Lady Lightfingers

by Janet Woods

  ‘It’s getting dark. We’ll have to find shelter before too long,’ Johnny said, with a worried look around them. ‘We’re in the New Forest. There’s bound to be a cottage where we can shelter.’

  ‘We might have to sleep in the open tonight, and we’ll have to go hungry.’ And to think she’d been looking forward to the country fresh air her mother had told her about. Now there was too much, and it was too fresh!

  Celia hadn’t expected the journey to be so long or hazardous. She hadn’t kept count of the days they’d been trudging along, and knew she’d give almost anything to have a cellar to sleep in tonight, except what people wanted her to give. She’d never go back to that life. Not ever! So what was the point of thinking about it?

  Johnny pointed. ‘There’s a bit of a track going into the trees. Let’s look there.’

  As they entered the canopy of trees the day darkened considerably.

  ‘What’s that,’ Celia cried out, pointing to a framework of sticks that supported layers of overlapping sod.

  ‘It’s a charcoal burner’s hut, I reckon. My dad told me a story about one. See, over there is where he makes the charcoal, but it’s not burning at the moment.’ Nearby, an axe leaned against a woodpile.

  There was no answer to their shouts, so they ventured nearer.

  The small, earth-smelling cave looked to be a cosy place in which to hole up. There was a curtain of sacking across the low entrance, which could be tied to pegs to keep the weather outside. Celia wished she had some milk for Lottie as she unpacked the cart. But Lottie didn’t even give a whimper. She was used to going hungry.

  Exhausted, they curled up together on a platform of wood, which was nailed to stakes to keep the sleeper above the damp ground. It was covered with a pile of sacks for a mattress. Celia took Lottie under her blanket and snuggled her into her body to keep her warm.

  The wind came in fitful bursts, but none of them heard it.

  Lottie’s giggles brought Celia awake. Her eyes opened to the sight of her sister playing with a small terrier. There was a smell of cooking in the air. Johnny was still asleep. His face, usually pinched with worry, was now relaxed. Celia wished he would always look like that.

  Her eyes widened as a shadow of a man passed by the opening, and she shook Johnny awake, whispering, ‘There’s someone out there.’

  A voice rasped, ‘Don’t you youngsters be frighted, now. Old Busby won’t hurt you. Likely you’ll want to go and wash your faces in the stream before breakfast.’

  ‘Breakast?’ Johnny said with some bliss, elbowing her gently in the ribs, and his eyes began to shine. ‘I haven’t eaten breakfast since the day we left London.’

  Neither had she. Celia’s stomach grumbled emptily at the thought of being filled.

  The charcoal burner was short, with a weathered face. A long grey beard decorated his chin and his eyes were as blue as a summer sky. He jerked his thumb when she emerged from the den with Lottie, and she followed a path to the stream.

  Johnny would allow her some privacy and wait until she was finished, she knew. She took herself and Lottie into some dense bush a short way off, where they made themselves comfortable. Breaking through a film of ice coating the surface of the stream they washed their hands and faces and returned, shivering, to the fire. A pot swung back and forth over a tripod. The terrier wagged its tail and gave a couple of yaps.

  ‘Quiet, Tinker, these be friends,’ Busby said.

  Celia remembered her manners, though they were easy to forget these days, without her mother constantly reminding her. ‘I’m Celia Laws and this is my sister, Lottie. Johnny is our friend, and we’re travelling together.’

  Busby nodded and spooned some porridge into bowls. ‘It ain’t fancy, but it will stick to your ribs, and there’s some eggs, bacon and bread for after. I’ve only got two spoons, so us men will have to wait.’

  ‘I’ll sup it from the bowl,’ Johnny said, his rattling stomach telling them all he was not prepared to wait. But at her bidding, he went off to wash the previous day’s dirt from his hands and face.

  ‘I’ll share my sister’s spoon. Are you sure you can spare this?’ Celia asked Busby politely, and even though berating herself for being a miser, she added, ‘We can’t afford to pay you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be offering it if I couldn’t. You’re welcome to it.’

  Lottie opened her mouth for a spoonful, and tried to grab the spoon. She wanted to eat her meals by herself, but if Celia allowed it, half of the oatmeal would be wasted on her clothes, and she was determined that Lottie was going to swallow every scrap of the nourishment on offer.

  Johnny came back, his face glowing with the cold. His eyes lit on the food.

  Busby indicated a seat on a log and said as he dished it up, ‘Travelling far, Miss?’

  ‘To Hanbury Cross village in Dorset,’ Johnny said, and Celia nudged him with her boot and gave him a warning look.

  ‘The road is dangerous these days. Where’s your folks?’

  She shrugged, saying briefly, ‘Up ahead . . . I daresay our kin are waiting for us at the next inn. It’s just . . . it got dark . . . and it was cold and we got left behind, so we thought we’d better shelter here for the night. Besides, we’ve got nothing to steal apart from a few coins.’ A lie, since she had a fortune in cash hidden under her skirt.

  Busby gave a faint grin. ‘I believe you, but felons aren’t always after goods, girl. I reckon you be old enough to know that.’

  Celia remembered Charles Curtis with a faint blush and some amusement. Her fingers strayed to her mouth. Fancy him handing all that money over for a kiss. He was certainly adept at getting his own way, and she frowned at the thought. He’d been much too generous. Did he really think she’d go back to him and become his whore for a week? The most he’d get from her was his money refunded. After that, she would no longer be under an obligation to him.

  She attacked her oatmeal before it got cold. She’d never tasted anything quite so blissfully delicious, except what followed after it – bread fried crisp in the bacon fat with an egg on top. They ate like there was no tomorrow, washing it down with hot tea.

  Flakes of snow began to drift down from the sky and Celia eyed the low, heavy cloud doubtfully. She hadn’t considered it might snow.

  ‘Dorset’s a fair step, and the snow is going to settle. The sky is full of it. You’ll be stuck when the wind piles it into drifts, and you won’t know which way is left and which is right.’

  ‘We have to go on . . . we have no food and shelter.’

  ‘What about your relatives?’

  She shrugged. ‘There are none with us.’

  ‘Aye, but I didn’t think there were, since me and my missus own the place, and I’ve just come from there. Best you come back home with me.’

  ‘Can’t we stay here?’

  Busby shook his head. ‘Once I’ve adjusted the kiln and sealed it I won’t be back here for several days, when it’s cooled down. There’s no food, and nothing to hunt this time of year. Besides, my woman would give me an earful if I left you here by yourselves, especially if you freeze solid. Now that would be a thing!’

  The thought that Busby had a wife went a long way to settle Celia’s unease of going off with a stranger. She remembered Charles Curtis and her fingers strayed to her mouth. She couldn’t trust herself to a man who made her feel . . .’ She didn’t dwell on how he’d made her feel, but moved on to Thomas Hambert, who’d been so kind to them. Not all people were bad, and Busby seemed to be kind-hearted.

  ‘I told the good woman about you when I went back to get something to feed you with. They’re as thin as a trio of sparrows thrown out of the nest, I told her.’

  ‘Now you feed them up real good, Busby, she says, and you bring them back here so I can look them over. Maybe they can help us round the place until spring stretches its feathers, then they can safely move on. Fact is, missy . . . I don’t want to come back and find you frozen to death . . . that I don’t. It would put me t
o too much trouble explaining it to the authorities and weigh too heavily on my conscience.’

  ‘That’s kind of you and your wife, Busby. I think we could all do with a warm bed for a while, and I don’t mind working for it.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ Johnny chipped in.

  ‘Good lad.’ Busby patted Johnny on the shoulder. ‘Now you’ve got some breakfast inside you, how do you feel about giving me a hand with the burner, lad?’

  Johnny nodded. ‘What do I have to do?’

  ‘See that pile of wood there? We have to pack it nice and tight so no air gets inside to make the wood burn too fast. Then I’ll set a fire in the middle and put the lid on. When things get nice and hot we’ll seal the kiln with those sods of earth there. It will take a week or so for it to cool down.’

  Celia tidied up the camp while Busby and Johnny set about fixing the kiln, and the scene was imprinted on her mind, so she began to weave a story about it. It wasn’t long before the two males were covered in dirty streaks. She wished she hadn’t left her notebook with Mr Hambert, and decided to buy one at the next town they passed through. In the meantime, the story would grow in her mind without too much effort, just like a mushroom.

  Before too long the mound was covered in the sods that man and boy had pitchforked into place, which prevented them from coming loose. Busby grunted, placed his hands on his back and stretched. She grinned when Johnny did the same, leaving two dirty handprints on his waist.

  ‘Ready, lass?’ Busby said, grinning at her through a face streaked with charcoal ash.

  ‘No, Mr Busby, we’re not ready. Johnny, you look like a chimney sweep. You can brush the dust from your clothes with a leafy twig and wash your face and hands in the stream if you want to make a good first impression on Mrs Busby.’

  ‘My Aggie does have a bit of a sharp edge to her tongue if somebody carries the muck indoors after she’s cleaned the floors,’ Busby thought to advise.

  As she tucked Lottie into the cart, Celia decided she could trust him, even if they didn’t have much choice. ‘Then you’d best tidy yourself up too, Mr Busby . . . then we will be ready.’

  He chuckled as he trundled off after Johnny. ‘Damn me if you ain’t as bossy as my Aggie,’ he said.

  Seven

  Foul weather meant that there was little traffic on the road; so few people required bed and board.

  ‘The railway has taken away some of our regular traffic,’ Busby said. ‘Still, it’s not too big a place to manage, and the sale of charcoal will keep us going.’

  The sky was so low it nearly touched the earth. It snowed heavily, not the sooty slush that had fallen on London now and again, but a thick coating of white that rolled over the countryside like a blanket, piled up on the hedges and merged into the horizon. There, the sky met the land without trace of a seam. Icicles hung from the thatch, and from the apple and pear trees in the yard, and their breath, and that of the animals, steamed the air where they walked.

  Celia could only imagine what would have happened to them if they hadn’t been persuaded to stay.

  The silence pressed against their ears until Tinker went leaping through the snow, disappearing under with each landing, only to leap out again and disappear under again. The animal’s antics made Lottie laugh. But the little dog had attached itself to Johnny, and slept on his bed.

  Celia didn’t want to be beholden to anyone, so she helped Mrs Busby in the inn, doing the cleaning jobs and making the beds of the occasional traveller. The woman was a fine cook, and she made a big fuss of Lottie.

  ‘The poor little thing,’ she said on occasion. ‘It’s a wicked world out there if you’ve got nobody to look after you.’

  In case the woman took too much of a liking to Lottie, Celia said firmly, ‘Lottie has got me.’

  ‘Aye, and you’re a capable girl, no doubt, and no mistake. But you’re young and you haven’t got much to your name.’ She dragged out a trunk and unearthed a couple of serviceable grey skirts from its depths, followed by a bodice of blue velvet and another of green. ‘Here, lass, they’ll be a bit big round the waist but we can put a couple of tucks into them. You’ll grow into the bodices in a year or so, no doubt. I don’t know why I was keeping them, since I’ll never fit into them again.’

  ‘I like you a bit on the buxom size,’ Busby said with a grin, and gave her a smacking kiss on the cheek.

  His wife blushed. ‘You watch what you say when the children are present, Busby. Get about your business now.’

  She pulled out a flannel nightdress after he’d gone, muttering as she shook it out of its folds, ‘I don’t know what’s come over Busby, that I don’t. I reckon we can make some smocks out of this, for young Lottie.’

  They spent the dark evenings in company with each other in front of the fire. Busby sucked on his pipe and gazed into the firelight. Mrs Busby sewed. It reminded Celia of evenings spent with her mother stitching trouser seams – except they were now well fed and warm – so she had to swallow hard to keep back the tears. Johnny whittled on a piece of wood and seemed contented, and no wonder, for the Busbys made a real fuss over him.

  With the firelight creating grotesquely dancing shadows on the walls, Celia told them the stories her mother had told her when she was growing up, or recited poems with her usual dramatic embellishment.

  ‘Just like a real theatre,’ Mrs Busby said, after one spirited performance, wiping the tears from her eyes.

  The icicles began to drip, the snow melted. Frozen wheel ruts in the mud patches gradually became mire. The sturdy forest ponies shed their winter coats, and buds appeared on the trees.

  Celia was restless and said to Johnny, ‘It’s spring, we must leave soon.’

  He begged, ‘Just another week or so, Celia. Let’s allow March to pass.’

  As it was, they had no choice because Mrs Busby sprained her wrist just when there was a trickle of travellers. Celia couldn’t do any less than help the woman out, in view of her kindness to them. Johnny helped Busby tend the charcoal burner.

  Then Lottie came down with a fever. Celia woke one morning to discover that her sister had taken ill. Lottie gazed at her through fever-bright eyes and gave a little whimper. Rosy patches adorned her cheeks; her nose was thick and clogged and her appetite gone.

  ‘You’ll soon be better,’ Celia tried to reassure Lottie, though she was far from convinced herself. She called Mrs Busby.

  ‘I reckon we’ll have to wait and see what develops,’ Mrs Busby said.

  For three days Lottie was a lethargic and grizzly creature who shook and shivered even while her temperature raged, and it was hard put even to get her to swallow liquid.

  ‘She’s not going to die, is she?’ Celia said to her host, so desperate that she burst into tears.

  Mrs Busby took her in a comforting hug. ‘There, there, my love. I can’t say she will and I can’t say she won’t, but there’s a strong feeling inside me that she will survive, and when she does I’ll eat young Johnny’s top hat in celebration.’

  The thought of which made Celia giggle.

  ‘That’s better,’ Mrs Busby said. ‘That Lottie of yours is a strong little girl, and she’ll get better . . . you’ll see.’

  On the fourth morning Lottie was covered in spots.

  ‘Measles, I reckon. She would have caught it from that traveller a couple of weeks ago. He had spots on his face, though I didn’t think nothing of it at the time. Now the spots are out she’ll soon get better.’

  And Lottie did, but she’d lost the weight she’d gained at the inn.

  ‘We must go soon, Johnny,’ Celia said one day, when Lottie seemed stronger.

  She sensed the reluctance in Johnny to leave. He found excuses . . . He needed to clean the windows, or he went back and forth with Mr Busby, with whom he’d formed an attachment . . . making himself useful.

  The days passed and the trees in the orchard were covered in pastel blossoms that attracted an industrious army of bees to the pollens.

  Busb
y sensed the need in her to move on, and returned one day with Johnny, who was wearing a new set of warm clothes. ‘His trousers were so old his arse was hanging out and freezing in the wind,’ Busby said, ‘and the buttons on his shirt didn’t do up. I thought he needed something more hard-wearing to travel in. I bought them from Ellie Green in the village. They belonged to her lad who went off to war and never came back.’

  ‘And right smart he looks too. You should have bought him a new hat; he looks like an undertaker in that’n,’ Mrs Busby said with a sigh.

  Still they lingered on, like hibernating squirrels. It was almost the end of April before they left, when Celia took it upon herself to pack their belongings in the cart.

  They had tears in their eyes as they hugged each other.

  ‘You’ve been so kind to us, thank you,’ Celia told them.

  Busby gazed at his wife, and when she nodded he cleared his throat. ‘Mrs Busby and I have been thinking. We were once blessed with a son and he’d be about Johnny’s age now if the good Lord hadn’t taken him for his own. It doesn’t seem right, you youngsters being on your own in the world.’

  ‘I have kin, and I promised my mother that I’d seek them out,’ Celia told them, even though those kin were strangers to her. The stepmother had already denied Alice Laws and her daughter a home. Would she welcome that young girl back? Celia doubted it. And what of the aunts? They were probably both married and with children of their own to look after. They might not even live in the family house any more.

  Mrs Busby took over, as though she’d picked up on Celia’s thoughts. ‘It’s only right that you’d want to be with your kin, but we’ve got room if you feel the need to settle, or if you’re not wanted when you get to where you’re going. Johnny could help Busby and the lad could learn a trade from him. And later, when his pa has served his sentence, we could help them find each other. As for you lass, you could help me in the inn. We rub along quite nicely and could look after the bonny little one between us.’