Chapter Fifty

I’ve heard nothing from you since. But Sal came and found me this morning. How it made my heart leap to see her. I tried to give her my attention, push other thoughts aside. She hadn’t been at the trial, she said, because the old bastard’s children had come for her. They’d just appeared on the doorstep one day, bailiffs in tow. Apparently, there’s been no end of trouble for her since my trial. Everyone in London knows where the School-house is now. The old bastard’s children claimed Sal was their property, left to them in his will. Mrs Slap said she had to go, not to bring any more trouble. For six weeks she’d been a maid. Sal, a maid! I tried to picture her with bucket and soap and rags. Oh, she made me laugh, with her tales of seasoning their tea with their own piss! She’d been able to buy herself back, with all her savings from the School-house. All her lovely coins, poured out in a golden stream, right into their grasping hands.

She grinned. ‘I suppose I rather pay them than pay some lawyer to fight them. And I got my free paper now.’

She told me the broadsheets are saying that the Devil was in me and put it in my head, that I wanted to carve the Benhams and boil their bones into soup and that I do not repent of it, save that I didn’t get that chance. I didn’t want to talk to her about any of it. I asked her about Laddie, but she knew nothing. Laddie’s made himself a loose thread. I suspect he didn’t want to face their questions, or their English justice.

We held hands, we watched the candles dwindle and burn. She’d brought me food, a blanket, some paper and a pen. Added to the sheaf you had already left.

Best of all, a copy of Moll.

I won’t say more about Sal’s visit. It was like that elephant, so long ago. No matter what I write, you won’t know what it was like. She did bring one last thing, which I saved until she left. A letter. I opened it, pulled one of the candles closer. It was from Miss-bella, addressed to: ‘Frances, former housemaid and latter-day whore’, care of THE SCHOOL-HOUSE. I suppose she must have read the papers too. Perhaps it amused her to write me at the brothel rather than the gaol.

Frances,

I do hope this reaches you.

My husband is long gone and Phibbah even longer. Therefore I must write you.

I heard he gave you away as soon as you got to England, which must mean he knew how close death was for him. I believe it is also close for you.

It has outraged my brother that I am writing to you. His sister, penning a letter to her husband’s bastard! I think he saw it as the last sign, if he needed one, of how this place has rotted me like a thrown-away apple.