Notes: I had intended to write something completely different for this chapter, but I made the mistake of trying to read other people's fiction again. To clarify - I made the mistake of reading attempted Sweeney Todd smut. So now you lot have the dubious privledge of sitting through a little historical accuracy. (Thanks to Aithilin for her help in illuminating a little problem...)
A potential title for this chapter is as follows; Victorians do not wear panties!
Fogg's Asylum. A large brick and mortar monstrosity standing three whole storeys to the skyline, visible immediately from the very moment you stepped into the street, like a dark and forbidding sentinel. A guardhouse for the insane. It stood on a mandmade outcrop of stone made slimy and mouldy by the damp from the muddy river that protected it on three sides. The other side was guarded by a large iron fence, only a small gate, barely big enough for a carriage to pass through, provided a portal to the outside.
Anthony stood at this gate, looking up at the cold brick facade with its tiny barred windows, hoping for a glimpse of his beloved Johanna. Rationally, he knew that she wasn't likely to appear, but he told himself that there were other reasons for his vigil. How to get into this fortress and rescue his beloved? The windows too small to climb through, the building too sheer to scale, rocks to slippery to approach from the water. Also, all he had was the word of one worker that she was in residence at the asylum. Anthony needed some means of confirmation, some way to make sure that she was there before he even attempted to rescue her.
Anthony stood there so long that someone noticed. Soon there was a mutter of activity inside the gates. The forbidding front door, a relic of the past studded with metal circles embedded in the wood, swung open, its barely oiled hinges creaking in protest to allow a small, portly figure to emerged. The figure was a man, bald under his bowler hat, his suit just as brown and drab as the building he worked in. The man was surprisingly quick on his feet, soon standing near Anthony on the opposite side of the iron gate.
"Can I help you, sir?" The accent was one step shy of Irish, perhaps a foriegner who had been in the country long enough to cleave the rough edges from his vowels. The word sir was peppered with a touch of mockery, picking at Anthony's youth and worn clothing.
"Yes," Anthony said, plumbing the depths of his own dishonesty in desperation, searching for a reasonable excuse that might bring him to stare at the asylum for so long. It came to him in a stroke of genius that he only hoped he could pull off. "Could you tell me if there's a young lady called Johanna in residence here?" Anthony asked the question earnestly. He expected the look of suspicion that followed his query and responded as if he were apalled by his own lack of decorum. "Oh! She's my cousin, sir. We were good friends during our childhood. When I heard of her," here he faltered on purpose, just like any good lad would, his look of guilt not entirely made up, "her misfortune, I wrote to her. But my letter was returned unopened, sir. I wondered if there had been some mistake."
Anthony put on her best immitation of hopeful innocence, praying that it was a good one. He hadn't told a lie since he was a boy. Anthony's won honest nature hated the lie that he was telling now, but he told himself that it as only to save Johanna.
His dishonesty seemed to have done the trick. The man in the bowler hat rolled his eyes skyward as if asking for patience. "Johanna Barker," he recited tonelessly, "second floor, women's section. Is that all?"
"Yes sir," Anthony said, nodding to the man. His heart had leapt into his throat at the mention of her name. Now he knew where she was for certain, and he had learned her last name as well. "Thankyou sir!"
The man shook his head, impatience showing. Without further comment or even any further aknowledgement of Anthony's existence, the man turned and quickly disappeared back into the asylum.
Anthony stood where he was a moment or two more, staring up at the second floor with his eyes trained on its one lonely window. Fleetinly, he imagined that he could see a flash of yellow hair in the darkness. Finally he turned to begin his journey back to his own lodgings, humming a simple tune under his breath. Johanna...
Undressing was a ponderous task. Many buttons needed to be undone, small ties unlaced, layers of cloth drawn away from the body and carried to the clothes press. Still, it was a chore that Mrs. Lovett was glad of at the end of a long day, a chore that when done allowed her to breathe a little easier.
It was late, many hours since the sun had gone down, but only an hour or so since the shop had been closed. Mrs. Lovett's bedroom was lit by candles. One lonely oil lamp on her bedside table remained unlit - she felt it was too late at night and too close to bedtime to light the oil lamp and she only had gas lighting for downstairs. Her bedroom was on the second floor of the house, where there were only two other rooms. One of them was Toby's bedroom, Mrs. Lovett could hear the boy's quiet snores from across the tiny hallway, the other room was a small thing that might once have been intended as a bedroom but that now housed broken furniture, old shoes, and a portrait of Nell with her late husband.
Nellie Lovett sat at a small chair by her dressing table, easing first one foot, then the other, from her boots. Her feet throbbed, aching in a good way now that they were free from their confines. She wiggled her toes through her stockings, noting with dismay that she had a hole in her left stocking that showed her little toe through the thin cotton. The fabric had been darned one too many times already, she would have to buy new ones. It was almost like losing a friend.
With a sigh, Nell began to unbutton the bodice of her dress, feeling one layer of restriction fall away from her torso. Once the dress was undone she stood to remove it from her body. This dress was a new one, and she smiled at the amber silk and black lace before stowing it in her clothes press and sitting back down at her dresser. She had just picked up a horsehair brush to begin combing out her hair when she heard soft footsteps coming up the stair. Mrs. Lovett looked around the room, hoping for something she could cover herself with. Unhelpfully, the only things she could see where her night corset and chemise - laid out on the bed neatly - and the gown she intended to wear the next day.
A thrill of excitement mixed with dismay; she knew there could be only one person bold enough to enter her house in the middle of the night, and it was no robber. Her heart skipped a beat, her skin flushing in the candle-light. Mr. Todd!
He entered the room without warning, simply pushing open the door without seeing the need to knock first. Almost as soon as he had opened the door Mr. Todd stopped dead, frozen in place just inside the door to Mrs. Lovett's inner sanctum. Somehow he had never imagined her as a creature separate from the clothes that she wore. Mr. Todd had never even paid much attention to how her dresses changed from day to day. He had memorised the colour of her hair but couldn't remember what colour cown she had been wearing that day.
Mr. Todd realised he must have been staring when she whispered his name. "Mr. Todd!" On second thoughts it was perhaps more of a hiss than a whisper. "Close the door!"
Mr. Todd's mouth twitched, his eyebrows snapping together into a suden frown. It was impossible to tell what he might have been thinking, whether he was contemplating leaving or if what he had sought her out for was too important for disgust. Seconds that stretched like hours ticked past on a tiny mantle clock by a pitcher of water on her dresser. Eventually Mr. Todd managed to move. He took another step inside the room and closed the door, sealing himself in her chamber. There was something strangely final to his movements, as if he almost thought he would never leave.
Mrs. Lovett sat there at her dressing table, still holding her hairbrush, her wild reddish curls tumbling in a messy halo about her head and shoulders, glowing in the light from the candles. Her skin glowed, tinged with gold that threw the curves and hollows of her form into sharp relief. The tiny hollow at the base of her throat was a dot of shadow, the swell of her breasts a landscape of light and curvesof darkness. Her corset, trimmed in soft lace, bound tight to her flesh from breasts to hips, looked rosy and pink in that light. He had never realised how slender her waist was.
Covering her from hips to knees were soft cotton bloomers that tied at the knee by worn pink ribbons. She still wore stockings, though one had fallen down enough to expose two scandalous inches of calf and shin. It was almost pornographic, and yet somehow she looked less wicked without her dress, more innocent... More human than demon.
An odd expression passed over Mr. Todd's face, only to be replaced by something cold and dispassionate when he cleared his throat. "Mrs. Lovett," Mr. Todd began gruffly, "I've been meaning to ask you something..."
Mrs. Lovett put down her brush, pretending not to feel strange or excited when she turned to look at him. "Yes, luv?"
"Did you... My Lucy..." Mr. Todd cleared his throat again, fighting against a feeling of constriction that made him want to lash out at something, anything. "Were you," he tried again, only to have his throat lock up. Try as he might, the words wouldn't come. Mr. Todd looked away, touching one of his razors and feeling the cold from the silver tingle through his gloved fingers.
"Yes, Mr. Todd," Nellie said, saving him from having to voice the question he had come to have answered. She watched him begin to pace the length of her room, nothing like pity or remorse in her face or voice, "I made all of them fancy sauces that your Lucy used in her cooking."
Mr. Todd's gaze locked with hers, cold accusation in his eyes, fingers stroking the handle of the razor at his right hip. Mrs. Lovett shook her head.
"Lucy," Nell explained softly, soothingly, "was a terrible cook when you met her. Oh, her meals were passable, they were well enough, but they were nothing special and she worried that you wouldn't be happy with what she made. She asked me to teach her - nearly set me kitchen on fire! But the poor thing was so upset, so miserable that she couldn't please you... Lucy asked me to make her my sauces, Mr. T. She paid me when she could but mostly it were a favour like. She did improve on her own a bit before... Well, she did improve a bit on her own."
Mrs. Lovett fell silent, uncertain. She watched Mr. Todd pace. He made two cricuits in silence before he turned to her, such a sad and hopeless look on his face that her heart broke for him - for all that she had been terribly jealous of Lucy, she had always wanted that beautiful Benjamin Barker to be happy. Sorrow struggled with his default hate, she could see the emotions at war on his face, watching his thoughts spiral downwards into the abyss. Sweeney Todd was not like Benjamin Barker at all, but Mrs. lovett still wanted him to be happy. As happy as a man like Mr. Todd could be.
"Lucy." Mr. Todd seemed unaware that he'd spoken the name aloud, his voice ragged. Memories struggled to surface, kept at bay by the cruelty of time, his head full of hatred, revenge, long years in a harsh prison colony with nothing but his innocence to keep him comfort. He had lost his innocence somewhere in the last fifteen years, and with it he had also lost his wife.
Mrs. Lovett clucked her tongue. She stood, covering the space between dressing table and bed in two short steps, that errant stocking falling another inch or two at the movement. She ignored it. Quickly her night things were swept away, placed where they couldn't become rumpled or in the way. Mrs. Lovett approached Mr. Todd from the side, her hands outstretched to take his arm. Gentle, but firm, she gripped his forearm through his shirt and led him to the bed, ordering him to sit down without needing to say a word.
He sat, face blank, struggling to recall what Lucy had looked like. All he could see was Mrs. Lovett, her face flushed from running back and forth in the evening rush, the sound of her voice drifting up to his barber shop from her kitchen far below. He dug deeper, wringing the memory from his very soul until a flicker of golden hair stirred in his mind. Golden yellow hair was all he remembered.
Mr. Todd sighed, releasing the memory to come crashing back down to reality. He found Mrs. Lovett standing in front of him, gazing at his gloved hands with a kind of wry disapproval. For a very breif moment he felt as guilty as a schoolboy, though the feeling was replaced just as quickly as it had appeared, leaving only resentment. "What?" he barked.
Mrs. Lovett was unperturbed by his hostility. "You burnt your hands quite badly, didn't you?" she demanded, "I saw them bandages earlier too, Mr. T."
"It's nothing," Mr. Todd grumbled his reply, hating how she managed to remind him at once that he was human and that she had been cooking for him even when he still had Lucy. The reminder was like a tiny needle worming its way into his heart.
"Nothing? Nothing dont need bandages. Let me see them."
Mr. Todd stared back at her in silence, momentarily contemplating how easy it would be to slit her throat right now and soak her corset in blood. His thoughts of murder were brought to an abrupt halt when she sat down beside him and gingerly took his right hand in her own. Delicate fingers peeled the glove from his hand and laid it aside, returning to unwrap his bandages and reveal broken blisters and angry red flesh beneath cracking scabs. It looked disgusting, but Ms. Lovett didn't even flinch. She would have seen worse on many of his victims, Mr. Todd knew, though none of the marks would have been from burns.
Mrs. Lovett looked at him expectantly and Mr. Todd gave her his left hand with only a small amount of reluctance. She removed the glove from his hand with the same amount of delicacy. He watched the glove fall from her hands, the material resting on her thigh, and imagined his own fingers resting there in place of the leather.
"You need to let the air get at them for a time," Mrs. Lovett decreed, "so them blisters can dry out properly. Fancy picking up a boiling pot with your hands! Silly man."
"I'm afraid my temper got the better of me, luv," Mr. Todd growled the strange little joke, forcing his eyes away from the glove on Mrs. Lovett's thigh. He wasn't convinced that she would understand that he was joking in his own dark, very dry way, and was surprised when she smiled.
"It seems to do that a lot," Mrs. Lovett agreed. She eyed his dirty bandages with distate a moment before standing to take them to her dressing table and the small bowl she kept for washing her face and hands. The pitcher on the table filled the bowl with water, which she set the bandages to soak in. "There we are," she said cheerfully. "Now," she told him, looking at him over her shoulder, "you go off to bed, and in the morning I'll have some fresh linen for those hands of yours."
Mrs. Lovett sat down at her dressing table again, taking her up brush to resume the chore of her hair. Mr. Todd sat where he was a moment, flexing his hands, curling his fingers in the air. His glove had fallen to the floor when she stood, it lay there now forlornly, two fingers curled under itself. Slowly Mr. Todd stood, bedsprings creaking in his wake. He stepped forward over the glove to stand behind Mrs. Lovett's chair. He reached down, hands circling her neck, his blistered, red flesh pressing against her unblemished skin. Mr. Todd squeezed a little, both quietly enraged and yet impressed when all she did was still the motion of her brush and close her eyes.
Mr. Todd watched her in the mirror, the flickering candle-light that danced upon her skin. "You deserve to die, Mrs. Lovett," Mr. Todd whispered, leaning in to say the words close to her ear. He felt her curls press against his own dark, unruly hair but paid it no attention in the mirror, his eyes locked on her face.
"We all deseve to die," Mrs. Lovett rejoined just as softly, her voice breathy and her pulse fast beneath her fingers. He remembered saying those words to her when Judge Turpin had escaped his grasp and he had gone just a little bit mad. How appropriate that she should say that to him now, when he felt as if he were only just beginning to grasp how far his sanity had slipped. A deceptively delicate hand raised to cover his. She didn't try to hold his hand or drag his fingers away from her neck.
Slowly, darts of pain lancing through his palms as his blisters brushed her skin, Mr. Todd's hand dipped to her shoulder and spread out across her sternum, fingers splayed abover her breasts. He looked at their reflections in the mirror, seeing them both this time, his own private hell watching him from the glass. Nell's eyes were still closed.
In one abrupt movement Mr. Todd removed his hands from her skin and turned away. He was out of the door before she had opened her eyes, his footsteps echoing down the stairs alongside the slam of her bedroom door.
In the small room across the hall, Tobias Ragg stared up at the ceiling in the darkness. The walls were very thin up here. He had heard almost every word that had been spoken. He knew he needed to know more, but he was afraid of what he might discover.