He was too preoccupied to notice what was happening. In a moment she would be knocked to her knees. Then she would be dragged under, as though sinking beneath a human wave, and stamped into the mud in the trample of hobnailed boots.
‘Ay-up!’ She felt a sudden change, and the crowd parted around her. A hand caught her by the shoulder and yanked her to her feet with a rip of cloth. There was a shout as loud and ringing as her father’s. But it came from close at her side, easily besting the noise of the crowd. ‘Mind what you are doing, you great oafs. You may say what you like to me, but mind that there is a lady present. Have a care for her, at least. Perhaps I judge you unworthy of employment because you behave no better than animals.’
Then she was back on her feet, and the support was gone from her arm. She felt the crowd swirl around her again as her rescuer retreated. But for a moment there was a subdued quality to the actions of the mob, as though their frenzy had been defused by shame.
And the man who had saved her was back at the front of the group again, pushing past her father and climbing back onto the pillar that held the gate. She had thought Mr Stratford an intimidating figure even while behind the gates. But it was even more startling to have been so close to him, even for a moment. He had used his strength to force others out of the way, and his agility to be down to the ground and back up the fence before the mob had realised that he had been in their grasp. He was staring down at them again, his expression more disgusted than angry, as though they had proved to him that he was correct in his scorn.
‘Go home to your families, if you care so much about them. A new year is coming, and a new age with it. You had best get used to it. When Stratford Mill is open in a month there will be work for those of you willing to put aside this nonsense and tend to your shuttles again. But if you rise against me I will see the lot of you transported and run it with your daughters. They will cost me less and have the sense to keep their tongues.’ He reached towards his belt, and the group before him gasped. He withdrew not a pistol, but a purse, showering the coins into the crowd.
‘A Merry Christmas to you all!’ he shouted, his laugh both triumphant and bitter as he watched the threat dissolve as the crowd scrambled for the money. ‘Do not bother to come here again. As long as I breathe, I will not be stopped. If you destroy the machinery I will get more, until you wear yourselves out with breaking it. Take my money and go back to your homes. I have summoned the constable. If you are here when he arrives you will spend Christmas Day in a cell, longing for your families. Now, be off.’
It shamed her to watch the men of the village too on the ground to notice this new threat. They were a proud bunch. In better times they would have thrown the coins back in the face of this stranger rather than accept his charity and his scorn. But the recent economic troubles had left most of the village without work and in need of any money they might find to make any kind of a Christmas—merry or otherwise—for their families.
Her father’s rallying cries were lost in the scuffle as men scrabbled in the dirt for pennies. Barbara pushed through them easily this time, until she could lay her hand upon her father’s arm. ‘Come away,’ she whispered. ‘Now. Before this goes any further. You can speak another day.’
It seemed the mood had left him, passing out of his body like a possessing spirit, leaving him quiet and somewhat puzzled, as though he did not quite know how he had come to be standing here in front of so many people. He would come away with little struggle, and she would have him home before the law arrived. All would be well. Until the next time.
Directly above her, and removed from the chaos, Joseph Stratford observed—distant and passionless, as though he did not know or care for the pain he was causing. When she looked at him all her father’s anger and frustration seemed to rush into her. If the Lord had bothered to imbue her with reason, then why could he have not made her a man, so that other men might listen to her?
She turned and shouted up at the dark man who thought himself so superior to his fellows. ‘You blame the men around me. But you should be ashamed of yourself as well. You stand over us, thinking yourself a god. You are mocking a level of hardship that you cannot possibly understand. You act as if you are made of the same rough wood and cold metal gears that fill your factory. If I could see the contents of your heart it would be nothing but clockwork, and fuelled by the coal running in your veins.’
Just for a moment she thought she saw a change in his face, a slight widening of the eyes as though her words had struck home. And then he gave a mirthless, soundless laugh, little more than a lifting and dropping of the shoulders. ‘And a Merry Christmas to you as well, my dear.’ Then he turned and stepped easily from his perch, dropping to the ground, though it must have been nearly eight feet, and strolling back to his carriage and his nervous grooms and coachman. They came cautiously forwards to open the gates so that the carriage could get through. They needn’t have worried, for the men who had blocked the way had turned for home in embarrassed silence as soon as the money on the ground had been collected.
She pulled her father to the side of the road so that the horses could pass. But there was the signalling tap of a cane against the side of the box as the vehicle drew abreast of them, and the driver brought it to a stop so that Stratford could lean out of the window and look at them.
‘This is not the end of it, Stratford,’ her father said in a quieter voice. Now that the crowd was gone he sounded capable of lucid argument, and quite his old self.
‘I did not think it was, Lampett,’ Stratford replied, smiling coldly down at her father, staring into his eyes like a fighter measuring the reach of his opponent before striking.
‘I will not let you treat these people—my people—like so many strings on your loom. They are men, not goods. They should be respected as such.’
‘When they behave like men I will give them respect. And not before. Now, go. You have lost your audience, and your child is shivering in the cold.’
I am not a child. She was full four and twenty. Not that it mattered. But she was shivering—both from fear and the weather. The slight made her stand a little straighter, and fight the shudders until she could appear as collected and unmoved as her enemy was.
It did not seem to bother Joseph Stratford in the least that the weight of the entire town was against him. They had broken his frames once already and sabotaged the building of the mill at every turn. Still he persevered. Barbara wished she could respond in kind with that careless, untouchable indifference.
The envy bothered her. Perhaps—just a little—she appreciated the man’s sense of purpose. However misguided it might be. When she looked at him she had no doubt that he would succeed. While her father was all fire, he flared and burned out quickly. But Stratford was like stone, unchanging and unmoved. It would take more than a flash of anger to move a man like him once he had set himself to a goal.
She looked again at him and reminded herself that he was proud as well. That sin would be his downfall if nothing else was. He could not succeed if he reduced all men to enemies and herself to a faceless, valueless child.
As she watched the two men, locked eye to eye in a silent battle, she was relieved that her father did not own a firearm. Though she thought she could trust Mr Stratford—just barely—not to shoot without provocation, there was no telling what her father might do when his blood was up and his thinking even less clear than usual. She reached out for her father’s arm again, ready to guide him home. ‘Come. Let us go back. There is nothing more that you can do today. If he has truly called for the constable, I do not wish to see you caught up in it.’
He shook off the embrace with a grunt and stepped back, giving an angry shrug as the carriage moved again, travelling up the road to the manor house. ‘It would serve
