by Evie Grace
‘Come along with me and we’ll do what we have to do to make ends meet. I think with new clothes we can pass you off as a damsel in distress. There’ll be many a knight in armour who’ll fall over themselves to help you.’
The woman’s voice seemed to fade into the distance, and Catherine didn’t recall anything else until she woke to find herself on a bed in dark, smoky room. She could smell beer and roast meats, the odour of stinking sheets and overflowing chamber pots and the faint scent of lavender.
She sat up abruptly. ‘Where am I?’
‘Keep your voice down, my lovely.’
Catherine recognised the old woman from the road.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Helping us both out,’ she said. ‘We’re at the Ship Inn, where the landlord has offered us hospitality until you are well … which might take a few days, give or take.’
‘But I’m all right now. Who’s paying for this? I have no money. I can’t settle the bill.’
‘Oh, don’t you worry your pretty head. The young man from the stagecoach who saw you fall came to your aid. He’s left money with me. It’s safe in my pocket. Don’t you worry, I can fix everything. When the baby comes, you’ll give me money from what you earn while you’re with me, and I’ll place it with a couple who have no child.’
Catherine shivered. She’d heard rumours of the baby farmers who did away with the baby and took the money to the nearest tavern. The woman’s breath reeked of gin. She had to escape from her clutches, but how?
When the woman left, she heard the turn of the key in the lock. She brought food later – bread and a little meat – and left again, keeping her confined. Catherine looked out of the window onto the street. It was too far to jump or climb down.
The woman returned again at midnight. She locked the door, shuffled around then sank down on the bed. Catherine shrank back, pretending to be asleep until dawn began to break, when she slid slowly to the edge of the bed, aware of every creak and groan of the bedstead. She sat up and lowered her feet to the floor, reached down and picked up her boots and basket. The woman’s breathing stopped. Catherine hesitated, her heart in her mouth. The woman sighed and started to breathe again.
Catherine stepped across the floorboards, testing each one before she placed her full weight on it. On reaching the door, she slowly worked on the bolt then pushed it open. She looked out onto the landing and hastened towards the stairs. Down she ran and out through the front door of the inn onto the street. She kept running even though she was barefoot, passing the bakery and the village forge and heading away from Faversham. When she looked back and found no one following in pursuit, she slowed to a walk to catch her breath. She had pains in her belly and a raw sensation in her throat.
She checked her pockets – they were empty except for the half a sixpence. She checked her basket and found one single coin. She was alone, almost penniless and with child. She didn’t see how it could get any worse.
Chapter Fourteen
Innocence and Temperance
Faversham
The rain began to fall. Catherine took shelter at the foot of a rick, crawling a little way inside where she curled up, shivering, like a half-drowned dormouse. The next morning, she emerged into bright sunshine to continue her search for work, but it was the same story at every farm. The great threshing machines were rumbling into action, some powered by horse, some by steam. They didn’t need any more hands.
At the end of another day of walking, her boots began to fall off her feet. She tore some strips of material from her petticoat and wrapped them around her bleeding toes before moving on. She pulled an onion from a field and ate it raw. Its scent on her skin was a painful reminder of the time she had accused Matty of stealing onions from her pa. How she regretted that now. She hadn’t known what poverty was.
She tried another farm.
A young woman opened the door and stared at her.
‘What do you want?’ She was wearing a crumpled apron and holding a wooden spoon.
‘I’d like to speak with the mistress of the house, if I may.’
‘You may not, I think.’
‘Sarah, who is at the door?’ A middle-aged woman appeared in the hallway behind the maid. ‘How many times have I told you to leave spoons and the like in their rightful place before you greet a caller?’
‘I’m sorry, ma’am.’ The maid’s attitude changed as soon as her employer spoke. ‘This person is looking for work.’
‘Tell her to go away. We have all the staff we need.’
‘Miss, we have no work here.’
‘I can clean and cook, and do laundry. I can sew,’ Catherine said quickly.
The maid closed the door in her face.
She tried the farmyard where the farmer spoke with her as he supervised the labourers and the threshing machine.
‘If I could afford to give you lodgings for a while, I would, but there’s no work. Have you nowhere else you can go?’ Tears sprang to Catherine’s eyes when he carried on, ‘The shelter of the workhouse would be better than being on the street.’
She shook her head. She would go anywhere but there.
She walked on through the woods, scavenging for sticks that she could sell or exchange for food, but the wood was wet and weighed her down. She sat down on a tree stump to rest for a while as the sun came out. Its rays crept across her body, drying her clothes, warming her skin, and bringing out the emmets that bit at her legs where her stockings had gone into holes.
Other than the raw onion, she hadn’t eaten for three days, not since she’d baked half a potato in the embers of a fire that she’d made up from kindling and twigs. She gazed around at the trees and undergrowth looking for anything to break her fast, finding only a handful of fallen hazelnuts. She picked them up, broke them from their shells and nibbled at the shrunken kernels. She remembered how Matty had found the bees’ nest, and the taste of the honeycomb: sweet dreams of long ago when she didn’t have a care in the world. Now she couldn’t find enough food to sustain a squirrel.
What should she do? Go back home to Overshill and throw herself into Ghost Hole Pond to the mercy of the spirits?
As she contemplated the idea of drowning, the baby kicked inside her.
‘I’m sorry. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world,’ she whispered. Stroking her belly, she raised her eyes to the sky and offered a silent prayer for calm seas. ‘Matty, my love.’
She stood up, turned and headed back to Faversham with her shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders. Her stomach griped with hunger. She was starving.
She stopped at the next bakehouse that she came across. A woman stared from the door, guarding the loaves that were lined up in the window, and the faggots that were stacked up outside. A boy pushed past her with a bucket of frothing yeast as she searched in her basket for her last coin, and handed it over to the woman.
‘That isn’t enough for a loaf of bread,’ she said, her eyes enquiring as they flicked from Catherine’s belly to her face, ‘but I can give you a few crammings. Put your money away,’ she added quietly. ‘Wait there.’ She went inside the shop and returned with a paper bag.
Catherine snatched it. She tore the bag open and stuffed a lump of chicken feed into her mouth.
‘Thank you,’ she muttered, her mouth filled with rancid lard and bran, bound with water and baked in the oven.
‘God bless you. Where are you heading?’
‘Faversham.’ The dry crumbs stuck in Catherine’s throat. ’I have relatives there.’
‘You’d better keep walking, so you can be safely indoors by nightfall,’ the woman said.
Catherine lowered her eyes and went on her way along Lower Ospringe Road. She walked past the Union twice before stopping outside the entrance. It was a grand building, newly constructed from Faversham brick, and more imposing than any house Catherine had seen, apart from Mr Hadington’s. The front gateway bore a sermon in stone carved above, reading ‘Innocence and Temperance’.
She couldn’t go any further. If she walked away now, she would be walking to certain death and she would have failed in her promise to Matty to look after their child. Taking a deep breath, she stepped up to the timber gates and knocked at the small door within them. The slot in the door opened and a pair of dark eyes peered out at her.
‘Who goes there?’ said a man’s voice.
She didn’t know what to say. Every fibre of her being burned with shame.
‘I’ve fallen on hard times. Please, sir, I’m at my wits’ end. I have no food, no money. I’m desperate.’
The door opened. She shrank back as a fetid odour wafted out from the courtyard beyond the gates.
‘Uncover your head so I can see you.’
She pulled her hood back to reveal her face.
The gateman stared at her. He was about forty years old with a pale complexion and white-blond hair, as if he’d been laundered with onion juice.
‘Where are your documents? Your written order from the parish?’
‘I have none.’
‘I’m obliged to peruse your paperwork. Rules is rules. Have you anything that will do?’
She shook her head. She had no energy left to walk back to Overshill to meet the overseer to authorise her admittance to the Union. She closed her eyes and began to sway. She didn’t care what happened any more. She was exhausted, drained, prepared to lie down right there and let her life ebb away if no one would help her.
‘I suppose that the first rule of rules is that rules are made to be broken,’ the gateman said. ‘You aren’t the first and you won’t be the last. Let’s see what the Board decide tomorrow. Follow the corridor to the left.’
Catherine staggered through the door and into the courtyard.
‘No, that way, cloth ears,’ the man said, redirecting her. ’Keep going straight and you’ll find yourself at the receiving ward.’
She entered the ward where the aroma of cheap lye soap and unwashed bodies assaulted her nostrils. She retched, partly from the smell and partly through hunger. A fire burned and belched smoke from the grate at the far side of the room, but it made no difference to the temperature. She stood shivering in silence for some time before a middle-aged woman entered the ward and approached her.
‘There’s no need to be scared, ducks,’ she said as Catherine shrank back. ‘I’m Mrs Coates, the matron here. What’s your name?’
Catherine frowned. She wasn’t expecting to be greeted by a friendly face. The woman had dusty brown hair pulled up into a bun with a cap on top, a round face with soft green eyes and a mouth prone to smiling.
‘Your name? I thought that was a simple enough question.’
‘Mrs Matthews,’ she said. She had wanted to say Carter, to imagine that she was indeed Matty’s beloved and loving wife, but she was afraid that because of his notoriety, her true identity would soon be guessed at.
The woman scribbled in a book, adding her name to a list.
‘You’ll be interviewed by the Board of Guardians tomorrow. If you answer their enquiries to their satisfaction, they’ll approve your entry into the workhouse proper. Now, hold your arms up.’
‘I have nothing but my clothes and what’s in the basket,’ Catherine said, her hands behind her back, fumbling for the half a sixpence that she’d tucked into her waistband. She placed it in her palm and turned aside to cough, covering her mouth so she could slip it beneath her tongue.
‘You are unwell?’ Mrs Coates said.
‘It’s just a summer chill.’
‘Put your arms up then. Quickly. I have to search your person for valuables and contraband, and anything that can be used as a weapon. It’s Union rules. Take it or leave it.’
Catherine struggled to keep her hands raised above her head as Mrs Coates patted her all over and checked her pockets.
‘Now, take off your clothes then get into the tub over there. There’s soap and a scrubbing brush.’
Catherine removed her clothes as the metallic taste of the half a sixpence stung her mouth. Trembling and ashamed at exposing her nakedness, she stepped into the tin bath of greasy, grey, lukewarm water.
‘Sit down.’ Mrs Coates poured a basin of hot water over Catherine’s head and checked her hair for lice with a comb, tugging roughly at the knots, before she made her scrub herself clean and raw all over.
‘Out you get.’ Mrs Coates handed her a cloth to dry herself. ‘I don’t want you catching your death when you haven’t got anyone to give you a decent burial.’ Her voice softened. ‘Come over to the fire while I find you a uniform.’
‘I’d like to keep my clothes, if you please.’
‘I can’t let you wear those rags in here. We’ll have them fumigated and put away for the day when you leave us, if you don’t end up in the parish coffin beforehand. You’ll be given supper and sleep here until you see the medical officer and go in front of the Board tomorrow. When they admit you, you’ll pick oakum until the time comes for your lying-in. The work is hard and the rations are moderate.’ Mrs Coates bustled away and returned with a uniform.
Catherine dressed in front of the fire and hid the half a sixpence in the hem of the skirt.
Later, after a meal of potato, turnip and meat stew with dry bread, she settled down on a bench with a blanket for the night. The wool was scratchy against her skin, the mice scuttled across her feet and her heart ached for Matty and Overshill. She missed John too. How was he without her and Matty to look after him? She hoped Ma was struggling with John’s care and keeping up with all the chores. It would serve her right for treating Catherine like she had. And as for Pa, she was angry at him for blaming her and Matty for the loss of the tenancy. Ultimately, Wanstall Farm had meant more to him than his own flesh and blood.
The next morning, the sound of a bell jolted her out of sleep.
‘No lazing abed.’ The sound of Mrs Coates’s shrill voice reminded her where she was.
She dragged herself up and dressed in the uniform she’d been given the day before. As she pulled on her stockings, she became aware of another figure who was shrouded in shadow in the alcove beside the fireplace.
‘Good morning,’ she said, unsure whether she should speak or not.
‘Well, I never did. It is indeed a good mornin’, especially now that I have the chance to reacquaint myself with Miss Rook.’ The figure stepped into the light. The face was familiar, older and more careworn, but otherwise the same.
‘Drusilla?’ Memories came flooding back: the harvests at the farm, the night of the rick fire and the confrontation in the woods.
Catherine felt sick as the former maid went on, ‘You’ve been brought down a peg or two. Who would have thought that you of all people would end up pickin’ oakum like the rest of us?’ She cackled like a witch. ‘This is the answer to all my prayers, a little bird released from her gilded cage, all a-flutter and in need of a friend.’
‘The name is Mrs Matthews,’ Catherine said firmly.
Drusilla touched the side of her nose. ‘I see how it is. It’s all right. I’ll help you keep your secrets.’
But it would be at a price, Catherine thought.
‘I shan’t be staying here long,’ she said.
‘We’ll see. There’s many a pauper who’s said that. You owe me, and one day I’ll take what I’m due.’
‘Why do you blame me for your misfortune?’
‘I blame you for lettin’ on that those sleepin’ drops were from the bureau at the farm, not ones Jervis had got for me, so I lost my position.’
‘You’d have lost it anyway.’
‘That’s your opinion. And it’s Matty’s fault Jervis got done for murder. If he hadn’t reached for the gun, it would never have gone off.’
‘Matty was trying to stop him,’ Catherine said. ‘He went to fetch Jervis away from Sir William.’
‘That’s what he led you to believe.’ Drusilla leaned close to her so she could see every scar and pockmark on her face. ‘He was part of it. He was loyal to the ca
use.’
‘That isn’t true. He wanted to end the suffering of the poor, but not by unlawful or violent means.’
‘You think what you like. My dear Jervis is a hero. He was one of the few brave enow to fight. You saw what it was like for people like Mrs North left impoverished by the death of her husband, and the labourers laid off in favour of them threshin’ machines. You saw how they struggled, yet you were content to stand by and do nothin’.’
‘We did what we could,’ Catherine said, feeling a stab of guilt that she hadn’t done more. ‘The Rooks were never wealthy. Pa paid rent to the squire and tithes to the parish. We never had much to spare, and now we have nothing. You might not know, but Squire Temple has evicted the family from the farm.’ She broke off when she saw Mrs Coates approaching.
‘Mrs Matthews, there you are. I see that you’re back with us, Mrs Carter,’ she said a little sharply.
‘I found myself down on my luck after a couple of weeks outside, and thought it was time to renew our acquaintance.’
‘I’ll be watching out for you this time,’ Mrs Coates said.
Drusilla smirked. ‘You do that, dearie. Just remember though that there’s none so blind that cannot see.’
What did she mean? Catherine wondered as Mrs Coates retreated. She decided that it was better not to ask. She had no wish to invite trouble.
‘To think that you’ve been brought down to this, and with a babe on the way,’ her companion said. ‘How does your ma face that snooty vicar’s wife when she comes to call?’ She mimicked Ma’s voice. ‘Mrs Browning, I expect you know that we have a daughter – who isn’t really our daughter – in the Union over at Faversham. Oh, Mrs Browning, you’ve gone quite pale.’
‘Drusilla, I don’t want to hear any more of this.’
‘What about your pa? What does he think of his little miss perfect now? Oh, just think of all the times I did your laundry at the farm. Perhaps you’ll end up in the laundry here washin’ my dirty linen.’ She wiped a dab of porridge from her chin. ‘I’d call that poetical justice.’