Pit Bank Wench Page 14

  That he would. Cara watched her cousin rise from the small gilt chair, shapely body moving sinuously beneath its silken sheath, the wealth of chestnut hair gleaming against skin that might be mistaken for alabaster. Melissa was beautiful but that beauty would not be wasted on Carver Felton. Melissa would never become his wife.

  ‘I was being silly.’ Her pretty mouth drooping, Melissa held out her hands to her cousin. ‘You shouldn’t let me tease you so, Cara. You have always been like a sister to me, letting me say and do the most hurtful things and never once reprimanding me. I feel dreadfully ashamed. I know you and Carver have an understanding, that you are to marry in the future. I have behaved stupidly. Forgive me, Cara, please?’

  Anger melting from her, she took the hand stretched towards her. ‘Let us forget all about it. I think we should both say goodnight and go to bed.’

  Grey eyes glistening beneath half-closed lids Melissa’s voice was husky, her mouth softly penitent.

  ‘I’ll say goodnight, Cara, but not until you say you forgive me. Really forgive me.’

  Releasing one hand, Cara touched the tumbling chestnut curls.

  ‘I forgive you, Lissa,’ she murmured, kissing the girl’s pale cheek. ‘Of course I forgive you.’

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘That were good!’ Daisy brushed the flecks of pastry from her skirt. ‘That woman has a face like a fourpenny hock but she makes a good pie.’

  ‘Is she really so long-faced?’ Emma smiled as she too shook away the last remnants of supper.

  ‘Long-faced?’ Daisy laughed. ‘I tell you, Emma, were she to lie down it could be mistaken for the Holyhead Road.’

  Listening to the girl’s laughter ring across the heath, Emma’s own smile faded. Sometimes when they had been alone her sister had laughed like that. Carrie! Emma glanced away towards the twin spires of the churches on the distant hill and the pain of that night came sweeping over her again. If only she had known, if only Carrie had told her, she could have helped . . . done something. But what? Would she have had any more courage than her sister had had? Could she have faced their father, openly accused him? And if she had, what then? In the quiet that followed Daisy’s laughter she seemed to hear the voice she had heard so often. ‘Brother will turn against brother, the child against the father . . .’ Caleb Price, the preacher man, would have wielded the words of the Bible like a weapon, leaving Carrie and herself to suffer the barbs of guilt.

  ‘Eh, don’t go to sleep yet.’ Mistaking silence for sleepiness Daisy touched Emma’s shoulder. ‘We are not sleeping on the heath tonight.’

  Keeping her eyes lowered so the girl would not see the torture she hid, Emma reached for the hand extended to her, feeling the wince of pain as her fingers closed over it.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Daisy said as Emma cried an apology. ‘It’s just soda causes the soreness. It bites away the skin, and old long face at the pie shop likes plenty of it in the bucket when you be cleaning, same as they do in the workhouse.’

  Emma released the girl’s hand. ‘Daisy, I know how you feel about going back there but we have to. We can’t go on sleeping in the open, depending on charity for food.’

  ‘No, Emma!’ Daisy burst out. ‘You don’t know what it’s like ’cos you’ve never been put there! You’ve never been ordered to keep a still tongue from morning ’til night save for one hour. To scrub floors and stairs ’til the blood runs from your hands. To stand with head bent whenever a wardress passes. To fetch and carry for them like a dog only to be kicked like one and then have to stand and thank heaven for its mercy and the parish for its beneficence. No, Emma, you don’t know what it’s like or how it feels!

  ‘You speak of depending on charity for food. Don’t be fooled. You get no charity from the parish. Every crumb is slaved for, every slice of bread paid for in sweat. The parish workhouse!’ Daisy laughed, a low cynical sound. ‘The only charity they give is the charity of death. That’s the only relief to be found inside those walls!’

  The shadows beginning to creep over the sky matched those in the girl’s eyes, and the ones that darkened Emma’s heart. Daisy and Carrie, two girls not much more than children, what they both had suffered! Drawing the girl against her, feeling the shiver that ran through her thin body, Emma felt the same desperation. Not to go to the parish might mean death from cold and hunger, while to knock on its door would certainly result in heartbreak.

  ‘It’s all right, Daisy,’ she murmured. ‘We’ll ask for no charity, and we’ll find somewhere to sleep.’

  ‘We’ll ask none for a night or two anyway.’ Daisy brightened. ‘We have a shilling and fourpence. That will buy a bed at Joe Baker’s and a breakfast of bread and dripping. We ain’t starving just yet, Emma.’

  Daisy would spend the money she had worked two days to earn on buying them a bed in a lodging house, while she . . . Emma felt a warm flush suffuse her cheeks . . . while she kept the shilling Carver Felton had left her.

  ‘Two shillings and fourpence,’ she said softly. ‘I have a shilling also.’

  ‘Is that the money you offered Coombs to leave you alone?’ Then, when Emma nodded, ‘If it took rape to get you to part with that shilling then I reckon you’d better keep it, least until we be desperate. And we ain’t that, not yet. Come on, I know a place we might spend the night. It won’t cost the price Joe Baker asks, and there won’t be so many fleas neither.’

  Matching the brisk pace set by Daisy, Emma followed her along Lower High Street, pausing to let the occupants of a hansom pass into the Turk’s Head Hotel.

  Grabbing her arm, Daisy hauled her on. ‘Step lively, Emma. The Shambles will be picked clean afore we get there.’

  Almost running the remaining distance she turned left into a narrow street. The pungent smell of meat and offal hung heavy in the air. Along one side wooden trestles strung with unlit candle jars lay empty; only one stall still boasted a feeble light.

  ‘Good!’ Daisy released her hold on Emma, running ahead to where a man in a long apron and straw boater was packing knives into a large wicker basket.

  ‘Evening, Mr Hollington.’ Emma watched as Daisy bobbed him a polite curtsy. ‘Am I too late? Oh, I hope not, my mother said not to buy sausages from any other butcher. She said not to bring any but the best and that could only be got from Samuel Hollington.’

  ‘Did her now?’ His bushy side whiskers bristling as he smiled, the man looked at Daisy. ‘Told you to watch your manners too so it seems. Well now, I reckon I can find a couple of sausages.’

  Reaching deep into the basket, knife clinking against knife, he drew out a string of plump sausages. Counting off a dozen he grinned at Daisy. ‘So, me little wench, do you reckon that be good enough for your mother?’

  Delight showing in her answering smile, Daisy nodded, delving into her pocket for the coins she had earned earlier.

  ‘How much is that, please?’

  Wrapping the sausages in a sheet of paper retrieved from the basket, the man smiled anew.

  ‘That’ll be tuppence.’ He passed the parcel to her. ‘But the price be halved by that smile of yours. Now you go back to that sister waiting along of you on the corner and both of you be off home.’

  Bobbing another curtsy as she smiled goodnight, Daisy ran back to Emma, pulling her out of earshot before she spoke.

  ‘I reckoned on Hollington still being here, he’s always the very last to leave the market.’

  ‘But how did you know?’ Emma questioned when Daisy paused for breath.

  ‘You get to know a lot when you work for Liza Coombs. I had to come to the Shambles every Saturday night and wait ’til Hollington were near enough sold out. Come ten and eleven o’clock at night he would be near enough giving stuff away, ‘specially to them he could see hadn’t hardly a half-penny to bless themselves with. Good-natured don’t describe Butcher Hollington and grasping don’t describe Liza! She would send me with sixpence full knowing I would get a pig’s head and near enough a loin of chops or an aitchbone of beef t
hat would feed them for a week and still get three-pence change. But even so she was never satisfied. Greedy old cow! But forget Liza, let’s go and cook these sausages.’

  ‘We need a pan and a kitchen fire to do that,’ Emma said as Daisy set off at a trot. ‘And we don’t have either.’

  ‘Watch and learn, Emma.’ Daisy’s laughter floated behind her. ‘Watch and learn!’

  *

  After Cara had left for her own bedroom, Melissa dropped the penitent pose. Her cousin intended to have Carver Felton for herself, but what Cara wanted and what she was allowed to have were two entirely different things! But Melissa would play the pliant young girl . . . until it suited her to change the game.

  Returning to the mirror she stared at her reflection. Drawing the silk nightgown close about her body, she studied the slender curves of waist and rounded hips then with one swift movement pulled the nightgown over her head, throwing it from her with a soft exultant laugh.

  This was what would buy her all that she wanted. Placing a hand on each hip she stroked the soft flesh. This was all it would take to make her mistress of a fine house.

  Grey eyes gleaming, lips parted, she continued to stare at her own nakedness, watch her own hand caress her stomach then slide slowly into the curving hollow of her waist and upward to cup the burgeoning mounds of her breasts.

  This would buy her any man’s name, and the man she wanted was Carver Felton.

  And he wanted her. That much had been plain from the looks and little attentions he had directed towards her at dinner. Much to the chagrin of Arthur Payne, not to mention Cara.

  Oh, he may think that like her cousin Melissa Gilbert would be willing to become his mistress, and maybe she would. For a time. Smiling at herself, Melissa squeezed her nipples gently between thumb and finger. But only so long as it suited her. She would let him taste the wine but it would take a wedding ring to purchase the whole bottle. And once she was the wife of Felton of Felton Hall, cousin Cara could go to hell!

  Ignoring the silk lying like a tiny heap of newly fallen snow on the pale jade carpet, Melissa turned off the gasolier, leaving only a night light to combat the shadows, and slid naked beneath the sheets.

  It would only take a few nights. Or maybe she would grant him just one. Once having held her body in his arms, sampled the delights of her soft flesh, he would not be able to resist. But she would. She smiled in the darkness. Melissa Gilbert would not be such easy prey or so willing a partner as her cousin. Poor Cara! Spreading her arms wide, Melissa pressed herself into the soft caress of fine linen sheets. Cara thought to see Carver Felton at the altar, and so she would. But the bride he would be taking would be her cousin.

  ‘Daisy, just where are we going?’ Emma caught up with the figure trotting before her. She had followed her friend through a maze of narrow streets and alleyways, each darker and more forbidding than the one before, the close-packed houses showing no more within them than the flicker of a candle.

  ‘We’re almost there.’ Daisy slowed to a walk.

  ‘But where is that?’ Emma panted.

  ‘The Monway.’ Daisy pointed over to where a large building loomed in the darkness. ‘That be the Monway iron foundry. The watchman there will let us cook the sausages over his brazier, and if we share them with him he might let us sleep the night in his hut.’

  ‘We . . . we couldn’t do that.’

  ‘I bloody well could!’ Daisy expostulated. ‘It beats lying out on the heath all night. It’ll be warm and dry and it won’t take any of our money.’

  ‘But I have a shilling, that will buy us a bed . . .’

  ‘No!’ Daisy retorted sharply. ‘I don’t want to know how you came by that money, but I do know it must have been a way you won’t forget in a hurry seeing as what you have gone through without the spending of it. So you leave it lie where it is. We’ll get by, Emma, we ain’t beat yet!’

  Slipping her hand into Emma’s, she smiled. ‘That watchman won’t be able to say no to Hollington’s sausages.’

  The soft growl of a dog warning them not to come any nearer, Emma held back from the welcoming heat of the glowing brazier.

  ‘What you be about?’ A man with shoulders stooped by age stepped out of a nearby hut. ‘Don’t you come no nearer.’ He peered into the shadows. ‘Not lessen you want to feel General Kitchener’s teeth in your arse!’

  ‘We only want to stand a minute at your fire,’ Daisy called.

  ‘A wench, be it?’ the man answered. ‘Well, step you up. But I warns you, the General’s bite be a lot worse than his bark. One wrong move and he’ll have you!’

  Her hand still in Emma’s, Daisy stepped into the circle of firelight. ‘We don’t mean any harm, mister. Me and my friend want only to warm ourselves. The heath gets cold at night.’

  The old man dropped his hand to the dog’s head and it sank to its belly, though its eyes, glowing redly, stayed fixed on the two women. ‘It does that, but how come the pair of you be on the heath at this time of night?’

  ‘It makes a bed when you got no other,’ Daisy answered while Emma stood groping for words.

  ‘Oh!’ The voice, gravelly with age, took on a note of apprehension that was immediately picked up by the dog whose throat rumbled another warning. ‘How come you have no bed? Be the bobbies after you?’

  ‘If they was I’d let them catch me.’ Daisy grinned. ‘At least then I’d have a place to sleep. In the cells. It has to be better than sleeping under a hedge.’

  ‘You don’t know what you be saying, little wench.’ The watchman coughed in the back of his throat. ‘A few nights in one of them gaols and you’d soon sing a different tune, you’d pray to be out on the heath. I know, I’ve seen men and women after they’ve served a term along the line and I tell you they ain’t been pretty to look at. No, by God they ain’t! Well, step up and warm yourselves. That’s what you came for, ain’t it?’

  Drawing the package from beneath her shawl, Daisy held it out. ‘We came to warm ourselves and . . . and to ask could we cook these over your fire? We’re willing to share them with you, and there’d be one for the General too.’

  His interest caught, the old man took another step forward. ‘What you got there?’

  ‘Sausages fresh from butcher Hollington in the Shambles.’

  ‘The General be partial to a sausage.’ The old man coughed again. ‘You wait there, I’ve a pan in the hut. And remember his teeth – he ain’t choosy who he sinks ’em into!’

  Droplets of fat jumping from the pan sizzled on the glowing coals, arousing the attention of the dog who raised his short muzzle to sniff the air appreciatively.

  ‘You make a good job of cooking.’ The old man eyed Emma in almost the same way. ‘Same as you make a good job of not answering my question.’

  She glanced up from prodding the sausages with a fork the watchman had produced along with a tin plate. ‘What question, Mr . . .’

  ‘Birks,’ the man supplied. ‘My name be Enoch Birks.’

  Politeness an instinct with Emma, she bobbed him a small curtsy. ‘Good evening, Mr Birks. May I present my friend, Daisy Tully, and myself, Emma Price.’

  In the light of the brazier the old man’s eyes twinkled and he grinned beneath the generous moustache.

  ‘Well, if that don’t be the prettiest introduction I’ve ever been given! You be fair well-mannered, the two of you. Makes a change to be addressed civil in this day and age, you be more like to be ignored by young folk today; they think ’cos a body has a few years they be bound to be senile or stupid. No manners.’ He shook his head. ‘That be what’s wrong with folk today, no manners and no respect. But you two have been brought up to know better, that be plain.’

  Smiling her thanks, Emma returned her attention to the frying pan, turning each sausage while trying to avoid the darts of hot fat that sprayed with each move.

  ‘But I ain’t senile,’ Enoch resumed. ‘Old I be, but I ain’t stupid. That were a pretty speech you made, wench, but it still didn
’t tell me where you be from nor how come it is you have no bed?’

  Glancing quickly at Daisy, Emma caught the faint movement of her head. Daisy was warning her to say nothing. But the old man had been kind to them, he had not turned them away. He could so easily have set the dog on them but he had let them stay. Such an action deserved an answer that contained, if not all the truth, at least an element of it.

  ‘I come from Doe Bank.’ Her voice just audible above the splutter of the pan she kept her eyes lowered, hiding the pain that immediately leapt to them. ‘My home was . . . was accidentally burned and my family died in the fire. I was visiting a friend who lived at Plovers Croft at the time. That’s how come I too did not die.’

  ‘Plovers Croft?’ Touching the dog’s ears Enoch soothed its rising enthusiasm at the smell of cooking. ‘That place were flattened days since. Several of the folk stopped by here on their way into the town.’

  ‘Yes,’ Emma answered quietly. ‘When my own home was destroyed, I’d hoped to stay at Jerusha Paget’s house . . .’

  ‘Jerusha Paget?’ Enoch broke in quickly. ‘Be that the woman that physics folk?’

  ‘She uses herbal medicines.’

  ‘Arrh, that be the one. She helped my Mary many a time. She dead?’

  ‘No. Jerusha decided she was too old to go on the road so she stayed in Doe Bank, but I . . . I could not face staying there.’

  Staring into the brazier, Enoch moved his head slowly from side to side. ‘The road be a hard place at any age, but there be more danger there for two young wenches. No respect, you see, no respect for women!’

  Forking the sausages on to the plate, Emma took the thick wedges of bread that were to have been the watchman’s meagre supper and dipped each one into the sizzling fat. Adding several sausages to each, she handed them to Enoch.

  ‘Share and share alike.’ Breaking each sandwich in half he handed a portion to each of the girls, laying another on the ground for the eager General Kitchener.