Emily (21 page)

Emily crouched as far back in her cell as she could when these visitors came. She couldn’t bear the shame, couldn’t bear the thought of being the object of ridicule or the laughing stock of these people come to gloat. I have no hope, she thought, locked in her cave of despair. I am as doomed as that poor woman in the next cell whose face I never saw.

She was lying facing the wall when she heard the rattle of the gate and her name being called. ‘Emily Hawkins! Rise up.’ She scrambled to her feet as the warder unlocked her cell.

‘What? Where am I going?’ Fear hit her. ‘Am I going to court?’

‘No.’ The warder had little to say. ‘You’re being moved.’

‘But why?’ She started to cry. Was this the start of procedure which would lead to the hangman?

‘Where ’you tekking her?’ Meg stood between
the warder and the gate. ‘Come on, where’s she going?’

‘Nowt to do wi’ you.’

Meg sidled up to him. ‘Aw, come on. You can tell me!’

The warder hesitated, then gave a small smile. ‘It’ll be a favour, Meg.’

She nodded. ‘Just tell us where you’re tekking her.’

‘She’s being put in one of ’other cells. Comfort of home in there,’ he added caustically.

Meg moved back. ‘You’ve got a friend after all then, Em! You’ll be too good for ’likes of us when you get up there.’

Emily stared. She was frightened. She didn’t believe them. They were going to hang her without a trial. ‘No,’ she shrieked. ‘I won’t go! Let me stay here.’ Somehow she had become accustomed to these outcasts of society, familiar with their disgusting habits, their scratching and swearing, their fighting and brazen shamelessness, born she was now quite sure, out of hopelessness and misery.

Meg grinned. ‘She wants to stay wi’ her pals, don’t you, Em? You’ll miss us, won’t you?’

Emily looked over her shoulder as she was dragged away. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘I will.’ But Meg had already turned her back and was walking away.

‘Who sent me in here?’ She was bundled with her belongings into one of the cells in the passageway, which, although it was open to view through the barred door, was slightly larger than the small cell she had just occupied.

‘Don’t know, but I shouldn’t complain if I were you,’ said the warder. ‘There’s not many have this luxury.’

It’s hardly luxury, she thought, looking around at the damp, streaming walls and the straw mattress on the bench, but it had a grate with a low fire burning and it had a single wooden chair and on a shelf a stub of candle, and she was grateful for that at least to her unknown benefactor. She was brought some soup, slightly warmer and not quite so greasy as she had eaten previously and she sat by the fire and felt a glimmer of hope where there had been none before.

It must be Mr Francis, she pondered. No-one else would do this. Towards the end of the afternoon, just as she had lit the candle from the dying remains of the fire, she heard the sound of footsteps coming down the stone passageway; the heavy tread
of the warder’s boots and lighter steps such as a woman might make. She didn’t look up, but sat staring at a puff of smoke which tongued around the last sliver of wood and curled its way into the room.

The iron key rattled in the lock and startled she jumped up. A woman was entering and the warder was locking the gate behind her. She had her face covered by the hood of her cloak and in the gloom Emily couldn’t see whether she was young or old.

‘Have you come to share my cell?’ Emily asked softly. ‘I thought I was to be alone, but I shall be very glad to have some company in this dreadful place.’

‘I can only give you my company for an hour,’ the woman whispered. ‘I have been asked to come and see you.’ She shuddered and turned her head to glance around her surroundings. ‘And in truth, I don’t think I could bear to stay longer between these walls.’

‘Who are you? Who has sent you? Please, won’t you sit down?’

The woman removed a basket from beneath her cloak and sat gingerly on the chair, then quickly got up again and called the warder who was standing outside. ‘Send more wood for the fire,’ she demanded. ‘And more light.’

The warder, to Emily’s astonishment, hurried away, to return a few minutes later with a bundle of twigs and a lantern. The woman nodded, but didn’t thank him, and he again locked the gate and waited outside.

‘Thank you,’ Emily said gratefully. ‘I don’t know
who you are, but I thank you from the bottom of my heart.’

‘It’s not me you should thank, but Mr Francis,’ the woman said softly and removed her hood to reveal, even though the cell was filled with dark shadows, a neat head of fair hair stranded with silver and coiled into a thick chignon at her neck. Not a young woman but a middle-aged one with fine features and large eyes.

‘I knew it,’ Emily breathed. ‘I knew if I appealed to him he would help me. I am so grateful,’ she began again, overcome with emotion.

The woman hushed her. ‘He would have enquired about you even without your letter,’ she said, keeping her voice low so that the warder wouldn’t hear. ‘He read of the case in the newspaper and was of course very concerned, especially’, she added, ‘as his daughter was involved.’

‘Oh, but she wasn’t,’ Emily stressed. ‘It was Hugo Purnell, not Miss Deborah – I mean Mrs Purnell, as she now is. It had nothing to do with her.’

‘But –’. The woman sounded puzzled, ‘I understood that you damaged one of her pictures. That is what the police are saying.’

‘No,’ Emily cried. ‘Mr Hugo said he had bought the picture for her, but it wasn’t true.’ She put her head in her hands and started to sob. ‘It wasn’t the kind of picture a gentleman would buy for his wife! He – he bought it for himself.’

‘I see,’ the woman said quietly. ‘And did it offend you? Is that why you damaged it?’

Emily nodded and wiped her eyes with her shawl. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘He told me that the woman
in it reminded him of me. She was naked!’ she breathed, hardly daring to speak of it. ‘I was so ashamed.’

The woman took a deep breath. ‘And the child you bore? It was Hugo Purnell’s?’

Emily nodded again, unable to say more, yet feeling such relief that she had told this stranger.

‘He will deny it in court, you know that? Even though eventually he will boast to his friends of it.’

Emily looked up. ‘Will Mr Francis be able to help me? I shall understand if he can’t come himself because of Miss Deborah, but will you be able to see him and tell him? Are you a friend of Mr and Mrs Francis?’

The woman hesitated. ‘Yes – of Mr Francis. We have known each other for many years, since we were very young. Not Mrs Francis. We have only met once.’

Emily was puzzled and wondered how she could be a friend of Mr Francis and yet not of his wife; perhaps not of their circle, she thought. She had a pleasant voice and manners, yet did not have the upper-class tone that Mrs Francis had, and Emily knew well enough that Mrs Francis was a stickler for propriety and people knowing their proper place.

‘May I know your name?’ she said shyly. ‘When I think of your kindness in coming here, I would like to have your name in my thoughts.’

‘My name is Mary,’ she smiled and Emily thought how lovely she was, how her face glowed when she smiled.

‘Is that what I may call you?’ she asked. ‘Would it not be impertinent? Don’t you have a married
name you would prefer me to use?’

Mary looked sad for a moment and gazed into the flames of the fire before saying softly, ‘Mary Edwards is my name, Emily, and I am not a married woman, although I am known as Mrs Edwards in my business.’

‘Oh,’ Emily said eagerly, ‘I have relatives called Edwards; Hannah Edwards, though she’s dead now, and her grandson is Sam Edwards.’

‘Yes, I know.’ Mary looked her full in the face and there was grief written there. ‘Samuel is my son.’

There was silence between them. Mary Edwards sat with her hands folded in her lap as she waited for Emily to absorb the knowledge she had given her. Then Emily whispered, ‘Was it shame that drove you away? I felt shame when I gave birth. I knew I would be considered impure, a fallen woman, even though it wasn’t my fault.’

Mary shook her head. ‘No. I felt no shame at giving birth to a child whose father I loved and who loved me. No, it went much deeper than that. I knew that if I left, both my son and his father would have a better life without me.’

‘But no-one knows who is Sam’s father!’

‘No,’ Mary said. ‘They don’t. Not even my mother knew, though sometimes I wondered how she didn’t guess.’

‘Sam is a good man,’ Emily explained tenderly, ‘but he needs to be looked after. Mr Francis has placed him with a family on a farm in Holderness and they are taking care of him.’

‘Yes,’ Mary smiled. ‘I know. I know everything about him. How he has grown from childhood into
manhood. What work he does, what his pleasures are. I even know about you from the time you went to live with my mother.’

Emily’s own problems faded into the background as she listened, astonished at this revelation.

‘Your father’, said Mary, ‘was my cousin. We were very close when we were young. That’s why you were sent to my mother when he became so ill. He and your mother knew that you would be well cared for, they knew how she had cared for Samuel.’

‘But your mother would have stood by you. Why didn’t you stay with her?’

‘I came to see you, Emily, and attend to your needs,’ Mary admonished gently. ‘What happened to me is in the past. We must look to your future now.’

Emily, brought back to the present, looked at her with a frightened expression. ‘I don’t think I have one,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t see further than the hangman.’

‘Hush, hush. Don’t speak so,’ Mary chided. ‘We must think of what is the best thing to do. Is there anyone who will speak on your behalf?’

‘No-one,’ she said. ‘I have no family. Only Sam,’ she added, ‘and he can’t help me. I have no influential friends. There’s only Mr Francis and he knew me only for a short time.’

‘He will do what he can,’ Mary assured her, ‘but it is a little difficult for him. His wife –’. She hesitated. ‘His wife will object if she finds out. Because of your connection with me,’ she added.

‘I don’t understand,’ Emily began. ‘Your connection with me? Why should she object?’

‘We are related, Emily. I explained that your father was my cousin!’ She took a deep breath. ‘And Roger Francis is Samuel’s father.’

The hour of her visit passed quickly as she related the story of how she and Roger Francis had fallen in love when she was a servant girl and he the son of the house where she worked. She emptied her basket of the things she had brought for Emily. A warm shawl. Soap and towel, a new hairbrush and cotton handkerchiefs. A small tin containing sweetcake, and some fruit, which she pressed her to eat for its goodness. Then she brought out a small posy of sweet-smelling flowers. ‘Not practical, I know,’ she smiled, ‘but I thought they might cheer you.’

Emily pressed her nose into the fragrance, then she looked up at her. ‘I remember you! I’ve seen you in the florist’s shop!’

Mary nodded. ‘It’s my shop. Roger Francis bought it for me over twenty years ago. But’, she said proudly, ‘I paid him back every penny, even though he didn’t want me to. I wanted to be beholden to no-one. I didn’t want anyone to say that I was a kept woman.’

‘And – and –’. Emily was hesitant, not wanting to pry. ‘Do you love him still?’

‘Oh, yes.’ There was a radiance about her as she answered and once more Emily thought how lovely she was and that there was little wonder that Mr Francis had fallen in love with her. ‘More than ever.’

‘And he? Does he still –?’

Mary lowered her eyes and Emily felt she had intruded, that she shouldn’t have been so impertinent as to ask the question, but then Mary looked up and laughed. ‘Yes. I’m happy to say that he does.’

After she had gone, Emily lay on the mattress with her new shawl wrapped around her; it smelt of flowers and dispersed the odour of damp walls and mildew which permeated the building. She thought of all Mary had told her and of what she had not. And piece by piece, bits of the puzzle dropped into place. Remarks made by Mrs Castle, the cook at Elmswell Manor, who had said the master had made a mistake in bringing Emily there. ‘She had known,’ Emily murmured to herself. ‘She had been there a long time. And she had kept the secret all those years.’

A memory of Mrs Francis came to mind. Of the day when Deborah had let down Emily’s hair so that it streamed around her shoulders. Mrs Francis had been startled when she saw her, she remembered, and had asked, ‘not her daughter’, and Mr Francis had been angry and yet defensive as he denied it.

I must have reminded her of Mary, she thought. I must have a look of her, the same-shaped face, the same blond hair. And Mr Francis too used to look at me as if he was seeing someone else. She thought of the love that he and Mary still shared, in spite of the differences between them and, inexplicably, Philip Linton and his whispered words to her at Scarborough, came to mind. It is possible then, she mused sleepily, to love someone
of a different class! And I didn’t think that it was.

She slept better that night; she had not been given any further hope, yet now she felt that she wasn’t alone. And I have a kinswoman. Someone I didn’t realize existed; and I feel that she would care about what happened to me.

Three days later she had another visitor. A man, who said he was a lawyer and had come to consider her case. ‘Mrs Edwards has asked me to represent you,’ he explained. He was a large man in black clothing who seemed to fill the whole of the cell. ‘She speaks highly of you and, although it is a very serious charge against you, there could be mitigating circumstances.’ He looked solemnly at her over a pair of round spectacles as if weighing up her character and explained the procedure of the hearing at the magistrates’ court, when it would be decided whether or not she should stand trial at the Assizes. ‘Well, Miss Hawkins, we will try. We will cheat the hangman if we can.’

Roger Francis mounted the steps of Mrs Purnell’s house, rang the bell and waited to be admitted to Mrs Purnell’s presence. ‘Forgive me for calling without an appointment, Mrs Purnell,’ he said, on being shown through to her sitting room, ‘but I was in Hull on business and had a desire to see my daughter. I haven’t heard from her for some time, nor has she been on a visit.’ He smiled thinly. ‘She is obviously too busy with the delights of town to think of her Papa.’