The Crimson Petal and the White (84 page)

William runs his hands through his hair, and stares up at the windows, whose inky-black panes are spattered with sleet and garlanded with snow. This cannot be happening to him!

‘Rose, fetch the storm-lanterns,’ he croaks, after an excruciating silence. ‘We must search the grounds.’ His eyes grow suddenly bright, as if a flame has belatedly kindled behind them – or a fever. ‘Put warm coats on, all of you! And gloves!’

A cursory inspection of the grounds confirms the worst: a trail of footsteps in the snow leading from the front door to the gate, and the gate swung wide open. The street-lamps of Chepstow Villas glow feeble in the drizzly gloom, each illuminating nothing more than a drab sphere of air suspended fifteen feet off the ground. The road is pitch black, with a hint, in the murk beyond, of unlit buildings and convoluted passageways. A woman in sombre clothing could quickly be lost in such a darkness.

‘Is she in white, d’you know?’ asks William of Clara, when the company of searchers is ready to set off from the house. She regards him as if he’s an imbecile, as if he has just enquired which of Mrs Rackham’s ball gowns she has chosen to wear on this momentous occasion.

‘I mean, is she in her night-dress, God help her!’ he snaps.

‘I don’t know, sir,’ Clara replies, scowling as she represses the desire to tell him that if Mrs Rackham has frozen to death, it probably happened while Clara was being forced to search for her in broom-cupboards and under the governess’s bed.

Stiff-limbed in a bulky overcoat, William blunders forward in a haze of his own breath and, in his footsteps, two women follow. Since only three functioning storm-lanterns have been found, those three have been divided amongst William, Clara, and Rose. Letty and Janey are in such a state of agitation that they’re useless anyway, and had better go back to bed, while Miss Sugar oughtn’t to have troubled herself to get up in the first place.

Sugar stands at the front door and watches them go. Even as they pass through the Rackham gate and strike off in different directions, a hansom cab rattles by, raising the possibility that, despite the extreme lateness of the hour, Agnes may have hailed one, and be miles away by now, lost in a vast and intricate city, stumbling through unknown streets of unlit houses full of unknown people. Drunken laughter issues from the cab as it rolls past, a reminder that death from exposure is only one of several dangers awaiting a defenceless female in the world at large.

It occurs to Sugar, as she stands shivering on the porch, that the interior of the Rackham house is unguarded; assuming the other servants stay in bed as they’re told, there’s no one to observe her opening prohibited doors, no one to stop her poking about wherever she chooses. Loath to let such a golden opportunity go by, she pictures herself standing at William’s study-desk perusing some secret document or other. Yes; she should hurry upstairs and make this lantern-slide fantasy come true … But no; her will is lacking; she’s so weary of stealth; there is nothing more she wants to discover; she wishes only to be a member of the family, absolved of suspicion, cosily welcome, forever.

Suddenly, quite out of the blue – well, out of the black – she’s assailed by the thought that Agnes is close by. The certainty of it infuses her brain like a religious belief, a Damascene conversion. What idiots William and the others are, following a will-o’-the-wisp of tracks made by carol singers too careless to shut the Rackham gate! Of
course
Agnes isn’t out there in the streets, she’s
here
, hiding near the house –
very
near!

Sugar rushes indoors to fetch a lamp, and emerges a couple of minutes later with a rather flimsy, puny type, better suited for lighting a few yards of carpeted passage between one bedroom and the next. Gingerly she carries it out into the wind and the wet, holding her palm above the open bulb to shield the trembling flame. Sleet stings her cheeks, sharp little spits of it so cold they feel hot, like fiery cinders in the wind. She must surely be mad, yet she cannot turn back until she has found Agnes.

Where to look first, in this deadly serious game of hide and seek? She tramps onto the carriage-way, her boots going
krift, krift, krift
in the gravelly snow.
No, no
, says a voice in her head, as she makes her way along the flank of the Rackham house, past the bay windows of the parlour and the dining-room –
No, not
here;
you’re not even ‘warm’. Move farther away from the house:
yes: farther into the dark. Warmer, yes, warmer!

She ventures into unfamiliar parts of the Rackham grounds, beyond the vegetable glass-houses whose snow-covered carapaces gleam like marble sarcophagi in the dark. Every few steps, in her efforts to keep the lamp sheltered, she’s distracted from her footing and almost stumbles, here on a garden tool, there on a coal-sack, but she reaches the stables without having fallen.

Very hot
, the voice in her head commends her.

The coach-house doors are shut but not padlocked; so strong is the instinct that brought her here, that she presumes this fact before her eyes confirm it. She undoes the latch, tugs the doors open a crack and lifts her lamp into the aperture.

‘Agnes?’

No answer, except the burning of intuition in her breast. She opens the coach-house doors a little wider, and slips inside. The Rackhams’ carriage stands immobile in the gloom, larger and taller than she remembered, oddly disquieting in its burnished, steel-studded bulk. A puddle of chains and leather straps drools from its prow.

Sugar walks up to the cabin window and lifts her lamp to the dark glass. Something pale stirs within.

‘Agnes?’

‘My … Holy Sister …’

Sugar opens the door, and finds Agnes huddled on the floor of the cabin, her knees drawn up against her chin. That chin is speckled with vomit, and Agnes’s eyes are heavy-lidded, blinking too feebly to expose more than a slit of milky white. In her frigid lethargy, she’s passed beyond shivering, but at least she’s not deathly blue: her lips, smeared with lubricant, are still rosebud-pink. Thank God she’s wearing more than just her night-dress – not enough to keep her warm, but enough to discourage the cold from piercing her heart. A magenta dressing-gown, of thick silk in an oriental style, partly covers the white cotton night-dress, though the front has been buttoned clumsily, with most of the buttons in the wrong holes. Agnes’s feet are bandaged up to the ankles, and additionally shod in loose knitted slippers, the wool sodden with melted snow and prickly with fragments of leaf and twig.

‘Please,’ says Agnes, barely able to lift her head off her knees. ‘Tell me it’s my time.’

‘Your time?’

‘To go … to the Convent with you.’ And she licks at her lips, trying ineffectually to dislodge, with her listless tongue, a small glob of vomit stuck in the mouth-salve.

‘N-not yet,’ says Sugar, doing her best, in spite of her revulsion, to speak with the authority of an angel.

‘They’re poisoning me,’ whimpers Agnes. Her face nods down again, and damp strands of fine blonde hair slither off her shoulders, one by one. ‘Clara’s in league with them. She gives me bread and milk … soaked in poison.’

‘Come out of here, Agnes,’ says Sugar, reaching into the cabin to stroke Agnes’s arm, as if she were a wounded pet. ‘Can you walk?’

But Agnes appears not to have heard. ‘They’re fattening me up for sacrifice,’ she continues, in an anxious, high-pitched whisper. ‘A slow sacrifice … to last a lifetime. Each day, a different demon will come to eat my flesh.’

‘Nonsense, Agnes,’ says Sugar. ‘You’ll get well.’

Agnes swivels her head towards the light. Through a veil of hair, one eye blinks wide, bloodshot-blue.

‘You’ve seen my feet?’ she says, with sudden, angry clarity. ‘Bruised fruit. And bruised fruit doesn’t get well again.’

‘Don’t be afraid, Agnes,’ says Sugar, though in truth she is very afraid herself, that the glare of Agnes’s eye and the sharpness of Agnes’s torment will cause her own nerve to crack. She takes a deep breath, as discreetly as an angel might, and declares, in a seductive voice she hopes is serenely trustworthy, ‘All will be well, I promise. Everything will turn out for the best.’

But the assurance fails to impress Agnes, despite its fairytale flavour; it only reminds her of more nastiness.

‘Worms have eaten my diaries,’ she moans. ‘My precious memories of Mama and Papa …’

‘Worms haven’t eaten your diaries, Agnes. They’re safe with me.’ Sugar leans into the cabin to stroke Agnes’s arm again. ‘Even the Abbots Langley ones,’ she soothes, ‘with all their French dictation and Callisthenics. All safe.’

Agnes raises her head high, and utters a cry of relief. Her pale throat trembles with the breath of that cry, and her hair slithers back over her shoulders, revealing tears on her cheeks.

‘Take me,’ she begs. ‘Please take me, before
they
do.’

‘Not yet, Agnes. The time isn’t yet.’ Sugar has set the lamp on the ground, and is hoisting herself gently and slowly into the cabin. ‘Soon I’ll help you get away from here. Soon, I promise. But first you must get warm, in your nice soft bed, and rest.’

She lays an arm around Agnes’s back, then smoothly slides her fingers into Agnes’s armpits, which are hot and damp with fever.

‘Come,’ she says, and raises Mrs Rackham up off the floor.

The walk back to the house is not quite the nightmare Sugar feared. True, they must make their way across the grounds without any light, because she can’t support Agnes and carry a lantern at the same time. But the sleet and wind have eased off, leaving the air quiet and apprehensive under gravid snow-clouds. Also, Agnes is no dead weight: she has rallied somewhat, and limps and lurches alongside Sugar without complaint – like a drunken strumpet. And, now that the objective is the single monumental structure of the house, whose downstairs windows helpfully glow with lamp-light, the going is easier than when Sugar was groping into the inky unknown.

‘William will be angry with me,’ Agnes frets, as they walk along the carriage-way, their four feet going
krift, krift, krift
and
fro, fro, fro
.

‘He isn’t here,’ says Sugar. ‘Nor is Clara.’

Agnes looks at her rescuer in wonder, imagining William and Clara being rolled aside like the two halves of the Red Sea, their startled limbs waving impotently as the irresistible force of magic pushes them out of the picture. Then she stops in her tracks, and casts a critical glance over the house across whose threshold her guardian angel is about to lead her.

‘You know, I’ve never liked this place,’ she remarks, in a distant, reflective tone, as snow-flakes begin once more to flutter down from above, twinkling on her head and shoulders. ‘It smells … It smells of people trying terribly hard to be happy, without the slightest success.’

TWENTY-EIGHT

B
ut now, my dear Children – for that is how I think of you, blessed
readers of my Book throughout the world – I have taught you all
the Lessons I know. And yet I hear your voices, from as far away
as Africa and America, and as far removed as the Centuries to
come, clammering Tell Us, Tell Us, Tell Us Your Story!

Oh, Ye of little understanding! Have I not told you that the details of my
own case are of no consequence? Have I not told you that this Book is no Diary?
And still you hanker to know about me!

Very well, then. I will tell you a story. I suppose, if you have read all my
Lessons and pondered them, you have earned that much. And perhaps a book looks
better if it is not quite so thin – though I believe there is more substance in this little
volume of mine than in the thickest tomes written by unenlighted souls. But let that
pass. I will tell you the story of when I witnessed a thing that none of us is permitted to see until the Resurrection – but I saw it, because I was naughty!

It happened on one of the occasions I was transported to the Convent of Health
for healing. I had arrived in a dreadful state, but after an hour or two of my Holy
Sister’s sweet attentions, I was much improved, and madly curious to explore the
other cells of the Convent, which I was forbidden to do. But I felt so well I was
bored. Curiosity, which is the desparaging name that men give to womens’ thirst for
Knowledge, has always been my greatest flaw, I admit. And so, dear readers, I left
the confine of my cell.

I moved stealthily, as Wrongdoers do, and looked into the key-hole of the next
chamber. What a surprise! I had always presumed that only our sex could be offered
Sanctuary at the Convent of Health, but there was Henry, my brother in law! (I
didnt mind in the least, for Henry was the decentest man in the world!) But I swear
that I should never have looked through the key-hole if I had known he wouldnt be
wearing any clothes! However – in a glimpse I had seen him. One of the blessed
Sisters was at his side, tending to his burns. I looked away at once.

In the hallway behind me I suddenly heard footsteps, but, rather than run back
into my own cell, I took fright and hastened on ahead. I ran directly to the Most
Forbidden Room, the one with a golden A fixed upon it, and passed inside!

How can I pretend to be contrite for my sin of disobedience? I could say a thousand Hail Marys, and still smile in bliss at the memory. There I stood, dazzled
with wonder at the Apparition in the middle of the room. A giant column of flame,
for which I could detect no source: it seemed to issue from empty air a little distance
off the floor, and taper to nothingness far above. I estimate – though I was never
much good at calculations – that it was fully twenty feet high, and four feet wide.
The flame was bright orange, gave off no heat and no smoke. At its heart, suspended
inside it like a bird floating on the wind, was the unclothed body of a girl. I could
not see her face, for she was floating with her back to me, but her flesh was so fair
and free of blemish that I guessed her to be perhaps thirteen. The flame was so
transparent that I could see her breathe, and knew thereby that she was alive, but
sleeping. The flame did not harm her at all, it merely bore her aloft and made her
hair swirl gently, all about her neck and shoulders. I nerved myself to extend one
hand towards the glow, guessing that it must be something like the flame that issues
from burning brandy. But it was more peculiar even than that – I was able to put
my fingers quite inside it, for it was cool as water – indeed it felt just like water
running over my hand. I do not know why this should have startled me more than
getting burned, but I cried out in surprise and snatched my hand away. The great
flame was disturbed by the motion, and wobled irregularly, and to my very great
alarm the girls body began to turn!

I was too awestruck to move an inch, until the floating body had turned entirely
around, and I could see that it was – my own!

Yes, dear readers, this was my Second Body, my Sun Body – utterly perfect
– every mark that Suffering ever inflicted upon me, gone. So eager was I to see its
flawless state, that I leaned my face right into the flame, a most delicious sensation.
I was most especially delighted with my bosom, so small and smooth, my lower
parts, free of gross hair, and of course my face, with all the cares erased. I must say,
I was relieved she was asleep, as I dont think I should have had the courage to look
myself in the eyes.

Overcome at last with fear – or satisfaction – I left the room and ran back to
my cell as fast as my feet could carry me!

Sugar turns the page, but this ecstatic episode was evidently as much of
The Illuminated Thoughts & Preturnatural Reflections of Agnes Pigott
as Agnes managed to write before arriving at her fateful decision to dig her old diaries back out of the ground.

‘Well, what do you think?’ says William, for he’s perched on the rim of his desk, and Sugar stands in front of him in his study, holding the open ledger.

‘I–I don’t know,’ she says, still trying to guess what his summons here this morning might have in store for her. Both she and William are mortally tired, and surely have better things to do with their fagged brains than dissect Agnes’s ravings. ‘She … she tells a story quite well, doesn’t she?’

William stares at her in bafflement, his eyes smarting pink. Even as he opens his mouth to speak, his stomach emits a growl, for he’s given the servants – those of them who were disturbed in the night – leave to sleep late.

‘Are you making a joke?’ he says.

Sugar closes the ledger and hugs it to her breast. ‘No … No, of course not, but … This account, it’s… it’s a dream, isn’t it? A record of a dream …’

William grimaces irritably. ‘And the rest of it? The earlier part? The …’ (he quotes the word with exaggerated distaste) ‘lessons?’

Sugar shuts her eyes and breathes deep, plagued by a temptation to laugh, or to tell William to leave his damned wife alone.

‘Well … you know I’m not the most religious of people,’ she sighs, ‘so I really can’t judge—’

‘
Madness!
’ he explodes, slamming the palm of his hand against the desk. ‘Complete lunacy! Can’t you see that!’

She flinches, takes an instinctive step backwards. Has he ever spoken so harshly to her before? She wonders if she should burst into tears, and plead ‘You f-frightened me’ in a tremulous voice so that he’ll enfold her penitently in his arms. A quick glance at those arms, and the fists at the ends of them, dissuades her.

‘Look – look at these!’ he rages, pointing to a precarious stack of books and pamphlets on his desk, all of whose covers are concealed under curious hand-made jackets of wallpaper or cloth. He snatches up the topmost, yanks it open to its title page, and loudly, jeeringly recites: ‘
From Matter
to Spirit: The Result of Ten Years’ Experience in Spirit Manifestations, with Advice
for Neophytes
, by Celia E. De Foy!’ He flings it from his hand like an unsalvageably soiled handkerchief, and snatches up another. ‘
A Finger in
the Wound of Christ: Probings into Scriptural Arcana
by Dr Tibet!’ He flings that away also. ‘I searched Agnes’s bedroom, to remove anything she might use to cause herself a mischief. And what did I find? Two dozen of these vile objects, hidden inside Agnes’s sewing-baskets! Solicited from as far afield as America, or stolen – yes
stolen
– from a spiritualist lending library in Southampton Row! Books that no sane man would publish, and no sane woman would read!’

Sugar blinks dumbly, unable to appreciate the point of this tirade, but shaken by its vehemence. The stack of books and pamphlets, as if likewise unnerved, suddenly collapses, spilling across William’s desk. One tract falls onto the carpet, a hymnal-sized little thing snugly clad in lace.

‘William – what do you want of me?’ she asks, straining to keep her voice innocent of exasperation. ‘You’ve called me in here, while Sophie sits idle in the school-room, to look at these things of Agnes’s you’ve … confiscated. I agree that they’re proof of … of a severely muddled mind. But how can I help you?’

William runs a hand through his hair, then grabs a handful of it and squeezes it hard against his skull, a fretful gesture she last saw him exhibiting during his dispute with the jute merchants of Dundee.

‘Clara has told me,’ he groans, ‘that she absolutely refuses to give Agnes any more … medicine.’

Sugar bites her tongue on several replies, none of them very respectful to men who wish to keep their wives doped to the gills; she breathes deep, and manages to say instead: ‘Is that such a calamity, William? Agnes was walking fairly well, I thought, when I escorted her back to the house. The worst of the danger is probably past, don’t you think?’

‘An incident such as last night’s, and you suggest the danger is
past?
’

‘I meant, to the healing of the wounds in her feet.’

William lowers his gaze. Only now does Sugar detect a furtiveness in his bearing, a dog-like shame she hasn’t observed in him since he first lifted her skirts at Mrs Castaway’s and entreated her to submit to what other whores had refused. What does he want of her now?

‘Even so,’ he mumbles, ‘Clara – a servant in my employ – has openly defied me. I instructed her to give Agnes that medicine until … until further notice, and she refuses to do it.’

Sugar feels her face beginning to contort with reproach, and hastily smooths it as best she can. ‘Clara is Agnes’s maid, William,’ she reminds him. ‘You must ask yourself, how can she possibly fulfil that function if Agnes doesn’t trust her?’

‘A very good question,’ remarks William, with a portentous nod, as if it’s only too clear to him how untenable Clara’s employment has become. ‘She has
also
refused, point-blank, to lock Agnes’s door.’

‘While she’s attending to Agnes?’

‘No, after.’

Sugar tries to insert this wedge of information into her mind, but it’s just a little too big to fit through the aperture. ‘You mean, you want – uh, the plan is … for Agnes to be kept a …’ (she swallows hard) ‘locked up in her bedroom?’

Face burning, William turns away from her; he waves one arm indignantly towards the window, his stiff fore-finger stabbing the air. ‘Are we to be fetching her out of the coach-house, or from God knows where else, every night of the week?’

Sugar hugs the ledger tighter to her breast; she wishes she could put it down, but feels she’d be unwise to take her eyes off William even for an instant. What does he
really
want? What act of extravagant submission would deflate the anger from his pumped-up frame? Does he need to batter her with his fists, before exerting his remorse between her legs?

‘Agnes seems … very placid just now, don’t you think?’ she suggests gently. ‘When I brought her in from the cold, all she talked about was how much she was looking forward to a warm bath and a cup of tea. “Home is home,” she said.’

He glowers at her in stark mistrust. A hundred lies he’s swallowed; lies about the superior size of his prick to other men’s, the erotic potency of his chest hair, the inevitability of Rackham’s one day being the foremost manufacturer of toiletries in England; but this – this he cannot believe.

For a moment she fears he’ll seize her by the shoulders to shake the truth out of her, but then he slumps back against the desk, and wipes his face with his hands.

‘How did you know where to find her, anyway?’ he enquires, in a calmer tone. It’s a question he didn’t get around to asking hours ago, when he arrived back at the house at dawn, soaked to the skin, wild with worry, only to discover his wife tucked up and dozy in her bed. (‘My goodness, William, what a state you are in’ was Agnes’s sole comment before letting her eyelids droop shut again.)

‘I … I heard her calling,’ Sugar replies. How much longer does William intend to keep her here? Sophie is waiting in the school-room, rather distractible and peevish today, craving the familiar routine of lessons, yet resisting it … There’ll be trouble – tears, at the very least – if normality isn’t restored soon …

‘It’s …
exceedingly
important,’ declares William, ‘that she doesn’t run away in the next few days.’

Sugar’s self-control cannot bear the weight any longer, and she snaps. ‘William, why are you telling me this? I thought you wanted me to have nothing to do with Agnes. Am I to be her warden now? Is she to sit in a corner of the school-room while I teach Sophie, to make sure she behaves?’ Even as the words slip out of her lips, she regrets them; a man requires constant, tireless flattery to keep him from turning nasty; one careless remark can make his fragile forbearance shrivel. If a girl’s going to be sharp-tongued, she’s better off making a career of it, like Amy Howlett.

‘Oh, William, please forgive me,’ she implores, covering her face with her hands. ‘I’m so very tired. And so are you, I’m sure.’

At last he crosses the floor to embrace her: a hard clinch. Agnes’s ledger falls to the floor; their cheeks collide, bone against bone. Each of them squeezes harder as the other responds in kind, until they’re quite breathless. Downstairs, the doorbell rings.