Heritage of Shame

by Meg Hutchinson

  ‘Watch where you be going… almost had a body off her feet… some folk have no thought ’cept for theirself!’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’

  Anne’s apology followed after the grumbling figure, but it was more than an apology to the living… she spoke to her son.

  26

  Puffing on his clay pipe and nodding intermittently, Laban listened to Anne’s outline of what she had proposed to the matron.

  ‘It be a good idea,’ he said when she was done. ‘Keeping a man’s hands busy leaves his mind no chance to wander.’

  Sitting at her clamp beneath the window, Unity had continued to stitch a section of military pack saddle, leather hockles protecting her fingers. A man’s mind might not wander with his ’ands busy but that couldn’t be said of everybody; ’adn’t she watched this wench move about the workshop at Fallings Heath, seen her ’ands work confident and sure while her eyes spoke of a mind far away?

  ‘There be one thing, though,’ Laban continued, ‘there be men as don’t take kind to women telling ’em what to do nor how to do it. Mayhap there’ll be a few of that kind up at Butcroft.’

  ‘I – I had not thought of that.’

  Neither had that matron for all her buts! Unity smiled grimly to herself.

  ‘Might do well to give some thought to it afore you sets yourself to deciding to go on with this venture—’ Laban began.

  ‘And it might be well to forget it altogether!’ Unity let her needles drop. ‘You be doing too much as it is; first it was helping out at the Regency works, then comes the taking over of the Glebe and as if that don’t be enough you opens up them buildings along of Fallings Heath, putting them to the leather; but that ain’t enough, you have to help out at Bentley Grange and at Butcroft, fetching and carrying hours you should ought to be resting… and now this, setting up a workshop for patients. I tells you, wench, you be going to work y’self out and that’ll get nobody nothin’!’

  ‘The wench were only thinking of others—’

  ‘Be that as it might!’ Unity interrupted sharply. ‘But too much thinking of others and not enough of one’s own self brings no good in the end. I says this be naught but a hare brained idea. Being in two places at the same time be summat the best of folk can’t master and that is what her’ll try to do, be at Fallings Heath and at Butcroft both; well, I says no, it be too much for one wench, you tell me if that don’t be the way of it… go on, you tell me!’

  ‘It do be the way of it.’ Laban met Unity’s challenge, a smile directed at Anne just a gentle curve of the mouth. ‘Unity be sharp in her telling but be right nonetheless. What you be suggesting, though good in itself, needs a more careful thinking.’

  ‘But it would work, I know it would.’ Anne looked from one to the other, seeing concern on Unity’s face, sympathetic agreement on Laban’s.

  ‘I be of the same mind,’ he nodded, ‘but I agree also with Unity; it’s too much for you to take on along with what you already does.’

  She had wanted so much to give those men an answer to what she saw so often in bleak eyes, heard in flat hopeless tones as she talked with them: a chance to fulfil a need, the need to feel useful, in some small way to stand alongside their friends in the field, to go on fighting the only way they could.

  Seeing disappointment mirrored on the small face Laban glanced at his wife, looking for the support she had never once failed to give. It was there now, smiling back at him from blue eyes age was fading to grey.

  ‘That don’t mean to say as you shouldn’t see it done, wench,’ he said quietly, ‘just to shape it different like.’

  How could she shape it differently? A frown drawing her brows together Anne looked at the man she knew loved her as he would a daughter of his own.

  ‘I said as men don’t take kind to women being placed above them in the workplace,’ Laban answered the query born in that frown. ‘It’s summat they don’t be comfortable with, p’raps the world will change one day but today ain’t one day, it’s now; that being the way of it, set them to work with a man to do the supervising, that way they’ll be content and you won’t have an extra burden on your shoulders.’

  Nodding agreement Unity took up her needles. ‘Laban be right, a man ain’t comfortable in his work then he don’t give of his best.’

  ‘I understand that.’ Anne’s hands rose and fell. ‘And of course a man would be best… but where do we find one, every man left to the town is already in employment.’

  His pipe finished, Laban tapped the bowl gently against the chimney breast, blowing several times down the slender stem before laying it aside. Smoothing a piece of soft pigskin previously laid across the table he spread a paper pattern on it, marking its shape carefully.

  ‘Not every man,’ he said, head bent, ‘I hears as how Bert Jeavons be sent back with a bullet wound to the hip, no bones broke but painful. Bert were always good with the leather and mild tempered with lads—’

  ‘That don’t be the way his Sarah be telling, her says he be like a bear with a sore—’ Unity paused then went on ‘— well, never mind what be sore but her reckons he don’t be easy to live with.’

  ‘Nor would any man be with Sarah Jeavons on his back all day, reckon that were Bert’s chief reason for enlisting as soon as he did.’

  Catching Laban’s wink, Anne hid her own smile, hoping it did not show in her voice as she asked could a man with a hip injury, albeit not too serious, manage to work?

  Keeping his eyes on his marking, Laban avoided Unity’s. ‘If it means keeping out of Sarah’s way then I reckons Bert Jeavons could manage to fly, any road you let me go talk with him, I think you’ll find him saying yes.’

  Cutting her thread with a sharp bladed cap knife, light catching its pointed end gleaming like a tiny star, Unity released the clamp, putting the finished section of pack saddle aside.

  ‘And you must content y’self with that,’ she looked at Anne, ‘it’s a strong back you’ve proved to have, wench, one them parents of your’n would be proud of, God rest ’em, but the strongest of backs break when too great a load be put on it.’

  ‘I only wish to help.’

  A smile greeting the reply Unity watched the girl settle to stitching a belt. It wasn’t Anne Corby’s only wish, but heaven alone could grant what her heart cried for. ‘They knows that along at Butcroft and at Bentley Grange,’ she said as she selected another section and set it in the clamp, ‘and so does everybody in Darlaston, there ain’t a family as don’t regard you with respect. You’ve come home, wench.’

  Anne watched the line of stitches grow. The hardship Clara Mather had brought to many seemed forgiven if not forgotten, Anne Corby had gained people’s respect, she had Abel Preston’s respect… that would have to be enough for he would never give her his love.

  *

  Her hands trembling in her lap, teeth clenched against the fear beating in her throat, Anne stared unseeing into the mirror above the washstand in her room.

  Tsar interned at Tsarskoe Selo.

  It rang over and over in her brain, beating like a hammer on an anvil.

  Tsar and royal family arrested.

  It was still happening… Sir Corbett had destroyed the amulet but the evil of it was alive, breathing, moving, wreaking its havoc. Abduction in Istanbul, shipwreck, almost run down by a cart in Dover, she had allowed herself to be persuaded each of these incidents was no more than coincidence, things which could happen any time to anyone, tricks of fate. But the woman, Beshlie, the old gypsy who had come to sit at her fire that one evening in France, she had felt that same evil.

  A jewelled piece… given by a Rai, a great lord who fears for one greater still…

  As though rehearsed the words came back, stabbing themselves into her brain.

  … but it be too late, the great one be already marked for death… his juval and his chavvies… they have looked on the devil’s trinket… though they be innocent of guilt they will be sucked into his maw…

  Mikha
il Mikhailovitch Yusupov was a great Russian lord but the Tsar was greater still. Was he the one the gypsy meant? Juval and chavvies… they were Romany words for woman and children, and the newspaper report stated all of the royal family were being held at Tsarskoe Selo, one of the Tsar’s country homes.

  But the amulet, the thing given to Rasputin, worn by him despite its reputation, Sir Corbett had said it was destroyed, even the ash of its remains buried in some secret place. It was gone so its powers, imagined or otherwise, could not be responsible for what had happened in Russia. The whims of fate? Anne’s fingernails pressed into her palms but she felt no bite.

  The gypsy woman had not believed so; the workings of the Dark One, she had called the shipwreck and abduction; but she had not stopped there.

  … it was his hand reached to you and it will reach again…

  The tricks of fate had not ceased with her returning to Darlaston. With her stare locked on the mirror she saw the shadows behind her head gather themselves together, draw into filmy features, a mouth smiling with contempt as it stared back at her, Quenton’s mouth! Even as she gasped it was gone, the misty greyness of it fading and reforming until the steely eyes and tight face of Clara Mather glared from the mirror’s depths.

  … treachery and malevolence…

  The gypsy’s words had proved themselves true, Quenton had threatened and his mother had tried to take her inheritance: that had been their treachery.

  Within the depths of the mirror the hard eyes seemed suddenly to gleam, the mouth to curve with a smile so vicious Anne caught her breath, then a tendril of mist broke away to form itself into a separate figure, the tiny figure of a child, its eyes closed in death. Joshua! The scream she had held back so long now a clawing choking hand at her throat, she watched the vicious mouth open in a laugh, a filmy finger touch the infant’s lips.

  The very movement spoke of evil and with it came a terrible thought. Had her aunt been responsible for her baby’s death, was this the malevolence spoken of?

  Evil knows many ways.

  How many times had her father said those words? But this… her son’s death…!

  Blackness swirling in her head Anne felt herself drawn down, ever down into a dark pit, and as she fell she heard a voice following, a voice repeating over and over…

  … it will reach again… reach again… reach again…

  *

  She had dreamed it all, the horror of the night before was a figment of her imagination, the result of overwork to which Unity equated her pallor. Glad of the chance to breathe the outdoor air Anne walked more slowly than usual. A dream, yet it had stamped its mark, a deep sleep leaving her tired and drained of energy. She had risen this morning at her regular time, talked over tea and toast with Unity and Laban but all the while that terrible scene played in her mind… the image of a vicious grinning face… a finger touching her baby’s lips. It was all too wicked yet it seemed all too real. Clara Mather had vowed that the house and the foundry would never be returned, that they were the true inheritance of her son, that she had worked so they could be his… had she also killed so they could be his?

  She could not believe that. It was a dreadful thing to think! Her aunt had been a spiteful woman but she would not take a child’s life. Nightmares such as she had had last night were just that, nightmares. They were unreal fantasies of the mind and to think of them any other way, to allow them to dwell, was foolish as it was foolish to believe a lifeless object, a thing crafted of metal and stone could hold any kind of power. Good or evil was of man’s making.

  But Mikhail Yusupov and Sir Corbett, both logical sensible men, why would they speak as they had? Unless… yes, that had been their reason: make believe a piece of jewellery carried ill luck and it would not be stolen. But that did not explain the gypsy woman’s…

  No! She pushed the rest away. Whatever Sir Corbett had done with the trinket, sold it or destroyed it, the thing was gone from her life; she would not think of it again.

  ‘I were told as I might catch you here—’

  A figure huddled in dark clothing stepped in front of Anne.

  ‘—so I waited. It be a fair step to Blockall.’

  Shawl drawn low obscured the features, but the voice? Anne hesitated, she had heard it before.

  ‘Mebbe’s you’ll be thinkin’ it be wrong of me to wait for you in the street like this but, as I says, Blockall be a bit far for old legs so I asks you don’t take what I done unkindly.’

  ‘Of course not, Mrs Davies.’ Recognition dawning, Anne smiled. ‘But what brings you here?’

  ‘This.’ A hand emerged from beneath her shawl and the woman held out a letter.

  Even in the fading light of evening Anne could read the words stamped heavily across the envelope.

  H M War Office.

  *

  Abel… Abel was dead! Too stunned to answer she stared at the envelope in her hand. He was gone from her life, there was no more chance of writing to him, no way of telling him of her true feelings… it was too late!

  ‘I’ll be leaving that there with you and getting away ’ome afore it be dark. Goodnight to you, wench.’

  Her mind blanked with dry tears, Anne stood unaware of the woman drawing her shawl sheath like about her spindly frame and hobbling away, unaware of the slow fall of night, of people making their separate ways home or to shops now cautiously lit with a candle; she knew only the pain binding her chest.

  Abel… she had wanted to say so much to him… needed him to know… but he would never know, for Abel Preston was dead!

  ‘C’mon, wench, come you home.’

  Somewhere in the emptiness a voice reached to her, an arm passed about her shoulder.

  ‘Abel,’ she whispered, ‘Abel, he—’

  ‘I know, wench, I know, but this don’t be the place.’

  Memories of an earlier letter, of a different woman stunned with grief flooded Laban’s mind. Yes, that was of another time but the anguish and heartbreak would be the same. This girl was not mourning two sons as he and Unity had; but the loss of a friend you cared for was bitter enough. He had seen the friendship grow, watched it over the months. But the lad had not spoken of what lay hidden inside him, he had loved this daughter of Jacob Corby and it was surely because she was that man’s daughter he had held his silence. Now he would never break it.

  His arm supporting her he nodded, acknowledging the quiet murmurs of sympathy as they walked. Darlaston had become a town of tears where no one asked why.

  A young child had come to the Regency works, sent by his mother to tell of Anne Corby stood like a statue of stone along of the gate of Butcroft House and answering nobody as spoke to her. He had rewarded the lad with a penny and seen his eyes light up like torches and sparks fly from metal rimmed clogs as he raced for Charles Cadby’s sweetshop. The woman had seen the sense of sending for him rather than for Unity with Regency Leather being sooner to reach than Fallings Heath, nevertheless her would need be called, a woman were ever best at a time like this.

  ‘Old Mrs Davies give it to her?’ Unity came downstairs from putting Anne to bed. ‘I would have thought her to have had more thought than to push a letter like that into a wench’s hand, why not bring it here to the house?’

  ‘The woman be near enough seventy, and not so sturdy on her feet as her once was, it be too much of a trek from her place to this.’

  Unity nodded. ‘The woman be a kindly soul and done what her seen to be right, it’s me who be wrong to go talking against her.’

  ‘’Twere a shock to you as well as to her upstairs.’ Laban reached for his wife’s hand, patting it consolingly. ‘We all say things we don’t mean when we be upset.’

  ‘Some of we says nothin’ at all.’

  ‘Her’s still not spoke?’

  Withdrawing her hand Unity reached for the teapot warming on the hob. ‘Naught but that one word over and over: Abel. It… it’s almost like her feels guilty, guilty for—’

  ‘Guilt!’ Laban looked u
p from the tobacco he was shaving into paper thin slivers. ‘What mean you by that?’

  Having spooned tea into the pot Unity hesitated. Laban did not like a prying woman… but she had not pried, she had asked no question, but she could not avoid words the eyes gave voice to. She had seen what had not been said, caught the quick flush of colour to the girl’s cheek whenever Abel Preston had called, the note of eagerness which was more than enthusiasm for the walk whenever she had been called upon to take finished work to the Regency. It was not only Abel had feelings, Anne Corby had the same.

  ‘Before I tells what I think let me say this, Laban Hurley. I’ve asked nothing and been told nothing, I keeps my counsel…’

  ‘But?’ Pressing tobacco into the bowl of his pipe Laban knew better than to show the smile hovering behind his lips.

  A sharp, almost angry thump placing the teapot on an intricately cast trivet. Unity stared defiantly at the bent head.

  ‘But nothing! I sees what I sees and there be no blame in that!’

  Holding a spill to the fire then to the pipe, Laban sucked on the long stem, his smile still hidden. He knew his wife well, she would need no more prompting… he had only to wait.

  ‘I wonders you haven’t seen it for yourself… but then a man don’t see nothing as don’t be served on a plate or in a tankard.’ Quick hands matched by a now edged voice Unity covered a pinprick of irritation.