I knew then that it was an answer to my prayers, to the nights I have spent on my knees asking why our family has suffered such humiliation: it was my fault.
And I see it now. God has a plan for each and every one of us He creates. His plan for Josiah was a brilliant one, set at the centre of court. But that plan did not account for one factor: Hetta.
Hetta befriended the gypsy and I, weak again, gave in to her demands. My sin looms so large that it has changed the path of my life.
This idea haunted me all the way home. As I walked through the swirling leaves, as I tasted the musk of late October on the air, I kept asking myself why I had done it. I had three boys. Three! My mother would have given her right arm for only one. But I had wanted a girl. Another Mary to sit with me and walk with me, a mirror of my own childhood springing up at my feet. And wrong as it may be, I want her still.
When I returned to The Bridge, I went straight to the nursery. Lizzy sat in her rocking chair beneath the trailing vines, darning one of Hetta’s torn stockings.
My child wore the gown of olive silk I commissioned for the royal visit. It becomes her well, bringing out the coppery tint to her hair. She let me kiss her, but I could not keep her for more than a moment. As soon as my lips met her cheek she was off again, running between her companions.
It hurt me. I put my soul in peril, I paid the price of my future – and I receive one meagre kiss.
I sat down heavily beside Lizzy. ‘I hope it will not be seen as odd for Hetta to spend so much time with these boards. She never was an ordinary creature and now . . .’
‘No, no.’ Lizzy snipped off a thread. ‘Don’t go fretting about that. It’s only natural she should take to the things, not having any friends of her own age. She doesn’t have to speak to the boards.’
Hetta is not like me. That is not her fault, of course, but every difference I find is a little chip in the dream I had of my daughter. The close confidante, who was to be the repository of all my secrets, can confide none of her own. She isn’t at ease with me. I am not to her what I am to the boys.
Perhaps it is part of my punishment. A check to my hubris. With herbs and ancient words I can create a daughter, but I cannot make her love me.
‘Remember,’ Lizzy went on, turning the stocking over, ‘when you were Hetta’s age, you could run about with poor Mary. God rest her soul.’
‘And after that, I always had you to talk to, dearest Lizzy.’
She smiled up at me, her old gums dotted with black. ‘Though there were some who thought that unfit, weren’t there, because of my station? So you see, there’s nothing strange about Hetta playing hide and go seek with wooden people.’ She began a new stitch. ‘What I do find strange is Mr Samuels, disappearing so suddenly like that. Have you found no trace of him in town?’
I shook my head. Mark and Jane were right: the shop simply is not there. I cannot see how it has happened, but it has. Even that man and his premises have fled from us. I am stuck with my cursed treasure.
Lizzy sighed. ‘A mystery. I thought maybe there was news of Samuels, when the master rode off so fast.’
I jerked round to face her. ‘Josiah is gone?’
‘Aye. Didn’t you know?’
‘I was at church.’
‘Oh.’ Without looking at me, she threaded her needle. ‘Rode out about an hour ago, he did.’
Foreboding hit me, as keen and sharp as the wind hurtling over the hills. ‘Fast?’
‘Aye.’ She pursed her lips. ‘As fast as if the hounds of hell were on his tail.’
I waited in the Great Hall. The day wasted fast. Indigo clouds blushed pink underneath as the sun slipped away. Blackbirds chimed until the light extinguished, then the owls began to mourn.
At long last the gravel crunched. I heard voices in the stable yard and the tramp of feet. Moments later Josiah strode through the door, splashed with mud.
I flew to him. ‘Josiah, what is it? What has happened?’
His look was guarded. He removed my hands from his cloak and held them at a distance. ‘The boy has been found.’
‘Merripen?’
‘Yes. It was our own man, our own Mark, who found him.’
‘Thanks be to God.’
‘Finally, I have some news to send to the King.’
What a blessed relief to picture that evil spirit captured and shackled! I had never supposed that the devil would sup with a child so young. I remembered Merripen’s eyes, dark and blazing like a brazier of flaming pitch, and it struck me cold.
Foolishly, I thought that would be an end to it; that Josiah and I could go on as before. But he released my hands and swung off his cloak, turning from me as he said, ‘The boy will be confined in Torbury St Jude tonight, and tried tomorrow. I shall attend.’
‘Tomorrow is All Saints’ Day.’
‘The day after then,’ he said irritably.
I knew I should leave it there; congratulate him and flee from his sight. But a raw uneasiness in my soul compelled me to blurt out, ‘What will happen to him?’
He stared at me. His pointed beard made his mouth appear mocking, somehow cruel. ‘That will depend on the verdict.’
Guilty. It must be guilty. Josiah will not let them find anything else. His reputation stands on the line. If he cannot catch and punish the miscreant who offended the Queen in his own house, his shame will know no end.
My throat grew tight, tight enough to choke me. I remembered the man who had his ears cut off. ‘A traitor’s death, then? Will they truly bestow that upon a boy?’
His crack of laughter made me jump. There was no mirth in it. ‘A boy! Can a human boy do that to an animal? Oh no, my lady. Mark my words, he is possessed of a demon.’
‘Indeed he must be. At that young age!’ He is only a little older than my Hetta. I pictured him, so short beneath the scaffold. How thickly the rope would pile around his small neck, how smooth and flat his little stomach would lie beneath the blade. A child hung, drawn and quartered. ‘Do you expect the King to show mercy?’
‘Mercy?’ He spat the word out like a thing vomited. ‘Would you extend mercy to the fiend?’
I stuttered. ‘No . . . I do not know. Deeds so wicked cannot go unchecked, and yet . . . Does not something within you baulk at this? Do you not feel the execution of a child will hang heavy upon your soul?’
‘In nowise.’ His eyes glittered. I did not like the thread of steel in his voice. ‘I am not responsible for this. The only person responsible is you.’
It hit me like a blow to the face.
‘You let him into the stables, you put the horse in his way. This would not have happened were it not for you.’ His glare pinned me to the spot. ‘If anyone has that boy’s blood on their hands it is you, Anne, and you alone.’
LONDON, 1866
The change in the texture of air was remarkable. As the carriage trundled through familiar streets, smog descended in a tobacco-coloured mist. Black smuts flecked the windows. Elsie tasted the biting scent of sulphur upon her tongue long before it invaded her nostrils.
Soon the factory materialised: one tall chimney flowing with smoke and behind it rows of slanting gables, like the dorsal fins of sharks. Iron railings enclosed the courtyard. Through the rails Elsie glimpsed a wagon delivering deal wood for the splints. A boy, one of their sellers, emerged from the building and walked past the horses with a tray bobbing at his waist. The merchandise seemed so much bigger than the boy himself.
A man opened the gates and they drew into the factory complex. Elsie heard metal clang behind her, locking her in. After The Bridge, this felt like another world. Alien. She looked with the eyes of a stranger at the place that had once been her home. Through the steamed factory windows she could see the cutting machine glinting like a hay knife as it whisked back and forth; sparks from the petulant matches that would not co-operate. The splinters of light hurt her eyes. She had to look away.
‘Right,’ said Jolyon as they stopped in the yard. ‘Let us get you
up to the living quarters and rested. You must be exhausted after that journey.’
‘But what about the girls from Fayford? When their wagon arrives they will need to be settled in and shown what to do.’
‘Miss Baxter will take care of all that. Who do you think has been running around after the apprentices since you married?’
It nettled her, to be supplanted. This was hers. She might marry and move away, but she would never let go of the factory – she would always be mistress here. God knew she had earnt that title. ‘Well, Miss Baxter might look after them today, for I really am fatigued. But once I have rested I will start helping again.’
Jolyon chewed his lip.
‘It will benefit me,’ she explained. ‘I need to be where there is noise and bustle and life. At The Bridge I feel like a piece of taxidermy underneath a bell jar.’
‘We shall see. But first a cup of tea and a lie-down.’
She could not argue with that.
Firmly secured on Jolyon’s arm, she alighted from the carriage and turned left, past the dipping rooms and drying sheds, towards a small, grey-brick house commanding the west side of the courtyard. Dusty, frowzy women with tassels missing from the fringes of their shawls nodded their heads in acknowledgement as she came by. A fine white vapour, garlicky and pestilential, arose from their shoulders.
‘The windows could do with a scrub,’ she told Jolyon, as she regarded the house. ‘Look what happens when I leave you alone. I dread to think what kind of bachelor’s den I am walking into.’
He smiled. ‘You will find it just the same. The same as it always was.’
The front door squealed as Jolyon’s housekeeper opened it up to them. Mrs Figgis had a plump figure and a pudding face – no trace of cheekbones under the large pores on her skin. Her unwieldy bosom went before her. Elsie wondered how her apron stretched over it. She tried not to stare as she entered her old home.
Mrs Figgis was a new fixture, hired after Elsie’s marriage to do those womanly tasks she had always taken care of. Elsie was pleased to see how kind and motherly the woman acted, ushering them into the parlour, where the fire was already simmering, beneath the coals before she hurried out to fetch the tea tray.
It was a strange reversal of Elsie’s arrival at The Bridge. She found the mantelpiece clean. The windowsills, too. That was no small feat for a servant working in the yellow cloud of a factory. Thin powder – not precisely dust nor sand – got into everything, even under your nails and inside your nose.
‘I stand corrected,’ she said as she drew her bonnet off and sat before the fire. ‘You are being cared for extremely well.’
‘Indeed I am. Mrs Figgis is a treasure. Not, of course,’ he added swiftly, placing his hat on a stand and taking Elsie’s from her, ‘that she makes up for having you around.’
‘Flatterer. I don’t believe a word.’
Leaning back, she glanced around at the parlour. Jolyon was right – it was all the same. Faded wallpaper with a repeating pattern of rose bouquets, a few well-chosen ornaments on the shelves and crocheted antimacassars draped over the backs of the chairs. The usual chemical smell of the factory, heightened by her absence from it. The room was the same. Only Elsie had changed.
She could not help but notice how small everything was, after The Bridge: the chairs too close together, the fire feeble and insufficient. As if she had grown too large to be contained in such a place.
Mrs Figgis brought in the tea with some bread and butter, before tactfully leaving them alone. Elsie raised the cup to her lips. There was a chip missing from the rim.
‘I want you to take a drop of laudanum and sleep for the rest of today,’ Jolyon told her. He picked up a slice of bread. ‘Tomorrow, I shall make enquiries about your treatment.’
She nearly dropped her cup. ‘I saw a physician at The Bridge. He said I was well enough to travel.’
‘That is not a full recovery, though, is it?’
‘I will admit that I am still weak, Jo, but I don’t require more than rest and a glass of wine a day.’
‘You have had a nervous shock. It does not do to let such episodes pass unheeded. The physicians have all manner of therapies these days that can soothe you – steam inhalations, cold sitz-baths.’
She sipped the tea, but it was sour in her mouth and hurt when she swallowed it down. ‘I thought we agreed. I was not . . . It was all a ghastly joke.’
‘Yes.’ Jolyon chewed his bread and butter, purposefully avoiding her eyes. ‘I am not implying otherwise. But it is still a nasty blow to the nerves. And together with all the rest – Rupert passing, so suddenly, like that.’
‘Jolyon—’
‘And now look what has happened! The loss of your child. It would be unnatural if it did not shake you up. There is no shame, you know, in receiving help. Just a little something to steady your nerves, reanimate your spirit.’
‘I know that.’ She set her cup down on its saucer. ‘But it’s quite unnecessary. Please do not waste your money. I’ve dealt with things like this all my life.’ He opened his mouth to speak, but she got there first. ‘This is what happens to me, Jo. I trust people and they abuse that trust. It is time I pulled myself together and learnt from it.’ She realised she was shaking. Hurriedly, she folded her hands in her lap.
‘At least,’ he said gently, sitting forward in his chair, ‘accept some help in “pulling yourself together”. It is my duty, Elsie, as your brother, to look after you. You are so brave that I often forget you are a member of the fairer sex. You were not built to withstand these things.’
She sat on her retort, because she knew it would hurt him. At twenty-three he wanted to feel grown, the man in charge.
‘You have already discharged that duty.’
‘No, I have not.’ His brow contracted – he was serious, now. ‘I am worried for you, Elsie. We need to be careful. After . . .’ He struggled for a moment, his throat working. ‘After what happened with Ma.’
Her eyes locked on his: his hazel irises, flicking minutely from side to side, and the shrinking pupils. But she could not pierce deep enough. He gave nothing away.
She realised she had forgotten to breathe. ‘Ma?’ she whispered.
‘Because of how she went at the end.’
‘You were too young to remember that.’
‘I assure you, I recall it vividly.’
How could she hide it – this unaccountable trembling in her fingers, the twitching deep in her bones? ‘I didn’t know. I am sorry for it, Jo. It was a terrible time. I would have spared you the memory.’
There was a long pause.
‘I remember,’ Jolyon said, carefully, ‘how bad she got. Seeing goblins and devils. And then, at the end, such terrible stuff. She used to whisper me over to her bed and accuse you of all sorts.’
‘Me?’
‘Oh, she was quite mad. I understood that, young as I was. But she was our mother, Elsie, and these things can be hereditary.’
Her face quivered back into life. ‘She had the typhus! A fever like that would send anyone off into Queer Street.’
‘Her confusion got worse with the typhus, but it didn’t start with it. You told me yourself. You said she’d been that way since Pa died.’
‘Yes. I did say that. Of course, the grief changed her. But she was not mad, exactly. At least, I don’t think so.’
Did people know when they were going insane? she wondered. Did they feel the weave of their mind ripping apart? Or was it like passing into a gentle dream-world? She would never know, for she and Ma had never discussed the subject. And if she were honest, back then, she did not care if Ma suffered – in fact, she rather desired it.
‘Is it worth taking the risk? Is it not better to see a doctor?’
A strange lethargy washed over her. What did Jolyon know about risks?
‘You cannot make the comparison, my dear Jo, but if you had known our parents better, you would realise that I do not share any characteristics with them.’ The old ache
lodged in her throat. ‘Nothing, do you understand?’
‘You do, Elsie. You cannot help it. They are always with us, in our blood, in our very being. Whether we like it or not.’
She shuddered. ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose they are.’
Her heart was beating too fast. It made her eyes cloudy, her lips dry. A faint singing started up. She could not tell if it was her ears, or the women working outside.
Daylight sifted in through the smog, prying at the curtains and splashing the tea tray yellow. The moment it touched her knee she stood, abruptly. Her cup and saucer rattled.
Jolyon stared up at her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. She pressed a hand to her forehead. It was slick with sweat. ‘Forgive me, Jo. I’ve come over terribly unwell. I think I had better go and lie down.’
January passed into a raw, wet February with wind shrieking over the factory buildings, blowing smoke from the chimney in a diagonal stream. Elsie scarcely noticed the days go by. Whether it was the sleeping draughts prescribed by Jolyon’s doctor or the red lavender tincture she took in her wine every evening, she felt a sense of cushioned well-being, detached from day-to-day cares.
She made rounds of the factory, but she had no real responsibilities. She could idle past the dipping room and watch the boys paddling a phosphorescent mixture on the stove. Frigid gusts of wind carried the fumes up over the gates and out into the thicker smog of London. Occasionally her nostrils found snatches of the sulphurous odour, but it did not trouble her as it used to do. The scent was a pinprick, a little jolt, rather than a knife blade.
When it grew too cold to peer through steamed-up windows, she would enter the factory proper, where the splints were made. Here she moved and breathed freely, a fish put back in water. The steam, the whirr of the machinery, the woodchips and factory chatter were all as familiar to her as Jolyon’s voice. She looked down on her employees, dashing to and fro, and the seething glitter of the saw, and felt she had been resuscitated. Brought back to life.
By March she was restored and had begun to mentor the three young girls she had rescued from Fayford.
The Silent Companions Page 18