Eppie (37 page)

Sleep satiated, Martha stumbled
out of bed. Seeing Dawkin brandishing the fowling piece at her son’s chest, she
shrieked in alarm.

Disturbed from her slumber,
Lottie bawled.

Leering, Wakelin stepped
toward Dawkin. ‘Ya wouldn’t know how ta use it anyhow.’

‘Wanna try me?’

‘Gimme it!’

‘I saw what you was doing!’

Wakelin seized the barrel
of the gun. In the ensuing scuffle, a blast rocked the cottage.

Falling backwards, Dawkin
slammed against the grandfather clock, sending its winding mechanisms whirling.

Wakelin knew the odds were stacked against him when Gillow
appeared in his nightshirt and gaped in disbelief at the dust and fragments of
reeds spiralling from the puncture in the thatch. ‘What the?’ 

Diving for the door, Wakelin was quickly lost in the
swirling dawn mist.

Once Wicker’s leg had healed, Eppie
and Dawkin released her at a sandy sett by the riverbank. However, so devoted
to Dawkin had she become that she immediately ran back.

Her coat had toughened up and become rougher, stiffer, with
wiry hairs. She had never wholly recovered from her injuries and so was unable
to tunnel into Gillow’s vegetable plot.

Simply for the fun of seeing Eppie squirm, Dawkin fetched
out a
worm
from his pocket and let it wriggle between his fingertips before
popping it into his mouth. ‘Mmm, tasty.’  

Wicker placed her front paws upon his shoulders and licked
his cheeks. In response, he spat the food onto his palm and offered it to the
cub. Wicker consumed it with relish.

‘Do you have to keep doing that?’ Eppie asked.

Dawkin grinned at her discomfiture. ‘It was you who told me that
mother badgers chew worms for their young.’

‘Well, I wish I never had. It’s disgusting.’

It was a chilly spring morning and they were lazing beside
the stream. Surrounding them were clumps of daffodils, dancing in the gentle
breeze.

Eppie lifted the head of a dying bloom. ‘Fair daffy down
dilly, I weep to see you haste away so soon. Like you, our lives have a short
spring. Like you, we soon decay and die. Gabriel read that poem to me in the Crusader
Oak. It teaches us that our lives are short. We must make the most of time.’

‘Then you won’t say no to a game of frog-lowp?’ He pointed
to a carpet of anemones. ‘Bend down over there.’

Seeing him race towards her, she giggled and lost her
balance. 

He skidded to a halt, frowning. ‘How can I leap if you don’t
hold yourself firm? And don’t spring up when I’m jumping. The last time you did
that you split my chin in two. What are you laughing at? It hurt.’

Footsteps thudded towards her.  Hands pressed upon her back,
he sailed over. 

Martha hurried towards the children, her face clouded with
anxiety. She had been over at the Leiffs cottage. ‘Molly’s asking for you,
Eppie. Hurry, she’s like as to go back at any moment.’

Bare-footed, Eppie hastened across the lane.

Warmly wrapped against the wind in a cream turban and
ungainly woollen coat, Jacob was in his shed, loading firewood into a basket.

Thrown into mental confusion, not knowing how to act towards
her dying friend, she dawdled in the Leiffs garden, considering how best to
take command of her indomitable spirit lest she say or do the slightest thing
that might cause offence to Molly or her mother.  Habitually, she checked for
slugs on cabbages. 

Spying her, Jacob smoothed his bristly grey moustache so that
it reached his lower lip. ‘There was a time when that girl could talk for two
days without stopping. No more. You get along in. The missus has sent me out
for firewood. Keeps me mind off things.’

Timidly, she knocked. 

Abruptly, the sound of someone chopping with a knife ceased.
Footsteps spilt across the stone floor. Having ushered her in, Sarah
disappeared through a door at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Wait on, I’ll see.’

Logs crackled. The low chimney overshadowed with trees,
smoke incessantly filled the parlour with smother, which seemed not to bother
the kitten at the fender-side. Sarah had been in the process of chopping garlic
mustard. Scattered around an open bible was a handful of salted herrings.

Jacob booted the door open, groaning under the weight of the
logs.

‘You’d best come up,’ Sarah told Eppie, ‘though don’t be
frightened if she don’t recognise you.’

The stairs were steep and splintered over the years by the
boot-nails of Molly’s elder brothers as they tramped up and down. Reaching the
narrow landing the smell of sweat came strongly to Eppie’s nostrils. Sunbeams
streamed into the room where the brothers slept, falling upon James, whose
weakened body heaved with each hollow cough. Suffering the same ailment as Molly,
slowly, but surely, his lungs filling with fluid, he was drowning.

The adjacent room into which she stepped was sparsely
furnished with little more than the bare necessities. Jacob’s bass viol stood
in the corner like a soldier on guard. A flimsy cloth, draped from the rafters,
swept the timber floor, partitioning Molly’s bed from that of her parents.

Sarah took up her knitting. Wakelin and the parson sat in
rough chairs beside the bed. Although Wakelin glanced up as Eppie trod to the head
of the bed, her hands clasped before her, no emotion stirred in his face. 

Downstairs, Jacob scraped back a chair at the hearthside and
droned on to the kitten about the nuisance of toll evaders sneaking through in
the dead of night.

Eppie was disturbed to see how ill Molly had become since
yesterday, scarcely the shadow of a living creature. Dark circles swam around her
sunken eyes. 

Time passed. 

A hush suffused with the presence of God saturated the
sickroom, a hush that must not be broken by any brash, piercing word, or
jolting sound.

Slowly, rhythmically, Jacob tapped with his foot upon the
iron-dog at the hearth.

Eppie glanced at the bowed heads, at onions strung from the
rafters in an attempt to draw out Molly’s fever. Listlessly, she stirred the
spoon in a trencher filled with a mixture of brandy and vinegar. Jacob’s
leather snuffbox stood beside
Pilgrim’s Powders for Fevers
.
Absent-mindedly, she flipped up the lid of the box and snorted a pinch of snuff
up her nose, imitating the way she had seen him do. With a terrible sense of
consternation, she felt her nose become unbearably ticklish.

Startled by Eppie’s vigorous sneeze down the back of the parson’s
neck, Sarah dropped her ball of wool. ‘This is too bad!’ she cried mournfully,
dabbing the parson’s damp neck with Jacob’s half-finished vest. ‘Too bad!’

Jacob burst in. ‘What’s a-miss, Sarah?’

Imagining the stray ball unfurling beneath the bed to be a
monstrous mouse, the kitten wriggled out of his hand and sank her teeth into
the wool, spitting. 

Her eyes streaming, Eppie sneezed without cessation,
uncomfortably aware of Wakelin glaring at her.

‘By, that’s a shocking cold you have, petal.’

No one had noticed Molly’s eyes flicker open. The look of
pain which had scoured her face for the last few days had disappeared. Smiling
lovingly at Wakelin, her expression was one of wonder, as though she were
seeing joyous things in a distant, happy land. With a final, sighing breath she
drifted from earthly things as naturally as a falling leaf in autumn.

Betsy rubbed her aching feet. ‘My
corns are killing me. That’s a sure sign of rain. I don’t relish the idea of a
soaking. I’d best fetch my thick shawl.’

‘You needn’t bother, Mrs P. The wind’s blowing the clouds
away too fast for rain,’ Gillow answered.

Martha roused them. ‘We’d better get going.’

They passed beneath the porch.

‘It’s so sad about Molly, poor lamminger,’ Betsy said. ‘Mind
you, after her flame perished I suppose it was to be expected.’ 

Last winter’s eve, each member of the congregation had taken
a candle to church. From Parson Lowford’s perspective the flame symbolised
God’s spirit. For villagers who gave credence to folklore it was to hear the
spirits call out the names of those who would die during the year: a bright
light was favourable, a spluttering flame meant misfortune, while a dying flame
foretold death.

Tinkering with the broken latch on the gate, Gillow spoke
with vehemence. ‘That’s superstitious clush.’

‘You’re only saying that
because a death-watch beetle fell from a beam and snuffed your candle,’ Eppie
said, grinning.

Mourners, clad in sombre raiment, assembled for Molly’s wake
in the parlour of The Fat Duck. 

Parson Lowford was doing his best to curb the irreverent
conduct of his congregation. Visiting of relatives on the Sabbath was frowned
upon, as was the funeral wake, where folk expected to indulge in meat and drink
after the service. The villagers, however, had other ideas and were adept at
contriving plots to continue their cherished way of life. On this occasion, Molly’s
wake was being held
before
the funeral to lessen the chance of the parson
catching them.

An impressive fire roared. Feeling the heat, Eppie unpinned
her mantle and thrust it between over-garments that ballooned from pegs.

‘Gillow!’ Jonas shouted above the hubbub. ‘Come and toast
your innards with a pint of warmed ale. Or would you prefer a drop of something
stronger?’

Bill and his friends were seated at their usual table,
swilling from tankards and puffing on pipes. Tobias, who had managed to get a
few days off work to visit his family for the funeral, was chatting to Wakelin
at the bar. Edmund, beside them, had his arm around Kizzie.

Sarah approached Martha and Betsy. ‘There’s a jug of whey set
by for the children.  Sweet tea is it, ladies?’   

Balancing brimming mugs, Eppie and Dawkin made their way to
a table, averting their eyes from Tom who glowered at them from behind the
counter. They squeezed in at a bench. Women, seated nearby, were grumbling
about the parson charging folk who had not joined the burial club a guinea to
hold a funeral.

The high mantelpiece was cluttered with cheap figures in
crockery-ware, brass candlesticks and tobacco dishes. Dawkin indicated to a
print that showed a masked rider on a horse. ‘That’s what I want to be when I’m
growed.’

‘A highwayman?’ Eppie asked, trusting that he was teasing.

Wilbert slunk up behind her. ‘Guess who I saw looking through
your window last night?’

‘Parson Lowford?’

‘Death! He’s coming back tonight to shred you with his
talons. His face is black from never washing an’ his hair’s all moppy.’

‘The only one I know who resembles that description is you,
Wilbert Hix,’ Eppie replied blithely.

‘Think you’re clever, hey?’ he said, enraged at her for
dispassionately dispelling his imaginative tale. ‘Well I tell ya, my pa’s
braver than yours.  He’s sliced off Ranger’s …’

‘Wilbert!’ Bill leapt to his feet and grabbed his son by the
ear. ‘Off home, lessin’ ya want me to give ya a raw hide.’

‘What about the food? Mrs Leiff says there’s a cheese for
the children. She’s hid a chunk o’ money in it. I’m set on getting that.’ 

Glaring dangerously, his father raised his fist.

Knowing better than to argue,
Wilbert tore off.

Repairing a boundary where a cow had escaped, a hedger
doffed his cap and stared in mute respect at the passing of the plaintive procession.

Upon the horizon, du Quesne could be seen galloping on
Ranger. He headed towards Maygott, who was checking fields fertilized with
shoddy waste from a cotton mill.   

Wakelin and Tobias were engrossed in conversation as they
walked along.

‘I ain’t experienced,’ Wakelin said.

‘You don’t need none. Speed’s the thing. We work night and
day with relays of horses, two men off, two on. Don’t expect steady money. Late
with a delivery, the company loses orders and we ain’t paid.’

‘You sure there’s a place for me?’

‘My friend fell in the lock and got crushed to death between
the boat and the wall.  I can’t be surer than that.’

The parson waited before the church door in readiness to
receive the coffin. Snatched by gusts of wind, his black clerical robes writhed
around his legs.

From somewhere up ahead, the baying of dogs was borne upon
the blustery breeze. Shoulders heaving, tongues lolling, a pack of mongrels
bounded around the corner and sped towards the mourners.

Eppie halted with a jerk, recalling Wilbert’s tale about the
Dogs of Death that hunted the souls of the recently deceased.

Sensitive noses attracted to the flimsy coffin, some dogs
leapt at the cart, whilst others, detecting the scent of badger, circled Eppie
and Dawkin, snarling.

So far, Wakelin had concealed his grief at the death of his
beloved. Now he gave his repressed emotions vent, cursing in fury, and pelting
the dogs with stones.

‘Stop this!’ Gillow cried, mortified by his son’s coarse
language. ‘You shame your mother and me with your wicked words.’

Wakelin pulled back his shoulders so that he stood as tall
as his father. ‘By, I’ll be glad to see the last of you!’

‘And what do you mean by that?’

‘I’m off to work on the flyboats.’

‘Flyboats? You haven’t asked my consent.’

‘That’s because I don’t need it.’ Snatching more stones from
the lane-side, he continued his onslaught.

Around the corner advanced a cavalcade of travellers’ wagons
drawn by hill ponies. Some gypsies raced up to Wakelin and pushed him around,
keen to pick a fight. Bawling her apologies to Molly’s mother, the gypsy matriarch,
adorned in a picturesque costume with a crimson cowl, called off her lads.