Orphans from the Storm: Bride at Bellfield Mill / A Family for Hawthorn Farm / Tilly of Tap House

‘So,’ she told the cat sitting watchfully at her feet a few minutes later, as she nursed the baby now sucking eagerly at his milky bread, ‘We have two good reasons why Mr Denshaw won’t want to keep me on. The baby, and you.’

She gave a small sigh. If the Master of Bellfield did but know it, she was as reluctant to be here as he was to have her here. But she had given her promise—a deathbed promise that could not be broken.

The baby had finished his milk. Marianne lifted him to her shoulder and rubbed his back to bring up his wind.

Within half an hour of Charlie Postlethwaite leaving, the baby had been fed and changed, and was back in his makeshift crib, now returned to the floor, whilst Marianne was carefully turning the bacon she was frying ready for the master’s return. All the while she kept a cautious eye on the cat, who had forsaken the hearth to go and sit beside the basket, where it was watching the sleeping infant.

‘Don’t you dare get in that basket,’ she warned it.

The cat gave her an obliquely haughty look, that immediately changed to a wary twitch of its ears as it stared at the door, as though it had heard something that Marianne could not.

Sure enough, within seconds, just after the cat had retreated to its hiding place beneath the settle, Marianne could hear the sound of men’s voices in the yard.

Hurrying to the window, she saw a group of men surrounding and supporting the Master of Bellfield. His arms were about their shoulders and a bloodstained bandage was wrapped around his thigh.

Marianne rushed to the door and opened it.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked the nearest man.

‘It’s t’master,’ one of them told her unnecessarily. ‘There were an accident at t’mill with one of t’machines.’

‘Told us to get him back here he did,’ another man supplied.

As the two men now supporting their employer struggled to get him through the doorway they accidentally banged his injured leg, causing him to let out a small moan through clenched teeth.

His face was pale, waxen with sweat, and his eyes were half closed, as though he was not really fully conscious. Marianne could see the bloodstain on the makeshift bandage spreading as she watched.

‘He needs to see a doctor,’ she told the men worriedly.

‘Aye, the foreman told him that. But he weren’t having none of it. Threatened to turn him off if he dared to send for him. Said as how it were just a bit of a scratch, even though them of us who’d seen what happened saw the pin go deep into his leg. Sheered off, it did, looked like someone had cut right through it to me…’

Marianne saw the way the other man kicked the one who was speaking, and muttered something to him too low for her to hear before raising his voice to ask her a question.

‘What do you want us to do with him now that we’ve brought him back? Only he’ll dock us wages, for sure, if we don’t get back t’mill.’

Marianne tried not to panic. They were treating her as though she really were the housekeeper, when of course she was no such thing.

‘Perhaps you should consult your master—’ she began, and then realised the uselessness of her suggestion even before one of the men holding him spoke to her bluntly.

‘Out for the count t’master is, missus, and in a bad way an all, I reckon. Mind you, there’s plenty living round here that wouldn’t mind seein’ him go into his coffin, and that’s no lie.’

Instinctively Marianne recoiled from his words, even though she could well understand how a hard and cruel employer could drive those dependent on him to wish him dead. It was no wonder that some workforces went on strike against their employers.

‘You’d better take him upstairs,’ she told the waiting men. ‘And one of you needs to run and summon the doctor.’

‘You’d best do that, Jim,’ the oldest of the men announced, ‘seein’ as you’re the fastest on your legs. We’ll take him up then shall we, missus?’ he asked Marianne.

Nodding her head, Marianne hurried to open the door into the hall, trying to look as though she were as familiar with the layout of the house as a true housekeeper would have been, although in reality all she knew of it was its kitchen.

She had time to recognise how badly served both the house and its master had been by Mrs Micklehead as she saw the neglect and the dull bloom on the mahogany doors which should have been gleaming with polish. The hallway was square, with imposing doors which she assumed belonged to the main entrance, whilst the stairs curved upwards to a galleried landing, the balustrade wonderfully carved with fruit and flowers whilst the banister rail itself felt smooth beneath her hand.

Two corridors ran off the handsome landing and Marianne hesitated, not knowing which might lead to the master bedroom, but to her relief the Master of Bellfield had regained consciousness, and was trying to take a step towards the right-hand corridor.

Trying to assume a confidence she did not feel, Marianne hurried ahead of the men, who were now almost dragging the weight of their master. Halfway along the corridor a pair of doors stood slightly open. Taking a chance, Marianne pushed them back further, exhaling shakily as she saw from the unmade-up state of the bed that this must indeed be the master bedroom.

‘We can’t lay him down in that, lass,’ one of the men supporting the master told her, nodding in the direction of the large bed. He added trenchantly, ‘That looks like best quality sheeting, that does, and I reckon with the way he’s bleedin’ it’ll be ruined if we lie him on it.’

He was right, of course, but since she had no idea where the linen cupboards were Marianne shook her head and said firmly, ‘Then they will just have to be ruined. How long do you think it will be before the doctor gets here?’

‘Depends on how long it takes Jim to find him. If I know Dr Hollingshead, he won’t take too kindly to being disturbed before he’s finished his breakfast.’

The two men had managed to lay their master on the bed now, and Marianne’s heart missed a beat as she saw how much the bloodstain on his bandage had spread.

‘Come on, lads,’ the man who seemed to be the one in charge told the others.

‘There’s nowt we can do here now. We’d best get back t’mill.’

Marianne hurried after them as she heard them clattering down the stairs.

‘The doctor will want to know exactly what happened,’ she told them ‘Perhaps one of you should stay—’

‘There’s nowt we can tell him except that a metal pin shot off one of the machines and flew straight into his leg. Pulled it out himself, he did, and all,’ he informed Marianne admiringly, leaving Marianne to suppress a shudder of horror at the thought of the pain such an action must have caused.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE men had gone, but the doctor had still not arrived. Marianne, who had seen all manner of injuries during her time at the workhouse, and knew the dangers of uncleaned wounds, had set water to boil and gone in search of clean linen, having first checked that the baby was still sleeping.

When she eventually found the linen cupboards on the attic floor, she grimaced in distaste to see that much of the linen was mired in cobwebs and mouse droppings, whilst the sheets that were clean were unironed and felt damp.

Her aunt would certainly never have tolerated such slovenliness and bad housekeeping. This was what happened when a man was at the mercy of someone like Mrs Micklehead. Against her will Marianne found that she almost felt slightly sorry for the Master of Bellfield—or at least for his house, which must once have been a truly elegant and comfortable home, and was now an empty, shabby place with no comfort of any kind.

She made her way back down the servants’ staircase to the attic floor and along the corridor to the landing. The departing men had left the door to the master bedroom open, and she could hear a low groan coming from it.

Quickly she hurried down the corridor, pausing in the doorway to the room.

The Master of Bellfield was still lying where the men had left him. His eyes were closed, but his right hand lay against his thigh, bright red with the blood that was now soaking through his fingers.

Panic filled Marianne. He was bleeding so much. Too much, she was sure.

Whilst she hesitated, wondering what to do, someone started knocking on the front door.

Picking up her skirts, Marianne ran down the stairs and across the hallway, turning the key in the lock and tugging back the heavy bolts so that she could open the door.

‘Doctor’s here, missus,’ the man who had been knocking informed her, before turning his head to spit out the wad of tobacco he had been chewing.

Marianne could see a small rotund bearded man, in a black frock coat and a tall stovepipe hat, emerging from a carriage, carrying a large Gladstone bag.

‘I understand there’s been an accident, and that the Master of Bellfield has been injured,’ he announced, without removing his hat. A sure sign that he considered a mere housekeeper to be far too much beneath him socially to merit the normal civilities, Marianne recognised, as she dipped him a small curtsey and nodded her head, before taking the bag he was holding out to her.

‘Yes, that’s right. If you’d like to come this way, Doctor. He’s in his room.’

The bag was heavy, and she could see the contempt the doctor gave the dusty hallway. She vowed to herself that on his next visit she would have it gleaming with polish.

‘You’re new here,’ he said curtly as Marianne led the way up the stairs.

‘Yes,’ she agreed. Taking a deep breath, she added untruthfully, ‘Mr Denshaw sent word to an employment agency in Manchester that he was in need of a new housekeeper. I only arrived last night.’ She hoped that the sudden scald of guilty colour heating her face would not betray her.

She paused as they reached the landing to tell him, ‘The master’s bedroom is this way, sir.’

‘Yes, I know where it is. You will attend me whilst I examine him, if you please.’

Marianne inclined her head obediently.

The sheet was red with blood now, and the man lying on the bed was unconscious and breathing shallowly.

‘How long has he been bleeding like this?’ the doctor demanded sharply.

‘Since he was brought here, sir,’ Marianne told him, as she placed the doctor’s bag on a mahogany tallboy.

‘I shall need hot water and carbolic soap with which to wash my hands,’ he told her disdainfully, as he went to open it. ‘And tell my man that I shall need him up here. Quickly, now—there is no time to waste. Unless you wish to se your master bleed to death.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Marianne almost flew back down the stairs, thankful that her ankle, whilst swollen, was no longer bothering her. Opening the front door, she passed on the doctor’s instructions to his servant.

‘Probably wants me to hold him down,’ he informed her. ‘You wouldn’t credit the yellin’ and cursin’ some of them do. Shouldn’t be surprised if he has to have his leg off. That’s what happens to a lot of them.’

Marianne shuddered.

By the time she got back upstairs, with a large jug of hot water, some clean basins and the carbolic, the doctor was instructing his servant to remove the scissors from his bag and cut through the fabric of his patient’s trousers so that he could inspect the wound.

One look at the servant’s grimy hands and nails had Marianne’s eyes rounding with shock. What kind of doctor insisted on cleanliness for his own hands but seemed not to care about applying the same safeguard to others? Marianne’s aunt had been a friend of Florence Nightingale’s family, and she had been meticulous about adopting the rules of cleanliness laid down by Miss Nightingale when doctoring her own household and estate workers. She had also been most insistent that Marianne learn these procedures, telling her many times, ‘According to Florence Nightingale it is the infection that so often kills the patient and not the wound, and thus it is our duty to ensure that everything about and around a sick person is kept clean.’

Impulsively Marianne reached for the scissors, remembering those words now. ‘Maybe I could do it more easily, sir. My hands being smaller,’ she said quickly.

Before the doctor could stop her she placed the scissors in one of the bowls she had brought up with her and poured some of the hot water over them, before using them to cut through the blood-soaked fabric.

The air in the room smelled of blood, taking Marianne back to scenes and memories she didn’t want to have. The poor house, with its victims of that poverty. A young woman left to give birth on her own, her life bleeding from her body whilst Marianne’s cries for help for her were ignored.

Her hands, washed with carbolic soap whilst she had been downstairs, shook, the scissors slippery now with blood. How shocked her aunt would have been at the thought of Marianne being exposed to the sight of a man’s naked flesh. But of course she was not the young innocent and protected girl she had been in her aunt’s household any more.

Soon she had slit the fabric far enough up the Master of Bellfield’s leg to reveal the wound from which his blood was flowing. Not as fast as it had been; welling rather than pumping now.

‘Come along, girl—can’t you see that there’s blood on my shoes? Clean it up, will you?’ the doctor was ordering her.

Marianne stared at him. He wanted her to clean his shoes? What about his patient’s wound? But she could sense the warning look his servant was giving her, and removing from her pocket the small piece of rag she had picked up earlier, intending to use it to clean the top of the range, she kneeled down and rubbed it over the doctor’s shoes.

‘Good. Now, wipe some of that blood off his leg, will you, so that I can take a closer look?’

Marianne could hardly believe her ears. Surely he wasn’t expecting her to wipe the blood from her employer’s leg with the rag she had just used to clean his shoes? Indignation sparkled in the normally quiet depths of her dark brown eyes. She turned to the pitcher of water she had brought upstairs and poured some into a clean bowl.

‘Of course, sir,’ she told him. ‘I’ll just wash my hands first, shall I?’ she suggested quietly, not waiting for his permission but instead rubbing her hands fiercely with the carbolic soap. She poured some water over them, before putting some fresh water in a clean bowl and then dipping a new piece of sheeting into it.

The only wounds she had cleaned before had been small domestic injuries to her aunt’s servants, and none of them had involved her touching a strongly muscled naked male thigh. But Marianne forced herself to ignore that and to work quickly to clean the blood away from the wound, as gently as she could. She could see that the pin had punctured the master’s flesh to some depth, and a width of a good half an inch, leaving ragged edges of skin and an ominously dark welling of blood. Even though he was still semi-conscious he flinched beneath her touch and tried to roll away.

‘Looks like we’ll have to tie him down, Jenks,’ the doctor told his servant. ‘Brought up the ropes with you, have you?’

‘I’ll go down and get them, sir,’ the servant answered him.

Marianne winced once again, moved to unwilling pity for her ‘new employer.’

‘Perhaps a glass of spirits might dull the pain and quieten him whilst you examine him, sir?’ she suggested quietly.

‘I dare say it would,’ the doctor agreed, much to her relief. ‘But I doubt you’ll find any spirits in this household.’

‘Surely as a doctor you carry a little medicinal brandy?’ Marianne ventured to ask.

The doctor was frowning now.

‘Brandy’s expensive. Folk round here don’t believe in wasting their brass on doctor’s bills for brandy. Hmm, looks like the bleeding’s stopped, and it’s a clean enough wound. Knowing Denshaw as I do, I’m surprised that it was his own machinery that did this. Cares more about his factory and everything in it than he does himself. Your master is a foolish man at times. He’s certainly not made himself popular amongst the other mill owners—paying his workers top rate, giving them milk to drink and special clothes to wear in the factory. That sort of thing is bound to lead to trouble one way or other. No need for those now, Jenks,’ he announced to his servant, who had come into the room panting from carrying the heavily soiled and bloodstained coils of rope he held in his arms.

‘Best thing you can do is bandage him up and let nature take its course. Like as not he’ll take a fever, so I’ll send a nurse up to sit with him. She’ll bring a draught with her that will keep him quiet until the fever runs its course.’

‘Bandage him up? But surely, Doctor—’ Marianne began to protest, thinking that she must have misheard him. Surely the doctor couldn’t mean that she was to bandage the Master of Bellfield’s leg?

‘Those are my instructions. And make sure that you pull the bandage tightly enough to stem the bleeding, but not too tightly. I’ll bid you good day now. My bill will be five guineas. You can tell your master when he returns to himself. You may feed him on a little weak tea—but nothing more, mind, in case it gives rise to a fever.’

Five guineas! That was a fortune for someone like her. But it was the information the doctor had given her about the Master of Bellfield’s astonishing treatment of his workers that occupied Marianne’s thoughts as she escorted the doctor back down the stairs, and not the extortionate cost of his visit. Her heart started to beat faster. Did this news mean that the task she had set herself before she arrived at Bellfield could be nearer to completion? If only that might be so. Sometimes the weight of the responsibility she had been given felt so very heavy, and she longed to have another to share it with. But for now she must keep her own counsel, and with it her secret.

As soon as she had closed the heavy front door behind the doctor she headed for the kitchen, where to her relief the cat was curled up in front of the fire whilst the baby was lying gurgling happily in his basket.

He really was the sweetest-looking baby, Marianne acknowledged, smiling tenderly at him. He was going to have his father’s cowlick of hair, even though as yet that cowlick was just a small curl. His colour was definitely much better, and he was actually watching her with interest instead of lying in that apathetic stillness that had so worried her. She was tempted to lift him out of the basket and cuddle him, but her first duty had to be to the man lying upstairs, she reminded herself sternly. After all, without him there would be no warm kitchen to shelter them, and no good rich milk to fill the baby’s empty stomach.

Bandage him up, the doctor had said. He hadn’t even offered to leave her any bandaging either, Marianne reflected, her sense of what was ethically right in a doctor outraged by his lack of proper care for his patient.

She would just have to do the best she could. And she would do her best—just as her aunt would have expected her to do. Now, what was it that boy on the bicycle had said his name was? Postlethwaite—that was it.

Marianne had seen the telephone in the hallway, and now she went to it and picked up the receiver, unable to stop herself from looking over her shoulder up the stairs. Not that it was likely that the Master of Bellfield was likely to come down to chastise her for the liberty she was taking.

A brisk female voice on the other end of the line was asking her what number she required.

‘I should like to be put through to Postlethwaite’s Provisions,’ she answered, her stomach cramping with a mixture of guilt and anxiety as she waited for the exchange operator to do as she had requested. She had no real right to be doing this, and certainly no real authority. She wasn’t really the housekeeper of Bellfield House after all.

‘How do, lass, how’s t’master going on?’

‘Mr Postlethwaite?’ Marianne asked uncertainly.

‘Aye, that’s me. My lad said as how he’d heard about t’master’s accident. You’ll be wanting me to send up some provisions for him, I reckon. I’ve got a nice tin of turtle soup here that he might fancy, or how about…?’

Tinned turtle soup? For a sick man? Marianne rather fancied that some good, nurturing homemade chicken soup would suit him far better, but of course she didn’t want to offend the shopkeeper.

‘Yes, thank you, Mr. Postlethwaite,’ she answered him politely. ‘I shall be needing some provisions, but first and most important I wondered if you could give me the direction of a reliable chemist. One who can supply me with bandages and ointments, and quickly. The doctor is to send up a nurse, but in the meantime I am to bandage the wound.’

‘Aye, you’ll be wanting Harper’s. If you want to tell me what you’re wanting, I’ll send young Charlie round there now and he can bring it up.’

His kindness brought a lump to Marianne’s throat and filled her with relief. Quickly she told him what she thought she would need, before adding, ‘Oh, and I was wondering—would you know of anyone local who might have bee hives, Mr Postlethwaite. Only I could do with some honey.’

‘Well, I dunno about that,’ he answered doubtfully, ‘it not being the season to take the combs out of the hives. But I’ll ask around for you.’

‘It must be pure honey, Mr Postlethwaite, and not any other kind.’ Marianne stressed.

Her aunt had sworn by the old-fashioned remedy of applying fresh honey to open wounds in order to heal and cleanse them.

‘A word to the wise, if you don’t mind me offering it, Mrs Brown,’ Mr Postlethwaite was saying, his voice dropping to a confidential whisper. ‘If the doctor sends up Betty Chadwick to do the nursing you’d best make sure that she isn’t on the drink.’

‘Oh, yes…thank you.’

At least now she would have the wherewithal to follow the doctor’s instructions, and the larder would have some food in it, Marianne acknowledged as she carefully replaced the telephone receiver, even if the shopkeeper’s warning about the nurse had been worrying.

Mentally she started to list everything she would need to do. As soon as she had bandaged the master’s wound she would have to fill the copper and boil-wash a good supply of clothes with which to cleanse his wound when it needed redressing. She would also have to try to find some decent clean sheets, and get them aired—although she wouldn’t be able to change his bed until the nurse arrived to lift him.

Armed with a fresh supply of hot water, and a piece of clean wet sheeting she had washed in boiling water and carbolic soap, Marianne made her way back upstairs to the master bedroom.

Her patient was lying motionless, with his face turned towards the window and his eyes closed, and for a second Marianne thought that he might actually have died he was so still. Her heart in her mouth, she stared at his chest, willing it to rise and fall, and realised when it did that she was shaking with relief. Relief? For this man? A man who…But, no, she must not think of that now.

Quietly and carefully Marianne made her way to the side of the bed opposite the window, closest to his injured leg.

Congealed blood lay thickly on top of the wound, which would have to be cleaned before she could bandage it. Marianne raised her hand to place it against the exposed flesh, to test it for heat that would indicate whether the wound was already turning putrid, and then hesitated with her hand hovering above the master’s naked thigh. Eventually she let her hand rest over the flesh of the wound. A foolish woman, very foolish indeed, might almost be tempted to explore that maleness, so very different in construction and intent from her own slender and delicate limbs.

Marianne stiffened as though stung. There was no reason for the way she was feeling at the moment, with her heart beating like a trapped bird and her face starting to burn. In the workhouse she had become accustomed to any number of sights and sounds not normally deemed suitable for the eyes and ears of a delicately reared female. Naked male limbs were not, after all, something she had never seen before. But she had not seen any that were quite as strongly and sensually male as this one, with its powerful muscles and sprinkling of thick dark hair. And, shockingly, the flesh was not pale like her own, but instead had been darkened as though by the sun.