Vagabonds

Vagabonds

Table of Contents

To three lovely women,

good friends whom I love very much:

Jane,

our delightful new daughter-in-law;

Madge,

a real trooper who is the salt of the earth;

Barbara Arnold,

who would happily scour the world for my books!

God bless them.

Part One

England 1885

Don’t be afraid

When dark clouds gather.

Somewhere, the sunshine

Is breaking through.

J.C.

Chapter One

‘Be off with you… we don’t want no beggers at this door!’ Cook’s round, homely face was full of disgust as she glared at the young woman who was loitering on the outer step. ‘Go on, I say… be off with you, afore I call the master. You’ll show a clean pair of heels then, I’ll be bound.’ She had been up to her armpits in flour when the knock had come on the door. Now she began frantically wiping her chubby hands on her pinnie and flapping the corner of it towards the ragged, offending creature who seemed unwilling to make a move.

The young woman stood her ground and eyed the agitated cook with bold black eyes. ‘I’m no “beggar”!’ she retorted, drawing the tiny infant closer into her arms and reaching down to take the frail hand of the small child by her side. ‘I don’t want charity, missus. I’m willing to do good honest labour for a reasonable wage… and I’m a lot stronger than I look, so don’t go thinking I’m afraid of hard, heavy work. I can do whatever’s needed of me.’ Molly was desperate, and it showed in her voice.

‘Oh, it’s work you’re after, is it?’ Cook’s temper began to recede as she quietly regarded the young woman before her. ‘These your two brats, are they?’ She let her small, round eyes rove over the two children; the girl she ascertained to be somewhere in the region of three or four years old, and the infant in arms probably not yet a year old. As for the young woman, she looked the most starved of all three. She was painfully thin, but had the kind of face that held a particular strength, with dark, striking eyes that somehow held a body mesmerized. Cook didn’t hold with folks knocking on her kitchen door, especially when they might want something for nothing. ‘Where’s the father of these two?’ she asked sharply.

‘He’s run off.’

‘Run off…? The devil he has.’ Cook wasn’t surprised. All men were the same in her eyes: either wasters or womanizers. The same thing applied whether they were beggars or kings. ‘Well, I’m sorry, young lady… there’s no place here for extra hands. Oh, we could do with somebody, I’m not denying that… but the master don’t see it the same way as them that have to do the work.’

‘Couldn’t you at least ask?’ Molly believed that beneath her sharp and unkind manner, the old lady might have a soft spot.

Cook shook her grey head. ‘No. It wouldn’t do no good.’ Her small piggy eyes fell to the fair-haired child, who promptly smiled at her, melting her heart. ‘Poor little tyke,’ she said, thinking how all three made a sorry and pitiful sight. ‘Look… wait here a minute,’ she told the young woman. ‘I know there’s no work to be got, but there’s a larder just bursting with certain goodies that would never be missed by them upstairs.’ She jerked a podgy thumb heavenwards. ‘I’ll not be a minute,’ she chuckled, tousling the child’s unkempt curls before she turned to go quickly back into the kitchen.

As good as her word, the old dear returned within a short time, bearing a strawberry basket tucked under her arm and filled with food from the larder: a crusty loaf, a tub of butter, two rosy apples, a chunk of pork pie and three slabs of her best cherry cake. ‘Here, take this and make yourself scarce. If we’re found out, there’ll be four of us going down the road to beggary… you mark my words!’ She thrust the basket over the young woman’s outstretched arm and, without another word, stepped back into the relative safety of her own kitchen. ‘Lord love and preserve us!’ she was heard to mutter, before hastily making the sign of the cross on herself and shutting the door against the sight of that poor young woman with her two fatherless brats.

‘Thanks very much, missus.’ The young woman smiled and began walking away down the long narrow path that would lead her to the outer lane.

Satisfied that they were far enough away from the big house, she stopped and sat on the high bank beside the ditch. The children sat beside her, waiting for something to eat. Breaking two chunks of bread from the loaf, she gave a piece to each of the children. ‘There you are, my beauties,’ she said in a soft, loving voice. Then, at the sight of them both happily tucking in to the old cook’s generous gift, she laughed aloud, throwing her arms round them and declaring with delight, ‘Just follow your mammy’s example… and you’ll never go hungry. What… if that old woman had offered me a job in that big posh house, I’d have fainted on the very spot!’ When the two children took pleasure in Molly’s infectious laughter, she hugged them all the more tightly, her heart bursting with love and a prayer of thanks to the Lord that, somehow, he always managed to see them through the hard times.

From the window of the kitchen Cook had watched the pathetic ensemble as it went away down the path. ‘There’s always somebody worse off than yourself,’ she murmured, feeling guilty that she had spoken so sharply to the young woman at first, because there was something about the creature that seemed to put her above the usual beggar or vagabond. She shook her head thoughtfully and turned her attention to the baking of the day’s bread. But the image persisted awhile, until she deliberately pushed it from her mind. They’d be all right, she told herself, them sort had a way of surviving. She was astonished though, to think that a young woman of such attractive looks should be made to wander the streets like that. Oh, and what sort of a fellow would ‘run off’ and leave his woman and children to fend for themselves?

How much more astonished Cook would have been to learn that the ‘vagabond’ she had just dismissed from the house of Justice Caleb Crowther was no other than Molly… lost daughter of Emma Grady. Emma, the niece of Caleb Crowther, and now his bitter enemy.

‘Oh, I say… such terrible tempers. And them being gentry and all.’ The words were uttered in a soft and fearful whisper as, afraid yet strangely excited by the fearsome row that was raging inside Justice Crowther’s study, the maid dithered by the door. A petite and plain woman with a thin, worn face and bright round eyes, she was burning with curiosity; yet she was also amazed by her own boldness in lingering here, her mind in turmoil and her ears singing in anticipation of the boxing they would get from Cook if she loitered in her duties.

Oh, but how dare she barge in on such a terrible uproar with the master in as black a mood as ever she’d known, and the mistress giving him as good as she got? Why! The idea of disturbing them was unthinkable, and if a lowly scullery maid such as she were suddenly to show her face with the intention of cleaning out the firegrate, like as not the two wolves at each other’s throats on the other side of that door might just as easily turn on her! The thought was so real and terrifying that Amy clutched at her own throat and turned tail to scurry away. She would have liked to stay a while longer, but no matter; she had discovered enough.

As she went along the corridor and towards the stairs which led down to the kitchen, a wicked and devious smile came to her face. Even now, she could still hear the angry, raised voices behind her. The nearer she came to the narrow stairway, the faster went her thin little legs and the brighter shone her eyes. Oh, but she had such a tale to tell Cook! Such a juicy, satisfying tale!

‘At last we know the worst. Emma Grady wants her pound of flesh right down to the blood and bones!’ Caleb Crowther sank his ageing but still formidable figure into the leather-bound chair behind the desk, his piercing blue eyes marbled with fear as he glared at his wife’s anxious face. ‘Damn the woman!’ he snarled, clenching his teeth and feverishly stroking his long thick fingers over the mass of iron-grey hair which covered the lower half of his ungainly features. ‘When she was transported some twenty-two years ago to the other side of the world, I prayed we’d seen the last of her. But I was a fool. I should have known better. I should have made sure that she was hanged!’ He fell forward on his desk, burying his balding head in the depths of his hands and making low, intermittent sounds that betrayed the hatred simmering inside him. Hatred, and something else… fear. The crippling fear that Emma Grady’s return had wrought in him. ‘Over three years since she set foot on these shores again. Uncertain years… littered with solicitors’ correspondence and mounting fees to be paid at the end of it all.’ He raised his head and began drumming his fingers impatiently on the desk-top. ‘She has deliberately kept me guessing as to her real intentions… toyed with me… no doubt found it amusing to think of me squirming.’ Suddenly he was sitting bolt upright in the chair, his narrowed eyes searching his wife’s face as he judged her reaction to his next words. ‘Now, she’s moving in for the kill!’ Snatching up the offending letter, he flung it across the desk. ‘Read it, woman,’ he snapped at his wife. ‘This affects us all.’

‘You seem very sure that she can hurt us… you surprise me. I thought you had prepared for every eventuality… including Emma Grady’s possible return?’ Agnes Crowther smiled knowingly, and with contempt.

It was a gesture that infuriated him. ‘There’ll be nothing for any of us to smile about if she succeeds in her little game,’ he reminded her angrily, ‘and make no mistake about it… she means to beggar us. We underestimated her once. We’d be downright idiots not to see her for the dangerous enemy she’s become. Emma Grady went away a young, naive creature who could be easily manipulated… she’s returned an influential and powerful woman with a curiosity for certain answers and a thirst for revenge. Mark my words, she won’t rest until she has us at her mercy!’

‘Strange, don’t you think… how the tables turn?’ There was cynicism in her voice, and a trace of fear. With calm deliberation, Agnes Crowther came forward from the casement window where she had been gazing across the beautifully tended lawns, quietly indulging in memories of long ago. Her troubled thoughts had carried her back some twenty-five years to when Emma Grady had played and walked on these same lawns; a young girl tormented by the fact that her beloved father, Thadius Grady, was wasting away. With his eventual passing, Emma’s torment had not ceased. So many bad experiences had assailed her; so much tragedy and heartache that might have destroyed a lesser soul. ‘What makes this letter frighten you so?’ Agnes Crowther kept her unflinching gaze on his face. ‘There have been others… and always you’ve satisfactorily dealt with them. Why should this one be any different?’

‘Because it touches on deeper issues… deeds and titles regarding the mills that Thadius left to her. Up to now, her solicitor has been cleverly laying the groundwork… probing… making sure of his case regarding his client’s claims. Now he’s digging to the real issues, making demands… requesting certain documents. Uprooting things that go back too many years.’

‘These… “documents”… surely you can supply them?’ She let her gaze remain on his face a moment longer. Only now did she fear the worst. ‘Or is there something there to incriminate you… to incriminate all of us?’ She had always trusted his judgement in these matters; after all, he was a man of the law and well versed in such legalities. With a jolt, she was reminded of how he had cunningly secreted Emma’s inheritance and almost lost it in the recession. It was true however that he had then salvaged enough to sell off the derelict cotton mills and to buy a considerable share in the Lassater Shipping Line. If that enviable income were now denied them, it would be nothing short of disaster. Certainly, her husband’s comparative pittance, as Justice of the Peace, would not sustain their pampered lifestyle. Suddenly incensed by the prospect of losing everything she valued, she rounded on him. ‘This is your problem,’ she told him in a cold voice. ‘It was not me who chose to marry Emma off to an employee of my brother’s, a man who was socially inferior to Emma Grady. Is it any wonder that it ended in tragedy? Though I must admit I never really believed that she had a hand in murdering the unfortunate fellow.’ In her deepest heart, Agnes Crowther could never see her brother’s daughter committing such a foul and cold-blooded crime; the girl was too loving, too warm and sensitive to ever deliberately hurt another soul. Yet it had been these very qualities which had alienated her from Emma. She had seen in her brother’s child all of those admirable traits that were sadly lacking in her own daughter, Martha, who was almost the same age as Emma. She could not suppress her bitter resentment of the fact that while Emma was strong and forthright, Martha was weak and deceitful.

When Emma’s mother had died in tragic circumstances, and later, when her father Thadius was gravely ill and brought Emma to live with him in this house, both Agnes and Martha had set about making Emma’s life miserable.

After her brother’s death, Agnes Crowther vented all her bitterness on Emma, not protesting at Martha’s spiteful treatment of the girl, nor intervening when Emma was so unsuitably married off. All along, Agnes had suspected that her husband had deliberately planned to cheat Emma, yet she had not once argued on Emma’s behalf. Not even when she realized that Caleb had played a hand in the verdict that demanded Emma’s transportation as a convict.

For a long, uncomfortable moment it seemed as though Agnes Crowther might read the letter. But then she lifted her hand and joined it with the other at her breast, the fine bony fingers pointed upwards in that posture of prayer which had long been a familiar and peculiar trait of her unbending character. ‘I will not demean myself by reading that mischievous letter, and thereby giving credence to Emma Grady’s vindictive proposals.’

‘You will read it!’

‘I will not!’

‘What are you saying, woman… that you refuse to support me in this bitter fight with Emma Grady? You seem to conveniently forget, my dear, that she is after all your kith and kin. And, more importantly, that the inheritance she now lays claim to should by rights have been left to you in the first place. Why your father struck you out of his will in favour of your younger brother, Thadius, is quite beyond me!’

‘No doubt he had his reasons,’ came the curt reply. She could have reminded him that the main reason she had been so cruelly disinherited was because she had stubbornly rebelled against her father’s strong disapproval of Caleb Crowther. ‘The man is little more than a fortune hunter,’ he had warned his daughter, ‘but mark my words… I will see to it that he never gets his hands on a penny of my money!’ Agnes Crowther had loved her father. But, much to her later regret, she had loved Caleb more. She smiled now at the bitter irony of it all, because even though Thadius had been the main beneficiary in their father’s will, he had foolishly appointed Caleb as trustee and executor of his estate. As Caleb had so often remarked in the months following Thadius’s passing, ‘I could not have planned it better myself… see how conveniently the inheritance has fallen into my lap.’ When the mills were later foreclosed by the banks and the money almost gone, Caleb had felt no regrets for Emma, who by now was ‘safely’ out of the way. His only concerns were these: that he should salvage enough money from the failing textile business to forge a new company in his own name, which would serve to finally sever the links between himself and Emma Grady, and that he should cover all traces of his illegal acquisition of Emma’s fortune. He had believed himself to be cunning and thorough. But now, with Emma returned, vengeful and determined to expose his treachery, he had been made wary and afraid. Yet he was equally determined that she would not beggar him. He would see her ruined first. Or dead! There was no remorse in Caleb Crowther’s heart for the callous way in which he had treated Emma Grady. Only hatred, and now a deep haunting fear that would not go away; he despised himself for harbouring such fear. After all, she was only a woman, however rich and influential she had become.