Orphans from the Storm: Bride at Bellfield Mill / A Family for Hawthorn Farm / Tilly of Tap House

Picking up her skirts, Marianne ran down the stairs and across the hallway, turning the key in the lock and tugging back the heavy bolts so that she could open the door.

‘Doctor’s here, missus,’ the man who had been knocking informed her, before turning his head to spit out the wad of tobacco he had been chewing.

Marianne could see a small rotund bearded man, in a black frock coat and a tall stovepipe hat, emerging from a carriage, carrying a large Gladstone bag.

‘I understand there’s been an accident, and that the Master of Bellfield has been injured,’ he announced, without removing his hat. A sure sign that he considered a mere housekeeper to be far too much beneath him socially to merit the normal civilities, Marianne recognised, as she dipped him a small curtsey and nodded her head, before taking the bag he was holding out to her.

‘Yes, that’s right. If you’d like to come this way, Doctor. He’s in his room.’

The bag was heavy, and she could see the contempt the doctor gave the dusty hallway. She vowed to herself that on his next visit she would have it gleaming with polish.

‘You’re new here,’ he said curtly as Marianne led the way up the stairs.

‘Yes,’ she agreed. Taking a deep breath, she added untruthfully, ‘Mr Denshaw sent word to an employment agency in Manchester that he was in need of a new housekeeper. I only arrived last night.’ She hoped that the sudden scald of guilty colour heating her face would not betray her.

She paused as they reached the landing to tell him, ‘The master’s bedroom is this way, sir.’

‘Yes, I know where it is. You will attend me whilst I examine him, if you please.’

Marianne inclined her head obediently.

The sheet was red with blood now, and the man lying on the bed was unconscious and breathing shallowly.

‘How long has he been bleeding like this?’ the doctor demanded sharply.

‘Since he was brought here, sir,’ Marianne told him, as she placed the doctor’s bag on a mahogany tallboy.

‘I shall need hot water and carbolic soap with which to wash my hands,’ he told her disdainfully, as he went to open it. ‘And tell my man that I shall need him up here. Quickly, now—there is no time to waste. Unless you wish to se your master bleed to death.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Marianne almost flew back down the stairs, thankful that her ankle, whilst swollen, was no longer bothering her. Opening the front door, she passed on the doctor’s instructions to his servant.

‘Probably wants me to hold him down,’ he informed her. ‘You wouldn’t credit the yellin’ and cursin’ some of them do. Shouldn’t be surprised if he has to have his leg off. That’s what happens to a lot of them.’

Marianne shuddered.

By the time she got back upstairs, with a large jug of hot water, some clean basins and the carbolic, the doctor was instructing his servant to remove the scissors from his bag and cut through the fabric of his patient’s trousers so that he could inspect the wound.

One look at the servant’s grimy hands and nails had Marianne’s eyes rounding with shock. What kind of doctor insisted on cleanliness for his own hands but seemed not to care about applying the same safeguard to others? Marianne’s aunt had been a friend of Florence Nightingale’s family, and she had been meticulous about adopting the rules of cleanliness laid down by Miss Nightingale when doctoring her own household and estate workers. She had also been most insistent that Marianne learn these procedures, telling her many times, ‘According to Florence Nightingale it is the infection that so often kills the patient and not the wound, and thus it is our duty to ensure that everything about and around a sick person is kept clean.’

Impulsively Marianne reached for the scissors, remembering those words now. ‘Maybe I could do it more easily, sir. My hands being smaller,’ she said quickly.

Before the doctor could stop her she placed the scissors in one of the bowls she had brought up with her and poured some of the hot water over them, before using them to cut through the blood-soaked fabric.

The air in the room smelled of blood, taking Marianne back to scenes and memories she didn’t want to have. The poor house, with its victims of that poverty. A young woman left to give birth on her own, her life bleeding from her body whilst Marianne’s cries for help for her were ignored.

Her hands, washed with carbolic soap whilst she had been downstairs, shook, the scissors slippery now with blood. How shocked her aunt would have been at the thought of Marianne being exposed to the sight of a man’s naked flesh. But of course she was not the young innocent and protected girl she had been in her aunt’s household any more.

Soon she had slit the fabric far enough up the Master of Bellfield’s leg to reveal the wound from which his blood was flowing. Not as fast as it had been; welling rather than pumping now.

‘Come along, girl—can’t you see that there’s blood on my shoes? Clean it up, will you?’ the doctor was ordering her.

Marianne stared at him. He wanted her to clean his shoes? What about his patient’s wound? But she could sense the warning look his servant was giving her, and removing from her pocket the small piece of rag she had picked up earlier, intending to use it to clean the top of the range, she kneeled down and rubbed it over the doctor’s shoes.

‘Good. Now, wipe some of that blood off his leg, will you, so that I can take a closer look?’

Marianne could hardly believe her ears. Surely he wasn’t expecting her to wipe the blood from her employer’s leg with the rag she had just used to clean his shoes? Indignation sparkled in the normally quiet depths of her dark brown eyes. She turned to the pitcher of water she had brought upstairs and poured some into a clean bowl.

‘Of course, sir,’ she told him. ‘I’ll just wash my hands first, shall I?’ she suggested quietly, not waiting for his permission but instead rubbing her hands fiercely with the carbolic soap. She poured some water over them, before putting some fresh water in a clean bowl and then dipping a new piece of sheeting into it.

The only wounds she had cleaned before had been small domestic injuries to her aunt’s servants, and none of them had involved her touching a strongly muscled naked male thigh. But Marianne forced herself to ignore that and to work quickly to clean the blood away from the wound, as gently as she could. She could see that the pin had punctured the master’s flesh to some depth, and a width of a good half an inch, leaving ragged edges of skin and an ominously dark welling of blood. Even though he was still semi-conscious he flinched beneath her touch and tried to roll away.

‘Looks like we’ll have to tie him down, Jenks,’ the doctor told his servant. ‘Brought up the ropes with you, have you?’

‘I’ll go down and get them, sir,’ the servant answered him.

Marianne winced once again, moved to unwilling pity for her ‘new employer.’

‘Perhaps a glass of spirits might dull the pain and quieten him whilst you examine him, sir?’ she suggested quietly.

‘I dare say it would,’ the doctor agreed, much to her relief. ‘But I doubt you’ll find any spirits in this household.’

‘Surely as a doctor you carry a little medicinal brandy?’ Marianne ventured to ask.

The doctor was frowning now.

‘Brandy’s expensive. Folk round here don’t believe in wasting their brass on doctor’s bills for brandy. Hmm, looks like the bleeding’s stopped, and it’s a clean enough wound. Knowing Denshaw as I do, I’m surprised that it was his own machinery that did this. Cares more about his factory and everything in it than he does himself. Your master is a foolish man at times. He’s certainly not made himself popular amongst the other mill owners—paying his workers top rate, giving them milk to drink and special clothes to wear in the factory. That sort of thing is bound to lead to trouble one way or other. No need for those now, Jenks,’ he announced to his servant, who had come into the room panting from carrying the heavily soiled and bloodstained coils of rope he held in his arms.

‘Best thing you can do is bandage him up and let nature take its course. Like as not he’ll take a fever, so I’ll send a nurse up to sit with him. She’ll bring a draught with her that will keep him quiet until the fever runs its course.’

‘Bandage him up? But surely, Doctor—’ Marianne began to protest, thinking that she must have misheard him. Surely the doctor couldn’t mean that she was to bandage the Master of Bellfield’s leg?

‘Those are my instructions. And make sure that you pull the bandage tightly enough to stem the bleeding, but not too tightly. I’ll bid you good day now. My bill will be five guineas. You can tell your master when he returns to himself. You may feed him on a little weak tea—but nothing more, mind, in case it gives rise to a fever.’

Five guineas! That was a fortune for someone like her. But it was the information the doctor had given her about the Master of Bellfield’s astonishing treatment of his workers that occupied Marianne’s thoughts as she escorted the doctor back down the stairs, and not the extortionate cost of his visit. Her heart started to beat faster. Did this news mean that the task she had set herself before she arrived at Bellfield could be nearer to completion? If only that might be so. Sometimes the weight of the responsibility she had been given felt so very heavy, and she longed to have another to share it with. But for now she must keep her own counsel, and with it her secret.

As soon as she had closed the heavy front door behind the doctor she headed for the kitchen, where to her relief the cat was curled up in front of the fire whilst the baby was lying gurgling happily in his basket.

He really was the sweetest-looking baby, Marianne acknowledged, smiling tenderly at him. He was going to have his father’s cowlick of hair, even though as yet that cowlick was just a small curl. His colour was definitely much better, and he was actually watching her with interest instead of lying in that apathetic stillness that had so worried her. She was tempted to lift him out of the basket and cuddle him, but her first duty had to be to the man lying upstairs, she reminded herself sternly. After all, without him there would be no warm kitchen to shelter them, and no good rich milk to fill the baby’s empty stomach.

Bandage him up, the doctor had said. He hadn’t even offered to leave her any bandaging either, Marianne reflected, her sense of what was ethically right in a doctor outraged by his lack of proper care for his patient.

She would just have to do the best she could. And she would do her best—just as her aunt would have expected her to do. Now, what was it that boy on the bicycle had said his name was? Postlethwaite—that was it.

Marianne had seen the telephone in the hallway, and now she went to it and picked up the receiver, unable to stop herself from looking over her shoulder up the stairs. Not that it was likely that the Master of Bellfield was likely to come down to chastise her for the liberty she was taking.

A brisk female voice on the other end of the line was asking her what number she required.