Eppie (26 page)

‘When I was a lad I saw the fair go up in flames.’

‘What happened, Grumps?’

‘One night, Bill Hix and Paxton Winwood grabbed a couple of flares
that were lighting the stalls and set fire to a tent. No one else but me saw
their caper so they got away with it. I thought it was funny until I found
they’d also let a black bear loose.’

‘Did it get ya?’

‘It was making straight at me when I had this idea of
tipping up jars of boiled sweets. That bear was so busy guzzling that I was
able to escape.’ 

As they approached Little Lubbock church, Edmund hailed
Samuel from behind a hedge. ‘I’ve just given birth to two lambs and I’ve a
third on the way.’

Samuel hopped from the cart. ‘And there was I thinking that,
after you gave birth to that six-legged lamb, I’d seen everything!’

Edmund was a slender, serious youth whose shoulders were so
sloped that he looked like a bottle of beer. 

‘Why don’t you come an’ watch the next ‘un arrive in the
world,’ Samuel asked Eppie.

He dipped his hands into a pail of lye water to wash away
grime. With a look of concentration on his face, he thrust his hand up the
ewe’s rear. 

‘Can ya feel it?’ Eppie asked.

‘Aye. Here’s the legs. The mother’s too tired to give birth
to this one naturally.’ The lamb slipped onto the grass with a gush. He thrust
a piece of straw up its nose. ‘This is the best way to clean out the airways.’ 
The lamb sneezed. 

A sorry-looking ewe stood within a hurdle. ‘That one gave
birth to a single lamb, but it died,’ Edmund said. ‘I was thinking she might accept
this last triplet as her own.’

Samuel rubbed the lamb into the birth fluids. Satisfied that
the triplet had acquired the scent of the surrogate ewe, he placed it beside
her. A loud
mair
, the ewe’s greeting to the lamb
,
was met with a
soft bleat,
airr
,
from the adopted lamb.

Eppie was relieved. ‘The
new mam’s licking the lamb’s ears.’

‘She’ll lick it clean to get the blood racing,’ Edmund said.

‘Love?’ Samuel said tremulously, noticing Martha’s restless
fingers plucking the swell of her unborn child. ‘You all right?’

‘It’s nothing, only, seeing the lamb being born seems to
have brought on my own.’

‘I’d best get ya home, double quick.  Edmund, take care o’
the dogs.’

Samuel and Eppie helped Martha clamber back onto the cart. The
old shepherd flicked Fleecy’s reins.

‘Good luck, Mrs Dunham,’ Edmund cried, waving from the lane-side.
‘I hope it ain’t born with six legs.’

‘I certainly hope not!’ she replied, forcing a smile. She
held her breath to help her deal with a sudden, crushing pain.

‘If I ain’t mistaken,’ Samuel said nervously, ‘and there
ain’t nowt I don’t know about lambs, yours intends to arrive sooner rather than
later.’ 

From behind came the steady spin of carriage wheels. He
glanced back. ‘That’s Master Gabriel’s coach a-coming. When I was selling off
my barren ewes I met up with him. He’d come to take a look at the fair.’ 

Eppie kicked herself for not having spotted her friend. 

‘It seems Gabriel and his mother journeyed back yesterday. Her
ladyship was a mite queasy so she pushed off home. Gabriel said he’d stayed overnight
at Malstowe with friends.’

Eppie stared at the yellow and black carriage bowling along,
its horses driven by Fulke Clopton. The severe-faced coachman wore a
high-crowned hat with a red ribbon cockade. 

Samuel shouted above the clattering wheels, ‘I know I had my
doubts about these ‘ere turnpike roads, but I’ve had a change of heart. We’d
never have been able to race along at this pace afore.’ 

The sheep cart span towards the smithy. Eppie caught the
familiar ring on the blacksmith’s anvil. Far louder, as they approached the bend
in the lane, came a pounding of hooves with a sound like
butter-and-eggs,
butter-and-eggs
. Men shouted, encouraging horses to a greater pace. 

Eppie’s skin prickled. Tightly gripping the edge of the cart,
she sensed unknown danger.

Whirling around the corner came two stagecoaches hell-bent
in a race to see which would be the first to reach the staging inns in
Litcombe, one overtaking the other.

The green and yellow carriage, which she recognised as one
of Thurstan’s flying coaches, was slightly to the fore of a rival carriage
belonging to Hurry Eades. Locked in a foolhardy bid to win prestige for their
employer, and a few extra coins in their pockets, the drivers were oblivious to
the imminent peril of those travelling in the sheep cart.

‘What’s ‘em gaming at?’ Samuel cried as the carriages bore
recklessly towards them.

Spotting the sheep cart, the driver of the rival coach drew
hard on his reins. ‘Whoa!’ 

The stony-eyed driver of the flying coach whipped on his
fearful beasts without mercy.

Whinnying in terror, Fleecy bolted down the only escape
route possible, the embankment. The cart toppled sideways. The rope traces
twisted under pressure and snapped with a noise like an anchor hitting the sea.

Thrown out of the cart, Eppie turned head over heels. Her
neck wrenched with a sharp pain. Splashing into the brook, she rapidly pushed
herself up with her hands, terrified that the cart would fall on top of her,
snatched up her bonnet, and scrambled out. 

The cart had come to rest upside down in the brook. Fleecy was
cantering down the lane, petrified by the ordeal.  The coaches had disappeared
into the distance.

Martha lay in a flattened patch of cow parsley, pain
sketched upon her face.

‘Mam!’

She tried to sound calm so as not to frighten Eppie. ‘I’m
not hurt.’

Samuel sloshed out of the ditch. ‘That was a mite close.’
His forehead had struck a stone on the opposite bank.

‘You’re bleeding,’ Eppie cried.

‘I’ll survive; my head’s made of wood.’ He knelt at his
daughter’s side and stroked her hand.

Ebernezer had hurried from the smithy. ‘It’s fortunate
Eade’s coach pulled behind Thurstan’s express; otherwise you might’ve been
caught up in the accident an’ all, Master Gabriel.’

Gabriel had gone clean out of Eppie’s mind. Glancing round,
she took in his figure as he raced towards them, noticing how slim and handsome
he looked, his blond hair caught back in a bow.

Gabriel averted his eyes from Eppie’s gaze. ‘I’ll take you
back to the manor house, Mrs Dunham.’ He turned to the coachman. ‘After that,
go to Leighton House and request that Doctor Burndread urgently ride to the
manor to tend Mrs Dunham and Samuel.’  

Fulke’s ginger eyebrows, stiff like the hairs on a pig’s
back, fell over close-set eyes, lending to him the appearance of an angry
squirrel permanently asleep. Sluggishly, he answered, ‘Yes, sir.’ Though he
nodded, Eppie thought he looked disgruntled by the order.

‘If it’s all the same to you, Master Gabriel, I’ll be off to
find Fleecy,’ Samuel said. ‘She’ll be in a state. Martha, love, you’ll be fine
with Master Gabriel looking after ya.’ He trudged away.

Gabriel stooped beside Martha. ‘Are you able to walk a few
steps to my carriage?’

‘I must go home.’

‘There may be complications. You need proper care.’

‘Eppie mustn’t go. Not there. Eppie you run after Gramps.’

‘I won’t leave you, Mam!’

Gabriel glanced at Eppie’s anxious face. ‘We need to make
Mrs Dunham comfortable. You’ll find rugs in the carriage. Arrange them on a
seat.’

She crossed to where the horses waited patiently, chomping
on their bits.  Fulke, smelling strongly of horse provender, glared at her as
she stepped inside. Mud dripped from her sodden frock onto a rug and the padded
seats.

Out of earshot of the others, Gabriel spoke softly to Martha.
‘There is nothing to worry about, Mrs Dunham. Mother knows about Eppie.’

‘She knows?’ Martha feared that if she did not die from this
accident, she would surely perish from a massive heart palpitation. 

‘She knows that Eppie and I spend time together.’

‘That is all?’  

Gabriel’s voice was so low it was scarcely audible. ‘What
more is there to tell?’

Intimidated by the presence of the servants
within, Eppie chose not to follow Martha through the grand front door into the
house. So, here she lingered on a lawn divided by symmetrical paths and
knee-high box hedges. Ugly stumps of yews stuck out of the lawn, forming a
circle like a henge. To indulge Talia her mother had asked Alf, the head
gardener, to shape the yews to look like wildwood creatures. Shortly after Talia’s
death, du Quesne had the trees felled. Lady Constance never forgave her husband
for this barbarous act and, to aggravate him, refused to have the trunks
removed.

A magical aura emanated from the wood henge, stillness like
the silence of sleep, as though Talia were putting Eppie’s mind at ease. Martha
and the baby were going to be fine.

About the manor, with its stone mullion windows, was a
marked gloominess. It appeared to have grown over the centuries, with bits
added higgledy-piggledy. The Swan Chamber projected into a turret. Supported on
stone pillars it looked like a giant’s lantern. A Chilean potato tree with
star-like purple flowers rambled up an ironwork trellis to the sill of the window.
Eppie recalled Gabriel telling her about the climbing plant and her surprised
response, ‘You grow potatoes up your house!’

Jackdaws cawed hideously, alighting upon the multitude of
spiral-motif chimneys.

Climbing to an open doorway, she slumped beside a Grecian
urn and smacked her shoes on the steps to remove mud. A ramp swept down one
side of the steps, presumably for the ease of conveying her ladyship into the
garden in her wheeled chair. 

Spying Eppie, a freshly-starched chambermaid paced towards
her, agitatedly wafting her apron. ‘Shoo. If Mrs Bellows sees ya she’ll have a
faint.’

Eppie stood up smartly, startled to see Molly Leiff working
here.  

‘Have a faint if I see whom?’ the housekeeper demanded in a stentorian
voice.

‘A gypsy girl’s come
a-begging, Mrs Bellows, m’am.’   

Mrs Bellows shoved Molly to the side
to make way for her tonnage. She stiffened in shock. ‘Goodness, what a filthy
child. Be off this instance.’

Nervously, Eppie crunched
her grime-hardened frock, lost for words.   

‘His lordship does not behold with giving charity to rapscallions.
Go, or I will have the footmen set the dogs on you.’

Eppie lived in fear of du Quesne’s mastiffs, and was about
to run home.

Rubber wheels screeched upon the polished floor. ‘Thank you,
that will be all, Mrs Bellows,’ said Lady Constance du Quesne. ‘You may leave
this to me.’ 

Eppie gaped in trepidation
at the lady, making her face grubbier by rubbing tears into her cheeks. The
convertible chair in which her ladyship sat had a reclining back and adjustable
footrests, two large wheels at the sides and a smaller one behind. She was
adorned in the finest black silk, her bodice fashioned in a crossover manner, her
skirts trimmed with elaborate pleats. Notable amongst her attire was a black
mourning cap, a black velvet ribbon choker with a tiny brooch inset
illustrating a lily, and long black mitts with drawstring cuffs.

Lady Constance addressed a tall,
good-looking liveried footman, ‘Duncan, is that you there?’ Though he stood
only a short distance away, beside a tall palm that dominated the corner of the
vestibule, she appeared unable to recognise him with certainty. ‘My room feels
like a Siberian winter. Arrange further supplies of coal immediately.’ She rapped
a wheel of her chair with her walking stick. ‘Come close, child. My son has
informed me of your arrival.’

To appear presentable, Eppie prodded her smudged bonnet into
shape and thrust it upon her head.

Agnes had the task of pushing her ladyship in her
invalid-chair. ‘If you’ll take my advice, your ladyship, I would not let this
girl near you. She is heavily soiled.’

A hint of consternation was evident in Constance’s voice. ‘That
is something my son failed to divulge.’

Eppie plucked up courage. ‘Please, I’d like to see my mam.’

‘Impossible,’ Constance replied. ‘The doctor is with her. Molly,
see to this child’s ablutions.’

‘’er what, ma’am?’

‘Wash her.’ On impulse, Constance added, ‘Inform Hannah that
Miss Dunham will be joining Gabriel and I for refreshments.’

‘Your husband would be most displeased to learn of you
providing tea for one of his villagers,’ Agnes advised.

‘I shall amuse myself in any manner that appeals to me,’
Constance answered dismissively.

Eppie felt a surge of warmth and familiarity towards this
gentle woman. Her former beauty could be discerned in her graceful composure
and flawless pink cheeks. From beneath her black mobcap poked wisps of brittle
blonde hair. That she suffered from some malady was evident. Sunken in shrouded
sockets, the light of her eyes was dimmed like glazed sapphires.

Lady Constance drifted into
a state of reverie. ‘Only yesterday it seems was I brought to bed of a
daughter, Genevieve.’ Eppie gazed at the lady, awestruck. ‘She was a sister for
Gabriel, to make up for the loss of my darling Talia.’ Approaching footsteps
broke her sombre thoughts. Although Molly only carried one cloth with which to
dry Eppie after her wash, Lady Constance said, ‘Ah, here is the girl, with a
great bale of linen it would seem.’

Molly curtseyed. ‘I’ve been
below stairs, m’am, and set about boiling a cauldron of water to chuck Miss
Eppie in.’ 

‘You make it sound as though
the child were a lobster. No doubt, if you hunt around, you will find some
garment suitable for Miss Dunham. Agnes, I will take in a little air.’