The Miller's Daughter

by Margaret Dickinson

  Into the silence, Emma asked, ‘Who is “the Merry Widow”?’

  Her steady, violet gaze was on Sarah, whose cheeks flamed as she darted a fleeting, uncomfortable glance at Emma. Turning away, Sarah bit her lip. ‘Don’t ask me, Emma love, please don’t ask me.’

  Emma felt a twinge of unease. She could not remember Sarah ever being so evasive nor so agitated. What was all the mystery?

  I know, she thought suddenly, I know who I can ask.

  By midmorning, when the mill sails were spinning and Sarah was being kept busy with customers in the bakery, Emma slipped away. She marched up the road, past the turning leading to the chapel and on towards the market place, purpose in every stride. Past the butcher’s on the corner, the cobbler’s and the long, low whitewashed pub, she came to the far end of the square where the smithy and the wheelwright’s workshop stood next door to each other, joined by a semicircular brick archway. Attached to the archway was a sign declaring in bold, black lettering, METCALFE.

  Standing in the open doorway of the forge, she raised her voice above the clang-clang of the hammer. ‘William, have you any news of Jamie? Is he safe? When’s he coming home?’

  The gaunt young man straightened his back from where he had been stooping over the anvil. With one hand he dropped the horseshoe, glowing red hot, from the end of the tongs into the butt of water where it spat and sizzled. He turned to face her, the smile creasing his thin face and banishing for a moment the haunted look that always seemed to be in his eyes these days, making him seem so much older than his seventeen years. ‘What a lot of questions all at once, Em.’

  ‘Well, have you heard anything, William? Anything at all?’

  Sadly, he shook his head and the anxious look came back into his blue-green eyes. His voice was scarcely above a whisper, ‘No, no, I haven’t—’ He seemed about to say more but stopped abruptly in mid-sentence and ran the back of his hand across his forehead, wiping away the beads of sweat.

  A sudden tremor of fear ran through her. Her heart quickened its beat and she caught her breath. ‘William, you don’t mean – you’re not afraid something’s happened to him, are you? Oh, it couldn’t. Not now, right at the end of the war. It would be too cruel.’

  ‘No, no, Em,’ he said swiftly, putting out his hand towards her. ‘I don’t mean that. It’s just that – it seems a dreadful thing to say, but for some things, I’m dreading him coming back.’

  Emma’s violet eyes darkened with sympathy. ‘I know, I know,’ she said gently and reached out to touch his arm, bronzed and sinewy from his work.

  William Metcalfe shrugged. ‘I don’t even know if my letter about our parents’ death ever reached him. I’ve heard nothing from him. Not a word.’

  ‘Oh. Oh dear.’ She scarcely knew what to say. She was silent now, in sympathy for the young man who awaited his elder brother’s return with such a mixture of emotions. She was remembering the time only three months earlier when the whole village had turned out for the funeral of Josiah Metcalfe. The procession had wound its way from the Metcalfes’ home behind the blacksmith’s and the wheelwright’s premises in the market square to the chapel. The memory caused Emma not only sadness for Jamie and William, but acute embarrassment. Whenever she thought of that day, she almost squirmed with humiliation. Of all the village folk, only her father had stayed away from the funeral. She had been aware of the whispers and, although she had tried to hold her head high as she joined the congregation in the chapel, she had felt angry and uncomfortable that her father was so conspicuous by his absence. The whole village knew that the two men, Josiah Metcalfe and Harry Forrest, had little time for each other, but even Emma had not realized that their quarrel went so deep that Harry Forrest would callously snub the family in such a deliberate and public manner. And to make matters worse, when, only one week later William’s mother had died, Harry Forrest had stayed away from her funeral too.

  ‘Least he’s not a hypocrite,’ Luke had tried to comfort Emma. ‘No one can say that of him, lass.’

  William’s voice broke into her thoughts. ‘I can still hardly believe they both went like that. So quick. A great, strapping chap like me dad . . .’ His voice fell away and his gaze, suspiciously bright, met Emma’s troubled eyes. ‘Nowt but skin and bone by the time he died. Jamie – ’ his voice broke, ‘wouldn’t have recognized him.’

  Emma felt tears prickling the back of her throat. ‘I know. And your mam wore herself out caring for him, didn’t she?’

  He nodded. ‘Her heart just gave out. But at least she was spared all that pain and suffering me dad went through. He used to grab hold of her arm and beg her to give him summat for the pain. Great bruises, she had on her arm, where he’d gripped her.’

  Emma swallowed painfully. ‘Luke said he heard your dad yelling out sometimes when he came to the smithy. Even from inside the cottage at the back there.’

  ‘It must have been bad, Emma, ’cos me dad was no coward when it came to bearing pain. Why, I’ve seen him when a horse has given him a nasty kick, just shrug it off as if it were nowt. He suffered badly. I know he did.’

  He glanced about him and sighed heavily. ‘And what my big brother’s going to say to all this, I don’t know.’

  The smithy’s yard was littered with old horseshoes and bits of metal and ashes blew about the cobbles in little flurries. Emma glanced around the brick walls where usually the blacksmith’s tools hung in well-ordered rows. Now they hung higgledy-piggledy. Several hooks were empty and, when Emma looked about the floor, she saw why. Tools lay everywhere, as if William had been too busy to replace them in their rightful position between jobs. A pile of horseshoes had been slung in one corner and out in the yard, three ploughs awaited repair. As William turned away towards the glowing forge, Emma saw he was limping.

  ‘Have you hurt yourself?’

  William grimaced. ‘Ben Popple’s shire kicked me day ’afore yesterday.’

  Emma pulled a face in sympathy and said, ‘Ouch,’ as if she too could feel his pain.

  William nodded and said with feeling, ‘Yeah, “ouch” indeed. I’m no good with ’osses, Em. Jamie’s got that special touch, y’know.’

  Emma almost blushed and was thankful William could not read her thoughts. Swiftly, she quelled her romantic daydreams and brought her wandering mind back to William.

  ‘I’m better working wi’ wood,’ he nodded to his left towards the wide passageway that ran between the smithy and the wheelwright’s workshop. ‘But I’ve had to close that for the time bein’. I just haven’t been able to cope with both businesses. There’s still one of Farmer Leighton’s wagons waiting for a broken wheel to be repaired. But I can’t get anyone to give me a hand with the tyre. It needs both smith and wheelwright.’

  She had watched Jamie and his father working in partnership to shape the huge round of the metal tyre. They heated it in a bonfire and then, lifting it with long-handled tongs, they carried it between them, to fit it over the wooden cartwheel. Finally they poured cold water on it to cool it quickly so that the metal contracted to fit tightly on to the wheel. William was right. It was a two man job.

  He was picking up a piece of metal and examining its usefulness as a horseshoe with a half-hearted interest. ‘I’m losing business here an’ all, now. Just what Jamie’ll say when he does get home, I daren’t think.’

  As William thrust the metal into the fire, Emma wandered out of the forge and peered over the closed gate leading into the wheelwright’s yard. Broken wheels stood leaning drunkenly against one wall. In the centre, a wagon with a broken shaft and its blue paint peeling off in flakes waited forlornly for attention. Everywhere were piles of wood waiting to be made into wagons and in one corner a neglected heap of elm butts, still with the bark on, were already collecting mildew.

  She went back and stood watching, feeling the heat from the fire, smelling the aroma of singeing hoof that clung to the walls of the smithy. William brought another shoe out of the fire to the anvil and picked up his hammer
to beat the white hot metal into shape.

  William was a year younger than Emma and no taller, with light brown hair and greeny-blue eyes. He had always been thin, but now that slimness had a gauntness to it, as if the burdens he had been obliged to shoulder alone threatened to weigh him down and break his slender frame and gentle soul.

  When the noise of his hammer ceased, she said, ‘He’ll understand, William. Jamie will understand what you’ve been through, what you’ve had to cope with all on your own.’ She did not add, though the thought was in her mind, that Jamie would not have expected his young brother to cope at all. William had been only fourteen when Jamie had gone away. It would be how he was still picturing him – as a boy. Now Jamie was returning to find a man, but a young man who had borne the heavy weight of losing both his parents so suddenly and struggling alone to keep the family concerns going. ‘Would you like me to come and help you?’ she asked.

  He glanced up, his warm smile creasing the lines around his eyes. ‘Would you? Just to tidy the house up a bit.’ He pulled a comical face. ‘It’s as bad in there as out here.’

  She chuckled. ‘Well, I meant out here, with Farmer Leighton’s wheel, but if you’d rather . . .’

  William was shaking his head. ‘I wouldn’t want you to help me with that. I wouldn’t let you. It’s not the sort of work a lass ought to do.’

  Now Emma threw back her head and laughed, ‘Oh, William. I love you when you get all protective. It’s me, remember, Harry Forrest’s great carthorse of a daughter.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that, Emma,’ he said and at the use of her full name, Emma’s laughter died.

  William only ever called her ‘Emma’ when he was annoyed, which was so unusual that she could not remember the last time he had called her by her full name. Since childhood, to William, she had always been ‘Em’.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said swiftly. ‘But I could help you out here, really I could.’

  William shook his head emphatically. ‘No, Em, but I’d be really grateful for some help in the house.’ He was smiling again, his easy, good nature restored at once.

  ‘Right then, I’ll come Sunday afternoon complete with bucket and mop. And as for all this,’ she swept her hand in a wide arc to encompass the smithy and the neighbouring yard too, ‘Jamie will soon be home now to help you. Why,’ she tried to smile brightly at him, to lift the young man’s spirits, ‘it’ll be just what your father always wanted, two Metcalfe brothers running the business with Jamie as the blacksmith and you as the wheelwright. Isn’t that so?’

  ‘Oh, Em,’ the young man sighed. ‘What would I have done without you these last few months? You always seem to make things better.’ He glanced away, back towards the fire and muttered gruffly, ‘I hope our Jamie knows what a lucky feller he is with a girl like you waiting for him.’

  Emma laughed, the sound echoing around the walls of the smithy. ‘I hope he does too.’

  ‘But you’re right,’ he went on. ‘Our dad inherited the two businesses from his father and his Uncle George, who had no family, and he always planned that one day Jamie and me would work side by side again like the old days.’ He grinned at her. ‘Lucky he had two sons, wasn’t it, and not daughters?’

  The smile faded from Emma’s mouth and her glance fell away. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s what my father has always said.’

  The young man was at once contrite. He dropped the long tongs on the floor with a ringing clatter and came swiftly towards her. ‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Me an’ my big mouth. You know I wouldn’t say anything to hurt your feelings.’

  She put up her hand to him and forced a smile to her mouth. ‘I know you wouldn’t.’

  William was one of the most compassionate, kindly men Emma knew. Her violet eyes softened as she looked at him now. She was so glad he was going to be her brother-in-law. She couldn’t wait for the day when she would come to live in the little cottage behind the smithy and the wheelwright’s and care for both her husband and his brother, at least until William found himself a bride too. But it wouldn’t do to say so, not now. She bit her lip, holding back the words, not daring to tempt a Fate that had not yet brought her Jamie safely back from the war.

  ‘William,’ she began, deliberately changing the subject, ‘there’s something I want to ask you . . .’

  ‘What’s that, Em?’

  ‘Do you know who “the Merry Widow” is?’

  Five

  ‘Where’ve you been gallivanting off to when there’s work to be done?’

  Harry Forrest was standing in the doorway of the mill, looking out across the yard, his thumbs hooked in his braces, his collarless shirt sleeves rolled up above his elbows. Even in winter, he wore only a waistcoat over his shirt, but underneath, he wore a thick woollen vest and long johns, garments that were the devil’s own job to get dry on a wet wash day, Emma thought. Corduroy trousers, heavy boots and a cap completed the miller’s working clothes. Indeed, they were almost a uniform, for not only Luke, but all the farm workers, even William and Jamie too, wore similar workaday attire.

  Emma closed the gate and walked across the yard towards him. ‘I’ve been to take old Grannie Bartlett’s bread, Father,’ she answered, outwardly placid, but inwardly seething. It was a truthful answer, if not the whole truth. She could have said, ‘And finding out things about you. Things I’d rather not have known.’ But she kept silent about calling to see William Metcalfe. It did not do to arouse Harry Forrest’s wrath too often.

  Her father grunted. ‘We’re not a delivery service for the locals, girl. Old Mrs Bartlett should get a neighbour to fetch ’er bread.’

  Emma said nothing, knowing he was spoiling for an argument if she gave him the opportunity. ‘Anyway,’ he muttered, ‘ya took yar time, didn’t ya? I’ve been waiting for a hand. Get up top and unhook these sacks as I send ’em up. They want to go in Ben Popple’s bin.’

  Emma nodded and set down her basket on the floor. Hitching up her skirt, she began to climb the narrow ladder up to the bin floor of the mill. ‘Mind ya gets the right bin,’ came her father’s irritable voice. ‘I don’t want Ben on me back ’cos we’ve mixed up his grain wi’ summat else. You know how fussy he is about his own special mix for his pig feed.’

  ‘No, Father,’ Emma called, without pausing in her climb. She stepped on to the meal floor where the ground flour or meal came down the spouts from the millstones on the floor above into the waiting sacks. It was where the miller stood for most of his working day. Between the fingers and thumb of one hand he felt the texture of the ground grain as it poured down the wooden chute. With the other hand, he adjusted the tentering gear to raise or lower the stones above to produce the exact fineness of flour or meal he wanted. It was a skilled and exacting job and the slightest change in the strength of the wind meant a tiny, precise adjustment to the gearing.

  On this floor too, was the pair of auxiliary stones driven by the engine.

  Out of her father’s sight, Emma gave a quick, exasperated shake of her head. She hardly needed to be given such an elementary instruction. They all knew, had known for years, that Ben Popple liked his own grain, and no one else’s, used to make up the feed for his own animals.

  ‘After all the trouble I tek to produce a good crop, I dun’t want it mixed in with the likes of old man Tollison’s, full o’ weeds an’ muck,’ Ben Popple would boom in his loud, carrying voice every time he brought grain to the mill. ‘And don’t you go letting anyone else have my special mix either, Harry Forrest.’ He would tap the side of his nose. ‘It’s my secret how I gets my pigs fatter than anyone else’s. See to it, Harry.’

  And Harry saw to it, handing out the instruction every time, even to Luke, who knew the foibles of the farmers around here as well as, if not better than, anyone. But Harry Forrest liked to let everyone know just who was master of the mill.

  Her father’s voice still floated up to her. ‘And it wouldn’t do to upset Ben Popple, now would it, me girl?’ A sly innuendo
had crept into his tone.

  Emma climbed on, deliberately scraping her feet on each rung as she climbed to make as much noise as possible so that she could not hear any more. She passed the stone floor where the huge cast iron spur wheel in the ceiling drove the three smaller stone nuts, each one connected to an upright spindle in the centre of each pair of stones. Above each set of millstones, a wooden spout brought the grain down from the bin floor above and fed it into hoppers and then, via the vibrating feed shoe, into the centre of the grinding stones.

  Arriving on the next level, the bin floor, Emma sighed. Ben Popple was at least twice her age if not more; fat, pompous, with bad teeth and breath to match. He had never married, yet he acted as if he thought himself irresistible to women.

  ‘Now then, Emma,’ he would greet her every time he came to the mill, hanging about the yard until she appeared. ‘My, but ya’re a bonny lass. When are you going to let me speak to ya dad ’bout us being wed, eh? I could do with a good strong wench about me farm and to warm me bed at night.’

  ‘When the sun shines both sides o’ the hedge, Mester Popple,’ she would tease him.

  Ben Popple would roar with laughter. ‘I like a bit of spirit in a wench, an’ all. Harry can keep his lah-di-dah fancy women but you’ll do fer me, Emma Forrest. You’ll do fer me.’

  At first she had taken his words as the kind of innocent joking between an older man and a young girl, without any offence being meant nor taken. But then one day Harry Forrest had overheard Ben and he had chosen to view the wealthy farmer’s banter very differently. ‘You could do a lot worse, m’girl, and with your looks, probably not a lot better.’

  On the bin floor she unhooked each sack from the hoist as it came rattling through the trap doors, lugged it over to the small bin in the far corner and heaved in the grain. There was scarcely room to move between the wooden bins and soon the confined space was thick with dust. It clung to her black hair, tickled her throat and made her blink, but for Emma it was her way of life, and if not exactly oblivious to the discomfort then she thought nothing of it. Besides, today her mind was filled with what William Metcalfe had told her.