Pit Bank Wench

by Meg Hutchinson

  Holding the reins in one hand, the other clutching the whip loosely at his side, he listened to the intruder’s approach. The man was either stupid or very inexperienced at what he was about. A cold smile touched the corners of Carver’s mouth. A few minutes of the whip and the fellow would have the kind of lesson that should rectify at least the latter.

  The trees were sparser here, forming a natural clearing. He glanced to each side of him. Should the fellow make a run for it, the horse could easily overtake him. The coppice was not so dense as to prevent that. A few yards ahead, following a faint track that led through the heart of the wood, a figure came into view.

  Holding the animal’s head firm, Carver stared. This was no man poaching his land. Overhead the risen moon filled the clearing with a cool pale light, its silver gilding blonde hair, touching a high-buttoned collar and spilling over dark skirts.

  A woman! Carver sat motionless. A young and pretty woman if the moonlight had not deceived him.

  ‘Good evening.’

  A touch of his heels swinging the horse across her path, Carver touched the stock of his whip to one side of his brow. His sudden appearance had the desired effect. The woman gasped, one hand going to her throat while the other clutched a basket.

  ‘Isn’t it a little late to be gathering herbs?’ He lowered the whip, a slow, deliberate movement meant to catch the eye. ‘That is what you’re in Felton Wood for . . . or is it to carry away a poacher’s ill-gotten gains?’

  ‘I . . . I was not gathering herbs.’

  Emma felt the tightness at her throat and the thumping of her heart against her rib cage, but forced herself to answer calmly. This man was merely passing through the coppice, no doubt taking a shorter route home as she was.

  ‘Oh, then it is a poacher’s trophy you are here to collect!’

  Emma lifted her head, the movement trapping moonbeams in her hair, turning her eyes to silver. Carver felt a quickening low in his stomach. The moonlight had not deceived him, the woman was pretty. Damned pretty. Pretty enough to delay him . . . for a while. His glance quickly scanning each of her hands he noted the absence of a wedding ring. Pity, he thought, a husband could make a useful scapegoat. A pity but hardly a disaster!

  ‘I’m not collecting from any poacher!’ Indignation sharpened her voice as she answered. ‘I am on my way home from visiting a friend. I left a little later than usual so decided to cut through the wood, it takes quite some distance off the journey.’

  ‘I see.’ Carver traced a glance over the length of her. A pretty face, a pleasant voice. And the body beneath those shabby clothes, would that be as appealing?

  ‘And where might this friend live?’ He directed his horse to the right and then to the left, matching Emma’s steps as she tried to pass.

  Indignation retreating before a fresh surge of fear, Emma clutched the basket to her. He had no right to question her but arguing would only serve to lengthen an encounter she wanted over and done with.

  ‘She . . . they live across the heath, over towards the path that links Coppice Bridge to Lea Brook Bridge. Mr and Mrs Paget.’

  He knew the place, a few vermin-ridden houses. They too figured in the project he intended putting to Langton.

  ‘And you?’ Carver leaned forward as the moonlight fell once again on the face turned up to his, and the quickening in his stomach became a jolt of desire. ‘You said you were on your way home.’

  Fear lodging like a solid barrier in her throat, Emma looked at the figure bent forward over his saddle but the moon at his back threw his face into shadow.

  ‘I . . . I live at Doe Bank. My father is Caleb Price.’

  Price! Carver straightened, the tension in his stomach slackening, the heat that had begun to build in his veins as he’d looked into that pretty face becoming cold and dead. The man he had paid to bring him information concerning the girl his brother thought to marry had said she was young and beautiful, with hair the colour of wheat washed in moonlight. Carver had laughed cynically at the man’s over-poetic description but he did not laugh now. The man had been correct in his appraisal, the girl was beautiful and her hair was the colour of wheat washed in moonlight.

  ‘It is Emma, is it not?’ He once more countered her attempt to pass.

  His voice had taken on a cold sound, but in her fear the words barely registered. Clutching her shawl protectively across her, fear drumming in her veins, she stammered, ‘Please, let me pass!’

  Sliding from the saddle, his back still to the pale light, Carver balanced the whip in both hands. ‘Oh, I will, Miss Price – Emma – after I have properly introduced myself. I am Carver Felton, brother of Paul, the man you think to marry.’

  ‘Paul . . . you are Paul’s brother?’ Emma felt her fear fall away. This man was Paul’s brother, she had been silly to be so frightened. He would do her no harm. A smile wreathing her mouth, she looked into the shadowed face. ‘Paul has talked of you.’

  ‘And of you!’ The whip still balanced in his hand, Carver took a step forward, his height throwing her slight figure into shadow.

  ‘I was hoping to meet you.’ Emma dropped a small curtsy.

  ‘And now you have!’ Bringing the whip down hard across the basket he sent it sliding from her arm, at the same time catching her wrist in a grip like steel. ‘Before we part you will know me just as well as you know my brother. Maybe even a little better!’

  Throwing the whip aside he wound his fingers into the neck of her blouse, wrenching the cheap cotton until it split to the waist.

  ‘How well do you know my brother? As well as this?’ Snatching her hard against him he pressed his mouth to hers, biting into the soft flesh of her mouth. Releasing her, he stared for a moment into her shocked face then, the palms of both hands coming down hard on her shoulders, sent her tumbling backward, the suddenness of her fall driving the breath from her body.

  ‘As well as this, Miss Price?’

  Staring down at her, mouth fixed into a cold smile, Carver loosed his clothing, his black eyes holding hers all the while in a hypnotic stare.

  ‘No, don’t!’ Emma tried to twist away as he dropped down beside her. ‘Please . . . let me go.’

  ‘I have said I will.’ Carver stroked one finger across her cheek, the touch of her pale skin reawakening the quickening in the base of his stomach. ‘But after I have introduced myself properly – this being the proper way for a slut like you!’

  Moving like quicksilver he threw her skirts up to her waist, ripping away her bloomers, knees forcing her legs apart as he lifted himself on to her.

  ‘No, no . . . please!’ Emma sobbed, trying to fling him from her, but another blow to the face sent her senses reeling.

  ‘Did you say no to my brother, Miss Price?’ he hissed in the darkness, cold and venomous as a snake. ‘Did you pretend with him as you. are pretending now? Was your long-lost virginity a bribe to lead him on? Did you offer him the dubious delights of your body in the hope of getting him to marry you? Was that the price he was to pay for this?’

  The last word vicious as the pain that seemed to split her body he thrust into her, pushing and driving deeper and deeper until the agony of it enfolded her in a sheet of darkness.

  How long it lasted Emma could not tell. She knew only the pressure of his body on hers, the relentless rhythm, then the relief that sobbed in her when at last he moved away.

  Afraid to move, shock holding her limbs rigid, Emma lay with her eyes closed, praying silently. Let him go now. Please, God, let him go, let him leave!

  Dressed once more, Carver looked down at the figure lying on the ground, moonlight gleaming on limbs naked as he had left them. Reaching for the whip where he had thrown it, he turned towards the horse quietly grazing the tender bark of a tree. Then, hesitating for a brief moment, he reached into the pocket of his silk waistcoat.

  Moonlight sparking from the coin he twisted between thumb and forefinger, he glanced again at the girl he had raped, and laughed, a soft cynical sound that scrape
d the silence.

  ‘Ask him now, Miss Price. Ask my brother to marry you now. And when you do, show him this and tell him I was right. It was too high a price to pay!’

  Bending over her, he slotted the shilling between the lips of her vagina.

  Chapter Three

  Leaving the brougham in the care of a man who shuffled across the yard, one leg dragging painfully after the other, Carver ignored his deferential touch of a dust-blackened cloth cap, striding past him into the mine office.

  ‘Never mind them!’ He waved away the ledgers the startled accounts clerk reached for. ‘Where’s Barlow?’

  Only half listening to the faltering reply, he ordered the overseer to be brought to him.

  It had been a month since his brother had left for Blaydon. It had taken several strongly worded letters to keep him there but Paul had stayed. For how much longer? Not that it really mattered, a few more days and it would be of little consequence. Carver had put the case for the digging of an arm from the Birmingham Canal to link the Topaz mine and those belonging to Langton and other mine owners to the waterway. He had argued that constructing a basin at Plovers Croft would facilitate the transporting of their coal as well as his. Loading and docking facilities for the narrow boats would be of benefit to every coal master from Lea Brook to Ocker Hill and those who chose to use it could be charged accordingly. The venture would pay both ways, he had told them. Their own coal could be moved more quickly and in larger quantities. One narrow boat could shift at least three dozen times the amount of a horse-drawn wagon. And there’d be the revenue from any other mine owners who used the new link. They had seen the practical sense of the idea and agreed that same night that work should start as soon as agreement was reached with the Birmingham Canal Navigation Company to breach their waterway.

  Knocking down those houses at Plovers Croft would have caused Paul to object, he would have been against putting the families out; but what did that matter against the beauty of the plan? The place would be better off without them. Besides, Paul wasn’t here to object. Carver had achieved a great deal in the past month. It was so much easier to get business done when his brother was not around to sermonise, continually throwing a spanner in the works every time a suggestion was made to improve the business.

  Paul . . . Carver stared through the dust-grimed window to where young lads bent double and used their shoulders to push the coal-filled bogies from the pit head and link them to the donkey, the steel cable that hauled them to the loading bank. Paul set too much store by the workers, both in the coal mine and the iron foundries. They should have decent housing and proper schooling for their children, he said. Well, they were living in the 1880s, Carver argued in return. Men were no longer serfs but were free to leave his employ at any time it did not suit them!

  But Paul was not the only one to throw a spanner in the works. Carver smiled inwardly. He had been shown a double portion of Lady Luck’s favour that night a month ago. He had solved two problems, not only that of the canal venture but that of his brother’s proposed marriage. He had taken the Price girl, and not because he wanted her. A shilling would buy him more interesting sport and a better playmate in any tavern in Wednesbury. She had been pretty enough, granted, but her looks had been of no interest to him. His only reason for taking her in that grove had been to prevent his brother from marrying her.

  Carver turned from the window, the smile inside him cold and cynical. After all, even Paul, despite his high-flown ideas, would not want marriage with a woman who had sold herself to his brother. And that was what he would hear, regardless of anything the little slut might tell him. That he, Carver Felton, had lain with her and paid her for her services. She had taken the money he had left, of that there could be no doubt, and thus there’d be no marriage.

  Glancing at the door as it opened, he concealed the smile. He had put an end to the business of the Price girl. There would be no Doe Bank wench marrying into the Felton family!

  Waiting until the clerk withdrew, Carver turned again to the window and asked in a cold impersonal voice, ‘Do we have anyone by the name of Price working here?’

  Barlow’s shoulders visibly relaxed and he loosed the breath anxiety had tight in his chest. Felton was out after some poor bugger, but thank the Lord it wasn’t him! ‘We ’ave the preacher man . . . he be named Price.’

  ‘Where does he live, do you know?’

  Brow creasing as he searched his brain for the answer, Barlow looked at the man he worked for as he turned to face him. Hair black as a crow matched the clipped line of sideburns that outlined a strong jaw, its darkness relieved by two narrow swathes of silver that ran from above each glittering eye like silver horns. The trademark of evil, Barlow thought. The touch of the Devil who always marked his own.

  ‘We ’ave several Prices working here, sir.’

  Barlow winced as Carver released an exasperated breath. Whatever it was this man Price had done it had Felton wound tight as a spring.

  ‘I can get the wages ledger, Mr Felton, the addresses will be there against the names.’

  ‘Ledger!’ Carver crashed his fist on to the table that served as a desk. ‘I haven’t come here to read a bloody book! You should have these things in your head, that’s what I pay you for.’

  ‘Price is a common name, Mr . . .’

  Carver eyed him, slow and easy, threat in every line of his dark-suited figure, lips hardly moving, voice dangerously pleasant.

  ‘I want no excuses Barlow. And I want no overseer who cannot do the job as I expect him to.’

  Sweat gathering in the palms of his hands, the overseer almost felt the tin being shoved into them. Christ what did the man think he was, a bloody file ledger on legs!

  Nervous tension squeezing his throat he coughed, but as those black eyes settled unblinkingly on his own, giving their unspoken message he stammered, ‘There . . . there be a Joby Price working in the long tunnel, he lives up along Dudley Street; then there be Davy Price, he be in the winding house, lives in Potters Lane . . .’

  Barlow coughed again as the toe of Carver’s boot began a measured tapping against the table leg.

  ‘. . . and then there be the preacher man, Caleb Price, he works the donkey engine. You know, Mr Felton, it winds the bogie trucks along the tracks . . . to the loading bank . . .’

  ‘I know what a bloody donkey engine is!’ Carver’s foot ceased its rhythm.

  ‘Yes . . . yes, o’ course you do.’ Barlow swallowed the acid blocking his throat. ‘The preacher man he . . . he lives up along of Doe Bank.’

  ‘Doe Bank!’

  The name was only breathed but it stopped Barlow and he waited, intuition telling this was the man that was sought.

  ‘What do you know of him?’

  ‘I ain’t never had a deal to do with him, sir. I can’t be doing with his spouting the Bible at every turn.’

  Carver’s eyes glittered with suppressed anger. Irritation was plain in his answer.

  ‘That was not what I asked.’

  ‘No, Mr Felton.’ Sweat trickling over his palms and along his fingers the overseer glanced towards the window in an effort to avoid that piercing black stare, but he knew he must face it again. ‘I know he has a wife and family, two wenches but no lads. The eldest must be around eighteen and the other . . . sixteen or so.’

  ‘Names?’

  The curtness of the question brought Barlow’s glance back to his employer.

  ‘Like I says, sir, I ain’t had a lot of dealings with the man so I can’t say gospel like that these names be certain, but I remembers him mentioning two, Carrie and . . .’ he paused ‘. . . Emma. Arrh, that be it, Emma, though I don’t know as whether one or the other be the name of his wife.’

  Emma. Carver felt satisfaction glow in his chest with the warmth of a good brandy. Emma Price of Doe Bank. The man Caleb was her father, he had the right one.

  ‘Will I ’ave them fetched, sir?’

  ‘No,’ Carver answered coolly. ‘That will
not be necessary. The one who works the donkey engine, give him his tin tonight. He’s finished at the Topaz mine.’

  ‘Finished!’ Surprise pulling his straggling brows together, the overseer stared. ‘But why, Mr Felton? I mean, what shall I tell him? I ’ave to give a reason.’

  Carver walked to the door then turned, one dark eyebrow raised. ‘Why is because I say so, and that is reason enough. Tonight, Barlow. See that it’s done!’

  It had been a month . . . a month since Carver Felton had raped her. Emma held the shawl close around her. And in all that time Paul had not come to see her once. But that was not surprising if he knew. His brother must have told him. Yet would he? What man would admit his rape of a brother’s sweetheart? The girl who was to have been his sister-in-law?

  But that would never happen now. Even supposing Paul still loved her, still wanted her for his wife, she could not marry him, could not live so close to Carver Felton, probably seeing on a daily basis the man who had treated her with such heartless contempt.

  Drawing the shawl over her head she pulled it low over her brow and across her cheeks, trying to close out of her range of vision the trees forming the coppice where he had raped her.

  A slut was what he had called her. She would know him as well as she knew his brother, the words implying she had lain with Paul. Then he had left that shilling, paying her as he would pay a whore, and to Carver Felton she was no different. Emma felt disgust and shame rip through her as they did day and night, memories she could not dispel tearing her apart.

  He had stood looking down at her. Clamping one hand across her mouth, Emma stemmed the bile of revulsion that threatened to spill from her lips. He had looked at her, still naked to the waist, then bent over to place that coin in her vagina.

  One shilling! One silver shilling! That was all it had taken to salve his conscience. But it was not enough to buy her forgiveness. Carver Felton would never have enough money to buy that or stave off her revenge.