Stone Cradle (6 page)

The bearded fella never came back. A different one, one we hadn’t met before, came in and took us to the door of the sickroom, and I knew’d we were getting near it still some feet away from the stench that came from the open door. We knew the stink of
sewerage right enough, but this was something different, something deep and coloured. ‘What is that smell?’ I whispered to Dadus, as I tucked Lijah tighter into my shoulder.

The warder accompanying us heard me and leaned towards me staying sternly, ‘It is the stink of corruption, young lady, and let that be a lesson to you.’

As we reached the door, he said, more normal like, ‘Gangrene. We’ve a few cases at the moment.’

The room was another high-ceilinged one but the windows were smaller and didn’t admit much in the way of light. There were about a dozen beds in there, made of boards. I looked quickly down one row. The two women in it nearest to me were both sitting up and knitting. They both had triangles of cloth over their noses, held around their ears with bits of ribbon. The rest of their faces was red and pockmarked and Dadus told me later they had an evil
gorjer
disease that was eating off their faces bit by bit.

It was a soft sighing sound made me look the other way, and it was then I saw Dei. She was flat on her back, with her legs slightly raised. She was turned towards us – her face was pale and her gaze misty with pain. She lifted a hand.

A nurse in a grey uniform got in front of us as we went to her. ‘I can allow you a few minutes only,’ she said, ‘and then we have to lock this room as I must attend elsewhere.’ She turned away and left us to it.

Dadus reached out to Dei and took her raised hand. I went around the other side, turning Lijah towards her so she could see his sleeping face. Her head was bare and her hair white at the temples. Her skin was as grey as the nurse’s uniform and seemed to hang on her face like it was too loose for the bones beneath. I could not believe the change in her. She was an old woman, suddenly, and I felt this thick load of panic inside but I did not want her to see it, so I smiled. She smiled, and tried to speak, but it was clear the pain was too great, so we talked to her and told her how we’d quit
our fines and had found lodgings nearby until they let her out. I bent and put Lijah down on the boards, next to her, and she managed to turn her head a little and look at him.

After a short while, the nurse came over and fussed us out. It broke my heart to be leaving Dei there but we made sure she knew we would be back just as soon as they’d let us.

As the nurse locked the door behind her, Dadus said, ‘Whereabouts in the town can we purchase laudanum for her?’ and the nurse told him the name of the chemist’s, and said how we was not to worry about her being sent back to the cells but as soon as she could sit she would have to quit her sentence with light labour, like the others. She saw what we thought of this by the looks on our faces and said that in most other prisons a hard labourer with broken legs would have been tossed back in the cells to take their chances with the rest. It was only on account of Huntingdon being so progressive that there was any such thing as a room for the sick and injured.

All the way back to our lodgings, my father said nothing, but his fists were clenched and he strode at such speed that I ran to keep up.

We got Dei back when her time was done. She hadn’t had to do the light labour after all, on account of being in too much pain to sit. Dadus used the last of our money to hire a cart so that we could get Dei back up to Ramsey and get our
vardo
back from the Lees. It was a big problem how we’d get the wherewithal to pay them back, and to keep buying laudanum for Dei, but all I could think of was how once we got Dei back then it would all be sorted. I realised how, though she had always been the quietest one of all of us, she had always done the most and held it all together.

We took Dei on the cart across the bridge. There was a big common on the other side of the river where some of our Travelling folk camped sometimes and Dadus was thinking how we might be
able to stop with them for a few days while we worked out whether Dei could make it up to Ramsey.

It was the coldest day of all. We piled blankets on Dei but she was shivering and sweating in turn. Dadus had talked a pie out of the baker, to give to Dei, to celebrate the getting-of-her-back. She took a nibble at the crust then said she couldn’t manage the rest, and this worried me more than anything for after four weeks of gaol fare she should’ve fall’d on it.

As we crossed the bridge, with Dei on the cart and Dadus leading the horse and me carrying Lijah, I looked down. The river had frozen over. The
gorjers
were out skating. I could see a group of women just past the arch, about six of them. They were skating in a circle, slowly, with their hands tucked into fur muffs and their long coats flying out behind them. One of them slipped and wheeled her arms and then fell, and they all burst out laughing.

I looked back as we left the river behind, at the dark figures skating on the grey ice, flying around like big birds, as free as you please.

The Travellers on the common took us in. They were a small group and it turned out they were related to the others we had been in the wagon with on our way across the Fens. They were eager for news of them, and we were sorry as our trial had been before theirs so we knew not what their sentences had been. But Dadus promised he would find out when we got back to Ramsey, and get word down to them.

They were mostly Smiths, and Greys, but none of the Greys were related to Redeemus Grey and his lot that we’d been with in Werrington, although of course they knew of them. There was a cousin of Dei’s, from the Kent Marsh Smiths, and when she saw the state Dei was in she fell to a-wailing and a-weeping and swore to us she would nurse Dei like her own daughter, and though I was grateful I couldn’t help feeling that what Dei needed most was
quietness, and me. They weren’t well-off folk, otherwise they would never have been stuck on the common with the weather so bad, but they were better off than us and took us in.

Dei died four days later. I was with her, holding her hand. Dadus had gone out with some of the other Smith men. The other women had taken over the caring of Lijah and I just had him for feeds. I sat next to Dei the whole time, in the bender tent the folk had, with an extra layer they built over to try and help. It was bitter cold, but she didn’t seem to notice. I stroked her fine-boned hand and I talked to her softly of what trouble Lijah was going to give me and how she’d better get well soon as I’d be needing help of her. At that, she gave a small smile, though she was long past speaking by then.

When she was gone, I couldn’t bear her cousin, a-weeping and a-wailing. I felt like she was trying to take my grief, for who was she, after all? It was an uncharitable thought. I would have cried myself, I think, but for the wailing cousin. She made my face stony, for I wanted to be different from her to show her how much less my Dei was to her than me. You wouldn’t think such things should matter at a time like that, but they do.

I let the cousin’s wailing tell Dadus what had happened. He would have heard it as he came back towards the camp. I hope he let himself stop for a minute and take a breath, a deep breath, as it would have been the last breath he took before he knew for certain that our Dei was gone.

We burned her, that very night. We put her on the cart, with her few things, her shawl and her sewing things, and took her to the far side of the common and laid her down and piled wood on her.

Dadus and me stood by and we were getting through it, just watching the flames alongside the others gathered round who were our new family now. Then, all at once, there was a loud bang, and an orange flame shot skywards, and the branches we had piled on collapsed inwards. A shower of sparks flew up into the night air, and it was like Dei was escaping into the black sky. And Dadus
next to me fell on his knees and bent over with both arms across his stomach as if he was going to be sick. He opened his mouth wide, and there was an awful, long moment when no noise came, but then he let out his howl, and it filled the sky. I dropped to my knees as well and put my arm around his shoulders, and tears were running down my face; but I realised I was frightened by Dadus collapsing down more than wanting to comfort him. I thought, after this he will be broke, just like Dei’s legs were broke, and I will have to take care of him just like I do Lijah, and I already saw me making the decision about getting the cart back to the farrier and how we would pay back the Lees up at Ramsey and the whole future was falling on me, and I was foreseeing it – and I had never really thought on Travellers who tell the
gorjers
they see such things, but I saw my life there, going up in flames.

And then I could not forgive myself for thinking of myself and not of Dei.

Dadus stayed to see the fire out, but I could not, and, as it died down, I took my leave and said I would go back to the camp for Lijah. I was wept out and spent by then, and was full of air and nothingness, and this hollow feeling hurt so much inside that I had my hands pressed to my chest as I crossed the common in the dark. And so it was I came to the camp where some of the women were seated round a fire and the Marsh cousin took one look at me and handed me a bundle and I was in that much of a state it took me a moment or two to realise she was handing me my son.

I took him, and I thought how he seemed heavier since Dei had died. He was quiet for once, and I put his arm around my neck, and I felt myself begin to weep, and I did not want to frighten him so’s I tried to do it quietly but he must have felt my body shake, for he did something he had never done before. He clutched at me. He was so little, he was only just able to move his arms and do such a thing. But as I held him, he held me back, and it was the sweetest
feeling I had ever had. And I loved the weight of him, my son. And I thought how my Dei must have held me like this once, and how these things continued, and how my Lijah was now all to me,
all,
and as long as there was breath in my body, nothing nor nobody would ever take him from me, and if I close my eyes I can still see the loud orange flames against the blue-black sky and the shower of sparks and hear my Dadus howling and feel my soft, heavy son in my arms, even now.

T
he time has come to talk of Lijah grow’d, for that is the marrow and fatness of my story.

I sometimes think on’t, that Lijah is my story. Until you have a child, you believe the story is yourself, for your small mind cannot stretch beyond that, and why should it? You have no other way of thinking. It is when you have a babby that you realise the world goes on and on, and you are not the story any more, you are just a small part of someone else’s story. A bit like us going round the sun ’stead of the other way round. I had my son, and then I went around him, and when he was not there it was dark – and I’m not saying we don’t all need a bit of night-time too, for we do, but there was no daybreak until I knew where my Lijah was and what he was about.

When he was small, I thought it might stop when he was grow’d, but if anything my feelings for him grow’d as well. It was because he had naught else but me, so I had to be enough to make up for that, and I reckon it became a habit I could not stop.

No girl would ever have been good enough for my Lijah. I’m not so stupid as to think that. But of all the lasses in the Fens, the flat old Fens where you can see as far as you like and know the world is big enough for anything, he had to pick
her,
the
grasni,
all clouds of gingery hair and great huge cheeks and hips and all bigness and softness like an eider you could lose yourself in. Oh, I’m not saying I couldn’t see the attraction.

The thing is, about redheaded people, they smell a bit high.

We went fruit picking every summer when Lijah was a boy. The travelling was all a-slowing down by then, for they had made a new law, the
gorjers,
that said we should not camp on the commons no more and this made it very hard as we were not allowed to stop on roadsides or farmers’ lands neither. The only way we could stop anywhere when we needed to was by breaking the law – and as we were breaking the law we only did it for a short bit before moving on to break the law somewhere else. So their new law meant we had to break the law a lot more often than what we had before.

The only time the farmers wanted us was when it was a harvest, of course, and then we had fine times for it was like the old days with folk showing up from all over. That and the horse fairs was the only times it was like it was.

It was by the cherry orchards of a farmer named Childer that the part of my life as it was ended. I was married by then, to Adolphus Lee, and then widowed within half a year of Lijah being married himself, but I am getting ahead of myself and getting things in not-the-right-order again, so I will go back awhile.

Dadus and I made out all right for some years after we lost Dei but I can’t say as I remember it as a good time. Dadus hawked his kitchen goods but without the talent he had had for it before, for Dei had been behind him, suggesting all the time. And I remember
things being hard, going from place to place. And our only joy in all this time was Lijah.

We even went so far as to try and settle once, on Lijah’s account. We found a site over at Paston, where a large group of Lees had managed to buy a bit of land off a farmer, Lord knows how. So they were making their own little kingdom, these Lees, and they were a bit high and mighty with it but we thought we’d give it a go on account of trying to get some schooling for Lijah. I had never forgiven the vicar at Werrington for killing my mother, but I had come to the conclusion that if Lijah was going to get ahead in life when he was grow’d then a bit of
heducation,
as Dadus called it, was maybe no bad thing.

We asked around a bit and found what looked like the perfect place for him. I didn’t know a right lot about schools, having never set foot in one in my life, but I was rather taken by this big old building in the middle of a field, with a church attached, just a couple of miles from the site. It was organised by nuns and I had to go and speak to them first. They were like big crows – big crows who had starch for breakfast every morning. I liked the look of them.
They’ll put ’im right,
I thought.

First morning, I had him up nice and early and into the clothes I’d pressed the night before. He wasn’t going to let me down, I told him, or he’d catch it from me, good and proper. He was small for his age, was Lijah, with black hair and heavy brows. He often had a fierce look, for he was not the sort of child who was inclined to smile unless he knew there was something in it for him. I saw the way that people looked at him sometimes, wary like, as if he was a terrier, and I always wanted to say to them,
but you should see him when he’s sleepy, when he clamps his arm around my neck like a vice and won’t leave go, and I have to lie beside him until he’s sound asleep and if I try and move too early he cries out and pulls me closer.

I knew nobody else saw what I saw in my Lijah, the small boy who cried out, so I worked hard to make him look as sweet as
possible that morning, so that the nuns might find him appealing and not be hard on him. I brushed and oiled his hair, and for good measure I took a comb and gave him a kiss-curl in the middle of his forehead. I do swear it was the first time in his life that boy had looked angelic.

Before we left, I gave him a sugar sandwich wrapped in brown paper for his dinner, and a lovely little
lolli pobble,
a red apple, which I’d polished to a shine. The apple was for break time, I told him, and he was to go into a quiet corner to eat it. He wasn’t to show it to none of the other children he’d be associating with. They were only the children of the local peasants round here and they’d probably never seen such a lovely little apple and would have it off ’im soon as look at it. I was proud of that red apple, as you can probably tell, which was my undoing as it turned out.

Anyroad, we walked over there at a brisk pace, him holding my hand and trotting to keep up, and I was that keen not to be late that we were early and had to hang around and he kept getting the apple out and looking at it and I said put it in your pocket and leave it there. Eventually, one of the nuns came to open the place up, a tall woman with a long nose, not one of the ones I’d met. She looked down the length of the nose at us and smiled. ‘My, we are punctual,’ she said, and I didn’t much like the tone in which she said it, to be frank.

Lijah was looking at the ground, so I poked him on the shoulder and he lifted his head and said, ‘Morning, Miss.’

‘Sister!’ I hissed at him.

‘Morning, Sister.’

She gave another of those smiles, and I still didn’t like it.

Before I turned to go, I bent down to him and said, ‘You show me up today young man and I’ll tan your hide so hard you won’t sit down for a week. And don’t let nobody touch that apple.’

He turned without a word.

I got the full story later, of course. They always like to make sure you get the full story, don’t they? What I think happened, more or less, was this.

My Lijah gets into the classroom and to start off with he behaves himself right enough, even though he hasn’t a clue what’s going on. He knows enough to watch the other children and to copy them, and the lesson begins, and there’s a nun at the thing on the wall they call a Black Board and she’s writing on it with chalk and they all have their slates and chalks and they’re copying her. And maybe the other children aren’t quite as common as I thought as I’d stood behind a bush and watched them arrive after Lijah had gone in: the girls all had pressed pinnies and aprons and the boys had cleaned shoes and oiled hair, although none of them had a kiss-curl as smart as my Lijah’s.

What I heard is something like this. While one nun is writing on the Black Board, another nun is walking up and down between the rows of desks to keep an eye on the children. Maybe she’s flexing a ruler, just to make sure they knows what’s what. She gets to the point where she’s passing Lijah, and she stops and she sees a bulge in his pocket. ‘Elijah Smith!’ she says, and heads lift. ‘What is that in your pocket?’

‘It’s my apple, Sister,’ Lijah says.

The nun sticks out her hand. ‘No food allowed in the classroom, boy, you should know that.’

At this point, I reckon my Lijah is faced with what you might call a bit of a dilemma. And the dilemma is this: what is he more scared of, the ruler in the nun’s hand, or the leather strap that I keep in the
vardo
which I take out each morning and hang from a nail in the porch? Well, there’s no contest, the strap wins hands down.

‘I’m not to give the apple to nobody, Sister.’

At this, the nun might’ve got nasty, of course, but some of them looked quite nice so she might have just as easily been understanding and kind being as it was my Lijah’s first day and he was
only a poor, ignorant
gipsy
boy. ‘It’s all right, Elijah,’ she might have said. ‘You can give the apple to me, and I will keep it nice and safe for you and give it back to you at break time.’

Well, my Lijah wouldn’t have been fooled by that. Oh no, the kindness would have tipped him off. This nun wants that apple for herself, he would have thought. She’s heard tell of how red and shiny it is, how it is hard as a conker and will burst with juice as soon as you bite into it. The very thought of it is making her mouth water. She’s feeling peckish. She’s thinking, if I’ve got to walk up and down this class half the morning flexing this ruler, I reckon I need a little something to keep me going.

He always went a little red himself when he was angry, did Lijah. ‘You can’t have my apple, Sister.’

At this, the kindness would have disappeared, I reckon. The nun would have held her hand out and lifted the ruler. Meanwhile, the other children would be staring open-mouthed – little slugs would never have seen such defiance.

Well, at some point, my Lijah decides to bolt for it. The nuns told me he did it of his own accord but I reckon one of them tried to grab him because suddenly he’s up and running rings round them. They chase him round and round the classroom and when one of them nearly catches hold of him, he leaps up on a desk and the next thing he’s leaping from desk to desk over the heads of all the other children who are squeaking like mice and cowering and the nuns are shouting for help and it all ends up with Lijah standing on the nun’s table in front of the Black Board where she has foolishly left a pile of spare slates and he picks up the slates and as a nun rushes towards him he spins it at her and, BANG! Right on the forehead! Down goes the nun.

And he doesn’t stop there because by now he’s enjoying himself so spin goes slate after slate, in all different directions. The other children duck so they won’t get beheaded and crash go the slates through the big, long windows that look out of the field. (This bit I
know is true as I saw the windows for myself when the nuns took me on a tour of the damage Lijah did, and the postman stopped us to say how he’d never been so surprised in all his life when he came up the lane and saw slates come crashing through them windows and flying towards him.)

Eventually, Lijah runs out of ammunition and the last remaining nun is closing in on him, so he jumps down from the table and belts for it, but he sees the postman in the drive so he swerves and runs to the church. The side door is open and somehow he gets in the tower and bolts the door behind him and he’s up those stone steps quick as a squirrel and he finds the bell-pull and by then he’s probably shouting, ‘Dei! Dei!’ having quite forgotten the leather strap and thinking only of how he’s saved his apple so far and wants me to come and get him before the mad
gorjers
do him in.

So he does the only sensible thing he can think of doing. He grabs one of the bell-pulls, and swings on it.

Now, those bells had not been used in living memory, I got told, so the tolling which rang out across the fields and the surrounding district would only mean one thing to the dozy inhabitants: imminent Napoleonic invasion.

By the time I got there, the whole village was out.

There was nothing for it. I stood at the bottom of that tower, and I lifted my finger to my Lijah, who stared down at the vast crowd beneath. I rokkered to him straight, in Rummanus like, as I wasn’t going to have the whole village understanding me. Roughly translated, it meant,
if you don’t come down right this minute, I’ll kill you.

That was the start and the finish of Lijah’s
heducation.
Aye, the kiss-curl was the only good thing came out of that
hexperiment.

We moved on from Paston after that. For a while, we were over in Northamptonshire. I made baskets for a shopkeeper and taught Lijah how to wet and weave and he was talented at it, as I knew he would be. I taught him his coins as well, and all the other things he
needed to know to do business in the world, and I reckon by the time he was ten or twelve he knew enough from me and Dadus for a good enough life and never mind the nuns. Those smart children in their pinnies and shirts might be able to write on Black Boards but could they coax milk out of a goat what didn’t want to give it? No, I don’t reckon they could.

There were many times he didn’t get fed proper, of course, and he stayed a small fella. As a consequence, he developed the habit of looking after himself, so’s he wouldn’t get picked on. That’s the thing about camp life. You have to let the
chavos
go off being hectic when there isn’t a job to keep them busy, and then they fall to arguing and before you know it you’ve another mother standing outside your
vardo
rolling her sleeves up and calling you out. My Lijah learned to look after himself pretty sharpish, on account of him being small and also on account of being got at sometimes.

I suppose it’s when boys are nearly men that they feel they have to start really getting at each other, for without knowing they are already strutting about like cocks in the farmyard in preparation for the competing they’ve to do later in life. We were back on the Fens when Lijah reached that age, on another big site with a whole load of Smiths and Herons and Lees.