~Epiphany~
"Can you walk?"
"Not yet." It was an odd question to ask a crippled woman, Nellie thought. 'But I will," she added stubbornly, watching him suspiciously as he threw the blanket off her legs. Underneath, she was wearing nothing but her white camisole and long under-drawers over her bandages.
"You will walk in time, my dear. But not today." He contemplated her legs for a long time.
For someone who'd recently had a flaming candle hurled at his chest, Judge Turpin was more courteous and composed than ever. He was even being pleasant. It even seemed that his appearance had undergone some sort of transformation. Gone was the grizzly bristle on his cheek. His greying hair had been neatly combed down in a thick, orderly state behind his ears. And his clothes! For someone as poor as Nellie, the way a man dressed himself had never been much of a concern. Sweeney had worn the same thing day in, day out – her only trouble had been washing the blood out of his shirts, and the occasional darning of a much-abused sock.
"Pray madam, tell me what amuses you," demanded the Judge stiffly, stepping back from her bed in a manner that spoke more of his having been slighted, than any real pretence at decorum or propriety toward a woman in her undergarments.
He was clean and fresh-shaven, she'd give him that. But the frock coat of pale purple silk, embroidered in pastels; underneath, the white neck frill over the waistcoat of cream silk satin, embroidered with tulips and edged in blue silk ribbon – it was too much for the baker to bear.
Nellie burst in a small fit of laughter: he looked more like a dandy than a judge!
"Stay there my dear," said the Judge drily, knowing very well she couldn't run away. "I will be but a moment."
Nellie didn't have time to contemplate the fresh letter that had arrived early in the morning under her door.
She'd only had time to climb out of bed, grasp the letter, and crawl back. It was under her pillowcase now, and she could only hope the Judge didn't get the idea of fluffing her pillows. If Sweeney kept sending her any more letters, she'd never get her legs to recover. Of course, she hadn't mentioned to the Judge how she'd been practising sitting herself up in bed and standing up unassisted for ten minutes each day, until she collapsed in exhaustion back onto the bed.
Just as Nellie was thinking of seizing the letter and opening it, someone knocked on her door.
"It's only the maid," said the older servant, coming in with a large white bundle in her arms. "I've been ordered to dress you," she explained, holding the long garment up for the invalid's appraisal.
It was a fine white gown of Indian Muslin that fell in a tiered train all the way down the back of the dress. The entire gown was decorated with silver metal embroidery.
"Somehow I don't think me bandages will like it so much," Nellie blurted, thinking of her sores potentially seeping through onto the beautiful white fabric and creating a bloody mess.
The older woman shrugged. "No matter. Sir was very specific about it fitting you."
And it did fit.
It had been made loosely to accommodate for her bandages. Once on, it was impossible to tell, save for the burn scars on the left half of her face, that the younger woman had ever been close to resembling a mad, frankensteinian monster.
"Done you are!" The maid finished the ensemble by tying a loose white cap around Nellie's short hair to disguise any unhealed patches of skin.
"Thank you," Nellie grumbled, wishing with a sudden sick fever that she was back in her familiar bakehouse, hacking away at slices of skin and muscle.
The maid nodded. She swept out of the room, just as Judge Turpin was coming in.
"Since you are unable to walk unaided," he said, pushing the door open with the Beadle close at his heels, "this will no doubt help you."
"What is it?" Nellie said, gaping at the odd contraption.
It was a velvet-lined carnelian chair, to which were attached two thick wooden wheels.
"A wheel-chair," explained Turpin proudly, bending and stroking the arms. "It was my mother's when she lived, and now I give it to you."
"Wot if I don't want it?" she pouted, staring disdainfully at the decadent contraption. In all her life, Nellie had never had to sit still for more than a few minutes, except of course, when she happened to be dead drunk. And now those two were grooming her to be an old maid before she was forty-three.
"The Lordship wishes you have it," said the Beadle with a supercilious smile. He rolled the chair forward so that stood in line with her bed.
"How else are you to accompany me on our excursion?" added the Judge with a raised brow. His expression was one of non-negotiability.
If she were to refuse outright, Nellie realised, not only would she offend him, she would destroy any hopes of securing further freedoms for herself. Suddenly the possibilities of the wheelchair seized upon her. "This means I'm free to leave my room when I wish?" she pressed.
"Within reason," answered Turpin, dismissing the Beadle with a wave of his hand.
Nellie shuddered at the smile he gave her on the way out.
"Ordinarily," Turpin continued, lowering the seat adjustment with a black iron lever, "I would have the servants attend to you. I trust I will encounter no more incendiary projectiles?"
The baker shook her head.
"Good," he smiled, thinking how pretty she now looked in the outfit he'd given her. Not pretty in the fairy lamb-like way Johanna had been; nor the angelic sweet way he'd first seen Lucy, holding her babe amidst the flowers as if she were the Virgin Mary herself. Eleanor Lovett was not like that. In all Turpin's bible editions, the pictures of saintly women had mostly been blonde, or if they were not blonde, their faces still conveyed a completely uncomplicated sweetness, a clarity of expression, a radiance of complexion, a sanctified gaze. He could not say that about this woman. If anything, she was of the sort of creature he found cavorting in his books of "leisure" that he'd taken so much joy in terrifying that pitiful sailor boy with. He appraised her carefully. She was not pure, or pretty, even in white. Despite her small stature, thin-limbs and paleness, she was not fragile.
There was something perpetually wilful and wanton in her entire demeanour that even Sweeney Todd's fire had been unable to extinguish. When he stared, she did not turn her gaze to the floor, as a modest woman should. She did not smile or sigh prettily, but contemplated him as the women on the street were wont to do, as if calculating how many coins might be scavenged from his dead body were they to stab him dead and leave him bleeding on the street…
Yes, despite her scars, Mrs Eleanor Lovett was certainly something to be gandered at.
Suddenly it occurred to him. It wasn't solely her beauty. Lucy was beautiful, as was Johanna. And Celeste. What Mrs Lovett possessed was infinitely rare in a woman. It was not the sort of rat cunning Beadle Bamford had inherited from his line of degenerate ancestors, nor the despicable deceptiveness of that abominable Sweeney Todd.
Eleanor Lovett, he at last understood, was ruthless, quick-minded, ingenious, aphoristic and manipulative. There was no other human being he had met over the course of the monotonously passing years as a magistrate who matched his intelligence and wit – more importantly, whose philosophies were so completely in concurrence with his own. To be plain, they were the perfect match. Now it was only a matter for him to convince her…
"Is there a problem Judge Turp…"
"Septimus, if you please," he said, lowering his voice significantly.
He frowned slightly as he watched her frantically smooth down the layers of frilled dress. She had not yet thanked him for it.
"Mind you don't ruin the material," Nellie scolded as he knelt by the bedside and put one arm around her neck, the other underneath her legs. Any movement hurt her these days, and Nellie had grown increasingly used to keeping a calm face when the needling nerves ran amuck through her legs and spine. "Wos this your mother's too?" There was more than a hint of sarcasm in her voice, and the Judge was not so entirely enamoured of her that he could ignore it.
"No," he said gruffly, placing her easily in the chair and kneeling before her feet. 'I had it made specially for you, my dear. Consider a little gratitude may be in order." His lowered his face so that it loomed close above hers.
"You still 'aven't told me where we're off to today," she reminded him, not at all fazed. She'd endured so much of Sweeney's intimidations that she was now all but used to having imperious men attempt to scare her witless into abject obedience. And there was no way she was about to call him Septimus. It reminded her of sewage, or sepsis.
"That," he said, steeling himself upright and taking the handles of her chair, "is a surprise. You must breakfast first, and I must see that everything is as it should be."
He wheeled her to the end of the corridor, when the stairs presented problem.
"Didn't think o' that, did ya?" said the woman smartly, smirking up at him. She might be imprisoned in Turpin's maze, but it didn't mean she had to smile and laugh and comply with the man's every wish.
"Beadle," called the Judge, ringing the bell cleverly placed at the stair landing.
The Beadle came up five minutes later, wheezing and puffing for all the world as if he an impregnated toad. Disgusting, though the Judge and Nellie instantly at the sight of the Beadle's bulging waistcoat.
"Wheel the chair down," he commanded, lifting Nellie into his arms as he did so.
"Contrary to wot you might think," Nellie said stonily as the Judge began to carry her down the steep steps, "I'm not quite as daft as the last lot of floozies you milked. I won't be fallin' for you bringin' flowers an' the like, so you can forget about it straight off."
By the time she was finished, they had reached the bottom of the stairs. The invalid was placed ceremoniously into her velvet seat, and the Judge resumed his wheeling duties in silence.
"I wos there," Nellie continued, not caring that the Beadle was also in earshot of her speech, "when Lucy lost 'er marbles an' tried to poison 'erself. Sorry, she did poison 'erself. Ain't nothin' so sad Sir, as a mother wot can't even feed her babe. You might want ter think on that, when you go ter bed an' say your prayers –"
The Judge wheeled her to the end of the lengthy ebony dinner table. There were only two plates set, and yet the entire thirty seat-table was laden every which-ways with food.
The Beadle sat down to eat straight away. His plate was already stained with food scraps and the like, and without waiting, began to heap it to towering heights with meat, sweets and other rare delicious meals that a prostitute or orphan could only dream of eating in Burtonian London.
"You forget that I too was there," said Turpin, gripping the edge of her arm chair threateningly, "and saw the woman deteriorate before my eyes. I took that child and offered her a better life. What could a widower have offered her, but more destitution? You could barely afford to feed yourself. The child would not have survived the month."
"Which ought to beg the question, Lord Turpin, what good you did gettin' rid o' poor ole Benjamin Barker in the first place!"
"This conversation, Madam, is at an end. Enjoy your breakfast."
Nellie watched him take his hat and cane, and storm out onto the street.
From across the dinner table, a pair of beady rat-eyes had also been observing.
"Just you and me then, Mrs Lovett," said Beadle Bamford with a grin.
* * *
Kudos to Mirei for the "Burtonian" neologism =D