Eppie (54 page)

Martha grabbed Wakelin by the elbow. ‘We must tell her!’

Coline knelt beside her brother. ‘I doubt it.’

‘This pretence has to end!’ Martha flashed. ‘Eppie keeps
going on, making out she’s up to the work. She can’t take much more. Look at her;
can’t you see it in her eyes?’

Frightened and infuriated by his mother’s words, Wakelin
shouted at the children. ‘Get out! Out!’

Startled by the man’s ferocity, Coline and Fur dashed past
the dangling remains of the door and were lost down the street.

‘How long do you think it’ll be before Eppie has an
accident?’ Martha asked. ‘If she died it’d be like we killed her, you and me,
when she needn’t be at the mill at all.’

‘Why needn’t I be at the mill?’ Eppie asked. ‘What are you
talking about?’

Wakelin turned on Eppie, ‘I said OUT!’

To save her skin she ran, but only as far as the steps. Sitting
back on her heels, peering through the brick grating, she eavesdropped.

‘Living the wretched way we do any one of us might drop dead
tomorrow,’ Martha said. ‘I could even now, the way I feel. If I wasn’t around I
couldn’t bear to think of Eppie slaving when she could be free.’

‘If you was dead it wouldn’t matter what ya thought,’ he
said glibly, ripping up another floorboard.

‘So clever you are! Mr Grimley told Eppie that Gabriel lives
in London. She could write to him. He’d send money for her passage.’

Stamping on a tea chest, a wild light flared in his eyes. ‘I’m
tellin’ ya, Ma, if Eppie finds out you’re dead! I’m dead! Is that what you
want?’

Born of the air the white robin flew to the jerkin in Eppie’s
hands and pecked frantically at the pocket beneath the rope belt.

‘Talia? What is it?’ Eppie whispered. ‘What are you doing?’

The bird poked its head inside the pocket as though looking
for something.

‘You want me to look inside, is that it?’ The thought
repulsed her somewhat; the last time she had looked inside one of Wakelin’s
pockets, wondering at the bulge, she had fetched out rancid lumps of fatty
belly pork. Still, to humour Talia, she plucked up courage.

Withdrawing the gold locket an impenetrable curtain that
Eppie never knew existed was whisked away before her.  

Mr Leather alerted to Wakelin’s
unscrupulous activities by a snooping neighbour, they found themselves thrown
onto the streets. 

Martha was terrified of spending the night in some wrecked
house, where she imagined herself and the children being attacked. Coming to
sleep beneath Bridge House was her idea, though she quickly regretted it.

Reaching the driest boulders they settled as best they
could. At least they were out of the rain, which streamed like never-ending frost-candles.
Rats scurried over rocks and up stone pillars stabilised with nets of pebble infill.
From thence they scurried beneath the bridge and gained entry to the house. Overhead
a bottle smashed.

‘Hey, Fur, we’ve struck gold,’ Wakelin cried. ‘I’ll give ya
a leg up.’

Fur stuck his head out of his blanket. ‘What for?’ he asked
gloomily.

‘Up there must be Grimley’s cellar.’ Wakelin dragged his
friend to his feet and bent over whilst Fur scrambled onto his shoulders. ‘You’re
as light as a thatching spar. See where ‘em rats is getting in?’

Icy spray gusting onto Eppie’s face, she stared at the
rocks, fearful that Fur might fall.

Fur disappeared through the hole. 

‘See o’t?’

‘Not a leprechaun.’

‘Feel your way around. There must be summat worth having.’

A few thuds, a clank of glass.

‘Here, take these,’ Fur said. ‘I can’t see what they are. Where
are ya?’

Rotten splinters sprinkled upon Wakelin’s upturned face. He
spat them out.

‘Wakelin, do you have to keep stealing?’ Martha protested. ‘Now
you’re getting Fur involved. Whatever would Eibhlin have thought?’

‘Chuck ‘em,’ Wakelin hissed. He caught the first bottle. Losing
his footing in reaching for the next, it smashed onto rocks. He swore loudly as
another bottle slapped into the river with a hollow plop. 

‘Careful!’ Fur cried.

‘Shurrup, ya fool.  Someone’ll hear ya.’

‘Who’s there?’ a woman nervously shrilled above their heads.

Fur leapt into Wakelin’s arms.

Lantern-light flickered in the draughty cellar.

Relieved at not being caught, Wakelin and Fur tittered.

‘Is somebody down here?’

‘What is it, Priscilla?’ a girl asked, her voice wavering anxiously.

‘I don’t know, Miss Rowan. I thought I heard a noise.’

Lantern rays picked out the hole. Everyone sheltering beneath
the bridge hastily concealed themselves with their grey blankets to make them
blend in with the rocks.

‘Will you take a look at that?’ Priscilla said. ‘Heed my
words, one day soon this entire house will tumble into the river.’ She retraced
her steps. ‘I’ll get Loafer in tomorrow to sort out the rats.’

 Joyful at his triumph, Wakelin smashed a bottle top on
rocks and slopped the liquor down his throat. ‘Madeira! Anyone else wanna
guzzle? Coline? It’ll keep out the cold.’

Eppie was glad he was happy. Shivering, she lay down on the
boulder and, using the edge of her shawl as a makeshift pillow, drifted into an
uncomfortable state of sleepiness that was not true slumber. 

Not long after, Wakelin awakened her, mumbling in that
sluggish, drunken tone she had become accustomed to. ‘Zit?’ Loudly,
desperately, ‘S’con.’

‘What’s gone?’ she muttered, groggy with sleep.

‘Whizz it?’

‘Have the tinkers stolen something from you?’

He would not say. All he knew was that the locket was
missing. He had been afraid to sell it in case someone recognised Talia’s portrait
and he was arrested for stealing the locket. Besides, it raised his spirits to
gaze upon Talia’s handsome face. In a stupor, he groped his way across the
boulders on his hands and knees. 

‘Where are you going?’ his mother whispered.

‘I gorra go look fer it.’

Not wishing to be away from his friend, Fur stumbled after
him.

‘I think Wakelin was missing this,’ Eppie said, a short
while after they had gone.

Martha took the offered locket. ‘How did you get this?’

‘Wakelin must’ve stolen it from Gabriel after they fought in
the cornfield. I’ve always wondered why Gabriel cares so much about me that he
wanted to fight Wakelin. Why do you think it is?’

‘You know Wakelin’s never been fond of the du Quesnes.’

‘That’s no proper answer. Anyway, Gabriel’s never done
anything unkind to Wakelin, not like Thurstan. And why do you think Talia
haunts me?’

‘Talia? Whatever can you mean?’

‘She’s here now, sitting on that rock behind you.’

‘Here?’ Consumed by a panicky awareness of a silent, intense
presence, Martha wheeled around. She saw only the racing waters, swirling deep
and black around boulders.   

‘She’s been with me for years. If it hadn’t been for Talia warning
me, I’d never have realised something was wrong when our cottage flooded. You’d
have drowned. Even when I can’t see her I know she’s around. I feel her frock
brush against my fingers or the tickle of her hair on my face. She’s like a
cobweb, always there, only I don’t see her until she’s frosted over. Why do you
think she comes, Mam?  Why to me?’

‘I can’t say, Eppie. I can’t.’

Eppie felt sure that Martha was holding something back from
her. ‘Can’t? Or won’t?’

Martha tried to quell the
shaking in her voice. ‘Snatch some sleep, else we’ll all be good for nowt
tomorrow.’

The bell tolled. The mill wheel whirled for the first time
in weeks, water and spume smashing about it.

Martha stumbled to her feet. ‘I’ll rush on with Lottie to
the apprentice house. Hurry you two.’

Miserable and damp, Eppie and Coline stretched their stiff,
aching bodies. ‘At least we’ll be out of the bitter air,’ Eppie said. Grabbing their
few belongings, they picked their way across the rocks.

Robert du Quesne had spent the night at The Wolf and Child.
‘Confound that waterwheel,’ he said as Crumpton let him into the yard. ‘What I
need is steam, then the working of the mill will not always be at the mercy of
the weather.’ He saw Eppie about to step into the yard. ‘Use your time-piece,
Crumpton. That’ll teach the workers a lesson.’

The gates slammed to with an ominous clang, leaving Eppie
and Coline gazing into the yard from the outside. Eppie had heard from Eibhlin
about Crumpton’s cunning practice of altering his watch to make it appear that
the mill hands were late. Feet were heard shuffling behind the girls as more
workers arrived.

‘You’re all late,’ Crumpton said. ‘Longbotham, you about?’

The clerk emerged from the lantern-lit office. Through the
open door, Eppie glimpsed the manager seated at his desk, a perturbed look upon
his face as du Quesne strode agitatedly before the desk, no doubt grumbling
about the inefficiency of waterpower to run the machines.

‘Take this lot’s names,’ Crumpton ordered. ‘Three minutes
late. Dock each an hour’s wage.’ He headed into the mill. ‘Fine any other
latecomers half a day’s wage.’

Eppie scarcely had time to throw off her shawl before she
was back at the hated, humdrum work. Dust and fibres from spinning frames
constantly blew under the cage of roving threads where she and Coline swept the
floor with wicker switches.

When Wakelin and Fur arrived two hours later and discovered
the gates locked it was obvious what du Quesne was about. ‘We’ll go the back
way,’ Wakelin said cunningly.

Doubled over, they scurried towards the side of the mill.
The wall of the building soared from the river bank. Freezing spray catapulted
from the waterwheel, dampening their backs, as they stared through a window
into the engine room. Conveying the motive power from the shaft to the tireless
machines, the engine looked like a massive metal insect scurrying in the same
position. Powerful strapping, buckles and wheels beat with a tremendous
thundering and rattling.

Owing to his shock of green-tinted hair, Redgy Dipper, the
engine-operator, was frequently the butt of the mill children’s jokes. Sneaking
time off work, he was seated in the corner, wedges of bread upon his knees,
fishing with a long-pronged fork into a jar labelled
Loomp’s Quality Choice
Pickled Onions
. 

Becoming aware of faces peering at him, his eyes widened in
surprise, until they looked as round and shiny as the onions floating in the
greenish brine. Flying into a rage, he threw the window wide. Wakelin only just
ducked in time. ‘What are you porking at?’ Dipper asked.

Wakelin heaved himself up, and dropped in. ‘We ain’t climbed
up here just to look at you gorging yersen if that’s what yer thinking.’ 

‘It’s usual to come in by the gates,’ Dipper said gruffly.

‘Locked,’ Fur answered.

‘An’ we ain’t paying no fines,’ Wakelin added. 

Eppie did not need to hear the exchange of words between the
intrepid two and the overseer, who spotted their furtive movements the moment
they attempted to scurry to the finishing-shed, to deduce this was not the
happiest of gatherings.

Bored after his Christmas break, Snarl bombed into the fray
and dug his teeth into the nearest ankle: Longbotham’s. Dropping the fines
book, the clerk fell to the floor like a crushed beetle.

Distressed by his mother’s death, Fur booted the book,
sending it skimming across the greasy floor. It came to rest beneath a machine. 

Snatching up a claw hammer, Crumpton grabbed Fur and forced
his head onto a packing case. ‘Ya shouldn’t have done that, ya scraggy imp!
I’ll learn ya!’

‘Leave him!’ Coline grabbed Crumpton’s arm.

Crumpton shook her off and gestured with the claw, snatching
off her mobcap as he did so. ‘Grab that book. Get it!’ he cried, seeing her
tarry, ‘or I’ll make your brother suffer.’

Wakelin made to grasp the hammer. The overseer hit out,
striking him on the shoulder. 

Diving beneath the machine, Coline heard her brother scream.
She glanced around to see Crumpton driving a nail through Fur’s ear, pinning
him to the packing case.

Wakelin was cursing and swearing.

‘Coline!’ Eppie yelled. ‘Look out!’

Forgetful of where she was, Coline lost all sense of her own
peril. All she was aware of was Fur’s tortured expression. Something ripped
through her hair. She instinctively threw up her hands to protect herself.

Mr Grimley hastened from his office. ‘Crumpton, how could
you do that to the boy?’

Crumpton was so heated that his sideburns steamed. ‘Stop
hopping about, Longbotham! Get that book! Fine Dunham. Thrupence for oaths and
insolent language.’

In response, Wakelin tore down a Yellowing from a pillar and
screwed it up.

Du Quesne took not the slightest heed of Coline, who lay
with her head in a pool of blood, writhing in the aisle where Eppie and Mr
Grimley had dragged her. ‘Clearly, Dunham, you have not read Rule Number 21. If
any person wilfully damages the Notice of Rules and Regulations they are
dismissed, instantly.’

‘Suits us,’ Wakelin retorted. ‘I’d rather die in the open
air than chained up in this stifling mill.’ Loudly, he cried, ‘Be seeing ya,
Crumb!’ A venomous look in his eyes, he walloped the overseer so hard on the back
that his donkey teeth were propelled from their bedrock of evil-smelling gums.

The remainder of the day Coline spent in the baling room,
the nerves of her body racked by the agonising pain of her torn scalp.

Though poorly, his head wrapped in a blooded bandage, Fur
drudged on.  

Evening crept around.

Du Quesne was busy inspecting textiles with Crumpton. Eppie
deemed this a good opportunity to speak with Mr Grimley. Creeping into the
lamp-lit office, she was surprised to see Mr Loomp seated at the clerk’s desk, thumbing
through the entries in the book of misdemeanours.