The Misbegotten by Katherine Webb Read Free Book Online

Lice crawled in all the seams and Alice pinched a flea that had landed on her arm, crushing it with her thumbnail. The discarded clothes were thrown into the fire, and the two women stared mutely at Starling’s naked body for a minute.
    ‘Saints preserve us,’ Bridget muttered, and for the first time Starling saw pity in the older woman’s eyes. They were looking at the scars and bruises all over her body. Alice put out soft fingers and traced the length of one wound, which had left an angry red welt from Starling’s bony left shoulder to the bottom of her hollow ribs. Frowning, Alice turned her. Her back bore the diagonal slashes of having been beaten with a cane or thong. Old scars beneath newer ones, crisscrossing; a cobweb of injury that would haunt the skin for ever. The backs of her thighs had marks that looked like splodges, raised and shiny. ‘These are burns, for certain,’ said Bridget, and Starling felt the woman’s rough fingers examining her. The touch made her shiver, and goose pimples scattered over her damaged skin.
    After a while, Alice turned her to face them again; there were tears in her eyes, but she smiled. Bridget wore a thunderous scowl, and Starling shied away from her.
    ‘Well,’ said Alice breathlessly. ‘You are quite safe from whoever treated you this way here, Starling. Whoever your people were, we are your people now. Isn’t that right, Bridget?’ Bridget chewed at her bottom lip as if reluctant to answer, but then she said:
    ‘There was never a child so wicked that it deserved such punishment. I’ve a balm of rosehips and apple that will help soothe those scars. Once she’s clean.’ She went out of the kitchen towards the still room, and Alice smiled at Starling, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
    ‘See, there – Bridget has a sharp tongue and a hard way about her, but underneath it all her heart is like butter, and quite easy to melt. In you get.’
    The water in the tub was soon dark with dirt. Alice soaped her all over and rubbed her with the cloths, ignoring the stiff brush, much to Starling’s relief. Her hair took the longest time. It was snarled up in knots and rat tails, caked with mud and filth. There were burrs caught up in it, and twigs and pieces of hay. Alice worked through it with her fingers, soaped it, combed it out as gently as she could, until eventually it was clean. Great clumps of it came loose and floated around in the soapy water like spiders. The winter sun shone in through the window, and when Bridget came back into the kitchen she paused.
    ‘Such a colour! Who’d think it, under all that grime?’
    ‘What colour is it?’ Alice asked, tipping her head this way and that as though to see better.
    ‘Much the same as that copper kettle, and the fire it’s sitting over.’
    ‘Oh, how lovely! Alas, to my eyes it is only brown,’ said Alice. Starling tipped her head curiously at Alice.
    ‘Well, she looks far more like a little girl now, and a bit less like a muckworm,’ said Bridget, nodding in approval.
    As it dried, Starling’s hair sprang up into loose curls which seemed to delight Alice all the more. They sat in the parlour, a grander room than Starling had ever seen, though the furniture was plain and faded, and the floor of bare stone. Starling was clothed in an old dress of Alice’s, which was too big and trailed on the floor behind her. The woollen stockings were too big as well, and crept down to rumple around her ankles. Her feet were stuffed into leather slippers, tied on with string.
    ‘And now she’s a scarecrow again,’ said Bridget, and Alice chuckled.
    ‘Only for a little while. Only until we can get her some clothes of her own. We’ll go to market on Thursday, and find some cloth. Bridget can stitch you some dresses, and when you’re bigger, you’ll fit into my old things just fine.’
    ‘Your outgrown dresses might fit her in time, but they’re too fine for a servant. She’ll have to have others.’
    ‘A