‘And you think I don’t care? I’m the one that buries them there. Thank God nobody knows what is lying there, else they would take both you and me to the cells. You’ve not told anybody you were expecting, have you? After all, you weren’t that far gone and you only told me the other week.’ Bill looked at his wife and, even by the light of the candle, he could tell that she hesitated in her answer.
‘Our Lucy knows. She’s not daft; she knows the signs nowadays. She’s seen me being sick of a morning, and she’s been more caring than usual when it comes to looking after the li’l ’uns. So I had to tell her.’ Dorothy glanced at her husband as he scowled at the news of Lucy knowing her mother’s condition.
‘I’ll talk to her in the morning – tell her that you’ve lost the bairn and she’s not to say anything. She can stop at home tomorrow, wash this bedding and look after her siblings. Adam Brooksbank will have to do without her for one day. It isn’t as if he’s got a manor house to look after. It’s only a scratty bit of land on the edge of the moor.’ Bill sighed and looked across at the remains of the baby that he had to dispose of.
‘You’ll not tell her what you’ve done with the baby? She’d not understand that you are embarrassed by the deformity of the ones we lose. I wish she’d not noticed that I was expecting, but she’s of an age where she misses nothing.’ Dorothy pulled on Bill’s sleeve and begged him not to say anything about the burial of this baby, and the other babies that had been born and had died with hideous deformities.
‘I’ll not say owt. It’s an embarrassment to both of us. What makes them like that, I don’t know, but both you and I know we couldn’t have them buried in the churchyard and all the world know about them. God takes them away before they are fully formed, thank heavens, and the lime pit is the best spot for them.’ Bill stood up. ‘I’ll take this ’un and bury it now, before it’s light and folk are stirring. You lie down and stay in bed this morning. Lucy can look after everything, once I’ve had a word with her.’ Bill looked down at his pale-faced wife and smiled. ‘It’ll be alright, lass. It’s best got rid of.’
He walked over and picked up the bundle, then stopped just for a second as Dorothy whispered, ‘You’ll say a prayer over it, won’t you, Bill?’
‘Aye, I will, lass. Now get some sleep and leave me to my work.’ Bill walked quietly out of the house and across the yard to a part where nobody else went. He looked around him as he placed the bundle on the cobbled yard and started digging in the back of the quicklime pit, which nobody else but him touched. His heart filled with pain as he placed the small body from the sack that he’d wrapped it in and buried it quickly under the quicklime, leaving it to be dissolved in the flesh-eating substance. Nobody must know his secret. He didn’t know why his wife kept having these deformed babies, but he suspected it was something to do with the chemicals and potions that he worked with in the yard. If he wanted to keep his workforce, he’d have to keep the babies’ deaths and his suspicions to himself or risk everything he’d ever worked for.
He glanced around him and looked towards the east as the first glimmers of daybreak crossed the sky. He’d have to face the world as if nothing had happened, and talk to Lucy, telling her that her mother had lost the baby after carrying it just a few weeks, not months. That would make her think that nothing was wrong, for many a woman miscarried in the first few weeks, leaving nothing to show but blood-stained sheets, which he would ask her to wash in the copper that morning. No doubt she’d complain that she couldn’t go to work at her new place of employment, but family came first and he was sure Adam Brooksbank would understand, once told the circumstances. The main thing was that Lucy never learned about his own and Dorothy’s secret or, knowing Lucy, she would talk and tell someone about the dark corner of the flay-pits where the decomposing bodies of her kin were buried.
Thomas Farrington yawned and stretched, then pulled back the tattered bedroom curtains of his window, which overlooked the yard of the flay-pits. In the dim morning light he watched as Bill Bancroft stood for a second with a shovel in his hand, his head bowed as if he was praying.
It wasn’t the first time he’d seen his boss digging there at a strange time of day. What was he doing there? What was he burying there, and why would he not let anyone use the lime from that particular pit? Was Bill burying money? Surely the lime would dissolve it in time, for the lime burned and dissolved everything it touched, including his own skin, which was blistered and sore from the constant splashes of undiluted lime that splattered on his body. Whatever it was, he was going to find out, Thomas decided. He too would dig in the lime pit and discover exactly what was hiding there.
Lucy sat on the edge of her bed, still half-asleep and trying in vain not to wake her young sister, Susie, with whom she shared her bed. She’d been awakened by her father urging her to get dressed and join him in the kitchen, as he whispered to her from around the corner of her bedroom door.
She shivered in the cold morning light as she pulled on her bodice and underskirts and plaited her long blonde hair, in readiness for her
