Pit Bank Wench (2 page)

‘
A mess of pottage’.
The quotation rang in his mind. The biblical Esau had been deprived of his heritage for a bowl of broth, but Carver Felton would not be so easily robbed. Their father had thought to divide not the business perhaps but certainly the running of it. He had thought that the terms of his will safe-guarded that intention. But their father had made a mistake, the mistake of appointing Carver his brother’s keeper. He would share his authority with no man, and if that meant having his brother locked away, then so be it.

And the wench, the drudge his brother had hoped to make his wife? Carver smiled into the mirror. He must be prepared to make some small concession. The girl would be taken care of.

‘I tell you, Emma, nothing can come of this, nothing but heartache, ain’t no coal master’s son going to look for a wife among the like of us.’

Emma Price’s lovely face creased into a smile lighting midsummer blue eyes.

‘Paul has already asked me to be his wife, Mother, we will be married as soon as Father says I might.’

Turning from the pot in which she had been stirring broth for the evening meal, Mary Price stared at her eldest living child. Emma was so beautiful, with hair the colour of wheat and a complexion like a lily fresh bathed with the dew of the morning, was it any wonder she had caught the eye of the Felton lad? But catch his eye or his fancy there would be no marriage made there. Want it he might, but what of his family? They would certainly harbour no Doe Bank wench.

‘So he’s asked you to be his wife.’ The wooden spoon she had been using dripped gravy onto the floor but Mary had forgotten it. ‘That be one question he’s asked and one you seem agreed to; but what of the other?’

‘Other?’ Emma looked up from the pastry she was rolling. ‘What other question?’

Mary felt a tug at her heart. Both of her daughters were pretty and she loved them both; but not equally. She had a feeling for Emma she had not had for the children who’d been taken from her, and one she did not feel for Carrie. Oh she loved her younger girl, of course she did, but not with the depth of feeling she had for Emma. Now seeing the shadow that forever stalked women of their class looming close to her daughter she felt that strong, protective love burn hot in her veins.

‘The question of you lying with him, of you being a wife to him afore the ring be on your finger.’

Mary saw the slow tide of colour rise in her daughter’s cheeks and a sharp stab of anger and despair shot through her. Was it already too late, had Felton already taken what he was really after? Doubtless that was all it could be. To him, Emma would be no more than an entertainment, a pastime to be cast aside once he tired of it . . . or when it became an embarrassment.

‘Paul has not asked . . . asked any such question.’ The flush in her cheeks burned bright but Emma’s eyes, as they rested on her mother’s face, were cool and steady. ‘He would never ask such a thing, he would not even think it.’

‘All men think it.’ Mary’s glance turned inward, remembering. All men think it and many ask it, but how many stand by the consequence? Pushing back the ghosts of the past she looked again at Emma and this time her own faded blue eyes suddenly shone with an intense new burst of life. ‘Tell me Emma, tell me true, has Felton laid with you?’

Her own love answering her mother’s, Emma felt no resentment or shame at the question, only a strange turning of the heart, a deep wrenching inside as she looked at the thin lined face.

‘No, Mother.’ She answered softly. ‘Paul has not lain with me.’

Across the room Mary Price’s eyes glowed with a passion they had not held for twenty years, and her words came with a low almost ferocious urgency.

‘Then you must not! No man is a saint, they all gets the urge, some stronger than others. It be a sweet pain that drives and drives, a hunger that gnaws until they has to satisfy it. The promise of a wedding ring is many a man’s route to paradise and many a woman’s road to hell. Take heed of what I says Emma, take heed of your mother for I be treading that road still. Keep what you can give only once, keep it until the ring be on your finger and the sheet you soil be on the marriage bed. Be no man’s whore no matter what the promises he makes. Give me your word, Emma, give me your word.’

Despair and sadness vivid colours that painted every word, Mary stared hard at her daughter but in her mind she saw a different, younger face; a face drawn with fear and washed with tears.

‘Be no man’s whore,’ she whispered, ‘for heartbreak be the payment they give, sorrow and shame the coinage they use, and the woman has a lifetime in the spending of it.’

Her fingers suddenly trembling, Mary dropped the spoon bringing her hand to cover her face, long shuddering sobs shaking her thin body.

Ignoring the flour on her hands, Emma ran to her mother, flinging her arms about her, understanding for the first time the full rawness of the pain always present in her tired face, the sadness haunting her weary eyes. But what had caused so much sadness and pain, what was it haunted her mother?

‘You have my promise Mother,’ she murmured, her fingers stroking the hair that had long lost its lustre. ‘You have my promise.’

But Mary did not hear; she heard only the words followed by heartless laughter: ‘
What else can you expect? You play the whore, you get treated as a whore
 . . .’

‘But I was not a whore . . .’

Emma felt her nerves tighten as she caught her mother’s whisper. ‘I was not a whore. There was no man but him. I loved him, I loved Luke Carter, and he said he loved me, that we would marry in the summer. “Lie with me, Mary,” was what he asked. “Show me the love you have for me,” was what he said. But when the new life quickened within me he turned from me, he would not marry a whore . . .’

Sobs cutting off the words, Emma held her mother tight in her arms, the dreadful implication of what she had just said hitting her with the force of a blow.

Luke Carter, her mother had said. She had lain with a man named Luke Carter. But her husband was Caleb Price! Her mother had known two men. Emma felt a tremor in her knees. Which of the two was her father? Was she Caleb Price’s daughter or Mary Price’s bastard?

Her sobs quieting, Mary sank to a chair, her hands closing about Emma’s as she dropped to her knees. ‘I know what you be thinking, what everybody thought when they found I was pregnant and no man to take me . . .’

‘No, Mother.’ Her eyes glistening with tears that were more for her mother’s pain than her own fear, Emma pressed her cheek to the thin hands. ‘I am not thinking what others may have thought, you are my mother and I love you. What happened when you were younger makes no difference.’

‘Oh, but it does, it will.’ Mary looked at the head bent over her hands, at the shining pale gold hair so like her own had once been. ‘The stigma is never allowed to die, it passes from woman to child, an unjust heritage; and that heritage will be used against you, used to keep you in misery should what I did so long ago ever be brought to light.’

A heritage of shame.
The words branded themselves on Emma’s brain. She was not the daughter of Caleb Price. She was another man’s love child! But where was the love when that man had turned his back on her mother?

‘It will not matter that you are not the fruit of my transgression, of my wrongdoing; that will not deter the hand that is raised against you, stop the tongue that speaks ill of you. Should it be known you are the daughter of a woman left in shame then that shame will become yours, such is the way of this world.’ Releasing her hands, Mary cupped them about her daughter’s face, reading the uncertainty in those lovely eyes, her own heart crying out afresh at the thought of how soon that must give way to condemnation, to disgust.

‘You might not be thinking what others have thought.’ She spoke softly but her eyes cried out to her daughter from the depths of her soul. ‘But should the time come when you are tempted to think in such a way, then remember what I say to you now. Before God and before heaven I tell you, you are not the child folk may say you are. You are not my first-born, though you be the first I bore of Caleb Price. You are his true daughter though he has always fear of the truth of that. He took me knowing I had given birth to another man’s son, a child that lived barely a month. In twenty years he has not forgiven. Once a whore, always a whore is Caleb Price’s thinking.’

‘But you were married!’

‘Yes, we were married.’ Mary gave a half smile that was as heartbreaking to see as her sobs had been to hear. ‘But the condemnation never stopped, the judgement sentence never fully served. In the eyes of Caleb I could never be trusted. He could never be sure the babes I carried were his. His fears have cast a coldness over this house, one that can never be warmed. It killed what love I could have felt for him, killed it nigh on twenty years gone. You, Emma, were the only one of his children gotten in tenderness, a tenderness that died long before your carrying was done. Mistrust and bitterness was his marriage gift to me. I suppose I could expect no other in exchange for a dowry of shame.’

‘But you have not . . .’

‘No, not once in twenty years.’ Mary smiled through a film of tears. ‘I have looked in no direction but that of Caleb Price, but bitterness be a hard taskmaster and jealousy a cruel mistress. Your father danced at their bidding until they became second nature to him. Had he even wanted to shake them off it soon became impossible and they have lodged in this house ever since, a grinding obsession of his he will not forsake until we are both carried out in a box.’

‘But surely Father must know?’ Emma stared up at her mother. ‘He must know you would never be untrue to him.’

Mary touched her lips first to the soft gold of her daughter’s hair, then dropped her hands to her lap. ‘He knows. But the seeds of doubt are strong. They flourish in the driest of ground, and once sown can never be fully harvested. Caleb has his beliefs and I have my bitter harvest. But you, Emma, you must never go the way I trod, you must give yourself to none but the man who weds you, and then not until after the marriage lines be signed. Remember that when next a man smiles into your eyes and takes your hand in his.’

Half an hour later, her hands washed and a cup of tea made for her mother, Emma returned to her baking.

She would not forget what Mary had told her, but she need have no fear that the same pain would be hers. Paul was not of that breed. He would not ask her to give herself before marriage and certainly would not leave her should she expect his child. Paul Felton loved her, and tonight when they met he would tell her so again. It would shine in his eyes, ring in his voice as he asked her father’s permission to marry her.

Rolling pastry on a floured board, Emma glanced at her mother, thin shoulders hunched as she stared into the fire. Caleb Price had married her knowing she had borne a child by another man, but what had motivated him to do so? Had it been pity for a young girl reviled by others? Was it charity?

Lining an enamelled dish with pastry, Emma filled it with chopped mutton and potato.

Watching her mother rise, steps slow as she walked into the scullery, Emma guessed it was neither of those things. Caleb Price had brought no happiness and precious little comfort to the girl he had married, his continued fault finding and demanding ways making her old before her time. No, he had not married to comfort her but to satisfy his own desires, the greatest of which was to be seen as a pious, godly man.

Placing a pastry lid over the dish, Emma crimped the edges with a vengeful thumb. The only one he cared for was himself, the only religion he followed was his own. Caleb Price was god in his own kingdom.

But her own marriage would not be like that. Paul Felton loved her. There would be no unhappiness for her, no stigma in the eyes of the world. Hers would be no dowry of shame.

Chapter Two

Emma picked up the empty basket with one hand, the other lifting her shawl over her head.

‘It be a kindly thing you do, bringing me a pie every week.’

Jerusha Paget followed Emma to the door of the tiny back-to-back house, its rear joined to an identical house. They were two in a block of eight, each damper, colder and more rat-infested than its neighbour.

‘I only wish it could be more.’ Emma’s answering smile was filled with sympathy.

‘Nay, wench, your family has precious little as it is. We as serves the Feltons all be in the same boat. Work a man ’til he drops and then to buggery with him, that be their way. They have love for nobody ’cepting themselves.’

Emma felt the sting of those words but even so could not deny them. But Paul had told her of his plans to alter the living conditions of the miners’ families; told her of all he intended to do once he reached his majority. Once he was twenty-one he would have a full say in the Felton business and that included how its workers were housed and treated. But until that time, he had said, she should say nothing to any of them.

But why? Emma tucked the corners of the shawl tighter beneath her small breasts. Was it because of his brother? She knew from odd snatches of conversation that Paul had a brother. He never discussed him, not even saying his name, but she knew it. Carver Felton. That name was all too familiar, she’d heard it often enough, spat out by the men of Doe Bank. But she had never seen him. What was he like, the brother of Paul’s, and why had she not been taken to meet him?

‘I will call again next week.’ Emma glanced over the woman’s shoulder to the iron-framed bed that occupied most of the poky room. ‘I hope Mr Paget will be better by then.’

‘That be a hope we will both be denied,’ Jerusha answered quietly. ‘But there be more will be denied you yet.’ Drawing the plain gold band from the third finger of her left hand she held it towards Emma. ‘This be all I have to give you, Emma Price, but had I riches a-plenty I could not give you anything that will be of more use to you in the days that lie afore you.’