Page 35 of The Twelve Days of Christmas

STAVE VIII.

A Thread Unfinished

E IGHT M AIDS A M ILKING

The first day of a new year held no respite for a farmer.

For Nathaniel – the son of Old Mr Hodge of Hodge Farm – his day started as it always did: at the hour of five he would rise from his bed (too short, really, to fit his lanky frame), turn to the small washstand at the window and splash water on his face, then the ruddy hair of his armpits.

If nature necessitated it Nathaniel would use the chamber pot, after which he felt about in the dark for his garments which had, the previous night, been folded with military precision across the back of a simple oak chair that held the pitted scars of woodworm.

No candle would be lit, even though in the winter months no daylight would illuminate the tiny room, for Nathaniel had become accustomed to the morning routine that took less than ten minutes altogether to complete; he could traverse the crooked confines of the farmhouse with sightless ease, and find himself outside in the yard long before the residents of Merrywake had stirred.

No indeed, that it was the first of January, the very first day of a brand-new year, was of no consequence to Nathaniel Hodge, nor to his livestock – the cows still needed feeding, their straw changed and pens cleaned, so too the pigs and sheep before releasing the latter out into the fields …

and all this must be accomplished by breakfast.

For only one man, the magnitude of these tasks might appear to be somewhat overwhelming, but Nathaniel was used to hard work and bitter weather, knew too the workings of the farm intimately since his father had begun coaching him almost as soon as he had outgrown his swaddling clothes, and therefore had no qualms about doing these tasks all by himself.

They were no hardship. Nathaniel enjoyed the uninterrupted stillness of a world not yet woken; those hours of early quiet he looked forward to each and every day.

If one were to survey the young man as he closed the farmhouse door behind him, one would not fathom that, once, Nathaniel had resented this life which had been mapped out for him before he even left his mother’s womb.

Once, he ran away to escape it in an attempt to forge his own path …

But alas, seventeen was too young an age to truly understand that the passing up of a scythe in favour of a blunderbuss was not a more favourable choice, and for four years Nathaniel lived through too many mornings that held in them not the promise of calm, but chaos.

Too many times had he woken to the sound of cannon fire and the screams of wounded soldiers, too often had he seen the sun rise over battlefields filled with the corpses of cavalry and horses.

Too long had he craved the peace of Hodge Farm and the company of a father who would not forgive him for leaving.

Nathaniel had never been more thankful than to receive the bullet that shattered his femur and allowed him to return home.

And though he would for ever walk with a limp, at least he had come home.

So many others had not.

Nathaniel made slow but steady progress across the yard towards the cowshed, his old black-and-white terrier, Buck, trotting at his heels.

Nathaniel did not hum under his breath as some men are wont to, nor mutter absently the way his father had been prone.

In truth, Nathaniel was naturally a man predisposed to silence, especially during this brief spell of morning contemplation in which he could reflect on the events of the previous day before he became distracted by those of the current one.

That morning, however, Nathaniel Hodge was in an uncharacteristically preoccupied frame of mind.

If little Buck could speak, he might ask his master what it was that had set about this melancholia, but even if the dog could utter such a question Nathaniel would not have been able to answer it, for to even speak the name of the person responsible in the quiet space of his own mind was tantamount to torture.

Prudence Brown.

Sweet, innocent, Miss Prudence Brown.

At least, until four days ago, Nathaniel had thought her innocent. But now? Well, now, he was deeply wounded to discover that the girl he had been besotted with these past three years was not innocent at all.

Nathaniel opened the door of the cowshed.

Inside, the scent of hay and sweetly pungent dung assailed his nostrils, the warmth of bovine bodies filled the barn; the cows watched him, some lowed in greeting, and as one of his favourites – a stocky Ayrshire by the name of Duchess – poked her brown-and-white head between the bars of her pen, Nathaniel took bitter comfort by reaching out to scritch her behind her silky ear.

Duchess leant into Nathaniel’s hand, and for a moment he let her grunt in pleasure.

It was Miss Brown who had named the cow.

Nathaniel remembered the day well. He had been home from the Peninsula mere months and had not yet become master of himself; cannon fire and cries still filled his ears at night, dead soldiers and their steeds his vision.

Summer marched into autumn, each night the same terrible dreams. By October Nathaniel did not think he could bear it, but then the calving season commenced and soon the miracle of new life began to erase the ending of others; those dear wibble-legged calves kept him pleasurably distracted, and so too did the presence of a sweet-faced girl who – on her days off – would pass the farm on her afternoon walk.

Prudence Brown, only sixteen, all innocence and friendliness – a breath of fresh air to a drowning man of two-and-twenty.

She did not look at his limp and scorn it as the village girls did.

She did not seem to mind that he was a gangly fellow with hair the colour of copper and a nose twisted from the butt of a musket, or care that he said very little, for she could run her tongue well enough for the both of them.

Neither did Miss Brown turn her nose up at the smell of dung, or the unappealing look of pig-slops, and nor did she – upon arriving to the farm at the very moment a little calf slipped wetly from its mother onto the hay – flinch at the sight of it.

‘I’ve always thought cows so pretty,’ she had told him, and such a generous comment it was, for the newly birthed calf that lay so weak and bloody on the ground most assuredly could not be described as pretty in that moment.

But the sincerity of her softly spoken words were enough to prompt in Nathaniel a feeling of profound admiration and delight, and so he said shyly:

‘You can name her, if you like.’

Miss Brown’s freckled face had lit up. She chose the name Duchess, and though Nathaniel thought the name a little too grand for an Ayrshire cow, he accepted it readily enough and vowed then and there to one day make Prudence Brown his wife.

Still, Nathaniel Hodge, for all his awkwardness and insecurities, was a considerate man.

He did not wish to pressure a girl of sixteen into matrimony.

The wife of a farmer was not an easy life – he knew that well enough, for his mother had despised it until her untimely death – and, like he once had, Miss Brown might wish to chuse another path.

And so he had bided his time these past three years, cultivated a tentative friendship, introduced her to his father before age and infirmity took him.

He allowed Miss Brown the time to understand the changing seasons of his life, and at length Nathaniel had been sure he had engaged her affections well enough to give him hope that when he asked for her hand in marriage, she would be inclined to say yes.

But that was before he saw her in the embrace of Ralph Hornby.

It had been a shock. Nathaniel had not believed her the type of girl to have her head turned by someone as tawdry, someone so officious, as Wakely Hall’s valet.

Nathaniel – who generally felt no inclination to dislike anyone – had never much liked Ralph Hornby, for the man took the greatest pleasure in teasing him, had done so since the moment Nathaniel began delivering milk and other provisions to Wakely Hall in lieu of Old Mr Hodge after his death.

Miss Brown would always shyly let Nathaniel in at the back door, where he would stand overwhelmed and awkward near the hearth in the crowded kitchen, a cup of Mrs Denby’s excellent soup in his hand while the sharp-tongued housekeeper, Mrs Wilson, counted out his payment in one of the back rooms, and during these moments Mr Hornby would mock Nathaniel’s ruddy hair or muddy clothes, and ask rather pointedly if he had a particular fondness for the scent of manure.

So, then, to see Miss Brown attached to the valet in such an intimate manner … Well, the pain that so often troubled his leg was nothing in comparison!

Duchess huffed contentedly; Nathaniel dropped his hand, turned away.

Looking at the Ayrshire was in that moment a little too upsetting for him, and so he busied himself with his morning chores and for the most part successfully managed to remove Prudence Brown from his thoughts.

By the time he returned to the kitchen and fed Buck his morning portion of barley meal and potatoes, Nathaniel had convinced himself that he could manage one whole day of not thinking about Miss Brown at all.

Such was his frame of mind as he sat at the table with his tin cup of beer and small bowl of porridge, and Nathaniel would possibly have continued thus if his oats had not slid from his spoon and dropped upon the tablecloth, the globule landing on the embroidered milkmaid which adorned it and the faded threads of her skirts.