Daughter of the River

by Daughter of the River (retail) (epub)

  She got no further, for there was a crashing in the undergrowth and an all too familiar voice cried, ‘There he be, lads! Let’s get him!’

  Maddy sat bolt upright. ‘Run!’ she screamed.

  But Patrick had no choice. Her brothers were upon him before he had risen to his feet.

  ‘You leave him be this instant, you gurt brutes!’ she yelled, forgetting her fine accent in her distress as she beat at Bart with clenched fists and flailing boots. But she might have been a fly for the notice he took.

  ‘What’ll us do with him?’ demanded Lew.

  ‘Sling un in the river,’ declared Bart.

  Patrick struggled with all his might and Maddy continued to punch and kick at her brothers, but it was useless.

  ‘One, two, three!’ Patrick’s body was swung in time to the chant, then the four brothers flung him as far as they could. There was a huge splash and he disappeared from view.

  ‘There, that should cool un down a bit,’ Bart gloated. Then his expression changed. ‘Get you home, maid,’ he ordered.

  Maddy did not hear him. ‘Where be he?’ she cried in distraction. ‘He be drowned!’

  ‘Serves him right. Come on, lads, let’s have a drink to celebrate.’ Bart started to move away with the others. Only Lew looked back apprehensively. ‘Don’t be bloody soft, boy,’ his elder brother rebuked him. ‘He were asking for un.’

  The tide was high, and although the water was scarcely a man’s height deep at that point, Maddy knew it was more than she could cope with in long petticoats. Moreover, she could not swim. Evidently neither could Patrick. As she looked desperately for him, he rose to the surface, his mouth open in a soundless cry for help, one arm raised in supplication.

  ‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ she screamed, but how?

  A little further on she had noticed a boat moored to a branch. Running to it she hauled at the painter, relieved to see that the oars were there. It was no easy task scrambling down the stony bank and climbing on board. Somehow she managed it, strengthened by sheer desperation. A few expert pulls on the oars and she was near the spot where she had last seen Patrick. Then she caught sight of him, floating face down just below the surface of the water. As she reached him she prayed that he was still alive.

  Finding Patrick was one thing, getting him into the rowing boat was a different matter. She knew she could not haul him aboard on her own without capsizing the boat.

  ‘Help!’ she kept calling until her voice was so hoarse and weak she was sure no one could hear her.

  ‘I be coming, maid! I be coming!’ The answering voice seemed like a miracle. Even more wonderful, she recognised it. It was Lew’s! Not daring to move for fear Patrick would slip from her grasp, she saw her brother rowing rapidly towards her. He was alone. It took him no more than a few minutes to reach her. To Maddy it felt like hours before she felt Patrick taken from her as Lew dragged him into his boat.

  ‘I’d best get him on land quick,’ he said. ‘Can you manage?’ Maddy nodded, and taking up the oars, followed behind him. Quite a crowd awaited them when they arrived at the Mill Dam. By the time Maddy reached the shore, Patrick was lying on his stomach and capable hands were pressing on his back, forcing river water from his lungs. To the many enquiries of ‘What happened?’ Lew replied abruptly, ‘Accident.’ But Maddy’s single question ‘Will he live?’ was harder to answer. It seemed an age before the water stopped spewing from Patrick’s mouth and his eyelids flickered.

  ‘He’m still alive!’ someone exclaimed.

  They carried Patrick to the Victoria and Albert, up to his tiny room above the stables. Maddy would have followed but the solid shape of Mrs Watkins blocked her way.

  ‘Twouldn’t be seemly, you being a maid,’ she said firmly. ‘Please, can’t I stay?’ begged Maddy. ‘I’ll wait outside.’

  ‘I idn’t having females hanging about yer, this be a respectable inn,’ retorted Mrs Watkins. Then she relented. ‘Go into the kitchen and dry off by the fire, you’m near as soaked as he be. Sukie’ll make you a cup of tea.’

  With that Maddy had to be content. As she sat by the blazing fire in the inn’s kitchen, Sukie the maidservant said consolingly, ‘He’m in good hands. The missus have forgot more about nursing than most folk ever knowd.’

  Maddy smiled at her bleakly, hoping she was right.

  It was dark by the time Mrs Watkins came back downstairs. ‘Best go home now, maid, he’m sleeping peaceful,’ she said.

  ‘Can’t I see him, just for a minute?’ Maddy begged.

  ‘Not till the morning then, if he’m fit, you can peek in on him. I idn’t changing my mind, there idn’t no point in you pleading.’

  Maddy had no option but to obey, although as she walked away from the inn she felt that she should be the one sitting up with Patrick that night. It was her right. She loved him.

  As she neared home, her thoughts turned to her brothers and a terrible fury swept through her. They had gone too far this time and she meant to punish them for it. By the time she reached the cottage she was too angry to speak. Her mouth in a tight, grim line, she stormed in, marching through the kitchen and up the steep stairs without a word or a look towards her father and brothers who sat in sheepish silence. Tying a change of clothes and her precious Jane Eyre into a shawl, she returned downstairs and made for the door. Bart got there before her.

  ‘Where’m you going?’ he demanded.

  She did not argue. She slammed her fist right into his solar plexus. Taken by surprise, he doubled up. Maddy pushed him aside and stalked out.

  She did not go far. At the bend in the path she stopped and listened for any sound of pursuit. When none came, she slipped off her boots and, in her stockinged feet, crept back to Annie’s cottage. The Crowthers’ dog heard her and began to bark, but he was silenced with a curse. There was no light showing at the Fleets’ windows so she was obliged to throw a handful of gravel against the glass. Instantly there was the flickering flame of a candle being lit, and William’s head appeared.

  ‘It’s me, Maddy,’ she said in a hoarse whisper before he could call out and disturb everyone. ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Course you can, maid. Step right in. Us’ll be down directly.’ William’s head was withdrawn.

  Maddy opened the unlocked door and stepped into the kitchen, standing uncertainly in the darkness. Soon William came downstairs, candle in hand, followed more hesitantly by Annie.

  ‘What’s happened? What be the matter, my lover?’ demanded Annie. ‘William, light the lamp, boy. Us don’t have to grope about by candle.’

  ‘No, please don’t!’ exclaimed Maddy urgently. ‘I don’t want them to know I’m here.’

  ‘Them? You mean them?’ Annie jerked her head in the direction of the Shillabeers’ cottage. ‘What they been up to this time?’

  ‘They almost killed Patrick…’ Once she started, the words flowed from her in a stream. The horror of the experience, her fears for Patrick, the terrible dread when she had pulled his seemingly lifeless body from the water, poured from her. Annie and William listened without interruption, knowing she needed to share the dreadful events of the day. ‘I can’t go back there yet,’ she ended. ‘Please, can I stay with you?’

  ‘Course you can.’ William spoke up. ‘You stay as long as you want, and if your lot come over trying to cause trouble, they’m going to have me to deal with.’ William had been something of a wrestler in his younger days; even Bart would think twice before tackling him.

  A sudden exhaustion swept over Maddy. Annie noticed her droop where she sat.

  ‘There, things be catching up with you,’ she said kindly. ‘You bide there a minute while I get a pillow and some covers. Won’t be too comfortable there on the settle, I’m fearing, but us’ll do the best us can.’

  In spite of Annie’s fears, Maddy was asleep almost at once.

  The next day she found it odd to wake up in strange surroundings yet see the familiar scene from a different angle. Surreptitiously she watched
her father and brothers set out late for the fishing.

  ‘I bet it were a real muddle over there this morning,’ said Annie. ‘I’d have give good money to have been a spider in the corner watching they men trying to cope. It be baking day, too, bain’t it? They won’t have no bread. You’m idn’t planning to creep over while they idn’t there and fire the oven, I hopes?’

  ‘No,’ said Maddy grimly. They’re going to have to get on without me.’

  ‘Good maid,’ beamed Annie approvingly. ‘Well, I be glad of your company, never doubt that for a minute. Maybe, if you feels like reading, us could have a bit of Jane, eh? Twill be as good as a holiday. But first you be wanting to see how young Patrick be faring, I dare say,’ she said gently. ‘You get off to un as soon as you please.’

  Maddy gave her a hug, touched by her kindness and understanding. ‘No one ever had such good friends as you and William,’ she said, with a lump in her throat.

  ‘And what about the times you’m helped me over the years when I been bad? The water you’m fetched, the floors you’m scrubbed, the dinners you’m cooked? Tis us as has the good friend.’ Annie sounded quite indignant. ‘Off you go and give that sweetheart of youm a big kiss. That’ll cure him faster than aught else.’ And she gave Maddy a gentle push towards the door.

  Avoiding the numerous Crowthers was Maddy’s biggest problem. Quite apart from not wanting her menfolk to know where she was, she had no wish to have to satisfy Elsie’s curiosity over events. Choosing her moment, she slipped along the foreshore going upstream away from the path, then, scrambling up the bank, she cut back through the scrubland behind Duncannon until she joined the path at a point out of sight of the cottages.

  ‘Ten minutes, and not an instant more!’ was Mrs Watkins’ stern directive when she arrived at the Victoria and Albert. ‘And definitely no funny business!’

  She entered the room to find Patrick sitting up in bed reading. He looked terribly pale, but when he saw her his face lit up. Dropping the book, he held his arms open wide to her. For a while she could do nothing but hold him close, rocking back and forth with the joy of being with him. He needed a shave and the roughness of his cheek against hers filled her with tenderness.

  ‘I feared you wouldn’t want to see me again,’ she whispered brokenly.

  ‘Why ever not? It was an accident.’

  She eased back from him, looking at him with astonishment. ‘How can you say that?’ she demanded.

  ‘What else was it? I fell into the river accidentally and, fool that I am, not being able to swim, I nearly drowned myself. It’s thanks to you that I’m still here.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that at all,’ she protested, fearing that the shock of the events had affected his brain. ‘Don’t you remember? We were at Mill Point and my brothers—’

  He silenced her with a gentle finger upon her lips. ‘We were at Mill Point certainly,’ he said decisively. ‘That was where I slipped and fell in, and I defy anyone to say otherwise.’ His eyes were clear and she could see that he was perfectly lucid. He knew exactly what he was saying.

  ‘Oh, Patrick…’ She hardly knew how to voice her feelings. ‘You are wonderful… The most wonderful man in existence.’

  ‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘I thought you realised that.’

  ‘I do,’ she answered, giving a serious response to his teasing. ‘Good. I like to be appreciated.’ He smoothed her cheek with his hand. ‘Don’t look so serious. Everything is fine. According to Mrs Watkins, I’ll mend.’

  ‘Thank goodness.’ Maddy breathed the words, then exclaimed, ‘To think of it! I didn’t ask how you’re feeling.’

  ‘I preferred the way you did greet me. It was much more enjoyable. I confess I’m as weak as a kitten but otherwise I’m fine. Mrs Watkins says I’ve the constitution of an ox, and who am I to argue?’

  ‘Thank goodness,’ whispered Maddy again. ‘When I think of seeing you there under the water, so still—’

  ‘Don’t!’ Patrick’s cheerful manner disappeared suddenly. His face grew more ashen and he clutched at her convulsively, his fingers grasping her flesh painfully, his face pressed hard against her breast. He was shaking violently. ‘Please don’t remind me. I don’t want to think about it, I can’t bear it.’ Startled and alarmed at this unexpected reaction, Maddy tightened her arms about him reassuringly.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’m here. It’s all right.’

  They remained like that, with Maddy holding him and stroking his hair, all the while whispering soothing words.

  ‘I’m not wonderful,’ he whispered eventually. ‘I’m an awful coward and I know you’ll scorn me for it, but I have to confess to you, I’m terrified of water. I have been ever since I can remember. Even when I cross a bridge I keep my eyes firmly away from the parapet, and as for being in a boat, that fills me with panic. There, you can scoff at me now, you who have been brought up by the river all your life. To you I must seem a miserable specimen.’

  ‘Why?’ demanded Maddy. ‘There have been times when my heart’s been in my mouth when the boys have been out with a northerly blowing and a strong tide running. What’s more, I think you’re more wonderful than ever, and I won’t be contradicted. What happened to you would have been terrible for anyone. For you it was doubly so, yet you refuse to condemn my brothers.’

  ‘It was an accident.’ Patrick’s hold on her became less desperate as he relaxed. ‘Let’s talk of something else, or better still, not talk at all. I like it like this.’ And he nestled his head more comfortably against her.

  Maddy gave a laugh, as much from relief as anything else. There had been a moment when she had feared she would never hold him in her arms again. Then she remembered. The river had already claimed its victim for the year in poor Biddy. If the old belief were true, it did not want another. But dared she have relied on mere superstition? No, she decided, not when Patrick’s life had been in the balance. He was too precious.

  ‘Mrs Watkins said there was to be no funny business,’ she reproved him jokingly.

  ‘This isn’t funny, this is deadly serious,’ he replied, and to prove it he pulled her face towards him and kissed her on the lips, gently at first then with growing ardour.

  A heavy tread on the stairs betrayed the approach of Mrs Watkins.

  ‘Time you was gone, maid,’ she said in a no-nonsense voice. ‘As for you, young fellow-me-lad, you can get up tomorrow if there’s no fever on you, then it’ll be back to work the next day.’ She looked questioningly at Maddy. Well?’ she demanded. What be waiting for?’

  ‘Can I come again tomorrow?’ she asked.

  ‘I suppose so, though I can’t be doing with all this coming and going, not with an inn to run.’

  Maddy turned to Patrick. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Be sure you’re a lot better by then.’

  ‘The sight of you today has been the best tonic I could have had,’ he smiled in return, and blew her a kiss.

  ‘Daft ha’p’orth,’ snorted Mrs Watkins.

  On her way home Maddy saw a sight she had never expected to see. Davie was coming out of Mrs Cutmore’s shop, a loaf of bread in his hand. He had a look of acute embarrassment on his face and he was holding the loaf away from his body, as if trying to disassociate himself from anything as unmanly as buying bread. He looked so funny that Maddy was hard put to it not to laugh. She dodged into a gateway out of sight, and waited until he was well ahead, to make sure she would not catch up with him.

  ‘Your father were over yer asking if us’d seen you,’ Annie informed her the instant she arrived. ‘Us didn’t tell un, of course. Us just said you’d be mazed to bide so close to home. That seemed to satisfy him.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Maddy with a smile.

  ‘You had another visitor, too. Constable Vallance. Leastways, your menfolk did.’

  ‘The boys weren’t—’

  ‘Don’t worry, he didn’t take your lot away with him. He weren’t looking any too pleased, mind. Had a face lik
e thunder. Us heard him giving them a warning good and proper. Told them the injured party refused to lay charges, but that he knowd they’d been up to no good. And if they got into mischief one more time he’d be down on them and no mistake.’

  ‘Thank goodness it wasn’t any worse, though I doubt if they’ll take much notice of the constable’s warnings.’

  ‘I don’t know. Without you at their beck and call maybe they’ll learn some sense at last.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Maddy, but she was not very hopeful.

  The rest of the day was the most idle Maddy had spent in a long time. She did what she could to help Annie about the house, they had countless cups of tea and talked, then more tea as Maddy read aloud. First it was a three-week-old copy of the Totnes Times that William had acquired. While he waited for passengers to be ferried across the river, he listened to her reading with interest. But when Maddy took out her copy of Jane Eyre, he wandered off into the garden muttering, ‘That be women’s stuff.’ However, she noticed that his weeding kept him close to the open window. Annie noticed it too, and gave a sly grin.

  ‘I should come in, boy, and listen proper,’ she called. ‘They ears of youm must be getting longer by the minute. Next us knows your nose’ll be twitching and you’ll be wanting dandelions for your supper.’

  ‘I be all right here,’ William grunted, but as the story progressed the regular chink of his hoe grew less frequent until it ceased completely.

  From time to time, between reading and helping Annie, Maddy would peep through the window. She could see her father and the boys as they patiently cast their net upstream towards the quarry. Her conscience was beginning to trouble her. The last time she had cooked for them had been dinner the previous noon. She doubted if they had had a decent meal since then, yet there they were, working hard with no proper nourishment inside them, while she idled away her time reading and drinking cups of tea.

  She was homesick too, which was ridiculous considering how close to the cottage she was. But she had never slept away from her own home before. She missed her attic, with the sharp fresh smell of tar rising from the nets stored in the room below. She missed having her familiar things about her, and her regular routine to keep her occupied. In short, she wanted to go home.