Victorian Maiden (18 page)

She could flee! She could run and run and run to where Mr Price and her uncle would never find her. She could run across the Pilgrim's Causeway to the Holy Island, and plead to the Heavens there. It was a holy island, and the Heavens would be merciful, just as they had been merciful to a little boy from a workhouse. 

But then she remembered the great iron-studded door of the tower, and that it had been locked fast behind them. What had been built to keep out armies of raiders would surely serve equally well to keep in one little girl; one wicked little girl, whose mama had left her for Hell.

Could she fling herself from the high battlements and dash out her life on the hard, bare rocks below? For several long, delicious seconds she immersed herself in the relief, the wonderful, blessed relief that this would surely bring. 

And then she remembered Dante, and his Inferno and how wicked she still was.

And then the orb and the hills did kiss, but there were no sweet dreams, and bad things did happen.

Miss Pearce had eaten with them. That too was surprising, startling even, because for a servant to have eaten with them in the grand dining room at Sessrum House would have been utterly unthinkable. And then she, Elizabeth, had been given wine at the table. It was a fine French wine that suited the meal perfectly, and Miss Pearce had laid out the crystal and poured her a large glass – a very large glass – as if she were a grown lady and not a little girl at all. That too was startling. Never before had she been given fermented drink where she hadn't been held down on her bed and the liquor forced down her gullet.

A lot of Uncle Alfie's best wine was consumed with the dinner. Miss Pearce was smiling and attentive with the bottle and, with the strength of the wine and the heat of the fire-basket, all too soon Elizabeth's head was spinning and her ears were pounding. And then she had to weep for being a wicked, little seductress and for poor lost Peter, and for her dear, dead mama.

Miss Pearce told her that she had been born on the Holy Island. Like the Heavens, she had seen her despair and she had come like an angel of mercy to comfort her. Miss Pearce pulled her into a tight, warm embrace. She stroked her hair and kissed her forehead. Safe in her warm, strong arms, it was almost like having her dear dead mama back again. Lizzie tried to swing her legs, tried to swing them like she did when she was a very little girl, but her heels caught on the hard, stone flags of the floor.

And then, with a grinning nod of permission from Mr Price, Miss Pearce lifted her gently from her chair and led her back up the worn, spiral stairs. Round and round, round and round. Miss Pearce and Mr Price became no more than shadows driving her on. Lizzie knew that she could easily throw herself from the rooftop now; that she could at last make it all stop. She needed so much just to sleep forever. Like the Heavens, Miss Pearce knew that too. She kissed her once more and gently pulled her, dizzy and unsteady, into her bedchamber.

“The wine was a special treat for you,” Miss Pearce whispered huskily, “I hope it wasn't spoiled?”

Elizabeth shook her head and the room spun… round and round, round and round.

“Good, because I wouldn't want to have my special treat spoiled, or Mr Price's.”

Elizabeth tried to focus on her face, tried to focus on her words.

“Our treat,” Miss Pearce continued, easing her down onto the bed, “Is to have you with us, Elizabeth.”

That was kind, she thought, the sort of sweet thing her dear mama would have said before she left her for Hell.

Miss Pearce's hand lifted. She reached over and pulled at the blue velvet ribbon in Lizzie's hair that set off her hair so nicely. It loosed and fell away and Miss Pearce smiled. She began to caress her hair, to stroke it down tenderly over her shoulders and Lizzie remembered the time before her mama died, when her mama would brush her hair exactly fifty times before she kissed her goodnight. They would count the strokes of the hairbrush together. But Lizzie could see that Mr Price was in the room; that he was sitting on a low settee beside a large, dancing fire, watching as if entranced. He seemed to have fire dancing in his eyes, but Lizzie wasn't worried; bad things wouldn't happen this night, because Miss Pearce was there to protect her, just like another mama.

“You're very beautiful, Lizzie.” 

Miss Pearce's fingers were cool behind her neck and she kissed her cheek with such tenderness that Lizzie didn't even notice them slowly reaching for the clasps of her gown. It was her dear mama kissing her goodnight to protect her against all the bad things. The touch of her lips surprised her just a little as they reached out once more and met her own. It was surprising to be kissed by lips that were so soft and so gentle, that had no reek of tobacco, no taste of hard liquor, and no rake of stubble.

She felt her dress being pulled from her. Her mama was undressing her for bed. 

“But Mr Price is watching,” she mumbled, trying to protest. 

Her brain seemed as heavy as lead, her thoughts as sluggish as the shadowy waters that rolled and lapped at the shore outside.

“Shh, Lizzie, never you mind what Mr Price is doing.” 

Miss Pearce seemed a little breathless now. It must be the heat of the fire. Lizzie nodded and allowed her leaden, leaden eyelids to fall shut. Under them the room seemed to be spinning once more, faster and faster and faster. It was a curious sensation. 

And then there was another curious sensation. She was being kissed again, she was sure of it; not brutally as she usually was, with hands mauling her and grabbing her and making her hurt, but softly and tenderly. She felt something hot against her skin and she shivered. There was another part of the curious sensation too, a part that she couldn't quite comprehend with the room spinning so, but it was of Sessrum, of the Annexe and of cruel, cruel punishment.

She awoke. Miss Pearce was there, leaning over her. She was naked – stark naked – with the curves of her smooth and flawless skin rippling orange in the firelight. She was naked and she was touching her, caressing her, stroking her. Her touch was light but her eyes were ravenous. She had Lizzie's hand in her own and she smiled the smile of her uncle, as she pulled it against the softness of her breast. Horrified, she felt it swell against her fingers like a live thing. The wine vanished from her blood and she shrieked.

“Hush, Lizzie, don't struggle so, I'll show you what to do,” Miss Pearce purred, reaching for her hand once more, spreading her fingers.

“No, no – please don't!” 

Lizzie snatched away her hand, curling into the bedcovers, hugging them as if she were a tiny, tiny child and not a grown girl at all.

A shadow; a great, black shadow crept across the flickering wall above her head. It was large and squat, and it held in its hand, if hand it was, the paler shadow of a bottle through which the light of the fire cast swirling shapes and eddies. Its voice had a deep, familiar catch. 

“I'll settle her down for you, Pearce. Roberts gave me this for her in case she struggled. He calls it her medicine.”

Lizzie felt hands taking hold of her. They were big, muscular hands; hands she knew were overpowering and unstoppable. Her head was forced back and the hard, cold rim of a bottle pushed against her face. She felt cold liquid over her lips, across her cheeks, in her mouth. There was an acrid, bitter taste. She gasped and then there was more liquid. She spluttered and choked. The liquid was running cold around her neck, like Miss Pearce's icy fingers. Two faces, blurred, almost preternatural, appeared over hers and a voice spoke, too deep and too slurred to understand.

She awoke the next day to the sun's rays streaming flat and bright through the narrow window slit of her room, and to a suffocating wave of nausea. The pillow was soaked under her cheek, as if in the night she had cried tears enough to quench the flames of the Inferno itself. But then, as she lay on the clammy wetness, the memory, the raw, unbidden memory of the night before came back and the scab was ripped from her mind. She remembered that the wet under her cheek was the spilt, choked medicine for wicked girls, and oh, how wicked she had been.

She remembered Miss Pearce and how she had tried to… to arouse her, to seduce her. That was it; those were exactly the right words. Miss Pearce was a woman, but she had tried to somehow seduce her, and Mr Price had been watching her do it. He actually seemed to have been enjoying it, with the flames dancing in his eyes.

She was certain Miss Pearce would go to Hell, to the Eighth Circle of Hell where Uncle Alfie always said her mama had gone. She wondered if Mr Price had punished Miss Pearce for her wickedness as she vaguely remembered now he had punished her. Yes, she could feel the ache, deep in her belly where he always hurt her, and the stinging on her neck where he liked to bite her with his little sharp teeth.

She thought again of her mama, and just for a moment, just for the briefest moment, she hoped that her mama really was in Hell. For the briefest moment, she hoped with all of her heart that Uncle Alfie was right and that Mary and John and the words on the gravestone were wrong. Because if her mama really was in Hell then the broad whinstone drift beneath them would have blocked her view of the bad things that had happened in the night. Her mama would not have seen just how wicked she truly was.

She thought again of the roof, and of flinging herself onto the rocks below. She thought of the long, sandy causeway to the Holy Island, and of sitting there, singing her favourite lullaby as the waters rushed in to drown her. She imagined herself, face down, being pulled into a fishing coble. She pictured the fishermen looking at her, examining her, seeing that she hadn't been punished nearly enough, and dropping her back into the cold, bleak waters to sink down into Hell. 

And if her mama was in Hell, she would see her again – today – now. 

But she knew the instant the thought seared a path across her mind that she couldn't do it; she couldn't do any of it. Because maybe Mary and John were right after all, maybe her mama was in Heaven with Jesus. Perhaps she had seen everything that she had made Miss Pearce and Mr Price do to her. 

She knew then that she had always to be an especially good little girl, and do everything exactly as she was told, so that her mama would come for her soon. Then she could explain that she had never, ever meant to make them do that, that it was all a frightful, frightful accident. She could explain that she really would be more careful from now on, and that she really never, ever meant to be a wicked girl at all.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the big gong calling her to breakfast. She ignored it. The lingering effects of the wine and the lingering image of a woman with firelight dancing on her naked skin drove her instead to seek the sanctuary of the battlements.

For the rooftop was a sanctuary. It was somewhere she could be safe, and somewhere she could be alone. The whispering of the waves calmed her spirit and soothed her mind, and the gentle breeze purged it of the wine. And if ever Mr Price or Miss Pearce were to happen upon her; if they were to seek her out with their ravenous, lascivious eyes, then the welcoming rocks below would be glad to receive her.

So Lizzie sat by the parapet and gazed across the bay.

To her left was the Holy Island, where Miss Pearce had been born and where, just a few short months earlier, a game had gone horribly wrong and a terrible, terrible thing had happened.

She glanced away lest that memory should come, bidden by name. To the right of the bay were yet more islands, rugged and bleak against the pure blue of the sea. John had told her that these were the Farne Islands, formed from pillars of the same black rock as that on which this very tower stood. He had also told her there was a lighthouse there, from which just a few years before, the great North Country heroine Grace Darling and her papa had rowed a little wooden boat – a coble – almost a mile through a terrible storm. They had rowed through the storm and rescued no fewer than thirteen shipwrecked sailors from certain death. 

Grace had recently died, John had said, from tuberculosis, and as she watched those same seas, so calm and serene now, Lizzie felt a stab of envy. Grace had lived, cut off from the world, in a lighthouse – in a tower – built on whinstone, and so here was she, cut off and imprisoned no less. But Grace had had her papa with her, and she had performed a deed of such goodness and heroism that the Lord Jesus had looked down and rewarded her. He had rewarded her with death after just twenty-seven years of endurance on this earth. Pray God Lizzie could be rewarded some day too.

A huge grey gull soared above her, riding the winds that rose over the tower. When Mr Price or her uncle, or the other gentlemen of the Friday Club were punishing her in the Annexe, or in their carriages, or at their grand houses in the town, she could almost make it seem as if she wasn't there at all. In her mind, she would be playing games with John, or taking her lessons with Mary, or talking to her dead mama and papa in their grave. The men were content to punish her sinful body, and they would leave her spirit, what was really her, to wander as freely as it chose; as freely as the gull on the breeze or the magpies on the Stray. But here, at Budle, was Miss Pearce. Miss Pearce didn't want to punish her body. Miss Pearce was tender and soft, and she treated her body almost as if it were something holy.

Miss Pearce wanted her soul. 

At night, when she came to do terrible things, she would never hurt her like the gentlemen hurt her. Miss Pearce would stroke her and caress her; she would whisper soft and tender things into her ear and tell her how she was quite lovely. Miss Pearce would try to possess her. And each time she did, Lizzie would be dragged back from her safe and special place to cling desperately to her very soul itself.