The Servant

by Maggie Richell-Davies

  ‘Come.’ Jack has my elbow in his grip again. ‘You look peaky. You need feeding. Vauxhall isn’t the only place that sells oysters and the sport has made me hungry. Then I suppose I must escort you home.’

  ‘You are right. Master Chalke will need his tea. I am going to make cinnamon buns.’

  ‘You shouldn’t put yourself to so much trouble.’

  ‘Why not? He is my master, after all.’ I still cannot believe him a lecher. His eye may be frequently on me, but he always keeps his distance. And my imaginings about those auctions could be wild of the truth. He is an aristocrat even if a disgraced one. How could the brother of a lord be involved with a bawdy house? The thought is laughable.

  ‘Is he?’ Jack turns those brilliant eyes on me and grimaces. ‘The world is more complicated than you appreciate, Hannah. You must learn to take care of yourself. Nobody else will.’

  He is abrupt, as if something has annoyed him. He can hardly be resentful of my attentions to Master Chalke, can he? But for Jack to have kissed me like that must mean something. It was not the salutation of a friend.

  I need to be alone, to re-live that disturbing sensation. How soft yet urgent his lips were. I have never been overwhelmed by my body before, being dismissive of girls eager to catch some callow youth’s eye. Now I have unexpectedly experienced the flame a kiss can ignite and it unsettles me. I remember Mrs Lamb’s admonition that respectable girls must be virgins if they want a wedding band. And that if I really want to find different work, away from here, it means going away from Jack.

  Chapter Twenty

  The bruising hand over my mouth is no nightmare. It is flesh and blood. Soft-skinned. Redolent of the peppery scent of snuff. A gentleman’s hand. And though he doesn’t carry a candle, and there is just an outline against the moonlit window, there is only one man it can be.

  I wrench my mouth free.

  ‘Sir!’

  Something unthinkable is happening. Master Chalke’s weight is on top of me.

  It seemed only moments ago that I locked up the house and crawled under my blanket expecting to dream of Jack and that kiss.

  I choke out a strangled protest, my tongue dry in my mouth.

  ‘Lie still, dammit.’ It is a command. From someone I am used to obeying.

  Fear and panic overwhelm me and I twist my head, gulping air.

  This will be my fault. We are taught it is always sinful Eve who lures men to sin. Master Chalke has mistaken my manner. Has thought me a loose woman inviting an approach. Has thought me like Susan.

  ‘I am a good girl, sir!’

  ‘All the better.’ He makes a noise that might be a smothered laugh. ‘You can be good to me.’

  I am frantic. To scream. To beg him to leave me alone. But the only noise I manage is a squeal.

  I might as well plead for twenty guineas a year and jewels in my hair.

  I sleep in my spare shift. It is all I have. His invading hand rips it from neck to hem and gropes at me. He is slobbering over my neck, his breath stinking of bad teeth and the brandy I carried to the book room hours ago.

  I think of calling for the mistress, but she is no friend to me. Even if this is not my fault, that I would never flaunt myself before any man, especially an old one like him, it is just the two of us in the night.

  I instinctively fight him, but he is too strong.

  ‘Quit struggling. Or do you like to be hurt?’ He labours above me. ‘That’s right. Cry. It excites me.’

  I flail beneath him and instinctively try for his eyes with my nails. It is then that he punches me. Bunches his fist and strikes, like a pugilist in a ring. My nose gushes metallic-tasting blood and I am reduced to gasping wetly for breath as he thrusts with increasing violence.

  Despite the noise we make, nobody comes. The house remains dark and silent. Only the clock on the downstairs landing measures my fate, as if nothing of significance has happened.

  Now I weep, but quietly in obedience to his command, collapsed beneath him. He is the devil, come in the night to destroy me. Almost worse is knowing what an utter fool I have been.

  How do women bear this? Must half the human race lie in subjection beneath the other half? Every mother in the street must have done it. My own included, though I cannot bear to think of that. Even our queen and king have children. How can God have decreed tender babes come from such an act?

  At last, the master hoists himself off me with a grunt and bends to the floor for a knotted handkerchief he must have brought with him. From it he shakes pennies onto the bed, as if I were one of those desperate women who linger outside public houses. The shame stings as badly as the raw place between my thighs.

  ‘One word to my wife,’ he orders, ‘and you are on the street. Without a character. Without a roof over your head or food in your belly. With no option but to open those pretty legs to anyone who offers.’

  He opens the door cautiously, a thief in the night, before padding barefoot down to his own bed. Leaving me in a ruin of blood-streaked sheets.

  I lie, shuddering with sobs. There is no bolt to my door, nothing to stop him returning.

  The thought panics me. Clutching my torn shift, I scramble from the bed, grab my shawl, and flee down through the shuttered darkness, past the great ticking clock, my bare feet hurrying over wooden floorboards, then carpet, to the cold flags of the kitchen.

  I stop at the door leading into the yard, palms flat against its rough wood. It is like pitch outside, for clouds have obscured the moon and it has begun to rain. I hear it tapping on the windows, like pointing fingers. I did not think to grab my boots and realise I cannot run through wet streets barefoot, in a torn shift. An affront to public decency. An invitation to any men lurking in the alleyways.

  A church bell announces the hour. Two o’clock. Followed by disjointed ringing, near and far, from neighbourhood steeples and towers. So many places of worship, so many fine churches. When I observed them from my garret, I thought what an upright city this must be. With so many houses of God.

  I cannot stay here, but where could I go?

  Everyone knows the city’s unlit thoroughfares are no place for honest men in the small hours. Honest women, never. Though I am no longer that. I am stained by what has been done to me. For my life long.

  Yesterday began before dawn in the dank scullery and though I went to bed utterly weary I was innocent and clung to hopes for the future. Now there is only despair and shame, for I am spoiled goods. I cannot even weep, only shiver with cold and misery.

  I think for a moment of trudging every long mile to find Mrs Lamb. She was the nearest thing I had to a mother since my own died. But Mrs Lamb is lost to me, and not just through distance. She would be repelled. It is as if I have been pissed on by something foul.

  What would I do out in the night, a defenceless girl, with my shift in tatters and blood on my thighs? Yet how can I stay? Upstairs the master will be in bed with his wife and it strikes me that she has reason to be sour. I should have taken warning from what I have heard and seen. Instead of dithering, I should have begged Thomas for help and fled to the countryside.

  For how can I stay safe from the master, who will likely come after me again?

  All I can do is scramble to the hearth, grasp the cold, black iron of the kitchen poker and take it back with me to the door. I crouch against it, panting as if I have been running. My mind in turmoil. If he comes after me again, I will use it. I will kill him, even if I hang for it.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  There is a sour blade of light on the lime-washed wall. Dawn. The sparrows will be squabbling soon, as if this were a normal morning. But I am still crouched against the yard door, knees bent to my chest and arms tight around my legs. The poker still at my feet.

  Everything is quiet, but my mind still rages at being turned to spoiled meat. The flagstones are chill but my tremors are more from fear and hate than from cold.

  There have been long hours to beat my mind against the cage my position has b
ecome. Even if Mrs Lamb and Mistress Buttermere come back from York, they will assume I had forgotten their teachings. Decent housewives will slam their doors in my face. Even the poorhouse turns away fallen women. And after those two years under its merciless roof, I would rather perish.

  I had been put in a narrow bed with Mary, younger even than my own ten years, who looked as if she still wet herself at night. The room was cavernous. Chill. Full of women and girls. Sleeping, snoring through snotty winter noses or coughing themselves awake from weak chests. Muttering with bad dreams that would likely come true.

  ‘Tomorrow’s our day for Chapel,’ she confided, wet thumb briefly out of her mouth as she tried to cuddle into me for warmth. ‘And we gets shin of beef, after.’

  I had shaken free and wiped my eyes on the sleeve of my night shift. I had no handkerchief. They had stripped my own good clothes from me and given me others that did not fit, in scratchy fabric. Together with an apron. A cap. A pair of mended worsted stockings. All in a blur of rough hands, harsh voices, unwholesome smells.

  ‘I want my mother,’ I sniffled, but under my breath, in case the overseer heard. I had already discovered her sharp fingernails seemed to relish drawing blood from the earlobes of troublesome children.

  ‘You have a mother?’ Mary’s voice was a whisper. She had bright red hair, though everything else about her was colourless.

  ‘She is dead.’ If she were alive, I would never be in this bleak place.

  ‘But you had one?’ There was a pause. ‘’Cos I never did.’

  ‘Everybody has a mother.’ I pictured the tall woman with dark, curly hair. Eyes like periwinkles. A laugh like sunshine. Arms always eager to hug me.

  ‘Not in this place, they don’t.’ I turned to see the girl’s eyes gleam in the near-dark. ‘But I wish I could have had one. To remember.’

  As I wrapped my arms around her, I vowed that one day I would get away from there. That nothing would ever make me go back.

  I force my mind to settle. The Chalkes are creatures of habit. On wash-day, after breaking their fast, two chairmen arrive to carry them away until late afternoon. Until then, I must bite my lips and pretend respect while I decide what to do.

  If I stay, that beast will surely come for me again. Turn me into his creature. But, were I to protest, the Chalkes would stand together and kick me into the gutter without a penny of my hard-earned wages. Without a character and destitute.

  I have no idea where to find the local constable and if I went to him or even to the parish priest, have no confidence in being believed. What was done to me is an offence, but justice for the poor is rare. Even a fifteen-year-old knows that. I dare not risk being falsely accused of theft like the unfortunate Susan.

  I unclench my fingernails from my palms. I should rouse myself before Peg comes. My shift clings to me and though I scrubbed myself with kitchen soap, almost relishing the harsh sting, I will never feel clean again.

  Yet I remain immobile. Without money or anyone to whom to turn, the choice is between unsafe streets or a brute in a silken waistcoat.

  It sickens me that I was raised to be obedient, to show respect, to be silent unless spoken to. This subservience, this seemly humility, is mightily convenient for monsters like my master. How can it be right for men to have such power because they are stronger and made in God’s image?

  What a fool I was to think Master Chalke worthy of respect. Even apart from those overheard conversations, the signs of what he was, what he would do, were plain in Peg’s eyes. In the tales about Susan. The neighbouring maid’s warning. The lascivious gaze of those visitors. I should have sought work scrubbing steps, like Peg. Yet I stayed, like a witless fool, and dreamed of working for a famous author.

  I blot my swollen eyes with the hem of my shift and swear to survive the shame. To one day be revenged. To see the master dragged from his house with chains on his hands and feet. I know that could never happen, but to dream of it might just keep me from running mad.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  A distant dog barks as the London bells begin to chime five. Hand carts jolt over the cobbles. The city is stirring. Peg will be dragging her way through the streets, eyes on the gutter for scraps for her hungry belly. What will she think to see me like this? I should drag myself to my garret for my gown and a clean cap.

  But I fear going upstairs in case I grab a kitchen knife, run to the master’s bedside and stick the blade into the lard of his belly.

  A noise in the yard makes me flinch. The door latch rattles. Pressure is exerted against the bolt.

  ‘Hannah?’ The voice is low, fearful of waking the sleepers upstairs. It is Peg, of course, come early as it is wash-day.

  ‘Why ’aint the door open?’ The ironwork rattles again.

  Shame keeps me motionless.

  The scrape of ill-fitting boots on flagstones is followed by scrabbling at the window. She must be able to make out my white shift in the gloom, for she returns to the door.

  ‘What’s up? Let me in.’

  I am usually the one giving instructions, but have to make myself leave the poker and work the bolt clear. I oiled it only yesterday, so it is easy. Yesterday, when I was still a pure maid. The knowledge makes me feel unclean, even before the lowly Peg.

  But she has eyes to see as she limps inside. She drops her ragged bundle. Grasps me in bony arms.

  ‘I warned you to get away.’ She cradles my head against her shoulder. It is the first time we have touched and I do not care that she smells bad.

  ‘You didn’t warn me about him.’

  She lets out a wheezing sigh.

  ‘He is so scared of the mistress that I was sure you was safe. From that, at least.’ She strokes my tangled hair. ‘Flashed a knife at him, she did, over the Susan business. Made him swear on the Bible to never touch another girl under her roof. Or she would slit his throat.’

  It sounds like something from a play, but I believe it.

  ‘He went after Susan, too?’

  ‘Does a dog cock its leg on every post? She ran complaining to the mistress. Who damned her for a liar, before throwing her out on the street.’

  Peg steers me to the kitchen chair and makes me sit. Hands me a scrap of moistened rag.

  I dab at my nose, thinking of Susan as the cloth turns from red to pink. The bleeding has stemmed. If I am careful the swelling might not be too bad.

  ‘But the girl threatened to snitch. Not about being raped – she as good as asked for that – but about their other dirty business.’

  ‘What dirty business?’

  Peg dismisses my question with a grunt.

  ‘They swore blind she had nicked their best spoons. A pack of lies, of course. But she was thrown in jail.’

  Peg shakes her head.

  ‘Then the mistress visited her in the public cell. Whispered the slags in there would finish her off in return for a silver shilling. Susan must have been pissing herself with fear, ’cos she took the punishment.’

  Peg glances at the brightening light outside and sucks on her broken teeth.

  ‘A chit scarce sixteen. Whipped. Branded with a hot iron on the thumb. Transported. For saying she would blab.’

  She limps to the fire left ready-made last night, reaches for the tinder box and sets about striking sparks with the flint. ‘It’s freezing in here.’

  I am still huddled under my shawl by the time she has brewed tea and brought me a bowl, wrapping my hands around its warmth.

  ‘Get that down you. Or you will likely take a chill.’

  ‘I don’t care. I would like to die.’

  That would be an escape. Yet the tea is welcome and as I gulp it, I find a burst of courage.

  ‘I have read of men punished for rape. There was a major, once. A gentleman. He went to prison.’

  Peg’s brows furrow.

  ‘Likely the girl he tumbled come from a respectable family. Nobody is going to care about a servant.’ She sets a bowl of warm water in front of me. ‘Clean
yourself up. And watch that mouth if you don’t want to end up in the river.’

  ‘Must he get away with it?’

  ‘What have I just said? Susan could have had a knife in her guts. Or even gone for the drop. For the value of spoons that she never took.’

  I shudder. I have never seen a public hanging, but Mrs Lamb said women drew the biggest crowds.

  ‘You needs to act normal.’

  ‘How can I?’

  ‘Surprising what a body can do, when she has to.’ Peg thrusts a fresh rag into my hand. ‘Clean your face while I fetch your clothes. They will be stirring soon.’

  Sullenly, I apply the cloth to my face. It stings. His signet ring has cut my lip.

  ‘He will come after me again. Won’t he?’

  ‘He might. If he thinks to get away with it.’

  I want to go into the yard and puke. What is to stop him grabbing me whenever he wants? I will become his prey in the night, with the mistress asleep and him free to roam. If I cannot devise a way to protect myself, I am lost.

  ‘Would the mistress stop him?’

  ‘Maybe, if she found out. But you are the one who would pay. They would both swear you’re an artful baggage. Or stole summat. Like with Susan.’ Peg has resumed her defeated look. ‘Don’t risk it. Submit. Or run as far away as those legs will take you.’

  I drop the cloth in the bowl. I must find a way to keep safe while I seek another post, perhaps through Thomas. I glance at my companion and a thought flutters through my mind. A desperate moth at a shuttered window. Mistress Lamb said I was a bright girl. I must use those wits to survive.

  ‘The rich gets away with everything,’ Peg mutters, at my shoulder. ‘Always have. Always will.’

  Destitution is fearful. Hollow-eyed misery you must pretend isn’t there, lest it break your heart. The gentry no doubt, if they ponder the matter at all, convince themselves that is what the poorhouses are for. But I will never surrender myself to such a place again.

  Peg surprises me with industry, fetching my clothes and setting the great cauldron to boil for the wash while I dress. As if nothing is wrong.