The Workhouse Girl

by Dilly Court

  Mrs Bonney crossed herself. ‘I don’t know where heathens go when they pass on, but God rest her soul, anyway.’ She gave her daughter a gentle push. ‘Stop being silly, Maud. Go and finish feeding the hens.’

  ‘She looks like a ghost,’ Maud said as she sidled past Sarah and ran out into the yard.

  ‘I must look a sight,’ Sarah said, her hand flying to her hair, which hung loose around her shoulders. ‘I’ve had a long journey, and I wondered if I could buy some eggs and perhaps you could spare a loaf of bread. Miss Elsie always said you were the best cook in Blackwood.’

  Mrs Bonney puffed out her chest. ‘I’ve heard it said often, Miss Scrase. Of course I can let you have anything you need.’ She stared at Sarah’s shabby clothes. ‘You can pay, I suppose.’

  Sarah took the purse from her pocket, giving it a shake. ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘Come into the house and I’ll see what I can find.’

  In the farmhouse kitchen Mrs Bonney took a loaf from the cooling rack and wrapped it in a piece of butter muslin. ‘So where will you stay, miss? There’s nothing left of Miss Elsie’s place but a pile of ash and charred wood.’

  ‘I’ll find somewhere in the village. I doubt if I’ll be staying very long, but I wanted to look up old friends.’

  ‘Everyone thinks you died in the flames,’ Mrs Bonney said, sorting eggs into a rush basket. ‘Will you have some butter and a piece of cheese?’

  ‘Yes, that would be nice, thank you.’

  ‘The Hawkes children was very upset, and young Davey was beside himself by all accounts.’

  ‘But I sent him a note, telling him that I’d gone to London.’

  ‘I don’t know nothing about that, miss. But you’d best be careful if you’re intending to go into the village. Some folks might drop down dead with fright if they think you’ve come back to haunt the place.’

  Sarah paid for the produce but her thoughts were elsewhere as she left the farm and hurried off to find Grey. She could only imagine how Davey must be feeling if he had not received her brief letter explaining her sudden departure. It had never occurred to her that people would assume that both she and Elsie had been consumed by the flames. She was out of breath and angry when she rejoined Grey.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he demanded, frowning. ‘Have you been crying?’

  ‘You didn’t send it, did you?’

  He stared at her open-mouthed. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Young Maud thought I was a ghost. Everyone in Blackwood assumes that Elsie and I were killed in the fire. I gave you a note to send to Davey.’ His guilty expression confirmed her suspicions. ‘Tobias Grey. How could you?’

  He took the basket from her. ‘I gave it to a boy and tipped him a penny to deliver the note. I can’t help it if he didn’t carry out my instructions.’ He walked on. ‘It’s too late to do anything about it now.’

  She ran after him. ‘But they all think I’m dead. How am I to contact Davey if I can’t be seen without causing a stir?’

  ‘We’ll think of something. The most important thing now is to get off the road before someone sees us.’ He hurried onwards and she had to run to keep up with him.

  ‘I wish you’d tell me where we’re going.’

  ‘Have you ever been to Blackwood House?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she said breathlessly. ‘But I know where it is. Everyone in the village knows about the haunted yew tree tunnel that surrounds the house.’

  ‘That’s the story that was put about to keep people away.’ He stopped outside a pair of rusty wrought-iron gates. ‘It obviously worked.’ He tugged at a bell pull. ‘Let’s see if Parker is still here.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘He used to be the gatekeeper. He got me out of scrapes no end of times when I was a boy, but he must be getting on a bit now. I don’t even know if he was kept on after my grandparents passed away.’

  ‘Your family owns all this?’

  ‘Grandfather chose to leave Spitalfields and live in the country. My mother, George and Elsie grew up here and I visited quite often when I was a child. Elsie was a lot younger than my mother. She was only eleven when I was born and she used to boss me around, but I didn’t mind too much because she taught me to fish and to climb trees and she had a tame fox that she had reared from a cub. Then she went away and I didn’t see her again until I was a grown man. I heard the whispers about her in the servants’ hall, but I never took much notice of them.’ His voice broke and he turned away, wiping his sleeve across his eyes. ‘She didn’t deserve to die like that.’

  ‘I’m sure her spirit is still here,’ Sarah murmured, peering through the gates at the avenue of overgrown trees, some of which had fallen across the drive and been left to rot. ‘What’s that?’ She pointed at a tangle of dark green foliage above which she could just make out the upper storey of a building cloaked in ivy.

  ‘The yew tree tunnel,’ Grey said with a wry twist of his lips. ‘It’s supposed to be over seven hundred years old, planted when the house was built by a Knight Templar returning from the Holy Land, although I think that’s just a story.’ He rattled the gates and flakes of rust showered down on them. He tugged at the padlock and chain. ‘It doesn’t look as though Parker survived,’ he said, bending down to pick up a large piece of stone. The lock succumbed to one sharp tap and the gates screamed on their hinges as he pushed them open. ‘Welcome to Blackwood House.’ He closed the gates behind them and replaced the chain so that it appeared intact. ‘Come along, Sarah. We can stay here for a day or two. I can assure you that no one will bother us.’

  They made their way along the leaf-strewn carriage sweep, dodging fallen tree trunks and kicking aside broken branches. As Sarah had seen from the road, the yew tree tunnel began at the end of the drive and twisted in a serpentine fashion around the side of the house. The gnarled old trees were in desperate need of pruning, and it would have taken a brave person to negotiate the narrow gap beneath their intertwined branches unless armed with shears and a hacksaw. Even so, the sight of it sent a shiver down her spine and she was relieved when Grey took the gravel path that led to the back of the house.

  They came to a paved area pockmarked with weeds, and beyond a stone balustrade was a wilderness of tall grasses. ‘That was once a croquet lawn,’ Grey said, following her line of vision. ‘And what looks like a jungle was the shrubbery where I used to hide from Elsie.’

  ‘I wish I’d known her then,’ Sarah said, staring at the tangled mass of vegetation with a practised eye. The stone urns that once must have been filled with flowering plants were now strangled with bindweed, but she could see many of the plants and herbs that Elsie had used in her potions. She recognised cleavers, a common enough weed that rampaged unchecked and was the basis of many of Elsie’s favoured remedies for everything from eczema to insomnia. ‘It’s a shame she’s not here now. She would have loved all this.’

  ‘You’re the only person, apart from her, who would look at all this and see something other than gross negligence.’

  Sarah rested the basket on top of the balustrade. ‘She taught me well.’

  ‘And if I fell ill I’m sure I’d be grateful for a garden filled with weeds, and a budding apothecary to cure me.’ Grey glanced up at the louring clouds. ‘It looks like rain. We’d best find a way in.’ He tried the door, and to Sarah’s amazement it opened. He stepped inside. ‘Come on. I promise you that the ghosts are friendly.’

  The sky had darkened suddenly and large spots of rain splattered onto the paving stones. Sarah snatched up the basket and hurried after him. The moment she entered the room she felt the hairs standing up on the back of her neck. The air was thick with mustiness and the smell of decay. The furniture was shrouded in dust sheets and silence hung in a pall over the sleeping house. If there were ghosts, she thought nervously, they were in hiding, but she felt a tangible presence and it had nothing to do with the fact that she was standing close to Grey. The scent of the outdoors clung to him, but there w
as the pervading odour of an unwashed human body in the room.

  She felt Grey stiffen and she felt instinctively for his hand. She wanted to run but she found that she could not move and then, without warning, a figure sprang from the gloom, yelling like a banshee and brandishing an axe.

  Chapter Sixteen

  GREY STOOD HIS ground. ‘Parker, is that you?’

  The axe fell to the floor and the sound reverberated round the room, bouncing off the walls and causing flakes of plaster to rain down from the ceiling. ‘Who is it?’

  Grey took a step forward. ‘It’s Toby Grey, Parker. You remember me.’

  ‘Master Toby? You was just a boy when I last saw you.’

  ‘You’re right. I haven’t been near the place for ten years or more, but now I’ve come home.’ Grey moved swiftly to shake Parker’s hand. ‘I didn’t know you were still here, but it’s good to see you.’

  ‘I thought you was a robber, sir,’ Parker said apologetically.

  ‘Is there any chance of something to drink? The young lady and myself have been travelling since yesterday.’

  ‘That’s not Miss Elsie.’

  Sarah stepped forward. ‘My name is Sarah and I was Miss Elsie’s ward.’

  He stared at her as if attempting to assimilate this information. ‘I haven’t seen her for a long time. She used to bring me vittles, but she stopped coming a while ago. You aren’t going to turn me out, are you? She told me that everything would be all right.’

  ‘And so it will,’ Grey said, picking up the axe and placing it out of Parker’s reach. ‘I can see that you’ve done a good job in looking after the house, but it’s a big place for you to manage on your own.’

  ‘I done me best, sir.’ Parker made a move towards the door. ‘I’ll light a fire in the morning room if you’d like to take the young lady there, and I’ll bring you some tea.’

  ‘Better still,’ Grey said gently, ‘we’ll have tea in the kitchen.’ He followed Parker, pausing in the doorway to beckon to Sarah.

  She hurried to his side. ‘The old man’s mind is wandering,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll have to tell him about Elsie.’

  ‘Not yet. It might be too much for him to take in. I don’t know if it’s simply his imagination playing tricks or whether Elsie did keep him supplied with his day to day needs. Did she ever mention the house or her visits to see Parker?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, she didn’t. Neither did you, for that matter. All these years I’ve thought that you were poor and that’s why you fell in with Trigg.’

  ‘It’s quite true that I was desperate for money. My father was a gambler and he left nothing but debts.’

  ‘And you naturally turned to a life of crime.’

  He ushered her into the kitchen. ‘It didn’t happen like that. I tried to earn an honest living, but then I began to take risks and you know the rest.’

  ‘There’s just enough tea to make a brew,’ Parker said triumphantly. ‘But as to food, I’m afraid there’s only nettle soup. I’ve been living off that for days while I waited for Miss Elsie to come with provisions.’

  Sarah placed the rush basket on the table. ‘You’ll eat well tonight, Mr Parker.’

  ‘You mean that Miss Elsie hasn’t forgotten me?’

  Sarah was about to tell him the truth but Grey was frowning at her and shaking his head. ‘Yes, that’s right. You could say that this comes from Miss Elsie.’ She glanced around the large empty kitchen which once would have bustled with activity. She had no idea how many servants would have been employed in a house of these proportions, but she could see from the size of the range and the battery of copper pots and pans that there must have been a significant number of women cooking, cleaning and attending to all the needs of the wealthy Fitch family. Mrs Burgess would think herself queen of all she surveyed if she had a kitchen such as this and a full complement of staff to organise.

  ‘It was quite splendid in its time,’ Grey said, apparently reading her thoughts. ‘But its glory days are long past.’

  ‘You never said a truer word, Master Toby.’ Parker had been riddling the embers in the range to little effect and he rested the poker with an exasperated sigh. ‘It’s difficult keeping the fire going with only green wood for fuel. I remember when we had coal aplenty and the log store filled to capacity.’ His hands began to shake and he dropped the poker.

  Grey hurried to his side. ‘I’ll do that, Parker.’ He helped him to a chair. ‘Sit down, old chap. You’ll feel better when you’ve got some food inside you. I’ll see what I can do with the fire and then we can have that cup of tea.’

  ‘And all I need is a knife and some plates.’ Sarah emptied the contents of the basket onto the table. ‘And then we’ll eat.’

  They left Parker dozing by the fire, replete after a meal of tea, bread and cheese. Grey led the way through a maze of narrow corridors until they came to the entrance hall. A heavily carved oak staircase led to the first floor and beneath a layer of dust the floorboards glowed with the patina of many years of dedicated polishing by housemaids long departed. As in the drawing room the furniture was shrouded in holland covers, giving the old house the appearance of being inhabited by ghostly spectres. Dust motes filled the air, dancing and glinting in the feeble rays of sunshine that penetrated the grimy windowpanes.

  ‘Why did you bring me here, Grey?’ Sarah demanded anxiously. ‘Hiding away isn’t going to solve anything.’

  ‘I know, but it can only be temporary. If I know George he’ll have the police looking for me at this very moment, and eventually they’ll come here.’

  ‘Then I must go into the village right away. I have to see Davey and put things right and then he’ll help me get you on a boat bound for the Continent.’

  ‘Wait until dark. I’ll go with you as far as the church.’

  Illuminated by moonlight, the church was silhouetted darkly against the night sky. Grey had insisted on accompanying Sarah but she stopped by the lychgate. ‘Wait here for me.’

  ‘If you’re not back within the hour I’ll come looking for you,’ he said in a low voice.

  ‘Just keep out of sight,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can, but please don’t follow me. I know almost everyone in the village and I’ll be quite safe.’

  ‘All right, but be careful.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me.’ She walked away, wrapping her shawl around her head so that she merged into the shadows. Her pulse began to race as she hurried along the main street. The school and the blacksmith’s forge were shuttered and silent and the warm glow of firelight and tallow lamps shone from uncurtained windows, but for some inexplicable reason she felt like a stranger as she made her way to the cottage. She was suddenly nervous as she raised her hand to knock on the door, but then she remembered that it was never locked, and taking a deep breath she lifted the latch and stepped inside.

  The sight that met her eyes brought a lump to her throat. Mary, Lemuel and Jonah were seated round the table with their heads bent over a book, but at the sound of the door opening Mary looked up. Her face paled and she leapt to her feet uttering a shriek of fright. Jonah pointed a shaking finger at Sarah. ‘Ghost,’ he cried, reaching out to hold his sister’s hand. ‘Don’t let her get me, Mary.’

  Lemuel jumped up and advanced on Sarah with his small hands fisted. ‘Get out of here, evil spirit.’

  Sarah stood her ground. ‘I’m not a ghost or an evil spirit. It’s me, Sarah. I’ve come home.’

  Mary was the first to recover. She moved slowly towards her. ‘B-but you died in the fire. Everyone said so. The vicar held a service of remembrance for you and Miss Elsie, even though we all knew she was a heathen.’

  ‘I sent a note,’ Sarah said, fighting back tears. ‘I’m so sorry if you didn’t receive it, but I was certain you knew that I was safe and well.’

  Mary’s pale face assumed a mask of indifference. ‘We’ve been thinking you were dead and gone for nearly three weeks. Why did you go away? Why didn’t you come
here and let us all see that you was alive?’

  ‘I still say she’s a ghost,’ Jonah said, hiding behind his sister. ‘Pinch her, Lem. See if she’s real.’

  Lemuel darted forward and pinched Sarah’s forearm, making her squeal. ‘She’s real,’ he said, backing away.

  Sarah rubbed the sore spot. ‘I hope you’re satisfied, boys. That hurt.’

  ‘You should be ashamed of yourself,’ Mary said angrily.

  ‘Don’t blame him.’ Sarah smiled as she pulled her sleeve down to cover the red mark.

  ‘I didn’t mean Lemmy. It’s you who are in the wrong.’ Mary’s pretty lips hardened into an unsympathetic line. ‘You nearly broke our Davey’s heart. He’s been off his food ever since you got burned to a crisp in the fire, and won’t hardly speak to no one. It’s all your fault, Sarah Scrase.’

  Sarah pulled up a stool and sat down. ‘I couldn’t help what happened, Mary. You must hear me out.’

  ‘There’s no excuse for running off like that,’ she said, frowning.

  ‘There might be if you’d just listen to what I have to say.’ Sarah was angry now. She had slept little on the journey from London and she was exhausted as well as overwrought. ‘Miss Elsie suffered terrible burns. She might have died in the fire if it hadn’t been for a brave man who saved her from the burning building. We took her to a hospital in London, but it was too late and she died of her injuries.’

  ‘She was a witch,’ Jonah muttered beneath his breath but just loud enough for Sarah to hear.

  ‘She was a healer and she took care of your father,’ Sarah said firmly. ‘You all know that, so don’t talk nonsense, Jonah Hawkes.’

  Jonah’s face crumpled at her sharp tone and she was instantly ashamed of her quick temper. They were all too young to understand. ‘Miss Elsie was a good woman,’ she added in a gentler tone. ‘But she was different from the rest of us, Jonah. That doesn’t mean she was bad or that she was a witch. She used her knowledge to cure sick people.’

  Jonah did not look convinced and he went to join his brother, who had retreated to the hearth and was squatting on the packed earth floor eyeing her suspiciously.