Victorian Maiden by Gary Dolman

about? Yes, that must be it. Uncle Alfie was right; there had to be lots of little boys called Peter Lovegood between Harrogate and the Holy Island, because no one was allowed to tell lies to a policeman. That would be wicked. Yes, it must have been a different little boy called Peter Lovegood.
    But the address! Oh, my dear Lord Jesus, the policeman had said there was an address.
    Another image replaced that of Uncle Alfie in her mind. It was of Uncle Alfie’s gentleman friend Mr James punishing her cousin John. She had seen him once, as she had staggered, bruised and bleeding, into her bedroom after she had been a very, very wicked little girl indeed. It had taken her uncle and four of his friends from the Friday Club to punish her that week, one after the other. Mr James had screamed for her to get out but it was too late; the image was burned forever into her memory. She had seen what he had been doing to John as he lay, face down on her bed, trembling and softly whimpering. It seemed abominable, but it answered all at once a question that had been niggling at her thoughts ever since she had known she was so wicked: How could boys be punished as she was, and as all the other little girls Mr Otter kept in the big room downstairs were punished? She had assumed, correctly it seemed, that boys were the same as her uncle and the other gentlemen without their trousers on, and now that she knew, she realised just how wicked little boys could be.
    But if John could be so wicked, he might be telling lies now after all. There had been an address tied around the boy’s neck. So it might just have been the same little Peter Lovegood – the boy who had gone with them that day across the sands but had never returned. And if John was telling lies to the policeman, Uncle Alfie must be telling lies to the policeman too. What if Uncle Alfie was wicked? The vision of Mr James, naked from the waist down rushed back into her mind but this time, instead of a naked, whimpering cousin John lying face down on her bed, there, in his stead, fat and as white as cook’s fresh bread dough, was Uncle Alfie.
    She shuddered and the image dissolved and was replaced by yet another. But this one was a real memory and so she shuddered again. This was one of those awful, awful memories she tried to keep hidden so far away, hidden in that most foul and secret part of her mind, and it had surely come to torment her.
    A little boy of around ten years old was giggling and chattering incessantly in anticipation of the game of Viking Marauders he had been promised. He, along with John, Lizzie, and a pretty little, waif-and-stray girl called Sarah were to enjoy the game as part of a grand adventure at the seaside with her uncle and two of his gentlemen friends. They were even going to be allowed to stay up and play for most of the night before they moved on to Uncle Alfie’s hunting lodge the following morning. And yes, she remembered now; the boy was going to be settled as a pauper apprentice to the gamekeeper.
    Accordingly, they had travelled up to the county of Northumberland by express train and private coach, and then crossed on foot over to Lindisfarne, the Holy Island, along what her uncle had called the Pilgrim’s Causeway.
    The Pilgrim’s Causeway, Uncle Alfie told them as they trudged out onto the broad, white sands and mud flats, was a path across the very bed of the sea itself. It was marked by a long line of ancient weather-beaten timbers driven deep into the sands, which had guided pilgrims to the Holy Island for centuries. The way, he said, was completely dry twice each day when the tide was low, but when the tide rushed back in, and it rushed back in faster than any child could run, it was quickly submerged under many, many feet of the cold, black waters of the North Sea.
    Uncle Alfie had warned them that they must always be good little children; that they must take care to do everything, exactly as he said. Although the