by Jean Chapman
Belle was still disturbed; why should her thoughts run on death, and why did she have the feeling of impending disaster?
‘Shall we go down, back out into the sunshine.’ He seemed to sense her feeling of unease, but still she lingered, still felt there was something more she had to do here.
‘Oh! Look!’ She went quickly to read a slate plaque on the far wall. ‘A peal of 5040 Stedman Triples to commemorate the Coronation of Her Imperial Majesty Queen Victoria… .’ She felt Cato come to stand close behind her, and he read down the list of names, the ringers who had completed the peal, and she was suddenly aware that the chamber had a voice of its own. From high above sounded the deep sonorous tick of the church clock. It seemed to echo and grow louder as he placed his hands on her waist. She heard him draw in his breath as she turned under his hands, looking up to him. He bent to kiss her cheek. As she reached up and clasped her hands behind his neck, he kissed her check again, then her lips, slowly running his hands up her back to bring her closer to him.
‘You smell nice,’ he whispered. ‘Fresh and sweet.’ ‘Eau-de-Cologne,’ she whispered back as she felt his hands hot through her cotton blouse, gently exploring her neck and shoulders. Then he moved one hand round and upwards. Instinctively she caught his hand below her breast and held it fast below his goal. He kissed her again, and whispered, ‘I would never hurt you, never do anything you didn’t want me to.’
To allow a man to touch her breast was not something a girl did lightly. Belle firmly held his wrist for a few seconds longer, then just as suddenly as she had grasped him she released her hold. This was why she had lingered in the church, why she had led him on to ever more secluded places, to give some sign, to defy the premonition of ill-fortune that had come over her. As his hand reverently cupped her breast, she half gasped, half sighed, at the intensity of the desire it fanned in her.
His lips moved from her lips to her ear. ‘Belle…’ he began, pausing as if seeking some new way to tell how he felt, but there was none. ‘I love you.’
‘And I love you, Cato.’ She heard the same certainty in her voice as she had heard in the voice of the mild-seeming bride-to-be, and having made her declaration in word and deed, she suddenly felt the caution of all girls for their safety. She remembered her mother’s adage about these things, that ‘it was a man’s place to ask, and a woman’s to refuse.’ She had made a promise to him, but now… .
‘We’d better go,’ she whispered. For a long moment Cato held her closer but then released her.
‘Yes,’ he agreed, his voice not quite steady. ‘I am supposed to be on our stand drumming up customers.’
They held hands as they left the church, and Cato stopped her in the porch to kiss her lips once more. Once back in the grounds of the old priory, she leapt up on to one of the ruined walls and, with Cato holding her hand, ran along it. When she came to the gaps where gate or doorway had been, he caught her waist and lifted her high and joyously over to the far side. St John’s clock chimed the full set of its quarters, then intoned twelve o’clock.
‘They will wonder what’s happened to me,’ he said.
They had only just reached the main road when they became aware of some kind of turmoil in the distance. Soon they began to meet a steady stream of people coming away from the direction of the fair, more and more the nearer they walked.
Cato caught the arm of a young boy who came running by. ‘What’s happening?’ he asked.
The boy was wide-eyed with excitement. ‘It began in one of them booths,’ he said, his voice rising to fever pitch, ‘but now it’s the steam-men and the farmers. They’re all fighting! All the men!’
‘Go in peace.’ Belle ironically repeated the old clergyman’s words.
7
They began to meet many people who were obviously leaving the market because of the disturbance. ‘This is all we need,’ Cato said as they began to hurry more purposefully. Some they met looked serious and in a great hurry to be away, others were laughing, showing some bravado, noisily swopping versions of who they had seen punched and kicked. ‘Perhaps it would be better if you went to the shops and tried to find your mother,’ Cato suggested.
‘No!’ Belle was emphatic. ‘I want to see what’s happening.’ Before he could say more she ran to ask the same question of her father’s cowman, Ambrose, who she saw talking to a group of men from Loncote, among them Saul Cox the backsmith and his son.
Ambrose took in the fact that she was with Cato Abbott before replying. ‘You don’t need to worry, your Derbyshire cousins have joined up with your father, fair flinging their weight about last time I saw them. Fighting that wood-sawing gang,’ he glanced at Cato again.
‘You’d best wait here, Miss Belle, let the police clear the trouble-makers.’ The blacksmith with his flat thatch of black hair nodded the wisdom of his remark to her. He hesitated a moment, then looked at Cato. ‘They did say as how it was the young Abbott boy as was getting the thrashing.’
‘I’ll go and get the silly idiot out,’ Cato said immediately. He glanced at Belle. ‘You stay here.’
‘No, I’m coming,’ she said, and ran after him as he strode away.
‘Go back, don’t be such a fool,’ he began, then had to grab her arm to stop her being brushed aside by a stampede of youths, who first left the market grounds, then with whoops of encouragement to each other, threw themselves back towards the fringes of the affray. The main battle seemed to be centred near the steam ploughing engines, where they could see fists and sticks being raised, and hats and other missiles skimming this way and that. There was a kind of concentrated effort in the centre. The men swayed and milled as it they would weld themselves together, in a battle punctuated with thuds, and groans forced from bruised ribs - real fighting, contrasting with the hysterical excitement of the circling youths.
‘Cato!’ A shout reached their ears, was repeated, then an arm waved from the middle of the crowd. They both caught sight of John just before he disappeared beneath a concerted attack by three men. Belle recognised her cousins. Cato swore under his breath, but instead of wading into the fight as she expected, he turned to her and began to shepherd her away.
‘But … your brother,’ she shouted above the increasing roar of the affray.
‘Come away,’ he ordered.
‘You can’t leave him!’ she protested. He grabbed her arm and turned her away.
‘No! No!’ She struggled against him and gesticulated wildly in the direction of John.
‘Will you get out of this crowd?’ he demanded.
‘No! You’re a coward, Cato Abbott. A coward!’ She turned and saw a cudgel-like stick near a man’s foot. She dived to retrieve it. She’d make a few heads sing with that!
The dust from the many scuffling feet rose, choking her. Just as she had her fingers around the weapon, her hand was trodden on and deliberately ground down. A man heavily involved in fisticuffs with a larger opponent gave a swinging back-handed swipe to whoever was trying to make off with his dropped stick. The blow stung across her cheek, his knuckles seeming as hard as those of a metal gauntlet. She felt her very teeth were loosened. She tried to blaspheme, but her mouth felt raw and unresponsive. The man gave her a startled look as she rose, for the first time realising that this opposition had come from a woman.
The next moment, before she had any chance to retaliate, she felt her arm being seized again, and she was dragged forward, further into the melee. It was Cato by her side, propelling her forward, a look of fury on his face, which, she quickly realised, was not aimed at the man who had just struck her.
‘All right!’ he shouted at her. ‘You want to see the action. So you shall!’ This time he drew her after him, towards the stand where his father’s two engines were. He made his way through the crowd like a scythe through a nettle patch, and while he took a few blows, not one more was allowed to reach Belle. Reaching the footplate of the first steam-engine he caught up and lifted her on to the platform. ‘There’s a grandstand view
!’ he shouted at her, ‘stay there!’
He turned and immediately waded back into the mass of men, moving steadily towards his brother. Belle’s hand Went to her check, as much to nurse a pang of conscience as the place she had been struck. She realised, too late to retrieve the word ‘coward’, that it had been her that Cato had been concerned about. Far from being afraid of a fight, every blow she saw find its mark on him seemed to spur him on. He neared his brother. Belle raised herself on a ledge, then higher on a metal box, so she could see. What she did see infuriated her. John was being made sport of, pushed around in a circle by the three Langtons, and others recruited for the game. John was trying unsuccessfully to land a blow somewhere as he was bodily buffeted and passed around like some unwieldy, flailing parcel of arms and legs.
She saw Cato reach the circle and break into the ‘game’. He caught and steadied John, then aligned himself next to his brother.
After the initial shock Belle saw the Langtons’ mouths open in joyful acceptance of an added victim, their numbers obviously making them feel immune to much harm. Then Ben, her eldest cousin, raised a stake above his head. ‘Look out! Cato! Look out!’ she screamed ineffectively against the general clamour. He saw the blow coming just in time, twisting his head away and taking the weight of it on his shoulder, it made him stagger, but he directed his fall, taking Ben with him, out of her sight, below a horizon of bent backs and raised arms.
In seconds he came into view again, but the relief she felt turned to alarm as she saw her cousins were managing to rally yet more supporters. She vaguely recognised farmers’ sons who would know the Langtons from their annual visits, young men who had been friends with her own brother, and who would certainly align against the Abbotts, the strangers. She looked wildly around, asking aloud: ‘What are we doing about it?’
She could see both brothers now, and it was obvious that in trying to protect John, Cato was receiving more than his share of blows. So many, against two, she felt it was like watching a lynch mob going into action. What could she do? She searched the crowd for possible allies, then she saw joe Abbott, not too far from the engine on which she stood. Without thinking of any consequences she began to shout to him.
‘Mr Abbott! Mr Abbott!’ She gestured and screamed his name with desperate repetition and, at last, he glanced her way. She beckoned urgently, mouthing with angry emphasis: ‘Your sons! Your sons!’ He came then, climbed up to her on the engine, his face red and displeased with her summons, but he immediately saw the need for action -although, to her surprise, he first bent to look at a glass-encased pressure gauge, which stood at a hundred and forty.
Joe put his foot on a lever near the firebox. The cracks of firelight around the door seemed to show a healthy fire inside, but Joe was not satisfied. He swung open the door with his foot and, taking up the shovel from the coal, carefully spread more fuel evenly over the blaze. The smell of smoke and oil was suddenly much greater as Joe worked. He seemed to become one with the machine, coaxing the indicator higher on the gauge until the steam pressure stood at one hundred and fifty pounds to the inch - and Belle was almost breathless with anxious anticipation as she realised what he intended. His hands moved on levers, checking gears, opening cylinder cocks, casing a regulator across.
Her hands gripped tighter as the engine came to life under her feet. It was like being in a great pulsating heart, with pistons thumping, smooth brass rods sliding, warmth enclosing them. With the ease of long use Joe Abbott closed the cocks, inched the reversing lever to forward, and hung on a lever which set the engine’s whistle blaring out.
Again and again he blew the warning whistle, but it was the sudden hearty chugging of the engine which alerted those nearest to the fact that slowly, ponderously, the wheels of the steam-engine were moving towards them. The great ridged rollers turned into the crowd, and it seemed to Belle that they must crush men under the wheels, as heads disappeared below her line of vision. Joe gave blast after blast on the whistle, and moved the engine forward foot by irrevocable foot. The startled faces from the front appeared again, at the side of the engine, to Belle’s relief, as like a liner through a sea of people, it edged nearer and nearer to where Joe’s sons were being beset by some ten or twelve hefty farmers.
Some of the crowd beat on the engine with sticks, shouting that Joe was a madman, but these were quickly swept aside by a small group of steam-men (Mordichi Evans and his sons amongst them), who were using the path the engine cleared to advance behind it, like infantry behind armour.
The brothers were taking a real beating, and she willed the traction-engine on, nearer, anticipating with grim satisfaction the moment when her eldest cousin finally saw the retribution she was bringing. Like the mills of God, she thought triumphantly, the reinforcements might grind slowly, but they were likely to grind exceedingly small.
At last realising what was happening, the crowd began to push aside, to drop back, awed by the sight of this great machine inching its way into the central mass of men. Belle glanced at Joe Abbott’s face. His hands were delicately balanced on lever and regulator, like a musician’s, but creating a rhythm of calculated risk to rescue his sons.
The engine was suddenly the focal point of all, as even the Langtons and Cato and John finally noticed its approach. Cato pushed his young brother towards the footplate, and his father unceremoniously swung him up by his jacket, like a dog retrieving a puppy. Cato, too, with a final push skittled back two clawing opponents and gained a foothold on the engine, and all the time Joe kept it trundling inch by inch like some improvised tank.
The cries of fighting had died now, as the two sides were mostly separated, but suddenly Ben Langton saw that Belle was on the engine with the Abbotts. He raised a new rallying call. ‘Traitor! Traitor! Belle Greenaugh!’ His raised arm, accusing finger, directd all attention her way. She momentarily turned from Cato’s bloodied forehead, which he brusquely told her to leave alone, and stood tall, defiant, between the Abbotts. Her brazen manner invited more abuse. All around the cry was taken up, first by all three Langtons, then by their allies, then by people who knew only that the Abbotts were new to the area.
Then there was a gasp from the crowd, the cries gradually died away, and a new tension was in the air. Belle heard Joe Abbott swear under his breath, Cato’s knuckles showed white as he held on, and John gave a gasp of dismay. Everyone looked to one spot, where a man stood alone in the path of the slowly advancing engine. The exclamation that left Belle’s throat was one of shock and horror. She closed her eyes to defeat the image of her father standing only yards away, his droving stick raised, pointing at the engine as if confident this would by some magic property delay the inexorably advancing machine.
‘Stop the engine,’ John breathed, his voice echoing her own disbelief.
‘Never,’ Joe Abbott answered, both believing and accepting his new neighbour’s challenge. ‘Never! He’ll move.’
‘Belle!’her father shouted. ‘Get down from that engine!’
Tears of anger and frustration filled her throat, made her voice ragged as she too responded to the battle-cry. ‘You move!’ she shouted.
‘For God’s sake,’ Cato exclaimed, his gesture towards Belle and his glance at Sam Greenaugh told of equal exasperation. ‘For God’s sake,’ he repeated more urgently, now to his own father. ‘Stop!’
Belle saw Joe’s hands tighten on lever and regulator, keeping them steady in the same position. She saw her father’s arm straighten and his stick point more directly at her — then another voice screamed out.
‘Belle! Belle!’ the voice appealed. ‘He won’t move. He won’t move!’ The last words broke in a sob, distracting many eyes momentarily from the tableau. Belle saw her mother, hands clasped towards her daughter in desperate and dramatic appeal. As their glances met Mabel shook her head in despair — and Belle felt her mother was right. He was just stubborn enough not to move, until it was too late.
She glanced at the figure in front of the traction-engi
ne, foreshortened now, from where she stood on the footplate, to head, shoulders, torso - and decided. Without care she jumped, high and forward, landed - slipped. There were shouts of alarm from all sides as she half fell beneath the steam-engine. She saw as if in slow nightmare her own legs lying before the advancing rear wheel. Another scream, she thought her own, and in the same seconds as she tried to scrabble away, she was seized and bodily thrown clear. Cato’s hands were rough, bruising but effective, and there were murmurs of relief all round. Cato bent to lift her back to her feet, asking briefly if she could stand. Her legs trembled with shock, and she had to hang on to his arm.
‘Let her go!’ Her father’s anger was cold as he stood to one side, at last out of the path of the engine, which with a ring of gears Joe now brought to a halt.
‘I’ll take her.’ Belle was suddenly aware of her mother by her side, but her mind was a confusion of images, of the great ridged wheel brushing her calf, of Cato’s frantic strength, and of his anger now - hot anger ready to spill over, but he placed her gently enough into her mother’s arms.
Then he turned to Sam Greenaugh. ‘You must be a maniac,’ he stated. ‘You’d risk killing anybody to get your own way.’ There was a murmur of assent from some standing nearby.
‘I’m not dealing with your generation,’ Sam snapped, ‘or with upstart newcomers who break down and burn my hedges, my fences, my stacks of hay — who have brought gipsies and rogues into the parish — and who seem to be able to bewitch young innocent girls!’ His harangue gained strength, and any murmurs of sympathy for the Abbotts were quickly drowned in a growing murmur of antagonism as Sam listed his grievances.
‘Be careful, Mr Greenaugh,’ Joe Abbott warned, ‘or I’ll not be slow to have you in court for slander, and for shooting off a gun in a reckless and dangerous manner.’