Emily, dear little Emmy with no last name (like her, like them all) and no home, has a rat perched on her shoulder and she is cooing to it. In reply, the rat is chattering eagerly. He does not have Sir Edward's received pronounciation nor the mannerisms collected from years spent in the company of the young Queen Victoria, but Emily, and so Veronica too, is glad of his company. The rats are well-loved. They are friends. And this, as well as their speaking, doesn't even seem strange to Veronica any longer.
Where would she be now? Where would they all be, without dear little Emily-with-a-y and their army of loyal rats (plague or no plague?)
Her sweet little Flea, who sinned against God just like the rest of them, would not have been able to withstand the crueller devices for very much longer. Likewise poor Joanna, of far better breeding than her, who already found it difficult to tell what was real from what was fictional (and was the wallpaper moving?) Christelle – there was nothing that could have been done for her, the poor darling, and as for Jolie Rouge, their Captain by her own definition, with her winsome eyes and her whimsical tales of riot and pillaging aboard the seven seas, well, Jolie had her own demons to face.
Worst of all, Veronica knew, deep down in her heart hidden underneath her shifts and corsets, that she would never really have been pardoned. She was never really going to get out. Nobody would really have come to take her home the next day.
(thank heavens for dearest Emily!)
Veronica was no fool, even for a girl, and she was constantly being told, of course, that a lady's brain was really a very small and silly thing and that she instead should be measured by the size of her waist, bosom and posterior. The doctors would poke and prod at her, gleaming lasciviously at her curves as they subjected her to cruel and injust tortures and pulled her around by her steel manacle.
Men saw her for what she wasn't – an alluring temptress whose eyes weren't hollow and telling of black and terrifying stories but shining with lust. A danger to herself and others because of her supposed fondness of the feel of their hands on her skin – something the doctors insisted she partake in anyhow, just to increase their monetary proceedings, the foolish men!
Veronica was no more a nymphomaniac (there it was again, that delightful word!) than the next girl – why, she was no fonder of sins of the flesh than the good Queen Victoria was (that is to say, she supposed). Her skin crawled when the doctor's rough hands curled around her waist or when she was thrown from her cell to the mercy of a stranger. She would rather be sucked dry than dear old Lymer's finest leeches than have to suffer the company of one more "respectable" gentleman.
But Veronica was a showgirl, a true Vaudevillian, and she had learnt a fair few tricks from her time in orphan asylums, theatres and opera houses, in the backstages of carriages and the bowels of circuses where she would dance by the day and practise the works of Shakespeare by night (dear Emily reminded her of darling Ophelia!) Like with vultures, you should never let men see your fear.
It was a place, home, where she would occasionally find that whiskered gentlemen of questionable background wanted to teach her far more than knife-throwing, leeching or performing, and provided they had no chloroform-soaked rags, she would allow them to accompany her to an alleyway where she would strangle the dear man with his own cravat and run away with a wristwatch to sell for a few slices of bread.
Home wasn't such a terrible place, she thought with a fond little half-smile, but they didn't have dear Emily, or any of the other inmates – even the ones who really had lost their minds!
And as long as Veronica lived, even if it was only until tomorrow, or if it was until she was older than the Queen, she never would suffer another man's foul hands or besmirching tongue again. She was already skilled in manipulation, you see dearest, and now she really can throw a knife, too!
Tucking her knees up to her chin, she cooes to Sir Edward as he addresses her as "dear girl", and she giggles to herself in the very last corners of her mind.
Either way, she will always hit her target.