Night in Eden (5 page)

She let loose with another swing. He sidestepped it nimbly. "Enough, Bryony."

"Enough, Oliver?" She swung again. "Enough?"

She was aiming for his shoulder. But when he tried to duck the blow, somehow his head got in the way. The stick caught him just above the ear with a sickening clunk. He reeled back, dizzy. It was only then that Bryony realized how dangerously close they'd come to the edge of the cliff.

"Oliver!" she screamed, throwing away the stick and reaching out to grab him. But he jerked away, unwilling to let her touch him.

"You are fortunate the authorities have decided to try you on the lesser charge of manslaughter," said Felix Fraser, brushing absently at some grains of snuff on his bulging waistcoat. "If they were to find you guilty of murdering your husband, they would burn you alive."

Beneath his watchful gaze, the woman seated on the
hard-backed chair before him maintained an unflinching, awful composure. But she couldn't hide the terror that flickered in the depths of her dark brown eyes.

They were in the small, stone-walled room the prison reserved for the use of lawyers and their clients. It was relatively clean, and the fire burning on the open hearth was enough to chase away the worst of the cold and damp. But nothing could keep out the stench of the prison around them. The air was foul with the smell of filth and rot and despair.

After three months in this hellhole, Bryony Wentworth looked more like a Billingsgate doxy than the niece of Sir Edward Peyton of Peyton Hall. Her dark hair was dull and unkempt, her dress stained and ragged and pulling tightly over a stomach swelled big with child. From behind her skirts peeped another child, a big-eyed girl with dirty blond hair and a finger that never left her solemn little mouth. It was something Felix could never approve of, this business of throwing a woman's children into prison with her. But the child looked healthier than her mother, and Felix suspected the woman was going without food herself to feed her daughter.

"The penalty for manslaughter is only hanging," Felix said, wishing the little girl would stop staring at him like that. "Because of your... ah... delicate condition, the Crown will need to put off the execution until after the baby is born, which means that the sentence will likely be transmuted to an order for transportation."

"Transportation?"

"Aye. To Botany Bay. It might be for fourteen years, but seven is more likely."

For a moment she looked relieved. But then a new fear must have struck her. "They—they will let me take Madeline, won't they?" she asked, clutching the little girl to her tightly, as if someone had already appeared to snatch the child from her arms.

"We can apply." Felix debated with himself, then decided it would be best not to raise the woman's hopes.

"Although I must warn you that they do not often allow it."

"But you're talking as if I've already been convicted."

Felix shrugged. "Not much doubt of that. There is this female who was a witness..." He frowned and picked up a paper from the litter he had spread out on the battered old table before him. "Flory Dickens, that's her name. And then there's the men from the village who spent the night looking for your husband. Why you went and announced what you'd done is more than I will ever understand." He gathered the papers together and thrust them into his worn leather satchel. "Still, I suppose if people were not foolish, I would be out of business."

"Oliver was always a strong swimmer," she said quietly, staring down at the hands she held clenched in her lap. "I was hoping they might find him alive. Or at least find his body."

She raised her head. Her face was white with a pallor that had little to do with her months in prison, and in her eyes was naked, soul-wrenching grief and an all-consuming guilt that was terrible to see. She looked smashed, destroyed.

Somewhere in the gloomy depths of the prison cell, water dripped against stone. The constant, hollow, echoing sound went on and on, always there, behind the rustle of the rats in the straw and the wail of someone's newborn baby and the moans of the sick and the dying and the mad. Sometimes Bryony thought that if anything about this place finally drove her insane, it would be that monotonous
drip, drip, drip.

She shivered in the fierce, biting cold and drew the
filthy rag of a blanket up around Madeline's thin shoulders. Hunger gnawed at her pregnant belly. Hunger and despair and raw, endless fear. There was so much, so very much to fear here.

There were other sounds, but she was careful not to turn toward them. She heard a woman's whimper and a man's labored breathing, and then Bryony shut her ears to the animal-like grunts of the coupling going on beside her. It was impossible to tell whether or not the woman lay willingly beneath the man who was taking her so fiercely; even if she were not willing, she was likely too weak or too afraid to resist.

There was so much here to fear.

It was ever present, the fear. The fear and the hunger, the grinding, dehumanizing treatment, and the appalling filth. Once the stench of unwashed bodies and excrement and untreated disease that hung so thick in the air here would have made her retch. Once the rats, the lice, the creeping, scuttling creatures would have made her shudder. But eventually one grew accustomed to living under even the worst of conditions... or, at least, one almost ceased to notice it. There were few alternatives. One grew accustomed, one went mad, or one died.

Madeline stirred beside her. Bryony laid her hand on her daughter's hot forehead, and her own body trembled with fear and twisting, knifelike dread. The child was burning up with fever.

Dear God, don't hurt my Maddy. Not my little Madeline.

She prayed more out of habit than conviction. God hadn't been listening to her much lately.

No, that's not true, she told herself quickly, suddenly fearful lest He indeed be listening now and decide to wreak His vengeance on her for her lack of faith. After all, she hadn't been burned as a husband-killer. And although she'd been sentenced to hang for manslaughter, at the end of the assizes the sentence had been transmuted to transportation for seven years.

There'd been another woman—a girl, really, only fifteen—who'd been tried at the same assizes as Bryony. She'd stolen five yards of ribbon. They'd sentenced her to hang, with her body to be delivered up afterward to the surgeons for public dissection.

Sometimes, when Bryony lay shivering in her straw at night, she could still hear that poor girl screaming as they dragged her away.

Madeline coughed, a harsh, body-racking cough that cut through Bryony's thoughts. Dear God, it was always so cold. The children in the prison had been dying regularly throughout the winter. Lately just keeping Madeline alive had become a bigger worry to Bryony than gaining permission from the Crown to take the little girl with her on the transport ship. Felix Fraser had put a petition through for her after the assizes, but so far they'd heard nothing back. It was already the end of February, and rumor had it a ship—the
Indispensable
—was being readied to sail soon.

She heard the key grating in the lock of the heavy metal door, but there were dozens of other prisoners in the cell, and it wasn't until her name was called that she looked around.

"Bryony Wentworth," said the bullet-headed jailer, tapping his ring of keys against his greasy leather apron. "Somebody 'ere to see ye. And bring that brat o' yers with ye."

Madeline was too weak to walk. Bryony lifted the child's frail body in her arms and carried her out into the dim, stone-flagged passage. She followed the jailer down the corridor, up a short flight of steps, down another hall, and into the room where she had once met with Felix Fraser.

There were three people already in the room. A middle-aged servant woman named Potter, whom Bryony remembered from Peyton Hall, sat on a straight-backed chair near the window. She held her hands primly folded in the lap of her starched uniform, her mouth sour and disapproving.

Near the woman stood two men, their backs turned, talking. At the sight of Felix Fraser, Bryony's hopes soared. He must have heard back on her petition. Oh, surely—

Then the man beside the lawyer turned, and in the instant before he raised his scented handkerchief to cover his mouth and delicately pinched nose, Bryony recognized the thin, severe face of her uncle, Sir Edward Peyton.

She hadn't seen him in four years, not since the day she'd eloped with Oliver when she was sixteen. Other than for instructing his solicitors to release Cadgwith Cove House to Oliver's control and sending Felix Fraser to consult with her after her arrest, he'd refused to have anything to do with Bryony since the day of her marriage.

"Uncle Edward." She looked from him to the lawyer. "Mr. Fraser."

Madeline began to cough again. Bryony hugged her daughter to her. "It's all right, darling. It's nice and warm in here, isn't it? Everything will be all right," she said. But her uncle had turned away from her again, and with growing dread Bryony raised her eyes from Madeline's head to the lawyer's solemn face. "You've heard back on my petition?"

"Yes." Felix Fraser fiddled with his watch fob.

Bryony shifted the little girl's weight, so that Madeline's legs were wrapped around her mother's bulging waist and her head rested on Bryony's shoulder. "And?"

"It's been refused."

For a long moment Bryony could only stare at him. Horror and utter disbelief mushroomed within her, welling up and up, squeezing her heart, pressing against her lungs until she thought it might suffocate her. It seemed to spread like terror throughout her body, to her arms and legs, numbing her, bringing a ringing to her ears and a dimming of her vision.

"I have discussed the situation with your uncle, and he has agreed to assume the child's guardianship," said Felix Fraser, his voice brisk, his watery gray eyes sad and worried. "He is here to take her home with him."

"But—" Bryony looked wildly from the lawyer to her uncle's thin, stiff back. "But, surely... something. We must be able to do something? Could we not appeal? You will authorize it, will you not, Uncle Edward? Perhaps if—"

The lawyer shook his head. "There simply is no time, my dear. The
Indispensable
sails from Gravesend next week. You are to be transferred by coach to London tomorrow."

"Tomorrow!" Bryony's grip on her daughter tightened so hard, Madeline lifted her head and murmured in protest.

Sir Edward Peyton turned and spoke to her for the first time since she'd entered the room. "Give the child to Potter," he said, his voice devoid of all expression.

Bryony stepped back. "No." She shook her head slowly, once, from side to side. "I won't let you take her."

Uncle Edward's breath fluttered the handkerchief he still held fastidiously protecting his nose. "You have no choice." He nodded to the woman with the stiffly starched cap and dour expression. "Potter—"

"No." Bryony backed against the wall, hugging Madeline to her as if by sheer force of will she could make the child a part of her body again and keep her there, as safe as the unborn baby in her womb. "You can't take her from me. You can't. Oh God, no.
No."

Madeline clung to Bryony and began to whimper. "Mama," she wailed as they pried her clutching, white fingers from around Bryony's neck. "I want my mama. Let me go! Mama?"

"Madeline!" Bryony lunged against Felix Fraser's restraining hold, but her uncle and the servant woman
were already carrying the screaming, frantic child from the room. Heavy, retreating footsteps echoed ominously down the length of the corridor.

"Mama! Don't let them take me. Mama, please. I'll be good. I promise I'll be good.
Mama."

Bryony had a final, heartbreaking glimpse of Madeline's tearstained cheeks and desperate, wildly thrashing little arms. Then the door at the end of the hall closed with a hollow thud. Long after Madeline was lost to her sight, Bryony could still hear her, crying, and calling her name.
Mama. Mama!

It felt as if they had reached into Bryony's body and wrenched out her heart. Her breath came in great, tearing gasps. She would have collapsed had it not been for Felix Fraser. He turned her in his arms and held her while the anguished, tortured sobs racked her body. "Go ahead and cry, my dear," he said, stroking her hair as if she were a child herself. "Go ahead and cry."

She didn't know how long he held her like that. When he thought she was able to listen, he began to talk. At first it was just words, washing over her. But slowly some of what he was saying began to penetrate her shivering agony.

"I know it's hard to believe, my dear, but it is best this way. The child is already ill. She might not have survived the voyage if we had secured permission for her to go with you. I know you will miss her, but you must comfort yourself with the knowledge that she is alive, and that your uncle will look after her."