Beyond the Veil of Tears

by Rita Bradshaw

  Randall, the coachman, shut the door and took his place in the driving seat, lifting the reins and clicking his tongue for the horses to move off. He was frowning. His guts had twisted at the look on his master’s face. It was common knowledge among the staff at the house that Golding had had his young wife put away because it suited him, and to a man they were all heart-sorry for her. The young mistress was no more barmy than he was, Randall thought, and it was plain wicked to have her installed in one of these places. They were worse than the workhouses – and that was saying something.

  He couldn’t work out if the master had heard good news or bad, and he knew better than to enquire. The news would filter down from Wood or Palmer soon enough. But to come out of there looking as pleased as punch wasn’t natural, however you looked at it. But then the master wasn’t natural. Evil swine, he was.

  He guided the horses through the open gates, nodding his thanks to the keeper, who began to shut them immediately they were on the road.

  Yes, evil as the day was long, was Golding. Look at what he’d done to their Toby: taking his eye out because Toby hadn’t fastened his horse’s saddle properly, and the lad only sixteen. Toby would have been scarred worse than he actually was, if it wasn’t for the young mistress sending for the doctor and paying for that expensive ointment, which had cost an arm and a leg. He’d put his brother forward for the position of groom, too, thinking another steady wage would help at home, but he’d regretted it ever since. And Toby wasn’t the only one who bore marks of the master’s temper. Now if it was Golding locked away in the asylum, there’d be plenty cheering their heads off; but no, it was the mistress, and her such a kind lass.

  They say the devil looks after his own, Randall thought, squinting his eyes against the bright sunlight, and Golding was living proof of it. Likely he’d live to a ripe old age and die peacefully in his bed, damn his eyes.

  He clicked his tongue for the horses to begin trotting, his face as grim as his thoughts. He, for one, lived in hope that the master got his just desserts this side of hell, and suffered plenty in the process. Every time he looked at their Toby’s scarred face and the patch he wore over his empty eye socket, he prayed it would be so. And he wasn’t the only one who wished it so, either, not by a long chalk. As much as the little mistress had been liked, the master was hated and feared. There wouldn’t be one person who’d grieve Golding’s passing and that was the truth. He’d lost count of the times he’d dreamed about doing him in, but he’d never get away with it, more’s the pity. Still, a man could dream, nevertheless.

  It was the afternoon of the second day after they had escaped from the asylum. The first day had been spent hiding in woodland not far from Earlswood, not because of Angeline’s broken wrist, but due to May spraining her ankle badly when they had climbed up one of the trees whose branches overhung the wall and jumped down the other side onto the grass verge. May had been so intent on helping Angeline, who had found the procedure nigh on impossible with her damaged arm, that she hadn’t taken enough care with her own safety. Within minutes her ankle had begun to swell and, after they had crossed the road from the boundary wall and found a gate into a farmer’s field, May had had to sit for some time before she could limp on. They had reached the patch of woodland after an agonizing twenty minutes, and by the time it was light May’s ankle had swollen to twice its normal size and she couldn’t get her boot on.

  A pure little stream gurgled through the heart of the woodland and, after slaking their thirst, both girls had sat on its mossy bank, May with her sprained ankle dangling in the icy-cold water and Angeline cradling her broken wrist in its sling. In spite of their precarious situation the knowledge that they were free was heady, and for a long time they simply breathed in the warm, earthy smell and listened to the water splashing over the stones and pebbles. They had dozed the afternoon away before moving under the shelter of a sturdy oak tree, and the night had been relatively warm and quite dry, so they had both slept as well as their injuries permitted.

  They had awoken the next morning with the dawn chorus, stiff and sore and ravenously hungry, but the hours of inactivity the day before – along with the benefit of the icy water on May’s ankle – meant the swelling had subsided enough for her to force her boot on.

  As the sky had lightened they had washed their hands and faces in the stream and had a long drink, before leaving the protection of the woodland and setting off in the direction of Newcastle over the fields. They didn’t dare take the easier route by road, where they might have been able to get a lift on the back of a cart, for fear that someone might put two and two together and surmise they were asylum inmates. Consequently the going was slow. May could only hobble a short distance at a time, and the pain in Angeline’s arm was excruciating, especially when she stumbled or moved awkwardly on the uneven ground. Nevertheless, their spirits were amazingly high. They were together and they were free, and their liberty was everything.

  They hadn’t covered half of the distance they had hoped for when, at four o’clock in the afternoon, May finally admitted she couldn’t walk any further that day. They were in open pastureland, and Angeline pointed to what looked like an old barn in the corner of a field. ‘Can you make it to there? It’s shelter of some sort and, once you’re settled, I’ll see if I can find something to eat.’ They were both faint with hunger.

  May snorted. ‘It’s spring, lass, not autumn.’

  But as they made their way towards the barn she stopped abruptly. ‘Look there.’ She pointed down at their feet. Hidden from predatory eyes was a stone curlew’s nest, ripe with eggs.

  If anyone had told Angeline she would not only eat raw eggs but enjoy them, she wouldn’t have believed them, but before they reached the barn they found two more nests containing eggs. She felt sorry for the parent birds, which swooped down close to their heads once or twice, calling their displeasure at the ransacking of their nests, but as May said: needs must. The eggs would barely have made a satisfactory meal for a hungry crow, but it was something in their stomachs after two days without sustenance.

  On entering the barn, they found it wasn’t as dilapidated as it looked and was clearly used for the storage of hay, a heap of which was stacked in one corner. May’s ankle was like a balloon again, and when she finally managed to extricate her foot from her boot it was black and blue.

  They made a rough bed with some of the hay and sank down on it, May falling asleep almost immediately despite her hunger. Angeline’s wrist felt worse, if anything, and after a while she gave up trying to sleep and went to sit at the entrance to the barn in the evening sunshine.

  The old barn adjoined a line of hedgerow dividing one field from the next, and sweet vernal grass and the scent of stitchwort, white dead-nettle, speedwell and other wild flowers hung in the warm, still air. The only sound was the hum of bees searching for nectar in the May blossom of the hedgerow trees, and the twittering of birds. Angeline rested her head against the warm wood of the barn and shut her eyes, drinking in the peace and serenity after the incessant noise and strain of the asylum.

  She would rather die than go back. She held her wrist against her chest, her head bowed. She couldn’t be shut up again and caged like an animal. Nor could she return to being Oswald’s wife. From this day forth she had to forget her old life. Not her parents, she added quickly, as though they had heard her thoughts and were hurt by them. Never that. But she had to stand on her own two feet now, for better or worse. She had nothing; even the clothes on her back weren’t hers. She was the poorest of the poor.

  A little snore from the bed of hay behind her brought her head turning, and she smiled to herself. She did have something. She had May. And strangely that took away the fear she might have felt, and brought a sense of – if not excitement, then hopefulness. There was something curiously liberating about having reached rock bottom, which she couldn’t have explained, even to herself. She was hungry and tired and in pain, but right at this moment there was nowhere else she wou
ld rather be than sitting here in the sunshine in an old barn in the middle of nowhere. She wasn’t silly enough to expect this feeling of euphoria to last, but right at this moment it was welcome.

  She looked out over the field again, her eyes drawn to the edge of it, where the hundreds of tiny, individual five-petalled flowering clusters of cow parsley whitened the hedgerow in a delicate lace-like mist.

  She had told May that if they escaped the asylum, Angeline Golding was dead, but that hadn’t happened the night of the fire. It had been happening for a long time – probably since the day of her marriage, but culminating the night her baby had died. The old Angeline had been an innocent, gullible girl, foolish and ridiculously romantic, with her head in the clouds. Her mouth tightened, a hard look coming over her face. She was glad that Angeline was dead. She had been weak, and because of her weakness she had only bitter memories to take with her into this new life.

  She shut her eyes, letting the sunbeams dance over her face as she slowly relaxed and her breathing became deeper. Within a few minutes she, too, was asleep.

  Angeline didn’t know what it was that woke her, but when she opened her eyes it was to see a plump middle-aged woman with rosy-red cheeks and jet-black hair pulled tightly into a bun staring at her. May must have roused at the same time, because she heard a movement behind her and her friend saying, ‘We’re not doing any harm, Missus. We’re just resting awhile.’

  ‘You know you’re on private farmland?’

  ‘No . . . well, yes, I suppose so, but like I said, we’re just resting for a bit before we move on.’

  The woman’s eyes swept over Angeline’s sling and then to May’s foot, which had turned all the colours of the rainbow. ‘Looks like you two have been in the wars?’

  ‘We had an accident – fell down a bank in the dark. We’re . . . we’re trying to get to a town or big village to find work. Our da died and it was a tied cottage, so we had to get out.’

  ‘You sisters then?’

  May nodded.

  ‘Where’s your mam?’

  ‘She died years ago. There was only us and our da.’

  Angeline rose to her feet, wincing as the movement hurt her arm. She sensed the woman didn’t believe May. ‘We’re not doing any harm,’ she said softly. ‘We just wanted to shelter for the night, but we’ll move on if you tell us to.’

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. ‘If you’re sisters, why don’t you talk like her? Come on, I’m not daft and I don’t like being lied to. You’re an educated lass – a cut above.’

  Too late Angeline realized she should have kept quiet. Miss Robson’s elocution lessons had rid her of all but the slightest of accents and had given her the diction and pronunciation of a young lady (something her mama, in particular, had been adamant about), but right at this moment it wasn’t helpful, to say the least.

  ‘She was sent away to school,’ May began, but Angeline gestured for her to be quiet.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said even more softly. ‘We’re friends, not sisters.’

  ‘You from that asylum place that caught fire?’

  Angeline blinked. She heard May struggle to her feet, but before her friend could deny it, as she was sure May would, she nodded. As the woman took a step backwards, Angeline spoke quickly: ‘Neither of us is remotely mad, I promise. I know that’s probably what people who are mad would say, but it’s true. My husband had me locked away so he was free to live his life without the encumbrance of a wife, and May—’ She stopped abruptly, not sure if May would want to share her story.

  ‘The son of the house where I worked forced me, and when I said he was the father of the baby I was carrying, the family had me put away,’ May finished for her.

  ‘When the fire started, we saw our chance to escape and we took it.’ Angeline glanced behind her at May and saw that she looked as frightened as she herself felt. ‘You have no idea what it is like to be somewhere like that when you are perfectly sane. It . . . it’s beyond words. We’ll leave now, this minute, but please don’t tell anyone that you’ve seen us and give us away. People were trapped in the flames and died, and they’ll think we’re there, under the remains of the building. It’s our only hope.’

  There was a pause while the woman’s gaze moved several times to both faces. Then she said, ‘This husband of yours? He sounds a right so-an’-so.’

  There was bitterness enough in her tone to convince the most sceptical mind that she was telling the truth when Angeline said, ‘He is.’

  The woman nodded. ‘Gentry, is he? Aye, I thought so. I’ve no time for the gentry. Come riding over me husband’s land on the hunt, all dressed up in their finery, and never mind the crops or anyone who gets in their way. No, I’ve no time for any of ’em.’ Again the keen brown eyes searched their faces, and then the woman smiled. ‘You two seem all there to me, and I’m no bad judge. I’ll not give you away, don’t fret; but perhaps better me husband – he’s the farmer, Farmer Burns – don’t know you’re here. Had a spot of trouble last year with folk stealing the beet and what-have-you, and he’s been a mite touchy since then, if you know what I mean. You can sleep here tonight, but just the one night, mind. I want you gone in the morning.’

  Angeline inclined her head as she said, ‘Thank you, thank you so much. You’re very kind.’

  ‘I’ve been called a lot of things in me time, lass, but rarely kind.’ The woman chuckled to herself. ‘What have you done to your wrist then? Painful, is it?’

  ‘I’ve broken it, I think.’

  ‘Broken, you say? Let’s have a look, lass. When I was bringing my six lads up there was rarely a few months went by without one of ’em breaking something.’ The farmer’s wife helped Angeline take her arm out of the sling and then gently felt her wrist. ‘Aye, it’s broken all right, but it seems a clean break to me. You want me to see to it? I used to sort my lads out myself – them quacks charge a fortune. What about you, dear? Want me to look at your foot?’ she added to May, examining her ankle before pronouncing, ‘Nowt but a sprain, but they’re painful enough. I’ll strap that up an’ all, when I come back after I’ve given my lot their dinner. Suppose to be out looking for one of our goats, I am. She’s a wanderer, Eliza is. Won’t stay with the others and is forever finding a way out of the pen.’

  Angeline was feeling giddy, whether from lack of food, the pain in her wrist or simply relief at the way things had turned out she didn’t know, but when she said faintly, ‘I need to sit down’ and slid to the floor with her back against the barn, the farmer’s wife looked at her intently.

  ‘When did you two last eat something?’

  It was May who said, ‘A couple of days ago.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can bring later. You’re lucky it’s a warm May this year. Last year there was snow on the ground even now. Still, every cloud has a silver lining. That’s what Farmer Burns always says, and he’s rarely wrong.’

  With that the little woman bustled off, leaving the two girls staring at each other. May hobbled over to Angeline. ‘Do you think we can trust her? Perhaps we should go now? She might bring her husband or one of her lads back with her, or send them to fetch the authorities.’

  It was beyond her to go anywhere tonight. Weakly Angeline murmured, ‘May, let’s take it Mrs Burns is the silver lining in our cloud, all right?’

  A soft, scented twilight was falling when the farmer’s wife returned carrying an enormous wicker basket. Setting it down next to where Angeline was sitting, Mrs Burns said softly, ‘Lass, I won’t pretend this isn’t going to hurt like the dickens, but it needs to be done, if that wrist is going to heal properly. Now I’ve got to make sure the two ends of the bone are lined up and then strap your wrist to this splint. All right? I’ll be as quick as I can, and your friend will have to help me, cos it’ll need two of us. Then we’ll see to your foot,’ she added to May, ‘and after you can both have a bite and sup tea.’

  Afterwards Angeline was glad she hadn’t known what was in store. Halfway through the pro
cedure she must have fainted, because when she came round her wrist was bandaged to the wood and May was looking at her with a white face and anxious eyes. Mrs Burns was just tying the knot in her bandage, her voice cheery as she said, ‘All done, lass, and it’s going to feel better now it’s held firm. Here, drink this.’ She delved into the basket and brought out a bottle. ‘A couple of good swigs will help.’

  ‘What is it?’ Angeline said as May helped her to sit up.

  ‘Laudanum. It’ll dull the pain and help you sleep, and you’ll feel much better in the morning.’

  Turning her attention to May, Mrs Burns swiftly and expertly bandaged her ankle before returning to her cavernous basket and bringing out a cloth on which she laid a whole egg-and-ham pie, a crusty loaf and a pat of butter, and a baked jam roll and pot of thick cream. Setting two plates and a handful of cutlery in front of them, she then added a jug with a lid on it, full of tea, saying, ‘It’s already got milk and sugar in it’, and two tin mugs. ‘Now, I’ll leave you both to get on the other side of that lot, but I’ll be back in the morning to see how you’re doing. They think I’m collecting the last of the eggs from the hen house, so I’d better get going. Now, now, the pair of you – no blubbering. You get stuck into your grub, all right?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know how to thank you,’ Angeline managed through her tears, as May openly sobbed at the side of her. It was the first time she had seen the tough, resilient May cry and it shocked her, although of course it shouldn’t, she told herself. May might be made of stern stuff, but she was only human, and the unexpected kindness was overwhelming.

  They ate every morsel of food and drank every last drop of the sweet tea, before snuggling down on their hay bed as the moon and stars came out in a velvet-black sky. They were asleep even before they said goodnight to each other.