Maggie’s wheelbarrow

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Courtship in WIP Wednesday

In this excerpt, taken from my novella Maggie’s Wheelbarrow, Maggie is talking about what happened after her sergeant father died, when the officer said she must marry or go back to England

“The soldiers who didn’t have a wife began to bring me presents and ask me to marry them. All except the one I wanted. Corporal Will Parker watched me from afar, and I waited for him, but he didn’t come. Then our officer told me that I had to choose or I had to leave, for half of the bachelors were squabbling over who had my favor, and the other half were writing poetry or picking flowers, and not a single one of them was remembering we were meant to be fighting the French.”

She chuckled, and the ladies giggled with her. “I was still waiting for Corporal Parker, but my time had run out. So, I picked a bunch of wildflowers and took it to him. I told him I was a good cook, an excellent seamstress, a competent laundress and would make him a faithful wife, but he need not count on me for any poetry, for I was a practical soldier’s daughter.”

Her hands stilled as she remembered his shocked expression and how it changed to dawning delight. Half lost in the dream of that day, she finished her story. “He said he had always wanted to marry me, but he never thought he had a chance. We went to find the chaplain, and were married that very day. And we had more than a year together before we were separated. Happy, even if there was a war on, because we were together. I loved him, and he loved me.”

For more, preorder Merry Belles, due for publication on December 20th.

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Toil and trouble on WIP Wednesday

I’m adding to my Maggie’s Wheelbarrow, and turning it into a Christmas story, for the Bluestocking Belles Christmas Collection. Here’s one of the new additions.

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The hope of soon being reunited with Will, or at least reaching his mother, had kept Maggie moving along the winding roads from Portsmouth to the first village of Ashton. When that proved to be the wrong place, she changed her strategy. Winter was coming. Even now, the heat was gone from the long evenings as soon as the sun dipped below the horizon. If she had to find lodgings for herself and the children during the winter, then she must make more than the few coins she had picked up on her way north.

Having made the decision between one village and the next, she put it into practice at the first opportunity, asking at both inns and the three major houses if there was any work available.

One of the inns took her on to clean rooms and empty slop pails. For one week, she told them. After that, she said, she must be off once more on her search. With Eva on her back and Billy tagging behind, she managed the heavy work with ease, and a week later set off the next Ashton with several more shillings in her purse and a warmer coat for each child to keep them comfortable in the sometimes cold wind.

The second Ashton was as disappointing as the first, but Maggie got two night’s work at the inn, and on the strength of that was offered temporary work at the great house, where they needed extra servants during a house party. At first, she thought she’d have to turn the job down, though the wages were excellent. But another woman overheard her telling the hiring steward about her children.

“I reckon they could stay with me Ma,” she said. “She’s looking after me own young uns, while I earn a few coins, so two more wouldn’t matter to her none, and she could do with the pennies.” The woman introduced herself as Frannie, and offered to take her to visit her mother immediately.

“If she could put you up for at night,” said the steward, “I shall add two shillings a day to the wages, for where I could find you a bed, I do not know. Mind you, you’ll have to be at your post by five in the morning, and will not be home until after the guests have had their dinner.”

Frannie’s mother proved to be a kind woman whom Eva took to straight away, and the other children were twins of Billy’s age, so Maggie went off to work the following morning with a light heart. If she saw out the week of the house party, she would earn the princely sum of twelve shillings! Two shillings of that would go Frannie’s mother, but ten shillings would feed her little family for weeks, if she was careful.

It was hard work and long hours, but in some ways, it was also a holiday. No walking for hours with Eva on her back and the wheelbarrow before her. No need to find dry spaces through the day to feed the children or to change a wet clout. And she enjoyed the walks with Frannie in the pre-dawn quiet and the velvet dark of the late evening.

After the first three days of the house party, the servants settled into a routine—those who belonged to the house, the temporary hires, and servants of guests all learning what they could expect from one another. Hearing how some of the guests behaved toward the servants, Maggie was pleased to be working where she didn’t see them.

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Journeying in WIP Wednesday

I’m rewriting Maggie’s Wheelbarrow, a newsletter subscriber short story, into a Christmas tale for the next Bluestocking Belles Christmas collection. Here’s a snippet with Maggie and her children, poor as church mice, trying to make their way through England to find Maggie’s mother-in-law.

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 four years ago and Pa at Salamanca the following year. She and Will had been courting when Pa died, but he’d not received permission to marry. With Pa’s death, they went ahead without permission.

“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.”

The baker stood up. “Wait here.” She bustled off along the street and disappeared into another shop. A few minutes later, she came back, smiling. “You and the children will sleep here tonight, Mrs. Parker. You can have my brother’s room.” Her eyes filled with tears, which she blinked away. “He died at Talavera, he did, and I know he’d want me to help a fellow soldier’s wife.”

She gave a decisive nod. “And then, in the morning, the carter will take you on your journey. He is not going far, but he’ll save a days walking, I reckon.”

Maggie accepted, and tried to offer money for bed and board, but the baker said that Will had fought to save England, and the least she could do was help out his little family. The carter said the same. “I was in the Peninsula, ma’am. If I cannot help the family of one of our own, what is the world coming to?”

Furthermore, when their ways parted, he left her with an innkeeper’s son who had been in his company in the army, and the son insisted that his family would be glad to have her and the two little ones to stay for the night.

In the morning, a friend of his drove her north, but he proved to be not quite so charitable, and in the end Maggie had to produce the pistol that her father had given her long ago. It was not loaded, of course. Loaded guns could not be carried in pockets and were, in any case, not safe around children. Maggie judged that the man would not know the difference, and she was right. He unloaded her wheelbarrow and her possessions from his cart, called her some unpleasant names, and went on his way.

And so it went through the following weeks. Maggie and her children found safe refuge some nights and on others slept outside under the stars. Sometimes they were offered lifts and sometimes they walked. Twice more, Maggie had to use her pistol to discourage someone with quite the wrong idea about camp followers.

A war bride’s transport on WIP Wednesday
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A war bride’s transport on WIP Wednesday

I’ve been writing a story for my October newsletter. My heroine is a woman with two children, trying to get home to England and the husband who left her in Spain when the army invaded France.

The ship docked in Portsmouth on the morning tide. The passage from Spain had taken most of the money Maggie had been able to save, and she was determined to be out of town before nightfall so that she would not have spend any more.

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 had done so many times during their long treks through Portugal, Spain and even the south of France. But towns were not safe places for those without a roof over their head and a stout door between them and the predators who would take even the little that Maggie and her children owned.

It didn’t take her long to discover that passage on a coach would cost more than she could afford, so it would be another long walk.

Two hundred miles, at least, and that was if the first village was the correct one. It was only after several letters had gone unanswered that a kindly army chaplain explained that Parker was a common surname and that many villages 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 sent her next letter to them all, proclaiming her intention to leave Spain and come to England. She hoped one of those letters had reached the intended recipient, for the cost had set back her savings and kept her in Spain for another month, even though the chaplain was good enough to send the package in the army mail, to be posted on from London.

Ah! That was what she needed. Outside a general store was a sturdy wooden wheelbarrow. 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.

To her relief, the boy she had paid to watch her baggage was still there, 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 Madeleine still in the shawl tied tightly to her back, she set off to walk to Ashton.

“It will take us the rest of June and part of July, 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.

Once she had arrived in San Sebastián, she had found work cleaning floors and making up rooms in 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 that far, and Madeleine 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 eight-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.