Samuel was not well enough to have resumed his duties when I received a letter from Ianto Davies. It was short and to the point. Someone he knew had pulled a dead young woman from a canal near him, which he thought might well be Maggie, given other circumstances, he added mysteriously and irritatingly. Would I care to make a formal identification so the people who came to the rescue might claim the reward?
‘He didn’t say anything about the poor child’s baby?’ Harriet asked gently, watching me drink strong tea to steady me.
‘No. Nothing. But there’s this line about other circumstances: could that allude to a baby?’
‘If it does and if the baby is alive it must come back here. I can find a wet nurse in the village until Mrs Billings is able to look after her. No, she never will be, will she, not with all the blue pills in the world? Ada? Her hands are already full, what with her children and doing her best for her mother. Yet I would not see the baby go into the workhouse or an orphanage: never!’
‘And it may not be an orphan. His lordship may still be alive somewhere.’
She snorted. ‘I can’t see him recognising his by-blow, not in a month of Sundays. No, we must find a better solution. Enough of this speculation! When is the next train?’
‘This is a whole new world!’ she gasped as she peered through the railway carriage window. ‘One I never knew existed. Oh, I have read about it – I believe I have read about everywhere from Norway to the South Seas. But all my journeys have been from one place of employment to the next.’
‘I wish I could have made your first trip with me one through a better landscape,’ I said. ‘One with cleaner air and happier people. But we can pretend that over there are the Alps, not chimneys belching foul smoke. We can pretend that the turgid water of that canal is a lake so clear we can see the fish.’
Her response to my folly was the saddest smile I had ever seen. Perhaps she was shocked by my insensitivity – we were going to identify a body, after all. But a deep unease I did not want to recognize made me shiver. Dare I take her hand? I reached for it: it lay passively in mine.
If Ianto Davies was shocked to see an unmarried man and woman present themselves at the manse, he did not show it. He greeted me as if I was an old friend, and Harriet with almost as much enthusiasm. I suspected Marty had told him about us.
‘Would you care for a cup of tea, or would you rather get the sad business over and done with first? Yes? We’ll take my trap and head down to the Navigation down Bilston way – they’ve laid the poor girl there.’
‘The Navigation? A public house?’
‘Yes. In an outhouse.’
‘Not a mortuary?’
‘That’s how they do it round here. Bleak as it is, it’s like a social event – people go round to see the body and have a quick half while they’re at it. One day it’ll all change – there’s already talk of building a proper mortuary. I’ll just get my lad to get the trap.’ He rang a bell. Someone shouted. He shouted back in Welsh. ‘This way, now.’ He led us into his tiny yard, where an aged horse stood resentfully between the shafts of an equally venerable vehicle. He continued as if five minutes had not passed, ‘There will be an inquest, of course.’
‘Suicide?’ I asked quietly, hoping that Harriet did not hear.
‘Why should it be? Someone saw the poor little wench – I’m sorry, you pick up the lingo if you live here long enough – the girl on the towpath and said she might have slipped. She was pretty well crawling, she was so weak, they said. A man on a narrowboat. Him and his wife. I know them a little. They don’t come to chapel, but they have been to the parish church and had all their children baptised, as if the water carries some sort of extra luck, with them living on it. But they were more interested in fishing out the baby. Like Moses in the bulrushes, they say, only in a cut – that’s what they call canals round here, Mrs Faulkner – not a river.’
‘Did the baby survive?’
‘Bless you, yes! Didn’t I tell you? I’ll be forgetting my own head next. A little girl.’
Digesting the news, neither of us spoke. Ianto urged the reluctant horse into a slightly faster pace.
‘Ah, here we are!’
We fetched up at a depressed-looking public house, Ianto leading us down one side to a shed, which was not even locked.
‘Are you sure, now, cariad?’ he asked Harriet, who had stepped forward. ‘I’d recommend waiting outside and letting Matthew—’
She said simply, ‘It’s I who was responsible for her in life: I owe her this in death.’
We walked in side by side.
As we emerged, she nodded, as if like me she was unable to speak. ‘Yes. Poor Maggie,’ she said at last, her voice a mere thread. Then she straightened her shoulders, and resumed her usual business-like tone. ‘Is there an undertaker you can recommend, Mr Davies? I want her brought back immediately to the village where she was born, and given a proper funeral, not tipped into a pauper’s grave.’
He nodded. ‘I will see to that for you.’
‘The living are even more important than the dead,’ she said. ‘You mentioned Moses in the bulrushes? Who took the baby in?’
‘Not Pharaoh’s daughter, I’m afraid! Jem Stride. He’s a boatman. In charge of a narrowboat – actually, his wife is, I’d say. Not a barge: you must never call them that. And you’re in luck. They’re still moored, waiting for their next load. Kingfisher. Is that irony or optimism? I’ll leave you to judge. Down over that humpbacked bridge.’ He encouraged the horse to a dingy patch of greensward. It was happy to stop.
We looked around us. Amid all the vile smoke and fumes, a line of ragged washing fluttered defiantly from front to back of the brightly-painted vessel.
‘And there behind her is a butty boat, which means they can carry extra cargo. That’ll be their horse, there.’ He jerked a curly thumb at the animal in question. ‘Watch the ropes.’ He banged on the side of the cabin, calling. A woman appeared, her sleeves rolled up, revealing arms as muscular as a prize-fighter’s. Nestled within them was a small bundle, wailing. Ianto stepped away without performing introductions, as if wanting to see how we comported ourselves.
Harriet surged forward. ‘Is that Maggie’s baby? Mrs Stride, I’m Harriet Faulkner: I’ve come to take her home to her grandmama!’
‘Over my dead body, you do! ’Er’s my little one now, ain’t you, my pretty? You’re your ma’s pretty Lizzie.’ As the wails increased, she simply lowered her bodice and put the babe to her breast, just as one of Alf’s sows would let a piglet suckle. Blushing, I averted my gaze, but Harriet managed to smile encouragingly. ‘I lost me last babby after she picked up a fever. But the milk’s coming nicely, ain’t it, my pretty?’
Harriet nodded. ‘Is she thriving?’
‘Oh, ah. You can have a look if you like – but you’m not taking her nowhere, understand?’
A bent and wizened man appeared along the towpath, accompanied by a yellow-toothed brute of a dog which snarled at the sight of us.
‘Charlie! Give the lady and gent a hand aboard, will yer? And keep that bloody dog quiet, or I’ll tie a brick round its neck and drown it myself.’
Down a short, steep flight of steps, the cabin smelt of poverty and dirt, but was neat and tidy. ‘The rest of the kids are at school,’ Mrs Stride told us, as she sat on a what in fashionable circles would be a window seat, but here was not much more than a shelf, covered in a rag rug. She shifted the baby to the other breast. ‘We might be poor, mister, but they goes when they can. They knows their numbers and their letters as good as anyone.’
Mr Stride nodded, pulling out a pipe as he sat down.
‘And you can take that stinking pipe outside, too, like a Christian man. Ah, they’ve all been christened and all,’ she added proudly as he sneaked off. ‘As I’ll swear on that Bible.’ A huge tome, swathed in a shawl, lay on an upper shelf.
‘And they can all read and write?’ Harriet asked quietly. ‘How old are they?’
She listened patiently to a recital of names and ages. I followed Mr Stride out on to the tiny area by the tiller, where I passed him my cigarette case. There was no sign of Ianto. We smoked in silence, the dog occasionally snarling in its sleep, with the women’s voices murmuring inaudibly on. In silence? Just as there was constant smoke billowing from the manufactory chimneys, so there was incessant noise – from the iron wheels on the cobbles of the street, and also from what sounded like giants’ hammers.
‘Steam hammers, that’s what they’ll be,’ Stride said. ‘They need coal. That’s where I come in. We’ll fill the butty boat with coal, plus a bit more forward there. Hard for the missus to keep things clean. Nice when we go through a bit of country. Rabbits, pheasants and such. Nothing what belongs to anyone else,’ he added hastily. ‘Never a sheep, nothing like that. Smell that? Rabbit stew. Better a job like this than in a works. Seen a lot of me mates carried out of them in coffins. Them what they call chemicals – not getting anywhere near any of them. So I carries coal. They say as the coal gets into your lungs, but it’s not so bad if you wet it first.’
‘What will your children do?’
‘The missus says if they learns well, the wenches might go into service or work in a shop. My lad – I’d like him to go for a soldier. We got hopes, mister. Hopes.’
‘What about Lizzie?’
‘Treat her the same, won’t we? No better, no worse.’ He spat into the green waters. ‘That missus of yours – she might want the nipper but it’ll break my old woman’s heart to let her go. Look at her face.’
I nodded. And thought of the hopelessness of Mrs Billings. And of Ada and Silas, who might have a claim, though I could not imagine how they might manage with yet another child. Of course I could find them another, bigger cottage; of course I could increase Silas’ wages. And yet … was I going to play God? I feared I was. ‘Now we’re on our own, tell me about the baby’s mother.’
‘Topped herself, no doubt about it. But I won’t tell the Coroner that, bless you, no. Don’t want Lizzie growing up knowing that. Moses, that’s what we’ll tell her about – like we found a little princess in the reeds, not a princess finding a lad, if you get my meaning.’
‘What if we told you she was the daughter of a rich man?’
‘Oh, not that old story! Some gentleman has her as his fancy woman and kicks her out when she gets in the family way. Bastards! Begging your pardon, sir. Funnily enough, the bab had something tucked up in the rags we found her in – amazing it stayed there, now I come to think of it. As if her mam wanted it kept safe. Come back down – I’ll show you.’
The baby lay asleep in Harriet’s arms, but Mrs Stride, although busy at her tiny stove, barely took her eyes off her. Stride shifted the shawl covering the Bible: ‘There!’
I took what he was offering. A silver spoon, complete with the Family’s coat of arms. I showed it to Harriet. Without touching it, she nodded.
‘I think Maggie, Lizzie’s mother, stole this,’ I said gently, ‘and it could get her family and maybe you into a great deal of trouble if it was found here. Mr Stride, you said you want to raise her as your own, no better and no worse. Maybe Mr Davies has told you I offered a reward for someone telling us where Maggie – the baby’s mother – might be found. You shall have that. I have another offer for you: let me return this spoon secretly, and – no! listen to me! – and I will give you some money instead, more than any pawnbroker would give. You know Mr Ianto Davies, minister up at the Baptist Chapel in Wolverhampton, I believe?’
‘Ah. He said as how he’d bring you here. I bet he’s over yonder – trying to stop old Biddie supping her stout. He’s straight, is Mr Davies, so they say.’
‘As straight as any man I’ve known. Are you a drinking man, Mr Stride? Because if you are, I don’t want to give you a lot of money that’ll go straight down your throat.’
His wife said, ‘He ain’t signed the pledge, nor never would. Why do you ask?’
‘Because you’d need a lot of money to raise Lizzie properly – and that would mean for your other children too, doesn’t it? Exactly the same.’
Harriet, unprompted, took up my theme. ‘Money for schooling. Money for a doctor if they – if you! – fall sick. Money for apprenticeships.’
‘Safer than going to be a soldier,’ I said aside to Stride. ‘Better prospects.’
‘You bribing us, or summat?’ Mrs Stride snapped.
‘Never!’ she responded, tears in her eyes. ‘I can see you are good people – Lizzie’s name is already in the family Bible, Matthew!’ She stopped, blushing, as she used my name for the first time in public. ‘At home she has a grandmother – she has an aunt … But who am I to try and take away a child from a loving home?’ Tears welled from her eyes. ‘Promise me, never to let her go to the workhouse or an orphanage: you must trust Mr Davies if ever you fall on hard times. Promise me!’ By now the tears were running freely.
Stride looked awkwardly on. ‘You mean we can keep her? Maybe you could write that down in the Bible, missus.’
‘I’ve told you, she’s not mine to give away. But—’
‘Let’s call it finders keepers, then,’ Mrs Stride said decisively. ‘And we’ll promise on the Good Book. We’ll have that reward, Miss, but you can give Mr Davies the spoon money. Just in case. Know what I mean?’ She proffered the spoon, which Harriet slipped into her bag.
I handed over the money.
Mrs Stride stared, and then peeled most of the notes off, handing them back to me. ‘Much too much.’ She considered a moment longer. ‘Suppose you give that lot to Parson Davies too. Hey, I’ll do it myself if he’s anywhere around.’ She went up on to the tiny deck and bellowed.
As we drove back to the manse, Ianto was so joyful he might have been a smile personified. ‘Oh, you’ll doubt this and worry about that, but in my view you have been extremely wise. Assuming her family did want her, what would a court of law do? What would your employer say, Matthew, if the by-blow he’s gone to all that trouble to get rid of suddenly reappears? Answer me that, eh? Now, you shall see me lock this money, in a sealed envelope signed by all three of us, in my chapel safe. No – don’t argue: it’s what the Strides will expect. Make it all legal-looking – I know it’s not, but who’s to ask? And who’s to say a woman like her won’t love a child and bring her up as well as a duchess would. Not that a duchess has anything to do with her children, or so I’ve heard, it’s all nurses and maids. Look you, here’s the chapel: come along in. I can feel God here, for all it was only built five years ago. A proper organ, see …’
Harriet was generous in her thanks to Mrs Davies for the late luncheon she pressed on us. Chiefly she needed tea to revive her, saying that her appetite had died at the sight of the poverty of the area. Perhaps it was true: at least our poorest villagers had cleaner air to breathe and the chance of occasional fresh food. She expressed proper admiration of all our hostess’s schemes to benefit the poor drudges of the area.
At last it was time for the journey home. Seeing a newspaper boy, I bought a paper. I suspected I might be his only customer.
Usually when I offered her my arm, she gaily dismissed the need for any assistance; today, as we walked to the station, I could feel her fatigue as occasionally I took her weight. Under her pretty hat, her head was bent. I couldn’t see her face, but I could feel the depth of her sighs, as if she lamented more than the death of a simple servant girl. And we still had to break the news of Maggie’s death, of course.
‘I must change into mourning first,’ she said, as if she read my mind. ‘We will all wear black in the House, until after the funeral at least. Who will take the burial service?’ she gasped, as if thinking of it for the first time.
A porter slammed the door on us. We were in motion.
‘Not Mr Pounceman, not if I have anything to do with it! I wonder … I might ask my father, if the Church permits. He certainly would be willing, I would vouch for that. And you would be able to meet him and Mama when they stay in my house – you’ll recall Beatrice had the house prepared for visitors—’
‘For them?’
‘Exactly. I wanted them to meet you – you to meet them! It was to be a surprise for you! But an aunt was unwell, and they had to postpone their visit. They are due any day.’
We were walking back from the station and had nearly reached the House, when we saw Silas, trudging towards the servants’ entrance.
Harriet and I exchanged a glance: this would not be a comfortable conversation, but one which she would initiate.
‘Silas!’ She took his hand and retained it. ‘I have just come from Wolverhampton. I fear I have sad news for Ada and for your mother-in-law.’
‘Well, it’s something Ma-in-law won’t hear, Mrs Faulkner. I was on my way to tell you she passed away this afternoon, God rest her soul – just when we hoped those blue pills were doing her some good, too.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
It was my turn. ‘My condolences, Silas – and to Ada. How is she?’
He shrugged sadly. ‘I’d say she was glad her ma’s suffering was over. But she can’t stop the tears coming yet. But you said you have bad news too – young Maggie, is it?’
‘It is indeed. She had a daughter, whom some kind people have taken in as their own. Unless you and Ada might want …?’
His face expressed purest panic. ‘Six, and already – and yes, another on the way. Don’t say it, Mr Rowsley. Dr Page already has. So – would those folk love her?’
‘They already do, Silas: I tried to bring the baby away, but it would have broken their hearts. But you must tell Ada – consult her.’
The panic returned. ‘If his lordship hears, won’t he do what his ma threatened and turf us all out?’
‘Not if I have anything to do with it!’
‘But he’s your boss, Mr Rowsley – he might sack you too. And where would we all be then? And the Stammerton folk too? If you ask me, you’re the only one who seems to care about the land!’
Harriet stepped diplomatically into my horrified silence. ‘In the meantime, is there anything you need, Silas? No? May I ask if you have any plans for the funeral? Because we’ve arranged for Maggie’s body to be brought back here to be buried amongst her own, and it occurs to me that she and her mother might be reunited in death.’
He snorted. ‘If I was Maggie I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near her ma. You know why the poor mite ended up miles from home? Because her mother sent her, that’s why!’
‘Sent her!’ I repeated.
‘Ah, ’cos her ladyship said to. She said if there was any squeak about poor Maggie being with child by his lordship, which, by the way, she said wasn’t true, though we all knew it was, not just Maggie but the whole family would have to go. So off the girl went, and Mrs Billings pointing everyone in the wrong direction, like. Come on, Mr Rowsley, sir – that search we had. All the time Ma-in-law knew you were wasting your time, and everyone else’s too.’
I nodded gravely. ‘Tell Ada what I have suggested. If she thinks separate graves are more appropriate, then naturally the estate will pay for two.’
‘Now, all the women will be able to come here tomorrow afternoon for their mourning outfits which I will order myself,’ Harriet said, cutting through the tension with a practical offer, ‘and I will provide black armbands and hatbands for you men.’
‘Thank’ee.’ He shuffled with embarrassment. ‘But where’ll we get a preacher and who’ll pay for him? There’s not much in the funeral fund pot, Mrs Faulkner: not enough for a funeral supper.’
‘Maggie was not treated well by the Family when she was alive. The least they can do is pay her expenses in death – and her mother’s too, I believe. Don’t you? As for the wake, as we have illness in the House, we could have the big harvest tents erected.’
‘And the clergyman would take the service – or services – for very little, if any charge, Silas,’ I added. ‘My own father. He won’t have known Maggie or your mother—’
‘Neither did Pounceman, if he called the poor little wench all the things I heard tell he did!’
‘No. He didn’t, and Mr Rowsley told him he shouldn’t have spoken as he did. But I knew her, Silas.’
His eyes popped. ‘You’d speak in the church, ma’am?’
She shook her head. ‘I’ve no wish to scandalize the village. But others knew her: Marty Baines did. And his friend the Reverend Ianto Davies did. She will be spoken well of.’
He nodded slowly. ‘And I suppose, when push comes to shove, that’s all anyone can hope for.’
As he walked away, I found the most banal question to fill the fraught silence. ‘So many mourning clothes so quickly?’
‘A warehouse in Shrewsbury,’ she said briskly. ‘And I formally request that the estate pay for them, Mr Rowsley.’ She smiled, perhaps combatively. ‘Why should people with nothing and with no choice in the matter have to pay for something they may never wear again?’
‘Why should they even have to pay for their own uniforms?’ I asked. ‘And have to accept aprons as Christmas presents as they do in some households?’
She gasped as if in pain. What could she mean? But she simply returned to the matter in hand. ‘Now, the funeral – or funerals. Are you absolutely sure that your father will officiate?’
‘Yes. Papa is the obvious choice. A senior churchman – how could Pounceman or his bishop object? And he has a frighteningly kind heart.’
She shot me an amused glance. ‘Excellent. Matthew, I am worried that … No, it is time to go in: Beatrice will be needing numbers for supper.’
‘And I am sure she will be able to provide us with some afternoon tea: poor Mrs Ianto is no great cook, is she? But I need to talk over what were really not our decisions to make: would you join me in my office for a few moments?’
We went, as the local phrase had it, all round the Wrekin as we wrestled with our consciences. At last, I said, ‘Ianto said it would be like this, didn’t he? Let us call it quits, unless Ada is desperate to have the child – in which case there would be months if not years of wrangling, none to anyone’s benefit except the lawyers’.’ As I spoke, my eyes dropped for the first time on the newspaper I had bought. ‘Harriet! Harriet! He’s done it! Mark’s done it! Look!’ I thrust the paper into her hands. ‘That poor child! He’s got her off! And there’s talk of bringing perjury charges against the drunken men who lied about her! In many ways, this has been the worst of days. But there is always joy. Little Lizzie will grow up poor, but she will grow up loved. The child in Oxford has endured a terrible ordeal but – my darling, what have I said?’
She had fainted clean away.