Pit Bank Wench (21 page)

‘
Ask my brother to marry you now!
’

The words mocked her from the darkness as they had mocked her then. Carver Felton had deliberately raped her to prevent such a marriage.

‘Paul,’ Emma whispered. But there was no answer. There never would be. Paul was lost to her. She would never be his wife. And the child she carried? Jerusha had said it would bear its father’s name. But Carver Felton would never own to the bastard child of a Doe Bank wench.

‘Leave me be!’

The cry was that of a woman, one as frightened as herself. Unsure whether it had come from her own fearful mind, Emma listened.

‘Let me go! Leave me be!’

Daisy! Emma’s head jerked up, her own fear fading instantly. That was Daisy’s voice. Hearing the harsh laughter that followed it, Emma sprinted towards the sound. From the alley beside the Turk’s Head Hotel the noise of a scuffle and the throaty cursing of a man caught her ear.

‘Daisy!’ she shouted and rushed into the alley. Almost hidden in the shadows she saw the figure of a man, his back to her. ‘Daisy!’ she called again, then hurled herself at the struggling shape.

‘Leave her alone, you beast!’ Emma screamed as she pulled at the man attacking Daisy. ‘Leave her . . .’

The rest was lost as she felt herself knocked backward, the breath forced from her as she was slammed against a wall.

‘Well now, if there ain’t another of ’em!’

Beer-sodden breath fanned her face. ‘Now ain’t that a bit of luck? Here’s old Charlie a-waiting of his turn with the young ’un, but there be no need of waiting now. I’ll take you instead.’

‘No!’ Emma screamed again as he pressed against her, one hand restraining her shoulders, the other drawing her skirts up over her hips.

‘You can take your time with that ’un, Tom . . .’

Emma’s stomach turned as fumes of beer and sour breath touched her face.

‘. . . old Charlie Bates has one of his own.’

‘Old Charlie Bates best leave that woman alone unless he wants to leave this alley in a bed cart!’

An oath falling from his lips, the man turned away but his hold on Emma stayed firm.

‘You go find your own whore, you bloody . . .’

‘I said, leave that woman. Do it now or I’ll lay this about you.’

‘You hear that, Tom?’ The man laughed again. ‘This here bloke threatens to hoss whip Charlie Bates. What say we do him first then turn our attention to the women? They’ll be the more enjoyable for the wait.’

Growling his assent the one called Tom joined his companion, leaving Daisy free to run to Emma.

Staring past them to the man who had just challenged them, Emma caught her breath. Holding a candle jar in one hand and a short-handled whip in the other, butcher Hollington stood his ground.

‘You’re going to be sorry you stuck your nose where it had no business,’ Charlie Bates sneered.

Hollington made no move as the two men stepped towards him.

‘Arr, bloody sorry,’ Tom added. ‘I don’t take kindly to being interrupted when I be with a woman.’

‘Even if that woman does not welcome your dubious attentions!’

‘They be a couple of trollops,’ Charlie sneered. ‘What other reason to hang round this alley? ’Sides, they don’t belong to no man, they wears no wedding ring. In my book that makes ’em fair game!’

‘Not in mine.’ Hollington raised the whip.

‘What you standing there chuntering for!’ Tom pushed past his mate. ‘The more you talk, the longer I have to wait. And this between my legs won’t last all night.’

Lunging forward, he recoiled as the whip sang past his ears.

‘Why, you bastard!’

Defying the threat of the lash the man rushed forward, shielding his face with one arm. His hand grabbing the wrist that wielded the whip, he yanked at it but the butcher held on tight.

‘Mr Hollington . . . is that you in there?’

Emma could not hold back a cry of relief as a voice called from the street.

‘It is that.’ The butcher wrenched his hand free. ‘And I’d welcome your help.’ He lifted the jar and light from it illuminated the men’s faces. ‘We have men in Wednesbury who will give you pair the beating you deserve,’ he declared, ‘and that without the sovereign I am willing to pay them. We don’t take kindly to our women being threatened in the street, and give short shrift to a man who dares attack one of them.’

‘That what these two been up to?’ The brawn of them filling the narrow alley, four men came up behind the butcher. ‘Then you can keep your sovereign, Mr Hollington, we’ll see to this scum for the pure pleasure of it. You get on home. And you women do the same.’

Clinging to each other, Daisy and Emma squeezed past the men who had attacked them, the hands of the others passing them safely out on to the street.

‘Oh, Daisy!’ In the light that spilled from the bow windows of the hotel, Emma’s face glistened with tears. ‘Daisy, we can’t go on like this . . . we can’t!’

Her own face wet with tears, Daisy nodded. ‘You’re right, Emma, we can’t go on like this. We’ll go to the workhouse tonight.’

Chapter Fourteen

‘They came out of the Turk’s Head just as I was passing.’ Daisy still held tight to Emma’s hand. ‘They grabbed me before I could do anything and dragged me into that alley. I was so scared, Emma.’

‘I know, I know.’ She felt her heart twist in sympathy. Carrie must have felt like this when their father . . . so scared . . . But Carrie had not screamed or struggled. She had probably thought at first that what was happening to her was a normal thing, the act of any loving father.

Loving father! The words were like dry dust in her soul. Caleb Price had loved only himself. Even his love for the Lord must have been only a pretence, a show put on for the benefit of others, while he . . . Emma swallowed the bile in her throat. While he abused his own daughter.

‘They said . . . they said they were going to . . .’

‘Shhh.’ Squeezing the hand held in hers, Emma tried to still the girl’s fears. ‘It’s over, Daisy, they won’t hurt you now. Try to forget it.’

Feeling the tremor run down the girl’s arm, Emma realised the futility of her last words. Had Carrie been able to forget? Had she herself been able to forget what Carver Felton had done to her? Could any woman ever truly forget the man who raped her?

Her own father, Carver Felton, Eli Coombs . . . how many such men were there in the world, men who saw women as inferior to themselves, objects fit only for their amusement?

Even as the thought rose within her Emma knew it was unfair. She had never received so much as an unkind word from the men of Doe Bank, and though some of the jaggers who had bought the coal she picked from the waste heaps of the Topaz had been rough, they had never made an untoward remark. And then there had been Paul. He had shown her nothing but gentleness. Had said he loved her, said they would marry. But his brother had damned that hope, destroyed that dream forever. Paul Felton would return but she would be gone.

‘I tried, Emma, I wanted to keep you from going into the workhouse . . . I’m sorry.’

Emma glanced at the building looming out of the shadows, the steep angles of its roof cutting into the night sky, a low-slung lantern throwing a dim light over pilasters and moulded architraves that lent an air of false grandeur to the heavy door, the small windows that flanked it closed and blank, like blind eyes turned on a pitiless world.

The workhouse.

The uneven cobbles before its entrance biting through the thin soles of her boots, Emma felt the misery of this place drift out to meet her, touching her like a living thing, and shivered.

‘Oh, Emma, I’m so sorry!’ Daisy turned to her, taking her shiver for fear.

The shelter of shadow hiding her true feelings, Emma tried to keep despair from her voice. ‘It’s not your fault, Daisy,’ she murmured. ‘If it weren’t for you we would have been here a week ago. Don’t worry, they may find us work somewhere.’

‘So long as it isn’t with another Eli Coombs.’

How would they be able to tell? Until it was too late. Grasping the other girl’s fingers firmly in her own, Emma walked towards the door of the workhouse.

‘Be you positive that is the place you seek?’ His handcart rumbling on the cobbles, Samuel Hollington came up behind them. ‘That there be naught but a stopping off place for the cemetery. I pity the poor souls who find themselves in there.’

‘It’s the only place left to us, Mr Hollington.’ It was Emma answered him. ‘We have both tried to find work but without success.’

‘Arrh, times be hard.’ Samuel ran one hand over the bushy whiskers that framed a face ruddied by long hours spent in the open. ‘But the workhouse be harder.’

‘Beggars do not have the luxury of choice,’ Emma answered quietly.

‘If each man were given his choice then the world would hold naught but kings. Then who would tend a farm, or labour at a steel furnace, or even sell meat in the Shambles?’ The butcher chuckled. ‘King Samuel! Don’t sound right somehow, but butcher Hollington . . . yes, that be more like it. I guess I would still be a butcher.’ Resting the handcart on the ground, he pushed his straw boater back on his head, peering at Emma.

‘I’ve seen you two afore that shemozzle in the alley.’

Daisy stepped forward. ‘I’ve been to your stall every night for a week. I bought a pound of sausages each time.’

‘Yes, you did.’ He chuckled again. ‘I got to look forward to them visits, to your smile and chatter. It were so polite but bright and breezy at the same time.’

‘I enjoyed it too, Mr Hollington.’ Daisy smiled despite her dread of the building that stood, bleak and stark, behind her. ‘I don’t suppose I will have that pleasure again so I thank you for your kindness now.’

‘Well said, my little wench.’ Samuel Hollington beamed.

‘I offer my thanks too.’ Emma smiled. ‘Especially for your help tonight. Those men . . .’

‘Arrh, them!’ Samuel’s voice hardened. ‘I don’t reckon they come from these parts. I haven’t seen them afore and I know most of the men in Wednesbury. They’re likely travellers, out on the road seeking work, or a way they can have themselves a good living without it. But you rest assured, wench, you won’t meet with them again, not in this town you won’t, not after the handling they’ll get tonight! Men who go around raping women aren’t dealt with lightly hereabouts.’

Her smile fading as she glanced up again at the dark building, Emma murmured goodnight.

‘Hold up!’ Samuel raised a hand as if to hold her back. ‘You don’t have to go to that place.’

‘I am afraid we do.’ Emma shook her head. ‘We cannot spend another night under a hedge.’

Touching the back of his boater, the butcher slid it to the front of his head. ‘You slept under a hedge . . . you mean, every night for a week?’

‘Usually,’ Daisy volunteered. ‘One night we swapped a share of our sausages for a place in the watchman’s hut along of the Monway. I thought it were fair trade but Emma wouldn’t have we do it again. She said the man were old and needed his sleep.’

‘But a watchman isn’t supposed to sleep.’ Samuel smiled.

‘I told her that an’ all,’ Daisy answered ruefully. ‘But she still refused. I reckon he would have been glad to trade, seeing what short work he made of our sausages.’

‘And I reckon you’d have been right in that assumption.’ Samuel chuckled again. ‘You be a bright little wench who understands trading for a profit, even if that profit be no more than a place to sleep on the floor.’

Her face clouding over, Daisy turned away. ‘A place on any floor is preferable to a bed in this.’

‘Then don’t go in, least not tonight. Look, I’m not saying as Mrs Hollington will say yes to a permanent place but she will find a corner for you both for tonight, that I am sure of. It would be one night less in that hell hole, but I leave the choice to you.’

Daisy swung around. ‘Eh, Mr Hollington! Do you really mean it?’

‘I mean it, little wench.’ His smile answering hers, the butcher lifted the handles of his cart. ‘And I’ll throw in a sausage or two for your supper.’

*

‘
They belong to no man . . .
’

Washing her face and hands in the wash house at the back of the Hollington house, Emma remembered the words of one of the men who had attacked Daisy and herself.

‘
. . . ain’t neither of ’em wears a wedding ring . . .
’

Had the fact that she and Daisy were unwed made them fair game for such men, and would it again?

And what of Sarah Hollington’s comment last night when her husband had produced two girls in need of a night’s shelter.

‘A woman settled with a husband be one thing, a girl still not married be another. They be more nuisance than they be worth, what with lads coming a-calling every evening. I don’t want that, no . . . I don’t want that nuisance!’

Where had her answering lies sprung from? Emma’s face coloured rapidly. She had never been given to lying before yet they had slipped from her lips.

‘But I
am
married, Mrs Hollington.’

Even now, after thinking about them all night, her own words surprised her. ‘I was married in the Chapel at Doe Bank three months ago. My husband is with the Army in India.’

‘In India, you say?’

Emma’s stomach tightened now as it had when the question had been asked.

‘Yes.’ She had forced her eyes to meet those of the woman studying her keenly. ‘He was to be stationed in a place called Myapore.’

‘Was?’

It had been asked abruptly and Emma had answered without blinking an eye though the breath was tight in her lungs.

‘William . . . my husband . . . wrote that his regiment was moving there from Calcutta. That was six weeks ago. I have heard no word since then to say they have arrived.’

‘And when did your husband leave England?’

Sarah Hollington’s glance had dropped to the hand holding the shawl across her breasts and Emma realised why. A wedding ring! Sarah Hollington was looking to where a wedding ring would be.