Lewis stumbled on the narrow stairs in his hurry to get away. He’d gotten the answers he came for, but they were not the ones he wanted.
First, the child was an Aubrey, whatever surname he might carry.
Second, Gideon had needed no force.
And third, she was not safe. What’s more, she showed no interest in becoming so.
She’d also answered a fourth question, one he never thought to ask. She might have given up on marriage, but she had not given up her love for the beast in the gilded pelt, the one she’d written about in her poem. Her wistful memories told him that clearly enough. An altogether unsatisfactory conversation.
Putnam had returned with not only biscuits, but a chunk of mutton and some bread, even a bottle of ale. Evidently she hoped to entice him to stay a while longer, but he had no appetite, except for solitude.
As he regained his balance at the bottom of the staircase, he heard a door close above and footsteps on the stairs. “Mr. Aubrey!”
Putnam. He waited there in the filthy vestibule, begrudging the delay.
She came into sight, his hat in her hands. “Oh, sir, I’m glad I caught you.”
He grunted his thanks. The cold would have reminded him soon enough that he’d forgotten it.
“Will you come again tomorrow, sir? I bought all that food…”
“Give it to her,” he said, with a jerk of his head upward. “She needs to eat. I’ll be sending over some coal too. Don’t you dare skimp on the fire.”
She trotted behind him as he pushed the door open. “But will you come?”
“She doesn’t want anything to do with me.” He stared at her, her face pinched with trouble, her faded blue eyes beseeching. Her mobcap sat crooked, gray hair sticking out on one side. She looked a bit demented.
“She does and she doesn’t, if that makes sense. She’s been through so much, she hardly knows up from down. In any case, I don’t care what she wants.” She broke off, shivering.
“What in God’s name…” Scowling, Lewis closed the door again, shutting out the wind. “You’re paid to care for her!”
“Aye.” Putnam eyed him for a moment, gauging his temper, or his interest, or maybe his trustworthiness. Either she was satisfied or she was desperate, because she continued.
“She probably didn’t tell you. Her parents will take her back, though they’re sure to make her life miserable. But the child?” She shook her head. “They won’t have anything to do with the child.”
He gaped at her. Whatever did she mean? His mind went whirling and tumbling, rolling off the edge of the world. He put a hand to the wall to steady himself.
“Unless she can figure some way to make a living for herself and the babe, he’ll have to go to the workhouse.”
Lewis shoved the door wide, gulping the cold air to clear his head. How do people lose their humanity? His father, and now the Spains.
“May they rot in hell. Yes, I’ll be back.” He crammed his hat on his head and stalked away.
Lewis recited all the curses he knew. He’d learned them from Gideon—the one thing Lewis could thank his brother for. Except that without Gideon, he wouldn’t need them.
By heaven, Gideon had a lot to answer for! If he knew about Anna, would he give a goddamn? Or if not Anna, the baby? How could he not? To father a child and not care whether it lived or died? Not care that it faced abandonment? It seemed impossible. Would it not run counter to the laws of human nature? Lewis had read Cicero recently. ‘Of all nature's gifts to the human race, what is sweeter to a man than his children?’
There were exceptions to every rule, of course. Lewis ground his teeth. In a case like this, those exceptions should be shot. Or at least stripped of the parts that enabled them to procreate. And for good measure, deprived of property, charm, good looks, and any other attributes that made them irresistible to naïve young women.
The workhouse! Lewis had relegated it to the end of his list because the thought of finding Anna in such a place turned his stomach. How much worse an innocent child?
Well, he had never seen inside a workhouse. He couldn’t imagine doing so would change his feelings in the matter, but he headed north instead of south, back past Anna’s alley, across the Headrow to Lady Lane.
The workhouse was an ungainly hodgepodge of rectangles and triangles and smokestacks. Except for the long buildings like barracks, he could not guess what purposes they served. Thankfully he did not need an intimate knowledge of the inner workings. He only needed to see how they treated the children.
He entered into a spacious room busy with the whir and clack of twenty or more spinning wheels and the women operating them. Lit by the afternoon sun, it was cheerful despite the cold stone floor and unadorned brick walls. So far, better than he’d expected.
A man emerged from a small office in the corner. He was perhaps forty, tall and spare, dressed modestly in brown. “Sir,” he said, bowing. “I am Robert Brumbage, the master here. How can I help you?”
He was happy enough to provide the tour Lewis requested, focused on the children’s facilities. The way led through a cavernous dining hall and a huge laundry room, past an infirmary and dormitories. Children toiled alongside the adults and a handful of girls no older than little Barbara, with runny noses and chilblains on their fingers, swept floors or scrubbed tables.
At least the children showed snatches of curiosity or mischief. The adults had nothing but apathy or resentment. Anna looked not much different from that young mother over there, uniformed like all the rest, her eyes vacant and shoulders hunched in hopelessness. She folded sheets with a tot sniveling at her knees and an infant besides, wrapped up against the cold, asleep in a plain wooden crate. What hateful circumstance had brought her to this pass? Something like Anna’s own, perhaps.
Lewis’s teeth and lips clenched tight, his innards seethed with bitterness. Against Gideon and Anna, her parents and his own. Against Sir John for insisting, back in London, that Gideon’s flirtations would cause no lasting harm. Against himself, and Cassie too, for not seeing what was in front of them.
“How do they get out of here?” he asked. “Children and adults alike?”
“The wool and linen mills take the largest number of our inmates, get them on their feet to earn an independent living. Children included.”
Lewis grunted. “Not much of a childhood. How young do they start?”
“Eight or nine, sometimes younger.” He pictured Kate Redfern going off to make her living as a mill girl instead of playing with a wooden sword.
Brumbage pulled open a door into the next building. “I know what you’re thinking. I have children myself; my son turns eight come February. But there are always a dozen more needing a place, and a child’s wages can help lift a whole family out of here.”
They passed a windowless classroom filled to overflowing with youngsters, lined up on benches in their gray-and-white uniforms. “We teach them all some skills if they stay long enough,” said Brumbage. “A bit of reading, signing their names, some arithmetic. If a lad shows a particular talent with numbers or letters, we’ll try to find him an apprenticeship that makes use of it.”
“And here are the little ones.” The master’s smile brought warmth to his voice as a couple of tots attached themselves to his legs. Another dozen or so scampered around the small room or played with a paltry assortment of mismatched blocks and broken toys. The place smelled of shit and urine and sour milk. Every nose needed wiping, every head needed a comb. The only light came from an oil lamp hanging high on the wall, out of reach of little hands. Did these children ever see the sky? Sunshine, grass, a tree? Did they ever feel the rain?
Lewis followed Brumbage through a darkened doorway into a dungeon of a room. A lamp burned low on a table in the far corner. Between that and the doorway, twelve or fifteen rough-hewn cribs and cradles stood in ranks on the bare stone floor. The walls had once been whitewashed, but not in recent memory. No chains dangled from the walls, but it could easily have served as a prison. The coldest room in the building seemed an odd place to install its most vulnerable residents.
The cradles held the tiniest ones, swaddled in coarse woolen blankets. No arms, no legs, just bundled shapes with faces in the appropriate place. Some eyes were open, some closed. A muffled coo came from one little mouth, a whimper from another.
The older infants were swaddled too. He had no knowledge of childrearing, but surely it was unnatural to keep them so confined. Certainly it was not the Redferns’ way. Would Toby be quiet if he were swaddled? Lewis thought he’d be livid!
A chill crept up his spine, sending gooseflesh down his arms and erupting from the nape of his neck in a shudder of…cold? He started to sweat.
The place was like a crypt, these bundles like baby corpses laid out in their shrouds. Lewis’s breathing echoed off the cold stone, harsh and ragged. His heart pounded as though he’d just run to Wrackwater Bridge and back.
He rushed through the outer nursery and into the corridor beyond. His ears did not stop ringing until he reached the main hall, where he waited for Brumbage. He must apologize, and pretend to be grateful for the tour.
He had certainly learned something. The workhouse was not an option.
Lewis trudged back to the Rose and Crown in the late afternoon twilight, beyond curses, beyond useful thought. His mind floated among images old and new, ideas sensible and insane, seeking order in the chaos. Like bits of colored paper he was charged with assembling into a mosaic of something recognizable, or individual letters that would create words, sentences, solutions—If only he could figure out which ones went where. In all this cocked-up mess with Anna, where should he begin?
Gideon was to blame, and God damn him for it. Gideon should bear the responsibility and the suffering. Since God had not made the necessary arrangements, Lewis must fit that into the puzzle along with everything else.