Stone Cradle by Louise Doughty Read Free Book Online

wasn’t a proper courthouse, so the magistrate held our hearing in the local pub one morning, in the top room. It’s all a bit strange to me now. A woman came and said how a gipsy had come to her door and she’d turned her away, and later her chickens had gone poorly and started staggering about, then another pair had come and offered to buy them off her cheap. I was only half listening. Then she said the second two was a young ’un and an old ’un and they had a baby with them, and she pointed at me and Dei. I wanted to laugh out loud, it was that foolish. I had never seen the woman in my life.
    The magistrates called her the prosecutrix. When she went to the back of the room, she stood next to a big fella, and I saw he was the farmer that had spat at us as we sheltered underneath the oak tree.
    There were so many other people in the room saying things that I lost track. I just held my Lijah. But I could feel Dei and Dadus either side of me getting stiffer on the bench in a way that meant they were upset. Then we were all standing, and the magistrate in the middle, a white-haired fella, was saying, ‘One week hard labour followed by five years in a reformatory,’ and Dadus was stepping forward with his hat clutched in his hands and tears were running down his face and he was talking about Lijah and saying how I was still a nursing mother and so young and all – and it wasonly then I realised they were talking about me. I looked at Dei, and she was crying too, with her eyes closed and lips a-flutter, which meant she was praying.
    We all sat down again, and the white-haired fella goes into a huddle with the others.
    There is a way to get through being told something terrible, and that is not to believe it until it is proved to be true. At least, I thought so’s at the time, although I have since changed my mind and am more into plain speaking.
    I think we were let out the room for a bit. I can’t rightly remember. I know that, some time that day, the lady who ran the public house came up to me with some bread and cheese and said I was nobbut a child myself and had not a scrap of flesh on me and if I was to look after that babby I needed feeding up. I gave some to Dei and Dadus but they wouldn’t take it.
    We were back in the room then. It had a lot of windows and a low ceiling. They probably had wedding parties and such when it wasn’t for the magistrates. The white-haired fella said how he had been moved by what my Dadus had said and the fact as how Dadus had been a licensed hawker and had not been in trouble before spoke something. But he could not let people like us think it was all right to go around poisoning people’s chickens just whenever we felt like it. But he was mindful of how to take an infant from a nursing mother was not right. As such, I was getting a fine. Our vardo and things would be sold to pay for it if we did not have no money. But he had to make an example of all miscreants and because of that Dei would get four weeks’ hard labour, not two, and I understood she was doing my hard labour for me and I started to cry but Dei and Dadus were quite calm by then because I wasn’t going to the reformatory neither. Dadus got a fine for not being licensed.
    All I understood was that I wasn’t going to be put away and Lijah would not be taken from me. I didn’t really understand aboutDei. She was being sent to the House of Correction in Huntingdon, they said. Dadus and I would have to stay in Ramsey to sort out our fines.
    When we got outside, it was cold and sunny. There was the same wagon waiting. Dei went forward and I went to go with her, but Dadus put his hand on my arm and said, ‘No, Lem, you and me are staying. It’s just Mother is going.’ And I stood holding Lijah and staring at her as she climbed up. There were windows in the wagons, and I waited for her face to appear at one, but it didn’t, which was perhaps for the best.
    ‘When we’ve sorted out the fines we’ll go down to