Eppie (19 page)

The black-whiskered oboe player appeared less adept than his
friends at holding his ale.  Swaying, his flickering eyes watering, he
exclaimed, ‘’ere, there’s some kind of sticky ooze on yer keel.’ He blew out
his flushed cheeks. ‘It dain’t ‘alf pong.’

Outraged by the peals of laughter at his expense, du Quesne
glowered at the capering musician. ‘How dare you speak to me in this impudent
manner?  Don’t you know who I am?’

‘Carse I do’s, yer Lard duck Queer-fleas.’

‘Mr Gyrie!’ the parson exclaimed in despair. ‘You are
inebriated.’

‘Nah, ya can’t fool me there, pars’n,’ the jolly violinist
replied. ‘I knows a’m in church.’

With all the merrymaking, Eppie’s fears thawed. Gradually, she
became aware of Gabriel agitatedly waving his musical score, indicating that
she had better take her chance to run. Flying round, she almost smacked
straight into Thurstan.

‘Don’t stand there like a stuffed baboon,’ du Quesne bellowed
at his nephew.  ‘After her!’

In the hedgerows, flocks of linnets
sang. For once, Eppie gave them no heed. Scanning the hedge, she longed to find
somewhere to lie low to give Thurstan the slip. Beyond the ditch, hawthorns
spanned field boundaries. In summer they provided ideal hiding places. Now, bare
of leaves and peppered with holes, they were useless for concealment.

Pelting past the rake-maker’s yard, a stitch in her side
forced her to a walking pace. 

A wagon, loaded with chained oak trunks, rumbled towards
her. She staggered onto the grass verge to avoid it.    

Pippa Parker was slumped over Ferret Farm gate, her lank
hair dripping in greasy coils. In the cold wind, bruises upon her face appeared
orange-mauve. Chewing a fingernail, she stared inquisitively from beneath bony
eyebrows. ‘Waz up with ‘ee, Eppie Dunham? Ya look frayed at edges.’

‘Someone’s hunting me.’

Pip peered down the lane. ‘Thicky Thurstan’s heading this
way on Bullet. Have ya done summat bad?’

‘I’ve slimed his Lordship’s breeches.’

‘Good on ya! I’ll hide ya, but I’ll want summat for it.’

Weary almost to the point of exhaustion, Eppie consented to
the demand. Crouched low, she scuttled towards the gate.

Pip shoved her towards a lead coffin that served as a horse
trough.

Eppie gaped in dismay at the hoof-raked muddy puddles. 

‘Can you think of anywhere better?’ Pip asked indignantly.

Surveying the expanse of meadow where scrawny horses grazed
on the few remaining grassy tussocks, Eppie realised she had no choice.

Shoving Elizabeth inside her cloak, she cowered in the mud.
Iciness oozed through her stockings.

Pip tossed a filthy horse feed sack over her, blotting out
the dipping sun.

Thurstan drew rein. ‘You there, Pippa Parker, the blacksmith
says he saw you speaking to Eppie Dunham.’

‘I ask ya, when do I get time to stand around
rattling on to folk, sir?’

‘I saw you flopped over this gate like a sack of grain. You
opened it, as though letting someone in.’

‘Weren’t me, sir,’ she answered, injured.  ‘Don’t ya believe
us?’

‘Frankly, no.’ He thudded to his feet. ‘Do you take me for
an imbecile?’

‘It wun’t be hard,’ she muttered.

Eppie wanted to laugh, but kept quiet.

He threw back the chain.

A horse cantered towards the trough. The ground shook.

‘Don’t come in, sir!’ Pip shrieked.  ‘You’ll get flattened.’

‘I am not concerned about your stupid pony.’

‘But t’uther day Hopper bit clean through the seat of me
brother’s breeches!’ 

Thurstan quickly remounted. Bullet galloped away.

A dun-coloured pony stood beside the trough, his head
weaving from side to side. 

‘Hey up, our Pip,’ yelled Flip, her brother. ‘Pa says hurry
up with that pony.’

Pip dipped into the pocket of her grubby smock for loose oats.
‘Here, Eppie, you grab him. I ain’t boverin’.’

Eppie warmed to the trusting pony as he munched the treat
from her palm.

Stroking Hopper’s muzzle, she slid her fingers beneath the
noseband and guided him to the stable, all the time speaking soothingly.

Pip tossed the saddle onto the pony’s back. ‘Hopper don’t
like leathers. It reminds him o’ work, and he ain’t fussed about that.’

‘Don’t you think you ought to fix it on a tighter hole?’
Eppie asked. ‘When you buckled it he pulled a grumpy face and breathed out.’

‘He don’t like it tight.’

Dozily, the pony stood in the yard, one hind leg resting, and
his eyes half closed. 

Mark, the children’s father, strode towards them, scratching
curling hairs that showed above the buttons of his filthy shirt.

Flip straddled a wall. Pretending it was a horse, he
tormented it with a whip.

‘That cob’s a mean-tempered beast,’ his father warned.
‘You‘ll have to get into the saddle sharpish if ya wanna get there at all.’

Sally, their mother, picked her way through the
thistle-dried garden. ‘Just don’t go breaking your neck in the doing of it.’

Eppie noticed the puffed bruising beneath one eye, evidence
that Sally had stumbled upon her husband’s hasty fists. She recalled what Martha
had told her. After getting Sally with child, Mark did not want to marry her. The
parish had forced it upon him. He had been led handcuffed to the church.

Mark sauntered off with a halter, ready to catch another
horse. He regularly bought nags cheap, the ones no one wanted, ill-tempered, or
all rib and bone, broke them in and sold them back at horse fairs.

Pip led the pony to where Flip waited. ‘Hopper don’t need no
rough stuff to break him in.’

‘It’s always best to do as yer father says,’ Sally cautioned.

Flip snatched the reins and sprang into the saddle. He gave
the pony a hearty kick in the hindquarters as he wriggled in his seat, quickly
following this with a fierce dig in the ribs with his boot. With a snort of
alarm, the whites of his eyes wildly protruding, Hopper jibbed backwards, crab-like,
toward the wall, clattering into buckets. Instinctively, Flip gave the cob another
kick in the ribs to disentangle him.

Dashing back, Mark wrenched the reins. ‘Ya clumsy oaf.’

Hopper reared. The saddle went awry. Flip slithered, his
fall broken by a heap of mouldering straw. 

‘You ain’t fixed his saddle on proper,’ Mark said, giving
Pip a clip around the ear.

Terrified of her father’s wrath, she jabbed a finger towards
Eppie. ‘It were ‘er. She told me to keep the buckle loose so Hopper didn’t kick
out.’

‘Did she!’ Staring savagely, Mark bore down on Eppie. 

Too astonished for words, she ran.

Pip caught up with her halfway along the track. ‘Not so
fast! You owe me.’

Eppie skidded to a halt. ‘I ain’t got o’t.’

Pip rubbed her smarting ear. ‘I’ll take ‘er.’

‘Not Elizabeth! I take her to bed with me.’

Shoulder-barging Eppie, Pip grabbed the doll and ran. ‘Well,
ya don’t no more!’

Eppie could not bring herself to open the field gate. ‘I
can’t leave without Elizabeth.  She’ll think I don’t love her.’ Sinking beside
the briar-entangled hedge she cried until she felt as dry as Gillow’s stored
beans.

Dusk deepened. 

She awoke to the sound of Oss Cordwainer, the herdsman,
calling in the cows. ‘Cush! Cush!’

How peaceful the heavens looked, the curved blade of the
moon as sharp as a sickle, the stars wheeling in its silver light. 

She thrust out her numb legs and rubbed away pins and
needles.

Ebernezer still toiled in his forge, a stream of flickering
firelight flooding the yard. The reverberating clank-clunk of his hammer
sounded strangely remote.

She took a glance of longing at the distant farmhouse, its parlour
glowing with lamplight, and trudged off down the lane.

Black-silhouetted, a rider lay in wait in the high-hedged
lane that led to the manor stockyard. Though she knew it was not he, she spoke
in a fearful, wavering voice, ‘Pa?’

Thurstan touched Bullet’s
flanks with his spurs and rode up, slowly. In his black cape and tricorn hat he
looked every inch a highwayman.

Her face lengthened in
horror as, drawing level with her, he pointed a cavalry pistol between her
eyes.

She took a step backwards.
‘Is he going to kill me?’ she thought in terror. ‘Kill me here? Now? Will I never
see mammy again?’

A sudden surge of blood
around her body lent wings to her feet.

As she increased the
distance between Thurstan and herself, a shot, so loud that the earth seemed to
shatter beneath her, rent the chilly air. Something breezed past her ear, lifting
her hair with a sickening caress. A bullet!

‘I could kill you, know that!’ Thurstan laughed short and
cold. He kicked his capering horse into stillness. ‘But I will not,’ he
muttered maliciously. ‘I will derive greater pleasure knowing that you are
living your life in grime and misery. Though you know it not, Dung Heap, you
did me a favour when you stole Cousin Genevieve. It was a feeble weapon without
a thrust.’

‘I can’t imagine what’s keeping
him,’ Martha fretted.

Gillow had gone to the manor to pay the land agent the quit
rent for the past three years.

‘Are you looking forward to the church concert?’ Eppie
asked.

‘Very much. It’ll make a change to listen to pleasant music.
All I hear these days is the stale singing of drunkards hanging over Miller’s
Bridge.’

‘That’s pa and Wakelin, ain’t it?’

‘Like as not!’

‘Before pa gets back, I’ll finish my sewing. I want to give
him a surprise.’ Working steadily in the loft, a perplexed look crossed her
face. She called down to Martha, ‘Wakelin was in church yesterday, talking to
the tomb of Gabriel’s baby sister.’

‘That’s odd.’

‘D’ya reckon we ought to ask him what he was up to?’

‘Safest to leave him be.’

Eppie climbed down with the rabbit pelt stuffed with straw,
its head and paws intact. ‘What do you think?’

Martha gazed in wonder. ‘How clever! Dressed in his little
clothes he looks alive.’

‘Which bit of him do you like best?’

‘I like all of him,’ she answered admiringly, ‘though he smells.
You’ve done a good job of sewing the buttons on the shirt. I like his frilly
lace cuffs and shoe buckles.’

‘Lord du Quesne has shiny buckles so I thought my rabbit
would like some. They’re too big; they’re off Jenny’s old bridle.’

‘Why did you want to stuff a rabbit?’

Eppie nipped into the front garden. ‘After pa set the snare
I asked him why, in the Ten Commandments, Thou Shalt Not Kill doesn’t apply to
killing rabbits. He said because they aren’t like us. I told him they was.’

‘What did your pa say?’

‘That God only made rabbits so people can eat them. I told pa
that every life is special.  He got mad and told me to hop it.’

‘I can’t say I’m surprised. You do pester him with your
questions.’

The room filled with the aroma of freshly-baked bread. Martha
set the table. ‘You can’t really think rabbits are like us?’

Eppie sliced the pheasant pie. ‘They jump around, have
bairns, eat, breathe and do droppings.  We could’ve been born rabbits instead
of people.’

‘You eat rabbit meat.’

‘I think of it as a gift from the rabbit, to keep me alive.’

‘Rabbits don’t chatter like us.’

‘Gabriel and I spotted a guard rabbit on top of a warren. It
thumped with its paws, warning other rabbits that a fox was coming.  That’s a
rabbit’s way of talking.’ 

‘One thing you can’t deny is that rabbits don’t look like
us.’

‘That’s what pa said. So I asked him if rabbits looked like
us would he stop putting out traps.  He said he supposed.’

‘That’s why you decided to make your rabbit?’

‘Exactly! When he sees my rabbit he’ll take that horrid
snare away.’ Hearing hurried footsteps, she glanced through the window. ‘Here’s
pa. He’s running!’

‘Running? That’s a first. I never recall seeing him run
before.’

Gillow burst in. ‘Where is he?’

‘Who?’ Martha asked.

‘Don’t answer me back, woman. You know who.’

‘If you mean Wakelin, he hasn’t come in for his tack.’

‘I need to find him, quick. I’ve been to the woods. He and
Haggard aren’t there. I have to warn him.’

‘That’s a good ‘un, Gillow,’ Jacob said, chuckling in the
lane.

‘What’s he spouting on about?’ Gillow muttered angrily.

‘I’ve used pigeon decoys to lure pigeons for shooting,’
Jacob said, ‘but in all my time I’ve never heard of anyone dressing a rabbit to
lure coneys to the trap.’

Gillow stomped down the path.

Martha spoke in a hushed voice. ‘Eppie, you never said you
were going to put it there. Now we’re in trouble.’

‘Why? My rabbit looks funny holding a carrot.’

‘That’s precisely what I mean. As long as I’ve known him,
Gillow’s been most solemn about his plot of earth.  It’s sacrosanct.’

Betsy hobbled over. ‘Unless I am mistaken, that rabbit is
wearing a patch of my red-spotted neck scarf.’

Eppie dashed off to greet the old lady. Before she got far, Gillow
grabbed her by the back of her frock and marched her to the porch. ‘What’s your
game?’

‘Lower your voice,’ Martha implored. ‘Eppie meant no harm.’

‘I only did it to give you a laugh,’ Eppie said, startled at
his harsh words.

‘And I suppose you thought it was funny when you spilt
polish on his lordship’s pew?’

‘I didn’t do that on purpose.’

‘If you’ve been making out to your mother that it was an
accident you’d better admit to her that you’ve been lying.’

‘It weren’t no lie.’