Valerie Anand - The House Of Allerbrook

“You care more for the horse than for Sybil!” Jane shouted.

“Mind your manners, sister,” said Francis. “And yes, an honest horse is to my mind worth more than a silly, lightskirt wench.”

At Stonecrop Farm, just above Porlock, the days at this time of year began at cockcrow. Bess and Ambrose Reeve rose as usual shortly after the sun, splashed their faces and dressed quickly. Bess dragged a comb through her greying hair and bundled it under a cap. Downstairs, their daughter Alison and the maidservant Marian were already astir, waking up the banked fire in the kitchen, while the farmhands were pulling on their boots, about to go and feed the plough oxen and the pigs. Ambrose went to help them.

The morning was fine, the grass asparkle with dew. Bess and Alison collected pails and set off for the field where the cows were grazing, to milk them out of doors. Two of the dogs went with them, not barking loudly, because they had been trained to be quiet when near the sheep and cattle, but sometimes woofing softly, running here and there with noses to the ground.

Until, as they passed the haybarn, one of the dogs stiffened, pointed his pewter-coloured nose at the barn, and in defiance of all his careful training, started to bark very noisily indeed.

“Now, what’s amiss with you? Be quiet!” Alison seized his collar.

“He never does this as a rule. Now Brindle’s started! There’s something wrong in that barn,” said Bess. “Be a vagabond or something in there, if it b’ain’t a fox. Put thy pail down, Alison, and come along.”

“But Mother, if there’s a wild man in there…an outlaw…”

“We’ve got the dogs. Go and fetch a hayfork! That’ll be enough.”

Sybil, curled miserably in the hay, had barely slipped beneath the surface of sleep, because her empty stomach wouldn’t let her. She woke suddenly, to find two women, both in brown working gowns and white aprons, standing over her. The younger of the pair was grasping a two-pronged hayfork. The second one was middle-aged and standing with arms akimbo. A grey lurcher and a brown-and-white sheepdog stood beside them, growling. Sybil sat up, pulling herself farther away from the threatening points of the hayfork.

“It’s all right, Alison. It’s just a lass,” said the older woman. “Quiet! Down!” she added to the dogs.

They stopped growling and lay down, but Alison continued to hold her hayfork at the ready and demanded, “What be you a-doin’ yur?”

“I just…I just wanted somewhere to sleep. I was cold and it was so late. I meant to come to the house this morning.” Sybil was trembling.

“What be you at, wandering about and sleepin’ in barns?” Bess asked, though not roughly. The sunlight slanting in behind her through the open door had shown her how young Sybil was, and how white her face.

“I…I ran away,” said Sybil. “I took food with me but I’d eaten it all by yesterday morning. I’ve been looking for work, but I couldn’t even find a farm till last night. I saw candlelight…from one of your windows, but it went out before I got close. The barn wasn’t locked. I’m sorry. Oh,” said Sybil, bursting into tears, “I’m so hungry! ”

“Well,” said Bess, “young wenches dyin’ of starvation in one of our barns, that’s somethin’ we wouldn’t care for. ’Ee’d better come in for some breakfast. Then we’ll hear thy story. But it had better be the truth, now. Liars b’ain’t welcome at Stonecrop.”

In the kitchen Bess despatched Marian with Alison to see to the milking, telling them to send Ambrose back indoors while they were about it. She then fried a piece of bread and an egg, filled a beaker with ale and handed it to Sybil. “But eat slowly, or thy guts’ll complain,” she warned.

Ambrose, large, gaitered and puzzled, appeared while Sybil was in the midst of eating and Bess did the basic explaining while he listened, pulling off his cap and scratching his thin white hair. At the end, by which time Sybil had finished, he, like Bess, asked for her story.

Sybil was too tired and frightened to lie, and didn’t, except that she begged them not to ask where her original home had been, and clung to the name of Sybil Waters, which the Lanyons had given her. “I walked and walked,” she said, coming to the end of her account. “Miles from Lynmouth, miles up the East Lyn, trying to find somewhere. All day I walked and then when it got dark, I tried to sleep in a patch of trees, but there were things rustling, and I saw eyes….”

“Fox or weasel, no doubt,” said Ambrose with a snort. “Christ, girl, you were a fool to run off like that. And leavin’ thy babby!”

“No one’ll hurt Stephen. They’ll look after him in Lynmouth,” said Sybil. “But I can’t go back. I won’t go back! I’d rather walk into the sea and finish it all. I was used as a slave, just a slave, not a penny in wages and nothing was going to change, ever, for the rest of my life!”

“All right, be calm,” said Ambrose.

“We don’t need help in the house,” Bess said. “Wouldn’t mind help with the milkin’ and the dairy. You any good at that?”

“I can milk and make butter,” offered Sybil, who had occasionally done so at Allerbrook. “But can I have a proper job? With a wage, and if anyone wants to marry me, can I say yes?”

“What do you think this here place is?” Ambrose enquired. “It b’ain’t no dungeon. From what ’ee’s told us and the way thee speaks, our farmhands won’t be thy kind of bridegroom. But work, and ’ee’ll be paid, only there’s to be no more gettin’ thyself into trouble. We don’t stand for that here. Decent folk, we are. Today ’ee’d better take some rest. Got any clothes apart from that grubby lot ’ee’s wearin’?”

“I had some in a bundle….” Sybil looked confused.

“I’ve got it here,” said Bess. “The bundle, I mean. It wur with her in the hay.”

“Then ’ee’d best change, take a bit of rest and wash all them messy clothes,” said Ambrose. “Tomorrow, we’ll see.”

“She’s at a farm called Stonecrop, just above Porlock, on the west side,” said Francis, coming into the dairy where Jane and Eleanor were skimming cream. He was holding yet another letter from Katherine in his hand. “She got herself taken on as a dairymaid there, it seems. She told them that Katherine treated her like a slave. She’s still calling herself Sybil Waters.”

“The mistress is furious,” said Perkins from the doorway behind Francis. “Says she won’t have Mistress Sybil back, that she never used her as a slave. She says she cared for Sybil like a daughter and she can hardly believe in such ingratitude. She’ll keep the boy, Stephen. Seems Master Owen thinks he might be trained up as a sailor….”

“I wouldn’t agree to have him back here in any case,” said Francis.

“Well, it doesn’t arise,” said Perkins. “But the mistress says she’ll have naught to do with Mistress Sybil and the Stonecrop people are welcome to her.”

“How was she found?” Jane asked.

“I found her, mistress. I’d been riding out each day, first this direction, then that, and eventually I came across the place. It’s in Culbone parish—there’s a tiny little hamlet and a little church, both called Culbone, not far away, down in the woods toward the sea. The farm’s up on the edge of the moors, though, away from the woods. Bleak kind of place. She looked tired,” he said with some compassion, “and I reckon she works as hard there as she ever did with us, but she told me she was happy and that she was being paid. I suppose that’s a point. She can go to Porlock now and again and buy herself the sort of gewgaws women like.”

“Francis,” pleaded Jane, “couldn’t Sybil come home?”