Pit Bank Wench (39 page)

Those were Mary’s words as she’d pointed.

Emma turned, her glance going to the window now filled with the light of day.

But she had not pointed towards Felton Hall. Hands clenched together, Emma stared deep in thought. Mary had pointed in the opposite direction, pointed towards the town.

Carver had taken her son to Wednesbury. Would they still be there, in one of the hotels?

Throwing her shawl about her head, Emma ran out into the sunlight.

He had not come to the White Horse. The man at the door brushed Emma aside. The likes of her were not to be seen hanging about this establishment. But the anguish in her face had softened him and he had relented. No man with a child had come to this hotel, he said.

She had met with the same at the George and then at the Dartmouth. Neither hotel had received a man travelling alone with a small child.

But he had come this way. Emma stood outside the hotel. She had tried each place she knew of, except the smaller inns. Would Carver Felton choose one of them?

‘I ’eard you asking questions, you lost something?’ A woman of questionable age, rouge like ripe tomatoes stuck to her cheeks pulled a tasselled shawl around her shoulders.

Her mind in a turmoil, Emma looked vaguely into the painted face.

‘Won’t get nothing from him ’cept a kick in the arse!’ The hennaed head nodded in the direction of the doorman watching them. ‘But could be I can ’elp . . . for a price.’

‘I . . . I don’t have any money.’

‘You ’aving me on?’ The painted mouth tightened.

‘No, really.’ Emma felt the tears she could no longer hold spill on to her cheeks. ‘I didn’t think . . . I just ran out to find . . .’

‘Find!’ Bloodshot eyes quickening with interest, the woman took a step closer. ‘What was you expecting to find? The money some fancy city bloke left without paying?’

The inference behind the snort that followed those words was lost on Emma. She shook her head. ‘My son,’ she sobbed. ‘I ran out to find my son, I . . . I did not think to bring any money.’

‘Get along, you two!’

Ignoring the shout from the doorman, the woman took Emma’s arm. ‘You say you be looking for your son? He wouldn’t bring a street woman ’ere, not to a place like this.’ She glanced at Emma’s patched skirts and threadbare shawl. ‘This takes money.’

‘You don’t understand.’ Emma dashed the tears from her cheeks. ‘He’s just a little boy.’

‘A young ’un!’ The woman’s voice hardened. ‘Some dirty bugger took off with a young ’un? Ain’t the first I’ve ’eard of. Wenches or lads, makes no difference, they picks ’em off the street and that be the last anybody sees of ’em. I reckon it be men from Brummagem be taking ’em. Some men like it with kids, and the younger they be, the more they likes it. Filthy bloody perverts!’ She spat on the pavement. ‘Should be bloody casterated, the lot of ’em!’

Birmingham, the woman had said Birmingham. Perhaps Carver had taken her child there? For a moment Emma’s heart lifted. But she had never been there herself. Where would she look, how would she find her way?

‘How old be your lad?’ The woman gestured with two fingers as the doorman shouted again.

‘Almost three,’ Emma said softly.

‘Three!’ The bloodshot eyes widened. ‘Great God Almighty, the dirty bleeders! It be worse than I thought.’

‘Please.’ Emma touched the hand that held her arm. ‘How do I get to Birmingham?’

‘You don’t. Least not without money you don’t. ’Sides, if your lad be gone to that city you won’t never find him. It has more dive holes than a rabbit warren! The bloke that took him could ’ave sold him along the line by this time.’

None of this making sense to Emma, she shook the woman’s hand. ‘He wouldn’t leave my baby. The man was his father.’

‘I’ve warned you two, now get along before I send for a constable.’

The woman glanced behind her. ‘You can send for Father Christmas if you like, you sour-faced cow, but he won’t give you what you’d like Nancy Clark to give you!’

Turning her back on the doorman the woman looked more closely at Emma. ‘Say, does this babby ’ave black hair with a lighter streak across the top?’ Then, as Emma nodded, she went on, ‘And the man the same but with two streaks of silver going back from his forehead?’

Emma nodded.

Releasing her hold, the woman stepped back, the glance that ran over Emma’s skirts and shawl blatantly disparaging. ‘I seen ’em yesterday but that bloke weren’t no half a dollar a day coal miner, he were dressed like a gent. But that’s it, ain’t it? He’s buggered the kid off to get rid of the evidence!’

‘I have tried all the hotels I know of. None of the people I spoke to saw them.’

‘Huh!’ the woman snorted again. ‘How many of them would tell you if they ’ad? Have you tried the Great Western alongside the railway station?’

Seeing from Emma’s face that she had not, the woman continued, ‘If they say he ain’t there then ask at the station for Ernie Blount. Tell him Nancy sent you. He be a friend of mine, quite a good friend if you takes my meaning. If that man took a train from the station then Ernie will know.’ Raising her arm the woman pointed. ‘Turn right at the first corner, that be Chapel Street, it brings you on to the Portway. Follow the road straight ’til you gets to Great Western Street, the station be at the end.’

‘I’m not telling you again . . .’

The woman turned towards the irate doorman as Emma ran the way she had pointed. ‘Keep your arse in your trousers!’ She spread both arms wide, pushing her breasts forward. ‘Who knows? If you minds your manners I might pull your old dodger for you.’ She grinned as she drew the shawl closed again. ‘Then again, pigs don’t fly, do they?’

Flourishing the tasselled shawl she walked a few yards along the street then flounced around to face him. ‘On second thoughts,’ she called, ‘I’d rather pull the pig’s tail!’

‘Took a train yesterday, the midday for Birmingham.’

Emma walked slowly across the heath. Learning nothing from the hotel she had sought out Ernie Blount. He had been helpful but what he’d said had killed any hope left in her.

‘. . . but I reckon he had little intention of staying there, seeing as he enquired of the train for London.’

She had gasped at that. London! It might as well be the other end of the earth.

‘Got no luggage with him,’ Ernie had gone on, despite her cry. ‘But there were boxes brought here to the station in time for the first train this morning.’

‘Did they have an address?’

‘Ar wench.’ He had looked into eyes that pleaded to be told. ‘Ar they did, but weren’t no place I knows of. Had some fancy foreign name, one I couldn’t read. Not proper like. But the last word I could make out. It said Switzerland.’

Switzerland? She knew from the atlas her father had sometimes allowed Carrie and herself to look at that it was a country of high mountains, and that to reach it meant crossing the breadth of France.

Even had she the money to get there she might never find them. But she had no money to speak of. What she had saved from cooking she had given to that young lad to pay his fare back to Ireland.

Now her son was gone. She might never see him again!

Blinded by tears, Emma stumbled on towards Plovers Croft.

Carver Felton had raped her and left her with child. A child he had now taken back.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

‘You had me scared half to death, I couldn’t think where you might have gone to. Eh, Emma, don’t do that again. Don’t get going off without telling me.’

‘I had to look for him, Daisy.’ Emma stared at the cup handed to her but did not touch it.

‘I know you did, but I’d have come with you. Tomorrow we’ll both . . .’

‘It won’t do any good.’ Emma’s voice trembled. ‘Tomorrow or any other day, we’ll not find Paul.’

Sobbing, she related all that had happened that morning. When she reached the end of her tale, Daisy sat silent for several minutes.

Outside the shouts of men going about the business of building the new waterway sounded louder than usual, their calls and laughter invading the silence that pressed in on the two women.

‘Switzerland!’ Daisy said at last, the word feeling strange on her tongue. ‘I ain’t never heard of no such place. Is it far away?’

‘Yes, Daisy. It is. Too far for me to follow. I suppose that’s why Carver chose to go there.’

‘But he can’t stop there forever, he has to come home to Felton Hall sometime; that business he thinks so much of will bring him back, supposing nothing else can.’

What Daisy said made sense. Emma stared at her cup, seeing nothing. Carver would return eventually, but that did not mean he would bring her son with him.

‘We can only wait, be here when he does come back. We will wait together.’ Daisy rested a hand on her friend’s shoulder. ‘Like I told that priest, I was brought up without much religion but I reckon the Lord will listen when we pray.’

Had He listened to Carrie? Listened when another frightened child had called to him? Emma could not stem the tide of bitterness within her. What use was prayer to a God who was deaf? He would no more help her than he had helped her sister.

Feeling the shuddering sobs, knowing it best to let Emma cry out her fear and sorrow, Daisy fetched bacon and sausages from the cool box. Work was one way of holding her friend together; beside which the navvies would be expecting their hot sandwich breakfast.

Setting the huge cast iron frying pan on the stove, she turned as Liam came through the door, shaking her head as she met his glance.

‘I’ve set wood for the fire out along the back.’ He gave a quick look at Emma, her face turned from him as she wiped away the tears, then back to Daisy. ‘Is there anything else I can be after doing?’

‘No, I don’t think there is, not right now.’

‘There’s no word?’

Placing strips of bacon in the pan, Daisy gave another shake of her head.

‘Then I will go into the town, might be he took the child that way. If so somebody must have seen them.’

‘She’s been there already.’ Daisy poked the bacon with a fork. ‘The swine was there all right and he was seen along of the child, but it seems he left almost afore he got there; it certainly wasn’t his intention to stay in Wednesbury.’

‘Emma.’ Dropping to his haunches beside her chair, Liam took her hands in his. ‘Emma, tell me, where was he seen?’

Sobs causing her voice to break, she told him of the street woman and the porter at the station.

‘Switzerland!’ He echoed her last word as Daisy had.

‘Emma says that place be a fair way off, and be all mountains and such. Not that I’ve ever seen a mountain.’

‘It is a fair way off, Daisy,’ Liam answered, his eyes still on Emma. ‘But ’tis not so far a man cannot be found. Where one has gone, another may follow.’

‘That would take money.’ Drawing her hands from his, Emma wiped her eyes. ‘Far more than I have.’

Placing the strips of fried bacon on a plate, Daisy set to refilling the pan. ‘Emma gave all her money away, kept only enough to buy what were needed for a day’s cooking. And there ain’t so much profit made from that as would pay her fare to Birmingham!’

‘Gave her money away?’ Liam stood up, his brown eyes filled with question. ‘But why? And to whom?’

‘Daisy!’ Emma glanced up quickly.

‘I know, I know!’ Daisy shrugged. ‘I said as I would keep it secret, but it be out now so you might as well tell him the all of it.’

Twisting a damp handkerchief between her fingers, Emma began falteringly. ‘I . . . we . . . Daisy and I went to see the priest of St Mary’s church, the one with the green spire . . .’

‘You went to see the father?’

Nodding, Emma went on. ‘We’d heard he was going to Ireland so we went to ask would he let the boy that was beaten travel with him.’

‘And he agreed?’

‘Ar!’ Daisy snorted. ‘After asking a thousand questions.’

‘Sure and that sounds familiar, he would have made Grand Inquisitor so he would.’

‘Well I don’t know what that be neither, but if it be one poked his nose where it shouldn’t be then that priest would take top prize! Anyway, he only agreed so long as the lad paid his own fare.’

Understanding spreading across his face, Liam looked at Emma. ‘But the lad did not have the kind of money would take him home to Ireland, so you gave him the rest.’

Tending bacon, Daisy waited for Emma to reply, then when the silence seemed set to last she looked over at her friend, her voice gentle with affection.

‘No, Emma did not give him the rest she gave him the lot, every penny. Said what the lad had earned should go to his mother.’

‘But why, Emma?’ Liam’s voice was as tender as Daisy’s had been. ‘Why did you not tell me? I would have seen the lad had his money.’

‘And deprive your mother of what would have been sent to her?’ Emma smiled through tears. ‘My own mother would have called that robbing Peter to pay Paul. I saw no reason for my needing the money, while that boy had every reason.’

‘And now you have reason and no money!’

‘You did it too, Daisy.’ Emma met the gentle admonition. ‘You gave him your money too.’

‘Yes, well,’ Daisy turned back to her cooking, ‘I had no call for it either.’

‘What’s done can’t be undone, but I have . . .’

‘No, Liam,’ Emma interrupted sharply. ‘I have enough guilt in my heart at leaving Paul. I could not bear the extra of knowing I had taken money that was meant for your family. Please Liam.’ She rose to her feet. ‘Try to understand. I recognise your desire to help and I appreciate it, but I will not take your money or any other man’s here when you have worked so hard for it.’

Taking her hands, he looked deep into her eyes, his voice no more than a whisper. ‘My money is yours, Emma, just as my life is yours. Their only value lies in helping you.’

It had been the hardest month of her life. Every day had been given over to the hope she might be reunited with her son, every night to praying for a miracle that did not come. Only once before in her life, the night her family had died, had she felt so utterly heartsick.