The Ripper's Wife(90)
Dreadful sorry, Clementine!
“In a churchyard on a hillside,
There grow roses well entwined,
And some posies amongst the roses,
Flowers for my Clementine.
“Oh my darling, oh my darling,
Oh my darling, Clementine!
You are lost and gone forever,
Dreadful sorry, Clementine!
“In my dreams she still doth haunt me,
Robed in garments soaked in brine.
Though in life I used to hug her,
Now she’s dead, my Clementine.
“Oh my darling, oh my darling,
Oh my darling, Clementine!
You are lost and gone forever,
Dreadful sorry, Clementine!
“Then the miner forty-niner
He began to weep and pine,
For his darling little daughter,
Now he’s with his Clementine.
“Oh my darling, oh my darling,
Oh my darling, Clementine!
You are lost and gone forever,
Dreadful sorry, Clementine!”
As the last notes of his song died away, the world through that little window seemed to shrink to the size of a postage stamp; then everything went black. The last thing I remember thinking, as the prison van swayed and shook over the cobbles, was that Death was rocking me to sleep.
30
Holed up in that dank, dark, icy-walled little cell, sitting huddled, shivering on the floor, with only the clothes on my back—the same black mourning gown I had worn to my trial—I felt like I had already been buried, walled up alive, behind stones so thick no one could hear me scream. Even Sleep had forsaken me. Whenever I lay down, longing for him to come and take me in his comforting arms, I imagined, so vividly I thought my sanity had deserted me too, a sword hanging by a fraying rope dangling over my head. I could not close my eyes and lay there all night tense and alert, every part of my body stiff and aching.
But I was not dead, though I lived every moment in the shadow of death, marking the ever-dwindling eighteen days that stood between me and the gallows. Even for the half hour each afternoon when I was let out to walk in the high-walled prison courtyard, though the sky above me was light and sometimes the sun even shone down on me, I walked in darkness and I walked alone. “My God, why have you forsaken me?” I used to whisper, straining my ears, listening, and hoping for an answer that never came.
My counsel, Sir Charles Russell, the only one who was allowed in to visit me during those dark days, assured me that the world had not forgotten me. He took my hand and said most gallantly, “The friendless lady has more friends than she knows.” There were petitions circulating on both sides of the Atlantic—why, one in London alone had already garnered half a million signatures—beseeching Queen Victoria to spare my life. Every edition of every newspaper was full of vigorous arguments in my favor from doctors and lawyers and just ordinary people who thought my conviction a travesty and grave miscarriage of justice. Pictures appeared depicting me as a frightened and penitent Magdalene, cowering against a wall, with Jesus Christ standing between me and an angry mob led by Judge Stephen, who were ready to stone me, with a caption reading: “He who is without sin amongst you, let him cast the first stone.”
But the days dwindled and passed. I laid out little bits of stone I chipped from the wall to mark their passage—18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 . . .
And every day I kept thinking about that diary, hidden away behind the smiling face of a candy box beauty, tucked safely inside my tapestried trunk. It was now safe with Mama. She’d managed to save it, as I knew she would, even when Michael ordered Battlecrease House stripped and everything—all the furnishings, books, and bric-a-brac, my personal possessions, and even the children’s toys and clothes, so that nothing need ever again touch them that would remind them of me—be sold at public auction.
It had been the unhappy task of Sir Charles to inform me while I was awaiting trial that everything—almost everything—was already gone. Sensation seekers had even gone into a bidding frenzy over my frilly, ribbon-trimmed drawers. But Mama had not failed me; she was the one person I could always count on, and she had managed to save the one thing that mattered—the tapestried trunk. She had even succeeded in saving my Bible, the one I’d had all my life, by sending her own clever maidservant to view the goods prior to auction. She’d substituted another Bible of the same size and color in its stead while another of Mama’s servants created a diversion by falling down in a fit. “I hope the ghoul who would bid upon a falsely condemned woman’s Bible pays two hundred pounds for it!” Mama told me afterward. It actually sold for ￡225. I wonder what Michael spent the money on. Did any of it go to my poor children? Did he spend one penny to provide them with new toys?
Sir Charles told me by the terms of Jim’s will, the one he had written in a fit of anger after tearing his old one up, I was completely cut off and, although I technically remained the beneficiary of Jim’s insurance policies, he had defaulted on the premiums. Now all the power was in Michael’s hands. He could do anything he liked with money or goods and my children’s bodies and souls; he could turn Bobo out to work as a chimney sweep and send Gladys out to skivvy if he wished and no one could stop him. I had no power except . . . if I dared . . . the diary. . . . It was my trump card if I only dared play it. Murder would become execution. The truth would set me free; I had only to tell it.