Harriet screamed and began to run, but her assailant reached out and grabbed at her shawl, spinning her back around to face him. With a sneer, he dug his meaty fingers into her side and pulled her close. ‘I don’t be finished with you, miss.’
Another scream from Harriet: this one mutated into a gasp as she watched her attacker being floored by a severe punch to the stomach. It took a moment for her to realise that the blow had come from her father, who had appeared from the darkness with George Fox; the pair of them were now feverishly pounding and thrashing the sordid man, whose pleas for clemency were being ignored. She could no longer bear to watch and instead stooped down to help her poor friend, who was twisting on the floor with his hands shielding his eyes. ‘Christopher—do you be alright? Oh, you poor thing,’ she soothed, as she carefully lifted his hand and held it in hers. ‘Thank you,’ she mumbled, so quietly that the words were almost lost below the thumps, thuds and rasping groans of the three men behind her. She could stand it no longer. ‘Pa! That be enough—stop! You be bringing a death to the man and then you be taken away!’
Joseph, blood and sweat streaming down his face, stopped and looked at his eldest daughter cowering on the floor below him. His eyes—vicious and fiery—fell to the floor. ‘Christopher—stand up,’ he ordered.
Despite the pain searing through him, Christopher obeyed. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Take my daughter back to the Horse,’ Joseph demanded.
‘Yes, sir,’ he replied, drawing on what little energy was left in him. ‘Come on, Hattie.’
Despite the gloom of the night, Harriet could sense her father’s firmness and she stood, knowing better than to argue, threaded her arm through Christopher’s and made her way back to the Black Horse.
‘Whatever do you be doing out here, Hattie?’ Christopher asked softly, as they lumbered towards the gin palace.
The emotion that she had doggedly held inside her finally demanded release; the pain around her body, the weakness of her mind and folly of her decisions came flooding out as warm tears. Even if she had wanted to answer Christopher’s question, her rasping sobs would have prevented it. Besides which, she could hardly confer on him the inevitable guilt that would ensue if she informed him that the very reason for her being out tonight was owing to her hope of meeting him at the Polymina.
Christopher sighed and pulled his arms around her. ‘It be all right, Hattie. He won’t be a-hurting you again.’ He could feel her body tense under his touch. ‘He didn’t’—Christopher hesitated—‘He didn’t…’
Harriet shook her head and tried to supress her sobs, but the tears were unrelenting. She shivered suddenly and uncontrollably.
Christopher tightened his embrace. ‘Come on, Hattie,’ he calmed, gently running his fingertips over the fine strands of her hair behind her ear. ‘We be catching a death out here.’
Harriet breathed deeply, seizing control of her emotions back from the night. She stood tall, entwined her fingers with his and headed towards the bright lights and welcome familiarity of the Black Horse.
As she entered the gin palace, Harriet let go of Christopher’s hand and held her head up; there was little more trouble that she could have inflicted upon herself, yet she was determined to face the consequences like an adult, not like the quivering, terrified girl that she truly felt inside. She clasped her hands together to prevent them from shaking and smiled at her mother’s concerned face.
Eliza hurried from behind the bar. ‘Where the devil have you been, Hattie?’ her mother demanded. ‘Leaving those poor girls like that—you want horse-whipping. Do your Pa be a-seeing you, yet?’
Harriet nodded. ‘I just be a-walking,’ she answered, her voice a delicate shell on the verge of cracking. She averted her gaze from her mother’s intense glower; skimming over the usual mixture of clientele steeped in liquor, her eyes fell on the gentleman standing upright at the bar. Their eyes locked and Harriet knew at once that he was the man that she had witnessed at the Priory Stream. She smiled and, for the slimmest of moments, the horrors of the evening vanished. She thought she detected a lightening of his eyes.
She turned when the street door opened. Standing there, looming large in the doorway, was a man whom she barely recognised: bruised, cut and covered in blood was her father. ‘Home,’ he murmured to Harriet, his chest rising and falling rapidly.
Harriet turned to leave, casting a final fleeting glance at the gentleman at the bar.
The dawn sky appeared deep grey, as if it had been sucked up from the sea itself. The snow that had threatened for several days finally began to fall, a fine dusting coated the rooftops and untrodden edges of the pebble-beach walkways. The dimness of the day had forced the early illumination of candles throughout the Priory Ground; to a stranger out at sea, the scene before him would have been one of resplendent beauty.
When Harriet set out that morning, she strode quickly towards the Priory Stream, the cold immediately nipping at her exposed fingers.
She reached the water and was mercifully alone. Her ordeal seven days ago had replaced Widow Elphick’s amputation as the main topic of gossip on the charwomen’s and washerwomen’s lips and she had scarcely been able to contain her fury when she had first returned to the stream following the incident and caught her name in the same sentence and context as Miss Rutherford’s. She hadn’t dared to respond but had tried to make her feelings clear through her admonishing glare.
It had come as a surprise to Harriet that she should still be allowed to continue her extra work; her feared loss of privileges
