Resurrectionists (62 page)

I felt myself go weak. My eyes remained closed, and every flicker and spark I felt was for Virgil. He unfastened the stays of my bodice, slowly stripped me down to my chemise.

“Gette,” he said softly, and because it was not Virgil’s voice, I said, “Shh.” Maybe he thought I didn’t want to wake the baby. He made no other sound. I heard his clothes drop to the ground, and then his hot body was against mine. He pushed up my chemise and I wriggled out of it, feeling the fire warm on my skin. Fingertips brushed my breasts, light and tentative. My body responded, remembering every touch that Virgil had ever bestowed upon it. Kisses descended upon me and I wore them gladly just as I would have worn Virgil’s.

I have spoken about my poor memory, about my fear that I am becoming addled in my mind. I know not when the precise moment was, but as Edward made love to me it suddenly and really became Virgil who was in my embrace. I do not know how to explain it better than that. I still had my eyes closed, and underneath my fingertips I really
could
feel Virgil’s long limbs and his fine hair. I gasped when it happened, and my lover took it as a gasp of desire. He pulled my legs gently forward and pushed them apart, clung to me and fumbled for a moment before entering me. Yes, it was Virgil. I felt my lips making his name, but the sound remained trapped in my throat. The hard pressure of his body against mine was divine. I moved with him, heard his breathing near my ear, and I loved him with every particle of my soul. Hot tears ran down my face and he kissed them away. His passion built. I locked my legs around his back. But when the moment of his ecstasy arrived, he suddenly pulled out of me. The shock made me open my eyes, and it wasn’t Virgil, of course it wasn’t. It was just Edward, his eyes halfclosed in sexual release, spilling his seed on my belly. In an instant, my body began to shudder. Edward fell back on his haunches and I drew my legs up towards me, reached for my chemise to cover myself. The awful stickiness of his issue upon my skin revolted me. My hands flew to my face, and I hid behind them in shame.

“Gette?” he said, concerned.

“Be quiet,” I said, “you’ll wake Henri.”

Henri. I glanced towards the drawer. My son. My husband’s son. He was in the same room as my sin. What kind of woman was I?

Edward chuckled, gathered his clothes. “Henri could sleep through anything.”

I could not look at him. I kept my eyes down, made no motion to get dressed. I wanted him to go away and I wanted to clean every trace of him off me.

“Oh, Gette, please,” he said, standing and dressing himself. “It’s not so bad, is it? I’m not so bad.”

I merely shook my head, refusing to meet his eyes. He touched my hair. “You are so beautiful, my dear. Come, let’s go to bed.”

“I’m not tired. I shall sit up a while.”

He sighed, knelt once more beside me. “I know what might cheer you up. The day after tomorrow we shall travel to Solgreve to fetch your wedding ring. Here.” He reached into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out a handful of money, offered it to me.

“Look, we have sufficient to buy it back three times.”

This only made me feel worse, for if I had

suspected myself a whore before, his handing me money directly after I had allowed him to use me was proof of my suspicions. Still, God help me, I reached out and took the money. “Thank you, Edward,” I said softly.

“Coming to bed?”

“Not just yet.”

He kissed my cheek. I turned my head away from him.

“I understand,” he said, though I don’t believe he did. He stood and gave my right shoulder a squeeze, then turned and went to bed.

He had left his cravat upon the floor next to the fire. I picked it up and scrubbed his seed off me, then cast it into the flames. I sat for a long time, naked, with a handful of banknotes, trying to feel nothing. I heard Henri grizzle a little and snuffle in his sleep and turned my head in that direction. Was he having a bad dream? The thought pierced my heart. I stood and pulled on my chemise and went to him, sat beside the drawer and allowed my fingers to caress the silken hair on his head. My touch brought him peace. I watched him for a long time. I seemed to remember, not long since, making a promise that I would never see his innocence compromised, and here I was, clutching the money Edward had given me, having betrayed Henri’s father in the same room as the babe slept. I became disgusted with myself and I started to cry. I saw my hand upon my son’s head, and my fingers looked bony, my wrists scrawny. I was not a fit mother.

I am not a fit mother.

Somewhere in the distance I heard church bells striking four. It was Sunday morning. Out there, I thought, somewhere in this city there was surely a good Christian woman with plump arms and a full bosom who would be a better mother than I could ever be. And so I formed my resolve.

While Edward slept, I dressed. He kept his

firewood in a basket by the hearth. I carefully removed all the wood and then gently took Henri from his drawer and wrapped him up tightly in the basket. I used my second dress for more padding, ensuring he was sufficiently warm. I tucked the money into my stays and without a word to Edward, I left the apartment with Henri.

Outside the morning was cold, but not as cold as I had feared. I followed the direction in which I had heard the church bells. The streets were empty, chilled. I checked Henri again and again. Still he slept, warm and safe in his cocoon. My body shook as though it purposed to fall to pieces. Cold silence oppressed my ears. When I breathed, fog stood out in front of me. I felt as though I were the only person left in the world, layers of loneliness weighed heavily upon me. My dear child.

I found the church and sat down upon the stone stairs with Henri. I touched his silken cheek with the back of my knuckle and whispered to him in the dark.

“Henri, I hope that one day you will understand why I am doing this. You deserve a better mother than I can ever be, and no doubt the church will find someone, perhaps even today. Someone with a warm hearth, someone who is not always on the edge of starvation, someone who does not prostitute herself. Perhaps you will have brothers and sisters, and toys to play with.” My voice broke and I held a sob deep inside. It sank within me and bruised my soul.

“Farewell forever, my love,” I said, holding my cheek against his. “Dawn is not far away, and the rector shall find you and take you in.” I could hear the sweet sucking sound of his sleeping breath and felt my heart would burst.

I placed the bundle carefully on the top step, nearest the door. The morning was very still, but I made sure he was sheltered from any icy breezes. I pulled the blankets tighter around him, up near his little face and the top of his head.

I kissed him once and then walked away.

I walked forever. I felt no pain, no exhaustion. I merely put one foot in front of the other and walked. A vast emptiness inhabited me and the only way to endure it was to keep moving. Daylight crept into the sky and I was still walking. Eventually, a coach came past and stopped beside me.

“Are you in trouble, Ma’am?”

I looked up, bewildered. Then I remembered that for once I was well-dressed and must look like a person worthy of attention.

The driver was concerned. “Ma’am?”

“I . . .”

“Where are you going?”

“Whitby.”

“I have room inside. I’m taking packages to Whitby.”

Now I had stopped walking, my legs threatened to give beneath me. The driver got down off the coach and helped me inside. “Shall I take you to a doctor, Ma’am?”

“No, no. Take me to a guesthouse.” Then,

remembering my manners, I reached for the money inside my stays and held it out in a handful. “I can pay you.”

God bless him, he was a good man. “Now you put that away. You’re sick and you’re lost, and I’m going to Whitby anyways.”

I did as he said, and he closed the carriage door. It was cramped inside, filled with packages. I was hot, burning up, but I began to cool as I sat there among the packages, the motion of the carriage lulling me. Eventually, I slept.

I have known so much pain, Diary. I dare not even turn to the beginning of this book and read over the pages which record earlier happiness, for the contrast would be too much to bear. I can only take comfort in knowing that I have done the right thing, that Henri will have a good home. Why, by now, he may very well be settled with his new family, amongst warmth and merriment, receiving kisses and cuddles. He may fret for me for a while, but he will soon forget me. There is not very much of me to remember.

Though I wonder if he had resembled Virgil more, would I have kept him?

It does not pay to wonder about such things. I have sufficient misery. It would have been selfish to keep him under any circumstances. I will rest here in Whitby a few days, for this guesthouse is comfortable and clean. Then, later in the week, I will return briefly to Solgreve to rescue my wedding band. After that?

Well, who can know the future.

Wednesday, 21st January 1795

I wonder, do houses have memories? This old cottage, here in Solgreve, for instance. Have events to which it has been witness imprinted themselves upon the walls and then seeped into the bricks and foundations to lie there, dormant, for years?

This shall be the last thing I shall ever write. One can achieve an awesome state of clarity when one realises one is truly the plaything of Fate. It is simple. One says, “Oh, I see, so now I shall die and that shall be an end of it,” and one accepts it. I am to die on a Wednesday. Strange. I have never held a particular prejudice against Wednesdays.

The pressure of the last few months has bent me and bent me and bent me, but finally I am broken. If what I write seems bled of feeling, it is because I have no capacity left to feel. You will soon understand. I spent a few days in Whitby. Every night I dreamed of Henri and would wake in tears, craving the sweet scent of his breath or the bestowal of one of his little, wet smiles. I told myself again and again it was for the best, and tried to diminish my sadness by imagining him ensconced in a grand house with maids and cooks and warm arms to hold him.

During the days at Whitby, I would take long walks along the beach, through the town, and sometimes I would sit for hours in the markets, no matter that it was cold. I would watch the actions and listen to the conversations of others and take comfort in their mundaneness. I know not how many conversations I overheard about the best way to preserve apples or the possibility of more snow before the end of winter. But it was quite a different conversation that I heard the morning before yesterday which has broken me. Imagine, had I left earlier, had I chosen the opposite end of the market to sit, or had I decided to linger upon the beach, I would never have known.

Two women stood near a stall selling fish oil, and they conversed about their husbands and their daughters and the coal man, and then one of them, a large woman in a grey dress, said, “My niece from York has written me a letter this morning.”

“How is she?” said the other.

“She is well. But she had a sad tale. An abandoned child was found dead on the steps of the church near her house.”

Upon this moment my blood turned to cold angles.

“Oh, no. The poor child. How old?”

“Just a babe. Tiny little thing.”

And upon this moment I thought, it could not possibly be Henri. For he was warm and sleepy when I left him. This must be some other unfortunate child whose mother was not careful enough.

“Did it freeze to death?”

“No, it suffocated. The mother had wrapped it so tight, in a mourning dress of all things.”

And upon this moment I knew it was my child about whom these women spoke, as though he were just an object for their brief consternation. The horror was indescribable.

“A mourning dress? Fancy.”

“My niece said the rector told her the child was weak and sickly to begin with, as though it had starved a while first.”

“Its mother must have been a madwoman.”

A madwoman. Yes, perhaps I am. The women

walked in another direction and I sat like a statue, for I feared moving. To move would be to fall to pieces. I resisted, and still do, resist the images that wish to draw themselves in my mind. It will do me no good to know how long Henri lived after I left him. If it was quick, or if he cried or struggled, or if the rector was only a few minutes away when his little heart stopped beating. It will do me no good to wonder had I been less tired, less oppressed by grief, whether I would have made a better decision about Henri’s future, or even if I would have been attentive enough to notice that the clothes were too close around his face in the basket, that he need only turn his head to be smothered in my mourning dress. The lot has been cast. I have been dealt my Fate.

And so, you see, they are all dead, all those whom I dared to love. I sat at the market for hours, and I wished nothing so much as to die too, but that would be an end to my suffering and I deserve much worse than to die. I deserve to contemplate daily, hourly, eternally, that I suffocated my own child.

I returned to Solgreve, bought back my wedding ring, and have had a day or two to decide upon how I shall punish myself. And I have decided.

This morning I visited Mr Edghill the surgeon to make a purchase, and then I mailed a letter to Edward. It said simply that Henri was dead and that I had returned to Solgreve, to the seat of my last happiness. And here in Solgreve, I wrote, I intended to die also. Mr Edghill had given me poison for mice and I would take a large dose that very afternoon (which is today, which is a Wednesday) and I requested Edward come to bury me as soon as possible. Bury me in my own garden and plant a rosebush over my bones and not tell a soul, so that Flood will never know I’m there and I can stay in the ground.

Buried in Solgreve. A fitting punishment. But Edward does not know that, and nor shall he. Virgil’s letter I will stitch into the binding of my Diary to follow this last entry. I shall not send it to its designated recipient, for it reads like the speculations of a madman. I know everything in it is true, of course, for I have seen the Wraiths and met with Flood and know that such things as are beyond explanation exist in the world. But I cannot expect others to believe it.