He slowly pulled his arm to his forehead and cautiously opened one eye. Mara still bent over him, staring down at his face. He grimaced a little, expecting her to be appalled at his statements. But instead, her brows were furrowed in even deeper concern, her mouth open slightly.
Jake pulled himself up into a sitting position, and Mara sat next to him. “My friends and I were at the fruit stands today, and a man caught me snitching a melon. I ran, hid in the bushes on the outside of your wall, and then found my way into your garden, where you caught me.” He hung his head in shame.
Mara dropped her jaw, aghast. Not at his stealing, but at his need to steal. She had no idea people outside the four walls that protected her family home were in such dire straits. This boy and others like him were starving to death, blocks away from her house of plenty! How could that be? Her ten-year-old mind couldn’t quite grasp the situation.
“You can come here and eat any time you want.”
Jake looked at her, surprised. “You want me to come back?”
“Yes.” Her simple statement told the truth. Tears stung the backs of his eyes at the straightforward invitation. He blinked back the wetness and started giggling again, which also sent Mara into a fit of giggles. Pretty soon, he laughed so hard he had a stomachache.
Then they talked. She told him all about her life, and he told her all about his. He talked about the years before he lost his parents, the vicarage, and the people he remembered in the congregation. He told her about Luke, Alvin, and Pete, and their escapades and escapes. He left out the darker details to protect himself from answering the hard questions he she could ask.
Mara told him about her brothers, and how malevolent they were to her. She told of her cousins, and how nasty they were to her. She told of her parents, and how disinterested they were in her life. Mara talked to Jake about the people who served her family, and how they cared for her and she cared for them, and about the house and her room and her dolls and the books she read.
Jake picked up the book she had, and haltingly read a few passages out loud. It had been awhile since he’d had a book in his hands, and it felt good to be reading again. And they laughed some more.
They came from two different worlds, but felt a connection of friendship that transcended their stations in life. The bond forged from a shared need for love and family.
All too soon the sun began to set. Mara stood up to return to the house before someone came searching and found Jake in the garden with her.
“Come tomorrow, and we’ll have lunch together again. And I will bring enough for you to take back to Luke and Pete and Alvin, too. I will never let you go hungry again. I won’t let my friends starve.”
Jake melted. He hadn’t had anyone take care of him in a very long time, and this girl would feed him and his friends. He didn’t know what to say. Jake decided Mara was the kindest, most wonderful, most beautiful person he had ever seen. He thought of her as his angel, and he would go to the ends of the earth for her. The tears threatened again, so he hurriedly turned away to leave.
“I will see you tomorrow,” he croaked, and then disappeared into the bushes.
Chapter 3
The next day, true to her word, Mara waited for Jake in the copse with a full picnic basket. She also gripped in her pudgy fingers a white linen bag with clumsy handles that looked very similar to a couple of old napkins sewn together. It held food for the other boys. Jake once again ate his fill, then he and Mara spent the afternoon talking. She gave him a book to help him brush up on his reading. The publisher intended it for a younger reader, but Mara knew Jake probably needed to start from the beginning again.
They continued to meet daily for most of the month of April. Mara had to start sneaking food in order to keep the staff from becoming suspicious. She was a big girl, and ate a lot to comfort herself. Now, though, she set aside most of her lunch for these four very hungry young men, and doing her best to bring them as much additional food as possible. She sewed several linen bags out of old napkins she pilfered from the bottom of the great cabinet in the pantry for Jake to use to carry food to the boys.
She quickly learned how hard it must be for the boys to steal food from strangers on the streets. She had enough trouble gathering what she needed from under the noses of a friendly household staff! She had to get up very early in the morning to take food before the staff began to stir. She also had to locate a good hiding place that wouldn’t be found by the dog, Lilac; the cook, Mr. Fout; or his staff, Jessie and Gigi. She had to escape from sweet Cecilia, who as an adult couldn’t be trusted. Mara had to avoid the three maids—Beth, Portia, and Nettie—plus Termins, the butler. Outside the house, she had to steer clear of Calvin, the stable master and coachman; Higgins, the stable hand; and Rory and Basil, the gardeners.
Mara had long ago established that the copse with the trellis belonged exclusively to her, so the servants rarely disturbed her there except to call her to meals or other events. She felt fairly confident she and Jake could continue to meet there without being discovered. By nature, Mara didn’t generally like to be sneaky. As time went on, she developed a sense of it. By the end of April, she had become an expert sneaker. She even pilfered some old clothes from trunks in the attic for the boys to wear. She gave them hairbrushes and shoes and other items she had found in those trunks as well. She even gave each of them one of those new-fangled toothbrushes her mother thought were so wonderful. Mara also thought they were wonderful.
She met the other boys for the first time about three weeks after Jake had come through the wall. She sat in the copse, anticipating his arrival, when a loud commotion in the bushes frightened her.
“Hey, mate, get off my hand!”
“Sorry, ass puss, that ain’t me!”
“Well, bugger!”
“Bloody hell, man.”
“Hey, guys, watch your language and pipe down, will you? You’re gonna wake the dead!” That last voice belonged to Jake, and Mara realized that Luke, Alvin, and Pete were with him. Her heart skipped a beat when she realized Jake finally had brought them around for her to meet! She had heard so much about them, she assumed she’d recognize them on the spot. She did.
Jake popped out first, followed by a boy with a scar running along his left cheek. Pete, she surmised. Behind him came a boy with the lightest blond hair she’d ever seen—Alvin. Luke crawled through last. Small and cute as a button, he had sparkling grey eyes full of life. Pete was twelve, and Luke and Alvin were both eleven, although Luke looked more like he was seven or eight. All three were just as skinny as Jake. Two weeks of filling lunches had kept the hunger pangs from biting but hadn’t done a thing to eliminate their gauntness. But they were all dressed in the clothes she had picked out for them based on Jake’s descriptions, and they looked considerably better than Jake had when she first met him. Luckily, the staff at the Queen’s Children’s Home didn’t pay too much attention to the orphans’ clothing, so they were able to wear the hand-me-downs without repercussions.
“Come, fellas. Say hi to Angel Mara, our savior!”
“God, Jake, you didn’t tell us she how fat she…” Jake clamped a hand over Pete’s mouth and looked at Mara, mortified.
Mara cringed inside, but she did not react outwardly to Pete’s thoughtless comment. She endured similar barbs and insults from her brothers and their friends all the time, and had learned not to show pain, since that only brought on more of the same torture.
“Sorry, Mara. This one has no manners,” Jake said, yelling “no!” in Pete’s ear.
“Sorry, Mara.” Pete hung his head in shame, and dug into the dirt with his toe.
Mara didn’t hear remorse very often and the warmth in her soul she felt following Pete’s sincere apology stunned her.
“I forgive you, Pete. Friends?” With that, she stuck out her hand for a shake. He looked up at her, surprise all over his face, took her hand, and pumped it heartily.
“Gads, Pete!” interjected Alvin, “let her go before y
ou break her!” Alvin pushed Pete out of the way so he could take her now-empty hand and shook it enthusiastically. “So happy to meet you finally. You don’t know whatcha mean to us.”
Luke finally stepped forward, and smiled a smile that could melt ice. He gave her hand one firm shake, and then moved back again. Then the boys all started talking at once, trying to be the center of attention, while showering Mara with profound thanks for the food she’d been sharing with them.
Chapter 4
For the next few weeks, Mara and the boys spent several hours a day in the copse and the gardens playing hide and seek, rolling around with Lilac, eating lunch, telling stories, and talking about their dreams. The boys didn’t seem to care that Mara carried all those extra pounds, and when she interacted with them, she never thought about it. She just felt like one of the boys. Sometimes, she would bring her sewing kit and repair tears or sew on new buttons or hem trousers. Because of Jake's height, Mara let out all the hems of his pants and took them in to fit his skinny waist. She just wished she could do more for the boys than give them a little food and some clothes.
The boys stopped stealing for the moment, and were happy to escape the confines of the orphanage for a bit every day. The more they stayed away, the less punishment Snellings could dole out. But with Jake growing bigger and stronger, they all knew Snellings would soon sell him as an apprentice. That thought scared them all.
Mara spent May, June, and part of July at the Rochcliffe House, the ancestral family home in the country. Her father’s older brother, Cecil Markham, the Viscount Rochdale, now occupied the manor. This temporary move forced the boys to go back to their old ways, waiting for the day when Mara returned and they could once again stop roaming the streets. They still crawled through the wall and play with Lilac most days. They loved that dog.
Mara arrived back the first week in July, and the boys were ecstatic.
Later that month, they had cherry tarts for Pete’s thirteenth birthday. In September, they ate peach cobbler for Jake’s fourteenth birthday. In October, they celebrated Mara’s eleventh birthday with leftover gooey chocolate cake. They would have been deliriously happy if it weren’t for the feeling of impending doom that Jake or Pete could be sent off to work in a sweatshop somewhere.
As the weather became colder, Mara found the boys old coats to wear. With the change in seasons, the friends were able to spend only lunch in the copse before the boys had to go find warmer shelter, usually straight back to the orphanage. Mara wished she could sneak them into the house, but they all knew they pushed their luck already. They had to be content to eat and run. Particularly stormy or cold days forced Mara to leave the bag under the bench, hoping the food would still be edible by the time one of them came to retrieve it. She also had to lock Lilac in the stables to ensure that the dog didn’t eat the food she left for the boys.
In December, her chance to do more than simply feed the boys came in the most unexpected way. Old Higgins, the footman, who had been in the family since her father was a small boy, caught a cold and didn’t recover. Mara was saddened by the death of the dear, sweet man who always had a kind word and a pat on the head for her. Her family didn’t even seem to notice, which made her even sadder.
A few days after they buried Higgins, she had gone to the stables to feed squash rinds to the horses when she overheard Calvin and Rory talking. Since Rory couldn't garden in the winter, he helped with home repairs or assisted Calvin in the stables repairing horse trappings.
On this particular day, they were discussing how to replace old Higgins. Termins, the butler, had all responsibility for hiring and firing the staff, but he wouldn’t dare hire a stable hand without input from Calvin. Calvin was at a complete loss. Usually his neighborhood sources could recommend skilled people for hire, but lately the need for knowledgeable stable hands had increased, and there were none available in the area. And Calvin didn’t want to look in a different neighborhood, at candidates he didn’t know. “I’d probably end up with a ruffian”, he muttered.
The two of them mumbled about the lack of good workers, and what London was coming to.
“Ahem.”
They looked up, startled, to see Mara staring at them.
“Ahem.” She cleared her throat again, and then began speaking rapidly, before they could stop her.
“I know of a perfectly fine apprentice who is willing to work hard. He can read and write and do numbers. He is well spoken and is in need of a job right now. I will vouch for him and his background. He may not know much about horses, but he is really smart and will figure it out fast.”
Mara stood there, rooted to the spot, wondering if her impromptu speech had been helpful or harmful to her cause. She held her breath, waiting for Calvin to say something.
“Well, Miss Mara,” he said slowly, “that is an unusual notion, but I am willing to meet this young man.” Calvin had no idea where Miss Mara could have found a young apprentice in need of a job, since she rarely ventured outside the house and garden. Nevertheless, he wanted to meet the young man.
“Bring him by when you can, but don’t wait too long.”
“Oh, thank you! I will bring him by after lunch.” With that, she dropped her treats and ran off, leaving the poor horses to bend to the ground and rummage for the squash rinds. Rory and Calvin looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders, and continued to moan about the state of the current workforce.
Mara was so excited she wasn’t as careful as usual while gathering lunch food from the kitchen, and was almost caught by Mr. Fout. That brought her activities to a grinding halt, and forced her to gather her wits again before venturing off to the copse, now very aware of who might be watching. She could hardly contain herself as she waited for Jake to arrive.
The boys had barely popped out of the bushes before she told them the news, her words pouring out in an excited jumble.
“Hey! Wait a minute, Miss Mara,” said Pete, putting his hand on her shoulder in an attempt to calm her down. “We canna understand a word you said.”
“Okay, okay,” she caught her breath and started again. “I may have a job for Jake. Higgins must be replaced, and I talked Calvin into meeting Jake.”
The boys’ jaws all dropped at once. “Talk about fate,” said Alvin. “At least one of us is now safe.”
“You don’t have the job yet,” Mara said to Jake, bouncing up and down and taking his hand into hers. “But at least you have a chance. You just need to convince Calvin you are the man for the job. I promised him you would be a really fast learner.”
Jake let go of her hands, dropped to his knees, rocked back and forth, and laughed until he was almost hysterical. “Oh, God, oh God,” he repeated, over and over.
Mara looked at Luke for an explanation of Jake’s very odd behavior.
“Jake and Alvin canna go back to the orphanage. Snellings, the jackass, has chosen them to go to the fish hut at the pier and shuck fish bones all day long. We hoped to hide them out here somewhere. Jake said some pretty ugly things to Snellings, and then hit him before running off. Pete and I waited awhile, then followed them here. They've been hiding in the bushes.” Luke looked at Jake. “I don’t know if his brain is frozen from being out in this cold, or he is relieved to be saved from the fishes.”
“Yeah,” interjected Pete. “You shoulda seen the punch Jake threw. Blimey, 'twas a thing of beauty! Nailed the bastard right between the eyes. Bossman never saw it coming, and it laid the bloody arse to rest just like that.” He snapped his fingers, emphasizing the word that.
Jake had done a good job laying Snellings down, but it meant he was now a marked man.
*****
Jake awoke that morning like every other morning in the orphanage, cold and hungry, wishing to be anywhere but there. He dreamed every night about life with his family, and wondered what it would be like now if they hadn’t died.
He and the boys sat down to a breakfast of runny gruel and a piece of bread. The cook made the meager food supply g
o as far as possible; hence, the awful, watered-down gruel was more liquid than substance. The bread was always the best part of the day, as it was made fresh every morning. However, each orphan received only one tiny slice per meal.
Depressed, cold, hungry children filled the room. Jake looked around and wished he could do something about it. But what could he, a mere boy, do against the establishment? The only bright spot in his life was Mara.
As he contemplated the disheartening situation, Snellings came in the room and demanded the orphan’s attention. Jake sighed. Snellings’ arrival at meal time never brought good news. He usually ate his own feasts in his quarters upstairs.
“Abbot!” he boomed across the room. Jake’s shoulders shrank even further than normal. “Bitters!” Alvin glanced over at Jake, fear in his eyes.
“Now, you stinking piles of garbage, not next week!”
Jake and Alvin slowly rose and walked over to Snellings, all eyes upon them. Pete reached out and grabbed Luke’s arm in horror as he watched his friends walk between the long tables and benches toward Snellings. This could only mean one thing—they were about to be sent to a workhouse somewhere. What they all feared had come at last.
Snellings addressed Jake and Alvin in a voice loud enough to be heard throughout the meal hall. “Seems the last fool I sent to the fish hut de-boned and filleted himself. So, because little, stupid Simon Bottoms was a pathetic, useless apprentice at gutting fish, I have to send you two dim-witted scum to replace his sorry dead ass.” He laughed out loud, as if he had made a big joke.
Alvin gasped. Working at the fish market gutting, heading, nobbing, skinning, filleting, and bone separating fish was the worst job in the world. Snellings seemed to send more orphans there than anywhere else, and they usually didn’t last more than a year. Snellings had just handed them death warrants.
Mara: A Georgian Romance Page 2
