The brute yelped and momentarily loosened his grip on Harriet’s mouth.
‘Christopher!’ came Harriet’s winded, guttural cry.
Christopher drew back his fist and slammed it into the man’s face, feeling a soft crack under his fingers as his knuckles met with the man’s nose.
The brute was clearly taken aback at Christopher’s unexpected bravery. An unearthly roar bellowed out from him, as he finally released his grip on Harriet and switched his focus towards Christopher. A succession of left and right punches—almost rhythmical in their recurrence—smashed into Christopher’s face and body as he tumbled to the ground like a rag doll.
Harriet screamed and began to run, but her assailant reached out and grabbed at her shawl, spinning her back around to face him. With a sneer, he dug his meaty fingers into her side and pulled her close. ‘I don’t be finished with you, miss.’
Another scream from Harriet: this one mutated into a gasp as she watched her attacker being floored by a severe punch to the stomach. It took a moment for her to realise that the blow had come from her father, who had appeared from the darkness with George Fox; the pair of them were now feverishly pounding and thrashing the sordid man, whose pleas for clemency were being ignored. She could no longer bear to watch and instead stooped down to help her poor friend, who was twisting on the floor with his hands shielding his eyes. ‘Christopher—do you be alright? Oh, you poor thing,’ she soothed, as she carefully lifted his hand and held it in hers. ‘Thank you,’ she mumbled, so quietly that the words were almost lost below the thumps, thuds and rasping groans of the three men behind her. She could stand it no longer. ‘Pa! That be enough—stop! You be bringing a death to the man and then you be taken away!’
Joseph, blood and sweat streaming down his face, stopped and looked at his eldest daughter cowering on the floor below him. His eyes—vicious and fiery—fell to the floor. ‘Christopher—stand up,’ he ordered.
Despite the pain searing through him, Christopher obeyed. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Take my daughter back to the Horse,’ Joseph demanded.
‘Yes, sir,’ he replied, drawing on what little energy was left in him. ‘Come on, Hattie.’
Despite the gloom of the night, Harriet could sense her father’s firmness and she stood, knowing better than to argue, threaded her arm through Christopher’s and made her way back to the Black Horse.
‘Whatever do you be doing out here, Hattie?’ Christopher asked softly, as they lumbered towards the gin palace.
The emotion that she had doggedly held inside her finally demanded release; the pain around her body, the weakness of her mind and folly of her decisions came flooding out as warm tears. Even if she had wanted to answer Christopher’s question, her rasping sobs would have prevented it. Besides which, she could hardly confer on him the inevitable guilt that would ensue if she informed him that the very reason for her being out tonight was owing to her hope of meeting him at the Polymina.
Christopher sighed and pulled his arms around her. ‘It be all right, Hattie. He won’t be a-hurting you again.’ He could feel her body tense under his touch. ‘He didn’t’—Christopher hesitated—‘He didn’t…’
Harriet shook her head and tried to supress her sobs, but the tears were unrelenting. She shivered suddenly and uncontrollably.
Christopher tightened his embrace. ‘Come on, Hattie,’ he calmed, gently running his fingertips over the fine strands of her hair behind her ear. ‘We be catching a death out here.’
Harriet breathed deeply, seizing control of her emotions back from the night. She stood tall, entwined her fingers with his and headed towards the bright lights and welcome familiarity of the Black Horse.
As she entered the gin palace, Harriet let go of Christopher’s hand and held her head up; there was little more trouble that she could have inflicted upon herself, yet she was determined to face the consequences like an adult, not like the quivering, terrified girl that she truly felt inside. She clasped her hands together to prevent them from shaking and smiled at her mother’s concerned face.
Eliza hurried from behind the bar. ‘Where the devil have you been, Hattie?’ her mother demanded. ‘Leaving those poor girls like that—you want horse-whipping. Do your Pa be a-seeing you, yet?’
Harriet nodded. ‘I just be a-walking,’ she answered, her voice a delicate shell on the verge of cracking. She averted her gaze from her mother’s intense glower; skimming over the usual mixture of clientele steeped in liquor, her eyes fell on the gentleman standing upright at the bar. Their eyes locked and Harriet knew at once that he was the man that she had witnessed at the Priory Stream. She smiled and, for the slimmest of moments, the horrors of the evening vanished. She thought she detected a lightening of his eyes.
She turned when the street door opened. Standing there, looming large in the doorway, was a man whom she barely recognised: bruised, cut and covered in blood was her father. ‘Home,’ he murmured to Harriet, his chest rising and falling rapidly.
Harriet turned to leave, casting a final fleeting glance at the gentleman at the bar.
The dawn sky appeared deep grey, as if it had been sucked up from the sea itself. The snow that had threatened for several days finally began to fall, a fine dusting coated the rooftops and untrodden edges of the pebble-beach walkways. The dimness of the day had forced the early illumination of candles throughout the Priory Ground; to a stranger out at sea, the scene before him would have been one of resplendent beauty.
When Harriet set out that morning, she strode quickly towards the Priory Stream, the cold immediately nipping at her exposed fingers.
She reached the water and was mercifully alone. Her ordeal seven days ago had replaced Widow Elphick’s amputation as the main topic of gossip on the charwomen’s and washerwomen’s lips and she had scarcely been able to contain her fury when she had first returned to the stream following the incident and caught her name in the same sentence and context as Miss Rutherford’s. She hadn’t dared to respond but had tried to make her feelings clear through her admonishing glare.
It had come as a surprise to Harriet that she should still be allowed to continue her extra work; her feared loss of privileges had strangely not occurred. Her only punishment had been the locking of the street door each night whilst her parents worked in the gin palace: her nocturnal adventures on Cuckoo Hill with Christopher were over and she only hoped that their friendship was not also finished. She had tried almost every day to seek him out and thank him and to make amends but he was never home when she was working for Widow Elphick, even when she arrived early or lingered late.
Brushing the coating of snow from one of the large stones that rose up from the streambed, Harriet perched herself on its flat cold surface. She scanned the snow-covered hills but knew that the stranger hadn’t come again. There had been no sign of him since the night of the incident. When the aftershocks of the event had settled, she had casually asked her mother about the mysterious man at the bar. ‘He were an odd one, he were,’ her mother had judged. ‘Something untoward in his character. Thought he weren’t stopping long when he skipped out soon after getting his first drink. Must have liked us, though, because he came back and spent most of the night in liquor.’ When Harriet had probed further, her mother had dismissed her questions and changed the subject.
Harriet shuddered as the feelings she had felt that night resurfaced, suddenly coiling around her chest, like a constricting snake. Her eyes darted all around, half expecting to catch the formless shape of her assailant lumbering up the hill towards her. She exhaled slowly, trying to rid herself of the choking sensation. He’s gone, she told herself. Pa said so. ‘He were an itinerant cadger on the look for anything his grimy hands could be a-getting,’ he had told her when she had pressed him as to the outcome of the conflict. ‘And he don’t be a-coming back.’ Her father had been uncharacteristically sympathetic towards her since then, largely directing his displeasure at Keziah and Ann having been left alone at night. Harrie
t had, of course, promised never to venture out at night again, which had seemed to satisfy her mother and father.
As her breathing returned to normal, Harriet noticed that the coldness from the stone was beginning to sting the backs of her thighs. Warm prickly blood surged back into her legs as she stood and carried the pails to the edge of the stream and began to fill them.
With each pail filled to the brim, Harriet left the stream and walked briskly towards the Black Horse. The snow, cascading now in larger chunks, fell silently around her, slowly encasing the landscape in white. As she walked she made sure to keep her eyes fixed to the floor, avoiding the condemning gazes of folk who had heard snatches of half-truths about her being caught outside the houses of ill-fame after dark.
Harriet was frozen through when she finally reached the Black Horse. She pushed on the handle, expecting it to burst open and to see her mother cleaning the floor as usual, but the door resisted against her, forcing water to slop over the side of the buckets. She set the pails down and tried again, but it was locked and she noticed then that the window shutters were also still closed. Where was her mother? she wondered. She had seemed perfectly normal at the breakfast table this morning and gave no indication that she wouldn’t be undertaking her usual routine. Harriet continued along the path to the house, set the pails down outside and entered the dim parlour. A thin reed candle was burning on the dresser, strong shadows climbing the windows and ceiling and a fire was gently burning in the stone hearth.
‘Hello? Does anyone be here?’ she called.
There was a sound upstairs then Keziah and Ann appeared. ‘We be here!’ Ann called happily.
‘Where be Pa and Ma?’ Harriet asked.
‘Widow Elphick’s,’ Keziah answered.
That both her parents were at Widow Elphick’s first thing in the morning struck Harriet as odd. She suddenly feared that something bad had happened. ‘What do they be doing there?’
Keziah shrugged. ‘They only just be gone.’
Harriet turned around, collected the water and strode through the snow to Widow Elphick’s house. She hurriedly knocked the special tap on the street door, then stepped inside. The parlour, much like the one that she had just left, was empty but for a burning fire. Standing still and listening carefully, Harriet heard muffled voices from Widow Elphick’s bedroom. She made her way to the stairs and began to creep up, the voices solidifying as she neared. She had quickly learned, from the times when Widow Elphick had been napping, how to navigate the stairs undetected; fear of waking the sleeping dragon had been a good teacher. The voices crispened as she achieved the top and Harriet hunkered down and listened.
‘Do you be certain-sure you be wanting me to read it?’ Harriet heard her father’s voice ask.
A barked affirmation was all the response that Harriet caught from Widow Elphick.
‘Dear Widow Elphick, we beg leave to transmit the interim conclusions and findings from a report into the ownership and legal entitlements of the dwelling tenement in which you currently reside. Following consultation with the Law Officers, it has been determined that these derelict lands form neither part of the adjoining land in the ownership of Lord Chichester nor the lands issued by a grant made to the Corporation of Hastings in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It has been the will of the Law Officers to pass the matter to the Commissioners for Woods, Forests and Land Revenues for further investigation. We regret that this decision might not be aligned to your expectations in wishing to assert your right to sell the tenement currently held by you.’
‘Blame me! What a load of balderdash,’ Widow Elphick cried. ‘I don’t get a word of it!’
‘It mean you don’t be owning this house, Widow Elphick,’ Joseph explained. A moment later he added, ‘Nor do none of us, come to that.’
The thread of conversation lulled and Harriet shifted slightly, straining her ears to recapture it. Then she realised that nobody was speaking: the three adults were trying to digest the words that her father had just relayed.
‘I be a-needing rest,’ Widow Elphick snarled, shattering the silence and making Harriet leap up and hurry down the stairs.
In the kitchen, she plunged a glass into the bucket of water, put it to one side, then began busying herself in the larder.
‘Hattie?’ her mother’s voice said moments later.
‘Oh, hello, Ma—I were preparing some food and drink for Widow Elphick—I be thinking water, beer, bread and cheese,’ Harriet suggested innocently.
Eliza nodded suspiciously. ‘You be behaving right, Hattie?’
‘Yes, Ma.’
‘Come back home when you be done here—I got more jobs in the house for you. No dithering.’
‘Yes, Ma,’ Harriet answered, beginning to slice into a penny loaf. She felt the house shudder as her father tugged open the street door and she watched as he disappeared into the snow’s embrace. Her mother followed swiftly, pulling the door closed behind her.
Harriet set the food and drinks onto a tea tray and made her way upstairs, this time ensuring that her feet fell on each and every noisy board, so as to be sure to alert the woman of her arrival.
‘Butter-my-wig, if it ain’t the newest of draggle-tails come into my room,’ Widow Elphick chided. She was sitting up in bed wearing a cream petticoat. ‘Miss Rutherford be sparing you the day, has she?’
Harriet bit down on her lip and placed the tray beside the bed. ‘Beer, water, bread and cheese for you,’ she said warmly, hastening towards the door.
‘I be a-talking to you, you filthy little wretch. You be thick of hearing?’ Widow Elphick shouted, making Harriet stop dead. ‘Least you could do is a-look at me.’
Harriet turned unhurriedly and faced her.
‘I be asking you—did Miss Rutherford spare you the day?’ Widow Elphick repeated, slowly enunciating each word.
‘I ain’t never been working for Miss Rutherford,’ Harriet answered, desperately trying to hold back the anger from her voice.
Widow Elphick laughed maniacally, rocking back and forth before stopping abruptly. ‘Well what do a young girl be a-doing outside a house of ill-fame in the middle of the night, if she ain’t no draggle-tail?’
Harriet felt her cheeks flush crimson as her rage boiled up from within. ‘It don’t be none of your concern what I were a-doing, you tempersome woman. I mislike you very much and I ain’t working for you no more!’
The woman hurled obscenities into the air, but Harriet had closed her ears, dashing from the bedroom. Downstairs, she slumped into the chair beside the parlour fire and began to sob. Her desperation to be treated as an adult had gone disastrously wrong, but all she cared about right now was never working for the old crone again.
The street door suddenly opened, sending in another gust of blustery wind. And there, standing with a frown and a look of surprise on his face, was Christopher. ‘Hattie,’ he said, more of an acknowledgment than a greeting.
Harriet sighed and quickly dried her tears, not wanting him to see her defenceless and in need of rescuing yet again. ‘Christopher,’ Harriet began, her eyes meeting his, ‘I be wanting to thank you for what you did that night. I be truly sorry you catched hurt like you have.’
Christopher nodded but said nothing, as he tossed a small log onto the fire.
‘Do you be wanting lunch?’ Harriet asked. ‘I be making-’
‘No—I don’t be hungry,’ he interjected.
She looked at him in wonder: something was different. Or wrong. He appeared to have altered since their last meeting. Harriet stood and took his arm, imploring him to face her. He turned, his cheek, still bruised from that night, and she noticed a look in his eyes that shocked her: it was one of disgust. ‘What be wrong?’ she asked.
‘There don’t be nothing wrong, Hattie,’ he replied. ‘I ain’t stopping. I just be seeing how Mother is.’ He moved towards the staircase and Harriet’s hand fell limply from his arm.
‘She be resting,’ Harriet said quickly, hoping to keep him in the
parlour so that he might reveal the cause of his displeasure. He nodded again and stopped.
‘What be wrong, Christopher? I know there be something,’ she said quietly, her voice almost lost in the cackle of burning oak from the hearth.
‘That gentleman in the Black Horse the other night—he be a friend of yours?’ he asked.
The opaque disharmony that sat heavily in the room between them suddenly sharpened into focus in Harriet’s mind. Christopher’s tone was soft and low but the wounded look on his face revealed that he was blighted by jealousy. ‘I don’t be knowing him whatsoever—he be just another man steeped in liquor,’ she said with a smile.
Christopher exhaled. ‘I best be getting back to work. Bye, Hattie,’ he said, disappearing outside and slamming the door shut behind him.
‘Goodbye,’ she breathed, noting with sadness the finality of their parting.
For several minutes Harriet stood in front of the fire, transfixed by the flames that engulfed the blackened oak. Finally, she opened the street door and stepped outside. All trace of her parents’ and Christopher’s footprints had vanished, covered with a thick layer of snow. She pulled her shawl tight and darted for home, failing to spot the shadowed man concealed in the doorway opposite, watching her until she vanished into the snowy haze.
The America Ground (The Forensic Genealogist Series Book 3) Page 8