Chapter 5- Confessions
In the morning, Lizzie brings oatmeal to the cells. Lucille is a statue on her cot, her blanket in a heap on the end. She does not move when the carousel spins her oatmeal to her side of the bars. Thomas is just waking, roused by the clattering of the cart, when she turns his breakfast toward him. He sits up, his brain slowly recalling just where he was and why. Lizzie gives him a little wave and returns to her father.
A little while later, Mr York ambles through the jail to check on his wards, stopping first with Lucille, retrieving her breakfast bowl on his rounds, "Today's confession day, Miss Sharpe. Brother Morton will be here. He'll start with Thomas, then you, and then tomorrow he'll come by to serve any spiritual needs, one at a time. Sheriff Rook will be with him. No funny business, miss. He'll have his rifle."
Lucille says nothing.
He leaves for Thomas' cell, "Confession day, Mr Sharpe. The way we do this, Brother Morton will start with you, then your sister, and tomorrow he'll come back to tend to your souls. Sheriff Rook will be with him. He'll have his rifle, so don't think to try anything."
"I assure you, it is over, Mr York."
"Somehow I'm not so sure I can trust your word."
"You cannot trust my sister, but I...I am relieved. My hell is over."
"Wait for the priest to say anything more."
"Do you not hear confessions of your prisoners?"
"I write. Brother Morton tends to you so you have someone's undivided attention. And Malachi makes sure nobody gets any ideas. We all sign the document to swear that it's true. Three sets of ears to make sure we serve justice as fairly as we can."
"Ah."
"You were hoping for something different?"
"I hoped perhaps you could relay my story to Edith and Dr McMichael."
"I'll see what I can do. But if they don't want to hear it, I can't make them."
"Of course."
"How is your shoulder feeling?"
"Excruciating. But only if I move."
Mr York picks up his bowl, "Rest easy- the doctor's coming to change your bandage in just a little while. Mort'll be here soon and he's starting with you."
"That is a blessing, indeed."
Mr York leaves with the bowl, wondering what his ward means.
Brother Morton arrives just after lunch. Thomas is sipping strong coffee when his cell becomes suddenly quite a bit more crowded, a chair for the Brother, Malachi at his post just inside the door, rifle in his hand, pointed to the floor. Mr York outside, the cart serving as his table, ready to write down everything Thomas says.
"Mr Sharpe. Mr York tells me you have committed the grave act of murder and there are three women no longer in this world because of you."
"And my son. Yes."
"You readily admit this? No reservations?"
"Of course."
Brother Morton is not sure whether he is dealing with an incredibly honest man or one who is entirely unphased by murder, "Do you care to elaborate?"
"It is a long story. I would prefer to start in my childhood so this makes sense."
"Go ahead." He settles in his chair. Thomas sips his coffee. And then he begins. He tells of a childhood marred by such brutal abuse that Brother Morton cannot help but cringe. Of his sister's murder of their mother and the incestuous relationship that led to it. Of years away and the way she drew him back to Allerdale Hall. Of the starving years thereafter and Lucille's plan for survival. He is disarmingly blunt about his complicity in her plan and how she poisoned Pamela and Margaret. It is only when he comes to Enola and the baby that his facade breaks and he cannot tell his story so dispassionately.
"I did not know until the carriage ride here that she killed the child as well. He would have died, yes, but it should have not been at the hands of his own mother. I loved him. And because I could not leave her, though his little lungs might have been better away from the cold and damp, he is dead."
"How did you not know?"
"He was so weak, so small...I had never had a babe in my arms before him. How was I to know what an infant's cough should sound like and when it was something dangerous?"
"And does this hurt more than killing the women did?"
"Yes. He was an innocent, fully trusting of me and of her. He could not know he sucked poison from off her breasts. She killed him while he tried to forge a bond with his mother as all infants should. The betrayal is...unfathomable. I know, what I did was wicked. But this was something different. Enola was already dying and she still cared for the child the best she could, but after him...things had to change." He continues his story, detailing how he found Edith, and how he could not bear to watch her die. The loss of his son made it harder for him to steal another man's beloved daughter, even if he was already dead. And he tells of how Edith caught them in bed and what happened after.
Once he is done, he sips his coffee and stares at the floor. He had planned, right until Brother Morton entered his cell, to lie. To take blame for everything and leave Lucille innocent. But then he had added 'and my son' to Brother Morton's statement of his victims. He knew he could not risk her being allowed to go free into the world for any reason.
He does not know that, in the adjoining cell, Edith and Alan sit listening.
Brother Morton gives him a moment of silence before asking, "And do you understand that the likely punishment for this will be death?" The question is gentle, cautious.
"Yes."
"Does this bother you?"
"Yes...and no."
"I must visit your sister next. But tomorrow we will talk further about the state of your soul and how you will prepare for death."
"I don't think I have a soul."
"I do. And I believe that yours is in a turmoil that perhaps my trade can help. You are a condemned man, Mr Sharpe- what could it hurt to perhaps trust the musings of a solitary monk?"
Thomas sighs, "Perhaps."
Brother Morton leaves and goes to see Lucille, Malachi and Mr York following. Alan and Edith slip unseen from the jail. Thomas is left alone with his thoughts.
Lucille is distant, as always, when Brother Morton begins talking to her. It is only when he asks for her confession does she say more than a few words at a time.
"Thomas needed to finance the mines. It was the only way we would not starve to death. And so he was married. We could not keep another woman in the house. I could not bear to share him. He would surely leave me if he loved her and then I would die. So I brought her tea. And she died instead. But the mines were the only way we could survive, in Allerdale Hall, so he married a Scottish woman. She could not love him. Not as I could. So she died, too. And when I found myself with child, I did not know how I would keep it and us. I did not want to see a child starve, but Thomas insisted on keeping it. It was weak, tired, and could hardly breathe when it was born. We hurried it along. It was mercy, given what the child looked like. A creature not quite human. She said she could save it. She lied. And after, when the third wife was dead, we went a little longer, the mining machine taking up more of his time and our coal. It was so cold... The fourth wife...I helped him choose a girl, but he rejected her. It was never supposed to end the way it did."
"Did he love any of his wives, or were they all married for their money?"
"He wasn't supposed to fall in love with any of them...or have relations with them. If he had only listened when I said he could never fall in love, none of this would have happened."
"Thomas tells the story differently."
"Of course he does."
"Did you kill the baby?"
She is clearly aggravated by the question, "No. Thomas did. You should have seen him with the child...he couldn't keep it. It had to die faster. He loved it."
"So you helped the process along."
"I did nothing different than anyone else in my situation would."
"And how does this all sit with your soul?"
"A soul is something I haven't the luxury of having."
"Oh?"
"I was confined to the nursery in the attic with the black moths as a child. Souls grow for those who are good enough to keep them. My father made sure I was not that person."
"Do you care to elaborate?"
"No."
"Do you have anything else to tell me?"
"No."
"And remorse?"
"Does the lion feel remorse for his kill?"
"I will return tomorrow to serve your spiritual needs. But think through the night about what you have done."
"I am a mad woman, Brother. You will not want to return."
"I return to all those destined for the noose in these cells. I cannot attend you in Carlisle, but I can do my work here."
"Carlisle?"
"Where you will be tried for murder and, if found guilty and no mercy granted, you will be hanged."
He expects some kind of reaction from her, but her face is as still as stone, "If they do not send me back to the asylum."
"I think the likelihood of that is fairly low. Prepare yourself for the harsher sentence."
"Who is to say hanging is the harsher sentence? You have not been confined to these places."
He rises and leaves the cell, Malachi following, "No, not as an inmate. But I have served many who have been there, or who ought to have been, and visited a fair few while they were imprisoned. They are not easy, no, but for those who recover, they are but brief torments and they have the choice to start new after."
She says nothing, so Mr York packs up his pages, returning to the kitchen where Lizzie is busy cooking. Malachi and Brother Morton sit at his dining table and read through his transcription.
"Miss Sharpe is dangerous- more dangerous than her brother," Brother Morton says.
"She stabbed him the day we arrested them."
"Whose version of the story about the baby do you believe?"
Lizzie comes from the kitchen and swipes the pages from in front of them, skimming both.
"Miss, are you sure you should be reading those?"
"Now, Mort, you know Lizzie's been working the prison near her whole life. My girl's more than capable of hearing the details."
She sets Thomas' confession down in front of Brother Morton and points twice to it, nodding. Then she sets down Lucille's and strikes a line across it with her finger, shaking her head.
"She says Thomas' is true, at least about the baby," Malachi says.
"How does she know?"
He looks to Lizzie, "You're going to have to explain, Liz."
She mimes driving a carriage, then pressing her ear to the wood behind her seat.
Mr York fills in, "She was listening when they were on their way here. Thomas said that was when Lucille confessed about the baby. If Lizzie verifies it, then he's telling the truth." She nods, tapping her ear, "That's what she heard."
"Well if Miss Lizzie says she heard it, I believe her," Brother Morton smiles at her, "I just wonder what else either of them are lying about."