Whispers in the Dark by Jonathan Aycliffe Read Free Book Online

belonged to the guardians—by which, indeed, she meant herself. And I think she would have kept them, were it not for the fact that she had already stolen the ring and the locket. Such treasures rarely fell to her lot. Sooner than have me make a fuss in a year or two years’ time, she let me take all that was in the chest, in the hope I would have forgotten that the stolen items had ever been there. It was pitifully little, but it seemed like untold wealth to me at the time.
    “May I see my brother before I go?” I asked, for it was more important to me than anything to have a chance to speak with Arthur again. I would leave him the address for which I was bound, and he would make his way there to fetch me as soon as he was sent outside himself.
    “Brother? What brother? Your brother’s gone long ago,” she said.
    Her words hit me like one of the blows she liked to deal out. The blood rushed from my face. I do not know why I did not faint, for the fear I had felt that first moment of her arrival had returned with redoubled force. I was certain for a moment that she meant he was dead.
    “Gone?” It was all I could do to force the question out.
    “Yes, of course. Did you think he’d stay on here forever, maybe just to wait for his big sister? This isn’t a hotel, you know. Our inmates don’t pay for their keep like decent folks. Your brother was found a place and sent to it like any other lad his age.”
    “When? When did he go? How long has he been gone?”
    She bent down over me, bringing her ugly face close to mine, her little red eyes gleaming. I could smell gin on her breath, and vinegar. I could smell the sweat of her body, a dark, humid odor. I wanted to be sick.
    “I have better things to do, miss,” she snarled, “than to stand here all day answering your questions. If you've got any illusions about going back to your old station in life, with maids to wait on you and nurses to wipe your behind, you’d do well to shake them out of your dull head this very moment. If you think it’s been hard on you in here, lass, it’s been nothing to what you’ve got waiting for you on the outside.”
    She straightened up, still leering at me.
    “But I have to know. Arthur—”
    She struck me hard across the face with the back of her hand. I had suffered her pointless violence often enough in the past, but the particular cruelty of that blow has never left me. Wherever she may be now, I hope she is suffering for that blow. God forgive me, but that is what I truly feel, even now, after all these years, as though my cheek were still stinging from the force of it. For if she had told me then what I wanted to know, if she had made it possible for me to follow Arthur, ail that followed might never have happened and he and I, dead or alive, might today be at peace.

    I had a long, cold walk to Dr. Lincott’s house. Mrs. Moss had sent me in my mother’s dress and my mother’s shoes, for my own had grown too small. The shoes were too large for me, but I stuffed some scraps of old paper into them and made do like that for a spell. After less than a mile, my feet began to hurt terribly, and in a short while I was limping. I even started to wish for my old hobnailed boots as though they had been the most stylish footwear imaginable. My clothes and other belongings I carried in the little cloth bag in which mother had brought them to Chester-le-Street. An old woman showed me the way.
    Dr. Lincott’s house was not half so grand as the one in which I had been brought up. But that did not stop me from shaking like a leaf as I came within sight of it. I had seen from a clock that it was very nearly two o’clock, and I was quite certain I would receive a hard welcome, or perhaps even be turned away in spite of everything and forced to make my way back to the workhouse. And all the way I thought of Arthur and that I might never see him again.
    I presented myself at the back door, as I had been told to do. Mrs. Venables, the