An Almond for a Parrot

by Dray Wray

  She took off her shift and stood before us in all her voluptuous beauty, then eased herself onto his erect pole.

  ‘Ride a cock horse,’ she sang moving up and down, ‘we goes up to town to marry me, into the grave to bury me.’

  He threw his head back and groaned as she began to fade from him. I walked to where he was sitting and put my hand once on his member. ‘Mary,’ he screamed, and exploded into the empty air.

  There was a scraping of chairs for now the apparition could be seen dangling above the table from the rope about her neck, turning round and round, her face a skull.

  Mr Luckham sprang up. ‘Help me cut her down, help me someone, for God’s sake…Mary!’

  She vanished and all the candles went out.

  ‘How did you do it?’ asked the duke the following morning. ‘Was she one of Queenie’s girls? Or an actress? How did you smuggle her in?’

  ‘Your grace,’ I said, ‘if I had done so, that would be supposing I knew what you were going to ask of me.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said the duke, being forced into the uncomfortable position of having to think logically. ‘I am a rational man. There must be an explanation, for there is an explanation for all things.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Madam, I asked you a question. Tell me how you smuggled in the woman.’

  ‘I didn’t, your grace.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that this…ah…Mary was really a ghost?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Balderdash,’ he said. ‘We will speak no more about this. You are forbidden ever again to do such a thing in my house – or anywhere else – while you are my mistress.’

  There became an even greater distance between us. One thing I knew for certain was that Sir Henry would spread the story of last night’s events – spread it further than jam on bread.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  When I was eleven, there was an earthquake in London. The world shook, crockery fell off the shelf, windows cracked and people ran into the street, screaming that this was the punishment of the Lord. Childishly, I found comfort in the rumbling of the earth. The notion that there was a force greater than that of petty men and petty women pleased me. In the days that followed the earthquake, street criers announced that the sins of London were responsible for the terrible calamity and the end of the world was nigh. If I believed in a vengeful God, which I feel blessed not to, I might have thought that what happened next was, like the earthquake, perhaps just punishment for my sins.

  I was at the height of my notoriety, for Sir Henry had embellished the events of the duke’s dinner party and cast me in the role of sorceress. Avery was seen more often in London, in the company of the countess and her mother, and whether the story reached him I never knew, but I became aware that he avoided me whenever we met socially. On more than one occasion his seeming disregard for me almost stripped me of my confidence. It mattered little to me that near every man in London longed to spend a night with me if the one man I wanted made it clear every time we met that he had no desire to be in my company. No matter how I tried to approach him, he was always careful that we were never alone, and at the first opportunity he would make his excuses and leave. That he was so distant made the assemblies, balls and routs torture, for I was certain that whatever love he once had for me had turned to loathing. Many times I caught his eye and wondered what he was thinking, what those blue eyes saw. He didn’t look at me with admiration as the other gentlemen did, more, I would say, with curiosity as if he was trying to find something in me he had lost.

  Sir Henry Slater called most days while I was at my toilette, to relate all the gossip he had heard. One morning, a month or more after the dinner party, he said, ‘My dear, you have to put an end to it – you positively do, I insist.’

  ‘An end to what?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t heard? Your duke is infatuated with a certain Dolly Kemp, a young actress, rather lusty in shape. If not elegant she has no noticeable defects apart from the largest bosoms ever to appear on stage. Black hair, fine skin and even finer arched eyebrows.’

  ‘So you have met this Dolly?’

  ‘Alas, yes. I went backstage to see Garrick and unfortunately I entered the wrong dressing room. My eyes are still recovering from the sight therein.’

  ‘Tell,’ I said.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Tell,’ I said again, most amused.

  ‘Miss Tully, it is serious.’

  ‘I take it she is in the play that we saw last week at Drury Lane. Come now, I can’t fire my pistol at him without a ball shot of knowledge.’

  ‘As you are so insistent, I suppose I must be candid. I found his grace already lost in her bosom and well mounted. She cried out, “Oh, sir, it’s so big!”’

  ‘What exquisite delight!’ I said, giggling. ‘Was it in pleasure or pain?’

  ‘She looked to me,’ said Sir Henry, ‘as if she was well stretched in that department.’

  What surprised me most about this revelation was that I felt not a flicker of jealousy, rather, I wondered when he would tell me that my position had been usurped.

  So it was I set off that evening in high spirits, to meet the duke at Drury Lane. The roads being uncommonly empty, my carriage arrived ahead of time and I dismissed my coachman. I was on the point of entering the theatre when a woman approached me.

  She was dressed in what looked like borrowed clothes. They ill fitted her slight frame. Her face was covered in a thick mask of white powder with two rosy cheeks painted on this blank canvas. A profusion of patches were spotted here and there.

  ‘Tully, it’s me,’ she said. ‘Have I changed so much?’

  ‘Flora,’ I said. I didn’t know what else to say, for she looked as if all the silliness of her had been drained away through a sieve of cruelty.

  ‘You’re quite the lady,’ she said.

  Her vacant eyes darted this way and that. I thought she was drunk, for I could smell alcohol on her breath and, although there was a chill in the air, there were beads of sweat on her forehead.

  ‘I have been robbed,’ she said, ‘and I haven’t the means to pay for the hackney carriage.’

  I brought out a coin and handed it to her. As she took it, I noticed her fingernails were bitten to the quick. I felt an overwhelming sadness to see the catastrophe of her life and how it had unravelled into this thin painted creature. I remembered her arriving at the fairy house in the earl’s carriage, with diamonds in her hair.

  ‘Please,’ she begged, ‘would you come with me and explain to the coachman? Tish tosh! I know it’s silly, but he’s in a terrible rage and the sight of one as famous as you might calm him down.’

  I was wondering what to do when I noticed Avery Fitzjohn coming towards me with a party of friends. On his arm was a lady of quality. I was so startled to find myself in such close proximity to him that I couldn’t even greet him. The lady lifted her nosegay and looked at Flora with an air of disdain. Avery bowed and seemed on the point of saying something to me when his companion pulled him away.

  Flora was still waiting for me and so I walked with her to the hackney carriage, grateful to have a reason not to be in the foyer of the theatre with Avery and his disdainful lady. I thought little of where we were going, though I noted that beside the hackney carriage was a private coach, its windows blacked out. As I drew near to it, the door of the coach opened and I felt a blow that echoed through my whole body. Then was darkness.

  I came to to find myself bound and propped up in the coach as you would a parcel. There was no sign of Flora, only my husband, Captain Spiggot, who sat opposite me with a self-satisfied smile across his face.

  ‘Madam, we meet again,’ he said, ‘and this time, unlike in Bath, I am taking you, my whore of a wife, home.’

  ‘I don’t understand why you persist in this claim to me.’

  ‘Because I want to consummate our marriage and share the joys of your inheritance which I believe are rightly mine.’

>   I laughed at him. ‘Inheritance? What inheritance?’

  ‘The legacy your grandfather left you – it was common knowledge among your father’s cronies.’

  Finally, it dawned on me why this blockhead had pursued me.

  ‘My father,’ I said, ‘was like you – a braggart, a liar and a rogue. And my grandfather died penniless. Do you really believe, sir, that Mr Truegood would have sold me so cheaply if I was to inherit a fortune? You are a numbskull if you do. If I inherited anything, he would have made sure he spent every penny of it.’

  Captain Spiggot’s face slowly changed as he recognised the truth in what I had said. His eye twitched and his scar became more livid, and for a moment his face fragmented and became that of the spiteful boy. I regretted my hasty tongue, for his mood changed to one of fury.

  He took a small vial from his pocket, grabbed hold of me and tried to make me drink from it. I managed to spit out most of the liquid and such was his rage that he slapped me round the face.

  ‘If you do that again, my little harlot, I will severely punish you.’

  This time the liquid made its way down my throat and after that I can honestly say that I remember not one single thing and had no idea where I was taken. I became conscious that I was lying on a bed, naked and cold, though a part of me was warm – uncomfortably warm. I was being rocked violently, back and forth. I tried to move and found my arms, like my legs, were tied to the bedposts. My head hurt worse than it had ever hurt before and my vision was blurred. There were three Captain Spiggots looming over me – one pushing forward, one pulling back and one in the middle. All were grimacing. Only then did I come to my senses. I was aware of what he was about and knew I had no way of stopping him. His weapon was well on its way to claiming me and I tried my damnedest to dislodge him.

  He was at the height of desire, and my resistance fuelled it to such a degree that with a few more thrusts he had released himself and only then did these three disconnected images become a terrifying one as his pent-up fury spilt into me.

  ‘Your cunt is too loose for my liking,’ he said.

  ‘You have no right,’ I said.

  ‘I have papers that prove you are my property, madam, and, as such, I can do with my chattels as I see fit. And I see fit to fuck you.’

  He climbed off the bed, buttoned up his breeches and left the chamber.

  There were no candles and the bedchamber smelled damp, as if the place wasn’t lived in. I had a feeling that it had been borrowed for the occasion. I could hear voices, footsteps, the distant slamming of doors. In the darkness every noise made me tremble, and I was shivering by the time the door opened again. Captain Spiggot came in with a candle that he placed on a chair then stood at the end of the bed, examining me.

  ‘How much does a man pay to spend the night with you?’

  I didn’t answer him, but said, ‘Don’t you want your freedom?’

  ‘“What God hath joined together let no man put asunder.”’

  He unbuttoned and, without going to the bother of taking anything else off, climbed on top of me.

  Even now I find it near impossible to write about. There are some things that make your whole being shudder in revulsion. I remember desperately hoping to free my mind from my body, to stand well away from it, to close my eyes and not see what was happening.

  ‘I will break you as I break my horses,’ Captain Spiggot said.

  In that pursuit he was brutal indeed.

  I think my stillness and the absence of me made him wilt at the climax of this second assault. Or rather, I willed him to wilt and to my delight he did just that. He pulled out, cursing me, calling me every name that the vulgar tongue can think of. He went to where he’d left the candle, picked up something and came back to the bed. The shock of what happened next made me regret he had wilted at all. He held a riding crop.

  ‘This is what I do when a horse throws me,’ he said.

  He gave me six lashes for my breasts, six for my stomach, and six on my thighs. I could taste the blood. All of me stung – a sticky, bloody kind of sting. As he picked up the candle to peruse his work, the door opened and in walked Victor Wrattan. With him was Flora.

  ‘Is the deed done?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, once. But the whore just now put me off my stride.’

  ‘Naughty, very naughty, aren’t you?’ said Victor Wrattan. ‘I remember you in your father’s house, how much you wanted me when I put my tongue into your mouth and my hand upon your cunt.’ Tears filled my eyes. ‘You would have given yourself to me then and there, wouldn’t you? She would have done, Flora, wet with longing she was. But I like resistance, enjoy breaking a woman. She was a young girl with no virtue, no modesty, a born whore. The likes of you debase your sex and in no small part our own. She was looking at herself naked in the glass – and longing for this.’ He unbuttoned himself. ‘You can watch, my love,’ he said to Flora, who was shaking. ‘You would like that, wouldn’t you?’ From what I could see she was terrified. He paused, looking at her. ‘You wouldn’t think she was once a beauty, would you?’

  I wasn’t the first and, alas, I won’t be the last to be used this way, yet for all his savagery I knew he would never own the soft place in me. He would never find the pleasure garden, he would never know heaven in the eyes of a woman. The two of them would only carry the echo of their cruelty, nothing more. I closed my mind and words rolled over me. This small thing called flesh would recover, I would live. I would never take this man to ruin me, I would never take this man to humiliate me, I would never take this man.

  They left me in that freezing room with no covers, tied down, my body raw from the use of the riding crop, the mattress sodden where I had pissed myself. There was one candle. I turned my face to the wall and it was in the light of that candle that I first saw the rat and the glint in its eye.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  The rat sat on a chair, cleaning its whiskers. And then it was as if Mr Crease was with me. He clicked his fingers.

  ‘Are you listening?’ he said. ‘Great seers, and by that I mean mighty ones, can borrow the sight, but not the hearing, of an animal.’

  How had it worked with Shadow? Barely conscious, I fought to stay awake, to concentrate on the creature.

  ‘Rat,’ I said, softly, ‘please…may I borrow your eyes?’

  It stopped and looked in my direction. I stared into those gimlet globes and held the gaze until I felt it reel me in. The candle must have gone out for all was blackness. I became aware that my vision seemed split: one eye could see a shape stretched out on the bed, the other eye was watching the floor. The strangeness of the alternate views made my senses wobble. I had ignorantly believed that a rat would have clear sight, but I was looking at a greyish-blue, blurry abyss filled with indefinable shapes. Was that really me – purple, swollen? We were moving and I had no idea where we were or what we were looking at. Ahead was the glint of…something. I decided it must be a thimble, yes, a thimble, of that I was certain, and over there, a piece of silver brocade fabric. Out of it a spider emerged to scuttle on its way. There were more rats and there was nothing I could do; I was at the mercy of this creature whose sight I had borrowed. The rat might have lent me its vision but it had not lent me its will. Shadow was a spirit dog, susceptible to my thoughts. Not so this very much alive rat. How would my sight ever be returned to me? Where were we now? Behind the skirting?

  I had to rely on my own hearing. There were sounds outside the chamber. I kept my body still as a soft tread approached. It must be Flora. I sensed she was near the bed.

  ‘Tully,’ she whispered. ‘Tully…’

  I was about to speak when I heard her scream. Then came a hard collection of military steps, they clattered up the stairs and marched to where Flora was. The voice of my enchanting husband echoed in the bare room.

  ‘Shut your bone box for God’s sake! What the…’

  I heard him stumble back, a chair thudding to the floor.

  ‘She is dead,’ h
e said.

  I kept my breathing as shallow as possible. Every inch of me waited for a rough hand to prod me. To my surprise there was none. The rat opened its eyes once more and we were back in the chamber. I could just make out foggy, grey objects. I tried to understand what it was that we were looking at and finally I saw a pair of boots. I felt the warmth of breath on my neck. Someone was leaning over the bed.

  ‘Lord, she is dead,’ said Wrattan.

  A pair of shoes passed uncomfortably close to my host.

  ‘She can’t be,’ said Captain Spiggot. ‘Hell! What now, Wrattan? Are you sure she is dead?’

  I expected to be discovered and punished further for this deception.

  ‘Don’t touch her,’ said Flora. ‘Just look at her eyes – they’re white! Come away from her.’

  ‘Quiet, you little bitch,’ said Wrattan. ‘I need to think.’

  Flora fell to the floor, not far from the rodent. It scurried, unnoticed, along the skirting board, feeling its way with its whiskers to the other side of the bed.

  ‘What shall we do with her?’ said my caring husband. ‘Bury her in a ditch?’

  ‘No,’ said Wrattan. ‘No – let me think.’

  I was becoming terrified that I might start to tremble but then the candle went out.

  Wrattan shouted, ‘Find another light, woman, and be quick about it.’

  My host could see in the dark – not well, but enough to sense that the two men were now standing away from the bed by the wall. The light returned and with it a sheet. Flora screamed. I could see what was upsetting her. Other rats had emerged from the skirting.

  ‘I can’t look at her,’ said Flora, laying the sheet over me.

  ‘I suggest we leave her,’ said my loving husband. ‘We need not concern ourselves. I was once told about a man who had been found, eaten by rats, and no one to this day knows who he was. With luck, the rats will perform the same service here.’