Chapter Three

2008

A plate of orangey-colored, herb-scented, overcooked mush and cup of green tea (it'd be good for my system) in hand, I perched on the edge of the saggy peach sofa. I took a tentative nibble at a forkful of pasta. Not too bad—enough MSG to make it quite palatable in fact. I blew on the forkful to cool it down.

My eye was drawn to the newspaper, still open on the coffee table at the employment pages. I'd drawn a couple of red rings around potential jobs, but that had been three days ago, and I'd not taken any further action yet. The truth was, nothing seemed quite right.

I'd graduated three years ago with a good history degree and the world had supposedly been my oyster. Yet the delights of a career had yet to open to me. I'd tried admin, looked into teaching, considered academic research. I'd been told I could be an accountant with a history degree. Well, that was just great. I just could not find anything that offered me the life I wanted. Whatever the hell that was. I lived a life of perpetual indecision. Boyfriends came and went without much regret. If you'd asked me to define my type, I wouldn't have been able to. It was the same with jobs.

So I'd taken a job with pay more suited to a student summer job, which involved dressing-up in a costume and shouting sensationalized history at tourists in a building which horrified most people. Not the career choice most people had been expecting of me, it had to be said. I remembered the optimistic predictions my teachers had made for my future, based on my outstanding school exam results. My university tutors, impressed by my dedication to history and a studiousness that had come largely from using academia to block out any confrontation with real life, had told me I was suited to postgraduate research. Somehow I didn't see myself as a professor one of these days. I just didn't know what I did see myself as. My parents would be happy for me to have anything that could be called a career, and I knew my mother especially was just waiting for me to come to my senses. Perhaps I was a disappointment to her. But even in that I found a little of the joy of rebellion. My school and university friends were mothers, secretaries, teachers, nurses, marketing assistants...and I was a Victorian prison wardress. There was something perversely satisfying in that.

The pasta was beginning to congeal as it cooled and was suddenly less appealing. I took one more mouthful and laid the plate aside. Actually, I couldn't imagine a better job than mine. The pay was derisory, the management laughable at times, but still something about my daily immersion in such an important building appealed to me. I was a historian, after all. I was beginning to think a job in a museum, maybe as a curator, might appeal to me. Yet I was reluctant to relinquish the fun of my work, the dramatic license I took in helping the past reach through and come alive. Besides, there was something to be said for spending the days in costume, pretending you were a character from a previous century. It was a good way of avoiding confrontation with reality. Which is exactly what my parents would have said to me too. Maybe they were right. Deep down I felt that same old uneasy sensation that told me I knew exactly what I wanted, only I did not want to recognize it. In the end, my prison was really an escape and there were not many jobs that offered that. What I needed was a life I didn't feel the urge to escape from. I just had no idea how the fuck I could go out and get it.

I reached for the remote control and turned on the stereo. The volume I'd been playing it last night made me jump, and I felt a twinge of guilt for my neighbors. I turned it down and lay back on the sofa to lose myself in rock. Every word of the lyrics, every nuance of the singers' voices; I listened to it and imagined the words were about me. It was my form of meditation. Soothed, I felt the tension dissolve for the first time today.

1808

Pain in her leg as she followed him back through the patches of light of the passageway. Concentration on her feet, not stumbling, one foot in front of the other. His broad back a shadow in front of her. Dry mouth, taste of barely swallowed acid. Three weeks. Hang. Dead. Did it matter now?

Pain deep in her body, unfamiliar. Her throat still tight and aching. The urge to sob, but her eyes dry. An odd calm, like the stillness of death already. Sound of his grating breath as they walked and the recollection of it, panting, close to her ear. Panting. Pushing. Hurting. Finally a moan of fulfillment and then laughter. Blood drying, crusting on her lip, her pulse strong in her cheek. No hope now. Dead.

Thunder of keys and gates, too loud. One hand clutching her torn dress against the prying air. Grains of the stone still on her hands, the smell of the underground in her nostrils. Buried. Three weeks.

A pulse of relief. Mrs. Beckinsale. Empathy.

'Brought her back to you, Mrs. Beckinsale,' he said.

'So I see, sir.' She did see, Elizabeth knew it, felt the inspection of the tired grey eyes. She saw everything.

'Turns out her visitor had made a mistake, couldn't help her after all.' The cruelty of the lie returned to her. But she hadn't believed it, had not allowed herself to hope.

'That's a pity, sir.' Bland meekness, but Elizabeth saw the shadow behind Mrs. Beckinsale's eyes. She understood.

'A clever one this. She gives you any trouble, call for me.'

'Yes, sir. Thank you.'

'Well, good night then, Mrs. Beckinsale. Lizzie.'

He left. Neither woman answered him.

Grey eyes looking her up and down. Mother. Mrs. Beckinsale was a mother, or had been. Elizabeth felt it. The tears were there now. Fingers turning her face to see the blue bruise on her cheekbone, examining her torn clothing. Nothing but empathy. And Elizabeth saw it then, helplessness too. As helpless as any of her charges.

'Now, don't cry'—the words were brisk, but the eyes were soft— 'it won't help.'

The door opened. The rush of foul air, and at the same time, the comfort of the four gazes turned upon her. Someone would know. They would know. 'Gilly, you look after her, mind,' said Mrs. Beckinsale, before turning away and locking the door behind her.

Gilly and Maisie were both on their feet. Even Jane appeared curious. Only Mary Smith's gaze was disinterested. Gilly came closer, peering through the gloom, as though she had not perhaps seen correctly.

'What did he want then?' demanded Maisie. Elizabeth turned staring eyes on the younger girl.

'Hush, Maisie, darlin', hush,' Gilly said gently. 'Elizabeth?' Fear and compassion combined. Warmth, a hand on her arm. Flood of relief, shame, and grief. Tears fell. Her legs buckled under her and she was on the floor, sobbing at Gilly's feet.

A moment of bewildered inaction, and then Gilly was crouched on the floor beside her. 'Oh, darlin', what is it?'

Elizabeth looked into Gilly's face. She knew her grief was infecting the other woman, as surely as if it was a disease in the enclosed cell. Maisie and Jane were both on their feet, near to her. Even Mary had moved to the edge of her bench. A threat to Elizabeth was a threat to them all, for they were as powerless as she was, as Mrs. Beckinsale was. It was not just concern for her or inquisitiveness that made them come to her now. It was the need to understand the danger.

Gilly squeezed her arm. Three weeks and it wouldn't matter. Why tell them, why face the pain of it in the retelling? The sobs hurt her bruised throat. She coughed.

'What happened?' It was Jane's voice this time, the first words she had bothered to direct at Elizabeth in the whole day.

'Yes, darlin', can you tell us?' This was Gilly. They needed to know. Elizabeth could feel the tension in the room.

'He said I had a visitor,' she began, her voice broken.

'We know that much,' Maisie interrupted.

'Hold your bloody tongue and let her speak,' Jane snapped at the younger girl.

Hesitation. How to find the words? 'He said I had a visitor. Someone who could help me.' It was as though the glimmer of hope he had given her was still in her heart. She remembered it too clearly, the idea of a friend, of a way out. Not alone. Why wouldn't the light be extinguished? Her breath caught in her throat. 'And he took me to see her. But we didn't go up and see a visitor. We went to another place.'

The memory of the sandstone walls and the dirt of the floor arrested her thoughts and she fell silent.

"What happened, darlin'?' Gilly pushed gently.

'He told me I have three weeks,' she said, looking just at Gilly. She felt the desperation of the words as she said them.

'Do you mean?' No reply. 'Oh, Elizabeth.' Gilly's arm was around her shoulders now, but the warmth did not prevent her shivering convulsively.

'And he told me I might as well be dead already. And he choked me, and he tore my dress,' the words were pouring through the sobs now, 'and his hands were hard and too strong and the floor was dirty and he was heavy.. .and it hurt, it really hurt.' She turned and clung to Gilly's body.

'Bastard!' Jane growled. Maisie was staring at her. Gilly held her tightly. Empathy and concern surrounded her. But the thought came too, they were glad; glad it had been her, who was going to die anyway, and not them, who would have the rest of their years to remember. She would have experienced the same sentiments. With a cry of pain, she pushed Gilly from her, and staggering to her feet, fled into the night cell. She collapsed onto the damp straw, her sobs reverberating from the close walls.

Her sobs had died away and she was lying prone, looking into the gloom. What did you see when you were dead, she wondered? Murmurs outside, in the day cell. Footsteps then, approaching. She turned to the doorway to see Gilly's figure outlined. Gladness flooded her heart. She did not want to be alone. She would be alone when she was dead, wouldn't she?

'Elizabeth?' Gilly's voice enquired across the darkness, checking to see if she was asleep.

'I'm awake,' she replied, sitting up. Gilly came to sit on the straw near her, taking her hand naturally.

'Oh, darlin', I wish I could say somethin' to help,' she said. It was such an expression of concern.

'There's no help, is there?' Elizabeth said weakly. 'There never will be, not for me.' Gilly drew her closer. 'Just three weeks. That's all forever is now.' Her words were cold. Her heart might as well have already stopped.

'No, darlin', forever's more than that. You'll just be in a different place, that's all,' Gilly said, pulling her into an embrace and smoothing her hair. 'And it's got to be better than here.'

'Do you think,' Elizabeth said, allowing the closeness, but her heart refusing to be warmed by it, 'that after everything, I believe in God or heaven? He abandoned me like everyone else. I used to dream of a better place, where my mother was waiting for me. Now I know it was all lies. This is all there is. Three weeks, and then nothing!' Her words were oddly high-pitched. Gilly still held her, motionless now.

'You have to believe in something,' she ventured.

‘I did, once. This morning you might have convinced me. But not now...' Her body began to shake again, as Gilly held her tighter. Shadows circled them and somewhere a door slammed shut.

2008

The name Elizabeth Cooper stayed with me, even though I tried to ignore it. It was just odd I should have had such a vivid dream and been left with this name in my head. I still couldn't place where I'd heard it before.

As a result of an early night and large-scale consumption of green tea rather than Southern Comfort, I felt much better when my alarm started its beeping the next morning. It was another sunny day, and I was refreshed enough to be able to conjure something like enthusiasm for work.

It was a slow morning once again, but for some reason I found it harder to relax than I had the day before. I circled the exercise yard, climbed the gallows steps and descended them again almost immediately, uneasy in the confines of the high walls for once. I hoped no one was watching on the CCTV that scanned the yard. They generally weren't. Memories of my dream lingered. It was strange that after so long working here, the place had finally crept into my unconscious. Other people who worked here had occasional nightmares about it, and usually told us all about them in detail in the staffroom the next morning, but I never had. I suppose this hadn't really been a nightmare. Still, it was enough to keep coming back into my thoughts. I'd even checked the staff rota this morning. No new employees at all. There was no memo telling us a new prison inhabitant would be wandering around the place in the dress of a poor Georgian woman. There was certainly nothing pertaining to anyone called Elizabeth. I wondered where on earth I'd heard the name before, why it should be sticking in my head with such determination.

I'd read a fair few books about the history of this place, heard stories. Maybe I'd plucked the name from one of them? By lunchtime, my curiosity was getting the better of me, and, shunning the luxuries of the staffroom and still in my black costume, I made my way to the other end of the building and the museum library and archives.

The part of the building that gloried in the name of library was not as spectacular as it sounds—a smallish, plain room, at quite the opposite side of the building to the staffroom, and on the first floor. The walls were not lined with books as you might expect, quite reasonably, of a library; there simply weren't enough books on relevant topics to fill that many shelves. It seemed the history of the wretched people who lived and died in these walls was not a very worthy academic topic. That was one of the reasons academic history did not appeal to me. It seemed that, even in our enlightened times, histories of major figures went into minor details of their personalities, yet somehow studies of lesser people treated them as generic parts of population growth or widespread urban distress. I wanted to know the people. But the historical record just wasn't there.

Still, they had made an effort here, in the library. There was a reasonable collection of books on crime and punishment through the centuries, a few social and economic histories, and a small selection pertaining to the Shire Hall and County Gaol specifically. There wasn't a lot else to be done. It wasn't so much the library I was after, however, but the archives.

Despite my history graduate credentials, I had not spent a lot of time in the library since I worked here, and now I was there, I looked around, a little bewildered. I knew there would be a system of some sort, but like all library systems, it would be a mystery until its secrets were explained to me. Besides, the scale of my idle research struck me now; what were the chances of discovering if a name existed in the centuries of records I presumed were in the archives?

I stood in contemplation a moment longer, trying to ignore the flickering of the fluorescent light above my head that gave the room an uneasy yellow tinge. It felt a little like a school classroom, and I found it a strangely intimidating room. I stared for a moment at the empty librarian's desk with its piles of orderly papers. I'd considered being a librarian for a while, on one of my more perverse days.

At that moment, the man himself entered the room. In his early forties, hair already thinning and largely grey, with clichéd librarian's glasses and an impossibly ugly knitted jumper, he looked just like the sort of creature you would expect to find inhabiting a museum library. With him was a younger man, probably in his late twenties. My eye was drawn to him, for his difference to the librarian as much as anything. He was tall and slender, with blond hair tied back into a short ponytail. He wore jeans and a black shirt, a silver pendant in the place where his collar was open. A pointed face that wasn't wholly unpleasant to look at. Had to be a graduate researcher, no two ways about it.

The librarian looked at me in my conspicuous costume and, recognizing me as a fellow inmate of this place, smiled warmly. 'Hang on a tick, I'll just sort this young man out, then I'll be with you,' he told me.

'Not a problem,' I assured him, my smile reaching both men.

'Just over here,' the librarian said, turning to the tall man and gesturing at one of the bookshelves. 'There's not a vast collection, but all our books on the eighteenth century are in this section. I'll let you have a browse, then I'll show you what archives we have.'

'Thanks,' the man replied. It was not enough of a speech to be able to catch whether he had an accent or not. As the librarian turned to me, I realized I had been watching and listening to them. It probably wasn't polite, natural though it seemed in such a small room. I smiled, trying to hide my slight awkwardness. Now it was my turn to explain what I wanted, while trying not to sound too crazy in front of my two-person audience.

'Hi,' I began, glancing at the librarian's name tag which told me he was called Kevin Donnelly, T work here,' I gestured at my costume, 'as you can tell,' I added, with an uncomfortable giggle in my voice, 'and I wanted to know about some of the prisoners here. Well, actually one in particular. I'm looking for a woman, I know her name, but I have no idea whether she'd be in the archives, or if I'd be able to find her, just by using a name?'

'You know her name?' he asked, with helpfulness suffusing his expression. It wasn't going to matter to him how I knew her name.

'Yes,' I told him.

'Then you're in luck,' he smiled, apparently excited, 'you see we've just put all the archives on a computer catalogue. It means you can search them by things like date and name of prisoner.'