Pit Bank Wench Read Free

Price’s daughter or Mary Price’s bastard?
    Her sobs quieting, Mary sank to a chair, her hands closing about Emma’s as she dropped to her knees. ‘I know what you be thinking, what everybody thought when they found I was pregnant and no man to take me . . .’
    ‘No, Mother.’ Her eyes glistening with tears that were more for her mother’s pain than her own fear, Emma pressed her cheek to the thin hands. ‘I am not thinking what others may have thought, you are my mother and I love you. What happened when you were younger makes no difference.’
    ‘Oh, but it does, it will.’ Mary looked at the head bent over her hands, at the shining pale gold hair so like her own had once been. ‘The stigma is never allowed to die, it passes from woman to child, an unjust heritage; and that heritage will be used against you, used to keep you in misery should what I did so long ago ever be brought to light.’
    A heritage of shame. The words branded themselves on Emma’s brain. She was not the daughter of Caleb Price. She was another man’s love child! But where was the love when that man had turned his back on her mother?
    ‘It will not matter that you are not the fruit of my transgression, of my wrongdoing; that will not deter the hand that is raised against you, stop the tongue that speaks ill of you. Should it be known you are the daughter of a woman left in shame then that shame will become yours, such is the way of this world.’ Releasing her hands, Mary cupped them about her daughter’s face, reading the uncertainty in those lovely eyes, her own heart crying out afresh at the thought of how soon that must give way to condemnation, to disgust.
    ‘You might not be thinking what others have thought.’ She spoke softly but her eyes cried out to her daughter from the depths of her soul. ‘But should the time come when you are tempted to think in such a way, then remember what I say to you now. Before God and before heaven I tell you, you are not the child folk may say you are. You are not my first-born, though you be the first I bore of Caleb Price. You are his true daughter though he has always fear of the truth of that. He took me knowing I had given birth to another man’s son, a child that lived barely a month. In twenty years he has not forgiven. Once a whore, always a whore is Caleb Price’s thinking.’
    ‘But you were married!’
    ‘Yes, we were married.’ Mary gave a half smile that was as heartbreaking to see as her sobs had been to hear. ‘But the condemnation never stopped, the judgement sentence never fully served. In the eyes of Caleb I could never be trusted. He could never be sure the babes I carried were his. His fears have cast a coldness over this house, one that can never be warmed. It killed what love I could have felt for him, killed it nigh on twenty years gone. You, Emma, were the only one of his children gotten in tenderness, a tenderness that died long before your carrying was done. Mistrust and bitterness was his marriage gift to me. I suppose I could expect no other in exchange for a dowry of shame.’
    ‘But you have not . . .’
    ‘No, not once in twenty years.’ Mary smiled through a film of tears. ‘I have looked in no direction but that of Caleb Price, but bitterness be a hard taskmaster and jealousy a cruel mistress. Your father danced at their bidding until they became second nature to him. Had he even wanted to shake them off it soon became impossible and they have lodged in this house ever since, a grinding obsession of his he will not forsake until we are both carried out in a box.’
    ‘But surely Father must know?’ Emma stared up at her mother. ‘He must know you would never be untrue to him.’
    Mary touched her lips first to the soft gold of her daughter’s hair, then dropped her hands to her lap. ‘He knows. But the seeds of doubt are strong. They flourish in the driest of ground, and once sown can never be fully harvested. Caleb has his beliefs and I have