You Only Love Twice (35 page)

“No! You’re going to go home and wait for me there. What you can do is pray—pray for those boys, Ellie. Now come along.”

They parted in the vestibule. Ellie was left in Sister Brigid’s care while Jessica, accompanied by two other nuns and a burly porter, walked toward Fleet Street.

Ellie broke the silence. “I didn’t know that you were in London, Sister Brigid.”

“I won’t be here for much longer,” said Sister Brigid.
“We novices take turns, a month here, a month at Hawkshill.”

“I see.”

“There’s a hackney stand at the corner of Fleet Street,” said Sister Brigid. “When they come to it, they’ll send a hackney for you.” Seeing the tortured look on Ellie’s face, the nun unbent a little. “Sister Martha knows what she’s doing, and she’s well loved in these parts. She’ll find your boys.”

“Sister Martha?” said Ellie.

“Jessica. Lady Dundas.”

“She really is a nun?”

“Did you ever doubt it?”

“Well, no, but Bella said—” Ellie stopped in mid-sentence.

“Yes?”

“It doesn’t matter what Bella said.” Ellie turned to face Sister Brigid. “I wasn’t very kind to you in Chalford when you were nursing Jessica. I behaved like a child. I hope you will forgive me. I’m so sorry. I wish there was something I could do to make it up to you.”

There was a moment of complete silence, then Sister Brigid smiled and said softly, “I absolve you on one condition.”

“What condition?”

“Save those words for Sister Martha.”

Tired and weary, and still in her nun’s habit, Jessica arrived home just as dusk was falling. Ellie was watching from an upstairs window, and when she saw Pip jump down from the hackney, she picked up her skirts and went tearing out of the room. When she got to the front door, a footman was carrying Pip’s brother into the house.

“Martin is suffering from exhaustion,” said Jessica quietly. “I know, the stench is awful, but that’s because he’s been cooped up in a sewer for the last three days. It could
have been worse. Believe me, it could have been much worse.”

She broke off to issue orders as a wide-eyed, staring maid came forward. There was bathwater to be drawn, and nightclothes to be laid out for the boys and a tray of whatever Cook had in the kitchen to tempt their appetites.

“Has Lucas come home?” she asked Ellie. “Not yet.”

“Good. That will give me time to tidy myself before he sees me.”

Ellie grabbed Pip’s hand as they ascended the stairs, but he wrested it from her grasp to demonstrate just how Sister Martha had made her hand into a fist and planted it on old Scurvy’s nose.

“She drew ’is cork, that’s wot she dun. Ooh, it wuz lovely. There wuz blood everywhere!”

“Who is Scurvy?” asked Ellie.

“Scurvy,” said Jessica, “is a tosher, you know, a sewer scavenger. They can make a good living from what they find in the sewers. The trouble is, the sewers are sometimes impassable for grown men. That’s when they use small boys. But they won’t be using Martin again.”

“Did you really hit him, Jessica?” asked Ellie, torn between horror and admiration.

“It was an accident. He bent his head at the wrong moment.”

At this, Pip chortled and Martin roused himself enough to smile.

The story gradually unfolded in Jessica’s bedroom as the boys were made ready for bed. Jessica and the nuns had tracked the boys’ foster mother to a gin house. At first she’d denied having seen the boys, but when Jessica threatened to make a citizen’s arrest and take the woman straight to the magistrates, she’d confessed that Martin had turned up three days before and she’d promptly apprenticed him to old Scurvy, the sewer scavenger. As for
Pip, he’d gone off to try and rescue his brother, and she couldn’t remember when she’d last seen him.

“Finding the mother was the easy part,” said Jessica. “The hard part was finding Scurvy. There are so many sewers that empty along that stretch of the Thames. If Pip hadn’t seen me and called out, it might have taken us days to find them.”

She was kneeling by the copper tub to bathe the boys, and held out a washcloth to Ellie. “I’ll do Martin,” she said. “You can do Pip.”

Ellie looked at the washcloth for a moment before gingerly accepting it. Misunderstanding the girl’s hesitation, Jessica said, “They’re used to being bathed by the nuns, so there’s no false modesty here.”

Ellie looked at the boys. Their knees were tucked up to their chins and their eyelids were drooping. Pip was relatively clean, but Martin, who was much smaller than Pip, looked like a little doll that had been dipped in a tub of grease then rolled in soot. Tears stung her eyes.

Quickly kneeling, she said, “You’ll have to show me what to do.”

Jessica laughed. “Just think of them as potatoes with their skins on, and scrub away.”

Opening his eyes at that moment, Martin exclaimed, “Did you see ’er, Pip? A facer. Right on the nose! That’s good ole Sister Martha for you.” And he demonstrated by plunging his fist into the bathwater and sending a plume of water flying.

After the boys were carried upstairs and put to bed and her own room was cleared, Jessica changed into a gown and rang for a footman. Not long after, he returned with a decanter of brandy and two glasses.

“You look,” she said, eyeing Ellie as she poured out the brandy, “as though you could do with a glass of Sister Dolores’s famous elixir.”

In fact, Ellie looked to Jessica to be on the point of
exhaustion. There was very little color in her cheeks, and the dark circles under her eyes looked like bruises. Her mouth trembled, and quick tears came and went at the slightest provocation. The girl obviously had spent several sleepless nights worrying, and now that the worrying was over, she was ready to collapse.

“This is a poor substitute for the elixir,” said Jessica, handing Ellie a glass of brandy, “but it will have to do. Drink it! It will do you good, then it’s off to bed with you.”

While Ellie obediently sipped the brandy, Jessica plunked herself down on the opposite armchair flanking the grate. “No,” she said, when Ellie made a face and tried to set her glass aside. “I know the taste is awful, but it really will do you good. Just think of it as medicine.”

Ellie picked up her glass again, took a minuscule sip, then gave a teary sniff. After another sip, she said, “Jessica, how can people do this to children?”

“For money,” Jessica said. “A pittance for a slave. That’s what it amounts to. And it’s all perfectly legal. Pip and Martin are fortunate that they are charges of the diocese, else I would have had a real fight on my hands.”

Another silence as Ellie digested this, then, in a low, vibrant tone, “I think the nuns must be saints to do what you did today. I had no idea that you ran such risks. I thought you spent all your time in the convent.”

“Now don’t go making me out to be something I am not. I’m not a saint. I’d only disillusion you in the end.”

Ellie flushed and looked down at her glass. “You’re thinking of Bella. I can’t believe how I set such store by her. She didn’t care at all what happened to Martin.” Her laugh cracked. “Just listen to me! I knew and I did nothing! So I’m no better than Bella.”

Jessica said quietly, “I didn’t mean what I said earlier. I was so worried about the boys, I spoke without thinking.”

“I deserved it.”

“Ellie, if we’re going to blame ourselves, I have to shoulder my share.”

Startled, Ellie looked up. “What do you have to blame yourself for?”

Jessica shrugged. “I knew you were upset about something these last few days. I should have come right out and asked you what was wrong, but my pride got in the way. I was afraid of another rebuff. So you see, I’m guilty, too.”

These words had the opposite effect to what Jessica intended. Tears flooded Ellie’s eyes, and she felt for her handkerchief, then mopped her cheeks. When she lifted her head, there was a look of entreaty in her expression. “Every day I expected Bella to tell me that Martin had come home. After all, he lived in a fine house; he was warm and dry, and had plenty to eat.”

“That’s true. But life in Bella’s stately mansion had suddenly become intolerable for poor Martin.”

“She must have done something
dreadful
to make him run away to that horrible creature who calls herself his foster mother.”

“Oh, she did.”

“What?”

“Bella called him a bad word.”

Ellie looked puzzled. “What bad word?”

“The most abhorrent word a small boy can be called. Yes, though it pains me to say it, Bella said the forbidden word.”

“What word?” breathed Ellie.

“Baby,” said Jessica.

Ellie straightened. “Baby?”

“Yes. But that’s not the worst of it. She went further. She stopped using his name altogether and called him ‘Baby’ instead because, as she said, only a baby would let things slip through his fingers. All the servants began calling him ‘Baby,’ too. What self-respecting boy could live with that?”

Ellie began to laugh. “I thought she must have had him whipped or worse.”

“Oh, Martin would have cheerfully suffered a whipping. He might have boasted about it. But this touched his pride, and he was ashamed.”

The smile on Ellie’s face suddenly died, and she hung her head. After a moment, her shoulders began to heave as she tried to choke back the sobs. Jessica quickly crossed to her, knelt down and wrapped her in her arms.

“There, there,” she said. “Everything worked out for the best. And now that we’ve found Martin, we’ll keep him with us. That ought to make Pip happy.”

Ellie’s words were almost incoherent. “Oh, Jessica! I’ve been so cruel to you. I don’t d-deserve your friendship.”

“Yes, well, if we had to deserve our friends, nobody would have any, would they?”

“You don’t understand! I did something awful.”

“What did you do?”

“I burned down your wagon … to frighten you away … and later I … I came into your room when I thought you were sleeping. I swear, Jessica, I wasn’t going to hurt you with the scissors. I was going to cut the bed-drapes, just to frighten you, you know, to show you that you weren’t wanted.”

Jessica took a moment to absorb Ellie’s words, then she said incredulously,
“You
set our wagon on fire? And that was
you
in my room at Haig House?”

Ellie gulped and nodded.

“But … I don’t understand. At Haig House, I smelled roses, Bella’s perfume.”

“I may have been wearing it. I don’t know. I can’t remember. You … you didn’t think I was Bella, did you?”

“I’m afraid I did. And when our wagon burned, we thought it was the work of some local boys.”

“Oh, God! Now do you see how wicked I am?”

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” Jessica crooned as the sobs
became deeper, harsher. “I forgive you. From what I’ve heard, I was no better at your age. Young love makes fools of us all.”

Ellie screwed up her face as the words tumbled out. “That’s not it! It was because of Jane. I felt as though I were betraying her. I couldn’t allow myself to like you. But Jane was good like you. She would never have blamed you for what your father did.” The spate of words turned into a torrent. “And I felt so guilty. Maybe I could have s-stopped her. There must have been something I could have done. But I never suspected that she would drown herself. I s-swear it!”

“Jane? Who is Jane?”

“My brother’s wife.”

Jessica sat back on her heels. She remembered Jane Bragge’s grave in Saint Luke’s churchyard, and later Lucas’s mother telling her that the young woman had accidentally drowned. She remembered something else. Philip Bragge, Jane’s husband, had died at Waterloo, leaving Ellie alone in the world, until Lucas had become her guardian.

She stared at Ellie’s bent head. “No, Ellie,” she said, “I’m sure you’re wrong. It was an accident.”

“That’s what everyone thinks,” Ellie cried. “But I know what I know.”

Jessica felt a numbness creeping over her. Jane Bragge and her father? She didn’t want to think about it; she was afraid to think about it. She said faintly, “You resented me because you were infatuated with Lucas.”

“No,” Ellie sobbed. “I hated you because your name was Hayward! I hated you because of what your father did to Jane!”

Long minutes passed. Gradually, Ellie’s sobs diminished to teary sniffs. Finally, she raised her head. Her throat worked and she swallowed. “I’ve said too much,” she whispered. “I should never have told you.”

Jessica said, “What did my father do to Jane?” Ellie
shook her head, but Jessica read the answer in her anguished expression. “Did he rape her?”

Ellie drew in a breath and fresh tears welled in her eyes. “Yes,” she whispered.

Jessica felt her heart contract, but there was no real sense of shock. Some hidden part of her mind had already made the connection. “Did Jane tell you?”

“No.”

“Oh, Ellie, were you there when it happened?” “No. But I overheard Lucas and the others talking about it.” “Lucas?” Ellie nodded.

Jessica took her chair again, picked up her glass and took a long, fortifying swallow. She was surprised at how calm and collected she sounded. “Drink the brandy, Ellie, then take your time and tell me everything from the very beginning.”

Ellie obediently sipped from her glass. Her head was bowed, and she kept her eyes down. At length, she began to speak. “Lucas had just come home from the war,” she said. “And Judge Hicks and his wife had taken me in until it was decided where I should go. They came out to talk to the judge. I wasn’t wanted, so I went out to the barn to play with the new kittens. They were in the loft. Afterward, Lucas and the others came into the barn. They didn’t know I was there. And that’s when I heard about Jane.”

Jessica said softly, “Who came into the barn, Ellie?”

“Lucas and Adrian and Rupert.”

“Go on.”

Ellie drew in a breath. “They were talking about Jane. They said that she had drowned herself.”

“But how could they have known when no one else knew?”

“She’d left a letter for my brother. Rupert had it. I didn’t understand what it all meant, not then.”

“I see. And what did they decide to do about it?”

Ellie didn’t answer for a moment. She darted Jessica
a
glance, then looked down again. “They … they talked about punishing your father. They talked about calling him out, or horsewhipping him or … or something. It was a matter of honor, they said.”