They’re coming. They’re coming. They’re coming. Gibbet. Gibbet. Gibbet. Tha’ll swing. Tha’ll swing. Tha’ll swing.
At each detaining suck and slurp of the mud around her boots, Annie thought she could hear the menacing warning echoing in her ears.
She glanced over her shoulder. The fog was eddying around the middle of the river, hiding the banks of Lincolnshire on the other side. But as the grey dawn broke, the vaporous mantle started to lift, rising to reveal the muddy brown waters lying just below the footpath where she was so desperately running, away from the town of Hull and the consequences of her wrongdoing.
‘Oo – oh, who’ll help me?’ She wailed, and then in fright put her hand over her mouth and looked again over her shoulder to see if the constables were following her and listened for a hue and cry.
A painful stitch in her side slowed her down, and as she gasped short, dry, rasping breaths to relieve it, she became aware of a melancholy moaning. She stopped and listened, but the sound also stopped. She hurried on and it started again. A whimpering lament of distress. She closed her open mouth. It was there again; inside her head, filling her mouth, her ears, her throat, shaking her body with its intensity so that she could no longer stand. Her trembling legs gave way beneath her and deposited her onto the muddy path.
‘Oh dear God, what have I done?’ On her knees she rocked and cried. ‘I’ll get found out. They’ll come for me.’
Wide-eyed with terror she hunched into herself and listened again, this time the only sound was the familiar lap of the river, the heavy-winged flight of cormorants as they swooped low over the water, and the thud of her own laboured breathing.
They won’t have found him yet. She took deep shuddering breaths. ’Course they won’t. ’Tide will have covered him. They might never find him. Francis Morton’s face swam in front of her and she screwed up her eyes to stop the tears and obliterate the vision.
‘I’m that tired,’ she mumbled. ‘Dare I stop?’
She hadn’t slept all night. She had gathered together her meagre possessions, her last few coins, her boots and shawls and morsel of bread, and left the dark damp room which she and her children had called home. She had kept to the narrow alleys until she reached the edge of the town, then with a brief backward glance, had slipped out of the broken, decayed walls and headed for the river.
In that dark hour before morning she’d hesitated on the Humber bank and surveyed the deep waters as she had done every day of her life; from her childhood on the wharves to her wifehood in the mean house in the rat-infested alley on its banks, and contemplated that all she knew was that beyond the spit of Spurn the river emptied itself into the yawning mouth of the German Ocean; but up river, of that she knew nothing. Having no patient mother or wise father who might have explained the river’s direction, she had only hearsay that the river split into two, dividing itself and going separate ways.
And what then? Did other rivers, streams and creeks fall into these mighty waters, cascading down hills and rushing through valleys to swell the rushing waters of the Humber? She’d wrapped her shawls around her. A wind was rising, cold and sharp, coming in from the sea. It disturbed the water’s dull surface, agitating it into frothy white crests, and she saw by the increasing undercurrent that the tide was on the turn. The river was on a journey and she was compelled to follow it.
The sun was breaking through the clouds. Lying low on the skyline it transformed the dark water to a pale mirror of gold and shimmered through the gossamer strands of dispersing mist, and she realized that shipping, schooners and cutters, colliers and trading luggers, would soon be moving up river, and that the footpath by the bank, and the old road just beyond it, would start to become busy with travellers making their way between the towns of Hessle and Hull.
I’ll have to hide, she thought, glancing along the narrow shore. Maybe I can sleep for a bit, and then move on again tonight. It wasn’t far, she had heard, to the town of Hessle, only five or six miles, though she had never been. But she knew of the town, where they built ships, and a ferry since ancient times had run a passage across the shortest stretch of the Humber to Barton in Lincolnshire.
She could see the banks of that country now as it appeared through the fog, and wondered if she could get there. Nobody would know me there, she considered; but she started to tremble at the prospect of someone remarking on the sight of a strange woman travelling alone across the water, and asking questions.
The sound of voices and the jangle of a harness startled her and she jumped down onto the pebbled foreshore and pressed herself into the side of the bank. She didn’t look up until she judged that the travellers had passed, then peered over the top to see the retreating figure of a man holding the reins of a mare, which pulled a small cart in which a woman was sitting.
‘They’re off to ’market,’ she mouthed. ‘I’d best be sharp and find somewhere safe.’
She hauled herself up the grassy bank onto the road and scurried along it, afraid of being seen. Beyond the road lay fields and meadowland and between the grassy areas were strips of scrub, common balk, overgrown with hawthorn and bramble, which marked the boundary and divided up the ownership of land.
Into the thick of this she scrambled, sliding down into the ditch at the road side and into the undergrowth, not heeding the thorns which tore her hands and pulled the threads of her shawl and skirt. She scrabbled on her hands and knees as far into the thicket as she could, pulling aside the prickly stems of dog rose and blackthorn and noting the red hips and blue-black, plum-like fruits which hung there.
I wonder if I can eat them? Her stomach was beginning to gnaw with hunger. She fished from beneath her skirts for the parcel of bread which she had hidden there, and chewing slowly to make it last longer, she ate half of it. Then, rewrapping the remaining piece, she pinned it carefully back beneath her skirt, placing it next to a small bag of coins.
As she lay in her small dark cave, her shawls pulled about her and her head resting on her hands, she heard voices from time to time, the sound of laughter and the measured clip of donkeys’ and horses’ hooves, and she shrank further into the undergrowth, praying that she wouldn’t be seen from the road. The day drew on and towards midday as the warmth of the sun reached her, she dropped off into intermittent sleep.
Her body twitched as she dreamed and she moaned softly. ‘Me poor bairns. Me poor bairns. What’ll become of us? Lizzie, I did it for thee.’
In her dreams she saw again the smiling face of Francis Morton. Then his smile became rigid as the knife in her hand struck, his teeth turning black as blood oozed from his mouth and covered his shirt, and his eyes stared accusingly at her.
She sat up with a cry. ‘Oh, dear God. They’ll hang me. I’ll swing from ’gibbet.’ Her hands touched her throat as if feeling the rope, and then locking her thin arms around her knees, she rocked, moaning softly. ‘What’ll happen to me bairns? Their ma a murderess!’
Tiredness took hold of her again, and brushing a pile of dead leaves into a pillow, she lay down and gazed up into the canopy of branches and shrubs above her, watching the patterns of sunlight as it filtered through.
Lizzie will be all right, she thought. Maria and Will will take care of her. They promised when I asked them. They’ve been good friends to me. ’Onny ones I’ve ever had. They said they’d take care of her, even though they’ve bairns of their own to feed, and Maria expecting another.
Happen I shouldn’t have been so hasty, but I was that angry. I thought Francis loved me. When I asked him, he said he did. But when I caught him in ’house—, and our Lizzie, poor bairn, being so frighted, well me blood was up. I couldn’t help myself. In God’s name, I couldn’t.
She touched her cheekbone and felt the tender swelling and the cut which still oozed blood from the blow Francis had given her and cried softly. I seem to have spent my whole life weeping. I’ve had no happy times that I can think of. None that lasted anyway. Alan never made me happy. I thought he would, when he married me, but he was nowt but a bully when he was at home. I was allus glad when he went back to sea, glad of those long voyages to ’Arctic, and I can’t say that I was sorry, not really sorry, when he died.
She sat up and wiped her eyes with the end of her shawl, and thought of the day when she was called to the office of the ship-owner, Isaac Masterson. ‘Mrs Swinburn,’ he’d said gently. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you of your husband’s death.’
Maria’s husband too, Will Foster, had suffered terrible injuries on the ill-fated voyage of the whaler, the Polar Star, but he had been a hero, while Alan had died because of his own drunkenness.
She sniffed. Makes me wonder why we’re here at all, when there’s only misery and pain.
And me two lads. What of them? Will they make out without me? I’ve never been a good ma, even though I loved them. I never knew how. She nodded as she sat in her damp hollow. They’ll be better off without me. Seamen’s Hospital will look after them. Ted, he’s not well, poor bairn, and Jimmy, why, I could do nowt with him, but he’ll look after himself will Jimmy, when he’s big enough; he’ll grow just like his fayther.
Convincing herself that her children would manage at least as well without her as with her, she waited, sometimes dozing, sometimes peering through the branches towards the narrow road and listening to the slap of the water on the pebbled shore.
As the sun started to sink she brought out the remaining piece of bread and nibbled half of it. She was very hungry, yet dare not eat more, and once more she carefully wrapped it and put it down beside her. She leaned forward and pulled a handful of hips and the small blue fruit which hung so temptingly above her.
‘These is hips, I know, and I don’t think they’ll harm, but these plums, if they are plums, dare I try them?’
She ran her finger over the waxy skin, disturbing the bloom, and on impulse sank her teeth into the flesh.
‘Aagh. Aagh. I’m poisoned. I’m poisoned. I’m done for. God forgive me for me sins.’
She spat and retched as the bitter juices stung her tongue and scorched her throat and she reached for the lump of bread and tore off a piece, chewing furiously.
‘Tha’s lucky. Tha could be lying dead. How stupid thou art, Annie. Never did have any gumption. That’s why tha’s in such a fix.’ She muttered and grumbled, hunger making her lightheaded, and she eyed the remaining piece of bread. ‘Shall I eat it now? Or shall I wait until I really need it? It’s not ’first time I’ve felt hunger.’
She lay down again and waited for darkness. There had been many times in her life when she had felt the pangs of hunger. When she was a child living beneath the river wharves she had had many days without food, when the other children had not had enough to share with her – until she had learned how to scavenge and beg for her own bread, she had known how to exist on very little sustenance.
I wonder what happened to me own ma? Who was she? Will my bairns forget who I am? No. No. They’re older. They’ll remember me. I was only a babby when she went.
Instilled in her mind was an image of a woman who suckled her, who sat with her beneath the wharves, and who laughed and smelled of warm milk and liquor, and who one day, when she reached for her, had gone and left only emptiness in her place.
Other hands had taken her and fed her on watery pap until she was old enough to fend for herself. The ‘River Rats’, people used to call them, and named them as thieves and ruffians. They lived on the refuse that others had discarded, searching in the mud when the tide had turned for anything that they could find and sell and turn into food.
And as for her father: the man who appeared from time to time claiming her as his own, demanding what little she owned as his, and giving her a beating when she objected; he too had disappeared, and she wasn’t sorry.
As dusk fell, she roused herself and prepared to leave her leafy shelter. She could hear the wind blowing strongly and she wrapped her shawls tightly around her head, tucking her lank fair hair inside. She reached for her bread. It was dark in the hollow and she couldn’t see it. She searched the ground where she had been lying.
‘It’s not here! It’s gone. Me bread. Where’s me bread?’
Her fingers touched some dry crumbly fragments and she peered at them. ‘Me bread! Summat’s eaten me bread!’
Furiously she banged the ground with her fists. All that was left of her precious bread was a small pile of crumbs. She heard scurryings beneath the branches, of mice or birds, of cats or rats. Whatever it was, had she been able to catch the offending creature she would without any compunction have strangled it with her bare hands.
There was a heavy swell on the river, white flecked waves spilling over onto the shore as she climbed down. I’ll walk here until dark, she thought, and then go back onto ’road. She felt nervous. She wasn’t afraid of the dark, but this was unfamiliar territory, a new country, an open space full of strange sounds, and the further she travelled, the higher the white cliffs which edged the shore became, intimidating her by their loftiness.
Even the Humber, her own river, which she had always lived alongside, seemed like a stranger, showing her a different face from the one which she had known from the confines of the town walls, longer and lonelier, and somehow threatening. While the vessels running for their home port before darkness fell, seemed to turn their surging sails accusingly towards her.
She remembered the old tales she had heard long ago from superstitious old women. Stories of the ghosts who roamed the river bank. Ghosts of the dead who had been carried in their coffins towards the churchyard in Hessle, in the time long before there was a place to bury them in Hull, and who were swept away by the turbulent waves, along with the grieving mourners who carried them, down into a watery grave. They waited, in the darkness, so it was said, their skeletal fingers dripping with slimy strands of river weed, stretched out to waylay travellers along the riverside path.
‘I don’t believe it. It’s just an old tale.’ She picked up her skirts and ran along the deep shingle, stumbling in her fright over the scrubby bushes and wild shrubs which reached out to trip her. But the shadows seemed to dance menacingly about her, and as the smudgy darkness fell, fiendish spooks and demons whispered in her ear, and with them, she thought she could hear the intimidating laughter of Francis Morton.
With relief she watched the moon emerge, sailing high above the water, lighting up the Lincolnshire coast and pointing the way with Neptune’s Path across the river, and it lit also the path on the shore, shining white on the pebbles beneath her feet. As she neared the Hessle creek, she could make out by its light the silhouette of boatsheds and the masts of boats which lay anchored in the water.
She crept silently towards the inlet and looked over. There was the ferry, held at anchor, its mast and rigging traced black in the moonlight, gently swaying on the water. It was a busy harbour, packed tight with boats, and on the bankside masts and canvas rigging were laid and crates stacked high one on top of another. She froze as she heard the sound of a man cough and then spit, and then saw the swinging beam of a lantern.
‘’Watchman,’ she breathed, and sank low behind a crate. It would be off to the magistrate if she was found and then all would be finished, she’d be sent back to Hull to a fate she didn’t dare contemplate.
As she watched, another figure emerged only yards from where she was crouched. She followed his progress as he dodged behind crates and boxes as if he was stalking the figure of the nightwatchman. He dashed across towards a boat which was lying beached on the quay, and hid behind it. She saw his face quite clearly in the moonlight. He was young, younger than her, she thought, his face unshaven, and merry as if he was having great sport. His dark hair was long and curly, and she saw a glint of an earring in his right ear.
She shifted her position, standing on tiptoe and peering above the crate, to be able to see him more clearly and he looked up, alerted by the slight sound, and saw her. For a moment alarm showed on his face, and then a grin appeared and he put a finger warningly to his lips.
Something told her that she should go, that things were happening here that could embroil her. Tha’s in enough trouble of thine own, she told herself. Tha doesn’t need any more.
Silently she edged backwards until she reached the riverside path again. She retraced her steps until she came to the stone bridge which crossed the haven and took another path climbing higher and leading away from the river, and up across a grassy sward to a small wood. Here she rested again. Her legs ached from walking on the deep shingle and she leant back against a tree and contemplated what she should do next.
Sleep must have overtaken her for she opened her eyes to the beginning of day. The sun was not yet fully up but a pale flush filtered through the trees and touched her cold cheeks with warmth. She looked around at her surroundings and found that she was on the edge of a copse, smaller and thinner than she had thought the night before, when the trees seemed blacker and denser than they were.
The copse edged a paddock where a stringy horse and an old goat were tethered and beyond the paddock was a cottage with a hedge of hawthorn around it. Annie dropped to her stomach and slithered along the ground until she came to the hedge, and lay in the damp grass peering through a gap.
A glimmer of light burned in the cottage window, and above the thatch the chimney-pot discharged a thick gush of spiralling wood smoke, whilst through the half open door drifted the tantalizing smell of something cooking.
She wasn’t so much hungry now, for she was well beyond the stomach rolling pangs of emptiness, but had the pinched and stabbing muscular cramps of an unfed belly which cried out for sustenance.
She wrinkled her nose. Could it be mussel and onion stew like we used to make down by ’river when I was a bairn? ’Mussels that were big and tender and salty, and if anybody had managed to pinch bread, we used to dip it into ’stew and it would be soft and pappy, and even them without teeth could chew it.
Or a drop of fish broth would be tasty. I used to make that for me bairns when Alan left me without money, and I’d bring home some fish heads from ’dock side and boil them with ’taties. Or eel pie like Maria’s ma used to make. She had ’knack with paste had Maria’s ma, all golden and crusty it was, not heavy and lumpen like mine.
She licked her dry lips as she hallucinated over the sweet white fleshy strands of eel, and its dark succulent skin which she used to draw through her teeth, and she lifted her head and sniffed, drawing in a deep breath to catch the aroma which floated towards her.
It was getting much lighter, the sun was rising with its pale light suffusing the sky with pastel streaks of rose and yellow and lighting up the house in front of her. She saw now that it was a low dwelling, a mere hovel, and she felt relief because of it. Perhaps the residents of this abode had also known hunger and would therefore be glad to share their morning meal with her. Or, she sank down again in despair, more likely they would turn her away as a beggar because there wasn’t enough for another mouth.
A shadow moved across the grass in front of the window and a donkey lifted its head and ambled forward. She envied it for its ability to eat grass, she had tried that too, but there was no nourishment in it.
Painfully she got to her feet and stumbled round the hedge. She wiped her face with the end of her shawl and smoothed her matted hair, and with weak and listless knuckles knocked timidly on the door.