The Orphans of Ardwick

by Emma Hornby

  ‘She’ll not.’ Voice dropping, his eyes deepened in intensity. ‘Pip?’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘I can do this. I’ll remedy this for us, I swear. You believe in me, don’t you?’

  He’d spoken with such sincerity, such conviction, that she actually almost did. Almost. She forced herself to nod. ‘Course, lad. Course I do.’

  His face relaxed a little and he gave a whisper of a smile. For a long moment, as he stared at her, it looked like he wanted to say more. Then for reasons she couldn’t fathom, his cheeks pinkened and he rose quickly to his feet. ‘Aye, well. I’d best get on.’

  Josephine swished the square of silk over the stones, smiled, then repeated the action. ‘Beautiful,’ she murmured, a soft, faraway look in her eyes.

  ‘Like thee.’

  ‘Oh, Pip. You are a dear.’

  She returned Josephine’s smile then continued with the dusting of the mantel. Her mistress appeared so much calmer these days. Easy of mind, free of unnecessary worry. Her complexion was healthier, eyes brighter. Being in love suited her. Swallowing a sad sigh, Pip averted her gaze.

  Josephine returned her attention to polishing the ring Alexander had presented her with to finalise their engagement, a thin band embedded with a cluster of amethyst and sapphire stones as pure and flawless as the bride-to-be herself and their future together, he’d told her. The gems themselves, he’d specifically chosen to represent his initials and thus his love for her. The sickening deception of it all, when her mistress had proudly informed her of this, turned Pip’s stomach.

  ‘Ah, dear girl. I didn’t tell you, did I?’

  Pulled from her thoughts, Pip shook her head. ‘Tell me what, Miss Josephine?’

  ‘Alexander and I were discussing our future home when he called yesterday evening. The subject of staff came up and I informed him I would like you and the boys to come and work for us.’

  She was silent, then: ‘Oh?’

  ‘He was most pleased with the idea. Is he not the most agreeable man in the entire world, Pip?’

  She’d believed he’d persuade her mistress to be rid of her. She’d also half wished he would. Now this … Forcing to her face what she hoped was more smile than grimace, she nodded.

  ‘I believe he has a soft spot for the three of you, you know.’

  This time, Pip didn’t respond; she couldn’t have got a word past the bile in her throat. A soft spot. The thought made her skin crawl.

  ‘After all, as I told you recently, he too is an orphan of some years. He understands the pain that such a loss brings. Oh yes, yes; he shall treat you all with a tender hand, I just know it.’

  Again, another false smile; quickly, she turned back to her cleaning.

  ‘It’s rather tragic that he hasn’t any kith or kin to speak of. Now we’re betrothed, we would have been making arrangements for our two families to meet. Ah, poor darling. Well, he does have a sister residing in France; rather a distance for me to travel, I fear, though maybe some day she will brave the crossing so we can make one another’s acquaintance.’

  Aye, and probably not, Miss Josephine, she said in her mind. This sister of his likely hasn’t a clue about you, nor the fact her brother’s to be wed. The less folk that know of his scheme the better, was likely his thinking, I’ll be bound. In fact, he was probably lying about being parentless, too, for the same reason, she thought, gritting her teeth. To lie about such a thing, when others were forced to live the reality … He really was despicable. Who knew what further untruths he’d fed her lady to uphold this charade? And why? For what reason, what?

  ‘Sister-in-law, hello.’

  Lost in her musings, Pip hadn’t heard the door open; at Josephine’s greeting, her back stiffened. She didn’t turn but carried on with her duties, head down.

  ‘Alexander is downstairs and wishing to see you.’

  ‘Oh, wonderful. Though I wasn’t expecting him …’ Josephine’s hands fluttered to her hair then dropped to straighten her skirts.

  ‘He decided to call in for a brief visit on the way to his gentlemen’s club. Come along, then. He cannot spare much time.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course. I, I just need to …’

  Hearing the agitated note in her mistress’s tone, Pip forced herself to turn. ‘You look gradely, Miss Josephine, honest,’ she murmured reassuringly.

  ‘Really, Pip?’

  ‘Aye. Go on, now. Deep breaths—’

  ‘Come along, for goodness’ sake,’ snapped Caroline, flinging the door wide. ‘He’ll be gone before you’ve managed to leave this room.’

  Pip shot Mrs Goldthorpe an angry look, but it quickly melted into a frown. She looked terrible – more so than usual. Her lips were pinched, her piercing eyes darker with barely suppressed feeling. Though twin spots of angry red stained her cheekbones, the rest of her was a pasty grey. For a fleeting moment, she wondered if Simon had put his plan into action already and the woman had discovered what he was up to, but quickly dismissed this. A child Simon might be. A fool he wasn’t. Cunning from years of necessity, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to give the game away, certainly not this early. Would he?

  Barely able to wait a full minute after the two women had disappeared downstairs, Pip was following in their wake, though her feet took her not to the drawing room but on towards the kitchen.

  Miss Josephine’s voice, high with excitement, carried through the door as Pip passed: ‘Oh, you have? The first week in May? Alexander, that’s marvellous! An absolutely perfect time of year for a wedding.’

  ‘Well, darling, I cannot advocate a drawn-out betrothal. It is merely precious time wasted, in my opinion.’

  ‘Oh, indeed. Thank you, thank you …’

  Pip closed her eyes, sighed, then hurried her step. After glancing around the kitchen and seeing that Simon was absent, she made for the garden at the back of the house. She found him on his knees, busy tending a sad-looking flower bed, a pile of dead weeds beside him. ‘All right, lad?’

  ‘Oh, better than.’ A hint of laughter coated his response. He rubbed his hands together, brushed dirt from his trousers, then rose. ‘Mrs Goldthorpe came to the kitchen earlier.’ He nodded when Pip’s eyes widened. ‘The young miss did just as I knew she would.’

  ‘What did Mrs Goldthorpe say?’

  ‘Blasted Cook for filling Miss Lucy’s head with nonsense. Cook gave her short shrift, mind – you know how she can be – and the lady went off with a flea in her ear. But Pip … I don’t know …’ He chewed his bottom lip thoughtfully. ‘There were summat in her countenance, summat different. I reckon a worm of fear has taken root in her. I don’t know, can’t explain it, can’t describe how she looked. Just different, you know?’

  ‘I do, as it happens. I were for thinking the very same just now when she called on Miss Josephine,’ Pip was forced to admit. ‘Eeh, lad …’

  Simon’s smile grew. ‘It might work. The bleedin’ thing just might!’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I’ve not thought that far ahead as yet. Careful planning is what’s needed, here. For this to pan out like we want, it needs to be done right.’

  ‘Well.’ Pip cast him a sidelong glance as they made back to the kitchen. ‘A date for the wedding’s been set: the beginning of May. That gives us just a few short months to beat Mrs Goldthorpe at her own hellish game. Josephine can’t marry that man, Simon. She can’t.’

  A flicker of uncertainty touched his eyes. But just as swiftly, it vanished, and the lad she knew and believed in implicitly was back. ‘The month of May, you say? Aye, plenty of time, with some to spare. You’ll see.’

  Chapter 18

  MUCH TO PIP’S secret astonishment, see she did.

  Simon had set to work that very night, though the first she knew of it was when Caroline hauled her from her slumber with a rough shake. The woman, hair flowing freely around her shoulders, her long white nightgown standing out starkly in the darkness, leaned over her, hissing, ‘What is the meaning of this? An
swer me, you young wretch!’

  ‘What, what …?’ Brain sludgy with sleep, Pip could only blink in confusion.

  ‘You know very well what. You, skulking … skulking around …’ She paused, as though finally realising this was an impossibility – Pip had clearly been fast asleep just now. There was no escaping the fact. She’d been nowhere apart from her bed, and Caroline knew it.

  ‘Mrs Goldthorpe, what is it? I were but dreaming; what have I done?’

  It was a long moment before the woman’s quiet response pierced the silence. ‘It matters not. Get back to sleep.’

  She sloped back to her own room, and Pip’s small smile went with her.

  ‘I thought it best to strike while Miss Lucy’s words were still fresh in her mind,’ Simon told her discreetly the following morning as they were eating their porridge. He flashed a shaky grin. ‘By, I don’t mind telling you: my heart weren’t half thumping as I stole up the main stairs.’

  ‘You could have warned me is all I’m saying. Frickened the liver out of me, it did, her looming over me like that in the dead of night.’ Pip glanced about before adding, ‘What did you do, then? Whatever it were, lad, it rattled her good and proper. She were fair wild for answers.’

  ‘Listened at her room, didn’t I, to make sure all were still within, then I opened the door – slow, you know, so’s it creaked all eerie, like – before slamming it shut again. ’Ere, it were perfect. I almost scared my rotten self! The noise I heard her let out afore I scarpered … Honest to God, I wondered for a minute if she’d gone abed that night with a suckling piglet.’

  ‘What are youse two giggling at, then?’ Cook called across, smiling, as they smothered nervous laughter with their hands.

  ‘Pip were just telling a joke,’ Simon called back, thinking on his feet. ‘You want to hear it, Cook?’

  ‘Ay, lad, go on.’ She came to rest her arms on the back of a chair facing them. ‘Fond of a good belly tickler, I am.’

  ‘How d’you stop a fish from smelling?’

  She scratched her dimpled chin. ‘’Ere, I don’t know. But I’d like to, aye.’ Her profession winning through, she awaited the answer with genuine interest. ‘How so?’

  ‘Cut off its nose!’ burst out Pip for him, recognising this as what an old drunkard used to tell them each and every night on his way home when they begged outside the taverns, before doubling up with laughter.

  ‘Eh? Cut off …? Ay, you pair of daft swines, what’re you like!’ With a shake of her head and a roll of her eyes, she returned to the bubbling cooking pot needing her attention.

  The children, wiping tears of mirth from their eyes, smiled wistfully.

  ‘Do you miss it, Simon? The slums, I mean.’

  He answered just as quietly. ‘Sometimes. Weren’t all bad, were it?’

  Pip shook her head. ‘There were a few good souls hidden amongst the bad, aye.’ A sudden vision of Peter, who had come to her rescue and given up his bed for her at Nan Nuttall’s, appeared in her mind. Again, she smiled.

  ‘I reckon often of late that we’d have mebbe fared better stopping put.’

  She nodded. Owing to recent occurrences, she’d begun wondering the same.

  ‘Come on.’ He rose suddenly and motioned for her to follow. ‘I’ve another idea.’

  Once in the garden, she watched him go to stand by the trees bordering the perimeter. Peering up, he scanned them keenly, reaching to finger a bare, winter-hardened branch here and there then dismissing it with a shake of his head.

  ‘What you thinking, lad?’

  ‘Here, you search over there.’ He motioned to the garden’s opposite end.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Sticks. They must be just right – long and thin, and the sturdier the better.’

  ‘Will these do?’ Pip asked minutes later, producing a handful, yet still with no idea what use he would find for them. She watched him bend them in different directions, checking their durability, his tongue peeping out in concentration. The majority he discarded but two seemed to pass his standards; along with one he himself had found, he hid them beneath a bush close by the back doorstep.

  ‘How will sticks help? What’s tha planning? Tell me, lad.’

  ‘In a minute. First, help me find some strong twine.’

  They located what he needed in the dresser drawer – fortunately, the servants were too occupied with their own affairs to notice. Simon stuffed the spool into his pocket. Then he took a deep breath and nodded, satisfied.

  Pip raised an eyebrow. ‘Well?’

  He went to stand in a quiet nook of the kitchen, she followed, and they leaned with their shoulders against the wall, heads close together.

  ‘I got thinking on summat Cook said to Cally. Remember, about ghostly fingers of death? I can’t risk entering Mrs Goldthorpe’s room while she’s there, nay, but … Well, happen I don’t need to. Them branches we’ve collected, I’m for tying them together to make one big long ’un. Then can you guess what I’m going to do with them?’ A mixture of excitement and nervous anticipation sparked in his eyes. When she shook her head, he licked his lips then whispered, ‘I’m going to pass it through the keyhole of her door and poke her with it – hard!’

  Eyes like saucers, Pip’s hand slowly travelled to cover her mouth.

  ‘Last night, when I were up there, I got a view of yon bedroom upon opening the door – the Goldthorpes’ bed stands nigh on facing the entrance and at no great distance from it. I reckon I can pull this off, I do. This will surely put the wind up her good and proper. Imagine it, woken from your slumber in the pitch-dark night by an unseen hand prodding at your person. The door’s firmly secured and you know there ain’t no one in the room with you that shouldn’t be. By, she’ll shit the sheets in fear, you see if she don’t. I know I would!’

  He’d succeeded in setting the wheels in motion with Miss Lucy, it was true. And, Pip had to admit, his antics last night had worked like a charm; Caroline had been visibly affected. But this new idea? She wasn’t convinced. It was a bold move, even for the brave Simon. There was so much that could go awry. ‘Lad, I don’t know …’

  ‘Thought you believed in me?’

  ‘I do, honest, it’s just … What if the twine comes loose, or the sticks snap? What are husband and wife going to think upon wakening to find a bunch of wood and string in the middle of their floor?’

  ‘They’ll not. I’ll secure everything proper.’

  ‘What if she springs up afore you’ve a chance to pull the contraption back out of the keyhole? She’ll catch you red-handed.’

  ‘Then I’ll practise awhile pushing it in and out, build my speed up, like, afore going ahead. Besides, it’ll be dark; she’ll see nowt. And dumb with sleep as she’ll be, I’ll have had time to remove it and scarper afore she gathers her senses.’

  Still, Pip wasn’t reassured. And another, more worrying prospect occurred to her: ‘What if you poke Mr Philip by mistake? After all, you can’t be certain she sleeps on the side of the bed closest to the door.’

  This time, the lad bit his lip. ‘I never thought of that. Ay, well.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a risk I’ll just have to take, ain’t it?’

  ‘Eeh, Simon …’

  ‘Trust me. It’ll work. It will.’

  Knowing he wouldn’t be swayed from this, she had no option but to support him. Thoughts of what their torturer would do should she discover him set her chest tightening and her knees atremble. She brushed his hand with hers in an affectionate caress. ‘Be watchful, eh, lad? Should summat occur, happen if the master’s dogs hear you on the landing and bark, give the game away—’

  ‘They’ll not. They didn’t last night.’

  ‘But if they do this time, or if someone should spot you and demand to know what you’re about in that part of the house, tell them … tell them Mack was crying for me. Aye yes, and you’d had no choice but to collect me afore he wakened the whole building. That’s believable enough, eh?’

  His eyes were so
ft at her concern. He nodded. Then drawing his hand away from hers, he patted his pocket. ‘Right, I’d best get on.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘If your lady needs you with her and I don’t see you again the day … Wish me luck.’

  ‘Good luck, lad.’

  Unsurprisingly, owing to the recent news, Josephine’s anxiety struck severely that night. Now that a date had been finalised and the upcoming marriage was official, it had suddenly become to her terrifyingly real. She was unable to shake her overthinking, over-fretting about the minutiae that could possibly go wrong on the big day, and hours later she still showed no sign of clawing through the other side. Curled in a ball upon the chaise longue as the dizziness made it impossible for her to sit upright or stand, pale and drawn, her skin slicked with perspiration, she looked exhausted. Still, of its own free will, her body trembled violently and her heart rate out-galloped any thoroughbred.

  Pip was at a loss what to do, had already tried every method she knew to bring an end to the bout but nothing had worked. The cruel truth that Josephine had been severely mistaken in thinking she had her condition under control, which the lady now realised, had served only to make her spirits and state of mind plummet, thus exacerbating things. So it continued on, relentlessly.

  Eyes yet again drawn to the clock atop the mantel, her own heart gave a few hard thumps at the lateness of the hour. Simon would be putting his latest plan into action any time – pray be to God, he wouldn’t be caught out. Gulping down her worry, she busied herself with instructing Josephine yet again to slow her breathing, though for different reasons – a much-needed distraction for them both.

  ‘Am I dying, Pip?’

  ‘Nay, Miss Josephine. It’s just your mind fretting, is all, just like the other times. You’ll come through it soon. Deep breaths, eh?’

  ‘If mere thoughts of the wedding have brought me to my knees like this, then pray what will I be like on the actual day? I shan’t be able to go through with it, will I? I’ll ruin it just as I do everything else. I’m pathetic.’