Eliza’s Daughter

by Joan Aiken

  ‘I was gathering mussels – I was carrying little Tirrizz, bless her heart, so she wouldn’t cut her little tender feet on the sharp mussel shells –’

  And when did you last carry little Tirrizz? I wondered. And where had all this happened?

  The mussel beds were all on the beaches east of Ashett.

  ‘Did you inform the coastguards?’ asked Willsworthy in his hoarse rasping voice.

  She whirled on him.

  ‘In course I told them! Or – leastways – I sent a message by Frank and Charley Tedburn. Oh, my poor heart! Oh, my little Polly. Shall I ever, ever see her more?’

  She lapsed into hysterical sobbing.

  ‘In the midst of life, God moves in a mysterious way,’ said Dr Moultrie.

  I stole into the back room. Nobody was paying any heed to me. All eyes were on Biddy. In the kitchen I found the boys, Hoby, Will and Jon, lugubriously contemplating a single rush basket in which slept a child.

  With my heart crashing painfully against my ribs, I tiptoed across the floor and inspected the occupant. There slept Polly Wellcome, in heavy, red-cheeked, open-mouthed slumber which suggested to me that she had been given a few drops of laudanum in her Daffy’s Elixir (a mixture to which Biddy sometimes had recourse if she wished to go out of an evening).

  ‘Wh-where’s T-Triz?’

  My teeth chattered so much that I could hardly utter.

  ‘That be Triz,’ said Will. He was a large, fat, stupid lad, who, although nearly twelve, had not yet succeeded in learning his letters. ‘Polly’s drownded,’ he added.

  I met the eye of Hoby.

  He explained: ‘Biddy, you see, keeps saying that it was Polly who drownded. And you better not give her the lie; old Willsworthy would be down on you like a chopper.’

  ‘But - but –’

  ‘Well, Biddy ought to know her own child, didn’t she? If she says it was her own little ’un got drownded?’

  That was Jonathan, whose mind moved sensibly enough, but he was, I knew, amazingly short-sighted, could hardly see more than a yard away from his nose, always came last in the games when the boys shot arrows or played at marbles. He had never looked closely at either child, I was sure of that.

  ‘Hoby – what happened? What does Biddy say?’

  ‘Why,’ said Hoby, scratching his head and frowning, ‘Biddy says she was out gathering mussels with the pair of kinchins, down on Growly Point rocks – and that the tide came in extra fast, and Polly was swept away down one of the wynds.’

  That was what the local people called the rock channels.

  ‘But,’ went on Hoby slowly and thoughtfully, ‘I don’t say but what that tale has me in a puzzle.’

  ‘Why, Hoby?’

  ‘Well, this is why: Biddy was at the fair until three; I saw her then, with my own eyes, colloguing with an old rapscallion wearing gold rings in’s ears. So how the pize would she have had time to get down to the shore? The tide would have been flooding afore that; the mussel beds would have been covered over. And she warn’t there earlier, for after dinner the lads and I saw her start off to Ashett with both the kinchins; didn’t we, Will, Jon-o?’

  ‘Ay, that’s so,’ they said.

  ‘But –’

  Then I began to think.

  ‘What is Willsworthy doing here?’

  ‘Why,’ Hoby explained, ‘this very morning, it seems, a message came down from Kinn Hall that Lady Hariot is better now, come home from Madery, cured of her sickness, back on her pins, and wants little Triz took up to the Hall, right away tomorrow, so as to be with her rightful ma.’

  ‘Oh, my heart alive . . .’

  ‘So Triz is to be sent off tomorrow.’

  ‘Biddy is going to send Polly – being as how she’s lost Triz –’

  None the less, something about the story seemed to me to be wholly wrong. And queer. Why, suddenly, would Biddy take Triz down to the shore and lose her – just when this summons had come? Why should she send off her own child to the Hall? Biddy was not a devoted mother, certainly, but she did show a kind of animal affection at times, when she would suddenly pluck Polly from the ground and give her a few smacking kisses. Towards Triz she had never displayed the slightest feeling. So – what was behind this? Did she want to part with her own child? And would nobody notice that an exchange had been made? Nobody guess?

  ‘Where does she say she was gathering mussels?’

  ‘On Growly Rocks.’

  ‘She never was there,’ I said with confidence. ‘Never. I sat up on the cliff head the livelong afternoon, and there was not a soul on the rocks all that time. Not a single soul. And there was – there was another lady on the cliff, who would say the same.’

  ‘You going to go in that room and give Biddy the lie?’ said Hoby with his wicked sidelong grin, eyes bright under sandy lashes.

  ‘What do you think she did with Triz, Hoby?’

  He shrugged. ‘Sold her to the gypsies? Triz was like a liddle elf-maid, anyway. Maybe they’d want her.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ But after a moment I said, ‘Do you really think Biddy might have done so?’

  Hoby cast up his eyes and shrugged again.

  I said, with a stiff tongue and a dry mouth, ‘I shall go over to Ashett. I shall find those gypsies. If they knew – if they knew the whole story –’

  ‘You are going to the gypsies?’ Jonathan looked at me in stupefaction. ‘Do you want your tripes cut out, girl? Firstly – how will you find them? And I wouldn’t care to be in your shoes when Biddy and Hannah come to hear –’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  I thought of little Triz, alone and terrified among the gypsies.

  In fact, I knew nothing about gypsies, whether they were cruel or kind. Among the natives of Othery they had a wild reputation. Some of it might be deserved, some not. It was said they stole or bought children. Why? Nobody knew. They had plenty of their own.

  ‘Well, I’m going,’ I said, more stoutly than I felt.

  Just then there came wails from the back door. It was poor Charlotte Gaveston, the lack-wit, and Biddy’s two foster-boys, Charley and Frank, crying for their supper. Under cover of the commotion, I slipped away on the path to Ashett. After a moment or two I heard footsteps.

  ‘I’m a-coming with you,’ Hoby said. ‘I reckon you are wholly daft, crack-brained, dicked in the nob; and there will surely be Old Hokey to pay if you do find Triz; but you do stand by your friends and I like that in you, liddle ’un. And you may need a bit of help.’

  I was immensely glad of his company. Night was beginning to thicken as we crossed the ridge and dropped down into Ashett; but the fair was still going full tilt, with torchlights, and flares, and music and dancing, pipes and tabors and drunken yells.

  ‘Where were the gypsies?’ I asked Hoby.

  ‘When I left, they were all grouped together on the Folworthy Road, starting to pack up their gear.’

  But when we had made our way with some difficulty across the fairground, between half-dismantled stalls and groups of drunken revellers, and reached that area, I was dismayed to find it empty and dark; the gypsies had already moved on.

  ‘Ay, ay, they went up Folworthy way,’ a man said when we asked him. ‘Likely they’ll make their camp up on Folworthy Moor. They Romany travellers never wants to bide too long near a town.’

  I was nearly crying with disappointment, and Hoby made a strong case for turning back.

  ‘Liddle ’un, Liza-loo, see, we’ve come far enough; ’tis fair and late, and we’m never going to catch ’em now.’

  ‘Oh, Hoby! Let’s go another mile or two. Maybe the gypsies will camp just outside of town. Or, you go back, if you are tired, and I’ll go on . . .’

  But he would not let me go on alone, and so we walked two, three miles westward from Ashett, across Hoe Bay and up the steep hill on to Umberlei
gh Down. My feet ached, and the night was beginning to be very cold; a huge pale sparkling moon soared overhead – the same moon that had looked on me kindly so much earlier in the day.

  Mr Sam would like that moon, I thought. Mr Sam would give his endorsement to my quest.

  Hoby was very patient. He walked quietly beside me. He did not complain.

  And at last we found the gypsies.

  They had made themselves an untidy camp, with their wagons in a circle and a few shabby tents. A fire burned in the centre. Pale-coloured lurcher dogs glided about, and nimble tabby cats.

  A noble smell of cooking came from the pot on the fire. Rabbit stew.

  ‘What do you want, gadscho children?’ asked a dark-haired woman, seeing us hesitate at the edge of the circle of firelight. She gave us a sour, dismissing glance.

  I thought of Mr Sam; thought how he would comport himself at such a moment. ‘If you please, ma’am, I wish to see the – the main person. The head person here.’

  She looked at me frowningly. And, I suppose, I extended my hands in appeal.

  From that moment, all changed. The woman seemed immeasurably different. She nodded. She led us to a wagon that was somewhat larger than the rest. Here, on the steps, sat a man not old but thin and weathered, sharp-featured with a hooked nose and very bright eyes, gold rings in his ears. A shock of grey hair.

  ‘’Tis the same cove as I saw Biddy a-colloguing with,’ Hob whispered in my ear.

  ‘What is it, then, gadscho children?’

  ‘Sir,’ I said – I thought it best to be very respectful, as if he were a magistrate or a parson – ‘is there – did a woman leave a child with you today? A very pale-haired little child – like an elf-child?’

  ‘What is her name?’ he said, looking at me very intently.

  ‘Her name is Thérèse.’

  Upon impulse then, I called aloud – in a high shrill voice that I hardly ever made use of, except very occasionally to call home the cattle or pigs – most people had never heard it.

  Triz had, though; sometimes I would do it to make her laugh.

  ‘Triz? Ohee, Triz? Are you here? Can you hear me?’

  In a moment she came bundling out of another wagon, flung herself tumbling down the steps, hurled herself across the firelit circle and into my arms.

  ‘Alize! Alize! ’

  ‘There was a mistake made,’ I told the earringed man. ‘She was handed over to you by mistake. You can see that, can’t you?’

  ‘And the money that passed?’ he demanded, rather grimly. ‘Can you pay it back?’

  I spread out my hands. ‘I don’t know anything about money. We have no money.’

  Hoby helpfully turned his ragged pockets inside out.

  But the earringed man, like the dark-haired woman, was staring at my hands.

  He murmured something to her rapidly, in a foreign tongue. And they both made a gesture, as if to ward off the Evil Eye.

  ‘And you can sing?’ he said to me.

  ‘Sing ? I don’t know. Why?’

  ‘Sing after me.’

  He sang a queer spread of notes; almost a tune. It began very low, and ended very high. ‘Sing that now,’ he said. So I sang it.

  ‘Again.’ I sang it again.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘We forget about the money. You are a –’ And again that foreign word.

  He took hold of my hands (Triz was terribly unwilling to let go of the one she clung to) – and held them for a moment between his own, which were rough, greasy, gnarled like the bark of trees, but surprisingly warm and kindly.

  ‘Go in peace then, gadscho children. You have a long walk home.’

  ***

  It was indeed a long walk. My feet ached more and more. The moon became ginger-coloured and trailed down the sky. We took turns carrying Triz, who weighed amazingly heavy, considering her fairylike stature.

  And when we did get home, what a rumpus!

  Hoby had been perfectly right in his forebodings.

  Biddy had remained in Hannah’s house, and a kind of wake was being conducted. They had been drowning their grief and mourning the dead in tankards of green cider with smuggled eau-de-vie added; a most perilous mix of liquors. Nobody was at all grateful to have Triz returned; quite the contrary. Biddy reviled me as a wicked little viper, always ready to do somebody an ill turn.

  ‘Making out as how that’s Triz! That’s not Triz! How do we know that’s not some gypsy’s brat? Bringing her here! The idea! What next, I’d like to know?’

  However this argument was wholly undermined when Polly woke up, roused from her drugged slumber by all the shouting, and mumbled out, ‘Tiz! Tiz!’ and with, for her, a quite unusual demonstration of enthusiasm, went to hug her foster-sister.

  But I noticed Triz flinch away when Biddy approached her, and wondered whether her infant mind had absorbed the fact that her foster-mother had planned to dispose of her as one might part with a puppy or a kitten, turning her over to an alien group without the slightest compunction.

  In the end everybody was too tired and too drunk, I daresay, to pursue the argument further that evening. Dr Moultrie and Mr Willsworthy, figures of authority, had left, and I did not think it was the time to fire my main salvo, the fact that I had been on the cliff all afternoon and knew that Biddy never went anywhere near the shore. (Or that the lady with the odd eyes would be able to corroborate my story; if I could ever find out who she was.) In the meantime I said, ‘Triz can sleep with me; if you don’t want her,’ and carried her off to my cubbyhole, where, twined together – for there was scarcely room for one, let alone two – we passed the rest of the night, she in a sleep of utter exhaustion with her threadlike arms tight around my neck, while I lay awake for hours in a fever of worry.

  Being but a child, and only too well aware of the great and incalculable powers of adults, I feared that next day might bring yet worse troubles; that Biddy might find some means of repudiating Triz and sending her back to the gypsies; that somehow her tale would be preferred over mine; that evil and injustice would triumph, as I had seen them triumph many times before.

  Next day, however, matters turned out very differently from my expectations. (As they almost invariably do; but I am never prepared for this.)

  For a start, we all overslept, worn out with exertion, dispute, green cider and brandy.

  I was roused from my slumber by a thunderous rap on the door, and shouts.

  ‘Open up there! Where’s Mrs Wellcome? Where’s t’other Mrs Wellcome? Show a leg, show a leg! Here’s Squire’s lady a-waiting for her babby!’

  Stupefied with late, heavy sleep, I stumbled downstairs and opened the door. Behind me I could hear the grunts of Hannah and Tom as they staggered about, trying to make themselves presentable.

  Outside the door was a pony-chaise waiting. A groom stood at the horses’ heads, and another – I knew him, it was Jeff Diswoody, head groom at the Hall – was the one who had been banging and shouting.

  ‘Damme, what’s to do? I’d have reckoned ye’d all be up at cockcrow making the little maid ready – here’s my lady come her own self – iss! – to welcome home her nestling – who you’d think ’ud be a-waiting wreathed in roses like a May queen – what do we find? Not a soul astir!’

  I looked past him to the chaise – and there was yesterday’s lady of the cliff! Today she was dressed fine, in yellow silk and gloves, and a silken sunshade, but I knew her at once by her swivel eye – and also by the smile she gave me. She was Lady Hariot! Of course, I should have guessed it. Who else could she be?

  Here was my chance and I took it like lightning.

  ‘Only a moment, my lady!’ I gulped, hasted back up the stairs to where Triz, like a scrawny fledgling, was blinking and rubbing her eyes in my tumbled nest.

  ‘Come quick, Triz, here’s your lady mother waiting for you, all in
silk-satin, and two grand white horses ready to pull ye home!’

  I lifted and carried her down the stairs. Poor little thing, she was still half-asleep, and, I daresay, mazed from all her adventures of the previous day; she burst out a-crying and buried her head in my shoulder, clinging to me frenziedly as Jeff Diswoody tried to take her.

  ‘Alize! Alize!’ she cried.

  ‘Now, now, what’s all this to-do, don’t want to go to your own mam?’

  Of course she didn’t.

  ‘Poor little one,’ said Lady Hariot seeing at once how matters lay. ‘No wonder that she does not like to leave her friends. But I have a solution: why do not you – what is your name, my child?’

  ‘Liza, so please you, ma’am.’

  ‘You, Liza, come up with Thérèse now to the Hall – then it will not seem so strange to her. For I can see she is very attached to you. And then, after she is settled in, one of the grooms shall drive you back.’

  ‘Law bless you, my lady, I can walk back from the Hall easy as fall off a brick,’ I said, enchanted at this solution to my problem, and I hopped up into the chaise, still clasping Triz in my arms. ‘I am sorry, ma’am, that you should see her all of a muss, like this, but – but Biddy and Hannah were both late back from the fair last night –’

  ‘It does not signify, not in the least,’ said Lady Hariot absently. ‘I have clothes waiting for her.’ With one eye she was thirstily, eagerly studying her daughter, while the other one strayed to the cottage where Hannah, who must have made one of the speediest toilets of her existence, was curtseying, bobbing and beaming, now arrayed in a clean cap, tucker and apron.

  ‘Oh, ma’am! Oh, my lady! Oh, ’tis such a joy to see ye well and back home and bobbish again!’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Wellcome. And thank you for taking care of my daughter. I am not standing on ceremony, as you say. Good-day!’ she called, as Jeff cracked his whip and the ponies broke into a trot. Hannah’s face was a study as we bowled away down the village street. I rather dreaded to think what my reception would be when I got home, but to have Triz safely settled, and this chance of seeing the Hall, would amply compensate, I felt, for whatever trouble lay ahead.