The Wilding Read Online Free PDF Page B

think her entire body was in stays. Her sleeves were rolled up to reveal tight, hard forearms ending in well-shaped but not particularly gentle hands. I had heard a ballad about a youth who dressed as a woman and went into service in order to kill the mistress of the house, and I now glanced nervously at the maid’s bodice. My glance dispelled any such wild notions: though thin, she filled out the front of her gown as females are supposed to. This was certainly a girl – the servant, I guessed, who had shown herself so vigorous as she heaved the bucket from the well.
    She was altogether an extraordinary sight. Her expression was bitter in the extreme, but not, I thought, from any immediate displeasure at me or my doings. Rather, her features appeared to be grown that way from constant hardship and disappointment, and yet for all this she was not ugly. The straggles of hair trailing from her cap were amber-coloured; she had the wedge face and lucent eyes of a fox. That is about as far as I go in poetry; if I have still not made myself plain I will say bluntly that she was not beautiful, but she held the eye longer than many women who are, partly because of this striking physical presence but also because there was something terrible about her, as if, like the beast she resembled, she recognised no kinship with ordinary Christians.
    ‘You may clear away,’ I said. She obeyed me at once; I was glad to see her so prompt to my command.
    * * *

    The next day I took cartloads of apples to the stone cider mill, and then (having promised Dunne that Bully should not be put to this drudgery) I went with my aunt’s permission to her stable and chose a patient old horse to drive it. Once the mill was in action I unloaded my press, piece by piece, and fitted it together next to the old one, a fine construction and well worth the mending, but just now standing dusty. From time to time I left the shed to scrape down the mill and throw in fresh apples. The more I ran about, the happier I was; my spirits were always high when I was making cider, and the work was of a kind that hurried my body but left my mind at liy to think.
    Now that I did think, it struck me that I had slid from not liking Aunt Harriet into suspecting her of wrongdoing. Yet the sense of Uncle Robin’s letter seemed quite to the contrary: whatever his wickedness might be, he had feared her discovery of it. This was a lesson to me. My feelings about my aunt had clouded my judgement, and I should be more careful in future.
    I was crossing the yard as I made this resolve. Happening to glance up, I saw a casement open and the maid’s face visible within. She disappeared at once, and the window was pulled to.
    This strange young woman: what was she doing in my aunt’s house? Why would Aunt Harriet, with her passion for deference and decorum, employ such a creature?
    Perhaps, I thought, they shared some secret – but there I was again, suspecting my aunt when Robin’s letter gave me no cause, and of what? What could I suspect her of, but procuring or hastening his death? Put thus, the very notion was laughable. I again reminded myself: my purpose was to discover the crime Robin had wished to expiate – to ease his ghost, and my father’s anguish, by carrying out the instructions he had not time to give.
    I went back to the shed and continued to feed the mill, but had not been there long before I looked up to see the maid standing in the doorway. She curtseyed to me but remained, seemingly at her ease.
    ‘Pray make yourself at home.’ I spoke coldly, but she seemed not to notice and nodded as if to accept my invitation.
    ‘Where’s Binnie, then – sick?’ Her voice had a rough edge surprising in so young a woman, like the hoarseness of one that lives outdoors.
    ‘Sir,’ I hinted, and was about to add that she had no business to address me, when she repeated, ‘Sir. Is he sick, Sir?’
    ‘I’ve nothing to do with Binnie.’
    ‘Oh. I thought you were his