A Spy in the House

She should have been listening to the judge.

Instead, Mary’s attention was focused on the flies swarming around her ankles in the prisoner’s dock and their primary interest: the pool of stale urine at her feet. It wasn’t hers. Some poor fool must have lost control of his bladder earlier in the day, but the puddle would remain until . . . well, until long after her case was finished, at any rate.

It was odd how her senses shifted. In the late afternoon heat, the flies’ buzzing was the loudest sound in her mind. The judge’s nasal tenor was far down the list, well after the persistent cackling of someone in the gallery. If she squinted in just the right way, she could make out a halo of loose, grayish hair. Mad? Or merely relieved that it was someone else in the dock?

The prosecutor — deformed by his wig, white powder drifting off it every time he turned his neck — had enjoyed himself hugely. He’d made much of her youth — “How much more depraved is one so young, who has already trod so far and so fast through the thorny thickets of evil?” — and her dangerous looks — “Such pitch-black hair is a token of her pitch-black soul. Such evil should be nipped in the bud” — and by that cliché, he meant to hang her. She had not spoken in her own defense. She had nothing to say.

The judge’s voice, threading its way amid the excited droning of the flies, loomed suddenly close and intimate. “For the crime of housebreaking, Mary Lang, you are hereby sentenced to hang by the neck until you are dead. May God have mercy on your soul.” The last sentence sounded like mockery. How could it not?

There was some minor shuffling in the room but no murmurs of surprise. Mary lifted her chin and gazed steadily into the gallery, where the spectators looked uncomfortable in the late summer heat. Only one figure — a woman dressed in light mourning, her veil rolled back — met her eyes. And winked.

Mary blinked. When she looked again, the lady was gone. Then the wardress was dragging her from the prisoner’s box and leading her out of the courtroom, down the long, dung-and-onion-smelling corridor toward the cool damp of the cellar.

The wardress flung a brawny arm round her shoulder and jostled her roughly. “Don’t you faint, now, young woman.” Her voice was hoarse, with a West Country accent.

Caught off guard, Mary stumbled. “I won’t,” she muttered, but the woman shoved down onto Mary’s shoulders again, hard enough to make her knees buckle.

“May the Lord have mercy on your puny weak soul, indeed!” Under the cover of her petticoats, the wardress kicked Mary’s foot, sending her stumbling once again. “Lawsamercy, you scrawny brat, none of this nonsense!”

They had nearly reached the turnkey. Behind her back, the wardress administered a sharp twist to Mary’s left wrist. The iron cuffs cut into her flesh, causing her to hiss in surprise. The woman shook her shoulders roughly, gabbling the whole time at the turnkey. “The bloody girl’s fainting! I’m not having these fine-lady airs, that’s for certain!” Her strident voice drowned out the responses of the nearby jailers. “A good ducking in the horse trough will sort her out!” cried the woman furiously.

Mary chose to go limp. What was another quarter of an hour’s bullying to her? She was dragged outside and across the cobbled yard, the wardress still scolding and shaking her vigorously. The men clustered about the door, grinning at the spectacle. As she approached the trough in the corner of the courtyard, lugging Mary under her arm, the wardress produced a coarse handkerchief from her pocket and clamped it over Mary’s nose and mouth. A new smell, sweet and cold, flooded her nostrils. She struggled for a moment, briefly bewildered by the expression in the woman’s eyes.

And then the sky went black.

Was this death? Her mouth felt thick, as did her head. Her fingertips were numb. She twitched them experimentally and realized with a small shock that her wrists were no longer shackled. Indeed, she was floating, swaddled in linen and soft blankets. She turned her cheek to one side and rubbed against the pillow, catlike. The scent was pleasant and totally unfamiliar. No lake of burning fire so far. No heavenly choir, either. She saw no reason to move or even to open her eyes.

“Mary?”

She hadn’t considered that God might be female. Slowly, reluctantly, she raised heavy eyelids and focused on the speaker. The woman had changed her lavender mourning dress for something darker, but it was she: the lady who’d winked at her from the gallery. That meant this was neither hell nor heaven.

“How do you feel?”

The question seemed irrelevant. Mary let her gaze slide around the room — large, simply furnished, lit by candles — and back to the Winker. “I don’t know.”

“Your head might ache; chloroform sometimes has that effect, although we use as little as possible.”

Chloroform:
a fancy word for a dangerous substance. She’d heard whispers of potions that knocked one out but always dismissed them as wishful lies.

“You must be thirsty.” The Winker offered a glass of something pale and cloudy. At Mary’s hesitation, she smiled. “It’s quite safe to drink.” To demonstrate, she took a sip.

Mary’s first taste was tentative. Then, as the cool liquid filled her mouth, she guzzled it greedily. Lemonade. She’d had it once before, a couple of years ago. Now she was sorry when it was all gone. Wiping her mouth, she looked at the lady. She still felt fuzzy-headed, but her curiosity was strong. “Why?”

“Why don’t I begin with who and where? Then I’ll get to why and how.”

Mary nodded. She felt mocked.

The lady sat down beside the bed. “My name is Anne Treleaven,” she began, “and I am the head teacher here at Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy for Girls. Our founder was an eccentric and wealthy woman whose desire was to help women achieve a measure of independence. Education for girls in our country is generally very inferior, even for the rich, and many girls receive none at all. So Miss Scrimshaw founded a school.”

She spoke quietly, but her eyes were sharp, and they rarely left Mary’s face. “We are a little like a charity school, since most of our students would not normally be able to afford our fees. However, we are a very unusual institution in that we often select our students instead of waiting for them to come to us. We search for girls who would most benefit from the special training we offer.” She paused. “We have chosen you.”

Mary scowled. “I suppose you think that’s generous. What makes you think I want to be chosen? Suppose I
want
to hang?”

Instead of shock and outrage, Anne’s face showed mild amusement. “Don’t bristle. We don’t intend to keep you here by force. You may leave at any time and go directly to the gallows, if you wish. But I hope you will at least listen to me for a few minutes before choosing.”

Mary felt both churlish and childish. She shrugged.

“My colleagues have been watching you for some time. You know one of them as the wardress at the Old Bailey, of course; another observed you in Newgate prison during the weeks before your sentencing. They were both struck by your intelligence. They were also intrigued by the fact that you pled guilty instead of insisting upon a trial. Most people charged with capital crimes insist upon their innocence, whether they are truly innocent or not. But you didn’t. Why not, Mary?”

After a pause, Mary shrugged again. “Maybe I was fed up.”

Anne’s eyes glinted. “With lying? Stealing?” She refilled Mary’s glass and passed it to her. “Or perhaps with living?”

Mary’s blink was the equivalent of a full confession from another, less hardened, girl.

“You are surprisingly resigned to death, for one so young.”

“Twelve years is enough for me,” she said. Well-meaning strangers — women, especially — were forever trying to coax her into a tearful confession of her life’s sufferings. She hadn’t fallen for that sort of rubbish in years.

Anne raised one thin eyebrow. “That is what my colleagues suspected, and that is why we brought you to the Academy: in the hope that you might find the prospect of a different sort of life more tolerable.”

“As an honest little maid-of-all-work, you mean? So that fine ladies can have the joy of beating me, all for eight quid a year?” She spat on the carpet. “Not I.”

Anne’s expression hardened. “No, Mary, not that. Not ever that.”

“You’re mad, then. There’s nothing else — not for my sort.”

“You’re wrong about that.”

“Am I?”

“You’re clever, Mary. And fierce. And ambitious. There are a few professions open to women; you might join any of these.” Anne paused and inclined her head. “And there are one or two other possibilities available to women of exceptional abilities . . . but to speak of these now would be somewhat, shall we say, premature.”