Eppie (47 page)

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.

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.