LONDON
One month later
Alyce slowly uncurled herself and sat upright on the flagstones. Instinctively, her hand went to the top of her head. Every time she woke up she did this; every time she knew exactly what she would find; and every time her heart sank a little lower when her fingers felt the coarse, uneven bristles where her hair used to be.
She missed her hair, especially when the nights were as cold as this. She’d never cut it, not once in fourteen years, and it had been long and thick enough to wrap around her like a blanket. Her mother had loved it. The governors had removed it all in one go.
Next, she stuck a finger in her ear, and scooped out the candle wax she had stuffed in there earlier that evening. For a couple of weeks now she had taken to collecting the little white blobs that dripped on to the floor from the governors’ candles, and used them to block out the laughing, crying and screaming that echoed sporadically through the passageways. It always got worse at night.
Her cell looked strangely pretty in the moonlight, frozen into a delicate, white stillness. The floor had been swept, the bucket in the corner had disappeared, and she had been given a bundle of fresh straw to make her bed in, as though she were a prize cow. Above the straw hung a pair of manacles, which the governors had not used. They had tried, but her hands and wrists were too thin and kept slipping out. Nonetheless, they still served as a bleak reminder that she was a prisoner.
A prisoner, not a patient. ‘Bethlem Royal Hospital’ read the inscription above the gate, but she had realized the truth of it very quickly. Bedlam, as they called it, was no hospital, and she wasn’t here to be nursed back to health.
Alyce padded over to the window, her feet as hard and icy as the stones underneath them, and looked through the bars of her cell. A huge, ragged raven was perched on the gables of the governors’ lodgings. It flapped noisily across the courtyard, then glided over the gatehouse and out into the street.
It wasn’t the other prisoners that kept her from sleeping as much as her own memories. They made a terrifying noise of their own, inside her head, that couldn’t be blocked out. Those last moments of panic: the fear in her mother’s eyes, the grip of her fingers on Alyce’s shoulders, so tight it had left bruises. Then the sight of the carriage pulling into the village at the bottom of the hill, her mother scrawling and sealing the letter, and bundling Alyce into the cellar underneath the cottage.
Make for Bankside, she’d said. Find the hangman John Dee. Give him this letter.
The trapdoor closing, and after that…
Alyce’s frozen face became flushed and hot. Don’t think about it, she scolded herself. Her eyes stung. She thought she could smell burning. Nothing to think about. There’s nothing to be done.
All the way to London, Alyce had muttered her mother’s words, over and over until they seemed to lose all meaning: Bankside. The Hangman. John Dee. Bankside. The Hangman. John Dee. She’d still been chanting when Master Makepiece had found her in the ditch, wrapped up in her wet, filthy hair and half dead from exposure. It was no wonder he’d thought Bedlam the best place for her. She must have seemed quite out of her mind. And maybe she was.
When he’d first taken her in, she was only supposed to have stayed for a few days. There were endless arguments outside her cell about her upkeep, and how she had no one to pay for her, and how she should be thrown out to make way for an inmate who could bring in some much-needed funds. But her sponsor had stuck by her, despite the objections of his fellow governors, and it was now several weeks since she’d made this stinking cell her home.
Suddenly, she heard the sound of a key rattling in the lock behind her. She hurriedly wiped the tears from her eyes.
Let it be the nice one. Please, please, let it be the nice one.
It wasn’t the nice one. It was the other one. The fat one. The one who shouted at her, and scolded her, and told her she had been cast out by God, that the Devil was in her, and plunged her into baths of ice to cure her of her ill humour. Despite the cold, his face was red and sweating, with thin strands of straw-coloured hair slapped down on to his forehead. He was still panting from climbing the single set of stairs up to Alyce’s cell.
‘Hello, my dove,’ he slurred. Drunk, again. She shivered. ‘Cold one tonight. Everyone’s getting something to keep ’em warm, Master Makepiece’s orders.’ He spoke the name with barely disguised venom, and held out a bowl of porridge.
Alyce crept forward and took it, keeping her eyes fixed on the governor’s glistening face. The bowl was freezing.
He watched her as she retreated into the corner and lifted a spoonful of the grey slop to her lips.
‘Alyce!’ he said, frowning in mock outrage, and wagging his finger. ‘Good Christians say grace before a meal.’
He had played this game before, and she always lost. She didn’t know what ‘grace’ was, and even if she had done, speaking was not something that came easily to her any more. Sometimes Master Makepiece coaxed a few words out of her, but she had never said a thing to this Master Kemp. In her silent world, she heard them talk about her. Melancholic, Makepiece had said. Kemp, on the other hand . . . well, his descriptions of her were a bit more imaginative.
‘If you can’t thank God for the food in front of you, girl, I’m not sure I can let you eat it in good faith.’ The governor reached out a hand to reclaim the bowl, and Alyce flinched. ‘Repeat after me: benedic nobis, Domine deus . . .’
Alyce said nothing. She just stared.
‘Repeat after me,’ said Kemp, nourishing his frustration, allowing it to bloom across his face. His jowls wobbled. ‘Benedic nobis . . .’
Again he was met with silence. In one motion, he stepped forward and grabbed Alyce’s chin in his stubby little fingers, and then began working her jaw up and down as though she were a puppet he might force to speak.
Alyce grew hot with shame, which quickly turned to anger. She gripped the edge of the bowl, and hurled its contents at him. The porridge struck him square in the face with a deeply satisfying slap.
There was a strange pause. Master Kemp peered at her through his lumpy, gelatinous mask. Oats clung to his eyebrows and dripped from his chin. Alyce wanted to laugh, for the first time in what felt like years. But then the moment passed. He wiped a sleeve over his eyes and roared into life, seizing her by the throat and pouring curses upon her.
‘Edmund!’
The second voice surprised her. It was low and warm, but weary. Over Kemp’s shoulder she saw another man standing in the open doorway. It was Master Makepiece, the one who’d found her in the first place, and the only governor who shown her the slightest kindness. Kemp released her from his grip, and turned with a sharp sigh.
‘She is even less likely to speak with your stinking breath in her face. Leave her be.’
Master Kemp snorted. ‘She refuses to accept the Lord, Thomas! How can she ever hope for salvation if she cannot pray?’
‘Not all prayers need be spoken aloud, Edmund. God knows this child’s thoughts better than we do.’
Master Kemp looked back at her. Alyce kept her face perfectly still.
‘It’s not right. She should be shouting her faith from the rooftops. Calling to Him, begging Him for forgiveness.’
‘She is not allowed on the rooftops,’ Master Makepiece said calmly.
Master Kemp looked at him coolly, and then hiccoughed, ruining his composure. ‘All of the others, for all their caterwauling, they can still say a few words of prayer. They still know the power of the cross when they see it. But this one . . .’ He shoved his finger in her face.
Master Makepiece allowed Master Kemp to trail off, and waited for quiet. ‘It hardly matters now, anyway. She is leaving. Tonight.’
‘Leaving?’ said Kemp.
Leaving? thought Alyce.
‘Yes. They are waiting for her downstairs.’
‘They?’ It took a moment before Kemp realized who Master Makepiece was referring to. Then Alyce watched his sagging face split into a grotesque smile. ‘You see! I was right!’ He turned back to her. ‘You’d better get learning those prayers now, girl. I knew it!’
Makepiece ignored him. ‘Come child. There is somebody to see you.’
Alyce came forward, one cold foot settling in the spilt porridge as she went. She gave Kemp a wide berth, his grin like a carved, exaggerated mask in the moonlight. Once outside in the passageway, the air thrummed with the wailing and laughing and demented chattering of the other inmates. She wanted to plug her ears again.
Master Makepiece placed a hand gently on her shoulder, and she looked up at him. His features were somehow soft and hard at the same time – as though the years had worn then down into an expression of resolved, immutable kindness. But tonight they looked sadder than usual. He peered at her from under his heavy eyebrows.
‘I’m so sorry, Alyce,’ he said, and led her down the stairs.