Rena froze as the woman met her eyes. She was the first person to have really looked at Rena since she’d arrived in Abbotsville, and an unspoken understanding hummed between them. Rena wondered if this woman had been homeless too. Cast off by relatives, or perhaps born illegitimate.
“Who is loitering there?”
Rena stepped back at the nasty voice but turned her eyes toward the staircase, where a woman with a stack of faded blankets was descending the stairs. This woman was much older than any of the other women there. Her graying hair was tied tightly at the back of her head, and she had the beady eyes of a badger, dark and unusually close together.
Rena’s voice came out in a painfully fragile thread. “I came to see if you have a room.” The words flooded her with shame. She wondered what Edric would have said if he had seen her in such a place, practically begging for crumbs.
The older woman shook her head. “No,” she answered in a clipped voice, then stabbed a thumb at the door. “Leave.”
Half-relieved to be cast out from such a dismal place, Rena turned toward the door but stopped as she remembered the stable where Nell was still sleeping like those in India who were born too unclean to merit a caste at all. From the highest to the lowest was a dizzying fall, and Rena still couldn’t feel the ground beneath her own feet. Could they plummet lower still? She thought of how it might be if she and Nell faced winter without a home. What might happen if the chill in the air journeyed to their bones and then to their lungs?
“My mother-in-law is starving,” Rena managed, half turning back to the woman. “We both are. We have nothing. We are desperate.”
The woman looked at Rena the way Nell’s family had looked at her, as if the whole of the Indian mutinies were carried out at her behest. “Put the Indian chit back on a boat,” one cousin had whispered to Nell when he thought Rena was out of earshot. “Send her home at once.”
“Even we have standards,” the woman said scornfully. “You must find lodging elsewhere.”
But Rena had already been everywhere. Nearly delirious from sparse food and even sparser sleep, she felt unbearably thin beneath the woman’s gaze. “Wife!” growled a voice, and the woman winced. Rena turned and watched as a thin man with a dirtied apron crossed through the kitchen door. “See to the storage room,” he ordered, jerking his head toward the back. “Make it ready.”
The woman hissed then spun around and disappeared through the back hall. As soon as she was gone, the man folded his arms in front of his chest and gave Rena a dubious look. Hard work had given his skin a blotchy appearance, but his eyes were clear. Scraggly white whiskers hung in a long, wiry tangle along his jaw. Rena had once heard them called Piccadilly weepers by British soldiers who had worn the style with a bit more class.
“Have you not heard of what happens in our upstairs rooms?” the man challenged. “Or is that why you’re here?”
Rena’s humiliation climbed, undercut by a stab of raw fear. “I have no interest in what goes on in any of your rooms,” she responded. “I left my mother-in-law, Lady Hawley, sleeping in a stable. All I am looking for is a roof to put over her head.”
At her stiff reply, his face softened, as if discomfort was something he didn’t often see in his line of work. He measured her anew, the corners of his mouth pinching as he glimpsed her black mourning gown and trembling hands. With a slight wince, he asked her, “This mother-in-law of yours. Can she wash dishes?”
Half-breathless with hope, Rena jumped to answer, “We both can.”
“My wife will never let you in her kitchen.” He shook his head with an embittered frown. “But if your mother-in-law can wash dishes and floors, if she can sweep and clean tables, then you can stay in our storeroom.”
Rena was too stunned to answer immediately. With the looming threat of the workhouse, she was certain Nell would accept the arrangement, though it still smarted to imagine her mother-in-law scrubbing floors in such a place. “I am…indebted to you, sir.”
“It’s not exactly posh lodging—a drafty produce closet with a narrow bench.”
“We’ve slept in gutters,” she answered, steadily meeting his eyes.
He quirked a bushy eyebrow then nodded. “And the men? The ones hereabouts who drink too much, they might take an interest in you.”
She hesitated, glancing back at the pretty, albeit rumpled, woman who still watched her with unease. Was this their silent understanding, then? Was Rena looking at her future, or was this poor woman remembering her own naive past?
“I am not to be touched,” Rena insisted, mortified to have to set such a stipulation, regardless of whether it would be followed. She turned back to the innkeeper and lifted her chin. “If you can promise me that, then we will gladly accept your offer.”
“Ah, so here you are setting our terms now.” He nodded his approval then extended a veiny hand. “I am Mr. Bagley, and I accept your terms. It’s only fair warning to you, though, that my wife does not and likely will never like you.”
If such was the least of Rena’s worries, she might actually sleep through the night for the first time in nearly two years. “I am growing rather used to being unliked,” she confessed. “And I would rather sleep among humans who despise me than horses who don’t.”
Oats, barley, wheat.
Rena ran her fingers with wonder along the sheaves as she followed the main road out of town, passing foreign fields and grand estates as she journeyed. So much food, she thought bleakly, and yet she and Nell were both starving.
It certainly wasn’t for lack of trying. For four weeks, Nell had scrubbed dishes and floors to pay for their place in the shabby storeroom at the Gilded Crown. But money was scarce, barely enough for a loaf of bread and some watered-down milk every few days. And while the Bagleys had allowed them to stay in their produce closet for practically nothing, they were not about to feed them as well. To Rena generosity was becoming a land with uncomfortably tight borders.
Hunting for work of her own, she had knocked on enough doors to scab her knuckles a hundred times over. No work was beneath her, she vowed, no prospect too small. But all doors closed as if on phantom hinges, blotting out her desperate pleas.
Since Edric had died, Rena wondered if she was being punished for something she had done. For marrying a foreigner, perhaps. For leaving her family behind so she could look after Nell. For watching Nell starve and finding herself too weak to find an answer. Karma. The word unfolded like a flower in her mind, whispered in her mother’s careful, instructive voice. As a child, Rena had learned that her actions had the power to haunt or reward her, to shape who she would become, possibly even in future lives. And Rena felt haunted in many, many ways.
She pressed deeper inland, hoping to come upon a farm willing to pay half price for a milkmaid. With fewer buildings and trees left to block the wind, she pulled her gray shawl tighter around her shoulders and tried to brace herself against a shiver. It was only August, and Nell often said the country air would become crisper after the harvest was gleaned, then turn bitter. Though Jaipur certainly had its colder evenings in the winter months, Rena had spent much of them indoors. She was still too used to the heavy air, the kind of heat she felt deep in her throat every time she swallowed. Abbotsville’s leaves were dazzling in their own way, the fields a lovely shade of burnt sunlight, but the shivers still jumped along her skin and made her wish for a warmer, more inviting place.
“You think your desert sands are everything, Rena, but there is a whole world beyond this heat. Someday I will take you to England. We’ll pluck apples from the trees and lie in the grass all evening while we eat them. And then I’ll whisper in your ear all the ways I love you.”
Rena gripped the front of her threadbare dress, feeling the press of Edric’s ring from beneath the fabric. He had spoken those words to her three days after their wedding, and it sickened her to hear his voice now, in a strange, foreign place where stalks of wheat stood sentinel over her aching heart. She shut her eyes, no longer wan
ting to see the lush leaves and yellow harvest. “Oh Edric,” she sighed to the empty road. “This place is yours. I wish you could share it with me.”
As if hearing her somber plea, distant voices began singing deep in the field beside her, the echoes lifting up a sorrowful dirge which matched the caws of crows as they soared overhead.
As if their voices could sense her hunger.
As if they were giving it a voice all its own.
Rena turned toward the field, closing her eyes once more as she listened. From a distance, she couldn’t make out any of the words, but the vague sound gave the song a certain beauty. She took several steps toward the field, then parted the stalks, her feet crunching the ground as she pressed forward. The fields were empty.
She walked for what felt like hours, pulled toward the voices as if hypnotized. She followed the music through several plots of land until she began to see men with swooping scythes in hand and the hunched-over backs of women as they gathered. Stubs of grain fell to the earth beneath each worker, but they did not stop to collect the smallest of these fallen pieces. They worked in a rhythm that made Rena nearly dizzy as she watched. Some of the workers still sang as they gathered; some of them chattered and gossiped among themselves, wrapping twine around thick sheaves; some of them scowled as they worked in the distance, hauling dried sheaves to a massive machine that guzzled, shook, and churned.
Glancing away from the workers, Rena studied the sprawling manor on the hill above—an ancient building with a buttressed roof sloping out like the spine of an overturned book. She dipped to a knee, scooping up a few pieces of scattered grain, and cradled the buds in her hand. So much food, she thought again, and yet her stomach could not recall its last meal.
Desperation whispered in her ear that she had to do something, and fear guided her hand as she slipped the grain quickly into the bag at her side, which Nell had insisted she bring in case she happened upon any vegetables growing wild.
She was about to gather another handful when a hard fist clamped tight around her wrist, jerking her so hard to the side that she nearly lost her footing. Startled from her crime, she looked up into a pair of flinty eyes.
“So this is what they teach in your part of the world?” the burly laborer snarled. “To steal from those who work their own way?”
“Please!” she cried, but his grip tightened around her wrist until she gasped and her fingers spread out in terror, dropping the few snatches of grain she still held. “Please, they were just left on the ground!”
She hardly realized she was struggling against him until he tossed her to the ground. Her arms thrummed with pain as her hands shot out to break her fall. For a moment, she could barely move. No man within her father’s house had even seen her face, not until Edric had at last pulled aside her veil, and no other man had ever touched her either. Now she was thrown aside as if she had never been cherished, never been set apart in her father’s world of books and satin, but was made only to be beaten.
“You think you’re worthy of our leavings?” The laborer laughed at her startled expression. “I’ll throw you to the magistrate before I let you touch even the scraps from Lord Barric’s table.”
“That’s enough.”
The burly worker looked to the side, scowling as another man strode forward. The newcomer was thin but muscular, a young man with corn-colored hair parted to the side and prominent sideburns cut in the style of Prince Albert. He wore a respectable-looking suit, pressed and trim.
“She was stealing,” said the larger man to the other, defensively, running a hand along his sweat-stained collar. “I know Lord Barric wouldn’t like that. Not a bit.”
“I can certainly deal with the situation without you putting words into Lord Barric’s mouth.” The blond man jerked his chin toward the other workers. “Back to work. Now.”
As the worker retreated, the new man looked down at her with eyes that were all English, bright blue and glinting. “And were you stealing, as he says?” He regarded her down the length of his slender nose with a cautious expression, arms folded in front of him.
Rena crept back up onto her knees, hardly knowing if she dared stand for fear of being arrested. “He speaks the truth,” she finally admitted. “I stole grain. Two handfuls.”
“I see.” He tipped an eyebrow. “And how did you happen to be here, stealing two handfuls of grain?”
“I heard the singing from the road, and I followed it.” She realized her answer was peculiar, nearly riddlish. She met his eyes more fully and quietly confided, “And I was hungry.”
He unfolded his arms from his chest, so she thought he intended to help her up, but he crouched down in front of her instead, lowering his eyes to her level. “How long since you’ve eaten a meal?” The pity in his voice speared right through her, made her cringe. She wondered what her father would say if he ever found her kneeling at a man’s feet.
“It wasn’t just my hunger,” she amended, mortified by the sound of her own excuses. She stood abruptly and straightened, trying to feel less small. “I wouldn’t have done it for myself alone. But my mother-in-law—I promised I’d take care of her, but we have no money.”
Standing, the man pondered the grain still scattered about their feet, then glanced at the manor in the distance. “Lord Barric owns this property,” he said after the thread of silence had tightened between them. “He is the master of Misthold, up at the top of the hill. But he is abroad. Gather what scraps you can while the sun is still high in the sky. Keep your head down while you work. And then go with my blessing. If anyone gives you trouble, you tell them William said it was permitted.”
She stared at this man called William, not fully understanding his words. “You are giving me permission to steal from your own master?”
He measured the placement of the sun with a speculative eye. “You won’t have long,” he observed. “Be quick.” And then he walked away.
Rena watched his retreat with a sense of wonderment. She’d been certain she was about to be arrested. Instead, a blessing of grain, offered at no cost.
She was not the only one shocked by William’s offer. Work had ground to a halt around her, men and women staring at her with looks of unguarded curiosity and distrust. Tipping her eyes up at the sun, she ignored their heated stares, even as William barked one final order at his underlings to “keep working!”
As the workers dropped their eyes to their work, Rena dropped to her knees and hastily began to gather grain.
Jack Fairfax, the Earl of Barric, parted easily through the line of workers, his coat crisp and black against a sea of faded tan work smocks. As soon as the laborers saw him coming, they ducked their heads down, working faster. He heard his name carried through the rows on whispers: “Lord Barric…Lord Barric…Lord Barric…”
He only sporadically left Misthold to come into the fields below. His tenant farmers saw to the crop’s annual yield, and his steward oversaw the farmers. Most of his peers were content to manage their land affairs from London or Bath, where they could continue with their other interests, but Barric preferred to keep a hand in his investments, to be known among those who worked beneath his title.
His friends teased him to no end on this score. “Still working the fields, eh, Barric?” one would ask over a game of whist. “Don’t you know that’s what the bumpkins are bred for?” To the sound of chortles, another would interject, “I’ve heard milkmaids make excellent lovers, but how ever do you get the dirt out of your shirtsleeves?”
He kept a hawkish gaze as he walked the fields, straight on course, penetrating. The workers were making good time with the harvest, he noted, their hands tired but strong as they reaped and bound the sheaves in toiling waves. Still, the end of autumn was racing toward them, and he wanted no surprises come winter.
At the end of the row, a girl with black hair and dark skin collected grain, her hair knotted tightly against the back of her neck. She wore a simple black dress which fit her loosely. Barric stopped mid
step when he saw her. While he didn’t know every hired hand working his field—for his steward managed such affairs—this girl was undoubtedly foreign, and after the mutinies in India, he was certain he’d have been aware of the risk involved in hiring her. He watched her tuck several handfuls of grain into a bag at her side. Not once did she look up at the workers milling about her.
She was trespassing, he realized darkly. Stealing from him. With skin and hair as dark as hers, did she really think she could go unnoticed?
He cut forward a few steps but stopped when he heard the girl was singing under her breath as she gathered. Music, he thought. From a throat so thin he could wrap his fingers twice around it, from lips so parched they were nearly bleeding.
He considered the girl’s face. Her expression was intent and focused, her gaze bright despite its weariness. Dirt lined the edges of her jaw, where she had often stopped to rub her hands. As she stooped to gather a few fingers full of grain, her slender back curled into the shape of a question mark.
His eyebrows rose.
“Lord Barric.”
He redirected his gaze as William stalked toward him.
“I didn’t know to expect a visit so soon after your travels.”
Barric returned his steward’s greeting with a smile that rested subtly on his thin lips. He had no wish to talk about his lengthy trip to France, even with William. The whole sordid business had already left him in an especially dark mood. Barric replied, instead, with sarcasm, “You know how I like to be surprising. But so, it seems, do you. That girl—” He inclined his head toward the end of the field. “Who is she?”
Shadow among Sheaves Page 2