Authors: Leah Fleming
For all this Eliza needed to be rehearsed and prepared so that she might make that one effort to get out of the farmhouse without making too much fuss. She had taken to practising with her
sister, walking to the door and pretending it was the outside porch, pretending to get into the steps of Papa’s chaise, rehearsing how they might achieve this one last feat.
‘I must take myself to Lawton one more time,’ Eliza announced at the dining table to everyone’s surprise. ‘Just in case I die in childbed. I must see my home one more
time. I want the baby born in Lawton. It will please Papa so much.’ It was about the longest sentence she had spoke in public but everyone was agog with this decision.
‘It’ll make you ill again,’ said her husband. ‘Happen, we’ll get the doctor in here to be on the safe side.’
‘No, Mr Stockdale, I am decided in this matter. Bella will be at my side. That is sufficient.’ Matt was too dumbstruck to protest further.
It looked as if their plan was going to succeed. The return to Lawton was achieved even if the welcome was a little cool and the house stripped of many of the best pictures and furnishings,
servants dismissed and owed money. The house was cold and unwelcoming after Yewbank, dark and damp. All that remained was to prepare the bedroom for the confinement and send word for the services
of the best midwife in town, preferably one who liked her ale bottle. Everyone was fussing around Eliza, unaware that the real mother to be was already doubled up with cramp and backache, knowing
her time was close.
Eliza managed to send for Papa and meet him on the stairs, saying that the labour was beginning and to send for Mistress Ackroyd straight away, clutching her stomach to great effect. No one else
must be admitted through the door until the baby was born.
‘I’ll call for Doctor Brindle,’ he said, suddenly alert.
‘No, Papa, women are best left to their own devices,’ she ordered, clutching her belly again with a dramatic groan. ‘Leave us be. All is prepared in the upstairs chamber.
Saddle a horse and send news to my husband in due course, that he must come and greet his child tomorrow. Take your time; do not rush back for it will be many hours yet awhile. There will be no
admittance until it is done.’
By the time the midwife was admitted to the room it was already dusk and Mirabel slipped into the bed in her shift and bed cap while Eliza took on the role of the servant, hovering quietly as
the nurse examined the patient, unaware that they had swapped places. The final piece of deception was in place. Mirabel could hardly breathe as the pains grabbed her body and squeezed the new life
ever forward. It was the longest night of her life. For once Eliza made no fuss and watched on with horror and fascination as the tiny body pushed its way into the world, purple and then pink,
squealing, taking lungfuls of air and yelling lustily while sending an ark of piss across the bed into the nurse’s face.
One look at her son and Mirabel knew she was bound to him for life. He was perfect, sound in limb and with those bright speedwell-blue Stockdale eyes just like his father. Suddenly she was so
tired and exhausted that she lay back and slept. Eliza was instructed to pay the midwife well and ply her with strong ale so she would be dismissed groggy and sleepy back to the town. There was no
need of her services once she had buried the afterbirth and informed Papa that a healthy boy child was born who would be called William Albert Dacre Stockdale, after their brother.
Matt wanted to tell the world that he had a son. All his doubts were forgotten as he danced around the kitchen and drained the ale keg dry with his mother looking on.
‘Never thowt she’d do it, son, with being that little,’ she grinned. ‘I suppose William’s a good enough name but you should’ve had yer say and all.
This’s what’s wanted, this bairn’ll bring new life to the place and cure yer wife’s ailments once and for all.’
Matt stopped at every tavern to toast his new child and came back ‘market fresh’. He could not wait to see his son. His wife was such a mystery to him. How could this feeble woman
who scorned him by day, devour him by night within the darkness of the bed curtains. He had crept in and she caressed him in the darkness. Only her hands puzzled him: by day they stitched like the
furies, white and soft as silk, sewing her poor mind into those samplers; by night her hands were rough hewn and coarsened by passion. Once she was recovered he would insist they share the bed
every night. This misunderstanding must not happen again.
He arrived at Lawton to see her sitting, plumped up with cushions, holding the infant to him proudly, ‘Your son, as I promised,’ she smiled so sweetly, turning to the maid who was
sitting in her usual spot, silent in the shadows. ‘Is he not a true Stockdale? He has your fair hair.’
He had to admit he had the look of Matt’s own father, looking like a little old man in his arms. How proud he would have been. He bent down to kiss her forehead in acceptance of this
surprise gift but she turned her cheek.
‘I’m so weary after all this travail but fetch my sewing box and I’ll stitch his name onto his sheets and linen; the first of many,’ she smiled.
He turned to Bella and ordered her to bring wine to celebrate but his wife shook her head.
‘Later, the poor girl is as tired as I am for she had sat with me and helped deliver me safely. We both need to rest. Take your son and show him where you must,’ she ordered and he
was thrilled to see her so alive. ‘Close the door and admit only Papa when he arrives back from his business. I want no visitors but the Parson who can baptise him here if you wish’
For a few days Matt’s hopes of a miracle cure for his wife rose. She was brought back to life by this bairn. Then to his utter disappointment, on her return home she fell back to her old
ways, sitting by the windows of light, rocking the cradle with her calfskin boot, sewing, sewing, always sewing. He never saw her feeding him but the boy seemed to be thriving. He insisted that the
boy be properly baptised in St Peter’s church before the congregation, which upset his chapel-going mother.
Mirabel did not make the church service for she was in one of her feverish moods. The baby was held by the maid as usual, who rocked him back and forth until he slept and the christening went
ahead with the Squire bursting with pride at the sight of his grandson. His daughter had done her duty and produced an heir and he seemed mighty relieved that everyone was satisfied with her good
work.
Soon life at Yewbank was back to the old way. The baby roared, screaming for its feed, upsetting Matt’s mother with his untended cries.
‘That girl’s got not enough milk. She scarce lifts her eyes from her sewing to see to him. I’ve taken to putting him in the kitchen with me. It’s not right, Matt. His
cries wake us all in the night but all that Dacre girl does is sew and sew: such fine gowns, I must admit, embroidered caps, capes. Her fingers are raw. Only Bella gets up to him in the night and
shushes him up. There is nothing William lacks, poor lad, but a mother with a bit of sense. I cannot be doing with his cries. They tear my heart out. You’ve got to say something, son, or I
will.’
One morning Matt himself could hear the baby screaming out with hunger, so wondering when someone would lift the bairn and see to his comforts he came indoors to have words. Bella was scurrying
across the top of the upper floor and in her haste she dropped some napkins. He picked them up still warm from the flat iron, smelling of lavender, and followed her into Mirabel’s chamber to
return them. For once the door was not locked.
Through the open door to his horror he glimpsed the maid’s pock-marked breasts as she suckled his son contentedly.
‘What in God’s name are you doing with my son?’ he screamed and the baby startled, screwed up its face and began to wail. Mirabel looked up at him blushing and for once had the
grace to give him her full attention. Bella looked at him square on, the brazen hussy.
‘Someone has to feed William. He’s hungry and Mirabel has no milk. Wet nurses are common enough, Sire,’ she spoke without asking for permission.
‘Aye and we all know that a milk cow must first deliver to produce its milk. A barren cow cannot suckle a calf. Hellfire! What are you two she devils up to? Give me that thing . . .’
he snatched the child from the breast and slammed the door, his mind afire with rage at such deception.
What had been going on under his roof? This was mischief indeed. What he was thinking was unbelievable. Whose child was this bastard? His head was ringing with fury at the scene he’d just
witnessed.
So that was their little game. They had hatched up this plot to deceive him, giving him the child of a maid and some quisling from the tavern too drunk to see her face. How could he have ever
been deceived into thinking this was his own heir when he had been with his wife but twice? How they had deceived him! Matt tore through the kitchen, striding out into the yard with the screaming
infant wailing for all to hear.
‘Out of my way!’ he ordered as the yard boy stepped aside. Then, seeing Sadie the dairymaid, he dumped the bundle into her arms and made for his horse to saddle up and mount,
strapping the screaming child tight around his chest in a makeshift sling.
He rode like the furies towards Gunnerside Foss but not before he halted suddenly to look up at his house, and the world that was fast collapsing around his head. How grand the farmhouse looked
with whitened walls set against the emerald moorland, the sun torching the windows with golden light, so proud and outstanding but so full of corruption. How he had been duped and humiliated by
those scheming women: one unfit to be seen and the other not right in the head. Poor Matt Stockdale who thought he could be a gentleman, fobbed off with someone else’s bastard, made a
laughing stock in the district. No wonder they had hidden away in Lawton to deceive him. It was as clear as a mountain stream now. Well, he was going to have the last laugh now . . .
‘What’s going on?’ puffed Lucy Stockdale, as she rushed into the bed chamber unannounced, hearing the screams. ‘Where’s the babby?’ Eliza
was simpering and shaking her head and Mirabel was buttoning up her shirt trying to stay calm. How could she explain the mess they were all now in? But there was no time for explanations. Matt had
taken her baby in a rage of fury, thinking William some bastard imposter. There was danger in the air and she must go to him.
‘Please see to Miss Mirabel,’ she begged, trying to stay calm and not alarm Mistress Stockdale further. ‘I must take the baby a warm shawl or he will be chilled in the fresh
air.’ She ran down to the kitchen but there was no sign of her son. She ran through the yard calling his name but there was no answer until Sadie came out of the dairy and said the Master had
saddled up and gone. Her heart was thumping with fear.
‘Saddle me a horse and be quick. The Master is out of his senses. He thinks the baby unwell,’ she lied. Now was not time for explanations. All she could think about was little
William, hungry, cold and in danger from a man in the throes of furious confusion. This was the moment she had dreaded, the moment when all the tight ball of lies they had wound was unravelling
fast. Mirabel mounted the brown horse for the first time in months, racing off down the track in pursuit of Matt, taking a flying leap over a wall in the race to save her son.
Sitting in the saddle with the whimpering child, Matt suddenly felt as if all the stuffing had gone out of him. Matt wanted to cry out himself in shame for having been such a
blind fool who’d built his house on the shifting sand of vanity, not on the rock of truth. It was built on the sands of pride and ambition. How could he ever think to emulate the gentry when
he was but a yeoman? Here he was, a farmer’s son, parading about in his top hats and leather boots and fancy steed, now brought low by a frigid wife and a cunning maid in this house of
whispering women. Damn them all!
He glanced down at the little baby’s face, innocent yet corrupt, and he felt a stab of pity for the poor mite. How could he dispose of this terrible deception? All he wanted to do was
punish those two imposters once and for all and teach them that Matthias Stockdale still had his pride and his wits. He began to shake at the very thought of his wicked intentions. Then he saw the
horse chasing after him, tearing across the field like the furies on one of his better horses, a woman in a cloak astride a man’s horse, riding like wild fire.
There was something in the way she was riding that reminded him of time’s past: the time when in his youthful arrogance he thought he could ever woo the young Mirabel Dacre before she
shrunk into this heartless, witless, feeble-headed creature. He wanted to weep at all his foolishness but as he watched the figure lit against the skyline, some recognition stirred in his mind,
some strange intuition, the sort he had never had for years, that his old flame had returned . . .
It was Mirabel, come to plead with him, to tell him she was sorry for the deception, to plead forgiveness and pledge her love. Then he saw it was only the maid, the monstrous Bella in all her
pock-marked ugliness and he fled from her, racing down towards the edge of the path where the roar of the waterfall drowned out her crying. She would be witness to his determination. He must be
Master of Yewbank or die in the attempt. If she moved a step further, he would jump. It was the only solution now to his shaming. But his mother depended on him to keep them in old age. How
he’d sacrificed her comforts for his fanciful schemes. How could he have ever been ashamed of his family? They were strong. It was the Dacres who were weak.
He turned to see Bella following, dismounting swiftly with arms outstretched. Bells of warning were ringing in his head: ‘Stand firm, she is a witch.’ He stepped closer to the edge,
holding out the baby in defiance.
Mirabel sensed his intention and froze, hearing the roar of the water after heavy rain, the wailing of her child and the crazed look on Matt’s face. If ever there was
punishment, it was coming now and she prayed hard for guidance to direct their path to safety.