THIS STORY IS BEING WRITTEN AS PART OF OUR #COVIDCREATIONS PROJECT
All across the world people are struggling with their mental health due to the pandemic, a change in the way of our lives, fearmongering by media sources and government rules and lockdowns. To get through and keep us as sane as we ever were, we started this project to write every day.
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All across the world people are struggling with their mental health due to the pandemic, a change in the way of our lives, fearmongering by media sources and government rules and lockdowns. To get through and keep us as sane as we ever were, we started this project to write every day.
EVERY EVENING THE STORY WILL BE ADDED TO, UNTIL IT IS COMPLETE or THE WORLD IS FREE TO ROAM ONCE MORE
Join us - do something creative every day!
PART ONE
‘Excuse me if my recollections are none too flowered; it was a lay lady by name of Annie who taught me the alphabet and such, while at the reins of a Suffolk pulling a small cart. There and back, there and back, every Saturday for as long as I was first introduced to the safe haven of the workhouse. All ports have a price and I’d be over the barrel more than once a week, my tasks among keeping quiet thereafter were menial ones - the floors, the paths, the leaves. The muting icing on my wretched cake would be, in my eyes, ‘Lord Coachman’ and escort to Annie, to pick up flour from miller Bill Brackley’s place.’
A’m kicking my heels outside miller Bill’s, wiping the hard pull saliva from Dunbar’s bit, checking his shoes. I sometimes break him loose and let him drink from the rat pool, if Bill shouts me to. Two crows drive a heron down through a thorn by the stream; Dunbar spooks and clops the cart back a yard. And then… screams. I want the awful noise to be that of the heron.
But the truth was, I knew it wasn’t.
… … …
I froze in an air of foreboding doom; my eyes flashing a sight of the cowering heron and somehow simultaneously the mill door. The hell’s gate opened, and there stood white Annie, unknowingly straightening her dress.
“Annie, what’s ‘appened?” I exclaimed.
Annie heaved a vacant vomit and closed the door gently behind her.
“We have to leave,” she uttered, her wide eyes giving me a glare of urgency.
“What about the sacks, Annie, the flour?” I floundered.
“We have to leave!” she insisted.
The journey from the mill to the workhouse was one of unveiling stark truths.
“Tom,” she vented, “we’re dogs of this underworld; we are service to the devil, please God help us!”
Her tone was unsettling. “What ‘appened at the mill, Annie?” I probed.
Annie sat silent, head down, nervously handing her forearms, the pink marks mottling her white skin.
By halfway house, she had composed and sat once again perfectly prim.
“Tom,” she disclosed gently, “I know what that brute Belt Gibbs does to you. You don’t be ashamed - there’s no time. Every dog has his day, bu’ don’t seek it. Promise me, Tom, don’t seek that day; don’t fight for that day. In all hell there will be light in the virtue of patience.”
Her prophecy lay me silent in concerned thought. I thought it my duty not to be a twelve-year-old boy - but rather a stalwart, man chaperone and so I too remained silent for the last of the journey, trying not to notice the tremble in Annie’s limbs beside me.
The workhouse, brick and sick, drew into view. Dunbar saw it too and started to low his head in reluctance.
As always, Belt Gibbs, all shoulder and belly, emerged opening the double door of the kitchen store to help us offload.
“Where’s the flour,” he grunted resentfully to Annie.
“There’s been a problem,” Annie replied, lowering her head so as not to meet his harsh eyes. “I must speak to Mr Proctor.”
“I see,” he grunted indignantly. “Sharp to the office then!” and he led us there assuming the lead, like a sergeant that wins all wars.
He knocked excessively loudly, three times with his notorious, ivory, club-handled stick before siding his head assertively into Mr Proctor’s office door.
“Yes!” declared Proctor.
“Belt Gibbs, Sir,” Gibbs roared.
“Come, come,” commanded Proctor.
The transition from hall to office was fast and leaden with Belt Gibbs’ purse-lipped fury that Annie should speak preferably with Proctor instead of himself.
“It seems there has been - a problem - with this week’s flour supply from Brackley’s,” mockingly declared Gibbs.
“I see,” countered Proctor, “and what might that problem be?”
Gibbs shoved Annie forward, a wry look of expectancy on his face.
I looked up at Annie too, for I also awaited the answer.
“Well, Sir,” she whispered.
“Speak up! Speak up!” deplored Proctor.
“Well Sir, while, whilst, while…”
“Get on with ‘t girl,” thundered Gibb, his pulsing rage making the bile rise in my chest.
“Well Sir, whilst carrying out my required duties with Brackley… err… he died, Sir.”
--- --- ---
Annie was dead before she hit the flags.
During her crumpling decent, I saw Scratch, the ratter, startle from his sleep and scurry under the coffer; I saw Proctor on his chair, momentarily balancing on his back two legs as he recoiled; I saw a dusky dove come to settle on the outer sill of the office window, and I saw Annie’s eyes, Annie’s wide eyes before…
The ferryman, the reaper, who you will, mercifully took my legs and closed my eyes: Annie’s caved temple and eye socket, eyeball resting on cheek and the instant pool of thick, clear fluid all too much.
I aroused drowsily from the same spot at which I’d collapsed, my vision clearing slowly to reveal Proctor at his desk, head down, his gaunt hands wrapped around his flask.
Annie was gone, Belt Gibbs too, and for all my wanting it hadn’t been a bad dream; Scratch was circling and inspecting a poor attempt at mopping up the evidence.
Having been witness to a murder, I needed time to piece together the picture in order for my survival. What were they going to do with me? I re-closed my eyes and feigned my temporary state of non-existence.
I needed to gather my thoughts on the jigsaw pieces I held.
‘The house works like this: the hessian sheets come in, we stitch ‘em an’ they go out as sacks, some t’ shipping, some t’ farms. Th’ house gets paid via Proctor an’ Gibbs; they bring in the food an’ keep us in rags, an’ down to Annie’s service they’s been a wavering by Brackley of flour costs. There’s eighty of us ‘ere in rags, a lot o’ flour, a lot o’ pennies in Proctor and Gibbs pockets. Bu’ it’s all ended abruptly. Proctor’s drinking. Gibbs is waging war.’
I squinted open my eyes as armed as I could be under the circumstances.
“Ah Tom,” Proctor said immediately. “You’ve suffered a nasty fall. How are you feeling?”
I dared not look at him. I shook my head.
“We’ve decided to send you across to the infirmary for a few days, check you for fever, infection, feed you up, me lad.”
I nodded, words seeming to fail me.
“Good, clever boy!” Proctor replied, seemingly agreeing with my silence.
At that same moment, a trundling past the window drew both of our attention, as Dunbar and cart passed out over the cobbles to what everyone referred to as the tradesmen’s gate. I knew instantly what lay in that cart, and felt a selfish anger course through me that it was Gibbs at the reins.
“As I was saying,” Proctor deflected, coughing dramatically, “feed you up and get you well again. Come now, let’s get you down and rested for the night. Reverend Clancy will give you the once over in the morning.”
There were three beds in the infirmary, one made up with a wedge of bread and a glass of water on its side table. A slab with coarse straps ran along the short, far wall. The locking of the door echoed around the sparsely furnished rectangle.
I took a sip of water, its moisture scorching the dry sand which had become my throat, and stared wearily at the cruciform which hung above the strap block.
Lock, key and barred windows were the obvious forefront of their plan – if Gibbs knew that I was there, was that better than dead?
--- ---- ---
I could hear Proctor and Reverend Clancy beyond the door shortly after dawn, before the Reverend fumbled the key into the lock. I had been spark out for ten hours or more, but his slight-tippled attempt at unlocking the door brought me full to my senses.
It had always been one of Annie’s undertakings to look after the sick and it appeared Reverend Clancy was quite surprised that he’d been summoned to make a medical examination of one of the workhouse inmates.
“Sweet lamb of he, Lord Jesus watches you,” sang Clancy, followed by an exaggerated pointing action towards, but not directly at due to his nauseous swaying, the cruciform on the far wall. “Thank the Lord for odourless gin. Thank the Lord, forgive me my sin. Ah ah ha ah,” he laughed at his little ditty tune.
It’s said that we shouldn’t judge, but I was sure Clancy was approaching the final stages of madness. He looked at me, eyes closed but eyebrows raised, before uttering emphatically, “There! Examination over. You boy are fine, just rest needed. Ah ah ha ah!”
He hadn’t even looked at me, and yet before I had even attempted any response, he had his hand on the door handle and was hollering his ditty once more: “Sweet lamb of he, Lord Jesus watches you, farewell and be true, as I have much to do. Ah ah ha ah!” and he chortled while righting himself to exit.
However, his exit plan was shortlived, for the door bolted open swinging as madly on its hinges as Clancy did on his own two legs, and in barged Belt Gibbs, the smell of death and all.
“So, he has an infection!” he roared, directing his glare at Clancy, who did not notice in the slightest.
“Sweet lamb, Mr Gibbs, good Lord no! He’s as sprite as a fobbly, wobbly chick, Ah ah ha ah!”
Gibbs gave me a look of malice.
“So…” roared Gibbs once again, “he has an infection!”
This time Gibbs’ roar had bought some semblance of earth to Clancy, who replied quite soberly, “Well Mr Gibbs, enlighten me for I am unknowing?”
Gibbs advanced towards my bedside, cast aside the threadbare blanket and wrenched me by the scuff of my nightshirt and threw me over his shoulder like a sack of coal. I tried not to tense, knowing all too well from his manhandling prior, that it would make the pain worse, as he slammed me down on the strap slab. The straps were hastily tightened across my body, one across my chest, making me have to take shallow breaths to keep me conscious, the other so tight across my thighs that my feet felt numb.
“There,” shrieked Gibbs, as he threw back my night shirt covering my nose and mouth and making my breathing even more pitiful, while revealing my nether regions. “An infection on his pike end!”
Clancy had sobered up in the ferocity of the proceedings and nervously and embarrassedly stepped towards me to peer at my privates.
“I’m usually only called to the infirmary to read last rights,” Clancy exclaimed.
Belt Gibbs laughed loudly and cruelly.
I lay there in the half light of my covered mouth and seemed to enter a place of distance. It seemed that all of my senses had become detached from myself.
“Errr,” Clancy observed. “I don’t see there to be a problem.”
Gibbs fury exploded at the holy man as he bellowed, “Then your eyes fail you! Carry out in the eyes of your superior there on the wall what you would normally recommend!”
“Good Lord,” replied Clancy taking a step away from the brute Gibbs. “You are asking me to...?”
“Exactly,” retorted Gibbs, the malicious enjoyment of his violence flickering upon his face.
“I’m not a surgeon Mr Gibbs and barely a doctor, besides there are no instruments here.”
Gibbs took from his jacket pocket an apple and from his back trouser pocket a folded grafting knife. He opened the blade, sliced a wedge of apple, ate it promptly and handed the knife to the clergyman.
“Proceed,” commanded Gibbs. “Proceed!”
Annie came into my dream and smiled truthfully, and in that moment the Lord gave Clancy temporarily the hands of ‘exact’ and ‘meticulous’.
In the void, I heard the door lock.
“Not a word Clancy,” threatened Gibbs.
“Most understood and forever eternal,” replied Clancy.
Annie’s words floated about me.
“Forgive me Lord,” someone whispered.
--- --- ---
A mid-October dawn broke, and I wondered whether I was still on earth, halfway to St Peter’s gate or already over the other side; the dazings of the prior days’ happenings had left me inexplosive, but hardly tranquil.
I flinched as a key turned in the lock - what next could be better than death?
“Up up Tom Fletcher, you are a wanted man!” purred a pure, lush voice.
My body eased, and soul, and mind, – had an angel come to take me?
“Up Tom Fletcher,” purred the voice again. “You’re wanted. Dunbar – he’s stuck to the spot and won’t move. By all accounts you are a fool and a mute, but I don’t believe the half of it, for it was a fool that conveyed those words to me!”
My mind whirled from half sleep to full consciousness, and there stood the angel.
“Oh, do forgive me,” she admonished herself. “Let me introduce myself.”
Her manners were almost as impeccable as the ringlets which tumbled from her crown, her poise like Annie’s only with real refinement.
“Rhubarb Shilling, thirteen years and two months,” she gave a little courteous nod towards me, evidently proud of her name. “Rather catching, don’t you think? Rhubarb Shilling - only one of me.”
I did think... and if I hadn’t already lost any ability to make an utterance, her presence alone would have had me lost for words.
“I arrived only yesterday, and already have had instruction. Mr Gibbs has sent me over to mend you up, for we are to go on the flour run. We leave in an hour so no time to waste.”
She gently handed me a small bottle, her velvety soft fingers brushing lightly against my rough, calloused hand as I took it from her.
“It’s saline,” she mouthed quietly, as if to save me from anyone else hearing. “You dab, dab, dab. Now I’ll open a window to accustom you to some fresh morning air.”
One of her shoulders dipped slightly as she turned, exposing both her sympathy and a little embarrassment. She pushed the window sharply to open it a quarter, which seemed almost instantly to render the bars meaningless.
“Now dress yourself Tom. I’ve never been on a cart before,” she giggled half excitedly.
Her disposition was infectious and the thought of Dunbar, my friend, had me dressed in an instant.
Before we could leave, an ominous sound had us both turning our heads towards the doorway. Instantly recognisable footsteps were coming down the hall. My body gave me up as my hand started to shiver, but Rhubarb took a side step in front of me shielding me from the door as he appeared.
“Has he spoken?” Gibbs demanded.
“Has he spoken,” exclaimed Rhubarb shrilly in retort. “In all my days in this profession, I have never heard a mute talk!” She placed her hands upon her hips in a manner that would make anyone believe that what she was saying was the God’s own truth.
“Miss Shilling,” Gibbs mellowed, trying to sidestep around her to view me. However, Rhubarb matched his stride and continued to shelter me from his reach. I couldn’t help but smirk at Gibbs inability to address her as Rhubarb, and lowered my head for fear of him seeing my delight.
“Miss Shilling,” he continued. “How long have you been in this profession and how old are you?”
“I am thirteen and two months, Mr Gibbs, and old enough and wise enough to remind you that your boots are mudded in my infirmary!”
Unbelievably, Gibbs retreated immediately to the open door, making sure his feet were firmly outside the infirmary. I could only gulp in pleasure of Rhubarb’s demeanour.
Gibbs called over Rhubarb’s petite figure and strong composure, “Tom, we need flour today. Not from Brackley’s – go to Marsh Top,” before trudging away heavily down the corridor.
The exhilarating combination of Miss Rhubarb Shilling and leaving the infirmary saw me two miles down the drag to Marsh Top, before I came to my senses and had to wonder whether Dunbar had yoked and strapped himself?
My own sense of wonderment was matched by the awe of Miss Rhubarb Shilling on her first ever cart ride. Dunbar knew it too, and probably reckoned he could have won dressage that day.
--- --- ---
1850
The Three Queens, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire Border
“Wah hey Wah hey Jack ‘Miller, Jack ‘Miller’ –” That’s how they greeted me as I entered the Three Queens Inn.
Amused, I countered back, “Ow ey lads, am still Jack Dance. I knows me roots, still a sheep drive, a’ways will be!”
Beth Green reluctantly slammed a tankard o’ froth on the bar with a blunt statement as accompaniment, “It’s a gaggle o’ tarfoot to Cheshunt in t’ morning, Jack!”
She was none too pleased with me mornin’ notice to quit, but I’d a chance o’ me own roof an’ none beholden to me boss, Beth Green, who were the last surviving member of the infamous ‘Three Queans’ that had built the ‘inn’ and all of its holding pens by ill repute.
Nobody liked the tarfoot geese runs; it were slow, and the first winter batches were a’ways a wanderin’ nightmare.
It were a hard shoulder farewell, for after Cheshunt, I’d be north east there’bouts to run Brackley’s. (I call him Brackley as father ain’t the right term aft he left me with Beth Green when me mother (another of the ‘Queans’) died havin’ me.
“You will write, Jack?” Molly entreated, her green-blue eyes peeping at me through her long loose tresses from outside the snug doorway.
One of me vagabounds chortled, “Thought you might be goin’ wiv him, Moll!” causing raucous laughter, and Molly to retreat having turned a glorious shade of pink.
I drank with the huddle, arm wrestled, an’ for the rest o’ the evening made false light o’ the fact I were leaving in th’ morning.
Spark could drive a ‘undred bleaters to Cheshunt for days, busy an’ happy all through, an’ all I had to do was watch an’ walk, but a ‘undred an’ fifty tarfoot ‘ould take eight days, an’ that kind a patience he lacked.
I knelt down, an’ roughed up his coarse black and white coat: “At the end o’ this drive boy, there’s a mill, a life, an’ you an’ me boy, it’ll all be ours.”
Whether he knew what I were saying or not, I weren’t sure, but his ears pricked, an’ he ran a figure o’ eight an’ barked, so I took it that he did, an’ opened the gate of the geese holdin’ pen.
Two miles in, an’ I took a quick detour hastily over the church wall to say hullo, goodbye. The stone read, “Here lies John Dance. Departed 2 Feb 1816. And his wife Christine. Departed 18 Dec 1832. Reunited.”
I ain’t sure if I’m written as Dance or Brackley, but unlike many, I’m lucky an’ unlucky enough to know the truth. The story goes that John Dance died of his wounds some eight months after Waterloo, an’ aft that Christine set up with two other widows the house of ill fame I had just left: The Three Queans - as it were known back then.
Hearsay and whispers rally that it were the counsel of Victoria herself that had its name changed to the ‘Three Queens”, all part of the emergence of the ‘Golden Era.’
--- --- ---
“Do you know, Tom?” exclaimed Rhubarb. “As we are in Nelson’s shire, I thought, it might be quite apt to hereby name this cart H.M.S bumpy!”
I smiled silently, enjoying Rhubarb’s engaging nature as we headed up to Marsh Top. Holding the reins in one hand, I reached behind the seat and drew out two hessian sacks, passing them to Rhubarb with a little nod.
She folded them neatly into two make-shift cushions and handed me one. As we both half-stood to place down the comforts, Dunbar’s ears pricked and he came to an abrupt stop, nearly sending the pair of us head over heels off the cart into the dirt below.
With Dunbar still, and the clatter of the cart suddenly silent, we now too could hear a faint hollering in the distance behind us.
I could make it out to be a trap and trotter weaving its way towards us, its path bearing no direct course with its wheels rumbling haphazardly on and off the grass on both sides. On it swayed a figure, one hand on the reins and one flapping aloft.
“Goodness me,” declared Rhubarb in astonishment, “I do believe he is trying to hail us!”
I knew before he even came into full view that it was Clancy, and as he weaved closer, swerving around our cart, he pulled up crossways just in front of Dunbar, who snorted in disgust.
He stumbled from the trap in his customary morning state, falling to his knees on the track right in front of Dunbar with both arms raised. Dunbar snorted loudly again, sending a spray of slobber in Clancy’s direction before looking away.
“Oh yee, oh yee, son of the everywhere spirit,” he began in his standard rambling fashion, lifting himself unsteadily from the dirt. “Forgive me, forgive me!” he continued.
Rhubarb’s expression of distaste was in agreement with Dunbar’s as she enquired cynically, “And to whom do we have the pleasure?
“Ah Eve, Eve… so profound… Clancy and reverend to all you see,” Clancy replied, completely oblivious to her mockery.
“Well enchanted I’m sure,” she continued, passing me a look of camaraderie and then rolling her eyes at the state Clancy was already in not so very long after dawn.
By now, Clancy had fully risen to his feet, but still rocked on his heels as he approached the side of the cart. Emphatically, he clasped his arms about my ankles and lay his head upon my boots before whimpering, “Lord, forgive me!”
Rhubarb’s patience with the inebriated clergyman, by this point, was wearing thin, and she replied, “If our forgiving you will render sense into your day, and allow us on with our duties, then I’m sure you are forgiven!”
Clancy lifted his bleary eyes in question towards mine. I nodded once, to which he released my ankles. Leaning back, further than I thought his body would allow, he raised his arms and chin heavenward, “Mysterious Lord – two saints on their way, watch them by night and guard them by day. Ah ah ha!”
Staggering backwards, he somehow made it back to his trap, lost his footing two or three times before making it aboard, and then criss-crossed his way into the distance, leaving his turning a little late to head over the verge on one wheel left down towards Leper’s Copse.
“Well I have never seen the like!” exclaimed Rhubarb as Dunbar started to move us off again. “Right Tom, we need to make haste to Marsh Top!”
Upon arrival, Sam Beck addressed me courteously, “We go’r eight t’ spare. Eight more in three days. Should keep y’ goin’ eh?”
I nodded.
He paused, “Sad ‘bout Annie, Tom. I’m awful sorry, lad. Throwing hersel’ in th’ cut all cos a’ Brackley. Would ne’er a though it.”
In an instant, I knew Belt Gibbs had planted her in the cut to turn the favour for himself by crafting a heartbreak suicide.
All I had to do was nod in agreement.
The way back to the workhouse exposed the looming reality of the times. Rhubarb revealed that Annie had been brought back to the workhouse the evening she herself had arrived. Her corpse had been transferred to another carriage, and departed to London: “Body parts for medical science,” Rhubarb informed me, “and a small transaction at that!”
I could hardly question it.
--- --- ---
WE ARE BUSY RIGHT NOW SO THIS PROJECT HAS BEEN TEMPORARILY SHELVED, BUT WE WILL RETURN TO IT SHORTLY
‘Excuse me if my recollections are none too flowered; it was a lay lady by name of Annie who taught me the alphabet and such, while at the reins of a Suffolk pulling a small cart. There and back, there and back, every Saturday for as long as I was first introduced to the safe haven of the workhouse. All ports have a price and I’d be over the barrel more than once a week, my tasks among keeping quiet thereafter were menial ones - the floors, the paths, the leaves. The muting icing on my wretched cake would be, in my eyes, ‘Lord Coachman’ and escort to Annie, to pick up flour from miller Bill Brackley’s place.’
A’m kicking my heels outside miller Bill’s, wiping the hard pull saliva from Dunbar’s bit, checking his shoes. I sometimes break him loose and let him drink from the rat pool, if Bill shouts me to. Two crows drive a heron down through a thorn by the stream; Dunbar spooks and clops the cart back a yard. And then… screams. I want the awful noise to be that of the heron.
But the truth was, I knew it wasn’t.
… … …
I froze in an air of foreboding doom; my eyes flashing a sight of the cowering heron and somehow simultaneously the mill door. The hell’s gate opened, and there stood white Annie, unknowingly straightening her dress.
“Annie, what’s ‘appened?” I exclaimed.
Annie heaved a vacant vomit and closed the door gently behind her.
“We have to leave,” she uttered, her wide eyes giving me a glare of urgency.
“What about the sacks, Annie, the flour?” I floundered.
“We have to leave!” she insisted.
The journey from the mill to the workhouse was one of unveiling stark truths.
“Tom,” she vented, “we’re dogs of this underworld; we are service to the devil, please God help us!”
Her tone was unsettling. “What ‘appened at the mill, Annie?” I probed.
Annie sat silent, head down, nervously handing her forearms, the pink marks mottling her white skin.
By halfway house, she had composed and sat once again perfectly prim.
“Tom,” she disclosed gently, “I know what that brute Belt Gibbs does to you. You don’t be ashamed - there’s no time. Every dog has his day, bu’ don’t seek it. Promise me, Tom, don’t seek that day; don’t fight for that day. In all hell there will be light in the virtue of patience.”
Her prophecy lay me silent in concerned thought. I thought it my duty not to be a twelve-year-old boy - but rather a stalwart, man chaperone and so I too remained silent for the last of the journey, trying not to notice the tremble in Annie’s limbs beside me.
The workhouse, brick and sick, drew into view. Dunbar saw it too and started to low his head in reluctance.
As always, Belt Gibbs, all shoulder and belly, emerged opening the double door of the kitchen store to help us offload.
“Where’s the flour,” he grunted resentfully to Annie.
“There’s been a problem,” Annie replied, lowering her head so as not to meet his harsh eyes. “I must speak to Mr Proctor.”
“I see,” he grunted indignantly. “Sharp to the office then!” and he led us there assuming the lead, like a sergeant that wins all wars.
He knocked excessively loudly, three times with his notorious, ivory, club-handled stick before siding his head assertively into Mr Proctor’s office door.
“Yes!” declared Proctor.
“Belt Gibbs, Sir,” Gibbs roared.
“Come, come,” commanded Proctor.
The transition from hall to office was fast and leaden with Belt Gibbs’ purse-lipped fury that Annie should speak preferably with Proctor instead of himself.
“It seems there has been - a problem - with this week’s flour supply from Brackley’s,” mockingly declared Gibbs.
“I see,” countered Proctor, “and what might that problem be?”
Gibbs shoved Annie forward, a wry look of expectancy on his face.
I looked up at Annie too, for I also awaited the answer.
“Well, Sir,” she whispered.
“Speak up! Speak up!” deplored Proctor.
“Well Sir, while, whilst, while…”
“Get on with ‘t girl,” thundered Gibb, his pulsing rage making the bile rise in my chest.
“Well Sir, whilst carrying out my required duties with Brackley… err… he died, Sir.”
--- --- ---
Annie was dead before she hit the flags.
During her crumpling decent, I saw Scratch, the ratter, startle from his sleep and scurry under the coffer; I saw Proctor on his chair, momentarily balancing on his back two legs as he recoiled; I saw a dusky dove come to settle on the outer sill of the office window, and I saw Annie’s eyes, Annie’s wide eyes before…
The ferryman, the reaper, who you will, mercifully took my legs and closed my eyes: Annie’s caved temple and eye socket, eyeball resting on cheek and the instant pool of thick, clear fluid all too much.
I aroused drowsily from the same spot at which I’d collapsed, my vision clearing slowly to reveal Proctor at his desk, head down, his gaunt hands wrapped around his flask.
Annie was gone, Belt Gibbs too, and for all my wanting it hadn’t been a bad dream; Scratch was circling and inspecting a poor attempt at mopping up the evidence.
Having been witness to a murder, I needed time to piece together the picture in order for my survival. What were they going to do with me? I re-closed my eyes and feigned my temporary state of non-existence.
I needed to gather my thoughts on the jigsaw pieces I held.
‘The house works like this: the hessian sheets come in, we stitch ‘em an’ they go out as sacks, some t’ shipping, some t’ farms. Th’ house gets paid via Proctor an’ Gibbs; they bring in the food an’ keep us in rags, an’ down to Annie’s service they’s been a wavering by Brackley of flour costs. There’s eighty of us ‘ere in rags, a lot o’ flour, a lot o’ pennies in Proctor and Gibbs pockets. Bu’ it’s all ended abruptly. Proctor’s drinking. Gibbs is waging war.’
I squinted open my eyes as armed as I could be under the circumstances.
“Ah Tom,” Proctor said immediately. “You’ve suffered a nasty fall. How are you feeling?”
I dared not look at him. I shook my head.
“We’ve decided to send you across to the infirmary for a few days, check you for fever, infection, feed you up, me lad.”
I nodded, words seeming to fail me.
“Good, clever boy!” Proctor replied, seemingly agreeing with my silence.
At that same moment, a trundling past the window drew both of our attention, as Dunbar and cart passed out over the cobbles to what everyone referred to as the tradesmen’s gate. I knew instantly what lay in that cart, and felt a selfish anger course through me that it was Gibbs at the reins.
“As I was saying,” Proctor deflected, coughing dramatically, “feed you up and get you well again. Come now, let’s get you down and rested for the night. Reverend Clancy will give you the once over in the morning.”
There were three beds in the infirmary, one made up with a wedge of bread and a glass of water on its side table. A slab with coarse straps ran along the short, far wall. The locking of the door echoed around the sparsely furnished rectangle.
I took a sip of water, its moisture scorching the dry sand which had become my throat, and stared wearily at the cruciform which hung above the strap block.
Lock, key and barred windows were the obvious forefront of their plan – if Gibbs knew that I was there, was that better than dead?
--- ---- ---
I could hear Proctor and Reverend Clancy beyond the door shortly after dawn, before the Reverend fumbled the key into the lock. I had been spark out for ten hours or more, but his slight-tippled attempt at unlocking the door brought me full to my senses.
It had always been one of Annie’s undertakings to look after the sick and it appeared Reverend Clancy was quite surprised that he’d been summoned to make a medical examination of one of the workhouse inmates.
“Sweet lamb of he, Lord Jesus watches you,” sang Clancy, followed by an exaggerated pointing action towards, but not directly at due to his nauseous swaying, the cruciform on the far wall. “Thank the Lord for odourless gin. Thank the Lord, forgive me my sin. Ah ah ha ah,” he laughed at his little ditty tune.
It’s said that we shouldn’t judge, but I was sure Clancy was approaching the final stages of madness. He looked at me, eyes closed but eyebrows raised, before uttering emphatically, “There! Examination over. You boy are fine, just rest needed. Ah ah ha ah!”
He hadn’t even looked at me, and yet before I had even attempted any response, he had his hand on the door handle and was hollering his ditty once more: “Sweet lamb of he, Lord Jesus watches you, farewell and be true, as I have much to do. Ah ah ha ah!” and he chortled while righting himself to exit.
However, his exit plan was shortlived, for the door bolted open swinging as madly on its hinges as Clancy did on his own two legs, and in barged Belt Gibbs, the smell of death and all.
“So, he has an infection!” he roared, directing his glare at Clancy, who did not notice in the slightest.
“Sweet lamb, Mr Gibbs, good Lord no! He’s as sprite as a fobbly, wobbly chick, Ah ah ha ah!”
Gibbs gave me a look of malice.
“So…” roared Gibbs once again, “he has an infection!”
This time Gibbs’ roar had bought some semblance of earth to Clancy, who replied quite soberly, “Well Mr Gibbs, enlighten me for I am unknowing?”
Gibbs advanced towards my bedside, cast aside the threadbare blanket and wrenched me by the scuff of my nightshirt and threw me over his shoulder like a sack of coal. I tried not to tense, knowing all too well from his manhandling prior, that it would make the pain worse, as he slammed me down on the strap slab. The straps were hastily tightened across my body, one across my chest, making me have to take shallow breaths to keep me conscious, the other so tight across my thighs that my feet felt numb.
“There,” shrieked Gibbs, as he threw back my night shirt covering my nose and mouth and making my breathing even more pitiful, while revealing my nether regions. “An infection on his pike end!”
Clancy had sobered up in the ferocity of the proceedings and nervously and embarrassedly stepped towards me to peer at my privates.
“I’m usually only called to the infirmary to read last rights,” Clancy exclaimed.
Belt Gibbs laughed loudly and cruelly.
I lay there in the half light of my covered mouth and seemed to enter a place of distance. It seemed that all of my senses had become detached from myself.
“Errr,” Clancy observed. “I don’t see there to be a problem.”
Gibbs fury exploded at the holy man as he bellowed, “Then your eyes fail you! Carry out in the eyes of your superior there on the wall what you would normally recommend!”
“Good Lord,” replied Clancy taking a step away from the brute Gibbs. “You are asking me to...?”
“Exactly,” retorted Gibbs, the malicious enjoyment of his violence flickering upon his face.
“I’m not a surgeon Mr Gibbs and barely a doctor, besides there are no instruments here.”
Gibbs took from his jacket pocket an apple and from his back trouser pocket a folded grafting knife. He opened the blade, sliced a wedge of apple, ate it promptly and handed the knife to the clergyman.
“Proceed,” commanded Gibbs. “Proceed!”
Annie came into my dream and smiled truthfully, and in that moment the Lord gave Clancy temporarily the hands of ‘exact’ and ‘meticulous’.
In the void, I heard the door lock.
“Not a word Clancy,” threatened Gibbs.
“Most understood and forever eternal,” replied Clancy.
Annie’s words floated about me.
“Forgive me Lord,” someone whispered.
--- --- ---
A mid-October dawn broke, and I wondered whether I was still on earth, halfway to St Peter’s gate or already over the other side; the dazings of the prior days’ happenings had left me inexplosive, but hardly tranquil.
I flinched as a key turned in the lock - what next could be better than death?
“Up up Tom Fletcher, you are a wanted man!” purred a pure, lush voice.
My body eased, and soul, and mind, – had an angel come to take me?
“Up Tom Fletcher,” purred the voice again. “You’re wanted. Dunbar – he’s stuck to the spot and won’t move. By all accounts you are a fool and a mute, but I don’t believe the half of it, for it was a fool that conveyed those words to me!”
My mind whirled from half sleep to full consciousness, and there stood the angel.
“Oh, do forgive me,” she admonished herself. “Let me introduce myself.”
Her manners were almost as impeccable as the ringlets which tumbled from her crown, her poise like Annie’s only with real refinement.
“Rhubarb Shilling, thirteen years and two months,” she gave a little courteous nod towards me, evidently proud of her name. “Rather catching, don’t you think? Rhubarb Shilling - only one of me.”
I did think... and if I hadn’t already lost any ability to make an utterance, her presence alone would have had me lost for words.
“I arrived only yesterday, and already have had instruction. Mr Gibbs has sent me over to mend you up, for we are to go on the flour run. We leave in an hour so no time to waste.”
She gently handed me a small bottle, her velvety soft fingers brushing lightly against my rough, calloused hand as I took it from her.
“It’s saline,” she mouthed quietly, as if to save me from anyone else hearing. “You dab, dab, dab. Now I’ll open a window to accustom you to some fresh morning air.”
One of her shoulders dipped slightly as she turned, exposing both her sympathy and a little embarrassment. She pushed the window sharply to open it a quarter, which seemed almost instantly to render the bars meaningless.
“Now dress yourself Tom. I’ve never been on a cart before,” she giggled half excitedly.
Her disposition was infectious and the thought of Dunbar, my friend, had me dressed in an instant.
Before we could leave, an ominous sound had us both turning our heads towards the doorway. Instantly recognisable footsteps were coming down the hall. My body gave me up as my hand started to shiver, but Rhubarb took a side step in front of me shielding me from the door as he appeared.
“Has he spoken?” Gibbs demanded.
“Has he spoken,” exclaimed Rhubarb shrilly in retort. “In all my days in this profession, I have never heard a mute talk!” She placed her hands upon her hips in a manner that would make anyone believe that what she was saying was the God’s own truth.
“Miss Shilling,” Gibbs mellowed, trying to sidestep around her to view me. However, Rhubarb matched his stride and continued to shelter me from his reach. I couldn’t help but smirk at Gibbs inability to address her as Rhubarb, and lowered my head for fear of him seeing my delight.
“Miss Shilling,” he continued. “How long have you been in this profession and how old are you?”
“I am thirteen and two months, Mr Gibbs, and old enough and wise enough to remind you that your boots are mudded in my infirmary!”
Unbelievably, Gibbs retreated immediately to the open door, making sure his feet were firmly outside the infirmary. I could only gulp in pleasure of Rhubarb’s demeanour.
Gibbs called over Rhubarb’s petite figure and strong composure, “Tom, we need flour today. Not from Brackley’s – go to Marsh Top,” before trudging away heavily down the corridor.
The exhilarating combination of Miss Rhubarb Shilling and leaving the infirmary saw me two miles down the drag to Marsh Top, before I came to my senses and had to wonder whether Dunbar had yoked and strapped himself?
My own sense of wonderment was matched by the awe of Miss Rhubarb Shilling on her first ever cart ride. Dunbar knew it too, and probably reckoned he could have won dressage that day.
--- --- ---
1850
The Three Queens, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire Border
“Wah hey Wah hey Jack ‘Miller, Jack ‘Miller’ –” That’s how they greeted me as I entered the Three Queens Inn.
Amused, I countered back, “Ow ey lads, am still Jack Dance. I knows me roots, still a sheep drive, a’ways will be!”
Beth Green reluctantly slammed a tankard o’ froth on the bar with a blunt statement as accompaniment, “It’s a gaggle o’ tarfoot to Cheshunt in t’ morning, Jack!”
She was none too pleased with me mornin’ notice to quit, but I’d a chance o’ me own roof an’ none beholden to me boss, Beth Green, who were the last surviving member of the infamous ‘Three Queans’ that had built the ‘inn’ and all of its holding pens by ill repute.
Nobody liked the tarfoot geese runs; it were slow, and the first winter batches were a’ways a wanderin’ nightmare.
It were a hard shoulder farewell, for after Cheshunt, I’d be north east there’bouts to run Brackley’s. (I call him Brackley as father ain’t the right term aft he left me with Beth Green when me mother (another of the ‘Queans’) died havin’ me.
“You will write, Jack?” Molly entreated, her green-blue eyes peeping at me through her long loose tresses from outside the snug doorway.
One of me vagabounds chortled, “Thought you might be goin’ wiv him, Moll!” causing raucous laughter, and Molly to retreat having turned a glorious shade of pink.
I drank with the huddle, arm wrestled, an’ for the rest o’ the evening made false light o’ the fact I were leaving in th’ morning.
Spark could drive a ‘undred bleaters to Cheshunt for days, busy an’ happy all through, an’ all I had to do was watch an’ walk, but a ‘undred an’ fifty tarfoot ‘ould take eight days, an’ that kind a patience he lacked.
I knelt down, an’ roughed up his coarse black and white coat: “At the end o’ this drive boy, there’s a mill, a life, an’ you an’ me boy, it’ll all be ours.”
Whether he knew what I were saying or not, I weren’t sure, but his ears pricked, an’ he ran a figure o’ eight an’ barked, so I took it that he did, an’ opened the gate of the geese holdin’ pen.
Two miles in, an’ I took a quick detour hastily over the church wall to say hullo, goodbye. The stone read, “Here lies John Dance. Departed 2 Feb 1816. And his wife Christine. Departed 18 Dec 1832. Reunited.”
I ain’t sure if I’m written as Dance or Brackley, but unlike many, I’m lucky an’ unlucky enough to know the truth. The story goes that John Dance died of his wounds some eight months after Waterloo, an’ aft that Christine set up with two other widows the house of ill fame I had just left: The Three Queans - as it were known back then.
Hearsay and whispers rally that it were the counsel of Victoria herself that had its name changed to the ‘Three Queens”, all part of the emergence of the ‘Golden Era.’
--- --- ---
“Do you know, Tom?” exclaimed Rhubarb. “As we are in Nelson’s shire, I thought, it might be quite apt to hereby name this cart H.M.S bumpy!”
I smiled silently, enjoying Rhubarb’s engaging nature as we headed up to Marsh Top. Holding the reins in one hand, I reached behind the seat and drew out two hessian sacks, passing them to Rhubarb with a little nod.
She folded them neatly into two make-shift cushions and handed me one. As we both half-stood to place down the comforts, Dunbar’s ears pricked and he came to an abrupt stop, nearly sending the pair of us head over heels off the cart into the dirt below.
With Dunbar still, and the clatter of the cart suddenly silent, we now too could hear a faint hollering in the distance behind us.
I could make it out to be a trap and trotter weaving its way towards us, its path bearing no direct course with its wheels rumbling haphazardly on and off the grass on both sides. On it swayed a figure, one hand on the reins and one flapping aloft.
“Goodness me,” declared Rhubarb in astonishment, “I do believe he is trying to hail us!”
I knew before he even came into full view that it was Clancy, and as he weaved closer, swerving around our cart, he pulled up crossways just in front of Dunbar, who snorted in disgust.
He stumbled from the trap in his customary morning state, falling to his knees on the track right in front of Dunbar with both arms raised. Dunbar snorted loudly again, sending a spray of slobber in Clancy’s direction before looking away.
“Oh yee, oh yee, son of the everywhere spirit,” he began in his standard rambling fashion, lifting himself unsteadily from the dirt. “Forgive me, forgive me!” he continued.
Rhubarb’s expression of distaste was in agreement with Dunbar’s as she enquired cynically, “And to whom do we have the pleasure?
“Ah Eve, Eve… so profound… Clancy and reverend to all you see,” Clancy replied, completely oblivious to her mockery.
“Well enchanted I’m sure,” she continued, passing me a look of camaraderie and then rolling her eyes at the state Clancy was already in not so very long after dawn.
By now, Clancy had fully risen to his feet, but still rocked on his heels as he approached the side of the cart. Emphatically, he clasped his arms about my ankles and lay his head upon my boots before whimpering, “Lord, forgive me!”
Rhubarb’s patience with the inebriated clergyman, by this point, was wearing thin, and she replied, “If our forgiving you will render sense into your day, and allow us on with our duties, then I’m sure you are forgiven!”
Clancy lifted his bleary eyes in question towards mine. I nodded once, to which he released my ankles. Leaning back, further than I thought his body would allow, he raised his arms and chin heavenward, “Mysterious Lord – two saints on their way, watch them by night and guard them by day. Ah ah ha!”
Staggering backwards, he somehow made it back to his trap, lost his footing two or three times before making it aboard, and then criss-crossed his way into the distance, leaving his turning a little late to head over the verge on one wheel left down towards Leper’s Copse.
“Well I have never seen the like!” exclaimed Rhubarb as Dunbar started to move us off again. “Right Tom, we need to make haste to Marsh Top!”
Upon arrival, Sam Beck addressed me courteously, “We go’r eight t’ spare. Eight more in three days. Should keep y’ goin’ eh?”
I nodded.
He paused, “Sad ‘bout Annie, Tom. I’m awful sorry, lad. Throwing hersel’ in th’ cut all cos a’ Brackley. Would ne’er a though it.”
In an instant, I knew Belt Gibbs had planted her in the cut to turn the favour for himself by crafting a heartbreak suicide.
All I had to do was nod in agreement.
The way back to the workhouse exposed the looming reality of the times. Rhubarb revealed that Annie had been brought back to the workhouse the evening she herself had arrived. Her corpse had been transferred to another carriage, and departed to London: “Body parts for medical science,” Rhubarb informed me, “and a small transaction at that!”
I could hardly question it.
--- --- ---
WE ARE BUSY RIGHT NOW SO THIS PROJECT HAS BEEN TEMPORARILY SHELVED, BUT WE WILL RETURN TO IT SHORTLY