Poor Law (The James Blakiston Series Book 2)

by R J Lynch

  Maughan raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

  ‘You have not heard the news? About your daughter, Margaret?’

  ‘That wanton is no daughter of mine. What has she done now?’

  ‘She is dead, sir. Murdered.’

  The silence lasted a minute at least, and what went on behind Maughan’s suddenly immobile face Blakiston could not have said. Then the farmer turned again to the serving maid, whose hand was over her mouth. Quietly he said, ‘Call your mistress, Nell. We will be in the parlour. Then coffee, cake and cheese. Quickly now.’

  He took Blakiston’s elbow once more, gently this time, and guided him into a room that was one third the size of the big kitchen but made lighter by white wallpaper dotted with small red and blue flowers. On three sides of the room were solid wooden settles covered by green cloth cushions, with a low table occupying the space between them. The fourth wall was dominated by a fireplace though no fire burned in it at this warmest time of the year.

  The door opened and a tall, subdued woman entered. Maughan took her immediately by the hand. ‘Mister Blakiston, this is Jane, my wife. Jane, Mister Blakiston.’ Jane Maughan nodded in Blakiston’s direction. Maughan had not let go of her hand. ‘You have heard? About Margaret?’

  ‘Nell told me.’ The voice was gentle, well modulated – and not from these parts, thought Blakiston. She turned towards him. ‘Please, Mister Blakiston, sit. And then I should like to hear what happened to Margaret.’

  At that point, Nell and another girl came in carrying trays which they arranged on the table. ‘Thank you,’ said Jane. ‘You may leave service to me.’ The two maids curtseyed and left the room. Jane poured coffee into three cups and handed one each to Blakiston and her husband. She cut two slices from the fruitcake and topped each with a slice of cheese. These were for the men only; she ate nothing herself. She looked expectantly at Blakiston. ‘Who killed her? Was it her husband?’

  ‘I have arrested him for it, though he denies being the killer. But really I am intrigued, for this happened on Saturday morning or even on Friday night and I know you were in church on Sunday and the whole parish must have known by then. I should have told you myself had I had any reason to connect Margaret Laws with you. Did you hear nothing till now?’

  Husband and wife shook their heads. Maughan said, ‘We have our own pew in church.’

  ‘I know, for I have seen you in it.’

  ‘The rector does not like it that a farmer has a pew of his own but it was bought and paid for by my father before Reverend Claverley came here. Probably someone else’s servants would have told ours, and we should have learned from them, but our maids and hired men share the pew with us.’ He sniffed. ‘The rector likes that even less, but it is a master’s duty to see that his people worship God in His house and that they are not distracted by idle chitter-chatter while they do it. I am sorry, Mister Blakiston, but I must ask you to take it on yourself to tell us what you know.’

  Blakiston nodded. ‘I shall do so, though I fear it is little enough.’ When he had finished, Maughan said, ‘You do not seem sure that Joseph Laws is guilty of her murder.’

  ‘If he is not, I do not understand why he attacked me. Or why he ran away. But I am vexed by this question of the letter. At first it seemed easy: he told me that there had been a letter, telling him to go to Carlisle, and I believed that either the letter had not existed or that he had written it himself to give substance to his story. But he cannot write…’

  ‘But Margaret could, and she might have written the letter herself to get him away from the house, while the maid would also be gone…’

  ‘…and that is also true and crossed my mind. But I had the constable ask the postboy and there was a letter and the postboy did deliver it.’

  ‘It could still have been sent by Margaret. She got him out of the house so that she could pursue her strumpet’s impulses, and Joseph returned before the man had left and so he killed her.’

  ‘Then why go to the trouble of posting it, when she could simply have shown it to him? And why does he say nothing of finding a man in his place? No, Maughan, it does not hold. But I fear Joseph Laws must stay where he is till we find ourselves on clearer ground. It is an uncomfortable lodging he has found.’

  ‘That is no more than he should expect. God’s will is not set aside without retribution.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘The Book of Proverbs, Mister Blakiston. Whoso loveth wisdom rejoiceth his father: but he that keepeth company with harlots spendeth his substance. Joseph Laws married my daughter, a proven Jezebel, to get the tenancy of a farm. He wasted his Heavenly treasure for the transitory gains of this sinful world.’

  Blakiston glanced at the farmer’s wife. She had not spoken since giving him the coffee and cake; if she had any reservations about the picture her husband painted of their daughter, it did not show on her face. ‘Well, Maughan,’ he said. ‘I must be about my business.’

  Now Jane Maughan spoke at last. ‘When is the funeral to be?’

  ‘That I do not know,’ said Blakiston. ‘Nor who will arrange it.’

  ‘We will do that,’ she said, and now it was Maughan who received Blakiston’s quick glance but he showed no sign of disagreeing with his wife. ‘It is not fair to expect Tom Laws to pay,’ he said. ‘And I would not saddle the parish with the cost.’

  The words interrupted Blakiston’s intention to leave. ‘Mister Maughan,’ he said. ‘I shall speak plainly and I ask that you treat my questions in a spirit of openness. You have welcomed me in a most generous and warm-hearted way, and yet you have the reputation …’ He tailed off as Maughan’s eyebrows rose, but the expression he saw was one of amusement and not annoyance. ‘The reputation,’ he went on, ‘of a man who is the scourge of paupers. And here you are saying that you will bear a cost to save the parish.’

  Amusement had now become an open smile on Maughan’s face. ‘I know what people say about me, Mister Blakiston. Sit down. Let us drink another cup of coffee and talk about what you have said.’

  In truth, Blakiston was pressed for time and did not feel that he had enough to spend in this way, but he wanted to hear what the man had to say. He did, though, refuse the offer of more coffee.

  Maughan said, ‘You know that Our Lord said, “The poor you have always with you”.’

  ‘I do. To be frank, I have often wondered why a God who has all power in His hands should not trouble to change that.’

  ‘It would not serve His holy purpose. The poor are not poor by chance. Look in our own parish; the evidence is there. Tom Laws, Joseph’s brother, was born the second son of a farmer. The way things are now, with enclosure coming and fewer men needed on a farm, his fate was clear; to pick up work as he could and live each day from hand to mouth, or to leave the land for the brutish life of the coal mines. But the Laws have always been a good and God-fearing family and see how he has been rewarded; when Wrekin, son of your master under God Lord Ravenshead, ravished Lizzie Greener and left her with child, God chose Tom Laws to take the dishonoured maid as his wife and the babe as his own, and rewarded him with the tenancy of Chopwell Garth.’

  Blakiston coughed. ‘In fact, it was I who chose Tom Laws to get the farm.’

  ‘It was God acting through you, Mister Blakiston. And the Greeners, too, desperate poor though they were, have always been a Christian family and they have had their reward.’

  ‘The rape of a daughter? That is God’s reward for their piety?’

  ‘Lizzie is become a farmer’s wife. She could never have hoped for that. And her mother, Florrie, lives her final years in comfort with maids to order about when she must have expected to age and die a penniless crone.’

  ‘In fact,’ said his wife, ‘Florrie is Lizzie’s stepmother. But I agree, she is a good person. And her daughter Kate, Lizzie’s sister, is the most perfect young woman you could meet on a long day’s walk and she, too, is blessed for she must now find a husband to thank God for.’

  ‘And a
ll this,’ said Maughan, ‘from what you call the rape of a daughter. Inexcusable though that was.’

  ‘And how will God deal with the rapist for it?’

  Maughan passed a hand across his face. ‘It is not for the likes of me to forecast God’s way with the son of a baron. Wrekin will know his fate in due time.’

  Blakiston had been a non-believer for the last ten of his twenty-six years but there were few people with whom he felt able to let down his guard and he did not judge Maughan to be one of them. ‘I was brought up,’ he said, ‘to believe that God helps those who help themselves.’

  Maughan spread his hands and smiled. ‘Then look at Job King. He was born here into absolute poverty. But see him now. Others were content to eke out a few joyless years at the parish’s expense. Indeed, his own brothers and sisters did so and they died in poverty. But Job took himself off to America. I know nothing of what he did there but he has prospered for here he is, not fifty years old and back among us the tenant of Gaskell Lodge.’

  ‘A handsome estate,’ said Blakiston. ‘If small.’

  ‘And set to become more so, Mister Blakiston, for Job is returned with all sorts of New World ways and notions and the money to put them into practice. Already we feel the effect, for he is hiring people for the harvest and paying them by the acre and not by the day. And unheard of sums. I am told he agreed with old Dick Jackson that Dick would reap fifteen acres of wheat and be paid five shillings the acre. And he will have his beer and allowances. He is paying the other men the same.’

  ‘That will be expensive wheat.’

  ‘We shall see, Mister Blakiston. I shall be watching this experiment with great interest.’

  ‘You have told me how God rewards the virtuous, Maughan. But what of the undeserving?’

  ‘We must not let people starve and the Act for the Relief of the Poor does not allow us to. People who cannot work must be provided for. People who can work must be made to do so. But people who will not work should be cared for only in prison. That is what the law says, Mister Blakiston, and it is good law.’

  Into Blakiston’s mind came words he had heard in church so many times: “Blessed be the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” But he felt weary at the thought of debating further with a man more convinced of the rightness of his ideas than Blakiston could imagine ever being. He stood. ‘It has been a fascinating conversation, Maughan. But I must take my leave.’

  Chapter 11

  Heavily though it lay on Blakiston’s mind, Margaret’s murder would get little attention that week. The business of the wheat harvest left him no time for investigation.

  He rode to Chopwell Garth for the discussion with Tom Laws and Jeffrey Drabble on how the work was to be carried out. Drabble was already there, having walked from New Hope Farm, and Blakiston was impressed as he had been many times before by the dogged refusal of Ryton’s poor to allow their circumstances to overwhelm them. He asked Lizzie to send her brother Ned to join them for he, too, had a part to play.

  Florrie told Nellie, the maid, to bring small beer for the visitors. Then she left them alone.

  ‘I have decided,’ Blakiston said, ‘that the best way to deal with this is to treat the two farms as one.’

  ‘Do you mean always?’ asked Tom.

  ‘At this moment I mean for the purposes of the wheat harvest. Later we will see. Chopwell Garth and New Hope would make a single farm of nearly six hundred acres and that may be too much for you to handle, Tom. But for the harvest it will work well. We have one hundred and twenty acres of wheat on the two farms together. If we say that one man can reap fifteen acres, we need eight men. Drabble makes one and Ned another and we agreed at the Whitsuntide fair with five more. They are working now at the home farm and they should be here on Thursday, which is three days from now. We need one more. Joseph’s hired man was to be that one, but Joseph chose to get rid of him.’

  ‘Perhaps he will come back,’ said Tom. ‘Now that Joseph is gone.’

  ‘Perhaps he will. I need to talk to him anyway, to see what he has to say about Margaret Laws and his relations with her.’

  ‘Beg pardon, Master,’ said Drabble, ‘but I am constable this year. What will I do if something happens that needs the constable?’

  ‘We shall deal with that question when it arises, Drabble. Until it does, you will work all the hours of daylight on the harvest. Unless it rains, of course. Our agreement with the men was that they would have their pay at the end of each day and that applies also to you. You will eat and sleep at New Hope Farm, as we have agreed with that bad-tempered young woman there, but the hired men will sleep in the barns, six to each farm, and they are entitled each day to bread, cheese and five pints of ale and half a pound of beef for each one. Tom, the cook at the home farm will bake the beef into pies, which the men prefer. Could you please speak to Lizzie and Florrie about doing the same here? And I will instruct Susannah Ward.’

  Tom nodded. ‘They will be expecting no less.’

  ‘The men are also to be supplied with gloves. The Castle has seen to the making of those and I shall bring them when next I come. The harvest will be by reaping, not mowing, and as close to the ground as possible. Drabble, when I came to New Hope yesterday I saw you with a scythe in your hand.’

  ‘I was practising, Master. Reaping is not as easy as it was when I was young.’

  ‘Very well. You are to be commended. Tom, your task will be to watch the men at work and make sure that they reap low, and only when the corn is dry, and that the shocks they make are sized in accordance with the number of weeds.’

  ‘Shocks?’

  ‘The bundles, man, that they bind the crop into.’

  ‘We call them stooks here, Master.’

  ‘Very well; stooks. I want them stacked so that they shake off rain, and not so close that the sun and wind cannot get in to dry them. Now. The business of transferring the crops to the farmyard. I know you have waggons on both farms. Tell me how you work them.’

  ‘We use three. While one is loading in the field, one is unloading in the yard and the other moves back and forth between the two.’

  ‘Three waggons means six horses.’

  ‘We have only two here. The others come from the Castle at harvest time.’

  ‘This year you will have only one of the Castle’s horses.’

  ‘But, Mister Blakiston…we cannot run three waggons with only three horses.’

  ‘Nor will you need to, for we have been making carts at the Castle and three carts will come here this week. Each cart is drawn by only one horse. I am determined to bring our farms into line with the practice in the South, where waggons have not been used for some years. You will find that carts work better than waggons and with half of the horses. Drabble, you have two horses at New Hope and you will receive four more from the Castle, but next year New Hope, too, will change from waggons to carts. By next year’s harvest also, both farms – or one combined farm, if that is what we decide to do – will have installed iron rails in the farmyard so that we can deliver the crop from yard to barn with no loss of grain.’

  The three Durham men stared at him in amazement.

  ‘I know that farmers believe that whatever has been the standard practice of their county has been so since time immemorial and cannot be altered,’ said Blakiston. ‘They are wrong. Now, gleaning. At the home farm we are not permitting gleaning to begin until the shocks – I beg your pardon, the stooks – have been cleared from field to yard.’

  Tom said, ‘The Blacketts don’t allow gleaners into the fields after reaping till pigs have been allowed to graze there.’

  ‘I know the Blacketts do that, and so does the Bishop of Durham, and we will not follow their example because it is an iniquitous practice. The poor have had the right in England for as long as records have been kept to go into the fields and glean the grain that is left behind by the scythe. It is a right they have by permission of the farmer, but it is a right nevertheless and to deprive them of it by gi
ving first pick to hogs is a dirty trick. Especially when the poor are under such oppression otherwise. But the poor have begun to glean from the stooks themselves and that is not to continue. As soon as the stooks have been cleared away, the fields will be opened to gleaners.’

  There was a loud clatter from the farmyard and Blakiston said, ‘That sound you hear brings me to the last thing I want to tell you today. Come into the yard with me and I shall show you what is afoot.’

  They followed him outside, to find two men unloading rough wooden planks and a collection of bricks from a cart. Blakiston said, ‘The same delivery is being made to New Hope Farm. The sheaves will be taken into the barn which is what, next year, you will have the iron rails in place for. Stacking them on a wooden floor, raised on bricks, will protect them from rats and keep them free of dampness from the floor and so we will lose less than in the past. You and Ned, Drabble, will spend the rest of the day building a floor here, and tomorrow you will both do the same at New Hope.’ He walked into the barn, the three men following him. ‘Build the floor against this wall, nearest to the yard. That will leave room beyond for threshing. If there is time after you have built floors in both barns, you will also cut an opening – a sort of window, but with shutters and no glass – in the wall by the yard so that the sheaves can be thrown directly from the cart, through the window and onto the raised floor. Tom Laws, as Drabble is to work here today I take it you can give him his dinner?

  ‘He can eat in the kitchen with us.’

  ‘Excellent. Are there any questions, or shall I leave you to begin?’

  Before he left Chopwell Garth, Blakiston sought out Kate and walked with her from the dairy to the farmhouse door. ‘Dearest Kate, please tell me you are not altered in your intentions.’

  ‘I am not so changeable, James.’ She smiled up at him, that sweet smile through her eyelashes that reduced him to a jelly. ‘I said you may have our banns read on Sunday, and you may.’ She rested a hand on his arm. ‘Will you stay for dinner?’