On a Making Tide by David Donachie Page B

They thought she had no idea theyfollowed her home, but Emma knew all right, and that gave her pleasure too.
    The smell of mothballs filled her nostrils as she shook out the blue dress and slipped it carefully over her head. Only then did she spin round sharply, quick enough to catch a glimpse of a pair of disappearing, becapped heads. Then, in a loud voice, as she tied her ribbons and finished her hair, she sang a song she had heard in the market, standing outside the Red Bull Inn, that she knew would increase the discomfort of her peeping Toms.
    They took old Cain to ’Merica, cause his crimes were manifest,
    There weren’t not one of his neighbours, who’d swear he weren’t a pest,
    Some were wont to hang him, and from a gibbet swing,
    Yet others swore a gibbet’s too fine, a sill is just the thing,
    For Cain he was peeper, who spied on spouse and maid
    So they packed him off to foreign parts, a trussed and bonded slave …
    There were several more verses, which saw the peeper tarred and feathered, whipped, pilloried and finally blinded, but the scrabbling sound that came through the ill-fitting window made the continuation of the ditty unnecessary. That made Emma glow even more and, with a final look in her little glass, she went through to the parlour to greet her mother properly.
    The pair sat on either side of the fire, her mother smiling and straight-backed in a low cut dress of fine green silk, her brown eyes alight. Nan was frowning and shaking her head, muttering to herself in a way that alarmed Emma. It seemed that while she had been brushing her hair, decisions had been taken.
    ‘Well, Emma,’ Mary Lyon said, her voice confident. ‘What do you say to a chance to enter household service? We shall find you a good family and a nice establishment, and maybe you can get back to your books.’
    Her mother carried on, talking about rising in the household or maybe becoming a governess, if she could apply herself to learning, none of which did anything to cheer her grandmother. Emma wasn’t sure if she should be pleased or upset, the only idea in her mind that wherever she ended up might be more comfortable than the Steps.
    ‘What kind of bed does a girl get in service?’ she asked, breaking into her mother’s flow of assurances.
    Mary Lyon’s eyebrows, pencilled to twice their normal size, went up in surprise. ‘Whatever do you mean, girl?’
    ‘Might they be allowed a feather mattress?’

    ‘I’ve no desire to accord my nephew favours, Mr Fonthill. But neither do I wish to see him expire before he ever gets sight of salt water.’
    ‘I’ve done what I can, sir, short of undermining Dobree or Mrs Killannan.’
    Maurice Suckling knew that there were things he wasn’t being told.Fonthill couldn’t be in ignorance of the true nature of events, even if he chose not to intervene. His nephew was engaged in a feud, the root cause of which he refused to divulge. Childless himself, Suckling was unaware that he was facing a perfectly normal parental dilemma. While demanding honest answers, he had to admire the way these were refused. Whatever punishment Nelson was being subjected to had to be suffered without recourse to either outside authority or family connection.
    ‘Things can’t go on like this,’ said Suckling, with a hint of a groan. ‘My arm aches from wielding that damned birch sapling. I’ve belaboured more haunches this past week than I have in the whole of my last commission.’
    Fonthill didn’t reply, there being little he could say. There was nothing wrong with the Captain fetching a relative aboard, plenty of officers favoured their own, and though those sons and nephews often faced a torrid time in the mid’s berth, it usually died down when they learnt their place. Certainly there was bullying, and quite probably thievery in the article of food. Drinking was commonplace, and after life in a conventional home the shock of joining such a place was terrifying. But service life was harsh,