Eppie (4 page)

Nestled against Martha, the baby
quietened.

Gillow polished off his
cold gruel. ‘I’ll nip across to Henry’s and let him know that Wakelin won’t be
draining in Pasture Old Field. Then I’ll call at the blacksmiths to see if Ebernezer’s
fixed that arrowhead on my paring spade.’ Afterwards, he was off to Litcombe.

Martha swung the kettle
over the fire. ‘Don’t forget my muffin-pike. Three times you’ve returned
without it.’ She kissed him farewell beneath the porch.

‘It’s my guess that the full moon causes Wakelin’s fits,’ he
reflected. ‘It’s known to bring a man out in a depression of spirits. I’ll
shoot an owl; it might ease him if you made another stew with the bird.’

Heading off to harness Jenny, their horse, he spoke encouragingly
to his vegetables.

Martha heard the door of the cart shed creak open and Gillow
exclaim to the dog, ‘Twiss, me old shaggy mat! Why’s Wakelin chained you up in
here?’

Martha laid Eppie in the rocking cradle and tucked the coverlet
around her.

The bedchamber and parlour were furnished with many items
that Henry, who was married to Claire, Martha’s sister, had picked up from the sales
of houses belonging to yeomen. Over the years, Gillow had built up his savings
from weaving and paid Henry back.

Henry was a well-respected man amongst the farm labourers,
having started out as head-fagger, made it to under-bailiff and finally to his
position as bailiff for Lord du Quesne. 

Beneath
the bedstead was a truckle bed with a straw sack mattress. A food cupboard hung
below the rafters. Under this a birch-wood basket, containing Martha’s sewing
things, was set upon a round table, whilst a child’s commode stood beside the
cradle. The only decorations on the roughly-plastered walls were prints of the Saints
Matthew and Mark, their faces speckled brown from years of damp.  

Martha fetched sprigs of dried rosemary out of the cradle
.
‘How did this get here?’ Puckering her brow, she gazed searchingly at the
baby’s features. ‘She looks different somehow. Silly me, I’m fretting too much.
It’s just them bruises she got when Wakelin fell.’

She went to gather potatoes from the crock at the bottom of
the dresser.

‘Only me!’ Betsy stepped into the parlour. ‘How’s the baby?’

‘She’s fine now.’

‘I’m so glad, m’dear.’

‘I still can’t imagine why Wakelin would go off like that.’

A wagon drew up. ‘Anyone at home?’

Martha was expecting Jonas Lathy, the innkeeper. Like most
of the village women, she brewed for the family and set aside a few bottles for
the tavern.

She knelt upon the cushioned seat set into the wall under
the window and peered out. It was Tom, Jonas’s son. ‘That’s all I need when
I’ve a stabbing head-cramp. Gillow says Tom’s worse than a gossiping old lady.’

‘I hope he ain’t thinking about me when he says that?’ Betsy
said, chuckling.

Tom took a shortcut across the bed of white and pink gillyflowers,
trampling them underfoot. Martha’s blood boiled. Most of the front and side
gardens were taken with Gillow’s vegetables and fruit bushes. This year there
was a plentiful supply of gooseberries, currants, plums and damsons. The flower
patch, where she lovingly tended primroses, violets and calendulas, was her
treasured plot.

Tom trailed Martha to the stone wring-shed where she brewed.
‘Seeing as my old man’s stacking barrels in the yard I thought I’d call for the
liquor. Mind if I take a nip?’ Standing amidst Gillow’s straw bee-skeps he
savoured the bouquet of the mead. ‘Mmm. Spicy.’ 

‘The recipe was handed down from my great-grandmother.’

‘And lovingly made by your tender hands,’ he said, taking one
of her hands in his.

She drew back sharply, wiping away his touch in the folds of
her skirts. ‘Tender! You know my hands are as rough as the stubble on your
face, Tom Lathy!’

Miffed, he thrust his hand through his greasy black hair. ‘You
heard about Lady du Quesne?  Her bairn died in the night.’

‘No, I had not heard! That is sorrowful news.’

He
stowed the bottles into a wooden crate in the wagon. ‘It seems Doctor Burndread
gave her ladyship a rough ride.’ Climbing onto the driver’s raised bench, he
flicked the horse’s reins. The wagon moved off. ‘If you ask me, du Quesne’s
physician would be better off working as a butcher; he’d make a finer job of stuffing
sausages.’

‘I’ll give him sausages.’ Gillow
had settled at the loom, ready for a spot of work. He was on his feet again
after Martha recounted the tale of the lad’s visit.

‘What do you mean?’ Martha
asked in surprise, looking up from spinning.

‘That Tom’s a bit too full
of himself for my liking. I won’t have him making up to my wife. I shall go and
speak with his father directly.’

She now regretted having
mentioned Tom’s bumbling, amorous approach. ‘I think you are taking things to
extremes.’ If Gillow annoyed Jonas there was the risk that she would lose her
earnings from brewing.

Shielding her eyes against
the sun, she stood before the picket gate and watched him stride off, the grey
dog gambolling at his side. She left the cottage door open on warm summer days
to let out the heat of the fire. Steam rose from the cauldron. ‘What about your
meal?’ They usually had their main meal at night, after the day’s work.
However, Gillow had a hearty appetite. If he had had a busy morning at the cloth
market he also liked a ‘little sustenance,’ as he called it, earlier in the day.

‘Keep it stoked.’

Keen to see how Wakelin was, and to have an explanation of
his curious action, she settled the baby and climbed to the loft. He lay on his
straw mattress, sweating, in a stupor.  Concern was in her eyes as she surveyed
his blue-tinged cheeks and the cut above his eyebrow.

 Fighting dark thoughts, his mouth quivered. ‘I’ve gorra ...’ 

 She sought to catch escaping words.

‘ … get home.  Ma mun’t find out.’

‘What mustn’t I know?’ 

 He opened his bloodshot eyes a slit and stared at her as
though regarding a stranger. 

‘Wakelin, tell me why you took Eppie?’

Restlessly, he wiped his fingers over his bruised lips.
‘What y’on about?’ Try as he might, he could not comprehend her words.
Thrusting a thumb stump into his mouth, he gnawed. 

 It was a habit that annoyed his mother. ‘Stop that,’ she
scolded, tugging at his wrist. ‘I’ll fetch you something to eat.’ She returned
with a bowl of bacon, onion and oatmeal broth. 

Turning his head away, he stared vacantly at his father’s woolsacks.
‘I ain’t hungry.’

‘Try a bit,’ she coaxed. 

He thrust the bowl away. The broth slopped onto the bare timbers. 

Losing her patience, she spoke vehemently. ‘Wakelin, I must
know why you took Eppie?’

Brows furrowed, he tried to remember for her sake. ‘I can’t
think, Ma. Honest.’

Mind fuddled, he listened to her clunk away in her battered,
stout clogs.

Finding a moment to herself, Martha
rocked herself to and fro in her low, rush-bottomed chair. She beamed lovingly
upon the baby’s rosy-cheeked face. Eppie’s glistening eyes flickered open at the
sound of her gentle voice. Save for the ticking of the green-stained
grandfather clock, standing like a coffin beside the door, the cottage was
quiet. Martha drifted from her worries about the constant bickering between
father and son, to the time of Wakelin’s birth:                                                                                   

It
was the middle of the night, the 13th of November, 1790. Battering rain sent
rivulets beneath the door, swirling into puddles within the cottage. Elm
branches clawed the thatch. A solitary candle burnt low.

Gillow
drew the stool to the bed. ‘It’s been hard for you.’

Martha supped the gin-laced caudle. ‘Has Betsy went?’

‘She says she’ll be back first thing. May I hold the lad?’

As he took the new-born infant into his arms the coverlet
fell, exposing the baby’s arms.

Gillow’s eyes opened wide in horror. ‘Didn’t Betsy notice
this?  Didn’t you?’ He leapt to his feet.

‘See what?’

Without a word of reply he disappeared into the parlour, the
baby in his arms. Scrabbling around the oak dresser, he thrust aside
earthenware pots and pans. A jar of pickled beetroot crashed to the floor.

Martha stumbled towards Wakelin, lying helpless upon the
table, his heels pounding. His ear-piercing screams tore at her heart. ‘What
are you doing?’

Gripping the hilt of a carving knife, Gillow came at her.
‘Leave him be!’

‘No, Gillow!’

Faint from blood loss, her knees buckled. Helplessly, she
tugged in anguish at her bedraggled hair crying, over and again, for Gillow not
to harm her baby. Wakelin’s blood speckled her nightdress. She did not dare to
look, to even consider what Gillow was doing. Vaguely, she became aware of him
tearing rags and clanking jars. 

He drew her to her feet. ‘It is finished.’

Afraid of what she would see, she pulled away.

He held on to her arm. ‘It had
to be done,’ he reasoned. ‘He couldn’t go through life with two thumbs on each
hand.’                       

The following day, whilst Wakelin slept in the loft, Martha attended
to her chores, glad of Eppie to chatter to. Laying the baby on the rag rug, she
wiped her clean and powdered her bottom dry with wood dust.

Preparing a pie, she dipped into the bentwood flour barrel.
‘A few months ago, whilst fishing at Lynmere, your brother hooked the biggest
pike I’ve ever seen. When his lordship heard about it he had it stuffed with
rags and put with his collection of dead things in his study.’ Regretfully, she
added, ‘It would’ve been better stuffed with my onion pudding in its belly.’ She
whisked eggs with a bunch of twigs. ‘When you’re older you’ll enjoy trotting
after me, tossing corn to the chickens. Hepsie loved it.’

Later that night, Martha was scrubbing platters, greasy from
the evening meal, when Gillow donned his hat, ready to visit the tavern. ‘I shan’t
stay long. I need to be up early to lift them ‘taties or the grubs will be
after them.’

In his absence, enjoying the tranquillity of the
countryside, she rested upon the circular seat beneath the black mulberry in
the back garden, sucking the tree’s wine-red fruit. After Gillow’s
great-grandfather built the cottage on squatters’ land, he had planted the
mulberry by driving a truncheon into the earth.

Returning from the tavern, Gillow settled beside her and
untied the packet of tobacco he had bought from the innkeeper.

‘You’re quiet,’ she mused, watching him fill his pipe.

‘I was thinking what a sorry business it is, her ladyship
losing her baby. Apparently, it was Master Gabriel who discovered the infant dead.’

Martha stroked Eppie’s fine hair. ‘We’ve much to be grateful
for, with our child in rude health.’

‘Come to your pa, my little maid.’ Gillow bounced Eppie on
his knees. Chuckling, she wafted her chubby arms. His expression hardened. ‘She
could’ve got hurt bad with Wakelin taking her like that, the lump head.’

Martha shushed him, having spotted Wakelin lurching toward
them. ‘Are you feeling more yourself?’ she asked gently.

Coming to sit beside his mother, he stretched out his
spindly legs. From the glazed look in his eyes, she guessed she was unlikely to
get a response. She turned to Gillow. ‘How is Lady Constance?’

‘It’s reckoned the pain and blood loss will be the death of
her. After the birth she was running a fever, so Doctor Burndread leeched her.’

Bored, Wakelin stood up.  ‘I’m off for a stroll.’

‘It’s late,’ his mother protested.  

He shrugged. ‘I’ve been cooped up all day.’

‘Don’t forget you’re to be out for work at sun-up,’ his
father said.

Wakelin’s ungainly figure disappeared into the gloom.

Too tired for a walk, Twiss curled at Gillow’s feet. 

Martha wiped Eppie’s frothy mouth with the burp cloth tied
around the baby’s neck. ‘First thing tomorrow I’ll have to get on with the cheese-making.
So, no matter how much wailing you do, little moppet, you’ll have to learn that
your place is in the cradle. And if I’m to keep my market pitch, you’ll have to
come with me next Saturday.’ She rose. ‘It’s been an exhausting day, I’m turning
in.’

Resting upon the packhorse bridge,
Wakelin contemplated the black, swirling waters.  From The Fat Duck drifted the
sound of raucous guffawing and the merry lilt of a fiddle.

It felt good to be away from the confines of the cottage.

Heading into Copper Piece Wood, he dawdled beneath a
hornbeam, grinning maliciously when a sandy-coated badger and her cubs ambled
across his path. He watched them stop to root for worms and turn leaf-litter in
search of woodlice. 

Wakelin
was used to being outdoors at all times and in all weathers. His best friend was
Tom Lathy, although Tom was twice Wakelin’s age. On summer nights the two of
them
often
prowled around the woods, tracking badgers. They would block up entrances to
setts and wait for the grunting badgers to return homeward. Once trussed up,
the creatures were kept in cages in a barn. Bets were taken, and the badgers
baited with terriers and bulldogs in the inn yard.

Soon
he approached Tunnygrave Manor. The house stood in an elevated position over
the valley, surveying sweeping fields. The sky was darkening above the stone-tiled
roof and massive chimneys. Dogs barked in the stockyard. It would not be long
before corn threshing. That was pleasant, warm work for winter, when he readily
joined in with the men’s cheerful banter.