Chapter 1
The ship docked in Portsmouth on the morning tide. The passage from Spain had taken most of the money Maggie Parker had been able to save, and had not included food. Buying enough to keep the children from hunger during the voyage had depleted her slender reserves even further.
She did not have to carry Billy and Eva far from the wharf to the coach stop.
However, she discovered that passage to the Midlands on a coach would cost more than she could afford, so they were facing another long walk.
Two hundred miles, at least, and that was if the first village was the correct one.
Maggie was certain, however, that she would be able to earn money along the way.
She was willing to turn her hand to any honest work, and it was now autumn, so there would be crops to harvest in the countryside, and extra hands might be needed even in the towns, when inns or great houses had busy times.
As she walked, she was looking for a hand cart or something similar.
Ah, yes! Outside a general store was a sturdy wooden wheelbarrow.
That was what she needed. Maggie went inside to find the price.
“Three shillings, ma’am,” said the shopkeeper.
After some haggling, she bought it for two shillings, popped Billy inside, and pushed it back to the wharf.
She was determined to be out of town before nightfall so she would not have to spend her last few coins on accommodation.
In summer, a woman, a toddling infant, and a baby could make themselves comfortable for the night in a hedge or under a tree—and she had done so many times during their long treks through Portugal, Spain, and even the south of France.
Even if it rained—and in the England she remembered from her childhood, rain was always a possibility—she might find barns or abandoned cottages that would give them a little shelter from the elements.
Yes, they would not need to rent a room under a roof in the country. Towns, though, were not safe places for those without a stout door between them and the predators who would take even the little that Maggie and her children owned.
To her relief, the boy she had paid to watch her possessions was still waiting on the wharf, and so were her bags, her small trunk, and the bag with all the things she needed for the baby.
She gave the boy another threepence and an extra penny to help her load the wheelbarrow.
Then, with Billy perched on the trunk and Eva still in the shawl tied tightly to her back, she set off to walk to Ashton.
“It will take us most of September, I expect,” she told her two children as she walked.
Chatting to the children helped to pass the time as the long miles rolled away under the single wheel and her shoulders ached.
Her feet, too, for it had been months since their last long trek across the Pyrenees, and through Spain to San Sebastián.
Once she had arrived at the Spanish port town, she had found work cleaning floors and making up rooms at an inn, so she could save enough money to buy passage for them all.
Between that and the time on the ship, it had been more than three months since she walked long distances, and Eva had grown heavier—it felt like much heavier.
Eva was happy in her shawl. Soothed by her closeness to Maggie and rocked by the movement, she made no complaint. Maggie supposed she slept some of the time, and for the rest, watched the world pass with those wise six-month baby eyes.
Billy, who was never still even in his sleep, kept asking to get down from the wheelbarrow to walk and then to get up again a few minutes later, for he was tired of walking.
A steep hill perhaps two hours out of Portsmouth proved to be the biggest challenge of the day.
Reaching the top, she found a safe place to rest her legs and change Eva’s clouts.
Then it was Billy’s turn, and it was, as always, a struggle.
Billy kept trying to wriggle away, but she soon had him clean and reclouted.
“You may run to that tree and back, Billy, while I get you a drink and something to eat.” She had purchased a bottle of barley water and some buns with currants in them.
Billy had his own metal cup. Eva’s feeder cup, with its long spout, was of china.
It was wrapped in rags, packed in a little box just a fraction larger than the wrapped cup, and tucked into Maggie’s bag, where it was well padded by her clothing.
It was one of the little family’s least-easily replaceable possessions.
The barley water had been flavored with sugar and fruit juice.
Maggie crumbled one of the buns into a plate and splashed it with barley water so that it softened and Maggie could feed it to Eva a spoonful at a time.
She would have to find milk before the day was out.
Her own had dried during the last long walk.
Billy ate most of a bun and asked for a second cup of barley water.
Between the three of them, they almost finished the bottle.
Once they were on their way again, Billy fell asleep in the wheelbarrow. Eva lay relaxed against Maggie’s back—probably, she was also asleep.
The road trended down again, and then back up, but none of the hills they encountered were as steep as the first. Maggie sang a marching song, altering some of the words so that they were less profane. Billy was fond of repeating the sounds he heard.
They made another stop when they passed through a village in the late afternoon. The baker was putting up her shutters, and Maggie asked if she had any leftovers she did not plan to keep for the next day, and that Maggie could buy for half price.
They feasted on pies, sitting on a bench outside of the shop and the only price the woman asked for her bounty was Maggie’s story.
Maggie told her about growing up as the daughter of a sergeant, following the army with her Mama and then marrying a sergeant of her own and having her son.
“When the army invaded France, I remained behind. Billy was very ill, and once he was well again, I was close to my confinement. Eva was born in February, and by the time we could travel again, the war was over. I should have been with him. If I had been with the army, I would know what happened, and I would have been with people who knew that Will and I were married.”
The woman’s eyes softened with pity, as if she was thinking that Will had abandoned Maggie and Billy. It was not true. He loved Maggie, and she loved him. Something was wrong, for Will would have returned for them if he could. Perhaps he was dead. Surely Maggie would know if Will was dead?
Her eyes filled with tears, and she turned away to pour the last of the barley water into the children’s cups.
“You could do with some milk for the little ones,” said the baker, and she hurried into the shop. When she came back, she had questions. What did Maggie do when she realized Will wasn’t coming for her? How did she get to England? Where was she going?
Eva had been five weeks old when news of Napoleon’s surrender and of the victory at Toulouse filtered through to the remnants of soldiers’ families left behind in Spain.
She and Billy joined the band of wives and children who crossed the Pyrenees in the hopes of joining the army’s embarkation.
“By the time we got there, Will’s regiment was already gone, overseas to Canada, they told me.
They wouldn’t send me there or even back to England, because I didn’t have my marriage papers.
” The precious document had been lost in a river crossing where she’d had a choice between saving Billy or saving her bag.
“The other wives that the army rejected decided to return to Spain. I went back with a group of my friends, since I spoke more Spanish than French, and the French didn’t want us there.
” Most of the wives were Spanish, and some of them were only wives by the most generous interpretation of the term. But they were Maggie’s friends.
“When Will didn’t answer my letters—” she had sent them both to the regiment and to ‘Ashton, the Midlands’— “I found a job in an inn at San Sebastián in Spain to earn enough to pay for our passage. And now I am walking to the Midlands. I know Will comes from a village called Ashton. I am going to visit all of them if I must, and find Will’s family. ”
It was only after several letters had gone unanswered that a kindly Englishman who was in San Sebastián on business explained that Parker was a common surname and that many villages in England were called Ashton.
Even in the English Midlands, which was all she knew about where Will’s family lived, there were several Ashtons.
She had addressed her next letter to every Ashton village she could find on the businessman’s map, proclaiming her intention to leave Spain and come to England.
More precious coins were spent on sending those letters, and she hoped one of them had reached Will’s mother.
“You’re a brave woman, Mrs. Parker,” said the baker. “Do you not have family of your own?”
Maggie shook her head. Ma and Pa had been all the family she had.
Both were orphans and both were gone, Ma of a fever in Portugal when Maggie was a child and Pa at Badajoz two and a half years ago.
She had admired Will for some time, but it was not until Pa died, when the officer of their regiment said that she must marry or go back to England, that Will had spoken of his own regard for her.
Once they were wed, admiration had swiftly deepened into love.
“If Will’s family don’t want me, at least I’ll know,” she said, more to herself than to the other woman. “I can make a life for myself and the children, but I need to know what happened to their Daddy.”