Chapter 1 – Under Juno's Watchful Eyes
Rome, the Kalends of March, in the reign of Antoninus Pius
The first crimson streaks of dawn had only just brushed the tiled roofs of the Palatine when Aurelia stirred, a wave of queasiness rolling through the cradle of her swollen belly. She lay for a moment in the hush that precedes a Roman morning, letting her gaze drift across the coffered ceiling of the cubiculum she shared—more in theory than in daily reality—with her absent husband. The cedar-smoke of the night lamp still hovered, and somewhere in the peristyle a single thrush was rehearsing its tentative spring song. Today was Matronalia, the festival of Juno Lucina, patroness of childbirth, and every fiber in Aurelia's aching body told her she must rise before the household woke, bathe, dress, and join the river of matrons climbing the hill to the goddess's temple.
She pressed a palm to the place just beneath her ribs where the child—her child, no matter what the men called the babe once it emerged—nudged in a rhythm that felt impatient and oddly curious. "Soon, little one," she whispered, and the words fogged the cool air. Somewhere beyond the shuttered windows she heard the muted clatter of the kitchen slaves coaxing flames to life. The villa itself still dreamed, but the world outside was already assembling its noises—distant wheels over stone, a mule's bray, a vendor singing the virtues of fresh olives to a street still smeared with night.
Aurelia eased her feet to the floor, gritting against the tug in her back. Pregnancy, her mother had once told her, was the price the gods exacted for the privilege of shaping Rome's future. She remembered nodding dutifully, fourteen and wide-eyed, unable then to imagine the bruising weight of that "privilege." Now, expecting her third child and mindful of the tiny marble urn that held her infant son's ashes in the household shrine, Aurelia found the word privilege tasted of iron. Yet she would walk to Juno's temple today; she would pray as every Roman mother prayed—begging, bargaining, promising—because to do otherwise felt like stepping unarmed into battle.
Livia, her gray-haired midwife and the steadiest voice in Aurelia's life since childhood, arrived just as Aurelia struggled with the fibula pin of her ivory stola. "If you'd rung the hand-bell I could have pinned that, domina," Livia chided, softening the rebuke with a smile that folded her olive skin into familiar creases.
"I can fasten a brooch without summoning half the villa," Aurelia insisted, though she allowed Livia to settle the mantle's pale edge over her shoulders. The fabric smelled faintly of hyacinth petals—her mother-in-law's doing, no doubt, for it was Octavia who dictated that patrician women in public must appear unsullied even by the mild musk of sleep.
"Your feet are already swollen," Livia murmured, glancing downward. "The walk to Juno's hill is long. Let me fetch the chair bearers."
Aurelia shook her head. "On Matronalia I walk. The goddess hears steps better than groans carried by slaves." It was something her own mother had whispered years ago, and repeating it now felt like a talisman.
Livia accepted the decision with a tilt of her head and produced a cup of warm goat's milk flavored with honey. Aurelia drank, wincing at the sweetness—another of Livia's tricks to settle nausea—and then allowed herself to be guided through the peristyle. The colonnade's shadowy pools of lantern light framed her favorite hour: that slender space when the night's hush still lingered, yet the first lares offerings already flickered before painted ancestral faces. She paused to pour a splash of milk onto the hearth's embers, murmuring a plea to Vesta for steady legs.
Only when she stepped onto the stone portico did the chill strike her. Rome in early March was capricious; dawn's breath nipped like a scorned cat, but the promise of a mild day shimmered beyond. Aurelia gathered her mantle and nodded to the two household guards who would walk a discreet pace behind. Then Livia, short of stature but unflagging, opened the villa's bronze-ringed door, and Aurelia stepped into the awakening capital.
The streets near the Forum already throbbed with life. Smoke spiraled from brazier vendors crusting bread dough on iron griddles; donkeys clopped under baskets of early roses destined for Juno's altar; and everywhere, women in winter-weight stolas moved in purposeful clusters. Some carried wriggling infants wrapped against the cold, others shepherded solemn little boys clutching wooden swords—miniature Marses who would one day defend Roma.
Aurelia kept one hand cradled below her belly, as though the jostling might dislodge her fragile cargo. She felt the curious stares of younger matrons who recognized her silk and the golden hairpins marking her rank. Among them she also glimpsed women whose tunics were patchworked, whose sandals were rawhide thongs, yet who lifted their chins with the same brittle hope: that Juno Lucina would open her hands to them, that the goddess would not demand another toll of blood and tears.
Near the Fountain of Juturna Aurelia's pace faltered. A memory sliced through—the same corner where, two springs earlier, she had walked with little Marcus swaddled in lamb's wool, proud to show him Rome's flowery riot. By the following winter he had sickened, his breath rattling like papyrus in wind. Marcus the younger had left her arms after only nine months, and Aurelia still woke some nights certain she felt his tiny fingers on her collarbone. She inhaled sharply now. Livia's fingers brushed her elbow. "Steady, my lady" the midwife whispered.
They resumed, and at last the marble stairs of the temple loomed—step upon step flanked by laurel wreaths and fluttering ribbons of dynasty colors. Aurelia's mother-in-law awaited, resplendent in amethyst trim. Octavia's sharp eyes swept over Aurelia, noting the faint pallor, and her lips compressed. Not for the first time Aurelia wondered whether Octavia prayed more fervently for a healthy grandchild or for the status a male infant would secure.
Ceremony unfurled with ritual precision. A chorus of acolytes intoned hymns older than the Republic; incense coiled around the temple's skylight like an invisible net. Aurelia knelt on stone smoothed by generations of hopeful mothers and offered her garland of myrtle and white lilies—tokens for Juno, tokens for survival. When her turn came to approach the altar, she found her voice vibrated like a lyre string.
"Juno Lucina," she prayed, "whatever this child's form, grant it breath. Grant me the strength to meet your trial. If you must measure me, measure me by love, not by the counting of sons." Her words startled even herself; they were less petition than challenge, but the statue's marble eyes only gazed forward, inscrutable.
A priestess tapped Aurelia's shoulder, pressing a thin strip of purple-dyed wool into her palm. "For safe delivery," the woman said. "Keep it beneath your pillow." Aurelia curled the offering in her fist and, still kneeling, bowed until her forehead met the cool stone. Somewhere behind, Octavia murmured the formal family plea for a strong male heir. Aurelia stood when bidden, but her heart thrummed with a different rhythm—one that recognized, in that moment, her own quiet rebellion.
The walk home took longer; exhaustion seeped into Aurelia's hips. By the time the villa's gates closed behind her, sunlight had minted bright coins across the peristyle pool. Claudia, her two-year-old whirlwind, squealed from the portico and barreled forward on chubby legs, bare curls bouncing. Aurelia bent—awkward with belly and stiffness—to catch the little girl, inhaling the scent of figs on her daughter's breath.
"Mama!" Claudia crowed, patting the mound beneath the stola. "Baby!"
"Yes, love," Aurelia laughed, though the movement jarred her ribs. "The baby walked all the way to Juno and back."
"Hungry," Claudia announced, untroubled by the mysteries of gods.
"Then let us find something worthy of a pilgrim's appetite," Aurelia declared. She handed her mantle to a waiting servant and carried Claudia to the triclinium, ignoring Livia's silent command to rest first.
Midday unfolded in domestic choreography. Aurelia tasted the stewed lentils simmering for the household meal, adjusted the coriander, and praised the cook—an elderly Greek who beamed as though awarded a triumph. She conferred with the steward about the week's olive oil ration, dictated a letter of thanks to a cousin who had sent Egyptian cotton for baby linens, and reviewed the accounts; a senator's wife might not speak in the Forum, but she could keep figures as sharply as any publican. Throughout, her back ached, yet the steady tick of tasks provided a soothing metronome that subdued her temple-born anxieties.
It was only when Claudia's nurse whisked the child away for a nap that Aurelia felt the room's weight tilt. Livia appeared instantly. "You will lie down," she ordered, not as a suggestion.
Aurelia conceded, retreating to a shaded chamber where a low couch awaited. "Just an hour," she bargained, but exhaustion claimed her quicker than speech. In that hazy liminal space between waking and sleep, she dreamed: Marcus sat at the foot of her bed with ink-stained fingers, scribbling something on a scroll. Each time she tried to read, the letters rearranged into tiny swords, and the swords into the fragile bones of a sparrow. She woke gasping, hand pressed to her belly as if shielding the child from her own imagination.
A silken afternoon drifted through the shutters. Aurelia sat at her writing desk, penning a response to Marcus's latest letter—delivered that morning by imperial courier but left unread until now. Her husband wrote in the formal style of the Senate even when addressing her: report of a grain levy dispute in Sicily, a polite line inquiring after "your health and the progress of our heir," and a reminder to light a votive at the family shrine each evening. No mention of longing, no teasing recollection of the poetry they once recited in secret. Marriage, Aurelia understood, was a ledger of alliances.
Still, she dipped the reed pen and crafted words that bridged the miles with grace: The household prospers beneath your father's steady oversight. Claudia learns her letters; she traced the curve of alpha today with astonishing seriousness. The babe grows restless and strong—your mother feels certain it is a boy. The last sentence tasted of copper, yet she wrote it, sealing the lie with a final flourish.
She set the scroll aside to dry and moved to the courtyard loom, where unspooled skeins of wool awaited her evening solace. The loom stood taller than Claudia, its wooden frame worn smooth by decades of female hands. Aurelia slid onto the stool, guiding deep-dyed purple threads through the warp—a ripple of color against cream that would border the infant blanket. The shuttle clicked, clicked, clicked, and each pass drew taut the private vow that underpinned her days: I will swaddle this child in something woven from my own will. I will bind us together in every strand.
The courtyard filled with the hush of industry. From an adjoining portico rose the odor of beeswax as a servant polished bronze figurines; somewhere a lute rehearsed a scale. Claudia, newly awake, trotted in chasing the tabby kitten that had adopted the household. She skidded to a halt beside the loom.
"Purple!" she exclaimed, eyes wide.
"Yes," Aurelia said, "imperial purple. Do you know why?"
Claudia shook her curls.
"Because purple is rare and precious." Aurelia drew the child onto her lap, guiding tiny fingers to feel the woven edge. "And what is rare and precious must be protected."
Claudia considered this with solemn toddler logic, then brightened. "I'm purple?" she asked, and giggled at her own silliness.
"More than purple," Aurelia said, kissing the top of Claudia's head. "You are worth all the colors in the world."
The kitten leaped onto the warp, tangling itself in threads. Livia appeared with perfect timing, clucking at the animal and lifting it free. "Enough weaving. Light fades." She fixed Aurelia with a stare that brooked no argument. "Your feet have doubled since morning."
Aurelia sighed but yielded. She had learned through painful lessons that ignoring Livia's practical counsel invited trouble. Together they walked—slowly—toward the sleeping quarters.
Dusk settled like silk over the villa. Oil lamps flickered in niches, illuminating frescoes of Venus cradling Aeneas's infant son—images of mothers saving futures. Aurelia reclined on a couch in her private study, legs propped upon cushions soaked with vinegar water to ease swelling. Livia massaged her calves with saffron-scented oil while reciting in low tones a recipe from Soranus for easing uterine strain.
When the slave withdrew, Aurelia leafed through a slender volume of Ovid she kept hidden beneath scrolls of household accounts. Her father had taught her letters— a radical kindness—and his voice lingered in her memory when she reached the line where the weaver Philomela turned trauma into tapestry. Aurelia traced the margin, thinking how women's stories survived not in marble stelae but in fabric, in lullabies, in whispered advice passed by firelight.
A rap at the door interrupted. A servant offered a slim wooden tube—another letter, this one from Marcus's mother, delivered within the household by a trembling hand as though it bore a sentence. Aurelia unfurled the tablet.
Daughter, Octavia's script declared, I have arranged for the soothsayer Lucius to read the omens of the household this Saturn's day. Your presence is expected. The astrologer returns favorable signs of a male star. Continue your piety, for Rome thrives when its matrons fulfill their most sacred duty.
Aurelia's pulse thudded. She pictured Octavia lighting perfumed filaments before the lararium, reciting lineage like an accountant tallying debits and credits: two granddaughters, one vanished grandson, one unborn liability in Aurelia's womb. She folded the message without comment, yet the parchment seemed to scald her fingertips.
Night had fully dropped by the time she entered Claudia's small chamber. Moonlight latticed through shutters across the child's cot. Claudia stirred, eyes blinking at the shadows. "Mama sing," she breathed.
Aurelia lay beside her daughter, drawing the half-finished purple blanket across them both. In the hush she began a lullaby her own mother had borrowed from a shepherdess:
Dormi, dormi, mea stella,
Dream over hills where poppies sway,
Threads of gold will guard your sleep
Till dawn unspools the day.
Claudia's lids fluttered shut; her thumb found her mouth. Aurelia continued humming even after breath evened into slumber. She watched the moon's path glide along the ceiling mosaic—tiny tesserae forming Orion, the hunter who pursued but never caught.
She thought of Marcus, camped somewhere beyond Capua with senatorial envoys, arguing grain tariffs while she measured nights in the rise and fall of a toddler's chest. She thought of the unborn baby stretching skin around her ribs. Most fiercely, she thought of the soft weight of the purple wool weaving her present to her children's future.
At last her voice dwindled to a hum, and the villa stilled. Yet her mind, like a spindle spun by unseen hands, revolved onward. She pictured Juno's altar, lilies browning in the torchlight, and wondered whether the goddess had heard the raw kernel of her plea: Measure me by love.
Outside, Rome slept under constellations unwavering and ancient. Inside, Aurelia the matron, the mother, the anxious mortal, lay awake. Her hand rested upon the curve of impending arrival, fingers splayed as though to map stars beneath the skin. She did not pray aloud this time. Instead, she listened—to her own heartbeat echoing through two bodies, to Claudia's small snores, to the almost imperceptible rustle of the loom thread where it hung over a chair back like captured twilight.
In that weaving-room silence she felt—not certainty, but possibility—whisper against her thoughts: that perhaps strength could bloom not from delivering a son, but from delivering love woven tight enough that no edict, no expectation, could unravel it. With that improbable comfort tucked against her ribs, Aurelia closed her eyes. Before sleep finally claimed her, she imagined tomorrow's shuttle darting across wool, each beat of its passage binding past to future, mother to child, hope to fear, in a tapestry the world was not prepared to read—but that she would weave all the same.
Chapter 2 – Smoke on the Thames Wind
London, February 1905 – two years since the horse-drawn hearse bore John O'Shaughnessy from Whitechapel to the City cemetery, and winter refuses to loosen its gray fist.
The bell in St Saviour's belfry had not yet tolled five when Maggie O'Shaughnessy's eyes snapped open in the half-light. She did not wake because she was rested—sleep nowadays clung to her for no more than a cat-nap between freight-trains of worry—but because the air inside Number 10, Whitby Court, possessed a precise texture she had come to recognize: a damp, metallic chill that crawled across cracked plaster right before dawn, chilling the water jug and tightening the baby's cough. It was, in its way, a clock.
For a moment she lay absolutely still on the lumpy mattress, pallet really, listening. One floor down a toilet chain clanged; two floors up a man barked a curse at a coughing wife; in the alley outside, costermongers jolted their carts into motion, iron rims crunching over frozen muck. Beneath it all, faint but inevitable, came the drone of the city's earliest mill whistles carried on wind from the river: one from the biscuit works, two from the match factory, another from the steam laundry that hired only orphans and the half-blind. They called and answered like mournful geese in fog.
Maggie's first thought, every single morning since John's accident sheared him from her life, was whether she had enough time before Nellie woke. For if there were ten minutes left she could lie there under the threadbare quilt and imagine—forbidden luxury—what it would feel like not to rise into hunger. But the squeak beside her made the decision; Nellie, ten months old, issued a drowsy fret that would, within seconds, bloom into wail.
Maggie shifted, careful not to jostle the tiny bundle too briskly, and drew the child against her breast. Her fingertips brushed the baby's cheek—a cheek already chapped by coal-soot drafts—while her other hand sought the tin cup of water left from the night. She sipped, then offered a dampened fingertip to Nellie to tease the gums and buy herself a minute's peace.
In that whispered sliver of time Maggie performed a silent inventory: three pennies in the teapot, four shirtwaists finished and folded neat as altar cloths in yesterday's newspaper, half a coal shovel in the scuttle, quarter loaf gone stale, a pint of diluted milk turned bluish by extra water she dare not admit adding. Rent six shillings overdue. Mrs Pritchett the landlady would send her runner today, she was certain; the man always came on Fridays, rapped the door with a nickel-knobbed stick and smiled as though decency were a childish fad.
"Up we get, poppet." Her voice was roughened by sleep and a chronic black-fog cough, but she forced brightness into the syllables. She lifted Nellie, swaddled her in the shawl that had once been Maggie's mother's, and pressed nose to tiny curls smelling faintly of lamp-oil. The baby's eyelids fluttered open; blue as gin-bottles but ringed by the gray shadows cast by East End air.
Nellie gurgled—half greeting, half complaint—and Maggie's heart, so burdened with sums and lateness, lifted a little. Love was a stubborn weed; it sprouted even in cracks between cobbles coated in coal dust.
She tucked the shawl ends, braced Nellie on one hip, and swung her legs from the mattress to the chill of frayed linoleum. Her boots lay where she had kicked them free hours earlier—the leather cracked but serviceable. A single sooty candle stub in a chipped saucer provided light enough to navigate the cramped room: mattress against one wall, rickety table pressed beneath the window, sewing machine perched on a crate, and in the far corner the cheap pine cradle John had painted white the week before his final shift.
Maggie's gaze snagged on the photograph above the cradle. She did not have to study it; the image was etched on her brain's underside. Still, each dawn she looked. John at twenty-five, thick hair slicked back, his broad shoulders squashed by the studio's oval frame, eyes bright with the reckless certainty of men who believe time fears them. Herself beside him, cheeks pleasantly full, corset laced but not punishing, one gloved hand resting atop his. That hand, she remembered, had been trembling; the photographer had mistaken its quiver for girlish nerves, never knowing it was the tremor of a baker's daughter who'd just married a boiler stoker, uncertain of soot and Sundays but wholly convinced of love.
She kissed two fingers, pressed them to the glass.
Wind rattled the single windowpane. There would be snow again by night, she guessed. February liked to linger in London, a paying guest who stretched tea leaves twice and stole the bedwarmer.
By half-past five, Maggie had bound her hair in a kerchief, buttoned a secondhand coat over her thin blouse, and wheedled Nellie into swallowing four ounces of watery milk thickened with a spoonful of barley water. It felt heavier on Maggie's conscience than it did in Nellie's belly; yet the child cooed contentedly enough, banging her wooden spoon against the enamel basin in triumphant percussion.
Maggie set her daughter inside the hollow of an old market basket padded by the shawl, jammed her own hat—black felt, veil long lost—on crooked, and drew a breath that whistled in her sternum. "Come along, lovey," she murmured. "Mama's got shirts to deliver."
Then the shirts—four immaculate white shirtwaists, each cuff hemmed in goosefoot stitch, each mother-of-pearl button secured by four twists—were cradled in brown paper and tucked beneath her free arm. To damp they must never succumb: a grease smear could halve her payment; a single coal speck, doom the entire batch. She readjusted the baby basket on her right hip, opened the door with her elbow, and stepped into the corridor.
Whitby Court's stairwell smelled of boiled cabbage, chamber pot vinegar, and paraffin. The wooden treads sagged; each creaked in a minor key. Maggie descended quickly, avoiding the third step that split last autumn, and paused on the landing outside Mrs Klein's room to listen for coughing. Nothing. Good—maybe little Otto's pneumonia had eased.
At street level she nodded to old Mr Greaves, the night watchman, who dozed on a stool barricading the entrance. He startled upright, tipping his cap. "Early, Mrs O'Shaughnessy."
"Morning," she replied, and pushed into Spitalfields air.
Dawn had not yet brightened the horizon; shades of smoky mauve hovered between chimney tops. London's East End, even at rest, churned: drays clattered past, hooves striking sparks; newsboys rehearsed headlines they would shout once printing presses spat out fresh broadsheets; and over everything, the brewery's yeasty tang mingled with the tanner's acrid fumes so thoroughly one could hardly remember meadow grass ever existed.
Maggie walked briskly, the basket bumping her hip in steady rhythm, mindful of the shirtwaists' pressed folds. Her destination lay three streets west: Mrs Harrow's Modiste, a haberdashery of the kind that advertised "French Finery at Belfast Prices" yet relied on women like Maggie to keep needles flashing through cheap calico long after gaslights dimmed. At the corner of Cable Street she overtook two factory girls, scarves drawn tight, gossiping about a foreman whose "hands were octopus's." Maggie kept her chin tucked, eyes forward. She was their senior by a decade; still, shame prickled—not because she was older, but because they had jobs with predictable wages whilst she wrestled coins from piecework.
The shop's backdoor, narrow as a priest's confession booth, was already ajar. Maggie ducked inside the starch-scented gloom. A single gas jet hissed above the sorting table where Miss Lettice, Mrs Harrow's thin-lipped clerk, sat tallying garment packets with the severity of a customs officer.
"You're late," Lettice snapped without glancing up.
"It's quarter to six," Maggie answered, placing her bundle on the scarred counter.
"I said Thursday by close of business yesterday."
Maggie bit her cheek. She had, in fact, stitched until her eyes burned raw, but Nellie's midnight croup fit cost her an hour. "Rough night for the baby, miss. But the seams are immaculate. You'll see."
Lettice sighed as though the plight of infants inconvenienced commerce. With a bone-point awl she flicked open the paper, inspected each garment minutely, sniffing cuffs, pinching pleats, tugging thread ends. Maggie's stomach knotted; waiting for verdict felt like balancing on an ice floe.
"Buttons secure. No staining." Lettice's tone grudging. "But stitch density on the underarm gusset is heavy. Wasted thread."
"A stronger seam for wear," Maggie explained gently.
"A heavier seam for cost," Lettice corrected, scrawling a figure in her ledger. She slid two tarnished shillings across the wood.
Two shillings: for sixty hours of sewing, subtracting threepence she'd spent on coal to keep fingers from freezing stiff. She closed her fist around the coins. Pride would have her argue. Hunger shoved pride aside.
"Next batch Saturday. Twenty shirtwaists," Lettice said, already turning to other packages.
Twenty. Maggie's heart sank. She would manage—they would have to eat. "Yes, miss," she murmured, bobbed her head. Nellie, half asleep in the shawled basket, stirred. Maggie slipped out before more could be demanded.
Outside, the city was throwing back its blanket of darkness; gutter gaslights winked out; a smear of pink bled through coal haze above the docks. Maggie paused in a side alley, leaned against soot-rough brick. Two shillings. Enough for rent? Not remotely. Enough for coal and bread and doctor if the cough worsened? Absurd. Tears blurred the brickwork. Maggie allowed them five seconds—counting softly—then swiped them away with the back of her glove.
"Keep going, for Nellie," she whispered, a mantra so often repeated it felt carved on her ribs.
She shifted the basket, exhaled clouds of warm breath that vanished into morning hollows, and turned toward the public pump.
Most households in Whitby Court shared two outdoor pumps, one at each alley mouth. By six, a queue snaked along the kerb: women wrapped in shawls, men's cast-off coats, boots stuffed with paper to dam winter leaks. Children too young for school but old enough to balance tin pitchers stamped their numb feet. On frigid days like this, the pump handle's iron stuck to skin unless you spit first.
Maggie joined the back, baby basket at her feet, galvanized-iron pail clutched in gloved hands. A woman ahead—Annie Brown, freckled, no more than twenty yet already mother to two—turned with a thin smile. "Mornin', Mags. Ooh, little Nellie's cheeks ruddy as apples. Fancy that."
Maggie returned the smile. Conversation, even light, felt like coal tossed on dying embers of her spirit. "Morning, Annie. How's your Alf?"
"Still hacking like a donkey, poor love. Doctor says his lungs've blackened from the looms. But we'll manage." Annie's mouth formed brave shapes, though her eyes slid to the end of the queue where the workhouse warden sometimes came, scouting families on the brink.
"Manage we must," Maggie said. She bounced Nellie gently as the child groped for her mother's curls. "Heard tell the match factory's hiring," she added, aiming for casual but hungering for details.
Annie nodded. "Threepence ha'penny a gross, they say. Girls lose teeth from the phossy, but 'tis wages." She lifted one shoulder—shrug or shiver? "I might try for evenings if Mother can mind our youngest."
Maggie weighed the risk; phosphorus necrosis—phossy jaw—gnawed bone from within. Yet the rent agent cared little for molars. She hugged Nellie closer; the baby squeaked protest at the tightness.
"Next!" the pump steward barked.
Women shuffled. Maggie's turn arrived. She spat on the iron handle—one learned quickly—and pumped. Water gushed, icy and smelling faintly of rust. Each heave stabbed her shoulders. The pail filled; she eased it down, muscles quivering.
As she moved aside, Annie laid a hand on Maggie's sleeve. "If you need oat gruel for the babe, I've extra. Come by."
The offer stung more than it soothed; Maggie's instinct was to refuse. Yet she saw the genuine intent in Annie's earnest face. "You're kind," she replied. "We're managing, but thank you."
Annie's gaze flitted to Nellie. "She's a little darling. Hold tight to her."
"I do," Maggie whispered.
The trek back to Whitby Court taxed her. Pail sloshing against knees, baby fussing, shirtwaist payment jangling in her pocket like coins mocking their own insignificance. Snowflakes began to fall—tiny ash-white flecks that melted on pavement steaming from sewer grates. By the time she squinted at her building's soot-caked brick, Nellie's fuss escalated to full wail.
Inside, the corridor smelled of wet wool and rat poison. Mrs Pritchett's runner—thin lad with pox scars—waited outside Maggie's door, tapping the nickel-knobbed stick against his boot. Upon seeing her he placed a folded paper on the threshold and loped downstairs without a word.
"No," Maggie breathed. The pail thudded onto floorboards. She scooped the paper. Notice to Quit, typeface bold as gallows irons. Rent arrears: six shillings ninepence. Seven days to vacate or face bailiff seizure of goods. Goods—that word almost made her laugh; she owned nothing bailiffs prized.
Tears rose, hot and sudden, blurring the print. Nellie hiccoughed, sensing distress. Maggie pressed the notice flat against her chest as though to crush it, then tucked it between pages of the dog-eared Bible on the mantel. The Book of Psalms embraced many laments; one more could not hurt.
She set Nellie in the cradle, boiled what water remained from the pump atop her single-wick stove, and measured out two handfuls of oats—half of what she had. When the porridge thickened, she lifted the pan from the flame, blew across its skin, and spooned out the baby's portion first. Only then did she scrape the saucepan sides for her own mouthfuls. They stuck in her throat like wet ashes.
While Nellie napped beneath patched blankets, Maggie seated herself at the sewing machine to inspect the next pile of cloth: uncut panels for twenty more shirtwaists. She could finish them in four nights if she worked until dawn, but thread cost money and her left thumb's callus had split. Blood on fabric meant rejection.
She looked at the machine as though it were a tribunal. "We'll manage," she muttered. The words no longer comforted; they rang hollow as tin.
Her gaze drifted to the eviction notice peeking from the Bible's gilt edge. Seven days. Perhaps her brother William could help. They had not written in fourteen months, not since he married and moved to Kent to manage orchards. He'd been kind enough at the funeral, pressing a sovereign into her palm—"for the baby's christening"—but Maggie spent it on burial fees. Afterward shame kept her silent; she imagined his new wife disdaining the poor relation begging from their table.
Yet here she was, eviction biting her ankles. Pride? Pride fed no child. She abandoned the machine, fetched paper, one stub of lead pencil, and stared at the blank sheet until her stomach clenched with fear that words themselves cost too dearly.
She set paper aside. It was midday; the charitable mission served soup until one.
St Margaret's Mission stood two streets south, pressed between a pawnbroker and a public house whose windows glowed ale-amber even at noon. The mission's facade bore whitewashed scripture—Blessed are the poor in spirit—and a smaller, newer sign: Infants Welcome; Mothers Priority. Maggie inhaled deeply, adjusted her coat collar, and stepped inside.
Warmth—thin but precious—rushed over her. An iron stove squatted in the center of a draughty hall; kettles simmered atop, releasing steam scented with leek. Wooden benches held a score of women, each wearing the expression of soldiers on furlough—momentary relief, eyes already scanning for the next command. Toddlers chased crusts beneath benches; infants slept across laps. A matron in fringe shawl ladled soup, nodding to Maggie.
She queued, cradling Nellie. When her bowl finally filled—leek and potato, watery but fragrant—she sank onto a bench beside a gaunt seamstress who murmured "God bless." Maggie mumbled assent, tore a hunk of bread, and cooled spoonfuls for the infant.
On a dais at the far end, two volunteers sorted parcels of cast-off clothes. One, a young woman with a Cambridge diction incongruous to the East End, cleared her throat. "While you dine, ladies, I've a few items of news of interest." She unfolded the day's Daily Chronicle, voice carrying with surprising authority. "Yesterday afternoon, outside the House of Commons, Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst and a group of women attempted to deliver a petition demanding votes for all females, married or single. Police dispersed the assembly; several arrests were made."
A murmur rippled across benches. Maggie lifted her gaze, spoon paused. The name—Pankhurst—rang faint bells; she'd seen it on bill posters by Aldgate. The volunteer continued: "In Mrs Pankhurst's own words: 'We do not ask a privilege; we demand a right. The mother who rears the citizen should enjoy the franchise of citizenship.'"
Some women laughed, a short incredulous bark. Others shook heads. Maggie felt a prickle behind her eyes—a sensation not entirely sorrow nor hope but something tangled of both. She imagined a woman marching up Westminster steps, skirts swishing, demanding to be heard. Demanding. The audacity shimmered.
The Cambridge volunteer now lifted a stack of handbills printed violet and white. "Any lady interested in learning more may take a leaflet. 'Votes for Women Means Votes for Mothers.' The League wishes to include working women among its ranks." She smiled apologetically, as if aware how foreign the idea sounded to those nursing chilblains and infants.
Maggie's hand half-raised then fell. Why reach? She, who could not pay rent, had no time for politics. Yet as the volunteer moved along benches offering papers, Maggie's heart thumped like a fist on door wood. When the leaflet hovered near, she accepted almost without thought, folding it into Nellie's shawl. Its paper felt weightless and heavy all at once.
Soup finished, bread pocketed for later, Maggie approached the matron for leftover loaves. The matron pressed two day-old rounds into her bag. "Weather turning nasty, dear. Keep baby warm."
"Thank you," Maggie said, voice husky with mingled humility and humiliation.
Crossing the threshold back into winter's sting, she glanced at the public house. Laughter spilled through swinging doors—male laughter, full-bellied. She tightened grip on Nellie's basket and quickened pace.
The afternoon bled into twilight; factory whistles released throngs; sooty clouds bruised the sky. Maggie burned precious coal enough to warm the room slightly, boiled water for weak tea, fed Nellie mashed bread softened in broth. The cough lingered but did not worsen. At seven, neighbor Mrs Klein knocked to borrow two matches; Maggie obliged, receiving thanks and a half plug of laundry soap in trade. The barter of survival.
Nellie fell asleep close to eight. Maggie inhaled the milky scent exhaled by her daughter and tucked blanket edges snug. Only then did she uncap the ink bottle—dregs nearly gone—and spread paper on the table. Candle stub guttered, throwing her shadow tall against peeling wallpaper.
"Dear William," she wrote, the pencil trembling. I hope this finds you and Mary in good health and that the apples stored well through the frost. Polite preamble, the dance of respectability. She forced her hand to proceed. I hesitate to trouble you, knowing the burdens of a new household, yet circumstances compel me… She paused, eyes stinging, remembering that he last saw her wearing a black veil, defiant grief in her spine. Now she begged.
She started anew, each letter scratching like confession: Nellie grows strong and bright, a comfort to me daily. Work in the city is uncertain, and I find myself behind with rent. If you could spare any small amount or advise of positions near your village, I would be grateful beyond measure. I am willing to undertake any labor, indoors or out. I understand if this is impossible. Your loving sister, Margaret.
She read the lines thrice. They disguised desperation in niceties but any intelligent reader would hear the unspoken Help me before we are on the street. She blotted the sheet, folded it, addressed the envelope in careful script, and placed it aside—postage would cost a penny; tomorrow she must decide between stamp and milk.
The candle sagged. Maggie pinched its wick just in time to eke another hour's glow. Her gaze drifted to the leaflet now pinned above the table. The violet ink caught flame-light: Votes for Women Means Votes for Mothers. She heard again the volunteer's steady voice: "The mother who rears the citizen should enjoy the franchise of citizenship." Maggie whispered the sentence aloud, savoring its curvature.
Did she, Margaret O'Shaughnessy, seamstress and potential match-girl, have any say in how London ruled her life? The notion felt improbable as tea with the King. And yet—and yet—somewhere a woman marched for mothers she never met. Maggie reached up, straightened the leaflet's corner where tack had loosened.
A gust rattled the window. Snow thickened outside; she could smell it, cold and clean like water rung from linen. She banked the stove flame, slipped off her boots, and crawled into bed beside the cradle. The mattress springs complained but Nellie did not stir until a draught sneaked across her cheek; she whimpered. Maggie lifted the baby into her own blankets. Tiny limbs relaxed against her chest, heartbeat steady as the tick of distant Big Ben.
She began to sing—a tune John favored from the music-hall, softened now into lullaby:
Hush, ye little ones, shadows are falling,
Lights in the lodgings wink warm and low.
Though the wind wanders, though fortune's calling,
Mother will guide you where roses grow.
Her voice cracked on roses. She cleared her throat and continued, quieter, until Nellie's breaths became long and even.
The room was very still. Somewhere below, a drunk trilled shanties; somewhere above, a baby's colic echoed. Life stacked atop life in Whitby Court like so many crates, each creaking beneath another's weight.
Maggie's eyes wandered from sleeping child to leaflet, from leaflet to Bible's protruding eviction slip, and back. She laid her palm over Nellie's tiny fist. It was warm, trusting, curling instinctively around her mother's thumb.
"I'll find a way," Maggie breathed. Not loudly, not with the defiance of suffragette speeches, but with a steadiness new to her voice. The words seemed to rise from some underground spring—deep, persistent, unstoppable. "I'll find a way for us both."
Her mind—exhausted but unwilling to surrender—imagined steps: finish twenty shirtwaists, apply at the match factory if necessary, post the letter at dawn, perhaps approach the mission volunteer for leads. Little sparks in ash.
Above, the candle flickered its last and died. Darkness folded around the bed, but outside, in the hallway slit under the door, a streak of lamplight remained. Maggie listened to wind scour the brickwork. She surrendered her weight to the mattress, tucking quilt around mother and child so tight no draft could pry them apart.
Sleep came fitfully. Dreams showed her orchards under Kentish sun, apples bright like coins; then shifted to halls where women waved banners violet and white, cheering her name. She woke near midnight, unsure which vision carved hollower ache yet sharper hope. Nellie stirred but settled.
Maggie kissed the crown of her daughter's head. "Better days," she whispered, echoing the lullaby's promise. Perhaps bread and roses were not mutually exclusive deeds of providence. She closed her eyes again, and the final image before slumber was the pamphlet's slogan glowing faintly where moonlight slipped through cracked curtains: a fragile star pinned to wallpaper, small but stubborn, refusing to be snuffed.