In the misbegotten hours of Millbank nights, when a large population of criminals are too weary to make mischief, factions of inmates come to life. None more so than those miserable creatures in the darks.
Down the basement stairs of Pentagon No. 5 the smack of a fungal odour clings to her clothes and seeps into her skin. Clovis holds a flaming candle to air so thick with damp it is like walking through mist. She bends down to avoid the low ceiling in an antechamber that leads to the dark cells, one of which is empty. She steps into an unspeakably cold space, so thick with darkness that in spite of her light, her vision struggles to adjust. Creeping along the wall like a blind person she finds the wooden plank and sets her items upon it.
It is not completely unthinkable that a prisoner would roam the dungeon of Millbank. For all its fortress-like qualities, it is entirely possible to breach Millbank’s codes, especially when the governor is so devoted to her. Charles, as he insists she calls him when they are alone, falls over himself to please her. He enjoys sexual positions he never knew existed, and after five years he remains possessed. They meet sparingly, which only fans the flame, for they must be clever and vigilant. He is of the mind that, really, she asks very little of him. She seeks no fortune or outrageous gifts, only access and a certain degree of freedom within the prison, which he readily gives.
Tonight Clovis seeks the criminal skull. Dressed in a matron’s uniform she places her candle tin on the flagstone and lifts the bar of the cell’s massive outer iron-lined wooden door. Behind the grated gate a fingernail scratches at the wall of a room so dark that it is impossible to see its beginning or end. When Clovis holds the light up to the gate a female prisoner turns slowly to face her, and even with her steely resolve, Clovis’s breath quickens. The woman has picked the whitewash from the walls and smeared it upon her face layer upon layer. Her hair is matted and sticks out from her head in short, dirty clumps. But it is her lips that make Clovis falter. They are cut and smeared with fresh blood. Dried blood gathers in thick globs at the corners of her mouth.
Clovis recovers and quickly thrusts her hand out, in her palm sits a large piece of soggy bread.
‘It is fresh. I will break it up for you and give it to you through the grating.’
Over her brown prison dress the woman wears a coarse canvas, sack-like covering fastened with leather straps and screws. Her waist bears the burden of a chain that hangs to the floor and passes through a ring in the wall.
Clovis sets the light down and pulls off pieces of beef broth-soaked bread as if she is feeding a bird. She cannot see the thickness of dirt under the woman’s scraggly nails as her hand greedily snatches the bread and stuffs her crimson mouth quicker and quicker, until it is all eaten.
‘I will return with more bread and wine.’
The woman looks at her askance. Wine?
Clovis retrieves the wine and more of the broth bread from the empty cell. The woman inches closer to the grating.
‘What is your name?’ Clovis asks as she doles out the bread.
Her lip curls up in a snarl before she says, ‘Antoinette.’
‘Stop that scratching, Antoinette, or they will put you in the leather and you will lose the use of your hands.’
Silence.
Clovis opens a small glass pot. ‘Lips to the iron.’
She soaks a sponge and puts it to the woman’s lips.
‘Yow!’ Antoinette winces as the alcohol stings her lips, but sucks it with a greedy determination.
‘Shhh!’
‘What brings you to the darks, pretty matron? Not seen you in these parts before.’
‘Why do you disfigure your face, Antoinette?’
‘More wine.’
‘No. Tell me first.’
Antoinette turns her back to Clovis and leans against the iron gate. Facing the far wall, which they cannot see, and the cold air from the grating that billows towards her, she begins to speak.
‘I was a Mayfair beauty.’ She pauses. ‘I imagine your surprise. Could compete with you, I dare say. I am able to read and write; ’twas a great help with gaining custom of the richest whoremongers, one in particular. Apartments in Mayfair were being sought. But then I found myself perched on the sharp edge of scandal. He was a feisty, revolting one, of German descent, in the royal way, if you get my meaning.’
‘I am bored now, Antoinette.’
The prisoner turns, jumps upon and clings to the grating like an animal. Clovis does not shrink an inch. Her candle’s light creates a great stretching shadow on the wall that reflects Antoinette’s wild, thistled head.
‘Tell me why you act mad when you are not.’
‘I want out of this dank, wet hell,’ Antoinette hisses. ‘I make them think I dress for an evening in Shepherd’s Market. My lips are red; my face is powdered.’
She turns in a circle, her chain dragging, her arms thrust out to model her canvas-covered gown.
‘I have made a bustle.’
Clovis sponges Antoinette’s lips again.
‘If you tell them that I am mad, matron, they will transfer me to the asylum and I will be out in months. I have means. I can make it worth your while.’
‘I am not a matron. You are not going to the asylum. You will be conveyed to Van Diemen’s Land where the men will wear you out, to your death. You will be fucked senseless and will no more remember your romping Mayfair nights than your real name, which is Henrietta.’
‘Who are you?’ Henrietta’s voice goes cold and sharp like the sliver of glass she hides in her sleeve.
Clovis removes her cap releasing her brilliant hair. Henrietta takes a step back.
‘Ah! Well, if it ain’t Prisoner Fowler. The tattle about you flows through the tench—’
‘I have no interest in rumours. Be silent. I can help you. But you must do as I say.’
‘I would call you a liar, but here you are free to roam the darks disguised as a matron. You have somehow got your hands on wine, and even in light of a single flame, your skin shows nothing of the Millbank ghost, like the rest of us. Curious. So, what can you do for me?’
‘How many years do you have?’
‘Seven.’
‘How many served?’
‘Five, I entered only days before you.’
‘You shall have better food. You will enjoy a return of visiting privileges. And there will be a pouch of coins waiting for you upon your ticket-of release. You will be free, avoiding deportation.’
Henrietta bursts into a high-pitched screech of laughter.
Clovis shakes the grating. ‘Keep your voice down.’
‘Why me and what do you want in return?’
‘A great deal, Henrietta. I will demand a great deal. So think of your freedom and agree in your next breath, or I go.’
‘Agree to what?’
‘I will visit you each night while you remain in punishment. I have training in mesmerism, the New Science.’
‘Oh my blind cupid. A quack.’
‘I will leave you now, Henrietta. Enjoy your journey to Australia.’
Clovis turns to leave.
‘No. Wait.’
There is only the sound of boots on flagstones.
‘Wait. Please. Don’t go.’
Clovis swings around, once again illuminating the dark cell.
‘Sit down on the floor. Face the far wall, rest the back of your head against the grating.’
Henrietta arranges her chain and complies. Clovis slides her hands through the grating until they rest on Henrietta’s filthy head. She closes her eyes to recall the Phrenological bust.
‘Look ahead, Henrietta. Focus on the direction of the wall in front of you.’
The woman feels the warmth of Clovis’s hand pass over her head and down her back. In less than five minutes, Henrietta’s head rests heavily against the cold iron as she succumbs to somnolence.
Crouching down, and not without a whit of disgust at the woman’s knotted locks, in which lice and mites have surely taken purchase, Clovis places her fingers on Henrietta’s skull and begins to probe. Tracing the bumps and knots she settles first on the shape of the lower back of her head. There should be a projection of the bone where the organ that bestows an attachment to offspring is located, but it is almost non-existent. Underdeveloped. Indifference to those who are weak.
Henrietta’s breathing is more laboured.
‘I shall ask you several questions and you will answer truthfully.’
‘Yes. I will.’
‘Do you have children?’
‘No.’
‘Have you ever had a child?’
‘What happened to your child?’
‘I left it somewhere.’
‘Where? Where did you leave the child, Henrietta?’
‘At the Barley Mow in Marylebone. In one of the booths, under the table.’
Her tone is almost chirpy, without an ounce of remorse.
Clovis’s fingers crawl up Henrietta’s head, tracing the contours of the top centre where her skull rises to a severe point.
Very deficient in Conscientiousness.
Her hands travel across, up and down and around the prostitute’s head. Combativeness, Destructiveness, Secretiveness, all overdeveloped and excessive.
The potential for this woman to do harm is so great that Clovis is wary; if such a criminally-inclined woman falls so easily to her manipulation, perhaps Henrietta is acting. She will create a test to catch her out.
The night is waning and it is so cold in the damp dungeon that Clovis’s breath visibly floats by the candlelight. She must hurry now. Breathing slowly and deeply, she anchors to her purpose.
‘Stand up, Henrietta. Give your ear to the grating.’
The woman lifts her chain and stands with her profile to Clovis who positions herself flush to the grating and looks as if she is kissing the woman’s ear. But there is no romance in her bidding. Her voice is low and forceful with all the instructions she now pours into Henrietta’s consciousness. After her last whispered commands, she blows on the woman’s neck to wake her. Henrietta comes around in a minute or two. Clovis steps back.
‘Bloody hell. I have been in a fathomless sleep.’
‘Do you remember anything?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I will leave you now. What was your work before you were banished to the darks?’
‘You will be rid of the chain tomorrow. I will have you moved to the kitchen in a few days. A big room with light and better food will help. And you will not work alone. It makes the time go quicker. But I warn you. Best behaviour or you will be back withering in the darks.’
‘You mustn’t leave yet! I have something to tell you.’
‘It is very late.’ Clovis gathers the empty pot of wine, the candle, sponge and her cap.
‘No, no, there is something I must tell you. I do not know why, but I must.’
‘It will wait.’ Clovis puts her off as part of the test.
‘No, please. It cannot wait. It is urgent. I beg you.’
In the pitch black Clovis’s satisfied smile goes unseen by the prisoner.
‘Go ahead.’
‘I am here for theft. But it is not my only crime. I planned and committed another. My baby. My second child.’
Henrietta pauses, thoroughly confused. She does not know why she has admitted this, her deepest, most dangerous secret. And words rise again, different words, terrible words stream out of her mouth like thick fumes.
‘I set it up. I worked it so that another would be punished in my stead.’ She continues just above a whisper, ‘Hung by a rope as thick as my thigh.’
‘Good night, Henrietta.’ Clovis is deeply satisfied that her whispers proved successful.
‘I … I should not have said. No one knows. Not a soul. You mustn’t tell anyone, Clovis Fowler.’
‘One day I will come to you. You will do me a service. If on that day you are tempted to renege on our agreement, I promise you this: I will make you howl for your mother like a blind baby wolf.’
‘What? What will you ask of me?’
A grave silence is her answer.
Henrietta lifts her chain and carries it to the wooden plank. The links feel heavier on this dank chill night. She has allowed this red witch to add to its weight in uncountable, invisible rings. She has stained her own future with her confession. She despairs not for her crime, but that a woman like Clovis Fowler should know of it.