Friendship's Bond

by Meg Hutchinson

  Edward looked at the face of the woman he held dear as a mother, saying teasingly, ‘Not until you say you love me.’

  ‘Hmmph!’ Leah sniffed derisively.

  ‘Admit it Mrs Marshall.’ Edward chuckled jubilantly. ‘Admit you love me and I might be persuaded to let you go.’

  ‘But I won’t be persuaded against fetchin’ you the leatherin’ y’ deserves should y’ be tardy gettin’ y’self gone from my dairy.’

  Edward released Leah and cast a dejected look to Ann. ‘Ordered from the door, turned away into the night; take note Miss Spencer, take note of the cruelty of this woman.’

  Leah looked smiling at the tall man, his shoulders drooping with pretended misery.

  ‘Did you come all this way just so y’ could clog up my dairy?’

  ‘No.’ His mischievous smile returned as Edward reached into a pocket of his jacket. ‘I came to bring what it was you walked to Hill Rise Farm to collect then forgot to bring away with you.’

  ‘Eeh!’ Leah’s head swung. ‘I swears I ’ave a brain like a sieve these days; I thanks you for the bringin’ lad, milk wouldn’t form no curd wi’out the usin’ of a bit o’ salted skin from a calf’s stomach an’ I be near to usin’ the last o’ what be left.’

  ‘So I see.’ He appeared to glance to where a tiny piece of dried skin was nailed to the wall, a square of newspaper preventing its touching the limewash, but instead Edward looked at the face of the girl beside the cold cupboard, a face pale as the milk poured into the shallow stone vats. The dread he had seen flash across it had now become a fear of a different kind. It was not fear of himself, her continued presence indicated that, and it certainly was not fear of Leah, so what had made those features so drawn? What fear haunted Ann Spencer?

  ‘Be you hurried to get back to Hill Rise? There be fresh scones and the kettle be to boilin’.’

  ‘It be well for fishermen it’s a dairy you have and not a boat for with your method of baiting the seas would be empty within a twelvemonth.’

  The answer had come quickly but Leah caught his glance at Ann, one asking the questions she so often asked herself. Edward Langley too wondered what lay behind that drawn expression, but did his interest end there or did he have other feelings for the girl, feelings he had once had for Deborah?

  She turned from the dairy, calling as she crossed the yard, ‘I teks it that be meanin’ you’ll tek a bite o’ supper so you mek y’self useful helpin’ wi’ the carryin’ of them there ladles an’ such along of the scullery for washin’.’

  Edward smiled. ‘Best do as I’ve been told, I learned very young it doesn’t do to give Leah cause to tell a body twice.’

  ‘Mr Langley . . . has . . .’

  A pause, a tremor as though she was afraid to voice a question! Collecting pats and ladles, dropping them into the pails, Edward Langley showed no sign that he had detected the anxiety preying on this girl’s mind. He surmised that to press any question of his own might well have her retreat again behind that barrier of silence so he simply continued with the gathering of implements.

  ‘Mr Langley . . .’

  Ann spoke quietly, seeming as yet still unsure if she should be speaking at all.

  ‘Did Alec return the empty churns?’

  Was it the boy she feared for? But the lad wasn’t sick, he wasn’t simple in the mind, so why would she worry for him?

  ‘Delivered them same time as usual, he’s a very dependable lad.’ He answered lightly but again wondered as the reply darkened eyes already shimmering with unshed tears.

  As she placed butter boards one on top of another Ann felt the reply chill her. Dependable! So why was it Alec had not come home?

  Chapter 7

  ‘Alec!’

  Tight with horror, her voice trembled in the darkness.

  ‘Alec . . .’ The cry died on her lips. Ann stared at a figure with one arm held viciously across the boy’s throat, the free hand raising a club. Some inner sense warned her that to call out would have the weapon smash against Alec’s head. Ann’s next words were a strangled whisper.

  ‘Please, please let him go.’

  For a moment it seemed there would be no answer then the man snatched Alec so close the savage tug made him gasp for air. The stranger’s voice grated on the night.

  ‘You give,’ it snarled, ‘you give!’

  Money! The man holding Alec wanted money. But she had none.

  ‘Go Ann . . . leave, you can’t—’

  Another callous press to the throat cut off Alec’s call. The man’s head turned slightly, a sudden shaft of moonlight glittering on cold eyes.

  ‘Give,’ he rasped, lifting the club above Alec’s head, ‘give or he dies.’

  ‘No!’ Ann stepped towards the boy but was halted by the thick club swinging savagely inches from her face.

  ‘Please.’ Helpless, Ann could only beg. ‘I have no money.’

  ‘You give.’ The words slithered on the darkness; then in a tone like the hiss of a snake ready to strike he added, ‘You give now.’

  How could she make him believe she was telling the truth?

  Though she was trembling in every limb, fear for Alec drying her mouth, Ann knew she had to try. ‘Please,’ she swallowed against the stricture in her throat, ‘please understand I have nothing to give. I have no money nor has Alec, please . . . !’

  She pressed her hands against her mouth as she watched the club rise higher above Alec’s head, the ice-cold glittering eyes of his captor watching her as it began to descend.

  ‘He doesn’t want money.’

  Across from Ann the club halted in mid-air, the head of the shadow-shrouded figure whipping round to meet a new voice.

  ‘He isn’t asking for your body either, though I have no doubt he would not refuse given the opportunity.’

  ‘But he demanded payment, he said give.’

  ‘I heard what he said.’

  Quiet, less strident, the second voice answered Ann though the figure stepping from a darker ring of shadow looked directly at the man brandishing the club. He was not so stockily built, less of a block against the weak light of the moon, his tread making no sound as he stepped closer to the one still grasping Alec around the throat.

  ‘I heard . . .’

  It was repeated softly but Ann detected the threat, the razor sharpness of steel hidden beneath velvet.

  ‘. . . now it is his turn to listen.’

  Afraid to take her eyes from Alec in case any second that heavy stick came down on his head Ann was not sure if the movement at the corner of her eye was real or imagined.

  ‘Release the lad. Be certain that it is the only time I tell you.’

  That she had not imagined, neither the words nor the underlying warning.

  ‘No!’ The guttural, defiant reply was hurled towards the opponent. The man tightened his arm about Alec’s neck, ignoring the gurgle as the boy fought for breath. ‘Not until I am given . . .’

  ‘Then I must be the one to give.’

  Even as he spoke Ann caught the movement of the second man’s hand, caught the glint of moonlight on metal . . . saw the gun aimed directly at the boy.

  A muffled click exploded like thunder in her brain and she watched the body of Alec topple to the ground.

  ‘No . . . oooo!’ Ann flung herself forward, catching the falling figure of the boy, sobbing against the unmoving head. ‘I’m sorry, Alec, I’m so sorry I . . . I had no money to give.’

  She heard movement in the darkness, a shuffling drag followed by what could have been the soft splash of something being lowered into water, but though her ears caught the sounds they did not register over the horror dulling her senses.

  ‘Alec,’ she murmured against the boy’s face, ‘Alec, I could not make him believe I have no money.’

  ‘He did not want money.’ From the blackness of shadow a man’s voice spoke.

  Caught in a nightmare Ann clutched the silent figure even more tightly, her words a whispered sob. ‘He said giv
e, he kept saying I must give!’

  ‘But not money.’

  ‘Then what?’ Ann looked towards the voice but saw only shadow.

  ‘He came for what you carry with you, that which you brought from St Petersburg, the precious possession passed to you.’

  ‘Nothing was passed to me, you are wrong. I carry nothing but what I brought with me from England.’

  From deep within the obscuring darkness a hand fastened on her shoulder; a hand pulling her free of Alec.

  ‘No! I have noth—’

  ‘Ann . . . Ann.’

  ‘No!’ With the cry Ann’s eyes shot open.

  ‘It’s all right wench, it be only me.’ Leah’s soft words betrayed none of the concern the freshly lit oil lamp showed gleaming in her kind eyes. ‘You be ’avin’ of a bad dream, ain’t nuthin’ more than that.’

  ‘Alec!’

  ‘Alec be fast asleep in his bed.’

  ‘But he, the gun . . . the shot!’

  ‘Ain’t no gun nor be there any shootin’, all it be is a dream.’

  Ann pushed herself to a sitting position. Though still shaky she leaned against the pillows, the glance she cast about the bedroom showing fear was not altogether gone.

  ‘I . . . I’m sorry I woke you.’

  ‘No ’arm done, wench, be time I were a stirrin’, cows’ll be callin’ to be milked in an hour.’

  It had been a nightmare. Ann stared at the door which had closed on the departing Leah. A nightmare that would never go away.

  ‘I had searched my father’s house.’ Ann held a mug of hot tea between her cold hands while she continued with the explanation Leah had protested was not necessary. But it was necessary, Ann had decided when getting dressed; an explan-ation was long overdue. ‘I had asked at the embassy if he had left anything there for safe keeping, but there was nothing; yet at the port when that man was shot his last words were of a promise made by my father, a promise involving ‘‘a most precious possession’’. But if there was any such thing I found nothing of it.’

  Leah was silent for several seconds before saying, ‘Somebody thought you did, what otherwise could account for what that fellah said about some precious possession? But all o’ that be behind you, the pair o’ you be safe in England. As for the bad dreams they be a consequence o’ what you’ve gone through an’ though they be fearful when they comes they’ll fade given time.’

  ‘Fade given time.’

  The words lingered in Ann’s mind after Leah had left to milk the cows.

  But time had no end and neither did the nightmare. She had briefly told Leah of what had followed the uprising in the Ploschad Morskoy Slavy, of the onrush of armed horsemen causing panic in the crowds and how she, without conscious thought, had grabbed the boy and pulled him with her as she turned to run. But that was all she had told.

  Ann set a pan of water above the fire Leah had lit then reached for a jar containing porridge oats.

  ‘I have to get ship for England.’

  She watched the oats she had poured into the pan swirl in the stirred water; it seemed she saw again the panicked crowd, the terrified faces of women, the fearful countenances of men all rushing to get away from the threat of horses’ hooves, the sabres of their riders; a mass of people with no mind to listen to a girl even had they understood her words.

  It had been as if she was caught in a great tide of people carrying her along, carrying her with them aboard ship; only then had she realised she still held the arm of a complete stranger, a young boy who had gasped in disbelief as he saw his companion shot dead.

  Disbelief they had both shared!

  Somehow she had found a corner with space enough for herself and the boy to sit, then as her nerves quieted enough for her to think with reasonable clarity she had decided to request she be shown her cabin.

  ‘Niet . . . niet.’

  This was the response to her every question; people pushed her away, their own troubles obviously enough to deal with. At last she had found a man in uniform, the gold braid of what could signify a senior officer adorning a heavy jacket.

  He had shaken his head at her question.

  ‘Niet.’ It had come with a flourish of the hand together with a rapid spate of words which though unintelligible to her were clearly emphasising his denial.

  ‘But I have reserved a cabin!?’

  Desperation had her flourish her ticket but it had simply resulted in yet another curt ‘no’.

  The boy had explained. He had followed her and now interpreted what had been said.

  She had no cabin.

  In darkness which had fallen rapidly as a lowered curtain she had stared at the lad, seeming to hear from a thousand miles away his quiet, ‘You have no reservation. This ship does not sail to England, this is the ferry going to Finland.’

  The panic, the dash for the entry to the docks: in the madness of it she had been carried not in the direction of the ocean seaport but in that of the local ferry.

  The boy’s words had stunned her. How did she find her way home from there, a country she had never set foot in? How long had she stood on the deck, the splash of waves against the hull of the ship not registering, her only feeling that of numbness until . . .

  The remembered shock made her tighten her fingers about the spoon.

  . . . until returning to the corner where she had sat! Cloud over the pale moon had added to the darkness so at first she had not noticed, then as a filter of moonbeams cast pallid light she had seen her suitcase lying open, its contents gone. She had dropped to her knees, her distracted mind asking only one thing. Where was the photograph of her mother? Alec had found it, handing it to her with quiet sympathy.

  Ann stirred the contents of the pan but saw only pictures of the past.

  She had been clutching at the photograph, her head bent low over it, so she had paid no attention to the boy until a startled cry made her glance up then slowly, disbelievingly, rise to her feet. With one arm across the boy’s throat and the other encircling his body a man dragged him to stand against the ship’s rail.

  Who had that man been, what was it he had demanded she give, and who was the one who had shot him then tipped the body overboard?

  ‘I reckon that porridge be cooked, or be it you intends ’avin’ the bottom outta that pot?’

  Leah’s return to the living room whisked her back to the present. Ann fetched bowls from the dresser but even as she spooned porridge into them the questions she had asked herself remained just below the surface.

  ‘All o’ that be behind you, the pair o’ you be safe in England.’

  In England, yes.

  But safe . . . why could she not believe that?

  Dreams, especially the unwanted sort, left a troubled mind in their wake.

  After she returned to the dairy Leah pondered the look she had glimpsed on the face of the girl cooking porridge.

  Last night had not been the first time Ann had cried out in her sleep. It wasn’t to be questioned that the shock of being robbed of that which you held dear sent its terrors to haunt you nights; hadn’t she suffered the same on being robbed first of her sons then of a cherished daughter?

  Sleepless nights were nothing new to Leah Marshall and though the cause of them might differ the fear was the same. She had seen the shadow of it on Ann Spencer’s face, the mark left from robbery, from finding herself practically penniless in a land she knew little of and whose language she could not speak; that ordeal would scare any woman.

  But time and the balm of God’s mercy reduced if not the hurt then at least the fear it brought with it, so why did the shadow never quite leave that girl’s eyes? Why did it cast a deeper shade across her face when she thought herself alone? She had told of one reason; but what other nightmare haunted Ann Spencer?

  Chapter 8

  First she removed the small piece of dried salted calf stomach from water it had soaked in overnight, then Leah poured the resulting liquid into milk Edward Langley had delivered fresh fr
om Hill Rise Farm, adding it to the yield from her own small herd. He had not been his usual cheerful self this visit, in fact he had not been anything like the Edward she was used to; the hug had been there and so had the smile, but neither held their customary warmth.

  While she stirred the contents of the stone vat with a wooden paddle Leah considered the whys and wherefores underlying such a change in behaviour.

  Had it been Ann Spencer’s conduct of the evening before? She laid aside the paddle in order to reach for a stone jar glancing as she did so to where Ann was removing butter from the cool cupboard and setting the portions carefully into shallow trays lined with muslin. It was obvious Edward Langley was taken with the girl and she in her turn had shown no dislike of his company. Until last evening!

  After adding a helping of salt from the jar to the creamy milk Leah stirred again, her thoughts circling like the eddies produced by the paddle.

  The girl had refused the offer of help in the scullery, a swift shake of the head her only reply when Edward said he would wash out the churns in which he had delivered the evening’s milking; as before she had uttered no word of thanks when he had said he would carry the metal churns to the scullery.

  It took time to scour so many landles and pans, the sieves and pails needed at every stage of butter- and cheese-making, but the girl had taken more than was necessary, so much so Leah herself had bundled her from the scullery with an irate, ‘Be you a wantin’ Edward Langley a thinkin’ we be wi’out manners!’

  Leah glanced again at the slender figure now carrying the last tray of butter from the cold store.

  Ann Spencer had blushed at the reprimand, had apologised to Edward for her curtness, but the atmosphere had been less than easy.

  The wench had seemed far away . . .

  Leah turned her attention to milk which the evening before had seen the addition of water treated with calf’s stomach skin, using both hands to break the resulting solid mass of curd into small chunks, but her thoughts remained with the events of the previous evening.

  Her features had been pale and drawn, her eyes worried. Edward Langley too had caught that look.