The Love Child

“What she needs is her husband safe beside her.”

I thought: Everything is telling me that I must do this. I could save them both.

Surely what happened to me was nothing compared with their future happiness. I must save them both, no matter what it cost me.

I hated this man with an intensity I had never felt before. It was in his power to save my parents, yet to do so he insisted on my utter humiliation. One moment I wished I had never seen him, and then I remembered that if I had not there might not have been even this opportunity of saving my father.

I thought of the tangled web of my life and how one event was so closely interwoven with another. I tried to think of anything but the coming night.

For one thing I was thankful. There would have to be no explanation to my mother.

She would sleep deeply through the night and if she needed anything there was a bell rope by the bed which would bring one of the serving maids to her. I trusted she would not wake and find me missing.

There seemed no fear of that. The doctor had given her a potion which he said would make her sleep, for forgetfulness was what she needed more than anything.

So, as the shadows were falling I put on my cloak and went down to the inn parlour to wait.

I did not wait long. A liveried servant came asking for me, and there was the carriage waiting to take me to my doom.

We rode through the streets of that old city which had been built hundreds of years before when the Romans came to Britain. The streets were full of strangers and there were soldiers everywhere. It was a town of roistering and tragedy, for many a Dorset man would come to a sad end within the next few days. Through the town we went, past the almshouses known as Nappers Mite, past the grammar school founded by Queen Elizabeth, and the old church with its tower which was two hundred years old.

I saw these things as though in a dream. If I save my father, I thought, I shall never want to see this place again. Then I was praying silently for help to get me through this night.

On the edge of the town was a mansion. We turned in at the gates and went up the drive. The house loomed before us-sinister, I thought, like an enchanted dwelling conjured up by evil spirits.

I tried to appear calm as I stepped down and entered the hall.

It was not unlike our hall at Eversleigh-the high vaulted roof, the long refectory table with the pewter utensils on it, the swords and halberds hanging on the wall-a typical baronial mansion.

A woman came forward. She was rotund, middle-aged and heavily painted, with a patch on her cheek and another on her temple.

“We are waiting for you, mistress,” she said. “Please follow me.”

With a heavily beating heart and a warning within me to be prepared for anything terrible and strange which might happen to me, I followed her up a staircase lined with family portraits.

We went along a gallery to a door. I was taken into a room at the end of which was a dais; curtains were half drawn across this.

The curtains were then pulled right back and a serving girl with her sleeves rolled up was waiting there. There was a hip bath and two tall pewter jugs from which rose scented steam. I guessed they contained hot water.

“I am ready, mistress,” said the maid.

The woman who had brought me in nodded. “Fill the bath,” she said; and to me: “Take off your clothes.”

I said: “I don’t understand.”

“You are here to obey orders,” said the woman with a smile, which was the first of the humiliations I was to suffer that night. I saw her in the role for which she was ideally suited; she was a pander, a procuress. I had heard of these matters.

The maid had filled the bath and turned to me giggling. I felt an impulse to turn and run. Then horrible images came into my mind. My father … my mother …

And I knew then that whatever happened to me I must accept because it would be a means of saving them from tragedy.

Time passes. It will be over, I promised myself. Whatever it is I must bear it.

“Come, my dear,” said the woman. She had a deep, hoarse voice like a man’s. “We have not all night.” She laughed and the maid laughed with her.

“There is no need for a bath,” I said. “I am clean.”

“This is the way it is wanted. Are you ashamed to take off your clothes? Are you deformed or something? Oh, come, you look pretty enough to me. Now let us undo these buttons … quietly, gently. We don’t want to pull them off, do we?”

So I was stripped of my clothes.

“Quite commendable,” said the woman. The maid continued to giggle.

I stepped into the bath and washed myself.

The maid stood by with a big towel with which she dried me while the woman stood by smiling.

When I was dry she brought out a bottle of lotion which was rubbed into my skin.

It smelt of musk and sandalwood which I had noticed before and reminded me of Beaumont Granville. The scent was mingled with that of roses.