Annie

by Val Wood

  It was as if he was repeating her own thoughts. ‘What are you trying to tell me?’ she whispered. ‘That I shouldn’t see her now that I’ve at last found her?’

  ‘It isn’t my place to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do, Mrs Linton. I am only telling you how things are.’ He looked down at her hand which he still held. ‘Do you think Lizzie knew why you went away? And if she did know, does she remember? Or is it locked away in the furthest reaches of her mind?’

  She felt the blood drain from her face. ‘Do you know why I went, Mr Rayner? Does everyone know?’

  He shook his head. ‘I know because Will Foster told me. He’s dead now, is Will. He was a good friend of mine, and he told me in confidence many years ago, when I asked why Lizzie’s mother had gone.’ He patted her hand and strangely she felt relieved that he did know. ‘I have told no-one. This is the first time anyone has asked me.’

  Her thoughts were jumbled. Her resolve to at last seek out Lizzie was crumbling. Would she indeed be welcomed back, or would Lizzie despise her for leaving her? But what else could I have done, she thought desperately? What had been the alternative? I never wanted her to know that I had killed a man, no matter that he deserved it. And if she didn’t know, should she tell her now?

  She raised her head and her words came out thick and slowly. ‘You think it would be best if I went away without seeing her?’

  ‘If you care for Lizzie, and I’m sure you do, then it would be the wisest, most loving thing you could do.’

  * * *

  She refused his offer of refreshments but accepted his insistence that she should be escorted back to the inn. He called for the youth, Bob Hardwick, who had spoken to her earlier and as they waited for him to appear, he assured her that he would contact her if ever he felt Lizzie was troubled and needed her.

  Annie felt weak, yet calm. It was the right decision; and though she was saddened, within her pain lay a tenderness, a small spot of joy which came from knowing that Lizzie was happy. I wouldn’t spoil that happiness, she thought as she looked back at John Rayner, still standing watching her from his door. I know now that she is loved and cared for. She doesn’t need me, I was the one who needed her. She stifled a sob as she took Hardwick’s proffered arm. It’s the price I must pay.

  The market vendors beneath their canvas stalls were shouting to attract custom from the crowds of people who were milling in the Market Place. They held up squawking chickens, wriggling rabbits and ripe cheeses as they passed.

  Annie permitted herself a smile. There was good natured bantering with the customers haggling for a cheaper price; young children chasing one another between the stalls, and a group of militia men were idling their time away ogling young women and getting a lipful of cheek from them.

  She gave a deep sigh. She felt curiously disburdened. Her fears had passed. She could look forward to the future. Tomorrow she would go home. There was nothing for her here. She was a stranger.

  Across on the other side of the Market Place she could hear the voice of a preacher. He was imploring all to follow in the way of the Lord and to be saved from damnation as he had been. Each time he finished preaching a judgement, someone rattled on a drum.

  ‘Hey!’ A shout came from behind her. ‘Hey!’

  Annie walked on towards the Cross Keys. Bob Hardwick turned around.

  ‘Hey! I know thee!’

  All her old instincts returned. She knew better than to turn around. To turn around was to invite confrontation, or to invoke a request from a beggar. Or to be confused by a jostling pair who would apologize for mistaken identity and then make off with a purse or baggage. Young Hardwick should surely know better than that.

  ‘Annie Swinburn!’

  Bob Hardwick slowed his step and glanced doubtfully at Annie, then he turned again. ‘Be off with thee,’ he shouted. ‘Don’t be bothering us. Go on, clear off.’

  Annie’s temples started to pound and she felt a flush mounting her cheeks which rapidly disappeared, leaving her white faced as an old woman confronted her.

  ‘I knew it was thee. I knew one day tha’d come back. I’ve been waiting on this day!’

  Annie with frightened hammering heart, stared mesmerized into the malevolent glaring face of Mrs Morton, Francis Morton’s mother.

  ‘Be off with thee, woman.’ Bob Hardwick made to turn the old woman away, but with a surprising strength she lashed out, taking him unawares and making him stagger backwards.

  Mrs Morton pressed her bloated face towards Annie, her eyes were hidden beneath pads of swollen flesh and her breath was rancid. She lifted her arm and Annie warding off what she thought to be a blow, knocked off her own velvet hat; her pins came out and her long hair tumbled down.

  ‘Hah. It’s thee all right. I’d know those locks and innocent blue eyes anywhere. I’ve dreamt of meeting thee again for twenty years.’

  ‘You’re making a mistake. I’m not who you think I am.’ Annie’s voice was tight and nervous.

  The woman screwed up her eyes. ‘Huh. Fancy talk and fancy clothes. Tha allus did think tha was a cut above everybody else.’

  ‘Get away.’ Bob Hardwick seemed to recover his senses. ‘You don’t know this lady. Be off or I’ll call ’constable.’

  Annie shuddered. So this was it at last. She should have known. Should have guessed that Mrs Morton would wait to avenge her precious son. Like a spider in its web she had been waiting all these years.

  ‘Don’t know her? Don’t know her? ’Course I knows her.’ She pointed an accusing finger at Annie and she shrank back against a shop window.

  The shopkeeper came out, wiping his hands on a white apron. ‘Clear off, Meg Morton. Tha’s nowt but a troublemaker. Leave ’lady alone.’

  A jostling throng started to gather around them and Annie began to shake. Some of the onlookers had come for sport, but she remembered how quickly their laughter could turn to violence. If they should believe Mrs Morton! She turned to Bob Hardwick. He was a stocky fellow – if they could elbow their way out of the press.

  He’d gone! Wildly she looked around but all she could see was grinning faces. Then she saw him. He was running up the Market Place. She saw him stop and grab a boy and point a finger and then set off running again.

  There was a sudden shout from further up the street and the crowd as one turned their heads, necks craned to see what was happening elsewhere. ‘It’s sodgers,’ came a cry. ‘Now there’ll be trouble.’

  Annie saw from the corner of her eye a flash of colour, the clatter of hooves and rumble of cart wheels. She felt the grip of a hand on her arm.

  ‘Don’t think tha’ll get away, dearie.’ Mrs Morton hissed in her face. ‘I’m off to fetch ’law. There’s nowhere for thee to hide in this town. I know all ’places, all inns and hidey-holes, and I’ll find thee, don’t think that I won’t.’

  ‘Now then, Ma. What you up to? Come on, leave ’lady be.’ A fair-haired man pushed his way through the dwindling crowd who were leaving for excitement elsewhere. Annie thought she would faint. Her breath came short and shallow and she gasped. It could have been Francis Morton risen from the dead. The same fair hair, laughing blue eyes and full sensual mouth.

  ‘Sorry ma’am.’ He touched his forehead. ‘Me ma here is allus looking for somebody she used to know. She’s forever stopping young women, thinking they look like ’one she wants.’ He smiled at her, his eyes appraising her. ‘I’ll take her home, she’ll not bother thee again.’

  Mrs Morton lashed out at him and he caught her in a tight grip. ‘Tha’ll not take me anywhere ’till I’ve fetched ’law. This is her, I’m telling thee. She’s come back like I allus said she would.’

  ‘Aye, Ma, we know,’ he humoured her and turned to Annie. ‘She allus blamed a woman for my brother Francis’s death. She’s been looking for her for years.’

  Mrs Morton had been watching him as he spoke, her eyes darting from him to Annie. She gave him a sudden shove which sent him off balance releasing her from his grasp and s
he tore off up the street. ‘I’m fetching ’law,’ she shouted as she scurried away. ‘Keep hod of her, Ralph, don’t let her get away.’

  Another shout erupted from up the street; there came the sound of a pistol shot followed by a woman’s scream. Both Annie and Ralph Morton looked up. A mob were swarming around a company of soldiers, she could see their red uniforms and the plunging heads of horses.

  Bob Hardwick came running back. ‘I’ve sent for ’constable and Mr Rayner,’ he said, breathing hard.

  Another great shout erupted from the crowd. The three of them turned as the crashing of carts and the frightened whinnying of horses rent the air. They saw the flash of steel as soldiers drew their swords and the arms of the rabble reaching up to drag them down from the backs of their mounts.

  ‘Look out! Look out!’

  A pair of greys, pulling on a gun carriage, their reins hanging free as their driver fought for his life beneath a melee of flailing fists and battering boots, threshed their forelegs in the air and tore away down the street towards them, the gun carriage and its cannon swaying and rattling behind them.

  The crowd scattered, stalls were overturned as the mass of people fell back, trampling on one another in an effort to get out of the way. Bob Hardwick grabbed Annie and drew her back into the shelter of the shop doorway.

  Morton scanned the street towards his mother’s retreating figure. ‘Ma! Ma! Watch out!’

  Mrs Morton’s black swaying shape was alone in the middle of the road as she scurried on in determined purpose.

  ‘Ma!’ Morton’s voice rose to a scream and he sprinted towards her as the horses, in their mad bolt for freedom, gained on her.

  Annie turned her head and closed her eyes, but not before she had seen the black robed figure of Mrs Morton tossed and hurled beneath the flying hooves and heavy wheels of the lumbering gun transport, like a bundle of bloody rags.

  Someone ushered Annie into the shop and gave her a chair. She bent over and put her head on her knees and the shopkeeper fetched her a cup of water.

  He shook his head. ‘What a dreadful thing to happen! She’s been a hazard for years, wandering around ’town, causing trouble, but even so!’ He looked down on Annie, he’d been watching and listening to all that happened. ‘Don’t blame thaself, ma’am. Her family shouldn’t have let her out on her own. There’s enough of ’em to look after her.’

  Annie took a deep breath. Her last adversary. She was surely dead. No longer able to accuse her. But she felt no joy, no relief; only remorse that the old woman should be trampled down in the way she had been. Was Mrs Morton any worse, she wondered, in her addled determination to bring her son’s killer to justice, than she had been in protecting her own daughter from him?

  A shadow fell over her. It was Morton. He looked down on her and she felt a sickening fear. His face was white, there was a coldness in his eyes and a slight tic twitching on his upper lip.

  ‘She’s dead. Never stood a chance. It’s as if she never heard owt, she was that determined to get to ’magistrate.’ His stare was accusing. ‘There’s more to this than meets ’eye. She said she knew thee.’

  It’s no good. I’m finished. Annie felt a great weight pulling her down. He’ll be so bitter about his mother, he’ll be prepared to believe anything she’s ever said. I can’t go on. I can’t keep on running any more. When the constable comes, I’ll tell him.

  A figure blocked the doorway obscuring the light. She lifted dull eyes and prepared to stand. It wasn’t the constable, it was John Rayner. He was holding Annie’s hat in his hand. He glanced at the figures grouped around Annie, his eyes lingering momentarily on Morton, and then came towards her.

  ‘Such trouble. I’m so sorry. I came as quickly as I could.’ He gave her her hat and with trembling fingers she put it on and tucked her hair into it. ‘I’d better take you back to the inn. You’re very shaken I can see.’

  ‘Just a minute, sir.’ Morton blocked his path. ‘Beggin’ tha pardon, Mr Rayner, but there’s questions to be asked of this lady. My ma—afore she was just run over, said she knew her from a long time back.’

  John Rayner expressed his sympathy. ‘I’m so sorry about your mother, Morton. So very tragic. There are people out there who have a lot to answer for if they listen to their consciences. There’s a soldier dead too, people injured. A bad day all told.’

  He shook his head in commiseration. ‘Your mother was mistaken, I fear. Mrs Linton is a relative of mine, here on a visit. It is highly unlikely that your mother knew her.’ He put his hand on the young man’s shoulder as he bent his head and started to weep. ‘Take her home. Let her rest in peace.’

  * * *

  She told Joan and Tobias that she had witnessed an accident which had shaken her. She would go straight to bed and tomorrow they would go home. Home, she thought. I’m going home.

  ‘Did you find news of your family, Annie?’ Joan looked at her anxiously. ‘Was Mr Rayner able to help you?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He did. He helped me in more ways than I could ever thank him for. He was able to tell me all I wanted to know.’

  The next morning she was awakened by the insistent banging of a drum. The preacher was back in the Market Place, lecturing and cajoling. We all find our happiness in different ways, she thought, as she looked out of the window on to the street below. This unknown preacher has found his in the way of the Lord, and mine is waiting for me up on the hillside. She was leaving the past behind, the spectral shadows of the Morton family which had been hovering over her were gradually disappearing; only the future was important now.

  ‘Mamma, Mamma. I want to show you something before we go home.’ Tobias pulled on her skirt as they climbed into the carriage. ‘Yesterday, Joan took me to see the ships in the dock, and then we saw the Humber. Mamma!’ His eyes were shining. ‘I don’t want to be a farmer like Grandpa and Harry. I want to be a sea captain, like Papa used to be. I want to go to Trinity House School.’

  She had given one son to the sea. Her eyes filled with tears when she thought of Jimmy, lost from a whaling ship. How could she risk giving another?

  ‘Please, Mamma, can we drive that way so that I can show you where it is?’

  ‘Of course we can, though I do remember. You forget Tobias, that once I lived here.’ She smiled down at her eager young son and felt a sudden thrill of achievement. A son of hers going to the finest naval school in the land, and right here in Hull, where her own humble beginnings had been? Why, this town might be proud of her yet. Goodness. Tobias might even become an Admiral! Anything was possible!

  Annie leaned her head against the leather seat as the carriage moved off and thought of Matt. She couldn’t wait to see him, to share with him the joys and the sorrows. They would be up on the Wolds before dusk, home at last. Home, how sweet the word.

  She opened her eyes as she heard again the sound of the preacher. She put her head to the window. She could see his black-coated figure and an incongruous red waistcoat, his large hat and beneath it some kind of spotted bandana. Beside him stood a woman with a drum.

  ‘Stop!’ She pulled down the window to call to Grigson. ‘I want to get out.’

  She jumped down from the slowing coach. ‘I’ll be a moment only. I must speak to the preacher.’

  ‘Annie – Mrs Linton, please.’ Joan was agitated at the picture of her mistress dashing across a public place.

  ‘I’ll go with her, I’ll look after her. Don’t worry.’ Tobias, in search of fun was out of the coach in a flash.

  Annie took hold of Tobias’s hand as they approached the preacher. He had his head lifted to the sky and one eye closed in supplication. The other was covered by a black eye-patch.

  ‘Parson White,’ she breathed. ‘You’re alive!’

  He opened his eye and closed his mouth and stared at her. ‘Mrs Linton? Can it be?’

  ‘Parson White,’ she repeated. ‘You’re not dead!’

  He shook his head. ‘As I live and breathe, I’m not dead! The good Lord wasn
’t ready for me and here I am.’ He put out his hands and grasped hers. ‘Tell me that the Captain is alive and well!’ He glanced at Tobias. ‘Tell me that this is another of his sons!’

  She nodded, too choked to speak. When she was able to continue she said huskily. ‘But Matt said you were dead. He said you had saved his life and that you had been knocked into the sea and were drowned.’

  ‘Indeed I was knocked into the sea and I thought that my last moment had come. I was down in the depths as deep as could be. But something or someone called me back, and I rose to the surface.’

  He clasped his hands together and closed his eye again. When he opened it he looked down at Tobias. ‘I was saved, young sir, to serve my fellow man. My fellow man saved me and I will give my life to serve him—, them!’

  ‘But what happened, you old rogue?’ Annie couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Matt will be so delighted when I tell him.’

  Parson White raised a finger. ‘Tell him by all means that his fellow mariner is alive and well and sends his humble regards. But don’t reveal the manner of my escape, I beg you. It would upset him greatly.’ He dropped his voice to a whisper so that Tobias couldn’t hear.

  ‘I was in the sea and drawing my last breath. I knew that I couldn’t possibly survive. The ships were on fire. It seemed that even the sea was alight there was so much conflagration, and I was ready to meet my maker. Suddenly I felt something nudging me. I thought at first it was a spar or piece of floating timber, and I grabbed it. It turned over. It was a man’s body. A body so blown apart that it was barely recognizable.’

  He put his hand across his face. ‘But I did recognize him. Hadn’t I shared his grog? Hadn’t he and I and Captain Linton fought the same enemy?’

  ‘Greg Sheppard!’ she whispered. She had never met Matt’s sea captain friend but he spoke so often of him, that she felt she knew him.

  ‘Aye. It was he. There was no doubt in my mind. And he held me there above the water – didn’t leave me once. It was as if it was his last act, even though he was well and truly gone from this world, to save me for some purpose.’