When a woman is very bad at Millbank, she is broken. She will not be reasoned with. When she begins to deteriorate it happens quickly and she often becomes outrageously violent. The matrons of Millbank are under instruction to identify those who would do war with them in the female pentagon. So well trained are they in confronting the female and her evil ways that they are unsettled when Clovis Fowler meets none of those expectations. When she was stripped naked Clovis bore her humiliation very well indeed. She projected just the right degree of shyness and a touch of humility but also, she subtly positioned her body in such a way as to enhance the curve of her back, and slowly turned a shapely thigh. By the end of her bath, and after they had spread the crack of her buttocks, she gained her first admirers amongst the hardened matrons.
When they cut her hair the moment of truth arrived. This was often the female inmates’ breaking point; the harsh sawing sound of dull scissors followed by clumps of their femininity falling to the floor. Yet Clovis sits patiently, careful not to show defiance, nor anger, yet helplessness is absent in her. There is nothing of her behaviour to criticize.
She closes her eyes while her head is jerked right and left and thinks of the cloak of protection she has been given. With every passing moment she becomes more certain that like Finn, Willa and Jonesy, she too has been given the ability to live when others would surely die. When the last snip of the scissors leaves her hair short and uneven, she knows within the deepest part of her that the reason for this lies with the boy, Rafe. The exuberance given to his protection, and the care and intensity of it, concerns the dark magic he must surely possess. He is Icelandic, and therefore, it is feasible that its supernatural hand has touched him – she can think of no other reason.
The matron who gives Clovis her prison cap remarks later to the chief matron that she had never before witnessed the kind of strange, disturbing smile she received from prisoner 1089 after being shorn. ‘It were of the other world, mistress.’
Another matron, while bent down gathering their filthy clothes, was unaware that Clovis noticed the moment her mourning necklace fell from under her jacket and dangled for a few seconds until she replaced it. Before the matron left to take the clothes to the laundry, Clovis stopped her.
‘Excuse me, may I speak?’
‘What is it?’
‘I am sorry for your loss,’ Clovis says, in a most meaningful and sympathetic manner.
‘But how … how did you know?’
Clovis shrugs and lowers her head in modesty. ‘They say I have … I am too embarrassed to say, matron.’
‘The gift?’ Matron’s eyes bulge.
‘I would never claim … No, I would never even think it.’
The matron, quite in the dark as to the new prisoner’s real character, and quite awed by her, vows to pardon all her offences should she commit any under her guard.
There is a clandestine agreement at Millbank Penitentiary in which all are complicit. There are many reasons to secrete the Fowlers away from the regular wards and onto B Ward, Pentagon No. 4. Not the least of these is the bothersome fact of their fame. It is, however, something entirely more bewitching that instigates their complete seclusion.
It begins their first night. In each cell a small, barred window set high in the wall looks out onto the pentagon yards. At dusk a warder arrives with a lamp to light the small gas jets in each cell. When the chimes in the clock tower of Westminster Palace fill the quiet, the lights of the Millbank cells adopt the semblance of the sacred in the inky night.
In their separate cells, each of the four new prisoners takes down the wooden plank that stands against the wall and secures it on the raised wooden platform extending across the length of the cell. Upon it they place a hard mattress that forms their bed, and then a coarse linen sheet. There are no pillows.
Whether the prisoner is at work or sleep, the warders and matrons have full view of them in their cells through a slit in the wall alongside the door. In Pentagon No. 2 Jonesy hears heavy boots approaching and catches a glimpse of the shiny key box that protrudes from the warder’s hip. The warder pauses in front of his cell. He is a green one from the countryside, new to London, and this is his first encounter with a Chinaman. He lingers at the door to observe Jonesy sitting on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands. The warder has a perfect view of the shaved portion of the prisoner’s head, just above his temples, which forms the traditional style of his people. Jonesy’s braid was hacked off upon arrival with a swift snip of the prison’s scissors, leaving a mass of silky, black clumps. The gossip from the reception room is that he bore his shame well. The young warder, blond and pale, is curious. Jonesy lifts his head and resists the urge to call out to him that he feels light-headed.
Upstairs, in a different ward, Finn collapses on top of his messy half-made bed, dizzy from the spinning room. When his warder looks through the slit he is of course curious, as anyone would be to see a Lazarus in person, but he jumps back. Struck by the vision of Finn’s neck fully displayed, bruised in an array of colours, the warder cannot recall anything quite as ugly, and he has seen ugly in his career. He moves on without disturbing him. A reprimand for his untidy bed can be delayed until tomorrow.
In the women’s pentagon, Clovis begins to feel unsteady as she smooths the rough blanket. Certain it stems from her first encounter with the evening gruel, she begins to undress. Willa, too, suffers from a wave of nausea in her cell as small beads of perspiration form a line across her upper lip.
From a room in the building at the centre of the six pentagons, situated like the hub of a wheel, the governor, along with any other staff allowed, is able to survey the entire prison. Each cell can be monitored at any time of day or night. One of the officers claims it is similar to peering into an absurd doll’s house, looking down into the various rooms, one thousand and thirty of them, from a tall tower.
Four cells, four new prisoners, all of the same household, occupy different wards on their first night at Millbank. A chief officer will recall that on this night, he noticed nothing unusual before the lights were extinguished.
The next morning at six o’clock, the bell that is loud enough to wake all of Pimlico and Westminster sounds for the prisoners to rise. Finn, Jonesy, Clovis and Willa stay fast asleep.
‘Oh no you don’t!’ shouts the warder. ‘This is no way to begin your time with me.’ He bends down to yell into Finn’s ear. ‘Get your arse up, 1090.’
Nothing. No response at all.
Another officer on the floor below, not the pale blond, but a brawny, older man, throws open the doors, grabs Jonesy’s signal stick and pokes him with it.
‘1091!’ The warder yells like a siren. ‘Up, up, I say!’
Jonesy remains as motionless as a corpse.
In the female pentagon, the iron gate of Clovis’s cell stands wide open, as does the wooden door. The matrons of her ward stand in a gaggle around her bed.
‘What should we do?’ says one.
‘Send for the doctor.’ The chief matron, usually annoyed and quick to throw punishment, is clearly concerned. The prisoner is not dead, but does not respond to a pinch, a flick of cold water, or a slap in the face.
On the floor above, in Ward C, a young matron new to Millbank shakes Willa in a violent panic, worried that the girl has died during the night.
Two weeks pass. Millbank pulses with rumour. The inmates whisper that the Fowlers and their servants have been poisoned. The warders and matrons gossip from ward to ward, from pentagon to pentagon, until there are so many different versions of what befell the sleeping prisoners that the entire Millbank population is perched on a nervous, excited edge. The power of the stories breaks the monotony of their days and nights. Wagers are placed on whether they will awaken or die.
On the fifteenth day, Clovis opens her eyes to find herself in a large room. Her gaze fixes on blue, checked curtains and she wonders why her windows are covered with such a hideous pattern. She is so hungry that she could eat her own cooking, which is an affirmation of her voraciousness. She turns her head. Oh … This is not my home, not my bedroom. Finn looks dead in the next bed. She rises to her elbows. There is Willa further down, and on the fourth bed, Jonesy still sleeps.
The infirmary warder, who has the reputation for being a savage, jumps up from his chair and knocks it over, making an awful racket. He calls out with frightened, bulging eyes.
‘Doctor! Doctor! She wakes. They are all waking.’ He scurries around not knowing what to do, and then runs into the next room, ‘I say! Doctor, come quick.’
The doctor approaches them warily and must make an effort to steady his hands when he examines them. He probes, glares into their nostrils and throats, and tests their reflexes. Finding them remarkably well, he stands back from their beds quite astounded.
‘I feel giddy with hunger,’ Clovis says.
‘Yes, yes, please, doctor,’ the others chime in.
They are fed a tremendous amount of bread and are given several cups of hot cocoa.
‘Might we be allowed a cup of tea?’ Clovis asks.
‘No,’ the warder says, hatefully. ‘You’ve been dead to the world for two weeks. You’ve done no work, no cleaning, sleeping like innocent babes while the rest of the inmates here––’
‘That’s enough. Fetch them tea. And be quick about it,’ the doctor orders him.
‘What?’ Finn asks, dumbfounded. ‘Two weeks?’
‘What is wrong with us?’ Willa throws off her blanket and surveys her body, as if the answers might be written upon her limbs.
Jonesy, not fully awake, wonders if this then is the preliminary hearing of his death, and if so, where is Cheng Huang, the god who will hear his case. And who is this man probing his nostril with a cold instrument? He wonders, too, if he has any chance whatsoever of entering one of the Buddhist paradises. No, he thinks, probably not. He feels wayward strands of hair in his eyes and remembers – he has no queue and its absence is considered non-compliance. If he is not currently dead, the gods will execute him for treason for his missing queue. He hears the voices of the English. There are no English in paradise. He sits up and stares at the white men and women who surround him. Jonesy promptly falls back onto the bed.
A Millbank prisoner never knows how long their stay will be and are given no warning until they hear the words, ‘collect your letters’ – at which moment they will be sent on to a probationary prison to complete their sentence. But the Fowler group will not be sent on. Not to Brixton, not to a hulk, nor any other prison. These four are quarantined.
They are awake only a few hours before they are moved to one of the special wards near the infirmary in Pentagon No. 4. Clovis and Willa occupy three cells that have been fitted together to form a large, sleeping room, and a workroom, normally reserved for special cases. Finn and Jonesy are relegated the same arrangement down the corridor.
On that first night in the new cells, at a quarter to ten, when all lights are out, the flame from a large lamp glows through the slit in Clovis’s door. The keys are thrust in the lock and suddenly the chief matron stands at the door.
‘Cover yourselves. The governor comes with the doctor.’
Clovis throws her blanket over her shoulders and Willa reaches for her prison dress.
‘Leave us.’ The governor is brusque to the matron. ‘Doctor Lemmings, proceed, please.’
The doctor clears his throat and hesitates.
‘Out with it, sir.’ The governor softens a notch.
‘You, all of you, may be suffering from a sleeping sickness …’ the doctor begins.
Clovis looks first at the doctor and then to the governor.
Willa taps her temples. Three taps, a pause, three more. Repeat.
‘During the time you were asleep, we scoured your paperwork for whom we should notify in the event of your deaths. The same name appeared for each of you – an apothecary on the Commercial Road, Mr Owen Mockett,’ the doctor continues. ‘Odd, but nevertheless, it has proven to be a wise choice. He has presented me with a remedy of sorts, and a better understanding of what you can expect of your symptoms.’
‘Do get on with it, Dr Lemmings,’ the governor snaps.
‘Yes, well …’ The doctor removes two glass phials from his pocket. ‘Mr Mockett tells me that you are now under strict instructions from a doctor, a Mr Benedikt. You must take two drops and only two drops upon waking from any prolonged sleep you may experience. He was most adamant about this. The phials are made specifically to administer one drop at a time.’
All of Clovis’s senses and every fibre of her being are tuned to the doctor and the phials. At the mention of Mockett and Benedikt, she is on the edge of losing her composure. ‘Doctor’ Benedikt, indeed.
‘Mr Benedikt informed Mr Mockett that this sleeping sickness will most likely occur again this year in roughly six months’ time.’
Clovis’s thoughts are spinning, trying to arrange themselves into coherent compartments.
‘This is most unusual, and I am forced to allow for your special needs for one reason only, otherwise I would have you removed from here,’ the governor says. ‘This Mr Mockett cannot tell us if your condition is contagious.’
Willa rocks back and forth, back and forth. Clovis is not allowed to touch her. She is in no position to go against the governor, but she is weary of this man’s seething anger.
‘Sir, this is quite a shock. May I comfort her?’ she asks smoothly.
The governor does not acknowledge her. He cannot look at her without becoming aroused. She does not press.
The doctor places two phials on the table and edges ever closer to the cell door – as if he is fearful.
‘Two drops. Tomorrow we will discuss this further and I will collect the phials. They will be in my charge. And now we go to Fowler and the young Chinaman.’ Dr Lemmings is anxious to leave.
Clovis notices he does not call them by their numbers. The sleeping sickness has frightened a spark of humanity from him.
The governor stands at the door with his back to Clovis. He looks ahead into the dark corridor where the doctor waits for him and turns his head ever so slightly, yet not enough that Clovis might see his face.
‘I shall consider leniency and perhaps your regular clothing.’ He pauses. ‘You have … awakened sympathies.’
She fully understands his meaning, and though her capacity for astonishment is currently low, she is surprised he shows himself so quickly. A dark horse, this man.
‘Thank you, Governor, sir.’ She ignores that she is wrapped in an ugly blanket, that her hair no longer falls to her shoulders and her nails need cleaning. ‘I would be grateful, sir …’
‘The girl … you may console her if you wish.’
‘I do, sir, thank you a second time.’
His dark coat-tail disappears down the corridor.
One by one, the rules of Millbank are broken, all of them.
Clovis leads Willa over to the bed, which is noticeably sturdier in this cell and the mattress is stuffed with plenty of coir. She folds the blankets around Willa and kneels beside her. The flagstones are whiter but still as cold as a glacier, so she wraps the remaining blanket around her own knees and legs. She holds the phial to Willa’s mouth. ‘Take it.’ Willa parts her lips. Two drops touch her tongue.
Clovis leans in closer to Willa’s ear and begins the whispering cure. The words seem kind at first, spoken with warmth and in a soothing cadence. Willa fights to stay awake, terrified to ever give over to sleep again. Her mistress’s voice persists, coaxing, calming. Just as Willa’s head rolls to the side and her eyelids are too heavy to open, Clovis adjusts her tone. She demands obedience and loyalty and plants seeds of fear of the consequences should Willa ever wish to stray from her.
It is cold. She hears the governor and the doctor leave Finn’s cell, but she remains on the floor, her knees cuddled up against her body. Her thoughts whirl. She’s beginning to feel good again. There is a massive mountain of information to consider: Mockett, Benedikt, the sleep and what it means. She thinks of the governor and how she will make him her path to remaining sane in this god forsaken place. She considers how to use Finn, Willa and Jonesy – the people she is bound to in their long lives ahead. And the boy. It always comes back to the boy. A powerful idea brews.