The Poacher's Daughter, page 1
Margaret Dickinson
The Poacher’s Daughter
Contents
Acknowledgements
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Epilogue
For all my family and friends for their love,
encouragement and help throughout the years
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My love and grateful thanks to Helen Lawton and Pauline Griggs for reading and advising on the first draft. Your comments are always spot on and so very helpful.
My special thanks to my fantastic agent, Darley Anderson, who is always at the end of the phone for advice and encouragement. I wouldn’t be where I am today (thirty books and counting) without the wonderful support and help of you and your team.
And then, of course, there is the marvellous team at Pan Macmillan, headed by my lovely editor, Trisha Jackson. You all know who you are and I thank each and every one of you for the work you do to help bring my books to my readers.
And last, but never least, are my loyal readers. I hope you will all enjoy The Poacher’s Daughter as much as I have loved writing it.
One
Lincolnshire, 1910
‘Hello. I hope you’re not poaching my father’s fish.’
Rosie looked up from her crouched position on the bank of the stream near the stepping stones. Standing above her was a handsome young man with black hair and the bluest eyes she could ever remember seeing. He was tall and athletic, with a strong, square chin that might have been cut from granite. She hadn’t heard him ride up on his black stallion, whose sleek coat matched its rider’s hair. She rose slowly to her feet and stood facing the young man squarely. She knew exactly who he was; Byron, the only son of William Ramsey, who owned the Thornsby estate and most of the dwellings in the village. She had often seen Byron riding around the estate although she had never been this close to him before. But she was not afraid of him; Rosie Waterhouse was not afraid of anyone. With her wild red curls and her quick wit, she was a match for most folk. And now, as she smiled up at him, her green eyes sparkled with mischief. ‘I didn’t know your dad owned the stream, an’ all.’
Byron threw back his head and laughed, the sound carrying on the breeze. ‘Just the bit that runs through his lands. If you want to fish here, you need to get a licence.’
Rosie cocked her head on one side and regarded him saucily. ‘I don’t reckon they’d let me have one, d’you?’
‘Probably not. How old are you?’
‘Fourteen. How old are you?’
Byron blinked at her boldness, but answered her anyway. ‘Twenty.’
He dropped the horse’s reins, allowing it to graze contentedly. He moved towards her. ‘But I, of course, am allowed to fish here whenever I want to. So, let’s see if we can catch a trout for your tea, shall we? I see you’ve got some string and a hook, but what we really need is something to use as a rod.’
He glanced around and saw a fallen branch, from which he broke off a length of about four feet.
‘This should do it,’ he said, coming back to stand beside her.
For the next hour they sat side by side on the bank, hardly speaking but concentrating hard on the end of the gnarled branch for any sign of movement. At last, the end of the makeshift rod twitched and Byron hauled it out of the water.
Rosie gasped to see a huge fish on the end of the string. Byron despatched it expertly as it lay twitching on the grass between them.
‘There,’ he said, smiling. ‘That should feed you and your family for a couple of days.’
‘There’s only me an’ my dad. Mam died when I was two, having another baby. A little boy. He died an’ all.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. It must be hard for you, not having a mother.’
Rosie shrugged. ‘I don’t know owt different. I can’t really remember her.’
‘Where do you live?’
Now Rosie knew to be careful exactly what she said. ‘On the edge of the village. Me dad works for you sometimes. Your farm bailiff sets him on at busy times like harvest and ’tatie picking.’ She grinned. ‘I come and help then.’
‘Oh yes. Jack Pickering. He’s a good man. He sees to the day-to-day running of the estate and keeps an eye on our two tenant farmers. And our own farm too, of course, though nothing much escapes my father’s eagle eye.’ He paused and regarded her. ‘You’ll have been busy recently, then, with the harvest. It’s mostly gathered now though. So, what does your father do in the winter?’
‘Hedgin’ an ditchin’ mostly,’ she answered promptly. ‘Your tenant farmers use him too if they’re too busy to do it themselves.’
Byron laughed. ‘Or too idle. It’s quite a hard job.’
‘And he’s the local rat and mole catcher, too. Everyone fetches him in to do that.’
Byron paused. He was beginning to realize who she was. Softly, he asked, ‘So, what’s your name? I can’t go on calling you “little girl”, can I?’
She ran her tongue around her lips. ‘Rosie.’
‘Rosie – what?’
She hesitated a second, but there was no way she could not answer his question. ‘Waterhouse.’
Byron stared at her. ‘You must be Sam Waterhouse’s daughter.’
Rosie nodded.
‘Ah, that explains it then,’ he said softly, almost more to himself than to her. She was the daughter of the local poacher. For a few moments he seemed lost in thought. Then he cleared his throat. ‘I’ll meet you here again this time next week and I’ll bring you a pole with a hook on the end and teach you how to fish with that.’
Rosie said nothing. Her father already had such an implement – a gaff, he called it – but it wouldn’t do to tell Byron Ramsey that. She merely nodded, shocked by what he had just said. She could hardly believe it. The son of the estate owner, who virtually ruled the lives of almost everyone in the village, was offering to teach her how to poach fish from the stream that ran into the huge lake in front of the manor house, then out again, twisting and turning on its way towards the coast.
‘My father keeps the lake well stocked with fish – trout mostly – but some escape down the stream.’ Byron gathered up the reins and mounted his horse. ‘I’ll see you next week. Same time, same place.’ With a salute and a grin, he turned and spurred the animal into a gallop.
Rosie’s gaze followed him until he was out of sight and her young heart felt as if it was doing somersaults in her chest.
It was a strange coincidence that on the same evening when Byron had caught Rosie trying to poach fish, her father should decide that it was time she learned the tricks of his trade.
‘I’m not a church-going man, Rosie, as you well know,’ Sam began. ‘In Mr Ramsey’s eyes, I’m a rogue he’d love to slam in gaol before throwing away the key, but I do have my own principles. I never kill for sport, only to feed oursens and others in need. And I kill as humanely as possible. I try never to let an animal suffer if I can help it.’
Rosie regarded him with her piercing green eyes. ‘But the master kills for sport, doesn’t he? He allows the local hunt to come across his land chasing a poor, defenceless fox until their hounds catch it and tear it to pieces. And he holds shooting parties every autumn that kill hundreds of birds they’ve raised ’specially just to be shot at. And at those times,’ she added, with a tinge of accusation in her tone, ‘you go as a beater to frighten the birds into flight for him and his gentry cronies to shoot down.’
Sam sighed. ‘Yes, I do, and I can’t pretend I like doing it, but needs must. I need to earn a bit of money for things we can’t provide for oursens. We live well off the land, Rosie . . .’ Like everyone in the village, Sam had a patch of ground behind his cottage where he grew vegetables and rhubarb. He also kept hens, ducks and a few geese. ‘We’re even lucky enough to have our own apple and plum trees. Not everyone has. And then there’s fruit from the hedgerows and mushrooms in the woods and – I go poaching.’
‘On the master’s land,’ Rosie said softly, her gaze never leaving his face.
‘Aye, I do, and it’s illegal – you’ve got to understand that – but, to my mind, wild animals don’t belong to Mr Ramsey.’
‘But they’re on his land and you’re trespassing.’
To this Sam had no answer, except to say, a little sadly, ‘So, do I understand that you’d rather not learn my ways?’
Rosie smiled now and her whole face lit up. ‘Oh no, Dad, I want you to teach me everything you know.’
Sam and his daughter lived in the tiny cottage where he had been born, half a mile to the south of the village of Thornsby, set on the edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds and close to woodland; all of it belonging to the Ramseys’ estate. Houses and cottages clustered around a small village green with the road in and out of the village running from north to south. The church with its small cemetery stood on a hill top at the northern end. The only time Sam ever went near the church was to visit his wife’s grave three times a year, to lay flowers on her birthday, their wedding anniversary and Christmas Day. The village had one shop, run by Ben Plant and his wife, which sold everything one could think of – and more besides – from milk and meat to candles and soap. The carrier called twice a week to replenish the stock of items that Ben couldn’t source from the local farms. The village had one pub, the Thornsby Arms, and a wheelwright-cum-carpenter, who was also the local undertaker. The only ‘upholder of the law’ in the village, other than William Ramsey’s gamekeeper and the estate bailiff, Jack Pickering, was PC Douglas Foster, who lived in a police house near the village green where he had a small office. He patrolled the village and the surrounding land, most of it belonging to William Ramsey’s large estate, on his bicycle, reporting to a larger police station in the nearby market town of Alford. He was a benevolent man and tried to be a friend to those under his watchful eye rather than an enemy.
William’s Ramsey’s estate covered just over two thousand acres of farmland, woodland, parkland, streams and lakes. The farmland was divided into three small farms. One, Home Farm, was managed by William with the help of his estate bailiff. The other two, Bluebell Farm and Blackberry Farm, were run by tenant farmers. During his lifetime as a poacher, Sam had visited all corners of the land belonging to William Ramsey and would do so again, but tonight he would stay close to home. He and Rosie would venture into the wooded slope just above and to the east of the village. Beyond that, the land sloped down again through cornfields to a huge lake, overlooked by Thornsby Manor, a grand mansion in the vale where the Ramsey family lived.
Sam had learned his dubious profession as a boy from the local poacher at the time, nicknamed Little Titch, and now he planned to pass on the tricks of his trade to his daughter, Rosie. Sam’s wife, Agnes, had died giving birth to a stillborn son when Rosie was two. Sam had never remarried after his wife’s death, preferring to concentrate on bringing up his daughter, but he had received a lot of help from the villagers, many of whom were grateful to the poacher. Without him, they might well have gone hungry during hard times. Sam, still a comparatively young man at thirty-four, had one special friend; Nell Tranter, a widow who lived about half a mile from Sam’s cottage on the outskirts of the village with her son, Nathan. He was a year older than Rosie. Nell’s husband had been killed in an accident at threshing time on the estate only a year after Sam’s wife had died. To avoid an inquiry and a scandal, William Ramsey had made over the cottage to Nell and he paid her a small pension. And if the whispered rumours were to be believed, there had been bribery in other quarters too.
‘I know it’s hush money, Sam,’ Nell had said tearfully at the time. ‘But what can I do? I’ve a son to bring up.’
‘Aye, I know, lass, an’ it’s not easy, I can tell you. But if you need owt, you only have to say. Me and Jim were good mates.’ It had been Jim Tranter who had often found casual labouring jobs on the estate for Sam when work was plentiful.
Nell had smiled through her tears. ‘And if I can do anything to help you with Rosie, you must tell me. There’ll be times when she’s growing up she’ll need a woman to talk to, just as I’m sure Nathan will need a father-figure in his life.’
Sam had chuckled. ‘I don’t know that I’m a very good role model for him, Nell, but I’ll do me best.’
She had touched his arm. ‘That’ll do for me, Sam.’
And so, with the friendship between Sam and Nell deepening, the two youngsters were thrown together. Not that either of them minded. Nathan grew tall and strong, with broad shoulders, brown hair and warm brown eyes. Even from the time they were in the school playground together, Nathan was Rosie’s champion. Not that she needed him. With her fiery temper, she was a match for anyone and it was often she who gave someone a tongue lashing on Nathan’s behalf, saving him the bother of using his fists.
As daylight began to fade, they got ready. Queenie, Sam’s lurcher, wagged her tail furiously in anticipation.
‘Now, just after harvest, is a good time for you to start,’ Sam explained. ‘Partridge are ground-roosting birds and can no longer hide in the corn. Even rabbits and hares are more visible.’
It was a mild night, a little windy, with the clouds scudding across a bright moon as they set out.
‘It’s not a perfect night,’ Sam continued, beginning his first practical lesson. ‘Bad weather’s the poacher’s friend, especially if you’re using a gun, though a misty night’s the best time for that. It muffles the sound.’ Sam was thin and wiry but stronger than he looked. His face was tanned from being out in all weathers and his curly hair was still the same vibrant colour as his daughter’s. Tonight, he was dressed in his poacher’s garb: a dark shirt, black jacket and trousers, the latter secured around the waist with binder twine. On top, he wore a voluminous coat with several deep pockets for carrying the equipment he needed for setting snares and traps. Beside him, Queenie trotted obediently.
‘You used to have two ferrets. I remember them. You used to carry them in the pockets of your coat.’
‘Aye, and I did well with them, but they can be a lot of trouble. I’d rather it be just the two of us and Queenie now.’ As they came to the edge of the woods, Sam whispered, ‘No more talking now. Quiet as you can. Poachers need to move like ghosts.’
Rosie had fastened her long hair beneath a russet-coloured velvet hat to prevent it being caught by thorny brambles. Wearing a similar-coloured coat and carrying a leather bag over her shoulder, she trod carefully, trying not to make the undergrowth snap beneath her feet. The noise, in the black night, would sound like a gunshot. The trees rustled above her head, the moonlight, fitful between the branches, cast eerie shadows. Damp bracken brushed against her skirt. Scurrying animals and an owl’s hoot were the only sounds to unsettle her. But she was undaunted; Rosie was used to the woodland at night. Maybe tonight was to be her first lesson in poaching, but it was by no means the first time she had ventured among the trees after dark.
They came out of the far side of the woods and stood looking down the gentle slope of the recently harvested fields, the stooks still standing awaiting collection.
Rosie gasped at the sight in the moonlit field. ‘Just look at all the rabbits. There’s dozens of them.’
Beside her, Sam chuckled. ‘What did I tell you? Now, we’ve got to find a run. Let’s start here and work our way round the edge of the field.’
‘What am I looking for?’
‘Rabbits are creatures of habit and always use the same route. They run at nightfall and daybreak. You look on the ground for signs where they’ve hopped along.’
When the clouds uncovered the moon, he squatted down and pointed to the ground. ‘See, here and here – the flattened grass.’
From his pocket he pulled two sticks joined together with a piece of string. To the end of one of the sticks was attached a loop of wire with a slip knot. He dug both sticks into the ground, carefully placing the loop of wire over the path the rabbit would take. ‘Mind you get it at the right height. About six inches off the ground.’
They caught four rabbits, resetting the snare each time.
‘That’ll do for tonight. I don’t need to start feeding half the village yet, not while there’s still plenty of work to be done on the farms. But come winter . . .’
Her father didn’t need to say any more. When harsh weather came, the need for farm workers on the estate lessened and many, who were only casual labourers, found themselves out of work with only parish relief or the workhouse to turn to. That was when they looked to Sam for help.
As they retraced their steps through the woods, Rosie heard voices. Beside her, Sam hissed, ‘Down. Get down. Not a word.’
Queenie whined softly but Sam put his hand on the dog’s collar to quieten her. Rosie crouched behind a bush, straining to hear the words. There were two of them; two men. She managed to stifle the exclamation that rose to her lips as one spoke, for now she recognized his voice. Byron Ramsey. Rosie held her breath but then, as the other man spoke, she let it out slowly in a sigh of relief. She recognized his voice too.
