As it turned out Susan did not have to guide her father’s steps that night. He tripped on a flagstone in the yard and managed to crawl into the box of Mr Calthorpe’s best carriage horse, where he lay in a stupor, awash in his own vomit and kept warm by the horse. A startled stable-boy found him the next morning.
‘Ay, the stink o’ shit an’ spue was wusser ’n horse dung. Him was that white, Oi thought un was dead!’ the lad reported, laughing heartily every time he told the tale.
Mr Calthorpe had Lucket committed to Belhampton Gaol for ten days, and forbade him to work on the Bever estate again, while Mrs Calthorpe took Edward to task for deserting his sisters and spending all his time with the child from the Ash-Pits.
The boy mumbled some kind of apology, but the little girl’s face haunted him, along with Goody Firkin’s dire prediction. How would Susan and her young sister and brothers fare when winter stocks ran low? Edward had never thought about the lives of the poor before, but from now on he was never to forget them.
SUSAN WAS DESPERATELY
clinging to sleep and a beautiful dream of warmth and food and summer days where she and her sister and brothers ran through the fields beneath blue skies; she tried her best to clasp it and keep it, but it slipped treacherously away, fading into a thin memory of itself.
It was gone. She was awake and lying beside Polly, Bartle, Will and Georgie in the hay-loft that had been used as a chicken roost in better times; she was unable to go back to sleep for the gnawing pangs of her empty belly. It was still an hour before the winter sun rose, and she heard her mother moan and stir.
Quietly withdrawing herself from the tangle of arms and legs entwined under two stained blankets, Susan peered down to the one room where the family lived and where Dolly slept with baby Jack. Bartlemy lay on a heap of old clothes in a corner, his right leg propped up on a bag of straw, swollen and inflamed. The only point of light was the faint red glow of the remains of the fire, but Dolly had woken with the cold, and now proceeded to poke the embers with wood splinters, adding dry twigs from a nearby pile. In the resulting small blaze Susan clearly saw her mother’s face. The innocent vanities of girlhood had long been left behind in a daily struggle for existence; Dolly’s skin was grimy, her hair lank, there were gaps in her teeth and the sour smell of poverty clung to her flesh. The dark-eyed ploughboy who had pursued her through the summer fields now lay helpless in a fever, unable to escape to the alehouse while his wife and children starved, and Dolly carried their seventh child in her womb.
Susan watched as her mother pulled up the coarse woollen gown she wore night and day, and squatting over a pail, relieved herself.
Baby Jack awoke with a snuffling cry, and Dolly hushed him in her arms, whispering softly. ‘Hush, my sweet Jack, my poor little boy. ‘Twill be the poorhouse for us, or starve.’
Susan trembled, for she had heard stories about the dreaded place where families were separated and orphaned children slept in the same rooms as the deformed and the crazed. She tried to blot out such pictures by remembering that wonderful September evening in the stable-yard of Bever House, where they had filled their bellies with roast pig-meat and she had talked with Master Edward until dark. Would she ever see him again? Did he even remember her? She knew that she would never forget how happy she had been.
Everything was changed now. It was ten days into January, though Susan had lost count of time. The year had begun with continuous snow for a night and a day and another night, and it still lay frozen in great drifts. The familiar winter landscape of ploughed fields and leafless trees had turned into a silent white wasteland by day and a pathless darkness by night; the huddle of windowless cottages known as the Ash-Pits were pencilled outlines on a blank canvas as the dull red sun rose and fell, bringing scarcely seven hours of light to each day.
A hoarse grunt erupted from the bundle of rags and straw where Bartlemy lay, and Susan held her breath, hoping he would not wake yet. She was beginning to realise that Da was the source of the trouble that had overtaken them, as much as the hard winter. He had been laid up since Christmas with an injured leg, having fallen in Farmer Bennett’s bottom field while returning from the alehouse; he had lain there until a farm hand, out early, had found him half-frozen and brought him home. Dolly had scarcely spoken to him since, but Susan had heard her saying to nobody in particular that she was worse off than a widowed mother of orphans, ‘fur then Oi might ha’ asked fur parish relief, an’ folks might ha’ bin more forthcomin’.’
But Bartlemy had made the name of Lucket a byword, and the shame fell upon them all. Susan felt it more keenly than her younger siblings, and asked herself why the Calthorpe boy should trouble himself with such riffraff as the Luckets.
Yet he had sought her out and talked with her, just as if she had been one of his pretty little sisters. Remembering again his kindness to her and Goody Firkin, she smiled and let her thoughts dwell on the better life she had glimpsed. One day, she told herself, one day she would find her way out of the Ash-Pits, and take Polly with her.
But meanwhile shouldn’t she try to do something for them all – her mother and sisters and brothers? Shouldn’t she go out and beg, as some other poor folks did? But where could she go?
The nearest farm belonged to Thomas Bennett, a dour-faced, taciturn man who had long ago ordered Bartlemy Lucket off his property. Mrs Bennett was a thrifty housewife with a son and three daughters; she kept a couple of maidservants and was known for her good, plain fare. Surely she would take pity on the starving family if Susan were to knock on her kitchen door and beg for the leftover rinds of bacon or crusts of bread? Vegetable peelings could be boiled up to make soup, and half a pound of oats would go a long way. And if Mrs Bennett could spare a little honey . . . Susan’s mouth watered.
Yet the Bennett farmhouse was a good half-mile away up a steep track, now covered with snow, and Susan had neither cloak nor boots. In braving the wrath of the farmer, the danger of falling and freezing to death in the bitter cold was a real possibility: a nameless traveller had been found still and cold in Quarry Lane a few days ago.
Yet something had to be done, she knew, or at least tried. She
would
go, she decided, but not until the afternoon, when the air would be slightly less cold.
But before then they had a visitor, an angel of deliverance in the guise of poor Parson Smart in his ancient greatcoat and cracked leather boots that let in the snow.
Dolly’s dull eyes widened hopefully at the sight of the black figure at the door, and she called over her shoulder to Susan as he stepped across the threshhold.
‘Sukey! Make haste an’ line up Polly an’ yer brothers – the parson be come!’
Picking up little cross-eyed Jack in her arms, she stood waiting for Mr Smart to speak of parish relief; Susan and the other children stood staring dumbly at the glistening dewdrop on the end of their visitor’s nose.
‘Good, good,’ he nodded uncertainly, giving them a vague smile. ‘I hope that you are all good children, giving comfort to your mother and – er . . .’ He glanced towards the dark corner where Bartlemy lay. ‘You must bring them to church, goodwife, as soon as the weather improves.’
Absurd though he appeared, Susan sensed that here was a man struggling to do his Christian duty in the face of want and misery.
‘Don’t we get no parish relief then, Parson?’ cried Dolly, and Susan saw his eyes fall before her desperate need. In his haste to see smiles in place of blank stares, he started gabbling his message.
‘I have been to see Mrs Bennett, who in her charity has some victuals for you if – if young Susan will call at—’ he began, but Dolly broke in with a shriek.
‘What?’ she cried, her pinched face alert. ‘Has Sarah Bennett bread for us? Today?
Now
?’
‘Yes, woman, this very hour, if you will send the child up to her.’ He turned to Susan. ‘Go to the scullery at the back, and keep out of the farmer’s sight behind the hedge, for if he sees you – well, take care he does not. And have you a jug to take with you?’
‘Take the crock jug, Sukey,’ cut in Dolly, her sunken eyes glinting wildly. ‘Go on, get ’ee gone up to her back door!’
‘The
scullery
door,’ Smart corrected her.
‘What ha’ she got fur us, Parson?’ asked little Polly.
‘I don’t know, child. I heard her speak o’ barley bread and a cut off a hind o’ salt bacon – and she asked for a jug to be sent.’
The children’s weak cheers were too much for the parson, who had wrestled long and hard with himself before going to beg from the Bennetts. His own wife was having to make a dinner from thin, meatless soup and baked potatoes to feed their hungry brood in the draughty parsonage; he would feel the lash of her tongue if she ever found out that he had gone to Sarah Bennett on behalf of another family. Yet at this moment he knew that he had done right, and a constriction arose in his throat; he turned away from their grateful eyes to wipe his own with the back of his hand.
Dolly had no interest in his reflections. She picked up one of the rag rugs that had covered her and the baby as they slept, and threw it over Susan’s shoulders.
‘Get goin’, Sukey. Put yer dad’s boots over yer feet an’ make sure ’ee don’t spill nothin’, nor fall down in the snow. Go on, go
on
!’
Susan went forth on her errand without mishap, and arrived at the Bennett farmhouse kitchen, a haven of warmth where a hearth fire supplied heat to an adjoining bake-oven and a large black pot hung over it on a triple chain. The flagstoned floor was warm to her feet, and the aroma from the pot indescribably delicious.
‘These are thin times for us all, Sukey,’ said Mrs Bennett briskly. ‘This is for Dolly and you children, mind, not that idle drunken oaf. The farmer’s temper do rise at the very name o’ Lucket, so be sure ye don’t let him see ye.’
The jug was filled from the stew pot, and bread and bacon wrapped in a knotted cloth. Mrs Bennett’s sharp words were softened by her tone, and Susan sensed that the woman’s heart was at variance with her head.
‘Tom! Tom, where are ye? Come down and take this girl back to the Ash-Pits, will ye? Ye can help carry the – see she doesn’t fall down.’
A blunt-featured boy of about nine clumped into the kitchen in response to his mother’s call.
‘And whatever ye do, don’t let your father see.’
His duty done, Smart made his way back to the parsonage of Little St Giles, from which he served Lower Beversley. He was chilled to the marrow of his bones, but his heart was lighter, and he looked forward to a game of backgammon with his older children, to take their minds off the rigours of winter.
But his plans had to be set aside, for Dick the carrier was waiting for him with grim news. Goody Firkin’s corpse was laid across his cart, staring up at the empty sky.
The day that was to change Sophia Glover’s life began inauspiciously enough. A fire had been lit in the library, and she had set the boys to write an essay on the countryside in winter.
‘May we not play beggar-my-neighbour, Sophy?’ asked Osmond, restless with the long confinement indoors. ‘I vow that I’ll be thankful to see even the old rector’s study again, for ’tis poor sport here with a woman for tutor,’ he added in a lower tone but still loud enough for his cousin to hear. He got up and sauntered over to the window, his hands in his pockets. ‘How merrily would we glide down the slope if we had Henry’s sledge! Cannot a manservant be sent to Hansfords’ for it?’
‘Indeed not, Osmond. Come back to the table, you are disturbing your sisters,’ replied Sophia, suppressing a strong desire to box his ears. The girls were fidgety and inattentive when their brothers were present, and no sooner had they settled to their tasks than Osmond jumped up again.
‘Look there, out of the window, is not that the carrier’s horse?’ he cried.
They all ran to look, and sure enough, the old horse usually seen drawing Dick the carrier’s cart was now making his slow way along the white track that had been dug in the snow from the front gate round to the stable-yard. Dick and his son were on foot.
‘Come on, let’s go down and find out what news they bring!’ said Osmond, glad of any diversion, and rushed from the room without a backward glance. The others followed, clattering down the backstairs to the servants’ quarters, the domain of Martin the butler and his wife.
Sophia rested her elbows on the table and let her head fall between her hands. Keeping her young cousins occupied during this severe weather was weary work – but what would become of her when they no longer needed her? What was she, after all, but a nobody, a bastard offshoot beholden to the Calthorpes for a roof over her head? It was seven years since she and Bever House had been placed in the care of her cousin Calthorpe by her grandfather, old Lord de Bever, who had built the manor house forty years ago and brought his beautiful girl-bride Sophia Calthorpe over the threshhold; nobody could have foreseen at that time how soon the ancient name would die out. The death of Sophia in giving birth to their only son, Humphrey, who had himself died in agony with an inflammation of the bowel before he was twenty, had turned Lord de Bever into a bitter and disillusioned man, and at sixty he had quitted Beversley for London, to live out the rest of his life in St James’s Square.
But first he had summoned his wife’s nephew to assume ownership of the estate.
‘No need to wait till I’m dead, Calthorpe,’ he had said bluntly. ‘You might as well learn to hold the reins now as later. And those boys of yours will need to be brought up as responsible landowners – they are but toddling yet, but they’ll have to learn thrift, for ye’ll not get my money till I’ve gone.’
Osmond Calthorpe bowed. ‘I shall devote myself to the estate and to Beversley, Uncle,’ he had replied, hoping that Gertrude would show equal discretion, and not rejoice too openly at their sudden advancement.
Lord de Bever gave a grunt. ‘Hm. And there is one important condition.’