But the worst of it was that she knew this was how it would be until she went into service. And that would be even worse.

'Come and sit beside me, Meg,' Silas called out as he saw his wife looking out of the door to see where he was.

It was September, a beautiful evening with the sun just starting to set. Silas was sitting on the seat under the apple tree smoking his pipe, watching the sky turning pink. Down at the bottom of the field by the river bank he could see rabbits feeding. An owl was perched up on a fence post waiting to spot its supper. Everything was just as it should be, the chickens in their coop for the night, Hope, Joe and Henry already asleep up in the loft, and they'd had a good dinner tonight of chicken and apple dumplings. But Silas was unable to enjoy the peace or the view because he was worried.

Meg came over the gra.s.s towards him, a tankard of cider in her hand. She pa.s.sed it to him and sat down beside him. 'It'll be a year tomorrow that our Nell got wed. Are you thinking we've lost her for good?'

Silas didn't reply immediately, mainly because that wasn't what he was thinking about. He had concerns that Nell never came home to visit any more, but a wife had to obey her husband's wishes, and if Albert wanted Nell at their home in her spare time, then Silas supposed he had to accept that. But he knew Meg couldn't see it that way.

'I know you miss her,' he said eventually. 'But she chose Albert and they've got a life of their own to make now. At least we see her at church every Sunday.'

'Maybe it will be different when she has a baby,' Meg said hopefully.

'Maybe.' Silas sighed because he didn't really believe that. 'But it was Hope I was fretting about. She don't seem herself.'

'She'll be fine, she'll get used to work, we all had to,' Meg said. 'We should've broken her in more gently perhaps, stopped her going up to the big house a year ago. But what's done is done. We do have to teach her that for folk like us there is no easy road.'

Silas turned to look at his wife and wondered, as he had so many times before, how she managed to be so accepting. When they fell in love they believed that one day they'd have a little farm of their own, but here they were twenty-six years on and they were still breaking their backs for a pittance. When he was too old to work and they couldn't pay the rent, they'd be thrown on the parish.

But they were blessed, he knew that. They had each other, their children were healthy and strong, the five older ones were all in good positions, and two of them married off. He hoped he could get Joe and Henry apprenticed in good trades.

Hope was the only one he worried about for she was neither a Renton by blood nor by nature.

'She ain't never going to be right for service, nor for farm work,' Silas burst out. 'She's got too much brain for either. I see her sometimes questioning everything; that spark in her will never let her obey blindly like we've always done. And she's too pretty for her own good.'

'Maybe with her reading, writing and the sums she can do, she'll find work in Bristol or Bath in a shop,' Meg said hopefully.

'But there's dangers in the city.'

'There's dangers everywhere.' Meg took his hand in hers and stroked it lovingly. 'But we've taught her right from wrong, loved her just as much as our own. We can't do more.'

Silas drank the last of his cider as the sun slipped down behind the hill.

'Maybe we could go to Lady Harvey,' he burst out suddenly. 'Tell her Hope is her own and get a pledge from her that she'll help the girl when the time comes.'

Meg looked shocked. 'Whatever are you thinking of, Silas?' she exclaimed. 'We can't do that! She'd think we were trying to blackmail her. Nell, Albert, James and Ruth, they'd all lose their positions. You'd probably lose yours too.'

'She wouldn't do that! Not after all the good service our family has given her.'

'Don't count on it.' Meg grimaced. 'A woman with a guilty secret is a dangerous animal.'

Chapter Four.

1843.

'Surely Father should be back by now!' Hope remarked. She was looking out of the window at the pelting rain. Her father had left on a cart for Bristol to collect some goods from a ship at the docks three days ago and he had been expected to return the same night.

Her mother sighed, for it wasn't the first time today that Hope had asked the same question. 'Ships can't be relied on if the weather's bad,' she explained. 'But he won't have liked staying in Bristol; he always says it's a noisy, filthy place.'

'And what can Joe and Henry be doing?' Hope said peevishly. 'Surely they can't work in this rain?'

Hope's brothers were thirteen and twelve now. Silas's hope of getting them apprenticed to a trade had been dashed because he hadn't been able to find the money for their indentures. The Reverend Gosling had done his best to find them positions as gardeners, grooms or footmen but without any luck. So until something better turned up they were doing casual work on farms, at present for Mr Francis of Woolard, who had sent Silas to Bristol.

'Cows have to be milked whatever the weather,' Meg replied a little sharply. 'But maybe they've lost a few and had to go out looking for them.'

Autumn had come early this year with high winds, storms and such heavy and prolonged rain that the river Chew burst its banks. The mill in their village was flooded out, and much of the recently harvested grain was lost. At Woolard and Publow several cottages had five feet of water rushing through them. They had heard that a child fell into the floodwater at Pensford and drowned. Everyone had rallied round to move cattle and sheep to higher ground, but many perished before they could be reached.

At night, Hope could hear the river rushing through the valley below their cottage, and although she knew they were too high up to be flooded, it was still frightening. Bad weather made all the daily ch.o.r.es so much harder. They got soaked going out to feed the chickens, they brought thick mud back into the cottage which meant more work, and when the wood they brought in was wet it wouldn't burn.

The vegetable garden had been laid to waste, apples and pears were knocked down before they were ripe and quickly rotted. Only a little hay had been cut before the rains came, and the rest was ruined. Down at the inn, old men sucked on their pipes and prophesied that a bitterly cold winter would follow and everyone would have to tighten their belts.

Hope knew what belt-tightening meant, for the last two years had been bleak for everyone. She no longer resented having to work so hard, especially on the farm with her father, because she understood the necessity of it now. It had always been expected that a farm worker's wife and children would help him at crucial periods, and though there was no extra pay for this, there was often some kind of reward like a couple of laying hens, a sack of potatoes or a bag of flour. But the reward, however welcome, wasn't as important as keeping the farmer's goodwill.

Life was precarious for all farm workers: if they had no work they couldn't pay their rent, and that could mean eviction, and ultimately the workhouse. The only way they could ensure they got work was to make themselves more valuable than any other man. A wife and several children ready to pitch in too helped to achieved this.

Hope had heard the chill in the word 'workhouse' or 'Union' even when she was too small to know what it was, or even where it was. But now she had seen the grim grey stone building in nearby Keynsham, and observed the misery etched into the faces of the dest.i.tute who finally had to resort to banging on its doors for shelter.

It was a very real threat for her family now. Last year's harvest had been a poor one, and now this spell of terrible weather was a potential disaster.

It wasn't only the Rentons' winter vegetables that had been destroyed; most of the farmers had lost theirs too. With nothing to sell at the market, and no hay stored for their animals during the winter, they'd be forced to sell them or watch them die of starvation. They wouldn't need farm workers then.

Last winter, when the snow lay on the ground for weeks, the family lived on turnips and potatoes because there was no money to buy meat. The boys set traps for rabbits without any success, and night after night they all went to bed hungry. But if there was more snow again this winter, they wouldn't even have vegetables to fall back on.

'Will we go down to the Merchants' farm tomorrow to see if the baby has been born?' Hope asked, hoping to cheer her mother as she seemed rather glum.

Matt and Amy's first child, Reuben, had been born the previous year. A second child was due any day now, but there was flooding around their farm.

'I think we must wait for dry weather,' Meg replied, but sighed because she was as anxious as Hope for news. 'Amy's got her mother with her, so she'll be fine, and Matt would ride up here if he needed us.'

'Why hasn't Nell had a baby?' Hope asked.

'Questions, questions, questions, that's all I get from you,' Meg snapped. 'The good Lord decides who is to have babies and those to leave without.'

Hope retreated into silence. She had sensed for some time that her parents were unhappy about Nell and Albert, for whenever Hope asked anything about them the reply was invariably a curt one. The family had only been invited to the gatehouse once, and that was some eighteen months ago on a Sunday. Nell had gone to a great deal of trouble, cooking roast lamb, several different vegetables and apple tart to follow, but the meal was overshadowed by Albert's critical remarks about her cooking, and Nell's nervousness.

Yet there had been suspicions that Albert was something of a bully even before that. Nell rarely came home to visit, and when she did, she never stayed longer than half an hour. On Sundays at church with Albert beside her she often looked drawn and anxious. Albert was polite enough, but standoffish, as if he thought his wife's family were beneath him. Ruth reported that Nell never lingered in the servants' hall after work for a chat any more, and even when the sisters were alone together Ruth claimed that Nell seemed unable to hold a real conversation, for she preceded every statement with 'Albert says', suggesting that she'd lost the ability to express any view of her own.

Just a couple of months ago Hope had called on Nell at her cottage and asked her outright if she was happy with Albert. 'He's a good husband,' had been her sister's reply, which wasn't exactly an answer to the question.

Daylight was fading when Silas finally returned home. Hope was just lighting the candles when the click of the door latch made her turn to see her father in the doorway, rain cascading off him on to the floor.

Meg gasped, for it was clear by his strained expression that he was exhausted and chilled to the bone. 'Thank heaven you're back,' she said, rushing to peel the sodden sack from his shoulders. 'You must get out of those wet things this minute! Stir up the fire and make him some tea!' she ordered Hope, stripping off her husband's clothes as if he were a small child.

Once she had him in a chair by the fire with a blanket around him, a hot drink in his hand and his feet soaking in a mustard bath, she questioned him about his trip to Bristol.

'The ship wasn't unloaded so I had to stay in a lodging house. It were terrible.'

Meg got him into bed because he was shivering so violently, but he caught hold of her hand and tried to tell her how it had been for him. He wasn't entirely coherent, he couldn't even put whole sentences together, but the words he did use and the disgust in his voice painted a very vivid picture for both Meg and Hope about where he had stayed.

'Twelve or more men in one filthy room. Dirty straw. Low, brutish types, stupid with drink. Habits that turned my stomach. Animals behave better.'

Meg washed his face and hands tenderly, wrapping the blankets tightly around him and soothing him with the reminder he was safely home at last. But although his voice was becoming little more than a croak he seemed desperate for her to understand what he had been through.

Hope had been to Bristol twice, both times by day and in good weather, but however thrilling she'd found it, she hadn't forgotten the hordes of beggars, the noise, evil smells and the daunting hurly-burly of the place. It wasn't difficult to imagine how she would feel if she were alone, cold and soaked to the skin, compelled to hang around the docks for three days without anyone to turn to for help.

Her father spoke of ruffians who lay in wait for gullible country folk, of the ragged half-starved child beggars who plagued him after seeing him give a couple of pennies to one of their number. He said there were painted floozies on every corner who loudly belittled him when he ignored them. And all the time there was the fear that any one of the many brutalized drunken men would attack a simple countryman like him just for the few shillings in his pocket, and even for his cart and horse.

Someone at the rooming house picked his pockets during the night. In the morning another man attempted to run off with his boots, and he'd had to run after him on bare feet and fight to get them back. He said he would have turned tail and come home right then, but he knew that Mr Francis would stop giving him and the boys work if he did. So he waited to collect the goods from the ship, cold, wet, hungry and frightened almost out of his wits. He said he would never go there again.

Yet although he said how hungry he had been, he only managed half a bowl of stew before sinking back on to the pillow. He was still shivering, and he said his head and back ached, so Meg got other blankets to cover him and put a hot brick by his feet.

Joe and Henry came back a little later, equally wet and downhearted because Mr Francis had not paid them, or even given them anything to eat. 'We've done a man's work, so we should get paid a man's wages,' Joe said heatedly. 'Mr Francis was grumbling all day because Father hadn't come back. I reckon me and Henry will have to go to London to find work. There ain't nothing fer us around here.'

The boys went to bed straight after their supper, but Hope stayed up with her mother, sensing that she was worried about her husband. Even by candlelight, Hope could see for herself he wasn't right. He appeared to be asleep but he was shivering still, while beads of sweat glistened on his forehead.

'He's a strong man, he'll be fine after a good night's sleep,' Meg said, but there was a hollow ring to her voice.

Hope woke in the night to the sound of her mother poking the fire and the smell of drying clothes. It was pitch dark and still raining hard.

'Is Father any better?' she whispered as she climbed down the loft ladder.

Meg shook her head. 'He won't be able to work for a day or two. He's really poorly.'

Hope went over to the bed in the corner, and although the light of the candle didn't reach that far, she fancied her father's face was unusually gaunt. 'Have you slept at all, Mother?' she asked.

'I lay down beside him for a while, but it was too hot in there for me.' Meg sighed. 'I couldn't take off any covers for he was still shivering, so I sat in the chair.'

'You go up and get into my bed,' Hope said. 'I'll watch over him.'

'Wake me at first light, and keep turning the boys' clothes till they're dry. I don't want them catching a chill too,' Meg said wearily. 'If your father wakes, give him some water. I'll go down to see Lizzie Brierley first thing and see if she can make me one of her mixtures.'

To Hope, that was confirmation of how frightened her mother really was, for she usually pooh-poohed the concoctions Lizzie made.

Over the next four days Hope watched her father grow sicker and sicker. He was feverish, holding his head in his hands because it hurt, and he could barely get up to relieve himself. Meg plied him with both the mixture she'd got from Lizzie and one of her own herbal infusions, good for fevers. She sponged him down when he was too hot, and put a hot brick in beside him when he shivered. Yet by the fourth morning he was muttering deliriously.

'Shall I go and get Nell?' Hope asked.

'No, of course not,' her mother snapped. 'It ain't right to ask anyone's help when there's sickness in the house.'

'But Nell should know how ill Father is,' Hope argued.

'What she don't know can't hurt her. She'd only come rushing round here and make more trouble for herself with Albert.'

Only a few weeks back Ruth had claimed she thought Albert hit Nell, and Father had said if this proved to be right he'd go round and wring the man's neck.

'Well, shall I go and get the doctor then?' Hope asked. She was frightened because Father didn't seem to know her or her mother.

'We've got no money for the doctor,' Meg replied, her eyes bleak with anxiety. 'You go into the bakery and see if they've got some work for you there, meanwhile I'll build up the fire and try to get him to sweat out the fever.'

Hope knew that her mother must be desperate for money to send her in to beg for work at the bakery, for she disliked Mrs Scragg, the baker's wife, as much as Hope did.

Mrs Scragg questioned Hope closely about Silas's sickness, clearly afraid it was something infectious, then set her to work outside, scouring out bread tins. By late afternoon Hope was more exhausted than if she'd been working all day in the fields. After the scouring of the bread tins she was made to clean out two storerooms, scrubbing the walls and floors. She'd drawn bucket after bucket of water from the well, mucked out the stable and washed a huge pile of ap.r.o.ns. For all this she was given a shilling and a loaf of bread.

Her mother stopped Hope at the door when she went home. 'Don't come in,' she said. 'Your father has a rash now; you and the boys must sleep in the outhouse until he improves.'

'Is it scarlet fever like with Violet and Prudence?' Hope asked, tears springing to her eyes because she sensed her mother was afraid he was going to die.

'I wish that's all it was, grown men get over that,' Meg said wearily. 'Go to the doctor, Hope. Tell him how your father was when he came back from Bristol, but that he's delirious now and the rash is a "mulberry" one. He'll know what that means. I don't expect he will call to see your father, but he might be able to give you some medicine for him if you give him that shilling.'

Dr Langford lived in Chewton, a hamlet on the way to Keynsham, a distance of two miles. Hope was too young when Violet and Prudence died to remember the doctor calling then, but she often saw the short, rotund man in a stove-pipe hat driving through the village in his gig, and at church. Her mother had said that years ago he set her father's arm when he broke it, and as they had no money to pay him they gave him a chicken instead. That gave Hope the idea he must be a kindly man, and as she hurried down through the village and up Fairy Hill, she wondered if he'd be kindly enough to give her a drink and maybe a bite to eat, and bring her home in his gig.

That hope was dashed when the lady who answered the door asked her to wait outside when she said her father was sick.

The doctor came out to see her immediately. He was wearing a fancy red waistcoat, and looked much smaller without his usual tall hat. Almost as soon as she began to launch into a description of her father's illness, she was aware he was backing away from her into the porch of his house.

'So he was sick when he came back from Bristol? And this was four days ago?'

Hope nodded. 'He'd had an awful time because he had to sleep in a dirty room at the docks with several other men. He was shivering really badly even after Mother made him get into bed. Now he doesn't even seem to know us!'

The doctor looked alarmed. 'Tell your mother she must keep the room well aired and the windows open,' he said. 'She must try and make him drink water and broth, and to boil any fouled linen. I will make up some medicine for him, but you children must keep well away from him.'

'Mother already told me we'll have to stay in the outhouse,' Hope said. 'Is it something very serious then?'

The doctor looked as if he didn't know how to reply. 'Your father's a strong man, so we can be optimistic. But wait there, Hope, I'll get you some medicine for him.'

'She's the younger sister of the two girls who died of scarlet fever, isn't she?' Dr Langford's wife asked as he came back into the house. 'Do you know what ails her father?'

'I hope I'm wrong, but it sounds like typhus,' the doctor replied with a grimace, going to his cabinet which held various kinds of medicines, ointments and salves. 'There was an outbreak of it at the workhouse recently, and of course Bristol gaol is never without it.'

Mrs Langford was very fastidious and she shuddered. 'But the Rentons aren't low people,' she said. 'I'm told their cottage is a model of cleanliness!'

The doctor sighed. 'He'll have caught it in the foul lodging house he had the misfortune to seek shelter in. Someone there had probably brought it in from a ship or a gaol. And by now his wife may be infected as well, perhaps even the children too.'

'Oh dear me,' Mrs Langford gasped. 'You didn't touch her, did you?'

The doctor gave her a withering glance, somewhat shocked that her first thought would be for herself. But he didn't feel able to reprimand her for lack of compa.s.sion, not when he had no intention of putting himself at risk by calling at the Rentons' cottage.

'Of course not. But I'd appreciate it if you'd put a few things in a basket for the child to take home. Brandy, perhaps, a few nourishing things that might stimulate their appet.i.tes. I shall send along some belladonna to slow Silas's pulse and help the headache, but sadly that's all I can do.'

'I won't go away,' Hope said firmly, pushing her way into the cottage. 'You're sick too, Mother, and I'm going to take care of you.'

It was ten days now since her father had come back from Bristol, and up till now she'd done exactly as her mother asked. She'd looked after the animals, chopped wood, drawn water, and slept in the outhouse alone every night.