Pit Bank Wench (12 page)

In the shadowed dawn the smile faded, his face becoming hard as tempered steel.

Cara had taken one step too many. She had allowed her own lust, that for money, to override her judgement. She had thought to sink her greedy fingers into his business.

‘A mistake, Cara,’ he whispered, ‘and one that could prove fatal.’

Carver glanced upward. Sliding from behind a patch of cloud the moon spread a silver canopy over the heath. Carver smiled.

One step too many!

Chapter Eight

‘Will you be taking the girl to live with you in your house?’

Her two boys settled to sleep in the scullery, Polly Butler brewed yet another pot of tea.

Jerusha watched tea follow milk into the cheap heavy cups; none of the fine china of the moneyed classes would be found in Doe Bank, here it was thick platter plates and cups, all that mining families could afford, and some of them could not even afford those. She thought of the many times she had seen jam jars used as drinking cups when she had visited those without a penny to buy tea to put in them; the jars themselves taken from the rear of a grocer’s shop when he was not looking.

‘Will you be letting her make a home with you?’ Polly looked up from pouring tea.

‘I have no home.’ Jerusha took her cup. ‘Emma Price isn’t the only one whose home this night has taken.’

Polly set the large enamel teapot heavily on the hob then turned back to the woman beside her table. ‘No home! What do that mean? I don’t understand.’

‘It takes no understanding.’ Jerusha sipped the hot liquid, holding it against her tongue. ‘Mary Price’s house was taken by fire, as mine is taken by a landlord. Hers is a smoking ruin this night. The next will see mine tumbled to the ground.’

Polly stared at a face time had dealt with as cruelly as her own. ‘You turned out! When was you told of this? Did the bailiff call at the other houses in Plovers Croft or be you the only one?’

‘No bailiff came.’

Polly held her own thick pottery cup between both hands. She knew enough of Jerusha Paget not to ask how, if no bailiff had ordered her from her home, she knew it was to be so. And how she knew it would be demolished so soon afterwards. If Jerusha said it would happen then happen it would.

‘And I won’t be the only one put from house and home. Before three days be gone by Plovers Croft will be nothing but stones in the dust.’

‘But what will you do?’ Polly’s voice rang with concern. ‘Where will you go, do you have family anywhere?’

Her lips against the rim of the cup, Jerusha shook her head. ‘I have no family, there was only Jacob and he be gone now.’

‘Then you and the girl must both bide here. There will be a place on the Bank for you both.’

‘I can speak only for myself.’ Jerusha stared at the fire, her eyes seemingly drawn to its glowing depths. ‘For the girl I cannot answer, that she must do for herself, but I fear Doe Bank will never be home to her again.’

‘Then where?’ Polly was genuinely concerned. ‘It ain’t right for her to go wandering off alone, not every place be as ‘ospitable or as safe for a young wench as Doe Bank.’

Safe! Jerusha kept her glance at the crimson coals. She could tell Polly Butler just how safe this village had been for its young girls, but that danger was gone and no good could come of raking over the ashes.

‘Emma Price be able to suit herself, Polly. She be without parents to say what she must do and there be no guardian set over her. That leaves her free to follow what she will. But I reckon a lot of sense to that girl. She may find life hard but she will do nothing foolish. Nothing Mary Price would take exception to, God rest her soul.’

‘Amen to that.’ Polly crossed herself piously. ‘Poor Mary, not to leave out the other two, that young daughter and Caleb. Lord, what an end! What a way to go! Burned to death in your very own house. What do you reckon to be the cause of that fire?’

Jerusha sipped again at the hot sweet tea. She’d known the question would come and had known the answer she gave would be a lie.

The silence had come in the late afternoon wrapping about her like a cocoon, closing off the world about her, lifting her into its own heart, into a floating endless space of golden light. Then the soundless voice had come, speaking formless silent words; words that nevertheless rang in her mind with the clarity of a bell. She would leave this house, it had told her, leave it for the last time for soon after it would be demolished. Then it had spoken of the deaths of three people, of a fire set by a woman to take from the earth all mark of the evil done by a man. One who had abused his own child and those of the people to whom he preached.

The preacher man! The words had been said over again and then the light had faded and with it the silence.

Mary must have found him out. That was her reason for watching him hang himself. She could not live with the knowledge of what he had done, not live with Carrie’s pain or her own, so she had sent Emma far enough away so she would not witness that to which Mary set her hand.

‘Who knows what set that house to burning?’ Jerusha answered Polly. ‘A red hot glede dropping from the grate on to the rug, a fallen candle, there be many things could be the cause.’

Arr, many things. Polly kept a still tongue. But with three waking people in the house, a red hot cinder or a fallen candle would have small chance of burning it to the ground. And then there was Emma, what was that business of her running to fetch Jerusha Paget at night? There had been no sickness in Mary’s house or it would have been spoken of, and Mary Price had said not a word.

‘It were a blessing Emma weren’t in that house.’ Polly lifted her cup. Jerusha Paget could be close-mouthed when it suited her, a direct asking would bring no reply.

‘A blessing,’ Jerusha nodded.

Seeing both cups empty, Polly reached once more for the teapot. There was nothing better for loosening a neighbour’s tongue than a cup of tea.

‘Still, to cross the heath to Plovers Croft in the dark, and by herself! Something must have been worrying Mary to let her wench do that.’

Accepting the tea, Jerusha nodded and met the other woman’s glance. Polly Butler was a kindly soul but one who liked to know the top and bottom of everybody’s business. Tell her something one day and the next it would be all over Doe Bank and on its way to Wednesbury.

‘Arrh, I reckon you be right in your thinking, Polly.’ Jerusha allowed a little of the truth to escape, enough to satisfy the other’s curiosity. ‘But what they were worrying about we will never know now. All that girl sleeping upstairs could tell me was that her mother asked I should come.’

‘Arrh, it be the wench we must feel sorry for.’ Polly emptied the dregs of the teapot on to the fire, sending a cloud of acrid-smelling steam sizzling into the chimney, then banked the fire for the night and collected the cups. ‘They all be out of the misery of this world: young Carrie, her mother and her father. But that one, Emma, she has to live with the memory of this night.’

Cups in hand, she bustled into the scullery, stepping over the sleeping boys to rinse the cups in water taken from the bucket. Returning she glanced at the older woman still hunched in her chair. Jerusha Paget could shed a great deal more light on the happenings of the past hours should she choose, but that light would never shine. ‘Yes, I feel for the wench. There be many an hour of crying afore the memory fades.’

‘That be the way of it,’ Jerusha agreed. ‘But it be the way to healing. Tears help wash away the pain.’

The words were easily said. Bidding Polly good night, Jerusha climbed the narrow stairs to the room she would share with Emma.

The saying was easy, it was the living that was hard.

Emma stood before the charred bricks and blackened timbers that were all that remained of her home. Wisps of smoke curled up from the smouldering ruins and the morning air was heavy with the smell of burning.

They had been inside, her mother and sister, her father. They had died there. Had Carrie known of the fire, felt the agony of its touch, the choking of its breath as her parents must have?

How had it happened? Why had it happened? And why had Emma herself been spared? Unable to look any longer at the burned out shell, she covered her face with her shawl, her body shaking with grief.

‘Why?’ she sobbed. ‘Why leave me? Oh, God, why be so cruel? I can’t live without them, I can’t . . . I can’t!’

From the doorway of Polly’s house, Jerusha Paget watched the slight figure drop to its knees. Although she had not heard her words she knew why Emma cried. She knew the pain, the heartache of losing a loved one, the emptiness of being alone. As the girl was doing now she too had questioned the Lord, she too had asked Him why. But unlike the weeping girl she had been given an answer, an answer spoken in silence, an answer that had chilled her to the bone.

Drawing her shawl about her, black skirts brushing dew from the ground, Jerusha walked slowly over to the figure huddled in its shawl.

‘They be gone, child.’ She bent over Emma, one arm about the heaving shoulders. ‘Let them rest.’

‘I want it to be me . . .’ Beneath the shawl Emma’s cries were pitiful. ‘Oh, God, why could it not have been me!’

‘Come.’ Urging Emma to her feet then folding her in her arms, Jerusha held her while sob after sob wrenched free from her shaking body. ‘Cry it out,’ she said softly. ‘Cry it out. There be none save Jerusha to hear.’

Holding Emma half slumped against her, Jerusha guided her a little away from houses, huddled together close as frightened children, then waited until the sobs quieted.

‘You knew, didn’t you, Jerusha?’ Lowering the shawl Emma turned tear-washed eyes to the woman standing staring out across the heath. ‘You knew about the fire?’

The old woman nodded. ‘I knew, child.’

‘And the reason for my coming to Plovers Croft?’

Eyes fixed on the circles of pit wheels outlined against the sky, Jerusha waited. Perhaps the moment she’d thought to be a long way off was already here. Perhaps the time for truth was now. Emma knew one answer, and with hindsight would eventually guess the other. But guessing was not knowing. Only knowledge would salve the hurt, heal the wound.

‘Did you know that too, Jerusha? Did you know that Carrie . . .’

‘Did I know your sister plunged a knife into her own breast?’ Jerusha drew a long breath. ‘Yes, child, I knew that too. As I know her life ended before the flame was lit, she felt none of its sting.’

‘I . . . I didn’t know she had a knife, I didn’t see her take it. Then she said my father . . .’

‘He has gone to a judgement more forgiving than any he would have received from the hands of men, and Carrie is at peace now, that is what you must remember.’

‘But why did they have to die, Carrie and my mother? They never did harm to anybody. Why didn’t God take me? Mine is the sin!’

‘Question not the Lord or His ways, child, trust only His love.’

‘His love?’ Bitterness and pain throbbed in Emma’s voice. ‘Trust His love as Carrie trusted our father? Where was the love in what he did to her . . . is that what trust brings? So much torment that a young girl must take her own life. Is that love, Jerusha. Is that
love
?’

As the storm of tears broke afresh, Jerusha held the trembling girl. What Caleb Price had done, the sin he had committed against his own child and those of other folk, could never be described as love.

‘And what of the love my mother had for him, the trust she placed in him? The preacher man!’ Emma choked on the laugh that warred against her sobs. ‘If only they knew . . . if only they knew!’

‘Would that make you feel better, Emma?’

Jerusha’s words, quiet as they were, penetrated the storm of grief and anger and Emma was still.

‘Will telling the people of Doe Bank what their preacher man really was, of his hypocrisy and wickedness, bring you peace? Will your sorrow and torment be relieved by bringing the same to them? I think not, child, I think not.’

‘You knew that too, Jerusha! You knew what he did to Carrie?’

Her glance again fixed on the distance Jerusha thought of that light-filled silence, one that had spoken of so much pain.

‘Yes, I knew,’ she answered an astonished Emma. ‘Though heaven be my witness, I knew nothing of Caleb Price’s acts until yesterday. Only then was I told and by that time it was too late for me to face him with it. But now there is an end to his wrong-doing.’

‘Too late!’ Emma echoed the desolation inside her. ‘As it is too late for my mother. Oh, if only I had not left her, I could have saved her.’

‘I asked you not long since if you set store by my word. I ask you that same thing now – do you trust me, Emma Price?’

Feeling her nod, Jerusha went on.

‘Then listen to the truth. A truth that comes not of me but by me. Mary Price could not stand to live knowing what she did: the suffering of her child, the betrayal of her husband. Death was her only salvation, but it was a salvation she could not let you share. That was her reason for sending you to Plovers Croft. She knew Carrie was beyond my help, it was the only way to get you clear of that house before she cleansed it with fire. Yes, Emma.’ She paused, feeling the girl’s slight figure stiffen. ‘Your mother’s hand set the fire that took your home.’

Emma lifted her head, bemusement stark in her wide eyes. ‘But surely my father would not have allowed . . . surely he would have prevented her?’

‘Your father was beyond preventing.’ Jerusha answered gently. ‘He too could not face the years that would follow, he chose to go where his daughter had led. Like her he did not feel the sting of fire.’

He had followed where Carrie had led? Stepping from Jerusha’s arms, Emma turned to stare at the remnants of her home. Her father had taken his own life.

‘It was hard for you to hear, child,’ Jerusha went on quietly. ‘But only by hearing will you know any respite. Caleb Price will answer to his maker for his sin. Let it rest there. Though in your heart you may not forgive, give him his peace.’