7Kiri's Lane, London
Johanna awoke to the lashing of rain against her window. Instinctively she tugged at her blanket, only to be met by resistance and a sleepy murmur. Then she remembered; she was not sleeping alone.
Johanna turned to face Cosette. She looked into the girl's face, the round, lush cheeks, the wide-set, bovine eyes, the lashes spiky with last night's tears.
Johanna had never had a friend. She had been raised in the company of adults and had been treated as a miniature woman for as long as she could talk. She looked at Cosette and wondered about how different things might have been. She pictured Cosette as a child, with this kind, gentle father; one who kissed her bumps better and made sure her school clothes were pressed. One who blew out her candle when she had fallen asleep and carried her home when she was too tired to walk and collected keepsakes like old dresses and milk teeth. A childhood full of honey-gold sunshine, a childhood of splashing her hands through dappled leaves and giggling through play dates with girl-children.
Johanna exhaled and turned onto her back. When she conjured her childhood in abstraction, she saw greys. Plaintive greys and murky reds and long stretched walls like the face of a hound. Time spent in the company of stale-smelling old men who ignored her over vinegary glasses of red wine. She stared at the ceiling and wondered why Cosette had come into her life, and what it meant.
Silently and motionlessly, Cosette's eyes blinked open. Her face was turned towards Johanna's, their hair mingling in a golden-yellow puddle. Johanna wondered if she had forgotten what the day ahead entailed, but when she looked at her properly, she saw a glassy, defeated look in her eyes, as though her mind had been filled with nothing else. She tried to find something to say, but everything she mentally rehearsed sounded too flippant.
Footsteps sounded through the wall. 'Don't let's tell them that we're awake yet,' she breathed. It was clear that she wanted to say more, but it would not be necessary. Johanna understood.
The girls both lay on their backs, staring at a different portion of the ceiling, listening to the syncopated sounds of the rain and Rose's footfalls as she bustled around, lighting each hearth. Cosette clenched the bedsheets sharply as one of the floorboards thumped directly outside their room. Johanna placed a gentle hand over her strained knuckles.
'Don't worry,' she whispered. 'Rose will come in soon and light the fire. Pretend you're sleeping.'
Cosette nodded and rotated stiffly onto her side, banking the covers up over her head. There was something so infantile and heartbreaking about it; a little girl hiding from the monsters under the bed.
A few moments later the latch on the door clicked open. 'Good morning, Miss Johanna,' Rose said softly, treading over the discarded clothes from the night before. She twitched the curtains open, letting a bleak grey shaft of sunlight into the room. She stopped pointedly before the fire, her eyes on the mound of Cosette. Feeling suddenly protective, Johanna narrowed her eyes.
'Hurry up,' she snapped. 'We're cold.'
Shaken by Johanna's uncharacteristic curtness, it took several tries before the match caught. Cosette remained cocooned under the bedsheets, feeling the thunder of her hot breath on her face. Everything inside her was knotted tight, waiting for Rose to leave. After a few moments, she heard a muffled voice. She strained to listen, not wanting to move too much.
'Lord Turpin has requested that the girl dine with him,' Rose said. 'For breakfast. In twenty minutes.' Johanna had the impression that she had been stalling by the fire, trying to muster the courage to get the words out. The line in her jaw tightened.
'She's asleep,' Johanna said, but she knew that it was futile. The corners of Rose's smile sagged.
'I'm sure she's ready to rise,' Rose said. Johanna almost felt sorry for her. She was no older than seventeen, but had an ageless look to her face, one that she'd seen on matrons and pastry-chefs. Wide and rosy. She gently tugged at the bedcovers, which were anchored under Cosette's body.
After a few hesitant pulls, Cosette rolled over, not bothering to feign sleepiness. 'I'm awake,' she said shortly.
Soon after, Rose pulled a silver trolley through the door. There was congealing porridge and tea for Johanna, and a miniscule cup of black coffee for Cosette. Cosette looked hesitantly up at the two women. She had never had coffee before. She wondered if he had laced it with some vile drug to paralyse her. After taking her first cautious sip, she realised that the opposite was true—the taste rocketed through her, bitter and brown, as strong as cigarettes. A jangly energy fizzed through every vein in her body.
Porridge had been Johanna's breakfast ever since she was thirteen. Before that she had had soggy crusts of bread soaked in sweet milk. The timelines aligned with the night that Turpin had accosted her at his party. A strange rite of passage it had been. Now she watched Cosette about to do the same, placing her thimble of a teacup back onto the trolley and standing up. She thought of all the women she remembered from her history books, all the women who had been beheaded, burnt at the stake. She remembered how they had been described as a picture of grace beforehand, stripped down to their chemises, walking to the gallows with their bare white feet. Cosette looked like that now. There was a serene look on her face as she allowed herself to be undressed. But Cosette was not going to die, Johanna thought. She was going to be used and spat back out again. She was going to survive and she was never going to drink sweet milk again.
'There you are. I was beginning to think I'd been jilted.'
There he was, sat in the breakfast room with his newspaper across his lap, some nightmare that hadn't disappeared by morning. When he noticed Cosette standing there he smiled. Strangely, this smile did not turn her stomach the way it had done before. It felt almost sheepish.
'Sit,' he ordered.
Rose pulled out the chair beside him. Cosette lowered herself onto it gingerly. She had been tightened into a gown of Turpin's choosing, an awful, fussy thing, all pink satin frills and puff sleeves. It was the kind of thing Azelma and Eponine would have been dressed in on Sundays. She tried not to fidget too much.
'I trust you enjoyed your coffee?' Turpin asked, folding his newspaper over. Like clockwork, Rose scuttled to fetch it from him. Cosette nodded, conscious of how strained her breasts were every time she inhaled.
'Yes, thank you.'
'I had it imported from the Ottoman Empire. I ordered some red silk too. It will make a fine dress for you.'
Unsure of what to say, Cosette smiled in a way that she hoped conveyed demure gratitude.
Two more maids scurried around them, setting steaming silver plates of food before the pair. Seeming to have recovered some of his piggishness, Turpin let his eyes loll on the neckline of her dress as he picked up his fork.
Cosette's pulse quickened. She dropped her gaze into the dish. Creamy eggs, bread rolls and a dubiously grey tombstone of meat sat before her. Her stomach curdled. She realised that she had not had a full meal in days, but rather than being ravenous, she had transcended hunger completely. The thought of putting anything into her mouth made bile rise in her throat.
Turpin dismissed the staff with a wave of the hand. His beady eyes watched her.
'Eat,' he ordered. She did, without thinking. Some muscle memory of obedience remained from her time at the Thernardiers. As she ate, she watched Turpin's plate, watched as he slashed the egg, the yolk running like a wound, noticing the sinews in the beef as he sliced and stabbed and chewed. A few days ago, she thought, the meat had been a live animal. Now it was stuck between his teeth.
Turpin screwed his long fingernail between his teeth to dislodge the kernel of meat. He cleared his throat. 'I am aware that last night my conduct was—' Say it you pig her mind spat. Shameful. Abhorrent '—unfamiliar to you. I imagine it must have come as quite a shock. I trust you feel less overwrought this morning.'
Cosette inhaled so deeply that she was afraid that her dress would split. She imagined it, all the seams ripping as she unleashed every hot, deep feeling of rage that had nestled into her guts since stepping off that loathsome ship. Somehow, she forced the muscles in her face to smile. 'Yes, my lord. I feel much better.'
He chuckled. 'Your accent really is darling,' he said. He daubed at the corner of his mouth with a handkerchief. He picked up most of the yolk that had dribbled onto his whiskers, but not all. 'Tell me. Where in France are you from?'
'Paris,' she said. That was the safe answer, much simpler than explaining the full extent of her nomadic childhood. 'I lived there with my father. We—there was unrest—' she couldn't find the English words for rebellion, revolution or political upheaval, '—lots of fighting. We thought it would be safer here.'
Turpin gave a slight nod. Cosette waited for him to ask about her father, but instead he reached for the salt. 'Beautiful city, Paris. The city of lovers. I don't suppose you've ever had a beau?'
Cosette shook her head. She thought transiently of Marius, of his boyish sweetness. How naïve she had been. Turpin grunted.
'I'm sure you've caught many men's eyes. I'm sure many men have dreamt about you,' he said, in a low voice. Cosette had to fight her lip from curling up over her teeth. She wanted to snarl. Turpin pulled back his chair and stood. 'Or perhaps you were raised in a convent? Perhaps you were hidden away from men and their ugly desires? Perhaps you really are as daisy-fresh as you seem.'
He stopped beside her. Cosette stared blankly into her breakfast, hating the sound of his breath.
'I first bedded a woman in Paris,' he continued. 'She was nothing like you, of course. This one was a true whore. It was impossible to know how old she was—a life like that ages you before your time—but the skin of her throat was like crepe paper. There was a ladder in her stockings and pimples on her buttocks. I had just finished my schooling. I only walked behind those beaded curtains to fuck her, but it didn't take me long to realise that I could make her do whatever I wanted.' He chuckled slightly, recalling with fondness. 'She was so pitifully cheap that when I asked if I could piss on her, she shrugged and asked for two more francs. So I stood over her, a boy of eighteen, and I pissed into that red gash of a mouth, between her bony breasts and into her torn stockings. And her expression didn't change. It didn't even touch the sides.'
Cosette blinked. Disgust wasn't a strong enough word for it. Neither was revulsion. Her chewed food sat slimy in her mouth.
'Of course, she was all ran through by the time I got to her. But you,' he touched her hair. 'You are something to be treasured. And I will treasure you, darling. Just as I treasure Johanna.'
She thought back to her time at the convent, the rationed knowledge she had of the "act". Details had been muttered between prayers and bedtime. It involved a man and a woman being naked. It had something to do with a woman's eggs, which had something to do with her menses. It resulted in a baby.
Cosette stared at the eggs now, the fatty, tasteless whites. She thought of Turpin's flabby white tummy pressing into hers. She thought of his baby taking root inside her. She forced herself to swallow the mouthful of chewed food. It felt like clay sliding down her throat.
Cosette flinched as she felt his hand come down on the crown of her head. Her breakfast threatened to resurface as he dragged his fingers over her hair. 'You will be good to me, won't you girl?' he asked. His palms were clammy. Strands of hair stuck to the skin. 'Be good to me and I will be good to you. It really is that simple.'
The horrible nature of what was about to take place rooted into Cosette's stomach. Then, all of a sudden, the squirming nausea settled. A strange sense of peace flooded her body; this terrible thing will be done to me, she thought, and I will survive. All I must do is endure it.
She lifted her head, her large, blue eyes turned up to him. 'I will be good to you,' she said softly.
Despite everything, her words made Turpin feel uneasy.
Botany Bay, Australia
A swampy heat descended onto the cell as night fell. The walls perspired. The dirt floor released a heady smell, purging itself of all the heat that had been baked into it over the course of the day.
The men, who had been muttering amongst themselves, gradually began to organise themselves for bed. With at least two to a bunk, Robin and Levi lay shoulder-to-shoulder. Valjean had settled beside a man with a beard like frayed steel wool, a man so thin that the bunk would easily accommodate another.
Sometime in the dark of that balmy night, Jean heard the clang of the cell door. He opened his eyes and watched as the shadow of Benjamin shambled in, wincing with every step as though he were walking on hot coals. He took a cursory glance at the packed cots, before dropping to his knees and collapsing, face-first, onto the floor. Jean started, sitting bolt upright and causing irritated murmurs to issue from the bearded man. He squinted at the mound of Benjamin, straining to hear him breathe.
'Ben,' Jean whispered. When there was no response, he hurried towards the crumpled figure on the floor.
'I'm sleeping,' Ben murmured, face flat against the packed earth. Jean's face twisted at the sight of his lacerated back. Even in the dark of the cell the blood was startlingly vivid, rolling sideways down the flank of Ben's body.
Ben heard fabric tearing.
'Didn't you hear me?' he said, in a voice that might have been menacing were it not for the indignity of lying face-first in the mud.
'You need bandages,' Jean said, ripping the seams of the shirt that he had just divested himself of. 'Those cuts won't heal unless they're covered.'
He could see how tense his back was, the hiked-up shoulder-blades, the hard muscles. Once again, he was reminded of Cosette when he had first known her; well into her teenage years she had been jumpy whenever Jean approached her from behind. Concerned at the amount of blood that was pumping from the wounds, Jean balled up his first attempt at a bandage and dabbed at the slashes.
Benjamin growled in pain, feeling as though nettles were being rubbed into his skin.
'I know, I know, I'm sorry,' Jean said gently, with the same tone he would give to a wounded animal or a frightened child. Suddenly, Benjamin felt strangely unclothed.
' 's not as bad as it looks,' he insisted through his teeth, his shoulders somehow becoming more tense.
Ignoring him, Jean wound the strips of fabric around Benjamin's torso, looping them under his chest and tying them in a neat knot just under his ribs. The blood bloomed through, saturating the fabric almost as son as it was tied. Jean sighed.
'It'll have to do,' he murmured. 'Mary said she'd get me some whiskey—to say thank you—we can use that to clean the wound.'
'Well, aren't you bloody gallant?' Benjamin grunted, hoisting himself onto his knees and elbows. The cuts gaped and pulsed, spilling more blood. Benjamin's elbows buckled from under him, causing his top half to crash back into the dust. He slapped Jean's outstretched hands away and tried once more.
Jean, who wasn't quite sure what he had been expecting, found himself yet more puzzled; Benjamin's behaviour clearly didn't hint at some secret rapport he hadn't known they'd had.
As Benjamin tried in vain to struggle onto all fours, a glimmer of light at the far corner of the block caught Jean's eye. He watched as Callaghan, holding an oil lamp, used his baton to prod one of the convicts into walking ahead of him. What on first sight looked to be a young man turned out to be a woman, head freshly shaven, face shiny with tears. A lead weight seemed to slide into his stomach as he realised with horror that she had been the young, redheaded woman he'd seen Callaghan drag to his hut. Her long auburn curls had been sliced from her head, and, Jean realised, lines of blood had dried against her inner calves. Her eyes were empty.
'Jesus,' he said in a low voice. Benjamin, who had managed to force himself into a seating position, purposefully evaded the girl's helpless stare.
'Don't go letting on that you're soft,' he said. 'It'll do you no good.'
Jean turned to face him. Before he could stop himself, he asked: 'Why did you do it?'
Benjamin, who had been expecting the question sooner or later, gave a beleaguered sigh. 'Those wounds on your back,' he said. 'They've only just healed—cat o nine tails, right? Used vinegar to make it sting more?'
Jean nodded, the unwelcome memory making the healed skin of his back tingle.
'Well then, it's a wonder you didn't get blood poisoning. You didn't need them tearing anew.'
Ben shuffled into a more comfortable position and, seeing that Jean was not satisfied, rolled his eyes. 'We need you,' he said grudgingly. 'You keep Thomas in line. He's afraid of you.'
'Afraid of me?' Jean said incredulously. 'You just said I was soft.'
The flicker of a smile ghosted over Benjamin's lips. 'Might be an autem bawler, but you're also built like a brick shithouse and you lifted him off of Levi like they were two fighting puppies.'
Jean gave a huff of amusement. 'You should know that I'm not—I mean, not anymore. It's been years since I—' he stopped himself. 'I shouldn't have struck Thomas. That's not the kind of man I am.'
Benjamin's eyebrows twitched, an expression somewhere between anger and confusion. 'What he said was out of line. I'd have done the same.'
Someone called out in their sleep, leading to a few irked mumbles.
'I—' Benjamin started. 'I had a girl.'
'Oh?'
'She was a baby. Just shy of her first birthday when I—' he inhaled sharply. 'Not a day goes by when I don't… well, you know how it is.'
Jean continued in silence. He thought of his time with Cosette: 10 years, but it hadn't felt like nearly enough. What would Benjamin have done for ten years with his daughter? 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'Truly.'
Benjamin tried to shrug, then, realising too late, cried out loudly as he split his wounds. There was another rumble of anger from the sleeping men. In spite of himself, Benjamin's eyes began swimming with tears. 'Fuck,' he murmured. He touched the wetness of his face, perplexed. 'Fuck,' he said again, as though he were bleeding from some unknown cut. Out of the corner of his blurry vision he saw Jean's outstretched hand. Warily, he took it.
'We'll make it back home,' Jean said resolutely. 'We'll hold our girls again.'
Gripping Jean's hand, Benjamin gave it a firm shake. Then, leering forwards, he allowed Jean to grip his elbow and gently ease him onto his feet.
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