‘Olwen? Mary? Is everything all right at the alehouse?’ a voice asked. ‘I was delayed, er – this is Lowri.’
Olwen gasped. It was Barrass! And, he was with a woman!
‘Worried about you, we’ve been, every one back and you not…’ she stumbled to a stop afraid that her angry words would lead them all into trouble. ‘I might have guessed you’d found yourself a way to idle away an hour with a woman.’
‘Hush, Olwen.’ Both Mary and Barrass warned her.
Pushing him aside with a growl of anger, Olwen ran. Tripping over trailing bramble branches, not feeling them tearing at the skin of her legs, she burst into the house, climbed the ladder and threw herself on her bed. Even on a night when danger filled everyone’s mind, Barrass still managed to find himself a woman!
Barrass led the girl to the alehouse and bade her wait while he went inside to explain the situation to Pitcher.
‘One of the Frenchies was hurt and left behind by the boats,’ he said after telling him that he had someone seeking shelter.
‘Best to tell Emma,’ Pitcher said with a slightly hysterical laugh. ‘Funny night this has been, boy. What with my Daisy being seen in the bar-room and my Emma actually serving ale. Never seen a night like it. What’s a lost Frenchie beside all that, eh?’
Barrass beckoned to the girl and led her upstairs to where he expected to find Emma and begin his explanations all over again. From the door behind the counter, Pitcher turned to watch as the girl followed Barrass upstairs.
‘It’s a woman!’ he gasped. ‘A woman from the boats?’
Emma appeared at his side, swiped him and told him to hush his nonsense. Arthur shushed him and pointed madly towards the soldiers and Daniels. Pitcher gave a groan and took a long swig from the tankard in his hand.
Once Emma understood the situation, she woke Polly, who had managed to sleep through most of the noise. Whispering explanations about how Lowri had arrived, she sent the girl with Polly to accompany her, to spend what was left of the night with Mary and Spider.
‘No sense taking chances with that lot still on the premises, even if they haven’t the wits of a baby!’ she said firmly.
It was almost four a.m. before Arthur was able to relax and look around him. Still crowded, with only the local people beginning to go to their homes, the room looked like a battlefield, which, he thought wearily, it was. Men and women were sleeping across benches and tables and each other. Red coats surprisingly gay amid the more sombre colours worn by the rest. Daniels sat in a formal, upright position against the wall but was snoring peacefully with Arthur’s dog curled up on his knees, also snoring.
More and more people dispersed until eventually only Daniels and the soldiers were left. Leaving them to sleep until morning, a confused-looking Pitcher and a popeyed Arthur beckoned to Cadwalader, who was still strumming the strings of his harp, to follow them.
They went to their beds even though they were too wound up to sleep. Cadwalader was given a corner of the passage, with some blankets supplied by Emma in which to wrap himself. The exhausted dog stayed where he was until the gap between Daniels’s legs widened and he fell through.
Over the sea, the sun rose and shone on the quiet alehouse and a slight onshore breeze swung the open door, its squeak an echo of the music that had died with the dawn.
* * *
Morning broke too early for all the participants in the previous night’s activities. Some distant sound disturbed Barrass and he moved stiffly and wondered vaguely why he was sleeping in the passage behind Pitcher’s bar-room. Realization came slowly. The sounds of groans and muffled snores seemed to come from all around, puzzling him almost as much as his location. He turned to a crawling position and moved until he could peer around the counter.
The bar-room was full of bodies! He stood up, forcing his eyes to stay open and feed information to his stunned brain. What had happened? Then he saw the tall figure of Daniels rise from among the sprawling redcoats and it all came back.
The first memory was of the young woman who had materialized on the beach. Where was she? Had he dreamt her?
‘Morning, Daniels,’ he said with difficulty, his sluggish brain matched by his still sleeping tongue. ‘Quite a good night, wasn’t it?’
‘Why wasn’t I woken?’ Daniels demanded. ‘Allowing me to sleep here amid all this stink!’
‘I’ll find you a mug of tea – supposing Pitcher has such a thing as the makings,’ Barrass offered.
‘Just go and find my horse!’ the man insisted.
Barrass went to the cellar door intending to rouse Arthur when he saw his friend’s head appear above the flap door.
‘Daniels wants his horse,’ Barrass announced, and falling back on the area of the passage he had made his own, he fell back to sleep.
Later, when the world had righted itself and the day was underway, albeit in a half-hearted manner, Barrass asked what had happened to the girl.
‘I sent her to stay with Mary and Spider,’ Emma told him. ‘There’s no room here for vagrants and it will be some while before we can get her back where she belongs. Her with no money and only the clothes she stands up in.’
Barrass went up the path to see if he could see the girl, curious about her and half suspicious that the ‘accident’ that had forced her to stay had been planned. In this he was correct.
* * *
‘My brother is somewhere in Wales and I want to find him,’ Lowri told Barrass and Mary a while later on that Friday when they sat beside the fire drinking a cup of the tea that had already been delivered to the house. ‘His name is Cadwalader and he earns a crust singing and playing his Welsh harp. Have you heard of him?’ Lowri asked.
‘He’s here, in the village, staying at Pitcher’s alehouse,’ Barrass explained. ‘Come with me now and I’ll take you to see him!’
‘There’s a bed here for you, Lowri, remember that,’ Mary said as the couple set off down the path. ‘Olwen doesn’t mind sharing with you, sure of that I am.’
‘Now she knows I am not Barrass’s new friend,’ Lowri said.
Mary chuckled as she remembered the fuss her fiery daughter had made when Polly had brought the girl up the previous night. At first Olwen protested that she wouldn’t share the same field with one of Barrass’s women, let alone her bed! But when it transpired that Lowri’s arrival with Barrass had been innocent, she relented and hearing of the girl’s dilemma, willingly shared the small, narrow bed and was glad of the company through what remained of the night.
‘She was too afraid of being late for work to sleep,’ Mary explained to Mistress Powell, ‘there only being a few hours left of the night before she had to rise.’
‘I wonder if she is a sister to that Cadwalader,’ Mistress Powell mused, her knitting needles clicking as she began another row of the sleeve she was making.
‘They look alike,’ Mary said. ‘Thickset, sturdy, and they have the same colouring, so dark they’ve something of the foreigner about them. She even has the same white flash in her hair, strange that, isn’t it?’
‘Not so strange as this sleeve for your Spider,’ the old lady sighed. ‘No matter how many rows I knit, the length is still not enough. He’s a long shanks that husband of yours, Mary. Easier it is to knit for baby Dic and that’s a fact!’
* * *
Barrass remembered that the package given to him on the beach to be handed to Pitcher was still in his pocket. He patted it to remind himself to hand it over, but first he went back to the alehouse with Lowri, to find Cadwalader.
‘Gone, he has,’ Arthur told him. ‘When we finally roused ourselves to wakefulness his corner was empty. The blankets were there, all curled up as if around a man but of Cadwalader there was no sign. Taken his pack and gone he has.’
Barrass explained that Lowri was his sister and needed to know his whereabouts but Arthur shook his head. He took Barrass on one side and whispered,
‘Worried Pitcher is. Afraid the man has gone to report what he knows
of last night’s activities. Sharp eyes he has, see, and could probably tell who was missing and for how long they were away.’
‘There’s nothing to prove his story now. Everything is hidden safely away and I bet there’s not even a mark on the beach now there’s been another tide.’
‘Except her,‘ Arthur said, glancing at the young woman, who, dressed in trousers and having replaced her cap, looked very like a man.
‘Her we’ll have to watch,’ Barrass agreed.
Barrass gave Pitcher the package from the boat. He was curious to see that it contained a box of dominoes from France. Pitcher had been told about the new game by Edwin Prince and William Ddole, and on a visit to his friends in Bristol, William had arranged for one of his cargoes to include a set.
‘Will you ask William to come and explain the game?’ Pitcher asked, as he replaced the oblong pieces in the wooden box. ‘Can’t see how they’ll catch on without a couple of experts able to explain the game.’
‘I expect these new visitors you’re going to attract will know it. London’s the place for things new,’ Arthur said wisely. ‘Everything starts there it seems to me.’
* * *
Hidden in the newly sprouted leaves, high in the branches of a tree, Cadwalader sat and watched as the soldiers set off to rediscover the road to Carmarthen. Their marching left a lot to be desired, and he thought with a wry grin that if their officers could see them they would all be whipped – and probably be too insensible to feel it.
He could see the road outside the alehouse and saw Lowri arrive with Barrass. He guessed she must know by now that he had been at the alehouse the previous night. Thank goodness he had seen her arrive and had been given the chance to get away. Pity he had to move on. Just when he had the feeling that his search for a place to settle was almost over.
Behind him, the sea murmured sleepily as if it too were exhausted after the previous night’s revelry. To his right he saw the line of soldiers fading from his view. On his left, the outside of the alehouse was being brushed free of the sand and small stones that constantly appeared, by a sleepy-looking Arthur. The chairs and tables were being placed in the shelter of the porch wall out of the rising wind. In the doorway, as if undecided whether to go out or stay, he could just make out the shape of Arthur’s dog, head drooping as if he too wondered what day it was.
When he had seen Lowri making her way back up the steep path to the cliffs, he jumped down, and shouldering the pack he had hidden among the sand dunes, he set off inland, towards the town.
* * *
All through the day, people could be seen crossing and recrossing the outskirts of the village delivering packages. Tobacco and liquor and small quantities of tea were transported casually, as payment to those who had taken part and those who had helped.
At the shabby house in which the Morgan family lived, there was no reply to Oak-tree Thomas’s call when he arrived with the share of the cargo. Although none of the family actually helped, they were paid as compensation for the loss of their parents during one of the deliveries some years previously. He called again, and pushed open the broken door.
At once chickens escaped into the field cackling their disapproval of some unknown misconduct. A goat butted against him playfully and frolicked off to find food. He called again, staring into the stale-smelling room trying to penetrate the darkness.
‘Anyone there?’
In the darkness something moved and he stepped back, half expecting trouble from the wild, ill-tempered Madoc or Morgan. But it was Seranne who stood up and came to the door. Her face was white and in the loose gown she wore that was partly covered by a ragged blanket, she looked so thin that he was afraid to touch her in case her bones snapped.
‘Sorry to disturb you, Seranne,’ he said. ‘I’ve brought you some – Look, I think I’d better go and fetch someone to help you. You look sick.’
‘I have caught a chill again. It seems that for me the winter ails will never end.’ She smiled and shook her head. ‘No need for help, Vanora looks after us all. She has gone to tell them at Ddole House that I won’t be in today. Polly will call later when she has finished her morning’s work for Mistress Palmer, and Morgan and Madoc aren’t far away.’
‘I’ll be back with some food,’ he promised, and handing her the packages he had brought, he went along the stream and back on to the track. He glanced back and could see her pale face in the doorway, and saw her hand raised in farewell.
When he returned less than an hour later with a knuckle of pork, two roasted rabbits he had had cooking near his fire, and a loaf of bread, Seranne was dressed, her long hair was combed neatly and she looked like a different person.
‘It’s only the mornings,’ she explained. ‘Once I get up and set about the day’s tasks, I shake off the aches and tiredness.’
She thanked him for his gifts and assured him that by the following day she would be well enough to go to her work. Oak-tree Thomas returned to his house feeling a great anger against Seranne’s brothers, who at seventeen and nineteen, should be able to take better care of her. He did not know that as he and Seranne had spoken at the doorway, they were lying in their beds, weaker and more sick than Seranne.
Chapter Eight
It was several days before Seranne returned to Ddole House and when she did, it was to be met by a smiling Annie who told her she was no longer required.
‘But why?’ Seranne gasped. ‘Isn’t my work satisfactory?”
‘I’d hardly know would I, you being away more than you’re here?’
‘I want to talk to Florrie.’
‘I’m sorry, but Florrie is no longer responsible for the running of Ddole House. She will be marrying soon and until then, she is assisting me.’ Annie smiled again, but closed the kitchen door firmly in Seranne’s anxious face.
Dozy Bethan looked at Olwen, sharing with her a look of consternation, but neither said a word. They both knew the risk was great of them losing their place too. It had become a constant threat since Florrie had given notice that she intended to leave.
‘It’s all right for you,’ Bethan said later, when both girls were safely out of hearing from the house. ‘You have a home to go to, however crowded it is. I have nowhere but here. This house is all I’ve ever known, being a small child when I came here.’ It was a long speech for the slow-thinking Bethan and an indication of her anxiety.
‘I’m sure you and I will be kept on,’ Olwen said, to cheer her friend.
There was something else to worry them later that morning. It had long been Florrie’s habit to leave their money on the kitchen table every Sunday morning. A few hours after the dismissal of Seranne Morgan, both girls went to collect their wages; Bethan to put in the small metal box she had in her bedroom, and Olwen to hand over to her mother when they met briefly in church.
The two piles of coins were there but instead of the one shilling and four pence Olwen was expecting, there was only a shilling. Bethan’s shilling had been reduced to four pence.
‘This must be all mine,’ Olwen said. ‘She’s forgotten yours, or perhaps she’s gone this very minute to find the coins to make it up.’ When Annie came into the kitchen smiling as always, Olwen hesitantly asked if either was the case.
‘Good heavens above, no! You were late on Friday morning and so tired that all day you only worked at half speed. How can you expect to have a full wage when you didn’t give Master Ddole a full week’s work?’ She turned to Bethan, who held the four pence in her hand like a beggar asking for more. ‘And you, Bethan. What about the best china dish you dropped? How will that be paid for unless you contribute? We can’t expect the master to be as generous as he is and pay for our mishaps, now can we?’
Olwen’s temper flared but, glancing at Bethan’s stricken face she held it back, swallowing it, looking down so Annie wouldn’t see the rebellion in her blue eyes. She forced herself to nod agreement and willed herself not to cry in frustration.
Straight from work she would go an
d talk to Florrie, see if something could be done. But, as she confided in Bethan later on, it was a poor hope. Annie was now in charge and what she said was law so far as Ddole House was concerned.
There would be no point in her mentioning it to William Ddole himself and there was no one else. If only she dared to write to Penelope. But that would surely lead to her dismissal. She picked up the hated coal buckets and carried them outside to the coal store. Best she gave Annie no opportunity for complaint, or next week she would have nothing to hand to her mother.
Madoc was waiting for Olwen when she finished work that evening. He was standing against a tree, chewing a blade of grass and he smiled as she approached, but Olwen sensed that he was unwell. There was a transparency in his skin, a look about him that was like the fine porcelain cups used at Ddole House.
‘Olwen,’ he called in greeting. ‘I have a mind to walk with you and see this goat of yours.’
Olwen was startled by the suggestion, but more startled by the breathless way the words were spoken. Was the whole family to be struck down with disease? He was obviously in pain too, she noticed as they walked together across the fields to the cliffs.
He admired the young goat and said, ‘I’ll lend you one of our billies when she’s old enough for mating and you’ll soon have a young kid and a supply of milk to sell. A year later another. Before you know it, you’ll be rich.’
He didn’t stay long and when he left, Olwen followed and saw him stop and rest several times before he reached his house. Fearing the hidden illness that was threatening his life and those of his brother and sisters, she ran along the cliffpath, down on to the sands of Longland, taking joy in the health and strength she took for granted, thanking her parents for them.
Madoc fell on to his bed and panted with exhaustion. His eyes shone with fever and fury as he thought about the need for money that would take them from this house and give them good food and warm, dry beds. It was so little to ask of life, but the attainment of it was beyond their combined strength.
The Posthorn Inn Page 13