Devil Water (3 page)

“Whist -- Dicky,” said Ned uneasily. “Hould yor gob, divven’t gabble so free!” Dick shrugged and both keelmen went on spreading the coal in silence. As Charles had no idea how anything would be when James came home, and had heard little Jacobite talk in the secluded Yorkshire manor where he had spent his last years, he found nothing more to say. A cart reappeared on the track, and Charles turned reluctantly to leave. Dick interested him despite his truculence. And now that Charles was used to the horned lovelocks and the sweaty blackness, he saw how admirable were the physiques of the two young men; their thick strength and rippling muscles were bred from years of shoveling the chaldrons of coal up into the holds of the ships which waited downriver.

He murmured “Farewell,” but the men paid no attention. He turned the mare, then pulled her up as a girl came running down the path by the track. “Dickie! Dickie!” she called, her voice high with frightened urgency.

Dick looked up, then jumped again to the staith. “What’s ado, lass? Meg, hinny, what ails thee?” His voice was suddenly gentle, and Charles had the impression that the big keelman would have hugged the girl had he not been so sooty.

The girl was panting, half crying, as she tried to speak.

“ ‘Tis Nan -- been i’ the straw since daybreak -- the howdy says she’ll not last through it -- she’s calling for Geordie.”

Dick licked his lips, staring at the girl. He understood, as Charles did not, that her sister Nan was in labor and that the midwife thought she would die. Charles understood only grave emergency, and he saw that the girl was very young. A brown little thing, with tangled nut-brown hair, round eyes brown as peat water, rumpled russet bodice and skirt, and dusty bare feet.

“Canst not fetch Geordie?” said Dick frowning.

She shook her head. “I tried. Squire William himsel’ was there at the pithead. He wouldna let them send word down. He said --” she gave a sharp sob and twisted her hands, “said I was crazed to dare to summons a pitman from wark, only because a brat was a-birthing. I told him Nanny was dying, and he said ‘Let her then.’ “

Dick’s fists clenched. “Damn Black William’s guts! Damn him! Oh,
I’ll
get Geordie from the pit.”

“I pray so,” she whispered. “But how
can
thee?”

Dick grabbed a homespun shirt from the staith rail, pulled it over his head. “I’ve means,” he said. “Ned, do the best ye can, if ould Creeper comes tell him I’m took wi’ sudden gripes.” He turned to the girl. “I’ll bring Geordie. Hurry back to Nan. Canst make it, lass? Ye’re shaking.”

“Could I take her on the mare?” offered Charles. The girl started. She had not noticed Charles. Dick had forgotten him, but he nodded quickly. “ ‘Tis a welcome offer if ye’ll be so kind,” and he began to run up the track towards the highway and the Park colliery to find his eldest brother Geordie.

Charles helped the girl clamber up behind him on the mare, where she perched lightly, her arms around Charles’s waist. She did not speak except to give muffled directions.

They passed the bridge to Newcastle, turned south a bit, and came to another row of squalid stone hovels all alike. “There,” said the girl, pointing, “thank’ee,” and slipping off the horse she ran toward the center cottage. In front of it there was a group of pit-women. They made way for the girl, gaped at Charles, and then, peering in through the door and shaking their heads, resumed a dreary murmuring.

Charles had no reason to linger, but he was anxious to know if Dick would manage to get Geordie here in time. And he hoped to see the girl again. The modest delicate touch of her arms around his waist had been pleasant.

After a bit, as nothing happened, Charles rode down the road towards a smoking wooden structure he saw looming against the sky. He suspected that it might be the colliery where Geordie worked, and soon had confirmation, when he rode through an open gate and was hailed by a lanky man on a bay stallion. “Halt! What’s the meaning o’ this, fellow! Don’t ye know you’re trespassing?”

The man had very sharp black eyes, set near together in a purple-veined flabby face. He wore a cocked hat trimmed with braid over his own coarse grizzled hair, and a sober brown coat with pewter buttons.

“Forgive me, sir. I’ve no wish to intrude,” said Charles in his politest manner. “I saw the gate open and was curious to see a colliery. It is one, isn’t it?”

“This is the Park Pit, and I’m the owner o’ it, Esquire William Cotesworth. Ah, I see ye’ve heard of me.”

Charles had given a blink. So this was Black Will, and how could Dick possibly get Geordie out from under this long bulbous nose?

“And I’ve seen
your
face before,” added Cotesworth, whose driving brain was ever vigilant of smallest details. “Or one like it. Well, speak up, knave, who are ye?”

“Charles Radcliffe of Dilston,” said Charles, resenting Cotesworth’s tone and beginning to dislike him as much as Dick did.

“Ah, the Honorable Charles Radcliffe, to be sure,” said Cotesworth with a sudden twisted smile which did not affect the cold stare. “That’s who ye look like, a Radcliffe. Matter o’ twenty years since I had some dealings wi’ his lordship your father. He bilked me out o’ six guineas for tallow and wine he ordered.”

“What!” cried Charles. “You’re mad, sir! My father never cheated anyone in his life, and I assure you earls do not concern themselves with household provisioning.”

“All the same I niver got m’ six guineas. I’m a plain North Country man and I speak plain. I hear the new Earl’s coming home, and ye may tell him I expect the account to be settled.”

“No doubt my brother’s steward will see you’re paid,” said Charles with all the condescension he could muster above an impulse to punch that knobby tight-lipped face. “So you deal in tallow and wine as well as coals,” he added bitingly. “A Jack-of-all-trades.”

The muscles flickered around Cotesworth’s eyes, but he ignored Charles’s tone. “I’ve many trades,” Cotesworth agreed blandly. “But ye may also tell your noble brother white roses aren’t one of ‘em.”

Charles blinked again. He knew that the white rose was the Jacobite emblem, and he was annoyed into saying, “So you’d not hope to see the rightful king on the throne when Queen Anne dies!”

“The rightful king’ll never be a
Papist,”
said Cotesworth. “Good day. In future keep off m’land!” He sat motionless while Charles rode back through the gate onto the roadway. Then Cotesworth shut the gate and trotted off to his pithead.

Insufferable boor, Charles thought. I hope James never gives him his miserable six guineas! But he felt that there was something more sinister about Squire Cotesworth than a long memory for a trivial debt.

Charles presently got back to the row of miners’ hovels, and saw Dick standing on the street, watching him come. Charles spurred the mare and galloped up. “You
got
here! Did you bring Geordie?”

“Oh aye,” said Dick. “He’s in wi’ poor Nanny.”

“But how did you ever do it? I’ve just been to the pit, I met Black Will, you never got past
him!”

Dick grinned. A streak of white in the dirty face. “The Park’s an ould pit, laddie. Our grandfaither hewed in it. There’s passages to the outside Cotesworth divven’t knaw, but Geordie an’ me do. Now I’m off to join m’marra in the keelboat. Gan thou hyem to thy castle. Gatsheed pits’re no place for quality.” He gave a mocking, not unfriendly wave, and hastened back towards the Bensham staith where Ned was working.

Charles did not take Dick’s advice. He dismounted instead and knocked timidly at the Wilson door, which was now shut. The girl opened it, and looked astonished, but her eyes were shining and a clear rose color had come into her cheeks. “She’s better,” she whispered. “Nanny’s better, the moment Geordie came she took heart.”

“Is the baby --” said Charles awkwardly, and stopped.

“Aye -- ‘tis born. A fine boy. I guess ‘twill be another pitman some day, poor bairnie. It seems to me a fearful life.” She turned as someone spoke in the house, and answered, “Aye, I will so.” She came out of the hovel and shut the door. “I’m to get ale frae the Lion in case Nanny fancies some.”

Charles tethered the mare and walked along beside the girl, whose brown head barely reached to his shoulder. “I didn’t know a pitman’s lass would think this a fearful life, if you’re used to it,” he offered diffidently.

“But I’m not!” she cried flashing up at him like an indignant kitten. “Did you think me a Tynesider? I’m from Coquetdale -- from the North on the Border,” she emended as she saw him look puzzled. “Can ye not hear-r it in m’speech? They tease me enough.”

All the speech he had heard today had sounded strange to Charles, but now he noticed that she made her r’s with a throaty little burr, and yet he found her easier to understand than Dick’s broad Tyneside. As they went to the Lion and waited for ale and walked back again, Charles learned something about the girl.

Her name was Margaret Snowdon, but everyone called her Meg. She was fifteen. She had been born near a remote village called Tosson on the Coquet river, as had her big brothers and her sister Nan. Their mother had died last January and then Meg had been sent to her sister in Gateshead. The father, John Snowdon, was one of a large clan of Snowdons who lived in Coquetdale. John Snowdon was a farmer, but he was also something of a scholar. In the long winter nights he read many books, mostly sermons, and he had taught all his children to read and write. He lived in an isolated peel tower and saw little of his kinsmen, for he was a Dissenter -- a Calvinistic form of Protestantism Charles barely knew existed. Charles was familiar only with Protestants who belonged to the Established Church of England. Meg’s father held with the Scottish church, which was frowned on in England.

“But are you Scots then?” Charles asked, not greatly interested, but anxious to keep Meg talking, for without questions she fell shyly silent.

“Lord save us, but no!” cried the girl with so much horror that Charles laughed.

“We’re Northumbr-r-ians,” said Meg tilting her chin. “M’faither and brothers’d not thank ye for thinking us part o’ those thieving shifting Scots across the Border!”

Charles had heard of Border raids, and received the impression that the English gave as good as they got when it came to sudden forays, pillage, and cattle-stealing, but he made no comment, for it suddenly occurred to him that Meg was pretty, and that he would like to kiss her. They had returned to the Wilson doorstep, and the girl clutching her jug of ale was about to disappear inside.

“Meg--” he said putting his hand on her smooth brown arm, “will you come out again? I’ll give you a ride over to Newcastle -- there might be a cockfight or such.” He was not sure what diversions the town could offer.

Meg’s little face brightened. “I heard the Faws’re camping by Jesmond,” she said eagerly. “They’ll ha’ a piper. I hanker fur the pipes.”

“The Faws?” asked Charles still holding her arm.

“Egyptians and tinklers,” said the girl. “We call them Faws. They wander England but live on the Border.” The need for explanation reminded her of the gulf between herself and this tall good-looking lad who was staring down at her so winningly. She turned and releasing her arm put her hand on the door latch. “Nanny might need me,” she said, “-- and Dick wouldna like that I go wi’ ye.”

“Why not?” said Charles frowning. “Has he the say over you?”

She lowered her lashes, staring at the doorstep. “He has a mind to court me,” she answered slowly. “If he can put by a few shilling, but ‘tis mortal hard.”

“Well, you’re not bound to him
now,”
said Charles whose ardor was increased by this opposition. As she still hesitated his face changed and lost its boyish diffidence. “Come along, Meg!” he said sharply. “You know you want to and I think it unseemly that you should argue with me.”

Unseemly to gainsay the son of an earl, the grandson of a king -- his thought needed no voicing for Meg to understand it. Dick, while in the hovel, had explained just who the lad was, and she swallowed nervously, half flattered and half frightened. “I’ll see what Nanny says.” She turned and slipped through the door, leaving Charles to stand on the road, his spurt of haughtiness evaporated.

Inside the pitman’s cottage, Geordie had gone and Nan was asleep, so Meg put the jug of ale on the only table and consulted the midwife.

Mrs. Dodd was town-bred and a great respecter of rank, unlike Meg’s kinfolk. Up in the dales on the Border, there was neither servility nor feudal spirit. Each family was pretty much a law unto itself, and did as it pleased regardless of earls or dukes or even the Queen.

Mrs. Dodd, never backward with advice, settled the matter of Meg’s invitation at once. “Ye obey your betters, m’lass -- and do as the young gent wants. If he’s took a fancy to ye, ye might wheedle from him a pound or two which’d not come amiss here as
I
can see.” The midwife gave a disdainful sniff towards the frowzy straw pallet where Nan slept with the baby. “No need to mention it to your sister or that Dick Wilson neither.  I’ll bide till ye get back.”

Meg’s heart beat fast as she washed her face in the pail, tidied her hair with Nan’s comb, put on her one pair of shoes, and going outside said shyly to Charles, “I’ll come, sir.”

Charles and Meg had a glorious afternoon. They rode the mare across the Tyne Bridge and then explored Newcastle. They gaped at the Blackgate and St. Nicholas’ Church. They went to the squalid quarter near Sandgate where Dick and many of the keelmen lived, they explored the dark alleys Meg said were called “chares,” they walked out on the great quay and admired the line of barges with foreign flags, ships from Sweden, Holland, and even Turkey. Sailors were unloading bales of damask, barrels of figs and indigo, while the outgoing cargoes of tallow and candles lay ready on the wharf. “Must be Squire Cotesworth’s,” said Meg pointing to the bales. “ ‘Tis his chandlery’s mark. And some of those colliers down river’re his too.”

Charles glanced at the great ships lying at anchor, and said, “Black William’s done well for himself.”

“Aye,” said the girl. “Naught but a poor yeoman to start with, but the de’il’s taught him all his tricks.”