The Unseeing

by Anna Mazzola

  “You should understand that there’s a law on ship as firm as that on land. There are clear rules and clear punishments for those that break them. You will obey orders from myself and my men immediately. If you do not, you will live to regret it. I’m a fair man, but I’m also a hard man. Do not cross me.”

  He stopped at the break in the quarterdeck.

  “I have a crew of twenty-one men working under me. I’m responsible for their direction and discipline, so if any of them misbehave—I’m sure you know what I mean—you tell me.

  “We wait here for a week or so while the other convicts arrive. Then we sail via Tenerife to pick up fresh water. None of us wants to be drinking Thames water for the whole journey.” He spat over the side.

  “From Tenerife we make round the Cape of Good Hope and from there we cross six thousand miles of ocean without sight of land. It’s a tough life on board ship, but if you follow my orders and those of my men, you’ll get on well enough. I cannot, however, tolerate insubordination. You’ve managed to escape England with your lives. Make something of them here.”

  With that, he turned and strode away.

  A few of the children whimpered. Rain began to hit the surface of the river, causing the water to rise up in silver rivulets like the ridges on a washboard.

  • • •

  “What’s this?” said the first mate. “A fight?” He was a scrawny man, all sinew and elbows, with an anemic freckled face, a pointed chin, and lank red hair.

  “I won’t be in her mess,” Mary Boltwood shouted, pointing to Sarah. “She’s a murderer!”

  “Is she, now?” said the man, raising his eyebrows. “That makes a change from the thieves and whores we usually carry on board. You’ll all work together and live together. Whatever you were and whatever you did in England is of no consequence. You’re all the same here: you’re all dirt.”

  Once all of the women had been divided into groups of six, they were issued with bedding and cooking and eating utensils. Each mess was given a keg and horn tumbler and a kettle for tea-making. Each woman received a bed, pillow, and single blanket plus two wooden bowls and a wooden spoon. They were also handed a bundle of clothing. Sarah carried her things to her allotted bunk and laid them out: a couple of linen shifts, a cotton cap, a neckerchief, a pair of worsted stockings, a brown serge jacket, and a petticoat. An image flashed before her of Hannah Brown’s wedding dress laid out across her bed: a burst of red on white.

  “Beautiful, ain’t it?” Hannah had said. “Cost a pretty penny, too.”

  “I’m sure,” Sarah murmured.

  “Yes,” Hannah said, “it’s an expensive business, as it turns out, this getting married, what with the flowers, the food, the silk stockings, and slippers. I’ve had to buy some of the things on credit. James’s credit, if the truth be told.”

  Sarah made no comment.

  “He’ll understand, won’t he?” Hannah asked. There was a catch in her voice. “I’ll tell him when the time’s right. I just didn’t want to vex him with it before the wedding.”

  “Oh, yes,” Sarah replied. “I’m sure all will be well.”

  Sarah should have felt sorry for her. She should have warned her what kind of a man James was. She should have told her to take her dress and run and run and run.

  But instead she had thought, It should be me.

  • • •

  At eight o’clock they were sent to bed. In their bunk, Sarah and George lay close together, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of the timbers creaking and the wind singing in the ropes.

  “Is it ghosts, Mama?” George said after a time.

  She hugged him closer to her, marveling at the warmth and wonder of him, breathing in his little-boy smell. “No, darling. I know it sounds strange out there, but it’s just the wind and the water. We’re quite safe.”

  “Will you tell me a story?” he asked.

  Sarah thought for a moment. “There was a little boy called George,” she whispered, “and he was very brave.”

  Drawing upon the stories she remembered from her own childhood—the stories she had whispered to Rosina in the dark—she told him about a boy who traveled the seas and encountered giant whales and beautiful mermaids, who found crystal caves and pirates’ treasure. She whispered until she could feel his body relax and hear his breathing slow. Then she lay back next to him, staring into the gloom. Was it deceitful to pretend this was an adventure when she knew that they would encounter not mythical beasts, but danger, deprivation, and storms? Maybe she was as bad as her own mother, telling her daughters that their flight to London was an exciting trip, not the beginning of their descent into the gutter.

  Sarah thought of Rosina as she had last seen her. She tried to print her face on her memory so that she might never lose it, but it was Hannah Brown’s split face that came to her in the darkness, her wound as it was described at trial: the crescent shape of the moon.

  36

  “Let us have no lies, stories, fibs, or whatever you may call them. There are no white lies, they are all black. Any trying to deceive is a lie. Drop all lying and deceiving, or it will be a habit that will grow on you. ‘Speak out the truth fearlessly, and shame the Devil,’ people say. Why shame him? because he is the father of lies.”

  —Loving and Fighting: Addresses Delivered in Sunday and Ragged Schools, George E. A. Shirley, 1871

  The main room in Peele’s Coffee House was furnished like a drawing room, with mahogany booths, sanded floors and dark wood paneling. Newspapers, magazines, and books were piled on the shelves. Several men sat smoking cigars and reading. Edmund took his usual place and nodded to the servant, who returned a few minutes later with a cup of coffee and a copy of the Morning Chronicle, freshly ironed.

  “In fact,” Edmund said, “it’s not today’s news I wish to read but that from some months ago. I understand that you keep such copies?”

  The man led him to a shelf at the back of the room, which held carefully cataloged copies of regional newspapers. After some time, Edmund found the article from the West Kent Guardian that he was looking for.

  The female prisoner Gale seems perfectly overcome with anxiety. Little is known of her previous history. It is said, however, that some years ago she was a supernumerary at one of the east-end theatres, and that she then went by the name of Winston or Wiston. She afterward was “under the protection” of a well-known barrister.

  So Bessie had not invented the story. Sarah had been an actress. Of course, he had not specifically asked her whether she had worked as anything other than a nurse and seamstress. He had intentionally not directed the questions about her past too narrowly, but had instead allowed her to talk about herself. He had always been told that the fewer questions one asked, the more open the interviewee was likely to be. In this case, however, it seemed that the interviewee had selectively cut pieces of information. Why would she have done that? To avoid admitting she had fallen into prostitution? The line between actress and whore was often a thin one, and it was quite possible that she had wanted to avoid any discussion about that part of her life.

  Edmund wondered too about the barrister referred to in the article. If even the West Kent Guardian could refer to him as “well known” it must be someone of whom he himself had heard. Perhaps that was why Sarah had not mentioned this either.

  He told himself these omissions did not matter. As his father had said, everyone lied. That she had not told him these things did not mean that she had been dishonest about the murder itself. And, Edmund reflected, who was to say that the information the newspaper had printed was correct? The mere fact that something was written down did not make it true. Many of the stories that had been printed about Sarah and Greenacre were simply lies.

  Still, it would not hurt to find out who this barrister was, if indeed he existed at all.

  There was no journalist’s name on the newspaper ar
ticle—no indication as to who had written the piece. He had an idea who would know, however. Glancing about the room to check that no one was watching, Edmund ripped the page from the newspaper and folded it into his pocket.

  • • •

  “Am I wrong in thinking, Morris, that you occasionally drink with journalists?”

  They were sitting by the fountain in the heart of the Middle Temple watching little sparrows wash and shake themselves, the water springing in silver droplets from their feathers.

  “You are not, sir,” Morris said, drawing on his pipe. “I like to damp my mug in a wide range of circles.”

  “Know anyone from the West Kent Guardian?”

  “Don’t think so. Why d’you ask?”

  “One of their journalists wrote an article about Miss Gale. I would be interested to talk to that person. It might be in their interests too.”

  Morris raised his eyebrows. “And what might it say, this harticle?”

  Edmund took the crumpled page from the pocket of his waistcoat and handed it to Morris, who read it slowly, following the words with his forefinger.

  “You think ’er being an actress means she’s been playing a part for you—is that it?”

  “I’m more interested in the fact she was supposedly under the protection of a barrister. She didn’t tell me that. It may be nothing, of course.”

  Morris nodded slowly. “This is for yer own information, is it?”

  “It is.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, then,” Morris said, folding the piece of newspaper into his own waistcoat pocket.

  Edmund dipped his fingers into the water, and a sprinkle of goldfish swam to the surface. “I’d be obliged if you could be discreet.”

  “Mr. Fleetwood, I am always discreet. I see nothing. I hear nothing.”

  • • •

  The gleaming maroon stagecoach shot out of the yard, several small, tattered boys running behind it and gradually tailing off as the coach picked up speed.

  Edmund sat on the outside, next to the driver, listening to the brass work on the horses’ harnesses jangling like little bells as they cantered over the stones, past dustmen and milk women with pails, past men walking early to work and drunkards stumbling late to their beds. Out of London to where the roads opened up, past market gardens and the outlines of new houses, all the while keeping up a pace that turned the passing sights into a blur of white and gray, the stagecoach a streak of red through it.

  At Tunbridge Wells, the coach stopped at the Rose and Crown Inn to change horses. As the horses were unharnessed and taken to the trough, steam rising from their silken backs, Edmund went into the inn and bought a hot meat pudding and a pint of ale. A short time later, they set off again, with fresh horses, for Rochester. He took out of his pocket the slip of paper that Morris had handed him the previous evening and which stated only: “Ezekiel Breakspeer, Rochester, Kent.”

  When they arrived at the town, Edmund descended from the coach and looked about him at the High Street lined with redbrick buildings, and the ancient crumbling castle rising in the distance. Few people were about so he entered the Victoria and Bull Hotel, where he sought directions from the publican. Following the road, he came at last to a shabby cottage with a bowed front and dingy little windows. Outside the house a woman was feeding a clutch of hens.

  “Ezekiel?” she said. “He’ll be writing at this hour, I should think. Upstairs.”

  Edmund took the steps to the garret room, where he found a slight man with quick black eyes sitting at a small desk in a smoke-filled room, puffing on a cigar.

  “Mr. Breakspeer?”

  “That’s me. And who might you be?”

  Edmund stepped into the room. “I’m investigating, or was investigating, the Edgeware Road murder. I came across this article that I understood you wrote.” He removed the scrap of paper from his pocket and passed it into the journalist’s ink-stained fingers.

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “I wanted to find out if you knew who the barrister was—the one whom you refer to as having protected Miss Gale.”

  “Ah,” the journalist said. “Well, there’s a reason I didn’t print his name. Libel. Trouble. And for the same reason I’ll require some persuasion to provide you with his name now, particularly as I notice you haven’t given me yours.”

  Edmund had brought some persuasion in the form of a one-pound note, which he laid on the man’s desk.

  Ezekiel nodded. “Very well. Fleetwood.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Fleetwood,” Breakspeer repeated, pocketing the money. “He’s a senior barrister in the Middle Temple. Apparently he’s looked after her for several years, one way or another.”

  Edmund was silent for a moment.

  “And his first name?” he asked softly.

  “Arthur. Arthur Fleetwood. Maybe you’ve heard of him.”

  37

  “However this may be, there can be no doubt of the fact that by some means or other men contract at a very early age and retain through life a strong disposition to believe what they are told.”

  —A General View of the Criminal Law of England, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, 1863

  By the time Edmund returned to London, it was Saturday evening. His father was not at home, the butler informed him. A crown and a quiet word later, however, Edmund knew where to find him. He walked through Haymarket and the east end of Piccadilly and the Quadrant, down to Windmill Street, where the pavement swarmed with opera-hatted gentlemen, beggars, prostitutes, and black-cloaked barristers. Within a short time, he reached his destination on the corner of Little Argyll Street and King Street: the Argyll Rooms. Edmund climbed the stairs to the second floor so that he could look down from the balcony onto the huge ballroom, fifty feet long, hung with crimson flock wallpaper, and lighted by three chandeliers. Below him, dancing men and women swayed and swirled in reds and purples and blues.

  He attracted the attention of a servingman: “Have you seen Arthur Fleetwood?”

  “I couldn’t say, sir.”

  “Oh, come now. He’s here somewhere.” Edmund handed the man a bright coin. The evening was proving to be an expensive one. The serving man led him into an exquisitely furnished anteroom. From the center of the ceiling, a chandelier dripped crystal, the bright droplets reflecting in the mirrors on each wall. Dark velvet ottomans and matching chairs were placed around the room with colored cushions scattered upon them. Edmund saw his father sitting in the far corner of the room, his arm around a woman in mauve taffeta. As he approached, his father removed his arm and stood up. He was evidently about to make some pleasantry but saw the expression on Edmund’s face.

  “Edmund. Let’s not talk here.”

  “Why not? It seems a suitable location: full of corruption and artifice.”

  His father looked about him, uncomfortably. “It would be better if—”

  “If what? If I didn’t raise the matter of you keeping Sarah Gale as your whore?”

  His father’s female companion touched his arm and left them together.

  “Edmund,” his father said in a hushed tone, “I understand why you’re angry, but please be aware that I had your best interests at heart. And hers.”

  Edmund gave a short bark of a laugh. “Oh, of course. Just as you had my best interests at heart when you duped me and Jack into leaving our mother all those years ago.”

  “I hardly see what that has to do with it.”

  “Don’t you? You’ve used me in this to further your own interests just as you used me back then to distress Mother. And the hypocrisy of it! You cast Mother out for her moral failings, and then embarked on a relationship with a woman who, in your own words, was little more than a prostitute.”

  “Edmund, please keep your voice down.”

  “Good God, is that still all you care about? What people
think? Your precious reputation?”

  “And what do I have, Edmund, aside from that? What do you think would happen to my reputation were it to be discovered that I once consorted with a prostitute-turned-prisoner? I had to keep it quiet. I also couldn’t stand by and see her sent to the gallows. So I persuaded John that the matter needed to be investigated.”

  “And then you suggested that he appoint me to the role of investigator so that you could keep a close watch on my progress and influence my decision-making.”

  “That’s not exactly how it—”

  Edmund cut him off. “I couldn’t fathom it at first. Why would you claim to me that she was a woman of lax morals, a woman capable of doing anything to suit her own ends? But then of course I understood: you knew that would steer me toward the opposite conclusion.”

  “You have always been contrary, Edmund,” his father said quietly. “And you’ve always sided with the weaker party.”

  Edmund shook his head in disbelief. “You know, the amusing thing is that I thought I’d been selected for the job because of my legal skill and powers of analysis. I now realize I was chosen for my naivety. Well, it turns out you were right. She had me. I believed her.”

  His father took him gently by the shoulder. “Edmund, my dear boy, calm down, will you? Of course that’s not the reason. I’ve always respected your legal acumen; that’s why I suggested you. You and I both know she’s innocent.”

  Edmund remained silent, his breathing fast and shallow.

  “For God’s sake, Edmund. Sarah is many things, but she’s no murderess and no conspirator. You saw that just as well as I did. And did I think you might be sympathetic to her? Well, yes, I did. You’ve always been a softhearted boy; you’ve always liked to rail against injustice. And I knew when we spoke after the trial that you recognized the evidence against her was weak.”

  “You knew I would be taken in by her.” Edmund moved nearer to him. “And I was. I truly was. But now my eyes have been opened.”

  “Edmund, you are wonderfully mistaken. You must consider your position carefully. You know that if you report this, my career will be finished. Yours, too, perhaps.”