A Bouquet of Thorns (14 page)

‘She's dead, Rose,' he said without expression. ‘Let the doctor take her now.'

She flicked up her head like a lioness, her raging eyes flashing dementedly as she hugged Alice tightly against her. ‘No!' she wailed, lashing out at Charles, and when he tried to take the child by force, she bit into his hand and began to scream, a deep, howling, unearthly lament that made his blood run cold.

‘For God's sake, man, isn't there something you can give her?' he demanded.

Dr Power considered the broken, grief-stricken figure before him. What she needed was time. Time to say goodbye to her child. Time her husband was unlikely to grant her. And so Dr Power reached sadly into his bag.

The warder strode across the prison yard. He had just returned from three days' leave, two because he had worked two six-day shifts back to back and one in lieu of the August bank holiday. What good the break had done him, though, he didn't know. With eight offspring all under twelve years old, they couldn't even afford to take the carrier into Tavistock for the day. So he had spent the days at home with the children under his feet, walks on to the moor being the only respite from their cramped flat. He had returned to duty in a dark mood, to be told he was to be in charge of boot-making. It was considered a fortunate post so he should have been pleased, but he wasn't. Convicts should all be put to hard labour, in his opinion, even if they had to earn the privilege of being in one of the workshops. Scum, they were, the lot of them.

He nodded at the other warders as he entered the building, enjoying his recently elevated status to senior officer. He walked menacingly up and down the rows of work benches, burly arms crossed over his intimidating uniform. The inmates had their heads down as they worked in silence, since any exchange of words was punishable, each man shuddering as the principal warder passed. He picked up a half-made boot, inspected it and replaced it with a grunt, irritated as there was nothing he could criticize.

And then he spied him. The yellow particoloured uniform of the escapee made him easily distinguishable from the others who wore the garb of more trusted men. The felon glanced up as more pieces of leather were added to the pile before him, and the warder glimpsed his face. He recognized him at once. The bastard who had run off in the fog and forced a young woman to hide him when he broke his ankle. The warder had been delighted to be chosen as the one to administer the flogging, as his colleague who had been guarding the scoundrel when he had made his escape had met with instant dismissal. He and his family had been evicted from their home the very same day. They had been next-door neighbours, friends. Though he had put his full and considerable force into each stroke, the warder had been devastated when the bugger had only been given a few lashes. Well, now it was time to make up for it.

‘Get up, you,' he ordered. He saw the blackguard catch his breath, freeze. ‘I said get up!'

This time the convict sprang to his feet and stood erect in a military stance, staring straight ahead at the opposite wall. The warder looked up at his impassive face, cursing himself. He had forgotten the fellow was so tall, touching six foot, while he was barely five feet eight, though as swarthy and strong as a bull. His face twisted in a sadistic leer to compensate.

‘You were talking just then,' he accused him with a sneer.

The prisoner didn't move, didn't fall into the trap of denying his alleged crime so that the warder could reply that he had certainly spoken now and would be punished. The warder fumed with frustration.

‘You shouldn't be in here,' he spat. ‘Come with me.'

The assistant warder at the other side of the room dared to object. ‘He's here temporarily, sir, because of his health.'

‘Malingering, more like. Looks fit enough to me. Let's find some proper work for you.'

The junior officer shrugged and turned away as his superior marched the felon to the door. The fellow hadn't been an ounce of trouble, but it wasn't worth standing up for him. He was just another number – not worth risking the prospect of promotion for!

The principal warder led his captive through the work yards into the relative pleasantness of what had been the market square during the old prisoner-of-war days, and thence through the gate into the most secure part of the gaol. Up the side of the kitchens, then, and around the back of the chapel to an area the prisoner had never been to before. It was quiet, a hidden corner. Dear Lord, he wasn't in for an unlawful beating, was he? But now he recognized the smell as they passed the recently completed piggery, could hear the snorts of the sows and the squeals of their young. Well, he wouldn't mind working with any animal, and he rather liked pigs.

But no. The fetid odour became worse as they approached a shed about ten-foot wide and twenty in length. This wasn't just the fresh whiff of animal manure that he was well used to and didn't dislike. It was mixed with the reek of decaying human sewage that grew more pungent as they advanced towards the building, stinging the eyes and burning at the back of the throat. Jesus, the cesspits. The warder took out his handkerchief and held it over his mouth and nose. The convict at once broke out in a coughing fit that he struggled to suppress.

He was pushed down a set of steps and the warder knocked on the door to the sunken shed. It was opened by another warder wearing a mask.

‘Another one for you. Make sure he works hard.'

If the stench outside was rank and putrid, inside the shed it was like running full pelt into a wall of stinking, choking gas. Seth Collingwood could taste the foulness of the air, feel it on his tongue, seeping into his ears, his skin. He could scarcely see for the thick, clogging dust that at once seared into his lungs and he instantly started to wheeze. But it was the vile fumes of putrefying bones, of rotting, noxious excrement that clenched at his stomach. He felt the bile, the nausea rising to his throat. He tried to force it down, struggling, retching, but the rancid, suffocating atmosphere was overwhelming, swirling down inside him. He found himself on his knees, vomiting up his breakfast of watery gruel, on and on, uncontrollably, until there was nothing left to bring up and yet his insides still heaved in violent spasms. He felt a hand under his arm, dragging him upwards. Through his streaming eyes, he made out a haggard, grimacing face against the pall of dust that surrounded them.

‘Welcome to hell, pal,' the voice hissed in his ear.

C
harles watched through slitted eyes as Rose bent to lay a delicate posy of flowers on the tiny coffin as it was lowered into the ground. So graceful, so dignified, so
glorious
in her sorrow. The lashing rain that had driven into their faces as they had arrived at the church had eased, but a gust of wind lifted the jet-encrusted mourning cape about her shoulders, revealing the slenderness of her narrow waist and the swathes of edged silk that cascaded from the small bustle into a billowing train at her ankles. She straightened up, her neck as long and elegant as a swan's, and beneath the veil of her black hat, her lovely face was as white and as set as alabaster.

Oh, how he yearned to have her in his bed again. Of course, he had been back
sleeping
in their marital bed for weeks. And what a torture that had been, not being able to touch her. Penetrate her. At long last, Dr Seaton had examined her and pronounced her fit to resume her duties as a wife, provided Charles was gentle with her. He had planned to take her the very next morning, when he would expose every part of her to the daylight, but the child had died that very night, and even he could not be cruel enough to impose himself upon her.

Did he care so much about his daughter? His own flesh and blood? It was difficult to say, when he had hardly got to know her. He had never even held her. But what he
did
care about was the gnawing misery that had enshrouded his wife ever since. Her spirit had withered. Even the two dogs sensed it, laying their heads on her knee and looking up at her with doleful eyes while their offspring romped and rolled beside them. She didn't even notice.

Charles bit his lip as he contemplated her wilted form. Perhaps if he hadn't got rid of that ferocious beast she loved so much, the creature would have brought her comfort, breathed life back into her. But it was too late now. The dealer would have sold the animal on to heaven knew who, and when it became clear that its temper was untameable, it would probably have changed hands again. Charles
almost
regretted it, especially each time his wife wandered off into the pouring rain, a desolate, inconsolable figure lost in some macabre, gruesome world of her own. He would run out after her with a coat to shield her from the unseasonable weather, as, despite the odd day of brilliant sunshine, it was turning into one of the wettest summers in years, and farmers were worried about their crops. She would let him lead her home, malleable as a child, not uttering a word, nor swallowing a morsel of the tempting food Florrie and Cook between them produced on her plate at meal times, and only drinking when Florrie forced her to.

Charles came and put his arm about her now, for without it, he feared she might fall. It was time to leave the graveside, to allow the little soul to rest, to lie in eternal peace beside the grandfather she had never known in this earthly life, but who she would come to know in the next. Rose moved with faltering steps, turning just once to glance back with a feeble whimper, not seeing the tear-filled eyes of Florrie Bennett, George Frean, Molly and Joe, and all those who had come to share in her grief.

They made their silent and hesitant way through the graveyard to the iron gates, the hem of Rose's gown dragging along the sodden path and soaking up the rainwater from the puddles. But she seemed oblivious to everything around her until they came out to the road, and Charles hailed to the hired carriage that had been waiting at a respectful distance to drive them back to the house, seeing as he had considered their own wagonette inappropriate for such a sombre occasion. Just at that moment a group of six or seven people, dressed more suitably for the fashionable streets of London and shielding themselves with huge umbrellas even though the rain had virtually stopped, hurried gaily along on the opposite side of the street in the direction of the prison.

‘Oh, what a frightfully grim place!' one of the ladies tittered gleefully, with a plum the size of a melon in her mouth.

‘What do you expect, my dear?' a gentleman replied with equal delight. ‘This
is
the worst prison in the country. You have to be a pretty dastardly criminal to be sent here, you know!'

‘Of course!' another fellow declared with enthusiasm. ‘I wonder who they'll show us? Thieves and murderers, I expect!'

‘Not murderers! They hang
them
!'

And with a chorus of laughter, they marched on up the road.

Rose halted, a spark of hatred igniting in her breast. It was despicable, this custom of showing people over the gaol as if it were some sort of holiday attraction, pointing out to them the worst criminals, the gruelling labour they were put to for their punishment and the horrendous conditions in which they existed; whose sufferings were to be found amusing and entertaining, when many of them had only been caught up in a life of crime in the first place through poverty and starvation, and not every inmate was guilty of heinous acts that warranted such callous retribution. And, to add insult to injury, these tours were relatively frequent, but a prisoner was only permitted three twenty-minute visits every six months. Not that many ever experienced such a happy interlude, as most relatives were too impoverished to afford the journey to such a remote place. But that was part of it, wasn't it, to scorn and humiliate the convicts so that upon their final release they made the effort not to return – or at least not to get caught again.

Rose's mouth thinned into a fine line. On the opposite side of the road stood the tall, quite attractive building of the warders' new flats where Mr and Mrs Cartwright now lived in relative comfort with their remaining children. Beside it, much of the former soldiers' barracks where Molly and her family had previously lived in cramped accommodation beset by damp and crumbling decay, were being demolished, and beyond them, Rose could just glimpse the forbidding walls of the prison blocks and the building site that would eventually stand five storeys high to match the first rebuilt edifice that had been completed a few years earlier. Away in the distance stretched the extensive lands of the prison farm that had been, and continued to be, cleared and drained in the most impossible conditions by the human sweat and toil of convict labour.

Rose frowned. Teasing her brain was an emotion triggered by the sight of the gaol, a tenderness, a faint memory of something that had once soothed her aching soul. And then her heart tripped and began to beat faster as a vision of that lean, strong face with its expressive hazel eyes formed itself in her mind.

A long, sighing breath fluttered from her lungs, and her husband caught her as she slithered to the ground.

Charles padded across the thick bedroom carpet and came up behind her as she sat at the dressing table, mechanically brushing at her hair that swung in a living waterfall of thick raven waves against the foaming white of her nightgown. In the mirror, he met her dulled eyes that stared sightlessly at him from dark sockets in her sculptured face, her skin taut and pale as ivory. Dear God, she was so beautiful, and he already felt the uncomfortable rising in his loins.

He smiled benevolently, and felt his heart expand as her eyes widened a little and her lips curved upwards in a strained response. His hands came to rest on her shoulders. She tilted her head, but the hope expired inside him, since she did not turn to brush her cheek on the back of his hand, nor lean against him to take the comfort he was attempting to offer her.

He cleared his throat. ‘I'm so sorry, Rose. I know the child meant more to you than to me. I suppose a man doesn't become close to his children until they're older. But a mother . . . Well, I
am
sorry.'