“Hush! Sister Margaret could return at any moment,” said the girl sitting next to her. The girl’s name was Doris, and she had pimples on her cheeks. She was only fifteen, and rather plump. It was difficult to tell that she had ever wandered the London streets. She looked like any servant girl from Mayfair or Marylebone. “The linens and clothes we sew are bought by charitable women, who buy them to support the society.”
Catherine wondered whether her crooked tea towel, the second she had hemmed that day, would help the society. She rather thought not.
“I have a friend who was here, about a month ago,” she said. “Her name was Molly Keane. Did you know her?”
“You knew Molly?” said the girl to the other side of Catherine. She was thin and sallow, with dark circles under her eyes. Catherine vaguely remembered that her name was Agnes. “Well, I never. Horrible what happened to her, wasn’t it? It’s a lesson on the wages of sin, as Mrs. Raymond always tells us.”
“No chattering!” said Sister Margaret. They had not heard her come in, but she stood in front of them, pursing her mouth, which made it look as though she sucked limes for the fun of it. “Idle chatter is the Devil’s work. Who would like to read to us from Reverend Throckmorton’s sermons?”
And that’s the problem right there, thought Catherine, ignoring the voice of Agnes, droning on about how Jesus had separated the sheep from the goats, and the lesson Reverend Throckmorton had derived from that text. There’s never any time to talk in this damned place. It’s prayers and sermons and work, all day long.
It had not been difficult to join the Magdalen Society. Mrs. Raymond had taken one look at her and assigned her a bed. Although she had said rather sharply, “I hope you understand that we expect all our girls to truly repent, Miss Montgomery.”
“Oh, I will, I promise you,” Catherine had replied. “You don’t know how grateful I am for this opportunity, ma’am. It’s rough on the streets, and after that sailor came at me with the broken bottle, I’d had enough, I can tell you! And my landlady said I wasn’t paid up, so she wouldn’t let me in the boardinghouse. And my da won’t take me back—I’d taint all the other children, he says. All I have is the clothes on my back. I’m grateful you’re willing to take me in.”
“Well, you just behave yourself here,” Mrs. Raymond had said with a frown. Catherine had nodded and signed in the big book, a large leather-bound volume in Mrs. Raymond’s office where girls who had come before her had written their names or made their Xs next to the names written for them. She had signed: Catherine Montgomery. The first thing she would have to do was look at that book. She assumed it contained the names of all the girls who had stayed at the Magdalen Society. Catherine would see if the murdered girls were listed. And then? She wasn’t sure. But whatever she did would have to wait until that night, when everyone was asleep. In the meantime, she had a seam to sew.
DIANA: We were so bored waiting in the house across the street, me and Charlie. Dr. Watson didn’t seem to mind. He read all the newspapers, for mentions of anything unusual, he said. Once, he pointed out that the animals stolen from Lord Avebury’s menagerie were still missing. The search had been going on for a month, but they hadn’t been found. “What do we care about a bunch of animals?” I asked him. But he said any missing animals could have been used to make Beast Men.
CATHERINE: At least you didn’t have to sew seams and listen to Agnes read sermons! Sister Margaret had a whole book of them, by a Reverend Throckmorton, whom she had once met and for whom I’m convinced she had a secret passion. They were about sheep and goats, and the saved and damned, and how one would be saved and the other damned forever. He seemed to have something against goats. . . . After several hours of listening to that, I was ready to rip her throat out!
JUSTINE: It’s not such a bad thing to learn about God. I could not have lived all those years alone if it were not for the spiritual lessons my father taught me before he died. I find it comforting to believe in a divine Father who observes and knows all.
CATHERINE: Oh, spare me! Religion is a tool some men use to control others. I saw that myself on Moreau’s island.
DIANA: What Catherine said. If you had grown up in that damned society . . .
BEATRICE: Please, we’ve had these arguments before. Justine will never convince you, and you will never convince Justine. Cat, go back to your story. Our readers aren’t interested in a theological discussion.
At last, the bells announced that it was time for dinner. An entire day of sitting in an unnatural position doing unnatural work, listening to nonsense . . . Who actually needed tea towels, anyway? Or the horrible pin-tucked children’s smocks the more experienced sewers were making? Not children, who would rather run around naked, like animals or savages. And much healthier it would be for them too!
At tea, Catherine discovered that meals at the Magdalen Society included no meat. Because vegetable matter was healthier, said Reverend Throckmorton—have you ever heard such nonsense? She stared down at what Sister Margaret cheerfully informed her was a vegetable ragout.
“You’re not eating,” said Agnes, who was sitting next to her. “Are you quite all right?”
“I’ve decided to fast,” said Catherine. “Hunger will remind me to repent of my sins.”
“Oh, I understand!” said Agnes. “I felt that way myself, before I found peace and forgiveness for my sins. Those will come to you in time, I promise.”
Catherine looked at her thin, earnest face and wondered what she would taste like. Not much meat on those bones, unfortunately. Doris would be more appetizing.
A girl across the table from her, who could not have been more than twelve or thirteen, looked at her curiously, but when Catherine gave her a hard stare, she looked down again at her own plate.
After dinner there was a lecture, and then more prayers, and finally, finally, the inmates of the Magdalen Society were dismissed and sent to bed. “You’re not in the dormitory,” said Sister Margaret. “Follow Alice. Here’s a work dress for you, which you should wear tomorrow, and a nightgown. It’s been freshly laundered, so it may be damp. Dresses and undergarments are laundered once a week, sheets once a month. If you have any questions, Alice should be able to answer them.”
Alice was the girl who had been sitting across the table from Catherine, the one who had stared at her during dinner. “It’s this way,” she said. She gave Catherine a curious sidelong glance, but did not say anything further. Catherine followed her up a flight of stairs to the third floor. Here there were a number of smaller rooms. Each had been allocated to two girls, who shared one bed. Besides the bed, the room had only a chest of drawers and a single wooden chair. When Catherine saw the narrow bed she would be sharing with Alice, she wondered how she would be able to sneak out at night. Perhaps Alice was a heavy sleeper?
“I could help you, miss,” said Alice. “With those buttons, I mean.”
There were a lot of buttons on the dress she was wearing. She had not considered how she was to undo them.