The Hungry Tide (14 page)

As she looked back down the Market Place she saw the bronze statue of William III glinting in the morning sunlight. King Billy, as he was affectionately called by the Hull residents, sat proudly on his steed in splendid isolation in the midst of the bustle of the crowded street.

‘Is this what tha wants, Will, does tha want to move away from all of this?’ Her voice broke and she could barely hold back her tears.

‘I know tha’ll miss it, lass. It’s home, I know, in spite of everything. But it’s our only chance. If we stay, things will only get worse, we’ll have to move to a smaller place with less rent, or else we don’t eat!’

Maria nodded sadly. If she ate any less than she was doing, and there were times when she gave the children her share of food, then she wouldn’t have any milk for the baby and the baby would die. She wanted desperately for it to live, and to grow strong and healthy, for this was a special baby. She could sense it. As it moved within her she could feel the strength of its being and was comforted.

‘Mrs Masterson said for you to come up.’ The maid, Ellie, looked curiously at Maria as she waited by the kitchen door, Lizzie and Alice close by her and Tom gazing inquisitively about him.

‘Is tha going to ’country?’ she asked, her curiosity getting the better of her, as she led them up the stairs.

‘Perhaps,’ Maria replied with caution. ‘It’s not settled yet.’

‘Watch your thee’s and thou’s then,’ Ellie whispered as a parting shot as she knocked on the sitting-room door and ushered them in to Mrs Masterson’s presence.

What does she mean? thought Maria in a sudden panic. I wish Will was here. Will had gone alone to meet Isaac Masterson in his office down at the docks, leaving Maria and the children to their interview with Mrs Masterson.

‘Come over here, please, where I can see you.’

Isobel Masterson was sitting in a chair by the window, her feet raised on an embroidered footstool.

Maria obeyed, her eyes lowered, and she saw then that Mrs Masterson’s dainty little feet were swollen and shoeless. As she raised her eyes she realized the meaning of Will’s words.

Delicate indeed, I’ll give him delicate! she thought to herself, and found herself smiling sympathetically at the gentlewoman before her who was obviously in some discomfort.

‘I am not at all well today, Mrs Foster, so I will ask you as few questions as I think necessary, and the first one – so that we don’t waste time – is would you be willing, provided, that is, that I find you suitable, to come out to Monkston, to Garston Hall, to work in service for me?’

‘I’ll gladly come and work for thee, ma-am, if Will says that it’s all right. As for Monkston, well, I don’t rightly know where it is, as I’ve never been anywhere but here. But I’m sure that it will do as well as anywhere, if there’s work for us.’

She became bolder. ‘I would like to say, ma-am, though I’ve never been in service before, and am very ignorant of what should be done right, tha’ll – you – will only have to tell me once and I shall remember.’

Isobel breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Then I think we shall get along very well, for if there is one thing I cannot abide, it is having to repeat myself.’ She looked at the three children standing quietly behind Maria.

‘Will your eldest girl be able to help? Is she useful in the house?’

‘Lizzie isn’t my own,’ said Maria, drawing her in front of her so that Mrs Masterson could see her clearly.

Lizzie looked pleadingly up at Maria before turning her eyes towards Mrs Masterson.

‘But we take care of her, for her mother. She’s part of our family now,’ she added firmly. ‘And she’s very good with ’childre’, she can help with ’bairns when they come, ma-am.’

She thought that perhaps she had gone too far, that she had overstepped the boundaries of etiquette as Mrs Masterson frowned.

‘The bairns? I don’t understand what you mean.’

Maria blushed. Now she knew that she had gone too far. Annie was right, these ladies did pretend that pregnancy and all that went before didn’t happen to them.

‘I only meant, ma-am, that when my babby comes, she can help to look after it, so that I can work for you.’ She also wanted to say that Lizzie could look after the Masterson baby too, but she hesitated in case she was being too forward.

Isobel’s face cleared. ‘Oh – I see – you mean children! I shall of course expect you to speak clearly and correctly if you come to work for me.’

This wasn’t conveyed unkindly and Maria didn’t take offence, but she was surprised when Mrs Masterson added, ‘I hadn’t realized that you were expecting a child, when is it due?’

‘In about four weeks, ma-am. If it’s on time.’

‘Four weeks! Then how are we to manage? When will you be able to start work again?’

Maria smiled. ‘I’ll only need a couple of days, ma-am, just until my milk comes through.’

It was Isobel Masterson’s turn to blush and she turned towards the window to hide her embarrassment.

‘I’m sorry, ma-am. I didn’t mean—’ Maria was lost for words.

‘No, don’t be sorry.’ Isobel turned to face her with an impatient shake of her head. ‘It’s just so silly that a woman of my age doesn’t understand the normal facts of pregnancy. But who to ask, that’s the problem?’ she added softly.

Maria remained discreetly silent, but her heart went out to the grand lady who was obviously so bewildered over a natural event.

Isobel leaned forward and then glancing towards the children said, ‘If the children would just step down to the kitchen for a moment, I’m sure Cook will find them some cake.’

They needed no second bidding. Lizzie gave a small curtsey to Mrs Masterson and led the way out.

‘I hope you don’t mind my asking, Mrs Foster.’ Isobel hesitated for a moment and then took the plunge. ‘But you have been through childbirth before. Is it very painful? Does it hurt very much?’

‘Sometimes it does, ma-am,’ Maria admitted. She felt that Mrs Masterson would want the truth and it would be wrong to mislead her. ‘Especially with ’first, but with Alice my mother showed me what to do, and then it became easier. But you soon forget ’pain when ’babby’s in your arms.’

She smiled at the recollection, but Mrs Masterson, with no preconceived notion of motherhood, was unimpressed, and the thought of her own mother dispensing wisdom was ludicrous, as that lady finished with childbearing once and for all, after her only child, Isobel, was born.

‘Very well, Mrs Foster,’ she said as she concluded the interview. ‘Mr Masterson will make the final arrangements, but I hope that we shall be able to remove to Garston Hall within the next two or three weeks, and I would like to think that you will be there already to help with the arrangements.’

‘Yes ma-am, we can go any time, we’ve nowt – nothing to keep us here any more.’

She walked outside into the High Street to find Will waiting for her, a jubilant grin on his face.

‘Well, that’s it, ’job is ours. We go tomorrow!’

‘Tomorrow? So soon?’ She hadn’t thought that they would go immediately. Now there would be no time for lingering goodbyes to all the familiar faces and places.

‘And guess what?’ Will almost crowed with delight. ‘Garston Hall is in Monkston – and Monkston is on ’coast.’ He flung his arms around her and the children laughed aloud to see him in such high spirits.

‘Maria, we’re going to live by ’sea. The magnificent, rolling, deep, deep sea!’

Will rose early. It was still quite dark and as he peered out of the window he saw that there was a light drizzle falling.

‘I’d hoped it would be fine this morning, we’ve a long journey ahead of us. I’ll go off now, and see if we can get a lift with ’carrier. Today’s his day for going to Hornsea, and happen he’ll drop us off on ’road.’

The carrier travelled twice a week to the east coast town carrying a variety of goods and provisions, and sometimes, if he had the room, would take passengers also.

‘Otherwise I’ll have to hire a cart from ’yard. Mr Masterson said I could, and he would take it out of my wages.’

He left Maria and the children sorting out their few possessions. He swung along easily and swiftly now on his crutch, and indeed didn’t use it at all when he was inside, but jumped with a short rapid motion. His uncanny balance was due, he said, to his years of sailing, when surefootedness meant the difference between life and death as a ship tossed and pitched in mountainous seas.

He was about to turn towards the Market Place and the Blue Bell inn, where the carriers came in with their carts and waggons, when he heard the sound of shouting, and saw in the distance a small crowd of men running towards the jetty at the old South End. Curiously he turned that way. It would be either the wreckage of some small boat or some poor devil’s body, he thought, brought in on the tide.

They’d already turned him over when he got there, the men hanging precariously from the lower beams to pull the body clear of the broken crates and tattered canvas which littered the mud, just above the high-water mark. The thick brown mud had filled his eyes and nostrils, and a dark stain covered his shirt front.

There was muttering from the crowd: some of them knew him and with raised eyebrows and pursed lips signalled their confirmation that they had always known he would come to this.

‘River didn’t tek ’im,’ said one. ‘He was no water rat.’

Will turned away. There was a superstition that the waters of the Humber would only take their own kind, and Francis Morton was a town rat, who made his living scavenging in the streets and alleys. The river didn’t want him, and had cast him off, discarded and unwanted with all the other flotsam and jetsam that lay in the mud beneath the ancient wharf.

Hurriedly, he made his way towards Annie’s house. He wanted to be the one to tell her, the first to break the news. Or did he want to warn her? He was unsure in his own mind. She’d been in distress two nights ago when she had gone looking for Francis, but surely not enough to kill him? He dismissed the thought as fanciful. He’d seen the wooden shaft of the knife. No woman would have the strength to plunge it so deep into a man as physically powerful as Francis Morton.

He felt disturbed and conscience-stricken. He knew that he too had been in the right frame of mind to do serious injury to the dead man. He had always disliked him and he never had trusted him with Maria, having seen the way his lustful eyes followed her. But he wouldn’t in honesty have seen any man finish his days the way Francis had, reprobate though he was.

Telling himself that he was getting soft in the head, he turned into the square where Annie lived. He hammered loudly on the door several times, but on getting no reply turned away. A scrawny old woman leaned out of a window across the square and gave him a wide toothless grin.

‘If tha’s looking for Annie, tha’s too late, she’s gone – flitted.’ She cackled with laughter at her own wit.

‘Where’s she gone?’

The woman’s smile disappeared. ‘Can’t say. Who wants to know?’

‘I’m a friend. Lizzie is staying with us.’

The woman leaned further out of the window and dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘She left yesterday morning, ’fore it was light. I saw her go. I reckon she won’t be back!’ She drew her head back inside and disappeared.

Will was dismayed. If Annie had gone, it would look very suspicious should the constables come enquiring into Francis’s death. And yet he knew that no-one here or at her workplace would give her away. An impenetrable wall of silence would descend, impossible to pass or scale.

The carriers’ notices were posted up outside the inn, and although Will didn’t read well, he managed to make out the times and days that they set out. The Hornsea carrier, William Mires, didn’t move off until the afternoon, making it very late for them to travel if they had to walk some of the way.

I’ll go across to Mr Masterson’s yard and hire a cart, he thought, he did offer after all. It just means I’ll be a bit short in my wages, and they’re little enough as it is. He was grateful to Isaac Masterson for giving him employment, but astute enough to realize that the wage he would be earning at Garston Hall was a mere pittance compared with what he had once earned as a whaling man.

He had turned the corner from the High Street to cut down one of the alleyways leading to the Old Harbour and Masterson’s yard when he realized that he was being followed, that the sound of footsteps had been behind him since leaving the Blue Bell. He stopped abruptly and swung around.

A vice-like grip clutched his throat, knocking him back against the wall of the alley, his crutch slithering from under his armpit to the ground, and he found himself staring into the threatening eyes of Jack Crawford, Francis Morton’s crony.

He held him so close that Will could see his own eyes reflected in the dark pupils of the man’s jaundiced eyes, and smell his warm, rancid breath as he spoke.

‘I’ve been looking for thee, Will Foster.’

With a great heave from his muscular arms, Will shoved him away and the two men stood in the gloomy alleyway glaring at each other, their arms raised for attack. People on their way to work glanced down the alley and some made as if to come down it, but on seeing an obvious confrontation backed away.

‘So, now tha’s found me – what now?’

Crawford drew nearer menacingly, his busy eyebrows drawn together to meet above his flattened nose.

‘’Sacks – where are they? I want my share. That swine Frank Morton has disappeared. His ma says she doesn’t know where he is – but I reckon she knows all right. And if either of thee thinks tha can deceive me, then tha’s mistaken.’

Will hid a grim smile. Obviously the word of Francis’s untimely end hadn’t reached Crawford’s ears.

‘’Sacks have gone back – back to where they belong,’ he said dispassionately. ‘What about that old man? Has he recovered?’

Crawford looked sharply down the alley. ‘Keep thy voice down. Aye, he’s all right, just got a sore head, that’s all.’

‘Tha might have killed him.’ Will’s voice was caustic.

‘Well, I didn’t, did I? Never mind about that, what about all that stuff? Who would be so daft as to take it back? Dost take me for ’village idiot?’

Will shrugged and bent awkwardly to pick up his crutch, keeping a wary eye on Crawford as he did so. ‘I said they’ve gone back – I took them.’