The Silk Factory

by Judith Allnatt

  Her head began to ache with the effort of refusing in to weeping. She put the heels of her hands over her eyes and held them there for a minute, willing the headache not to develop into one of the full-blown migraines that had afflicted her off and on ever since she’d started the tablets from the doctor. It didn’t work. When she took her hands away the dull throb behind her eyes was still there and she knew that if she turned on the lamp she would recoil and the pain would flower into a tight clamp around her forehead.

  She stood in the darkening room looking out of the window, the row of gardens spread below her in the fading light: swings and a sandpit in Tally’s garden; a bower with a seat in the garden on the other side, its pale green paint light against dark foliage; patio furniture and rows of vegetables in others. Most had some kind of fruit trees; two others had the ancient remains of old mulberry trees, like her own.

  From amongst plum and apple, mulberry and damson trees came the repetitive call of pigeons settling to roost. The far end of her garden was in shadow, the bent shape of the buddleia and the big mulberry tree casting deeper pools of shade. Rosie stiffened. A small figure was squatting under the mulberry tree amongst the rubble and briars, her face and bare arms white in the dimness. Her hands were moving quickly amongst the weeds as if she were searching for something, her arms plunged deep into nettles and brambles. Rosie gasped. Her head pounding, she reached across the table to open the window and call out to stop her. The girl was scrabbling desperately, as if trying to recover some precious treasure, oblivious to stings and cuts. Rosie tried the long metal bar of the catch; it wouldn’t come undone. She pushed against it; the window was locked.

  The girl stopped suddenly, and looked over to her left, as if she had heard something. Keeping her head down as if afraid she would be seen, she glanced from side to side, as though checking her escape route, unsure whether to make a dash for it. Like a sparrow in fear of a hawk, she froze and cocked her head to listen. Quickly she rummaged again; then, startled once more, she half stood, clutching the cloth of her apron, twisting it between her hands, as if in an agony of uncertainty whether to stay or flee.

  Rosie felt a strange dizziness coming over her, as if she were being drawn towards the child, the kind of vertiginous pull exerted by a mill pond or a drowned quarry – deep dark water that pulled you in. Unable to tear her eyes away from the white oval of the child’s face looking up at her, she felt about her for the key on the windowsill and her hand met its cold shape. She groped for the window catch, her hand trembling. She fumbled with the catch, dropping her eyes to see how to get it undone, and in the moment that she looked away the spell was lifted. She gave a little cry and stepped back into the room, dropping the bar as if it were hot.

  Outside, a blackbird flew low across the lawn uttering its chattering alarm call and then the garden was silent. Silent and utterly empty.

  THREE

  1812

  ‘You’re late,’ the silk master said to Tobias and Beulah Fiddement as they hurried in, their faces white and pinched by the cold, the girl stumbling with tiredness. From behind the wide expanse of his mahogany desk, strewn with scales, measuring rod, oil lamp and lustrous samples of cloth, he turned and pointed to the wooden clock that hung on the wall above his head. Its dial was the size of a cartwheel and it read three minutes to six. ‘I won’t tolerate tardiness,’ he continued. ‘I myself have been abroad since cockcrow and everyone else is in their place.’

  He leant back in his seat and surveyed them, tucking his thumbs into the pockets of his waistcoat, which strained over his corpulent middle. Despite the illusion of gentility lent by a brocade waistcoat and a well-cut coat, he had the weather-beaten appearance of a seafaring man and was thickset and square. A bushy set of mutton-chop whiskers made shift to compensate for a lack of hair atop but ever failed to draw Beulah’s eyes from the signs of old wounds on his bald head: a strange indentation on one side and a series of thick white scars that exerted a horrified fascination upon her and led her to stare in spite of the dangers of doing so. She moved up close to her brother.

  ‘Well?’ the master said to Tobias. ‘Cat got your tongue?’

  Tobias slipped Beulah’s hand into his. Making his voice as deep as he could, he said, ‘Begging your pardon, Mr Fowler, sir. We’re not early but we’re not late neither. The clock still lacks three minutes before the hour.’

  Fowler turned round to look again with exaggerated slowness. ‘So it does, young Fiddement, so it does. But perhaps you could tell me why you’re cutting it so fine, to use a saying of our trade? Why you’re playing fast and loose, as it were, with my time when you know the penalty for lateness is a five-penny fine?’

  Tobias thought of the long dark tramp from the neighbouring village of Newnham, through fields frozen into stiff clods beneath the snow and along cart tracks slippery with ice, Beulah shaking with the cold, his own teeth chattering, and of carrying Beulah pick-a-back once they reached the road into the village, so that he could, at last, run the final stretch. He said tentatively, ‘We were held up by the weather, sir.’

  ‘By the weather, you say? Surely just a little dusting of snow?’ He leant forward, his elbows on the desk. ‘Eh? Eh?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. We both are … sorry.’ He gave Beulah a nudge. She nodded and then hung her head. Five pennies, she was thinking; five pennies was most of his wage. Five pennies was potatoes and broth and coals. Five pennies gone was an empty belly and a cold hearth.

  The master leant back with his palms on the desk as if considering the matter. The cherrywood handle of the whip that he always carried at his belt was revealed as his coat fell back and Beulah looked away quickly. A smile played at the corners of his mouth. Beulah didn’t like the smile. Over the busy noise of the looms above, the clock ticked with a hollow, wooden sound that seemed to reverberate from every wall of the office.

  ‘It won’t happen again, sir,’ Tobias said.

  The long hand of the clock gave a jerk and achieved the vertical of six o’clock with a loud tock.

  ‘You’re quite right, Fiddement,’ the master said, fixing him with a keen eye. ‘It won’t happen again and pleasant though it is to be passing the time of day with you, we all have work to get on with. As you can see, it is six o’clock, you are not in your places and your wage will be docked by five pennies.’

  Tobias’s face blanched and his fists clenched, squeezing Beulah’s hand until it hurt but he held his tongue.

  ‘But we weren’t late! You kept us talking!’ Beulah blurted out.

  Fowler’s gaze swivelled to fall on Beulah. His fist came down on the desk with a thump that rattled the brass pan of the scales. ‘Wha-a-t!’ he roared.

  Then Tobias was yanking her arm, pulling her stumbling to the stairs as Fowler leapt to his feet and, finding the first thing to hand, grabbed up a handful of brass weights and flung them after them with a curse. One found its mark and hit Beulah’s forearm so that she cried out; the rest thudded into the doorframe and on to the boards, thumping and rolling. Tobias pushed her before him up the steep, boxed stairs and they took the tight turn on the first-floor landing at breakneck speed. They ran on up the second flight and emerged, gasping for breath, into the clattering racket and floating dust of the top-floor workshop, where the black squares of the windows reflected a line of small moons from the glass globes full of water concentrating the light of tallow lamps on to the work. Jervis, the master weaver who was training Tobias, glanced over and gave them a quick nod of acknowledgement but everyone else bent their heads assiduously over their work, sensing something was afoot and wanting no part of it.

  Tobias looked back over his shoulder to see if Fowler was coming or if his anger was spent. ‘Quick, we could lose our positions!’ he hissed to Beulah. ‘Get in your place in case he comes.’ He gave her a little shove and then took his place beside Jervis’s loom, taking over from another lad as drawboy, to raise the warp threads that made the pattern.

  Nursing her arm, Beulah
blinked back tears and threaded her way between the ranks of wooden looms on either side, their foursquare frames closely packed together, each reaching almost to the ceiling with their hundreds of threads and lingoes hanging close and thick as a curtain. Battens thumping, shuttles flying, each weaver on his bench was in constant motion, a dark shape against the yarn like a busy spider suspended in its web.

  The children’s overseer, Alice, scowled at her: the weavers must on no account be left without yarn to work with and Beulah was already behindhand. Beulah took her place with the other children at the bobbin winders. Each child must fill and refill their tray with wound bobbins, the conical pirns that fitted into the weavers’ shuttles, and each must be perfect, without snarl or hitch. Beulah fixed her spool, held the thread lightly with one hand and began to turn the handle of the wooden wheel. Barely as tall as the wheel, she hauled on the stiff handle, her arm throbbing with every revolution. She worked as fast as she could, trying to wind the thread not too tight and not too loose so that it would run smoothly and evenly off the shuttle without causing the weaver delay, but she couldn’t get her usual speed up. The thread seemed to have a mind of its own, looping and snagging, and her tray filled all too slowly as her bruised arm began to stiffen and refused to be forced at the pace she needed.

  Every now and then she glanced at Alice to see if she was coming to check the trays. She was ever ready with a shove or a slap for anyone who had fallen behind, though at least, unlike the master, she kept an open hand.

  Beulah wished it was evening and she could be at home with Effie, who would give her supper, rub comfrey salve on her bruises and console her as Mother used to. Then she remembered the five pence docked from their wages and worried what Effie would say. She hoped she would be cross. Cross was better than sad; she couldn’t bear it if Effie was sad. Effie never cried but sometimes, if Beulah woke in the night, from her bed by the warm ashes of the fire she would see Effie sitting up at the table with her head in her hands. Beulah did what she always did when the master had scared her; she puckered her brow, narrowed her eyes and concentrated on turning her fear into hatred: a deep seam of hate like coal in rock, dark, thick fuel on which she could draw.

  Many tales were told about the master. Some said in his youth he had been an adventurer, and had sailed on a voyage to find the Northwest Passage, some that he was nothing but a Spitalfields mercer who had made his money from the labour of families in weaving garrets and had moved north after a brush with the law, leaving them to starve. Others said that he had devised an instrument for discovering new mines and had made his fortune in the Americas. All that was known for sure was that ten years ago he had bought up a bundle of property in the village: a row of cottages, two inns – the Harp and the Bull – the silk manufactory and the High House at the end of the street, where he lived with his wife, Tabitha, and his daughter, Hebe. Beulah had caught sight of the same fear in their eyes that she was determined to check in her own. For all their full bellies, fine clothes and feathered bonnets, she wouldn’t want to change places and live under their roof; no, not for one day. Fowler by name and foul-tempered by nature, she thought as she rested her arm for a moment before threading another spool.

  In the workshop, muted conversation began again amongst the weavers and drawboys, adding a background hum to the clack of the looms. The room began to lose the worst of its clammy chill with the labour of its inmates, regaining its usual smell of sweat and human breath. The girl next to her, Biddy, said in a low voice, ‘What did the master do?’

  ‘Threw one of they weights at my head,’ she said, ‘but his aim was out of true.’ She finished off the pirn she was filling and put it in her tray. She glanced round at Alice and saw her busy with her own winding. ‘Do you want to see?’ She pulled up her sleeve to reveal a swollen forearm already turning blue and they inspected it together.

  ‘It’s a bad ’un,’ Biddy said. ‘You’d best keep out of his way.’

  Alice stood up, placed her palms in the small of her back and stretched. She began to check the trays, working her way along the row of children, picking out any pirns that were badly wound and giving the child the sharp side of her tongue. Jonas, a clumsy boy with big hands more suited to ploughing or building, had clearly spoiled several as Alice fetched him a stinging blow on the side of his head that left him snivelling.

  Biddy glanced down at Beulah’s half-empty tray. Quickly she picked up a few of the pirns from her own full tray and dumped them into Beulah’s. She signed to Thomasin, the girl working on the other side of Beulah, to do the same. Thomasin hesitated, frowning, and then grudgingly passed a handful of spools over while Biddy made a great fuss of bending to set up another bobbin so that her body blocked Alice’s line of sight.

  All three girls were busily winding again by the time Alice reached them; they held their breath as she peered and poked into each tray with her quick eyes and her veiny hands. She hesitated at Beulah’s as if puzzled by its contents when Beulah had clearly been struggling along at half-speed. She looked suspiciously at the three of them, her mouth set in a hard line. As she passed on to the rest of the row, Beulah mouthed her thanks to Biddy, who gave a tiny nod, and to Thomasin, who muttered, ‘Never mind that. Bread at dinner is what you owe me.’

  Jonas was sent round to collect the trays and deliver them to the weavers and the task of filling more began again.

  Lieutenant Jack Stamford reined in his horse from a trot to a walk as they left the snow-covered fields and turned out on to a cart track, where ice showed dark and glassy in the ruts. The mare’s breath steamed on the air as she snorted and side-stepped, dancing a little at the treacherous feeling of ice beneath her hooves. ‘Shh, gently now, Maisie, gently.’ He held her firm, leant forward and laid his hand on her neck until he brought her to a standstill, his red tunic bright above the chestnut’s glossy flanks.

  He looked around to get his bearings. Every morning he inspected the men at reveille at first light before riding out from the barracks to exercise Maisie, taking a different route each time to put the young mare through her paces and school her to meet the unexpected with equanimity. Barking dogs, carts to squeeze past in narrow lanes, marshy ground that sucked at her fetlocks or streams with stones that shifted underfoot all triggered an instinct for flight from a nervous yearling, and patience, firmness and, above all, practice, were needed to build the reciprocity of trust that he required between horse and rider. They must be able to rely on each other completely. After all, she could one day carry him into battle.

  Behind him lay the white, open fields through which he had followed the line of the river away from Weedon Royal and out to the west. To the left, the track curved away and narrowed, as though it was petering out; to the right a church tower was visible in the distance and Jack deduced that it belonged to the village of Newnham. He would ride that way and then on to the woods where he could attempt to cajole Maisie in amongst the trees and accustom her to the crack of wood underfoot and the sudden slide of snow from laden branches.

  He took a deep breath of the biting air, feeling a sudden joy fill him that was born of the emptiness of the glittering scene, the creak of saddle leather and the feel of the reins, and the freedom to turn wherever he wished. He clicked his tongue to Maisie to walk on, encouraging her to a deliberate pace as she picked her way. Over the tops of the bare hedgerows, the fields spread in pristine white, save for the occasional deep tracks of fox or deer and the lighter patterns of bird prints.

  He passed a fine farmhouse with dairy and grain loft, stable yard and carriage house, and a garden with a spreading cedar tree, and rode on past a field of sheep, a dun yellow against the snow. Beyond was a dense acreage of coppiced hazel trees, each nut tree with many thin trunks growing from the stump of last year’s cutting to form a bushy growth of dark, damp wood, the branches outlined in snow. Black and white, the scene epitomised the depth of dead winter; the slow and secret sap was frozen and all colour and life had shrunk back to the roots t
o hide deep below the surface of the earth.

  In the stillness, Jack suddenly caught a glimpse of movement, someone bending, moving silently beneath the trees. He drew Maisie to a standstill and watched.

  A young woman. A young woman wrapped in a thin dress and a shawl the colour of a wood pigeon’s breast. Stooping to gather something from the ground and place it in the shallow basket at her feet, she came out into the light as if born from the shadows. Intent on her task she drew towards him and he sat motionless, watching the soft contours of her body as she moved among the stark, stick-like trees. Looking more closely he saw that snowdrops grew in clumps around the trees, their green leaves choked with snow but their white and drooping heads pushing through. It was these that the girl was gathering, clearing away the snow with her hands to pick each stem delicately until she had a posy and then laying them in the basket and packing the stems with snow. As she drew nearer, the light caught her profile; her face was inclined to the ground, and the curve of her cheek and its delicate colour struck him, the flush of blood strangely moving, speaking to him of Life in the barren scene as strongly as did the snowdrops. He held his breath. Here was life in adverse circumstances, beauty in a wasteland. A gift.

  Maisie’s flanks quivered beneath him as she shivered. He had kept her standing too long. Automatically he moved her forward and her hooves struck on the track.