Eppie (43 page)

‘No doubt the labourers will grumble at the change, preferring
the bacon and beer, and the unrestrained license.’

‘Let them grumble. As things have gone so well this year, we
might consider converting those tracts of rough grazing, south of Ferret’s
Farm, into cornfields. There are innumerable problems to be thought through at
the outset. If it were to be converted, the cornfields would be remote, far
from the manor. Terrain is another difficulty. It would not be practical to
bring the straw inwards to the existing stock-yard, and send back cart loads of
manure.’

‘If there was a muck-yard with a barn over there that would solve
the problem,’ Maygott suggested. ‘In-wintered cattle would tread the straw into
manure, ready to fertilize the land. That way, there’d be no undue carriage
problems. There’s a cottage in the vicinity.’

Eppie knew the place. It was no more than a ramshackle hut.
Most of the thatch was off, the saturated walls thick with grey, furry mould.

‘The difficulty is finding a muck-man to take on the job,’ du
Quesne said. ‘Few are willing; it’s a lonely, dirty task. I will give the
matter some consideration.’ He glanced skyward. ‘The clouds are thickening. Have
some stack-men sent back to reap. I don’t want to lose a single ear. If
necessary we’ll store some sheaves in the threshing barn. Isn’t that Hix’s lad?
What’s he up to?’

Eppie peered over the hedge. Wilbert was dashing madly about
with a faggot tucked under his arm, imitating the gamekeeper who was shooting
scuttling rabbits as their cover of corn progressively vanished.

‘You boy!’ du Quesne shouted. ‘Resume your work this
instant.’ 

Snatching at the reins, he was about to return to his study
to secrete himself away from the intense heat, when he spotted a tired-eyed,
ogling face. ‘Strawhead, I do not pay your mother good money for you to go
skulking behind hedges.’ He indicated to a pile of stubble tied with straw
rope. ‘Gather those and carry them to the ditchers.’

The idea crossed her mind that she would rather gather the scarlet
pimpernel that sprawled, mat-like around her feet.

‘Look lively, you idiot child!’ he barked. Riding away, he
ordered Maygott, ‘See to it that some of the other children do the same. Get the
older boys to help their fathers.’

Faces grim, children massed around Eppie. Quiet and
withdrawn, she was an easy target for their frustration, a scapegoat. 

Sukey prodded her with a bundle of stubble. ‘This is your
fault, Dunham. Hey, someone else is looking for trouble.’

‘Lottie, go back!’ Eppie cried, afraid that the child might also
become a victim of Sukey’s bullying.

Maygott was chiding reapers for their leisurely work.
Hearing Eppie’s shout, he glared around and saw the children dawdling. ‘Get a
move on, you lot, or I’ll deny you a respite.’

Crossing the field, Eppie slowed to Lottie’s snail pace. She
delayed further at the ditches when the child stopped to fill a wooden beaker
with muddied water.

Sure her tactic had worked, that the others would have already
reached the cornfield, she was sorely disappointed when, sauntering back, they
came upon the gang, concealed behind a blackthorn hedge, waiting in ambush.

Taking Lottie’s bedabbled hand in hers, Eppie encouraged her
to a quicker pace. 

Sukey skipped on their heels. ‘That fooled ya. Figured we’d
went, hey? Reckon when yer brother burnt yer head last Christmas he fancied
roast pig’s ear friz supper?’ She dropped an earwig on Eppie’s bonnet. ‘That
battle-twig’s gonna make a nest in yer deaf head.’

Eppie tramped on, eager to widen the distance between her
and the gang.

Boys dashed in front, thwacking stubble with sticks.

A stone smacked into Lottie’s back. She squealed in pain.

Eppie came to an abrupt halt and protectively pressed
Lottie’s sun-bonneted head against her stomach. The child wrapped her arms
around Eppie, sobbing.

‘Leave us be!’ Eppie cried.

‘Where’s the fun in that, hey?’ Sukey retorted, delighted that
Eppie was responding to her taunting. Scrabbling in the dirt, encouraging
others, she grabbed a handful of stones. Though some children hung back,
Sukey’s gang was like a pack of wolves going after its prey, whooping
victorious as stones hit their mark.

‘Oy!’ Wakelin was returning with a gang of stackers. He crashed
through the bullies. ‘Leave off, Hix, else I’ll slice yer guts with me sickle.’

‘Ooo, I’m that scared, big boy,’ Sukey cried brazenly. ‘You
ain’t even got one.’ 

Tom strode towards Sukey, his sickle glinting in the
sunlight. ‘Want me to do it for ya, Wake?’ Watching Sukey shoot off, pursued by
her gang, his laughter rang through the stifling air.  

Eppie and Lottie returned in the wagon with the men. Eppie
felt immensely grateful to Tom for scaring their aggressors. ‘I’m sorry about
what happened,’ she said, somewhat shyly. ‘About the badgers, I mean.’

‘’s all right.’ He grinned hugely. ‘It was the tar what
caused me the most trouble. I couldn’t get the wretched stuff outta me beard.’

He cocked his head, delighted to see the rare ghost of a
smile creep across her lips.  ‘I used to see you and that lad about with the
badger. What happened to it, dead?’

‘She ran off.’

He tied twine below the knees of his trousers in preparation
for harvesting. ‘Wild, see. You can’t train badgers like dogs.’

Not far away, Bill, labouring alongside Percy and Edmund, was
instructing Wilbert on how to handle a reaping hook, using a deliberate
chopping action.

Some children were playing hood-man-blind. Blindfolded,
Sukey span around, attempting to tig the others.

Jumping from the wagon, Eppie led Lottie over to Pip. Anxious
about being sent on a mission working alongside Sukey, she raced over to where
Martha and some other women toiled. ‘May I do some, Mam?’

‘I’m glad to see you making yourself useful for a change,’ Maygott
shouted, seeing Eppie raking corn and pitch-forking it onto a horse-drawn cart,
ready to be carried away. Rising in the saddle, he bawled up the field, ‘Sukey
Hix, stop messing about. Follow Eppie Dunham’s good example.’

Eppie kept her eyes lowered, guessing Maygott’s demand would
have riled Sukey.

Not long after, the cheapjack’s cart drew up at the field
entrance. Du Quesne and Maygott safely out of sight, the women’s backs
straightened in an instant. Eagerly trailed by their children, they scurried
away. 

Martha threw down her fork and peeled off the leather gloves
that protected her hands. ‘Let’s take a breather.  Besides, we’re short of this
an’ that.’

Harvey was elated to see the mass of exhausted women
rambling towards him. Within seconds, revelling in his chirpy banter, the
spirits of the women lifted. So absorbed was Eppie in rummaging through the tailgate
of the brimming cart and so loud was the chatter and laughter around her that
she failed to hear a wagon rattling towards them.

‘Poor Betsy,’ Martha said. ‘If only there’d been something
we could’ve done to stop it.’

Instantly, several heads turned.  

Never one to mince his words, du Quesne had declared Betsy
and other elderly people in the village, unsupported by family, to be beggars,
and ordered that they be hauled off to the poorhouse where, he declared, ‘You
may rot, for all I care.’

Betsy’s words to Eppie the previous evening flooded back to
her. ‘I won’t be seeing you again, m’dear. I’ll miss our card games.’

Though the cart had travelled on some distance, Eppie tore
after it, crying her friend’s name. To her consternation she saw not the face
of the Betsy she knew and loved, the jovial lady who always made light of
life’s difficulties. Rather, it was a face of impassive resignation. Drawing
her shawl close around her face, Betsy turned away.  

Riding back, du Quesne was so angry that he seemed to foam
at the mouth like his horse. ‘What the deuce do you women think you’re doing?’

Harvey was off in a trice.

‘Strawhead, how dare you sneak away the moment Mr Maygott is
not here to supervise you?’

Beholding the dreadful transformation in Betsy, Eppie felt
weak with the onset of nausea. Ranger became several spinning horses, his grey
spots whirling before her eyes. Involuntarily, she reeled towards the beast,
her stomach hard and pained.

Seeing vomit splatter upon the hem of her smock, a look of
disgust fell upon his lordship’s face and he rode away, rapidly.

Taking Eppie by the hand, Martha led her back to the field
and uncorked an earthenware jug. ‘Try and drink some of this. It’ll take the nasty
taste away.’

Eppie gratefully sipped the lukewarm small-beer, though it
did nothing to relieve the stabbing pain in her aching temples.

Martha stroked Eppie’s dry, bronze-hued cheeks. ‘It upset
you, didn’t it, seeing Betsy? What a dreadful thing it is to be poor. Look out,
more trouble.’

‘You there, Mrs Dunham, on your feet or I’ll cut your pay,’
Maygott yelled.

A look of frustration flashed dangerously into Martha’s
eyes.

The peal of church bells clanged through the fierce air.

‘Lowsing time!’ Tom hollered. ‘Come an’ grab yer
belly-timber.’ 

As part payment for the workers’
labours, du Quesne daily supplied crates overflowing with lettuces, onions and
radishes. These salads made an agreeable addition to the bread and bacon that
were the reapers’ staple mid-day meal. The crop cost his lordship next to
nothing and indicated an element of goodwill between him and the reapers. Even
beer formed part of the deal, each man being apportioned seventeen pints of
liquor daily.

Women chatted and sopped bread into tin cans of weak tea,
taken with a little brown sugar. An itinerant worker was bemoaning to some of
the villagers about how his son had run off to join the naval battle against
the French. One reaper fetched out his tin whistle and played a merry tune.

‘Why can’t Maygott leave folk be?’ Martha remonstrated,
swatting insects that gyrated around her head.

Wakelin bit into a raw onion. ‘Ignore the maggot. He’s
nubbut a crumbling mass o’ flesh.’

Lottie joined Sissy and other children who were bashing
apples out of the tree for use in jelly-making, though, by this method, most
would be so bruised as to be useless. 

Stretched on the grass, Tom laughed as single women wove
flowers into his black spade-beard.

Lottie poked Wakelin in the stomach with her stick. 
‘Froggy-back, Wakey.’

‘Nay, I’m done in.’ Eyeing her miserable face, he changed
his mind.

He was on all fours, Lottie giggling and slapping him on the
shoulder, when a cart drew into the field. Kizzie had arrived with a cheese
from the dairy and a milking-pail brimming with cider. 

Edmund swirled her to the ground. ‘You gonna give me a kiss
when we Drown the Harvest?’

Eppie imagined the fun and frolic of the Drowning. When
reaping was at an end, a man would plait a tuft of corn. Fast as he could ride,
he would make off to the brewhouse, where the stillroom maid waited at the threshold
with a bucket of water. If the man could hotfoot it past her, without getting a
drenching, and reach the kitchen table with the tuft dry, he claimed the right
to kiss her.

Wakelin grabbed the quart pint mug tied to the handle of the
pail and drank heartily. ‘Stop romping about Ed. Come and have some o’ this.
It’ll put back yer sweat.’

Maygott rode up. ‘Back to your work!’

Wakelin pushed through the knot of disgruntled workers who
rose, reluctantly. ‘We ain’t half way through.’

Maygott ignored the flash of anger in Wakelin’s eyes.
‘There’s no time to waste. You men finish with the scythe. We’ll lose some
grain this way, but it’ll be faster mowing.’

Like an irate army general, du Quesne patrolled on
horseback. Growing increasingly impatient, he could be heard complaining almost
incessantly.

Late for work, itinerant reapers, who had ridden to The Fat
Duck for something colder and stronger to drink, strolled up the field, adding
to his wrath.

Heaviness filled the air. Thunder grew close, threatening.

Eppie was half-choked with the corn dust that drifted in the
furnace hot air. She lugged yet another sheaf to Wakelin. He was building sheaves
into hooded stooks to protect the corn ears from rain.

Tumbling into stubble, Flip screamed as Wilbert, play-acting
the killing of the last sheaf cutter, made to stab him through the heart with a
branch.

The last sheaf is the corn spirit. He who cuts it kills her.
In times past, the last sheaf-cutter was killed on the field to restore life to
the spirit.

‘That’s what it was like for me, the summer before you was
born,’ Wakelin told Eppie. ‘Ownee rougher. I’d been gathering stones. Towards
the end o’ reaping these lads an’ me stood in a half-circle, chucking sticks at
the corn.’

Using his knees, protected with scraps of sheep’s skin, he
pressed the corn into position. ‘We pretended we were the men, who use sickles
to cut the last corn.’ He rubbed his neck, which was burnt nut-brown by the
fiercely glaring sun. ‘Even though it were only a game to us lads, Thurstan
yelled that he’d seen my stick slice the last sheaf. He and his friends beat me
up summat rotten.’

Tom took the rubstone strickle from his hugger, the leather
pouch at his belt, and sharpened the shaft of his scythe.  Seeing his friend
idle, he shouted in jest, ‘Wake, come and do some work for a change.’ Despondent,
in need of male company, Wakelin made towards him and Edmund. 

Eppie’s lonely figure was quickly singled out by Maygott,
who set her to beating lumps of earth, ready for the seeding of next year’s
crop.

All around, tempers frayed with the heat and rapid pace of
work.

A roll of thunder grumbled, as yet unaccompanied by rain.
Tips of trees swayed.