GEORGINA - Chapter 1: Spoilt Girl

Georgina looked from the upstairs window of her bedchamber at the dreary mill workers trudging to work.  She wasn't usually up this early but she had been awake with excitement for much of the night following the news that her father was going to let her go on the "Grand Tour" in the summer, with her older brother Rufus, his tutor, the elderly Colonel Wilson and his much younger wife, Charlotte.  Vienna, Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels and, she fervently hoped, Venice!  She broke away from her daydream and looked again at the shabby crowd entering the gates of her father's cotton mill.  Why did they have to walk past the front of their house, it was so depressing!  No doubt her father enjoyed being able to watch the minions over whom he now held so much power.  But Georgina couldn't wait to leave dull Lancashire for the colour and excitement of The Continent.

Georgina had enjoyed collecting together the essentials for her forthcoming trip: guide books, a silk lined canteen of silver cutlery, a fine  embroidered toiletry case to contain her absolutely essential make-up and perfumes.  She wondered how she would cope with getting dressed without her own personal maid, would hotel maids even speak English!  Rufus was like a child at Christmas showing off his pair of gilt patterned pistols, large black medicine bag and carefully researched details of steamer routes.  Georgina was a bit concerned when he explained how their two carriages would be dismantled and carried in pieces over the Mount Cenis Pass to Turin on the backs of mules.  She was slightly relieved to hear that their party would be carried in chairs fixed between poles by their Swiss guides and not suffer the indignity of sitting on one of the mules.  Although her father had given Georgina a fine dappled mare last year she had not really taken to riding at all and, though she did very occasionally get the groom to walk it around the grounds for her, she had never even got around to giving it a name!  She then started to daydream about watching the rippling muscles of handsome muscular Alpine chair bearers carrying her towards snow topped mountains.

It wasn't long afterwards she noticed her father was becoming increasingly morose and grumpy and reluctant to discuss details of her forthcoming trip.  One morning, six weeks before their planned departure, Georgina was suddenly ordered to go with the groom and Rufus to the stables and take the horses for a ride up to Hather Moor.  That was most definitely not her idea of fun but her father was most insistent.  Although it was a dry day there was a cold wind, after only a few minutes Georgina was getting painfully sore buttocks and then slightly twisted one of her delicate ankles when dismounting for the lunch which had been packed off with them.  As the groom led the horses back to the stables Georgina determined to tackle her mother firmly about father's unreasonable behaviour, however as they entered the house she heard her mother sobbing and her father arguing with the butler, who then turned and stormed out of the house brushing them aside. 

Her mother entered the hallway wiping tears from her eyes and sent her children to their rooms saying there would be no tea today but sandwiches would be sent up to them.   Distressed at seeing her mother so upset Georgina lost her earlier resolve and obediently obeyed. 

Long after dark no sandwiches had arrived so, feeling hungry and tired, Georgina timidly went downstairs looking for her maid.  Hearing her mother again crying quietly Georgina cautiously tiptoed towards the drawing room, but was intercepted by Rufus who instead led her to the library.

There he shakily explained that recently the Earl of Rawtenstall had ordered their father's mill to stop drawing the water essential  to power it from the River Douglas, because it was affecting the flour mills which were part of the Earl's estate.  Their father had brusquely told the Earl he had no need of his water as water wheels were old fashioned anyway and he was already planning to install steam engines to power the factory.  Unfortunately the bank, instead of loaning him the extra money to invest in steam plant, declared that his business would be unprofitable without the free use of the water power and immediately recalled all his existing substantial loans.  His appeal to the Bank's directors fell on deaf ears, which wasn't surprising considering that the Earl of Rawtenstall was its main shareholder!  As soon as the butler was aware of her father's predicament word had spread fast among the household staff, who were already owed several months pay, and they had all left fearing trouble from the mill workers once they learnt the news.

It felt strange putting herself to bed without any help and Georgina lay awake too troubled to sleep for much of the night.  She eventually fell asleep just before dawn only to be awoken soon afterwards by angry shouting outside.  She looked out to see the workers angrily massed before the locked iron gates to the mill.  As some of the angry mob started climbing over the wall surrounding the factory she hastily started to dress herself, hurriedly pulling on a petticoat.  Without her maid to fasten it she couldn't put on her corset so she quickly pulled on a cream skirt but couldn't arrange it so that it didn't drag on the floor.  Then she had difficulty doing up her bodice, eventually giving up leaving it unfastened at the top .  Outside she could hear glass breaking as the angry mob started hurling stones at the large windows of the cotton mill.  Glancing in the mirror she looked a mess, the poorly fastened bodice seemed to expose too much of her shoulders so she grabbed a shawl to cover them.  The sound of smashing glass suddenly got much louder and with horror she realised the the rioters were starting to direct their fury towards the house.  She grabbed a comb and frantically tried to get her tangled light brown hair into a presentable state, she so needed her maid to put it into a bun.  Rufus burst into her room, wide eyed he grabbed his sister by her slender wrist shouting "They're breaking into the house, they've all gone mad!" 

She pulled herself away from him and desperately pulled on the first pair of shoes that came to hand.  "Come on, you stupid girl" he yelled, then dashed back into his own room.  From downstairs came the sound of more glass breaking and of wood shattering.  Georgina again struggled to get her bodice properly fastened but as she released it it loosely slipped down again, and looking in the mirror it wasn't even straight!  Now she heard her father shouting furiously but slightly incoherently downstairs, no doubt he was drunk.  Frightened, she ran towards her parent's chambers in search of her mother.  The shouting and crashing got louder and she could no longer pick out her father's voice downstairs, Rufus emerged from his room brandishing his brace of pistols and joined her running along the corridor.

Entering her mother's room they saw her face down on the bed sobbing.  As Rufus tried to rouse her the mob followed them in, he grabbed his pistols and turned to face them shouting to the women to get out while they still could.  Georgina grabbed her mother by the arm and pulled her to the window which she struggled to slide open.  There was about a six foot drop onto the roof of the stable block, Georgina was thankful she had not been cornered in her own room at the front of the house from which there would have been no escape, but her mother shrank back sobbing "No, I can't."

Looking back into the room Georgina saw the angry workers closing on Rufus, several brandishing substantial pieces of wood from smashed furniture.  "Stop, or I'll shoot" he said, slightly uncertainly.

"Not all of us yer won't" snarled one of the men as Rufus backed off slightly.  With horror Georgina suddenly realised it was likely that Rufus didn't have a clue how to fire the pistols, in any case he'd probably had no time to load them.  After again failing to get her mother to climb through the window Georgina hoisted the hem of her own skirt up towards her waist and scrambled out, dropping feet first onto the sloping slates below.  When her shoes touched the sloping roof they slipped and as she slid down, losing one of them, she heard an explosion in the room above followed by furious yells.

She continued to slide on down the roof, rolling from her side onto her stomach as her fingers clawed at the smooth slates.  She heard her mother screaming "No, leave him!" somewhere above.   Her finger nails broke and tore as she failed to stop her feet from sliding off the edge of the stable roof, above she heard more furious shouting and a high pitch animal scream.  The front of her bodice caught on the iron guttering then ripped as she tumbled backwards into the yard.  Her bare left heel struck the hard cobbles first before she landed hard on her arse, luckily her shawl came between her skull and the ground, probably saving her life. 

Dazed, she stared upwards as two heavily built men started scrambling out of the window shouting "one of the bastards is getting away" before one dropped down onto the roof below. However the slates shattered under his weight and he fell through the roof up to his armpits.  Coming to her senses Georgina shakily scrambled to her feet, kicked off her remaining shoe, and painfully limped away towards the cover of the woods above the house.

As she tried to hurry into the shelter of the woods without putting any weight on her left heel Georgina twice tripped over the hem of her skirt which quickly became ragged and torn, with bloodstains from her bleeding heel.  Her heart pounding she gave up fleeing and crouched down looking back towards the house for the expected pursuit, but no-one seemed to be coming after her.

It was a couple of hours before the mob started to disperse.  Only a few stragglers, drunk on the contents of her father's wine cellar, remained by the time the Duke of Lancaster's Yeomanry,  who had been summoned by the Constabulary, arrived on the scene with the Magistrate who started loudly reading out "Our Sovereign the Queen chargeth and commandeth all persons..."  In her dishevelled state Georgina hesitated to approach the Magistrate reading out the Riot Act, who was a good friend of the Earl of Rawtenstall, and instead determined to make her way to Colonel Wilson's.

As darkness fell it started to rain and Georgina had only covered half the distance to the Colonel's house, having made slow progress with her bare injured feet, tripping several times on the sodden hem, until it tore and shreds trailed behind her.  She had to leave the road several times to avoid other travellers, finally, exhausted, she took shelter for the night in an almost empty coke store behind a roadside blacksmith's forge.  

She awoke startled by the sound of the smith opening the doors at the front of his forge in the morning and in daylight was horrified at the soiled state of her dress after lying asleep on the coke dust.  She ran limping past the astonished blacksmith who stood open mouthed at the apparition that had emerged from the back of his yard.  As soon as she was out of his sight she collapsed sobbing against a hedge at the side of the road and inspected the wound on the heel of her almost black left foot.  She slowly hobbled on to Colonel Wilson's house, carefully letting only the toes  take any weight on her injured foot.

It was with immense relief that she finally pulled the bell chain at the front door of the Colonel's house.  The maid who answered looked at her uncertainly, Georgina hoarsely pleaded "I need the Colonel's help, please, tell him it's Georgina Hudson.'

The maid disappeared leaving Georgina standing on the doorstep holding onto the door-frame for support.  It was several minutes before Charlotte, Mrs Wilson, came to the door and looked disdainfully down at Georgina who tearfully told her "They've murdered my parents and wrecked our house, please help me!'

'They're not dead, I've heard all about it.  Though your brother's in a poor way with a broken arm and leg they say.  Not that your upstart father didn't have it coming.  Thinking himself better than the rest of us, coming from the gutter to build himself an empire using other people's money" sneered Charlotte.

Horrified at the callous reply Georgina sobbed "Where are they, please where's my mother?'

"Sent packing by Earl Rawtenstall after all the trouble they've caused.  Your grand house and the mill were built with money he lent and now your workers have wrecked them!'

"Please what am I to do?  I must speak to the Colonel, please, no don't send me away" cried Georgina.

"The Colonel's resting" Charlotte dismissively replied.  "Why don't you try the workhouse, they'll soon put you in your place" and laughing cruelly she shut the door in Georgina's face.

Stunned Georgina sank to the ground with a rising sense of panic.  Conscious of the stares of two children across the road she got to her feet and limped away.   Having learnt that her parents were still alive after all she headed despondently back towards her home.

The sodden torn bottom of her skirt and petticoat clung uncomfortably to her legs and she realised the trailing shreds of the voluminous skirt looked pathetically ridiculous.  After first checking no one was watching, she tried to tear off the hanging strips of ruined silk and lace but collapsed in tears as she realised she had made even more of a mess of the skirt and that now much of her petticoat was visible through the rents.  Biting her bottom lip as she again painfully put her weight on her lacerated feet Georgina continued her slow progress towards home. 

She carried on until well after dark, trying to ignore the hunger gnawing away at her belly, her throat dry with thirst and rising panic at her situation.  Finally giving in to exhaustion she scrambled off the road where a small stream passed beneath it in a stone arch.  She scooped some of the water up in her cupped hands and desperately drank the slightly smelly silt laden liquid, spilling much down the front of her bedraggled clothes.  Exhausted she curled up and slept fitfully.

GEORGINA - Chapter 2: The Mill

Georgina awoke properly soon after first light.   Cold, very hungry and unable to find a comfortable position on the damp stony soil; yet she was reluctant to face the new day, fearing to stand on her swollen feet and in trepidation at what she might find on returning to her home.  Reluctantly realizing she couldn't lie there curled up in a shivering ball all day, she took a deep breath and scrambled back up the steep slippery bank towards  the road.  Almost at the top she grabbed in desperation at a thick briar but the the sharp thorns ripped into the flesh of the palm of her right hand and with a yelp she let go and slid. down the slimy slope on her belly, to end up lying face down sobbing in the wet red clay alongside the stream.  Her next attempt a few yards downstream was more successful and she regained the road with hair plastered over her muddy face and reddish brown stains down the front of her bodice and skirt, which, together with her petticoat was now so ripped down the side that, every time she put her left foot forward, the flesh of that leg was exposed almost up to her hips. 

She felt a sense of detachment from her body as she limped with trepidation towards the front door of her house, which was shut with two soldiers of the Duke of Lancaster's Yeomanry standing guard in front of it.  Several despondent looking men loitered uncertainly in the road.  As Georgina approached the militiamen the others moved nearer, already suspicious of  her identity.  Nervously fingering his musket the younger soldier asked uncertainly "Mistress Hudson?'

"Please, where are my parents?  Do you know, have you heard anything" she asked the older one in a slightly more imposing uniform.

It was the younger one who replied "It's not safe for you here miss, I heard say that your father had gone to Liverpool and taken passage to America with his family.  They..." and he motioned slightly to the gathering crowd "...are furious that he's got away with enough money for that when they cannot even feed themselves and will like as not end up in the workhouse."

Georgina turned and started to run from the gathering crowd, despite the agony of her bleeding, bruised feet, but after only half a dozen steps felt her head yanked back by the hair.  She fell heavily onto her bottom and was dragged by her hair across the hard cobbles towards the mill with its shattered windows and broken down doors.  She tried clawing at the arms of whoever was grasping her hair but another man grabbed her slim wrists with large coarse hands and dragged her along, legs flailing, into the mill.  Fortunately the remains of her dress protected her from most of the shards of broken glass from the shattered windows which covered the floor, until she was roughly dragged to her feet. 

Looking around in terror she saw that about thirty men had followed her assailants into the building. One shouted "Is that Hudson's daughter then?'

"She looks more like a Wigan whore after a bad night!" laughed a tall red faced man "we might as well use her like one.'

"Better tie her up first" suggested the man hanging on to her wrists.'

A heavily built man grabbed a large spanner from a shelf by where the lineshaft entered that part of the building "I'll just give 'er a tap with this, that'll stop 'er floundering like a landed fish."

"Piss off,  I want her alive when I fuck her" retorted the red faced man "tie her to the machinery and make sure you spread her legs well!"

Georgina found herself being dragged callously over the iron carriage of the spinning mule then she struggled hopelessly as she was turned onto her back,  her arms spread and stretched out across the frame and her wrists seized to the bobbins on it by cotton rovings.  She let her head hang back to hide her face in shame from her attackers who now spread her legs then harshly pulled them to the spindle carriage so her body was lifted clear of the ground, securing her legs to the spindles with more of the cotton which although quite soft still dug into her ankles under the weight of her stretched body.  As she felt the cold metal of a knife against her collarbone she craned her head forward to see a leering youth insert the knife under the top of her tattered bodice then tear it right open, to fall away exposing her pert breasts and stretched torso to the eager crowd.  Her skirt was easily ripped from her by pulling at the existing tears and she let her head hang back in resignation as the knife made short work of stripping away her petticoat and undergarments leaving her pale lithe body totally uncovered before the excited crowd.

"Let me at 'er first, I was the one who recognised 'er" shouted a gruff voice, as the terrified girl turned her tear stained face to one side to see a couple of men starting to unfasten their trousers.

"No, please, it's not my fault, no!" she screamed hysterically as an unshaven man, bare from the waist down, clambered over her left leg heedless of the agony his weight imposed on her frail suspended body. She hung limply, eyes tightly closed as she felt coarse hands exploring her crotch then moving to feel up the sides of her abdomen to her breasts and her shamefully erect nipples. 

As his fingers again explored her indecently exposed labia a stentorian woman's voice thundered "Joseph Webb, what the hell do you think you're doing!" and he immediately scrambled away from her.  Georgina looked up again to see several furious women glaring at their ashamed menfolk most of whom tried to shrink away or hide their faces.

With relief she saw most of her assailants turn and flee the building, though two or three boldly stepped forward and one, who appeared no older than Georgina,  arrogantly sneered at the woman "You've seen off your old man,  now piss off  and leave the bitch to us."

Georgina looked hopefully at the woman who had spoken but she spat in Georgina's face "Why did you have to come back?  You Hudsons have ruined our lives enough already without you fucking up our men."

Another tall woman with red eyes,  as if she had been crying,  moved to the side of the machine and heaved the heavy flat leather drive belt from the lineshaft off the spoked iron pulley on the machine which she then grabbed by the rim and started to turn.  Puzzled, Georgina tried to see what she was doing; another heavily built young woman then heaved the other end of the loose belting off the lineshaft pulley and dragged it towards her.   Struggling against the lashings holding her shamefully naked body taut Georgina realised that as the pulley was turned the carriage was now slowly moving further away from the frame, stretching her arms and legs, lifting her strained  body higher from the floor as the bonds cut painfully into her wrists and ankles.  She screamed.

The younger woman swung the heavy loop of flat leather high into the air bringing it crashing down over the tortured girls chest painfully flattening her breasts as it knocked all the breath out of her at the same time almost dislocating her shoulders.  She gasped for air then, seeing the woman raising the belt into the air for another blow she gave a  piercing screech which echoed through the vast building.  Even as the moving carriage stretched her further, her bonds cutting off the flow of blood to her hands, the heavy belt struck her again, this time across her belly and pelvis cutting short her screaming.  Wet faeces trickled from her arse onto the floor as the stiff edge of the belt cut  into her flesh against her bottom rib and she arched her neck back in agony with her mouth open wide unable to breathe for several seconds.

"Don't kill her till I've fucked her" yelled the young man in desperation, stepping forward as the woman started to raise the belt for a third time.  She paused for a few seconds then started to swing the belt again and Georgina closed her eyes tight,  half expecting the next blow to rend her in two.

A loud gunshot echoed through the building and the woman dropped the belt in surprise.  She turned to see the younger soldier holding his still smoking musket pointed above their heads. "There'll be no murder here today, I don't care who she is!" he shouted.

The woman sensed a slight uncertainty in his voice and shouted back "Yer no proper soldier, I know you, your only a gamekeeper.'

The second soldier who had followed him into the mill spoke authoritatively "While he's in that uniform he's a soldier and in any case this building's now the property of Lord Rawtenstall which we've been ordered to guard, so clear off.  We're allowed to shoot looters if necessary, remember the magistrate had to read the Riot Act again this morning when you lot tried to get back into the house."

Mouthing almost silent oaths the crowd shuffled away, the last to leave was the young man who could be clearly heard muttering "I bet they'll get to have some fun with her now."  The younger soldier drew his bayonet and quickly cut the bonds securing Georgina’s ankles so she dropped to a sitting position.  Hazily Georgina felt her arms cut free from the frame and her body slump onto the  broken glass littering the floor before losing consciousness.  The older soldier, a corporal, dragged a large canvas bag intended for cotton waste over her naked bleeding body while the younger man struggled to free the tightly wrapped rovings from her wrists and ankles without cutting her delicate skin, the blue tinge of her hands adding a sense of urgency. 

"You'd better get the stupid mare well away from here" said the Corporal "Before you go, pop down to the camp at the Chapel field and send Perkins up to take your place guarding the house" after a moments thought adding "Better tell Haversham I want him up here as well in case of further trouble.'

Georgina awoke groggily with a vague recollection of being carried across the countryside slung over someone's shoulders wrapped only in a piece of canvas.  She now lay on her back, shamefully realising she was naked beneath a coarse blanket.  She tried to roll onto her side to see where she was but when she tried moving her arms stabbing pains shot from her shoulders to her chest and she realised she couldn't feel her hands. Even taking a breath caused a pain right across her chest and she started to panic and pant shallowly.  "Easy girl, you've  taken a hell of a beating" said a voice which she recognised as that of the young gamekeeper volunteer. 

"Where am I?" she predictably whispered in a weak hoarse voice.

"Keepers Cottage, on Hather Moor" he answered.

"But this is Lord Rawtenstall's  estate" she replied trying to lift her head

"Aye, but at least your away from the mob, for now" he pointed out as he placed his hand to support her head and offer a mug of water to her lips.

"My hands, I can't feel my hands" she croaked starting to panic again.  He took hold of her left hand and started to massage it vigorously.

"At least they've got more colour in them now" he said, yet she could still see concern in his face.  "I don't know if I can get the doctor" he said quietly "His Lordship might not approve" he then took her right hand and inspected the red mark around that wrist before massaging that one as she drifted back into sleep or unconsciousness. 

He looked at the girl, she looked childlike now her eyes were closed and she was free of pain.  With her filthy matted hair and dirty face he barely recognised her as the haughty young woman who had accompanied William Hudson and his wife at the Hunt Ball.  Checking she wasn't awake he gingerly puled back the blanket to stare at her naked body.  Only in his most erotic dreams would he have imagined having a naked lithe young woman lying on his bed and yet, looking at her pale bloodstained body covered in blotchy blue and reddish purple bruises, trying to visualize how her breasts might look when not swollen and bluish grey, he felt pity rather than arousal.  He stared at her crotch and put his hand towards her thigh to move her leg aside but stopped guiltily and carefully replaced the blanket, taking care not to wake her.

Locking the cottage he set off for a brisk walk across the moor with his spaniel, needing the fresh air to clear his thoughts.

For five days she remained in the keeper's cottage recovering from her ordeal.  It was three days before she even managed to stand, wearing an old shirt of the gamekeeper's and a blanket wrapped around her waist.  As she moved to sit on a hard wooden chair he removed the stinking straw mattress soiled with her urine and defecation.  He had been slightly aroused when, sobbing with shame, she had allowed him to help dress her in his shirt.  Her breasts were still painful to touch and many of her bruises were now assuming a greenish tinge.  She stank!  It revolted him but he knew she couldn't yet wash unaided, yet he hesitated to strip and bath her.  As he worked during the day she was constantly on his mind.  He imagined her slim pale body sat in his iron bath tub as he ran his hands over her pert breasts and daringly considered soaping her between her legs.  But when he returned to his cottage he was just revolted by the reality of the filthy snivelling creature huddled on a chair by the fire.

"You can't stay here" he finally found the courage to tell her.  "I never know when his Lordship or his steward might choose to visit and might lose my job and my home if they found out who you are."

"Where can I go?" Georgina quietly replied.

"I am sorry but I can think of no alternative but the workhouse" he sadly replied "I fear though that you will find workers from your father's mill there too.  Surely you have some other friends or family you can turn to?"

She slowly shook her head.  Tearfully she looked up at his face "I have no clothes, what can I wear" she looked down again, unable to imagine walking into a town with just an old blanket round her.

"You can have an old pair of trousers of mine, and you might as well keep that shirt now."  Seeing the look of horror on her face he added "That would probably be for the best, you would look one of the sacked women from the pits then.  You will stand much less chance of being recognised.'

"But trousers!  They will see I'm not a man" she protested.

"That's what the women who worked in the pits wore" he reassured her.

The following morning Georgina despondently set off in the direction of Wigan, having also been given an old pair of the gamekeeper’s shoes, though he was reluctant to lose them as they were still wearable in dry weather.  As she passed through a coal mining district she reasoned that working in a colliery would surely be better than the workhouse, she recalled her father telling any disgruntled workers how it was always ensured that conditions in the workhouse were far worse than any alternative employment, to discourage slackers from seeking help there.  Also she assumed that there would be less chance of being recognised there.

She knocked at the door of the small brick colliery office, instead of being invited in a small weasel faced man wearing glasses came out and stared at her in disgust.  Hearing her request for work he laughed, rather like a braying donkey Georgina thought, then replied "Tell me another one!  Since our prissy new young Queen persuaded Parliament to prevent women and children working underground everyone's after the few jobs on the surface" stepping back into his doorway he added disdainfully "By the way, you stink.  I suggest you have a bath before you try asking anyone else for work" then he slammed the door shut again.

Georgina turned despondently away, perhaps she should wait for nightfall and find a stream to wash in before before presenting herself at the workhouse the next day?  A shabby elderly man shuffling about nearby beckoned to her.  I suppose he thinks I’ll let him screw me for a few pennies she thought, wait till he smells me!  When he beckoned again she thought she had nothing to lose, he looked too frail to force her into anything against her will, so she stepped over to him.

"I heard you talking to the clerk there" he said, adding "If you’re that desperate, and excuse me saying but you look like you are, there's other less scrupulous pit owners around.'

"Go on then" Georgina cautiously replied.

He indicated another village visible to the east "That there pit is one of Earl of Rawtenstall's  and he don’t bother too much what the law say.  Though the pay ain’t up to much some folks must make do on it'

She thanked him with surprising enthusiasm.  First she thought she had better take the clerk’s advice and wash herself before before trying again for a job.  There were too many people about for her to strip off and wash in daylight so she settled down a bit away from the mines to await dusk slightly hidden from the road by a the brick wall of a small orchard.

The more she thought about it the less hopeful she became about finding work.  If a lot of women had been put out of work recently it was unlikely that there would be any hope of her finding employment.  She was starting to feel hungry already, if she found work how long would it be before she got paid so she could buy food?  Where would she live?  With rising panic Georgina realised she had no experience whatsoever of a world without maids and servants to tend to her.  The workhouse, however horrible, began to seem a more attractive option, if only because it wouldn't require her to make decisions.  But then she remembered the likelihood of encountering her recent persecutors again.  Feeling her bruises and stretching her still slightly numb and stiff fingers she determined to at least try to find work in the morning.  Then she started to have doubts about her ability to carry out manual labour, she was still stiff and in pain from her recent beating, indeed her hips and knees already ached from the day's walk towards Wigan. 

GEORGINA - Chapter 3: The Pit Head

She awoke with a start, it was now pitch dark and she had no idea of the time.  She tried to recall if she had seen a brook or stream on her way there, she should have reconnoitred the area before it got dark.  She stumbled along the road away from the town listening for any trickle of water.  As well as needing to wash she was now getting thirsty.  As she concentrated on following the road in the darkness she suddenly recalled hearing ducks on her way there earlier in the day.  At that time she had wondered whether she might steal some eggs, before realizing they would be uncooked and she had no idea if it was safe to eat raw eggs, indeed she had no idea what raw egg looked like – the white would be runny she assumed.  It must have been somewhere near where she was now, she thought it was opposite where a large brick barn bounded the road.  Soon after a building loomed alongside the road in the darkness and she scrambled over a gate opposite, listening carefully for any sound from the nearby farmhouse where a faint glimmer of candlelight showed from an upstairs window.

It took her about a quarter of an hour to find the pond in the darkness.  She removed her shoes and dipped her toe in,  the water felt chilly and she almost lost her resolve.  Hesitating she scooped some up in her hands to drink, although cold it didn't taste very fresh.  After a moments hesitation she stripped off her trousers and shirt, sniffing at the shirt it too smelt of sweat.  She didn't think she could bring herself to slowly sink into the chilly water, she hesitated then dipped in the shirt and washed it about before wringing out as much of the water as she could then placing it by her trousers and shoes.  She had decided against washing the trousers as the thick material would surely take ages to dry. Georgina took a few steps away from the pond, took a deep breath then, before she could change her mind ran and leapt belly down into it with a tremendous splash. 

The shock of the cold water took her breath away and her arms sank into the soft mud only a couple of feet below the water.  Spluttering with the shock of the cold she gasped for air, dogs were barking frantically near the farmhouse.  She could hear bolts being drawn and a gruff voice shouted at the dogs, in panic she splashed to the far side of the pond and ran.  In the dark she didn't see a bucket and shovel and her shins struck them knocking them over with a loud clatter.  A snarling dog was closing on her as she scrambled over a quickthorn hedge.  Momentarily heedless of the little thorns tearing at her bare arms, belly and thighs she rolled onto the grass on the far side.  The dog was trying to push its way through the base of the hedge so she ran on, becoming increasingly disorientated.  The sound of the cursing farmer and his barking dogs receded and she sank  to the ground when she encountered another hedge.  Had the farmer found her clothes and shoes?  Cold, hungry and bleeding she felt light-headed and wondered if she was going insane.  Her shivering started to turn into a laugh as with a feeling of detachment she began to find it slightly amusing that she was no longer human, but a wild animal scampering like a frightened rabbit about the country side stark naked and starving! Curling up into a ball she wiped the blood from the small cuts on her belly with her finger and licked it.  Feeling dizzy she drifted into unconsciousness.

Georgina was awoken by clattering, the lowing of cows and more barking from the now distant farm.  Was the farmer sending his dogs to track her?  The first light of dawn had lightened the sky to the east, and she could now make out the roof and chimneys of the farmhouse against the sky.  She looked down at her own nudity, she now had nothing in this world apart from her wasting flesh and bones – lacking the strength for manual labour, hopefully too bruised to be alluring to the farmer should he find her.

She rolled onto her back on the damp earth, spread her arms out either side of her and sank her fingers into the soft soil as she stared at the rapidly lightening sky.  The chilly breeze gently passing over her belly and breasts changed from a discomfort to a gentle caress as her nipples hardened.  She felt she was becoming a part of the ground, sinking gently into it, her carcass rotting back into the earth ... her last thoughts before she again lost consciousness were to wonder whether the dogs would consume her or would cattle unseeingly trample her into the ground and shit over what remained of her body?

A sharp poke to her belly brought Georgina back to semi-consciousness and she tried to look up but the sun, now drying the ground and warming her body, dazzled her.  Half awake she felt something warm and moist exploring her crotch, she lifted her knees and moved them apart - immediately getting another jab in her empty belly and a gruff voice snarled "I s'pose these belong to you lass" as her clothes and shoes were dropped next to her.  Horrified she quickly snapped her knees together and curled up trying to hide her breasts, kicking away the dog which had started to lick her vagina.  "Yer look like yer’ve ‘ad a good night of it, but it seems yer boyfriend’s left yer now, so clear off from here sharpish or I'll let the dog 'ave more fun wi" yer."

Covering her front with the small bundle of clothes Georgina sheepishly muttered "Thank you, sir" as she scurried away towards ther road.  Just before reaching the road she hesitated and looked back to see the somewhat amused farmer stood where she had left him, watching her from a couple of fields away.  She ducked down hidden from the road by a hedge and turned her back on the farmer again and hurriedly dressed, before following the hedge to a gate and regaining the road.  As the morning sun continued to warm her chilled body she reflected that she was now far filthier than the night before although a quick sniff under her arms reassured her that she no longer smelt anything like as bad.

As she headed back towards the colliery that the old man had pointed out the day before her hunger pangs led her to inspect the hedgerows and trees for anything which might be edible.  All she could find were tiny green unripe blackberries here and there, in desperation she picked some and cautiously nibbled them, they were hard and unpleasantly bitter.  Georgina neared the pit village clutching her empty belly and, not having seen anything else edible, she determinedly picked more of the tiny hard green fruit and chewed and swallowed them.  The road led between mean rows of small squat cottages, far more squalid than any she had seen before.  Each cottage had an unpainted front door of rough planks alongside which was a small window no more than 2 foot square, tight under the low eaves was an even smaller window no more than eight foot above the ground.  Infants mostly dressed in tattered rags, but some naked, played on the street of rough uneven stones alongside a shallow stinking open channel choked at intervals with turds and vegetable peelings.  Georgina wondered why she had bothered at all about her own hygiene.  She reflected that the rows of cottages her father had erected were like palaces compared with these hovels, and at least he had kept the open sewers out of sight behind them.  Turning a corner she realised there was no "behind" to these hovels as the back of each one was another separate dwelling with a door leading onto a narrow lane separating it from the next row.  She looked into the open door of a cottage and saw a hunched woman with bare calves and twisted feet staring back at her with dull eyes in a grey lined face.  Georgina couldn't even guess at her age, there were no signs of grey in her lank mousy hair and her deformed body and worn face were as likely the results of toil as of age.

With trepidation she approached what she assumed was the colliery office, a low brick shed with two windows too dirty to allow her to see inside.  The door was slightly ajar and a squat dark haired man stepped out and stared at her before she had a chance to knock on it.  In silence he looked Georgina up and down, she felt self conscious of her bedraggled state and tried to think how to address him.  After about a minute of scrutinising her from head to toe he said "You look a fair lass, what brings you to this place?"

"I was wondering, I mean could you... I need work" she stammered, transfixed by his dark stare. 

"You've never worked in a pit before, have you?  Been sacked from a mill for laziness or something have you?  Now you've tried to dress like a pit woman but it doesn't work, you're too frail and too tall." he said then continued to stare at her, she had expected him to dismiss her but he still seemed to be expecting a reply.

Suddenly she could no longer contain her desperation "I'm starving, I have nothing, I've nowhere to go, please can you give me any work, anything at all!"

Startled by a loud clattering behind her she looked round and saw short woman with thick bare arms operating a windlass at the head of the pit, with another woman who had her back to her.  Seeing the heavy bucket of coal that emerged from the shaft Georgina realised she would probably not be strong enough to turn the handle once never mind the hundreds of times those women had just done.  She realised the man could tell what she was thinking as he slowly shook his head "Don't worry lass, you could probably do a child's work.  The law says we can no longer employ women and children below ground" he paused, then continued "but we pay the hewers for what they produce and let them pay whoever they want to hurry the coal for them from their wages.  Benjamin Hopkins lost the lass who hurried for him a couple of days ago and's making do with a couple of kids for now, said he can't afford another one but his productivity's down so he might change his mind if you're cheap enough."

"Yes, anything" Georgina replied, suddenly uncertain how much she needed to be paid to afford food and lodgings.

"He'll be finishing after six so hang about and I'll see if he'll talk to you then, but I can't promise anything.  There's probably plenty of stronger lasses than you looking for work if he thinks about it" and the man disappeared into his office then shortly afterwards came back out and walked straight past her to the pit head carrying a ledger.

No one seemed to take any notice of Georgina as she loitered around the pit head.  Unsure of the exact time of day she decided to stay nearby until the miners started coming to the surface at the end of their shift.  Beyond the shaft she saw bent figures sorting the coal emptied from the baskets as they were brought to the surface, most appeared to be women although two were men, looking somewhat lame and crippled.  Without pausing from their work two of them looked up at her suspiciously as she wandered nearer to them.

Feeling self conscious she turned her back on them and looked instead at a pair of dejected scrawny horses, attached to a rotating beam, walking slowly round a capstan watched by a small boy dressed only in an oversized shirt black with coal dust.   The capstan powered a cable which ran to a pully which in turn turned a chain leading down another shaft.  However Georgina couldn't see any way that was helping to raise the coal,  which seemed to be entirely the task of the women on the windlass.

The sun was sinking lower in the sky to the west, behind the whisps of grey smoke issuing from a third shaft, when Georgina noticed more activity at the pit-head.  The bucket had been unhooked from its chains and the iron spreader bar was now being winched to the surface bringing up pairs of miners sat on it face to face clasping each other.  She wondered how to recognise Benjamin Hopkins and looked around for the manager she had spoken to earlier.  He was stood in the doorway of his office noting the miners as they filed past.  Many of the men wore just a filthy pair of trousers, some also had clogs, shirts or jackets and caps.  Looking back at the pit head she watched as a couple of filthy small children, barely covered by the tattered rags they wore, were brought to the surface, there was no way of telling if they were boys or girls.  They loitered about the pit-head waiting until a man and woman came up next, they ran to the woman who wore a pair of trousers torn to shreds around her crotch, a somewhat cleaner chemise and a piece of cloth tied around her head.  It was a tediously slow process bringing to the surface many more men, women and a couple more children.   Georgina was trying to look without obviously staring at the bald tops of the heads of several of the woman when one of the men who had already passed her called to her "You there, the tall lass, is it you looking for work?"

She quickly replied "Yes, Mr Hopkins?" as she hurried towards him, unnerved at the way he was looking her up and down.

"Mr Thomas says you should hurry for me, not that I can really afford more help" he mumbled staring critically at her. 

"Please, let me try" Georgina replied, almost in crying in desperation, still uncertain what hurrying involved.  "Can I just try, you needn't pay me if I fail.." she hesitated realising she might well collapse weak from hunger the next day.  Unable to control herself she suddenly burst into tears.

"Right. Let's get you entered in the book then" said the collier pushing her towards Mr Thomas’s office.

"Name?" demanded the manager, Georgina hesitated.  "On the run are you?" he quizzed her.

Uncertainly she quietly replied "Georgina, Georgina Smith', after a pause adding "Sir."  However looking over his shoulder she noticed he had written down "George Smith, Hurrier" in the book in untidy spidery writing.

"You start work at five" he said turning back to her and dismissing them with a wave of his hand.

"A bell rings a bit before we start" explained Benjamin, "Where're you sleeping?" he added.

Almost crying with hunger she replied "I don’t know', reluctantly adding in a quiet voice "I’m so hungry!'

Grabbing her slender wrist he dragged her to the fourth cottage in a squalid row and called in through the open door "Mary, can I have a quarter of my stew now?"  After a minute or two a tired looking lank haired woman emerged carrying a cracked bowl holding a small amount of greyish mash which Benjamin offered to Georgina as he said to the woman "She's a new hurrier I'm trying, Anywhere she can sleep till we get paid on Friday?"

"Not here unless she can pay now, what happens if she don't work out?" the woman said eying Georgina critically.  But then, perhaps taking pity on the silent girl hungrily scooping the boiled potato and turnip mash mash into her mouth with her hands, added "Alight Ben, just for tonight she can sleep with the girls, but you pay her rent Friday whether she's still here or not."

"You'll lose nothing anyway" muttered Ben ungratefully "She can eat a bit more of my share of the stew if  she gets hungry before then and there's space on the floor."

Georgina hurriedly swallowed the tasteless mush so she could add "Thank you so much, I'll be no trouble..."

"You will be trouble if the girls find out I've let you stay a night without paying first, so you keep yer mouth shut lass" cut in the woman.

Georgina was led to the dark back half of the small upstairs room where five women slept on the floor.  It was separated from the front of the room, which was occupied by Mary’s family, by filthy blankets hung from the rafters.  Mary and her husband slept on a bedstead by the window where she had a chair and a small chest of drawers, otherwise the only other pieces of furniture in the whole room were a few rickety stools, apart from the bedding on which its other unwashed occupants slept.  Georgina curled up on the bare wooden boards in the space not taken up by the straw filled sacking used as mattresses by the other women, four of whom stripped off their ragged coal dust laden clothes rolling them up to use as pillows, lying down exhausted, stark naked on top of  their blankets spread over the coarse mattresses.  For a while Georgina heard Mary’s children talking as she rolled about uncomfortably on the hard floorboards trying to ignore the stink of sweat and other even less pleasant unidentified smells, then a bit later hearing the men come in downstairs talking amongst themselves before she finally fell asleep.

GEORGINA - Chapter 4: Down the Mine

The following morning Georgina was awoken from her exhausted slumber by a kick in the ribs as a thin faced but muscular woman said "Wake up, the bell rang ages ago.  If you're off to the pit you'd better get a move on!"  She hurried downstairs where Mary had been handing out pieces of  dry bread to her tenants who wrapped them in pieces of cloth or rag before hurrying to the pit head.  Ben was waiting outside in the first light of the summer dawn with a young boy and girl.

"So you are coming then" he scowled at her as he hurried towards the colliery.  They filed past the manager, who made a note in his book, before queuing at the top of the shaft.  To Georgina’s horror and amazement the two colliers waiting in front of Ben’s children stripped off all their clothes, nonchalantly handing them to a bent old woman who folded them and placed them in a small low shelter behind her, before they pulled the iron bar swinging over the shaft towards them and climbed onto it, to sit facing each other stark naked, holding onto the thick cable by which it was wound up and down.   The two children stripped off their shirts and handed them over to the old woman before their turn to be lowered down the shaft clasping each other tightly.

When it was Georgina and Ben's turn to descend she was relieved that he only removed his shirt,  keeping on his ragged trousers.  Georgina reached up and tightly grasped the thick fraying cable, with shock she felt Ben embrace her chest and grasp her rib cage through her thin shirt.  She saw he was grinning at her as they descended and she quickly looked away.   She was relieved as it quickly became pitch black so he could no longer stare at her embarrassment but he then moved his hands up and down her back crushing her tighter against his bare chest as the cable parted her breasts.  She took a deep breath but then realised it would be useless to scream,  indeed it would more likely make things worse for her.   As she screwed her eyes tight shut she heard him speak to her in a quiet trembling voice "My lass was being hauled up on her own last Saturday, I can't understand it, she must have been almost to the top when she fell."  He paused before continuing "She must have dozed off.   I was waiting at the bottom with my son, 'cos little Agnes was off work with her breathing problem again."  His voice sounded tearful as he added "I'll never forget her screams as she fell till the day I die, getting louder and louder till the thud at our feet and her blood splashing over us..."

At the bottom of the shaft sat a thin old man with an oilcloth bag containing a ledger, behind him in a holder fixed to one of the wooden props flickered a tallow candle.  He handed Ben three candles from a wooden box by his side, making a note in his book as he did so.  Ben lit one of these candles from the fixed one and placed it in a battered open fronted tin box.  He then motioned Georgina across to one of several empty low tubs with wooden runners saying to his daughter "Put the gurl belt on the lass and hook her up," The little girl fastened a stiff broad leather belt with a rusty chain around Georgina's slim waist and passed the chain between her legs hooking it onto the tub behind her. 

"Pull the corve into this tunnel and follow me, Agnes will follow behind but she won't need to help thrust it from behind till it's filled." Georgina obediently tried to follow, the hard edge of the leather belt cut into her hips and the cold rough links of the chain rubbed against her thighs as she strained, but the tub hardly moved. 

The flickering light of Ben's candle receded into the low damp tunnel and  Agnes started shouting from behind "Get a move on, yer lazy weedy strumpet!"  Georgina shut her eyes and angrily heaved herself forward, her heels slipping up out of her shoes, the edge of the belt painfully cutting into her flesh above her pelvis, the chain abrading the coarse cloth of her trousers against her thighs as the tub gathered momentum.  With a sickening thud her forehead struck a jagged piece of roof rock and she sprawled face down on the wet floor.  "Yer 'ad enough then, yer skinny whore" shouted Agnes from behind, prompting Georgina to lift her body from the floor and wipe away the blood running down her face, she felt up and realised the tunnel ahead was only just over two foot high and sloping gently downwards.  She was now reduced to little more than crawling, her trousers quickly ripping open at  the knees while her back and buttocks scraped the dripping uneven roof  at regular intervals.  As she realised with consternation that when the tub was filled with the heavy coal  it would have to be pulled uphill on the return journey her knees and thighs were now splashing through deep puddles.

It seemed to take forever to reach the coal face where, to the right of the tunnel, Ben had already retrieved his pick and, lying on his side started hewing at the wet shiny black coal.  Exhausted Georgina crawled clear of the running water which ran away on down the diminishing tunnel and flopped to the ground hoping he would take a while to fill the tub.  Almost immediately she felt Agnes's coarse tiny hands pulling her sodden hair back off her face and roughly tying it into a knot.  "Get that hammer and break up the big lumps and I'll fill the corve" commanded Agnes as she unhooked the chain from the empty tub then started pushing the smaller pieces of loosened coal through the narrow gap between the top of it and the mine roof.  Georgina's nose became dry and blocked from the dust while her arms soon ached so much from trying to wield the heavy short handled hammer in such a confined space that it was with a momentary sense of relief that on Agnes's command she finally turned away and allowed herself to be chained to the tub again.

The agony of the first uphill journey dragging the full tub of coal over the rough tunnel floor exceeded even Georgina's worst expectations.  The sole of her loose fitting right shoe snapped so that she lost it altogether in a deep rivulet of water.  To ease the abrasion on her knees, and now her bare foot, she clawed at the tunnel sides with her hands until her fingernails bled, while Agnes cursed and shouted from where she was pushing behind the tub that she seemed to be doing all the work.  Without Ben's candle in front Georgina had little idea how far there was to go in the pitch black.  Despite the water and sweat soaking her thin shirt and heavy trousers she began to feel unbearably hot as she strained her battered half starved body beyond limits she would never previously have dreamed of.  She decided that when, or indeed if, she reached the bottom of the shaft she would tell Agnes and that disgusting little man with his ledger and candles that she wanted to be hoisted to the surface and take her chance with the workhouse!

With relief she saw the glimmer of candles ahead and soon found herself in the larger tunnel at the foot of the shaft.  A short muscular woman, bare from the waist up, pushed her way in front of Georgina to get her tub to the shaft first.  The other woman tipped her tub onto its side and started shovelling the coal into the bucket to be hoisted to the surface.  As the bucket started to lift away towards the world of light and fresh air many dozens of yards above the woman looked back at Georgina for the first time, stared for several long seconds before exclaiming "Bloody hell, your first day innit!  You're back with a loaded corve damned quick for a soft bellied whore" adding with a toothless grin "Well done lass!"

Agnes quickly retorted "I've done all the shitty work thrusting back up!"

The woman replied "I'm sure she'd have had trouble without you, kid, but you know you couldn't even start to move a full tub on your own" then looking around she asked "By the way,where is your little brother today?"

"Trapper on the four foot mine again now" replied Agnes. 

"Well lass" continued the toothless woman staring again at Georgina. "You may not look much but I bet Ben will be relieved not to have to stop hewing to help the kids get the corves back up each time.  He must've lost a lot of pay the last few days" she added as she righted her tub and hooked her chain back on to it.

Georgina followed the other woman's example and filled the bucket with the coal from her tub.  Reasoning that there was no way they would stop raising coal to return her to the surface she pulled the empty tub back towards the coal face.  After the effort exerted pulling up the laden tub this now seemed light work in comparison.  Remembering the other woman's comments with a certain amount of pride she went on to wonder what creatures Agnes's brother had to trap.  "Are there rats down here?" she asked.

"No, why?" replied the little girl.

"What is your brother trapping then?" Georgina enquired.  At which Agnes started giggling, and didn't stop until they reached Ben, who had already built up a considerable pile of fresh hewn coal.

"Something's  amused you" he said to his daughter.

"She asked if Tom's trapping rats" she replied laughing.

Georgina was dismayed that Ben then started laughing at her too.  "He's working one of the doors that shuts off the four foot mine so some of the fresh air gets diverted here to the half yard mine." After pausing to laugh again at her mistake he added "If it wasn't for that fresh air the damp would build up and blow us to hell," Reaching for the flickering candle lamp he lifted it to the roof in front of Georgina "If that flame turned blue at the top we'd have to quickly snuff it and get ourselves back to the pit eye sharpish."

The next journey with a loaded tub to the pit eye was no easier than the first, she wasn't even sure where in the flow of gritty water she lost her other shoe.  After heaving four more loads of coal to the bottom of the shaft she returned with the empty tub to find Ben eating from the hunk of dry bread he had brought with him.  He tore off a large hunk and silently passed it to Agnes.  He then paused staring at Georgina.  "You're doing better than I expected, I s'pose you could do with a bite as you didn't have any porridge this morning" he mumbled as he broke off a small piece and offered it to her.

"Thank you Mr Hopkins" she gratefully replied before she stuffed the dirty hard handful of bread into her mouth.

"Mr Hopkins!" mimicked Agnes "and I hope you will address me as Miss Hopkins too" she giggled.

At the end of their shift at six o'clock Georgina struggled to keep awake as they were hoisted to the surface, grasping Ben's bare muscular torso tightly to her with her stiff bleeding and blistered fingers, all the time visualising his wife, or mistress, falling down, down through the darkness.  Perhaps waking only a fraction of a second too late to regain her hold on the cable.

As they walked away from the pit head Georgina uncertainly asked "Was it only last night that Mrs ... err ... Mary said I could stay if I hadn't paid?"

"I'll have a word with her now you've shown you can work despite your delicate build" he replied, adding "If you can promise me you'll not give up on me now." 

Georgina paused, taking in the import of his words before replying with perturbation "I'll try my best, at least until I've paid back anything I owe."

Agnes chipped in "She's hardly made it through today, I bet you she'll chicken out of going back down tomorrow morning."

Looking Georgina in the eye Ben replied "I hope you won't let me down but I reckon you're an honest lass" pausing, with a look of pity in his eyes "probably too honest for this hellish shit hole, but the way everyone else is losing jobs these days I s'pose it's this or thieving or whoring."

"If I had her body I'd rather be a whore" Agnes cheekily added, but she failed to duck quick enough to avoid her father's fist cuffing her ear.

That second night Georgina felt she had no option but to strip off her wet, coal dust impregnated clothes before lying down exhausted to sleep naked on the bare wooden boards.  She tossed and turned during the night trying to change position each time the pressure of her bony body on the hard boards became uncomfortable.  When she was woken in the morning she was at first horrified to realise she had been lying on her back with her hands behind her head and her knees spread to expose herself in the most licentious way to the two women looking down at her.  Embarrassed she pulled her gritty torn clothes back on and hurried downstairs.

At the end of the week when Ben got paid he explained how he had paid her outstanding rent and given Mary an advance for the next week sufficient for her to get porridge at breakfast as well.  

On Sunday the pit workers were given a day off.   Agnes explained that the surveyors went down the pit on Sundays to measure the amount of coal extracted and compare it with the clerk's records and to assess which faces should be worked the following week.

Despite Agnes's  previous antagonism towards her Georgina got the impression that she was now becoming her confidant.  Careful to avoid any mention of her mother's accident Georgina tried to enquire more about the working of the colliery,  but Agnes kept replying by quizzing Georgina as to where she had come from.

She watched some of the other women washing their filthy black dust laden clothes in the little brook below the village, despite it being Sunday.  She envied them for something else to wear other than the clothes on their backs.  But then she saw a waif like young woman with dark sunken eyes and uneven straggly hair hanging lank about the almost bald scarred top of her head sit down at the side of the stream and shamelessly strip naked to wash her tattered rags in the shallow slow moving water.  Was that the state that Georgina was destined to soon be reduced to?

When she returned to the shared hovel which was now her home Agnes presented her with a dirty shapeless hessian sack containing some straw to serve as a mattress, quickly explaining that her father had given her a new one because this one had been making her itch something awful at night.  Mumbling uncertain thanks Georgina couldn't help wishing that it had been a blanket that Agnes had found surplus.

The next week the unremitting toil continued, the woollen trousers the gamekeeper had given her were made for warmth not strength and she soon tore away the loose sodden material below the ripped knees, keeping it to use as a pillow at night.  The sweat from her hot straining body soaked into her thin shirt, rotting the seams so that it started falling apart at the top of the sleeves exposing the bare flesh of her shoulders while the hard leather belt had torn off several buttons so it fell loose way from her belly.  Towards the end of that week, her mind numb from exhaustion and tiredness, Georgina tried breaking the monotony of the repetitive drudgery by thrusting her pelvis down and forward as she pulled so the chain between her legs rubbed up between her thighs against her crotch.  After half pleasuring herself in this way over several journeys up from the coal face she realised with dismay that the cold rusty chain was now directly against her bare labia having worn through the moist wool serge.  That evening she shamefully shuffled back to her lodgings trying to keep her legs together acutely aware of the cool breeze around her sex if she moved her legs apart.  With silent amusement the other women watched her sat on her mattress unsuccessfully fumbling with pieces from the discarded lower trouser legs trying to arrange them inside the worn hole. 

GEORGINA - Chapter 5: The Worth of a Life

The next morning Georgina was relieved to descend into the darkness of the pit after furtively shuffling to work trying to hide the indecent rent by holding her cloth wrapped piece of dry bread in front of her crotch. 

As she descended the shaft she realised that one of Ben's coarse hands was grasping bare flesh through tears in her thin shirt as he firmly held her torso to him.  Should she follow the example of some of the other women and save her shirt for wearing to and from the pit?  Only the previous week such an idea would have been unthinkable, yet soon the alternative might well be walking home through the streets in a totally indecent condition. 

Her thoughts as she waited to unload her tub at the bottom of the shaft were on what Ben would think if she stripped off her shirt to work topless, and whether to discuss her concerns with Agnes.  They were cut short by a crash and rattle from above as several large pieces of coal fell from the bucket as it neared the top of the shaft.  One huge lump shattered on hitting the ground just in front of her, a large piece flying into face of the young woman waiting alongside her, who screamed and threw herself back on her haunches with blood gushing bright red from her shattered cheekbone, down the front of her colourless thick cloth chemise and canvas trousers.  Her screams faded to incoherent gasps as she fell back with her arms spread and her back arching jerkily to expose her midriff before collapsing motionless.  Georgina just froze in shock staring at the girl, expecting her to cough and sit back up again, until Mr Woods, the old man who recorded their productivity in his ledger, shouted out impatiently "Someone shift it out of the way, the bucket's nearly back down." 

A woman pushed past Georgina and rolled the obstruction to one side so she could start emptying her tub into the bucket.  Once the bucket was full she then turned to the dead, or dying, girl and roughly pulled off her bloodstained trousers and threw them to Georgina saying "Her Ma won't want these and she'd no other family so you can make yourself a bit more decent."  Embarrassed that her exposed crotch had obviously been noticed, Georgina watched as the other woman then carefully removed the girl's bloodstained shirt for herself  before dragging the naked body to the bucket.  "Come on then, help me get it on the bucket, it can't stay here" she commanded Georgina.  Her hands slipped on the wet blood covering the girl's arms as she helped drag the limp corpse to lie on its back on top of the coal in the bucket, then watched still in disbelief as, arms and legs dangling obscenely, it was hoisted up the shaft. 

"What happens to her now?" Georgina shakily asked the other woman.

"We'll bury her when we finish work, if her mother's there" she said as she hurried away leaving Georgina to re-fill the bucket when it came back down again.  Guiltily she  rolled up the blood sodden trousers and dropped them into her empty tub.

When she reached the surface at the end of her shift Georgina, guiltily clutching the bloodstained trousers, saw a crowd of colliers stood looking at the frail grey corpse laid on the ground by the pit head, black flies busy about the dried blood on its shattered face.  No one seemed surprised that the girl's body had been stripped, and the manager was talking gently to a tearful woman who she assumed was the girl's mother.  He turned to the crowd and asked "Does anyone want to pay for Helen Stewart to be buried in the chapel graveyard."  Without waiting for an answer a couple of men grasped the arms and legs of the cold naked corpse and carefully placed it face down on one of the small trams used to take waste to the spoil tip. 

The crowd followed the tram as it was pushed out along the temporary rickety track to the spoil tip.  At the edge of the black heap of discarded shale,  stones and other residues sorted from the coal brought to the surface, the two miners who had been pushing the tram dug a shallow hole and respectfully placed the girl's limp body into it in a foetal position,  as naked as when she was born.  Her mother knelt beside her and kissed her daughter's cold cheek before stepping back and nodding to the two men waiting with their shovels.  Just as they were about were to start backfilling the grave a slender youth timidly stepped forward and tenderly kissed the dead girl's cheek while cradling her lifeless head in his dirty hand.   The girl's mother stepped forward again, scowling, but before she could speak the boy had retreated back into the crowd.  The men then resumed shovelling the loose dirt back over the body.   An older man stuck a crude cross made from two sticks lashed together with what looked like dried grass into the slight mound as the crowd dispersed, most heading for the tavern.  Looking back Georgina realised that the crude grave would no doubt be covered by spoil in a few days,  to become just a part of the growing slag heap.

Realizing she was now alone, still staring at the grave after even the girl's mother had gone, Georgina looked guiltily at the blood stained trousers she was still holding.  Taking a deep breath after looking down at the indecent ruined crotch of her own trousers she scrambled down to the stream below the tip and thoroughly washed them,  staring at the girl's blood as it drifted downstream in the sluggish water.   Looking about she seemed to be alone so she cautiously removed her blackened shirt and washed that too,  watching the coal dust follow the rapidly dispersing blood.  Inspecting the thin wet fabric she realised how badly it was disintegrating with rough usage and shivered as she carefully pulled the cold damp material back over her arms and body.  Looking back at the slag heap,  remembering the pathetic frail body now interred in it, Georgina decided that her concerns about modesty whilst working in the Stygian darkness of the pit were really irrelevant if she too was likely to end her short life being brought up into the daylight as just a piece of limp broken flesh.

As she walked dejectedly back Ben called across to her from outside the packed alehouse and offered her a small mug of beer.  At first the bitter cloudy liquid stuck in her throat and she almost spat it out, but having drunk nothing but water for several weeks, she forced it down her throat to be grateful for the change.   The next mouthful she swallowed more easily.  Although very different to the wine she used to be allowed a small glass of occasionally, by the time she had finished the mug she was ready for more.  Seeing that Ben appeared somewhat inebriated already she hesitated to approach him with a request for another lest such familiarity be misconstrued.  

She turned to leave but spotted the youth who had kissed the dead girl in her grave, sat alone on the moist grass holding a mug to his lips with both hands.  As she got closer she could see that his hands were shaking slightly and he was staring fixedly in front of him.   Feeling sorry for him, and slightly curious, Georgina sat down next to him.  From the reaction of the girl's mother she could assume he wasn’t a relation "Was Helen a friend of yours?"

Instead of replying he finished his beer then stood up and, without looking at her, said "Will you have a beer?  Stay there, I'll get you one."  She watched as he headed through the crowd at the door of the tavern, staggering slightly.  He returned carrying two mugs, each twice the size of the one Ben had given her and silently handed her one.

Georgina repeated her question "Your friend was she?"

"We both used to hurry in the four foot mine, but I’m a hewer now." He paused to gulp down several mouthfuls of beer "In the top end of the half yard mine."

The unaccustomed alcohol made Georgina boldly persistent "Did you love her?”  Even as she said it she remembered his kiss and regretted asking that question.

"We'd meet in the tunnels" he drank again "Sometimes I"d deliberately seek her out in the dark."  He paused, placing a hand on Georgina’s thigh, dangerously near to the growing tear in the rotten fabric.  She gulped down several large mouthfuls of the warm, still beer.  "I always tried to be careful to avoid doing anything..." he drank some more beer and his fingers moved up slightly nearer to the indecent rent  "not to make bastards or anything."  Georgina drew a deep breath as she felt his calloused fingers on the flesh of her inner thigh.

She put up a hand to push him away as he leant towards her but when she touched his chest she instead found herself moving her hand round to his back pulling him tighter towards her.  As his whole hand moved to caress the skin of her inner thigh beneath the rotten fabric of her trousers she felt relief as it moved tenderly down her leg away from her exposed sex.  Were people watching them?  She frantically looked around but only saw people staggering homeward away from them, towards the terraced cottages, while those remaining gravitated towards the noisy warmth inside the tavern.  As his face moved towards hers she felt with her hand to check how much her torn trousers were exposing her, sat as she was with her legs slightly spread.  She found no fabric but her finger tips made contact with her exposed vagina, with shock she realised how moist it was, gently inserting her fingers she checked whether the dampness came from within or from the damp grass.

"I might as well have fucked her properly as she's ended up dead anyway" he said.  Confused, Georgina realised he was still thinking about his dead girlfriend and pulled away from him.  She went to drink some more beer but found that she had already emptied the mug, watching her he said "I'll see if Landlord will let me get some more on tick." Un-entwining himself from her he headed unsteadily back to the tavern carrying the two empty mugs.

Georgina felt she should immediately get away back to her lodgings, but then the boy could obviously ill afford to buy her drinks so it would be most ungracious to abandon him should the landlord give him credit for more beer .. so she just sat there, moving her knees together.  She wondered whether to change into the freshly washed canvas trousers, but felt certain he would know they were Helen’s.  Had he already recognised them bundled up alongside her?

As he headed back towards her with two more mugfuls of beer she shamefully realised she didn’t even know his name.  "Richard Barratt" he relied in answer to her question "or Dick if you prefer" he added.

"I’m Georgina Hu..." she started to reciprocate, then suddenly remembering to avoid any link with her past ".. err Smith" she finished.  Adding with a giggle "Mr Thomas wrote it down as George."

"That's in case the Inspector of Mines takes a look, women shouldn’t be working underground any more" explained Dick, moving closer to her, handing her one of the beers.  "You can read then?" he suddenly added.

Anxious to change the subject she sipped her beer then asked "You say you’re hewing in the half yard mine now, that’s where I hurry for Ben Hopkins.”

"You’re down the bottom, near the pump shaft.  There's plenty of coal down there, even if it's a bit wet.” He drank from his mug.  "They've put me to the top end, the other side of the shaft.  It's not much good up there, they tried it before, a few years ago but there's not much coal up there.  It so thin even I can hardly wedge myself in there, I think the seam's running out.  The roof's too low to get a corve up to the face so they send kids to push and roll the coal down to the pit eye, but I keep having to stop to help them."

Georgina could hardly imagine a roof even lower than where Ben worked, even there her buttocks scraped the roof with her knees on the ground.  As Dick huddled closer to her she had nearly asked if she could hurry for him before he had explained how cramped the thin seam was.  She had been wondering why such a skinny youth had been made a hewer, now she realised that probably few of the other colliers could squeeze into that part of the mine.  She grasped him tight to her and kissed him, then released her hold and started unbuttoning his shirt, he reciprocated by lifting her shirt up so he could place his hands on her bared midriff and feel her bottom ribs protruding above her hollow belly.  She drunkenly rolled her shirt up to expose her trim breasts, two more of the few remaining buttons popping off as she tugged at the ripe cotton then tightly hugged his bare chest to her body. 

As he moved his hands round her back, gently running his fingers up her spine, massaging the ridges of her vertebrae, she held his head in her hands turning his face towards her.  She kissed his lips, probing between them with her tongue.  Dick responded enthusiastically, probing deep into her mouth with his tongue, while clawing his fingers sharply into her back between her ribs making her thrust her chest tighter against him.  Georgina fell onto her back and he followed her so that his full weight crushed her to the damp ground, shamefully unconcerned that the bulge in his trousers was brushing the skin of her uncovered labia.  She released his head and, as he thrust his tongue as deep into her mouth as he could, she spread her arms wide surrendering her body to him.

As his tongue explored the back of Georgina’s mouth her stomach, unaccustomed to beer – especially in such quantity, heaved and she tried to push him away as the bile rose in her throat.  She frantically pushed his face up off hers a moment before she heaved beery vomit down her front, soaking her rolled up shirt, covering her breasts and ponding in her hollow belly. 

Dick rolled away cursing her as he felt the warm stinking contents of her stomach splashing on his chest.  Georgina tried to sit up feeling giddy and somewhat detached.  She retched to clear her mouth, eventually managing to mumble profuse but incoherent apologies before vomiting again as she tried to roll over and crawl away on all fours. 

Suddenly feeling embarrassed,  and guilty, Ben got to his feet and ran back to the village leaving Georgina lying face down on the wet grass.

GEORGINA - Chapter 6: The Adit

The next thing Georgina was aware of was the bell for the morning shift tolling.  Her head was thumping in time with each beat of her heart.  She shivered uncontrollably as she pulled her cold sodden shirt down to cover her exposed breasts from the view of passing mineworkers heading for the pit.  Scrambling to her feet Georgina hurried to the colliery and furtively scurried behind the manager’s office to discard the ruined remnants of her trousers and quickly pull on the coarse canvas ones acquired from the dead girl.  The legs were perhaps a bit short, finishing half way down her calves but anything was better than the old ones which had exposed more flesh than they had covered.

At the pit-head Georgina looked around but saw no sign of Dick before Ben arrived with Agnes.  He looked questioningly at her new trousers and  at her sodden shirt now held together at the front by only two remaining buttons.  As he swung the iron bar across the top of the shaft towards her for her to sit on he asked "Had a good night then" with a grin.  She didn't reply as he swung his legs over the bar and clasped her to him ready for their descent.  They hadn't descended far before he coldly stated "You stink."

Georgina paused, ashamed yet in a strange way emboldened by the sub-human state she felt she was slowly descending to.  "Fuck you!" she eventually spat out at him.

"Alright" Ben replied grasping her so tightly she could no longer breathe in. 

With relief Georgina at last felt her feet touch the ground at the bottom of the shaft.  Turning quickly away from him she started harnessing herself to the empty tub.  As she reached to fasten the belt round her belly her hands touched the stinking, vomit soaked,  slimy front of her shirt.  She glanced back at Ben and Mr Woods,  took a deep breath, unfastened the two remaining buttons on her shirt and peeled it off, rolling it into a bundle which she carefully placed in her empty tub.  By the flickering light of the candles she thought she saw Ben staring at  the way her hollow belly rose up from the bottom of her rib cage as she crawled on all fours and at her daintily hanging breasts.  She was  considering spitting in his face when Agnes, his daughter,  arrived down the shaft so, before she had the chance to make any comment, Georgina was swiftly dragging her tub down the tunnel. 

Having missed her morning porridge Georgina was hungry long before Ben stopped for his mid-day bread and she also realised that she had not brought anything to eat with her.   She was also unusually thirsty, indeed so parched had she become that she finally collapsed face down in the cold trickling water and gulped down a couple of mouthfuls of the filthy gritty water before she started feeling sick again.  When Ben finally stopped  to eat she curled up into a ball to hide her breasts from him as he turned to face her.  Then to her surprise Agnes pulled off her thick cloth chemise and placed it neatly with Georgina's shirt at the base of the coal pillar away from the face where Ben was working.  Slightly shocked she wondered whether Agnes had only started wearing it since Georgina had started working with them or whether Agnes was copying her.  However Georgina felt that the young girl was almost theatrically eating her bread as conspicuously as possible, fully aware that Georgina had failed to collect her ration that morning.

By the end of the shift Georgina had almost decided that Ben was no longer noticing that she was half naked beneath the layers of grime and dust, however when it was time to be hoisted to the surface he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her hurriedly to sit on the iron cross bar as soon as she had got her arms into her shirt sleeves, before she had a chance to fasten the buttons.  As they started to be hoisted to the surface he grasped her tightly with his hands inside her shirt, pressing her exposed breasts tight against his bare chest.  She avoided making any eye contact with him until they reached the surface when she quickly hurried back ahead of him, quickly fastening the front of her shirt as best she could. 

Apart from the occasional grope while being wound up and down the shaft Ben took no other advantage of her scanty clothing and after a couple of days Georgina followed Agnes's example and left her shirt in the care of the old woman at the top of the shaft, whose main job was to pass on the bell signal from Mr Woods at the bottom to the two sturdy women operating the windlass.

Georgina kept a look out for Dick but over the next couple of weeks only saw him a couple of times, in the early morning queue at the pithead.  On one occasion he nodded offhandedly to her but on the other he failed to look in her direction.  She hesitated to seek him out as she hazily recollected his disgust when she threw up over him and, in any case, she suspected he was thinking of the dead girl they had just buried all the time he was caressing her.

One of the hewers was killed when the roof collapsed on him then, a few days later, one of the hurriers working at the four foot seam, where small trams running on rails were used, lost her right leg when a loaded tram ran away crushing her.  Ben said misfortunes often come in threes and the following day they found themselves trying to work in over a foot of water by mid-day, when Georgina reported the flooding to Mr Woods he said to carry on and he would look into it.  Ben explained to her that the horse powered capstan on the surface operated a rag and chain pump which lifted the water up another shaft halfway to the surface where it ran off into a small adit emptying into a tributary of the River Douglas some distance away.  The next time she emptied her tub Mr Woods said he'd sent a message up and it had been confirmed that the two horses were still working and all seemed to be in order with the pump.  But as Georgina reported the water was still rising and Ben said the pump well had now become inaccessible he would send a message for someone to inspect the adit.  Within an hour the water was so high that the low tunnels were no longer tenable and six workers from the half yard seam were sent to the surface one by one sitting on the iron bar with the full bucket beneath, to blasphemous complaints from the winders that no coal had been left out to compensate for the extra weight of the men.

When they turned up for work the following morning it was confirmed that the adit was blocked and flooded up to the chain pump with little water emerging from its mouth.  As the colliers were turned away Mr Thomas, the manager, held Georgina back together with Dick Barratt and led them into his office with one of the surveyors.  He told them they were to go up the adit from its outlet to investigate and if possible clear the blockage, presumably a roof fall.  Dick immediately refused saying "If we unblock it all the water built up on the higher side will come down on us and drown us or at best flush us out senseless."

The surveyor then explained that they were at first simply to go up with a measuring chain, which was why it needed two of them, and report back to him the nature of the blockage and how many chain lengths up the adit it was.  He would then decide the best way of clearing it. 

Mr Thomas added that if they refused there would be no further work for them in the pit and Dick would be sent to rot in the gaol as a debtor.  He had chosen them because Dick was the thinnest hewer in the pit and he judged that Georgina would be capable of accurately keeping measure of the distance measured by the chain.  The surveyor spoke to Georgina ensuring she knew how to measure the distance up the adit using his long-linked chain while the manger discussed the possible causes of the blockage with Dick.

The adit was indeed tiny and both Dick and Georgina stripped off their shirts as they would have been quickly shredded by the jagged wet rock and shale walls and roof of the tunnel.  It was a slow and painful progress up the miniature tunnel.  Dick had to slide along the wet slimy invert on his belly pushing mainly with his legs as one hand held the end of the chain and the other the candle in its tin box.  Georgina had to wait behind in the darkness until the chain went tight then Dick would stop and she had to follow, in many places the back of her shoulders was jammed against the roof as her breasts scraped over cold uneven stones beneath her, she had little option but to keep her arms almost straight out before her and just wriggle so tightly did she fit the adit.  In other places the water had scoured deep pools in the mud and stone bed into which she would unexpectedly slither in the dark.  Here and there sections were supported by soft rotten timbers which crumbled as she touched them, her heart pounded as she envisaged the tunnel collapsing onto them, thousands of tons of rock crushing their bodies to nothingness in an instant; or, perhaps even worse, collapsing behind them to entomb them to a lingering death by drowning, starvation or suffocation in the darkness.   She wondered how so small a tunnel had been constructed, perhaps by children working in unimaginable conditions with just hammers and chisels.  Once she caught up with Dick they would start the progress over again.  Their progress was so slow that it seemed to take hours to reach the roof-fall.  Georgina just lay there soaked, exhausted and shivering, crying silently in pain from countless cuts and abrasions.  She mentally repeated to herself "nineteen and a half chains" as she dully stared past Dick's bare feet at the glimmer of his candle ahead as he inspected the fall.

To her surprise he started pulling away some of the loose stones in front of him.   "The surveyor said we were to just inspect the blockage and report its position back to him" she called forward. 

"Mr Thomas took me aside and said he'd cancel my debt to him of five pounds and give me a further five pounds if I could clear the blockage to save the time and cost of sinking a shaft to it from the surface." Dick replied "You can have the five pounds cash if you help me."

"You said we'd be drowned by the water released by the fall if we disturbed it" Georgina complained.

"This fall is only small stones, clay and mud" countered Dick "I should be able to carefully make just a small hole through, about the size of a small pebble, which will only let the water escape slowly, we can't be too far down from the pump, which has stopped working now."

Georgina replied that she had a bad feeling about it as she unsuccessfully tried to wriggle up alongside him.  With her arms stretched out in front her hands felt his bare belly, she moved one down to grasp the waistband of his trousers.  Dick started to wriggle back down to the slightly wider eroded section of tunnel where Georgina had been waiting. 

"Do you want to go back then?" he asked her. 

She thought of the long slow torturous journey back and wondered, if Dick was correct about how close they were from the pump shaft, whether they would be told to repeat the journey to clear the fall.  "Do what you want, I'll stay with you" she hesitantly replied.  Before he wriggled forward away from her again she added "You said you wished you'd fucked Helen before she got killed."

"You remember something of that night then?" he queried placing a hand onto her grazed shoulder.

Moving her hand back onto his flat belly she slid her fingertips under his waistband replying "I'm sorry I was sick when we kissed, it was the beer, I had never drunk it before..."

"I thought you were revolted by me kissing you, and you passed out soon afterwards" he replied moving his hand down to her breasts while she slid her hand down to his stiffening member. 

"I don't mind if you want to pretend I'm Helen" Georgina boldly responded.  He quickly pushed his other hand down the front of her trousers to explore and probe between her lips.

"You don't feel anything like Helen" he said as he inserted two fingers into her vagina. "She was sweet" he paused. "You're perfect" he added as he clawed the fingernails of his other hand across the prominent ribs of her back making her arch her body towards him.

"Fuck me!  Fuck me now, then I won't care if we die!  she suddenly screamed, letting go of his erect penis to push down and remove her trousers, Helen's trousers she recalled as the water carried them away down the tunnel.  Dick removed his hands from her to tear loose the waistband of his trousers and frantically push them down into the muddy water free of his legs and feet.

They clawed at each others already bloody, slippery, bodies.  She found his hard stiff cock entered her with unexpected yet not totally unpleasant pain then, as they writhed against the sharp wet rocks, her body was gradually taken over by an all consuming ecstasy even before she felt, with a thrill, his seed issuing into her. 

They lay panting, clasping each other tightly before the cold water trickling past their glistening bodies stirred them back  into action.  Now naked, Dick wriggled forward to the rock fall and, lying on his side, worked to loosen individual stones which he pushed down past the front of his body to Georgina who then rolled them past her into the deeper puddle.  The flow of cold muddy water increased slightly as a large piece of clay was dislodged, washing past Dick to catch Georgina's open mouth by surprise. 

Dick paused to ask "Are you all right?" to Georgina coughing and spluttering in the darkness between his legs.

"Carry on" she spluttered in reply.

The stones in front were more jagged and jammed firmly against each other so Dick had to spend some time trying unsuccessfully to wriggle them loose with his bleeding fingers.  Georgina pushed the end of the surveyor's long-linked chain up to him "Try using this to loosen them" she suggested.  Watching by the dim flickering candle light little spurts of water jetting from the tiny gaps between the rocks she again had that bad feeling about this task and indeed about the whole adit.  With no stones to handle down past her for the time being she reached between his legs and fondled his flaccid cock.  As it stiffened again  she massaged it in time with his body's writhing as he desperately struggled to loosen any of the immovable rocks ahead, blood trickling down both arms from his mangled fingers.  With her other hand she pleasured herself, as she had done many times in the past but never before with the excitement of pumping a hard throbbing penis in the other. 

She came before he did, releasing his cock in order to massage her own breasts and belly.  Then she slid further forward jamming her head between his legs to take the whole length of his hard swollen cock in her mouth.  She thrust her head to and fro, ecstatic each time the end gagged her throat at the back of her mouth. When she finally made him come he was oblivious to the pain from his fingers, ripping two fingernails off as,  no longer cautious,  he tore a large stone loose.  As he ejaculated deep into her throat she choked and sank her fingernails deep into his thin buttocks feeling his body arch so his pelvis thrust forward striking the back of her head against the tunnel wall while his cock pushed down her throat blocking her airway.

Once the large stone was released four other stones were immediately dislodged by the pressure of the water behind them,  then the whole mass loosened.  The gushing torrent struck the two helpless enmeshed bodies immediately sweeping them down before it until the girl's long slender legs lodged against the rough tunnel sides jamming them both from further progress.  The boy's torso folded back so that the tunnel was largely blocked by it, the mass of water upstream totally submerging his face so his lungs quickly filled with mud and water through his gasping mouth.  The girl's head, still jammed between his legs was pushed forward so her chin was jammed down onto her collar bone preventing her opening her mouth to spit out the semen with which it was still filled but she could, after a few long seconds, breathe in the occasional bubble of air from the cavitation downstream through her nose.

As the flow lessened and she could breathe more easily Georgina became aware of the pain from her hips due to the unnatural angle of her legs which were jammed immovably across the narrow tunnel.  In a panic she spat the remaining semen which she hadn't already swallowed out between her teeth and struggled to free herself but that only caused more pain.  Then by twisting her pelvis slightly she straightened and freed her left leg so her right leg could bend double at the knee allowing her to slide on down the tunnel away from the pressure of Dick's body.  Rolling onto her back with her arms trailing limply above her head she came to rest again on the bed of the adit as the flow reduced to a trickle, but by then she had already lost consciousness from the pain and the cold.

Georgina was totally disorientated when, luckily, she regained consciousness in the cold and wet total darkness of the adit.  She realised she had been awoken by the rapidly increasing flow of cold water past her body, muddy water splashing into her open mouth.  Shivering violently she rolled onto her belly and crawled forward back up the tunnel against the current.  With horror and hatred she realised they must re-started the pump.  She wasn't sure how far she had crawled when her hands felt Dick's cold legs and feet.  She frantically called to him, tugging at his legs until she dislodged his body, releasing the water built up upstream of it to cascade over her head.   Tearfully she pulled his limp form alongside her,  feeling his chill chest,  neck and face quickly she confirmed that he must have been dead for some time.   She wriggled back downstream then commenced the slow task of wriggling back downstream, dragging the corpse along by its ankles.

The cold rushing water numbed her body so that she was barely aware of how the stony bed and the  jagged rock sides and roof of the tunnel tore at her body as she wriggled backwards,  sometimes straining to drag the corpse as it caught on a protruding rock or a shattered timber support, sometimes being pushed down as the current caught it, washing it down on top of her until its legs twisted and once again lodged it against the tunnel walls.

Several times she stopped for a rest, each time making the effort to continue aware that if she drifted off into sleep or unconsciousness she would probably never awake.  She was beginning to think that she was in some never ending nightmare when she finally encountered the little masonry arch outlet of the adit, with some surprise as it was now dark outside.  She wearily dragged Dick's broken, battered remains out of the little brook running dark brown from coal dust mixing with the disturbed clay and ochre from recent fall.  For several minutes she sat huddling her bloodstained knees to her grazed breasts and torn nipples, staring at the shattered corpse lying on its back.  Now seeing it illuminated by the rising moon she could no longer recognise it as Dick, it had become just a broken carcass with the nose almost ripped from its face, one ear practically missing and several ribs glistening in the pale light where the skin and flesh had been torn away. She thought it strange there was no blood, it didn't seem to be just a trick of the moonlight as she could see the slightly reddish hue where the corpse was stained with the ochre rich clay in places.

When Georgina tried to stand she cried out loud with pain from her left ankle and fell forward onto all fours.  She crawled, dragging her injured leg behind her up from the brook towards a shrubby tree.  Grasping its largest stem for support she cautiously stood again.  Gingerly she tested her ankle again, wincing as it bore her weight she nevertheless managed to hobble unsteadily back towards the colliery. 

The only sound at the pithead was from the pair of dejected horses working the capstan powering the pump.  A small boy tending them looked up and down  the naked blood stained wraith in silence.  She feebly croaked "Help me!" but he just stared back at her, he was probably no more than four or five years old.  "Please, get help" Georgina pleaded, swaying unsteadily.  The boy just looked at her as if she hadn't even spoken.

After she pleaded with him a third time he replied "I mustn't leave horses" in a squeeky voice.  Turning away from him she staggered towards the manager's office, feeling increasingly weak.  She tried the handle, even though she knew it must be locked, then looked towards the adjacent village, the moonlit rows of cottages seemed to be swaying, rocking like a boat adrift on a gentle sea while she lost the feeling in her legs and crumpled to the ground.....

GEORGINA - Chapter 7: Never to See the Light of Day Again

Michael Thomas got the key from his pocket ready to unlock his office as usual, relieved that the lower levels of the pit would now reopen.  He was surprised when he nearly fell over a filthy body sprawled against the front of his door.  Not having carried a lamp as there was a full moon he opened the door so the gaunt carcass fell forward onto its face, he could see it had long lank hair plastered with mud or silt and he carefully stepped over it to light a lamp in the office.  He felt strangely excited as, holding the lamp in one hand he grasped one of the body's limp upper arms and rolled it onto its back so he could view its face.  He immediately recognised it was Georgina 'Smith'.  When he had first seen the sad looking girl with damp mud stained clothes clinging to her slim body, pleading for work, he had dreamt of seeing her as naked as she now lay before him, which was indeed the only reason he had offered to find her a job.  Excitedly he knelt and felt her chest, feeling the hollow below her sternum he could just feel her heart still beating, but dark blood slightly stuck his fingers to her skin.

The manager looked across towards the village where candles flickered behind tiny grimy windows as the miners prepared for work.  The girl would have to wait for now as he needed to check in the workers who would very soon be heading for the pit head so he dragged her into the office and lay her in the furthest corner.  Though she still showed no signs of consciousness he took the precaution of hurriedly binding her wrists behind her back and gagging her mouth with a piece of rag tied tightly behind her head.  Before he had a chance to tie her ankles he heard voices at the door as the first colliers arrived.

As Mr Thomas walked to the pit head with his ledger after locking the office door he recalled how he had often watched Georgina, in the half light before dawn,  waiting to descend; hoping she would strip at least some of her clothing before climbing to sit on the iron crossbar with Benjamin Hopkins.  At last, only a couple of weeks ago, she had finally taken to stripping off the remnants of her already indecently revealing cotton shirt at the pit head before starting work, but always with her back to him.  He would stare at her pale colourless skin stretched tight over ribs and vertebrae, but never once did she turn her body towards him so he could only try to imagine her breasts and hollow tummy.  With jealousy he had visualised what it felt like for Hopkins as he grasped her tight to his bare torso.  Was there further intimacy between them in the darkness of the pit?

"I said, is the water right down again now?" repeated one of the hewers, bringing Mr Thomas back from his wandering thoughts.

"Yes... Yes, the surveyor found a blockage in the adit and cleared it" he replied.  Watching one of the hurriers nonchalantly discard her coarse chemise and turn to talk with a younger girl Mr Thomas thought how that woman's short stocky body and pendulous breasts contrasted with Georgina's long-limbed slender form.  He checked the surface workers were all settled to their tasks before returning stealthily in the dim light of dawn to unlock his office, with his heart pounding as he turned the key.

Once inside Mr Thomas quickly locked the door and removed the key.  Georgina lay slumped where he had left her.  He untied her hands and rolled her onto her back.  For several minutes he sat and stared at her, she could have been dead apart from the barely perceptible rise and fall of her chest.  He wondered what had happened to Richard Barratt.  When he and the surveyor had seen the sudden torrent of muddy water gush out of the mouth of the adit, and watched as it continued for at least five, perhaps ten, minutes before  slowly abating to a brownish black trickle they were both so convinced that the two youngsters must have perished that they didn't even need to mention them to each other as they turned away and headed back to the pit.  The manager had been relieved that he could now consider reopening the pit, for as things had been recently with its owner, Earl Rawtenstall, he doubted that the money to sink a shaft from the surface to clear the blockage would have been forthcoming and the future even of his own job would have been in doubt.

As the first grey light of dawn entered through the grimy windows of his office, he bent forward   and pulled her left leg slightly to one side to get a better view of her sex.  The growing daylight gave more colour than the pale moonlight had.  He could now see that her battered, still bleeding, body was streaked reddish brown and grey with mud, blood and coal dust.  He stepped over her, grasped a slender wrist and dragged her torso sideways a foot or two  across the floor so her arms were now spread wide which he felt better displayed her chest and stretched her belly exaggerating its slightly concave curve from her hips to her prominent ribs.  He reflected that Benjamin Hopkins certainly didn't appear to have been over generous in feeding or paying his latest assistant. 

Increasingly excited, the bulge in his trousers grew as he regretfully recalled that Mrs Thomas didn't like him groping her or seeing her naked by either candle or day light.  But now it seemed that fortune had provided him with a helpless female body with which he could do whatever he willed. 

Suddenly he could contain his lust no more.  He removed his jacket and waistcoat, then bent down and tightly grasped a pert breast in each hand.  As he squeezed even tighter he was surprised to feel a warm liquid squirt from each nipple over his hands – did that mean she with child?  Looking down he saw however that it was bright red blood issuing from deep cuts where her nipples had been almost torn from her breasts!  The sight of fresh blood drove him into a frenzy and he tried to drag her up on to his table by her tits, but after stretching to an unnaturally flat elongated shape they slipped from his grasp and she dropped back onto the floor. Changing his grip to her hollow armpits he hauled her roughly up and onto the small table, knocking over a mug and an open bottle of ink, where she lay with her head and lifeless limbs hanging limply over the edges.  He grasped her thighs, pushing her unresisting legs apart, before unfastening his breeches and dropping them and his drawers to the floor.  He grabbed her hips and pulled her onto his erect cock,  but he couldn't get it into her  dry vagina.  So he roughly stretched her labia apart with the fingers  of both hands then forcefully wriggled two,  then three, fingers of his right hand into her canal.   Steadying her with the flat of his other hand pushing down into her belly, firmly pushing her pubic bone towards him, he furiously twisted his fingers enlarging her hole so he could get the fourth finger of his right hand in.  Mrs Thomas never let him pleasure her with more than one finger.  He roughly screwed his fingers further in, he felt her soft tissues becoming slightly moist but looking down he saw thin streaks of blood on his fingers, either from his probing fingernails scratching her or perhaps from tearing due to how much he was stretching her passage.

He knew he should be ashamed of the abuse he was subjecting the girl to, but his cock felt as though it was swelling  to burst and he withdrew his fingers sufficiently for him to also insert his thumb then viciously thrust his whole hand in, trying to stifle a yell of excitement as his other hand pressing flat on her belly felt the thrusting of his right hand deep inside her.

He quickly withdrew his blood-smeared hand and thrust his throbbing penis into her easily this time.  He pumped ecstatically at her lifeless cunt while kneading and clawing at her breasts and raking her ribcage with his fingernails leaving fresh bleeding marks on her already scarred body.   Mrs Thomas was always telling him not to 'keep poking' at her and nagging him not to be rough when making love, but now he could subject this pliant young, though possibly fast expiring, body to his darkest fantasies.

He ecstatically came all too quickly,  ejaculating deep inside her,  then dropped forward to lie on her still body staring at the fine features of her grazed yet still elegant face inches from his own. 

With a start he came back to reality,  there was paperwork to process,  hauliers' bills to be replied to and he hadn't checked on the surface workers sorting the coal from the slag.  Hurriedly dressing he looked round his office, broken crockery, pens,  pencils and loose invoices were scattered across the floor and he stared at a large puddle of blue ink which was slowly soaking into the floorboards by his overturned chair.

Once he had hastily tidied the worst of the mess he turned his attention back to Georgina.   From a chest in the corner he got out an old shirt and pair of trousers he had kept for the rare occasions when out was necessary for him to descend into the pit.  Struggling with the girl's limp uncooperative limbs it took longer than he expected to pull his old clothes onto her .  He then lay her carefully on the floor beneath the window with her arms by her side before leaving the office,  locking the door.

Georgina slowly regained consciousness, every part of her body aching painfully.   Looking about her she was relieved to see that she was safe on Mr Thomas's office.  However when struggled to her feet her left ankle was so swollen and painful that she hesitated to put any weight on it,  while her crotch stung as she moved her legs.  She felt that her vagina had perhaps filled with grit and mud as she was deluged by the flood of mud and coal dust in the adit.  She sat down on the chair by the table, spreading her legs to ease the pain, and wondered how long she had been unconscious.   Would Mr Thomas return soon?   She was so thirsty,  she looked around the room,  there were several mugs on a shelf near the unlit stove. She hobbled over and filled one with cold water from a large kettle on top of the stove and drank it eagerly,  she refilled the mug and shakily returned to sit at the table.

Soon afterwards she was pleased to hear Mr Thomas returning.  As he entered he looked at her, slumped over his table, in surprise.  He asked how she felt,  but before she even finished her answer he was questioning her about what had happened to Richard Barratt and where he was now.   Georgina explained about the wall of fallen stones he had dislodged and how she had dragged his body out of the adit.  Mr Thomas immediately insisted she lead him there.   Though barely able to even stand with pain and fatigue she managed with him supporting and dragging her to get back down to the outlet of the adit and point out the filthy battered carcass.   Had she not told him who it was Mr Thomas would not have recognised the torn flesh and bone, which already appeared to have suffered from the attention of crows, foxes and the like; with empty eye sockets and its stomach torn open.

Sickened, Georgina asked Mr Thomas about his offer of money to Dick if he cleared the obstruction in the adit,  which had directly led to his death. 

"I never made any such offer" he lied, "Check with the surveyor if you don't believe me."

"You were speaking with Dick alone while the surveyor was explaining the measuring chain to me" she retorted, "I should get at least the five pounds cash you promised, it would have cost scores of pounds to  have cleared it from above!"

Mr Thomas's furious punch to her lower belly took her totally by surprise', she doubled in pain and fell  forward into the brook gasping for breath.   "You'll say no more about adits, promises of money or clearing roof falls to anyone" he snarled, a further kick, to her chest, sending her back in as she struggled out of the shallow water.

The manager had only promised the poor boy a reward because he was confident that success in clearing the adit would lead to his certain death.  He had no authority from the Earl of Rawtenstall to make such an offer,  and feared that neither would he have paid for any work to clear it in order to keep the colliery open.

Shocked,  Georgina again crawled dejectedly out of the brook, looking up at Mr Thomas in disbelief.   "I think you murdered Richard Barratt" he sneered.  "He tried to fuck you, so you madly attacked him and killed him."

"No!" she screamed back at him.

"Everyone saw you with him the night after Helen Stewart's death" he pointed out.  "Bring his body back to the pit" he commanded.

"I can't" she weakly replied.

He kicked her in the face as she looked pleadingly up at him.  "You will"  he stated "or hang for his murder here,  from that tree."

Blood trickling from her nose she reluctantly tried to obey.  Half crawling, she dragged the carcass by one wrist for a few yards across the ground before collapsing.  Mr Thomas grasped her filthy long hair and lifted her head up so he could see her terrified eyes then looked down to see that the shirt he had provided her with was now ripped open and bloodstained down the front, he spat in her face snarling "Don't stop you lazy whore."

In the end Mr Thomas had to grasp the corpse's  other wrist and help her drag it to lie on the ground near his office.   Georgina was shaking with confusion and fear as he tied her arms tightly behind her back, thrusting her chest forward so that one breast was bared by the open front of her shirt.  He then pushed her to the floor of his office tying a rope round her neck, securing the other end to the stove, to await the end of the shift. 

The pit workers stared, puzzled, at the ravaged carcass in front of which they had been assembled.   Mr Thomas walked past them into his office and immediately came back out roughly pushing Georgina, battered and bloodstained,  in front of him.  She waddled unsteadily with her legs apart, the front of her shirt torn open to the waist and her head bowed so her matted hair covered her face as she stared down at her feet.

"This evil bitch did that to Richard Barratt there" announced the manager, pointing at the unrecognisable corpse on the ground.  "She couldn't just say no to him and push him away when he made advances to her yesterday, she went crazy, strangled him unconscious then beat and slashed at him until he bled to death."

"Hang her!" shouted one of the miners.

The manager continued "She should be sent to the gaol and tried for murder, for which she would indeed hang for certain" but he paused a few moments before continuing "However the court would learn that we still employ women, and children, underground in contravention of the new law.  So in everyone's interest I have decided we shall deal with her ourselves."

"Yes, hang her down the shaft" someone shouted.

Someone else added "Let us fuck her to death first!"  Although Georgina did here a female voice muttering quietly "Poor cow, I saw that little bugger molesting her a few weeks ago outside the tavern."

She tried to turn away from the crowd but a sharp tug at her bound wrists made her fall back against Mr Thomas then sag to her knees.

"I have no authority to hang anyone" he stated, adding "So I have decided she can spend the rest of her life working the top end of the half yard mine, where poor Richard Barratt here used to work.  For every ton of coal she can get to the pit eye she can can be given a chunk of bread or something, otherwise she can starve – it will be her choice."

"Won't she run away at night?  Or are you planning on keeping her at your house between shifts?" queried one of the hewers, to a few suppressed laughs.

The manager wearily replied "Didn't I explain clearly enough, once she's down there she can stay down there, never to see the light of day again."

"Bastard!  You ...." Georgina started screaming hysterically, cut short by a harsh kick to her belly which sent her sprawling breathless onto her back, her open shirt falling off her shoulders as she writhed.  To the disappointment of most of the assembly Mr Thomas gagged her then dragged her back into his office.  Before retiring for the night he did however temporarily release her while he gave her a mug of weak black tea and some rather dry bread.

The following morning Georgina's aching stiffness was made worse by the fact that she had spent the night on the office floor with her wrists and ankles bound together.  When the manager returned to his office, once the workers had descended just before dawn, she was unbound and led to the pit head where Ben Hopkins waited, shuffling uncomfortably and avoiding eye contact with her.  There she was told to strip, she removed the tattered shirt and tried to hand it to the old woman waiting by the signal bell, but Mr Thomas said "She won't be needing that again, just throw it away" then, turning to stare at Georgina ordered "And the trousers please, Miss."

She glared back at him, then took a step towards the shaft.  Mr Thomas roughly pulled her back by her left arm "Ben, remove her trousers please."

"Stop, I'll take them off" she interjected, quickly dropping the trousers to her ankles and stepping out of them, conscious of Mr Thomas's continuing stare.

"Shall I go down with her?" asked Ben.

"No!" Mr Thomas jealously responded "You can tie her hands to the cable if you want to make sure she doesn't fall."

"Why not bind her wrists to the cross bar and let her hang by them?" Ben then suggested salaciously.

Although the image evoked by Ben's suggestion appealed to Mr Thomas he didn't want any create  any impression that he was taking advantage of Georgina's misfortune so he promptly disparaged that idea but watched, with some consolation, as the slender naked girl's bloody subjugated battered  body squirmed with the agonizing pain from the pressure of the hard iron cross bar and the winch cable against her swollen vagina.  She winced, drawing in her stomach, then threw back her head and screamed obscenities at them as she disappeared from view down the shaft.

As he turned away Mr Thomas did feel some regret that he would probably never see her again.

GEORGINA - Chapter 8: The Half Yard Seam

At the bottom of the shaft several miners were eagerly awaiting Georgina.  Her feebly resisting naked body was grasped, groped and manhandled with unnecessary enthusiasm  towards a newly installed ventilation door sealing off the low tunnel at opposite side of the shaft to where she had been accustomed to work.   Worse assault upon her body was prevented by Mr Woods' repeatedly stressing the manager's strict instructions that she was not to be raped or sexually assaulted.

Mr Woods repeated to her the manager's order that she would be fed in accordance with the coal she fetched, and gestured to where a pick, hammer and shovel had been left for her.  He explained that she should not remove the pillars of coal left as they supported the roof, before bolting the door shut behind her, leaving her, shaking with disbelief at her treatment - in total darkness.

For several hours Georgina just lay curled up in a ball, she had decided not to give them the satisfaction of getting any coal for them but instead to just lie down and die.   As time passed hunger, cold and boredom made her start to move around, exploring her surroundings with her hands in the dark.   Crawling slightly uphill away from the door the roof rapidly lowered so she could only slither forward on her belly.  At least it was a lot drier here than lower down nearer the pump well where Ben  worked, but she could tell why they had chosen Dick to try working this thin seam, most of the stronger more heavily built hewers' shoulders would be too  broad for them to lie on their sides to use a pick.  Somewhat disorientated she collapsed face down and slept on and off for many hours.

When she finally awoke fully she began to wonder whether she really did want to die of starvation;  she was also desperately thirsty but had in the past avoided drinking the filthy groundwater trickling throughout the pit.  However when she cautiously tried licking some of the dribbling water seeping from the shale roof she found it slightly fresher than the foul contaminated puddles nearer the pump well further down the mine.  Feeling the little rivulets of water on the floor she guessed that if she followed them they might lead her back down to the ventilation door.   As she continued to drag herself along beneath the low roof of the tunnel it kept reminding her of her ordeal in the adit.  Slowly an idea came to her that, if she could get through the bolted door,  there was a slight chance that escape from the pit might be possible.

She lay curled up shivering and hungry by the ventilation door hearing the noises from the shaft and the hurriers shovelling coal.  Once Mr Woods opened the door to enquire if she had fetched any coal, she sullenly shook her head.   The slightly hollow emptiness in her belly grew to become a nagging, persistent pain which she tried to alleviate by clasping her hands in front of her and pressing them into her stomach as she curled forward.  Now unable to sleep she crawled to where the pick had been left and started dragging it up the tunnel.  She had intended hacking away at one of the nearby pillars left to support the roof so she would either get sufficient coal to exchange for something to eat or bring the roof down to finally end her misery. However as she prepared to strike the pillar with the pick she hesitated, terrified as she again visualized the hundreds of thousands of tons of stone above her dropping to instantly flatten her diminutive flesh and bones to nothingness.  She continued to crawl uphill beneath the lowering roof to where she assumed the coal face that Dick had been working was. 

Georgina's first few strikes at the coal face were totally ineffective.  Realizing much more effort was needed she lay on her side facing it and swung the pick with every bit of strength she could summon from her frail body, the skin being torn from her right shoulder by the jagged roof until at last a piece of coal was dislodged.  She repeated this process again and again until she was drenched in sweat and blood, the pain from the ripped and grazed skin of her shoulders and ribs surpassing that of her hollow shrivelled stomach.  After about five or six hours labour she collapsed, shaking with fatigue, to sleep for a while.  She awoke cold and stiff and started feeling around in the dark for the lumps of coal she had loosened.  Remembering Dicks description of working this almost impossibly thin seam she pushed and rolled as much coal as possible in front of her down the tunnel, but in the pitch black she seemed to have lost most of it by the time she reached the door.  She crawled back up and retrieved as many of the lost lumps as she could find on her next journey down.  Feeling the accumulated pile she knew that she hadn't gathered anywhere near a ton yet and collapsed in tears at her failure.

However when Mr Woods unbolted and opened the heavy door and looked in holding his candle at the small heap of coal and muttered "Right then, shovel that into the bucket then you can have some bread."

Crouching wearily Georgina first shovelled the coal through the door nearer to the shaft then staggering to her feet she carried it unsteadily a shovel full at a time to the bucket waiting to be winched up the shaft.  With shame she avoided eye contact with Mr Woods who was intently watching every painful movement of her sweat and blood soaked naked body by candlelight.  Once the bucket was full she looked round and saw young Agnes was there, grinning at her discomfort.

"I’ve got to hurry for father on my own now, you bitch" she spat at Georgina.  Unhitched from her tub Agnes walked towards her carrying a shovel "He has to keep stopping to help me, I can't keep up on my own." She pulled back the shovel preparing to drive its sharp edge into Georgina's hollow belly but Mr Woods grabbed it and told her to get on with unloading her tub, before going to his locker and producing a small hunk of dry bread which he handed to Georgina.  She devoured the bread in an instant then scurried back through the door into the almost welcome darkness beyond.

When Georgina heard it go quiet the other side of the heavy wooden door she assumed that it was night and that the workers had all gone home.   Rather than waste her energy hewing coal she had decided to attack the heavy wooden ventilation door.   She waited for a further half hour or so to be sure no one was still at the pit head to hear any noise which might travel up the shaft then attacked the solid timber with her pick.   She struck it near the hinge  with a resounding crash.  Twice more she struck the same spot with all her strength.  As she felt the only slightly scarred wood with her fingers she was shocked to hear shouting, distant but getting nearer.   She lay still as the puzzled voices reached the foot of the shaft.   They didn't quite sound like the miners; then she recognized the voice of the surveyor who had accompanied them to the adit.  Now she recalled Ben telling her that when they weren't working the surveyors took the opportunity to go down the pit to measure what had been dug out and to set out new tunnels, she had assumed that meant Sundays but they evidently worked at night as well.

As she thought about her shameful treatment she wondered if, perhaps,  the surveyor was unaware of the manager's accusations against her and her predicament.  After all he had seen them both enter the adit working together and possibly seen the flood water pouring out while they were still in there?  Several times she took a deep breath and opened her mouth to shout,  but each time lost her nerve.   It was, she reflected,  just as likely that he was in league with the manager and had agreed with the cover up of the shameful circumstances of Dick's death.   Curled up into a shivering ball she fell asleep until awoken by the clamour of the miners starting work again in the morning.

She repeated her labours of the previous day and earned another meagre piece of dry, stale bread which did little to alleviate her pangs of hunger. 

Georgina felt herself becoming slowly weaker as the inadequate diet,  exhaustion and, perhaps, loss of blood all took their toll on her frail, abused body.   The longer it took her to hew and move coal the less frequently she was fed.  The less she fed the weaker she became.

She started to hew coal from a roof pillar not far in from the door.  When eventually she broke away the last piece of coal from between the floor and the low ceiling she lay on her back debilitated and forlorn staring blindly upwards in the darkness willing the roof to fall and crush her wasted carcass.   She counted her ribs,  she grasped her hollow belly and dug her fingertips in as hard as she could, she spread her skeletal thighs and fingered inside her cunt.  Desperate for anything to surpass the cramping hunger pain from her empty stomach she clutched her left breast with her left hand while the fore and middle fingers of her right hand massaged deep into her vagina as her thumb grasped her pubic bone, which now stood proud of her concave belly between the even greater, somewhat grazed, protrusions of her hip bones.  Aware of the rocky roof only inches above her, she remembered making love to Dick in the adit, and how she had then made herself come again as she massaged his cock seconds before he was drowned in the deluge of water, mud and rocks that had enveloped them.  Her fingers thrust and grasped frantically and she willed the rock to fall and crush her as the orgasm overwhelmed her.  She flung her arms out wide, arched her back and thrust her chest and belly up against the cold, hard,  damp roof, then screamed.  But to her disappointment she was still alive and gripped by hunger as she let her sweat drenched body go limp again.

Upon hearing the unearthly scream from behind the ventilation door Mr Woods ran to it and unbolted it.   Seeing the heap of coal Georgina had accumulated he called to her "Load the bucket and you can have another piece of bread."

She crawled out through the door and staggered to her feet using the shovel for support.   She knew she just did not have the strength left to shift perhaps half a ton of coal from behind the door to the shaft.   She needed a piece of that hard mouldy bread or she would die.   It wasn't fair.   She had done nothing wrong,  nothing to deserve this unwarranted punishment,  nothing to deserve having to work in this hell on earth of a pit,  just as she had done

nothing to deserve the wrath of her father's mill workers.

"If you don't want to load the bucket you can starve, you stupid murderous bitch" growled Woods.

He was totally unprepared when Georgina swung the shovel to crash onto the side of his head.   With a gurgling cry he fell to his knees holding his hands to a bleeding scalp wound, blood trickling between his fingers. 

Just at that moment Ben was approaching the foot of the shaft hauling a tub with Agnes pushing behind.  They ran furiously at Georgina,  snatching away her shovel and hurled her face down to the ground.  Another hurrier had just arrived,  a boy younger than Georgina, Ben called out to him "The evil bitch has done for Mr Woods now."

Georgina tried to appeal to Ben as he rolled her onto her back, but he punched her in the face so her head snapped back.   Dazed she gasped for breath as another miner arrived, having heard the commotion echoing down the tunnels.

To her horror and indignation she felt her legs grasped and spread wide.  "No! " she hoarsely screamed in desperation, but then she felt herself being first dragged and then lifted up by her spread legs until her lower spine struck the top edge of Ben and Agnes's tub.   The skin of her back was torn from her vertebrae and ribs as her torso was hauled back to lie over the coal filled tub, arms and legs dangling over the sides in pathetic submission.  Looking, upside down, towards the shaft Georgina saw Mr Woods regain his feet and stagger towards her,  the hair on the left side of his head matted with wet blood.

Fingers suddenly probed her vagina and Georgina tried to sit up but someone grabbed her hair and jerked her head back down as she heard Ben's voice "I'm going first, lad.  I've been wanting to do this for months!"

As Georgina felt Ben's cock force its way into her, Agnes' face suddenly appeared inches from her own.   The little girl's face was grinning maliciously, then it turned aside as she shouted "Don't fuck her,  hang her."

"All in good time" her father  panted in reply, Georgina wished he would come, and get it over with.

"She should be flogged first" Agnes then added.

"Go away,  little girl" the youthful hurrier shouted.

Georgina could hear  Agnes removing the belt and chain from the coal tub, but was totally unprepared for Agnes swinging the rusty chain through the air,  bringing it crashing down across her straining chest.  Georgina screamed hoarsely.  Then as she was flailed by the chain for a second time Georgina realised that she hadn't even noticed when Ben finished with her, for the other miner was now grasping her slender thighs and pushing them painfully wide apart as he prepared to rape her.  

Looking to her left Georgina saw the boy had stripped naked and was staring intently at her body, two fingers of his right hand subconsciously placed either side of the base of his erect penis.   The boy looked up and shouted "Agnes, leave her alone until I've had my go!"

"Can we hang her then?" Agnes queried, her tiny bare breasts heaving a she panted with excitement.

"There's some rope in my locker" Mr Woods contributed then, remembering the manager's instructions, immediately regretted it.  The miner who was now ravishing Georgina was much rougher than Ben had been and delighted in clawing at her wounds bleeding from Agnes' assault with the chain,  smearing the fresh blood over her tender breasts and sore belly.  As the rough miner started to grunt in time with his brutal heaving Georgina suddenly felt a rope loop passed over her head and tightened round her straining neck.

"Stop!  I haven't had a go yet" yelled the boy,  but Agnes pulled with all her strength on the rope,  so the miner had to hang on tightly to Georgina's hip bones to stop her from being dragged away from him.

She couldn't breathe.  His strong fingers dug deep into her flesh bruising painfully against her pelvis.   Little Agnes braced herself and continued pulling the rope with all her might.   Georgina's chest heaved and her back arched as she tried to draw a breath.  "The whore's fucking coming" the miner yelled in surprise.

Georgina was now barely conscious but she knew she most definitely was not having an orgasm!  

"God,  she's wet!" called out the miner,  in ecstasy.

"I think she's pissing herself" observed Mr Woods.

Georgina's eyes were wide open and her arms fluttered feebly get as she tried to get her hands to her throat, but her lips were starting to turn blue.  The boy groped at Agnes,  screaming "Stop it!  It's my turn now."

'I think I deserve a turn after she tried to kill me" mumbled Mr Woods, walking to take over the place of the miner between Georgina'a legs.  As Agnes was forced to relinquish her grip on the rope round her neck Georgina, coughing,  gasped for air.

Frustrated the boy instead turned his attention to Agnes, grabbing her from behind then throwing her onto her back on the floor; grasping a small bare breast in his left hand, he pushed her left thigh aside with his right, her rotten trousers tearing at the crotch to expose her cunt.

"No you don't" roared Ben, kicking the naked boy in the face so that he fell back away from his daughter.

Despite a few moments fumbling between Georgina's  legs after dropping  his trousers, Mr Woods didn't enter her,  but just stepped back to sit down holding his head.

Having regained her feet Agnes shouted "Now can we hang her properly?"

To Georgina's shock Ben replied "Go on then" adding "and we'll hang this little bastard too!" giving the boy,  who had fallen to his hands and knees, a vicious kick in the belly so that he now fell on his side exposing his genitals to a further kick which still failed to reduce his erection. 

He then turned his attention back to Georgina, rolling her off the tub to fall awkwardly to the ground from where he dragged her on her back by one leg to the foot of the shaft.  Taking hold of the end of the rope still tied round her neck he climbed onto the empty bucket and, balancing carefully, managed to find a gap behind one of the horizontal setting timbers holding the cleading boards lining the shaft about eight foot up just wide enough to pass the end of he rope back down through it.  Jumping off the bucket he heaved down on the rope pulling Georgina, struggling, to her feet.  Agnes eagerly helped heave on the rope as Georgina strained to support her weight on her toes until they were lifted clear of the ground and the rope again crushed her neck closing her windpipe.

She reached up grasping at the rope trying to relieve the pressure while her feet flailed about in the air.  Quickly losing consciousness her arms fell to twitch alongside her body as her eyes rolled upwards.  Ben supported her crotch with his right hand, then inserted two fingers into her bleeding vagina before lifting her so that the weight borne by her neck was relieved sufficiently for her to take a rasping breath before he dropped her again.  Agnes ran her hands up and down Georgina's stretched and bloody torso asking "Is she dead yet?"

Georgina didn't hear Mr Woods command "Get her down from there!" or feel the other miner wrest the rope from Agnes's grasp and drop her to the floor.  When she felt rough hands loosening and removing the rope from round her neck Georgina drew a shallow breath before deciding to pretend to play dead, or at least pretend to be unconscious, in the hope that they would not further molest her.  She prayed that they might even leave her lying at the foot of the shaft outside the door as she had an idea that she could perhaps escape after the shift ended.

"Drag her back through the door then shut it, someone can find her body in a few days time.  Quick now I can hear another hurrier approaching."

Georgina's heart sank as she heard Mr Woods' words but still allowed her body to remain limp as she felt herself dragged by both feet back into the darkness, hoping they might not bother bolting the door behind them when they left.  Alas no; she heard the two bolts being slid across after the heavy door crashed shut.

GEORGINA - Chapter 9: The Apparition

She just lay where they left her, shaking and feeling cold with shock.  She heard all the usual sounds of coal being tipped, then shovelled into the bucket, the clatter from the shaft as the bucket was wound up, the occasional brief conversation between workers and Mr Woods.

At the end of the working day she heard the workers assembling to be hoisted to the surface in pairs after the bucket was unhooked.  Then she heard a slight scratching, rubbing sound from the door, was someone drawing the bolts?  The door slowly scrapped open and she quickly shut her eyes again pretending to be dead.  It took a lot of self will for Georgina to remain limp as she felt a pair of small hands exploring her body, cautiously feeling her belly and rib cage as she held her breath, then weighing each of her small breasts before fingering her neck where the coarse rope had cut into it.  She first thought it was Agnes, curious about the feel of a corpse then, as the fingers probed her sex, pulling her labia apart and exploring her vagina she thought it might be the young hurrier.  She took slow, shallow breaths hoping that her tormentor wouldn't notice.  Mr Thomas's voice from the foot of the shaft sent the mysterious young person scurrying back, shutting the door behind them.  Georgina didn't think she heard the bolts being shot closed, but then he, or she, was being very cautious and furtive, making as little noise as possible.

Tired and dizzy from hunger and pain Georgina had trouble measuring the passage of time.   Once she was sure all the mine workers had returned to the surface she crawled to the door and, trembling with the fear that her last hope of escape had gone,  pushed the door.   It moved!  There was perhaps hope she might get away and live!

She stumbled unsteadily to the tunnel which she had become so familiar with when hurrying for Ben.   Shaking as she struggled to crawl down the gentle slope she heard a noise ahead, were the surveyors working in the mine that night?   She stopped and listened.  With relief she realised it was the rhythmic clatter of the pump, magnified by the silence in the rest of the pit.  Despite the total darkness she had no trouble following the route she had so often laboured along to the stall where Ben worked the seam.   This time,  instead of turning aside to the coal face she continued towards the clanking and rattling of the pump,  more cautiously now, feeling her way in the pitch black as the cold gritty water swirled higher round her legs and forearms.  The last few yards to the pump well seemed to Georgina to take forever, as she cautiously felt her way with outstretched arms uncertain what form the pump would take,  however the almost deafening rattle and clatter of chains made her well aware of the possible dangers there.

Crawling forward through the water with her right hand outstretched her left suddenly lost contact with the floor and Georgina toppled forwards.  Her face plunged into the water as her head struck a large, rough wooden post while her right hand grasped the links of a heavy chain which was, however, moving downwards so that hanging onto it just pulled her head first below the surface.

Floundering in the dark turbulent water she could hear that she was only inches away from the rattling machinery.  Even as her head broke the surface of swirling water she felt moving chains and rags threatening to drag her into whatever pulleys and pipes were sucking the water away.  Her hands desperately searched in the darkness for a safe hold.  She found the rough wooden post,  which was in fact a vertical pipe, and hung onto it as she recovered her breath. 

Shivering in the cold water Georgina knew she had to find the will and strength to haul herself up the pump shaft.  Slowly she pulled herself out of the water, desperately grasping the rough surface of the wooden pipe which seemed to be simply a  piece of tree trunk with a hole made up the middle.  As she started to climb the pipe  she struggled to get sufficient grip to cope with the increasing weight as her body lifted out of the water.  Fortunately her kicking feet found that the pipe extended some way below the surface so she was able to grip it with her knees and thighs.

Slowly and painfully she dragged herself clear of the water,  but sobbing with despair she knew she hadn't the strength to maintain her grip on the rough slimy wood.  Only by inches did she manage to slither up the wooden column,  shivering from exhaustion,  hunger and the cold water dripping down the outside of the pipe.  As she tried to reach high up the slippery pipe with her hands she lost her grip and toppled backwards.  The back of her head struck another piece of wet timber and she grappled with her hands to prevent herself from falling back into the swirling water in the darkness below.  Fumbling around she suddenly realised it was a wooden ladder up the opposite side of the shaft.  Almost crying with relief she swung her legs across to it and climbed cautiously up the rotten wood rungs. 

After slowly climbing for what seemed like ages she could hear the splashing of the water at the top of the pump, still underground, where it emptied into the adit on the level of the four foot seam.  Weakening fast she struggled up the last few feet of the ladder.   Aware of how far she would fall if she lost her footing and of the danger from exposed cogs and pullies she cautiously felt her way round the slippery wooden platforms and structures at the head of the pump, being careful to avoid any of the moving parts where the drive from the horse gin connected with the pump chain, until she finally found where the water from the top of the pump gurgled into the adit via a short wooden trough. 

For several minutes Georgina sat with her knees drawn up under her chin, shivering uncontrollably from the water which had been drenching her debilitated naked body for the last half hour or so.  She dreaded re-entering the adit running with filthy cold water,  yet was relieved that she had finally found a way to escape.

In the total darkness the adit seemed even smaller than Georgina remembered.  She tried to hurry down it as fast as she could on her hands and knees, but had only gone a short distance before she was reduced to wriggling through silt and clay between sharp stones.   To her dismay the water was soon almost to the roof of the tiny tunnel.  Although she managed to slowly slide forward on her back for several more yards with her mouth and nose just above the surface, the cold water made her take short panicky breaths and she soon realised the tunnel ahead was totally under water.

In desperation she took a deep breath and pushed herself forward beneath the water.   Unable to breathe she felt her thorax jammed between jagged pieces of rock,  as she tried to thrust her body forward they cut into her, wedging against her ribs.   Georgina had no choice but to exhale the precious air from her lungs, which allowed her to slide forward until her hips jammed on the same rocks.  Ignoring the sharp edges cutting into her flesh she frantically twisted onto her side tearing her body free just as her empty lungs instinctively expanded, but drawing in filthy water instead of air.  Spluttering and barely conscious she scrambled free of the obstruction, shaking with relief she coughed up the choking water and gulped in mouthfuls of air.

Vaguely aware of new pains in her side she felt down, experiencing a stinging pain as her fingers touched touched the torn bleeding flesh of her hips.  Overcome by dizziness she reflected that she might die at the same location as had Dick.  With an effort she pressed on.   Cold and pain dulled her senses and she felt a slight sense of disbelief when she finally slithered out from the wet adit into the comparatively warm air of a still, early autumn, night.

Too exhausted to stand Georgina dragged herself along on all fours following the stream until it was crossed by a road.   Here she crawled beneath a straggly hedge and curled up, quickly falling asleep.

She awoke to the grey light of a misty dawn.  Her legs felt stiff and when she tried to stand she experienced a stabbing pain in her left knee.  She sat down again and stared at her battered body, strangely she could see no obvious damage to that knee, though fresh blood trickled down the outside of her thigh from a deep cut there.  Although tired the pain from her empty stomach stopped her from sleeping.  She tried clasping her hands together and pressing them into her belly in a futile attempt to ease the continuous pain in her abdomen. 

Now and again she heard walkers and the occasional rider on the road and each time expected her shameful naked body to be spotted.  But covered in dried blood, mud and coal dust she remained unnoticed, lying still behind the base of the thorny hedge.  As the mist cleared and the sun broke through Georgina made a further effort to stand, the need for food overriding the pain from her knee and then from her crotch as she took hesitant steps forward following the field side of the hedge.  Stumbling forward she at first just concentrated on putting distance between herself and the pit, several times crouching still as a number of people and the occasional cart passed along the road.  After twice managing to pass through gates into further fields she realised she could go no further without passing along the road. 

Georgina looked around the countryside.  A little way off there appeared to be a canal while in the distance ahead she could see a very substantial timber headgear topped by a large wheel with a tall engine house and a brick chimney nearby, very different from the ramshackle pit she was fleeing from.  As she stepped out from behind the hedges and limped along the road she tried not to even think what the reaction of the first person to meet her might be.  She came to a small cottage directly abutting the road without encountering anyone, desperate for food she pushed at the door, it opened and she hurried out of the sunlight into the dark interior.  A shuffling noise and the whimpering of a small child came from the direction of a smoky peat fire to the right.  As her eyes became accustomed to the darkness she made out a wizened old woman dressed in black stood next to a crude crib staring wide eyed at her.

The woman muttered "Holy Mary mother of God protect me" in an Irish accent then crossed herself. 

Georgina approached the woman with her right hand outstretched and tried to speak. "Please ..." she croaked weakly, desperate for food yet too ashamed,  too debilitated, to speak.

The ancient woman sank to her knees before the skeletal wraith reaching out to her, convinced she faced either a corpse arisen from its grave or the Grim Reaper.  "Forgive me Father I have sinned, but I am not ready yet, please no!" she pleaded before falling face to the stone floor covering her head with her hands as she started sobbing.

Georgina grabbed a jug of milk from a shelf and greedily drank before picking up a half eaten loaf next to it tearing off chunks to stuff into her mouth.  Unaccustomed to food in more than minuscule quantities she was soon doubled over in pain and a flood of stinking liquid shot from her bowels.  The stinging sensation from her rectum was now worse than her other aches and pains, but she forced herself to carefully sip some more milk, aware of the need to get more nutrition if she was to survive.

Leaving the old woman lying on the floor shaking with fear and confusion at the filthy naked apparition and the revolting stench from the excrement trickling towards her, Georgina grabbed a brown broadcloth cloak from a hook behind the door before staggering back out onto the road.

Even though the cloak now covered most of her nudity Georgina still presented an indecent pathetic sight, bloodshot eyes peering through the lank filthy hair plastered over her face while fresh blood again trickled down the outside of her bare thighs past her lacerated knees towards her battered blood-stained feet, while the shit down the insided of her legs was starting to attract flies.  Two farmworkers walking in the opposite direction who had been staring at her as they approached from a distance pointedly averted their gaze away from her as they got closer and passed on the far side of the road.  She carried on past the track leading to the large colliery and continued to shuffle unsteadily towards the rows of houses ahead.  A chaise driven by a gentleman with a lady at his side approached, pulled by an elegant chestnut horse.  They both stared intently at Georgina who shamefully turned her head away from them only to stumble and fall to her knees.  The little carriage slowed and stopped alongside her, as she regained her feet the cloak rode up to the top of her filthy thigh so it became clear she wore no garments beneath it and the horrified lady commanded "Don’t look Cyril, drive on!"

Georgina's relief at escaping the pit now gave way to total despair and hopelessness.  She ambled aimlessly into the town, her eyes no longer focussed as children ran curiously towards her, some shrinking away again but one little boy boldly walked up to her and tugged at the hem of her cloak, peering beneath it at her battered anatomy.  His horrified older sister ran up and grabbed his other hand to pull him away but he kept a tight grip on Georgina's cloak as he was pulled away so that she lost her balance and fell on top of him, her arms fluttering uncertainly, the cloak was pulled clear of the front of her body as she lifted her knees and drew her feet in towards her.  The boy screamed in panic, his sister screeched in alarm and people ran out of their houses shouting.  Just before she lost consciousness altogether Georgina saw an angry looking man in a top hat noisily waving a wooden rattle running determinedly up to her.

The policeman roughly dragged Georgina’s limp body off the terrified child, dropping it face down on the cobbles as he carefully lifted the boy to his feet, checking he wasn’t hurt before handing him to his mother.  He then turned his attention to Georgina, pulling the cloak to cover her bare bony buttocks before lifting her head then feeling her neck to check her pulse.  He soon commandeered a passing coal wagon and, after making sure the cloak was wrapped tight around her, got the driver to take her legs while he lifted her arms to help place her on top of the coals so they could take her to the workhouse.

GEORGINA - Chapter 10: The Colonel

The workhouse porter was appalled at the coal-dust being scattered about the tile floor of the entrance and through to the Relieving Room from the unconscious girl's cloak and the waggoner's boots as he helped the constable to carry her in.   "Neither the master not the medical officer are here.  You should have made an appointment if you wanted her assessed."

The constable dismissed the driver of the coal wagon before turning to the porter "Find a nurse to see her then."

"Take that filthy cloak off her,  we can't have that coal-dust everywhere" grumbled the porter."

"She's wearing nothing under it" the constable pointed out.

Once a nurse had arrived and started sponging Georgina's face to try to revive her, the exasperated porter set off to find the matron.

But before he returned the workhouse master entered pursued by two elderly gentleman.  He looked in contempt at Georgina who was just regaining consciousness then dismissed the policeman saying "What are you hanging around here staring for? "

The constable replied "Sir, I ought to speak with this woman to ascertain whether she has been the victim of a criminal assault."

"I shall speak with her and call your station if any crime has been committed" replied the master.  "In any case I need to find out which parish she belongs to if she's to be admitted here."

Georgina,  now vaguely aware of their conversation but confused and terrified of being returned to the pit  starting mumbling "No,  no!"

As the policeman turned and left the shorter of the two elderly gentlemen, who wore a white dog-collar, pushed forward to insist to the workhouse master "You should not refuse to allow the fruits of our Harvest Festival to be distributed to the needy in your care..."

Infuriated he turned to the pestering rector "How many times do I have to tell you, it is for their own good that the inmates here are not allowed to become too comfortable and pampered.  You of all people, Sir, should understand it is our moral duty to persuade the lazy and indolent that they should work rather than loiter here; both for their own spiritual good and for the good of society upon whom they should not be a burden.  Look at this wench here who I must urgently attend to."  He suddenly paused reflecting that perhaps it was not proper for the gaze of a man of the cloth to fall upon such an indecent female.

The other gentleman interceded "Perhaps, Your Reverence, we should seek the advice of the overseer as to families who are suffering and in need elsewhere in the diocese?"

Georgina immediately recognised that voice and without thinking weakly called out "Colonel Wilson, Sir."

He turned and stared at the miserable female lying with thin, filthy legs indecently exposed below a dirty loose fitting cloak wondering whether he should recognise her.  Then she turned her head to look pathetically up at him and he stared into her pleading eyes.   "Mistress Hudson?  No, surely you can't be?"  She reached a grazed thin arm towards him, allowing the cloak to fall aside exposing   a bare shoulder, to the horror of the master.  The Colonel looked with disbelief at the slender hand outstretched in desperation "Georgina it is you, isn't it?"

She then lay back sadly asking in a quiet voice "Why did you turn me away after I fled to your home?"

"I would never turn you away dear Georgina" he reassured her, wondering if her mind was wandering.

"Charlotte sent me away, saying I should go to the workhouse..." Georgina mumbled.

"Charlotte!" the Colonel spat "I don't know how I was taken in by that woman, she walked out on me, to go off with some rake from Manchester, once she decided I wasn't likely to die soon so she could get her hands on my money.  I am so, so sorry, I didn't know..." he continued shakily.

"Reverend Armstrong, can you please go out and call for my carriage.  I must get this young lady attended to by Doctor Bachasson immediately."  The clergyman obeyed the Colonel's command despite his revulsion at the "Lady" referred to.

Dr Bachasson had never before had such a patient to deal with in his house.  The first thing she needed was a good wash,  but he hesitated to ask his own housekeeper to deal with such a squalid creature.

"Colonel,  do you have a maid or housekeeper who could assist me?" he enquired.

"No,  I'm still trying to engage one, none of the ones I select stay more than a day or two"  the Colonel replied.  "Don't worry,  I'll clean her up a bit before you look at her."

The Doctor decided to leave the Colonel to his task while he retired to his study for a smallish glass of brandy to steady his nerves.

When he returned he was  slightly shocked to see the girl stripped totally bare with the Colonel carefully trying to clean dirt and grit from the deep cuts in her feet with a wet sponge.  As the Colonel probed her wounds her glistening pale body tensed and occasionally arched off the table in pain.

The Colonel looked up and stated "I've cleaned her up a bit.  As you can see she's suffered superficial cuts and grazes to just about every part of her body, but some of the wounds to her hips and chest are deep, you'd better take a look at them."

The Doctor stared up and down the girl's emaciated body noticing how the darker bruised areas and the raw swollen cuts and grazes contrasted with her almost white skin where she wasn't injured.  Then she turned her head and looked straight at him.  Embarrassed he turned away but then the Colonel addressed him again.

"She looks to me as though she may have suffered an assault to her private parts." The Colonel waited for the Doctor to turn back before continuing "You had better check her over there, that's one kind of injury we didn't have to attend to in the army."

Doctor Bachasson froze momentarily then mumbled something about needing some swabs.  He returned to his study and poured himself another brandy.  He had occasionally been called by the midwife to put stitches into tears after a difficult delivery, but then the patients had been covered as much as possible, leaving just the vaginal area uncovered for him to carry out his surgery without distraction.  But now he was faced with a young woman's body laid stretched out in his surgery displaying every inch of its flesh,  even if appallingly battered and starved.

  

The third glass of brandy cleared his head a bit.   His patient's body was little more than skin and bones,  so he would concentrate his mind,  thinking back to when he was a student at the College de St. Cosme, and try to imagine he was just dealing with one of the skeletons used for instructing the trainee surgeons.

Colonel Wilson watched intently as the Doctor stated to probe Georgina's vagina.   "I've repaired tears to the perineum on patients after giving birth but the bleeding here seems to be coming from deeper  inside ..."  As he eased his instruments further in Georgina uttered an inhuman scream, arching her back for a couple of seconds before trying to curl up and roll away from her tormentor.  "It's alright" the Doctor reassured her "I'll leave it alone."

Turning to the Colonel he snapped "Stop feeling her over,  a bit of dirt never did any harm.   I just need to get those deep cuts to her thighs and chest stitched up before she loses any more blood."

That evening, after the Doctor's treatment with laudanum and brandy had eased her discomfort, Georgina was carefully placed in a hired carriage, wrapped in blankets, to take her to the Colonel's house after he had reassured Doctor Bachasson that he had arranged for a nurse to tend for her.

Over the next week the infections from her wounds sent Georgina into a high fever,  she wouldn't eat and Colonel Wilson had to force water down her throat to prevent fatal dehydration.  Covered in stinking sweat she writhed furiously and kept throwing off her sheets and blankets.

When Dr Bachasson visited he was apalled that Colonel Wilson had not in fact employed a nurse as he had promised and looked in disgust at Georgina squirming naked and delirious on the sweat soaked bed. 

He increased her dosage of laudanum and further prescribed chamomile in an attempt to redress the imbalance of her humors, which he attributed as much to the lack of female attention as to her starvation and loss of blood.

The Doctor took offence at the sight of Colonel Wilson grappling with Georgina's body glistening with perspiration, as he held her down on the bed with one hand firmly pressing down on her collarbone while trying to sponge clean the suppurating wounds to her chest and breasts with the other.  "The patient needs to be kept wrapped up and warm, not manhandled and groped for your entertainment!  If you won't employ a nurse forthwith I refuse to collude any further in your abuse of her." saying which he packed his black leather bag and turned away.

As he left the Colonel called after him "Don't forget to send your bill on to me ..."

However, over the next 10 days Georgina ate little and spent an increasing amount of time curled up lying on her side complaining of stomach pains.

Before calling Doctor Bachasson again Colonel Wilson decided he had better try to engage a nurse to tend to Georgina. 

Elizabeth Platt had almost given up trying to get another job after Mrs Crawford had forced her to  resign from her post of governess to Mistress Amelia.  However Colonel Wilson had been in such haste to employ a nurse for his charge that he had conceded that Elizabeth could provide the references from her previous employer later.

Elizabeth determined to make a  sufficiently good impression that her failure to come up with the promised references might be forgotten, even though she had been given little clue as to the exact nature of the "lady recovering from distressing circumstances" whom she was to nurse.

Her first impression of Georgina confirmed her worst fears.  She had been ushered into a foul smelling upstairs room with the shutters and curtains drawn shut.  In bed she could make out a motionless thin woman with lacklustre tangled light brown hair covered by a crumpled woollen blanket.

All she was told was that Miss Georgina was recovering from an unfortunate incident and that she needed to slowly recover her strength.

Georgina seemed confused and listless.   She took a little food then refused any more,  turning her head away.  It smelled as though she had soiled her bed so Elizabeth gingerly removed the blanket and the sweat soaked soiled sheet beneath.

Elizabeth had never seen a body with its bones so visible beneath its stretched skin, the ribs accentuated by the reddish brown healing grazes over them.  She hurried off to fetch the bath then away to the kitchen to fetch kettles full of hot water. She reflected that at the Crawford's household maids had done such fetching and carrying for her.

Georgina was surprisingly light to lift into the bath,  lighter even than sweet little Amelia.   She wriggled weakly but didn't resist being gently lowered into the warm water.  

Amelia had always struggled and fought to avoid being put in the bath,  Elizabeth had always quite enjoyed restraining Amelia,  twisting her arm so she grimaced with pain while threatening terrifying consequences should she cry out.

Elizabeth studied the wounds and scars on Georgina's body.   She tried to imagine what had caused them, to visualise the girl's pain.   Her heart beat faster as she wished she had been there.  Wished she had inflicted them and seen the girl's agony.

Perhaps there was still time?  As she wrapped her arms round Georgina to lift her she momentarily gave her chest a sharp squeeze.  

Georgina turned and stared at her,  Elizabeth saw pain in her eyes but also defiance.  This wasn't a child she was dealing with this time and she couldn't afford to lose another job.   "Sorry" she said as sincerely as she could.

Two weeks later Elizabeth regretted having done so good a job caring for her patient.  For now she was no longer required, the fever having passed and Georgina was back on her feet.   She now hated Georgina for recovering and wished she had taken advantage of her weakness when she's had first arrived.

But as she packed her few belongings Colonel Wilson knocked on her door then entered.   He handed her a letter.   A testimony to her skill and dedication in caring for her patient.  "Thank you sir,  this will make finding new work a bit easier."

The Colonel smiled kindly.   He then handed her another slip of paper "If you are seeking a new position go to this address and ask for Mrs Vaughan.  She will be expecting you and is looking for a nanny for her two daughters."

Elizabeth Platt thanked the Colonel, curtsied, and left.

Colonel Wilson had listened with horror to the tales Georgina told him.   As her strength returned she started talking of taking revenge on Ben,  Agnes and Mr Thomas.

"Is it really them you should be blaming?"  Georgina stared back at him in disbelief.   "It seems to me that they're as much victims of Lord Rawtenstall as you are" he reflected.

"Yes him,  as well" she conceded.  After a minute or so's reflection she added "But I do regret hitting  Mr Woods."  She paused "Though I might never have escaped from there if I hadn't been..." she hesitated "...attacked.  And left for dead."

Colonel Wilson did make enquiries, the pit had recently closed and few of the former workers remained in the village.  

When he returned home he told Georgina of the desolation which had already set in there.   Rather than dwelling on the horrors of the recent past he suggested she look instead to the future.   She didn't reply, but looked listlessly down at her feet.

"We should go on that Grand Tour which you had been so looking forward to before!" he announced.

Georgina shrugged and moved her gaze from her feet to the fire "Who would accompany us?" she sneered, wishing to forget her past life of comfort with her family.

"I have someone in mind who would be willing to accompany us,  subject to your approval."

Not that Elizabeth Platt, thought Georgina, wishing that the Colonel would just let her rest, alone.

"Come in!" the Colonel called out to someone waiting silently in the hall.   Georgina looked up as she heard footsteps entering the room.

Nervously holding his cap in both hands stood the young gamekeeper yeoman.   "At your service Mistress Hudson" he said after a moment's hesitation.

Georgina smiled shyly at him,  slightly embarrassed as she remembered how they had met before.

"Isn't it proper for me to have a female companion."

The Colonel started to reply "Of course,  my dear.  If you want to be proper I'm sure... "

"No!"  she interrupted  "I don't care about being proper,  this young man... "  She paused,  embarrassed  "I must apologise, I don't think you ever told me your name!"

"William Kipling,  Miss."

"But don't you work for Lord Rawtenstall?"

"Not any more Miss, things have been going bad for the estate recently,  three of us keepers have been sacked.  'Tis said his Lordship has lost a lot of money in railway shares."

"I'm sure that Kipling will be much more capable than your brother should it come to needing firearms to protect us."  added the Colonel.

"Very well.  But if you are too join us you are to call me Georgina, not Miss."  She smiled slightly,  for the first time in many months.

THE END