One thought is in my head as I knock on Liz’s worm-eaten splintery door: I cannot stop here long.
Bill rests his great hairy paw on the door-frame to block my way. ‘Uh. Another Amesbury expecting to be kept.’
When Bill came courting—the only man willing to overlook how scrawny Liz was after the smallpox—he wore breeches stitched from moleskins, and he wears those greasy breeches now, along with a torn coat of some thicker pelt, and a black cap stuck about with rabbit-tails and eagle claws. His squat dwelling stinks as he does. A mix of graveyard mould and rancid butcher’s block.
‘Will you let me in, Brother?’
He thinks about it, sly-eyed; steps aside; jerks his head. Carrying my box, holding myself proud, I walk inside, only to trip and nearly fall on the hollow dirt floor, the light being so dim I cannot see my way. One rank-smelling room, the rafters low and smudged with smoke. Sole sign of Liz’s presence is a pair of wooden head-combs lying on the bed. I set down my box on the rough plank that serves as a table.
‘When’s my sister home, Bill?’
‘When Elliott lets her go,’ he grunts. ‘The old devil finds every way he can to keep her toiling for him. Don’t touch that jar, thinking you’re clever to help yourself to a drop of tea without asking. ‘Tisn’t tea, ‘tis poison for the rats.’ He puts a black hand to his throat and makes a choking sound, laughing at my look of disgust. ‘I’ll be back when I’ve sold what I catched today,’ he adds, and swinging open his coat to show me half-a-dozen rabbits tied to his belt, he slouches out, leaving a trail of bloody drops behind him.
When his thumping footsteps fade I sit myself on a stool and vow I will not cry. I am weary is all, and footsore, and did not imagine Bill Eardley’s greeting would be quite so harsh. Nor did I expect to find the place as mean. One wooden candlestick is the only homely touch. A heap of wire snares lies in one corner, and above them, on a great black hook, a pair of long, curved butcher’s knives I suppose are for skinning the pitiful creatures Bill catches in his traps.
I was never close to either of my sisters, but when, long after twilight, Liz returns, I jump up and hug her tight. She is even sparer than I remember, and does not return my hug. Her smile is fleeting.
‘So, little sister, you found us. Did Mrs Jervis take you in?’
‘From noon ‘til Bill came back.’
‘Gossip about us, did she?’ Liz sits to pull off her boots, and her feet are just as I remember them, with knuckly toes, and pale and bony ankles like our mother’s. ‘Still, old Jervis is kind enough. Did you keep away from the quays on your way from Temple-gate?’
‘Yes, Liz.’
‘Don’t cast up your eyes, girl. Who has lived in Bristol twelve months? And who just rolled into town with grass-seeds stuck to her hem?’
‘You. Me.’
‘There then.’ She edges a piece of kindling into the fire. ‘We live plain, as you see. The landlord bleeds us dry.’ Her thin brown face is defiant. ‘I warned you the place was small.’
‘It’s well enough.’ Yet I am sure Bill Eardley misled my sister when he made his offer. He averred he owned his dwelling-place outright; he did not confess it was made of cob and mouldy thatch, or that he merely rents it.
‘You have it neat,’ I tell her. The room is so bare it could hardly be otherwise.
‘Neat? I can sweep the floor one-handed while the other does the grate.’ She casts a bitter glance at the bed. ‘’Til I came here I thought everyone but tinkers slept apart from where they ate.’
‘Liz. I slept in the box bed by the hearth ‘til I was six.’
‘Grown folks I mean. You know what I mean.’ She speaks in a rush, as though she longs to unburden herself. ‘One room, no chimney save a hole in the wall that lets the rain in, a few inches of stony ground for a garden, a cracked jar for a cooking-pot. Even old Jervis owns a kettle. I expected to better myself when I came to Bristol.’
‘Believe me, you were better here once Father fell sick.’
If Liz picks out a hidden thread in my meaning—who was left to care for Father after she and Meg left home?—she gives no sign. ‘I thought to make my fortune,’ she says bitterly. ‘I never stopped to consider I’d nothing to sell.’
‘Furs, maybe?’
‘Bah! Not the kind he fetches.’
‘You’ve found work, though, Liz. Steady, and close by.’
She shuts her eyes, and the lids are blue like the circles round them, and above them her hair is dull and threaded with grey, and her lips so thin I can scarcely make them out. Then she blinks and fixes me with a stare. ‘You were a fool, Corrie. You should have pleaded with Cousin Mary to let you stay in Salisbury. You might have found a husband there.’
‘Among the dried-up clergy in Cathedral Close? Liz, I burn to tell you something. It was my fault Father died.’
‘Don’t be foolish. He died of hunger and hard work, like every other Amesbury.’
‘Yes, because Squire Lloyd let him go. And he only did because of me. When I came back from Salisbury, Robert Lloyd asked me to marry him. He said he’d loved me since we were children. Remember how we roamed the woods and fields, the two of us, before he went to Oxford? Salisbury had turned me into a beautiful young lady, Robert said, and he was determined to wed me.’
Liz is looking at me in mocking disbelief, tinged with envy. ‘Then why didn’t he?’
‘The Squire heard of it, and banished Robert to Jamaica.’ I have kept my secret all these months; tears run down my cheeks. ‘I shall never see my love again, and if I did he wouldn’t thwart his father’s wishes.’
Liz tilts her head, considering. ‘You may not like it,’ she says at last, ‘but you were lucky. How would you have fared, married into gentry? His friends would have disowned the pair of you. His father would have cut off his inheritance. His mother? She’d have hated you.’
Liz is dripping hot wax into my wounds.
‘I swore I’d never say his name again. Please, Liz, let’s talk of other things.’ I wipe my eyes, and inch my stool back from the fire. ‘I did wonder if there’d be room for me here with you and Bill.’
I am hoping she will tell me why, after three years’ marriage, there is no baby, but she ignores the bait. ‘I split two fingernails today,’ she says. ‘See? Damned weeding, one day I’ll break my back.’ She pushes her fist into her spine, grimacing.
‘You shouldn’t over-work, Liz. The granmers used to say a young wife shouldn’t be too thin.’
She thumps the table. ‘You think I’m addle-witted. I know what you’re saying, nosy so-and-so.’
‘I only wondered.’
‘Don’t pry. I’m regular as church bells, and don’t tell me I’m skinny, you little besom.’ She chucks back her head. ‘If you want to know whose fault it is, why don’t you look at Bill? He’s pickled his bollocks with rum like the rest of him. And good thing too.’
‘Oh Liz.’
‘Why? Would you want a child if you had to bring ‘em up here, dressed in skins like a savage, and sleeping in a borrowed garden trug?’
I can’t help laughing. ‘Liz. It wouldn’t be that bad. He’d buy the baby a christening gown.’
We both laugh heartily.
‘Oh aye, and a lace cap and a silver rattle.’ Her face grows sober. ‘Most probably he’d wait ‘til I was out and drop it in a well.’ Her eyes fill with tears.
‘He wouldn’t, Liz.’ I reach out, though she pulls her hand away. ‘When Mother said Tom was on the way, Father slammed the door and spent the evening wandering Salisbury Plain. Soon as Tom was born Father was overjoyed to have a son. He died broken-hearted for his boy.’
Liz is bound up with her own sorrows, but she knows how I nursed Tom and never slept or ate for a month after we buried him. She stands up, rummages beneath the mattress, and pulls out a paper parcel and sets it down before us. Then she reaches for the small basket she brought home from Elliott’s, and hands me a small, hard pear.
‘Sugar?’ I say, peering at the paper. ‘How’s that then?’
‘Bristol’s where sugar’s at, remember. I hide it from Bill or he’d put it in his rum.’
We sit companionable by the little smoking fire and take turns to dip the sour green fruit in the sticky grains.
‘God, but I’ll have cramps from eating unripe fruit.’ Liz wrinkles her nose and picks a shred that has stuck between her teeth. ‘Mr Elliott tried to give me better today, but I take only the ones too poor to sell.’
‘I relish it with this sugar, though. I wish I could have fetched you a pot of honey, Liz. All I brought was a lump of cheese. Here.’ I open my box and hand her the cheese, tied up in a piece of muslin.
‘Don’t let Bill have it.’
‘Good Wiltshire honey, eh,’ she says, stowing the cheese under the mattress. ‘I wonder where Father’s bees flew to.’
‘They didn’t fly, dunder.’ The longer Liz and I are sat together, the more Wiltshire I sound. ‘Father’s friend Silas put ‘em with his own skeps.’
‘Even now I can’t believe the cottage is gone, and Father dead, and Mother moved to Salisbury,’ Liz says. ‘I think of them as they was.’
‘I don’t,’ I say sadly. ‘If you’d picked your way over the ashes of the house-fire you wouldn’t neither.’
‘I suppose.’ She leans back in her chair, and rests her chin on her hand. Then she looks up.
‘Corrie? There must have been something saved from the fire besides a few spoons. What about Pilgrim’s Progress? And Robinson Crusoe? I loved old Crusoe and his Friday.’
‘It all went up, Liz. Everything. If not gone, plastered in soot. I took what I stood up in.’
I don’t add that Mother gave me eighteen pence to give me a little security when I arrived in Bristol. Liz was ever prone to jealousy, especially when it comes to Mother.
Luckily she has lost interest in the story, or lost heart.
‘God, I be tired. Remember how Father used to say his joints ached?’ She runs her hands over her knees, then rests her head on the chair back and shuts her eyes.
***
I waken to find the room cold and the fire turned to ash. Liz startles as soon as I shift and I wonder if she’s fearful. She must be, married to that lump.
‘Run to the pastry-shop, will you, Corrie?’ She stands up and feels in a crack above the door lintel, and counts the pennies in her palm, frowning.
I think of Bill’s resentment when he greeted me.
‘I’ll fetch for you, Liz, but I cannot have you buy my victuals.’
She tosses her head. ‘I daresay I can provide your first night in Bristol. Fetch us three slices and quick as you like. Go on, don’t argue. The pie-seller with the orange stockings and black waistcoat is cheapest; he’s on the corner with the High-street. I’d come with you if my feet weren’t like red-hot coals.’
‘Well, perhaps this once.’ I rise and wrap myself in my cloak, though a thought strikes me, and I cannot step out into the night until I have spoken it.
‘Liz, when I was on my journey people were talking of a string of boys murdered in Bristol in the last few months. Is it true?’
She busies herself putting coins back above the lintel, and does not answer.
‘It is then.’ I cannot hide my shock. ‘And one just this last week?’
‘Monday. Near the rope-walk on St-Augustine’s-back. There’s been half-a-dozen in the last two years. Every one a boy, so you don’t need to fear. Two hundred turned out for the last one’s funeral.’
‘I heard they were stable-lads or beggars, sleeping in lofts or under hedgerows.’
‘Aye, killed where they were sleeping. Folk reckon there’s a pedlar called Red John preying on young lads.’ She picks up the poker and jabs the embers in the grate. Her face glows reddish-black.
‘Why don’t they hunt for him?’
‘He fled up country, they say. Vanished in the autumn mist. Though I think he’s hid on board a ship. Who’d pick him out among a crew of sailors when half are thieves and pirates? Like I keep telling you, stay away from the rough lot round the quays. You have no understanding of a place like Bristol. Ships sailing in from every corner of the world, folk who speak no tongue you understand, men who fight and whore, and women no better than they should be.’
‘Liz, I came to find a place in a respectable household and that is what I shall do.’ I push a stray lock of hair beneath my bonnet and look at her straight. Then I can’t resist asking, ‘Liz, how does he kill them?’
‘Cuts their throats. And leaves no trail of blood behind to trace him by. The magistrates come asking all the washerwomen if they’ve been given any laundry with bloody stains on.’ She flushes. ‘I take in washing now and then, I ain’t ashamed of it.’
‘Of course you ain’t. Did any washerwomen say they had seen aught wrong?’
‘We all did. We washes sheets and shirts and petticoats with every kind of stain on them. I never found any linen steeped in blood, and if I did, I shouldn’t tell the magistrates.’
‘But Liz, what of the poor lads with their throats cut?’
‘If I told tales about my customers I should never earn a penny. Besides, I’ve no tales to tell. I promise you, Corrie, if I did, I’d tell you all.’
‘Then promise to tell me about the city and the quays when I come back. Bill knows a few pilots, doesn’t he? I saw so many masts when I came over the river. I did hurry past, I promise you.’
‘Pilots? They’re a reckless savage lot. “Sharks” they call them up the river. Go on. I’ll tell you the little I know when you bring back that pie. I’m famished. Lord, but I’m tired too.’ She rubs her face, and seeing her sickly complexion and sunken cheeks I feel a pang for my sister. Marriage has aged her twenty years in two. ‘Listen, Corrie,’ she mumbles, rising to unlatch the door. ‘I’m pleased to offer you a bed for a week or two, but no longer. We’ll be out of here ourselves soon, looking for a cheaper room.’
‘Cheaper?’
‘We owe rent, or Bill does. We shall have to share with another family. I’m sorry, Sister.’
I go to kiss her to show I bear no ill feelings, but she flinches from my touch and up close there are bruises on her throat which are plain despite the meagre light and the neckerchief she wears to hide them. Whatever she claims about Bill’s debts I guess why she wants me gone.
Liz would never let her husband degrade her own sister I tell myself, as I step into the yard, altering my certainty to ‘I hope she has the means to prevent it,’ for it is many a year since I lived with Liz, and I know her less than I once did, while all I know of Brother Bill is that he cares for no one but himself.
***
An hour after we have fallen asleep, I by the hearth, Liz on her bed of straw, Bill blunders in and kicks the door shut, promptly tripping over a stool and swearing fit to wake the dead. He reeks as he always does, of rum and dung and slaughter, and not satisfied with what he has drunk he throws off his hat and coat and fumbles in the dark until he finds the ale jug. I lie as still as may be while he gulps and then devours the slice of pie Liz left out for him. Either he forgets I am there or cares nothing for it, for next he thumps the jug down on the table then draws back the blanket, climbs on my sister and does his grunting work on her for all the world like a boar that serves a sow. He rolls off, still in his filthy boots, and moments later sets to snoring. My poor sister is evidently used to such treatment, for she makes no sound or movement, and by and by joins her softer snores to his.
It is fortunate Liz banked up the fire, for besides my cloak I have only the straw she lent me to lie on. The draught from the door is sharp, and as I saw when I arrived, the floor is green with damp. Even so, being worn out I sleep until at last the watchman calls four o’clock, wakening me from a dream in which a black figure shuffles towards me and I cannot move.
Someone drops to his knees with a grunt of pain. A split-moment later I am pinned by a hand on my chest and another at my throat.
‘Saints alive, Bill!’
He plants his filthy palm over my mouth; I gag at the smell of rabbit guts and his foul breath in my face.
‘What you hiding in that shift of yours? Come on, Miss Coronation Amesbury, I said you couldn’t stay rent-free. Give me what you owe.’ He pulls at my clothes with greasy fingers.
Now I see why Liz stows her few pennies in the wall. ‘Leave me be, you rogue.’ I try to keep my voice between scolding and jesting.
‘You must have money for how’d you get here in the first place?’ He shoves his hand under my shift and gives my leg a painful squeeze, whereupon my temper flares.
‘If I have money it is not for buying rum for you.’ I twist out of his hands and give one of them a nip.
He squawks and kicks out at me as I struggle free.
‘You bit my thumb, you bitch.’
‘Shush, brother. Liz’ll hear.’
He shoves me but I return the compliment threefold, enough to push him back towards the bed. Straight off Liz wakens.
‘Not again,’ she groans. ‘Leave a body in peace, won’t you?’
‘I got up to fetch a swig of ale. Shut your mouth.’ Bill knows I will not rouse Liz further by nay-saying him. ‘Here, give me some blanket, lazy mare.’
‘I’m fairly starved with cold,’ she grumbles, and while I wait for my heart to slow, I listen to them bicker over who has most of the paltry coverings, and whose turn it is to hunt for firewood tomorrow.
I wait for Bill to say, ‘Your good-for-nothing sister Corrie can find some,’ but perhaps he is fearful of Liz guessing what he was at when he jolted her awake, for he makes no mention of me. I lie until dawn, fretting over the time I may take to find another place, wishing that once I have done so it will be in my power to save my sister from a man as unlike the ideal husband as I can possibly imagine.
Despite everything, the thought brings a smile to my lips as I lie on my musty pile of straw waiting for dawn and wishing my feet were warmer. Did I not swear a month or two ago that the ideal husband does not exist within these shores?