CHAPTER 35
Clara sat, head bowed, on the dank floor, wearing only her shift and underskirt. The rest of her clothes had been stripped off by her fellow inmates.
The cell door groaned open and the guard stood in the sudden frame of light. "Hoi! I told you to leave 'er be."
"'Tis only 'er clothes," Millicent whined.
"She's got friends, I tell you. Look — they sent’er a basket already."
Clara's eyes snapped open. Tom! He hadn't forgotten her.
"Mine!" Millicent and Grace scuffled forward, hands outstretched and fingers grasping.
"No, no, no! It's’er present. She orter get first dibs." The guard shoved the whores aside and set the basket in Clara's lap. Her hands curled around it protectively, though she knew it would be snatched away from her the minute the door closed.
"What'd they tip you, then, eh Jarman? Somethin' 'andsome?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?" Jarman chuckled as he left.
"Gracie," Millicent breathed. Clara recoiled from the black stink that flowed from her rotten mouth. Even as she turned her head, she registered surprise that she was becoming able to distinguish degrees of foulness. God help her when this hellhole no longer stank!
"A bottle o' tinto, by all me dead 'usbands’ sufferin' souls!"
Millicent's arm plunged into Clara's basket and withdrew a bottle with a long cork. "Ahhhh," she sighed. "'Ere's me lovely."
She took her prize over to the largest heap of straw and pulled the cork with a resounding pop. She sat back against the oozing wall, stretched her legs before her, and took a long draught.
"A cheese! A 'ole cheese! An' bread, Millie, by your 'usbands’!" Grace snatched the largest lump in the basket and retired to her own tuft of straw.
Clara was left alone, mercifully, in the middle of the cell with the basket in her lap. She didn't mind the thefts; on the contrary, she was grateful for the distraction. Her undressers had not been gentle. Her body was bruised and scraped from their pinches and rough hands. She had feared they would strip her stark naked, leaving her to freeze in the night.
She turned her eyes to the basket, letting her vision adjust to the sparse light. She ran her hands over the contents: hard rolls, a sausage, apples, even a napkin. A hearty meal under other circumstances. She couldn't imagine being able to eat in this place. She hoped she wouldn't be here long enough to learn otherwise. She was surprised to find no note. It wasn't like Tom to send her a gift without one of his foolish sonnets to go with it. She smiled bitterly. The sight of his writing, even in light too dim for reading, would have given her some sense of him, some comfort.
She lifted an apple and turned it in her palms. It felt so ordinary, so simple and sane. It didn't belong in this nightmare. She felt a twitch under her thumb and held the apple up to catch the meager light. A worm poked its head out of the wholesome fruit.
That is wrong.
Her Tom would never send her a piece of wormy fruit. He would have examined every apple in the fruiterer's stall, selecting only the most perfect ones for her. And he would have written her a poem comparing her cheeks to apples or, knowing Tom, to leeks, because cheeks rhymes with leeks and he would find no rhyme for apples.
This basket was not from Tom. She knew it in her very soul. Then who had sent it?
She heard a coarse retching from Millicent's corner and saw the bottle fall from the woman's palsied hand as she clutched her throat, writhing in agony. Grace lay sprawled on her back, tongue lolling, the half-eaten cheese on the floor beneath her limp hand.
Poison!
Clara sprang to her feet and began pounding on the door with both clenched fists.