The Bride's Farewell by Meg Rosoff

Author:Meg Rosoff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.

Twenty-three

Robert Ames took Pell to meet a woman as sour-faced as his mother, who looked her over as if she were a market pig and led her up a narrow staircase in the stone barn to a tiny dark room that stank of old milk. In it lay a straw mattress without even a cover or blanket, and nothing else.

“You’ll be needing to keep it decent,” she scowled at Pell. “No visitors, no drink, and I’ll not be having that thieving dog round here neither.”

Pell tried to imagine what visitors she might consider inviting round to the stinking tomb while the woman kept talking on the subject of sin, and “every girl’s sworn duty to avoid foul temptations.” She pronounced the words with poisonous disdain, as if they had the power to corrupt the very tongue that spoke them.

Pell left Dicken chained up with Robert at the forge, where he pined until the moment she escaped from the dairy and came to him. Each evening she held his head in her hands and ran her aching fingers through the thick ruff of fur around his neck, full of remorse at his imprisonment. And despite his impatience for food and freedom, he burrowed against her, sighing devotion until she set him free.

It pained her to keep him tied up day and night, but it was impossible to do otherwise. Work commenced before first light and lasted until after dark, and sixty cows required leading from pasture to dairy yard to be milked and back again, twice a day. In addition, there was the churning, the lifting, turning, and wetting of cheeses, the hauling of buckets so heavy they left Pell’s fingers ridged and bloody, the cleaning and mucking out, and a thousand other duties. Robert’s aunt, Osborne (after her dead husband—no Mrs. Osborne, either), seemed determined to wring as much value as possible from the daily shilling she paid her workers, minus sixpence a week for lodging. Instead of six milkers for her sixty cows, she employed only four—and girls, being cheaper. Supervising all the work herself saved additionally on a foreman. Local people told of the water she added to her milk and the chalk to her cheese, forcing her to find markets farther abroad; and as for the health and vitality of her employees, she was perfectly indifferent.

On Pell’s first day of employment, Osborne cornered her in the cool room and pinned her with a narrow dead gaze. “I don’t know what a girl like you is doing in this place, but my nephew’s due to marry four weeks hence.” She paused to let this fact sink in and, not satisfied with Pell’s reaction, added, “And a nice decent girl she is, too.”

“In which case I wish him every happiness,” replied Pell stiffly.

“Do not pretend you misunderstand my meaning,” hissed the older woman.

Pell said nothing. No words would alter the fact of Osborne’s dislike. When the woman turned on her heel and departed, Pell trembled with unexpressed feeling. She would not acknowledge her humiliation.

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