In the morning, though still damp from the previous day’s rain, Maggie was keen to start-keener, indeed, than Maisie and Rosie, who were tired, flea-bitten, and sore from the previous day’s bumping about in the coach. Maisie in particular was silent over the hurried bread and ale breakfast, and stayed in the coach at the changes of the horses. She ate little of her dinner at Blandford-which was just as well, for Maggie had only enough money for two dinners, split between the girls while she ate her mother’s pie.
“You all right?” she said as Maisie pushed her plate to Rosie, who happily ate her way through the untouched potatoes and cabbage.
“Baby’s heavy,” Maisie replied. She swallowed. “Oh, Maggie, I can’t believe I’ll be home in a few hours. Home! It do feel like I han’t seen Piddletrenthide in years, though it be only a year and a bit.”
Maggie’s gut twisted. Until now she’d been enjoying the trip so much that she’d managed to push from her mind what it was leading to. Now she wondered what it would be like actually to see Jem again, for he knew her deepest secret and had shown what he thought of it. She was not sure he would want to see her. “Maisie,” she began, “p’raps-well, it’s not far now, is it?”
“No, not far. They’ll leave us at Piddletown-tha’ be six miles from here. We can walk from there-another five miles or so.”
“P’raps, then, you two could go on without me. I’ll stay here and catch the coach on its way back.” Maggie hadn’t told Maisie of her money troubles, but looking around Blandford-a busy town, the largest they’d been through since Basingstoke-she thought she could find work briefly somewhere and earn her fare back. It couldn’t be that hard to be a chambermaid in a coaching inn, she decided.
Maisie, however, clutched at Maggie. “Oh, no, you can’t leave us! We need you! What would we do without you?” Even the passive Rosie looked over in alarm. Maisie lowered her voice. “Please don’t abandon us, Maggie. I…I do think the baby’s coming soon.” Even as she said it she winced, her body tense and rigid, as if trying to contain a deep pain.
Maggie’s eyes widened. “Maisie!” she hissed. “How long has this been goin’ on?”
Maisie gazed at her fearfully. “Since this morning,” she said. “But it an’t bad yet. Please can we go on? I don’t want to have it here!” She looked around her at the noisy, busy, dirty inn. “I want to get home.”
“Well, at least you an’t at the yelling stage,” Maggie decided. “You could be hours yet. Let’s see how we get on.”
Maisie squeezed her hand gratefully.
Maggie did not enjoy that last leg of the coach journey, worrying about Maisie down below but reluctant to ask the coachman to stop so she could check on her. She could only assume that Rosie would rap on the ceiling if something were wrong. And the surrounding landscape-despite the greenness of the fields, the pleasing movement of hills and valleys, the bright blue sky, and the sun lighting up the fields and hedgerows-looked threatening to her now that she knew she’d soon be out in the middle of it. She began to notice how few houses there were. What are we going to do? she thought. What if Maisie has the baby out in a field somewhere?
7
Piddletown was a large village, with several streets lined with thatched houses, a handful of pubs, and a market square, where the coach let them down. Maggie said good-bye to the coachman, who wished her well, then laughed and cracked his whip at the horses. When the coach was gone, taking with it the clopping and jangling and rattling they had lived with for the last day and a half, the three girls stood silent in the street. Unlike London, where most passersby wouldn’t even notice the girls, here it felt to Maggie as if every person was staring at the new arrivals.
“Rosie Wightman, look a’ wha’ you been doin’,” remarked a young woman leaning against a house with a basket of buns. Rosie, who’d had many reasons to cry in the two years since she’d left the Piddle Valley but never had, burst into tears.
“You leave her be, you bandy little bitch!” Maggie shouted. To her amazement, the woman guffawed. Maggie turned to Maisie for a translation.
“She can’t understand you,” Maisie explained. “They’re not used to London ways. Don’t.” She pulled at Maggie’s sleeve to keep her back from the laughter that had spread to others. “It don’t matter. Piddletowners has always been funny with us. Come on.” She led them up the street, and in a few minutes they were out of the village and on a track heading northwest.
“You sure you want to leave town?” Maggie asked. “If you need to stop and have your baby, now’s the time to say.”
Maisie shook her head. “Don’t want to have it in Piddletown. An’ I be all right. Pain’s gone.” Indeed, she stepped eagerly along the track, taking Rosie’s hand and swinging it as they entered the familiar landscape of hills that would take them down into the Piddle Valley. They began to point out landmarks to each other, and to speculate once again about various residents of their village, as they had done constantly over the past few days.
At first the hills were long and gently rolling, with a wide sky above them like an overturned blue bowl and a view for miles of green and brown ridges divided by woods and hedgerows. The track led straight alongside a tall hedgerow, with misty banks of shoulder-high cow parsley flanking the way. It was hot and still, and with the sun beating down, insects invisibly whirring and ticking, and the cow parsley floating her along, Maggie began to feel as if she were in a dream. There were no sheep or cows in the nearby fields, and no people about. She spun all the way around and could see neither a house nor a barn nor a plow nor a trough nor even a fence. Other than the rutted track, there was nothing to indicate that people even existed, much less lived, here. She had a sudden vision of herself in this land as a bird might see her from high above, a lone speck of white among the green and brown and yellow. The emptiness frightened her: She could feel fear gripping her stomach and working its way up her chest to her throat, where it held tight and threatened to throttle her. She stopped, gulped, and tried to call to the girls, who were getting farther and farther away from her down the track.
Maggie shut her eyes and took a deep breath, in her mind hearing her father say, “Pull yourself together, Mags. This won’t do at all.” When she opened her eyes she saw a figure coming down the hill in front of them. The relief that flooded her was tempered by new concern, for as Maggie knew too well, a lone man could be the danger that made the emptiness so threatening. She hurried to catch up with the girls, who had also spotted the man. Neither seemed worried-in fact, they quickened their pace. “Tha’ be Mr. Case!” Maisie cried. “He’ll be comin’ from the Piddles. Ar’ernoon!” She waved at him.
They met him at the lowest part of the valley, just next to a stream that ran along the seam of two fields. Mr. Case was about Thomas Kellaway’s age, tall, wiry, with a pack on his back and the long, steady gait of someone who spends much of his time walking. He raised his eyebrows when he recognized Maisie and Rosie. “You going home, you two?” he inquired. “I heard none about it in the Piddles. They be expecting you?”
“No, they don’t know-anything,” Maisie answered.
“You back to stay? We missed your hand. I’ve had customers ask specially for your buttons, you know.”
Maisie blushed. “You be teasing me, Mr. Case.”
“I must get on, but I’ll see you next month, aye?”
She nodded, and he turned and strode off up the track they had just descended.
“Who was that?” Maggie asked, gazing after him.