4

‘Saran, Saran, what be wrong . . . be you all right?’

Awake in an instant, Luke was on his feet and across the room.

Still staring at Harriet, Saran did not see the lad’s face, anxious as her own, as he looked keenly at her.

‘It isn’t me,’ she answered, ‘it’s Harriet, she . . . she’s taken some sort of turn.’

A little colour returning to the white side of her face, Harriet Dowen pulled herself together, but she could not still the trembling of her hands as she asked for her cup. ‘No need for worrying,’ she said shakily, ‘and I be sorry to have wakened you, lad.’

‘But what happened . . . will I go for a doctor?’

‘No, lad, ’tis kind of you to offer but there be no doctor can cure Harriet Dowen of the mark her carries on the outside nor that which be inside.’

Was the woman who had been so generous to a couple of strangers ill . . . could it be she suffered from that same falling sickness a girl in the street next to theirs had suffered from, often taking a fit that left her trembling and drained of colour? Saran bent forward.

‘Can I get you anything . . . perhaps some potion?’ Concern uppermost in her mind she laid a hand on the woman’s arm, withdrawing it at the sharp gasp. ‘I’m sorry . . .’ Perplexed, she took a step backward her hazel eyes troubled. ‘I should not have touched you.’

‘Saran child, sit down.’ Harriet laid her cup aside. ‘There be something I would have you know . . . no need for you to go out of the room, lad . . .’ She glanced at Luke who had started towards the door. ‘I wants you to hear what it is I have to say for I feel it circles yourself.’ Returning her bright look to Saran, she went on. ‘What you just seen, the shock that took me when your fingers touched against mine, be a thing which has happened to me since I was naught but a little wench stood at my mother’s knee. Sometimes when people touched me I would see things in my head, things that had to do with them, oft time it were their past that were shown me and other times it would be what was yet to come. That is how it be with you. Your fingers brushed mine and it was there, pictures vivid and clear, pictures of a woman lying atop two wenches, one no more’n seven or eight years; her were trying to protect ’em from the lash of a belt . . . a belt wielded by a thickset man, heavy-jowled, hair flaming like dull fire.’

Enoch Jacobs! Saran felt her insides tumble. The woman was describing Enoch Jacobs!

‘The man be known to you . . .’ Harriet was still speaking though the trembling of her hands was gone, ‘but he be no more, he was called – called to join the moon dancers.’

‘Who be the moon dancers? I ain’t never seen ’em. Be they an act at the Palace of Varieties?’

‘They be no act on no stage, lad, you’ll not see them in any music hall.’

‘But you said the man you seen in your ’ead had bin called to join the moon dancers!’ Luke was clearly dissatisfied with the answer he had received.

Harriet nodded but her eyes did not leave Saran’s face. This wench knew well the man spoken of, her body bore the marks of his brutality and her soul the scars of his malevolence. ‘What I said were what I saw.’ She spoke slowly, the words directed at the girl. ‘The man I speak of were called by the moon dancers; you think to return to the place where he stepped into the water, to find his body and see it set in holy ground, but them as frolics wi’ the moon dancers be many days in the finding, sometimes it be far from the spot they was called, sometimes they don’t be found at all.’

‘Be these moon dancers real?’

‘Real enough to the poor unfortunates as sees them at their revels.’ Harriet reached for the teapot. ‘Now, lad, you fetch a bucket of coal from the backyard and I’ll see about mekin’ you both a bite of breakfast, the day be sharp as yet and an empty stomach will have it feeling no kinder.’

Her mind in a turmoil, Saran followed the woman’s instructions, setting a pan of water to boil, adding oatmeal and salt, then stirring the mixture with a wooden spoon.

‘many days in the finding.’

The words turned in her mind.

‘sometimes they don’t be found at all.’

Was Harriet Dowen telling her that Enoch Jacobs would not be found . . . to search for the body would be fruitless? But that could mean he had not drowned, for if he had then his body would float. It would rise to the surface . . . be seen by the first person to pass on the towpath. With a breath suddenly held in her throat, fingers gripping the long-handled spoon, she stood motionless, one thought dominating every other. Maybe she was wrong in assuming Enoch Jacobs had drowned, perhaps he had managed to crawl out of the water, drag himself on to the opposite bank! The moon had been brilliant but its light had seemed to play only over one patch of the canal, centred in one small area, leaving the towpath and surrounding land in thick dark shadow. He could have hauled himself out, she would not have seen him in the blackness; and if he had woken some time later and stumbled away that would explain why neither she nor Luke had seen him that morning. He was alive! Enoch Jacobs was alive and she must find him, for only he could tell her who it was had purchased her mother and sister, only he could tell where they would be found.

Turning quickly, the hand that held the spoon caught against that of the woman setting bowls on the table. Catching her breath Harriet pulled back, her face paling as she clutched the angry red mark already visible on her skin.

It had been no scald had that mark appear on the back of Harriet Dowen’s hand. The porridge bowls washed and returned to their place on the dresser, Saran turned her attention to the table. Gathering the cloth she took it outside, shaking its white folds free of crumbs. The woman had been more than kind to them. Standing a moment, Saran stared over the barren stretch of ground empty of any other dwelling. She had come here to live, to escape the cruel jibes of children, so Harriet had told her as they had talked the night before. But had that truly been the reason she chose to live in isolation with only the brief visit of women wanting potions, or was it the heartache of having no man ask her to be his wife? It was a cruel trick of fate that had half of her face covered with a terrible birthmark.

‘Darlaston, you say that be the nearest town?’

Luke’s voice floated out followed by the quieter tone of Harriet.

‘One way be Darlaston, the other leads to Wednesbury. You’ll come to the spot where the track divides – it be marked with a signpost – but it’s nothing either promises ’cept toil and sweat. Life be hard for the folk there and ’tis not much they have to feed their own and less to give to strangers . . . so you tek the bread and cheese I’ve wrapped in that cloth . . .’

The woman had done enough for them already, they should not be taking more of her bounty. Turning quickly indoors, Saran put her feelings into words.

Taking the folded cloth the older woman smiled. ‘What I give, heaven returns—’ The rest never came for as her fingers touched briefly against Saran’s she drew her breath sharply.

Having witnessed the reaction several times, Luke was impatient with the two; why not say what was seen, what it was given the older one to know? Maybe it would be for the good of each of them. In a few minutes it would be too late for they would have taken their leave. Resolute at the thought he asked, ‘What is it you sees whenever you touches against Saran?’

Pushing the cloth into a drawer Harriet Dowen’s mouth set in a firm line. ‘That don’t be for you to ask.’

‘But last night you said it circled me, so it be only fair I should know what it is!’ The sense of injustice lacing his reply carried over to his blue eyes, showing clearly in the look he now turned to Saran.

Was she being unfair to him? Uncomfortable with his stare she turned her back, pretending to busy herself with a last-minute smoothing of her skirts. It was true what he said, Harriet had told Luke that that which was shown her in those ‘flashes’ somehow included him, so maybe it was only right he should know. Facing the older woman as she came from the scullery, Saran forced away her apprehension, saying evenly, ‘Harriet, would you tell me, please . . . who or what are the moon dancers . . . is Enoch Jacobs still living, and . . . and will I find my mother and sister soon?’

‘I can tell you of the dancers well enough, but to the rest I would needs tek your hand atwixt my own. If you wants to hear then sit you at the table.’

The first to take a seat, Luke held his breath. Could be he would be told to wait outside.

‘This be your asking, will it be for your listening and for no other?’

The meaning was clear to Saran. With her word the lad would be banished from the room . . . but he had not abandoned her when finding her trussed on the heath, he had released her and stayed with her when he could easily have sprinted away; he did not deserve to be closed out, what she heard he too would hear. Giving him the fleeting ghost of a smile she nodded at the woman settled at the table.

‘The moon dancers,’ Harriet began, ‘waits for the unwary. Like golden will o’ the wisps they flickers on the surface of the waters, their streams of light stretching and swaying, lifting and falling to a tune only the one that be called can hear, and once it be in the ears there can be no shutting it off . . . any man or woman, any child caught by its melody be forced to dance; unable to resist, wanting only to be part of that shining reel, they steps into river or canal – where they drown.’

‘Be they ghosts of dead folk . . . folk who drowned afore them?’ Luke’s awestruck question breached the small silence.

‘Who can tell,’ Harriet shook her head slowly, ‘be they spirits of folk dead or the spirits long believed to dwell in forest and water.’

‘But such don’t be real!’ the lad answered, superior in his knowledge.

‘Don’t they!’ Harriet swung him a quieting look. ‘Neither do the dancers of the moon, but they comes and when their dance be over so does the life of some poor soul; so tek care, lad, think wise and well afore you lets the words from your mouth.’

‘So it was a play of moonlight Enoch saw on the water, moonlight and cloud shadows. In his drunkenness he thought he was watching a troupe of dancers and when he tried to join them . . .’

‘That was when his life were teken.’ Spreading both of her hands on the well-scrubbed table, Harriet answered Saran’s unfinished question. ‘I doubts my words will prove untrue when I says the man you calls Enoch Jacobs be dead though his body will be long in the finding and then no man will know his face for it will have been eaten by life that swims in the waters.’

Life that swims in the waters? Luke shivered. He would take no more dips in the canal and the nearest he would come to covering his whole body with water would be a bowl filled from a kettle and a cloth to soak in it!

Harriet turned a blind eye to the lad’s sudden loss of superiority, hiding her smile at the rapid disappearance of youthful swagger. ‘Return you to that place if it be that is your purpose,’ she said to Saran, ‘but you’ll not have the finding of the man you called stepfather. Ask about him, talk of him to the magistrate if that be your wish, but that path be strewn with the rocks of heartache and it gives no lead to that you truly yearns to find.’

There was a sureness in the voice, a quiet certainty in that disfigured face. Saran sat silent with her thoughts. Harriet Dowen had no reason to deceive her, nothing to gain by turning her from her intent and what would be gained by mistrusting the woman? The blood in her veins telling her it would be no gain but misery, Saran answered with a question.

‘Leaving what is done to lie in the past, by not returning to Willenhall but going on, will I find my mother and sister?’

‘I’ll answer first by telling what it is has already been shown me, then you can judge whether it be you wants to place your hand in mind.’ Closing her eyes the woman breathed twice, long and slow, then, lifting her lids, she began.

‘I saw a man with flaming hair, a man with a smile upon his face but with deceit and treachery in his heart. He takes the hand of a slight gentle woman whose own heart be heavy with the loss of a husband. He promises to cherish and take care of her and her daughters but with the marriage made he shows his true self – an evil drunken self that sells everything for ale, beats the three of them with a leather strap taken from his waist when they tell him there is no more to sell, and finally sets a bond around their neck, leading them to a tavern where the older be sold for half a crown while the child—’

‘There is no need to go on.’ Saran’s words erupted on a sob. ‘You have been shown true, the people you describe are my family, it is them I must search for. Please, Harriet, help me!’

Looking deeply into hazel eyes glinting with tears she knew the girl was fighting to hold back, Harriet Dowen turned her hands so the palms were upward.

‘I gives no guarantee, I can ask for nothing to be shown, neither can I refuse what be sent. The powers be sometimes strong and at others they be scarce a flicker in the shadows of the mind, but whichever it should prove you have my word I will not tell it wrong.’ Bowing her head, her words barely audible in the quietness of that tiny kitchen, she prayed, asking her power be governed by the spirit of the Lord and no presence of evil attend it. Then, looking again at Saran, she said softly, ‘Ask the grace of heaven, child. Then place your hands in mine.’

‘Why do you stay with me, Luke? You could go on, find shelter in one of those towns; it would be better if you did, I can make my way alone.’

Luke glanced sideways at the girl who had sat huddled with her face hidden on her knees near enough the whole of the day and who even now did not lift her head.

‘I be in no hurry,’ he answered, chewing on a blade of grass; ‘as for shelter, this won’t be the first night I’ve spent on the ’eath nor do I sees it as being the last and I reckons that so long as it sits well wi’ you then we will travel together, a bit o’ company be good for a soul.’

His soul or hers? Pressed into tear-dampened skirts, Saran’s eyes remained closed. The lad had heard the words spoken across that table; his future locked with hers should they choose the same path from the crossroads, a future filled with toil and topped with sorrow. But he did not have to walk beside her, his could be a different future, one where heartbreak was not the milestones which marked the way. But they had not yet reached that branch in the road, when they did . . . as they must . . . she would speak again of his leaving her and following his own way. She had been selfish. A short distance from the home of Harriet Dowen she had given way to the fears in her heart; sinking to the ground she had wept, and when the tears were spent had continued to sit locked in her own despair, wallowing in self-misery, and all the time Luke had stayed with her. But her self-pity was over, she would not give way again. Lifting her head she watched the darkening skies of late afternoon become strewn with banners of purple, gold and scarlet as the setting sun flaunted its dying beauty.

‘Ask the grace of heaven, child.’

The words Harriet Dowen had spoken that morning . . . had she meant them only to be said before their hands were joined? No; Saran knew that was not so, the woman was giving her words to use when she herself was no longer present to help.

She had placed her own hands between the outstretched ones.

Overhead the glorious streamers merged and blended, stretching a brilliant canopy of luminous colour, irradiating the earth with a lambent burning glow. Lifting her face to it Saran felt the rest of what that woman had said flare with equal luminosity in the darkness of her mind. The moment their hands had met the woman’s body had stiffened, her head held taut on her neck, and her glazed eyes had seemed to stare into a different world.

‘The way be not easy,’ she had muttered, ‘the path which fate unrolls before you be pitted with grief and anguish, pocked with bitterness and misery . . . but out of sorrow comes forth greatness, you will rise from the ashes of despair and as you walks you casts a great shadow, a shadow that covers many. Some be grateful while others seek to throw it off. But there be one walks beside you, his future locked with yours. Give him your trust, for through him you find what it is you seek.’

‘We should go on.’ She looked at the lad who had sat patiently those long hours while the emotions she had held in check so many days poured from her. ‘Maybe we will reach the town before night.’

The smile that flashed in his blue eyes was not relief for himself but for her, that she had found the strength to face the grim future Harriet Dowen had predicted. Stretching a hand Luke helped her to her feet while his heart told him wherever fate led Saran Chandler he would be there at her side.

‘We best keep to the track from now on for this heath most like be honeycombed wi’ worked-out gin pits, same as be around Walsall; the miners took the coal an’ left the holes gaping in the ground and they don’t be easy seen, ’specially so when it be dark.’

‘I often wondered why they did not fill them in before sinking another shaft.’

‘Don’t tek no wonderin’; like my father said, filling the pit afore movin’ on brought no pay for the labour and if the men of Walsall couldn’t earn then their families couldn’t eat.’

That was the first time he had made mention of any family.

Reaching the track worn in the rough grass, Saran matched her step to his. Was his father dead, as hers was? Why would his mother let him go into the world on his own at such a young age?

‘My family be all gone.’

His answer preceding her question, Saran walked on in silence.

‘They died from the cholera; mother, father, brothers, sisters, all dead barring one. Her name were Emmeline but we all called her Emmie. Five year old her were when the cholera struck, three year below me. Why we didn’t die only the Lord above can tell but it would have been better if we had . . .’

The young voice throbbed with a bitterness that caught at Saran. This lad had suffered far more than herself but she had been so tied up with her own sorrows she had not even thought he too could be hurting inside.

‘We . . . we was took into the poor ’ouse.’ He was speaking quietly, his words spaced, swallowing on each sentence before he could get the next past his throat. ‘Emmie was frightened, ’er were no more’n a babby but when ’er cried to be put wi’ me the wardress slapped ’er face. Weren’t allowed ’er said, males one side of the building females on the other. I seen Emmie just once a week after that, in the chapel on Sunday, but even then we was not allowed to speak. Then one Sunday I seen her little face so red and puffy I thought her’d been crying. I called her name but before I could reach ’er I was caught by the beadle and hauled away. The penalty for speaking when not asked was ten strokes of the cane and six days in the glory hole; that were a pit dug underneath the storeroom with no light of any sort but plenty o’ company . . . if you calls rats company. That were bad enough but worse waited my bein’ brought out.’ He swallowed hard, brushing the back of one hand across his cheeks.

‘Emmie were dead and buried . . . my sister had died and I hadn’t been allowed out of that hole to see her laid to rest. I thought then my heart could take no more sorrow, but then some six months later I was called to the beadle’s office. I was of an age to be indentured, sold into service until my twenty-first year, but I told him I would be no man’s servant. At that he flew into one of his rages, spluttering and shouting as he reached for the cane kept hanging on the wall behind his desk. “You’ll do as you be told, boy,” he was shouting, “you’ll do as I says or you’ll die same way as that snivelling brat died, I’ll kick you down the stairs same as Liza Jebbins kicked your sister!”’

It was some moments before Luke spoke again, moments in which Saran seemed to feel some of the agony emanating from him. But when at last he did speak the choking sobs were gone and in their place was a hard metallic anger.

‘It seemed at that moment, there in that room, the world went dark; a darkness such as couldn’t be related to the sun sinking below the horizon, a darkness no shadows of night could bring. It was a suffocating, drowning blackness such as had not come even with the deaths of the others of my family . . . an eclipse, a darkening of the soul that shut out every feeling but hate. Emmie had not died of the sickness of the lungs as I had been told, but murdered, kicked down a flight of stairs by a wardress! The beadle saw my face, saw the torture his words produced and he laughed . . .’

Pausing in his stride Luke turned away, keeping his face from the light of the newly rising moon, hiding his pain from her. But it could not be hidden. Saran waited, wanting to hold him, to soothe his hurt as she had so often soothed Miriam’s; but, afraid he would resent it, she stood unmoving beside him.

Speaking almost to himself, his words no more than a whisper, Luke went on.

‘I saw that swine laughing . . . laughing at the death of a little wench who couldn’t defend herself; I snatched the stick from him, then slashed it hard across his head and he fell against the fireplace. I raised the stick but he didn’t move, then I seen the blood trickling into the hearth. The beadle was dead, his skull cracked and I were glad. It took a second or two for me to realise nobody had heard and, my senses returning, I put the stick back in its place and took the glass he’d refilled wi’ brandy while laughing and I tipped it over him afore setting the glass atwixt his fingers . . .’

He had caused the death of a man! Breath trapped in her throat Saran tried to comprehend the enormity of what she had heard. The penalty for manslaughter was death! Luke would know that. He would know that should he be caught he would go to the gallows, yet he had stayed beside her the entire day. The lad had risked his own life . . . was risking it still . . . and all to comfort her!

‘I could ’ave gone then, over the wall and away while the rest of them warders was busy herding them inmates to the refectory for the evenin’ meal, but instead I put myself into the glory hole. I guessed the death would be seen as an accident for it were well known the beadle were overfond o’ the brandy, and if anybody wondered as to me I ’oped it would be thought as I’d already been sent to my employment. Be my thinkin’ right or wrong I kept me to that hole until it were my supposin’ the inmates to be in their beds, leavin’ the staff to their own pleasures.

‘It took no time to slip into the females’ wing and to find a door wi’ the name of Jebbins painted on it. So I waited, watched from an alcove as the woman went into her room, waited again until I believed her to be sleeping afore I went in. I found her easy enough, her snores leading me to the bed. As I reached it the moon shone into the room and at that moment Liza Jebbins opened her eyes. P’raps her thought me to be the ghost of the child her had murdered for her didn’t move; then, realisation dawning, her opened her mouth but I was quicker; I had the pillow from beneath her head, pressing it over her face afore a sound had left her throat; I held it there while I spoke close to her head. “You be goin’ to die,” I told her, “die the same way Emmie Hipton died.” I held that pillow ’til her struggles stopped but not long enough to see the life gone from her. Making sure her were unconscious only I pulled her from the bed and to the top of stairs that led to the hall. There her regained her senses, and, helping her to stand, I wished her a safe journey to hell . . . then, with my foot against her stomach, sent her on her way.’