A Mother's Secret (3 page)

Belinda knew little of physical love but she was unafraid and ready to sacrifice her virginity and her reputation for the man who already owned her heart and soul. She reached up to touch his cheek, tracing the outline of his jaw with her finger. All the pent-up emotion of the past months, the denial and desire, had come to a peak and she knew now that there was no turning back. She knotted her hands behind his head, pulling him down so that their lips almost touched. ‘I will marry you in spirit and with my body, my dearest George. I love you and I’ll always be yours.’

The news that Captain George Lawson had been killed in a skirmish with the Afghans on the Khyber Pass came three months later. Prostrate with grief Belinda lay on the chaise longue in her bedchamber, but her eyes were blind to the striking beauty of the magnificent vista outside. Her heart was shattered into tiny shards and she knew she would never love again, but her eyes were dry and there were no more tears to shed. She had sobbed for two days, refusing food and only taking sips of tea.

She heard footsteps but she did not look round.

Mahdu knelt beside her, placing a tray of food on the brass-topped table at Belinda’s side. ‘You must eat something, baba. If not for yourself then for his sake. The Captain would not want to see you suffering so.’

Belinda barely heard the words as the strangest of sensations inside her belly made her snap upright. ‘I felt it move, Mahdu. My baby, his baby, it moved. My darling George isn’t completely dead. Now I know for certain that I have his child to live for and love.’

Mahdu attempted to smile but she was afraid. She took Belinda’s hand in hers, holding it as she had when her baba was a little girl and terrified of the dark. ‘You will have to tell the Colonel. He has to know soon, before you begin to show and the gossips begin to talk.’

Belinda closed her eyes, sinking back against the cushions. ‘I daren’t tell Papa. I’m afraid it will be the end of his career in the army. I can’t do that to him, Mahdu. What shall I do? Help me, larla. I’m scared.’

Chapter Two

Cripplegate, London, December 1872

The undertaker’s parlour was dark even at midday. The pale winter sun reflected off the snow outside, but the feeble rays barely managed to penetrate the grime-encrusted windowpanes. Cassy stood in the doorway clutching the tiny bundle wrapped in a tattered piece of old sheeting. She had made the short walk from Three Herring Court to Elias Crabbe’s funeral parlour on many occasions in the past but the onerous task of bringing the dead babies to their last resting place never grew any easier. She swallowed hard, biting back the tears that threatened to spill from her eyes as she cradled the infant’s body in her arms.

‘Not another one so soon?’ Elias eyed her with a sardonic curl of his thin lips. ‘What does the old soak do to them poor little mites?’ Despite his caustic words, he stepped forward to relieve Cassy of her burden. ‘That’s the third one this month and it ain’t Christmas yet.’

‘He was sick when he come,’ Cassy said, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. ‘Biddy said he was an eight-month baby and never stood a chance.’

Elias shook his head as he laid the pathetic corpse on the top of a gleaming mahogany coffin. ‘How old are you, Cassy?’

‘It’s me tenth birthday today,’ Cassy said proudly, although she knew it would be no cause for celebration in Three Herring Court; Biddy didn’t hold with birthdays and such.

Elias shook his head, tut-tutting. ‘It ain’t right that she sends you to do her dirty work.’

‘I tried to look after him,’ Cassy said, feeling that she was in some way to blame for the baby’s demise. ‘I sat up nights with him, mister. Honest I did, but he just seemed to fade away like he had no wish to live. Poor little chap never even cried, not like some of ’em that come to us; they never stop bawling for their mas, especially the older ones. It’s enough to break a person’s heart.’

Elias peeled back the none-too-clean sheet and his harsh features softened just a little as he stared down at the tiny child, who looked perfect in death like one of the marble cherubs Cassy had seen in the graveyard. ‘Any known parents for this ’un, Cassy?’

She shook her head. ‘Biddy never said there was. No parents and no money for the funeral. She said do the usual, Mr Crabbe.’

‘As it happens there’s a young woman died in childbed, her infant too, so this little fellow needn’t be on his own.’ He held out his hand. ‘Money in advance, as usual.’

Cassy put her hand in her pocket and took out a silver shilling. ‘There might be another before the day’s out, guv. Little Freddie has the whooping cough something awful. I tried blowing flowers of sulphur down his throat but it made him sick. I dunno what else to do for him and that’s the truth.’

‘It ain’t right. Old Biddy Henchard should be strung up by the thumbs for the way she treats the nippers in her care and that includes you, young Cassy.’ Elias lifted the small body, holding it in the crook of his arm. ‘I’ll just settle this young fellah in with his new ma and sister. I don’t doubt he’ll be better off underground with them than raised in that rat-infested hovel. You should get away from there, girl. Take my advice and grab the first opportunity to escape from that old besom’s clutches.’

Cassy shrugged her thin shoulders. ‘You may be right, Mr Crabbe, but I got nowhere else to go, and if I left who would look after them poor children?’

‘You’re a good girl, Cassy. It’s a crying shame you ain’t got no one to look out for you.’

‘Oh, but I have, Mr Crabbe. There’s Bailey, he’s like the best brother a girl could have, and I ain’t no orphan. I got a ma but she’s an Indian lady, so Biddy says. I think she’s in service somewhere in London, and she comes once a year on me birthday to give Biddy the money for me keep. She comes in the dead of night so I ain’t seen her yet.’

Elias slammed his hand down on the coffin lid. ‘You earn your keep and more. It’s a disgrace that’s what it is, and if I ever sees your ma I’ll give her a piece of me mind.’

‘She can’t help it,’ Cassy cried passionately. ‘I’m sure she loves me but she has to earn her living and she can’t keep me, but one day I know she’ll come for me and take me home to India where it’s hot and sunny all the time.’

‘It would explain your looks,’ Elias said, squinting at her as if seeing her clearly for the first time. ‘It’s obvious you don’t come from round here, and with that black hair and them big dark eyes you’ll either end up on the stage or on the streets. It’s a crying shame but there’s not much chance for anyone raised round here.’ He opened a plain pine coffin and laid the tiny body carefully inside.

Cassy backed towards the door. The smell from inside the box was worse than the combined stench of the sewers and the horse muck, which was almost knee-deep on the streets beneath a frosting of snow. ‘Got to go, Mr Crabbe.’ She opened the door and stepped outside into the bitter cold. She shivered as she felt shards of ice piercing the thin soles of her boots, and snow melt seeped through the gaps in the worn leather uppers. She wrapped her shawl tightly around her head and shoulders as she started towards Three Herring Court and the only home she had ever known.

‘Ho, wait for me, Cassy.’

She stopped, turning her head with a ready smile. ‘Bailey. I thought you was sent on an errand.’

He caught up with her in long strides, his muffler flying out behind him like a pennant and his cap askew on his head. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes sparkled like chips of sapphire in his tanned face. Despite the fact that his jacket was a size too small, frayed at the cuffs and clumsily patched at the elbows, and his trousers barely came to the tops of his boots, he exuded warmth and vitality. ‘I had to put some money on a fight for Biddy, and I went to the market and got something for you. It ain’t your birthday every day of the week and you’re into double numbers now.’

Cassy puffed out her chest. ‘I’m almost a woman, ain’t I, Bailey?’

Hooking his arm around her shoulders, he leaned down to plant a kiss on the tip of her nose. ‘You’re still my little sister, Cassy. Don’t grow up too soon.’

She smiled up at him but she could not quite shake off the sadness that had enveloped her since the unnamed baby boy had died in her arms. ‘I wouldn’t be here at all if it wasn’t for you,’ she murmured. ‘If it had been left to Biddy I’d have been dead long ago, just like them other poor little mites.’

He gave her a hug. ‘Don’t talk like that. We look out for each other and that’s the truth.’ He thrust his hand in his pocket and pulled out a bulging paper poke. ‘Your favourite,’ he said, grinning. ‘Peppermint creams.’

Cassy tried not to snatch but her mouth was already watering as she anticipated the sweet minty taste. She popped one in her mouth, closing her eyes in ecstasy. ‘Mmm,’ she breathed. ‘That’s so lovely. I could eat peppermint creams all day.’

Her shawl had slipped off her head and Bailey ruffled her hair. ‘Don’t make yourself sick, little ’un.’

Stuffing another sweet in her mouth, Cassy grinned as she offered him the bag. ‘Go on, take one. It’s no fun enjoying meself all alone and you did buy them with your own money.’ She hesitated, eyes widening as she watched him take one. ‘You didn’t use hers, did you?’

Bailey tapped the side of his nose, winking. ‘Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies, young ’un.’

Cassy reached up to cuff him gently round the ear. Her hand was too small to inflict pain and she did not intend to cause him harm, but she faced him like a small tiger. ‘Call me that again and you’ll get what for, Bailey Moon.’

He responded by lifting her off the ground and setting her on his shoulders. ‘Let’s get you home afore you catch a chill and end up in old Crabbe’s parlour.’

She wrapped her arms around his neck as he jogged along the slippery pavement. His hands were warm on the bare skin of her calves as he held her in a firm grasp, but she felt safe with Bailey. He had been there for her as long as she could remember. He had protected her from Biddy’s volatile tempers and drunken rages. It was Bailey who had looked after her when she almost died of measles, the dreaded childhood disease that had taken the lives of three of Biddy’s youngest charges. He had wiped her nose when she cried and bathed her knees when she took a tumble. Bailey might not be her blood brother but he was something more to her; he was her whole family and she loved him dearly.

He set her down at the top of the steps leading into Three Herring Court. ‘Best not look too happy when we go inside,’ he said, setting his cap straight. ‘Hide them sweets too, or she’ll have ’em off you quicker than you can blink.’

‘I’m ten, I ain’t daft,’ Cassy said, tucking what was left of her treat inside her ragged blouse. ‘Let’s hope she’s dead drunk by now and we’ll get a bit of peace.’

Bailey took her by the hand as they negotiated the slippery stone steps that were treacherous even in summer, worn down in the middle by the passage of feet over two hundred years or more. Three Herring Court was a narrow street lined with run-down buildings that had had many uses over the centuries but now housed small businesses: a printer of religious tracts, a walking stick maker, a milliner who eked out a meagre living by taking in gentlemen lodgers, a pie maker of dubious repute, a candle maker whose small shop filled the street with the smell of hot wax and tallow, and an oriental gentleman who professed to practise Chinese herbal medicine but everyone knew he ran an illicit opium den. The rest of the dilapidated buildings were crammed with tenants, twenty to a room in some cases, and at the very end was Biddy Henchard’s tall and narrow house which she advertised as a nursery and board school, but Cassy knew that the locals referred to it as a baby farm.

The front door groaned on rusty hinges as Bailey thrust it open. The stench outside was as nothing compared to the smell that assailed Cassy’s nostrils as she followed him into the narrow hallway. Festoons of cobwebs hung from the ceiling and the walls had shed flakes of limewash to cover the bare boards like a powdering of snow. The mixed odours of dry rot, baby sick and the rancid stench of cheap tallow candles were almost overpowered by the fumes of jigger gin and tobacco smoke, which made the whole house reek like the taproom of a dockyard pub. Echoing throughout the building the wailing of infants came to a sudden halt, drowned out by a roar from Biddy’s gin-soaked throat. ‘Shut up you little buggers or I’ll beat your brains out.’

Not for the first time, Cassy wanted to turn and run away from this nightmare place, but the sound of a child coughing and whooping put all thoughts of flight from her head. She hurried along the narrow passage that led into the one large room which served as a kitchen, living room and nursery for some of the youngest children. The bare floorboards were littered with scraps of half-eaten crusts, potato peelings and balls of fluff which might have been dead mice or simply an accumulation of dust and fibres. The furthest part of the room was in semi-darkness with a tattered curtain drawn across the window which overlooked the court, and it was here that the children were stacked in boxes and crates like goods in a warehouse. The smell of ammonia from urine-soaked bedding was enough to floor an ox, let alone a ten-year-old child. Cassy covered her nose and mouth with her hand, shocked by the noxious fumes even though she was used to living in such conditions. The air outside had seemed sweet in comparison to the rank odour in the nursery. She made a move to snatch Freddie from the wooden crate where he spent most of his time but Biddy, who had obviously been asleep in a high-backed Windsor chair by the range, rose to her feet clutching a gin bottle in her hand and she advanced on him with a ferocious snarl.

Cassy snatched the infant up in her arms as a paroxysm of coughing racked his tiny body. ‘Leave him alone, missis.’

Biddy squinted at her through half-closed eyes. ‘Where’ve you been?’ She took a swipe at Cassy’s head but her aim fell far short. She staggered drunkenly and would have fallen if Bailey had not caught her. He pushed her unceremoniously back onto her seat.

‘I think you’ve had plenty, missis. The drink will be the death of you if you ain’t careful.’

With the bottle still clutched in her hand, Biddy pulled the cork out with her teeth and took a swig. ‘I ain’t drunk enough. When I can’t see or hear them horrible brats, that’s when I stop.’ She closed her eyes, holding the bottle to her lips and tipping its contents down her throat as if it were water.

Cassy hitched baby Freddie over her shoulder, patting his back in a vain effort to help him breathe. ‘He ought to see the doctor,’ she whispered. ‘I dunno what else to do, Bailey.’

He angled his head, glancing from the suffering infant to the shapeless form of Biddy slumped in her chair. ‘He don’t look too good. I think it’s the hospital for young Freddie, if we ain’t too late already.’

‘Don’t say that,’ Cassy cried, hugging Freddie closer to her thin chest. ‘I won’t let him die. I won’t.’

‘Well, she’s dead to the world,’ Bailey remarked, jerking his head in Biddy’s direction. ‘C’mon, we’ll take him to Bart’s. They’ll see him for free, only it might be a long wait.’

Cassy bit her lip. She knew that Bailey was right, but it would mean leaving the other young children to Biddy’s tender care, and that was worse than nothing. She was torn between love and duty. She had formed a bond with little Freddie and he was clinging to her now as if his life depended upon it, which of course it did. ‘I’ll take him if you’ll stay here and look after the others.’

Bailey shook his head. ‘I ain’t no nursemaid, Cassy.’

‘Oh, please, Bailey.’ Her bottom lip trembled as she fought to hold back tears. ‘He needs me to hold him. He’ll be scared stiff of them men in white coats.’