Stone Cradle by Louise Doughty Read Free Book Online Page A

Huntingdon and find somewhere to stop until she gets out,’ Dad said.
    Hard labour
, our Dei? ‘They won’t make her lift rocks or anything, will they?’ I asked Dadus but he wouldn’t reply.

C HAPTER 3
    C annon balls. It wasn’t rocks, we found out, it was cannon balls.
    We were lucky, and managed to get the fine paid up in a fortnight. Dadus found some local Lees who helped us out a bit, and we stopped with them while we came to an arrangement. They paid our fine and then kept our vardo, which was a beautiful bow-top, while we set off on the horse for Huntingdon. They would keep the vardo for us until we returned with Dei and paid them back. We were that relieved, as to have sold it outright would have been the end of us.
    We had a little money left over after we’d paid the fine, so when we got to Huntingdon, we tried to get a room at an inn called The Sun. I could tell the inn was called The Sun, as I could see the sign swinging in the wind and the bright yellow sun a-painted on it, with pointy rays. There was sleet falling, at the time.
    They turned us away, even though we could see there were no horses in their stable, but the woman came out after us and said there was another place at the bottom of St Peter’s Hill that tookwhat she called all sorts. It was worth us trying, she said, on account of it being close to the House of Correction. She didn’t like to think of the baby having nowhere to lay its head what with the sleet coming down an’ all. We thanked her right enough.
    The other place had a sign that was a dog raised on its hind legs snarling at a bone that was flying past in the beak of a big black bird. The downstairs bar was dark and crowded and there was a terrible noise of shouting coming from upstairs, and the young man who spoke to us said there were eight to a room but only six in one of them so we could have that. At this, Dadus told some story of how Lijah was awake all night and the young man would get complaints in the morning and wasn’t there a shed or something out back, next to the stables? He looked at us a bit funny but of course we could have told him that we would rather stop by the horses than with a bunch of stinking, drunken gorjers any day. We didn’t like paying for it when there were any number of stables in the town we could have slept in for free if we’d left the sneaking in until dark, but considering the position we was in we could not risk getting into trouble. Dei would be depending on us.
    As it turned out, there was a shed with a hayrick behind the stables which was as cosy as anything and we saw to the horse first and then the young man gave us some blankets and a talking-to about not lighting a fire, as if we were stupid. Dad went off and came back with the good news of having found a baker’s shop where they would give us bread each day if he was there two hours before dawn to help unload the furnaces. And this piece of luck was so large that I felt almost cheerful as we settled down at the bottom of the hayrick and ate fresh rolls, and talked about how the next day we would queue at the prison with the other relatives and send a parcel of rolls in to Dei. We talked about how pleased she’d be to get them.
    *
    The next day, after Dadus had done his shift at the baker’s, we set off for the prison.
    There was a right old crew queuing at the gate of the House of Correction. You’ve never seen such a bunch in your lives. There was the bony women with their bony children waiting to see the Debtors, and the loose women with their faces painted and even some gentlefolk, standing to one side, who were let in first, of course. Dadus said how he heard one say his brother was in there for sedition.
    ‘What’s that?’ I asked quietly.
    ‘Talking about not liking high-up folk,’ Dadus replied.
    I had never been near such a place before, and it felt strange to see the whole world there, and to think that such calamity could happen to anyone. It made me feel a bit