Truths by Rebecca S. Buck

Author:Rebecca S. Buck [Buck, Rebecca S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, General
ISBN: 9781602821460
Google: YQSbQAAACAAJ
Amazon: 1602821461
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2010-04-20T00:00:00+00:00

Gilly was quiet that day and eventually went to lie on the straw of the night cell. Elizabeth allowed her her solitude. Maisie, Jane, and Catherine were in the yard, speculating what Australia would be like. Elizabeth hated to hear them and sat with her pile of sewing instead, the needle motionless in her hand.

The swelling of her belly seemed to increase every day now. She put her hand to it and thought of the baby within, closing her eyes. Her life was pulsing into the child's veins, leaving her and nourishing the new existence. Her body would be hanged, but the part of her that was transforming itself into a separate human being would not be. The baby was her innocence; it could not be accused of the crimes she had been, and it would not be punished for them. And in the child, her innocent self would continue to live.

An abrupt memory of the carved sandstone walls, pain in her cheek and in her body, dirt on the floor, and his weight, his whispers. He had been wrong. She was not dead already, and now part of her was not going to die. It seemed bitterly fitting that it was he, who had told her she would be dead in three weeks, who had given her the spark of life inside her. The memory of the pain, the horror of the child's conception made her shiver with disgust and recollected fear. Yet she would not unmake the child in her womb.

The child would have a good life. She would fight for that with every breath, before they took that breath from her. The next ten days would decide it. The child would have a good life. Was it a boy or a girl? Whichever, it would be hers. Through her, it would be her mother's. The lines of connection would always be there, long after she was dead. There would, she imagined, be children, her grandchildren, and their children. Their hanged ancestor they would forget, if they'd ever known of her, but she saw the connection to the years to come, as if the cord that tied her to her child also tied her to her future grandchildren. She would never know them, but ultimately, she would triumph, living on into the future, when he had told her she might as well already be dead. Maybe one day, some descendent of hers would pass through the town again and gaze at its factories, its fine houses, its gaol, and know the connection was there. A feeling, a memory not their own, an unexplained thought perhaps.

And what she passed on to the future was pure. Her life was a lie now, her death would be a lie. Not only would the baby be her innocence, it would be her truth. Grown from a union of horror which she was forced to pretend had not happened, but known to the women in the gaol, the child would know one day its mother had loved it through her pain.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.