Pauper's Child Read online

  PAUPER’S CHILD

  Also by Meg Hutchinson

  A Love Forbidden

  A Promise Given

  A Sister’s Tears

  Bitter Seed

  Child of Sin

  Sixpenny Girl

  Pit Bank Wench

  Heritage of Shame

  Pauper’s Child

  A Handful of Silver

  Abel’s Daughter

  The Deverell Woman

  Pauper’s Child

  Meg Hutchinson

  AN IMPRINT OF HEAD OF ZEUS

  www.ariafiction.com

  First published in Great Britain in 2004 by Hodder and Stoughton

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by Aria, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Meg Hutchinson, 2004

  The moral right of Meg Hutchinson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9781789542752

  Aria

  c/o Head of Zeus

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  www.ariafiction.com

  Parian is a porcelain imitation of marble from Mount Elias on Paros, a Greek island in the east of the Aegean Sea… it originated in Britain, produced there in the early part of Queen Victoria’s reign… there is a dispute about who found Parian first…

  Parian Ware by Dennis Barker

  Leabrook Pottery was demolished some time after 1930. In the seventeenth century the town was famous for its salt-glazed vessels known as Wedgbury Ware.

  Wednesbury Revisited by Ian M. Bott

  Seeing no one is absolutely certain as to who it was first discovered Parian, and given Wednesbury enjoyed a long history of producing many types of pottery for use in the home, I have taken the liberty of having the birth of Parian Ware take place in my own ‘Black Country’

  Meg Hutchinson

  Contents

  Also by Meg Hutchinson

  Welcome Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  About Meg Hutchinson

  Become an Aria Addict

  1

  ‘I saw… I saw him there and I knew, I knew what he was doing and why! It was her…’

  Eyes blazing with hatred so intense it burned like black fire, Sabine Montroy glared at the small girl standing before her in a dismal joyless room empty except for the two of them.

  ‘… I saw him…’

  Breath snatched between teeth which hate had almost glued together, the words were a snarl.

  ‘He was there in Stafford Street, I did not need to wait to find out where he was headed; but who he was intending to meet, that was what I had to see, that was what I had to be sure of.’

  ‘Please…’ Violet eyes, wide with fear, stared upwards.

  ‘No!’ A long boned hand shot out, catching the small pale face, the force of its blow knocking the child back on its heels, the woman’s lips peeling back from her teeth in fury.

  ‘Did he give the chance of saying please? Did he listen to any plea? No, he did not. Like a thief in the night he left, no explanation, no apology, no care for the heart he broke… and why did he do so? It was because of her… her and you… you, the spawn of his evil…’

  *

  Callista Sanford opened her eyes to a grey rain soaked morning. The dream had come again. Like so many other times it had come from the distant realms of a childhood she tried so hard to forget; but in the night’s dark hours while her body lay in exhausted sleep the phantoms of memory slipped from the shadows of her mind, bringing with them the fear and the heartache. Turning her head, she watched the rain beating against the window. Why had that child been hated so? Why had she been treated with so much cruelty?

  Her body heavy, eyes wanting only to close, weary as if sleep had not come at all, Callista willed herself to rise and wash in the bowl of cold water she had placed on the rickety washstand the night before.

  It had simply been a dream; the reality was over. Cold biting through thin clothing, she shivered, her fingers blue as they bound her hair close into the nape of her neck.

  The reality was over, but the nightmare went on. As the sounds of muffled coughing reached through the stillness, a stab of fear added to the numbness of her fingers. Her mother’s illness, the cough which racked leaving her breathless, got no better with the days but seemed to grow worse. Her mother denied the worries but bright fevered eyes told Callista their own story, and also gave the remedy: she needed to get her mother out of this cold damp house. There was a way… a way she had refused until now to take, hoping every day might bring a different answer; now, hurrying to her mother’s room, she knew that way was the one she had to take!

  ‘Why are you out of bed?’ Concern at not finding her mother in her room echoed in Callista’s question as she hurried into the box-like living room.

  Ruth Sanford coughed into a scrap of cloth clutched in thin fingers, folding it quickly so the scarlet specks would not be seen.

  ‘I was not tired, my dear, I had rested so long yesterday I could not sleep.’

  Her mother could not sleep because of the cold! Callista poked the ash-grey embers of last night’s fire. If only they could afford a fire in her mother’s bedroom, just a small one to keep the worst of the cold at bay… but buying fuel for this one was as much as she could do. Maybe today would be better. Nursing the hope to herself she fetched the bucket from beneath the scullery sink, feeding the last of the coal it held onto the embers. Maybe today she would find a permanent post which would mean not taking the one way left open to her. She had fought against it so long, the thought of that man’s flabby mouth lowering to her own, his thick hands…

  Reaching for the quietly bubbling kettle she scalded tea she had spooned into a fat-bellied pot, trying all the time to rid herself of the thought, but as steam rose from the kettle it seemed to form into a heavy-jowled face, a face which leered.

  ‘I have finished the gown.’ Ruth Sanford coughed again, the scrap of cloth no disguise against the rattle in her chest. ‘But I… I must wait until tomorrow to deliver it. Mrs Ramsey will need to be advised beforehand.’

  What her mother meant but would not say was she felt too weak, too ill, to take the gown they had shared the making of to the woman who had ordered it.r />
  Callista added the last spoonful of sugar to the cup she stirred before handing it to her mother, leaving her own unsweetened.

  ‘I think Mrs Ramsey will be eager to see her new gown.’ She smiled, trying not to show her worry at the short gasping breaths or the tell-tale red rims of purple shadowed eyes. Had it been as she had thought, had it been the creeping cold of the bedroom that had sent her mother downstairs in the early hours? Or was the truth of it the need for the money it would bring?

  Reaching for the small pot of dripping she had saved from the few strips of fat bacon the butcher in the High Street had added to the threepence she had earned scrubbing out the shop, Callista emptied it into the shallow bottomed pan which she hung from the bracket suspended over the livening fire. They had enough bread for two slices. It would make breakfast for her mother, and the one egg left in the food cupboard would be her dinner. And her own breakfast?

  Callista could not deny the hunger pangs gnawing her stomach as she dipped one slice of the bread, placing it aside while the other fried, the appetising aroma of it causing her mouth to water. Swallowing hard, she placed the egg in the kettle still partly full of hot water and set it to boil.

  ‘I can deliver the gown, I will take it this evening,’ she said, handing the plate with its slice of fried bread to her mother.

  Letting it rest on her knee, Ruth Sanford watched her daughter busily set another plate with eggcup and spoon, then slice the dipped bread into dainty triangles before rescuing the egg from the kettle. They had tried so hard to make her life happy, and it had been in those first years. Jason Sanford had loved his wife and adored the child they had named from his beloved Greek myths; she had been his beautiful tiny wood nymph; and she was beautiful despite the hardship of their lives now without him. Yes, the hunger and cold had the face drawn, but even that could not detract from the beauty of the flawless skin, the wide violet eyes and gleaming black satin hair. All of Jason’s handsomeness was there in their child but it was added to, there was an extra something which at times seemed almost ethereal. The magic of a wood nymph! Ruth sipped her tea, lowered lids shielding the tears glistening in her own soft brown eyes.

  *

  It had been difficult convincing her mother that she herself was given breakfast by the wife of the butcher whose shop floor she scrubbed and it was equally difficult to look into those gentle eyes as the lie was told. But it had needed to be told if her mother was to accept the egg and bread being left for her midday meal. Maybe today she would be asked to scrub more of the shop, perhaps the counter and the huge chopping block the man saw to himself… it would pay another penny, possibly even two.

  Having her mother’s promise she would stay close to the fire and rest, Callista left the tiny two room house, drawing her woollen shawl close against the sharp nipping frost. The people of Trowes Court were good neighbours; though most were poor as church mice with nothing to spare but a friendly word; this they gave willingly, and knowing several of the women would find a minute in their day to call in on her mother made her own long absence easier to bear.

  Passing the church of St James, nodding and returning the several good mornings of others hurrying to their places of work, Callista entered Barlow’s butcher shop.

  ‘There don’t be no cleaning I wants doing today.’

  The shawl half on, half off her shoulders, Callista felt her heart drop like a stone. Not again… it couldn’t be happening again; but as she looked at the plump red-cheeked man fiddling embarrassedly with his moustache she knew it was happening again.

  ‘But… but yesterday you said…’

  ‘I knows what I said and I be sorry… but that be the way of it, I’ve got no call for the shop to be scrubbed, the missis be going to do that herself from now on. I apologises for getting you along of ’ere when there were no reason.’

  Releasing the moustache he had twiddled to dagger points he reached a small parcel from beneath the counter, holding it towards her.

  ‘Take the sausages for your trouble.’

  Why? She stared at the man, his gaze shifting before her own. Why this sudden change? Every day for a week he had expressed satisfaction with her work and every day of that week had requested she come to scrub out the shop on the following morning. He had been pleased with the standard of cleaning, so much so he added a little bacon or a chop to her pennies each time, yet now, suddenly, he was dispensing with her services.

  She could ask the reason, offer to do the work for even less than the threepence he paid but it would do no good. Her being told she was no longer required was merely history repeating itself.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Barlow.’ She glanced at the package still held in the plump-fingered hand. ‘But I accept only what I have worked for.’

  What did she do now? Holding a press of tears in her throat, Callista walked the length of the High Street. Some of the shops had given her employment of one kind or another but every owner had eventually acted as John Barlow had just done, each saying she was no longer required. Why? What did she do that was so unacceptable as to see her dismissed? It was not true that they no longer required assistance, for she had seen other women quickly installed in her place. So what was the truth? What particular Jonas rode on her shoulders?

  Brought up sharply by the hoarse shout of a wagoner to get out of the way, she glanced across the space which was the junction of several streets each feeding onto Trouse Lane, the arterial road to Darlaston. Immersed in her own thoughts, she had walked almost beneath the wheels of the heavy cart, bringing the owner’s displeasure singing about her ears like a whip. Once the cart had trundled past, she looked at the people standing in small groups, their breath hanging in small white clouds on the frosty air. This was the High Bullen, the place where men, women and even young children collected each morning hoping to be selected for a day’s work. She had never stood the line before, hating the thought of being inspected, looked over like cattle in a market. Trying desperately to think of some other place she might enquire for work, she crossed over to the other side of the road. Maybe if she went on to Darlaston? With that in mind she turned and the next moment found herself held tight in the arms of a man, the package he was carrying hitting the ground at her feet.

  Holding her steady until she found her feet again, the neatly bearded face of a well-dressed man regarded her with amusement.

  ‘My dear.’ He smiled. ‘It is a long time since I held a pretty girl in my arms and pleasant as I find the experience now I fear it is not quite proper.’

  ‘I… I beg your pardon.’ Confusion tripping her words, Callista broke free. ‘I was not looking where I was going… it was purely my fault.’

  The face broke into a broader smile. ‘Then it is a fault an old man welcomes.’

  ‘Your package, I do hope the contents are not damaged!’ How on earth did she pay for whatever might be broken? Picking up the small brown paper wrapped parcel she held it, all of her inner worry showing in her eyes.

  ‘Ah, the beautiful Artemis.’ He took the package. ‘Who knows, perhaps her fellow immortals have protected her and she remains in one piece.’

  ‘Artemis, daughter of the Titaness Leto and king of the gods, Zeus, and twin sister to Apollo the god of archery, prophecy and music…’

  ‘So…’ The broad smile faded as she broke off but eyes lifted to hers held an expression that was congratulatory and at the same time questioning. ‘You are familiar with the gods of ancient Greece. If it is not too personal a question might an old man enquire as to how you came by your knowledge?’

  Callista blushed, acutely aware of the logic behind the question. Her clothes, though clean, were shabby to the point of raggedness. How come a girl from her obvious walk of life had any knowledge of Greek mythology?

  ‘My father… Oh, I do hope the Artemis is not broken.’

  ‘Tut, child, forget the Artemis,’ he answered. ‘I too, would wish the lovely goddess remains in one piece but should that not be the case then that ol
d rascal, Glaze, will have the pleasurable and profitable business of hunting down another. But right now I wish to hear of this father of yours… he must be a man of some education.’

  Profitable! The word stuck out above the rest in Callista’s mind. The shop the man had indicated when naming its owner was filled with antiques of all kinds, but none of them within the range of her father, who would often bring her to stand looking in through the window, his voice caressing every object he pointed out, a love of them colouring their naming and describing. ‘Expensive,’ he would say, ‘but their beauty is one that knows no price.’ How then could she pay for the one she was responsible for breaking?

  ‘Does he perhaps read the classics? Your father, child, how did he learn of the ancient tales?’

  Callista glanced to where people were fast being chosen from the line of hopefuls. If she were to have any chance of employment she must join them now. ‘No,’ she answered quickly, ‘he does not read… I mean… please tell me the cost of the piece, the Artemis, and… and I will pay it, but I must go now.’

  She would pay the cost. The smiling eyes followed the direction of Callista’s glance. It would never be with money earned by work got from that line.

  ‘Why do we not get ourselves a hot drink and assess the harm we have both done.’

  ‘Both?’ Callista’s finely winged brows drew together. ‘That is unfair of me.’ The broad smile returned as he shook the package. ‘Our gracious goddess tells me her glorious body remains intact so you have caused no harm while I… I have prevented you gaining that for which I think you came. I fear the selection of workers for the day has been completed.’

  Shoulders drooping with realisation that the one hope left to her was gone, Callista watched the remaining figures drift aimlessly away.

  ‘Will you allow me to apologise over a cup of chocolate? Really, I feel the need of both.’

  She could sit for perhaps a few minutes, let the cold thaw from her bones before taking the long walk into Darlaston.