Victorian Maiden (16 page)

“She's still sleeping in her chair,” Mary Lovell whispered as she returned to the smoking room of the Annexe, as though her voice might yet awaken Elizabeth.

“How is she?” Dr Roberts asked.

He was whispering too.

“She's terribly unsettled, Doctor. She's been crying out for Rachel in her sleep again.”

“Who's Rachel?” Roberts asked.

“She was an old pauper woman who used to help me in the workhouse infirmary at Starbeck,” Mary replied. “She's long dead now, of course, but she was a good friend to Lizzie in the early days at the workhouse, when it was especially hard for her.”

Dr Roberts nodded and carefully poured the fresh tea the parlour maid had brought. As the tea tinkled into the fine porcelain cups, the feeling of anticipation around him steadily built.

“I fear I have a second missing person for you to find,” he announced at last.

Atticus and Lucie exchanged startled glances and Atticus said: “Another missing person?”

“Yes, indeed,” replied Roberts, handing him a cup. “I should very much like you to find my cousin. I've never had the pleasure of meeting her, but her name is Sarah. Sarah Beatrice Wilson was, or rather is, Aunt Elizabeth's daughter.”

“Elizabeth was expecting a child – her second child – when she eventually fled to the workhouse,” Mary explained. “It was born, a beautiful baby girl, a few months later. I delivered her myself, with Rachel helping. Elizabeth named her Sarah, after a friend she had as a girl, and Beatrice, after her late mama.”

“If Sarah was her second child, what became of her first?”
Lucie asked.

“Her first child, little Baby Albert, died at only a few weeks old,” Mary replied.

She sipped at her tea.

“I was the one who had to break the news to her.”

She sipped at her tea again.

“He was almost certainly murdered.”

“Murdered?” Atticus exclaimed, his face flushing with alarm, “How do you mean, ‘He was almost certainly murdered'?”

“I mean it in the plainest sense of the word, Mr Fox. You see, if the gentlemen of the Friday Club had the misfortune to put one of their girls with child, they had them sent straight away to the Home for Fallen Women and Girls at Brimston.”

“The brothel you told us about?” asked Lucie.

Mary nodded.

“Whilst they were there, they would either be given a rough-and-ready abortion, or if they were allowed to have their babies, they would be made to prostitute themselves to Mrs Eire's gentlemen visitors until they were too far gone. Then, once their confinements were over, their fate was the same as the other girls who'd served their purpose to the Friday Club. They'd either continue to be whored out at Brimston, or they'd be sold on elsewhere. Mr Alfred much preferred them to be sent abroad. He thought it was cleaner that way.

If the baby was a girl and the mother had been reasonably pretty, the infant would be brought up at Brimston – by its mother if it was lucky – and then sold into the Friday Club at whatever age it was deemed fit. The baby girls whose mothers weren't so pretty and the baby boys, well, they were generally sent out to a baby farmer.”

“Oh, dear Lord no,” Lucie groaned.

“Yes, Mrs Fox, I'm afraid that's invariably what happened. Mr Alfred or the Club would pay twelve pounds for the infants to be taken care of, permanently. I found out later that most of them would be kept quiet with laudanum whilst they were slowly starved to death on a mixture of lime and water. Elizabeth never knew that that was what almost certainly happened to her baby, to Albert. The coroner's verdict was ‘debility from birth,' and she just thought that he had died of natural causes, but even that – even that was enough almost to kill her.

When she fell pregnant for the second time, she was desperately afraid that her new baby would be taken from her and that it would die too. That was the reason she ran away to the workhouse. She believed they would allow her to keep her baby and to bring it up safely.”

Lucie shuddered.

“And did she?”

Mary pursed her lips.

“No, Mrs Fox, alas she did not. That is why Dr Roberts' is engaging you both to find her.”

She turned her head.

“Lizzie, have you awoken, my angel?”

Standing silently in the hallway, her lips forming unheard words, was Elizabeth.

“Come and have some tea with us, Lizzie, as a special treat. We have guests today. You remember Mr and Mrs Fox don't you?”

Mary stood and gently led Elizabeth into the group of chaises longues.

“Dr Michael has asked Mr and Mrs Fox to find Sarah Beatrice for you, Lizzie. You'd like to see Sarah Beatrice again, wouldn't you? You'd like to see her before you…”

 

Sarah – Sarah Beatrice – Baby Sarah! The other terrible memory stirred once again in its special, secret place and trembled against the fragile bonds that held it.

“Lizzie, we 'ave a new nurse in t' infirmary to 'elp Mr Wright.” 

Old Rachel's eyes were almost bursting with excitement.

Elizabeth's own leaden ones crept around to meet them, and she wondered how Rachel could always seem so happy. She was old, and she had been forced to endure so many long years of life, yet still she smiled, still she was able to laugh.

“It's someone ye know,” Rachel continued.

Elizabeth forced a single word through the blackness. It was, ‘Who?', but it sounded strangely hoarse and unfamiliar to her ears.

“Ye see, ye're speakin' again, an' I haven' even told ye who it is yet. She'll be a-helpin' me to deliver yer little-un in t' lyin'-in room.” 

Rachel glanced down at the great mound under Elizabeth's grogram gown and grinned. 

“Lizzie, it's thy old governess, Sister Lovell.”

Sister Lovell? The name sounded strange, but at the same time somehow familiar. Lovell?

“Mary?” 

The voice sounded much more like hers once more. 

“Mary Lovell?”

Rachel's grin widened. 

“Aye, Mary Lovell, but ye mus' call 'er, ‘Sister,' now, or ‘Ma'am.' Come wi' me; I'll take ye t' see her.”

And then she was back in Sister's, in Ma'am's, in Mary Lovell's arms; sobbing as if she would never stop.

“Lizzie, you're huge,” Mary exclaimed, “I can hardly get close to you.”

Elizabeth nodded.

“And Rachel tells me that you never speak these days, and that you hardly ever properly eat. All you do is make up brushes out of whin, and then wear them out on the floors.”

Elizabeth nodded again.

“Well, we're together again now, Lizzie, and I promise – I promise you now – that I'll look after you always. I've found a situation here as nurse, so Rachel and I will be delivering your baby and not Mrs Eire.”

The very worst memory of all; the memory of little Baby Albert also began to twist and tremble against its bonds, and reach out for its twin.

“They hurt me, Lizzie; all of them. They hurt me just like they used to hurt you and John and all the other children. Then your uncle wanted me to go and find them more girls for the club. They wanted me to become a procuress like Mrs Eire. So I did what you did, Lizzie, and I ran away from there.”

And then the other, terrible, terrible memory, the one that could never be hidden properly away in the secret places of her mind, broke free.

Mary and Rachel's faces were there, brimming with love and compassion.

“Almost there, my lamb,” Rachel crooned.

Another great wave of pain engulfed her, overpowering, unstoppable. She cried yet another cry of agony, pain tore once more through her body, and then she gasped, gasped in blessed relief. 

Another cry replaced hers. It was the cry of new life, of a newborn baby; of her baby. Its cries thrilled her, and Mary held out its tiny, perfect form.

“It's a lovely baby girl, Lizzie, quite as beautiful as its mama,” she said.

“Sarah,” whispered Elizabeth, “Sarah Beatrice Wilson; A granddaughter for my mama, and a little sister for Albert. They won't take her away, Mary; they won't ever take her away, will they?”

And she cradled her baby, Baby Sarah, and rocked her just as she remembered her own mama rocking her. And just like her own mama, she sang as she rocked:

 

 

And then she thought about the words she was singing to her baby and a terrible, visceral chill gripped her. The cradle will fall… and so will the baby. 

Baby Sarah will fall, just as she had fallen, just as her mama had fallen, and had needed to be punished. 

She suddenly wished with all her soul that she had not sung the words because the words were surely a curse. She wished now that they had both died, died as Rachel told her many women did, in childbirth. 

And a second set of words came into her mind, as she sat rocking to-and-fro, clinging to her baby. They were the words that the old crone Leah had sung to her when she was first admitted to the workhouse: 

The other memory moved on in her mind, and two years flew past in the time it took for her to rock to-and-fro, clinging to her baby.

“Taken her, taken Sarah Beatrice? Who's taken her? Taken her where?”

“Calm yourself, girl, there is nothing to be alarmed over. Your daughter has been taken away to be adopted by a wealthy local family. They will bring her up with every privilege. You should be very pleased.”

They were the words, the words she had dreaded with each and every one of her long waking hours. She could hear them still, inside her head, filling it, creeping through her body, through her arms, through her legs, turning them to ice.

“Who's taken her, Mrs Dixon? Who's taken my Baby Sarah? Please tell me.”

The matron's irritation effervesced and boiled over into anger. 

“Wilson, one of the workhouse overseers kindly took it upon himself to arrange for Sarah Beatrice to be adopted into one of the best families in the whole of the West Riding of Yorkshire. I do not know their name and nor do I need to, but I am assured that they are very respectable indeed. Your daughter will be raised in grace and comfort. That should be more than good enough for you.”

It was happening once again. Mrs Dixon's face seemed to drift away as if down a long, black tunnel. Her baby – Baby Sarah – had been taken away and she would never see her again. The worst thing of all was happening again. Little Sarah was going to die. She'd be starved to death and found in the still, black waters of a ditch; wrapped up in an old newspaper, to save the expense of a doctor being called to pronounce that she was properly dead. That's what the old crone Leah had said had surely happened to her little Baby Albert.

A picture of little Sarah's perfect face with her beautiful, beaming smile exploded into Elizabeth's mind. 

“Mama,” the vision of Sarah said, and giggled. 

But then she heard her cry, and her cry was a scream of terror. From deep inside the dark places of her mind she could hear her uncle's voice echo once more:

“Welcome to Sessrum House, Baby Sarah. You're a bad, wicked child, and I want you to beg me for mercy, just like your mama, and your poor, dead grandmama begged and begged and begged.”

Elizabeth could see his face, that loathsome face, and see the beast in his eyes. He was framing the words – those words – the ones that haunted every one of her nights, when the bad things happened. 

“In my experience, little girls who beg for mercy seldom deserve it.” 

And then Sarah screamed once more, but this time her scream was a scream of agony. It lingered, then all at once began to fade and die and the whole world seemed to fade with it, until finally, it all turned to blackness.

 

“
Lizzie… Lizzie… Wake up. Wake up, my lamb.”

Mary was off her seat and frantically shaking Elizabeth's skinny shoulders.

Elizabeth's eyes flickered open and she stared back, her face expressionless.

“Oh, thank the Lord she's come round,” Mary gasped, “I thought that she'd had a fit.”

“It certainly looked like it.”

Lucie was kneeling next to her, pressing her fingertips gently between the gaping bones of Elizabeth's wrist.

“And it was certainly a shock when she cried out like that and collapsed. Her pulse is racing. What do you suppose it was?”

Mary straightened Elizabeth's crisp, white poke bonnet.

“I think she just had a bad dream. That's all it was. She was having a dream.”

 

“Lizzie… Lizzie… Wake up, darling!” 

Someone was shaking her, calling for her. It was a gentle voice, full of warmth and compassion. Was it her mama, come for her at last? No, she decided, it wasn't her dear mama. Then who was it? Could it be Mary; Mary who'd come to watch over her, come to make sure no one hurt her ever again? 

But then she remembered that she had been hurt. They had taken her baby, and when they had, they had ripped away part of her soul too. Her eyes snapped open and the memory of the Matron's words overwhelmed her once again.