February 1903
Lutton was a city of about one hundred thousand souls built on a cross. One arm of that cross was the Mortmarie River, which was wide and powerful but so full of rocky turns and cascades that ships could not navigate it. Instead, the city builders erected dams and excavated canals to power a cluster of industry on the river banks. The other arm of the cross was the parallel pairing of a rail line and Broadway. These twin roads of steel and asphalt crossed through downtown at bustling Market Street, ran among the factories, and crossed the Trecesson Bridge. From there, a spur turned down along the top bank until it came to the docklands. Lutton’s harbor was wide and deep, with a stone breakwater extending from either side of its mouth to allow a narrow passage into protected water. Trains brought materials, factories wove them into goods, and ships carried these products to the world. The town motto, “Lutton Makes, the World Takes”, could’ve been the song from any of dozens of booming mill towns in America’s northeast.
The ships also brought people across the ocean and into the those mills. Some of them rose above the rest. One such entrepreneur was Lydia Estes, from Modena in Italy. After her husband was lost at sea, she began to support herself with home brewed medicinals. Out of this grew a stubby brick factory cornered between the bridge and the river that was the home of Lydia Estes Women’s Remedies, a purveyor of so-called “vegetable compounds” that claimed to heal women of any number of troubles believed specific to their gender. Estes was also a famous spiritualist and drew a cult of admirers around her optimistic view of the afterlife. More than anything else, Lydia sold hope and sold it well. She made her fortune off a commodity that was in much shorter supply than cotton or leather.
A canal ran along the backside of the Estes factory. On the other side of that waterway stood another institution that made a claim on the lives of those less fortunate than Lydia Estes, and that was Henshaw Home. The Home was a Protestant orphanage made up of a dormitory, a schoolhouse, and a church. These were constructed around a square of grass and all enclosed by a tall wooden fence. One of the caretakers was Cristina Gwynedd, who leased a small room beneath the eaves of the main building.
The room was big enough for a simple white metal framed bed and washstand with porcelain bowl and mirror. Cristina sat on the bed and faced a tiny window with a closed book in her lap. She could see the canal and its shallow, dingy water. The factory was not big or impressive in any way, being almost a perfect cube that gave every impression of wanting to fade into the background. The most interesting thing visible out that window was not the factory itself, but the grand home next to it. Full of stained glass windows and roof peaks sticking out every which way, the mansion seemed very out of place. A short breezeway connected home to factory. Estes was unique among her peers in that she prefered to always be close to her work rather than retire to leafier neighborhoods when the day was done.
The book in Cristina’s lap was entitled “The Spirit Room” by Lydia Estes. Cristina opened it to a page she had marked with a newspaper clipping. The clipping featured a yellowed advertisement with a drawing of a prim older woman and read:
“Are you ready for the new century? The Estes Company Women’s Remedies has always looked beyond the realm of traditional knowledge, mixing the best that science has to offer with the hidden wisdom of the spirit realm. Lydia is looking for talented young women with curious minds so that she may train them personally in the arts that will carry our world into a new and exciting era. Learn the secrets of her remedies and train to become a master medium.”
As she slipped her fingers among the book’s pages, Cristina heard a ruckus from outside. She dropped the book on the bed and came close enough to her window to look right down the side of the building and into a narrow alley made by the wall and the wooden fence. There was a girl there of about twelve and she was pressed against the fence, cornered by a half circle of four other older girls. Cristina jumped to her feet and then regretted the sudden move. Blood rushed from her head and she had to prop herself with one hand against the washstand. With the other she rubbed the dome of her pregnant belly. She had to remember that she couldn’t move as she used to. Cristina hurried down the rear steps as quickly as she could and burst into the alley. At first the gang didn’t scatter. Most of the girls were wide eyed as Cristina came waddling in their direction. Then one of them snickered and the rest followed suit.
“What are you all doing back here?” said Cristina.
The one that had snickered at the caretaker waved a small white object in the air and yelled, “Mrs. Gwynedd, look what she stole! You won’t believe it!”
Cristina snatched the object away and found it was a whale bone pocket knife with a scrimshaw sea turtle carved on it. The gang leader was bending over and pointing and shouting, thin red threads flying free from her tightly braided hair.
“I bet she took it the last time we went to Market Street!”
Mrs. Gwynedd gestured at them with the closed pocket knife as she yelled, “The lot of you aren’t going to have any supper if you don’t move your little bodies back to where they’re supposed to be and I’m still gonna slap you one way or the other when I can lay my hands on you.”
The girls remembered that they were, in fact, afraid of her and they started off. Once just out of reach, the snickering redhead turned and called out while running backwards.
“You can’t catch us. Why don’t you ask Mr. Gwynedd for help next time he comes back to put another baby in you?”
With those words, she and the rest of her gang disappeared. Their victim was left sitting in the patches of dirty ice and snow with her back pressed against the highboards. She didn’t look at Cristina as the woman set her back on her feet.
“Did you take this?” said the caretaker. When she got no answer, she said, “Well between you and me, I don’t believe you did, but even if you bought it fair and square you ought to know you can’t have this sort of thing here.”
She rubbed her hand through the girl’s coarse brown hair. When she lifted that hand, she found strands of hair wrapped around her fingers. Cristina placed her fore finger and thumb on a thick lock of the girl’s hair and gently pulled them away from her head. A few more hairs came loose. It may have been nothing, or it may have been a sign the girl was sick. Cristina made a note to herself to keep an eye out.
“Dorothy, I’d like it better if you learned to slug those girls sometimes.” she said. “You’d get no trouble from me if I was the only person to see it.” She smiled. “Do you know?”
Dorothy smiled back, but only for a moment and then she looked away.
“You’ll be out of here soon.” said Cristina. “You’ve got to learn to help yourself.”
Hand in hand, the pair exited the alley and rounded the corner of the dormitory. They walked across the frozen quadrangle. The girl watched her feet as the other kids watched her. When Cristina reached the other side, she brought her charge into the chapel and sat her down in a pew.
“Maybe we can rest here for awhile. No one’s going to bother us in the sanctuary.”
The girl sat with her hands in her lap and her head bowed as though praying. Cristina looked ahead at the altar and the short, curved stairway that met an ornately carved octagonal lectern booth. Then she noticed that there was someone else with them in the sanctuary. A young woman dressed in fine clothes stood and walked down the aisle with consummate grace. She smiled at Cristina and that smile was delicate and reserved, but seemed genuine enough. When she came closer, she extended a lace gloved hand.
“Eda Henshaw.” she said.
Cristina drew a quick breath and said, “I’m sorry, ma’am, I didn’t know who you were.”
She tried to stand and bow at the same time, but Eda said - or nearly sang -
“Please, don’t get up. You’re pregnant.” She tipped her head. “Who is this little one?”
“Her name is Dorothy. She doesn’t speak much.”
“Is she okay?”
Cristina opened her mouth part way, but caught her words and just let out a sigh. She closed her mouth and considered whether to broach the topic that was on her mind. Eda took a step closer and placed her hand on top of the other woman’s hand, which was resting on the back of a pew.
“Mrs. Henshaw…” said the caretaker. “Everything I know about you I read in the papers. You’re the niece of an English earl. You married Mr. Henshaw last year and moved to his estate here in our dirty city…”
“I wouldn’t call Lutton dirty.”
“What I mean is that those things are the sort of things the papers like. They don’t tell you about what a person really feels. But I’m watching your eyes and the way you look at this little Dorothy here and it seems to me you’re a kind woman with a good heart.”
“Thank you. I’d like to think so.”
“Mr. Henshaw has never come by the orphanage that he built. And yet here you are.”
“I admit my husband is a busy man. He’s left the care of the Home to me.”
“Then perhaps there are things you should know.”
Cristina let those words hang in the chapel’s dusty air. Eda Henshaw removed her hand and folded it together with the other one.
“Well?” she said. “Such as?”
“Such as the truth about Dorothy.”
Eda sighed, expressing some exasperation with this slow exposition.
“Miss…” she said. “What did you say your name was?”
“It’s Mrs. Mrs. Gwynedd. My husband is a sailor and that’s why I continue to live here.”
“Mrs. Gwynedd, I want to reassure you if I can. I love children. I have none of my own yet, but my hope is that will change soon. I want to improve their lives and I know that many orphanages, no matter how well meaning, are flawed. If you are trying to tell me some uncomfortable truth about Henshaw Home, then don’t be afraid. I should like to know. I can’t make it any better if I don’t.”
Cristina nodded, but still hesitated.
“Look.” said Eda. She went back to the place where she had been seated and retrieved a stack of books which had been on the pew. Then she said, “I visited the library in the school house and noticed there was little more than a few old textbooks. I decided to purchase the children some volumes of poetry. It’s always been a passion of mine. Take a look.”
Cristina slipped the top book off the pile. It was entitled “The Complete Works of Coleridge.”
She said, “As idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean.”
Eda smiled. “You’ve read the Rime of the Ancient Mariner?”
“You’re surprised.”
“Of course not, forgive me.”
“I don’t blame you. It would be a surprise to find me literate. I’m not a school teacher after all. I merely look after the children. If you want to know the truth, I was taken out of school as a young girl and put to work. My family had enough money that I could stay in school, but the teachers thought it was no use. Whenever I looked at words, they moved about on the page. But I taught myself to read anyway. As for Dorothy, I think she’s a bit the same.”
“She has trouble reading?”
“And speaking.”
“Is she mute?” said Eda.
“No, she just won’t talk.”
“I see.” Eda nodded. “We should look into that. Is that the great secret? Was it so bad to tell me?”
“No ma’am. I mean, no that wasn’t the secret.” Cristina drew a breath and exhaled slowly.
“Well then?”
“Dorothy isn’t an orphan.”
Eda blinked twice, as if trying and failing to shake the startled look from her face.
“Excuse me?” she said.
“Both of her parents are still alive. I know them. Her father drinks a little, or maybe a little too much. Her mother is a seamstress. They get by well enough, but Dorothy struggled in school. Somehow, Mr. Henshaw convinced the police to take Dorothy away from her home and bring her here, on grounds that her parents are unfit. All of this happened before you came, when Dorothy was about eight.”
“Perhaps there is a misunderstanding.”
Cristina stood. She took Dorothy’s hand and pulled the girl to her her feet.
“I don’t think so.” said the caretaker. “The other thing the papers print are Mr. Henshaw’s long articles about the evils of drink. He even managed to make this a dry county. That doesn’t matter much to me since I’m not very fond of booze, but all Mr. Henshaw can talk about is how drink corrupts the lower classes, about how boats from the old countries come laden with drunkards who can be offered the hope of reform and good standing if only they will bend to our ways. By which I mean his ways.”
“I am aware of my husband’s politics. He is idealistic, but not mean spirited.”
Cristina’s face reddened. She felt her pulse throbbing so hard she thought blood might burst from her neck. If she was being cautious before, her anger now was threatening to overwhelm her and she had to fight to make her words sound calculated rather than hysterical.
“There’s a rumor that Henshaw Home exists because your husband was alarmed at the number of Catholic orphanages and he wanted to fight for the souls of children. To him, the child of poor Catholic parents who enjoy their drink a little too much are as good as orphans. Idealism at Henshaw Home takes the form of kidnapping little ones from their beds in the dead of night and teaching them to forget their families and their heritage so that they may become good protestants in the image that issues from your husband’s delusions and fantasies.”
Eda Henshaw’s mouth was agape. Cristina took advantage of the silence to turn her back and drag Dorothy away down the aisle, towards the back of the church and the exit. Mrs. Henshaw shouted after her.
“You are wrong, and I promise I will help you to see your confusion!”
When Cristina returned to her room later in the day, she found that the book she’d left on her bed was gone. She flipped the bed covers up and dragged a trunk out from underneath. She stopped to catch her breath and noticed that the key was in the lock, which is not how she’d left it. She was in the habit of storing the key underneath the bowl in her washstand. She glanced over and noticed that one side of the bowl was tipped up a little, as though it had been removed and set back in haste. Cristina crouched and winced. She flipped open the lid. There were some of her clothes, arranged around an empty space. She pushed herself up by the bed frame and stormed from the room.
Each of the dormitory’s two wings were three floors with a single hallway running down their middle. The center was a wide octagonal tower with a spiral staircase twisting up to a skylight that resembled a spider’s web. As Cristina descended these stairs, she saw a bald head enter the circle and eclipse its floor of alternating black and white diamond shaped tiles. The shaft of light falling from the window overhead cast a webby shadow on the man’s scalp. He tipped his head up and the sharp light glinted off his little round glasses. Cristina orbited round and round that face as she drew closer and at last she reached the bottom floor.
“What’s your rush?” said the man.
“I think some of the children have robbed me.” she said. “I scolded them earlier…”
“Come with me.”
She followed him to a door with a sign reading “Headmaster” and they entered a small room with a desk, a wooden filing cabinet, and an iron pot belly stove that was glowing with a few measly coals. The office was colder than the rest of the building, owing to the headmaster’s insistence that he work with more privation than what the children had to live with. Cristina had always admired this characteristic, but she often wondered if he thought his sacrifices meant he could impose whatever order he wished. The bald man offered her a chair by the filing cabinets and he sat at the desk. Cristina spotted “The Spirit Room” there, with the newspaper advertisement sticking out of it. The other books that had been in her trunk were stacked near the back of the desk and each read the name “Lydia Estes” on their spines.
“Mrs. Gwynedd.” he said. “I’ve always had some suspicions that you were sympathetic to the spiritualist movement.”
“It seemed to be as though you didn’t mind so much, though I admit I didn’t ask.”
He leaned in and said, “As far as I’m concerned, it’s a harmless social obsession that will pass in a few years. However, our benefactor Mr. Henshaw is a vocal critic. He says it’s the devil’s work.”
“I keep it to myself. It’s not as though I teach the children.”
“I’m aware of that, and so long as Mr. Henshaw kept his distance from the Home, it was easy for me to look the other way. That is no longer the case, though. You may have heard that he’s taken a wife and it seems Mrs. Henshaw intends to make routine tours of our institution. I can’t risk having these materials around. I have to let you go.”
“Is there anything…”
“No.” he held up a hand in a “stop” motion. “Please don’t try to argue. I don’t have the heart for this sort of thing and I’m begging you to have a little mercy on an old man who is only doing what he must.” He removed his glasses and placed them on the desk. He rubbed his eyes. “I have no choice if I want to keep my own job. Everyone here knows. I just can’t risk it.”
Cristina ran the meat of her thumb along the paper.
“I know you’re afraid of him.” she said. “I won’t make it more difficult for you.”
She stood.
“Thank you, Mrs. Gwynedd. Is your husband returning soon?”
“I don’t know.”
A knock came to the door and one of the other caretakers burst in before the headmaster could say anything. The woman was pale and soaked in sweat. Her apron was covered in vomit and flecks of blood.
“It’s Dorothy.” she said.
The three of them hurried down a narrow and dark staircase to the basement. There they found the laundry room, a long space with small windows along the top of one wall. A row of utilitarian sinks lined up beneath those windows and in the center stood a garment press at the end of a long table laden with children’s clothing, some folded and some disheveled. Sheets hung from poles lining the ceiling. The whole place smelled faintly of mold.
Cristina could hear Dorothy before she could see her. There was a half circle of boys and girls, including some of the girls who had been terrorizing Dorothy earlier, and a few of the staff were trying to hold them back. Over the children’s nervous chatter came wheezing and hacking coughs, interspersed with sobbing. What struck Cristina was that the girl sounded desperate to just cry, to just release her pain through the catharsis of her tears, but couldn’t because every time she opened her mouth it was an invitation to convulsions erupting from her chest. The caretaker had a good idea of what was happening before she reached the edge of the room.
Her suspicions were confirmed once she cut through the crowd and found Dorothy hunched against one of the white sink basins, a thin trickle of dirty water sliding down the side and damping that rough, curly hair in the very spot where Cristina had placed her own fingers a few hours before. It was clear now that Dorothy’s hair had been coming loose because she’d been poisoned. There was vomit and blood all over the girl’s dress. When she saw Cristina, she tried to lift her head and open her mouth as if to speak, but then bent over and heaved another splatter of her insides. She gripped the hem of her dress with long fingernails that showed milk spots near the cuticles.
“She asked for you.” said the woman who’d fetched Cristina and the headmaster.
Cristina spun around and shouted into the crowd, “Which one of you evil things did this!”
The red headed girl shouted, “She did it to herself! She did it to herself! She did it to herself!”
The caretaker was about to fling another threat at the nasty child, but held her tongue when she realized the redhead’s voice was becoming hoarse with her screams and her face was badly stained with tears. She was, after all, a child and not a monster. She was afraid, but not of being caught. She ran up the stairs. All the while she was screaming, “She did it to herself!”
Cristina turned back to Dorothy as another woman ran up with a cup of milk. She tried to force Dorothy to drink, only to get it spat up on herself. Cristina knelt down in the vomit and felt those long nails dig with startling strength into the skin of her upper arm. The caretaker took the girl’s face into her palms. Dorothy’s cheeks were flushed and her lips were black. She groaned and the woman drew close enough to hear the whisper of Dorothy’s weak voice rising through her throat and crackling like tinder made of dry pine needles, burning away just as the words formed.
“I’m sorry.” croaked Dorothy. “I don’t… want to die anymore. It hurts… too much.”
“Where’s the doctor?” Cristina said to the room.
She craned her head to scan for the headmaster, but he was nowhere to be found. Then he appeared at the bottom of the stairs again, doctor in tow. The latter was a young man with a gray felt Homburg hat and fashionable waxed mustache with generous curls at the edges of his mouth. He carried a medical bag in one leather gloved hand and a walking stick in the other. Cristina disliked him the moment she saw him.
“Clear the room!” he shouted. “Get all these damned children out of here.”
The ladies shooed the orphans back up the stairs, leaving only Cristina, the headmaster, and the doctor with Dorothy.
“What have you been doing?” said the doctor to the headmaster. “Why didn’t you bring her to the hospital? I’ve heard about your incompetence, but this is just appalling, what with this crowd watching a child die in a dirty cellar like it was some kind of cabaret.”
Cristina stood. “Maybe you should help Dorothy first. There’s plenty of time for scolding later!”
“And who are you?” he said as he shoved Cristina out of the way.
The woman glanced back at the headmaster, who was clasping his hands and sweating across his bald prow.
“He’s a good man.” she said quietly, more to herself than anyone else. Then she placed her hand in her pocket and removed the scrimshaw knife with the turtle. She held it up and said, “Let her have this.”
“Are you crazy?” said the doctor. “Get out of here!”
Dorothy raised a hand as if she could reach across the room and take the knife.
“Papa.” she said.
Cristina looked down at the knife and examined it more closely. The image was very finely crafted. She had assumed it was the work of a professional. Then she noticed tiny letters beneath the sea creature’s hind legs. In an elegant script it spelled, “for D.S.”. Dorothy Sutherland. The blood drained from Cristina’s face and she felt very, very cold.
“Your father made this?” she said to the child.
Dorothy nodded. For a supposed alcoholic, the man was a skilled artist. And a loving father.
“You need to let her have this.” said Cristina.
The doctor didn’t even turn around.
“I said you need to leave.” he said.
“Papa.” bleated Dorothy.
“Sir, she’s dying - let her hold some piece of a father she might never see again!”
“Leave this room or I will have you removed!”
Cristina felt the headmaster’s hands on her arm. The two of them climbed the stairs and went back to his office. Eda Henshaw was standing there and looking worried.
“Mrs. Gwynedd!” she said. “I was just leaving when I was told…”
The other woman rushed up and nearly shoved Mrs. Henshaw with her full force.
“This is your fault! You take little girls from their homes so they can die here!”
The headmaster grabbed her and pulled her back.
“I didn’t realize…” said Mrs. Henshaw.
“You wouldn’t, would you? You’re a rich woman full of pretty thoughts and who knows nothing.” Cristina gasped with incredulity and disdain. “You are so blind that you think Mr. Henshaw is merely idealistic. Well you tell your husband he’s no Samaritan. What’s the worth to save their souls if they lose the whole world? Dorothy doesn’t need any saving, except from that vile creature who slithers over to touch in the night! I hope you never give birth to anything he could ever claim as his own. And if you do...”
“Mrs. Gwynedd…” pleaded the headmaster.
“And if you do, maybe I will be the one rescuing a child from its delinquent parents!”
The headmaster placed both his hands on Cristina’s shoulders and shoved her back.
“Mrs. Gwynedd, I think you should leave. Now.”
Cristina left and came to the rotunda. She left by the front doors and found a woman sitting hunched over on the stairs. The gates in the fence at the far end of the quadrangle were open and a single hackney horse drew a short carriage across the snow. There had been a slight thaw, so much of that snow had turned to wet and dirty slush that splashed over the animal’s legs as it trotted. The carriage was low and windowless and bore the words “Tecesson Hospital”. It was here to carry Dorothy to the morgue. The doctor must have ordered it before he came. He’d already known. Cristina touched the crying woman and she lifted her face. It was the caretaker who’d first come to alert them about Dorothy’s state.
“She’s gone.” said the woman.
“Has no one called for her parents?”
She woman shook her head and returned her face to her folded knees.
“What business do you have weeping when it’s Dorothy that’s dead and her own flesh and blood are out there somewhere, hoping that somehow she’s safe under the arms of her savior?”
A muffled voice emerged, saying, “God will place her soul among the angels.”
“For your sake, I hope so.” she said, and walked up to help the hearse driver find his charge.
