The Death of Lucy Kyte (44 page)
Read The Death of Lucy Kyte Online
Authors: Nicola Upson
31 May, 1832
There is joy in our house. At last the day has come when I can write in my book that I am with child. Samuel will not say it, but I know he hopes for a boy. I am so happy that I do not mind as long as he or she is well.
The next few entries recorded Lucy's growing excitement over her pregnancy, and Josephine could barely read them, knowing as she did that Lucy and Samuel were to lose two daughters. She did not know, of course, if other children had survived, but by November her fears seemed justified.
25 November
Never have I known a winter to be so hard. Samuel works all the hours God sends to put food on the table and I try to help as I can but the child is a heavy burden and I am not as strong as I might be. Molly runs wild with no one to watch her and Samuel will not scold her when she disobeys me. I am so tired, and I fear our child will come before its time.
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19 December
Hannah has come to help with my lyin' in, and has made a bed for me in Molly's old room so that Samuel can get his rest. It is strange to be away from him, and to see them all carry on without me and have another woman runnin' my home. I will be glad when the child is here and I can take my place again. I try not look out at the barn, but there is no help for it in this room.
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6 January, 1833
We have a little girl. I have never known such pain and joy as she fought her way into the world. Samuel says that I am to name the girls and he will choose what the boys will be call'd. So she is Maria, and I hope she will have a long and happy life.
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9 February
I can still barely write these words. My small, beautiful child was taken from me a week past. The ground is still frozen and we cannot bury her. She lies at the foot of my bed in the cradle that Samuel made for her. I want to look on her face, but my heart is broken. Samuel begs me to return to his bed where I will not be so sad, but I will not leave my little Maria until she is laid to rest.
Born in that room, carrying that name â it was hard to see how things could ever have turned out differently for Lucy's first-born, and the desperate sadness of both mother and child found Josephine easily across the years. She read on, and the diary became a mockery of its original purpose; there were very few precious days in Lucy's married life, and the pages recorded a series of miscarriages and bitter self-recrimination rather than happiness and fulfilment. Lucy's relationship with her husband and her stepdaughter seemed to deteriorate with each new loss, and Josephine felt desperately sorry for all of them. There were no villains here except circumstance and luck â but Lucy's continued obsession with Maria blighted the whole house, making her overprotective of Molly's childhood and driving her and Samuel apart.
17 July, 1835
Samuel has taken Molly to the Cherry Fair as a birthday treat. She will be twelve next week, and I know that he will spend money we do not have and spoil her as he always does. I can do nothin' with her. The parson has said there is a place for her at the doctor's house in Layham, which is a good position, but Molly does not want to go and Samuel will not make her. She is a lazy girl and can play him for a fool whenever she chooses.
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15 February, 1836
Phoebe Stowe call'd at the back door today and told me that the Missis is married again to a man called Harvey, and has been taken to court by William's wife. She is askin' for money for the child, who will never work because he has a wither'd hand. The court has said she must pay the boy what is due to him.
The description of William Corder's son jumped off the page at Josephine â it was the same genetic defect that she had noticed in John Moore â but she was too absorbed in Lucy's pain to give it much thought.
Hannah came later with a pie for dinner. I know she thinks I cannot feed my family and manage my house. She said Samuel needed lookin' after, as he is tired and worn out. We are all tired and worn out, and what she knows about keepin' a man happy when she c'd never get one is more than I can think of.
In the past, Josephine had enjoyed Lucy's barbed asides, but they carried a bitterness now that saddened her. She longed in vain for some joy, but she knew there would be no change of fortune with the next child. This time, out of superstition or resignation, Lucy did not even mark her pregnancy, and the child's name â Daisy, Josephine remembered from the parish register â was not recorded either.
21 June, 1837
Samuel says I held my baby, but I have no memory of her. I was taken with fever after she was born, and he told me today that she died three days ago, before she was even a week old. He has taken her to the churchyard to lie with her sister. I am no good to him as a wife, and I cannot bear him children.
From now on, the entries became sporadic and unconnected, as if Lucy could not bear to weave the bleakness of her life into a pattern, or to see it written down. Josephine knew that Molly and Samuel had less than two years to live after the next date, but the funeral that it recorded harked back to the past.
10 September, 1841
Went to the churchyard today to see the Missis laid to rest with her men. It was a sad day, as she was always good and fair to me, but most of the folk there were happy to see the last of the Corders put in the ground. Thomas Henry stood by the Gospel Oak, near his mother's grave, a fine lad of seventeen. She w'd have been so proud of him, but I wonder how much he remembers of her. I miss him comin' to the cottage as he used to when he was a boy. I hop'd once that he and Molly would grow to care for each other, but she will have nothin' to do with the Martins.
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13 June, 1842
Molly has been sent to stay with Hannah. Samuel found her in the barn with Tabor's stable lad. After all that has happen'd, I cannot understand why she w'd go there, but she is not the only girl to do her courtin' in the Red Barn. It is time the master pull'd it down, as no one will learn from Maria's mistakes, but Samuel says it is needed. There will be no good come of this, but it is the first time that Samuel and I have agreed on anythin' to do with Molly for as long as I can remember. She will bring shame on us if no one puts a stop to her nonsense, and I will not let her go the same way as Maria. Samuel is thinkin' of sendin' her away to service now for her own good, and for ours. It cannot come a day too soon for me.
Josephine looked at the date and tried to remember exactly when the Red Barn was burned down. A thought had crossed her mind, but she dismissed it as too fanciful and read on.
23 July
I have fallen again, but there is no joy in it this time. I am too old, and if God had wanted me to have a child of my own, he w'd have bless'd me when I was young enough to bear it. Samuel still hopes for a son, as he grows old, too, and will not be able to go on for ever as he does. Then I do not know what will happen to us. We will not be able to keep our home if we cannot work for it.
There is much anger on the farms among the workers, who fear for their livelihoods. They have been settin' the hayricks alight and burnin' the farm buildings. I do not understand what is happenin'. It is no world to bring a child into. Molly has found a good place at last in Boxford, so that at least is a blessin' and one less mouth to feed.
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1 October
Samuel brought Molly home today. She has lost her place for cheekin' her missis and makin' eyes at the master. Samuel is in a rage and will not trust himself to talk to her. She has lock'd herself in her room and will not come out.
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3 November
Hannah has been laid low and I have sent Molly to sit with her. The fields are full of water, and I doubt the rain will ever stop. Samuel has caught a chill and is not fit to work, but says the master needs him to move the animals from the fields. It is all I can do to drag myself from my bed. This child makes me so sickly, worse even than before. It is a wicked thing to think, but I wish nature would take her course as she has in the past. Then I c'd be well again.
A loud thud outside the window startled Josephine until she realised that it was just the snow, falling off the roof where the heat from the chimney had melted it. The noise broke the spell for a moment, and she poured another glass of wine and flicked back through the pages. It was taking her much longer to decipher Lucy's actual entries than it did to read Hester's transcript, but still she felt the rapid disintegration of a life, of all the ordinary hopes and expectations that any woman was entitled to have. Lucy was special to Josephine â as she had been to Hester â because of her connection to Maria Marten, and because she had faithfully testified to a series of extraordinary events; even so, this part of her life was in no way unique, and it pleased Josephine to think that â if and when her story was published â it would speak for so many women whose struggles had gone unrecorded.
5 November
We are in mournin' again. Hannah was taken in the night, and Samuel has gone to see the reverend about her buryin'. Molly was with her when she went, and has surpris'd us all by carin' for her aunt to the end. We have had our differences, but Hannah had a good heart and I will miss her. I am fearful of havin' this child without her, but am glad now that Molly is home.
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12 November
The floods have gone but the air is full o' frost. Molly is courtin' the lad from the stables again. He came sniffin' round like a dog as soon as she was back, and I have seen them goin' to the Barn again. If she carries on so she will be ruin'd, but she will not listen to me and I dare not tell Samuel for fear of what he may do. He spends more time at the Cock than by his own hearth, and when he is in drink I do not know him. He is tired of me and this life, and I can neither help nor blame him.
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2 December
I fear the child will not be long. I have gone to the small room again, as Samuel needs his rest. It is so cold, and there is no comfort.
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9 December
It is late, and very cold. Samuel is not home, and Molly left her bed an hour ago to go to the barn. I watch'd her lantern move across the field, and thought of Maria. It is so long ago, and nothin' has chang'd. There is only one way this will end, and I cannot bear it.
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13 December
Samuel says Mr Hoy's cottage has been raz'd to the ground. They think it is arson, and part of the recent troubles. The master has told us all to keep watch on the barns and cottages, for fear that it will happen again. God forgive me, but I wish they w'd set light to the Red Barn and take this evil from my sight once and for all.
In her heart, Josephine had known earlier that Lucy was going to do something terrible, and although she had suspected what it would be, the next entry still stunned her, its consequences more catastrophic than she could ever have imagined.
28 December
Two days on, the smell of smoke is still strong in the cottage and I cannot bear what I have done. Molly lies close to death, and I know that bathin' her wounds will make no difference. The men from the village did their best to save the barn, but the wind spread the flames faster than I c'd ever have thought, and in the end it was too fierce. It was ablaze in minutes, and burnt long into the night. Samuel and some of the others climb'd onto the roof of the cottage and threw off the burnin' embers as they lodg'd upon it. Molly and I pull'd the blankets from our beds and soak'd them in the pond to dampen the thatch. Then she went to help the lad from the stables with the barn, and Samuel c'd not stop her. She was caught in the flames and they brought her back cover'd in burns. And it is all my fault.
I cannot tell Samuel what I have done, and I pray for a miracle so that Molly may live. I thought that by burnin' the barn I would be savin' her, and my life with Samuel, but I have brought misery and sorrow on us all. There is nothin' left but blacken'd earth, but the grief is still here, worse than ever. And this time it is my doin'. Samuel can only watch as I tend his daughter. He thanks me for what I do, and I want to scream at him to stop.
So history was wrong. The Red Barn had not been destroyed by an anonymous hand in a political act, but by a woman whose personal pain had become too much to bear. Lucy had been damned from the moment that Maria Marten left her cottage to walk to the Red Barn, and although there was an inevitability about the sequence of events, Josephine was horrified at how many lives had been shattered by the murder. Samuel and Lucy might have borne the intimate tragedies of their life had they not been forever separated by Maria's shadow; Molly would have grown up as a carefree little girl, able to make her own mistakes without being continually reminded of others'; and the village could have moved on, creating its own ordinary, quiet history. Instead, on what should have been the happiest of days, the anniversary of her wedding, Lucy had taken fate into her own hands and confined the rest of her life to ashes along with the barn.
31 December
Molly lingers, but there is no savin' her. Phoebe Stowe came to sit with her while I tried to sleep, and brought some salve for the burns, but she cries with pain when we try to put it on her. Phoebe says they are offerin' a reward of a hundred pounds for the Boxin' Day fire at the Barn and for Mr Hoy's cottage. They think it is the same hand, but it is not. I may not answer to the law, but God knows what I have done.
Josephine knew that Molly would die, and could imagine that grief might have destroyed Samuel, but she still had no idea what Lucy's fate would be, and she feared the worst: if she had been hanged for what she had done, that would explain her absence from the churchyard. Or perhaps the guilt had forced her to take her own life. That, too, would deny her the peace of consecrated ground. She read on, conscious that very little of the diary was left and desperately hoping that it would not end without giving her the answers she needed.
