She has missed her lunch now and Cook is cross and will not give her a crust. She is late to help the younger girls with their baking lessons, which stirs their rowdiness when left on their own. Cook’s sharp tongue and the chaotic kitchen reduce Willa to a limp bag of nerves.
Later that evening when the flames are extinguished and the snores and whimpers of the girls form the melody of the night, doubt overcomes her and she worries that the lady who has offered her a life outside these walls will not come again. What if she changes her mind? With a hand still greasy with gristle she reaches under her mattress to retrieve her most powerful charm, a copper, crescent moon. She holds it to her lips and rocks until finally she falls asleep.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Willa’s first employer arrives on this dismal morning dressed in the colour of the gunmetal sky. The outline of her body between the two columns of the portico appears sharper than the week before, her jacket more severe, she looks more like a governess than the colourful and blooming flower of last week. Willa stands at the edge of the first-floor window peering down, with her head slightly cocked at this inauspicious beginning. She can hardly say for sure, because she doesn’t consider herself to be a good judge of character, but surely Mrs Fowler is a little less radiant today – but perhaps more powerful for it, Willa goes on to think; really it’s just her own silly supposition, her own weak effort to form an opinion after her upset with Matron, that Mrs Fowler, perhaps not aware of being observed, bears the aura of menace. And as the lady in grey lifts her petticoats to climb the step, she turns her head to the left and looks up into the window, where Willa flinches and draws back from sight.
No one comes to offer Willa a farewell. No one wishes her well. She wore the invisible mark of Matron’s Girl, which left her friendless during her time in the Refuge. She stands before Matron this morning her skin still red from the scrubbing she gave it last night. Her nails shine blue from her efforts to extract the essence of wild violets. Her desire to be and smell clean when travelling with her new mistress had almost made her ill and robbed her of sleep.
Whatever final business Matron and her new mistress may have attended is now concluded. With a slight nod Mrs Fowler turns on her heels and marches out of the Home of Refuge for Orphaned Girls with Willa following closely behind, clinging to her box of modest goods.
A two-wheeled, one-horse cab waits for them at the gates. Willa is unsure how to actually get in it, having never in her life ridden in or on anything, and though it looks simple enough, she is certain it is not. Clovis instructs her to climb in the cab before her, but the girl misjudges the height of the step, struggles with the box and becomes entangled in her petticoats, and with a dive forward lands with her face on the floor.
Clovis has not yet smiled at her servant today, but now she laughs. When the warmth of that bright beam of light shines on Willa, just as it did last week, it is worth a great deal more than a sore nose. In fact, the radiance so occupies her thoughts on their journey that she doesn’t notice that the hansom has stopped. She assumes they have arrived, but she cannot make out the river stairs from the little window, nor is the great river itself to be seen. She edges forward a bit more for a better view of a sprawling and imposing building. Its centre dome seems to stare back at her as though it were a large eye drinking in her soul.
‘Do you know what lies within this building, Willa?’
The cadence of her mistress’s words, spoken with the trace of a foreign accent, sounds like a song and they are the first she has spoken to Willa today.
‘No, mistress.’
‘Men and women who have fallen out of themselves. Some will be restored and others have fallen so far they will never be seen again.’
‘The madhouse?’
‘Indeed. Bethlem. Leave your box here and come with me.’
Frightened that there has been some trick played and she will be left here, Willa protests.
‘But, mistress! I don’t want to. What are you going to …’
Clovis turns on the girl with such fury and force in her expression, that the girl’s confidence is shattered.
‘I will not stand for disobedience. Nor will you ever question me again. If you doubt you are capable of either of those, then I shall return you to Matron Jennet at once.’
‘Oh no, mistress. Please. Forgive me. Please. I thought that …’
‘We will take the air here.’
Clovis steps down, adjusts her petticoats and begins to promenade along the perimeter of the formidable home of the forgotten. The cab waits.
‘Many arrive here and most will never leave alive. The criminally insane have their own ward but often they are so clever that they find ways to infiltrate the other wards … the women’s ward. I have also heard that a young woman’s hands may be tied in such a way that she cannot freely do her counting, or rub her amulets and charms.’
Clovis’s voice has become trance-like. ‘Worse yet, Willa. There are hundreds of women within those walls who are exactly like Matron Jennet. But even these women, well, they are lightweights compared to the doctors, who apply leeches to a woman’s labia.’
Here Clovis pauses to gauge Willa’s understanding.
‘Your quim. Imagine it.’
Willa tries desperately not to do so.
On the street the slow plodding donkeys bray against the rush of the horses and carriages. Fresh excrement steams in piles they build indiscriminately. The
