The Silk Factory (21 page)

‘… so, we’re to go to work as usual and hold our tongues so that the master will not know which of us had a part in it,’ he finished.

‘You can’t work like this – you’ll not keep that injury hid!’ Effie said in disbelief. ‘And there’ll be blood on the glass … in the cellar … Oh, Tobias! How could you be so foolish!’ She threw down the remains of the strips of cloth and paced to and fro in front of the hearth. ‘Even without that mishap, surely you must’ve seen how dangerous it was to do this and to write such a note? How many are there who know their letters? I’ll wager not more than two or three!’ She hurried to the window and peered out. ‘They’ll come for you. You mustn’t stay here.’ She went to the cupboard beside the mantel, took out bread and cheese, put half in front of him and wrapped the rest in a cloth.

Tobias looked at her with the face of a frightened child, unable to take in what she was saying. ‘Jervis said to do everything as usual,’ he said, ‘and none of us would come to any harm.’

She took his hands and looked searchingly into his face. ‘Think, Tobias,’ she urged. ‘Men have been hanged on slighter evidence than this and with less cause. Why, a boy your age was hanged for the stealing of a spoon! Jack’s given you a chance – you must take it.’

‘But where will I go?’ he said helplessly.

‘Head over the fields towards the locks at Braunston,’ Effie said. She reached up for the tin hidden on top of the cupboard, where she kept the money she’d been saving towards the family’s new home once she and Jack were married. ‘See if you can pick up work on the canals. Here …’ She shoved the tin towards him. ‘Use this to pay for your passage until your arm is healed.’

Tobias opened it and wondered at the weight of coin inside. Where had Effie got such money from and what was she saving it for? The soldier, he thought, and instantly felt distrust rise in him and a curse for all the agents of government. Yet the soldier had spared him, had saved his life. Confused, he emptied out the coins and thrust them deep into his pocket.

‘Head west on the canals and get as far away as you can. Make haste! They could be here at any minute.’

She helped him put on his jacket, easing the sleeve over his injured arm. ‘Travel light and fast. Send a message as soon as you can to let me know you’ve found a place and that you’re safe and well.’ She went to the door and looked outside. ‘Don’t say where you are, though, in case the message is discovered.’ She beckoned him forward and hugged him close. ‘Now, hurry,’ she said, ‘and go secretly and safely.’

She watched him cross the track and turn to raise his hand before slipping through the gate into the field beyond. Then he was gone from view.

She hurried up the ladder stair to the loft room where Tobias slept and quickly gathered his few belongings. She stuffed them into a pillowcase and straightened the bedcovers so that it would look an orderly, planned departure and not that of a runaway, leaving in haste. She took the pillowcase outside and hid it under an upturned bucket inside the chicken house, in fear all the while, listening for the sound of men in the lane. She must go about the business of washing as usual so that all looked innocent when they came. She must think of exactly what to tell them: that Tobias had been talking for a while of trying his fortunes as a weaver in Spitalfields and had left very early to be at the Watling Street in time for the cart traffic at first light.

As she re-entered the cottage, bandage, bowl and bloody cloth met her eyes, lying on the table in full view, and her heart leapt in her chest. What was she thinking! She threw the rags on the fire and took the bowl outside. She tipped it over a patch of nettles in the garden, the sun catching the pink stain in the water as it fell.

‘I don’t know where he is, sir,’ Beulah answered the master for the umpteenth time. He had made her stand on a chair in the middle of his office and had told her she would stand there until she told him the truth. Her legs and back ached as she stood, twisting her apron in her hands. Fowler walked around to the back of the chair and Beulah craned round to see.

‘Stand straight!’ Fowler roared at her and she snapped her head round again. He rested his hands on the back of the chair and spoke over her shoulder, his head level with her ear, his breath on her cheek. ‘Do you know what it is that’s burning in my yard?’ he asked her. ‘Do you know what that smell is?’

Beulah, barely perceptibly, shook her head.

‘It’s … my … money,’ Fowler said slowly. ‘My new frames that
someone
has seen fit to chop to matchwood.’

Beulah could feel the warmth of his body close to her, could smell the trace of snuff adhering to his bushy whiskers.

‘I will ask you again,’ he said softly, ‘and it will go better with you if you give me a truthful answer. Where is your brother and what was his part in this?’

Beulah held herself very still, fighting the urge to leap down from the chair and attempt to flee. She blinked. Effie had always taught her that lying was wrong and she’d also made a promise to the weavers to tell nothing. She repeated the only thing she could say that broke neither rule. ‘I don’t know where he is. God’s honest truth, sir.’

Fowler shoved the chair, making it rock, so that Beulah gasped and reached backwards to grasp the rail and steady herself. The master grabbed her arm in a grip that fingerprinted it with bruises and twisted it up behind her back. ‘I said stand still!’ he shouted, twisting harder so that she yelped in pain.

The door swung open and the constable entered. ‘
Mr
Fowler! What is this!’ he exclaimed. ‘Our investigations do
not
include laying hands upon minors!’

Fowler let go of Beulah’s arm and, seeing her chance, she scrambled down on shaky legs and sat down with a bump on the chair.

‘What news?’ Fowler demanded. ‘Have any of them talked?’

‘Not yet.’

‘And the captive, Saul Culley?’

‘A ball caught him in the thigh. He’ll need a doctor before he’s fit for questioning.’

A gleam came into Fowler’s eye. ‘Shot, you say? He may be persuadable. I shall have my own surgeon look at him.’ Seeing Boddington’s uncertain expression, he added: ‘To give an opinion on whether the limb can be saved, you understand.’

Boddington glanced down at Beulah, who was bent over, nursing her arm. ‘Send the child back to her work, Mr Fowler,’ he said. ‘These things are not for her ears.’

‘In just a moment,’ Fowler said amiably. ‘First she must tell us where her family lives. You must be able to do that, surely?’ he said to Beulah, leaning his hands on his knees in the attitude of a kind uncle, bending down to her level.

Beulah looked from him to Mr Boddington and back again.

‘Newnham, is it? Or Everdon?’ Fowler had seen the Fiddement children drenched through enough times to know that they walked a long way and clearly weren’t from the village.

Beulah looked at the door, willing Tobias to come through it. Why did he not come? He was supposed to do everything as usual, not leave her all alone to face the master! ‘Newnham, sir,’ she muttered.

‘There, that’s better,’ Fowler said in a jovial tone. ‘Now, where in Newnham?’

‘Down the track, off the lane.’

‘Which lane? What’s it called?’

Beulah shrugged. ‘It hasn’t got a name. It’s just the lane.’

‘Don’t fool with me, girl …’ Fowler’s hands itched to take hold of her and shake it out of her.

Beulah shrank back in the chair.

Mr Boddington said, ‘Who’s your landlord, child? Who does your house belong to?’

Close to tears, Beulah said, ‘Hob Talbot.’

Boddington nodded, satisfied. ‘Now let her go, sir,’ he said to Fowler.

Ignoring his words, Fowler asked him, ‘What of the enquiries made house to house?’

Boddington shook his head. ‘Nothing. The villagers would have us believe they sleep sounder than hedgepigs in winter. Not one will admit to seeing or hearing anything.’

‘I shall post bills offering a reward,’ Fowler said decisively. ‘We’ll see whether that will loosen any tongues.’

‘The girl, sir?’ Boddington insisted quietly.

Fowler went to the door by the stairs and called for Mrs Gundy, who came puffing from the kitchen. ‘Set the Fiddement girl to some useful employment,’ he said loudly for Boddington’s benefit but as Beulah passed him he said, under his breath, ‘Don’t think I’ve finished with you. I’ll have the truth if it takes ’til Michaelmas to get it.’

‘You understand my dilemma.’ Captain Harris sat at his desk, behind the pool of light cast by the oil lamp, with Jack standing before him. ‘Sergeant Clay has placed certain evidence before me, suggesting that you failed to apprehend a felon and yet you refuse to explain yourself.’

‘Sergeant Clay must be mistaken, sir.’ The colour rose to Jack’s face.

‘One man’s word against another’s is not sufficient in this case, lieutenant,’ the captain said drily. Stamford was clearly hiding something. He had no time for Clay, whom he knew to be hot-headed, undisciplined and lazy, but, nonetheless, he couldn’t ignore an allegation that Stamford was some kind of revolutionary – an insurrectionist sympathiser – however unlikely it seemed. ‘Come now, you must be able to give a more satisfactory account of your actions?’ He fixed Jack with a keen eye.

Jack remained at attention, staring ahead and refusing to meet his gaze. It pained him to be unable to answer, for he valued his spotless record and Harris’s good opinion, and felt dishonoured by his silence, even if it were only to protect himself against the malice of a blackguard like Clay.

Harris sighed. He prided himself on running an orderly company and had no wish for an investigation that would suggest fraternisation with rebellious elements in the community and would undermine the authority of the military in the area.
Fraternisation.
The word stirred a memory, somewhere in the back of his mind, of a previous conversation with Stamford. Ah – it was Stamford who had asked about married quarters a month or so ago. He’d had to refuse because the woman in question had a younger brother and sister in her care … both working at the silk manufactory … It all began to fall into place. Now he could make some sense of it. He rolled his pen to and fro across the leather top of the desk. If this came out it could all go very badly for Stamford. Neither would it reflect well upon the army.

He pulled the inkpot and a sheet of paper towards him, dipped his pen and began to write. Jack stood with his arms ramrod straight by his sides and heels pressed smartly together. Behind his deadpan expression he cursed Clay as his enemy and himself as a fool for not realising sooner the extent of the man’s spite. What if he were court-martialled? What would become of Effie then? He had tried to do the right thing by her but in solving one problem had only succeeded in creating a greater one.

Captain Harris shook the sand from his letter back into the dish, folded the paper and took a stick of sealing wax from the drawer. ‘You will leave within the hour and take this letter to Captain Quilter, who will be embarking troops at Southampton in three days’ time, for the Iberian Peninsula. You will be on that ship.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Jack managed. It was a reprieve – for that he must be grateful – but his thoughts flew immediately to Effie. ‘May I have one day’s leave, so that I can put my affairs in order before I go, sir?’ he asked. ‘There’s someone I must visit … I mean I have obligations I feel I must fulfil.’

Harris sealed the envelope and pushed it across the desk to him. ‘You may not,’ he said abruptly. ‘The connection with the person, and family, in question is best forgotten – do you not think?’

Jack opened his mouth to speak further but Harris had a dangerous look in his eye.

‘Dismissed, lieutenant,’ he said firmly.

Jack sat at the rickety table in his room, beneath the small window through which he had stared so often at the stars, thinking of Effie. Quickly he penned a note.

My dearest Effie,

I hope that all is well with the
whole family
.
I write in haste as I am posted overseas and ordered to go tonight. My darling, I cannot tell you how I shall miss you and worry for you but I have no choice. I know that you have a little money saved but before this is gone you must visit Father and Mother, as we planned, and ask for their help, as I do not know how long I shall be away. I shall write of you to them in glowing terms. I realise that you will be anxious about such a visit without me by your side but, my dear, you must do this for my sake as I shall not rest unless I know that in my absence you are under their protection.

God alone knows how long this posting may last but keep faith with me, dearest love, and be assured I intend to survive it and
I shall return
. I hope that our parting will be for only a short while and the current trouble will die down and soon be forgotten. I shall write again at greater length as soon as I have opportunity but for now am ordered to leave within the hour for Southampton. I fear incarceration would be my fate if I do not comply.

I love you so, dear Effie, and shall long every day to hold you in my arms again.

Yours, with all my heart,

Jack

He sealed it quickly. He would get one of the drummer boys to take it. Yates was trustworthy and he would pay him thruppence for his discretion. He gathered his few belongings and packed them into his knapsack. He stood for a moment in the middle of the room, wondering at how his life had been shaken upside down in the space of just one day. Could it have been only last night that he had sat here planning their trip to Bedford, anticipating with pleasure introducing Effie proudly to his family? He had imagined showing her the river in which he’d fished as a boy, his father’s books and his mother’s flower garden.

How strange that an action taken with the best intentions, to protect his beloved Effie from hurt, could lead to such disastrous consequences. When he thought of Tobias’s terrified face looking up at him from behind its prison of thorns he knew he could not have acted any differently. Tobias too would be journeying tonight and he hoped he had found food and somewhere safe to lay his head.