The Ribbon Weaver (46 page)

‘Amy, lass,’ Molly gently asked her one morning when the nurses had washed her and changed the dressings on her leg, ‘can yer remember what happened? How did yer come to fall into the ravine?’

Amy merely looked towards the window without attempting to answer. Molly and Josephine exchanged a worried glance. All they could do was wait until the girl was ready to talk to them.

The doctor assured them that behaviour such as this was normal following a bad accident. He even suggested that Amy might not remember what had happened and so for now they had to be patient.

That evening, when Toby called in as was customary to see how Amy was, on his way home from the schoolroom where he had been working, Molly was waiting for him in the hallway.

‘Come up an’ see her, lad,’ she implored him. ‘Happen she’ll speak to you.’

Toby hesitated but then after taking a deep breath he nodded and followed her up the stairs.

‘She’s in here,’ Molly wheezed pausing at the bedroom door. ‘Go on in, lad.’

Toby gulped before grasping the door handle and stepping into the room. A nurse was in the process of folding some linen but when he appeared she bobbed her knee and quickly left as Toby stood wringing his cap in his hands and staring towards the bed.

Amy’s head turned ever so slightly, and when she saw him standing there, a tear squeezed out of the corner of her eye. He was at her side in a minute, grasping her hand as all the love he felt for her rose in him like a tide.

‘Aw, lass.’ His voice was strangled. ‘Thank God you survived.’ He did not see the ugly scar on her face or the cage above her legs, only the girl he had always adored from afar. ‘You give us a rare gliff back there for a time, I don’t mind tellin‘yer. But it’s over now an’ all that matters is you gettin’ well again.’

She returned the pressure on his fingers for the briefest of seconds but then her eyes fluttered shut and as she drifted off to sleep again, Toby hung his head and wept openly with relief.

Toby continued to call in at The Folly every evening on his way home from his shift down the mine or after his few precious hours per week spent in the schoolroom, and it was on one such evening when he was making his way home that he stopped by to see Mary. She had just put the twins to bed and she and Joe were enjoying a bit of peace and quiet.

‘Come on in, love,’ Mary welcomed him when she opened the door. ‘Yer just in time fer a brew. Sit yerself down, there’s plenty left in the pot.’ She hurried to fetch another mug as Toby sank into the chair next to Joe and asked, ‘So how was she today?’

Toby sighed. ‘They reckon she’s healin’ as well as can be expected, but she still hasn’t spoken yet.’

Mary glanced at him out of the corner of her eye as she spooned sugar into his drink. Knowing Toby as she did, she suspected that something was troubling him. After carrying it over to him she asked gently, ‘What’s troublin’ yer, love?’

After chewing on his lip for a moment, her brother confided, ‘I’ve just got this feelin’, an’ I can’t get it out o’ me head – that what happened to Amy weren’t an accident.’

Mary frowned. ‘But what else could it have been? As far as I know, I was the last to see her afore the accident happened an’ there weren’t anyone else about …’ Then an image suddenly flashed before her eyes and the colour drained from her face.

‘There
was
someone else in the grounds, now I come to think of it,’ she said. ‘Me an’ Amy were standin’ at the gate, an’ as we were talkin’ we saw someone ridin’ a white horse alongside the river. It was a woman dressed in green an’ she were goin’ hell fer leather. I remember commentin’ on it to Amy just before she left me.’

As she and Toby stared at each other, a terrible thought occurred to them both simultaneously. ‘Weren’t Miss Eugenie’s horse white?’ Mary asked.

‘Aye, it was.’ It was Joe who answered with a deep frown on his forehead. ‘Did she see you an’ Miss Amy talkin’?’

‘I … I don’t know,’ Mary stuttered. ‘There’s every chance she did. Yer don’t think she followed the lass, do yer?’

‘It wouldn’t surprise me,’ Joe answered as he rose from his seat. ‘It were common knowledge that she was jealous o’ Miss Amy. I reckon we ought to go an’ tell the master.’

‘I’ll come with yer,’ Toby told him, and in seconds both men were out of the door and heading back to The Folly.

Once Lily had admitted them, Mr Forrester took them straight into his study and listened solemn-faced to what they had to say.

‘O’ course, we could be quite wrong,’ Joe admitted. ‘But it’s funny as it were a pure white horse, ain’t it? What do yer think we should do about it?’

With his hands joined behind his back, the master strode up and down the room for a time as he thought about it. Then he told them. ‘I think I need to ask Amy if Eugenie was involved in the accident and we’ll take it from there. Please wait here and I’ll be back shortly.’ Without another word he left the room and once upstairs outside Amy’s door he took a deep breath before entering.

Nodding at his wife and Molly who were sitting at either side of the bed he bent and lifted Amy’s hand and smiled at her.

‘How are you feeling, my dear?’ he asked gently.

She smiled at him weakly in answer.

‘Toby and Joe are downstairs,’ he went on. ‘And Mary remembered something quite interesting this evening. She remembered that on the day you had your accident, just before you left her, you both saw a woman on a white horse riding through the grounds. Is this right, Amy?’

He heard her sharp intake of breath and she pulled her hand from his.

‘Please don’t be afraid to tell me what happened, my dear,’ he urged. ‘Was that rider Eugenie?’

Mr Forrester’s heart was thudding with rage. Could it be that Adam’s wife had tried to kill Amy? He had known for many years that Eugenie was a jealous, possessive and self-centred woman, but surely she would not stoop to such levels?

When it became clear that Amy was not going to answer him, he quietly left the room, closely followed by his wife, who asked him in a horrified whisper, ‘You surely don’t suspect that Eugenie was involved in Amy’s accident, do you, Samuel?’

‘Well, it sounds very suspicious, don’t you think? Eugenie made it more than clear that she hated Amy, and if it
was
her riding through the grounds that day, she could easily have spotted Amy talking to Mary and followed her. Also, how many pure white horses have you seen hereabouts? Eugenie sent one of her father’s stable-hands for Snowflake within days of leaving here, much to Seth’s dismay. He had raised that horse from the day that Adam bought it for her as a foal, and she liked the fact that no one else had a mount like hers. She and Seth had many a quarrel about the way Eugenie rode him, but at the end of the day he was her horse and there was little Seth could do about it.’

‘So what are you going to do now?’ his wife asked nervously.

‘I am going to see Eugenie’s father. If she did have anything to do with Amy’s accident, the only way she could have got to the ravine was through the woods. You know as well as I do how dense the trees are in there, and if she forced the horse through them the poor creature would have been scratched to pieces. I shall demand to see Snowflake, and if her father refuses to allow me to, I shall involve the authorities. Although I doubt it will come to that. I always found Sir Edmund to be a reasonable man, and if she was not involved in any way he will be keen to clear her name.’

‘And when will you be going?’

‘As soon as Seth can have the carriage made ready for me,’ he told her, and with that he strode off, leaving Josephine wringing her hands fearfully.

Mr Forrester, accompanied by both Toby and Joe, was on his way to Eugenie’s father’s home, Greyfriars Manor, within the hour. They each sat silent until the carriage drew to a halt at the steps of the magnificent residence just within the borders of Leicestershire.

Toby and Joe waited outside while Mr Forrester was admitted to the house, reappearing moments later with a manservant who led them to the stable-block at the rear of the Manor.

One of the grooms showed them to the stall where a pure white horse was tethered.

‘Hello, Snowflake,’ Mr Forrester cooed softly as the groom opened the stall for him, and the gentle creature nuzzled his hand as he stroked its silky mane. Snowflake had always been a great favourite of Samuel’s, and he had been sad to see the stallion leave The Folly when Eugenie’s belongings were removed.

‘Fetch some lamps, please – I need more light,’ Mr Forrester demanded, and the groom scurried away to do as he was told. Minutes later, as the lamps were held aloft, Mr Forrester ran his hands down the creature’s flanks. There were cuts all along them that had obviously been inflicted recently.

‘When did the horse get these injuries?’ he asked.

The groom frowned as he tried to think back. ‘Oh, it must have been about a week an’ a half or so ago,’ he mumbled. ‘Yes, it was, I remember now – it were the night before we had that bad thunderstorm. The poor critter were in a right old lather when Miss Eugenie brought him back. Foamin’ at the mouth he was, an’ I had to bathe all the cuts meself. But thankfully she ain’t been back out on him since.’

Grim-faced, Mr Forrester strode back towards the house, telling his companions, ‘Wait outside for me, please. I shouldn’t be too long.’ He disappeared back into the Manor, where Sir Edmund Walton, Eugenie’s father, was waiting for him.

Toby and Joe clambered back into the carriage to wait, and when Mr Forrester rejoined them some time later, he was in a towering rage.

‘It was her all right,’ he spat in disgust. ‘Her father sent for her and she was so drunk she almost fell into the room. I actually felt sorry for the man. He obviously doesn’t know how to cope with her. She’s an only child and he’s a widower, and he’s out of his depth. Apparently she’s drinking the second she sets foot out of bed in the morning now. She admitted that she had forced Amy over the edge of the ravine and actually laughed about it. Can you
believe
that? She showed no contrition – says she is only sorry that she isn’t dead.’ Samuel took a deep breath to get himself under control.

‘So what do we do now?’ Toby asked as his blood boiled.

‘I’m not quite sure what to do yet,’ Samuel admitted. ‘I need to speak to Amy and Adam first. Her father has assured me that if we do not press charges against Eugenie, he will have her admitted to an asylum.’

‘Best place fer her an’ all!’ Toby cried. ‘Either that or she should feel a noose about her neck.’

The three men then lapsed into silence as the carriage bore them all back to The Folly, each locked in their own solemn thoughts. Their beloved Amy had been maimed and crippled for no good reason at all.

Chapter Thirty-Two

‘Aw, lass, whyever didn’t yer tell us that it was Eugenie who had done this terrible thing to yer?’ Molly asked as she held fast to Amy’s hand.

It was now three days since Samuel Forrester had visited Eugenie’s family home and the whole of the town was alive with gossip about what had happened. News had a habit of travelling fast in this neck of the woods.

‘I … I didn’t want to cause any trouble,’ Amy said miserably. The nurses had just washed and changed her into a pretty lace-trimmed night gown and the process had exhausted her, although she was slowly grower stronger by the day.

‘Well, all I can say is, it’s a good job Mary remembered seein’ her then,’ Molly told her. ‘An’ at least she’s had her comeuppance now, though I still don’t understand why you didn’t want the justices involved. Had you died, which you well could ’ave done, she’d have hung and that’s a fact. As it is, it’s doubtful she’ll leave that asylum for some long time – so that’s sommat to be thankful for, at least. They reckon they had to drag her out o’ the house kickin’ an’ screamin’ when they went fer her, an’ serves her right, that’s what I say. She don’t deserve no better.’

As yet, Amy was still lying flat on her back and once Molly’s chatter had died away, she suddenly asked the question that Molly had been dreading.

‘Gran, why can’t I feel my foot?’

Molly gulped deep in her throat. She had never willingly lied to Amy in her whole life and had no intentions of starting now.

‘Well, the thing is, love … yer leg were badly broken in the fall, an’ in more than one place. It were a terrible mess an’ so the doctor had no option but to …’

When her voice trailed away and her eyes filled with tears, Amy stared at her steadily. ‘My leg is gone, isn’t it?’ she asked.

‘Not all of it,’ Molly told her hastily. ‘He had to amputate halfway between the ankle an’ the knee.’

‘So … I will never walk again?’

‘Oh yes, you will, my dear.’ Josephine took her hand now and her own eyes full, she told her, ‘Your grandfather has already sent for a doctor from London to come and see you. He specialises in people who have suffered accidents such as this, and he assured us that when you are strong again and the wound has properly healed, he will be able to make you a wooden leg. No one will ever know what has happened, once you get used to walking on it, and no one will ever see it.’

Both women had expected tears but Amy lay unmoved before asking, ‘And what about my face?’ Her hand slowly rose to trace the jagged wound that she could feel running all down one side of her cheek.

The breath caught in Molly’s throat but thankfully, Josephine answered the girl. ‘The doctor assures us that the scar will heal in time. You must have done it during your fall.’

Amy carefully shook her head. ‘No, I didn’t. I remember how it happened quite clearly. Miss Eugenie was whipping her horse, and when it reared, its hoof caught me in the face.’

Molly visibly shuddered at the image Amy had conjured up, and not for the first time over these last long days she found herself thinking, Eeh, what I wouldn’t do to have just half an hour alone locked in a room wi’ that little minx an’ a horse-whip. I’d let her know what it felt like to have it laid across her, an’ that’s fer sure.

‘I would like a mirror.’

Amy’s words startled them and the two women glanced at each other fearfully.