Maisie looked back at him fondly, grateful that he’d not said anything or shown any surprise about the baby she carried. “The button agent making his rounds-he comes to collect buttons every month. He’s off to Piddletown now. I’d forgot he comes this day every month. An’t it strange how quick we forget things like that?”
The girls took a long time to climb the hill, panting and puffing, and stopping often, with Maggie carrying all of their bundles by now. As they rested she saw the telltale wince and tightening of Maisie’s jaw, but decided to say nothing. They were able to go more quickly down the next hill before climbing slowly again. In this stop-start manner they made their way along the Piddle Valley, Maggie discovering that the stream they crisscrossed was actually the River Piddle, reduced to a trickle in the midsummer heat. This piece of information restored something of her old sense of humor. “River. River! You could fit a hundred o’ them Piddlers in the Thames!” she crowed as she hopped onto a rock to cross it in two bounds.
“How d’you think I felt, seeing the Thames the first time?” Maisie retorted. “I thought there were an awful flood!”
Eventually they crested a hill to find that the track they were on intersected a proper road, which led down into a huddle of houses around a square-towered church, one side of it painted in gold light by the descending sun.
“At last!” Maggie said brightly, to cover her nerves.
“Not quite,” Maisie corrected. “Tha’ be Piddlehinton-next but one to Piddletrenthide. It be a long village, mind, but we’ll be there soon enough.” She gripped the stile they’d stopped by and leaned over it, groaning softly.
“It’s all right, Maisie,” Maggie said, patting her shoulder. “We’ll get you help soon.”
When the contraction had passed, Maisie straightened and stepped firmly onto the road. Rosie followed less certainly. “Oh, Maisie, what they going to say about us-about…” She glanced down at her own bump.
“There be nothing we can do about that now, can we? Just hold your head up. Here now-take my arm.” Maisie linked hers through her friend’s as they descended into Piddlehinton.
8
While on the track, they had met no one other than the button agent, and seen a man with his sheep on a distant hill, and another with a horse and plow. The road proper carried more traffic, however-workers coming in from the fields, horsemen passing through on their way to Dorchester, a farmer driving his cows toward a barn, children running home from an afternoon playing by the river. The girls slipped in among the others, hoping not to draw attention, but that was impossible, of course. Even before they reached the first house in the village, children began to appear and follow them. Each time they had to stop to wait for Maisie, the children stopped too, at a distance. “I bet they an’t had so much excitement all week,” Maggie remarked. “All month, even.”
As they approached the New Inn-the first pub in the village-a woman called out from her doorway, “Tha’ be Maisie Kellaway, don’ it? Didn’t know you was coming back now. An’ like tha’.”
Maisie flinched, but was forced to stop short with a contraction.
“You too, Rosie Wightman,” the woman added. “You been busy in London, have you?”
“Could you help us, ma’am?” Maggie interrupted, trying to keep her temper in check. “Maisie’s havin’ her baby.”
The woman studied Maisie. Behind her, two small boys appeared, peeking out at the newcomers. “Where be her husband? An’ yourn?”
There was a silence during which Maisie opened her mouth and then shut it; the ease she’d developed in lying in London appeared to have deserted her.
Maggie had less trouble. “France,” she declared. “They gone to fight the Frenchies. I been charged to bring the wives home.” To counter the woman’s skeptical look, she added, “I’m the sister of Maisie’s husband. Charlie-Charlie Butterfield’s his name.” As she spoke she kept her eyes fastened on Maisie’s, willing her to follow suit. Maisie opened her mouth, paused, then said, “Tha’s right. I be Maisie Butterfield now. An’ Rosie be…”
“Rosie Blake,” Maggie finished for her. “Married to Billy Blake same day as my brother, just before they gone off to France.”
The woman regarded them, her eyes lingering on Rosie’s dirty satin skirt. At last, though, she said to one of the boys peeking around her, “Eddie, run up to the Five Bells-don’t bother at the Crown, they’ve no cart there today. Ask if they can send a cart back to pick up a girl in labor needs to go up the Kellaways’ in Piddletrenthide.”
“We’ll go along and meet the cart,” Maisie muttered as the boy ran off. “Don’ want to stay round with her lookin’ at us.” She linked arms with Rosie and started down the road, Maggie shouldering the bundles once more, the gang of children still following. Glancing behind her, she saw the woman cross the road to another who had just come out of her cottage; the first spoke to the second as they watched the trio.
As they walked, Maisie said in a low voice to Maggie, “Thank’ee.”
Maggie smiled. “Didn’t you say once you’d always wanted a sister?”
“An’ Rosie married to Mr. Blake! Can you imagine?”
“What would Mrs. Blake say?” Maggie chuckled.
They passed from Piddlehinton into Piddletrenthide, though Maggie would not have guessed without Maisie telling her, as there was no break or change in the long string of houses along the road. She felt herself being sucked deeper and deeper into the Dorset village, and though it was better than being in the empty field, its unfamiliarity-the mud everywhere, the cottages with their peculiar straw roofs, the flat eyes of the villagers watching her-made her uncomfortable. A few called out greetings, but many said nothing, simply staring at the girls even though they recognized them. Maggie began to wonder if perhaps Maisie should have remained in Lambeth to have the baby after all.
Maisie’s waters broke in front of the Crown, and the girls had to stop, for her contractions were becoming more frequent and more painful. They led her to the bench next to the pub’s door. “Oh, where is that cart?” Maisie gasped. Then the publican’s wife came out with a cry and a hug for both Maisie and Rosie. It seemed only to take that one well-wisher to turn the mood from judgment to joy. Others emerged from the pub and from neighboring houses, and the Piddle girls were surrounded by surprised neighbors and old friends. Maisie rolled out her new lie for the first time, calling herself Maisie Butterfield so casually and fluently that Maggie wanted to congratulate her. She’s going to be fine, she thought, and took a step back from the crowd.
The cart arrived at last, driven by Mr. Smart, the very man who had first brought the Kellaways to London, and who was now taking part in another, more local adventure he could talk about at the pub later. Several women lifted the groaning Maisie into the bed of straw spread in the back, and Rosie and the publican’s wife climbed in after her. Maisie turned to ask Maggie for something from her bundle and discovered her friend was not in the cart with them. “Maggie!” she cried as they began to pull away. “Mr. Smart, wait for Maggie!” She had to stop, however, when the strongest contraction yet turned her cry into a scream.
The only sign that Maggie had been there at all was the girls’ bundles she’d been carrying, stacked on the pub bench.
9
Jem sensed something was different long before the cart appeared. As he worked outside the front door of the Kellaways’ cottage, painting a chair that his brother Sam had just finished leveling, he could hear a distant buzzing in the air of the kind that occurs when people have gathered and are discussing a subject, punctuated by occasional yelps from excited children. He did not think too much of it, for he had heard the same earlier that afternoon when the button agent passed through, and though he was long gone, his visit might account for the renewed disturbance. Perhaps two women were arguing over the quality the agent had assigned their buttons, whether superior, standard, or seconds. Each Piddle woman was proud of her handiwork, and hated to be judged not up to the usual standard. A catty remark by another could start an argument that might run publically for weeks.