The Mistletoe Seller. Dilly Court

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СКАЧАТЬ Lil, who had a valise in each hand and a bundle of clothes tucked under one arm. ‘My carriage is outside. I need you to accompany your mistress to Maddox Street.’

      Lil dropped the cases on the highly polished floorboards. ‘I ain’t going nowhere without Angel.’

      ‘It’s Miss Winter to you,’ Galloway snapped. ‘Do as you’re told. I’ll look after the young lady.’ He glanced at Gilly, who was cowering in a corner clutching a basket filled with kitchenware. ‘You, too. Get in the carriage.’

      ‘I ain’t moving until I knows what’s happening to Angel,’ Lil said angrily. ‘What’s up with the mistress, anyway? What have you done to her?’

      Galloway chose to ignore her and he left the house, staggering beneath the voluminous folds of black crepe that enveloped Cordelia like a shroud.

      Angel grasped Lil’s hand. ‘Look after Aunt Cordelia. He’s promised that you can come to me in the country. I don’t know where I’ll be but he gave his word you would be with me.’

      ‘And you believed him?’ Lil curled her lip. ‘I don’t trust that man, but for your sake I’ll see that the mistress is settled comfortably and then I’ll come and find you. It don’t matter where you are, you can trust me, Angel.’

      ‘I know I can. I wouldn’t go with him if he hadn’t promised that we’d be together.’

      Lil beckoned to Gilly. ‘Come along, nipper. Let’s get this over and done with.’ She followed Galloway out of the house.

      Seized by a feeling of panic, Angel ran after her but Cordelia was already in the carriage and Lil climbed in beside her, followed by Gilly.

      ‘Wave goodbye to your aunt, my dear,’ Galloway said loudly. He seized Angel’s arm and pumped it up and down so that from the carriage window it must have looked as though she was waving. ‘Smile,’ he said through clenched teeth as the coachman flicked the whip and the horses moved off.

      Angel tried to break free but Galloway tightened his grip on her arm. ‘No you don’t.’ He gave Angel a shove that sent her stumbling backwards. ‘My sister doesn’t want to be troubled by a brat like you.’

      ‘Aunt Cordelia.’ The words were ripped from Angel’s throat in a hoarse cry of anguish. The only mother she had ever known had been taken from her in the cruellest way, and even Lil had deserted her. She faced Galloway with tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘I hate you. You pretend to be kind but you’re a monster.’

      She did not see the blow aimed at her head until too late and she crumpled to the ground, stunned and barely conscious. Then, before she had a chance to gather her wits, she was hoisted over Galloway’s shoulder like a sack of coal. In a haze of pain she heard him hail a cab and the next thing she knew she was in the vehicle and Galloway climbed in to sit beside her. Overcome by a feeling of nausea and a throbbing headache, she slumped against the leather squabs, taking deep breaths of the fetid air. The stench of the river and the manufactories on its banks was overpowering.

      ‘Where are you taking me?’ she demanded angrily.

      ‘The workhouse in Bear Yard, if you must know.’

      Angel stared at him in disbelief. Surely the bump on her head must have addled her brains. ‘The workhouse?’

      ‘That’s what I said. You’re a pauper now. You are the devil’s spawn and you’re going back where you belong. It’s a new building, opened only last year. You’ll be quite comfortable there.’

      ‘But you promised Aunt Cordelia that I would be taken care of. You said I was to be a companion to a girl my own age somewhere in Essex.’

      ‘I lied,’ he said complacently. ‘It comes naturally to a lawyer – you’ll learn not to believe everything you’re told. This is a valuable lesson in life.’

      ‘You can’t do this to me.’

      ‘There’s no such word as can’t. That’s what my old nanny used to tell me and she was right. You will do as I say or I’ll inform the workhouse master that you are a simpleton and must be tied to your bed for your own protection. You won’t get the better of me, Angel Winter, so don’t try.’

      Despite Angel’s protests she was admitted to the workhouse and forced to undergo the humiliation of being stripped of all her fine clothes, scrubbed down with lye soap and her hair rinsed with vinegar. It trickled into her eyes and made her yelp with pain, but a quick slap from the older inmate charged with this task made Angel catch her breath, and she bit her lip, determined not to cry. Finally, after being given a coarse huckaback towel, she dried herself as best she could and with the greatest reluctance dressed herself in a shift and a shapeless, faded blue-and-white striped dress. A calico pinafore and a white mobcap completed the outfit and a pair of boots that had seen better days pinched her toes. When she tried to protest and ask for her own shoes, she received a clout on the ear that sent her sprawling onto the flagstone floor. In all her life she had never received anything more brutal than a smack on the wrist, and that was for a misdemeanour so small that she could not remember what she had done to deserve the punishment. Now in the space of a couple of hours she had been knocked to the ground, humiliated and imprisoned amongst total strangers. The comfortable life she had led in Spital Square seemed like heaven and now she was in hell. There was only one thing left that linked her to her past, and, when the woman turned away to hang up the towel, Angel took the ring and chain from inside her cheek where she had concealed it before the undignified assault on her body. She just had time to slip the chain around her neck and tuck the ring beneath her shift, before the older woman rounded on her. She yanked Angel to her feet.

      ‘Come with me.’

      ‘Where are you taking me?’

      ‘Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to or you’ll get another wallop.’

      Angel had no alternative but to follow the hunched figure from the communal washroom into a long dark corridor that led, eventually, to a flight of stairs. An unpleasant odour of damp and dirty laundry wafted up from the basement in clouds of steam. The large room, little more than a dank cellar, ran the length of the building, and the heat from the coppers was stifling. The red-faced women worked silently, washing the bedding, rinsing it and feeding it through giant mangles, which they operated by hand. Huge baskets were piled high with sheets and blankets and taken to the drying room. The deafening sound of hobnail boots clattering on the stone floor combined with the bubbling noise from the coppers and the rhythmic grinding of the mangles. Added to all this was the constant chorus of coughing from diseased lungs. It was a horrific place, but this was where Angel was destined to spend the rest of the day, and, as far as she knew, the rest of her life.

      Angel had missed the midday meal by a whisker and she had eaten very little at breakfast. As she worked on throughout the afternoon all she could think about was the bowl of thick, creamy porridge, sprinkled with golden sugar and slathered with thick cream that she had left barely touched. The boiled egg had fared little better, and she had only nibbled the buttered toast. Her stomach growled and by suppertime she was faint with hunger, dazed with exhaustion and could barely drag one foot after another as the inmates were marched to the dining hall. A hunk of dry bread accompanied a bowl of thin gruel, and this was eaten in silence with the matron watching every move.

      That night, trying to sleep on a hard wooden bed with just a thin flock-filled mattress, one blanket and no pillow, Angel made up her mind to escape. The other girls in her dormitory ranged in age from seven to fifteen: the younger ones cried themselves СКАЧАТЬ