A/N: New Chapter for 2010! =)
~Loving the Dead~
He had kept her up many hours reading to her from books of poems and epic battles of dead men.
He didn't seem to care or notice that her eyes drooped heavily by the fireside, or that his unclipped nails gleamed like the backs of dusty moths in the almost darkness.
He did not care, because Judge Turpin was a man used to having it all his own way, all the time.
"I will carry you bed," he insisted when she was already heavily asleep, dreaming of Sweeney swinging her hand by the seashore and skipping backwards into the waves.
"Let me show you where the waves are soft and safe," Mr T said to her, reserving a small downturned smile for her. She was about to open her mouth and laugh in delight –
"Bed, dear madam," said Turpin, jolting her awake as he carried her from the wheelchair across the threshold of her room.
"I can't sleep wif'out the candle," she protested.
The Judge gave a half-smile. "I think you can. Good night."
He was trying to consume her. Dry up all her body and strength and mind until her will was only for him.
"In his bloomin' dreams," she hissed, dragging her aching body out of bed to reach the window. She drew the curtains and saw that the moon was at its fullest. There was enough light. She crawled back into bed, took the letter from its hiding place and began to read.
The time drags slow for me. I think of the fire when you are sleeping in his house. The flames smell much stronger now.
If you wish to see me, I will be at St Dunstan's on Tuesday. All day.
I think of Lucy. Then I think of you. Death is easier. My nightmares…I see Lucy in them. Her throat is that slit of thin red blood. I cut her voice from her. My Lucy.
And you are burnt. It only used to be the darkness that brought me to this state. Now I am it, all hours. The old days are gone. All I know of Benjamin Barker is his name.
The moonlight stung her eyes.
She crumpled the letter and stuffed it under the mattress. She could not burn it.
"Benjamin," she whispered, looking up at the black ceiling with her hands on her stomach. The letter had brought up the flames again.
He had left her on the bakehouse floor. Her body was an obstacle he had sidestepped on his way up toward the light.
He had not cherished her skin. Her shoulders. The mess of her hair, or the curve of her half-smiles when she had been his willing sacrifice all those weeks of rolling bodies into the grinder. Why would he cherish her now? I must make my peace with the Judge. Give 'im wot he wants then get the hell out. Toby may be dead but who's ter say I can't still leave for the sea an' make a simple respectable life for meself.
She shut her eyes, and imagined it was spring and the bad winter wind was just starting to blow away. She was lying in a garden somewhere, and the sky was wider than any sky she had seen before. The clouds were smooth and white. The light coated her skin so gently she might float away…
Footsteps creaked just outside the door.
Bet it's the flamin' Judge she thought angrily, clutching her scarred body as she sat herself up and watched the door. It wouldn't be unlike him to saw a hole in the bloody door so he could spy on her while she slept.
It wasn't him. Another letter slipped under the door.
"Creepin' Jesus," she breathed, limping toward the crack of light. She knelt but didn't sit.
I'm outside. I will wait briefly. The back entrance.
She knew it was Sweeney. The beautiful hand. Her mouth grew dry. What did he want from her? Was it another trick to get to the Judge? "
No point anyway," she muttered, latching onto the knob. Trapped up here like – suddenly she realised the envelope wasn't empty.
The iron key stunk of rust. She had no idea what Sweeney had done to obtain it. The message was clear enough: I give you the choice.
Free yourself, or stay. Now she knew. He had come for her. And he wanted her to want her freedom.
Nellie felt very grave, as if she were standing at the back of someone's funeral service. The choice was hers, yet now she had freedom it did not fill her with any joy.
What was it the old Ben had used to say?
"I can never remember my keys."
He'd sat out the front of his tonsorial parlour with his new bride and babes smiling and laughing and picknicking on the stairs. He had a special grateful smile for the barber when she'd come home from St Dunstan's with a spare set of keys for his shop –
Well that was long over and done.
She didn't know. Could she bring herself to care for him again? He had brought her to this second oblivion. She didn't know if she could bear a third one.
Her hands shook as the key guided her to the hole.
It turned, and no ghost barber lurked on the landing. She forgot about the letter on the floor.
Found herself turning, turning slowly down the corridors like a woman unleashed from a mad house.
She'd drown wherever she went. That's what came of lovin' a dead man, she supposed.
* * *
"You came."
He had kept to the shadows. The wind was loud enough to mask his footsteps on the gravel and the guards had not seen him pick the door lock and enter the back entrance.
"I'd 'ave ter be a fool ter stay in that prison-'ouse."
She was much thinner, and made no pretence of smiling. "Wot you want?"
She hugged her arms against her. He saw that standing was a struggle for her.
"You read the letter."
She nodded. They studied each other. Every few moments his ear caught the back door, straining for the guards.
'Why did you come?" he asked.
She shrugged.
He surveyed her properly.
The baker's eyes were not so casual. Everything there spoke of dark contemplations, of a world as pitiful as his own.
"You killed me, Mr T," she said. Her hand reached out to pick at the wooden doorframe. The scars did not escape him.
"You've haunted me dreams these months an'…I feared you an' wished you dead an' wished meself dead –"
"I did wish you dead that day," he said quietly, taking the step forward that breached the many hourless caverns that separated them.
"I even rejoiced it, weeks after," he went on, looking at the torn threads of his jacket. "How is possible…that I don't now?"
He was drawing her in again, fighting her to look at him. "I don't know," she said stone-faced, half wanting him to lose interest and go away.
It was happening again. His presence took over, and her mind had no reasons: only the bleak hollow that knew what it meant to die slowly without uttering a single word.
"Don't pretend," he said, taking possession of her shoulders. They weren't bare, he noticed, as they once were –
"Help!" Thunder broke into the silent disarray of their world. Not true thunder, but the thunder of man crying out to fellow man.
She looked at him in the old way – when she had given him anything without question.
He led her out the back entrance. All around them, the lights came on.
"Quiet," he whispered, and carried her along the shadows of the wall.
"The guards are gone," she said emptily, but he did not release her.
He rushed across the grounds until they were across the street and staring back at Turpin's house of sin. It glowed.
* * *
"He threatened me," the Beadle wheezed, clutching his now bandaged hand. "Three days. That's how long he gave you," he repeated again, snorting the white powder from the silver snuff box with his free hand.
"I doubt he can do any more damage than what is already done," mused the Judge calmly, studying the Beadle's new stump with the barest interest. "I will have the police force step up their night patrol. We will hang him, my friend. Have no fear of that."
"The ladies will not adore me now," the Beadle said mournfully, rubbing his shorn head. "It's all gone now, me hair and my fingers."
"You understand, Bamford," said the Judge slowly, swilling his glass around in circles, "that Eleanor was only jesting. That was not your punishment."
The portly man's eyes swivelled to the closed door. "The she-witch," he said under his breath, his mind churning now with all the torturous plans he could devise.
They both descended into the pits of their spirit-glasses. Turpin looked into the depths of the liquid, and saw only one face. It was not his.
"Sir! It's urgent! Sir!"
Another person disturbed the Judge's private library that night.
"What is it?" he snapped, rising to the sound of the knock. Would he have no peace?
"Sir!" It was Mary, tying her skirts and bobbing her head anxiously at the two deadly men.
"Well, out with it girl."
"It's the patient sir! She's gone."
* * *