Victorian Maiden (5 page)

The nurse reached over and patted Elizabeth's trembling hands.

“Yes, of course; the two hundred pounds,” she spat, “The most precious part of all.”

Dr Roberts stood suddenly and lifted his wine glass high.

“That is enough talk of the past. The past cannot be changed, but rest assured, it will be mended. We look to the future now, so please, a toast: To Elizabeth Wilson and to simple, natural justice.”

“Have you bathed, Lizzie? Have you put on the new silk nightgown I picked out for you?” Her uncle's disembodied voice is faint and muffled behind the thick panelled door of her bedroom, but faint and muffled though it is, there is a strange, disquieting catch to it that sends minatory shivers down her back. “Let me see you.”

The shadows on the door cast by the gas lamp begin to slide to one side, and then, all at once, her uncle is there. The faint smile on his lips is eclipsed horribly by the cruel hunger in his eyes as they creep slowly down her body. She feels all at once exposed, almost as if she is still in her bath and hasn't put on her new silk nightgown at all.

“Might Aunt Agnes kiss me and wish me sweet dreams tonight, Uncle Alfie?” she asks. “I should like that very much. I should like Aunt Agnes to tuck me into bed tonight.” She hopes that she hasn't offended him.

“My wife, your Aunt Agnes, is feeling ill again tonight, and so she has sent me. Lizzie. You have been a wicked, sinful, little girl tonight; did you know that? You have aroused me, and you need to be punished – for righteousness' sake, and for the sake of your immortal soul.”

She looks directly into his eyes, those beastly, ravenous eyes, and it is as if she is looking into the eyes of Satan himself.

“Please have mercy, Uncle Alfie. I don't mean to be wicked and sinful, honest I don't. I never meant to arouse you. I don't even truly know what that means. Please don't punish me. Please have mercy.”

He reaches behind to jerk the heavy drape across the shadows on the door. Then he turns back to her and speaks the words, those words: “In my experience, little girls who beg for mercy seldom deserve it.”

She is picked up and hurled bodily back onto her bed. Her scream of shock, her shriek of terror, is smothered and now he's on her – on top of her – pinning her down with his suffocating weight and the great strength of his arms.

“Uncle, stop; please stop.”

‘Dear God, he's going to murder me.' 

Her pleas are extinguished as his mouth clamps down hard onto hers. The stench of tobacco, the rake of his whiskers, and then something else. 

‘Mama, please help me!' 

His tongue, wet and massive, forces its way between her lips, between her teeth, filling her mouth. She gags. 

‘He's choking me. He's choking me to death. He's killing me in my bed!'

His hands are everywhere, squeezing her, hurting her. She catches his arm. She tries desperately to push it away but it's too strong, too big. Her breath stops and she writhes frantically, impaled on his tongue like a fish on a spear. There is a sound like rending cloth. His hands, hot, rough and callused, scrape across her naked skin. Her brain shrieks for air and for her mama. But her mama is dead. A bell tolls in her mind. 

‘Mama, please: Uncle Alfie is killing me. He's choking me. Please, for the love of man make him stop!'

And then the tongue and the mouth are gone. She can breathe. She gasps at the air; at the pure, wonderful air. She gasps and fills her screaming lungs and thanks God and her mama that whatever it was, it's over.

She looks up. Uncle Alfie's eyes, those beastly, ravenous eyes, are waiting. They burn into her soul, laying her bare once again. She is aware of one massive hand with its fingers spread across her chest like some monstrous spider, pressing her down, pushing her hard into her bed. His belt lies open, its big, brass buckle jingling against his fingers as he scrabbles at his buttons.

“Beg me for mercy; beg me for mercy again you wicked little girl.” There it is again; the catch in his voice, the menace, the sudden breathlessness, almost as if he has just run all the way up the ghastly, creepy staircase that leads from the garden and into her bed.

“Mercy, Uncle Alfred, please have mercy.”

Her pleas are screams of terror. He's going to choke her again. He's going to kill her, make her dead, really dead, as dead as her poor, dear mama.

But instead he lets his breeches drop. The jingling of the buckle is the ringing of a bell: Her death bell.

“Deus misereatur: May God have mercy. But there will be no mercy for you this night, Lizzie.”

He grasps her wrists, pulls them high over her head and his eyes, those wolfish eyes, those eyes of the Devil sear into her once more.

Her shriek of terror becomes a screaming cry of pain, of excruciating agony without and within. Her very soul is being rent in two. His great weight smashes against her again and again and again, and each time it does, the pain, the very agony of the damned, erupts and utterly consumes her.

And then he stops and it's over – truly over – at last. The pain slowly dies to a throbbing ache, deep down in her belly. It dies everywhere, that is, except within her soul. There it will live on forever and grow stronger and stronger and stronger. 

She rolls over and becomes a baby again, whimpering as her body twists and she clutches at her knees. ‘Please forgive me, Mama, for…for…'

“You're a slut; you're a wicked little temptress.” 

Her uncle's bitter, hateful voice penetrates her agony in the silence of the aftermath. 

“That's what you wanted all along, isn't it? That's why you aroused me in your silk nightgown.”

Lizzie tries to understand him. She tries to comprehend what the words mean. But she can't. They are beyond her. 

“No, Uncle,” she whispers.

‘Please forgive me, Mama, for… for being a slut, and a wicked little temptress.'

“Here, let me get you dressed. Two of my gentlemen friends will be coming to see you shortly. Mrs Eire will need to sew you back up in the morning too. We need to get our full money's-worth out of you don't we, my girl?”

His laugh is short and harsh.

“Because yes, you are my girl now; I possess you.” 

She is dragged roughly to her knees and a fresh eruption of pain bursts inside her. Her new, silk nightgown, torn, spoiled and bloodied now, is forced down over her head. The hands release her and she falls back onto her bed. She feels dirty; she feels sullied and used somehow, guilty of something she knows not. But then her uncle had said she was a bad, wicked girl and that she deserved the punishment for the sake of her soul… just as she had deserved for her mama to go away, and she understands at last the gnawing, gnawing guilt.

The pain has gone; all except for a stinging on her arm where her knife has tried to stop her from remembering. She feels tired, so very tired, and so weary, almost as if she were an old woman and not a little girl at all.

She looks around. Everything is the same; the angels, the bed, the thick drape hanging by the door. She watches the door. She always watches the door at night. Night is when the shadows move. Night is when bad things happen. 

And then bad things did happen. 

‘Oh, Lord Jesus, help me!' 

The shadows on the door are moving, just as they always move at night, when the door to her bedroom opens and her uncle comes in. 

‘Oh, please, please be merciful!' 

Then, those words slip once more from their hiding place and burn a fiery path through her mind: ‘In my experience, little girls who beg for mercy, seldom deserve it.' 

Why does he make her say it? Why does he make her beg for mercy if she doesn't deserve it, if he won't ever be merciful? She is a wicked, wicked girl and the door is opening. Bad things are going to happen. Her body is numb, except for the stinging lines on her arm where the knife has tried to keep her from remembering. 

She looks up and she sees them; those eyes, those beastly, ravenous eyes; staring at her, coming closer. 

‘Please, little cherubs, fly to the Lord Jesus. Beg him to make Uncle Alfie be merciful.' 

Her fingers close around the warm, comforting handle of the knife. She pushes it against her skin. But it fails her. Dear Lord, she is numb. She can't feel the delicious pain, and she can't shut out those eyes – those beastly, ravenous eyes – or stop his mouth. She senses his lips parting and she hears those words once more, echoing in her mind: “Beg me for mercy, Lizzie. Beg, beg, beg! In my experience…”

Then, a power that is not her own takes her hand. It does what she has not the strength to do. She looks. Behold! There beside her is a beneficent, bearded face. It is the face of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah – her messiah. It has to be the Lord Jesus Christ, and standing with him is a woman; a smiling old woman with kind, weeping eyes. It is the old mother, dear Old Mother Shipton. 

‘Lord Jesus, thank you.' 

So she wasn't a witch at all; she was with the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus has come, so the world must have ended at last.

 

Early the following morning, Atticus Fox eased open the sash of his dining room window. He rested his elbows on the sill and gazed out across the verdant acres of the Stray, as they slid down to the gardens of the valley below. Inhaling deeply on the wonderful mix of scents, he allowed the rousing music of the Temperance Band playing in the bandstand opposite to mingle with his own warm feelings of satisfaction in a job well done.

“You know, Lucie?” he purred, “It is a truly wonderful thing to know that we have just helped to transform a poor old woman's life for the better. I can see now why Michael Roberts gets so much satisfaction in doing what he does. Will Elizabeth Wilson ever recover enough to enjoy her new life, do you suppose?”

His wife was silent for a moment as she allowed their breakfast tea to tinkle into the cups.

“No, I can't suppose she ever will, Atty.”

“But this is Harrogate. What about treatment with some of the spa waters?” Atticus suggested. “Chalybeate water is very good for the mind.”

Lucie smiled. Her husband insisted on drinking several large glasses of the sweet, iron-rich chalybeate water every day. He was convinced it kept his brain in first-rate condition.

“Senile dementia is a very serious condition, and it's completely irreversible Atticus. There are no waters and no medicines in the world that will change that. No matter what we might do, her mind will slowly perish and her brain will steadily lose its function, until she dies.”

Atticus pushed the sash closed and the music died abruptly to a muted whisper. He turned back from the window.

“So Mary Lovell and Dr Roberts are right then? Elizabeth has lost everything – her entire life?”

Lucie nodded.

“I'm afraid so. She lost it first to depression and now finally, she's lost it to senility and dementia.”

She shrugged.

“I agree with Sister Lovell that Elizabeth was never a manic-depressive though. I've seen eyes like hers before – in soldiers returning from war. I'm almost certain from what I've seen of her that Elizabeth Wilson has a form of battle-fatigue.”

“Battle-fatigue: But she's spent her entire life around Harrogate. She hasn't been within a thousand miles of a battle.”

“Perhaps not, but she has certainly suffered some form of severe trauma to her mind nonetheless; I'm convinced of it. It might be to do with her being orphaned. Her papa died when she was just a babe-in-arms, and her mama when she was thirteen.”

“There are lots of orphans in this world, Lucie, but precious few of them suffer from battle-fatigue, especially ones who are taken in by philanthropists. Why should she…”

The heavy, insistent rapping at the front door killed Atticus' question stone dead. They exchanged suddenly anxious expressions and waited, hearts pounding, to see who it was calling at this early hour. Social calls were strictly for the afternoon, and something about the knock told them instantly, and with utter certainty, that something was terribly wrong.

They weren't kept in suspense for long. Soon the housekeeper led in a tall, handsome man in a footman's livery, whose sweating, gasping face was familiar.

“Sir, ma'am – this is James, Dr Roberts' footman. I beg your pardon for showing him straight in, but he tells me that his errand is very urgent.”

“Very good, Mrs Morris, you did the correct thing. Please would you bring us some more tea? The poor man looks fit to drop, as if he has run all the way from Sessrum House.”

“Begging your pardon, Mrs Fox, but I have. I've run right across town. Dr Roberts has asked that I fetch you directly. You see, last night, Miss Wilson murdered Dr Roberts' grandfather. She murdered him with a paper-knife.”

The steady ticking of the clock in the hall beat against time that had frozen.

Atticus was the first to recover.

“Where is Miss Wilson now?”

“In the smoking room of the Annexe,” James replied, “Being guarded by the nurse who came to look after her. A pretty job of looking after her she's made of it too, I do declare.”

“Yes, yes,” Atticus cut across him impatiently, “And where is Dr Roberts?”

“I left him waiting for you and Mrs Fox, sir. He sends his compliments and asks that you be as quick as you're able.”

“Very well, very well, we will come directly; the tea will have to wait. Another murder for us, Lucie! And we thought it was just a search for a long-lost relative. Lead on James;
Quo Fata Vocant
– Whither the Fates call! There's no time to lose. You can tell us the rest as we walk.”