The America Ground (The Forensic Genealogist Series Book 4)

by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

  When she entered the warm parlour, Harriet found Keziah and Ann engaged in a game of dominoes. She removed her shawl and continued into the kitchen, where she found her mother stirring a spoon around a wooden bowl.

  ‘Everything be alright?’ her mother asked, setting down the bowl and fingering some bottled plums from a jar.

  ‘Yes, Ma,’ Harriet responded.

  ‘Widow Elphick alright after we be gone?’

  Harriet bit her lower lip, unsure of how to tell her mother of her parting exchange with the old woman, and that she no longer wanted to work for her. ‘She ain’t nice to me, Ma. Why do we be a-helping her so?’

  Her mother stopped stirring and looked at her. ‘Because we been friends since we were girls and we be sticking together. Don’t be letting it bother you. She ain’t had it good of late, what with the accident and now…’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘Now what, Ma?’

  Her mother seemed to regret her words. ‘She be wanting to move away.’

  Harriet was dismayed. ‘But what about Christopher? Will he be a-going, too?’

  Her mother shrugged and returned to her baking. ‘I don’t be a-knowing that, Hattie. He be growing into a man now and be earning his own keep. I shouldn’t wonder if he didn’t stay on and take lodgings someplace.’ Eliza set the bowl down and wiped her hands on her apron. ‘Hattie, can you be stuffing the beds while I be cooking the dinner? You can be a-taking Widow Elphick’s and Christopher’s round.’

  ‘Yes, Ma,’ she answered, spotting two hessian sacks of straw in the corner of the kitchen. Carrying them under each arm, she went upstairs and began to stuff the straw paillasse that she shared with Keziah and Ann. The first night after stuffing was always the most uncomfortable. It was a general consensus among the three girls that almost every part of their bodies was prodded, poked or scratched at some point during the night following stuffing.

  The stench of boiled pork began to pervade through the floorboards and Harriet, pushing the final handfuls of straw into her parents’ paillasse, felt the growls of hunger pangs in her stomach. She closed the shutters on the suffusing dusk and loitered in the darkness of her bedroom, anticipating the call from her mother. If she never saw Widow Elphick again for as long as she walked the earth she would be happy. Christopher, on the other hand, was a different matter; Harriet wanted another opportunity to make amends and set straight his current misguided vexation with her. The idea of him leaving the Priory Ground had left a cold niggling sensation at the back of her mind.

  When the call from her mother came, she walked downstairs and arrived in the kitchen, poised with a smile painted her face. She had decided to not cause a fuss and to take the dinners to Widow Elphick and Christopher willingly. A girl would shrink away and refuse to go, she told herself. A woman, however, would judiciously bite her tongue and bide her time. Widow Elphick would get what was coming to her one day.

  On a wooden tray were two tin plates containing boiled pork and bread. ‘Do these be going to Widow Elphick’s, Ma?’ she asked pleasantly.

  ‘Yes. Now be a-hurrying before they gets cold.’

  Harriet pulled on her shawl and made her way out into the night. The snow had ceased falling several hours hence and a thin moon reflected up from the ground, glistening like thousands of tiny discarded diamonds. It was the first time that she had been out at night since the attack and a sudden wave of fear struck her, as she struggled to trudge through the deep snow, which heaved and sucked on her feet like sinking sand. What if he’s here? she panicked. Skulking in the shadows, waiting for his revenge. She thought she saw movement down the alley that ran opposite Widow Elphick’s house. Something dark set against the stark white. She strained her eyes but could see nothing. She shivered suddenly, chastising herself for her weak, unwarranted fretting. She stood still and checked all around her then continued slogging through the thick snow.

  Finally, she came to the house. Rather unusually, the street door was slightly ajar. Harriet carefully placed down the tray, knocked lightly then pushed it open. She knew immediately that Christopher was not home: the room was in darkness and the fire was out.

  ‘Hello? Widow Elphick?’ she called, in as polite a voice as she could muster. She resented being there, more so now that she knew that Christopher wasn’t home. ‘It be Harriet—I be a-bringing your food.’

  The faintest fragments of moonlight guided her up the stairs where she found Widow Elphick’s bedroom door shut.

  ‘Widow Elphick,’ she called softly, steeling herself for the inevitable barrage of verbal abuse that she was about to face. She decided she would simply walk in, place the tray down and leave without saying a single word. Widow Elphick is only an evil old witch if I let her be, she told herself.

  Harriet placed her ear to the door and listened. Just creeping above the silence of the house was a soft purring, as if there were a sleeping kitten tucked behind the door. Harriet was unsure of what to do. If she knocked and woke the hoary woman, she would be in for the most scathing diatribe, but if she crept in and left the tray for her to find when she woke, then the tirade would follow later, via her parents for leaving the food to go cold. Harriet decided to wake the sleeping beast. She knocked and listened. The purring grew louder and Harriet pushed open the door.

  A waning sullen fire augmented the shadows with shades of ochre and scarlet and so it took Harriet longer than it might otherwise have done to spot the streams of crimson flowing down from the open black slice across Widow Elphick’s jowly neck.

  Harriet gasped when the recognition of the soft purring and the sight of the bubbling blood came together in hideous clarity.

  Widow Elphick’s eyes shot open and she tried to speak to her but all that emerged from her purple lips was a raspy groan. Beside her, on the floor was a shiny kitchen knife.

  Harriet screamed and ran from the house.

  Chapter Eight

  22nd February 1827, The Priory Ground, outside Hastings, Sussex

  Night-time had crept over the sea like a sinister black animal, bringing with it a tortured hollow wind that seemed to embody the general despondency of the Priory Ground inhabitants. For today, Widow Elphick’s body had been conveyed to the cold ground, buried beside her late husband in St Clements Churchyard. The woman’s passing might ordinarily have only garnered a handful of mourners drawn from among family and close friends but her death had sent a powerful ripple through the property owners of the Priory Ground; cowmen, wheelwrights, bakers, brewers, fishermen, lodging-house-keepers and mast-makers with little past acquaintance with Widow Elphick all unified in a strange troubled alliance. That the alliance had inadvertently processed from the church to the Black Horse, was a cause of much delight to Joseph Lovekin, who was witnessing his busiest evening since opening.

  Harriet, drafted in to assist with the workload, was bounding exuberantly around the gin palace collecting empty glasses. Finally given the perfect opportunity, she was determined to prove herself as an adult. She moved imperceptibly from one gathering to another, stealing snatches of conversation as she went.

  ‘If I don’t be owning me own home, then I don’t be owning me own business, neither,’ Moses Masters had lamented to his fellow shipwrights.

  ‘I heard there be happening an official inquest of sorts, to see who be owning what,’ Edward Picknell, the carpenter had moaned to his brother, William.

  ‘That addle-headed woman, drawing in the authorities like that,’ Ann Woods, a lodging-house keeper had whispered to her friend. ‘Do you be a-knowing that the old wretch clung to life for more than forty-five minutes after she sliced herself open? The surgeon tied one of her arteries, but it weren’t no good; her life were gone.’

  Harriet, carrying a tray of glasses to the sink behind the bar, wove together all the pieces of conversation in her mind to form a tapestry, the fabric of which was the letter that she had heard her father read aloud to Widow Elphick. Harriet sensed that trouble was on its way to the Priory Ground.


  ‘You be alright, Hattie?’ her father turned to ask.

  ‘Yes, Pa,’ she responded with a smile, as she heated water from the Priory Stream in a copper pan. She glanced out across the bustling gin palace and caught sight of Christopher’s profile. He was leaning against the bar, steeped in liquor and talking to his employer, the shoemaker, Mr Brazier. In just a few short weeks, Christopher seemed to have changed; his cheeks were less plump and his face was more angular and mature.

  Harriet added soda to the heated water then began to wash the glasses, seeking her mother from the crowd as she cleaned. Outwardly, her mother appeared as amiable as ever, but a deep engraved sorrow had been visible in her eyes since Widow Elphick’s death. ‘Surely, she would never have done that to herself,’ Eliza had wailed, upon seeing one of her oldest friend’s lifeless body. No amount of reassurance or comforting from her husband or children had done anything to lift her spirits.

  Harriet’s contemplations were interrupted when she noticed that the usual clamour from the bar had quietened; almost every conversation in the gin palace had inexplicably stopped. She set down the glass that she had been cleaning, dried her hands and moved out to the bar. The focus of everyone’s attention was on someone—a man judging by his voice—standing near the door. As he spoke, the crowd around him grew in number and in agitation. ‘They be a-coming!’ he yelled. ‘The parish constables and men from the corporation!’ Harriet moved closer and stood on tiptoes but could see nothing, so she backed away and climbed up onto the bar top. Just inside the door she saw Henry Weller, the baker, sweating profusely with ruddy cheeks. ‘I see them stopping for water near the Priory Bridge—they mean to make arrests! We need to be a-hiding!’

  ‘Don’t be a-talking rot, Henry,’ George Fox jeered. ‘We ain’t hiders—we be fighters!’ A rowdy cheer of agreement rose from among the men, followed by cries of swagger and bravado.

  ‘I be fetching me guns!’ one of the men declared and he too received a roar of encouragement from the others.

  ‘Men! Men! Men!’ Joseph Lovekin yelled, pushing through the crowds so that he was centre-stage beside Henry Weller.

  Harriet watched as the crowd acquiesced to hear his words.

  Joseph cleared his throat and raised his hand to speak. ‘Let us be none of them things—neither hiders nor fighters—not unless need be. Let us be listeners foremost and see what they be a-wanting,’ Joseph cried. ‘Going out there with weapons drawn be showing us as no more than criminals.’

  A low murmur rippled around the gin palace, but Harriet couldn’t determine if her father had the support or dissent of his patrons.

  ‘Lead the way, Joe Lovekin,’ one of the men called.

  Joseph looked around the room and saw the nods and general whispers of encouragement. ‘Let’s be a-going, then,’ he called.

  In just a few fleeting seconds, the Black Horse was a ghost of what it had been moments before. The dozen that remained—all women—gazed at each other uncertainly.

  ‘Get down, Hattie!’ Eliza snapped when she turned to see her daughter perched on the bar top.

  Harriet slid down and faced her mother. Silence continued to hold its reign over the room. ‘Do we just be standing here like fire-spaniels?’ Harriet said quietly to her mother, but just loud enough to draw the attention of the other women. ‘Or do we be a-joining the men and defending our lot?’

  Eliza looked about her and wrung her hands. She drew in a long breath, then spoke to the other women, who were looking on curiously. ‘Fegs, the girl’s right; we can’t be standing around here a-waiting for the men folk, let’s be a-helping them.’ Only Harriet detected the subtle notes of unease in her mother’s pronouncement.

  The women in the Black Horse seemed greatly satisfied with Eliza’s suggestion and, in a babble of excited conversation, they hurried towards the door, where they instinctively paused like deferential serfs to the lord of the manor, allowing Eliza to take the lead.

  An exhilaration, that rendered her oblivious to the piercing coldness of the night, swilled through Harriet’s veins, as she followed the throng of women towards the Priory Bridge. The pace of their march was such that Harriet quickly lost her position in her mother’s shadow, and was now struggling to keep up at the back of the line.

  The women trooped wordlessly but resolutely through the alleyways, their path illuminated by the pale offerings from a low fubsy moon. The wind brought to the women’s ears tantalising yet unintelligible scraps of the discord occurring near to the bridge.

  The party suddenly slowed, almost coming to a halt, and Harriet’s eyes widened as she fully took in the scene before her. The silhouettes of twelve men on horseback, just a shade darker than the stark hills which rose behind them, stood in a defensive, military-like line with their truncheons raised, as if ready to surge forward into battle. In their other hands, each man carried a muted lantern. Before them, shouting a cacophony of furious tirades, were dozens of men of the Priory Ground, their number having grown since leaving the gin palace.

  Eliza extended her arms to either side, bringing her party of women to a complete stop. They stood, watching undetected as the verbal battle continued between the two groups of men.

  Suddenly, one of the men on horseback raised his hand into the air. Harriet realised what he was holding at the exact moment that the pistol fired; the cracking sound ripped through the bitter confrontation that surrounded him and the Priory Ground sunk into an unnatural silence.

  ‘Savages,’ the man jeered, stepping his horse forward a pace.

  Harriet, focussing intently on the man, quickly passed around the back of the other women, drawing closer to him, as his oration continued.

  ‘The lawlessness of this condemned hole ends tonight. The licentiousness and the wickedness all ceases,’ the man bellowed. ‘We, the Corporation of Hastings have come to make arrests. We mean to commit felons to the Watch House, to be put before a magistrate and tried in a court of law. I have with me all nine of the Hastings constables, such is the seriousness of your criminal depravations.’

  ‘And what charges do you be a-bringing?’ Joseph Lovekin called.

  The man tossed his head, searching the crowds for the dissident and, as he did so, the pallid moonlight illuminated his face and Harriet recognised him immediately: it was the gentleman that she had first seen at the Priory Stream and then again in the Black Horse on the night of her ordeal.

  ‘Drunkenness, prostitution and gambling,’ the man answered sourly. ‘Though I’m certain that charges relating to the illegal settling of this land and the evasion of duty will be forthcoming in due course.’

  ‘What a load of old balderdash!’ Joseph cried. ‘I be a-telling you now, we won’t be druv. Now be getting on your way, you ain’t taking none from here.’

  A cheer in support of Joseph rang out from the Priory Ground men.

  Harriet stared, captivated by what was taking place in front of her. Her chest tightened as she watched the man on horseback lower his pistol and aim it at her father’s head.

  ‘You, Mr Lovekin and your den of iniquity are to be blamed for much of the evil that takes place in these parts. And your daughter, a common prostitute, is one we have come to arrest.’

  Harriet gasped then tugged her shawl up to cover her mouth. Had she heard correctly? Did the man say that he meant to arrest her? She sank back into the shadows and noticed then that her mother and all of the other women had gone. Vanished. Her heart began to pound as she realised that she had been abandoned, that the weak women had taken themselves off to hide somewhere, presuming that she was still among them. The vulnerability and helplessness that she had felt on the night of her attack suddenly returned.

  ‘Is that you, Miss Lovekin,’ the man called down, thrusting his lantern forwards. ‘Show yourself.’

  More than two dozen faces turned in her direction.

  ‘You be staying where you are, Hattie,’ Joseph instructed. He turned back to the men on horseback. ‘I won’t say it again, you
ain’t welcome here.’

  The man laughed a scornful, mocking laugh. ‘Common prostitutes, like your daughter, Mr Lovekin, will not be tolerated—now hand her over to the constables before we are required to use the full force that the Corporation has bestowed upon us.’

  Harriet shrank further back and a circle of men from the Priory Ground gathered around her like a protective fence.

  ‘We don’t be recognising no Corporation!’ a female voice suddenly yelled.

  Harriet, at once knowing that the voice belonged to her mother, peered through a gap between two of the men’s heads and saw that the entire group of women—plus a few other newcomers—had returned. Each of them was holding a bucket and an implement of some kind, which they brandished in the air.

  ‘We be an independent land and we don’t be wanting nothing from you,’ Thomas Waters, the sawyer yelled.

  ‘That be right—we be independent—like what happened in America,’ Joseph Lovekin added. ‘No need for no Corporations, nor kings, nor taxes.’

  The gentleman on horseback grinned. ‘That, Mr Lovekin, is treason talk.’ He turned around to the constables behind him. ‘Did you hear that? These disgusting vermin are refuting the authority of His Majesty. Mr Blythe, I request that your constables begin making arrests!’

  Harriet watched incredulously as her mother surged forward towards the gentleman. ‘We ain’t nothing to do with Hastings nor its Corporation, so take that, you tip-tongued muck-grubber!’ she yelled, hurling a pail of night soil over him.

  Even in the soft illuminations offered by the gentleman’s lantern, Harriet could see the look of utter disgust and humiliation in his eyes, as he ran a gloved hand down his coat, casting the flung effluence to the floor.

  Another woman heaved forward and threw the contents of her pail onto one of the constables, repeating the mantra, ‘We don’t recognise your authority!’

  More and more women hurried towards the constables, who were now beginning to back their horses away, and hurled their buckets over them, shouting as they did so.