The Other Cathy (9 page)

‘Your solemn oath is far from adequate, in the circum
stances.’

Again he was silent, and when he finally spoke it was with restrained urgency.

‘If you will listen to nothing else I say, Miss Hardaker, then
listen to this! Through all the long years of my ordeal, one
thought helped me to endure it and survive. My sole aim then was somehow to find the wherewithal on my release to return to this country and be revenged on the true culprit. Somebody
knowingly allowed me to be condemned to the hell of trans
portation for a crime he had committed.’

‘And who, in your twisted mind, do you suppose this per
son to be?’ she asked.

‘I wish to heaven I knew! But to discover his identity is my objective, that is why I am here. I had to wait eleven years to get my ticket-of-leave, being classed as a recalcitrant prisoner because I refused to submit. But when the time came
at last, things went faster than I ever dared hope. On the gold
field at Bendigo, after two years of fruitless struggle, I and my
two colleagues suddenly found a rich vein on the stake of land
we were on the point of abandoning. As my fortune accumu
lated I felt a fierce joy, for I realised that I was being granted
this chance of seeing that justice was done. And it shall be so,
Miss Hardaker. I swear before God that I have but one pur
pose in life, and I will allow nothing to stand in my way.’

Emma’s throat was dry, and she said huskily,
‘
I do not understand why you should be telling all this to me, Hugh
Hardaker’s daughter. You are surely not asking for my help?’

‘No, not that, but I want you to try and understand. I be
lieve you could understand and sympathise, if you would only
cast aside your prejudices and trust  me, as your instinct tells
you to do.’

‘You presume incorrectly, Mr Sutcliffe!’

‘Do I?
The other evening when I dined at Bracklegarth
Hall, you scorned me with contempt for speaking of our previ
ous meeting here on the moor. But I still maintain that we
both experienced the same feeling of instant accord that morn
ing, of being truly in sympathy with one another. It is difficult to define, perhaps, but it was undoubtedly there. And
however hard you deny it to me, you will not succeed in deny
ing it to yourself,’

‘I do deny it! Of course I deny it!’

Her mare was quietly grazing nearby and she called to her,
praying that she would not make too clumsy a business of
gaining the saddle unaided. When Matthew Sutcliffe stepped
forward to assist her, she said curtly, ‘I can manage, thank
you.’

‘For heaven’s sake, my hands will not defile you.’ She was conscious of a tremor at his touch. There seemed
an instant when they were both very still, acutely aware of
each other’s nearness. Then in a single smooth movement she
was safely mounted. As she wheeled Kirstie and made to ride
off, he softly called her name. She paused and glanced back,
to see him standing with his hands limp at his sides, looking up
at her.

‘I did not kill your father,’ he said in a voice drained of
emotion. ‘As God is my witness, I am innocent of his death.’

For a second time Emma felt tears press against her eye
lids so that for a moment she was almost blinded. Brushing them aside, she set Kirstie in a fast canter through the sea of purple heather to where Seth patiently waited for her, a few
sprigs of white heather in his hand.

* * *

That afternoon, while Aunt Chloe was taking her nap and Uncle Randolph had returned to the mill after his dinner,
Emma, pleading a headache, left Cathy with her scrap book
and slipped out of the house, heading for the stables. By good
fortune it was Joseph’s half day, and she found Seth alone in
the harness room polishing a snaffle, and asked him to saddle
Kirstie for her. He was plainly apprehensive of letting her ride
alone, but she assured him he wouldn’t get into any trouble.

‘Just say nothing about it, Seth, and no one will be any the wiser. I have something I must do.’

The weather had changed and the sky was a mass of
tumbled grey clouds, while the wind was whipping the heather
and moor grass in great swirling designs that rippled up and down the slopes. Emma kept an anxious lookout for any sign of Matthew Sutcliffe; another encounter with him was no
part of her plan. But as far as the eye could see the stark moor
land was empty of other human life. Presently she started to
descend into a shallow gully, picking her way with care down
the rock-strewn path to the stepping stones that crossed a
clear, swift-rushing beck. Ahead of her, set in a patch of rough land enclosed by a low wall, stood a tumbledown old building,
its begrimed walls the drab colour of gritstone. A long row of windows on the upper floor denoted it as the home and work
shop of a hand weaver of a past generation. From one of its
two squat chimneys a wisp of smoke eddied, to be instantly borne away by the wind. Apart from this, and the white she-goat tethered on a length of chewed rope, the place might have been uninhabitated. Emma dismounted and hitched Kirstie to the rotting remains of the old tenter, a long wooden
frame on which the scoured cloth would once have been
stretched to dry. She went up to the door, which was made of
rough planks and showed gaps stuffed with strips of rag to stop the draught. She rapped with her knuckles, and a thin
voice called, ‘Come tha in, Miss Emma!’

Hearing her name spoken so confidently, Emma was
startled. Ursly must have heard the horse and watched for her approach from the window, but it was still surprising that the
old woman had known who it was, considering her near-
sightedness.

The dim interior was clean though very shabby, with de
crepit pieces of furniture that might have been decaying since
the weaver’s time. Some worn out matting partially covered the
stone-flagged floor, and bunches of herbs were suspended from the ceiling beams to dry. In a dark corner a cat’s eyes
glowed green, and from his perch by the window a jackdaw
grumbled at her.

Old Ursly sat close to the smoky peat fire
with a number of pots and pans at her feet, pounding some
thing in a stoneware bowl with a stubby wooden pestle. She
was a tiny figure, barely four-foot-six standing; now, seated, her head did not reach the top rail of the ladder-back chair.
Almost like a child, Emma thought, if it were not for the
seamed brown skin and toothless, shrunken mouth. She was seventy, perhaps, or more. Nobody really knew, probably not
even Ursly herself, except that she seemed to know everything. She did not rise for Emma, but that was her way. She
just jerked her head towards a folded carpet-chair that was leaning against the iron fender.

‘So tha’s come then! Tha looks fair moithered, and no won
der!’

‘You sound as if you were expecting me, Ursly.’ Emma put aside a small basket containing some greengages she had taken
from the sideboard in the dining room and set up the chair.
‘And why is it no wonder that I should be looking upset?’

The small black eyes peered at her shrewdly. ‘Is there no
reason, then?’

Emma sighed. It was always the same with this strange old
woman, next to impossible to extract a straight answer to a
question. Her every utterance had an enigmatic quality, which
increased the uncanny feeling that she could see beyond the
vision of ordinary mortals despite her impaired eyesight.

‘Well,’ she said now, ‘out with it then, my lass. Tell me
why tha’s come all alone to see old Ursly.’

Emma bit her lip. She had planned to make this seem a
casual visit, but it wasn’t going to be easy.

‘I thought it was time I called in to see you,’ she said lamely.
‘Seth said you haven’t been keeping too well lately.’

‘There’s nowt wrong wi’ me, as tha can see! Here, go and
fill t’kettle at the beck, and we’ll mak’ ourselves a pot of tea.’

Obediently, Emma took the soot-blackened iron kettle out
side, pulling the door shut to keep out the blustering wind.
She walked down to where the little stream gurgled over its
rocky bed, pondering what she knew about Ursly. So much,
and no more; even the name by which she was known – was it
her forename or patronym, or the name of a husband long
since dead? She might ask till she was blue in the face, Emma
thought ruefully, and still be none the wiser. And Ursly’s
daughter had been called Rosie and nothing else. Not that
Emma remembered her; she was five years old when Rosie
died giving birth to Seth.

Emma had heard the story of Ursly’s first appearance in the
Brackle Valley on a freezing mid-winter day, forty years ago; she had been tramping through the snow along a lonely moor
land track with a bundle on her back and a baby in her arms.
Where she was going and whence she came no one knew, but it had been fortuitous, for a young man had been thrown from his horse and was lying badly injured, both legs gashed by the gritstone boulder against which he had fallen. The young man
was William Hardaker, Emma’s dead uncle. Ursly had cleansed
his wounds with snow and bound them with clean strips of
petticoat torn from her bundle; but William later recounted
with relish that some witch-like incantations had accompanied
the application of a balsam made from leaves of Adder’s
Tongue. Making him as comfortable as possible, she had taken
the baby and gone to summon help, and the local doctor freely
admitted that Ursly had saved the boy’s life, while contemptuously dismissing the curative properties of her balsam. But
William’s mother had been more generous, insisting out of her
gratitude that Ursly should take a situation at Bracklegarth
Hall and make her home there with the baby. She was an
excellent seamstress, but the position which started off vaguely
as sewing-woman became more obscure as the years went by
until she was virtually Maud Hardaker’s companion. The family resented Ursly’s privileges, and she would doubtless
have been sent away when Maud Hardaker died but that
Uncle Randolph’s wife Henrietta had taken a liking to her.
While Chloe took charge of the household management, the
ailing Henrietta and Ursly would spend long hours alone with
each other. However, after Henrietta had been laid to her rest, Uncle Randolph had dispensed with Ursly’s services; even
though, for Cathy’s sake, he kept Seth on. Old Ursly had been
banished with a small pension to this remote homestead tucked
away in a fold of the moor, relic of the Hardaker who first
sought to augment a meagre living as a smallholder by becom
ing also a weaver of cloth, over a hundred years ago.

As Emma stooped to fill the kettle with silk-soft, sparkling
water, she thought guiltily that she had defied Uncle Randolph’s wishes on two counts; he did not want his family to
have any contact with Ursly, whom he regarded as a meddle
some old woman; furthermore, she had ridden across the moor
alone, something forbidden in the family almost to the point
of superstition ever since Uncle William’s accident all those
years ago.

Returning indoors, Emma watched while Ursly stirred the
peat fire into life and placed the kettle on the hob.

‘Seth told me something this morning, Ursly,’ she said at
last. ‘He told me you’ve been saying that Cathy won’t see the
winter. It was wrong of you. How could you possibly know
any such thing?’

‘Happen I do know, then.’

‘But it’s ages since you’ve seen Cathy. Dr Mottram, who attends her, has never suggested that it might be so soon. He says Cathy might survive another year or two yet.’

Ursly’s breath hissed through her lips. ‘Doctors! What use
are they? When my mistress slipped her babies, three on ’em,
the doctor couldn’t do nowt. ‘Twas only when she did beg me to aid her that she came safe through to childbed, with
Miss Cathy.’

‘My Uncle Paget says that’s all nonsense,’ Emma ventured.

‘Aye, he would, wouldn’t he? The old doctor now, he did
have t’grace to admit that I saved young Master William’s
life. These ones now, they’d deny me that if they could.’

Emma nodded, for it was all too true. Neither Uncle Paget
nor Bernard had a good word to say for the old woman. They
deeply resented it when their patients, failing to find them
selves cured by conventional medicine, went along to Ursly
for her mysterious herbal concoctions, and often, according to hearsay, with miraculous results.

‘Anyway, it was a blessing for Uncle William that you found
him that day,’ Emma said. ‘Otherwise he might have lain
there for hours and bled to death, or been frozen in the snow. What a lucky chance that you happened to be going across the moor.’