A Risk Worth Taking E-Book

Alyson Hilbourne

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Cosy Crime
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 230

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Meg and her father run a public house by the sea, but Pa is also involved in the “night business” – helping the smugglers evade the excisemen. More than anything, Meg wishes he could get out of the gang’s clutches, but when Pa brings home an injured man to hide in their attic, it seems the family will be more involved than ever . . .

Leseprobe

A RISK WORTH TAKING 

by Alyson Hilbourne  

CHAPTER 1

O

h, Pa,” Meg mutters, and turns over for the umpteenth time, pulling the scratchy blanket with her. “Where are you?”

He tells her it is a risk worth taking but Meg can’t sleep on the nights her father is out on a smuggling run, not until she hears the alehouse door creak and his footstep on the stair, meaning he is safely returned.

She lies on her straw pallet, one eye on the worn shutters, gauging the time by the wraith-like streaks of light appearing through the cracks, indicating approaching dawn.

She and Pa have argued many times over whether the night business is worth it.

“The money –” her father argues.

“We can survive with the ale house. We could grow more of our own vegetables and get more goats,” Meg says.

“I’m a brewer, not a farmer,” her father grumbles. “And besides, the night business is more profitable.”

“Until you get caught.” But Meg doesn’t say it loudly enough for Pa to hear.

An owl hoots outside, making Meg jump. She lifts her head but there is nothing more.

She shivers as she thinks through the dangers.

Whatever money her father may earn in the night business, it is not invested in the alehouse. The thatch is mossy and thinning, and on wet, stormy nights Meg can hear water dripping into the attic above her bedroom.

The wattle and daub between the wooden wall braces of the upstairs needs work and the treads on the staircase need replacing, as do the stools in the bar and shutters on the windows.

The Anchor is in desperate need of repair.

Pa’s only weakness is a fondness for a fine waistcoat. Twice a year he orders a new one to be made, in fine silk or dusky velveteen, often with an intricate pattern.

“More difficult to see the stains,” Pa says, rubbing at a newly made mark on his latest purchase.

Meg gives him a tense smile. It doesn’t matter that he wears a heavy leather apron for brewing.

Running an alehouse involves slops of beers, smuts and singes from the fire, spatters and drips of fat from serving meals and clearing plates, to say nothing of the oil lamps and candle lanterns that need constant trimming and filling.

And meanwhile, each time Josiah puts out a call, her father leaves, spending his night unloading barrels of Hollands, French brandy, bundles of cloth and lace, packets of tobacco and boxes of tea from the ships that bring them across the Channel from France and Holland.

The booty is stacked into carts and barrows and secreted away to hiding places across the county, and Meg has another disturbed night wondering if her father will return or whether he’ll be on his way to the assizes in the morning.

For safety, the landing places change with each delivery of contraband and can be up to twenty miles away. On these nights Pa isn’t home until daylight and Meg remains sleepless, too.

Next to her, her faithful, mixed breed, mud-brown hound, Jip, twitches in his sleep as a rabbit squeals in the marshy fields beyond the dyke, an unearthly cry that sets Meg’s nerves on edge.

She has no doubt it has been caught by the fox that prowls the rough grassland, a wily, tatty creature, its patchy fur the colour of new conkers. It has been taunting her hens for years and only her constant nagging at Pa to fix their pen keeps them safe.

When Pa is not here the night has an extra silence. Meg misses his gentle wheezing snore and the creaking as he turns in the night. His presence keeps other sounds at bay.

Sounds like the mice crawling through the spaces in the ceiling above and the floorboards beneath her. Their movements whisper through the building and Meg shudders, unable to unravel words but sure the message is for her.

For a moment she imagines the ale house is full of ghosts, and a chill makes the hairs stand on the back of her neck.

It doesn’t matter how small she makes herself, the murmurs continue to swirl around her, poking like sharp fingers. Meg turns, pushing the woollen blanket away and wriggles on her straw pallet, but despite being dead tired she is still awake.

Eventually, unable to stand it any longer, she rises and goes to the window to open the shutters.

It is still too dark to see much but the sound of waves lapping on the mud flats of the estuary drifts through the small glass panes.

She is tempted to go out and walk down to the water’s edge, but she knows she’ll regret that decision in the morning when it is time to rise.

Instead, she stands, staring out into the blackness, twisting her thick blonde hair into a single plait that hangs down her back. Her hair is too heavy to be kept in place by a few hair pins and she is too busy in the alehouse to spend hours curling it or trying to make it look elegant.

The alehouse stands at the end of the dyke that runs along the river’s edge, near where the river empties itself in the sea.

The business relies on trade from the sailing ships that pull in at the staithes to unload, ready for smaller boats to take the goods up the river to the town.

The sailors, longshoremen, boat hands and local labourers call in for lunch and dinner, sure of a hearty meal and mug of ale to keep them going. The large, rusting anchor set in the ground outside the alehouse has given the place its name.

Meg rolls her shoulders, knowing that soon she will have to go and stoke the fires, knead and set the dough to rise for the day’s bread, and put on a pot of stew. The chickens will be squawking to be let out and the goat will need to be fed.

It is unfair of her father to put her through this. He should be back by now, surely.

Her body is tense. She cannot relax.

As a child, she dreamed of escaping the alehouse, but since her mother’s death when Meg was twelve, she has slipped into the role of landlady, and now her father would find it hard to cope without her.

For a while, she hoped he might remarry, and someone might take over her mother’s role, but there are no widows in the village, apart from Mistress Cooper, who is not the marrying kind.

And Meg has to admit, as much as she loves him, Pa doesn’t have much to offer a younger wife, apart from years of hard work.

He is round-shouldered and stooped, but still strong enough to lift barrels and sacks of grains, which is why Josiah keeps him on a tubsman to shift the contraband from boat to the carts that carry to hiding places.

Something creaks and Meg freezes, holding her breath, but then nothing follows, and she realises it is just the cottage settling itself down, like an old lady shifting her petticoats to be comfortable.

She should be used to the building’s groans by now but at night the sounds are louder and more intense.

A curlew whistles outside and makes her jump. Meg clenches her teeth, and when she turns and she can see her shifts hanging like a ghostly figure from the hook on the wall, so she knows dawn approaches.

She listens, straining to hear footsteps coming along the dyke or on the stair as Pa tries not to wake her. She knows the only way to prevent this anxiety is to stop her him going out, but if he will always go if Josiah calls.

“There’s no way out, except by death,” Pa explained once. “Even those who are too weak or infirm to lift the barrels are called to drive the carts or have goods are hidden in their houses.”

Meg bunches her fists, so her nails dig into her palms. If she knew who Josiah was she’d turn him in herself.

Her thoughts are interrupted by a low keening that she doesn’t recognise as belonging to any of the estuary creatures. Meg jerks round, her eyes wide, straining to hear more.

Jip scrabbles to his feet, his nails scratching to gain a grip on the slippery wooden floor. Meg can feel tension pulsing from his body and knows he is standing with his head cocked listening too for the sounds from outside.

Meg clutches the window frame. Who is there? And what do they want?

“Please not the excise men,” she mutters to herself in something between a wish and a prayer. “And please God, Pa is not hurt.”

At that moment she’d barter everything she has and never begrudge another waistcoat for her father to be safe.

She hurries back across the room and gathers her thick woollen shawl around herself to cover her chemise.

She pushes her feet into her wooden pattens and with Jip pressing tightly to her legs she descends the steep wooden stairs as quietly as she can.

CHAPTER 2

M

eg’s heart thumps as the soles of her wooden shoes crunch on the flagstone floor of the alehouse, despite her efforts to tiptoe. She holds her breath.

As she passes through the bar, she stops to pick up a heavy iron poker from by the fireplace. Although she trusts Jip to protect her, the alehouse is remote.

Warily, she lifts the metal latch that secures the door to the yard and pulls it open. The old hinges creak like a hangman’s gibbet and there is no hiding the fact the door has been opened.

Outside the air is chilly, but the dark of night has given way to monotone grey of dawn. As her eyes adjust, Meg can see the masts of moored boats as silhouettes on the river and hears insects clicking as they start the day. A blackbird flies past, issuing an indignant alarm at the early morning intruders.

Meg shivers as the dawn cold laps her bare ankles and Jip stands beside her, the fur on his back bristling and a low growl in his throat. She peers out. A couple of figures melt into the shadow of the outbuildings that Pa uses for brewing.

“Who’s there?” Meg demands, putting a hand on Jip’s head to stop him barking. His presence is reassuring but her heart is still thumping, and her hand weighs the poker.

One of the figures, a large oilskin hiding his real shape, steps forward.

“Meggie, love. You shouldn’t be up at the is time of day.”

“Pa!” Meg claps a hand to her chest. “You’re making the devil of a noise. Whatever is the matter? Why haven’t you come in to bed?”

“’Tis young Nat Stowell. We had a run in with the revenue men and he’s taken a musket ball in the leg,” her father says. “We had to hide from them and then carry him along the coast, keeping to the scrub so we weren’t seen. It’s taken a while.”

Her father’s voice has a tremor and is laced with worry and shock.

Meg frowns and picks her way across to the yard to what appears to be a pile of clothing on the ground.

Staring down she realises the bundle is a boy, somewhat younger than herself, his face not yet growing hair and his body not filled out.

“He’s but a child.” Meg turns to her father, her tone accusatory. “What is he doing out on a run?”

Her father shrugs and spreads his hands.

“Short-handed,” he says. “But Josiah needed to unload and move the barrels inland, so Harry brought along his brother to help as a tubsman.”

Meg thins her lips.

The night business is hard labour and many of the tubsmen who haul the barrels off the boats are bent and crooked from the work. But that is the least of their worries.

Dodging the excise men who patrol the coastline seeking out the smugglers is a constant contest. If they are found unloading a boat at night, the uniformed men hold the upper hand with their muskets and the rule of law on their side.

Tonight, however, it seems the excise men discovered them.

Her father waves a hand towards the figure still lurking in the shadow of the brew house, a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his eyes.

Meg crouches down beside the boy. His breathing is raspy, his face a pale moon with a sheen across his forehead. She glances back up at her father and clicks her tongue.

“Best get the boy inside,” she says. “I can do nothing out here in the yard. Though I don’t know I’ll do any better indoors.”

Her father gives a nod and beckons another figure loitering in the shadow. Together they pick up the boy, Pa taking his feet and the man Meg presumes is Harry, his shoulders. Nat gives a low moan and Meg glances round, conscious of how sound carries at night.

“Take him up to my room,” Meg says as her father gives her a questioning look.

Between them, the men manhandled the boy into the pub and up the steep stairs to Meg’s room. Harry goes first, backwards, halting on each tread so that Pa can catch up. Meg catches sight of the boy’s face, crumpled in pain. He twists in their grasp and stiffens, biting down on his lip until it bleeds.

Jip follows, sniffing at the strangers.

Meg pushes the outer door shut and puts the wooden bar across it. She returns the poker to the fireplace, lights a taper from the glowing embers of the fire in the bar, and shields it as she climbs the stairs after the men. Jip follows her, his tail wagging, easily pleased with the early morning excitement.

Pa and Harry set Nat down on Meg’s pallet and Pa stands back while Harry brushes the hair from his brother’s face and whispers to him.

“So, the excise men were after you?” Meg asks, looking from one to the other.

Besides the excise men, there are other gangs of smugglers along the coast who would happily muscle in on trade if anything were to happen to Josiah’s gang, and fights between the smugglers are more common than the run-ins with the law.

“Aye,” Pa says, shuffling from foot to foot and looking contrite.

“Then the chances are they’ll call here, looking for contraband. You know William Rufus has it in for you. You haven’t put any in the outhouses, have you?” Meg’s voice is fierce. They need no further excuses for that man to come sniffing round the alehouse.

Pa shakes his head.

“No, it’s all been moved inland,” he whispers. “Disappeared into the landscape. They won’t find it. We were unlucky, just finishing up when they caught us.”

Meg looks down at Nat. His eyelids flicker, and he is ashen and perspiring while his short dark hair is matted and clumped to his head. His breath is ragged, and all his clothing is damp. His moaning has subsided, which is worrying.

“We’d best get him out of these wet clothes and then put him in the attic where the revenue is less likely to look,” she says. “I’ll fetch a dry shirt if the two of you will strip him.”

She goes to her father’s room and takes a clean but old linen shirt from his chest and hands it to the men.

They change Nat’s clothing and heave a spare straw pallet up the ladder into the attic.

Harry then climbs up and Pa lifts the boy to him. Nat is not big, but the manoeuvre is tricky, and he hisses with pain, as he is jolted about.

Jip whines in sympathy and circles the base of the ladder, knowing he can’t get up there.

Meg lights a candle stump with the taper, kicks off her pattens and climbs up the ladder into the attic, taking the boy’s clothing with her. She hangs his breeches, stockings, and shirt from the ends of the rafters and sends Harry down to collect his jacket and boots.

“Make sure there’s no sign of him,” she tells Harry.

Meanwhile she sets the candle down beside Nat and looks at his leg. The boy’s face in the flickering candlelight shines like a polished table.

She sends Pa to fetch a rag and water. Harry drops his brother’s clothing in a corner and comes to crouch beside her. He has removed his hat and his blond hair flops over his face. A sharp smell of wood smoke and fish rises from him, and Meg notes the crease of worry across his face.

Harry straightens Nat’s legs and glances up at Meg. A long, ragged tear appears in fleshy calf of his right leg. The skin around it is bloodied, discoloured, and pulverized. Nat winces as Meg pokes it with a finger, and mutters but his eyes remain shut.

“Happen I can try and get it out with a knife,” Meg says glancing up at Harry. He grimaces. He is cradling his brother’s head in his hands.

She doesn’t need to spell out the danger the boy is in and how likely it is the wound will kill him.

Harry nods.

“I’d take him to the surgeon,” he whispers. “But the excise men are out searching, and I’d have to ask Amos to borrow his cart.”

They both look down at Nat. Meg doesn’t say it, but they both know a twenty-mile journey to Kirkstainton, rattling over muddy rutted roads, wouldn’t do the boy any good, either. He is as well off taking his chances here.

Pa will have some brandy they can give him for the pain and tomorrow she can go to Mistress Cooper and get something for fever and for healing or, if Harry chooses, he can go to town and fetch some laudanum.

But before Meg can go downstairs for a knife there is a thumping on the front door and below them Jip begins barking frantically and jumping around.

“The excise men!” Harry hisses.

Meg glances up and sees fear etched into his face. Several things flash through her mind at the same time.

They can’t move the boy.

Harry can’t be found here.

And everything must appear to be normal.

There is a knocking in her chest as her heart beats faster and a spike of adrenaline surges round her body. She squeezes her fists closed and makes a decision.

CHAPTER 3

I

’ll go.” Meg hisses at Harry. “Stay here. Pull the ladder up behind me and shut the trap door. “And,” she glances at Nat. “Keep him quiet, however you can. Pa, go to bed, now!”

Meg lets her father descend first and then hurries down the ladder. She is aware of Harry pulling it back up and closing the trap as she puts on her pattens and deliberately thumps down the staircase.

The alehouse, little more than a converted cottage with the bar downstairs and two small bedrooms above and a small outhouse behind that Meg uses as a kitchen, is chilly.

The air is always damp, especially in winter when the sea fret eddies around, or wind and rain blow in from the open ocean threatening to wash them all away.

Once, when she was a younger and her mother was still alive, the sea advanced over the dyke and cloudy waters swirled and lapped at the door to the alehouse.

Meg had come down in the morning to find Pa lifting the stools on to the tables and her mother moving cooking pots and pushing baskets of onions and potatoes on to shelves out of reach of the flood.

When the water receded a muddy residue was left that took days to sweep away. For a long time, it seemed everything they touched or ate had a gritty taste. Meg lives in fear of the sea rising again but so far, the dyke has held, and the sea has stayed where it is supposed to be.

The hammering becomes even more intense, shaking the door in its frame as Meg struggles to lift the wooden bar.

She has to grab hold tight of Jip as his hackles are up and deep rolling growl comes from within him. He would love to take a chunk out of the men who crowd into the doorway, pushing the door so it flies open narrowly missing hitting Meg in the face.

William Rufus steps into the alehouse, his two aides almost falling in behind him. Both have a musket slung over their shoulders and are panting with the effort of banging on the door.

“Where is it?” William demands. “I know your father was out this night.”

William’s face is flushed, he has streaks of mud over his britches and boots and his red tunic is somewhat awry. Meg takes a small sliver of comfort that the excise men have had as busy a night as the smugglers.

“Father is in his bed,” she says primly. “As was I until this last minute when someone rudely banged on the door.

“We’re searching the premises,” William says, glaring at her.

“Fine,” Meg replies, pulling her shawl closer as the draft from the door swirls around her thin chemise. She goes to the grate in the public room and tosses more logs on the fire.

The flag-stoned floor is cold and the sawdust she throws down to keep the alehouse smelling fresh blows into the corners with the breeze from the door.

She hears William and his men clatter upstairs and her father’s protests as they yank him from his bed. She guesses they treat him none too gently and she finds a wry pleasure in this. It is, after all, his own fault. It he wasn’t involved in the night business there would be no reason for the excise men to be here at all.

The footsteps move overhead into her room and the floorboards creak in protest. Meg hears the shutters pushed back further with a familiar screech of sound. She hopes the men haven’t treated them ill. The wood is only held together with cobwebs as it is.

She thinks of her petticoat hung from a nail in the wall, her blanket tossed aside as they laid Nat on her pallet, her linen box and her cape and bonnet behind the door. Not much for them to search and certainly nowhere to hide anchors of brandy, kegs of Holland’s gin or packages of lace and fine cloth.

William leads the way back downstairs, his men following like anxious puppies. Meg stands with her arms folded across her chest watching them.

“Brew house?” William holds out his hand.

Meg hands over the large, wrought-iron key, knowing the excise men will find only barrels of her father’s homemade ale and an anchor of brandy stamped duty paid. The further outhouses are for overwintering the goat and a wood store. There are no hiding places here.

The goods they are looking for will have been salted away inland and carefully concealed.

“Pah,” William almost spits at her as he returns and flings the key back. Meg fingers the familiar iron work, the shape of the bow reminding her of the leading in the church windows.

“We’ll catch him at it one day. We’ll rid this coast of smugglers. You see if we don’t.”

The two aides leave first and as Meg stands beside the back door ready to shut it behind them, William stops and turns to her.

“You don’t have to live like this, Meg Parton. There’s a fine stone house in town waiting if you’ll only say yes.”

William’s voice is oily and the sound of it makes Meg itch. She steps back, but William is no respecter of space and moves closer. His breath carries the stink of rotting meat.

“I’ll have your father sometime, Meg. Then you’ll have no option but to take me up on my offer. You’ll not get a better one.” He stands taller and straightens his hat. “Don’t think you will.”

Meg feels his eyes run up and down over her. She notices he starts as he looks at her chemise. She glances down and sees a smear of blood, no longer the crimson of ripe apples but a burnt umber iron colour.

She feels a flush spread across her face and is clutching for an excuse when William sneers, the scar at the edge of his lip pulling down his mouth on one side.

He was wounded fighting the Frenchies and Meg has no doubt he is a brave man, doing his best as he sees it for King and country. But she has no wish to marry him, not even for a proper house in town, built of even stones, with glass windows, a fine drawing-room, and a maid to cook and clean.

She blinks and swallows. It’s not true. She’d love it all – except William. Perhaps she is a fool. Any other girl would be overjoyed to be married and living in luxury, but there is a coldness to William that she cannot fathom, and he loves his work too much.

The people who live around the estuary have barely enough to live on and earning a little extra from the night business is what keeps most of them alive.

Besides which, the duty of imported goods has priced things like tea and sugar beyond the means of many.

Meg knows that further along the coast the excise men take a cut of the smuggling that goes on under their noses and allow the trade to go ahead. Not William, though. It seems to be his life’s work do whatever it takes to enforce the law.

Not for the first time she wonders if William’s wish to marry her is less to do with herself and more to do with stopping her father working for Josiah.

Meg shakes her head and watches as William steps outside and clicks his fingers. One of his aides scurries over, pulling his horse. The beast is reluctant, stiffens its legs and shows the whites of its eyes. William is oblivious and mounts.

She pushes the door shut before William can turn and look at her again and puts the heavy bar back in place. She swallows the bile that has risen in her throat and finds herself shaking. She leans against the door and allows herself to slide to the floor.

There are times, like now, when Meg misses her mother and longs for comfort and advice. What would her mother think of William? Would she advocate for the marriage?

Meg remembers the way her Pa looked at Ma. Her mother had been a beauty, with long auburn hair, blue eyes, and lovely skin. She had left her family, running away to marry Pa, and they had settled at the cottage on the estuary when Pa gave up working on the boats.

He’d learned the business of brewing and opened the alehouse, many of their customers visiting especially to be served by Ma. She was a favourite of everyone, and Pa was devastated by her death from a fever she caught during one damp river winter.

A lump rises in Meg’s throat as she thinks of her mother, but with the thought comes the realisation that William doesn’t look at her with that same adoration. The spark that Ma and Pa had is missing.