Abigail Moor by Valerie Holmes Read Free Book Online

filled
mattresses. Immediately to her right was a low arch beneath the
cruck frame of the building that led, she presumed, to another bed
chamber, as she could hear someone snoring.
    “Be quiet,
lass, don’t go wakin’ up the guests. Now you rest here and a tray
will be sent up. We will call you when the coach arrives.”
    Abigail glared
at her, but said nothing.
    Martha made her
way back down the stairs.
    Abigail was
left with a small oil lamp which flickered as her hand shook. She
felt fear like she had never known before; how she missed the
comfort of Beckton Manor. She stared out of the small leaded window
at floor level at the inn’s gable end; she waited anxiously for the
coach to arrive. Ale, bread and cheese were brought to her. She had
never felt so desperately alone, she was left on her own to stare
at the night by the light of her dwindling lamp, and reflect upon
the day’s events.
    She ate without
appetite and drank the noxious fluid, realising she knew nothing of
this world, only what she had read in her father’s study, from his
selection of books.
    Abigail
reflected on how stupidly bold her behaviour had been. She could
not help thinking how next time she would stay silent when a
strange door was opened to her, until she could see what or who lay
behind it.
    A loud dragging
noise of what sounded like barrel over stone could be heard from
the lower parlour. Abigail leaned over the stairwell, daring
herself to peer down as there were gaps between the planks that
made up the steps. She thought of walking down the stairs to see
what they were doing, bored with her own company, and curious as to
who worked at such an hour in such a solitary place. It seemed a
strange time for a dray to deliver. She peered down the stairs, but
saw that the man in black, wearing a tall hat, smoking a long clay
pipe, was sitting on the bottom two steps. Abigail fell back into
the gloom of the roof space. The sooner she was away from this
place the happier she would be, or so she prayed she would. This
was not how Abigail felt life should be. It was certainly not how
it was going to be. When she arrived at York, Martha Napp was in
for a surprise. Abigail was determined she would take control again
– but the question which concerned her was: How?
Chapter Five
    Martha returned to an ever more impatient Abigail after what seemed
like an age. The noises from the lower room had ceased and whoever
had been there had left by a back door. Abigail was frightened.
Every shadow, every snore from the other part of the loft space had
unnerved her. She was used to clean light coloured walls, high
ceilings, warm drapes, polished furniture and fine things, not a
draughty open thatch roof with roughly hewn beds beneath it. This,
she thought, was a place for insects, spiders and mice. She had
been secreted away and guarded like a criminal. Her disappointment
in Martha was growing by the minute. How could she think of leaving
her on her own in such a place as this? She glanced at the
slumbering figure in the bed through the small open doorway. Martha
had not even bothered to see that she was settled and well. Was
this how her servant thought it would be from now on? If so,
Abigail reasoned, she should be better off on her own.
    “Come, lass,”
Martha gestured to her and looked back down the stair well. She
prayed that the woman had not told this ‘Ezekiel’ of her father’s
money. If she knew she carried this then would they rob her and
return her? No, Martha would be in too much trouble if that
happened as Frederick meant what he said about placing her to work
in Blackman’s asylum.
    Slowly she
retraced her steps back down the narrow wooden stairs, trying not
to catch her bonnet on the low ceiling rafter. She returned to the
settle in the bar parlour by the open fire, pondering her future,
whilst Martha returned to Ezekiel in the lower one. Abigail stared
at the dying fire embers in the grate, her new life, vulnerable and
exposed to a world