A Mother's Sacrifice (35 page)

She noticed Noah watching her with a sneer on his face. He really did hate her for what she had done. But even now she did not regret it because she had had no choice at the time. Noah’s lies had seen to that.And if he had been a proper husband to her in the bedchamber he would never have discovered her deception. Her child’s true father could have stayed her secret.

Noah grasped the back of her gown and heaved her upwards. ‘Get yourself moving. I’m ready for another jar of ale from the inn.’

The inn yard was cluttered with horses and their droppings. She climbed on to the back of Noah’s cart, grateful for a rest. Noah took hold of a hank of rope and approached her.

‘Please don’t tie me again, Noah. I won’t go anywhere, I promise. I’m too tired.’

‘You won’t get far round here, anyway,’ he said as he bound her wrists to the cart. ‘Not in these hills in your state. I’ll be watching you from the window, though.’ He picked up the straw halter and walked off.

She must have slept, for the next thing she knew, Miss Banks was reaching up and putting the straw halter over her head. Then she undid the rope that bound her wrists and said, ‘Get down from there.’

As soon as her hands were free, Quinta pulled at the halter. ‘Take that off! It scratches.’

The older woman gave her a sharp cuff at the side of her head. ‘Don’t you tell me what to do! This shows you’re bought and paid for and you’ll wear it ’til I say you can take it off.’ She jerked the free end, making Quinta wince. ‘Bring your box.’

The roadway outside the inn was crowded now that the market had finished. Sheep farmers, butchers and other traders lingered, enjoying their gains from buying or selling. The worse for ale, they prodded and jeered at her as she stumbled after Miss Banks. ‘Is it far?’ she asked.

‘Speak when you’re spoken to or you’ll feel the back of my hand again.’

She did not think she could keep walking for long without collapsing and was flooded with relief when Miss Banks stopped by a couple of farm horses tethered near to a mounting stone. One was fitted with a ladies’ saddle and the other heavily loaded with bundles and sacks of supplies. A stocky man with a black beard and wearing a rough country smock loomed out of the shadows with a sheepdog by his feet. Quinta recognised him as the shepherd who had lifted the edge of her skirt with his crook in the marketplace. She hugged her box as close as she could, glad to be enclosed in her cloak.

‘You’ve bought the wife, then? Best get going if we’re to be home afore darkness,’ he said without looking at her.

Was he Davey? she wondered. The shepherd who could not afford Noah’s price? She daren’t look at him or Miss Banks, or utter a word for fear of being struck again. She didn’t know how much longer she could keep going before she fainted. But she must stay alert. She must note the way they travelled so she could retrace her steps when she escaped. For escape she would, she thought firmly. She might be too tired to think straight now, but what Noah had done to her was degrading, inhuman even, and she was not going to tolerate it. The straw halter around her neck scratched at her skin every time she moved, and every graze increased her determination to make Noah pay for what he had done to her.

‘I’ll move some of the supplies to your mount, Miss Banks,’ the shepherd said. ‘She’ll not walk the distance in her condition. ’ He set about repacking the horses.

Quinta was flooded with relief as he deftly rearranged the sacks and formed a space for her to sit side-saddle-fashion in reasonable comfort on the horse’s broad back. Then he helped Miss Banks up the mounting stone to her seat and finally settled her wordlessly on her mount.

‘Thank you, Davey,’ she whispered as he tied on her box.

‘I’m not Davey,’ he answered abruptly, fixing the reins of Miss Banks’s horse to the rear-harnessing on hers. He took up the bridle of her mount and led them off in single file away from the inn. His dog seemed to know the way and ran on ahead.

They left behind the inn and the town, which soon disappeared in the folds of the hills. She sat upright for as long as she could, losing count of the streams and narrow stone bridges they crossed, but their progress over the rocky tracks was slow and eventually her body sagged to one side. She rested her head on a sack of flour, welcoming the relative softness and too tired to care about beetles crawling under her hood into the warmth of her hair.

She thought briefly that the shepherd had behaved quite kindly towards her, making sure she was safe and comfortable before setting off. But Miss Banks was not the sympathetic spinster she had anticipated. For an old woman she seemed quite strong and Quinta guessed that only the tough survived an existence on these isolated moors. As they bumped and jolted over the steep stony track, she saw only acres of rocky moorland and an occasional shepherd’s hovel built of stone and turf. They did not pass any coal pits, nor many woodlands, and she wondered what they used for fuel.

The horses climbed slowly out of the valley, taking a track in the opposite direction to the South Riding and going deeper into moorland. The wind whipped around her ears and she drew her hood closely about her head. Soon they were high enough to be shrouded in mist again, a damp penetrating drizzle that soaked into her cloak and through to her shawl.

The shepherd threw some old sacking around his shoulders as he plodded on, guiding the horses along the worst of the rocky path. When the light faded completely and everything became totally black, she marvelled that he could find his way, but she guessed that there were not many tracks to follow up here. She did not see any farmsteads, nor even bridleways leading to them. It seemed as though she was going to the ends of the earth and she wondered how she would ever find her way back.

Eventually they rounded a hillside, the climb steepened and Quinta glimpsed a light, a dim glow ahead that eventually delineated a small window in a low building. Was this her new home? And her new husband? She shivered. It was such a very long journey from anywhere. She had thought at first that Noah simply wanted her out of the way until she had given birth to her baby, and that he would take her back afterwards. Her greatest worry had been that he would force her to give up her child. Now she knew he never wanted to see her again. Noah had had his revenge on her. He had ensured that she would vanish from his life and all she had known in the Riding. She wondered what he would tell people about her disappearance.

‘You! Girl!’ It was Miss Banks calling to her. ‘You stay down so he can’t see you.’

Quinta did as she was told. The shepherd released the reins and led her packhorse away. She heard the woman climb down from her mount and yell, ‘Davey! Davey! Get out here and see to this horse.’

After a few moments, an excited voice cried, ‘You’re back, you’re back, you’re back.’

He sounds just a boy, Quinta thought. A young boy, surely not ready for marriage yet?

‘Quiet, Davey,’ Miss Banks ordered. ‘You’ll spook the horse. Give him a good rub-down, some mash and water. Go on now.’

When he had gone she walked over to Quinta and said, ‘Get down and inside, you. He doesn’t know about you and I don’t want him to until morning. He’ll not sleep if he sees you tonight.’

Quinta was tired and cold and hungry but not so exhausted that she did not feel a mounting anger with the assumption that she was some sort of gift for this Davey. She followed Miss Banks into the small farmhouse. There was one large room on the ground floor with a wooden staircase in the corner. It was dingy and smoky. Dull embers glowed in the grate.

‘Make up the fire,’ the older woman ordered and Quinta hurried towards its warmth.

‘What is this?’ she asked, picking up a block of what she supposed was fuel from the hearth.

‘Peat.’

‘Is there no coal?’

Miss Banks did not reply. She walked over to her and pulled her shoulder round roughly. ‘Let’s get this straight from the start. I’ve heard all about your hoity-toity ma and how she thought you were too good to marry old Noah until some soldier’s lad put this in your belly.’ She gave her a sharp dig with a bony finger. ‘Well, I’ve paid good money for the both of you and you belong to me and my Davey now. So you don’t ask questions. You follow orders.’

Quinta frowned silently.

‘Did you hear what I said?’ Miss Banks demanded.

‘I heard.’

‘That’s better. You’ll sleep in the scullery for tonight so get yourself in there and stay put until I come in and fetch you.’

‘I’m hungry, Miss Banks.’

‘So am I. You’ll wait for your breakfast like me.’

‘But my baby won’t.’

Miss Banks pursed her mouth. She went to a large stone crock on the table and took out the end of a loaf of bread. Then she poured some dark liquid from a ewer on the table into tin mug and snapped, ‘Bring your box.’

Quinta followed her into the adjoining scullery. There was no moonlight showing through the tiny window but in the dim light from a lantern she made out a wooden pallet hung on two nails in the wall. Miss Banks put the food and drink on a draining board beside a shallow stone sink.

‘I have to go to the privy,’ Quinta said.

‘There’s a slop bucket under the sink. Get yourself settled before my Davey comes back. I don’t want a sound from you until I fetch you out in the morning or you’ll feel my horsewhip across your back.’ She closed the door firmly, turning a key in the lock and leaving her in blackness.

Quinta sat on her box and ate the hard dry bread hungrily, then swallowed the ale, which was good and very welcome. She was too tired to contemplate her future here. Miss Banks had a lined face and was grey-haired; Davey sounded too young to be her son. No doubt the questions she was not allowed to ask would be answered tomorrow.

Her head was stinging from where she had been hit earlier on and she did not doubt that Miss Banks would carry out her threat of horsewhipping. She flung aside the straw halter and stroked her bulge. She must protect her unborn child and she resolved to do Miss Banks’s bidding - whatever that was - until after he was born.

She spoke softly to her baby, reassuring him. Whatever the future held, she would look after him. He would always be safe with her. She promised him that. Or her, she thought. She had not long to go now. She expected to give birth after Eastertide when daffodils would be blooming, and wondered whether her child would be a boy or a girl. In spite of her fearful situation she felt excited by the prospect of being a mother and cocooned herself in that thought as she curled up on her hard bed.

After the bread and ale and the travelling, Quinta slept soundly for a while on the uncomfortable pallet, in spite of the damp, although she woke stiff and sore before dawn. The cloud had lifted and a pale moon shone through the scullery window. There was a back door, but it was bolted and locked. She searched quietly and without success along the walls and shelves for a key. The rain had stopped and the mist was lifting, though it still shrouded the tops of the hills.There was a wildness about the hills here; they were rugged and rocky with only patches of vegetation and barely discernible clumps of woolly sheep. Her hopes of escaping from this isolated farmstead in her condition were fast receding.

Too raw to keep folk. Only the sheep for company.
Noah had said that, or something similar, and been accurate on both counts. But the spring days were already lengthening and the sun, surely, was becoming warmer in the sky. By Lammas Day this year her baby would be more than three months grown and she would be lighter and agile again. She would be able to flee with her child. All she had to do was survive this austere house until then. And somehow please Miss Banks. She dozed again before daylight and was woken by sounds from the kitchen as the household stirred.

She was staring through the grimy scullery window at the inhospitable landscape behind the farmhouse when Miss Banks came for her. ‘You’ll look after indoors and the table. I brew the ale. I’ve done the fire and made the porridge today but from tomorrow I expect Davey’s breakfast ready for half past six and his dinner by half past eleven.’

Quinta wanted to ask about Davey but dare not. She kneaded bread dough and set it to rise by the fire. The peat smoke was already hurting her eyes so she was glad to escape to the scullery to wash and prepare vegetables that appeared on the table. Miss Banks came in and out but Quinta knew when she was near because her keys jangled on the chatelaine at her waist. She wondered why everything was so securely locked in a place where no one ever ventured and came to the conclusion that Miss Banks had employed staff before who had stolen from her. Quinta half laughed to herself. Perhaps Miss Banks thought she would have more loyalty if her servant were thought of as her Davey’s wife?

The table was laid, the mutton stew cooked and the bread baked by eleven o’clock. Miss Banks drew a ewer of ale from the brew house next to the scullery and Quinta stood patiently by the fire while Miss Banks yelled Davey’s name from the yard. When he came in the kitchen door he filled the frame, blocking out the light, and Quinta blinked. He was a hefty grown man, dressed in a smock similar to that of the shepherd.

‘Davey, come over here and look what I fetched you from the town.’ He stood there gazing at her. ‘It’s Sally,’ Miss Banks added.

‘My name is—’ Quinta began but then snapped her mouth shut. She was looking at the expression on Davey’s face. His head was rolling gently from side to side and his eyes were wide and staring: vacant-looking. His mouth dropped open in a lopsided grin and he repeated the name. ‘Sally, Sally, Sally.’

Chapter 23

Quinta thought she was going to faint. Davey was an idiot, an imbecile who had survived to manhood. Noah must have known this when he sold her to Miss Banks. How could he have been so cruel? All of Crosswell must know about Davey and no one would willingly wed him. No wonder Miss Banks was prepared to pay Noah’s price.