Joe looked surprised. ‘Do you be certain sure you want to be going back through the woods by yourself? It be pitch black in a few minutes.’
Eliza smiled. ‘I grown up here, I be knowing these woods better than the animals that call it home.’
‘No,’ Joe insisted, ‘If you be heading back, then I be walking you. Come on, lead the way.’
Eliza looked at him, mystified. Having complained of his tiredness from walking for days on end, he was now happy to trek all the way back to the workhouse. Just for her. Apart from Mrs Honeysett, nobody had ever taken much care over her—let alone a stranger; her fear of him immediately dissolved and she suddenly knew that she would be safer with him than back at the workhouse. ‘No, let’s carry on.’
‘Do you be sure?’ he puzzled, setting his canvas bag to the ground. ‘What about your home?’
Eliza shrugged. ‘It still be there tomorrow.’
‘Won’t nobody be missing you?’
Eliza thought about the workhouse and all the people inside it. After all the trouble and bad attention that she had brought to the place, most of them would be glad that she had gone. She thought of her friendship with Lydia and Amelia, their shared bond and their awful shared experiences. They would miss her. Just yesterday, she had spent the day in the infirmary, helping Lydia to deliver her baby boy. She was now in confinement, on a diet of beef boiled to a rag, toast and water. She would certainly miss her.
‘No,’ she breathed quietly, then began to move off. She stopped again and turned. ‘Do you be a-coming or not?’
Joe picked up his bag and followed her.
‘I be knowing of somewhere we can sleep tonight not far from here: Farmer Willis’s barn. It be away from the farmhouse and there’s sure to be left over hay to lie on.’
Joe exhaled. ‘A lie down be just what I need.’
The path terminated at the edge of the wood, giving out onto a cornfield. Just above the tall sheaves the last vestiges of the sun were manifest in a broken sweep of orange and pink lines.
Eliza led them along a narrow track that cut through the field, wanting to reach the barn before full darkness set in.
‘Can I be asking you, Eliza,’ Joe began, ‘why you want to be helping a stranger like this? It be very trusting of you.’
Eliza tried to evoke one of the women that she had so often pretended to be, to give an answer that told of adventure and risk, but instead she gave the honest answer: ‘To escape, just for a moment.’ Inexplicably, hearing her own words surprised Eliza. She was escaping the only home that she had ever known. But it was a bad home where awful things happened.
Eliza suddenly stopped, turned and placed her finger on her lips. They had reached the end of the field. She cautiously parted the long tendrils of corn and looked out onto the road. With darkness almost completely settled, Eliza was as certain as she could be that nobody was around. Facing Joe, she nodded and led him across the road to a large barn on the outskirts of the Willis’s farm.
Silently, Eliza crept inside with Joe close behind. She looked around the barn and was thankful that it would be a warm night; it had three wooden sides and a roof but the front was entirely open. Just as she had thought, at the back was a small stack of hay.
‘How do this fine hotel be meeting your expectations, sir?’ Eliza joked. Despite the darkness, she knew that Joe was smiling.
‘I think it be doing very nicely,’ he replied in a well spoken voice. ‘Which bedroom will be mine?’
‘Please, allow me,’ Eliza said, taking him by the hand and walking him towards the hay. ‘Here, sir.’
‘Why, thank you, madam,’ Joe said, dropping his canvas bag and collapsing into the hay. He sighed noisily and shuffled to get comfy.
Eliza scanned the dark barn for her own suitable place to sleep. It was inappropriate for her to be sleeping in any close proximity to a man—she knew that—but there was nowhere else. It would be a fine night, so she decided to sleep outside. It wouldn’t have been the first time. After all the trouble at the workhouse last year she had run away and spent three nights sleeping in a field. And then Mr Honeysett had found her and dragged her back.
‘Where do you be a-going?’ Joe called.
‘Outside,’ Eliza replied.
Joe sat up. ‘What for?’
‘To sleep.’
‘Why do you not be sleeping in here?’ he asked.
Eliza took a moment to respond. ‘It ain’t right, the two of us. Man and woman strangers sleeping side by side.’
‘Then I be the one to sleep outside,’ he said, jumping up. ‘Here.’
‘No, Joe, you be needing the rest,’ Eliza insisted, warmed again by his kindness.
‘Eliza, who be seeing us? At first light I be gone. Lie down here.’
She stood illuminated by the pale moonlight filtering in through the open side of the barn, deliberating on what to do. She knew that it was naïve of her, having been in his company for such a short while, but she felt a strange feeling towards Joe that she had never felt towards anyone else besides Lydia and Amelia: trust. She would be safer sleeping in a barn with him than she would be sleeping in the workhouse. One night of adventure, where she could be Eliza Winter.
She crouched down beside Joe and began to flatten the hay. ‘Goodnight, Joe.’
‘Goodnight, Eliza,’ he whispered. ‘Thank you for your kindness.’
Inside, she
