Wasp (23 page)

The cleric has begun his sermon. He’s a young man with unfashionably cropped fair hair and sharp cheekbones. An affliction of the voice melts all his ‘t’s and ‘s’s together. Hummingbird keeps snickering. Beth hunches in her seat and wishes herself on the other side of the world. While talking, the cleric’s eyes flit around, his gaze alighting on the floor, ceiling, windows. Murmurs ripple through his congregation. He then launches into a series of prayers.

Hummingbird leans across and whispers, ‘Are you going to take bread?’

Beth feels nailed to the pew. ‘I don’t think I can.’

‘It’s easy. Watch.’

People are leaving their seats and filing to the front of the church. Beth grasps Hummingbird’s arm. ‘Go up there, and I’ll run out and leave you, I swear it.’

Hummingbird shrugs her off and joins the other supplicants at the altar rail, leaving a strong scent of jasmine in her wake. The young cleric is working his way along the line, dispensing bread and wine. A choir sings some dirge from an upstairs gallery. Occasional sneezes punctuate the music.

He reaches Hummingbird. She raises her face to him, expression unreadable. The priest’s hand wavers, bread paused in the air between his hand and her mouth.

‘Child?’

‘Amen,’ says Hummingbird. Her tongue snakes out, pink and wet in the light from the stained-glass windows.

‘I can’t believe you did that,’ Beth declares as the two girls push through the city throng.

‘Why not?’ Hummingbird bats a fly away from her bonnet. ‘Putting some wind in the preacher’s sails teaches him a little of the humility his holy peers preach from their pulpits. These clerics love to sermonise. Sometimes their mouths need reining in.’

‘You behaved like someone from a travelling show.’

‘Our attendance always throws the pure at heart into a dither. No vicar will condemn us, no bolt of lightning strike from the sky. We are the devil’s daughters seated among the lambs. Yet we give generously to charities. Nothing confounds the fire-and-brimstone preachers more than fallen women filling the pockets of the poor and destitute. Last year a visiting clergyman hired a Sister with the sole intention of taking her to church and praying for her salvation. The Sister put on a suitable show of repentance then everyone returned home.’

‘That cleric’s cheeks turned so scarlet I thought they’d burst. We were lucky not to get kicked out on our tails.’

‘I doubt it, Kitten. He’s one of our best clients.’

‘No!’

‘It’s true. His visits to our particular den of delights are discreet but regular. However, his debt has grown heavy and he needed a reminder to settle. Besides, most of those fine-suited men stinking out the front rows with their expensive cologne spend much of their time whoring and gambling. They find absolution in muttering a couple of prayers then go and sin all over again. God is merciful, God is forgiving. The more money and status you’ve got the more merciful God tends to be.’

‘It’s not what I was taught.’

‘Where did those lessons get you? Listen, Kitten, everyone knows us. Some call these Emblems on our cheeks the mark of Cain, yet gallants often send their footmen to dog our path home in a bid to arrange an unofficial assignation. These unwelcome shadows can usually be perplexed by a fast carriage or sedan bearers who know a back alley or two.’

Hummingbird squeezes Beth’s fingers. ‘We don’t pretend to be anything other than exactly what we are, and that gives us power. A very sweet power. You will learn more about this once you wear an Emblem.’

Next morning finds Moth at the breakfast table, her eyes big and raw. Her left hand is bandaged. She won’t look at or say a word to Beth. Halfway through the meal she gets up and runs from the room, knocking her stool over in the process.

‘What’s the matter with her?’ Beth asks the serving woman.

The maid’s mouth thins. ‘Moth got a hot hand.’

Eloise catches Beth in the corridor and asks her to hang out the linen from the washhouse. Apparently the washerwoman has the gripe. ‘We’ve had a poor morning and it will rain again later,’ Eloise explains, both hands black with coal dust. ‘If you peg it up now we might get most of it dry before the heavens decide to open again. Either that or we suffer a kitchen full of wet bed sheets. Cook is very jealous of her space. I don’t want her sour face ruining the rest of my day.’

Beth hurries downstairs, scoops a basket from the alcove beside the courtyard door and steps outside. A flagstoned area, square as an executioner’s yard, is hedged by the House on three sides with the stables flanking the fourth. Wooden poles support washing lines that spider-web above ground made slick by the morning’s rain. Beth squints past the tall chimneys. Clouds grey the sky, thinning in places like the strands of some ageing dandy’s hair. The air feels clammy.

Two dozen steps take her across the yard, basket swinging at her hip. The washhouse door hangs open. Tubs, like huge wooden barrels lopped off at the base and banded with black iron, hug the space beneath the window. Scrubbing boards lean over the rims like gravestones.

Against the far wall, an untidy pile of linen lies heaped on the draining board. Already it’s beginning to smell of washing left too long.
If the rain catches it there’ll be no comfortable sleep for some of us tonight,
Beth thinks.

She piles the washing inside the basket. The damp cloth feels horrible against her bare forearms. A grey sludge of water covers the bottom of the nearest tub. Soap suds hiss as they dissolve.

A noise outside. Beth peeks round the door. Nobody there. A few pigeons coo from the slate roof. The linen basket is a dead weight in her arms. She dumps it under the nearest peg-spiked drying line, half throwing, half draping sheets over the twine. Taking a mouthful of pegs she creates white, billowing rooms for herself, the walls made of linen ghosts.

Another sound. Then another. A breeze funnels into the yard, catches the sheets and sends them flapping. A speck of something strikes Beth’s forearm and she looks up, panicking, thinking the rain has tricked them all. But the sky remains stuck in its grey doldrums. A pinch of soot, then? In a city of a thousand belching chimneys it must prove impossible to keep anything clean for long.

She rubs her arm and picks up the last of the washing. A sharp gust sends the corners snapping at her ankles. After this, Beth thinks, she’ll go to the parlour and steal a few minutes with some coffee. Perhaps Eloise will be waiting by the fire, her face fat with smiles and gossip.

A shadow falls across the sheet in front of her. For a moment Beth thinks a bird has caught itself in the folds. The shape turns into a fist and strikes her square in the face through the material. Beth staggers back. Gloved hands appear, plucking the pegs from the line. The sheet slithers onto the wet flagstones. Beth squeals. An apparition. A white-faced spectre with dark, slitted eyes and bloody lips open in a demonic pout. Wild patterns of blue and black swirl over its death-white cheeks. It wears a green satin gown with creamy sweeps of lace looping across the skirts. A peg is scissored between fingers and waved in front of Beth’s face.

She hears a wet slap as another sheet hits the ground. Then another. More figures, more white faces. Some are emblazoned with flames, others with birds or flowers, or strange winged creatures out of some poet’s dream. Beth is caught in a rustling cage of skirts and petticoats. One of the figures speaks with lips frozen in a scarlet kiss. The voice is hollow and filled with winter. ‘Quite the tattle tale, aren’t you?’

Masks, they’re wearing porcelain masks, that’s why their faces don’t move.

The circle closes around her. ‘Tattle tale.’ A blow between her shoulderblades. ‘Tattle tale.’ Another in the ribs. Beth tries to back away. She trips over someone’s leg and jars her spine on the hard stone. Thoughts tumble into one another. Her eyes water and she blinks to clear them.

An initiation.
She clings to the idea.
That’s all it is. I’ll wager all new girls undergo something like this. I’m nearly a Masque, Hummingbird said so. They’ll tease me a little, try to scare me and then there’ll be hugs and kisses. I’ll be one of the girls. Hummingbird and I shall laugh about it later.

They lean over her, masks dark against the gunmetal sky. One of the faces ducks out of sight. Footsteps crack across the flagstones. A pause. A muffled scraping sound. Then the face returns. ‘Hold her up.’

Hands hook under Beth’s arms and wrench her into a sitting position. The figure crouches in front of her, the mask inches from her face. Hot breath from those brittle lips tickles her nose. ‘Got a dirty tongue, haven’t you?’ the voice says. Beth doesn’t know how to reply. Who is hiding behind the porcelain? Is it someone she knows? Her back and ribs throb. The jest is wearing thin.

The figure holds out cupped hands. Manure, turned to ochre sludge by the rain, drips between the gloved fingers. ‘Open her mouth.’

An arm slides around Beth’s neck and tightens. Thumbs prise her jaws apart. Filth pours over her teeth and gums. She tries to scream and only makes choking sounds. The mask fills her vision. Beneath the thin slits, eyes glitter with anger.

‘Sisters don’t snitch on one another. Nor do Kittens. Remember that the next time you want to win a smile from the Abbess.’

The hand lets go. Beth rolls over, belly heaving. Manure pours out of her mouth and splatters onto the cobbles. Her eyes and nose sting.

Footsteps drift away. Muttering voices. Some faraway door opens and closes. Alone in the yard. Sheets flap as another gust blows between the chimneys. Others are crumpled phantoms lying prone on the ground.

I’ll have to wash them.
The only sane thought Bethany can squeeze out of her mind. She blinks, brings things into focus. A flagstone, tiny crack splitting its surface. Grains of dirt. A clothes peg, splintered into pieces.

Beth spits out the last of the muck and pushes herself into a kneeling position. Her breath is coming in loud whoops. Black threads wriggle across her vision.

‘I’m going to die,’ she whispers.

A pair of hands heave her into the air and carry her across the yard like a sack of oats. She tries to struggle but the arms holding her are firm. Ahead lies the horse trough. ‘No—’

Cold water smacks against her skin. It fills her ears, swills out her mouth. She swallows. Cool fingers slide down her throat into her belly. A hand pushes her deeper, sluicing the last of the manure from her nose.

Out. Fresh air. The world smelling as it should. Floods of water course down the front of her day gown. Hair flaps about her ears like wet reeds. The hands lift her out of the trough and smooth threads of sopping hair off her forehead. Leonardo’s face swims into focus. ‘Better now?’

‘Hurts
 . . .
’ Beth splutters.

‘But thou art clean, and will live. Pride injured more than anything, I wager, as was their intention.’

‘Why?’

‘Thy Sisters have punished thee for a reason only thou canst know. Give thyself a moment, then I shall take thee to Kingfisher where thou canst dry in front of his stove. I shall fetch a fresh garment from the House.’

‘I can’t go back.’

‘Thou canst not stay here. Best make thy mind up.’