Replenish the Earth (27 page)

‘Of course I can. The baby doesn’t make me incapable of doing normal tasks.’ But she was talking to herself. He had already moved away, a frown on his face.

His needing to talk to Ted so soon after the encounter with Sewell only added to her worries.

Since everyone in the village had overheard what Sewell said, it was discussed in every cottage and most of all at the inn for the next few days. Some said the man had shown a few proper feelings, for once. Others scoffed at them for being credulous. Foxes didn’t turn into kittens overnight, did they? No more could Sewell turn into an honest citizen!

He hadn’t offered any help to Nancy Bell, had he? Not like Squire had. Bought her some new stock, Squire had, and fitted strong new bolts to her doors with his own hands.

As for the small group of secret observers, they kept their thoughts to themselves, but not one of them doubted that Sewell was behind the troubles. It was just a question of how best they could catch him out.

* * * *

Thad was the next to suffer, less than a week after he had refused point-blank to obey a command to address Sewell as Squire.

‘You’ll be glad to change your mind one day,’ said Sewell, swishing his riding crop viciously through the air.

‘That I won’t! Bedhams are Squires round here, and allus will be.’

‘Bedhams! There are no Bedhams any more.’

‘Lawyers don’t seem to think so, nor Lord Tarnly, neither. An’ if that Hugh of yours takes one step inside my smithy, he’ll find himself sitting in the horse trough.’ Thad flexed his muscles and Hugh stepped back hastily.

‘I ent afeared of him,’ Thad went on, speaking in an over-amiable tone of voice, ‘Nor of that other one as is tryin’ to sneak round the side of me, neither.’ He raised his voice to shout, ‘Michael! Here, boy!’

His eldest son, a budding young giant of fourteen, came out of the smithy carrying a hammer. ‘Yes, Dad?’

‘Just see to it that Izzy don’t come too close to the smithy, will ’ee, boy? Even when he brings horses to be shod, he’s to stay outside.’

‘Yes, Dad.’ Michael hefted his hammer in his hand, his eyes sparkling with anticipation. ‘Can I hit him if he comes too near, Dad? Can I?’

‘Yes. But see you hit him hard, so he don’t try to clout you back.’

Michael hefted the hammer again and looked hungrily at Izzy, who began to edge away.

Sewell signalled to his men to remount. ‘That’s the last of my business you’ll see!’ he growled.

But it was Thad who had the last word. ‘Ent seen much of your business, anyway. You let that clumperton over in Sawbury do most of your smithing work. Thass why that mare of yours be limping - an’ it’ll only get worse. Too tight fitted, that back shoe is.’

* * * *

Less than a week later the smithy caught fire one night. Fortunately, Thad’s dog woke everyone by howling loudly. As soon as he smelled the smoke, Thad raced downstairs to find out what was going on and what he saw made him bellow, ‘Fire!  Fire!’

This brought the other villagers rushing to help.

A chain of them filled buckets at the duck pond, while Thad and his son raked away the burning thatch so that fire couldn’t spread to the house. The flames were soon under control, but not before Thad had suffered some loss and damage, not only to the smithy but to the part of the cottage which abutted it.

When the fire was out, Thad stood looking at his half-ruined smithy. ‘That were no accident,’ he said to the friends who stood around him, his fists clenching and unclenching. ‘I ent a careless man, an’ I tell ’ee that it were
no
accident!’

‘Makes you wonder about that there rick, don’t it?’ said his neighbour, wiping the sweat off his smutty forehead.

‘Ah. It do indeed.’ 

Another of the cottagers had slouched over to join them. ‘We’d all best be more careful from now on, I reckon.’

‘Very careful,’ agreed Thad. ‘An’ since the Lord helps those who help themselves, we’d best make shift to take action ourselves. We can’t delay too long if this sort of thing is going to happen. Eh, that Sewell hev got me fair roiled up now, an’ I don’t roil up easy.’

‘Thad!’

He turned to look at his wife, Meg, whose face was grimy with smoke, through which paler lines showed the tracks of her tears. ‘What if she’d got hurt, or dealt with like poor Nancy?’ he said softly to the man next to him. ‘Or what if it’d been one of the childer hurt. It don’t bear thinkin’ of!’

Meg came up to him and put her hand in his. ‘If the fire’s all out, Thad love, we might as well get some sleep.’

‘You get some sleep, my dear. I’ll just stay up an’ keep watch tonight, case there’s any embers still alight.’

She swung round to face him. ‘Thad, you won’t do anything - well, silly, will you?’

‘No. I won’t do nothin’ silly. I won’t do nothin’ tonight ’cept keep a watch on the house, I promise. You get yourself off to bed, now.’

Nate Pinkly, who worked for Sewell, came over to join them and Thad whispered ‘Shhh!’ to his wife as he turned to greet Nate.

‘Thass a bad business, Thad,’ Nate muttered.

‘Ah. We’ll all have to be more careful next time, won’t we?’

Thad pushed his wife towards the house, and she went with a reluctant glance over her shoulder. Nate wasn’t popular in the village, for he had been one of the first to work for Sewell and to call him ‘Squire’.

‘Thanks for your help,’ Thad added, for Nate had at least formed one of the chain passing buckets from the duck pond. Well, there’d have been trouble for any villager who didn’t play their part in trying to avert such disasters.

‘Least I could do. But how’d it all start?’

Thad studied Nate’s face. Either the man was a better liar than anyone had ever suspected, or he wasn’t involved in this. ‘Musta been a spark.’ Thad’s face was as guileless as a child’s. ‘Happens sometimes, don’t it?’

‘Ah. An’ you hev to leave that fire o’ yours banked up of a night, don’t you? Can’t be too careful wi’ fires. Good thing the cottage roof didn’t go up, eh? Thatch burns quick.’ Nate yawned hugely. ‘Well, I’d better get some sleep. Sewell d’keep a body on the hop all day long.’

Thad nodded and waited till Nate was out of earshot. ‘I’ll draw a jug of my new cider come evening and we’ll hold a little meeting in my house,’ Thad said, his voice a quiet rumble that carried only to his friends’ ears. ‘Don’t let anyone see you comin’ here. We don’t want word gettin’ back to Sewell that we’re meetin’ secretly, do we?’

They nodded and melted away into the darkness. Only when he was alone with the half-ruined smithy did Thad allow his emotions to show on his face. His eyes suspiciously bright, he stared at the charred tool handles and the collapsed wall.

‘They won’t stop me! Nor I won’t never call him Squire,’ he muttered. ‘An’ I’ll make ’em regret this one day, or my name’s not Thad Honeyfield.’

Unlike most of the villagers, he had some savings, though he bitterly resented having to dip into them. When Sewell rode through the village the next day, unable to resist the opportunity to gloat, Thad ignored his remarks completely, simply turning his back and continuing to work on rebuilding the wall.

Michael, labouring next to his father, didn’t turn away. He stood and stared back at the trio of men on horseback. He knew who held a grudge against his father.

A few of the other men in the village drifted over to stand near the smithy, their hostility as plain as Michael’s. In the end, Sewell rode off with his men, laughing loudly.

* * * *

Within the month, everything in the smithy was fully operative again, and only a few scorch marks were left to bear witness to the fire. The two seed-drills on which Thad had been working for Will were completely ruined, but there was still time enough to build others before sowing came round. Will not only provided more wood for this, but also lent a hand himself to put the new ones together.

‘You watch out for yourself, Thad,’ he warned.

‘Ah. There’s a few of us keepin’ our eyes open here now at nights, takin’ it in turns, like. You’d better see you do the same up at the Manor, Squire. Need a bit o’ proof, though, afore we can stop’n properly, don’t we?’

‘Yes. But I can’t see him giving it us, can you?’

‘Mebbe not. But we might persuade him to show his hand if we set about it right.’ 

‘Don’t leave me out of this.’

‘Ah.’

‘I mean it.’

‘Well, we ent ready to act yet, so you tend to your business an’ leave us to see what we can work out.’

* * * *

After that, people eyed the few strangers who passed through the village warily. Men who had never even had locks on their doors bought themselves stout bolts or made wooden drop bars, and began to keep a careful watch on their homes. It were all dangy peculiar, and they misliked it. Their fathers hadn’t had to have bolts on the doors, had they? And they shouldn’t have to, neither! Their anger, slow to fuel, began to smoulder hotly beneath their stolid exteriors.

Will was particularly vigilant out at Broadhurst, even going so far as to patrol the grounds occasionally at night, and the Haplins certainly didn’t skimp their new duties. But they found nothing at all suspicious at the Manor. The latest rash of incidents seemed to be confined to the village.

Then Sewell also suffered, to everyone’s amazement. It seemed someone had tried to break into his stables one night, and had damaged the lock. Fortunately one of the grooms had disturbed the thief and he’d run off.

This incident made some of the less astute villagers wonder if their suspicions had been correct, but it left others unmoved.

Thad’s lip curled scornfully when Nate eagerly poured out the tale of the supposed break-in one evening in The Golden Fleece.

‘Much damage done, then?’ Thad asked.

‘Well, no.’

‘Didn’t think there would be.’

‘Well, coachman sleeps over the stables an’ he heard a noise. Him an’ the groom chased ’em away,’ Nate confided.

‘Ah. So nothin’ was touched?’

‘Well, the lock was broke. Saw it myself, I did. Tore off the door frame, it was. Must’ve been horse thieves or gipsies, they reckon.’

‘Must it?’ Thad’s expression was bland.

‘Well, who else would break into the stables?’

‘Who else, indeed?’

But there had been no sign of gipsies in the district, and if there were any horse thieves, they’d go after Lord Tarnly’s prime stock, not the heavy-footed brutes Sewell favoured simply because they were showy.

As village constable, Sam Poulter got another haranguing from Sewell as a result of this, which made him very resentful, for what did they expect one man to do on his own? He couldn’t patrol the village every night, could he, as well as do his own work by day?

‘You find yourselves another constable,’ he yelled at the village elders when they too complained. ‘I’ve had enough of the job, for ’tis a hard one, that it is, bein’ called out at night and who knows what besides! I’ve done my best and if it ent good enough, you elect someone else and be done with it. If you can find’n.’

It took quite a while and several pots of cider, before the elders were able soothe Sam down again. This they did very zealously, because being constable was a thankless task at the best of times and no one else wanted the job, thank you very much! However, it was decided that Bart Potter should be elected as assistant constable, in case there was more trouble than one man could handle.

Sam, secretly delighted to have an assistant to order round, for it was Prue who ran things at The Golden Fleece, condescended to give the job another try.

Thad watched these ineffectual preparations with a curl of his lips, but kept his own counsel. Bart Potter and Sam Poulter were no match for young Ned Bell in cunning, let alone Sewell.

Perhaps as a result of the increased vigilance, an attempt to break into The Golden Fleece one night, after its occupants were all in bed, was easily foiled by Prue Poulter, who was a light sleeper. Her shrieks were loud enough to wake everyone in the group of houses bordering the green, and two men were spotted and chased.    

Unfortunately, the villains had horses tethered on the other side of the duck pond and they managed to reach these and make their escape. The villagers’ dogs, who should have warned of the approach of strangers, were found to be drugged and one of them, noted for his hearty appetite, never woke from that sleep. But how could a stranger have got close enough to the animals to drug them in the first place? It had to be someone they were used to.

Nate went around looking uneasy and began to get some funny sideways looks from his neighbours.

Sewell made a great play of sending his daughter to stay with friends in Bristol for safety, and this caused nothing but scorn. Afeard of broken locks, was she? Well, that young madam wouldn’t be missed. Too grand to walk into Broadhurst, she was, let alone stop and pass the time of day with anyone. No wonder she couldn’t find herself a husband, for all her father’s money! She had a face that’d sour milk in winter.

Without telling anyone, Mr Rogers took the unprecedented step of going into Sawbury and calling on Lord Tarnly to lay the matter before him.

Two days later, in his role as Justice of the Peace, Lord Tarnly came over to Broadhurst and asked a lot of questions which got him precisely nowhere. What could you say or do when you didn’t even know who your adversary was? Or at least, when you had no proof. Thad and his friends kept their suspicions to themselves and played dumb.

‘They gentry allus stick together,’ said Bob Wraggins afterwards. ‘No use expectin’ one of them to go after another.’

‘Besides,’ added Thad, puffing slowly on his clay pipe, ‘we got no proof.
Yet.’
He spat into the fire for emphasis.
‘
Best we wait our time, eh, lads?’

‘Ah.’

Lord Tarnly called at the Manor while he was over that way, and was very gallant to Sarah, complimenting her on her coming addition to the family and promising to hurry over at once with his militia if there was any further trouble. They had only to send for him.

Hannah had the last word on that, as she took her anger out on the dough she was kneading. ‘It takes an hour to get over to Sawbury, unless you have a horse, which most people ent got, and another hour to get them militia of his lordship’s together,
plus
an hour again for them to march here! What help could they give us! You tell me that. I’ll put my faith in the Lord with a little help from our dogs, thank you very much! Hetty’s taught ’em not to eat from anything but their own bowls now, so no one’s going to feed them any poison.’