then,’ he said sullenly. ‘I’ll find me another wench.’
But then she remembered how considerate he had been, how sympathetic. ‘Oh, come on, Jericho,’ she pleaded. ‘You’re not going to let me walk that path all by myself, are you? What if one of these here follows me? What if I get set on?’
He drained his beer and stood up. ‘I’d kill anybody who touched you, Poppy. Come on, then. Let’s went.’
The low sun threw long shadows as they walked hand in hand along the footpath back towards the encampment. Tall grasses and thistles waved lazily in the summery breeze and a white butterfly settled on a cluster of shepherd’s purse. The rain that had half threatened all day had not fallen, but bags of dark cloud still chased each other ominously across the sky.
Poppy and Jericho spoke little on the way back. He was reliving, in a silent, very personal exhilaration, every blow he had cast and received. A good hard fight energised him, set the blood coursing through his veins. And after every good hard fight he felt the insistent need for a woman. The one was a counterbalance to the other. The brutal punches and kicks, clenched fists striking the sturdy flesh and bone of some other man in desperate anger, could only be neutralised by the soft caress and accommodating smoothness of a woman’s willing body.
‘I want you, Poppy Silk. Let’s lie down in the grass.’
She looked at him apprehensively, seeing the lust in his narrowed eyes. He had been taken like this each time she had seen him fight. The first time, after he’d fought naked, he’d wanted her to go behind the hut with him. The second time, after the fair, he’d tried to seduce her under the bridge that they were approaching again now.
‘I won’t rest till you’re my bed wench,’ he said earnestly. ‘I had a word with Dog Meat. He reckons it’ll be all right if you and me sleep together in Tipton Ted’s hut. We could hang a sheet round the bunk for a bit o’ privacy.’
He was going far too fast, taking far too much for granted.
‘I don’t know if I want to do that, Jericho. I don’t want to be anybody’s bed wench.’
‘Don’t you love me?’ he asked, as if there were no earthly reason why she shouldn’t.
‘I like you,’ she replied. ‘Course I like you. You’ve been kind to me.’
‘But you don’t love me.’
‘I can’t say as I do.’
‘I’ll make you love me.’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t see how—’
He took her in his arms with a roughness she did not enjoy and searched hungrily for her lips. Poppy was in two minds whether to submit but, in the same instant that she felt Jericho’s ungainly kisses, she remembered Robert Crawford’s sweet, stimulating caresses, and had to turn her face away.
‘What’s up wi’ yer?’ Jericho asked, impatient. ‘Are you still hankering for that bloody chickenshit of an engineer? That Crawford?’
‘No, course not,’ she answered, averting her eyes away from his.
‘Christ almighty, I’ll kill the little bastard. I swear, I’ll swing for him if ever you are.’
‘I’m not, Jericho,’ she protested with a vehemence that was sham but convincing. ‘Course I’m not.’
‘So what’s up wi’ yer then? Why d’yer keep saying no to me all the time?’
‘Jericho …’ She uttered his name softly, soothingly. ‘It’s not that I don’t like you … I do. But I don’t want to be anybody’s bed wench, woman, whore, wife, or whatever else you want to call it. Not even yours, Jericho … Don’t you understand? I want to be Poppy Silk, owned by nobody but meself. I don’t want to have to sleep with somebody every night of my life and end up having a babby every ten months, like some o’ the women I know.’
‘You’re a bloody icicle,’ Jericho proclaimed angrily. ‘Christ, there’s more warmth in a dead nun than there is in you. I’d throw you to the ground and take you here and now, but I’d most likely skin me dick to shreds trying to shove it up your stone-cold cleft.’
‘And what do you expect from somebody who’s just had news of her father’s death?’ Her eyes filled with tears as another wave of grief subdued her. ‘Don’t you understand that I got other things on me mind than lying with you, Jericho. Leave me be. Just leave me be …’
So it was not late when Poppy returned to Rose Cottage that evening. The hut was quiet. All of the men had gone out drinking. Sheba was subdued and Poppy could tell that her mother had been crying.
‘Did you tell Tweedle Beak about me dad?’
‘Yes, I told him,’ Sheba replied.
‘And what did he say?’
‘Not much. He said as he was sorry, but I think he was a bit relieved.’
‘You mean because he won’t have to face me dad now?’
Sheba nodded. ‘I reckon that’s why.’
‘Did you tell him that you’re carrying me father’s child?’
Sheba shook her head dejectedly. ‘Not yet. I’ll tell him when I’m ready … If I think it’s worth telling him at all.’
‘You’ll have to tell him sooner or later.’
‘Or let him think the child is his …’
‘Mother, you wouldn’t … Would you?’
‘What else can I do, our Poppy? If he knows the child is Lightning Jack’s he’ll disown me. He wouldn’t stand to be ridiculed. We would all be back where we started when your father went on tramp. We’d all end up in the workhouse.’
‘Oh, Mother …’ Poppy sighed. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘Lord knows … Oh, there’s a note here …’ Sheba fished in the pocket of her apron and pulled out a cream-coloured envelope, which she handed to Poppy. ‘It was pushed under the door o’ the hut after you’d gone out. I hoped as you might be able to read it.’
Poppy took the envelope and recognised her own name written clearly on the front. Her heart went to her mouth as she tore it open. She withdrew the notepaper inside and scanned it for words that she could recognise. Some words were immediately recognisable, some she had to build up, but it was written in a precise hand that was easily legible.
‘What does it say?’ Sheba enquired fretfully.
‘Mother, I’m trying to read it …’
It was hard to construct the words, many of which she had not learned, but she built them up logically from the letter sounds she knew, and it all made sense.
‘It’s from Robert,’ Poppy said softly, her heart beating fast.
‘Read it to me, our Poppy.’
‘It
