Cassie

by E.V. Thompson

Genres: Women's Fiction; Action & Adventure Romance

Synopsis

Sixteen, pregnant, and brave beyond her years, Cassie refuses to remain patiently at home, praying for the return of her soldier lover from war. Instead she leaves the small Cornish fishing village of her birth and escapes to Spain - joining the brave band of women who follow Wellington's forces.

But once there, everything changes and it isn't long before her life is fraught with terror and adventure. As the armies battle out a desperate war over the hills and great plains of Spain, an even fiercer struggle rages within Cassie. For although her loyalty to Harry endures, her heart has long been under siege from another . . .

Release date: July 5, 2012

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 560

Sample

The day Cassie Whetter realised she was pregnant turned out to be one of the worst days of her young life. She had suspected it for some time, of course, but fear of the consequences was sufficient reason in itself for not facing up to the facts. Now she could evade the issue no longer.

Her family believed her sickness that morning had been caused by something she had eaten, and her mother was duly sympathetic. It was natural, too, that the smell in the fish cellar where Cassie worked should turn her stomach. However, such an excuse would produce a few raised eyebrows if she used it again tomorrow morning. And the day after …?

Cassie’s concern for her condition was tempered by the confident belief that Harry Clymo would marry her as soon as he knew. They had been walking out together for more than a year and it was accepted by Cassie’s family and friends that she and he would one day marry.

Harry Clymo had no family. Orphaned in a cholera epidemic when he was six, the Poor Board authorities had put him out to work on a farm when he reached the age of eight. That had been ten years ago.

There were those who said Harry would never amount to anything more than a farm-hand. That he was not much of a catch for a girl, especially a bright and lively one like Cassie. Some even suggested Harry was simple. But Cassie knew he was shy. He was also kind, and Cassie had come to look forward to Sundays when he came to the village for the afternoon service and was able to spend a couple of hours with her. They would walk around the harbour, gaze at the fishing-boats that were never worked on Sunday, and talk about nothing in particular.

There was no doubting that Harry Clymo was the father of the child growing inside her. Cassie knew this, and Harry would too. It had happened on the last night of Mevagissey Feast when a week of celebrations ended in a grand finale.

It had been the finest Feast Week anyone could remember. When darkness fell, every house for miles around stood empty, the residents thronging the narrow streets of the small fishing village. There was dancing, singing, a travelling theatrical group – and drinking. A great deal of drinking.

Even when a light drizzle moved inshore from the sea it did not dampen the festive spirit. Nevertheless, Cassie had decided to return home for her cloak. She was wearing a new dress made up from cheap patterned cotton. She feared the dye would run if it became wet and she did not want that to happen today.

Harry accompanied her to the small but comfortable terraced house perched on the hillside above the harbour. All was in darkness, but it did not seem worthwhile wasting tinder to light a candle, even when she discovered the cloak was not in its usual place behind the kitchen door. Then Cassie remembered she had been repairing the cloak’s fastening only that morning. She must have left it in the bedroom she shared with her two sisters.

Groping in the darkness, Cassie found the cloak on the bed where she had left it and called the news to Harry. But he had followed her upstairs and Cassie collided heavily with him in the doorway as she hurried from the bedroom.

‘You fill the space better than that old door.’ There was laughter in Cassie’s voice as she clung to him to maintain her balance, her mind on the music and dancing in the streets.

Harry laughed with her, a short, nervous laugh. Then they both fell silent and neither attempted to move apart. Cassie opened her mouth to suggest they should move, but she closed it again without uttering a word. Standing against him in the darkness Cassie could not see Harry’s face, but there was a tension in his body that both frightened and excited her.

‘What is it, Harry? What’s the matter?’

The spurious questions came out as a whisper, yet they had to be asked. Cassie needed time to struggle with an emotional decision she had known must be taken before long. The decision whether or not she would allow Harry to do what so many of their friends boasted of doing.

Harry reached out and pulled her to him clumsily and uncertainly. Cassie knew with instinctive certainty that this was the moment to stop him if she wanted to. She should stop him. A sharp, shocked word from her would be sufficient. He would drop his arms to his sides and mumble a foolish, embarrassed apology … She said nothing.

The cloak slipped to the ground and Harry stumbled over it as, arms about her, he guided Cassie to where he imagined her bed to be.

Cassie protested mildly when they fell upon the bed together, but only because it was the bed shared by her two younger sisters. Her bed was a few feet away across the room and they moved to it hurriedly and clumsily.

Harry’s lovemaking was as hurried and clumsy as the preliminaries had been. It was all over in a few confused, uncomfortable minutes. As he rose from her the realisation of what she had just done overshadowed any other emotion she might have felt. She had given herself to Harry without so much as a single protest. Indeed, she had encouraged him by her silence. By so doing she had become one of the girls the minister preached about at most of his Sunday services. A ‘hussy’. No better than the girls from the nearby town of St Austell, who flaunted themselves on the Mevagissey quayside whenever an Italian or Portuguese ship docked to load a cargo of salted pilchards.

‘Are you all right?’

Harry’s voice carried a conflicting blend of concern and proprietorial pride. He and Cassie had known each other for more than a year but had never gone beyond hand-holding and kissing. Tonight she had given herself to him.

‘You’ll not tell anyone?’

‘Of course not – but we’d better go back to the others before they miss us and suspect what we’ve been up to.’

Cassie trusted Harry and she was grateful that when they returned to the others he made no attempt to drop boastful hints, as she had heard some of his friends doing …

All this had taken place three months before, in December. Now it was March. Harry had been very kind and considerate during the intervening weeks and they made love on two subsequent occasions. Both had been as unsatisfactory as the first. It was winter and the soft grass fields and cliff tops around the village were out of the question. They had made love once in the lean-to wash-house, with Cassie bent uncomfortably over the copper, and again in a derelict fish cellar. Any hope of romance on this latter occasion had swiftly disappeared when a rat scampered from a pile of rubble. It had brushed against Cassie’s skin as she lay straddle-legged beneath Harry, with only his coat between her and the cold, stone-flagged floor.

During the weeks since December it had been evident from the sly, knowing glances cast in her direction by Harry’s friends that they had guessed the extent of his new relationship with her. Cassie tried hard not to allow it to matter. However, the time was fast approaching when her condition would become obvious to every man, woman and child in Mevagissey.

‘I think I’ll go out for a walk.’

Cassie had spent a couple of hours lying on her bed, thinking. Now she walked through the kitchen where the family were gathered and took her cloak from the door.

Joan Whetter looked up from her sewing and smiled at her daughter. ‘That’s a good idea. The fresh air will do you good. Mind you wrap up warm, though. There’s a cold wind blowing off the sea.’

‘It’ll get a sight worse after nightfall, so be back home before dark.’

There were at least five hours before it became dark, but Samuel Whetter spoke grumpily. The owner of a small fishing-boat, he had been unable to put to sea for days because of a strong onshore south-easterly wind.

Seated at the table, Cassie’s two young sisters, Anne and Beth, hardly gave her a glance. Both were sulking because Samuel had insisted they spend the afternoon copying out a chapter of the Bible. It was a task that had been set for them by the teacher at the thrice-weekly Methodist-run school.

When the door closed behind his elder daughter, Samuel frowned. ‘I’m concerned about that girl. She hasn’t looked herself this past couple of weeks. If she’s no better tomorrow I’ll have old Polly look in on her.’

Polly Dunne was a Mevagissey woman who attended births, laid out the dead, and administered herb potions to those who could not, or would not, call on the services of a physician. She ‘specialised’ in pregnancy and childbirth and had attended every birth in Mevagissey for the last twenty years. Polly had been an old woman for as long as Joan Whetter could remember.

‘There’ll be no need for any of Polly Dunne’s mumbo-jumbo in this house. All sixteen-year-old girls have times when they’re out of sorts. I’ve felt like it myself, many a time.’

‘I can remember only three times when you’ve looked the way our Cassie does. The last time was when you were expecting our Beth. If Cassie’s no better tomorrow she’ll be seen by Polly Dunne. You might have blind faith in that young Clymo boy. I haven’t.’

Standing just outside the thin wooden kitchen door, Cassie had heard every word her father said. It did nothing to help the way she felt – but being outside the house did. She realised she had felt trapped in a cocoon of guilt inside the cottage and no answer to her problem would be found there. She had to talk to Harry.

The place where Harry lived and worked was in a remote spot off the Pentewan valley. Halfway between Mevagissey and the market town of St Austell, it was about four miles away. She had never been to the farm before, but Harry had described it so well she had no difficulty finding her way there.

Cassie had hoped to find Harry working in one of the fields before she reached the farm, but there was no one to be seen. Only a few sheep and lambs in one field, and a herd of dejected, hollow-flanked cattle in another. Neither could she see him in the farmyard that was flanked by house and outbuildings. In fact there was a puzzling air of neglect about the place. An appearance of tasks only half done.

Cassie stood uncertainly at the edge of a knee-deep morass of mud, manure and stagnant, stinking puddles for several minutes, wondering whether she dared go to the house and ask for Harry. Her dilemma was resolved when a stocky barrel-chested man emerged from one of the outbuildings. He wore a smock the colour of the farmyard and beneath one arm he held a wriggling piglet, which was squealing noisily.

When he saw Cassie the man stopped and glared. ‘What do you want? We’ve no work here for milkmaids, or any other sort of maid – though if you was a young lad I’d soon find something for you to be doing.’

‘I’m not looking for work. I’ve come to speak to Harry. He usually comes to chapel on Sunday. He wasn’t there last week. I thought there might be something wrong …’

This much at least was true. Harry had not come to the Mevagissey chapel the previous Sunday but there was nothing unusual in this. He would often miss a Sunday service if there was work to be done on the farm.

‘If you want Harry Clymo you’ve come to the wrong place.’ With this the farmer’s mouth clamped shut in a thin, disapproving line and he began to walk towards the house.

‘You mean … Harry doesn’t live and work here?’

Cassie was puzzled. This was the farm Harry had told her about. She was certain of it. Even the farmer himself was just as Harry had described him.

‘This is the farm where Harry Clymo used to work, but he ain’t here no more. He’ll never dare show his face here again, neither. Not after the way he’s behaved.’

Cassie felt as though the ground was opening up beneath her feet as the farmer turned his attention upon the noisy pig. ‘Shut your row, or I’ll slit your throat ’afore Sunday!’

‘Where’s Harry gone? Why did you send him away?’

‘Send him off? I did no such thing to the ungrateful young wretch. After all I’ve done for him these past ten years he ups and goes without so much as a thought for how I’ll manage without him. Treated that boy like a son, I did. A good straw bed in the barn, a fire in the kitchen for him to warm his hands before milking on a cold winter’s morning. Even let him eat in the house with us once or twice. There’s no gratitude in you young folk these days.’

Dismissing the picture of Harry’s life conjured up by the farmer’s words, Cassie asked anxiously, ‘Do you know where he’s gone?’

Her plea exposed the desperation she felt. The farmer peered at her with a new interest. ‘You’ll be that Cassie girl, from down Mevagissey. The one he’d talk about whenever I gave him half a chance.’ The farmer grinned maliciously. ‘What’s the matter, girl? Harry left you in the lurch, too? Left you with more than he’s left here, I’ll be bound. That reminds me, there’s a few bits and pieces of his up in the barn. When he left me in St Austell market he said I was to give his things to Cassie Whetter. That’ll be you, I dare say?’

Cassie could only nod.

‘There’s a letter for you too. Not much more than a line or two. He scribbled it out and handed it to me, for you. Don’t ask me what it says. I’ve never had no need to learn to read or write, nor the missus neither. She’s got the letter up at the house.’

Suddenly losing interest in Cassie, the farmer turned away, but Cassie called after him.

‘Where did Harry go? Where is he now?’

The farmer jerked the wriggling pig to a more secure position beneath his arm. ‘Your guess as to where he is now will be as good as mine. He took the King’s bounty and went off with a recruiting sergeant. Harry Clymo’s joined the army. Gone to fight Napoleon.’

The farmer’s information shook Cassie to the core, but she hoped the note Harry had left would explain his actions. Taking off her shoes she hitched up the skirt of her dress and made her way through the evil-smelling farmyard mud to the dark and gloomy outhouse pointed out to her by the farmer.

Harry’s clothes and pitifully sparse belongings were strewn untidily about the heap of blanket-covered straw that had been his bed. Cassie suspected the farmer had already looked through his possessions. In spite of her own predicament, pity for Harry welled up inside her. This had been his home for ten years. This was where the Poor Board authorities had sent him as punishment for being an orphan in receipt of parish relief. There was nothing here Cassie wanted. She had a constant reminder of Harry Clymo inside her belly.

Leaving the cursing farmer to chase the lively piglet which had finally wriggled free in the yard, Cassie made her way to the house to collect Harry’s letter.

She had met few farmers’ wives. They rarely came to Mevagissey, preferring to shop in St Austell on market days. Most of those she had met had been solid and comfortable, rather jolly women. The wife of Harry Clymo’s employer was none of these things. At least a head taller than her husband, she was thin and gaunt-featured, with a nose that reminded Cassie of a chicken’s beak.

‘So you’re the girl young Harry told me about.’ The farmer’s wife looked at Cassie equally critically. She saw a brown-eyed girl with dark hair pulled back and tied behind her head. Small, only a lingering hint of immaturity concealed a figure such as the older woman had never possessed.

The beak sniffed noisily and lifted a little. ‘I’m blessed if I can see why he was so smitten, I’m sure.’

‘It seems he wasn’t so smitten as everyone keeps telling me.’ Cassie spoke sharply, stung by the woman’s words. ‘If he had been he wouldn’t have run off and joined the army.’

‘There’s something in that …’ Rummaging inside a huge earthenware pot, the farmer’s wife suddenly lost patience and upended the contents on the kitchen table. Picking out a piece of folded and crumpled paper, she handed it to Cassie. ‘Here. Perhaps this’ll tell you why he upped and left.’

Suddenly the woman’s face softened and she looked at Cassie wistfully for a moment. ‘Mind you, there was nothing for Harry here. He was a hired hand, earning barely enough to keep him in necessities. All he got from life was a beating when he did something wrong, and not a word of praise for working hard for months and years. I’d have had him in the house sometimes, but Bill would have none of it. Even when Harry first came and I could hear him crying with the cold out there in the barn, his little legs and hands fair raw with chilblains.’

Cassie was only half listening. The note – and it was no more – had been written hurriedly in pencil upon a page torn from the recruiting sergeant’s notebook. In a few lines, Harry confirmed what the farmer’s wife had just said.

Can see no future on the farm. The serjant says a bright lad like me can be a serjant in the army in a year. An officer in two. He says I’m the sort the army has need of. He’s given me three guineas for signing on. Wish I could have seen you before going but I’m off to Horsham, in Sussex, wherever that is. Wait for me Cassie. I’ll be back to marry you as soon as I can.

Harry

The letter was addressed to ‘Cassie Whetter, Mevagissey’. She doubted whether it would ever have reached its destination had she not come looking for Harry.

‘What does it say? Will he be coming back?’

Folding the note carefully and tucking it inside her purse, Cassie said, ‘He’ll be coming back to marry me, but you won’t see him on the farm again.’

‘He’d get no welcome from my Bill if he did come back – and I trust you’ve no reason to want him to marry you in a hurry? Gone off to fight a war, has he? I’ve got a sister who promised to wait when her man went off to fight in India, more’n twenty years ago. She’s still waiting, and none the wiser whether he’s dead or alive. You’ll be the same if you wait for a soldier to come home and wed you. But I haven’t all day to spend chattering …’

The farmer’s wife had seen her husband walking towards the house. His scowl was as black as the mud-covered piglet he held up by its back legs.

‘Be off with you, and wish that young man well for me … if you ever see hide or hair of him again.’

Pausing by the river which ran parallel to the valley road, Cassie washed off her legs before replacing her shoes. Her initial dismay had passed and she was beginning to marshal her thoughts.

She knew what she had to do, but her plans were far from clear yet. Two basic facts had to be faced. She was pregnant – and the father of the child she was expecting had gone off to join the army. Unlike the sister of the farmer’s wife, Cassie could not await the return of her lover for ever.

Quite apart from the shock to her family and the anger of her father, there were the laws of the land to be considered. Bastardy laws were harsh in the extreme and if the Reverend Mr Tremayne happened to be on the bench she could look forward to a lengthy spell in gaol. The choleric old cleric was fond of saying there was nothing like a few months in a prison cell for teaching an unmarried girl the errors of sinful ways. The fact that a St Austell girl returned to prison after her sixth illegitimate child did nothing to shake his faith in this custodial panacea.

Lost in her thoughts, Cassie sat on the river bank for so long that darkness overtook her well before she reached Mevagissey. She entered the house and went straight to her room, accepting without complaint the cuff to the side of her head administered by her father because she was late home.

That night, when Joan Whetter took a mug of hot milk and a chunk of fish pie to her daughter, she thought the tears on Cassie’s face were the result of her chastisement. Her hug, and a whispered, ‘He didn’t mean anything by it,’ only made Cassie cry more.

When Cassie’s tears ceased, Joan went downstairs to remonstrate with her husband for what had really been no more than a light tap. Samuel justified his actions indignantly. He had told Cassie to be home before dark and she had disobeyed him. He had been fully justified in chastising her. Indeed, if it happened again his punishment would be even more severe …

Later, after leaving the kitchen without a word, Samuel returned from Cassie’s bedroom and reported that he had made peace with his daughter. As proof of her forgiveness, she had hugged him more warmly than he could ever remember since she was a young, totally dependent little girl.

All was well in the Whetter household.



Cassie left home the next morning as soon as the house had emptied of her family. The weather having improved overnight, Samuel had set off in his fishing-boat at dawn. Joan went to the fish cellar in place of Cassie and at 8.30 a.m. the two youngest girls set off for the Methodist school.

Before leaving, Cassie wrote an explanatory note to her parents, omitting only her destination. Then, making a bundle of all the clothes she thought she would need, she took her savings from the small tin box beneath her bed. Encouraged by her mother, she had saved something each week from the pay she earned at the fish cellar. Sometimes it had been no more than a penny, more often sixpence and, very rarely, as much as a shilling. Changing it into coins of a larger denomination whenever she had enough, Cassie had amassed the sum of seven pounds, four shillings and threepence.

It was a small fortune. Enough, surely, to take her to Horsham in unknown Sussex.



Cassie walked the seven miles to St Austell town, arriving to catch the coach to Plymouth with only minutes to spare. The timing was sheerest luck on her part. She had little knowledge of coach timetables – and none at all of the routes they followed. Before setting off from Mevagissey she had looked at a map of Britain kept in a drawer in her mother and father’s bedroom. The map had once belonged to her grandfather, who was talked of with great respect as being ‘a scholarly man’, and it had become a treasured family possession.

Poring over the map, Cassie had eventually located Sussex. She had not found Horsham, but that did not matter too much. Cassie expected everyone to know where it was once she reached Sussex. Getting there would be the main problem. She knew it was in the general direction of London. So too was Plymouth and she decided this would be the place she must make for first of all.

The cost of the fare to Plymouth dismayed Cassie, even though she opted to travel outside, perched among the baggage of those passengers who were more comfortably accommodated. The fare had taken a frightening portion of the money she had with her. However, it would be a fast journey, only six hours to Plymouth – and speed was essential until Mevagissey and possible pursuit were far behind. For the next leg of her journey she would consider travelling on a stage-wagon. The wagon would take much longer, the heavy vehicle moving at no more than four miles an hour, but it was the cheapest form of transport.

Seven miles from St Austell the coach stopped at the ancient town of Lostwithiel to take on another passenger, a young dark-haired man with a great deal of baggage. When it was loaded he climbed up to the roof to check it was secure. While he made his check Cassie was obliged to move for him, accepting his apology.

Satisfied, the young man climbed down off the roof, nodding amiably in Cassie’s direction before entering the coach. A number of well-dressed men and women had come to see the young man safely ensconced in the vehicle. When it moved off he hung from the window, acknowledging their waving kerchiefs until a curve in the road hid them from view.

A few miles further on they stopped again, this time at Liskeard. Here the passengers were allowed twenty minutes to stretch their legs and partake of tea, ale or stronger spirits, as their inclination took them.

It was cold travelling on the roof of the coach and Cassie would dearly have liked to buy a drink of tea, but the need to conserve her depleted funds was paramount. She warmed herself by walking briskly back and forth along the road outside the inn, ensuring she never let the coach out of her sight.

The coach was late setting off from Liskeard, delayed by a joining passenger. An elderly lady, she was boarding the coach when she discovered a vital piece of her baggage had been left behind at her house. Assuring the coachman it would take no more than three minutes to have it fetched, she despatched a hotel porter. Thirty-five minutes later, panting beneath the weight of a large trunk, the porter returned.

The fuming coachman drove his vehicle out of Liskeard as though he led a cavalry charge. Clinging tightly to the rail beside her, Cassie could hear the squeals of protest coming from inside. Loudest of all was the voice of the woman who was the cause of the coachman’s anger.

There was good reason for haste. The coach needed to be ferried across the wide Tamar, the river that formed the border between Cornwall and the remainder of England. The ferryman was renowned for his irascibility and impatience. He would wait for the coach for no longer than five minutes beyond the appointed time – ten if he had few other passengers on board – but he would wait no longer.

Missing the ferry might delay the Plymouth-bound coach by as much as two hours – and the owners of the coach imposed a fine on the coachman that increased proportionately for every fifteen minutes it was delayed. Missing a ferry could cost him as much as a day’s pay.

Unfortunately, the coachman’s haste on this day would cost him far more than money. Whipping up the horses for a final two-mile dash to the ferry, he took his vehicle around a corner much too fast. Even so, he might have made it safely had not a householder been building a garden wall at the side of the road. A large boulder the size of a man’s head had fallen from the wall to the road. One of the coach-wheels struck the boulder, bouncing in the air and coming down again with a bone-jarring crash. There was the sound of splintering wooden spokes and the coach lurched down on its axle. The momentum of the galloping horses swung the toppling coach in a calamitous, lopsided arc towards a muddy bank that plunged twelve feet to a fast-moving stream.

As the coach left the road, Cassie’s screams mingled with those of the passengers travelling inside and as it toppled she was thrown over the back of the rolling vehicle. Two of the panic-stricken horses were pulled over with it. The traces of the others broke and they maintained a terrified gallop along the road.

Cassie landed in a tangle of long grass and low bushes growing beside the stream. Although scratched and shaken, she was otherwise unhurt and she had no time to worry about any effect the accident might have on her unborn baby. Sitting up she was just in time to watch the coach complete its final roll and come to rest on its side in the water, two wheels still spinning noisily.

The first passenger to climb from the overturned coach was the young man who had joined the ill-fated vehicle at Liskeard. His coat and shirt were ripped from shoulder to wrist and blood was running down his arm. The young man looked both ways along the empty road and then, shaking his head in a dazed manner, he helped Cassie clear of the bushes.

‘Your arm looks bad. Let me do something …’

‘It will wait. There are passengers inside the coach. I fear they may be hurt badly …’ As though to confirm his words the woman who had delayed the coach began calling for help from inside the overturned vehicle.

‘We’ll need to find help for them.’

At that moment, a figure splashed into view from the stream beyond the coach. It was the guard who had been travelling with the coach. Reaching the bank beside them, he sat down heavily clutching his shoulder, face contorted with pain.

Leaving Cassie, her rescuer called on the guard to give him assistance. ‘Here, man. Come inside the coach with me. A number of passengers are trapped …’

The guard turned pain-filled eyes up towards the younger man. ‘I can’t – I think my collar-bone’s broken. I needs help meself.’

‘Pull yourself together! You have passengers to think of. Where’s the driver?’

‘Somewhere under there, I reckon.’ The guard jerked a thumb in the direction of the coach, grimacing at the pain caused by the sudden movement.

‘I’ll help.’

When the young man looked doubtful, Cassie added, ‘I’m stronger than I look. Besides, there’s no one else.’

Inside the overturned coach a man began moaning and the woman renewed her cries for help.

Turning to the guard, the young man said, ‘Get on your feet and go and find help. There are houses no more than a mile along the road – and a farm closer still. We’ll need men, and ropes – and a surgeon.’

‘I can’t. My shoulder!’

‘Stop moaning.’ The young man spoke sharply and scornfully. ‘I’ve seen soldiers with worse injuries than yours helping wounded comrades to climb mountains. If you don’t get on your feet immediately I’ll drag you up to the road and use the toe of my boot to set you on your way.’

The young man moved forward menacingly as though to carry out his threat and the guard overcame his incapacity hastily. Still clutching his shoulder he scrambled up the bank and made off along the road, hunched over in pain.

Cassie felt sorry for the injured guard, but the young man had already dismissed him from his own thoughts.

‘Come with me, young lady. We’re needed inside the coach.’

Scrambling to the top of the overturne