Pit Bank Wench Read online

  . . . she could not live with the knowledge . . .

  The words Jerusha had spoken returned with vivid clarity to her mind. The hurt and the pain that had been her mother’s, Emma could understand as too much to bear. But Jerusha! The death of her husband was a vicious blow but it was one the woman had known must one day come. It could not be that which had caused Jerusha to make the decision she had, so what was it?

  Cresting the gentle slope, Emma stared across the heath. There was the answer to her question. In the last of the fading light she stared at the heaps of rubble that once had been Plovers Croft.

  Jerusha had known her home was to be destroyed, the same as she had known those other things. But her neighbours, people now without homes, had they known? The Croft was built on Felton land. Emma walked on. Only one man could have ordered it pulled down: Carver Felton. No need to ask why of that man, he needed no reason to do anything. ‘But one day,’ she murmured, ‘one day he will meet his reckoning.’

  Rain that had slept in the sky most of the day began to fall in large heavy drops. Emma pulled her shawl more tightly about her, though the worn cloth offered little protection. There were hollows in the outcrops of rock where as children they had played at being pirates, but they were over on the other side of the heath and it was madness to cross it in the darkness. Besides which, she reasoned, she would be as wet when she reached them as she would be when she reached the town. Six and two threes! Holding her shawl firmly, she walked on.

  ‘You be another of ’em?’

  A narrow-faced woman looked over the shoulder of the man who had opened the door to Emma’s knock. Water dripping from her skirts, she had seen the gleam of a lamp and made for it, coming to a small farmhouse flanked by a low building she guessed might be a barn. It would be dry in there, it might even be warm. They would not turn her away. Almost too exhausted to lift her hand, she had knocked at the door.

  ‘You be from the Croft, don’t you?’ The question held no note of sympathy. ‘They’ve been passing through ’ere much of the day, the last of ’em I saw off some hours since. If you be of their number how come you be passing at this time of night? Be you crippled?’

  ‘No.’ Emma brushed raindrops from her face. ‘I am not crippled.’

  ‘Then why so late?’ In the light of the lamp the man held high, the waspish features tightened. ‘Did you find business on the road? Is it that has kept you so long behind the rest?’

  Raindrops beating a monotonous rhythm on her head, Emma shivered as they soaked through the wet shawl to trickle down her neck. ‘Business?’ She shivered again. ‘I don’t understand. I . . . I had no business.’

  ‘She don’t understand.’ The woman laughed, a harsh mocking sound. ‘You hear, Eli, she don’t understand!’ Pushing the man aside, she stood with hands on hips glaring at Emma.

  ‘Like bloody hell you don’t understand! Don’t you try coming that with me! I know your sort. You makes your money where you can, be it in a bed or under a hedge. You ain’t choosy so long as the man has a shilling to pay you. Well, there be no place under this roof for the likes of you. I’ll give no shelter to a prostitute!’

  ‘I am no prostitute!’ Emma’s head shot up. ‘I am later than the others because . . . but why should I give you the reason? It is obvious you give no assistance to any of the folk who knock at your door, and it is obvious your intention is the same now. Forgive me for having disturbed you.’

  ‘Wait!’ The man spoke as Emma turned away. ‘My wife was being no more than cautious, we have all sorts pass by on their way to the town. But we know our Christian charity. There be a place to sleep in the barn. It be dry and the hay be soft. You be welcome to bed down in there.’

  ‘I . . . I have no money to pay.’

  ‘Like I said, we know our Christian charity.’ The man waved the lamp. ‘There be the barn over there, the door be on the latch. Take it or leave it.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Emma bobbed her head. ‘Thank you both.’

  Inside the barn Emma waited for her eyes to adjust to the deeper darkness. Smarting from the woman’s accusation, she felt the tears well. What was happening to her world? Raped by Carver Felton, then the death of her whole family and the loss of her home . . . what was she to do?

  ‘Oh, God!’ Covering her face with her hands, she cried into them, ‘Oh, God! Please . . . I can’t take any more!’

  Shaking from head to foot, her cries echoing eerily in the darkness, she let the agony of it all flow from her. Sobs still breaking from her throat, she stripped off her wet clothing.

  Accustomed now to the gloom she draped her skirts and underwear over a hay manger, her blouse and bloomers over a low door that closed off a stable in which a horse whinnied softly. Settling into the sweet-smelling hay, her hands came together. Many years with her father had made prayer an automatic process, one often carried out while her mind dwelt on other things. But tonight every ounce of her concentration went into her silent words, all the fervour of her heart in her prayer.

  ‘Forgive them, Lord,’ she whispered. ‘My mother did not know . . . she did not know what Carrie was suffering, and my sister . . . so much pain . . . so much heartbreak. Do not blame them, Lord, but take them into your loving care.’ Crossing her breast, Emma lowered her hands. She could offer no prayer for her father.

  Deep in sleep she did not hear the creak of the barn door as it opened, nor did the pallid gleam of the lantern disturb her as it played first on her face then slowly over her naked body.

  Passing a tongue over his parted lips, the man who had answered her knock at the farmhouse door placed the lantern on a nail hammered into a thick wooden post. He had long waited for an opportunity such as this and it would not be wasted. Slipping out of his trousers – he had not waited to don any other clothing – he kicked them aside then dropped to his knees beside the sleeping girl.

  Beautiful. He played a glance over the small breasts, the stomach flat and the colour of ivory in the lantern light, the patch of shadow at its base. His already hardened flesh was throbbing as he eased himself across her, settling his knees between legs parted in sleep.

  Folded back on each side of her head, Emma’s arms moved and instantly he grabbed her wrists, fitting them into one large hand while the other groped at her breast.

  ‘Be no call for you to cry out.’ He leered down into her face as her eyes widened. ‘You knowed I would come. That be why you said you had no money to pay, ’cos you intended to pay in other ways – ways that please a man.’

  ‘No!’ The mists of sleep dissolving before this new horror, she tried to struggle free. ‘Get away from me . . . get away!’

  ‘Come now.’ The hand left her breast to clamp across her mouth. ‘Not too loud in your pretending, we don’t want the wife to hear. Gets a bit jealous does the wife.’

  Eyes blazing with fear and anger, Emma tried to twist from under him but his weight was too much.

  ‘You be as eager as I am, do you?’ he laughed as he raised himself, displaying the hard flesh jerking between his legs. ‘You be wanting to make your payment real bad. But let’s not hurry things, take our time. That way there be more enjoyment.’

  Emma trembled with revulsion as he lowered himself on to her, nausea thick in her throat as she felt that throbbing flesh, hot and hard, leap against her stomach.

  Not again. Oh, God, not again! This couldn’t be happening again! But by the sting of her lips pressing against her teeth as his mouth replaced his hand she knew that it was.

  ‘I was telling the truth,’ she gasped as his mouth lifted fractionally. ‘I have no money, and I never intended to make payment this way. I am no prostitute.’

  The hand fondling her breast squeezed hard, and the kick of stiffened flesh against her stomach increased. ‘Money or no money,’ he slurred against her lips, ‘intended or otherwise, this be the way you be going to pay!’

  ‘No, please . . .’

  ‘Quiet!’ Releasing her wrists, he raised himself to his k
nees, bringing his hand down hard across her mouth. ‘If you want to walk from here in the morning you’ll keep this closed, but closed or open I’ll have what I want. And what I want be this.’

  Slowly, knees biting painfully into her flesh, he forced her legs wide apart. Then, touching the end of his bloated penis to the base of her stomach, he rocked slowly back and forth, his flesh stroking hers.

  ‘Don’t,’ Emma sobbed. ‘Please don’t do this . . . please!’

  Her mind flew to that other time. He had left her a shilling. Carver Felton had raped her and left her with the shilling sewn into the lining of her skirts.

  ‘Wait!’ She raised her hands to his shoulders in an effort to hold him back. ‘I . . . I do have a shilling. That is all I have but take it, take it, please, and go . . .’

  ‘I’ll take your shilling and gladly.’ He struck her hands away. ‘But first I’ll take you!’

  Thrusting his body forward he groaned and dropped heavily on to her.

  ‘Serves you right, you filthy swine! I hope you’re dead . . . I hope you are dead!’

  Heaving the still form off her, Emma rolled sideways into the hay.

  ‘It serves you right, you deserve to die!’

  Her senses reeling Emma looked at where her attacker lay, face down and unmoving, on the bed of hay. Standing over him was the thin figure of a young girl, the piece of wood with which she had struck him on the head still raised in her hand.

  ‘He got what was coming to him,’ the girl said softly, eyes never leaving the still figure. ‘I vowed I would kill him. Folk like him don’t deserve to live.’

  ‘No!’ Emma raised a hand as the girl lifted the weapon. ‘You must not strike him again.’

  ‘Why not?’ She turned towards Emma, her thin face blank and expressionless in the pale light of the lantern. ‘Why not hit him again? Why not make sure he won’t do to another what he has done to me – what he was set to do to you? Killing him would do every woman a good turn.’

  ‘No.’ Scrambling to her feet, Emma grabbed for her clothes, alarming the horse, who whickered. ‘No, it is wrong to kill.’

  ‘It isn’t wrong when you kill a pig, and that’s what he is. A dirty pig!’

  Damp clothing sticking to her skin, Emma pulled it on. ‘I don’t doubt the truth of that, but we mustn’t kill him. That way we become as bad as he is.’

  ‘I don’t reckon that!’ The girl still held the piece of wood at a threatening angle. ‘He be no better than vermin, the whole world would be better off without him! Why leave him whole, to rape some other woman? Why let him get away with that?’

  ‘No!’ Emma lunged forward, grabbing the girl’s wrist as she swung the wood.

  ‘I thought as how I would find you in here, Eli Coombs. I guessed where you would be, bare arse upward in the hay and that trollop underneath you!’

  Her hand still on the girl, Emma looked towards the door. A candle in her hand, the narrow-faced woman stood staring down at the figure lying in the hay.

  ‘I knowed what her game was, coming here that time of the night, same as I knowed yours . . . Christian charity, hah! The only thing you’ve ever been charitable with is that which swings between your legs, and any woman can have that for nothing. But the one you be covering now won’t find the next man so easy to lead astray. No, by God she won’t. Not once I be finished with her!’

  The candle flickering as she lifted it above her head, the woman advanced further into the barn and Emma felt the young girl beside her tremble.

  ‘Get up. Do you hear me, Eli Coombs? You get off that dirty trollop afore you gets this candle up your arse!’

  ‘He won’t be getting up, not yet he won’t.’ Her voice shaking, the girl broke free of Emma.

  Standing now in the pale circle of light thrown by the lantern, the woman’s face showed disgust. ‘Not you as well? He ain’t playing with two at a time? No wonder he’s having a job getting to his feet.’

  ‘It isn’t what he has done is keeping him from standing up, it is what I have done, and if it were not for the one you called a trollop he might never have stood on his feet again!’

  ‘Why? What have you done to him? If you have harmed him . . .’ The woman’s anger swung rapidly from her husband to the girl.

  ‘Harmed him?’ The girl laughed, a lost hopeless sound. ‘I should have killed him!’

  ‘Eli.’ Placing the candle on the ground, the woman knelt beside her husband. ‘Eli, be you all right?’

  ‘This be your fault.’ She glared up at Emma.

  ‘He . . . he came to the barn. I had no idea . . .’

  ‘No idea?’ Emma’s protest was lost on the woman. ‘You had every idea, and each one of them along the same lines. And that being to get my man out here.’

  ‘I thought no such thing!’ Emma was aghast. ‘I was asleep when your husband came here, I woke to find him forcing himself upon me.’

  ‘Forcing, was it? So how much did he pay to “force himself” on you?’

  ‘He gave me no money. I tell you, he . . .’

  ‘And I tell you, what you have done to my husband is going to cost you dear. You’ll get ten years for this, ten years’ hard labour. There won’t be many men will want your services after that, not the way you’ll look. That pretty face won’t look so good any more. Ten years, that’s what you’ll get for this . . .’

  ‘She didn’t do it, she didn’t hit him, I did.’ The quaver in her voice testifying to her fear, the girl lifted the piece of wood still gripped in one hand. ‘It was me, I clouted him with this.’

  Beside her the still figure groaned but the woman’s attention was on the girl. ‘You!’ She glared. ‘You hit him? Why, you ungrateful little toe rag!’

  ‘He deserved it.’ The girl’s voice rose as the woman scrambled to her feet. ‘It’s right what she says, he did come in here and force it on her, same as he forced it on me more than once. I seen him. I been in here all the time so I seen him do it.’

  At her feet Eli groaned again, rolling on to his back.

  ‘Here.’ Grabbing his discarded trousers, his wife threw them at him. ‘Get yourself dressed, you’ve got the bobbies to fetch.’

  The police? Emma felt her stomach turn over. She had never even seen a policeman in Doe Bank. The thought of possibly being arrested and taken to prison filled her with horror.

  Still dazed from the blow the girl had struck to the back of his head, Eli groaned afresh, pulling on his trousers as his wife screeched at him again to go for the police.

  ‘There’ll be no bobbies brought here!’ He rubbed his head, wincing as he touched the place where the blow had fallen.

  ‘But this wench and this . . . this trollop knocked you down, they like to have killed you!’

  ‘He didn’t need no knocking down, he was already near enough on his face when I hit him.’

  ‘You hear that? You hear what this little toe rag be saying? It was her hit you, swiped you with that piece of wood. She could have knocked your brains clean out, ’cept you don’t have any. Now you get that horse out of the stable and ride into Wednesbury. I want them bobbies bringing in and these two carted off to jail where they belong.’

  Getting to his feet, Eli swayed. ‘I said, no bobbies!’

  ‘Best you listen to him.’ A tremor still marked in her voice, it was the girl who answered. ‘It might be I’ll get ten years but it will be worth every minute to tell the whole of the town what it is Eli Coombs does with the girls he gets from Meeting Street. What it is you turn a blind eye to!’

  Even in the faint illumination of candle and lantern, Eli’s face visibly paled.

  ‘Get out!’ he hissed. ‘Get you gone before I decides to take a pitchfork to you!’

  Picking up the candle as Emma grabbed the girl’s arm, pulling her towards the door, the woman turned to the stable.

  ‘If you won’t fetch the bobbies, then I will!’

  One hand holding his half-buttoned trousers Eli struck out with the other, sending the li
ghted candle flying into the dry hay.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘You look very charming, Cara. And you, my dear Miss Gilbert, look positively enchanting.’

  ‘A flatterer as always.’ Acid beneath the smile she returned, Cara Holgate swept into the drawing room of Felton Hall.

  ‘There is no need for flattery when the truth is adequate. But adequate as that is, my words do not do either of you justice. What do you say, Payne? Do you agree with me?’

  ‘Indeed.’ Arthur Payne smiled at the two women. ‘It would take the Poet Laureate to do justice to such beauty.’

  ‘Enough!’ Cara waved her fan. ‘Melissa, my dear, don’t listen to them.’

  ‘Why not when I quite like what they say?’ Rouged lips showing white even teeth, Melissa Gilbert gave a dazzling smile. ‘I confess, Mr Payne, I rather enjoy being flattered.’

  ‘Then I shall devote the whole evening to doing what you enjoy.’

  ‘Then our evening together will be a short one. I have no liking for twaddle, listening to you playing the Lothario will bore me to tears.’ Cara flipped open her delicate lace fan then snapped it closed, movements sharp and irritated.

  Keeping his smile hidden Carver Felton handed sherry to each of his guests. Cara had no liking for twaddle! Except when that twaddle was directed at her alone.

  Seating himself in a brocaded Hepplewhite armchair, he glanced at the younger woman. ‘I hope your recovery from your illness is continuing, Miss Gilbert?’ He directed the conversation with consummate ease.

  Giving another of her dazzling smiles, Melissa switched her glance from Payne. ‘Oh, yes. I feel better with each day. I must say, my cousin takes such excellent care of me I am becoming thoroughly spoiled. I fear I shall not want to return home.’