Alice's Secret

by Lynne Francis

  ‘Is this it?’ he said, resting his finger on the spot. Alys felt her heart start to race uncomfortably as she bent closer to take a look. Headed ‘Mill Tragedy’ it read: ‘A fire at Hobbs Mill in the Lower Royd valley, which started around 8 p.m. on the night of 22 September has claimed the life of Richard Weatherall, aged 25 years, eldest son of James Weatherall of Hobbs Hall, Mill Lane, Northwaite. Mill Manager Owen Williams reported that the fire appeared to have been started deliberately. He, Mr Weatherall and Albert Spencer, the nightwatchman, had fought hard to control the blaze. Mr Richard Weatherall was unfortunately trapped and perished while trying to retrieve vital company papers. Williams commended Albert Spencer for repeatedly entering the burning building in a vain effort to save Mr Weatherall’s life. Mr Spencer has been awarded ten guineas for his bravery, which he will use to fund a stonemason’s apprenticeship in York with immediate effect. Mr Richard Weatherall’s family and his wife Caroline, whom he married just a few weeks previously, are inconsolable. The mill is damaged beyond repair and Mr James Weatherall has expressed his intention to leave the area and start afresh elsewhere.

  A local woman, Alice Bancroft, aged 20 and an ex-employee of the mill, was believed to bear a grudge against her former manager and has been apprehended and held in Northwaite lock-up, awaiting trial for setting fire with intent.’

  Alys sat back, took a breath, frowned and looked at Rob. She’d hoped, expected even, something that would set the record straight. But the news was even worse than she could have imagined: Alice had not only destroyed the mill, but someone had been killed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Alys felt low after Tim’s visit, and the news of Alice contained in the newspaper article hadn’t helped her mood. She had to fight down an impulse to email Tim to apologise. This was baffling to her: she should have been relieved that she’d found the courage to say what should have been said months ago; instead she felt unsettled and couldn’t pinpoint why. Eventually, she confessed her feelings to Moira over breakfast. Moira, not wanting to pry, hadn’t asked her anything further about Tim’s sudden appearance, and equally sudden departure.

  Her aunt stirred her tea slowly, then said, ‘Well, I don’t know the full story, but perhaps it’s just the unfamiliarity of the situation that’s unsettling you? You’ve been so used to having this relationship in the background somewhere, not properly dealt with, that you feel like something is missing? You need to readjust to the situation. Try to give it a few days; I’m sure it will pass.’

  It was wise advice. By the time a week had gone by, Alys felt more herself again and had stopped expecting Tim to be standing there every time the café door opened. She had become aware, though, that Rob hadn’t dropped by since she had last seen him in Moira’s garden.

  ‘What’s going on? We’ve lost our best takeaway-coffee customer,’ Moira teased.

  ‘Nothing to do with me,’ protested Alys. They were so busy with walkers, even though the school holidays were over, that she didn’t have time to dwell too much on Rob’s non-appearance. So, when the café door burst open on Saturday afternoon, admitting a giggling crowd of people who greeted her by name, it took her by surprise. It was a moment or two before she recognised Rob’s friends, Rosie and Sian, from the night out in the Nortonstall pub, along with several others who’d been there that evening.

  ‘We walked up from Nortonstall. It was so steep!’ Sian declared. It was clear from her expression that this wasn’t something that she was in the habit of doing. ‘Now we’re starving!’

  Alys was delighted to see them all again and helped them to push several tables together until they had taken up nearly half the space in the tiny café. Then she set about impressing them with a selection of her favourite cakes. Once tea was dispensed, accompanied by exclamations from the girls over the china it was served in, an appreciative silence descended for a short while.

  ‘This is my third cup of tea and my fourth cake,’ Rosie groaned, pushing away her plate. ‘We’ll have to walk back now. I can’t justify all these calories if we don’t!’

  ‘Please, Alys, you must bring the café to Nortonstall,’ Sian begged. ‘I can’t manage that hill every time I need some of your wonderful cake.’

  ‘You’re in luck,’ Alys said, and outlined the plans to open a second premises in Nortonstall. ‘There’s just one more document to be signed, and then we can make a start.’

  By the time the group were all ready to leave – deciding that the bus might be the best option after all as the skies had darkened, threatening rain – Alys had promises of enthusiastic support for the Nortonstall venture.

  ‘Have you seen anything of Rob lately?’ Alys asked, as they all gathered their belongings together, hoping her enquiry sounded casual.

  ‘Last I heard, he’d been sent off by his boss to take a look at some cattle down south. Somerset, I think he said. Or was it Devon? Anyway, some more rare breeds to add to the collection over Haworth way. I’m not sure when he said he would be back.’

  This came from Chris, whom Alys could remember Rob chatting to at some length that night in Nortonstall.

  ‘Ah, that would explain why he hasn’t been in for his daily coffee.’ Had her response sounded natural? She hoped so. She waved them off from the café window as they made a noisy last-minute dash for the bus.

  She was aware of a feeling of relief: Rob’s unexplained disappearance was nothing more than a work trip. Alys decided not to analyse why she was so curious about his whereabouts; in any case, she would soon need to put all her energies into their second café venture. But first, there was just enough time to focus once more on Alice and the mystery of the mill fire. On her next free day, she resolved to take a walk to the site of the ruined mill, in an effort to reconnect with the past, following one of the routes that Alice might have chosen.

  There was a definite feeling of summer’s farewell as Alys picked her way through the damp, lush fronds of bracken overgrowing the path down through the woods. So few people now passed this way that the path had all but disappeared. In the higher reaches of the wood, spiders’ webs were strung from frond to frond, jewelled with moisture droplets that sparkled as they caught the morning sun. Fat-bodied spiders sat proudly dead centre, striped legs delicately hunched, at the ready. Alys let out an involuntary shriek and brushed frantically at herself as she walked into one web, stretched right across the path, sensing it crackle in her hair like an electric charge. Feeling foolish, she looked around in case anyone was watching, then glanced down as a movement caught her eye. It was the spider whose construction she’d ruined, hanging by a thread from a frond. Alys felt guilty – all that work would have to be done once more.

  As she pressed on down through the wood, the foliage thinned out and the spider hazard passed. It felt chilly – no late summer sunshine penetrated this far – but dry. Alys breathed deeply, absorbing the scent of the woods: a mixture of earth, moss, bark, leaf. It filled her with a great sense of calm and she imagined it to be like a fragrant guide to the past, holding the history of the trees, the paths and the passage of time, locked within it. She wished she could carry it back with her to Moira’s cottage, captured in an old cloudy glass bottle with a ball stopper, held by a rusty metal catch that she could flip back to release the scent whenever she wished.

  Alys smiled at her thoughts. The woods always seemed to create these philosophical feelings in her. Her wanderings here over the previous weeks had been accompanied by musings about the craggy cliffs among the trees; mysterious clearings; the raised pool she had found just off the path, but deeply hidden; the hoof prints of deer planted deep in the mud around its dark peaty depths. The silence there had made Alys glance nervously around. She sensed something, the presence of others who had found this place before, who had been here long ago. There was a feeling of anticipation there, as if time was somehow poised, waiting for something to happen. She had no idea what had drawn her from the path in the first place, but she remembered her apprehension as she�
�d climbed the incline, wondering what she would find on the other side. The deer pool had been a surprise, somehow out of place, yet it must once have had a purpose, now long forgotten.

  Today she was intent on exploring the area a little further. She was familiar with the ruined mill: brick towers soaring from the valley floor, sturdy stone bridges, tumbled stone walls. Although she’d come to associate these ruins with Alice, she struggled to place her there when it had been a working mill. She’d seen faded, smudged black-and-white pictures of how the mill had looked in those days: a building several storeys high tucked into this small area of the valley floor; vast theatres of machinery where now there were only trees and ruins, and no sense of the noise, bustle, steam and heat that must have been daily normality six days a week. Now there was just the sound of rushing water, dippers bobbing from rock to rock, the wind whispering and rustling through the trees down the valley.

  Alys planned to spend some time just sitting, imagining, absorbing, being there. ‘Perhaps we’ve just lost the power to pick up on the past,’ she thought hopefully. ‘Maybe it’s all still out there, just waiting for us to recognise it, to tap into it.’

  The open area where the mill must have once stood had a couple of large flat stones that were perfect for sitting and contemplating. But Alys had a different spot in mind. The main path, such as it was, forked, with one part appearing to lead to a dead end, a crumbling wall. An earlier exploration had shown Alys that in fact the path skirted the wall, and tucked into the lee of it there were tumbled stones and a flat plinth-like rock, perhaps originally a stone door-lintel from the mill. It made a good seat, relatively hidden away, but with an expansive view over the whole mill site. If she had been an artist, it would have made the perfect vantage point to work from, Alys felt sure. Today she hoped it would be her window into Alice’s past. More than anything, she wanted to find out what had really happened on that fateful day in 1895. Had Alice really intended to burn down the mill and if so, what could have driven her to do so?

  She had come prepared with a rug that she used to cushion her stony seat, a flask of coffee, and biscuits. She settled herself in, poured coffee and sat back, a little shiver of anticipation making her hug her knees into herself. She wondered what anyone would make of her if they stumbled across her, half hidden amongst the bracken and ruined walls.

  It was time to absorb her surroundings. She sipped her coffee and looked around. Sunlight was breaking through the trees, there was the sound of running water, and a faint breeze stirred the bracken, still bright green in this sheltered spot. Alys tried to imagine how it must have appeared over a hundred years ago. Right where she was sitting must have been the wall at the boundary of the mill. The huge chimney she had passed was the only remaining complete structure on site – the rest had fallen into ruins and been cleared away, leaving few clues to what might have been. A waterwheel perhaps, sited in that narrow trench? There was the arch of a bridge, now going nowhere. Alys squinted through the trees that had sprung up on site over the years and tried to raise the mill walls in front of her, storey by storey. Somehow, because all the pictures she had seen were black and white, she couldn’t make the mill live in present-day colour. It remained trapped in history. She closed her eyes. Could she find her way in via her imagination, through the pictures in her memory?

  She relaxed, listening, and gradually the rush of the water transformed into the rhythmic pounding of the spinning machines as the thread wound onto the spools, evenly looping up and down, ready to feed the constant demand in the weaving shed. Small children scurried between the machines, carrying empty bobbins, or cans to collect cotton waste from the nooks and crannies where no adult could safely reach. They looked dirty, hollow-eyed and exhausted, their clothes little better than rags, a strange contrast to the pristine white cotton being spun all around them.

  Alys started and opened her eyes – not sure whether she had actually conjured up a vision of the past or whether she was imagining an animated version of something she had seen in one of the museums. The wood felt very still, almost as if a storm was coming, although she could see clear blue sky up around the treetops. Sunlight still glanced down on the water, catching tiny insects performing a late-summer dance in its rays. She closed her eyes again, half reluctant to forsake this for the harshness of the world she had observed, or perhaps imagined, but curious, even so.

  Part Six

  Chapter One

  Alice reached home just as the first fat drops of rain started to fall. Sarah looked up from her seat by the kitchen range, a pile of clothes to be mended, darned and patched at her side.

  ‘I was worried,’ she said. ‘I heard the wind getting up, and when I went outside the weather had already turned. I hoped you hadn’t gone too far afield.’

  ‘Ah, far enough,’ said Alice, a little breathless, setting the pail on the scrubbed table and brushing Elisabeth’s windswept hair out of her eyes. Sarah looked at her sharply. There was an odd brittleness in Alice’s tone, and her colour was high. Her lips looked bruised, but Sarah dismissed the observation as soon as she’d made it, noting how purple Elisabeth’s usually rosy lips had become.

  ‘You’ve let the child gorge on too many berries,’ she scolded. ‘She’ll be crying in the night with belly ache, you mark my words, unless I prepare a draught to settle her stomach.’

  Alice was intent on distraction. ‘Look,’ she said, pointing at the pail. ‘See how much fruit I picked. We can make jam tomorrow.’

  Ella and all the others crowded into the kitchen, exclaiming over the size of the blackberries and helping themselves until Alice protested and slapped their hands away, then covered the pail and put it in the pantry to keep cool until morning. Lightning flashed across the kitchen, followed almost immediately by such a loud clap of thunder that they all cried out, then laughed at each other’s alarm. Sarah, observing them quietly from her seat near the range, saw a real flash of fear cross Alice’s face.

  The others trooped back up the stairs, to continue their dressing-up games before bed, and Alice made to follow with Elisabeth, now scrubbed relatively clean of the purple juice.

  ‘What have you done?’ asked Sarah, taking Alice by the arm and turning her so that she faced her.

  ‘You must wait and see. But I hope I have saved us all.’ And with that Alice shrugged Sarah off and headed up the stairs. Lightning flashed again, provoking yet more screams and laughter from upstairs, and highlighting her shadow in monstrous form against the staircase wall.

  Chapter Two

  Sarah’s hopes that Alice was on the mend, raised by her apparent energy over the last couple of weeks, were dashed the following morning. When Elisabeth’s morning murmurings turned into grumbles, then into wails that went unheeded, Sarah rose to find out what was amiss. Alice lay in bed still, cheeks flushed and strands of hair plastered to her face. The tangled bedclothes were evidence of a restless night. When Sarah laid her hand to Alice’s brow, it was burning up with fever – as she’d feared.

  Sarah scooped Elisabeth from her cot and took her away for the little ones to entertain, then hurriedly prepared yarrow tea for Alice. Ella had already left for the mill, so leaving Thomas in charge of stirring the porridge pot, with strict instructions not to burn either himself or the breakfast, she carried the steaming liquid up the stairs.

  ‘Come now, you must sit up and drink this.’ Sarah half lifted, half pulled Alice up until she was propped on her pillows, then sat by her murmuring words of encouragement and stroking her hair back every now and then until every drop had been drunk.

  Thomas came up the stairs, Annie and Beattie trooping after him, to declare the porridge eaten and the pot put to soak. Sarah turned to find them jostling for position in the doorway, all wide-eyed and looking anxious.

  ‘It’s time to get washed and dressed now,’ Sarah said, and shooed them out. She knew that any washing done without the benefit of her first heating the water was likely to be sketchy, but she needed to sit with Alic
e to make sure that her temperature fell.

  Within the hour, Alice’s colour had returned to normal and her skin felt cooler and less clammy.

  Sarah had reason to be thankful for yarrow’s properties in ridding the body of infection. She was still worried as to what ailed Alice, though. The village had been free of contagious illnesses for a long time, and none of the younger children had been sick with any of the usual childhood maladies for some while. Perhaps what Sarah had taken to be a good sign – Alice’s energy in going out and about again – had been too much for her and she had simply overdone it?

  Sarah stifled a sigh. Her daughter’s health was of increasing concern to her. Alice wasn’t as robust as you might expect a young woman of her age to be. Sarah had noticed quite early in Alice’s childhood that she didn’t have the same stamina and energy as other children. She tired quickly, needed more frequent rests, and dark shadows were nearly always smudged below her eyes. Bookish pursuits with old Mrs Lister had suited her well, and Sarah had begun to think that she’d outgrown whatever the problem was. When Alice had started to work full-time at the mill, however, Sarah’s hopes had been shown to be premature. She’d returned exhausted each evening, then risen exhausted again to face the new day. It was at this point that Sarah had tried out a heart tonic on her, adjusting the dose and the formula until she found something that seemed to suit her well, and restore some of her equilibrium. Alas, the pregnancy had put an added strain on Alice’s body and Sarah had been fearful for her health yet again. The last few months had seen many ups and downs, and as Alice slipped into sleep, still propped on her pillows, Sarah felt an overwhelming sense of sadness. She would fight hard in every way she knew to prevent it, but she had a feeling of foreboding, a fear that Alice’s life was not destined to be a long and happy one.