by Kate Forsyth
‘She drowned her baby,’ Bess said. ‘Her father’s a rich merchant. He sells cloth, I think. No-one kent she was pregnant. I dinna ken how she managed to hide it. They found the baby in the privy. She drowned it in her wash-basin and tried to throw it out. I think they’ll hang her for that too, though happen they’ll just send her to the madhouse. She’s as crazy as a loon, poor thing.’
Rhiannon could not help shuddering. Bess saw, and gave her a sympathetic look.
‘What does hung, drawn and quartered mean?’ Rhiannon asked suddenly.
‘Do ye no’ ken?’ Bess asked in surprise. ‘Och, it’s what they do for traitors. They hang ye till ye’re almost dead, then they gut ye while ye’re still alive, and then they cut ye up into quarters and throw the parts o’ ye to the four corners o’ the city, for the dogs to fight over. I havena heard o’ it being done for years and years. No’ since afore I was born, at least.’
Rhiannon pressed her face down into her knees, within the circle of her imprisoned hands. Bess touched her arm in quick sympathy, but Rhiannon did not respond. She was afraid she might weep, or laugh, or throw up, or shriek, if she moved. Hung, drawn and quartered. No-one had ever told her that was the fate she might have to face.
‘Are ye all right?’ Bess whispered. ‘What’s wrong? Do ye feel sick? The smell from that bucket is enough to make anyone throw up!’
Rhiannon managed to nod her head.
‘Here, hold this to your nose,’ Bess said, taking a little bottle from her basket. ‘It’s lavender. It’ll help.’
Rhiannon reached out to take it, but could not manage with her hands locked together with the thumbscrews. Bess held it to her nose for her.
‘Thank ye,’ Rhiannon managed to say.
‘Och, that’s fine,’ the girl said awkwardly and put the bottle away.
They were silent after that, Bess sensing that Rhiannon did not want to talk. The hours crawled past. Rhiannon found herself getting more and more uncomfortable. The ground was bitterly cold, damp and very hard, and no matter how she sat or lay down, her imprisoned hands tortured her. Her thumbs were now red and swollen, and throbbed incessantly. She was hungry and thirsty too, and tormented by a constant crawling sensation on her skin, an itch that she could not scratch.
‘Lice,’ Bess told her. ‘The smocks and blankets are full o’ them. That’s what I have the lavender oil for, to put on the bites.’
Knowing the cause of the itchiness was no consolation. Rhiannon scratched wherever she could reach until her fingernails were bloody, but it did no good. The lice feasted upon her in high good humour.
Clarice the thief was one of the few prisoners not confined in some way. It did not take long for her to grow bored of exploring her toenails, and she began to prowl the room. First she tormented the mad woman in the cage, reaching through the bars to poke and pinch her. The mad woman began to wail, rocking back and forth, back and forth, until Rhiannon wanted to screech at her to stop. She was not the only one. Waves of unease rolled around the room. The woman in the stocks raised her head to look, but lacked the strength to crane it up for long and let it loll limply again. One woman hid her face in her hands and began to rock too, murmuring, ‘Make her shut up, make her shut up.’ Yet another tried to plug her ears with her fingers. Bess drew her shawl up around her ears and buried her face in her arms.
Clarice grinned and reached through the bars to tug at the mad woman’s matted hair. At once she shrieked like a banshee and leapt up, one hand clawing out through the bars and raking Clarice’s face. The thief was sent sprawling, her cheek bleeding. The mad woman laughed and laughed. Her high-pitched, hysterical giggle was weirdly infectious. Rhiannon had to cram her throbbing hands against her mouth to stop an answering chortle, and she heard a muffled snicker from somewhere on the other side of the room.
Clarice heard it too, and got up, her leathery face twisted with malice and hatred. ‘Who was that?’ she demanded. ‘Who just laughed?’ She prowled the room, prodding and kicking the chained women. ‘Ye think it funny, do ye?’
No-one said anything. Rhiannon herself hardly dared glance that way, in case Clarice turned her mean eyes upon her. She was in so much pain from her engorged thumbs now that even shifting her weight sent dizzying waves of pain through her, and she had no desire to try to fight the thief off again.
The merchant’s daughter was still rocking her bundle and humming a lullaby. She did not look up when Clarice stopped in front of her. Rhiannon felt Bess stiffen beside her.
‘Look at ye, ye loon,’ Clarice sneered. ‘Ye should be caged up too. Baby-killer.’
The girl did not look up, though her humming rose a little in pitch and volume.
Clarice bent and seized the bundled blanket and flung it away across the room. It unrolled and fell on the filthy floor. The golden-haired girl started to her feet, her hands flying to her cheeks, and screamed. It went on and on and on. Bess scrambled up and ran across the room, seeking to comfort her. ‘It’s all right, it’s all right, do no’ scream so, I’ll get it back for ye.’ Hastily she grabbed the blanket and rolled it up for her again, trying to thrust the bundle into the girl’s arms. The scream stopped, but the girl was only gathering breath to scream again, even higher and louder than before. Desperately Bess tried to calm her, but to no avail. Rhiannon covered her ears.
Then the door crashed open. Octavia loomed up in the doorway. Everyone shrank back, all except the merchant’s daughter, who was sobbing now, and tearing at her face with her nails, and the mad woman in the cage, who rocked back and forth on her haunches, muttering and giggling.
‘What is going on?’ Octavia demanded.
‘She took the girl’s baby.’ Clarice pointed at Bess. ‘I told her to leave the poor mad thing alone, but she’s a nasty piece, that girl, for all that she looks so sweet.’
Bess pressed back against the wall, her eyes dilated. ‘It’s no’ true,’ she stammered. ‘She did it, no’ me. I was just …’
Octavia stumped forward, cuffed Bess hard across the ear, seized her by the hair and dragged her towards the centre of the room, where a thick wooden pole ran from floor to ceiling. Bess began to scream and plead, dragging back against the grip on her hair as hard as she could, but Octavia was too strong. Despite all of Bess’s protestations, she was manacled and hung from a hook halfway up the pole, so that she could only stand on tiptoe. With tears pouring down her face, Bess tried once more to explain, but Octavia shrugged her massive shoulders and said curtly, ‘Ye interrupted my supper, girl. Ye’ve been here long enough to ken how much I hate that.’ She then shuffled back through the doorway, kicking aside the dead rat on the way.
Once the door was locked shut again, Clarice began to dance about, cackling in glee, and singing, ‘Rat-bait, rat-bait.’
Rhiannon took a deep breath, and lifted her iron-bound hands menacingly, saying in a low hiss, ‘Leave her alone, ogre-breath, else I’ll smash your face in.’
Clarice stopped dancing and stared at her. ‘Octavia’ll come back in,’ she taunted.
‘Happen so, but by then ye’ll have no face left. Octavia canna give ye your face back.’ Rhiannon had grown up the runt in a herd of satyricorns. She knew how to look and sound cruel.
‘Happen no’, but she’ll kill ye for it.’
‘Nay, she won’t. She’s looking forward too much to seeing me being hung, drawn and quartered.’
Clarice thought about this for a moment, then sneered at Rhiannon, pretending she was not afraid. She gave one last half-hearted jibe at Bess, then went to sit back down again, all the while shooting Rhiannon looks of hatred through the strings of her lank, grey hair.
Rhiannon went over to Bess. ‘Ye all right?’
‘My arms …’ Bess whimpered.
Rhiannon saw that the strain of her weight was almost pulling the girl’s arms out of their sockets. She did her best to roll up her blanket, so Bess could step up onto it. Although it did not relieve the strain entirely, it did help a little and Bess murm
ured a miserable thanks.
‘I’m sorry,’ Rhiannon said awkwardly. ‘It all happened so fast.’
‘What could ye have done?’ Bess answered. ‘If ye’d tried to help, we both would be strung up here. It’s Octavia’s favourite punishment. I should’ve kent better than to interfere.’
‘I suppose so,’ Rhiannon answered, ‘but still …’
‘If ye could try to drive the rats away when they come, that’d help,’ Bess said urgently. ‘Please?’
‘Rats?’
Bess nodded, her eyes black with fear. She looked up the length of her arms to the top of the pole. ‘They come in there.’
Rhiannon followed her gaze, and saw a ragged hole at the top of the pole. Her heart sank. She returned her gaze to Bess’s pleading eyes and nodded. ‘Me do what me can,’ she said.
About half an hour later, Rhiannon was dozing at the foot of the pole, her head resting on her bent arms, when she was jerked awake by a high-pitched squealing and rustling. She raised her head and looked around her. There was a general sigh and groan as all the women chained to the walls shifted unhappily. Those who could stand struggled to their feet, while those who could not pressed themselves back against the stone.
‘The rats are coming,’ Bess said in terror, straining away from the pole. ‘They ken it’s supper-time. Get up, Rhiannon.’
The horse-thief also got to her feet, hauling herself up by her chain. She called to Rhiannon. ‘I’d get away from there, lassie. Those rats are savage beasties. They’ll gnaw off your face if they can.’
Now Rhiannon could hear the clatter of hundreds of small claws on stone. The squeaking became louder. Bess gripped her chain and twisted, leaning as far away from the pole as possible. Her face was drawn back in a grimace of terror and disgust.
Then, like a stinking torrent of sewer filth, rats poured out the hole and down the pole. There were hundreds of them, big black brutes with red beady eyes and twitching noses.
Rhiannon tried to swipe them away with her manacled hands, but there were too many and they were too fierce. Bess pressed her face into her shoulder, trying not to shudder too violently, as they used her head and back as a bridge to the floor.
The rats rustled through the straw, seizing any crumbs or old bones or cheese rinds they could find. They swarmed around the feet of the prisoners, who shrieked and kicked out at them, sending the rats tumbling. The horse-thief seized one by the tail and swung it against the wall, smashing its brains out and tossing it to the pack to be torn apart.
Still the rats kept coming, a heaving river of mangy fur and gaudy eyes. One stopped to smell Bess’s ear, and Rhiannon saw the flesh there had torn where Octavia had cuffed her. Bess shrieked and writhed, trying to shake it off. Rhiannon tried in vain to help her, but she was handicapped by the thumbscrews.
‘It’s no good, she shouldna screech and jump around like that,’ the horse-thief said. She shook her head in regret, expertly kicking away a rat that ran too close to her leg. ‘It’ll bite her – and once they smell blood …’
Just then Bess screamed in agony as the rat sunk its filthy fangs into her ear. The rats went into a frenzy. They all leapt at Bess, tearing at her flesh. Though she tried to fight them off, there were too many, and soon her face and arms and hands were streaming with blood.
‘We’ve got to do something, we’ve got to help her!’ Rhiannon cried, her face white with horror.
‘They’ll only attack ye too,’ the horse-thief said. ‘I’m sorry for the lass but there’s no helping it. She should never have crossed Octavia.’
Rhiannon could not bear to watch. She turned her back, tears streaming down her face as Bess’s screams grew shriller and more desperate.
‘A few months back there was a prisoner who tried to escape,’ the horse-thief said. ‘She grabbed Octavia and tried to choke her with her chains … Octavia tied her up to that pole and smeared goose fat all over her belly. The rats chewed their way straight through her entrails. It took a long while for her to die.’
Rhiannon pressed the back of her hands to her face. She had thought the satyricorns nasty and brutish, but none she knew of had ever done anything so cruel. Inside her she felt something shrivelling, and knew some last remnant of naivety or hope was withering away.
One prisoner was rocking and weeping. ‘I want to go home, I want to go home.’
‘Who doesna?’ the horse-thief said.
Just then the door slammed open. Light streamed in, dazzling their eyes, then abruptly the massive shape of Octavia blotted out the light. She was carrying a bucket and a ladle. At once the tide of rats turned and converged on her. She tossed them a ladle full of slops and they scrabbled over each other to reach it, biting and snarling.
Everyone pressed themselves against the wall, wary and silent. She went over to Bess, hanging limply in her chains, moaning, her face and arms and breast ravaged with rodent bites. A few rats still huddled about her feet, feeding greedily on the hunks of her flesh they had torn away.
Octavia regarded her thoughtfully, then stuck the ladle in the bucket so she could unhook Bess’s chains with her other hand. The rats lifted their pointy snouts to sniff at the aroma of soup so close above their heads, then went back to their feast. Octavia dragged Bess over to the wall and dropped her on a pile of damp, filthy straw.
‘Tsk, tsk,’ she said. ‘How very dreadful. I must write to the prison governor and let him ken our rat problem is as bad as ever.’
No-one said a word.
‘I do hope she doesna die o’ her bites,’ Octavia said, in a voice of mock concern. ‘The hangman’s a good friend o’ mine and he’s no’ paid unless they hang. If he’s no’ paid, he has no money to gamble with and that means I lose out too. Oh well. They probably wouldna have hung her anyway, stupid soft-bellied judges. All this talk about prison reform and the problem o’ crime, and they never think to ask me. I could tell them, the only way to stop thieving, murdering scum like ye is to hang ye. No repeat offenders then, is there?’
She gave her hoarse, wheezing laugh and went round the room, kicking aside any rat brave enough to sniff at her, ladling soup into each woman’s wooden bowl. Everyone slurped it down greedily.
Rhiannon’s thumbs were now so swollen she could barely grip her bowl. She was so hungry, though, that she endured the thudding pain, holding up the bowl to Octavia pleadingly. The gaoler grunted and splashed some soup into it, and Rhiannon lowered her face to it. The soup was thin and cold and greasy, and tasted like old dishwater, but Rhiannon managed to swallow some down.
Octavia dumped the dregs of the bucket in the straw for the rats to squabble over, turned the lantern down low, and waddled out, locking the door behind her. Rhiannon’s heart sank. The mouthful of soup had done nothing to quench her hunger, and she had hoped the gaoler would remove her thumbscrews for the night. Her thumbs felt like fried sausages, about to burst in a splatter of sizzling fat.
She rested her throbbing hands upon her knees and laid her head back against the wall, shutting her eyes. She could hear Bess moaning in the straw. Rhiannon crawled towards her, one corner of the blanket clenched between her fingers, and tried as best she could to cover the wounded girl. Her hands were now so painful she could do no more. Bess was shivering violently, and Rhiannon managed to lie down beside her, her hands held awkwardly in front of her.
In her cage the mad woman rocked back and forth, laughing and muttering and occasionally rattling her bars. The rats scuffled the straw about, squealing in greedy outrage. The merchant’s daughter rocked her cloth-baby, humming a low tuneless lullaby, while someone else muttered, ‘Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up.’
Rhiannon closed her eyes, every now and again pressing her face into her sleeve to blot away her tears.
The iron-bound door crashed open.
Rhiannon startled awake. Octavia stood in the doorway, a lantern in her hand. She shone it this way and that, irradiating one ghastly, filthy face after another, their startled eyes wide and starin
g through the tangle of their hair. Then the light found Rhiannon’s face and settled there.
Rhiannon shrank back, lifting her hands in their cruel metal contraption to shield her face. Her eyes felt gritty, her swollen thumbs pulsated horribly, and her skin was cold and clammy and crawled with lice. Worse than the hollowness of her empty stomach was the dreadful fear that the sight of Octavia provoked.
‘Got friends in high places, do we?’ the gaoler cooed. ‘Should o’ told me, dear. If I’d had any idea … hope there’s no hard feelings … come, let’s get ye out o’ those.’ She bent and unlocked the clamp, releasing Rhiannon’s thumbs. The sudden roar of pain was so intense Rhiannon almost fainted. Sick and giddy, she was lifted from the ground and a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. ‘Let’s get ye cleaned up and some hot food in your belly,’ Octavia said, in the same treacle-sweet voice. ‘There are guards waiting for ye, to take ye to the Tower. I’ll get ye your things. Come now, can ye walk?’
‘Why? What’s happened?’ Rhiannon stammered.
‘Ye’ve been given liberty o’ the tower,’ Octavia said. ‘Seeing as how ye’ve got powerful friends. And rich too. Rooms in the tower dinna come cheap.’
As she spoke, she half-carried Rhiannon from the Murderers’ Gallery. Rhiannon cast one dazed look back at Bess’s motionless body, before the door slammed shut behind her. Octavia took her down the hall and into a small stone cell where, amazingly, a fire irradiated warmth and comfort. A big tin hipbath stood before the fire, with a ewer of water and a hunk of coarse yellow soap. Octavia dumped Rhiannon in the bath, dragged off the lice-ridden smock, and poured the water over her head. Rhiannon cried out, for the water was cold.
‘Sit,’ Octavia said and pushed on Rhiannon’s shoulder till her legs buckled and she sat down with a plop. The water was lukewarm and only came halfway up the bath, so Rhiannon wrapped her arms about her shivering body and hunched there as Octavia scrubbed her head and back with the soap and a harsh-bristled brush. Suds poured down Rhiannon’s face and she shut her eyes, totally dumbfounded by this sudden change in her situation.