Eppie

by Robertson, Janice

  ‘Don’t you go being; her heart is back in Ireland.’

  ‘Fluff and dust,’ Mr Grimley muttered mournfully. ‘They wind around the lungs and poison the workers. Many are the times that I have advised his lordship to fit a filter system. Does he listen?’

  ‘It ain’t right, Mr Grimley,’ Eppie said passionately. ‘Why did Mrs Eibhlin have to suffer like she did? She was a good woman. She had so much pain and never complained of it. Lord du Quesne treats us like we’re of lesser importance than him when, before God, we’re equal. Why can’t he understand that the poor have feelings? If workers are sick or injured he throws us onto the streets. We’re forgotten and left to die. Why don’t he care, Mr Grimley? Why?’

  Staring into her blue eyes, huge and hollow with misery, he answered gravely, ‘Yes, Eppie. Why?’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  PILFERING

  Though Eppie’s spirits rose whilst attending the Christmas Day church service, that afternoon they sank.

  Lying in their beds to keep warm, the children were scarcely aware of Bellringer nibbling their blankets. Martha stood on the threshold, her eyes blank, staring into nothingness. A few remaining chunks of coal lay scattered beside the cold cooking pot. She lacked the energy and enthusiasm to light the fire or ward off starving rats that sheltered in the cellar.

  Striding in, snow thick upon his boots, Tobias murmured a greeting to Martha.

  Eppie’s pleasure at seeing him was dashed when she saw Jaggery in tow. Though she knew Wakelin and Tobias regularly drank with him, she hoped never to set eyes upon the man again.

  The canal iced over for miles, steersmen had abandoned their boats in preference for cosy sojourns at taverns. Leaping at this opportunity, thieves were banding together, pilfering liquor and other goods from stranded boats. Finagle disposed of the stolen items and made pay-outs to gang members.

  An empty bottle of ale in his hand, Wakelin lay face down on his sack.

  Tobias approached. ‘Thought you was coming with us?’

  Wakelin glanced up, glazed-eyed. ‘Huh?’

  ‘There are a couple of boats we’ve got it in mind to do,’ Jaggery said. ‘The steersmen have left dogs on board. We need an extra man to muzzle ‘em. You game?’

  ‘Yur, yur.’ Struggling against his stupor, he stumbled to his feet.

  ‘Do you have to keep stealing, Wakelin?’ Martha remonstrated. ‘There must be a better way?’

  ‘You wanna be trapped in this cellar forever?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Then unless we all wanna sell our teeth, not that any of us have got any what ain’t in a rotten state, I’ve gotta go stealing, an’t I? Getting money’s the only way we’ll be able to dig ourselves outta this hole.’

  ‘You might get caught. What then? Where will I be without you?’

  ‘Never fear, Mrs Dunham,’ Jaggery said. ‘When it comes ta thieving, there’s none better than Wake.’

  Wakelin’s thick lips protruded from his sleep-satiated face. ‘S’right. Jag sez am good at it.’

  Crispin Cornell had been murdered in his bed a few days ago. A new Thief-Taker General ruled in his stead: Thurstan du Quesne.

  ‘It makes no sense,’ Martha went on. ‘Surely knowing Thurstan might catch you is all the more reason not to go thieving?’

  ‘All the more reason to go, don’t ya mean? It’s my way o’ showing I’m better than that scum. He’ll never catch me.’

  A few days later, the weather being sufficiently warmer, Eibhlin was buried in that part of the graveyard reserved for paupers.

  Even though there was no work, none of them felt happy. Fur kicked pebbles as they headed home along the towpath. Coline had hardly said a word since the death of her mother. Lottie sobbed because she had an earache. Wakelin was annoyed because they had been forced to dig into their savings. Added to this, he had nearly being caught pilfering. They were all hungry.

  Martha was exasperated with their stock of food acquired from the truck store. ‘It’s almost impossible to make anything with Mr Loomp’s pea-flour,’ she said as they approached the cellar. When she had fried the oat biscuits that morning they had crumbled like dry porridge. ‘I so wanted you to have something nice to eat after the funeral.’

  Wakelin was the first to spot the cellar door wide open. ‘That’s all I need. ‘em wretched tinkers are back. I wonder where they’ve been hiding all Christmas.’

  Fur picked up a dead sparrow from a dirty puddle of thawing snow.

  Eppie guessed from his expression what he was thinking. ‘You can’t be serious?’

  ‘You’d get more nourishment from boiling a flea,’ Wakelin said disparagingly.

  Trudging indoors, Martha stood as though transfixed, her fingers fanned across her mouth in consternation. ‘The frying pan? Stew pot? Kettle? Where’ve they went?’

  Eppie scanned the cellar. ‘Bellringer?’

  A knife had sliced the tethering rope where they had left the goat tied to the grating in the wall.

  The junk heap had gone.

  ‘They’ve cleared out,’ Wakelin cried. ‘Taken what little we had with ‘em.’

  ‘The kettle was on credit from the truck store,’ Martha said. ‘We’ll be months paying Mr Loomp back, and all for nothing.’

  Lottie screamed. ‘Ow, ow!’

  ‘Fiends!’ Grabbing a chair, Wakelin smashed it against the wall and stamped upon it until the timbers splintered.

  ‘Wakelin!’ Martha cried, aghast. ‘Whatever are you doing?’

  ‘Waz it look like?’ With his bare hands he ripped out the worm-eaten doorframe. ‘You want dry wood? You’ve got it.’

  ‘Wakelin, stop! This is senseless!’

  Sweating with the effort, he went in search of anything combustible. ‘I could kill ‘em tinkers, Ma. Why din’t ya let me at ‘em afore?’

  The children watched in bewilderment and trepidation as the pile of firewood grew. Seeing him discard his jerkin, inadvertently stamping upon it, Eppie snatched it out of his way.

  He wrenched down boards which had been nailed to the ceiling to stop the plaster from disintegrating. ‘I’m sick to death of this place. Weeks we’ve had to put up with stinking wet wood. No more, I tell ya. I only wish there was summat good to eat. The only meat we get is eelworms flapping in Loomp’s ‘taties.’

  ‘If you weren’t eternally guzzling and soaking on gin, and getting fined for it, we’d be able to save more,’ Martha berated him.

  Fur peered in the gap between the floor timbers that Wakelin had ripped up. ‘Hey, come and look at this, there’s a lake under the cellar.’

  ‘Don’t go blaming me for it!’ Wakelin yelled carelessly. He stared fiercely at his mother. ‘If anyone drains our savings it’s Eppie. Hardly a week goes by when she isn’t fined for her lazy ways, or for talking back to Crompton.’

  ‘Don’t call Eppie lazy! She’s always under the mules and so tired.’

  Fur dropped in a nail. ‘It must be at least two feet deep. I wonder if there are any fish down there.’

  Martha grabbed Wakelin by the elbow. ‘We must tell her!’

  Coline knelt beside her brother. ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘This pretence has to end!’ Martha flashed. ‘Eppie keeps going on, making out she’s up to the work. She can’t take much more. Look at her; can’t you see it in her eyes?’

  Frightened and infuriated by his mother’s words, Wakelin shouted at the children. ‘Get out! Out!’

  Startled by the man’s ferocity, Coline and Fur dashed past the dangling remains of the door and were lost down the street.

  ‘How long do you think it’ll be before Eppie has an accident?’ Martha asked. ‘If she died it’d be like we killed her, you and me, when she needn’t be at the mill at all.’

  ‘Why needn’t I be at the mill?’ Eppie asked. ‘What are you talking about?’

  Wakelin turned on Eppie, ‘I said OUT!’

  To save her skin she ran, but only as far as the steps. Sitting b
ack on her heels, peering through the brick grating, she eavesdropped.

  ‘Living the wretched way we do any one of us might drop dead tomorrow,’ Martha said. ‘I could even now, the way I feel. If I wasn’t around I couldn’t bear to think of Eppie slaving when she could be free.’

  ‘If you was dead it wouldn’t matter what ya thought,’ he said glibly, ripping up another floorboard.

  ‘So clever you are! Mr Grimley told Eppie that Gabriel lives in London. She could write to him. He’d send money for her passage.’

  Stamping on a tea chest, a wild light flared in his eyes. ‘I’m tellin’ ya, Ma, if Eppie finds out you’re dead! I’m dead! Is that what you want?’

  Born of the air the white robin flew to the jerkin in Eppie’s hands and pecked frantically at the pocket beneath the rope belt.

  ‘Talia? What is it?’ Eppie whispered. ‘What are you doing?’

  The bird poked its head inside the pocket as though looking for something.

  ‘You want me to look inside, is that it?’ The thought repulsed her somewhat; the last time she had looked inside one of Wakelin’s pockets, wondering at the bulge, she had fetched out rancid lumps of fatty belly pork. Still, to humour Talia, she plucked up courage.

  Withdrawing the gold locket an impenetrable curtain that Eppie never knew existed was whisked away before her.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  RULE TWENTY-ONE

  Mr Leather alerted to Wakelin’s unscrupulous activities by a snooping neighbour, they found themselves thrown onto the streets.

  Martha was terrified of spending the night in some wrecked house, where she imagined herself and the children being attacked. Coming to sleep beneath Bridge House was her idea, though she quickly regretted it.

  Reaching the driest boulders they settled as best they could. At least they were out of the rain, which streamed like never-ending frost-candles. Rats scurried over rocks and up stone pillars stabilised with nets of pebble infill. From thence they scurried beneath the bridge and gained entry to the house. Overhead a bottle smashed.

  ‘Hey, Fur, we’ve struck gold,’ Wakelin cried. ‘I’ll give ya a leg up.’

  Fur stuck his head out of his blanket. ‘What for?’ he asked gloomily.

  ‘Up there must be Grimley’s cellar.’ Wakelin dragged his friend to his feet and bent over whilst Fur scrambled onto his shoulders. ‘You’re as light as a thatching spar. See where ‘em rats is getting in?’

  Icy spray gusting onto Eppie’s face, she stared at the rocks, fearful that Fur might fall.

  Fur disappeared through the hole.

  ‘See o’t?’

  ‘Not a leprechaun.’

  ‘Feel your way around. There must be summat worth having.’

  A few thuds, a clank of glass.

  ‘Here, take these,’ Fur said. ‘I can’t see what they are. Where are ya?’

  Rotten splinters sprinkled upon Wakelin’s upturned face. He spat them out.

  ‘Wakelin, do you have to keep stealing?’ Martha protested. ‘Now you’re getting Fur involved. Whatever would Eibhlin have thought?’

  ‘Chuck ‘em,’ Wakelin hissed. He caught the first bottle. Losing his footing in reaching for the next, it smashed onto rocks. He swore loudly as another bottle slapped into the river with a hollow plop.

  ‘Careful!’ Fur cried.

  ‘Shurrup, ya fool. Someone’ll hear ya.’

  ‘Who’s there?’ a woman nervously shrilled above their heads.

  Fur leapt into Wakelin’s arms.

  Lantern-light flickered in the draughty cellar.

  Relieved at not being caught, Wakelin and Fur tittered.

  ‘Is somebody down here?’

  ‘What is it, Priscilla?’ a girl asked, her voice wavering anxiously.

  ‘I don’t know, Miss Rowan. I thought I heard a noise.’

  Lantern rays picked out the hole. Everyone sheltering beneath the bridge hastily concealed themselves with their grey blankets to make them blend in with the rocks.

  ‘Will you take a look at that?’ Priscilla said. ‘Heed my words, one day soon this entire house will tumble into the river.’ She retraced her steps. ‘I’ll get Loafer in tomorrow to sort out the rats.’

  Joyful at his triumph, Wakelin smashed a bottle top on rocks and slopped the liquor down his throat. ‘Madeira! Anyone else wanna guzzle? Coline? It’ll keep out the cold.’

  Eppie was glad he was happy. Shivering, she lay down on the boulder and, using the edge of her shawl as a makeshift pillow, drifted into an uncomfortable state of sleepiness that was not true slumber.

  Not long after, Wakelin awakened her, mumbling in that sluggish, drunken tone she had become accustomed to. ‘Zit?’ Loudly, desperately, ‘S’con.’

  ‘What’s gone?’ she muttered, groggy with sleep.

  ‘Whizz it?’

  ‘Have the tinkers stolen something from you?’

  He would not say. All he knew was that the locket was missing. He had been afraid to sell it in case someone recognised Talia’s portrait and he was arrested for stealing the locket. Besides, it raised his spirits to gaze upon Talia’s handsome face. In a stupor, he groped his way across the boulders on his hands and knees.

  ‘Where are you going?’ his mother whispered.

  ‘I gorra go look fer it.’

  Not wishing to be away from his friend, Fur stumbled after him.

  ‘I think Wakelin was missing this,’ Eppie said, a short while after they had gone.

  Martha took the offered locket. ‘How did you get this?’

  ‘Wakelin must’ve stolen it from Gabriel after they fought in the cornfield. I’ve always wondered why Gabriel cares so much about me that he wanted to fight Wakelin. Why do you think it is?’

  ‘You know Wakelin’s never been fond of the du Quesnes.’

  ‘That’s no proper answer. Anyway, Gabriel’s never done anything unkind to Wakelin, not like Thurstan. And why do you think Talia haunts me?’

  ‘Talia? Whatever can you mean?’

  ‘She’s here now, sitting on that rock behind you.’

  ‘Here?’ Consumed by a panicky awareness of a silent, intense presence, Martha wheeled around. She saw only the racing waters, swirling deep and black around boulders.

  ‘She’s been with me for years. If it hadn’t been for Talia warning me, I’d never have realised something was wrong when our cottage flooded. You’d have drowned. Even when I can’t see her I know she’s around. I feel her frock brush against my fingers or the tickle of her hair on my face. She’s like a cobweb, always there, only I don’t see her until she’s frosted over. Why do you think she comes, Mam? Why to me?’

  ‘I can’t say, Eppie. I can’t.’

  Eppie felt sure that Martha was holding something back from her. ‘Can’t? Or won’t?’

  Martha tried to quell the shaking in her voice. ‘Snatch some sleep, else we’ll all be good for nowt tomorrow.’

  The bell tolled. The mill wheel whirled for the first time in weeks, water and spume smashing about it.

  Martha stumbled to her feet. ‘I’ll rush on with Lottie to the apprentice house. Hurry you two.’

  Miserable and damp, Eppie and Coline stretched their stiff, aching bodies. ‘At least we’ll be out of the bitter air,’ Eppie said. Grabbing their few belongings, they picked their way across the rocks.

  Robert du Quesne had spent the night at The Wolf and Child. ‘Confound that waterwheel,’ he said as Crumpton let him into the yard. ‘What I need is steam, then the working of the mill will not always be at the mercy of the weather.’ He saw Eppie about to step into the yard. ‘Use your time-piece, Crumpton. That’ll teach the workers a lesson.’

  The gates slammed to with an ominous clang, leaving Eppie and Coline gazing into the yard from the outside. Eppie had heard from Eibhlin about Crumpton’s cunning practice of altering his watch to make it appear that the mill hands were late. Feet were heard shuffling behind the girls as more workers arrived.

  ‘You’re all lat
e,’ Crumpton said. ‘Longbotham, you about?’

  The clerk emerged from the lantern-lit office. Through the open door, Eppie glimpsed the manager seated at his desk, a perturbed look upon his face as du Quesne strode agitatedly before the desk, no doubt grumbling about the inefficiency of waterpower to run the machines.

  ‘Take this lot’s names,’ Crumpton ordered. ‘Three minutes late. Dock each an hour’s wage.’ He headed into the mill. ‘Fine any other latecomers half a day’s wage.’

  Eppie scarcely had time to throw off her shawl before she was back at the hated, humdrum work. Dust and fibres from spinning frames constantly blew under the cage of roving threads where she and Coline swept the floor with wicker switches.

  When Wakelin and Fur arrived two hours later and discovered the gates locked it was obvious what du Quesne was about. ‘We’ll go the back way,’ Wakelin said cunningly.

  Doubled over, they scurried towards the side of the mill. The wall of the building soared from the river bank. Freezing spray catapulted from the waterwheel, dampening their backs, as they stared through a window into the engine room. Conveying the motive power from the shaft to the tireless machines, the engine looked like a massive metal insect scurrying in the same position. Powerful strapping, buckles and wheels beat with a tremendous thundering and rattling.

  Owing to his shock of green-tinted hair, Redgy Dipper, the engine-operator, was frequently the butt of the mill children’s jokes. Sneaking time off work, he was seated in the corner, wedges of bread upon his knees, fishing with a long-pronged fork into a jar labelled Loomp’s Quality Choice Pickled Onions.

  Becoming aware of faces peering at him, his eyes widened in surprise, until they looked as round and shiny as the onions floating in the greenish brine. Flying into a rage, he threw the window wide. Wakelin only just ducked in time. ‘What are you porking at?’ Dipper asked.

  Wakelin heaved himself up, and dropped in. ‘We ain’t climbed up here just to look at you gorging yersen if that’s what yer thinking.’