Break of Dawn (9 page)

‘The doctor?’ Mary’s voice was thin and high. ‘Don’t talk such rubbish, girl. When have you seen the doctor?’

‘Dr Lawrence asked me to give Sophy a present from him and his wife last night.’ Bridget didn’t add ‘ma’am’; something told her they were beyond that. ‘He’d forgotten to give it to you,
as usual
,’ she added meaningfully.

She couldn’t have said anything more guaranteed to incense the furious woman in front of her. The fact that this maid, a person so below her in the social strata, was daring to criticise her actions, inflamed Mary to the point of madness. Grabbing hold of Sophy she dragged the child from the kitchen bench, shaking her hard for good measure. ‘You come with me, and you’ – she turned her blazing eyes on Bridget – ‘I’ll deal with you later.’

‘It’s not her fault.’ The look on the mistress’s face was frightening and Bridget had lost all restraint. ‘The doctor gave the present to me an’ I just passed it on, that’s all. You leave her be.’

‘You dare to speak to me like this?’ It was the final straw. ‘I want you out of this house by nightfall. Do you hear me?’

‘If she goes, we all go.’ Patrick, his face as white as a sheet, spoke for the first time. ‘My lass has worked hard for you, missus, we all have, as well you know. We’re not as daft as you think we are. There’s many a cook earnin’ double what you pay Kitty, an’ I do the work of two – three – men. We’d have slung our hook long before this if it wasn’t for the bairn.’

‘Then go.’
Mary so forgot herself as to scream the words.
‘Now! Today!’
as she hauled Sophy out of the kitchen, by which time Kitty and Patrick had moved to hold on to Bridget, who was fighting them to get to the child.

Mary found Sophy had turned into a whirling dervish as she dragged the little girl along the corridor and into the hall. When
they reached the morning room which housed the cupboard with the dreaded correction cane, Sophy began to kick and claw at her aunt in a paroxysm of terror. She was still struggling wildly when the first vicious stroke of the cane hit her across the top of her legs, causing her to fall on the floor, her hair cascading about her shoulders. And then the cane came again and again, striking the small body with enough force to make it bounce. With each stroke Mary was flaying Jeremiah and his lies, the ruination of her marriage, Esther and her wickedness which had brought the seed of badness into her own family, and not least the sickness she felt whenever her sons were home and in close proximity to that seed.

By the time Sophy’s screams had brought Jeremiah, still in his nightshirt with his dressing gown thrown hastily about his shoulders, to the morning room, Mary had locked the door against intruders. Sophy was merely a whimpering, semi-conscious heap when Mary reached for the pearl-handled knife she used to open any letters or packages delivered to the vicarage. She sawed at the long strands of golden-red hair with savage satisfaction, and each time the small head fell forwards it was jerked up again.

It took Jeremiah a couple of minutes to force the door, and by then Mary had all but completed her grisly task. She sat straddling the senseless child, surrounded by a cloud of silky hair which had feathered into the air and settled about her, her face lit by an unholy gratification and her breath coming in short gasps.

Jeremiah stood stock-still, unable to believe his eyes. It was Patience, coming up behind her father, who brought Mary to her right mind. Patience’s voice was a whimper when she said, ‘Mother? Mother, what have you done?’ and something in her child’s tone reached the enraged woman, causing her eyes to focus. Slowly Mary stood up, letting the knife fall from her clenched fingers.

‘Take your mother upstairs and make her lie down, Patience.’ Jeremiah looked neither at his wife nor daughter as he spoke, his eyes fixed on the small figure at Mary’s feet. Sophy’s dress had been almost ripped off her back in the struggle, along with her petticoat and shift, and the criss-cross of blue-red weals on her back and legs were startling against the white flesh. But it was the bloody
scalp, shorn of most of its hair, which was turning Jeremiah’s stomach. The child looked as though an animal had attacked it and he could hardly credit his wife, his contained, sanctimonious, self-righteous wife with perpetrating such an outrage.

He had been conscious of shouting from the direction of the kitchen whilst he had been trying to get into the morning room and now, as Bridget burst into the hall, he quickly pushed his wife and daughter out of the room and shut the door, blocking the entrance with his body.

‘What’s she done to the bairn?’ Bridget’s cap was askew and her face tear-blotched, and as Kitty and Patrick appeared panting behind her, Patrick caught his daughter’s arm as she lifted it as though she was going to strike her mistress. Such was the severity of the situation that Jeremiah didn’t think to reprimand Bridget. Repeating his earlier order to Patience, he said, ‘Take your mother upstairs,’ before he faced the servants. ‘The child is perfectly all right. Please go about your duties.’

‘Our duties?’ Bridget was beside herself. ‘The mistress has given us our marching orders and I want to see the bairn.’

He stared at the maid, his face blank but his mind working overtime. If he wasn’t going to lose all credence in the town, this matter had to be defused. Keeping his back firmly against the door and his hand on the door knob, he said, ‘My wife has disciplined the child but that is all and I am dealing with her now. We will discuss this later.’

‘Later my backside.’ Patience had led her mother to the foot of the stairs but now Bridget swung round, pointing at them as she said, ‘She’s a maniac, that’s what she is, and all over a few ribbons.’

‘Ribbons?’

‘The doctor gave me a present for the bairn last night, and she’ – again Bridget sent a burning glance towards the stairs – ‘she went barmy when she saw them.’

Jeremiah’s aplomb was returning. Drawing himself up, he said coldly, ‘I am aware you are distressed but that does not excuse your impertinence to me or your mistress. We will deal with our ward as we see fit, do you understand?’

‘Oh aye, I understand all right.’ Bridget’s Irish side was to the fore and nothing could have stopped her now. It had taken all of Kitty’s and Patrick’s strength to hold on to her when she had heard Sophy screaming, and when she had finally been able to fling them off and make for the hall, the silence from the morning room had been worse than the child’s cries. ‘Your lady wife beats her half to death and works the bairn like a dog, and you turn a blind eye. I’m sure some of your high-falutin’ friends would be interested to hear what really goes on in this house.’

‘How dare you.’ Patience and Mary had reached the landing, and confident that his wife wasn’t going to further complicate matters, Jeremiah was now every inch the master of the house. ‘If you don’t want to find yourself up before the magistrate, who happens to be one of those
high-faluting
friends you spoke of, I suggest you put some good distance between this town and yourselves. Slander is a serious offence and carries a custodial sentence, and I would make sure you and your parents get the maximum penalty. I don’t know how you would fare in prison but I do know they are most unpleasant places with a large portion of unsavoury characters.’ It had become obvious to him that there was no way he could retain the servants, so the only alternative was to put the fear of God in them. ‘And at your parents’ age’, he glanced icily at Kitty and Patrick standing at their daughter’s elbow, ‘the only place from there would be the workhouse, which is perhaps more unpleasant than prison in some cases. Do I make myself clear?’

Bridget’s high colour had drained away and she looked pale, but she still said stubbornly, ‘I want to see the bairn.’

‘Come away, lass.’ Kitty pulled at her daughter’s arm. ‘You can do nothing here.’

‘I will give each of you a month’s pay, which is extremely generous in the circumstances, but I want you out of this house by lunchtime and on your way.’ Jeremiah was praying the child wouldn’t rouse herself and begin to cry out. ‘And if I hear so much as a whisper about the affairs of this house I promise you will regret the day you were born. All of you.’

Patrick hadn’t said a word thus far but had stood, his jaw working,
listening to the others. Now he looked Jeremiah straight in the eye. ‘And references, master?’

Jeremiah stared back at him. ‘I have never found any fault with your work and Kitty is a good cook. Yes, I am prepared to give you references – even you, Bridget.’

Bridget knew what he was saying. Without references they would be hard-pressed to find good employment, especially her parents. She might find something, she was young enough, but them . . . The master had mentioned the workhouse and she knew it was a spectre that haunted her parents, even though she had promised them she would never see them put into one of those hell-holes. But would she be able to keep that promise without the master’s references? He was bribing her, he knew it and she knew it. But the bairn, she couldn’t leave the bairn.

It was Kitty, tugging on her arm again, who settled the matter. ‘Come away, lass,’ she repeated softly. ‘The bairn’ll be all right and after all, she isn’t yours. You have no rights concernin’ her and you can’t do nowt. I always told you it was wrong to get over-fond of her, didn’t I?’

It hurt, not so much what her mother had said but the way she had said it, because it suggested her mother held her responsible for the fact they were being turned out on their ear. Knowing she was beaten and a pain tearing her apart that couldn’t be worse if she was being disembowelled, Bridget’s voice was weak when she said, ‘She’ll do for the bairn one day, the mistress. You know that, don’t you? She’s not right in the head where that little ’un’s concerned.’ She swung round to face Jeremiah again. ‘And it’ll be
you
God holds responsible, because you can’t pretend you don’t know what’s goin’ on after this.’

Under other circumstances such disrespect from an inferior would have made Jeremiah incensed, but although he said icily, ‘I think that’s more than enough, Bridget. Go and pack your belongings and I will see the three of you in my study in an hour,’ inside he was greatly afraid that his wife had indeed ‘done for the bairn’. There had been no movement from within the morning room, not a sound, and the child had been unconscious when he had
seen her. What if she wasn’t unconscious but dead? Dear God, don’t let it be so. They would never survive the scandal.

When the servants trooped away, Patrick with his arm round his daughter who was sobbing audibly, Jeremiah waited until he was sure they were in the kitchen before taking a deep breath and opening the morning-room door. The child was lying exactly as he had seen her before. Through forcing the door, the locking mechanism was broken beyond repair so he dragged Mary’s small bureau against the door to prevent anyone bursting in. The way the maid had carried on, he wouldn’t put anything past her.

Kneeling down, he stared at the small body and when he saw the child was breathing the relief was so great he put his hand to his head for a few moments. He could see now that some of the blue weals had bled and a wave of sickness swept over him, but he forced himself to gently turn her over on to her back and still she didn’t stir. The little shorn head with a few tufts of hair remaining was shocking enough, but the child had a livid bruise on her forehead as though her face had been repeatedly banged against the floor, and maybe it had, he thought grimly.

Carefully he slid his arms under Sophy’s legs and shoulders and lifted her on to one of the two dark green sofas, propping her head on a cushion, at which point the heavily lashed eyes fluttered and opened and the child gave a soft moan as she shrank from him.

For the life of him Jeremiah didn’t know what to do or say. The child needed a doctor, that much was evident, but how could he call Dr Lawrence to the house and let him see the state of her? When a knock sounded at the door in the next instant and Patience’s voice called softly, ‘Father? Father, can I come in?’ again relief was paramount. He heaved the bureau to one side and opened the door, moving it back once his daughter had entered.

Patience was beset by a whole host of emotions as she walked over to the sofa and knelt down beside her cousin. All her life she had resented Sophy’s presence in the house. She knew her brothers liked Sophy more than her, even David who was her twin. Whenever the boys were home they sneaked down to the kitchen at every
opportunity in spite of it being out of bounds, and the way they were with Sophy – gently teasing her, laughing with her, telling her stories of their life at school – was so different from their attitude to her. And Sophy was clever too. She was their governess Miss Brown’s favourite, even though Miss Brown tried to hide it. When the three of them had read
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
this year and Sophy had acted out her part, Miss Brown had told her she was wonderful and had a natural ability for getting inside a character which was a true gift. They had been going to read another of Shakespeare’s plays next year but her mother had had a blue fit when she had discovered how Miss Brown was teaching English literature and had forbidden it. But it was Sophy’s appearance – her large beautiful eyes, her skin, her hair, especially her hair – which she hated the most. But now . . .

Patience put out her hand and touched Sophy’s arm, and like her father she felt physically sick at what her mother had done.

‘It’s all right,’ she whispered. ‘Mother’s not here.’ Sophy shivered, whether from the mention of her attacker or because she was cold, Patience didn’t know, but she said, ‘Shall I get you a blanket?’ but received no answer from the colourless lips in the chalk-white face. ‘I’ll get you something.’ She stood up and as she did so, said in an aside to her father, ‘She needs Dr Lawrence.’

‘That’s out of the question.’

‘But Father—’

‘Can you see to her? If I carry her up to the guest room out of the way, can you take care of her? I can bring you what you need and I’ve got some laudanum left from the bottle I had for the abscess in my tooth. A few drops of that will settle her.’