Book Four Extract-September, 1775 (REPOST)

“And so we condemn these men to hang by their necks until dead. May God have mercy on their souls.”

The mule dragged the cart out from under the three men, causing the crowd to cheer wildly, loud enough to startle the gulls from the surrounding rooftops. The pirates lost their footing one by one and danced the hangman’s jig in the same violent way; jerking and thrashing against their nooses.

Even from where Matilda sat, perched high on a stack of abandoned crates and netting behind the crowd, she saw the wet patches on their breeches as they voided their bladders. The leader, an old, paunchy man, died the quickest, his great weight dragging him down as the wind stirred his long, ash yellow hair. His younger, handsomer blond friend died with whores clinging to his legs. They pulled him down mercifully but ignored the African at his side, who they left him kicking for what seemed an age. The crowd pelted him with muck and stones in the meantime and when he was dead.

Matilda knew exactly when they were all or mostly dead, for the crowd whooped and surged forward after souvenirs, bits of the dead men’s clothes and hair, and to stroke their affected limbs with the dead men’s hands. She could not see their bulging eyes or tongues sticking out from so far away, but easily imagined the sight in her mind’s eye with an icy shudder. She watched as the corpses swung back and forth, buffeted by those stripping them naked.

She turned away, thumbing the locket in her pocket. She had no need to touch a hanged man’s purple face and nor did she need their grubby clothes, although she mused that she did need a new pair of boots. Matilda shook her head to clear herself of the thought. Dead men held no thrall over her, not since Mrs Coleman had taken the whole orphanage to see the slave that had murdered her mistress. The memory of the woman’s sightless, glassy eyes compelled Matilda’s legs. She clambered over the crates and onto the slippery, wet cobbles of the alley way, where she kept a fast pace. She almost ran to the King’s Inn, which stood at the end, full of dockers given the day off to watch the execution.

A stench of piss and vomit reached her as she slowed to a walk. The smell was all around her, and carried on a breeze from a nearby midden. Her stomach lurched. Matilda jerked a tatty calico cloth out of her breeches and held it to her nose, allowing the strong neroli smell to flood her senses as she threw herself away from the inn. Henrietta Street, into which she strode, was terraced and decayed, although the once fine houses had been home to a judge, the local MP and a duchess’s bastard. Matilda had come to know the place well since fleeing from St Vincent. She hardly looked twice at the state of disrepair the houses had fallen into, windows smashed and paint peeling.

Weeds grew up through the cobbles and as Matilda looked up, a poor hearse, little more than a dull pony and two wheeled cart, caught her eye. She paused for a moment; hands in the pockets of her breeches, she watched as the oldest Callaway boy and his father carried the middle boy, Tom, out of the house. Mrs Callaway clutched her daughter and wept as they put him on the cart.

Matilda, suddenly feeling guilty for watching the Callaways grief, pulled her cocked hat down and hurried on, yet it seemed that she was the only one who felt uncomfortable. She noticed several people standing around idly and watching from windows as the local gravedigger led his pony and cart away, Callaway senior and junior following, heads bowed. They narrowly avoided the huge, communal mound of rotting waste heaped on the corner, which they turned into, disappearing from sight.

She kept on walking in the opposite direction, feeling weighed down by the harsh reality that was life. The thought of death sat on her shoulders like a full woolsack and consuming her thoughts so wholly that she almost dropped her rag in fright when something splattered her forehead. She reached up, feeling wetness and groaning when a look at her hand revealed that it was rainwater.

Large, cold drops started falling from the pewter coloured sky, wetly smacking the cobblestones and her skin. Matilda glared at the sky like it had spat on her, then squinted to see what house she was at. She was dismayed to find that she was only at no. 3, and with another groan, she hauled her ragged frockcoat around herself and ran for no. 12. Half way there, she passed a huddle of scruffy, unwashed urchins playing in the street, prodding blobs of filth with sticks whilst one, particularly small, dirty boy clutched a cracked jug to his bony chest. His eyes followed her as she hurtled by, Matilda making sure to keep her distance from the gaunt beggar digging about in another midden. The latter pulled all sorts of rubbish out, scattering rotten fish heads and crusty old turds across the stones.

Matilda retched violently into her rag as his foraging and the driving rain worsened the cesspit stink wafting along the street. Her noise made a pair of young brothers look up curiously from where they were crouched outside of no. 9, clothes patched and frayed. They quickly returned their attention to the old and wormy gull carcass they had been poking, eyes bright with morbid fascination. Matilda, feeling vengeful, kicked the rotting bird into the gutter as soon as she was close enough to, scattering the boys as well. She watched as they ran off crying and swearing and on glancing down, Matilda found that she had gotten a few, white maggots on her scuffed boot. She cringed, sickened, and shook them off before running on.

She soon reached the last house, outside which sat an old, toothless crone, rocking on her stool and guarding her fragrant mint plants, which grew in crates beside the basement door. Matilda hated the woman’s grasping whore of a granddaughter. The girl, hardly pretty herself, charged a penny for her scented rags and then had the gall to belittle Matilda for the whole street to hear by comparing her to a tangerine.

“Look at that hard face she’s got!” Harriet cried, “Always scowling at us! And her curly hair! She’s the same colour as an orange, don’t you think?”

Harriet had a habit of splashing her with water whenever she caught Matilda, claiming that enough would wash her freckles off. Her nose and cheeks were splattered with lots and lots of them, her skin was nut brown and Harriet would not shirk from calling her fat because of her big bones. She taller than Harriet, making herself appear older than her thirteen years.

The crone leered at Matilda as she passed, but she ignored her, although she did glance down into the basement and see that the old woman’s cat was advancing on another dying gull. It flapped away weakly, trapped in the basement as the starving feline pounced.

Matilda ascended the stairs, as nimble as a fox and careful not to tread on the patches of slippery moss as she did so. The doorway was made to look like an Ancient Greek temples’, but the whitewash was grubby and rubbing off. The unlocked door was made of plain wood, but some thief had stolen the window glass, leaving someone else to block up the hole with a mismatched piece of wood from a chair seat. She ignored the hinges’ rusty squeak as she slunk inside, wet and cold. The hallway was drab and reminded her of the Mrs Coleman’s austere house, only damper and much less well-cared for.

Rain had seeped into the building over the decades, swelling the wood and causing blisters full of water to form under the poisonous paint; when they burst, Matilda could see every colour that the hallway had ever been painted, from orange-yellow, blue, dark green and lastly, pink. She stood staring at the right hand wall for a moment, lost in thought again. Her hand slipped inside her pocket and she clenched the locket, throwing her mind back to the dead men. From her left, in what had once been the dining room, she could hear a child’s hacking cough and its baby sibling grizzling hungrily. The father, she knew, was unemployed. His drunken snores carried throughout the ground floor, the intermittent creak of a loom breaking the drone as his wife worked her cheap loom. A gang of footpads shared the former library next door with their whores, clunking their tankards down on the table and fencing ill gotten coins over games of faro, waiting for twilight to fall.

She shook her head, but the thoughts lingered as she walked upstairs. The sweet smell of damp surrounded Matilda as she climbed through the house, rainwater having permeated the wooden frame, mismatched furniture and floorboards, which were warped out of shape. Every footfall brought forth a creak and squeezed out more rot, which mingled with the water dripping off her coat.

Matilda jumped and reached for her fruit knife as the drawing room door swung open, then relaxed when she recognised the face peering at her.

“Mornin’, Mr McCarthy,” Matilda said, nodding genially with a small smile.

The old Irishman was a former Royal Marine Major, but they had paid him off. He had lost all his money but still showed her kindness, and was one of the few in St John’s to do so. He had a ruddy face, drooping moustache and bloodshot, tired eyes. He was balding but his white, curly beard rested as thickly on his chest as a rat’s nest. Mr McCarty regarded Matilda her with a grandfatherly smile and she could not help but feel sorry for him. Rumour had it that he was so down on his luck that he was forced to burn his stag antlers to keep warm and, for food, eat his stuffed herons. He looked to have lost a lot of weight in a short time, Matilda noticed, and she was appalled to see that he had pawned the last of the brass buttons on his woollen Marine coat.

“Good morning, child,” he replied in his rumbling voice. He always struck Matilda as the sort of person who should play the part of God in a play, “You look like a drowned cat. Good hanging, was it?”

“I’ve seen better, sir.”

He smiled sadly and retreated back inside his rooms. He had laid claim to the boudoir as well and nobody had dared to challenge the old crack-shot into giving one of them up, although he took a lodger every now and then, including Matilda when she was newly arrived. She had been fascinated by his possessions; many damp books and shabby little curiosities. He had brought his hunting trophies over from Ireland and a painting or engraving of every family member, which made her to wonder why he was squatting in a run-down house, for he seemed to have a large family. She itched with curiosity, yet never had the courage to ask him. Matilda continued climbing the stairs instead, noticing that they got more rickety the higher up they went. Her eyes fell on the ornate stucco wall mouldings, shaped into flowers and once painted bright white. She was shivering by the time she reached the second floor, where the widow was broken, letting the wind and rain blow in.

Matilda was not startled by the sound of monkeys screeching in Mr Ponsonby’s room. He had a trio and used them to entertain the public for money. His widowed neighbour’s three small children tottered up and down the corridor, playing with a stick, rag and tin mug, watched wistfully by one of the two, hackneyed whore sisters in the bigger bedroom. Matilda herself lived in the attic, the leakiest and most draughty part of the house. The original staircase had been robbed out for firewood, forcing her to use a ladder with a number of missing rungs. It was precariously propped against a dark hole in the ceiling and led to a dark little corridor, onto which faced four doors where the servants had lived in better days. She always worried that the ladder might be stolen and was relieved to see it where she left it as she approached.

She lived in the second room along from the hole as the others were full of roosting pigeons that had gotten through gaps in the roof. A rat squeaked and ran over her foot as she crossed the threshold into an unfurnished room, bare but for a musty corn-husk mattress that served as her bed. Matilda had a mouldy old horsehair blanket as well and heard the familiar drip-drip of rainwater filling up the pail in the corner as she tramped inside. She felt around for her lantern, which had burnt itself out during the night, and re-lit the stubby candle, cursing and reminding herself to steal or forage for a new one.

Her tinder was barely dry as she bashed the flint and pyrites together, then checked that nobody had touched her meagre belongings. Once satisfied that all was as she had left it, Matilda relaxed. She threw her frockcoat aside with a soggy whump and sat down on her mattress, half regretting that she had ever come to Antigua. The island seemed even wetter than St Lucia and she reflected that running from a quiet, almost rural place to a bustling, almost overcrowded one. Matilda hugged her knees and curled up in the corner, shuddering as one awfully bad memory came back to her in a cold, black swirl.

Matilda’s hand twitched as remembered ramming the blade into his throat. His gurgling noise filled her ears and brought the first, curious spectator, another man who had come out for a piss. His look of horror was branded onto her brain. She fled as her attacker fell to the ground, spraying artery blood up the wall. The metallic smell stuck to her tongue and she ran, and although she did not linger, Matilda had never quite shaken off the feeling that the locals knew it was her doing, that it was she that had murdered the man. She had had thrown her bloody clothes in the harbour and stolen new ones from a washing line before slinking back the next night.

Murderess was a hiss that Matilda had reluctantly grown used to, even though nobody had tried to have her arrested. There was no evidence except for her sudden appearance from nowhere, and although she never let her face show it, the alley incident haunted her mind. She often awoke in the dark, imagining that she saw the man’s dead eyes staring back at her in the flickering candlelight.

She shuddered again and noticing how gloomy the room seemed to have gotten, Matilda sighed shakily and reached for the lamp. She plonked it down in front of herself, basking her hands a little in the weak light that the tallow burned with. The candle smelt bad but she had taught herself to ignore the rancid fat smell in case the darkness made her go blind. She sat back against the wall and became aware of a lump in her pocket, resting heavily against her hip.

Matilda slipped at hand inside and fished around for a moment, then drew out something wrapped in a woman’s lace kerchief. She pulled the fabric back, revealing her locket. It was the same size and oval shape of a hen’s egg but it weighed much more and was not so smooth. It was flatter too and made of several plates joined together. She rubbed her thumb on the lid, the locket’s familiarity calming her as thought of the dead man again and when they had come to the orphanage. She was sure that the locket was made of solid gold, not plated like Martha believed, but they had never said either way. Matilda battled for a moment to slip the catch at the top. Her short nails slipped, once, twice and a third time before she got the locket open.

It was a strange locket in that it unfolded like a bent ribbon. The first two compartments had fused together. The crack between them was filled with dirt and grease that stuck them to the lid, yet the miniature underneath was fresh and detailed. A man with a double cleft chin and rather swarthy skin stared up at Matilda, a cocked hat on top of his black hair, which he had had styled into two curls on either side of his head. He was fairly handsome but seemed to be getting fat. Matilda did not look at him for long, as her attention was drawn to the woman’s miniature that hung from his. The latter had had sunless cheeks, a dusting of freckles and hair so red that her head seemed to be on fire, but what struck Matilda most was the great resemblance that that the woman bore to her, so much so that she fervently believed that the tiny painting was of her mother.

Her belief was impounded by what the blond man, dead now, had told her when he and his Negro friend had brought her the locket. The metal had smelt of the sea, of sweat, and, faintly, of gunpowder and blood. It had been hot from being held for so long as he handed it over, telling her as he did so that her mother had loved her very much. Matilda closed her eyes and sighed, trying not to think of his body and that of his friend’s and captain’s swinging in the wind that morning.

As she did so, Matilda did not notice the folded scrap of paper that fell out from between the compartments as she raised the locket up. She only became aware of it when it crossed the lantern’s light like a flitting moth. Glancing down, she scooped the scrap up and unfolded it, peering myopically at the shaky letters scrawled on the yellowed paper. The ink had faded a little and although Matilda had only been taught how to read the Bible, she made out the words where it was all buried.

Matilda shook her head and peered again at the note, frowning. She had read the little slip of paper a thousand times, enough to wear away the paper’s sharp edges, but the message was no clearer or helpful than the first time. The message made little sense and just for a moment, Matilda even fantasised wildly about it being a sort of treasure map before dismissing the thought as mere fancy.

She sighed, despondent and frustrated; folding the note up with the locket, she shut it with a snap and pocketed it before rolling over on her flat mattress, through which she could feel the hard, cold floor. The cloth and wood were damp and smelt so whilst the straw filling poked her in the ribs no matter how she lay. Her blanket was scratchy and stiff and Matilda could not help but grumble herself to sleep, curled in a ball as her belly growled.