Eppie

by Robertson, Janice

  Wakelin looked anxiously at his mother’s defeated, weary expression, the end of everything she had ever known bitterly reflected in her eyes. ‘There’s no softness in du Quesne,’ he said blankly. ‘He means what he says, Ma. We have to go.’

  With a deep sigh, she spoke almost to herself. ‘Whatever shall we do? Where will we go? I’ve never travelled further than Litcombe. I’m scared.’

  ‘I know, Ma, but I’ll be there to look after you and the girls. Pa always got mad with me for being a tough-head. Now I’ll need all my guts to tackle what’s out there. What d’ya say, Eppie? We gonna stick together, as a family?’ He drew them close, so that they rested with their arms about one another. Quietness fell upon them like a warm, soft cloak.

  A sense of deadness pressed upon Eppie and Martha as they traipsed to and fro, shawls draped over their heads, stowing as much as they could beneath the oilcloth on the cart. At least the torrential rain had eased off.

  The dresser looked strange, empty of tankards and platters. From its nail beside the door, Martha fetched Gillow’s felt hat with its magpie feathers. Summoning all her willpower, she kept cheerful for the girls’ sakes, chattering as if they were simply going out for a jaunt. ‘The only things I’m not sad to leave are the larder beetles.’

  Lottie was curled in Gillow’s armchair.

  ‘This is foolish,’ Martha said, seeing Lottie yawn. ‘I should be tucking you into bed.’

  Samuel picked up a blanket. ‘She’ll want something extra around her, it’s a miserable night.’

  Eppie reached for Dawkin’s basket containing his collection of pebbles, which she kept on the shelf above the chimney beam. She pictured him paddling along the stream and recalled his ecstatic face upon discovering each stone: one the blue of speedwell petals, one that glittered gold, another imprinted with a shell creature. Carefully, she stowed it in the blanket chest, alongside clothes and other things much thought of.

  Wakelin lumbered up the path with an armful of tools. ‘Why’ve you tethered that donkey to the cart?’

  ‘I’m not leaving Dusty.’

  ‘If we take her, we take her for meat, like the hogs.’

  ‘I’ll look after Dusty if you like,’ Tom offered. ‘She’ll be a friend for Dodgy and now she’s discovered a taste for beer, I’ll see she don’t go short.’

  Wakelin slapped up the tail of the cart. His final task was to light the cart lamp. ‘Everyone in.’

  With the heel of her boot, Eppie kicked Gabriel’s books, carefully sewn into soft leather, beneath the seat to protect them from the rain. Here, Tipsy was lodged in a basket, beside those containing chicken and geese.

  ‘Where’s Ed?’ Wakelin asked, glancing around. ‘He was gonna see me off.’

  ‘I had to send him on an urgent errand,’ Samuel apologised. In his hands he held Gillow’s accordion, which Martha had given him as a keepsake.

  Taking a last lingering look at the cottage, Eppie saw it as an image frozen in time. Upon everything, the willow with her swing, the rows of potato leaves and fruit bushes, was a hypnotic quietude as though they existed in another world.

  ‘Wait, I forgot to say goodbye!’ She leapt from the cart.

  ‘Eppie!’ Wakelin yelled. ‘We’ve got no time!’

  She dashed to the sacred plot of earth beside the stream. The stone urn she had set there had tumbled in the storm, the harebells battered by the rain. ‘I’m sorry Twiss; I won’t be able to bring you flowers no more.’ A sense of utter desolation swept over her and she wept, utterly abandoned in grief.

  ‘Eppie! It’s well past nightfall. We can’t hang about or du Quesne will do for us.’

  Samuel kissed Martha and the girls a fond farewell. ‘Send word when you’re settled,’ he murmured in a dry tone of melancholy.

  Wheels rumbled. The load swayed. Crockery rattled. The horse’s head rose and fell rhythmically.

  ‘Poor Jenny, this is far too much for her to pull,’ Martha fretted.

  ‘We’ll take it easy, Ma,’ Wakelin reassured her. ‘Only a few miles a day.’

  Puddles on the lane shone in the lamplight.

  The goat struggled against the holding rope, the brass bell around its neck tinkling.

  ‘Eppie, you’ll have to walk behind,’ Wakelin said exhaustedly. ‘Them beasts will never come along unless ya keep proddin’ ‘em.’

  ‘Do I have to? I’m tired.’

  ‘Ain’t we all?’

  Glumly pacing behind the cart, she listened to water racing in the ditch, recalling the time when Samuel’s cart had overturned. She thought about Talia and the magical garden. It was funny how things changed. There was a time when Talia’s haunting seemed unreal. She had come to accept the ghost’s presence. Now this journey seemed unreal.

  Overwhelmed by the desire for sleep, she trudged past the church.

  Somewhere nearby a horse snorted.

  In an instant she was alert, fearful. Was it someone sent by du Quesne because they were late leaving? Were they going to be dragged off to jail?

  The bleak wind whipped and moaned around the gravestones. Two people on horseback lay in wait beside the lychgate.

  Recognising them, Eppie raced forward, elated. ‘I thought I’d never see you again!’

  Gabriel dismounted, painfully. ‘Edmund came to tell Kizzie that you were about to leave. She let me know. Hannah has rustled up some provisions for you: honey cake and a joint of venison.’

  Edmund led his horse over to where Wakelin stood.

  Gabriel approached Martha. ‘I am sorry about what happened to your husband, truly I am. He was a fine, upstanding man.’ Mournfully, he glanced back to where Eppie stood, raiding his saddlebags. ‘None of this should have come about.’

  Despite the warmth of her mantle, Martha shivered. ‘You know, don’t you?’ she forced herself to say.

  Gazing into her eyes, Gabriel felt as if his heart was being wrenched from his body. He managed the glimmer of a smile. ‘I think we have an understanding, you and I.’

  ‘I never meant for it to happen,’ she said desperately. ‘I can see no way out of it.’

  ‘Sometimes things are best left as they are. Take care of her?’

  ‘I love her,’ she replied so vehemently that he was filled with a desire to run away, to share in her motherly love. He stepped back.

  Acutely mindful of Wakelin’s mood of despondency, Gabriel trod towards him and offered him a handshake in friendship. In the man’s earnest eyes, as he clutched his hand, Gabriel saw the respect Wakelin felt for him saving his life.

  Too distressed to hang around, Wakelin set the cart into motion.

  Edmund doffed his hat to Martha and made his way homeward.

  Eppie and Gabriel stood together, darkness circling around them, dead leaves swirling about their feet.

  Delicately, he fingered the edge of her bonnet. ‘Does the burn cause you much discomfort?’

  ‘In the cornfield, with the sun, the skin around my bit of ear what’s left felt horribly tight and achy. I’m thankful mam stopped the flames before they set all of my hair on fire.’

  He rested his hands upon her shoulders, his warm breath touching her tenderly on her forehead. ‘Will you be all right?’

  ‘I don’t know. Where I ought to be there’s nothing. I feel like a no-one.’ She glanced up the lane, to unknown places. ‘Out there another world waits for me. I want none of it.’ She gulped, fighting to hold back tears, unsuccessfully. ‘All I want is to go home.’

  Wakelin’s irritated voice came from a distance. ‘Eppie! Stop shilly-shallying! You’ll get left behind.’

  ‘Remember me?’ Gabriel asked.

  ‘Always.’ Blinking through her tears, she reluctantly took a few steps away from him.

  ‘Eppie!’ Wakelin bellowed.

  ‘All right! I’m coming!’ Turning, she fled after the glimmer of the lantern swinging on the cart, her only guide into the unknown.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  THE PITS

&
nbsp; Jenny lay on the ground, her head on Eppie’s lap. Travelling had been slow with only a short passage possible each day. For miles the horse had clumped valiantly along. The flight had proved too much.

  Speaking soothingly, Eppie stroked Jenny’s hard cheek.

  The horse’s lashes were flat and gummy. Her nostrils blew gently and irregularly.

  ‘It’d be kindest to put her out of her misery,’ Wakelin said. ‘I’ll slit her throat.’ He unsheathed his knife.

  Concern for the horse made Eppie scowl anxiously. ‘She might recover if we bought her some medicine.’

  ‘Don’t be a sap head. She’s dying.’

  Eppie’s eyes filled with tears. ‘No!’

  Wakelin tugged Eppie to her feet. As he did, the horse’s head lolled heavily away.

  Martha shared Eppie’s relief at the horse’s natural demise. ‘It’s a blessing she’s gone from us.’

  ‘Yur,’ Wakelin retorted, ‘such a blessing that now we ain’t got no way o’ shiftin’ our stuff. I’ll have summat to eat, and then we’d better take what we can and get walking.’

  ‘What about Jenny?’ Eppie asked.

  ‘What about ‘er?’ Wakelin rifled a wicker basket and drew out a hunk of stale bread.

  ‘We can’t leave her, not like this.’

  ‘It’d be sad,’ Martha agreed.

  Eppie crouched over Jenny and kissed the velvety diamond between her eyes. ‘Can’t we bury her? Wakelin?’

  ‘We can’t do nuffin.’

  She was incensed by his lack of sensitivity. ‘What if it was you lying here? Would you want someone to come along and chop you up for meat, or crows to peck out your eyes?’

  Weakened after his ordeal with Thurstan, he felt depressed in spirits. He thumped the cart. ‘Ain’t we got enough troubles without making more? We’re stuck in the middle of nowhere. We have to mog on and find work afore we starve.’

  ‘I know all that, so the sooner she’s buried the better.’ Tying a knot in the hem of her frock, she drove in the ditching shovel. Being heavy, sticky clay it was harder going than she imagined.

  Taking a respite, she gazed back up the winding stretch of road along which they had journeyed yesterday. Sheep grazed on the rough grassland.

  Seeing her shiver, a fine web of dampness clinging to her cloak, Wakelin was filled with remorse at his sharp words and came to lend a hand.

  The next task was to choose what to take before they concealed the cart behind a thicket of osier. In the end they decided that, apart from Bellringer, the pigs, and the little food they had, everything had to be left, briefly.

  The further they trudged, Tipsy’s slight weight in the basket that Eppie carried seemed to grow heavier.

  ‘We can’t be far from Malstowe,’ Wakelin said. ‘I went there once with Ezra when we were cropping.’

  Taking a breather, they gazed upon hundreds of marl pits, each having a steep and a gentle slope, some partially filled with water. Men were digging the fertilizer that would be ploughed into the land to bulk up sandy soil. Ponies hauled barrows, chains rattled.

  ‘There might be work for me here.’

  Shortly afterwards, he emerged from the Lord of the Pit’s shack. ‘He can only take me on for a while; the ground will soon be too frozen to dig.’

  Nearby, a marler, leaning upon the handle of his spade, spattered phlegm onto the earth. By the mean look in his eyes, Eppie knew he recognised her.

  She gripped Martha’s arm. ‘We can’t stay here. It’s Jaggery.’

  Tossing a shovel upon his shoulder, Wakelin marched off, whistling.

  Eppie’s heart sank.

  Later that evening, riding a borrowed horse, Wakelin went to collect the cart.

  Sitting around the campfire with the marlers and their families, Eppie and Martha impatiently awaited his return.

  Cold light from the stars shone fitfully through scurrying clouds.

  Wakelin stormed out of the darkness. ‘You’re a dunderhead, Eppie. I knew we shun’t have hung around, burying Jenny. Some stinker’s made off with all our stuff, the cart an’ all.’

  Eppie sank her head between her knees in dismay.

  ‘We had to leave the cart a while whether or not we buried Jenny,’ Martha reasoned. ‘But how awful, now we have nothing.’

  Harkening the torment in her mother’s voice, Lottie burst into tears.

  Martha made an effort to appear cheerful. ‘Never mind, I suppose we’ll have to muddle on, as usual.’

  Conscious of the workers’ inquisitive glances, they turned in for the night, to the hut shared with several other families.

  For weeks, Wakelin laboured in the pits. Martha and Eppie found work doing odd jobs at nearby farms, leaving Lottie to be cared for by one of the pit women.

  To Eppie’s dismay, Wakelin counted Jaggery as one of his friends and, each evening, they would head off to a village tavern.

  On the final day, despite it being a murky November morning with steady drizzle, town-folk from Malstowe flocked to watch the bull baiting.

  Children gave a stirring cry, having spotted the beast, tethered behind a butcher’s wagon, trotting ungainly towards its place of torture.

  The Bearward led the bull into the bottom of the deepest pit where a stake had been specially erected. A long chain secured around the roots of its horns confined the beast. At the top of the slope the owners of bulldogs and mastiffs waited, each holding back their eager dog by its collar.

  Wakelin and Jaggery strolled along the line of dogs arguing, in friendly banter, about which was the most likely to win bets. Wakelin slopped ale in his eagerness.

  Although Eppie had no intention of witnessing the baiting to its savage end, she could not suppress her sense of curiosity as to what was taking place, and joined the throng.

  Trumpeting filled the air, heralding the start of action.

  Trampled ground rapidly turned to sludge as dog and bull fought. Gripping the bull’s nose, the dog held on with its clenched teeth. The bull, for its part, endeavoured to gore the dog or toss it out of the way, this being no easy feat with its horns locked into a wooden sheath.

  Stood at the top of the pit, the crowd laughed and jeered and gave loud, rough cries of encouragement.

  Gleefully, the butcher told those around him, ‘After it’s slaughtered that bull will fetch me a packet; meat always tastes tender after baiting.’

  Eppie could not imagine why. Nor could she make up her mind as to which looked the more ferocious: the bull, dogs or men? She walked away, sickened.

  ‘Have you seen Wakelin?’ Martha asked, pacing towards her, Lottie in her arms.

  ‘He’s watching.’

  ‘I hope he has more sense than to risk any of our money.’

  Ambling away, they peered at produce for sale in wagons and whiled away the time in a tent, eating hot pies and sipping steaming cups of tea.

  Revolted by the depravity of the scene, Eppie wished the heated baying of the mob would cease, for the suffering to be over. Soon enough, it was.

  ‘Wakelin!’ Martha shrilled, setting eyes on him.

  He half-turned to flee, an odd blend of horror and humility written upon his flushed face.

  Too clearly, she saw the worst had happened. Without waiting for him to utter a word, she scolded, ‘How could you?’ There was such despair in her voice that it frightened Eppie, and set Lottie to crying. ‘I trusted you.’

  ‘Ah, stop raging at me.’

  Martha picked her way through the exodus, pursuing him. ‘How much have you lost?’

  Eppie remembered du Quesne’s coin and fetched it out of her pocket.

  ‘What ew got?’ Lottie asked, placing her fingers around Eppie’s wrist.

  ‘I could give this to mam. Only it ain’t mine to give.’

  The guinea was snatched out of her hand by a filthy-nailed hand. Eppie shrieked in alarm.

  Jaggery spat on the coin and rubbed it dry on his waistcoat. ‘Where ya got this from?’

  Eppie was
loath to talk to this despicable man, though she could not refrain from honesty. ‘Thurstan du Quesne gave some money to his uncle at the pumping mill. Ranger hooved it into the ground. I was gonna give it back.’

  ‘Was ya?’ He held the coin high, squinting closely at it. ‘So, how come you’ve still got it?’ He guffawed, seeing her stern, troubled expression. ‘I’ll do you a favour and tek it off ya. That’ll save me the trouble o’ reporting you to the Thief-Taker General at Malstowe jail.’

  Martha hastened to Eppie’s side like an irate chicken without a head. ‘How weak-willed can you get? His excuse is that the other men led him on to chance our money.’ Seeing Jaggery limp away, tossing the gold guinea in the air, she added, ‘It’s a pity Wakelin didn’t have his luck.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  ROTTEN MEAT AND SOGGY CABBAGE

  A watery sun rose above the horizon as the marlers broke camp.

  Steadfastly marching, it was not long before the Dunham’s came upon the poorhouse, standing in a remote setting. Originally used as a plague house, where people suffering from leprosy were isolated from the healthy population, the building looked bleak and exposed, catching the full blast of the icy wind that tugged Eppie’s cloak.

  Before an arched portico, men loaded a wagon with mops, brushes, woven baskets and candles, all made by the inmates, ready to be sold at the market.

  Eppie gripped the iron railings and scanned the barred windows, hoping against hope that she might see Betsy. The place seemed as dead as she felt.

  Treading the steep road into Malstowe, Eppie’s step lightened. The air smelt refreshing, saturated with the dampness of fallen leaves. It filled her with optimism. ‘This is like Copper Piece Wood.’

  A river wound its way down the wooded escarpment, thundering in cataracts and splashing mossy branches. Soaring from its surging swell, the ashen-grey stone wall of a mill rose like the elevation of an imposing bastille. Behind rows of small-paned windows, machines rattled and clanked. A waterwheel, clamped to the side of the mill, turned with a tremendous grinding and creaking, shaking off frills of sparkling water.