Daughter of the River

by Daughter of the River (retail) (epub)

  And with that she slumped senseless into his arms.

  Chapter Eleven

  Maddy recovered consciousness to find that she was lying on a bench and that she was bitterly cold, in spite of being swathed in some sort of covering. Slowly her foggy brain took in her surroundings – an unfamiliar room furnished with tables and chairs and oak settles. An eating house perhaps? Or an inn? With awareness came a terrible sense of tragedy that bewildered her at first until she remembered.

  ‘Davie!’ she exclaimed, trying to rise but hampered by her wrappings.

  ‘Don’t try to move,’ said a male voice, as a strong arm helped her into a sitting position. She knew that voice. It was Cal Whitcomb’s. Vaguely she remembered seeing his face before the darkness had claimed her. ‘Take a sip of this,’ he continued, and held a glass to her lips.

  She smelled the spirits and turned her head away. The brandy Mrs Polsoe had given her still churned within her; if she drank any more she would be sick. Struggling to free herself from the enveloping folds of what proved to be a man’s Inverness cape, she exclaimed, ‘I must go! Davie!’ But what use could she be to Davie now? A cloud of grey mist swirled in her head and a high-pitched singing filled her ears, forcing her to close her eyes and lean back.

  The pungency of smelling-salts brought her back sharply, and she found herself confronting a concerned Cal Whitcomb once more.

  ‘You must rest,’ he said. ‘Don’t even try to move. Just lay where you are.’

  But Maddy found it impossible to be still, in spite of her physical state.

  ‘They mustn’t do it,’ she protested, trying to stand when it was as much as she could do to sit up unaided. ‘They can’t cut Davie up. I won’t let them! I won’t!’ She wanted to sound determined, yet she could hear the strain of hysteria in her own voice.’

  Cal pushed her firmly back onto the settle. ‘They aren’t going to. That is why I’m in Exeter. Davie is to have a proper burial.’

  ‘Let me go! I’ve got to go!’ Maddy was too busy struggling against his restraining hands to heed what he was saying.

  ‘Stay still, woman!’ He rapped out the words to gain her attention. ‘Won’t you listen to me? Davie’s body is not to be sent to the hospital. He is to have a proper burial in the prison grounds.’

  ‘Proper burial?’ She stared, paying attention to him at last.

  ‘Yes, that’s why I’m here in Exeter,’ he repeated quietly. ‘I am here on behalf of the squire – his gout is too bad for him to travel himself. I brought a letter from him appealing to the governor of the prison, who is an old acquaintance, to allow your brother a decent Christian burial. He persuaded other people of note from Stoke Gabriel to add their names too, in view of the harshness of the verdict and Davie’s tender age.’

  ‘And the governor agreed?’ She dared not believe it.

  ‘Yes. The burial will be at nine. Under the circumstances, if you are recovered in time I’m sure you would be allowed to attend.’

  ‘I’m quite recovered.’ To prove it Maddy tried to leap to her feet, only to collapse with dizziness.

  ‘When did you last eat?’ Cal demanded, then not bothering to await her reply he ordered a dish of scrambled eggs from the disapproving woman who had been hovering in the background.

  ‘I don’t want anything to eat,’ protested Maddy. ‘A cup of tea perhaps…’

  ‘Where have your father and brothers got to?’ Cal asked, ignoring her comments. ‘We’ve to find them quickly if they’re to be at the funeral.’

  Maddy bit her lip. ‘I wrote to the boys at home,’ she said. ‘I was sure they’d get here in time, but they didn’t.’

  ‘And your father?’

  She avoided his eyes. ‘He was very unwell this morning, too ill to come.’

  ‘You mean you were by yourself when… You faced this morning entirely alone?’ Cal was aghast. ‘Was there no one who would have come with you?’

  The landlady of the Three Feathers – that’s where we’re staying – she offered. She’s got a kind heart.’ The words came jerkily. ‘It was better alone, just Davie and me.’

  Cal did not believe her. ‘No one should go through such an experience alone,’ he muttered angrily. ‘No one. If I had known…’

  The woman brought the scrambled eggs and a pot of tea and set them before Maddy.

  ‘I’m really not hungry,’ she protested.

  ‘Eat it anyway.’ He scooped some egg up on the fork and handed it to her. Fearing he meant to feed her like a child, she gave way and took hold of it. Usually she would have resented his authoritarian manner, but compared to the other events of the day it was too trivial to bother about. ‘Will your father be recovered by now?’ he asked, a hint of sarcasm in his voice. ‘I mean, if I send a cab to the place where you are staying, do you think he will be well enough to attend the funeral?’

  Her mouth full, Maddy nodded.

  ‘Right, you stay here and finish your meal. Every last crumb,’ he stressed. ‘I’ll go and find a cab. What did you say the inn is called?’

  Maddy swallowed hastily. ‘The Three Feathers, in Lower North Street,’ she said.

  He was not gone long, yet by the time he had returned Maddy discovered to her surprise that she had made considerable inroads into the scrambled eggs and toast. Cal regarded her near-empty plate with satisfaction as he sat down opposite her. ‘I’ve told the cabby to bring your father here, and your brothers, if they’ve arrived. Then he’s to wait to take us to the prison.’ Again his commanding manner would normally have drawn a sharp protest from Maddy, but on that morning she was simply grateful to have someone taking charge. Davie was to be laid to rest properly, that was all she cared about now.

  The food did help her. By the time she had cleared the plate and drunk the tea, her head no longer swam, her knees had stopped shaking and warmth was beginning to seep back through her chilled body.

  ‘Kindly show the young lady where she can refresh herself,’ Cal said to the woman, whose disapproval had not lessened.

  They were evidently in a small, select eating house which was not yet open for business. How they had got there Maddy could not recollect, but she surmised that their unwelcome presence so early in the morning was the cause of the woman’s silent censure. When she gazed into the mirror of the ladies’ room, she knew differently. The face staring back at her was deathly white, streaked with dirt and tears, surrounded by hair as wild as any harpy’s. Part mad woman, part woman of the streets, that was what the reflection looked like. No wonder the proprietress of this clearly reputable establishment was not happy at her presence. As she set about repairing the damage, Maddy decided that it said a lot for Cal’s forceful character that they had been allowed in at all.

  Within a few minutes, her face washed and her hair combed into some semblance of order, Maddy felt she looked presentable again. What had happened to her bonnet she did not know, it had disappeared entirely, but with the hood of her old cloak pulled over her head, she felt she was fit to attend Davie’s funeral. She returned to the eating room just as Jack, pale and woebegone, entered. Behind him were Bart, Lew and Charlie, looking travel-stained and exhausted. They did not speak immediately, but held out their arms to take her in a mass embrace.

  ‘You must’ve thought us wadn’t coming, that us didn’t care,’ said Lew unsteadily, when at last they released her. ‘Didn’t get your letter until mid-morning yesterday.’

  ‘Someone’s going to pay for that,’ muttered Bart fiercely. ‘That letter should’ve come earlier!’

  ‘Us set off as quick as us could,’ Lew went on, ignoring the interruption, ‘making good time until nightfall. Us wadn’t so clear on the road as us thought, and in the darkness took a wrong turning.’

  ‘Halfway to Barnstaple us were afore us found out,’ put in Bart. ‘And though us walked right through the night us didn’t get here in time.’

  ‘How – how…?’ Lew stammered over the question he could not ask.

  ‘He wer
e powerful brave, you’d have been proud of him.’ In her distress Maddy’s fine accent crumbled. ‘He sent his love to everyone… He were that strong, I should’ve been comforting him and instead it were him as give me comfort… Oh Davie…!’ She collapsed against Lew’s chest and sobbed.

  ‘You didn’t ought to have been alone, maid,’ he said, patting her shoulder. ‘You didn’t ought.’

  The three brothers shot reproachful glances at their father, who hung his head in shame.

  ‘I be sorry, Maddy my lover,’ Jack said brokenly. ‘I be that ashamed of myself. I just couldn’t face it… I kept remembering him as a little un, always merry and up to mischief… He were our babe, you see, and I couldn’t face what they were going to do to un.’ Jack turned away, his shoulders heaving.

  Maddy went over to him and put her arms about him. ‘I know how you felt,’ she said gently. ‘And so did Davie. He understood and sent you his special love. I – I think that in some ways it was easier for him without so many… us’d have been that distressed, and us’d have set one another off and that’d only have upset him… Yes, Davie understood.’

  ‘Us gathers ’tidn’t all over,’ said Bart. ‘Us’d not been at the inn five minutes but this cabby arrives with some tale about a funeral.’

  ‘Yes, if we hurry there’s a chance for us to be at Davie’s funeral.’ Maddy recovered her accent and her composure as she wiped her eyes. ‘We—’

  She did not finish for Bart suddenly exclaimed, ‘What the hell be he doing yer!’

  For the first time the Shillabeer men noticed Cal Whitcomb standing in the background. And for the first time Maddy realised that she had quite accepted his presence, with no hint of the traditional animosity. If she were honest she was extremely thankful for his presence. Without him she would probably still be keening her grief away in the gutter.

  ‘Mr Whitcomb’s been very kind,’ she said, choosing her words with care. It would not do to admit how much she owed to Cal Whitcomb personally; the details of how she had collapsed with distress in the road would only serve to increase her father’s pain and guilt. ‘But for him, there would be no funeral.’

  ‘No funeral? What be talking about, maid?’ Bart glared belligerently at Cal. ‘Trust a Whitcomb to be where he idn’t wanted. You idn’t going to gloat over us, boy, so I suggests you get out now, while you can!’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ protested Maddy. ‘Without Mr Whitcomb there would be no funeral. They would have sent Davie’s body to the hospital instead.’

  ‘Don’t talk daft, our Maddy,’ Bart retorted. ‘What would they do that for when he be already dead?’

  ‘I thinks I knows,’ said Lew suddenly. ‘I heard un somewhere, only I didn’t believe un. They send the bodies of them convicted of murder to the hospital for the doctors to cut up. That be it, idn’t it?’

  ‘Oh my gawd!’ gasped Bart and Charlie in unison. Jack gave a choking sound, not a vestige of colour left in his face.

  ‘But it won’t happen to Davie,’ put in Maddy. ‘Because of Mr Whitcomb, he’ll be buried like a Christian.’

  ‘The thanks are mainly due to the squire.’ Cal spoke for the first time. ‘He is the one responsible, the one who wrote the appeal to the prison governor. I’m just his messenger.’

  ‘But you coming all this way to deliver the message, that was bound to add some weight, wadn’t it, you being Davie’s intended target?’ said Lew shrewdly.

  ‘A little, I suppose,’ said Cal.

  There was a pause, then without speaking, Lew stuck out his hand. He did it rigidly, as if he might regret it, but he did nevertheless. For a Shillabeer it was a major gesture. Cal took his hand and shook it. Slowly the others followed suit, ending finally with Bart whose handshake was the briefest.

  ‘I think we’d better be going,’ Cal said, then sensing a tension among the other men he added, ‘I am afraid I must accompany you to the prison since I have the necessary papers of entry, but when we get inside, I’ll withdraw. I’ve no intention of imposing on your grief.’

  Riding in a cab was one more new experience dimmed by the circumstances. Something that Maddy would ordinarily have regarded with great excitement she now considered as merely expedient. In fact, they were not far from the prison, yet she was grateful she did not have to walk. At the sight of the plain frontage on top of the slope above the road, her knees began to tremble again, and she feared she might not be able to stand. Thankfully, this time when she entered the prison she was flanked by the reassuring figures of Lew and Charlie.

  At the prison gate there was a delay. Cal went first and presented the documents which the warder appeared to query. Time and again the prison official glanced over to where the Shillabeers stood almost as if he were counting them. Maddy’s heart was in her mouth. Did the prison chaplain know they were coming? Would he wait for them? To her intense relief, agreement seemed to have been reached at the gate and the warder waved them in. Maddy had a strong suspicion that she saw him pocketing something slipped to him by Cal, but she may have been mistaken.

  They were led through a series of bleak courtyards and dismal passageways, each needing to be unlocked to let them through. The graveyard, when they were ushered in, proved to be neatly tended. That was all Maddy had time to notice before her eyes were drawn to the new grave yawning open in the freshly dug earth. Apart from two grave-diggers, prisoners presumably, the chaplain was already there, along with a man who proved to be the assistant governor. They looked surprised at the Shillabeers’ arrival, but Cal engaged them in earnest conversation.

  ‘What be that about?’ muttered Bart. ‘They’m looking at us as if us bain’t got no business yer.’

  ‘I knows what ’tis,’ said Jack. ‘They’m bothered in case Maddy be staying for the funeral. Maddy, maid, get yourself off somewhere, this bain’t no place for you.’

  ‘I’m staying.’

  Four pairs of masculine eyes stared at her in shocked amazement. In the village, funerals were affairs for men only. Maddy had not even attended her mother’s burial.

  ‘You can’t!’ objected Jack. ‘It idn’t…’ He had been going to say ‘fitting’, but the bleak look in Maddy’s eyes stopped him. After what his daughter had endured that morning, she could surely stand up to the rigours of her brother’s funeral.

  Whatever the problems holding up the proceedings, they had clearly been solved, for the assistant governor gave a signal, and from a side door came two warders pushing a trolley upon which rested a coffin. A decent coffin of polished wood, Maddy was relieved to notice. Davie was not going to his last rest in plain deal or, worse still, a canvas shroud.

  ‘Wait!’ Jack’s shout brought the warders, trolley and all, to a surprised halt. ‘Wait,’ he repeated, more quietly. ‘Us’ll carry him the rest of the way.’

  The four Shillabeer men moved forward and stationed themselves alongside the trolley. The warders looked rather nonplussed but stood aside without comment as Jack and his sons lifted the coffin onto their shoulders and carried it to the open grave.

  The service was plain and matter-of-fact, with the chaplain offering no comfort, no hope of a life to come other than what was in The Book of Common Prayer. He gave the impression that a convicted murderer deserved no better, just as his family deserved no comfort. It was over so quickly that Maddy felt she had not said a proper goodbye to her brother. Looking down, the coffin with its first scattering of earth seemed a forlorn final resting place for Davie, who had always been so full of life. Then she noticed a clump of snowdrops growing against the wall. Ignoring the disapproving exclamations of the warders, she picked a few of the fragile flowers and one by one she dropped them, watching through her tears as they fell on the polished coffin lid. Young and fresh, she felt they were a far better tribute to her brother than any words.

  Outside the prison gate they stood in an awkward group, five Shillabeers and one Whitcomb, not certain how to bridge a gap built up over three generations. As ever, it fell to Maddy to exp
ress the family feelings to Cal.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That’s a very poor way to express what we owe to you and the squire. Goodness knows, events have been terrible enough, but if they had taken Davie—’ She choked, unable to finish. With a struggle she recovered herself to continue, Things have been terrible enough, but without you and the squire intervening they would have been unbearable.’

  ‘It was the squire mainly. As I said, I am merely the messenger boy,’ said Cal.

  ‘That’s not true and you know it,’ Maddy stated. ‘And before I forget, we owe you something else – the cost of the coffin. Yes we do,’ she insisted as he waved a protesting hand. ‘That was no prison issue, but decent, polished wood. It was what we’d have chosen for Davie ourselves.’ A sudden thought struck her. ‘It was you who sent the laudanum, wasn’t it?’ she said. ‘And you were planning to attend the funeral, anyway, weren’t you? Even if we hadn’t met outside the prison… you’d have seen him decently into his grave.’ The last was a statement, not a question.

  Cal looked uncomfortable. ‘No one should go to his grave unattended,’ he said.

  That explained the long discussion at the prison gates: Cal had had to persuade the authorities to allow six people to enter when his papers were for only one. Yes, and probably had to bribe them into the bargain. The Shillabeers looked at one another, then Jack stepped forward and cleared his throat. ‘That were a great kindness,’ he said. ‘We be much obliged.’

  ‘Your thanks aren’t necessary,’ Cal said almost sharply. ‘If you want the truth, I still feel responsible for the tragedy. It was my evidence that was the most damning, though I never intended it to be.’

  Jack, still bowed down by the burden of his own remorse, could find it in his heart to be magnanimous to a fellow sufferer of self-reproach.

  ‘You spoke naught but the truth,’ he said. ‘It were that Linton devil. Twist the words of an angel, he could.’

  ‘You are very kind.’ Cal hesitated awkwardly, as if not knowing what more to say. Then he said hurriedly, ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have a train to catch within the hour. I suppose you’ll be going home, too?’