An Incomplete Revenge (21 page)

Webb nodded, and Maisie reached out to help Paishey clean more blood from her face and neck.

“Aunt Beulah will doctor me now. She’ll mend my ear.”

Maisie drew back, respectful of the gypsy ways, but she was curious to know what events had unfolded just before she came upon Sandermere attacking Paishey. She rested a hand on the woman’s shoulder so that she might not pull back, fearful, when asked about the attack. “What happened, Paishey? What did Sandermere say before he went for you?’

The woman looked at the ground as she spoke. “I’n came for water, and the
rye-moosh
—the boss man—came up to the tap while I was filling the kettle. He’n told me to move, to let him in, and I told him my kettle was nearly filled and I’d soon be done. I said
sir
out of respect.” Maisie saw a flash of the gypsy’s independence as she spoke. “Then he’n lifted his stick and went to thrash me, and he’n was saying I was nothing, that he would have us all sacked for our trouble, and the whole farm was his, all the hop-gardens and the tap and all the water what comes from it. Then he’n went for
me, just as you come along. Said everything was his, me an’ all, and he’n be takin’ what he wanted.”

“And there was a stink on ’is breath, couldn’t miss it,” added Billy. “ ’e’d been at the bottle, no doubt about it. It’s a wonder ’e could get up on that ’orse.”

Maisie nodded and said they’d probably all better be getting on, and Beulah should look at Paishey’s ear. Together they walked back to the hop-garden, where Webb and Paishey joined their people, before gathering up their daughter and leaving the workers. Maisie knew they were returning to the clearing, which, although temporary, represented the lair that any animal would escape to when harmed or threatened.

BILLY PAUSED BEFORE
walking along the rows to join his family. “What d’ye think that was all about, Miss, Sandermere actin’ like a lunatic?”

Maisie thought for some moments before speaking. “The man is losing the very underpinning of his life—the land that has been in his family for centuries—and it’s all his fault. The estate has given him a certain status to bolster him, and now it’s slipping through his fingers, so he’s clutching at whatever he can. And the drink is keeping his anger well oiled.” She paused. “There’s a sadness to him, as despicable as he is. A man who acts in such a destructive manner is himself harmed.”

Billy shrugged. “Well, ’e’ll be ’armed a lot more if I see ’im tryin’ on that sort of thing again, make no mistake. Like I said, I reckon we’ll be lucky to still be in work tomorrow. I don’t expect to be seein’ that ugly dial again as long as I live—and I’m glad of it.”

They continued in silence for a while. Then, as she walked alongside Billy, back to the bin where his family worked together, Maisie broke the news of Simon’s death. Simon had saved Billy’s life in the war, a memory forever fresh in Billy’s mind. He shook his head.

“After all this time. Gaw, blimey, Miss, I kept wishin’ it was the other way round, that ’e’d come back to what ’e was, before the shell got ’im.” He looked at her. “You alright, Miss?”

Maisie felt her eyes moisten. She nodded. “Yes. I don’t know whether I’m shocked or not. It was as if his very life had been playing wolf with us, so that when the time came for him to . . . to go, I couldn’t quite believe it. It’s as if we’ve been tricked by hope ever since he was wounded.”

Having stopped to talk, Billy walked on and Maisie kept pace, her head lowered. “You’ll feel better after the funeral, Miss. When that’s done there’s nothing more than to get used to it. Once our little Lizzie was laid to rest, we could only remember her and try to—you know—just go on, day by day, one foot in front of the other.” He paused again, unused to speaking of his feelings. “Sometimes I feel as if, when you throw that big clod of earth onto the coffin, you’re not just startin’ to fill the ’ole in the ground but the big gapin’ one that’s been blown in your life.”

As they reached the bin, with the tallyman close at hand, her thoughts were deflected by the rush to clean the hops of leaves. She had wanted to ask Billy why he had looked at Webb so intently when they were speaking after the encounter with Sandermere, as if something had taken him aback, just for a second. Instead, she steeped her hands into the hops and began to pull out leaves.

Once the tallying was finished, they spoke of the London boys just released from police custody. As soon as they had returned to the hop-garden, George and his family had packed up their belongings and gone home to Shoreditch. “Shame,” said Billy. “They needed the money, and the farmer’s not duty-bound to pay you your wages unless you see out the picking to the end. Pity they couldn’t find it in them to stay.” When they began speaking of Sandermere’s attack on Paishey Webb, Maisie debated whether to visit the gypsies again today. She had planned to but now wondered if her presence would be unwelcome at such a time. But it
struck her that the risk of retaliation by Sandermere, owner of the land where they had made camp, might encourage them to move on, and she wanted to see Beulah again. So she chatted briefly with the Beale family and took her leave, once again carrying her knapsack over one shoulder as she walked at a brisk pace toward the hill and the clearing. If she was not welcome, she would leave with haste.

THE LURCHER CAME
down the hill, walked with her until they reached the vardos, and then ran across the clearing to Beulah. Maisie waved as she came into the shade, her eyes seeing only outlines as they adjusted from the day’s bright light. Beulah raised one hand and beckoned Maisie to her.

“I wanted to find out how Paishey is.” Maisie took her place, seated on a fallen tree next to Beulah.

“She’n be better when we leave, now. Only another week, then we’ll go.”

“Where to?”

“Up’n there.” She thumbed to the north, meaning London. “We’ll go to the Common for the winter. No more work on the land afore year’s end, not for us anyway.”

Maisie nodded. “What about her ear, where the ring was taken from her?”

Beulah called to Paishey, who was sitting on her haunches, chopping vegetables into a bowl. She set the task to one side and, light of foot, approached the matriarch. “Show’n her.” Beulah pointed to the younger woman’s ear.

Paishey drew back her black hair to reveal the lower half of her left ear, encrusted with a deep green paste molded to her flesh. Beulah motioned for her to lean forward and, as she came close, reached up with her vein-strapped hands and picked at the paste until it fell away. The lobe was no longer livid and swollen, and
there was no division in the flesh, just a single line of no more than a hair’s breadth where the earring had been dragged free.

“She’n be wearing gold again, come morning.”

Maisie smiled at Paishey, taking her hand. “And your heart?”

The young woman nodded accord, to say she was well. “I’ve my Boosul and my Webb. If’n I let my heart break over an old sot, Webb’d go after ’im, and I don’t want that. We’n be good people, don’t want trouble.” She waved as she returned to her bowl of vegetables.

“I saw you out in the woods last week,” said Maisie, turning to Beulah. “You were dowsing, with a forked hazel twig.”

Beulah cackled. “Least you knew it were hazel.”

“Can you teach me?”

“No. Can’t be taught. I can tell you how, but I can’t teach you to feel, to listen to the rod.”

“I want to try.”

Beulah placed her hands on her knees and levered herself to standing position. Maisie stood up, too, and thought the old woman might rest her hand in the crook of her arm. Instead she walked upright, not stooped, toward her vardo, motioning for Maisie to follow her. She reached underneath the vardo to pull out a wooden fork cut from a hazel branch and cleared of leaves, then walked toward the field where the horses grazed. She stopped and looked out across the land, breathing in the late-afternoon air, as the sun traveled down toward the horizon, bathing the stubble in a pale orange-red shimmer. Beulah handed the fork to Maisie. Then, placing her hands on top of her pupil’s, she gave weight to the rustic divining tool.

“This’n be how it’ll feel, when it’s pulling.”

“How does it know what I’m looking for?”

Beulah shook her head. “You’n know the answer, girl. You does it all the time. You hold it here.” She tapped Maisie’s head. “If’n you want coins, you hold coins. If’n you want water, you see water.
And if’n you want silver, you think silver.” And when she said the word
silver
a second time, with a movement as sudden as lightning, she removed the watch from Maisie’s jacket lapel and threw it into the field.

Maisie clutched her lapel. “Oh, no! Why did you take that? We could have used something else. Why my watch?” She looked down, clutched the fork’s handles, and moved forward.

“Slow, girl, slow. Let’n the fork tell you how to step.”

Maisie felt the woman’s hand, light, on her arm. She had not seen where the watch was thrown but listened with her fingers to the rod’s counsel and held the watch in her mind’s eye. Taking one carefully gauged step after another, she made her way across the grass. Without looking up, she knew the horses had stopped grazing and were ambling in her direction. Beulah walked behind her, along with the lurcher. She offered no words of advice, no instructions, only her presence as witness.

She turned once, the weight between her fingers pulling her to the left and then in a straight line. The horses were closer now—she could hear them nickering behind her. She wondered why Beulah did not chivvy them away, then thought it was to test her resilience to distraction. Never, since her apprenticeship with Maurice, had a lesson been so keen.

The rod pulled again, the weight trying her balance. Her watch was close. Then, as the rod pointed downward, the heaviness in her hands diminished. She knelt down, pushed the stubble aside, and claimed the watch.

“Thank God!” She held it to her chest, closing her eyes, then stood up, turning to Beulah.

The woman regarded Maisie in silence, with the horses leaning close together behind her and the dog at her side. “Now’n you know. Now’n you can dowse.”

“It was a sudden lesson, Aunt Beulah.”

Beulah was frowning and came to Maisie, taking the watch
from her. She held it in her hand, as if to feel its weight. “Get rid of it.”

“What do you mean?” Maisie stepped back, as she might if threatened.

“That watch has been too close to death. That watch holds too much pain to be worn so close to your heart. Its time is done now. Get rid of it.”

“But it was a gift, from someone dear to me. I can’t just—” She took back the watch.

Beulah stared. “Yes’n you can. Hold on to time, like that”—she pointed at the watch—“and you stay in time.” She turned and walked back up the hill, stretching out her arms to send the horses away, while the lurcher followed, stopping only once to look back at Maisie.

LATER, MAISIE RETURNED
to the inn, where she was shown to the same room she’d occupied before. She ached for a hot bath and, when she inquired, found that the Yeomans could not do enough for her. Once again she steeped herself in a tin bath filled with hot water, leaning back to rest her head as the steam filtrated into every pore.

A letter had awaited her arrival at the inn, a brief note from Beattie Drummond written in a matter-of-fact manner to let her know she would be coming down on the train from Paddock Wood the next morning, arriving at Heronsdene station at nine o’clock. She asked if Maisie would pick her up, as she had information of interest regarding the case.
The case.
She thought Beattie’s tone somewhat proprietorial, as if she was claiming part of the case as her own. Maisie had encountered such behavior in the past, in other instances where the interest shown by a source of information crossed a line. The reporter’s enthusiasm was a direct result of her hunger for some acclaim in her field, but Maisie
could not allow it to stall her progress, which she felt was already hampered enough—by herself.

Later, as she lay back in bed before allowing sleep to claim her, Maisie replayed the day in her mind, watching as certain events and encounters came to the fore. There was Sandermere’s drink-inspired frenzy, his lack of control. Then Beulah, taking her watch, the talisman that had gone to war with her, and throwing it away. And her warning:
That watch holds too much pain to be worn close to your heart.

She cleared her mind so she could rest. The last thing she saw before she fell asleep was a vision of Simon, sitting in his wheelchair at the convalescent hospital. She remembered, once, leaning over him, her arm around his shoulder, his head pulled into the crook of her neck. There was a point at which the edge of her scar met his.

THIRTEEN

Beattie Drummond stepped down from the train, once more wearing businesslike attire, a blue-gray skirt with a white blouse and, on her feet, black shoes smart enough for the street yet stout enough to wear out to a farm, should it be necessary. She carried a jacket to match the skirt, and a brown briefcase with both buckles broken, so the flap lived up to its name. She moved the jacket and briefcase to her left hand when she saw Maisie and held out her right hand in greeting.

“How are you, Miss Dobbs?”

“Very well, thank you, and you?”

After shaking hands, they walked to the MG, where the reporter squinted into the sun as she waited for Maisie to open the passenger door. “Might I call you Maisie, seeing as we’re working on the same case?”

Maisie waited until Beattie was seated and then turned to face her. “Of course you may But look, Beattie—” It was time to set a boundary between her work and the newspaperwoman’s business. “I am grateful for the information you are finding for me, and I
will most certainly keep my word and ensure that you are the first to know if I encounter anything that amounts to a scoop for your newspaper, but I have only one assistant.”

Beattie was firm. “I thought, seeing as he’s not with you at the moment, you might need a bit of help with the legwork.”

Maisie shook her head. “Ah, but he
is
here. And I have found that I make more efficient progress alone, or with just my assistant working on other aspects of a case, in tandem with my inquiries.” She paused, so that her words might have an effect. “And though I am at present looking into events that have piqued your interest for some time, it is not yet what I might term a
case,
not in the way you might think.”