Emma slouched towards the brackish pond wiping bitter tears that slipped down chapped cheeks. She trembled in the cruel early morning chill as night haunts lingered in the deeper-shadowed recesses of Mersey Park.

I’m cold, but it won’t matter much, will it?

Winter hurried, fast approaching in early October, as the brittle overgrowth crackled in the sour company. Sharp vinegar wind clouded the air as Emma dragged her thin cloak about herself, glancing back at her frost-rimed footsteps leading to the lonely seat beside the long-forsaken pond.

No one will think of looking for me here.

In the near distance, the angry city burbled as the caustic shouts of day laborers could be overheard and the rattle of the horse carriage trade came to life.

If she stood on the cold-silvered wooden bench, she might glance at the steaming city metropolis through the skeletal trees, awakening as she hid in blissful, lingering shadow.

Engineers, as told by the houseman Jenkins, created Mersey Pond by diverting water underground from the sluggish river through a sophisticated collection of metal pipes and causeways.

The water rose up from the depths of the pond filling the half-acre in the middle of the city and, while once fashionable to stroll, the now-splintered and warped promenades that circled the murky depths were abandoned.

Cursed, they whispered.

Now, the gates are locked to the public with little chance of the local police tumbling her here.

It would only be a matter of time before an ill-drawn picture of her would be on the front of the Illustrated Crime Gazette and she would be anonymous no more.

My face will be plump and plain. With a picture of me brandishing a pillow or worse. Perhaps even a bottle of poison? Or a sharpened knife? The broadsheets are never accurate.

Stamping her feet in thin leather boots, Emma reminded herself again that what she did was right.

She acted in God’s mercy and his name. In the eyes of the Lord, her actions are forever justified.

Emma sniffed back the drip that threatened to spatter her cloak as she cast her doe-brown eyes out across the watery landscape.

Nothing lives in this water now.

I shall not condemn myself for what I have done.

Beaton House became her second appointment after traveling to the city proper from the northern countryside.

There, she learned her letters and craft as she applied herself to her work. Thanks to his kind heart, despite the wandering hands of Deacon Fry, she joined the downstairs staff as part of the household.

Too clumsy to sew and with no real affinity for cooking, Emma became relegated to doing maid work and often a minder for the guests and children, seeking Deacon Fry’s spiritual guidance.

Thanks to him, she learned to spell her own name and learn of the demands of older men.

Emma’s thoughts turned sour once more as she relived the candlelight visits of the Deacon who would take advantage of her after hours.

She could not bleed yet, as an honest woman did, and that became the attraction to the elder. She suffered the indignity of his sex on demand and became sworn to secrecy in seed and prayer.

On the bench, she spat, still tasting the salty discharge that the Deacon believed a sacrament to share.

Only as she turned of age and began her monthly flow was she discharged from his household and packaged off to the Beatons.

She never traveled the county proper before and this late-night train ride to the city started a terrifying ordeal at first.

Emma remembered well the stench of the metropolis, even through the closed second-class carriage windows that assaulted her as she descended upon the sprawling landscape.

Thanks to a small bottle of gin she'd stolen from the Deacon, Emma gained the bottled courage to face her new employers.

They did not know she was still drunk when she arrived in the early morning outside the stately home.

Emma glanced down at the battered wooden trunk she labored to the icy bench.

Besides her shame, it contained her bible, a shawl for darling Anna, and the silver crucifix the baby wore.

Emma lifted the thin chain up from the recesses of her luggage and kissed the sparkling memento.

The Beatons must be looking for me now.

They always paid her in a timely fashion and provided a roof and meals for Emma's service.

Emma knew that Mrs. Beaton would be inconsolable and that Master Beaton will have been speaking with the police constables and then retire to his study for greater reflection, whiskey, and Jesus’ guiding hand.

Mr. Beaton instilled in Emma a dedication to the holy book and the teachings of Jesus Christ Almighty.

He could only blame himself for the outcome.

Emma lied on her first meeting with the Beatons family. Still woozy from the unfamiliar drink and the train ride south, she met with them at their convenience in the front parlor. She wore her best wool that she cleaned especially for the meeting and impressed both with her manners - saying nothing about Deacon Fry’s past actions or letting her breath betray her.

For Emma, at this new start, it was important not to ‘step in it,’ as her Mam used to remind her. She kept her eyes down, watching Mr. Beaton’s hands.

They always told.

A kind man’s hands are soft and smooth.

Not like the horned barbs of the Deacon that worried her skin and beyond.

Here, at the Beatons, she would be safe from debauchery and deceit.

She spat once again, secure in her pond-side vigil.

When they pulled the first child’s body from the grey waters, the public outcry was small.

A mere foundling, an anonymous worker child.

There was the expected nattering and whispered conversation amongst the nannies and matrons who made up the bulk of the water’s edge retinue, with lots of useless observations on the deplorable state of the workhouses and the plight of children on the street - but with little change in Mersey Pond’s visitors.

Emma wasted little time indulging in the idle downstairs gossip as she was mustered to support Mrs. Beaton in her pregnancy.

She was eight months along with the blessed day fast approaching.

Emma helped the thick woman lower herself in the church to pray, attended to her toilet, and cleared away her night dirt without complaint.

With every task, she reminded herself of how lucky she was and that she was grateful to be taken in by such god-fearing and right-minded people.

Emma devoted herself to her work, the Bible, and the practice of her newfound faith.

Each night, she would read a little more of her book and rejoice in the fact her own true name was printed inside the front cover - in her own hand.

At Beaton House, each staff member was gifted their own bible, so the teachings of Christ are never far to hand.

Emma would labor nightly to untangle the words and lessons using the stub of a candle to see as she knelt on the rag rug square beside her bed.

In her service to the Beatons and Christ, she was reborn.

Which is why I released baby Anna.

On the day of her birth, both Madam and Master were at Saint Bartholemew’s laboring on the blessed event.

Due to her constant devotion, plus the ever-continued appreciation of mother-to-be Beaton, Emma was charged with securing documents needed from Mr. Beaton’s desk and delivering them to the front landing for collection.

All the downstairs staff awaited a call on the telephonic device as houseman Jennings was pressured into a makeshift carriage driver since the regular groom was sickened with gout.

Never had Emma been allowed to the top level of the house by herself.

Mr. Beaton assured Emma the needed documents would be found in the lockbox on his desk. All she was to do was retrieve the paperwork and deliver it to the houseman once he returned home for them.

Emma labored upwards, elated at the trust, yet fearful of a misstep in action. Master appeared the opposite of the former beast she called her employer, but she still worried about making a mistake and upsetting him.

She was determined to do her duty well.

Inside the study, the room’s collection of old paper, tallow, books, and parchment towered over Emma.

She threaded through the volumes of books and spied the stout metal box on the Master’s writing desk.

Emma pulled open the iron door of the paper safe, amazed at the official-looking stamped documents and papers within.

She flipped through the vellums, her tongue clasped between her lips, sounding out the words for the clerical documents requested.

As she dug into the collection of papers, she happened upon certificates of birth for Master and Madam.

Born together.

One family name.

Twins.

Emma tossed back the paperwork, grasping next to their false marriage certificate, seeing the cramped hand of Deacon Fry on the document.

Madam and Master are siblings.

Brother and sister.

Not husband and wife.

And now a child?

She crushed the offending paperwork deep into the recesses of the safe and gathered up the other paperwork she had been tasked to find.

The rest of the evening passed in a blur as she delivered the other documents needed to the flustered houseman, who raced back to St. Bart’s, after no time for a meal or drink of any kind.

Emma worried her brow in thought as she pondered her ill-fated discovery.

The Beatons are blood relations, kin, sister, and brother — their marriage documents were solemnized by her former employer with full knowledge of their birth.

But they were gracious with her, and Emma was tormented by this knowledge.

She spent the night on her knees in prayer in hopes that the child might perish on arrival.

Many children, her own beloved brother as well, long past, have gone to Jesus early. Perhaps God would smile down on her misfortune and take the child?

When the Beatons returned home a week after the blessing of their baby lamb, Emma was horrified to find that she was now charged with assisting Madam Beaton with the care and well-being of the newly-christened baby, Anna.

Emma shook the bitter memory away as the cold continued to weigh down on her shoulders.

With heavy eyes, she noted the ever-lengthening shadows across the pond, the overgrown pastoral scene into a spider’s warren of cruel dark fingerlings.

The wind gusted in eager anticipation of the night as she shivered on her perch.

Icy torments crept down her aching back as she slapped her hands together, hoping to bring life back to her frozen fingers.

The bitter snap of weather promised later in the month had arrived early and twisted around her as she stood woodenly, her feet and legs burning in painful response.

It shall be night soon.

 And then I shall do it.

The first dusting of snow fell on the pond as Emma watched the flakes sink beneath the icy, brackish water.

The next body to be pulled from Mersey Pond was not a street scrap.

It was found a week after Anna’s arrival at home and the household was stunned to hear that this child was a neighbor — a family familiar to both Master and Mother.

As condolences were made and mirrors turned to the wall or hung in black, Emma knew how close death was.

It could come at any time.

Her thoughts turned to the unholy union of Madam and Master and the words that were etched in her heart.

Leviticus 18:6 - You must never have sexual relations with a close relative, for I am the Lord.

It took little to complete her duty.

The nursery was on the ground floor and Emma was a constant visitor, removing the night oil for the child and cleaning her clothes and wraps.

No one thought her out of place in Anna’s room when Mother was recuperating in the parlor and Father was out doing whatever those incestuous monsters did when they were not impregnating their own kin.

The same swaddling clothes that were Emma’s to clean became the new shroud for the child.

Anna and Emma slipped away before the rest of the house was awake

Emma blinked back tears as she came back to her vigil here at the pond.

It was time.

She stood, her arms and legs stiff from the cold as she gathered up her trunk.

Looking up at the bruised night, she sighed as she pulled open her luggage for the last time, looking down at the swaddled child within.

Anna’s face, blue now, still peaceful, as if in slumber.

You could not see the broken neck from how Emma draped Anna's shawl.

Leaning in to straighten the crucifix, Emma smoothed the cold cheek of the child as she closed the lid of the trunk.

She took her first step off the bank and into the weed-choked water and waded out into the frgid depths of the pond, humming under her breath.

Emma slipped deep into the water, her coat dragged down by the heavy rocks she gathered earlier that tore at the seams of the thin cloth.

Baby Anna floated on the water inside the trunk as Emma clutched the burden to her chest as they slipped out and under the water.

Local stories tell that both of the children who died at Mersey Pond still made nightly appearances to those unafraid to venture into the park after dark.

I am not afraid.

Emma prayed as water filled her mouth that she and Anna would both be better company with the others here in Mersey Pond.

She smiled for the first time when two skeletal hands wrapped hers in a welcome embrace as they sank beneath the surface.

Home, at last.