Eppie (60 page)

‘How come you’re in
Malstowe?’ Martha asked.

‘I met Gabriel du Quesne in
London when I went to sweep the rooms of the house in which he resides. He told
me you lived here.’ He greeted Wakelin, ‘How’s things?’ 

Wakelin sat on the opposite side of the table, between Ezra
and Jaggery, all with their shirtsleeves rolled above splayed elbows. ‘Never
better,’ he replied apathetically.

Eagerly, Dawkin turned his attention to Eppie. In his voice she
detected a strain borne of forced separation. ‘I’ve been heart-broken at us not
being together.’

‘Me too,’ she replied, a tremor in her voice.

Jovially, he slapped his thigh. ‘Right, ladies, what’s it to
be?  Double whiskies all around?’

‘This is the only tavern that serves decent cups of tea,’
Martha answered. ‘Another pot would be lovely.’

Wakelin came to join him at the bar.

‘Can I stand you a slug of summat?’ Dawkin asked.

‘Gin’ll be good.’

Leaning against the counter, they enjoyed a moment of friendly
banter with Fortune, the barmaid. She and Wakelin were fond of one another.
Placing a tankard before him, she playfully ruffled his cow-lick.

‘I thought you was my girl?’ Wilbert shouted across the
parlour. ‘Why you wasting yer kisses on him?’

‘I’ve kisses for all them as buys me trinkets,’ Fortune
replied.

Dawkin took a sip of ale. ‘Mr Grimley tells me you’re not
living with ma.’

‘I’ve been hanging out in more places than I can remember. Recently,
I’ve got to wantin’ a bit o’ peace in me life. I’m sleeping on this barge down
river. Don’t let on to ma or Eppie. They wouldn’t approve.  It’s a wreck and going
nowhere … like me.’

Returning, Dawkin placed the tray, laden with drinks and a
cob loaf, upon the table.

Martha smiled at Lottie. ‘You won’t remember Dawkin. You
were a bairn when he lived with us.’

‘No, but you’ve told me lots about him. Is it true you
chewed worms for your pet badger?’

‘Worms? Is that what Ep told you they were!’ Dawkin grinned
back at Lottie, noticing the film of weariness upon the girl’s thin face, her
shoulders thrown crooked by the practice of piecing from a young age.

Eppie thumped him on the shoulder. ‘So you were fooling me!
I never guessed. What were they?’

‘Ah, ha, wouldn’t you like to know!’ He saw Sukey staring
hatefully at Eppie. ‘This is like home from home. The same old sour-tempered
folk.’

‘After she lost her job at Bridge House, Sukey came to work
at the mill,’ Eppie said. ‘She glares at me like that the day long.’ A far-away
look came into her eyes. ‘She frightens me. It’s like she’s waiting for the
opportune moment, waiting to pounce.’

‘Whatever can you mean?’

She laughed away her nervousness. ‘Oh, nothing.’

Sacked textile workers raised their voices in discontent. It
was the same grievance that Eppie, coming along here for a warm meal, heard almost
nightly.

‘Loss of earnings is one thing,’ said Pinkerton, an unwaged
man, ‘but it ain’t natural a man should hang onto his missus’s apron strings,
expecting her to come home with the wage. It’s about time we fought back to
regain our manhood.’

‘What do you reckon, Wake?’ Ezra asked. ‘You think we ought
to demand to go back to hand-teasing?’

Ezra’s task as a shearsman was simply one of supervising the
cropping process. Powered by steam, a pulley operated shears attached to the shearing
machine. 

‘What do I care?’ Wakelin answered.  ‘I’m outta it.’

‘Dunham don’t think about no one except himself,’ Wilbert
said.

‘Button it, Hix,’ growled Redgy Dipper. He had grown to
detest Wilbert’s mean, slothful ways.

‘Du Quesne won’t never listen to us,’ Brandon, a sacked
Irish worker argued. ‘He told me that the Irish are all drunkards, off to the
tavern as quick as we can earn a penny.’

Wakelin’s head swam in ale.  ‘Sen-sible lot, the Oyrish.’

‘I say we smash the looms,’ put in Hedley, a weaver who had lost
his job due to the introduction of power looms. ‘See what du Quesne thinks to
that.’

‘Burn the cotton mill while we’re at it,’ agreed Bow, his
friend. ‘This very night. No one will recognise us in the dark.’

‘Why should any of you be afraid to show your faces?’ Jaggery
asked. ‘If anyone ought to hide them faces in shame it’s Robert du Quesne.’

‘Who’s in?’ Hedley asked. ‘Anyone can band up with us, be ‘em
joiners, nail-makers, boot-makers, or whatever.’

‘Me for one,’ Ezra said. ‘If it hadn’t been for du Quesne
working us so long and hard my family would still be alive.’

Jaggery spoke low to Wakelin.

Wakelin’s thick lips hardened to a sneer. ‘Yur, let’s have done
with du Quesne. We’ll sup on his …’ His conviction did not hold fast because he
forgot what he was about to say.

‘… blood,’ Jaggery prompted.

‘Yur, that were it, bud.’ 

Jaggery clapped Wakelin on the back. ‘That’s fighting talk,
Wake. And don’t forget what he did in the graveyard.’

‘Yur, ‘e shot my pa.  Now’s the time ta kill du Quesne.’

‘Wakelin, you surely can’t mean what you say?’ Eppie said, appalled.

‘’e deserves it for what he done to my Molly. An’ what about
old Salty?  ‘e got rid of ‘er so’s ‘e wun’t have to prop her up on the poor
rates.’

‘I agree he was callous towards Molly and Betsy, but that
doesn’t mean you should seek to kill in retribution.’

‘Your clever sister, she has an answer for everything,’ Jaggery
said sneeringly.

‘Yur, you tell us what we should do, my clever sister. Here
we is, our lives crushed by that heartless villain and you say we should do
nowt.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

Dawkin joined in the argument, in his voice an underlying
pitch of anger. ‘If you ask me, it’s people like Squire Bulwar who ought to be
made to suffer for the way they’ve ruined the lives of others.’

Eppie was disturbed by his passionate outburst. ‘What’s
Squire Bulwar got to do with anything?’

‘You know how bad life was for us, Ep. Nowadays things are
worse on the land. On the way to Malstowe I passed through Little Lubbock and
got talking to your grandfather. He said a lad was scaring crows in Pasture Old
Field when he fell down and died. He had had nowt in his stomach for days. So, I
say let’s have done with the rich. It’s high time that the poor made the
rules.’

‘Simply because someone is born into a prosperous family
doesn’t make them wicked,’ she reasoned. ‘There are many fine people of noble
birth. Gabriel, for instance.’

‘Gabriel is an exception, but drive men into a corner and their
only defence is to attack,’ Dawkin said heatedly.

‘There’s not much chance of Dunham killing anyone,’ Wilbert
said. ‘After his pa were shot I heard him bragging to Tom and Edmund at the
Harvest Home that he was gonna murder Lord du Quesne. He’s done nowt. Yer
spineless, Dunham.’

Wakelin rose swiftly, ready to knock Wilbert’s tongue
through the back of his head.

Ezra stayed him. ‘He isn’t worth getting into a tussle
with.’

Queasy, Wakelin sank back. Glaring into his ale, he relived
his feelings of hatred for du Quesne following the death of his father. ‘I said
I’d get even with the scum,’ he thought. ‘I ain’t.’ He knew why, but loathed
thinking about it. ‘I ain’t got the guts.’ Despite his reservations, his
resolve grew. Du Quesne’s heartless treatment of his family and the mill
workers left him feeling that he must now act no matter what consequences
awaited him.

‘Wilbert’s right,’ Eppie said. ‘You could never take a
person’s life.’

‘Why are you siding with him?’ Wakelin asked, taken aback.

‘I’m siding with no one.’

‘Wake, you gonna sit there and let your loud-mouthed sister
insult you?’ Jaggery asked.  ‘If you was any sort o’ brother, with pluck, you’d
squash her nose.’      

Dawkin raised his fist to Wakelin. ‘You lift a finger to Ep
and I’ll lay you out flat.’

Hedley slammed his empty tankard upon the table. ‘Enough of talking.
We’ve put this off too long. I enjoy me ale as much as the next man, but now’s
the time to lay it aside.  I say we finish du Quesne, tonight!’

Jaggery mumbled words of encouragement to Wakelin.

‘Yur, Crumpton an’ all. Grimley won’t get off easy, neither.’

‘You can’t do that!’ Eppie cried. 

‘You got to agree?’ Wakelin asked.  ‘That donkey-mouthed
overseer beat you to pulp.’ 

‘Ep, is this true?’ Dawkin cried, aghast.

‘What we need is someone to lead us,’ Bow said. ‘Someone
with mettle.’ 

 Jaggery clapped Wakelin on the back. ‘Wake’s suffered most.
I say he deserves the honour.’

Wakelin, not wanting to be seen lacking nerve, nodded his
compliance, though Eppie noticed a barely perceptible look of alarm flit across
his face. He hid it by taking a substantial swig of ale, froth dribbling down
his whiskery chin.

Consumed by an appalling vision of Mr Grimley slain at the
hands of the workers for whom he cared so much, Eppie leapt to her feet and
faced the feverous men. ‘Each of us here knows there is nothing worse than
being constrained to do some one thing every day, for years, against our will. Though
I agree we must try to change the order of things, I believe that we must not
seek our freedom through using violence.’ 

Her voice was lost in bursts of laughter and rude remarks
about nagging women
.

In her mind, Gillow spoke as she remembered him reasoning with
Bill, the day she and Dawkin had released the badgers: “When you believe
something is wrong you must fight to achieve your aims. Not with bludgeons and
pickaxes, but with peaceful, passionate protest. That alone will secure your
objective.”

She held her head high. ‘Look at it from du Quesne’s perspective.
A violent protest would make workers seem like unthinking monsters. The only thing
it would achieve is to get the rest of the workers sacked. Rational argument
and non-violent methods are the only sure means by which to bring about our
objectives.’

‘A peaceable protest?’ Jaggery scoffed. ‘There ain’t no such
a thing. It’ll only end up in the massacre of the workers.’

Aware of the dour faces around her, Eppie’s courage began to
fail. She knew she must not give up, not now; Mr Grimley’s life depended upon
it. She spoke in a voice as confident as she could muster, aware of Martha
gazing proudly upon her. ‘My father died in the cause of peace. It is in his
memory that I beseech you all to follow me. Du Quesne and others like him would
have us believe that we are sinners simply because we are poor, that being underprivileged
is a fault of our making. We have punishment inflicted upon us because we are
impoverished and for no other reason. Dawkin says we need an uprising. I agree.
However, it must be a revolution in thinking, not using weapons. With moral
force and persuasion we can change the social order. We must ensure that there
will always be work for men, decent wages for all. Join me in a crusade.
Together we shall march against du Quesne’s pitiless rule.’

Though many grumbled, others shouted in agreement.

The door crashed back and in strode Thurstan, followed by
three yeomanry soldiers.

The banging of mugs on tables ceased abruptly.

Eppie stood alone.

Thurstan’s fierce eyes bored into her. His voice was smooth
and menacing. ‘I hope you are not leading a Combination, Dunham? You know the
punishment.’

Hands clasped behind his back, he strutted about the dimly-lit
tavern, eyeing the guilty-looking men. ‘Last night, Squire Obadiah Bulwar was
murdered. Gunned down beside his burning haystacks.’ There were mutterings of
disbelief. ‘A man disguised as a highwayman, with a coal-blackened face, was
spotted running away from the scene.’ 

An odd, knowing glance passed between Wilbert and Thurstan,
and Eppie wondered. Though she could not think why she did it, she glanced at
Dawkin. Upon his face was a look of repentance as if he bitterly felt the
consequences of something he wished undone.

‘Might that have been why he had failed to come to the tavern
last night?’ she pondered. ‘Had he gone to Garn Hall to murder Squire Bulwar?’
She was angry with herself for even considering that Dawkin might have been
involved.

Thurstan must also have wondered at the chimney sweep’s
expression. ‘Mrs Bulwar is offering a substantial reward of two hundred pounds
for information resulting in,’ he placed his hand upon Dawkin’s shoulder, ‘the
capture of the villain.’

Thurstan was leaving when Wakelin broke the silence of the
stunned inn-goers. ‘Enjoyed your rat cheese did ya, magistrate?’

Eppie was gripped by a wave of fear, tinged with humility. Though
Thurstan momentarily stood still and his shoulders tightened, he did not look
back.

Relieved that they had not been caught plotting, the men
settled back into their noisy ways, gossiping about the colossal reward.  

Unnoticed by Eppie, Dawkin, finding the tavern
claustrophobic, left the parlour, intending to head back to his lodgings.

Wilbert stepped after him. ‘From what you was saying about
Bulwar it wouldn’t surprise me if you had a hand in butchering the big fella.
Huge reward, hey?’ 

It was pouring.

Staying undercover of the doorway, Eppie cast around a
worried look for Dawkin.  Cold hands seemed to clutch at her.  Something was
wrong.

Horses blustered and restlessly stamped their shoes in the
stables across the yard.

A carriage raced away, its wheels spinning on the lane.

Wakelin pursued Eppie to make it clear how angry he was with
her. ‘You made me look a right dullard in front o’ everyone, saying I had no
guts.’

‘I never said that. Things got difficult. I don’t want
anything awful to happen to Mr Grimley, that’s all.  Why would Dawkin leave
without a word of farewell?’

‘How should I know?’ His head lolling in wretchedness, he
made to return to the parlour. On second thoughts, gone was his desire for
companionship.