The Servant

by Maggie Richell-Davies

  Sam’s freckled fist holds out something wrapped in greasy paper. Food. Still hot. The smell prompts my belly to growl audibly.

  ‘From your mother?’ I try not to snatch. ‘What a kind heart she has.’ Now it is in my hand I rip open the packet to find a pair of roasted pig’s trotters. Still warm from Mistress Haggerty’s oven. Sticky and with the meat falling away from the fine bones. Evidently, she is still cooking the foods I introduced to her kitchen. I manage to stop myself tearing off a bite, but the thought of being able to do so, soon, makes my body quiver.

  I look at Sam, who is searching through his breeches pocket and wonder how soon he will leave. How soon I can devour Mistress Haggerty’s bounty. He pulls out a piece of boiled sugar, covered with fluff, followed by some farthings and halfpennies. He gestures from the coins to me before folding down his height to place them on the floor just inside my door. Then he shuffles his great feet. He has followed his mother’s instructions and does not know what to do next. I wish I could ask if she is still in trouble with her husband, but could get no reply.

  ‘You had best get home, Sam,’ I say, helping him. ‘But let your mother know how much this means to me. That she cared for me in my trouble.’

  He knuckles his forehead in a familiar gesture of respect and turns back towards the stairs, stuffing his sweet into his mouth as he goes, lint and all. I imagine its taste and would have snatched it from him if it had been offered. I sense his relief at leaving, but am equally pleased at being able to crouch down against Nellie’s wall and fall on my feast.

  As well as being always hungry, I am never warm. Cold seeps into the bones, there is no escaping it. I dream of heat. Of thick stockings. Of flannel petticoats. My woollen shawl. Boots that don’t let in water and chafe chilblained feet. To suffer hunger and cold together is cruel. What will I do when my boots fall to pieces? Go barefoot?

  At least my child still lives within me. The days drag. The weeks feel like a candle guttering down to darkness. It is perhaps four weeks before I expect to be brought to bed. Or rather, I strive to be amused, brought to straw. The time will pass. I am awaiting release. A prisoner desperate to lose her chains.

  I am half-dozing in Nellie’s broken chair, still aching from my bruises and dreaming of spitted meat sizzling over a fire. Of a satisfying slab of Thomas’s cheese. Of warm bread, fragrant from the oven and oozing with butter. Of Mrs Lamb’s apple tartlets, their smell wafting around her kitchen like intoxicating smoke. So hot from the oven they threaten to scald your mouth, yet so tempting you don’t care and sink your teeth into them regardless.

  Then a noise in the passage outside jolts me awake, to find none of it real. My job is gone. Soon I could be starving in a doorway.

  The door creaks open and Peg, who usually drags around like a wind-broken nag, almost dances into the cellar.

  ‘I have news!’

  ‘What has happened?’ I think immediately of constables dragging Chalke away.

  ‘The old bastard has been beaten!’ She flashes broken teeth. ‘Thrashed, like a cur that nicked the Sunday roast.’

  ‘Beaten? By whom?’

  ‘Nobody knows.’ She rubs thin hands together, her face splitting in a grin. ‘But his face is swollen as a pig’s bladder.’

  ‘Was he robbed?’ I think back to the night I made the burned wine. Was that the work of men with a sister or daughter despoiled?

  ‘A grudge, ’tis thought. Apparently, it was a great tall feller, with a face muffled in a scarf, who come on him just after dark. Broke a whip on his back, but spoke not one word.’

  My heart misses a beat. A great tall man, with a whip.

  ‘He was not caught?’

  ‘Got clean away. There was no-one near.’

  Master Chalke has suffered pain and I am more than glad.

  ‘Peg…’ I hesitate. ‘Might it have been Thomas?’

  ‘Your farmer?’

  ‘I saw Jack at the Haggerty’s, just before I was dismissed. He said Thomas went to the bookshop, looking for me.’

  I cannot bring myself to tell the whole of it.

  Peg looks thoughtful. ‘I told you the man kept asking where you were. Why won’t you let me tell him?’

  ‘You must never say a word.’ I shift in the chair. ‘Look, Peg, there is food. Mistress Haggerty sent Sam, with it.’ The second trotter had been tormenting me for hours and it is a relief to pass it to my friend. The fat has congealed, but Peg falls on the meat with a sigh of pleasure.

  ‘A great lad called Ruben delivers the milk now,’ she says, her mouth busy, ‘so I wouldn’t be surprised if Farmer Thomas spends his days searching for you.’

  ‘He will not be looking now.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Never mind why not. Put him from your mind.

  Thomas must have realised what happened to me and meted out his own punishment. It surely means he knows I did not willingly give myself to Chalke.

  He knows nothing about the trade in children and, even if he did, what country farmer could set himself against men with sixty guineas to spend on unnatural lusts?

  Since Chalke and his powerful friends have not come after me, enough time must have passed for me to be considered just another dismissed servant. And at least I tried to help girls like Suzy, even if little seems to have come of my efforts. I need now to concentrate on my own survival, before poverty reduces me to sheltering in some derelict doorway.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Yet at dusk Peg is unexpectedly back, while I am forcing raw fingers to plait more straw. At least with Nellie lending me that old chair, I do not spend my days on the floor.

  I can just make out the furrows in Peg’s brow as she hunkers down beside my chair.

  ‘The new maid has brought in a young sister,’ she says. ‘The little ’un is only nine. Plump and pink-cheeked.’

  We look at one another and know her likely fate.

  ‘I sleep on the kitchen floor now, since they share the garret room.’ Peg presses her palms against Nellie’s warm wall. ‘Maybe the Mistress will hand me over to the parish constable. Now they don’t need me no more.’

  I put the straw on the floor and take one of her hands. The skin is rough and dry. The joints of her fingers swollen.

  ‘I told you not to worry about that, Peg. I have a letter from Chalke’s desk. From a surgeon they knew, at the Locke Hospital. The one who treated you all those years ago. It says you could not leave your bed or put a foot to the floor for weeks after your leg was broken. So how could have run into the hallway after your attacker? And killed him?’

  Peg stares at me, slack-mouthed.

  ‘I expect they silenced the man because he was making trouble for them,’ I say. ‘They are ruthless enough. And they planned for you to take the blame if the story ever came out.’

  ‘Why?’ She is round-eyed.

  ‘To save their own worthless skins. And you were too young to defend yourself. When nobody cared enough to ask after the murdered man, they let you go on thinking you had done it. Just to be cruel.’

  She rubs at her eyes.

  ‘And I was scared of the rope. All these years. For nothing?’

  ‘Peg, that letter proves your innocence. But I hope you will stay in the house a while longer. In case anything happens about my letter.’ I glance round the cellar. ‘At least you will have a decent roof over your head, and food.’

  She scratches at the scab on her neck that never seems to heal, then pulls two tired-looking carrots from her apron pocket. Filched from the vegetable sack at the house.

  ‘Here, have these. You’re thin as a shotten herring. I still wish you would let me say something to your farmer.’

  ‘No, Peg. Just stay at the house and keep your eyes and ears open. Something should surely happen soon and I need you there, to tell me.’

  My hunger is constant and after she has gone, I think how Thomas would hand me a full pitcher of creamy milk. Take me to his farm and place a heaped plate of roast beef i
n front of me. But would he? Now he knows I have a bastard in my belly?

  I think of him often, wishing I had my time over. After that visit to his farm, I should have trusted him. But the child was in my belly then. So it was already too late.

  I finger the carrots and plan to save them for nightfall. Then pour water into my washing bowl to dampen the bonnet straw, to make it more pliable for plaiting while there is still some light. And try not to worry about the coming weeks and what they will bring.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Early next day I make my way back to the Chalke house before they are likely to be abroad. I want to see the little girl for myself. It is a long walk, but I remind myself Peg does it regularly, despite a dragging leg. Without complaint.

  When the new maidservant finally saunters out to empty slops into the gutter, I see a sharp face that suggests she thinks she knows everything. Though, of course, she is cruelly wrong about that. She hangs about the railings, perhaps hoping to smile at the gangly footman from the next door house. Then a slight figure skips up the steps to join her. The sister. Small, even for nine, with fair curls and a rosy, chubby face.

  Why has nothing happened since my letter was delivered? Has Chalke’s brother succeeded in hushing the whole business up? If so, there is nothing more I can do. Especially now that I am carrying my shame for all to see.

  At least, since Master Chalke does not know about the papers I carried away, he can hardly link me to his disgrace and come after me. He will likely think a disappointed customer turned against him. And even if he does wonder, surely he will have too many concerns about his brother or the lawmakers to hunt down a pregnant beggar, hidden in the slums.

  As I pause outside the Chalke house, I remember everything I lost from being sent there. A life of contentment and usefulness, with people who valued me. People who would now cross the street to shun me.

  I no longer have even necessities and would be grateful for soap that smells of old bones and refuses to lather. For coals that are damp and billow black smoke in a grate. For back-breaking work, without thanks. I thought I knew about want, but know now that sacrificing that halfpenny to get my letter delivered could mean the difference between life and death for me. But what choice did I have? Suzy was young and unprotected. Like the child across the road. I am proud that at least I tried to do what was right.

  I think that it is time for Peg to leave that house, but not before telling the new maid of the risks to her sister. She looks knowing, so I suspect she will not be as surprised as I was by the evils there are in the world and will arrange for the child to go elsewhere.

  As I turn for home my mind fixes instead on the cold pease pudding which is all that awaits me in the cellar for my supper. My belly growls for it now, though I should save it until darkness falls.

  I want my body back. The one I have now is misshapen. It aches. It behaves oddly and wants to piss all the time. Even my walk is more like a duck being prodded to market than that of a young girl.

  I hate everything about myself. With no change of clothes, my skirt and bodice are stiff with dirt, the hair under my cap oily and matted. My head itches with fleas, but there is no soap and clean water must be bought from the water carts. The bed straw I paid for has gone frowsty and there is a foul stink from the night pail, even after it has been emptied.

  I yearn to be clean. There was an old wash tub at the Buttermere house that I had taken to my room every week so I could crouch down in it and douse myself in jugs of hot water. Even at the Chalke house, on wash-days when I rose before dawn, I would give myself a rub down with a soapy cloth in the scullery. Now I cannot imagine my body being wholesome ever again.

  The marks on the wall beneath my window track the days until the child is expected and I think of little else, since it rarely leaves me in peace, turning around inside me, like a carp outgrowing its pond.

  My mind returns constantly to the night my world collapsed, like a finger probing a sore. I fall asleep thinking of it. Dream of it. Wake to it. Sometimes I am made so angry by the remembrance that I can scarcely breathe.

  Next time I see Peg I will tell her to pack her few scraps together and join me in the cellar, though not before speaking to the new maid. Then we will face the hungry days to come together. I can do no more.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  My head aches, my throat is parched and scratchy, and I feel the itch of raised blotches all over my legs. I was so cold last night that I burrowed deep into the flea-infested straw, hugging my quilt and hessian shawl around me and burying my hands under my arms for warmth. Dreaming of afternoons in the Buttermere kitchen, with the warm weight of Puss on my lap as I darned stockings before the sparking fire.

  The occasional sound of infants through the wall in the night make me feel less alone. Nellie is unexpectedly kind, but I must not take advantage of her in case she turns against me. She is such a strange mixture of hardness and softness. Bad and good.

  There is a turnip in my hand, scavenged from the market, and I start to gnaw its hard, raw flesh. It reminds me of Thomas, talking about growing them for his beasts. I think of him often. Of his generosity and goodness. Hoping that the beating Chalke received proves my friend knows I did not go with my master willingly.

  Hunger begins to make me properly afraid, sometimes making my head spin with weakness and my knees threaten to give way. There is an angry scream in my mind that I hang onto life by such things as a vegetable grown to feed cattle. But I have an irrational urge to see the Buttermere house again, even just from the street. And, if I don’t go now, I will soon be too ungainly to travel far from my cellar.

  I am weary and my feet drag as I set out, making a woman in the alley shake a fist and threaten.

  ‘Take yourself off. I work this patch.’ She is in a dirty pink wrapper, wearing a straw hat decorated with tattered ribbon. A tart, hoping for customers. Does she think a girl heavy with child wants her loathsome pitch? I stomp away, striving for dignity.

  It is a relief to reach more respectable streets, though they bring that pang for what used to be. For what might still be, if Mistress Buttermere hadn’t moved to York.

  Overhead gulls fly and wheel, like scraps of paper in the sky. Mrs Lamb used to say they came inland when the weather was turning bad. Perhaps there will be more snow. The thought makes me shiver. I think I will never be warm again.

  It was foolish to come. The house is empty. Mistress Buttermere and Mrs Lamb must still be in Yorkshire. And what could I have done anyway, had they returned?

  I turn back towards the rookeries. When this child comes out of my belly I will not, of course, keep it. It would be a permanent reminder of what was done to me. Of what I have lost forever. And it will be a bastard, scorned by decent folk and expected to be as immoral as its fallen mother. I pray it will not be a girl. Peg says she has heard many of the lads from the Hospital enter the Navy, as ship’s boys, and I think of Thomas and his boyhood longing to be a midshipman. The Navy might offer a life of adventure and possibility, even to a foundling.

  I feel it stir inside me now. The oddest sensation. Something living that is part of me. Even this unwanted, unwelcome child deserves some kind of life. I would never expose it to perish on the streets. Nor would I leave it on the steps of the poorhouse. Most infants left there died, overnight or soon after. Their swift burials were in the ground in front of our building: the only things planted, dead infants. A paupers’ boneyard instead of a garden of flowers.

  The child itself will be innocent and I am determined not to hate the creature. That would be unchristian. Unfeeling. Unfair. But it will be a relief to leave it in the care of others. To try to forget its existence and the brutal night it was made.

  My letter seems to have achieved nothing and instead I must concentrate on my own survival and counting down the days.

  Chapter Sixty

  The bitter January nights gnaw my toes and deny me sleep. I remember when I took the warming pan to make the Chalke
’s bed cosy, and afterwards would slip up to the garret and leave it under my own blanket. There was usually enough heat remaining for a snug welcome after locking-up.

  Fleas remain a torment and I think back to how easy they were to catch in an ordered household, standing out like black seeds against crisp white bed sheets. Easy to trap with finger and thumb and crush between your nails. Here they breed in the straw and feast on me through the night. More shaming are lice that burrow into the seams of my clothes. I wish I had a candle, to scorch them out, but I have nothing.

  The hours of darkness are hardest. The light goes at four o’clock. Without a candle, without a rush light, without even the glow from a few coals, this cellar is pitch black. There is no chance of plaiting straw. No way to read my precious book. I think back to how I hated cleaning spilled wax from silver candlesticks. Now I would pick off the residue with eager fingers if I could use it to make light. Or I might even be tempted to eat it. I have heard women with child sometimes crave to eat coal. If I had a lump, I would try it.

  Servitude can be degrading, but at least provides food, warmth and light. Entertainment, even, for Mistress Buttermere owned a clavichord and often played pieces by Mozart and Bach. She knew I liked to sit on the top of the stair outside the music room and listen, even sometimes telling me who the composers were. Her fingers were swollen and heavy with rings, but could still coax magical music from a keyboard.

  Here there is nothing to do in the dark but lie on the straw, listening for the rat who comes scrabbling in the night. In the early days I feared he would attack me, but he is not bold enough. My hunger makes me wonder about trying to catch him. What would his flesh taste like? I remember Thomas talking of the Romans considering dormice a delicacy. A country dormouse would be wholesome. Yet a London rat will live on unspeakable waste, and I would need to eat the creature raw. I have not sunk that low. Yet.