The Mistress of Windfell Manor Page 16

  ‘Have you finished writing, ma’am?’ She smiled.

  Charlotte winced as she sat upright and pushed her writing desk out of the way. ‘Yes, I have, Lily. Is Jethro available?’

  ‘He is indeed, ma’am; he’s already saddled one of the horses in readiness for his ride into Settle. In fact he said if it’s a fairly local letter, he can deliver it personally, as Mr Dawson’s horse could do with a good workout.’ Lily held out her hand for the letter, knowing who it was for. She’d taken delivery of the letter that Archie had sent her mistress, when she had been so ill after her fall. Joseph Dawson would have thrown it onto the fire once he’d read it, so Lily had kept it safe for her mistress, knowing that Charlotte needed her friendship with him kept a secret.

  ‘I’d be grateful if he could. And, Lily, can we keep this to ourselves, please?’ Charlotte looked at the maid, whom she knew she could trust, and smiled.

  ‘Of course, ma’am. Neither Jethro nor myself know nothing about it.’

  ‘Thank you, Lily, that means a lot to me.’ Charlotte smiled and lay back in her chair. At least the servants were on her side.

  There was a hammering at the door. Rosie Atkinson rose from the small peat fire burning in the hearth to open it. She was cold and hungry, and the baby within her was sapping all the nourishment she had in her body, making her feel weak and feeble.

  ‘Go on, Rosie, see who it is. It must be somebody wanting summat, in weather like this.’ Archie sat next to the fire and waited for his wife to open the door to their earnest guest.

  ‘I’ll give him summat, if he wakens our Daniel up,’ mumbled Rosie. She was tired and needed her bed. She opened the door slightly, the wind battering her as she looked at the young lad in front of her.

  ‘Mrs Atkinson, is your husband in?’

  Jethro held onto his horse’s reins and waited for Archie to come to the door, not wanting to pass the letter that his mistress had written to Archie’s wife. The horse reared its head as Archie came to the door, wanting to be out of the cold wind. ‘My mistress, Mrs Charlotte Dawson, asked me to deliver this to you. If you read it, I can take a reply, if you wish.’ Jethro stood and watched as Archie opened the letter and read it quickly, the wind and rain blowing Archie’s hair and the letter getting spotted with raindrops.

  ‘For God’s sake, close the door, lad – you’re letting all the heat out,’ Rosie’s father yelled.

  ‘Well?’ Jethro waited.

  ‘No, lad, I’ve no reply; just give her my best wishes.’ Archie looked at the young groom and then screwed up the letter to him, written with love, and watched as Jethro mounted his steed and turned tail down the fellside.

  ‘What did he want, then?’ Rosie looked at the screwed-up letter in her husband’s hand.

  ‘He’s Joseph Dawson’s groom. He came to tell me that Crummock’s already let, so I needn’t bother wasting Aunt Lucy’s money on it.’ Archie looked at the letter in his hand and threw it quickly onto the peat fire, before anyone else asked to read it.

  ‘Aye, well, he wouldn’t rent it to you anyway – you’re not in his circle of friends.’ Rosie’s father shuffled on his seat next to the fire. ‘God knows why that Booth lass married him. She was worth more than that ’un.’

  ‘God knows indeed. It must have been the money that turned her head.’ Archie smiled at his weary wife.

  ‘She’ll never have what we have, Archie, no matter how much money he has.’ Rosie pecked her husband on the cheek, knowing that he was thinking of times past. ‘We will always love one another, no matter what.’

  ‘We will, my love.’ Archie returned her kiss and closed his eyes, remembering Charlotte’s kisses, before looking around the hovel that he was now living in and realizing he could have done so much better.

  Roger Wilson looked out of the window of Crummock and took another gulp of the port that he’d found in the pantry of the rambling farmhouse. Bloody frozen place, but still it was better than being in a police cell at Accrington. He watched as the sleet-filled rain came down in sheets across the valley, and laughed as Arthur, the farm lad, coaxed the milk cow across the farmyard into its stall to be milked. Silly bugger, he was sodden and shit-up. He’d work his fingers to the bone to keep those simple beasts fed and watered.

  You wouldn’t find him doing anything like that. Roger grinned, went back near the fire to put his feet up on the hearth, and sat back to finish the rest of his bottle. He toasted Joseph by swigging the port directly out of the bottle. ‘Cheers, Joseph, my old mucker,’ smiling to himself as he remembered the journey out of Accrington under the nose of the Peelers. They’d never find him here, in this godforsaken hole. Not that he wanted them to, not after half of Accrington was baying for his blood over unpaid bills and the theft of just a few casks of the best Fighting Cocks whisky. He’d done worse in the past, even if they did not know it; that’s why he was best out of it, keeping his head down here in his old mate’s new gaff. Lucky bastard, Joseph always had landed on his feet.

  ‘What do you want?’ Roger sat up in his seat, noticing Arthur entering through the kitchen door.

  ‘I’ve just brought you the milk for the house.’ Arthur looked at the middle-aged, rough-looking inebriated man, whom he’d been instructed was his new master.

  ‘Milk – what the hell do I want with milk? Here, go to wherever you country bumpkins go to and get me a barrel of beer and a bottle or two of their best whisky. I’ll need that to keep the bloody damp out of my bones in this godforsaken place.’ Roger threw a selection of coins onto the table for Arthur to do as he bade.

  Arthur looked at him and said nothing.

  ‘Go on then – bugger off! I could do with it before nightfall; it’ll help pass the hours, because there’s bugger-all to do here.’ Roger watched as the lad picked up the coins, hesitating before going back through the door.

  ‘Do you want me to bring the lambing sheep down into the low pasture tomorrow?’ Arthur had to ask, because it was his duty.

  ‘You can do what the bloody hell you like, lad. Just bugger off and get me my drink.’ Roger took another swig and gazed into the fire.

  ‘Right, I’ll do that then, and I’ll take the horse and cart into Austwick for your barrel.’

  Arthur waited for a reply, but got none. He shook his head as he walked out of the once-welcoming farmhouse. His new master was an old soak, not worth a penny to the running of the farm. He might as well be on his own.

  15

  Spring came slowly and truly, just as Lily had said it would. The snowdrops in the driveway gave way to delicately coloured yellow daffodils, with primroses flowering in abundance on the rocky crags above Windfell Manor. Dotted between them were perfumed dog violets, which reminded Charlotte of the posy that Archie had given her the previous spring. That seemed like a lifetime ago now. So much had happened in a year.

  She leaned against the window and looked out across the dale. The sun glinted on the River Ribble as it wandered down to the sea and she could just make out the red-brick chimney of Ferndale Mill, nestled down by the riverside, through the budding sycamore trees. She was bored; spring always made her restless, and not being able to ride a horse or have the freedom to wander the fells and fields around her family home made her even more so. Her hand wandered down to her stomach and she lovingly rubbed her extending abdomen. Another five months and she wouldn’t be bored, she’d have a child to call her own. A little new soul to love and nurture, and to learn the rights and wrongs of the world that he or she was to grow up in.

  ‘Can you get me my cloak, Lily, I’m going to go for a stroll.’ Charlotte caught the arm of her maid as she took the morning tea tray away.

  ‘Do you think that’s wise, ma’am? It looks warm out there, but there’s a real sneaky wind. Besides, what will Mr Dawson say? Will he be happy if you go for a walk alone? Perhaps I should go with you. You are still weak after your fall.’ Lily hesitated with the tray and watched her mistress pacing like a caged lion.

  ‘I am perfec
tly well. I wish everyone would stop fussing. This isn’t the first baby to be born, and it won’t be the last. Besides, Mr Dawson is at Long Preston today, visiting the Jackson family and looking at their new warehouse on the village green. So he won’t know what I’m up to, unless someone tells him.’ Charlotte knew that Joseph was watching her every move. Together with his spy, Mrs Dodgson, who had gone into Settle on her half-day off, so there was nobody to log Charlotte’s movements.

  ‘If you are sure, ma’am. I don’t mind accompanying you. Yates is having forty winks after Mr Dawson disturbed him in the early hours this morning, and Mazy and Mrs Batty are looking at a new cookbook by Mrs Beeton. It’s as big as a doorstop and tells you all the proper ways of service, and is full of fancy dishes that no doubt she’ll be trying on you.’ Lily waited in the doorway with her hands full with the morning tea tray.

  ‘No, Lily, I need some time to myself. But thank you for your offer.’ Charlotte followed her maid out into the hallway and awaited her return from the kitchen, smiling as Lily made sure that her mistress was warm within her cloak and gloves, before her walk. She would be lost without her sweet maid; they had both learned the ways of Windfell Manor together, and Charlotte trusted her completely.

  ‘Take care, ma’am.’ Lily opened the door and let a shaft of bright spring sunshine into the hallway of Windfell.

  ‘I will, Lily. I just need a breath of fresh air and some time to think.’ Charlotte smiled and ran her gloved hand around Lily’s worried face. ‘I promise I won’t be long.’

  ‘You’ll turn back if you start feeling ill.’ Lily lingered at the door.

  ‘Yes, I promise. Now go and look at that new book, else Mazy will be getting ideas above her station and will start trying for your position.’

  ‘She’d better not – her place is in the kitchen.’ Lily watched Charlotte step out along the gravel driveway until she got to the gateway, then closed the door behind her. She prayed that neither Joseph Dawson nor Dora Dodgson would not return before her mistress.

  Charlotte stepped out down the road that led to Settle, breathing in the sharp air and feeling all the better for it. Windfell had become claustrophobic of late. Joseph hadn’t lost his temper with her since her fall down the stairs, but the deathly silence they now lived surrounded by was worse. The marriage was a sham and everyone in Windfell, including the servants, knew it.

  She pulled her cloak around her. Lily had been right; the day was beautiful but very deceptive, with a cold bite in the air, once you were out of the sunshine. She stopped at the rough track leading down to Ferndale Mill and hesitated for a while. With Joseph at Long Preston, it would be interesting to take a look around the mill, without him keeping her in his office. Hopefully nobody would dare tell Joseph of her visit. After all, she was his wife and had every right to be there. Even with her worry about Joseph’s rage if he did find out, her curiosity got the better of her. She had always been interested in seeing how the mill worked, and she could also see if the warehouse was indeed full of raw cotton, like her husband had said.

  Charlotte dallied for a second and then set off down the track to the mill. She thought of all the mill workers making their way to work with heavy hearts every day, just to keep bread on the table. She passed the mill cottages, with their tidily kept vegetable patches, and crossed over the sluice gate that monitored the flow of water to the water wheel that powered the steam engine, which in turn powered the carding and spinning machines. The noise of the machines and shuttles within them assaulted her ears as she walked across the cobbled yard between the four-storey mill buildings. The carters tugged on their caps, realizing it was Joseph Dawson’s wife paying them a visit, as they moved bales of raw cotton up into the top of the mill by rope and pulley, through the large open doors at the very summit of the mill.

  ‘Can I help you, Mrs Dawson?’ Bert Bannister came over, after shouting at a man who was balancing on a horse and cart, trying to hook the bale bound for the top.

  ‘Ah, Mr Bannister, I just thought I’d visit my husband. Is he here?’ Charlotte was lying through her teeth, but she didn’t know if she trusted Bert Bannister or not.

  ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, he’s not here. I thought that you’d know he’s at Long Preston today.’ Bert looked at the lass. She appeared pale and tired, and he couldn’t help but think that Joseph Dawson had done to his wife what he’d done to his workers: taken the bloom out of her cheeks.

  ‘Of course, I’d forgotten. He did tell me this morning – how stupid of me to forget.’ Charlotte smiled. ‘I see we are busy, Mr Bannister. Have we plenty of cotton in at the moment, to keep our machines working, and people in work?’

  ‘Oh, aye, Mrs Dawson, the warehouse is full to the rafters. I’ve never seen so much cotton. I think Mr Dawson must have over-ordered. Either that or he thinks we are going to have a lot of extra orders.’ Bert had wanted to say something to his master about the over-stocking of cotton, but hadn’t dared to.

  ‘I’m sure he’s got his reasons. Mr Dawson doesn’t spend money if he doesn’t have to.’ Charlotte was relieved to hear that at least he hadn’t been lying about the shipment.

  ‘Aye, you can say that again. He doesn’t believe in chucking his money about, I can vouch for that.’ Bert regretted what he said straight away, but his overseer’s wage was paying for less and less, and his wife had been giving him earache all week.

  ‘Mr Bannister, would you mind giving me a guided tour of the mill? I’d like to see how it all works, and I have some time on my hands.’ Charlotte could see that she had Bannister in a quandary. He couldn’t say no, but at the same time he was wondering if Joseph would be happy if he showed his wife his empire. ‘I’ll not tell my husband, I promise.’ Charlotte fluttered her eyes at the burly man.

  ‘Oh, aye, go on then. I’ll not take you to where the beam engines are – the men in there will not want a woman in their way, and they only generate the power for the mill. No disrespect, Mrs Dawson. I’ll show you the carding and weaving rooms, but I’ll warn you, it’s noisy in there!’ He smiled at the young woman. She had more charm than her husband, and he respected her. Local folk talked highly of her family.

  ‘I know it’s noisy, Mr Bannister. I can hear it standing here. I don’t know how the women work, or talk to one another.’ Charlotte followed him up through the mill’s steep stairs to the carding room.

  Bert opened the heavy oak doors into the carding room. ‘They learn to lipread, ma’am; you can’t talk above this. This, ma’am, is where the cotton is cleaned and placed into the carding machine. When we first receive the cotton, it’s stiff and contains seeds, soil and leaves and has to be cleaned. This is called “scratching”. It’s placed on a wire frame in that machine over there, and is beaten so that all the waste falls out of it. It’s then ready for the carding machine, which gets rid of all the impurities left in it. In the carding drum a small roller, called the “stripper”, takes the cotton from the worker and, as you can see, it goes over rollers studded with wires to comb through the cotton. This aligns the cotton, making it into what we call a “rope of tow”, but it still needs to be stretched and thinned, using a process of drawing and roving. If you look at the rollers, ma’am, that is what they are doing; they are making the tow thinner and thinner so that it can be wound onto a bobbin. I remember when my mother did carding by hand, by brushing the cotton over wired combs, but the process is a lot faster since this machine came along.’

  The air was thick with dust and Charlotte sneezed as she watched women and children running back and forth, obeying the machine’s every demand. She couldn’t help but feel how selfish she had been over the last few months. She had been sitting in her elegant surroundings, feeling sorry for herself, when these women and children were labouring so hard to keep her in the manner to which she had become accustomed. She beckoned Bert to leave the giant room full of dust and noise, and caught his arm as they started moving down to the next level.

  ‘How many children work in th
e mill, Mr Bannister?’ she enquired, trying not to show her belief that there should be none at all – or at least not at the ages she had seen.

  ‘I’d say we have about fifty, ma’am. They are all over the age of eleven and are mostly the mill workers’ children. Although some, like Betsy Foster in the carding room, think it isn’t a good enough place for their kin to work.’ Bert sniggered.

  ‘I can’t say I blame her. Is Betsy at work here today? I’d like to talk to her, if I could.’ Charlotte thought Betsy sounded like a proud, sensible woman, and her view of the mill would be of great value to her.

  ‘No, her mate Sally Oversby says she’s ill today. I had to dock her pay with the wages clerk this morning.’ Bert knew that Charlotte should hate Betsy. It was starting to become common knowledge that Joseph Dawson was not being faithful to his wife, and that Betsy had caught his eye. And now this woman was asking to talk to Betsy. Did she perhaps know what was going on under her nose?

  ‘The poor woman doesn’t get paid, if she’s ill? Surely it isn’t her fault that she can’t work?’

  ‘Aye, and it isn’t our fault, either. I wouldn’t bother your head about Betsy, she’s a survivor, ma’am.’ Bert thanked the Lord that Charlotte wasn’t running the mill; there’d be no children employed, and everyone would be ill every day, if they were paid to be sick. ‘Here you go, ma’am: the spinning room.’

  Charlotte watched as the overhead spinning wheels drove the spinning mules back and forth, spinning the fine cleaned and carded cotton onto bobbins. Once full, they were placed into baskets, to be woven into cloth by the doffer that collected the cotton spools. She observed as the mule-minders watched their machines and the busy spindles for any broken threads, pausing the machines for a few seconds to allow the piecers to tie them together. The nimble fingers of the younger children tied them together quickly, before the carriage of the machine started moving again. The dust from the cotton filled the air and Charlotte watched in disbelief at the danger of the situation, as one of the mules briefly stopped while one of the youngest employees was sent rushing down the length of the mule under the thread, to clear the fluff that had been created beneath the carriage. His legs were barely clear before the huge machine restarted.