But Mrs Lamb used to jest about finding herself an elderly husband, since a widower with a family might think a woman past childbearing an advantage. He would get a mother for his brood in return for giving her security. With a white-haired gentleman possibly indifferent in health, she might not have to suffer him long.
I had scorned the thought. How different was it from slavery? Service in a good household seemed more honest. But need has made me see what tempted her: an old husband, with a limit to the time you would be tied to him. The memory of Chalke’s body brings bile to my throat. I do not wish ever to be touched by another man, not even a handsome one like Jack. But I think might submit to it, for Thomasina.
I cannot help remembering that Thomas is not an old man. Nor is he vain and immoral like Jack. I have that memory of walking with him in a meadow full of grazing cows, their jaws moving rhythmically and their eyes lazy with interest. Birdsong from the great oak in the centre of the field. Sunlight on spiders’ webs in the lush grass. There had been mud in his farmyard, as he had said there would be, but that proved it was not a foolish fairy tale.
I think now I could have tolerated marriage to Thomas, especially if it meant keeping my daughter, for he might not have made too many demands on my body. Perhaps I should have listened to Peg and tried to deceive him. With my bleak prospects now, perhaps I was wrong to be so stubborn.
It still seems strange to love this child so much, remembering her beginning, but I realise I would do anything for her. To make her thrive, we tried dripping gruel into her tiny mouth, prepared by our kind neighbour, but she puked up the mess and howled instead for milk. To live, she needs a wet nurse, but there is no money, and there will be a limit to Nellie’s charity. I rage against the unfairness of a world where I am forced to give up my darling child. To never see her first steps. Never hear her first words. Never read a story to her. All because I am poor, and disgraced.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
‘’Tis time, Hannah.’ Peg struggles up from the straw.
‘Must I take Thomasina to that place?’
My friend strokes my face with her calloused hand. She is as close to breaking as I am. It is a cruel thing to do and I am filled with furious tears. But I have nothing for my daughter but love. My gown is a rag and my boots squelch with every step. I have no work and cannot feed my child, or myself. I must do this, though the unfairness of it tears my heart.
Part of me prays they will have no room, for I must take my chance with their lottery. We have been told the Hospital only accept babies under three months old, and not all of those, since there are never enough places. And it enrages me that in order to apply I must display my shame before idle people of fashion.
Peg and I trudge the slow mile from our lodging, shivering in the wind since both our ragged shawls are lapped around the baby. Yet these last moments with Thomasina speed past. Nothing is said as we walk, the squeak of snow underfoot, but Peg and I know I could never do this cruel thing alone. I remember the desolate woman I saw that day, with Jack, and know I must look as defeated as she did.
By the time we arrive and Peg raises the iron knocker and hammers it on the door, my eyes are sore and puffy. How can I trust this building, with curving perimeter walls that make it look like a vast prison?
Yet the maid who eventually opens the door looks ordinary enough.
‘Come,’ she says, as I step into an echoing corridor. Her voice is not unkind, but she makes Peg wait outside, which renders me numb and I follow where I am led as if sleepwalking.
We enter a grand room, but with the grit of sand under our feet. Someone wants to save the fine floors from dirt tracked in by the poor women standing, like me, clutching their babies.
On the walls hang huge paintings showing scenes from antiquity or the bible. Can that be Moses, among the bulrushes? A few bored-looking couples seem more interested in the pictures than what is happening to us. Two young ladies, escorted by an officer in flaring scarlet, pass a pomander back and forth, to save their delicate noses. They nudge one another as a woman in a lace fichu motions to me to put my hand into a linen bag.
Obedient, my fingers grope. The balls inside feel smooth, like the billiard balls back at the Buttermere house, but colour has neither shape nor texture. There is nothing to guide me. If I take out a white one, Thomasina can have a place. If a black one, I will be sent away. If red, I must wait to see if any of the chosen babies are rejected for being sickly. My child’s future hangs on a blind choice.
My fingers reject first one, then another, and the woman shakes the bag, to hurry me. I pull my hand out, then uncurl my fingers, almost afraid to look. White. I should be glad, but instead I sob. That I have fallen so far, when I did nothing wrong. That not only must I accept my fate, but am expected to be grateful for this charity.
Afterwards I remember intermittent things, some clearly, others hardly at all. A woman in a pristine apron scooping Thomasina from my arms and disappearing with her.
My hands shaking. My legs leaden.
‘She is taking the baby to the doctor,’ the first woman explained. ‘To make sure it is not diseased.’
Indignation flared, then died. Would I want Thomasina left where there was sickness?
Then I was led into yet another room, this one with carpets on the floor. At a desk sat a lady in a midnight-blue silk dress, a book open before her and a velvet pincushion by her hand. Gold spectacles were perched on the end of her nose and a thin gold band was on her finger. Her knuckles were swollen, but those hands had clearly never laboured, except perhaps with a tapestry needle. The skin was speckled like a brown hen’s egg, for she was an old lady. A gentlewoman, filling the years of her widowhood with charitable works.
She looked up from under the frill of her cap, her eyes the faded blue of dried lavender.
‘How old is the baby?’
‘Two weeks.’
‘Is she baptised?’
I shook my head. I would have liked her christened, if I had known how it might be done. ‘But I have called her Thomasina.’
The lady nodded and wrote in her ledger. Reading upside down, I watched her write Thomasina against a column of numbers with a pen that scratched on the paper. Then she copied the number onto a separate piece of parchment. Sprinkled sand over the inky marks. Delicately blew away the residue.
‘Our children are all baptised into the Church of England by a proper minister,’ she said. ‘In our own Chapel.’ Her eyes met mine. ‘When they are given a new name.’
‘She will no longer be called Thomasina?’ Peg had warned me, but the reality of losing my child – probably forever – without even being able to name her, was yet another injury.
The lady’s voice was patient, for she must have done this countless times. ‘Our rules protect the child from knowing its origins.’
I stared at the split in my boots and felt my eyes blur. My baby must be saved from knowing what a dissolute woman her mother has been. But how would I know her again, if I were ignorant of her new name?
‘If I were able to come for her one day…’ My voice faltered. If Thomasina had still been in my arms, I think I would have run from the building with her.
The lady’s voice sounded tired as she pointed from her ledger to the parchment beside it. ‘We keep a description of each child. Of what it is wearing when brought to us. Of any physical characteristics. Your daughter, for example, has that mop of dark hair. Unusual in a baby so young. Then we record the date she is accepted. And her age. All this helps identify her, should there be the need.’ She looked at me, expectant. ‘Have you a token?’
I stood silent. Bereft.
The lady’s gaze softened. ‘A button, perhaps? Or a scrap of your dress would do.’ Her fingers moved to the chatelaine at her waist, with its tiny pair of scissors, and I remembered the gingham square that Peg suggested I should bring. I fumbled it from my pocket.
‘A pretty pattern,’ the lady said, taking it, and I saw from her eyes she did
not mock. ‘You will always remember that and we will keep it with our records as a pledge. Between you and the Hospital.’ Then she took a long dressmaker’s pin from the cushion and secured the fabric to the parchment, before folding everything into a package.
I was grieved to relinquish the square, having treasured it all these years, but wanted to invoke my mother’s spirit to protect her granddaughter’s identity with that scrap from her old dress.
‘This billet will be sealed with wax before you leave and your daughter given a leaden tag, with a matching number, to wear throughout her time here. Then we could track her record back, should we need to. It is a very sure method.’
I could see it had been carefully thought through. Peg was right. These people meant well.
‘We will take proper care of your baby,’ the woman assured me, removing her spectacles and rubbing her eyes. ‘She will be raised as a God-fearing member of society. When she is ready, she will have the skills to lead a useful life.’
‘But what will happen to her now, Mistress?’
‘All our infants go to wet nurses in the country until they are four or five, when they return here. The nurses are honest, clean-living women, and we have inspectors who check on them.’ She glanced at my hands, twisting as if wringing a cloth. ‘Have you heard of Master Hogarth? The famous artist, who died last year? Some of his works are on our staircase.’
‘I have seen his prints.’
‘Well, he was one of our inspectors in his spare time. As was his wife, Jane.’
I felt my eyes widen, for Master Hogarth was enormously respected.
‘And when she is four or five? What then?’
‘She will return here to be educated. She will be taught to read, though not to write. When old enough she will go into service.’
I tremble at the thought of her being at the mercy of an unknown family. Of a master like Chalke.
The faded eyes seemed to read my mind. ‘None of our girls are allowed into the households of single gentlemen. And if they are indentured to a married couple, the wife must sign her agreement to take the girl under her protection.’
That was more than I had expected.
Then the door opened. My baby was there. Was in my arms again.
‘Now you must say your goodbyes,’ the lady said.
My arms clutched the precious bundle, but after kissing her, murmuring that I loved her and shedding tears into her dark hair, I allowed them to take her. That place was her best chance, in case Chalke or his brother tracked me down and did me mischief. And there was always – I had to hope it – the possibility I could rebuild my life. That one day I might reclaim her.
It is almost impossible to drag myself away knowing Thomasina is left behind. For her sake I must somehow claw my way back to respectability. Find a way to be called her mother again.
I take one backward glance at those rows of windows, like judging eyes. Does she cry for me somewhere inside? Yet I have to place my hope in the Hospital, for there is nowhere else.
Peg is slumped close to the entrance and I see her lined face is as wet as mine. I do not know how we manage to trudge back to the cellar. Once, I expected to be free when the child left my body. No longer. I will never be free of my daughter while I live.
Back in our noisome room, Peg wipes her eyes roughly with her sleeve as if to signal further grieving is something we cannot afford.
‘The tapster at The Red Lion wants a woman for rough work’, she says. ‘The pay is next to nothing, of course. But get in quick tomorrow, before anyone else gets it.’
I nod, not yet steady enough for speech. Is that not the inn where Thomas goes every month? But I will go there tomorrow, early. I must look forward, not back. I must get my strength back. Look fit for a decent day’s work. Try to save up for a more respectable-looking gown.
I thought I would want to forget, for I have a hard and stony road to travel, like that poor man in The Pilgrim’s Progress. But how can I forget, when my breasts ache to nourish my child and my mind struggles to picture where she is, and the stranger who tends her, instead of me?
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Nellie brings two cabbage leaves, scavenged from the market, for my aching breasts. Now that it is too late, with bitter irony, my breasts are engorged with milk.
After Nellie has gone, I nibble their green edges, pick out the stems and crunch them between my teeth. Then I slip the remnants inside my bodice. Hunger is humbling. Given the chance, I would lick out a stranger’s dish and be glad of it. You see starving people in doorways, hollow-eyed and grey as wraiths, looking like the spectres they are destined to become. I will be one of them if I cannot find a way of putting food regularly into my body. My welcome job at The Red Lion provides scraps of food, if not yet the opportunity to show I can cook. But I need to look healthy and strong again. To look employable in a respectable household.
My days are a haze of grieving, hunger and fatigue. Part of me wants to die in the night, for my heart has been ripped from my body. But the child I tried to destroy – that I expected to hate, as a reminder of the harm done to me – has become my world. I cannot abandon her to make her way in this uncaring city alone. I must find a way to get her back. To somehow protect and nurture her. To make a new beginning.
Yet will I even be allowed to try? Peg saw Jack in the market yesterday with two of the men who had been at the Chalke house, again wearing greatcoats that failed to conceal liveries underneath. And they were asking questions of the stallholders. I remember the expression on Jack’s face when he asked if I could write as well as read. We need to move away from here. As soon as we can.
Peg and I consult Nellie, who is drawing on her pipe and blowing smoke over her collection of sleeping infants. We have brought a bag of roast chestnuts to share, an extravagance Peg bought to try and cheer me. It is past their season and they are riddled with worm, but we are indifferent. The tiny creatures will be shrivelled by the coals and might provide useful nourishment.
We cram into the evil-smelling room, glad of the warmth from the fire.
‘We need some cheap lodgings, Nellie,’ I say. ‘Do you know of any? Somewhere discreet?’
‘Behind with your rent?’ Nellie sucks on her pipe and regards us, perched on the end of her bed and surrounded by the gin-quietened infants.
‘Someone is looking for me.’
‘The law?
I shake my head. ‘Men who wish me harm.’
‘A scrap like you?’ She draws on the pipe again, thinking. ‘Well, I expect I can ask around.’ She hooks a chestnut from the bag. ‘Don’t fret, Annie. I won’t go around blabbing.’
Two days later, she comes to stand in the doorway of our room.
‘I might have some good news,’ she says.
‘Have you found us somewhere?’ I have been skulking in our room, afraid to go out. Afraid someone might come and drag me away. To the river, maybe.
‘I did find a place, but there may be no need.’ She frowns at our cubicle, and its lack of comfort. ‘A young cove was sniffing around yesterday when Doggett was out thieving more brandy. The man asked if anyone knew of a pretty girl hereabouts with curling black hair. Ripe to drop a child.’
‘Did the feller say what he wanted?’ Peg is avoiding my eye.
‘Some tale about a long-lost relative. Not that I believed a word. Stared at me like I was made of dirt, he did. With eyes blue as poison bottles.’ Nellie steps inside and positions herself against the warm wall. ‘I didn’t fancy the look of him. And cannot abide nosy parkers, anyway. So I told him there had been such a girl, in one of the basement rooms, but she had died. And her child with her.’
My heart races. It must have been Jack. He knows I live around here. ‘Do you think he believed you?’
‘Why wouldn’t he? I have had enough practice needing to lie to men.’ Nellie frowns disapprovingly at our window, open despite the bitter cold. ‘So I demanded half a crown. To pay for laying out your corpse and cleaning your r
oom.’ She pulls her shawl closer around her shoulders. It is shabby, but of wool. ‘I told him the blood on the bedding and on the floor had been terrible. That the job needed to be done quick, because you was starting to stink. That a man had to be paid extra to take you away on a handcart, as the other tenants was complaining.’ She grins. ‘It worked, for he cleared off, looking green. I don’t expect he will be coming back.’ She frowns at the open window again. ‘He didn’t leave no money, though. Mean bugger.’
Suddenly I find I can breathe again and Peg lets out her own sigh of relief. Jack came to find me and will instead have reported my death to anyone interested.
We should be safe now and will not need to move. At least here we have Nellie’s friendship and grubby generosity.
But I wish I knew where the Chalkes are and if Sir Christopher did more than send a few constables round to be bookshop to curtail Twyford’s activities.
‘Does that mean you are staying?’ Nellie asks.
‘I think it does. But if anyone else asks,’ I lick dry lips. ‘Anyone at all. Please tell them the same. That I am dead and buried.’
Peg nods vigorously. ‘You did right, Nellie. There are people who would do us mischief, given the chance. That tale of yours should send them away for good.’
It is a relief to think they will have stopped searching for me and I am hidden in our room, bending sore fingers to another pile of bonnet straw, when Nellie comes tapping on the door again. She has brought the treat of a bowl of stewed tea with her.
‘You know what you said? That if anyone else asked after you, I should say you was dead?’
‘Yes, Nellie. I must stay out of sight. For several months at least.’
I sip the tea, savouring it in my mouth. Not caring that it is bitter and stewed. Soon I might be strong enough to do a full day’s work. To start saving up to go to that rag man and pick out a more respectable-looking gown. To work my way back towards being employed in some good wife’s home.
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