Chapter 19 - Exposed And Vulnerable

Maggie, emotional and exhausted from the day's exertions, stretched out in the boat thinking over the Countess' words. She looked out across the lake and thought about Achilles. When merely a child, he was dipped into the waters of Styx by his mother, Thetis, in the hope of making him invincible. Thetis had only partly succeeded she thought. He had to be held somehow, and - by holding onto his heels - as he was dipped into those waters, his mother, however unwittingly, would later in life leave him exposed. Exposed and vulnerable. Like her own mother and father had left her and Thomas on the streets of London: exposed and vulnerable.

She listened to Tom and Jack arguing over their usual trifling matters. One day it would be about pirates and knights, the next about whether or not subterranean monsters were prowling the depths of the lake beneath them. Some days she thought she had outgrown the boys.

They had stopped in the middle of the lake and were drifting.

"I wonder whereabouts this crib is?" asked Jack, pointing back towards the house.

"It's here," replied Tom.

"Here?" said Jack.

"Yes, here. It's always here, always has been, always will be," responded Tom.

"But where is here?" asked Jack

"It's here. And no where else but here."

"What are you prattling about, Tom? And why's you being such a bleedin fathead? I'm asking you the whereabouts of this here place - the Countess' crib. Where? That is all. Where is it?"

"Look around, Jack. Don't you see it? It is here. I can see it now. In the morning when you wake it will be here still -"

"No, you numbskull! Where is it?" Jack was infuriated by Tom's perceived stupidity. He stopped for a moment, thought and changed tack. "Right, I used to live in London, which is..." he sat up in the boat and looked around in all directions. "Let's say London is there," he pointed northward across the lake. "Let's say it is some miles that way. Where then is here?"

"Here is here -" began Tom.

"Thomas, will you stop teasing Jack!" Maggie could take it no longer. She knew how difficult and pedantic Tom could be. "You know fine rightly what it is he is asking of you. Stop being such a clever fellow – if indeed that's what you think you're being. You sound more ignorant than poor Jack himself!"

There was silence.

Jack looked hurt and lay back down in the boat.

"I apologise, Jack. I did not mean to suggest - " explained Maggie.

"But you said it, Maggie. And you meant it. You meant it cos it's true." replied Jack.

"Again, I apologise. What I meant, was Thomas has had some basic education and knows exactly what you were asking of him. He is just playing at being green for his own amusement."

Tom stretched out with his cap covering his eyes, but his juddering shoulders gave away the amusement he had taken from the conflict he had caused.

Suddenly, Jack sat up and scooped a handful of water from the lake and in a quick swooping movement, spooned it up and over Tom.

Tom immediately came to life, sitting upright, laughing and pleased to fight fire with fire - or in this case, water with water. He did likewise and scooped water up from the lake and splashed it across the boat toward Jack. Maggie soon became caught in the crossfire of water and was embroiled in the water war. She too flung water at both Tom and Jack, and as water flew through the air in all directions, and the boat rocked from side to side, soon all on board were drenched through.

"Stop!" exclaimed Tom.

But Jack continued until he caught the look upon Maggie's face. Both of them were looking at something straight ahead, but somewhere above his head. He turned to look and saw they were now very near to the island and looking down upon them was the folly, the forbidden tower. A place strictly out of bounds, on the Countess' say so.

"Quick, get the oars!" commanded Maggie. "We need to get away from here. If the Countess suspects we have broken our word, she will be furious."

The boys were soon rowing in concert and the boat moved back towards the middle of the lake.

***

As usual at dinner, the Countess held court. She recounted to them the entire story she had earlier told Maggie: about her father, who was killed with other noblemen bravely protecting the King and his wife Marie Antoinette.

"I have lived through all the pain the world has to throw at me. I have survived children. And by surviving, I have become stronger. True, I did marry a man of business. A man, I suppose beneath me. But, if nothing else, he partially restored to me the life which had been stolen from me."

She said she believed England was the only truly free country in the world: a country in which it was natural for those born to lead, to assume power - and for those who worked, to remain in their rightful places. When she moved on to such matters as politics, Maggie had to bite her lip and felt confused, for the Countess contradicted all her father told her about rulers and ruled.

"But this country needs to be very careful," she warned. "For there are agitators out there trying to turn England into the revolutionary France of my childhood. This country cannot make the same mistake as France. For if England falls, the whole world falls."

"Poor people should get their fair share too!" retorted Tom as if to himself. "Father believes -"

"Ssssssssh, Thomas! How dare you contradict the Countess in such a manner, after all she has given us!" Maggie said. She gave Tom a kick beneath the table. "You should be more grateful, you might still very well be starving on the streets if wasn't for her generosity." She kicked him again and hinted for him to apologise.

"I'm sorry Countess," said Tom. "Forgive me for my selfishness."

"Not to worry, my child. You are young yet," replied the Countess. "You do not yet know the ways of world. Take heed of your sister, though. She is a fine example for you to follow. But now, eat up; eat as much as you can. The streets have left you like skeletons. You must put meat on those bones. You never know when the days of starvation may return."

She herself ate very little during meal times and went back to picking at the fish and vegetables on her plate.

At the end of the evening's meal, she turned to talk to Jack and Tom, "Now my fine, young fellows, I have decided it is to be not only Margaret who is to receive an education. After the summer is over, and starting in September, I will see to it that you too will get some tutoring. There is a fine gentleman in the local village who has a very good reputation and I'm sure he will bring you up to scratch."

The boys looked surprised but smiled back at the Countess. They then asked to be excused from the table, thanked her and went upstairs to their room.

"Do you think they are pleased at the news I gave them?" the Countess asked Maggie smiling.

"I'm sure they are," replied Maggie, a beaming, knowing smile - one she could hardly suppress - spreading out wide upon her face. She looked to the Countess, who also smiled, and seemed to be repressing the urge to laugh. "May I too be excused, my lady," asked Maggie. She too left the room and ran up the stairs to seek out Tom and Jack. As she left, she was sure she heard the Countess laugh as loud as she, as she climbed the stairs to the boy's room.

Before turning in to bed, Maggie sought out Jack and Tom in their room. When she entered both seemed annoyed at being told that their days of freedom would end soon.

In particular, Jack seemed dismayed by the news of his first encounter with education, and was quiet as Margaret began to speak to him. She tried to engage him in conversation and asked him how he felt at being given the chance to able to read and write.

"I ain't ready for it," he snapped back.

"I thought this was something you wanted? Reading and writing will enable you to search for your mother," she suggested.

"But maybe it's too late. Maybe I'm unable to do any learning. Maybe I'm too stupid. You were laughing at me today out on the lake, when Tom was making me look like a fool."

"I apologise, Jack," said Tom. "I was only being playful. I often do things like that when I'm bored. Isn't that right, Sis?"

"Ignore Tom. He is always thinking of ways to get up to mischief," added Maggie.

"But I don't know anything of the world. I only knows the life I know. Maybe I will be better running back to London again. That's the life I know. This won't work. I know it won't. It's not a life for me."

Maggie tried to convince him it would all work out fine. She thought back to those days, just after her mother had died, and how she would have to shower Tom in reassurances each night inside the wooden shack. Jack was scared, she thought, like Tom was back then. He was scared of having his new, safe world turn upside down.

"Jack, I shall help you too. With your learning, that is. We owe you so much - Tom and I - and you shall never be abandoned so long as we are around. Now, stop worrying and continue to enjoy the wonderful life we have been given here. And it will still be a wonderful life when you are put to learning. Indeed, it will become an even better life - for you will be able to write and read and maybe even finally track down your mother. What could be better than that?"

At this Jack smiled again. It was that familiar smile, the one she had first witnessed in the gang's hideout in London. She knew her words had had the desired effect and so she left the boys and returned to her own room.

But Maggie could not sleep. She was still afraid to sleep. Despite all of her encouraging words for others, she was plagued by her own thoughts and haunted by images she had, as yet, not been able tell anyone else about. Sleep for her became a lonely battle: for she knew nobody else could intervene in her dreams and slay her dragons. She knew, when she closed her eyes, those dreams would be waiting. She would have to face them at some point tonight, she thought, and she knew the conversation with the Countess, earlier in the day, would no doubt intrude in her dreams too.

Instead of sleep, she headed down stairs, looked around and listened. Not a soul awake. She walked over to the Countess' study, knocked three times - in case somebody was inside - and entered.

She would begin her writing task, while the images and words were fresh in her mind. She would get it off her chest, as the saying went. And she knew how that pressure on her chest felt, and what it looked like in her dreams. Maybe the Countess was correct, pouring down the deepest secrets of one's soul onto paper, might ease the burden she had been carrying.

***

Metropolitan Police Evidence: The Power Papers - Document 12

From Maggie Power's Journal.

July 25th, 1842

In the Good Book we are told, even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we should fear no evil. Yet ever since the day of my mother's death, evil is the one and only thing I've come to fear. It seems to live beneath my closed eyelids - for when tiredness fastens itself upon me and I fall headlong into dreams, I am nightly visited and confronted by evil. It haunts me in that supposed place of rest, stalks me across the lonely landscape of sleep. It begs of me to speak of the horror I encountered that day...

The day my mother died.

It happened during deepest winter. It had been another miserable, cold day. We scavenged, as usual, at low tide on the river, trailing behind the rest of the mudlarks. They seemed to resent our presence and sometimes would threaten us, and steal the things we had salvaged. Indeed, they believed we were taking food from their very mouths and did not like that we were not of 'their kind'.

We - my brother Tom, Mother and I - had hardly eaten in days, apart from the scraps of vegetables, discarded and rotten fruit, and the few crusts of bread we could beg. Yet these meagre morsels barely interrupted our daily cravings. At that point I thought we would never survive; and I still have to pinch myself to believe I lie here in these beautiful surroundings, in the Countess' study, writing these words.

Anyway, Mother hardly ever went outside once her illness became so bad. She would lie on the cold, hard floor covered in anything we could salvage to keep her warm. All the while, she would cough and splutter her way through endless days and nights. For days on end, my brother and I dreaded the morning we would awake and finally find her no longer with us - such was the severity of her illness.

We felt completely trapped within that cabin near the waterfront. We couldn't afford the payments required for the services of a doctor either. Besides, Mother informed us it no longer mattered: for soon she would die. Fate had clearly marked out her path, she would tell us. It had become clear to her it would not be long now. But she was, she continually reassured us, ready and prepared to meet the Lord.

Somehow, miraculously, she would arise each morning. Still alive, still able and strong enough to summon us to leave her, to go out on to the riverside and scavenge. I prayed each and every night for her continued survival. And God listened, answered my prayers.

Until the day he ceased to listen...

***