The Prisoner (18 page)

“We are talking about an eleven-year-old child.” Genevieve's outrage was tempered with her rapidly swelling fear. “She is scarcely a dangerous criminal.”

“On the contrary, we are talking about a young woman with a criminal past who, despite all that you have misguidedly offered her by way of a home and a fine moral example, cannot seem to overcome her own corrupt instincts,” Constable Drummond retaliated. “As I have told you before, Mrs. Blake, these things are in the blood, passed down from one generation to the next. No amount of coddling or comfort will cleanse the impure souls of the children in your household. It is best to treat them with a hard hand. Your unwillingness to do so has resulted in the unfortunate incident that has occurred today, in which several innocent citizens have suffered.”

“I don't deny that the children were wrong in what they did today, Constable Drummond,” Genevieve allowed, trying to mollify his unsparing attitude by agreeing with him. “But they were not doing it out of greed or any inherent need to steal. They were doing it solely because they wanted to help me—”

“Whatever the accused's reasons were can be presented at the time of her trial,” Constable Drummond interrupted.

“Her name is
Charlotte,
” said Genevieve, fighting to maintain a civil demeanor. She disliked the way Constable Drummond kept referring to Charlotte as if she were bereft of an individual identity, like a dog or a pig. “And you cannot possibly believe that anything good will come from imprisoning an eleven-year-old child in this foul place and forcing her to stand trial—”

“Unfortunately, Mrs. Blake, there is nothing more that we can do.” Governor Thomson's voice was shadowed with regret. “If it were the lass's first offense, perhaps we could afford to be somewhat lenient. Unfortunately, the girl has a well-documented history of stealing—that is what led her to be incarcerated in my prison in the first place.”

“It was her father who was stealing,” Genevieve corrected, feeling the taut threads of her composure begin to snap. “He was forcing Charlotte to show her crippled leg as a way of distracting a crowd while he picked their pockets—a leg that is malformed because he beat her so severely in one of his drunken outbursts that he broke it.”

“There is no question that the lass has had a difficult time of it,” Governor Thomson acknowledged. “But as you are aware, one of the conditions of your arrangement with the prison is that once the children are released to your custody, they must not break the law again, or else you will lose custody and the child must suffer the full punishment of our justice system. It is only by enforcing this provision that I am able to provide some assurance to both the court and to the citizens of Inveraray that the children will pose no further threat to our society. Charlotte has broken the law, and I am therefore bound by our agreement to relieve you of custody and pursue the matter through the court. I'm afraid there is nothing else to be done.” He looked as if he wished it were otherwise. “If we were to overlook this matter, the citizens could dispute my arrangement with you and insist that all the children currently serving the remainder of their sentences under your roof be returned to the prison system immediately. I'm sure Lord and Lady Struthers would be among the first to instigate such a petition.”

He was right, Genevieve realized. Sick despair tightened around her chest.

“The Sheriff Court will sit again in three days,” continued Governor Thomson. “At that time you will be able to plead your case on the lass's behalf. Perhaps you can appeal to the sheriff for lenience.”

Three days. An eternity for a child to spend trapped in a prison. But it was time enough for Genevieve to try to get Mr. Ingram and Lord and Lady Struthers to view Charlotte sympathetically, and to provide testimony on her behalf. If the victims were willing to be compassionate, she did not see how the sheriff could not be.

She swallowed her fear and slowly rose from her chair. “I would like to see her now,” she said, forcing herself to appear calm. She must give Charlotte the impression that everything was going to work out just fine.

“Of course.” Governor Thomson rolled out of his chair and jerked the creased fabric of his black waistcoat over the swell of his belly. “I shall escort you to her myself.”

 

L
EADEN STRIPS OF LIGHT WERE FALLING THROUGH
the narrow bars of the tiny window, casting the frigid cell in a somber caul.

Charlotte sat upon her wooden bed with her back against the wall and her crippled leg stretched out stiffly before her, the foot resting upon an overturned chamber pot. She was wearing her hat and coat, and had taken the two thin blankets that the governor's wife had provided her with and wrapped them tightly around herself in a desperate effort to stay warm. She knew she should try to walk around a bit to restore some heat to her flesh, but her leg was aching, so she did not think she could manage it just yet. Her injured limb was always worse when it was cold, or damp, or when she first awoke in the morning and it had grown rigid from repose. It also pained her badly at night after she had forced it to drag after her all day.

She could not remember a time when it had not hurt, although she knew that she must have once enjoyed the luxury of being whole and free of pain, for she had not been born this way. The memory of her actual injury had waned, however, and she was infinitely glad of that. That was the advantage of being young, she supposed, although there were times when she felt far older and wearier than her mere eleven years could account for. When one was a child, a year or two seemed nearly a lifetime away. While that made the wait for the privileges of being, say, thirteen, almost unendurable, it did have the benefit of blunting at least some of the sharp torments and cruelties of the past. The memory of her father's brutality seemed less immediate to her now, and although the dreams still haunted her, she no longer wakened to find her heart racing and her sheets soaked with a mortifying combination of urine and sweat.

“Stop yer starin', ye wicked whore of Satan, or I'll cut yer heart out and crush it in my hand!”

Charlotte glanced uneasily at the woman with whom she shared her cell.

Margaret MacDuffie was a short, sturdy woman of some forty years, with a plain, masculine face that scowled from beneath a filthy brown scarf which she wore tightly wrapped around her head. Her nose was large and misshapen; it started out between her eyes well enough, but then it rose in a stiff knob before flattening into a listless pulp just above her upper lip. In one of her slightly more lucid moments Margaret had told Charlotte that her husband used to beat her regularly, and that he had broken her nose more times than she could remember. This had aroused a great deal of sympathy on Charlotte's part, for she knew what it was to be at the mercy of a man who drank, and spoke with his fists.

She had tried to imagine how Margaret might have been before her husband began to brutalize her. Surely she could not always have been the raving madwoman she was today, or else he would never have married her. It was possible that Margaret had once even been somewhat attractive, although that required a rather substantial leap of the imagination. Charlotte was wise enough to know that most marriages were not based upon the romantic love that Annabelle described when she rhapsodized about her actress mother and the Scottish noble she claimed was her father. Even so, it seemed to Charlotte that when two people married, even if they did not love each other, they had to like each other, at least a little. In the case of Margaret and her husband, it seemed clear that they had not liked each other quite enough. Duncan MacDuffie drank and pummeled his wife nearly every day of their marriage, until one morning Margaret refused to tolerate his poor treatment of her any longer. On that particular day she rose before her husband awakened, washed her face and hands, then laid a fire in the stove and put a kettle on to boil. Then she went back into their bedroom, sliced open his throat with his own razor, dragged him into the barn and left him for the pigs to feed on. After she had washed away the blood, she sat at her kitchen table and enjoyed a strong cup of tea, a boiled egg, and two thick slices of oat bread spread with strawberry preserves. It was nae but a fitting end, she had told Charlotte, for a man who had been nothing but a swine his entire life, and certainly not worth missing breakfast over.

Unfortunately, Margaret was unable to bring the judge and jury presiding over her trial round to her way of thinking. In its wisdom, however, the jury did sense that there was something about Margaret that was not entirely sound—perhaps because of the way she wept so pitifully when she described how one of the poor pigs choked to death on a rather tough piece of her husband. Her ability to feel empathy for that animal, but see nothing wrong whatsoever with what she had done to her spouse, persuaded the jury to find her insane. Thus her life was spared, but she was sentenced to be confined as a prisoner for all the remaining days of her life. She had spent nearly two years in the Inveraray jail, and if her healthy appetite and robust constitution were any indication, it seemed she would spend many more there, although she was slated to eventually be transferred to a prison in Perth with a separate criminal lunatics section.

“I know what yer thinkin',” Margaret hissed, eyeing Charlotte suspiciously. “Yer thinkin' to have my share when the warder comes. Well, I won't allow it, do ye hear? I've a farm to run when I leave this place, and I need to keep myself well and fed. The pigs are waitin' on me,” she concluded, nodding happily.

Charlotte drew her blankets tighter and dug her chin into her chest, ignoring her. It was better to ignore Margaret when she ranted or talked nonsense. Charlotte had learned that answering her just seemed to make her further agitated.

There were footsteps coming down the hall, and a jangling of heavy keys. A pale waver of candlelight seeped into the dark cell as the door creaked open.

“Genevieve!” cried Charlotte, nearly tripping over the chamber pot in her haste to rise.

Genevieve swiftly crossed the cell and wrapped her arms tightly around the trembling child.

“Charlotte, my love,” she breathed, kissing the top of her head before pressing her cheek against Charlotte's soft hair. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” She buried her face into the reassuring warmth of Genevieve's cloak, which smelled like soap and cinnamon. “Can we go home now?”

Genevieve swallowed thickly. She wanted to say, “Of course we can,” and turn around and lead Charlotte out of the dark, cold little chamber, and away from the strange woman crouched in the corner who was staring at her with such unnerving fascination. She wanted to march past that vile Warder Sims, who was watching her embrace her daughter with such obvious derision, and by Governor Thomson, with whom she was unaccountably angry, even though she understood that he had been put in an impossible situation. She wanted to take Charlotte home, see that she had a soothing warm bath to wash away her fear and the foulness of this place, and then send her to bed with a tray laden with all of Eunice's specialties. And tomorrow morning Charlotte would be allowed to rest as long as she wished, and then she would join the rest of the family by a fire in the drawing room, and she would tell them about her terrible ordeal, and they would all hug her and tell her how good and strong and brave she had been to have endured such an awful thing.

Instead she held her child fast, stroking her hair as she desperately tried to think of what she was going to tell her.

“I'll leave you to visit, then,” said Governor Thomson, placing the candle on a small wooden bench. He stroked his wiry beard a moment before adding, “You may stay as long as you like, Mrs. Blake,.” It seemed he was at least trying to be accommodating. “Just call for Sims when you are ready to leave.”

The door slammed shut.

“Where's my supper?” screeched Margaret, lunging at the door like a wild animal and banging on it with her fists. “I want my porridge! Ye'll nae steal it from me, ye greedy whoreson. I'll have it if I have to kill ye first—do ye hear? The pigs are waitin' on me, Sims, and they're waitin' on you, as well, unless ye bring me my pissin' supper!”

Charlotte burrowed her face even deeper into Genevieve's cloak, trying to lose herself in its warm shelter.

“Let's sit down over here,” said Genevieve, steering Charlotte toward her wooden bed. “There, now,” she said, drawing her into the cradle of her arm and kissing the child's forehead. “That's better.”

“That's better, that's better,” cackled Margaret, scurrying back to her corner.

“I'm not going home, am I?” Charlotte's face was pale as she looked up at her.

Genevieve's heart clenched. “Not just yet,” she replied softly. “I'm afraid you're going to have to stay here for a few days—but I shall come to visit as often as I can, and we'll find some way to make them go fast. We have to wait for the next session of the Sheriff Court. Then we shall be able to talk to the sheriff and make him see what a dreadful misunderstanding this whole thing is. Once he realizes how terribly sorry you are for what happened in Mr. Ingram's shop, I shall able to take you home and everything will be all right.”

“I'm going home too,” Margaret said, tying and untying the oily scarf around her head. “My pigs are waiting for me.”

Charlotte trembled. “I stood before Sheriff Trotter once before, and he sentenced me to prison and reformatory school.”

“That was because he believed you had nowhere else to go.” Genevieve's voice was soothing. “After I have explained to him that you now live with me and that except for this unfortunate incident your behavior has been absolutely faultless, I am certain he will see that the best thing for everyone is for you to come home.”

“Come home, come home, come home,” chanted Margaret before bursting into giggles.