John Wright - Orphans of Chaos

He said in a low voice, “I never seen a girl like you before. Girls like you have boys of their own, whole strings of ’em, young men with straight backs and straight teeth and thick black hair. You think me wrong to’ve carried you off? Course I were wrong. But you’d not of talked to me. Were I s’posed to woo you? Bring you posies? Nawr! If you’d watches on both your two wrists and us standing in the middle of a clock maker’s shop, you’d not of told me the time of day.”

“I might have done,” I said in a quiet little voice. “You didn’t ask.”

I have already mentioned that I do not understand myself, or why I say some things I say. Here I was, apologizing to my would-be rapist, for being too stuck up and high-class.

I think I read somewhere that they call it the “Stockholm syndrome” when girls feel sorry for their own kidnappers.

But I did feel sorry for him. I mean, for goodness sake, Boggin made him chop off his own foot with an axe! How mad was I supposed to stay at him? And for how long? Forever?

“Oi? I didn’t ask, did I? Is that it?” He stepped slightly closer, and still kept my chin between his fingers, tilting my head up. It was not as if I were able to raise my hands to push him away. I was scared, and taking faster-than-normal breaths in through my nose. I could feel the stiff silky fabric of the bodice cupping my breasts tightly as my chest rose and fell.

“Miss Windrose—or mightn’t I call you Amelia, seeing as how we been close—?” he said, tilting his head slightly down.

Miss Daw, whom I had almost forgotten was there, said in her silver voice, “That would not be appropriate.”

Well, thanks a bunch, Daw. Here she was supposed to be protecting me. How come she was letting my ex-kidnapper stand there toying with my chin?

I could not nod much of a nod, but I twitched my head back a little bit, and sort of dropped my eyelashes. He was staring at my lips, but he must have seen that tiny motion, and he took that as a nod.

“Amelia—” (he pronounced it with a burr, so it sounded like “Ah, Melia”) “—Ah, Melia, what were I suppose to ask you, eh? What were I suppose to be able to give you, a man like me, what has nothing?”

“Freedom,” I said. “Help free me. Help my friends.”

He stared for a moment, stepping back. His eyes wandered over me, caressing my hair, my eyes, lips, chin, shoulders. His gaze lingered for a time on my breasts, then came to rest on my hands, which seemed so small and white compared to his, folded (as if demurely) in front of me. A moment more he spent drinking in the sight of my legs, ankles, my feet.

I finally understood the purpose of high-heeled shoes. They are not just meant to retroflex your knees, extend your legs, and make you callipygous. They also make you look like you’re standing on tiptoes, like a little girl reaching for a jar of sweets on a too-high shelf.

A delicate little girl. One who can’t run away.

He said, “Free you? Would you sell your body to your jailor to buy the jailhouse key, Ah, Melia? That would make you a right whore, then, wouldn’t it? Nar. You’d ne’er come to me of your free will, Ah, Melia, for you’d have to hold your nose to of done it. To lower yourself. And I’ll not have you lower yourself. You wouldn’t be worth the taking, then.”

I said, “Hold it. That doesn’t make any sense. If…”

He put his hand on the loose hanging ‘U’ of chain depending between the ceiling and my neck, and tugged it. I wobbled unsteadily, started to fall, and sat back down on the stool somewhat more forcefully than I would have liked, even though Miss Daw put her hands on my arms to guide me back down.

I sat down hard enough to make my bottom sting, and it reminded me rather too much of Boggin’s thorough spanking. The sensation of humiliation, of being pushed around, was too much the same. Tears came to my eyes.

Glum was looking down at me with something like awe on his face, as if I were a goddess. I think he thought I was crying for him.

He said, “I’d never let you go. I’d never free you. You’re too fine. You’re gold, you are. If I could carry the sunlight in my poke, I would not let it up, either, but I’d hale it back down to my house below the waves, where all is but murk and filth and gloom, and my house would be the one bright one, and you the one bright thing in it.”

Mrs. Wren, from the door, called out, “Time to walk or hop away, old crab, old five-toe, old Ahab. There is no more for you to see here! Come! Or must granny get her doll and fishhook out?”

Mr. Glum did not argue, but put his hoe under his armpit like a crutch, and hopped and stumped backward and out of the cell, never taking his eyes from me.

I sat on the stool, shaking.

Miss Daw brought out a key ring, and began unlocking the cuffs and leg-irons and belly-chain. She had to pause and puzzle over the locks every now and again; she did not seem as adept at prison matron work as Twitchett. Perhaps it was because Twitchett was Catholic.

The huge, heavy collar stayed on.

Miss Daw took out a cotton ball and some cream in a bottle to wipe my face clear of makeup.

I said to her, “Is that it? You brought him by to look at me. Just him? Just to look? Is that it?”

Miss Daw started daubing my cheeks clean of blush.

I said, “Two hours of making up for two minutes of being looked at by a man?”

Miss Daw said, half to herself, “Now you have had your first lesson in what it is like to be a real grown-up woman in a man’s world, my dear. We are judged by our looks, and men are not.”

“Why? Why was Glum brought here? Why all the chains? Am I some sort of prize to be given to Mr. Glum for his good behavior?”

No answer.

I said, “Am I supposed to seduce him? Were you doing this to mock him, or to make me feel bad, or as part of some spell or some scheme, or… what the hell was the point of that?”

“Please be careful with your language, Miss Windrose.” And she wiped my mouth to carry away the lipstick. It was almost as effective as Mr. Glum’s gag in silencing me.

But when she started daubing the powder off with a small sponge, I spoke again: “Why? Why, Miss Daw? Why should I be careful? Or else you might chain me up and paint me up and put me in a nightie and have Glum come by to ogle me?”

“It is not a nightie.”

“What kind of dress has underthings sewn in?”

“I am given to understand that it is used by ladies of the theater.”

“You mean ladies of the evening, don’t you?”

I have never seen her blush before. The perfect Miss Daw, always so polite, so distant and restrained, had red crawl into her cheeks, and she could not raise her eyes.

I said, “You were just taunting him, weren’t you? Using me to taunt him.”

Miss Daw did not answer that, but said instead, “Swear words, when used in vain, sometimes create echoes in over-space. The thought-energy creates a space-distortion effect, and decreases the distance between this plane of space-time and those achronic entities whom we call Furies, whose business it is to harass and torment the wicked.”

“Define ‘wicked.’ What do you call people who dress up girls and tie them up, in order to sexually arouse men old enough to be their grandfathers?”

She did not answer but curtly told me to close my eyes while she wiped mascara from my eyelids.

With my eyes closed, I tried to look in the direction she mentioned, toward hyperspace. I could see nothing, sense nothing. I could not remember what the other directions looked like, or where they were.

She washed my face with warm, soapy water, and a towel. While she did, my eyes still closed, I tried and tried to look.