The Miller's Daughter (3 page)

‘I’ll tell you summat, though,’ Luke was saying dragging her mercifully back to the present. ‘Whatever ya dad ses, I reckon old Charlie would have been proud of you.
You’re a handsome lass.’

Emma made no reply. It was not quite the compliment she would have liked, yet she knew Luke intended it to be one.

‘And you’ve a lot of his spirit in you, Emma. I often see flashes of it.’

‘Me? Spirit? Oh, Luke, come on.’ Now she did laugh. ‘I’m the most obedient of daughters.’

Luke shook his head. ‘That’s nothing to do with being spirited. Ya can still “honour thy father” and yet have a will of ya own.’

‘Just so long as it’s the same as dad’s will, eh?’ Emma murmured, though more to herself than to Luke. She was thoughtful now, surprised to hear that Luke, shrewd and
wise as he was, had already seen something in her that she was only just beginning to recognize for herself. That in her was a spark of rebellion, a growing determination to lead her own life, to
make things happen the way she wanted.

‘Ya still young, lass,’ Luke was saying, ‘but your time will come, Emma. I can see it in those lovely eyes of yours. Ya might be tied to this mill by tradition and by your
father’s wishes at the moment, but ya’ll never be a slave to any man.’ Luke laughed wheezily. ‘There’s too much of old Charlie’s blood running in your veins for
that to happen.’

The door opened and the icy cold of the November morning blew into the bakehouse.

‘Time to stand yapping all day, ’ave yer?’ Harry Forrest demanded of Luke. ‘I need you across at the mill.’ His glance swivelled towards Emma. ‘And
where’s me breakfast?’

Unhurriedly, Luke started setting the bread tins out. ‘You go, lass, I’ll finish here.’

‘Thank you, Luke,’ she smiled at him. ‘Breakfast will be ten minutes, Father.’ She turned and went through into the kitchen, ignoring Harry Forrest’s grunt of
annoyance.

Later in the day, when she had finished her work in the bakehouse and went through to the shop at the front, her mind was still filled with thoughts of the past which
Luke’s words had evoked. Of course, she had her grandfather’s blood coursing through her veins and maybe she was more like him than she had realized. But Charlie Forrest was a legend.
Could she really live up to the tales Luke told about him?

I just hope old Luke
is
right, Emma thought, because if I’m going to marry Jamie Metcalfe then there is going to be a real battle ahead.

‘There you are,’ Sarah Robson’s cheerful voice greeted her. ‘Are you free to tek over now, Emma? I’ll have to go and get Luke’s tea ready in a few minutes. By
the way, we’ve no cottage loaves left and I must remember to bring some more honey across tomorrow.’

Emma yawned and drew the back of her hand across her forehead. ‘I’ll do extra in tomorrow morning’s second batch.’

‘We need more scones an’ all,’ Sarah said.

‘I’ll do them along with the cakes after the first two batches of loaves,’ Emma nodded. ‘As the oven cools.’

She glanced up at the ceiling as they both heard the sound of Harry Forrest moving about in the living quarters above. ‘I’d better make a start on Father’s tea, too,’ she
murmured. ‘I expect he’ll be working late tonight if this wind holds.’

She heard Sarah’s sniff. ‘Shouldn’t bother. I reckon he’s on his way out.’

Emma’s eyes widened. ‘Out? Out where?’ Her father rarely left the mill and then perhaps only on a market day. It was unheard of, at this time on a Wednesday evening, that he
should be upstairs changing from his working clothes to go out
and
on a day when the wind still blew strongly in the late afternoon. It was the lot of the miller that he worked at any time
of the day or night when the wind demanded.

‘Search me,’ Sarah shrugged. Emma eyed her keenly. The woman turned away, but not before Emma had seen the smile twitching at the corner of Sarah’s mouth.

‘Sarah?’ she began warningly, ‘You know something.’ At that moment Harry Forrest’s heavy boots sounded on the stairs and Sarah bustled away to busy herself wiping
the crumbs from the shelves behind the counter ready for the fresh bread to be placed there the next morning.

The door at the bottom of the stairs opened and shut and Emma heard him cross the kitchen to leave by the door leading into the yard. Intrigued, she left the shop and went to look out of the
kitchen window. Now she could see that the mill’s five sails were motionless, parked in the position the miller always left them at the end of his working day. Leaning against the deep white
sink beneath the window, Emma saw her father standing outside the back door. He was dressed in his brown Sunday suit, the toecaps of his boots shone and he was pulling on his best cap.

‘He’s even shaved,’ she murmured. Normally, Harry Forrest shaved once a week on a Sunday morning in readiness for attending chapel, the rest of the week his face bore a
peppered stubble. His features were thin. His nose had a slight bump in the middle that gave it a hooked appearance and his grey eyes were sharp. Too sharp sometimes, Emma thought, for they seemed
to miss nothing.

She saw him cross the yard and step into the road, pulling the gate shut behind him. Overcome with curiosity, Emma went out of the back door and towards the gate too. From across the road came
the clatter of buckets as workmen swilled down the cobblestones of the cattle market after a busy day. Their voices echoed through the gathering dusk and the pungent, sweet–sour farmyard
smells drifted across to her. But, leaning on the gate, Emma’s attention was on Harry Forrest.

‘Now just where are you going, Father?’ she asked aloud as she watched him walk up the incline of the main road which curved past the mill and through the village. He passed the
market place without even glancing to his right and disappeared round the corner towards the church and out of her sight.

From behind her came Luke’s wheezing laughter. ‘Off to see the Merry Widow, lass. That’s where ya dad’s off.’

Emma turned swiftly, but Luke was walking away, his hobnailed boots echoing on the yard. She could hear him chuckling to himself. ‘There’s still a bit of old Charlie in Harry after
all.’

‘Luke . . .?’ she began, but Luke only waved his hand in the air without turning round and continued his way towards the gap in the hedge that led through the orchard, past the three
bee hives and towards his own cottage. ‘Harry Forrest can go gallivanting if he likes,’ she heard him chuckle. ‘But I’m off ’ome to put me feet up.’

Her father did not return until after midnight.

Lying awake in the darkness, hearing the wind rattling the slates on the roof and rustling the tree outside her window, Emma waited, every muscle tensed, listening for the sound of his return.
It was so totally unlike him. She could not remember a time when her father had acted like this. He should be here, working the mill, she thought crossly. The granary was bulging with sacks of
grain waiting to be ground and Harry Forrest was wasting precious hours of a good milling wind.

She heard the back door slam, the sound of his boots on the stairs and the creak of his bedroom door. She heard him moving about his room. Then the door opened once more and he stepped out on to
the landing again. Throwing back the bed covers, Emma swung her feet to the cold floor and pattered across the room. Peering round the door, she saw her father going back down the stairs, a candle
in his right hand to light the way.

‘Father? Are you all right? Where have you been till this hour?’

Without pausing in his descent, he rasped, ‘That’s no concern of yours, m’girl. Go back to yar bed.’

‘But—’

‘Don’t argue.’ The gruff command had become an ill-tempered roar. Emma flinched and shut her door at once. Moments later, she twitched back the curtain to see the dim shape of
her father crossing the yard towards the mill, determined not to miss any more of the good milling weather.

But where, she thought with an insatiable curiosity, had he been?

‘Sarah, do you know where my father went last night?’

‘Now, Emma, how would I know a thing like that? ’Sides, it isn’t any of my business.’

Emma glanced at her archly. She felt like saying ‘Since when has anything to do with a member of the Forrest family
not
been your business?’ Instead she said quietly,
‘But you do know, Sarah, don’t you?’ The woman avoided meeting Emma’s eyes and still said nothing.

Into the silence, Emma asked, ‘Who is “the Merry Widow”?’

Her steady, violet gaze was on Sarah, whose cheeks flamed as she darted a fleeting, uncomfortable glance at Emma. Turning away, Sarah bit her lip. ‘Don’t ask me, Emma love, please
don’t ask me.’

Emma felt a twinge of unease. She could not remember Sarah ever being so evasive nor so agitated. What
was
all the mystery?

I know, she thought suddenly, I know who I can ask.

By midmorning, when the mill sails were spinning and Sarah was being kept busy with customers in the bakery, Emma slipped away. She marched up the road, past the turning
leading to the chapel and on towards the market place, purpose in every stride. Past the butcher’s on the corner, the cobbler’s and the long, low whitewashed pub, she came to the far
end of the square where the smithy and the wheelwright’s workshop stood next door to each other, joined by a semicircular brick archway. Attached to the archway was a sign declaring in bold,
black lettering, METCALFE.

Standing in the open doorway of the forge, she raised her voice above the clang-clang of the hammer. ‘William, have you any news of Jamie? Is he safe? When’s he coming
home?’

The gaunt young man straightened his back from where he had been stooping over the anvil. With one hand he dropped the horseshoe, glowing red hot, from the end of the tongs into the butt of
water where it spat and sizzled. He turned to face her, the smile creasing his thin face and banishing for a moment the haunted look that always seemed to be in his eyes these days, making him seem
so much older than his seventeen years. ‘What a lot of questions all at once, Em.’

‘Well,
have
you heard anything, William? Anything at all?’

Sadly, he shook his head and the anxious look came back into his blue-green eyes. His voice was scarcely above a whisper, ‘No, no, I haven’t—’ He seemed about to say more
but stopped abruptly in mid-sentence and ran the back of his hand across his forehead, wiping away the beads of sweat.

A sudden tremor of fear ran through her. Her heart quickened its beat and she caught her breath. ‘William, you don’t mean – you’re not afraid something’s happened
to him, are you? Oh, it couldn’t. Not now, right at the end of the war. It would be too cruel.’

‘No, no, Em,’ he said swiftly, putting out his hand towards her. ‘I don’t mean that. It’s just that – it seems a dreadful thing to say, but for some things,
I’m dreading him coming back.’

Emma’s violet eyes darkened with sympathy. ‘I know, I know,’ she said gently and reached out to touch his arm, bronzed and sinewy from his work.

William Metcalfe shrugged. ‘I don’t even know if my letter about our parents’ death ever reached him. I’ve heard nothing from him. Not a word.’

‘Oh. Oh dear.’ She scarcely knew what to say. She was silent now, in sympathy for the young man who awaited his elder brother’s return with such a mixture of emotions. She was
remembering the time only three months earlier when the whole village had turned out for the funeral of Josiah Metcalfe. The procession had wound its way from the Metcalfes’ home behind the
blacksmith’s and the wheelwright’s premises in the market square to the chapel. The memory caused Emma not only sadness for Jamie and William, but acute embarrassment. Whenever she
thought of that day, she almost squirmed with humiliation. Of all the village folk, only her father had stayed away from the funeral. She had been aware of the whispers and, although she had tried
to hold her head high as she joined the congregation in the chapel, she had felt angry and uncomfortable that her father was so conspicuous by his absence. The whole village knew that the two men,
Josiah Metcalfe and Harry Forrest, had little time for each other, but even Emma had not realized that their quarrel went so deep that Harry Forrest would callously snub the family in such a
deliberate and public manner. And to make matters worse, when, only one week later William’s mother had died, Harry Forrest had stayed away from her funeral too.

‘Least he’s not a hypocrite,’ Luke had tried to comfort Emma. ‘No one can say that of him, lass.’

William’s voice broke into her thoughts. ‘I can still hardly believe they both went like that. So quick. A great, strapping chap like me dad . . .’ His voice fell away and his
gaze, suspiciously bright, met Emma’s troubled eyes. ‘Nowt but skin and bone by the time he died. Jamie – ’ his voice broke, ‘wouldn’t have recognized
him.’

Emma felt tears prickling the back of her throat. ‘I know. And your mam wore herself out caring for him, didn’t she?’

He nodded. ‘Her heart just gave out. But at least she was spared all that pain and suffering me dad went through. He used to grab hold of her arm and beg her to give him summat for the
pain. Great bruises, she had on her arm, where he’d gripped her.’

Emma swallowed painfully. ‘Luke said he heard your dad yelling out sometimes when he came to the smithy. Even from inside the cottage at the back there.’

‘It must have been bad, Emma, ’cos me dad was no coward when it came to bearing pain. Why, I’ve seen him when a horse has given him a nasty kick, just shrug it off as if it
were nowt. He suffered badly. I know he did.’

He glanced about him and sighed heavily. ‘And what my big brother’s going to say to all this, I don’t know.’

The smithy’s yard was littered with old horseshoes and bits of metal and ashes blew about the cobbles in little flurries. Emma glanced around the brick walls where usually the
blacksmith’s tools hung in well-ordered rows. Now they hung higgledy-piggledy. Several hooks were empty and, when Emma looked about the floor, she saw why. Tools lay everywhere, as if William
had been too busy to replace them in their rightful position between jobs. A pile of horseshoes had been slung in one corner and out in the yard, three ploughs awaited repair. As William turned
away towards the glowing forge, Emma saw he was limping.