‘What was what?’ asked Joan. ‘Be someone coming?’
‘No, I’m sure I heard a cry.’
‘I don’t know how you managed that.’ Joan was sceptical. ‘I can’t hear naught but the wind howling and the river roaring.’
‘I know I heard something,’ insisted Maddy.
Then came the sound of the Crowther’s dog barking. Not the usual excited yap he gave when a fox or cat dared to cross his territory, but a deep disturbed baying.
‘Maybe you’m right, maid,’ Annie said. ‘Us’d best go and have a look. You two go on ahead. I’ll come as best I can.’
Gathering up shawls and lanterns, they went out into the stormy darkness, to encounter Elsie Crowther, followed by a string of children. ‘I were coming to you,’ she said, the wind almost whipping away her words. ‘Something have set the dog up good and proper, and he won’t settle. There, look at the mazed beast!’
By the scant light of their lanterns they could see the dog running back and forth along the edge of the river, barking at something unseen in the swiftly flowing water.
‘I saw something,’ cried Maddy. ‘Someone’s out there! Look!’
The three women held their lanterns aloft. Their light was not strong enough to penetrate far, but the meagre beams caught something white being tossed by the seething waters some yards away from the shore. It was a fleeting sighting, then whatever it was disappeared in the watery darkness.
‘Tis a bit of bleached driftwood,’ insisted Joan.
But both Elsie and Maddy were more familiar with the river.
‘That were a face! No two ways about un,’ declared Elsie. ‘Some poor soul be in trouble out there. Yer, where’m you off to?’ she demanded, as Maddy rushed away from the water’s edge.
‘To get the boat.’
‘You’m idn’t going out there!’ cried Joan and Elsie in horrified unison. But they hitched up their skirts and ran after her towards the boat store just the same.
Maddy flung open the large doors. Buffeted by the wind, the women and children struggled to drag the boat out and across the foreshore, Joan scolding Maddy for her foolhardiness every step of the way. As they pushed the craft into the water Maddy feared her stepmother was right. The gale was whipping up the swift incoming tide so that the water seemed to seethe and boil. Only a fool would take an open boat out in such conditions, and in darkness too. But she had seen a face out there in the tumult, and in that one brief glimpse she was convinced that the face had registered despair.
The boat was already bucking and pulling on the waves as Maddy scrambled aboard and set the oars in the rowlocks.
‘You’m idn’t going to manage on your own,’ cried Elsie, already tucking up-her skirts to climb in with her.
Joan pulled her back. ‘You’m got little ones to think on,’ she said. ‘I be going.’ With a helping hand from Elsie, and Annie, who had now reached them, Joan scrambled into the bow of the rowing boat. She knelt there, clutching at the gunwale with one hand and holding the lantern aloft with the other.
Conditions were bad enough when they were in the relative shelter of the bight of Duncannon. As Maddy began to edge the boat upstream, further from the shore, the full force of the storm hit them. It needed all her strength at the oars to maintain control. Joan’s lantern, at her back, was of no use to her and in the darkness she used sheer instinct and experience to judge where she was; too much one way and they would be tossed ashore, perhaps against some rocky outcrop; too much the other and they would be swept into the turbulence of midstream, where their craft would stand no chance on such a night.
‘I saw something,’ yelled Joan above the screaming of the storm. ‘Head further away from the shore.’
Obediently Maddy pulled on the port oar as well as she could. It was a dangerous manoeuvre, she knew, for she could feel the current tug more strongly at the boat. Her admiration for her stepmother grew with every minute. Maddy was afraid. It was more than the bitter cold that was causing her teeth to chatter, it was sheer terror, yet she knew the river well and was accustomed to being in boats. Joan had no such advantage; her experience on the water was restricted to accompanying Jack on the occasional summer’s evening. Nevertheless, the older woman had volunteered to come, and now she remained crouched in the bow, peering into the gloom with never a protest or hint of panic.
‘There be something right ahead. Oh no!’ At Joan’s cry they were overwhelmed by utter darkness. The lantern had gone overboard. There was movement in the bows, making the boat more difficult to handle than ever, but just as Maddy was about to urge her stepmother to sit still there was a thump. The boat had hit something.
‘Tis a maid,’ cried Joan. ‘I got her!’
But catching hold of the drowning woman was one thing, getting her into the boat was a very different matter. For what seemed an age Joan struggled to pull the waterlogged body aboard. Maddy grappled with keeping the boat as stable as possible, conscious that she was growing more and more exhausted and that the most strenuous part of her task was yet to come.
‘We aren’t – going – to manage!’ gasped Maddy. ‘Can you – keep a hold – as she is?’
Joan’s reply was a sob of assent.
Maddy began the perilous task of turning the boat, hampered by its heavy, trailing burden. The instant she got it turned, heading against both the current and the wind, she feared her arms were going to be tom from their sockets, for the craft bucked and leapt like a wild thing. Strenuously she hauled on the oars until her muscles felt like strands of red-hot wire with the effort, but with every pull the tide tossed them back upstream. The sodden body, still grasped by Joan, acted as a sheet anchor, hampering them even more. In a brief glimpse over shoulder, Maddy saw that Annie, Elsie and the children had a fire on shore to guide them in. Biting her lips with dete: jination she made a greater effort. She tried to ignore the deepening chill round her feet as water came into the boat. She knew that, although she was trying to pull harder, her strokes were actually growing weaker as fatigue took its toll.
Heroically Joan attempted the near impossible by bailing whilst continuing to grasp the woman.
‘Us idn’t getting – no closer,’ she gasped. ‘I be going to have to – let her – go.’
‘No! Hold on!’ Somehow, in that agony of effort, pain and fear, Maddy managed to grunt out the three words. Common sense told her that the unknown woman was probably dead by now, but it made no difference. She was determined that the three of them would get back to shore. But even determination such as hers had its limitations. The oars felt like lead in her hands and they were making no headway. She knew she was barely keeping the boat under control in the roaring tide.
Through her exhaustion she heard Joan’s shout, ‘They’m coming!’ She was too tired to wonder who ‘they’ were, until she was suddenly aware that the boat had become comparatively lighter and freer. Then miraculously another craft came close and her father’s anxious voice shouted across, ‘You’m all right now. Us’ll throw you a line and tow you back.’
Manning the other boat with Jack were William and Joe Crowther, and in the stem was a dark heap which she guessed must be the unknown woman. Somehow they had managed to haul the body aboard their craft, freeing hers of its burden. Catching the flailing line was no easy task but after several attempts, Joan managed it. Then came the journey back to land. Although there were three strong oarsmen in the other boat, Maddy knew they could never tow another craft unaided in these conditions. Every part of her throbbed with pain, cold and fatigue, but she bent over to the oars again to give them her utmost assistance.
The crunch of shingle beneath the keel was a most welcome sound. She felt her icy fingers being gently prised from the oars, and strong arms lifting her. Then she was enveloped in warmth and light and she knew she was safely home again. After that, everything went black.
It was the sharp pungency of smelling-salts that brought her back to consciousness.
‘You’m going to be right
as rain presently,’ Annie’s voice said reassuringly.
‘Joan! Where’s Joan?’ were Maddy’s first words.
‘Yer, maid. More or less in one piece.’
With difficulty, Maddy opened eyes that stung with salt spray and saw her stepmother, pale but managing to smile, sitting opposite her. William and Joe were there too, looking concerned.
‘And Father?’
‘He’m just carried that poor soul upstairs,’ said Annie.
‘Poor soul? You mean the drowned woman.’ Oddly enough Maddy had almost forgotten the stranger who had been the cause of it all.
‘Yes, but her idn’t drowned. Her’m still alive, though Lord knows how… But not for long, I fear. Not in her condition. Elsie be tending her.’
As Annie spoke, Jack came hurriedly downstairs.
‘How be her?’ asked Annie.
‘Very poorly,’ replied Jack. ‘I wondered if I should go over to Paignton for the doctor or summat, but Elsie reckons her be beyond doctors and it be the parson her needs.’
‘I’ll go for un,’ said William.
‘And I’d best get back to the childer, seeing as my Elsie seems likely to be here for a spell,’ said Joe.
When they had gone, Jack looked at Maddy and Joan. ‘I don’t know if I should be proud as punch of my maids for being that danged brave,’ he said, ‘or leather the daylights out of the pair of you for near scaring me to death.’
‘I’m sorry if we gave you a fright, Father,’ said Maddy, ‘but we couldn’t just let her drown.’
‘Us’d never have slept easy again for the rest of our lives, and you knows it,’ put in Joan.
‘Even so, ’twere foolhardy.’
‘Maybe it were,’ put in Annie, ‘but I’ll tell you something near as daft, and that be you two sitting there soaked to the skin. I took the liberty of setting some dry clothes to warm over the chair there. And there be some broth heating.’
‘I’ll go and make sure us’ve got plenty of water and kindling, then,’ said Jack. ‘’Tis going to be that sort of a night, I reckon.’
Maddy was so stiff and racked with pain she wondered if she could change out of her soaking garments, and judging by the groans coming from Joan she was suffering too. Somehow she struggled into dry clothes, and slowly began to feel their warmth and that of the fire seep into her chilled bones.
Elsie came downstairs just then, a large jug in her hand. Seeing Maddy and Joan, she beamed.
‘You’m a deal better, ’tis obvious,’ she said. ‘A pair of drowned rats wadn’t in it, the way you was looking.’
‘What about the woman?’ asked Maddy.
Elsie grew grave and shook her head. ‘Not much more’n a girl, and no wedding ring. Tis the old story. Her’m paying for un now, poor soul. Baby’s on the way, but you can tell the maid habn’t got the strength, even without being fished out of the Dart. ’Tis a mystery how her got in the river, but I don’t suppose us’ll ever find out. Her’m too weak to talk. Skin and bone, her be, and that dirty even the river habn’t washed her clean. That’s why I’m come for some warm water, see if I can tidy her up a bit. Tidn’t right for her to meet her Maker all mucky.’
‘Well come up and help.’ Joan made to rise from her chair, but Elsie pushed her back.
‘You bide by the fire and get some hot broth in you,’ she said. ‘You won’t help no one by asking for lung fever. I can manage for now.’
It would have been good to sit by the fire, recovering from their ordeal, if the increasing cries and groans from upstairs had not reminded them that the night’s drama was not over.
‘I reckon us should go up and help, don’t you?’ said Joan eventually.
‘I’ll bide yer, minding the fire and keeping the water boiling,’ said Annie. ‘I finds they stairs hard going.’
Maddy knew exactly what she meant when she tried to climb the steep staircase. Her legs were too stiff to obey her, and she finished up on her hands and knees, with Joan following her in a similar manner.
Elsie was standing over the double bed usually occupied by Jack and Joan. In it now a gaunt, emaciated female tossed and turned in the agonies of childbirth.
‘I wish William’d hurry up with Parson,’ Elsie whispered. ‘Her’m idn’t going to last till the babe be born. ’Tis a miracle her’m kept going this long.’
Maddy went over to the bed and, picking up a towel, gently began to dry the pitiful creature’s still-wet hair. Unexpectedly, the girl’s eyes opened and she looked straight at Maddy.
Instantly Maddy stopped her drying.
‘I know her!’ she exclaimed. ‘We all do! She’s Victoria Fitzherbert, that’s who she is!’
Elsie and Joan gazed down at the bed in amazement.
‘Why, so it be!’ Elsie exclaimed. ‘I never recognised her, her’m that changed.’
‘Yer, in that case us’d better fetch her folks,’ said Joan. ‘Maddy, my lover, your limbs be youngest. Can you make it downstairs and ask your father to go?’
But before Maddy could move, she found her hand clutched by Victoria.
‘They won’t come… turned me away…’ The girl’s voice was barely audible.
‘They never did! What sort of folk be they?’ demanded Joan in a whisper, scandalised at such heartlessness.
‘I came here… nowhere else to go… then I saw the river…’ The words faded, though her hand continued to grip Maddy’s.
The three women tending her exchanged shocked looks across the bed. She had tried to drown herself! What Maddy and Joan had thought to be her struggle for survival had been the exact opposite.
‘The river wouldn’t take me! It pushed me back!’ Victoria’s sudden cry of despair shook them all.
‘Un didn’t want you, my lover,’ said Elsie, gently smoothing Victoria’s brow. ‘The river have took its due for thus year. Un don’t want no more.’
The irony of the situation was tragic: it had been Patrick, Victoria’s lover and presumably the father of her child, whom the Dart had claimed.
Another burst of birth pains overtook her and she writhed on the bed in agony. As she did so, the neck of her nightgown – one of Maddy’s – came open, revealing a favour hanging on a damp, grubby piece of ribbon. It was a Janus ring, identical to the one Maddy kept in her drawer. At that moment any lingering animosity that she had for Victoria faded and all she felt was a deep pity. How easily she might have been the betrayed girl in her place, deserted and desperate. But no, Maddy knew she would never have found herself in Victoria’s plight, for there was no way that Jack and Joan would ever have turned her away from their door.
Carefully easing Victoria’s fingers from her wrist, she hobbled downstairs and went in search of her father. Readily he agreed to fetch Mr and Mrs Fitzherbert, though he feared that their daughter might not survive long enough to see them.
Contrary to Elsie’s prediction, Victoria was still alive when her child was born. It was a boy, perfectly formed but far too small to have survived. Joan swiftly wrapped the tiny body in a piece of clean sheet and laid it in a basket on the floor. ‘Never had no chance, poor little mite,’ she said. ‘Oh, why don’t William get yer with the parson!’
Her stepmother’s speedy action had prevented Maddy from seeing the child, and she could not tell if he had resembled his father or not. She was glad. There was enough tragedy about that night without further reminders of Patrick.
Below stairs the door slammed in the wind, and the parson’s voice echoed up the stairs. ‘I know my way, Annie.’ In a moment he was with them in the lamplit bedroom.
‘Thank goodness you’m yer, Mr Bowden,’ said Joan. ‘Her’m sinking fast. I don’t know how her’m lasted this long, and that be the truth. I reckon her’m waiting for you, that be all I can figure.’
Joan’s words proved uncannily accurate, for as Mr Bowden approached the bed, Victoria’s eyes flew open. They were huge and overbright with fever.
‘Must tell… been very wicked.’ Her voice was no more than a f
aint rasp.
‘The Lord is compassionate to those who truly repent, my child,’ said the Reverend Bowden gently. ‘And you have suffered much for your sins’
But Victoria grew agitated. ‘Not the baby… not that. Patrick… I killed Patrick.’ If she was aware of the gasp of horrified surprise from the others, she gave no sign. Her troubled eyes were fixed on Maddy. ‘You loved him too… must know, I didn’t mean to kill him … We doubled back to Dartmouth. I had some money… gave it to Patrick for tickets… boat to America… he spent it… so angry I threw his fiddle into the river… Didn’t know he’d try to rescue it… poor Patrick…’ Her voice had faded to nothing as tears of sorrow and weakness trickled unheeded down her cheeks. For a moment it seemed as if she had slipped away, and the parson began to pray. Then unexpectedly she rallied and a faint smile lit her face. ‘He was the gypsy and I was the lady,’ she said quite strongly. ‘I fell in love with a raggle-taggle gypsy and I ran off with him and…’ She got no further. The light faded suddenly from her face and her eyes glazed over.
‘Her’m gone, poor maid,’ said Joan, gently closing the pale eyelids and drawing up the sheet.
‘Such a pity we did not have time to persuade her the young man’s death was not her fault,’ said Mr Bowden, rising stiffly from his knees. ‘She might have died more easy in her mind.’
‘I couldn’t fathom what her were saying right at the end,’ added Elsie. ‘Going on about gypsies. There wadn’t no gypsies. Her were rambling.’
Maddy knew what Victoria had meant. Patrick had never been quite at ease in the real world. His life had been a series of make-believe episodes, always with a woman involved. With her, he had been the worldly fellow in love with a simple rustic maiden, relishing opening her eyes to the wider world about her. Later, after Davie’s death, he had played the mainstay and comfort. From what she had heard about his brief affair with Lucy Ford, at the Church House, he had been the ardent admirer happy to appreciate the jewel that had no place in such a sordid setting. With Victoria, as in the old folk song, he had evidently played the wandering gypsy whose vagabond life was irresistible to the lady of quality.
Daughter of the River Page 42
