(no subject)
Surrey, 1864
“Keep away from them apples, you dirty thing!”
The young woman ran across the field towards where the haystacks were, with the workers’ lunches left unguarded on the ground nearby. Her dress, which was that of a thresher in the fields, flapped behind her as she went.
The child, sensing the danger, turned its head towards the source of the sound while it continued to wolf down the apples. It was thin, and had stains on its cheeks in rings from where the earth had been washed away by rain. Exhausted by its miserable diet, it hunched itself instinctively over the food without bothering to escape, privately reckoning how much of a beating it could take before the apples were wrenched from it. As the woman drew closer, she could see that the child was in fact a girl of ten or eleven, with long hair that was red beneath the dirt.
Hannah herself was approaching twenty, and was blonde and strong-armed with a finely shaped mouth and shining eyes. She was a phenomenon among those parts for the reason that she did not belong to them: she had come out of London seeking better things, and had quickly established a reputation for working with a relentlessness that only one who had lived in city slums could sustain. Life beat in her like a drum, forceful and thrilling, and she could find joy in her work and laughter in her leisure. It was true that she was isolated, a single woman living among the families of small farmers, but it was a sympathetic sort of distance: one that could be shared and even laughed at - as when people jested with her about her accent, or her fear of cows.
As Hannah reached the child, the girl threw herself to the ground over the apples, continuing to eat as she did so. There were no remnants of the eaten apples on the hay around her, and the casks of ale were untouched - the child was not eating, any more than the great machines in the work houses could be described as knitting, but was transferring all eatables from outside to within as fast as humanly possible. Hannah’s first instinct was to shake the child, but as its deprived state became apparent to her, she instead reached gently under the girl and turned her over.
“A fine way to get your lunch, running around stealin’ it from other people,” she scolded in a voice as clear and low as the London bells, “that’s the path that’ll lead you to the scaffold, and no mistake.”
The girl gave no sign of remorse but instead ate the largest of the apples in a few bites.
“You understand? Now we’re going to have to go and get some more from Mr. Hardy’s orchard ‘afore the others finish work.”
The child nodded slowly, looking Hannah in the eyes for the first time. Her looks were piercing, with wild blue eyes that stood out against the mud on the round cheeks, that had not yet succumbed to gauntness. She was dressed in a boy’s coat and trousers, both of which were so worn through that they had to be tied into place at several points with rags. Like many of the village children, she did not bother with shoes, but unlike them no part of the skin on her feet was the least bit discernible, for the seasons had covered them with traces of all that she had walked over - except snow.
Hannah took the child’s hand in hers. She cast a glance back at the bundle she had made, which was already double that of anybody else’s, and set off down the lane. She felt the child’s eyes still on her, and for some reason this so pleased and excited her that she burst into song. Anyone who had seen them would have thought that they were sisters who had been playing in a field all day, not an ex-factory girl in a strange county and an orphan without a name.