows, their arms pinioned behind their backs. The first to die had been a broken old man who had wept and dribbled piteously. The second was little more than a boy who shook so much he could barely walk. Sarah had turned away, unable to bear the sight of him begging and pleading with the jailers as they passed him to the executioner. The third was an older felon, well dressed in a black frock coat. He appeared calm, though dejected, as though he had always expected his life would come to this. But the fourth, Rudge, fought like a devil to the end.

  Three jailers had dragged him, kicking, struggling, and shouting, up the scaffold steps and then pinned him to the ground, lying across the man’s arms and legs as the executioner slipped the noose around his neck. It was one of the ugliest things Sarah had ever seen—the violent struggle to stay alive. Even in the noose, Rudge did not give up, but managed to catch hold of the scaffold beam as he dropped. The executioner and jailers tussled with him for several minutes to pry his fingers off the beam, finally sending him shooting through the trap door to his death.

  It was rare for a woman to hang. That was what had kept Sarah going—the belief that she might well be reprieved. This, however, had focused her mind. If the authorities were in the mood to hang a woman who had robbed out of necessity, the mother of small children, then they would have no qualms about sending her to be launched into eternity. Unless. She sat at her sewing: in, out, and over, in, out, and over. All morning, she sat at her sewing and she thought.

  • • •

  At ten o’clock, Groves arrived to take Sarah to the legal visitors’ room. She stood with her back against the wall of Sarah’s cell, her expression unreadable in the half-darkness.

  “Your time ’ere’s nearly up, Gale. Worked out which way you’re going to leave this place?”

  Sarah felt a cold fear slice at her. “I will leave alive,” she said, more to herself than to Groves.

  “Will you? That ain’t what they’re saying. Everyone round ’ere thinks you’re next.”

  Sarah felt for a moment the rope about her neck, the scratch of hemp, the hangman’s hands.

  Groves moved out of the shadows and walked toward the door. In the light, her face was pale as a grub. “Best tell ’im something good today, eh, Gale?”

  • • •

  Sarah followed Groves along the dimly lit passageway, her mind whirring. As they approached the stairs, she felt a presence to her right. Rook.

  “What does it sound like?” the woman whispered.

  Sarah did not reply and remained facing forward.

  “What does it sound like, to cut through bone?”

  Sarah winced inwardly but refused to turn to look at the woman.

  “’Cos that lawyer might believe your lies, but I know you were there, right in that room.”

  Sarah turned, wanting to read the other woman’s expression.

  “Yes,” Rook hissed, “that’s right. I know people who know. And what d’you think’ll happen when I tell?”

  Sarah felt her heart contract.

  “If they’ll hang Sharpe, they’ll stretch your pretty neck quick as winking. And what’ll become of your little boy then, eh?”

  All at once, Sarah leaned in to Rook, close enough to smell the sour unwashed scent of her. “If you’re so sure you know what I did, hadn’t you better be worried about what I might do to you?”

  Groves whirled round. “No talking! If I catch either of you saying another word you’ll both be on bread and water for the next week.” She grabbed Sarah’s arm and dragged her up the remaining steps. Sarah glanced back at Rook. Did she really think she knew something or was she, too, just playing a game?

  • • •

  Sarah watched Edmund as he opened up his notebook and thumbed through the pages to find his place. He looked tired today, she thought. His face was unshaven and she fancied he was wearing the same shirt as the previous day. He must know, as she did, that they had come to the heart of her case. Indeed, he dispensed with all preliminaries and said, “I want you to tell me today about Hannah Brown: how you met her, and how you came to leave Greenacre’s house last December. It’s important that I understand what happened.”

  “I don’t know all of the details,” Sarah said. “In fact, I’m not at all sure how James came to meet Hannah in the first place. You’d have to ask him.”

  “This is for your statement, Sarah,” Edmund said, opening his notebook. “I need to know what you knew of Hannah Brown.”

  Sarah bit her lip. What did she know of her, really? She had heard her name so many times, in the police station, in the magistrates’ court, in the court room—had it shouted at her in the streets. She had shared a roof with the woman; washed her clothes—and yet she knew precious little of what kind of woman Hannah Brown had been.

  “The first I heard of her was in early December. James told me he would be bringing a woman to the house—a woman who he was considering marrying.”

  Edmund looked up from his notebook. “That must have been a shock.”

  “In a way it was, yes. The plain way he said it. But I’d known for a while I was losing my
hold on him. He no longer found me as attractive as he once had.”

  She touched her cheeks briefly, remembering James’s words the night he had smashed her looking glass. “I thought you a peach when I first met you,” he had said. “But maybe even then you were overripe.” He had thrust her tear-stained face before the broken mirror. “Now look at you.”

  Edmund was watching her closely, but he did not say anything. She felt suddenly vain and foolish. What did it matter what she looked like? Before long, her face would be seen only as its death mask.

  “What did you say when Greenacre told you he was bringing this woman to the house?” Edmund asked.

  “There wasn’t much I could say. I knew I had no claim over him. We weren’t married. He’d never actually promised me anything. By that stage, I didn’t really believe I was worth anything. I think I just asked who she was and when she would be arriving. James told me he’d invited her over the following evening and said that I was to cook for them and to pretend to be only his housekeeper.”

  Edmund squinted in disbelief. “He wanted you to cook for them?”

  “Yes.”

  Sarah’s face flamed. What a fool not to have left him there and then. Things might have been so different.

  “And you agreed?” he asked, incredulous.

  “I was living there. I didn’t have much choice. I had a child and nowhere else to go. It was winter, remember.”

  It was a power game on James’s part, she knew that. It amused him to test to what extent she would bow to his will.

  Edmund shook his head. “What happened when she arrived?”

  Sarah remembered opening the door. Whatever she had been expecting, Hannah Brown was not it. She must have been near five and forty, maybe older, with hair far grayer than Sarah’s, a colorless, plain face, and a large flat forehead. For a second, Sarah had wondered whether this could truly be the woman who was usurping her. But then she noticed the clothing: a green satin dress, the color of wet grass; a merino shawl of the best quality; a black velvet feathered hat and—when she stretched out her hand—beautiful black kid gloves, wrinkle-free.