Turning the Stones by Debra Daley

of the senses. I was tired and the candle flames were wavering.
    Mrs Edmunds said, ‘God almighty, what is it now, wench?’
    I shook my head. The ribbon reminded me of something, but I could not remember what it was. It was like having a word on the tip of your tongue that will not utter itself. I found it awfully upsetting not to be able to plumb the deeper meaning of these yards of ribbon.
    Then something rose in me like a big bubble coming up from under water and I burst out with, ‘The master does not like me! He wants to send me away.’
    Hester said, ‘Huh. Ain’t we all waiting for the axe to fall.’
    ‘Shut it, Hart,’ Mrs Edmunds said. ‘And, Smith, stop wasting the light of a good candle and get on with it.’
    I pushed a wary finger towards the velvet. How could it be anything other than a snarl of ribbon? Feeling ashamed of my outburst, I bent over my stitches with a brow as stormy as Eliza’s. As I sewed on, by the light of a guttering flame, I wondered what Hester meant by the falling axe.

The Schoolroom and the Parlour

March, 1758
    Eliza put on an habitual scowl as she set about trimming her nib. She loathes essay writing. We are always told that a young lady should present a serene aspect, but Eliza is not a person disposed to mask her feelings. I am far more proficient in that regard. She has the strength of character to be a plain-speaker, too. After minutes of the rowdy mouth-breathing that tends to indicate powerful concentration on her part, she flung away in disgust the goose quill she had successfully mutilated. A crescendo of hoof-beats rising from the driveway three storeys below brought her to her feet.
    She cried, ‘That is Johnny. I know it!’
    Miss Broadbent, who was at the window, answered that it was only Croft on an errand and ordered her to sit.
    Eliza said, ‘I wish he would hurry and arrive. We are waiting for him to bring home bags of coin to salvage us, since Papa cannot. I heard Mama say so to Lady Broome.’
    My ears pricked up at that and I thought of the master’s cargo that had fallen into the sea. How the economy worked at Sedge Court I did not know exactly, but I was old enough to grasp that money – the want of it and the need for it – was a powerful governor of actions and atmospheres. People hung from a gibbet for it and left their families behind for it – I amthinking of Hester and Abby, for instance, and the herring girls, all of them exported from their homeland in return for their wages – and I had heard bankruptcy spoken of in the shops at Parkgate in the same tone of voice used to report a death or a sin.
    Miss Broadbent said, ‘It is unkind to speak of your father so disrespectfully, Eliza, and you are indiscreet as well, which is almost worse.’
    Eliza puffed out her cheeks with a noisy expulsion of air. She has a tendency to deploy a range of tics and gestures – huffing sighs, a jabbing finger, an eye rolled back in her head as if to preface a fit – as a point of emphasis or assertion. I do not mean to disparage her, although I admit I sometimes felt a twinge of pleasure when she made a gaffe in front of her mother. That had the potential to make me look more attractive to Mrs Waterland by comparison and reinforce the possibility that she might regard me as a de facto daughter, which was always my covert desire. At the same time I was troubled by such lapses in loyalty on my part towards Eliza. Regardless of the difference in our rank, she and I had a connection that I may call sisterly, and I cared for her as much as I cavilled about her.
    Eliza said, ‘Do you know that Johnny once saved me from drowning?’
    ‘You might have told us such a story once or twice, my dear, or one very similar,’ Miss Broadbent replied, and returned her gaze to the window. She pressed her hands into a steeple and turned the steeple upside down and inside out. The vertical crease between her eyebrows seemed to deepen slightly.
    ‘I shall tell the story