Bitter Eden Read online

  Frank's eyes glittered. Now was the time to get his father's agreement to buy. He thought of it as a well-earned bribe. Everything came easy to Peter, but Frank had td connive and maneuver for every scrap he got. He smiled. James would be pliable in order to avoid difficulty between his two oldest sons.

  After dinner James and Meg lingered at the table, talking and enjoying one last cup of tea. Fretfully Meg brought up Peter's name again. "Is there so much danger in helping the laborers, James?"

  "Not so much now. Frank is worried about the other landowners' opinions. No one takes kindly to having his hay ricks burned, or a horde of night riders trampling through fields."

  "But Natalie says Albert questions her. Why should he be so interested if . . ."

  "Albert is the magistrate, perhaps the most diligent we've ever had. We'd all be better off if Albert did not take himself so seriously." James cleared his throat and looked at Meg from under his brows. "And we have the good fortune of soon having him as a son-in-law."

  "Oh, James, what a way to talk," Meg scolded. "You're as pleased as I that Natalie and Albert will marry. He's young and will make a good husband for her, and it doesn't hurt to have our daughter the mistress of Foxe Hall; you've said so yourself."

  "AH true. I've said it and I meant it, but do I have to like him as well?"

  As the minutes passed and no strident noises were

  heard from upstairs, James began to feel more kindly toward everyone, even Albert. Perhaps, he thought, hope reviving, Rosalind and Peter had reached an amicable, or better still, an amorous agreement. Perhaps for one night Peter would not ride out with the haphazardly organized laborers. "Meg, is there another piece of pie left?" He handed her his empty cup to be refilled as well.

  What James hoped was taking place upstairs, however, was not. He had taken his first bite of pie when Peter came into the dining room. He hastened to his mother, kissing her cheek and whispering apologies into her ear. His face highly colored and relaxed, Peter was handsome, with a boyish impetuosity as youthful and alluring at twenty-six as it had been when he was sixteen.

  James did not know from whence it came, but his children had been blessed—or cursed—with beauty. The exception was Frank, who looked much like James himself. Natalie, Stephen, and Peter had gathered their looks from some long forgotten ancestors, James concluded, for it was certain neither he nor Meg had bestowed the evenness of feature or brightness of eye these three had.

  Peter chatted easily, teasing his mother. She rose to his bait, scolding and making faces of great pain. How could he talk to a lady so, even if she were his mother? Undaunted, Peter continued. Soon, in a pretense of anger, Meg hurried from the room, forgetting at least for the night her fear that he would be riding the countryside.

  After Meg left the dining room, Peter rang the bell and asked the serving girl for a cold supper for himself, and then ordered her to take something upstairs for Rosalind. He ate quickly, businesslike, his mind already on the night's ride.

  James sat watching the lines of concentration deepen along his son's brow and under his eyes. He knew what occupied Peters thoughts. His own were similarly occupied far too often. He knew that his son was right, and yet he wished fervently that Peter would turn his back on the chaos of the English farm laborers. Couldn't someone else challenge the system?

  In Kent and other southeastern counties, farm laborers were rioting. To the powerful landed gentry, it made revolution in England seem fearfully possible. Every minor disturbance reminded propertied Englishmen of the violence of the French revolutionaries. Perhaps because of their deep fear of mob violence, the wealthy also had an attitude of callousness toward the suffering of the poor, which couldn't be penetrated. But if the well-to-do viewed the poor lower classes with cold indifference, they viewed the vocal radicals—who stirred up the peasants with their talk of justice and equality—with the ferocity of animals protecting their lairs.

  James remained silent until Peter shoved his plate aside and rose to leave. He was dressed in dark clothing. In his hands was a dark seaman's knit cap to cover his blond hair.

  "Must you go tonight?" James asked, wishing he had been able to keep his silence. "All men deserve a night's sleep once in a while."

  Peter's eyes met his father's and held. Slowly he shook his head; his voice was low. "One night would become two. ... I'd like too much to stay home, Pa, to risk doing it even once."

  James didn't argue. Again he understood, and chastised himself for being a coward. But he couldn't help it. He didn't want his son sacrificed for a cause that could be settled only when the time was right. A

  handful of farm laborers could not force that time to come.

  He walked with Peter to the door and stood in the damp cold until his son had disappeared into the darkness; then he tunled back to the house and sat in his chair, his heart filled with dread, his mind a jumble of worries and memories.

  Peter was fighting a changing world that temporarily could not accommodate both its technical advances and its people. Unemployment was high; machines that could do the work of many were becoming common. Frank Berean looked upon the machinery as a boon: it was new, it was efficient, it meant more money in his pockets. Peter Berean deplored the rapid advance of machinery, for men he knew found themselves replaced by it, unable to feed their families. James shook his head sadly. What he could see—and neither of his sons could—was that each of them believed in progress and each had chosen a different aspect of it. Frank believed in technological advance, and Peter fought for social progress. Neither could be denied. There was no right or wrong to it, but with it came desperation. Out of the turmoil and confusion a phantom leader, Captain Swing, had emerged to lead the laborers to riot. Their hope was small—the past instructed that there would be few men of power or importance willing to listen to men of their class—but their desperation was great, and they would try anything. History deals with populations, but men die individually, and only once.

  James got up to pace the room, then returned to the window. His thoughts continued worrisome and agitating. Reform was haphazard. Politics, he thought, is an erratic beast that either plods with bone grinding caution awaiting the popularity of its cause, or charges with eye dazzling speed and no thought to

  consequence, bringing with it revolution. After the economic collapse of 1829, the beast had gone both ways at once. The emerging nations were quick to commit themselves to the machinery that would make them great powers, and painfully slow to recognize the devastating impact the industrial revolution would have on its poor.

  James wondered how much of the responsibility for Peter's restless crusading he should take on his own conscience. In some respects it had been his own life's choices that had determined Peter's choice now.

  James Berean had been born the youngest son of a baronet. He had grown up with privileges and some rank, and then had acquired in his youth an idealistic, romantic love of the simple, rustic life. It was a malady common to young men of his class, but James's infatuation with the rustic was augmented by his falling in love with Meg Wharton, the daughter of a tenant farmer. There was no question of James's family's approving of the marriage, so he had married without their approval, and turned his back on wealth and position with all the cocky assurance of youth.

  He became a tenant farmer like his father-in-law. He had expected to live the rest of his life as a tenant farmer just as his father had acidly predicted. That prediction had proven untrue. But his father had made another prediction, and that one had come painfully true. James began to see life as he never thought it could be. He saw for the first time that privilege came with land. Respect came with land. Dignity came with land. Without land he was nothing.

  As a tenant farmer he was thought to have no opinion of value. Things that James had taken for granted while growing up were now denied him. How could he have known his education was a privilege of the rich? He hadn't—not until it had come time for his

  own three sons to be
educated. It was believed that the poor didn't need education. It would only give them ideas. Places had to be kept, and part of the keeping was ignorance. Frank, Peter, and Stephen would never have learned their languages, history, or letters if James had not humbly returned to his family seeking their forgiveness and aid. When the opportunity came for him to buy Gardenhill House, James thankfully left the rustic life behind and moved into the landed class again.

  Peasant life had been a galling experience for James, but a learning one. And it had been an experience that had, at least in part, formed the character of the son he now worried about. Peter had only been a child, but the taunts of the wealthier boys had remained with him, as had his teachers' willingness to conclude he was stupid because he was not a young lord or squire. He had been judged by what he owned and found wanting. The injustice of it was something he had never forgotten, and he would always believe that any man wanting to advance by his own labors should have the right to do so. So Peter spent his nights with * the men who sought to better their positions, endangering his marriage by his absences, and his life by his presence among the outlaw workers. And James could not honestly tell him it was wrong.

  Chapter 2

  The night sky was opaque and black when Peter went to the stable. The horse started nervously as Peter fumbled and lit the lantern. The damp cold made his fingers stiff; the frosted metal of the lantern stung his flesh. Filled with misgivings, he harnessed and saddled his horse. Tonight, unlike other nights, he could not quell his disquieting uncertainty. Thoughts of Rosalind intruded, distracting him from his purpose. Forcibly he pushed them back, concentrating on the events before him. He extinguished the lantern and led the roan from the stable; then with a brief backward glance at James's distorted silhouette in the diamond-shaped windows, he rode out of the farmyard, across the open pasture, and into the shrouded woods.

  He wound his way over familiar but unseen woodland paths. As he approached a clearing, he slowed the roan to a walk. Over the horse's head he waved a white kerchief. A man moved out from the dark mass of a tree and waved him through.

  The Swing men were gathered around a small, clan-

  destine fire. Their large work-soiled hands, fingers protruding from ragged gloves, stretched outward seeking the elusive warmth of the tiny blaze. Peter dismounted and joined them.

  In spite of his efforts to dress as a laborer, he stood out from the rest. His boots were sturdy and well made. Many of the Swing men had bound their feet in rags to keep the torn shreds of their boots together. Others wore parodies of shoes—mismatched, mismade concoctions of leather and rag. Their coats were worn and thin, coarse, homemade garments. Angry once more at Frank's blindness to these people's plight, Peter shouldered his way among the men until he stood at the front of the group. He wanted to be seen by these men. He was ashamed of what his brother was. He wanted every man present to know that a Berean was there with them willing to fight by their sides for as long as reform took.

  Peter listened to the speaker. He didn't know the man's name, nor did he ask. Like many of the Swing men, the man wore a dark mask over his features in a futile attempt to conceal his identity. Peter pulled up the deep collar of his black sweater, covering the lower portion of his face, but he did it only out of respect for the others. He knew too well that it made no difference. When the magistrates decided to put an end to the Swing riots, identities of men such as these would have no meaning. The arrests would be wholesale, and no one would care who they were.

  Peter brought his attention back to the speaker. They were to burn the ricks of Roger Baker tonight. Peter became alert. Roger Baker was the chief tenant farmer on the Foxe property. Not only was Albert Foxe the magistrate for the parish, but the Foxe family was the most influential and the most adamantly opposed to the labor movement

  "Must it be Baker?" Peter asked.

  The masked leader was silent. His cloth-covered face turned toward Peter. "If you'd rather not be with us tonight, Berean, we can see your reason. We'd not hold it against you. Foxe will be your brother-in-law. We ask no man to do harm to his own family."

  "I care nothing for Albert Foxe. I was thinking of us—the movement—when I suggested another target. Thus far we've steered clear of the officials' homes. Baker's house is on the magistrate's home grounds. I am questioning the timing of the attack. Our movement has just begun to receive notice. We are slowly gaining momentum; other men are following. I am questioning the wisdom of antagonizing the magistrate now, when he is powerful enough to crush us."

  "Roger Baker is one of the strongest supporters of the thresher," the leader answered. "For every threshing machine brought in, ten of us will be without work. Baker has a field of neatly stacked ricks of hay, all done by his bloody machines, and ain't the prick happy to show them off to anvone who'll look? The hop men hereabout see Baker's fields and hear him talk, and they listen. He tells them all to buy threshers. And they listen to him. We don't want the magistrate on us, but we can't let Baker speak so freely of the thresher. We'll put a bit of the fear of Swing in his belly, and see how much he talks then."

  Several of the men around the fire murmured agreement. Peter merely nodded. Bevond suggestion, he never attempted to countermand the plans of the Swing men. Peter often questioned the wisdom of their decisions, for they were impatient and desperate for change to come quickly. But they spoke of children dying of fever, of children dying with cold, of children dying of hunger, and Peter could only listen and try to grasp with his mind what his experience

  would not allow him to feel. As the months since he had joined the Swing men passed, Peter knew that even his sympathies for them could never teach him to feel their desperation, or know what it was like to have no authority over one's own destiny, to be starving while no one cared. He could not argue with these men because he had never suffered as they suffered. He rode with them, and he talked eloquently and forcefully, encouraging them to keep their movement free of bloodshed. His voice was raised only on this one issue, and so far no man had been harmed by the Swing rioters. Their target was property.

  Peter mounted his horse with the others. The masked leader came over to him. "Berean, we've heard of the talks youVe made to the yeomanry on our behalf." The man seemed embarrassed. His voice was gruff. "You needn't worry about Gardenhill House. We wont touch it. Tell your pa that. We know our friends . . . and our enemies." He cleared his throat. "I just wanted you to know that We know our friends."

  The man dug his heels into his horse, wheeling the animal around. Forming the semblance of a column, the Swing men followed him through the woods, heading for the Foxe property.

  The lights of Roger Baker's house winked warmly from behind the black mound of a gentle hillock. The muted thud of the horses' hooves seemed out of place among the soft sounds of the night hunters. Strange, interrupted sounds of pelting wings, agonized shrieks; fluttering, beating sounds of life-and-death struggles among the night animals.

  "WillyI" the leader called in a hoarse whisper.

  A small thin man rode up to him.

  "When you see the ricks in flame, and we're clear,

  poke this into Baker's door. Careful . . . don't be seen." Willy looked at the scrap of paper:

  Bewar of the fatel dager! Swing.

  He grinned as he stared at the note. He couldn't read a word, but he, like the others, knew the message it carried. He held the paper with pride, flattered beyond speech that he should be chosen to affix it to Roger Bakers door with his dagger.

  The rest of the men went to the stable yard and broke into two groups. Dismounting, the first group went into the fields where the hay was stacked in ricks, the other into the outbuildings to remove Baker's tools and release his horses, acts calculated to wreak havoc on the operation of his farm. Systematically they spread out in the darkened barn. Peter, with the others, felt his way cautiously in the pitch-black building, searching for the location of the tools. In spite of all their efforts to move silently, tools fell to the
floor, making what seemed a shattering din. Softly muttered curses cut the quiet air. Shadows of men hurried in blackness to and from the barn, carrying out farm implements and scattering them over the field, throwing them onto the fires or into the bordering woods. In the barn others continued rooting out Roger Baker's possessions. They covered the interior, climbing up into the loft, into the unused and empty stalls. They all stopped breathing as a pain-filled shriek cut through the night.

  "Christ! Shut the bastard up! Who is it?"

  "Kilmer ... he fell from the loft," another voice said.

  The Swing men crowded around the fallen Kilmer.

  A grimy hand covered Kilmer's mouth, shutting off his cries. Another tried to straighten his leg, crumpled beneath him.

  "Get him out of here! Quick, take him to his horse. Jude, you take him. Hurry!"

  Two men lifted Kilmer and carried him to the door of the barn. Chaos broke out behind them. Tools clattered to the floor; men bumped into each other as they tried to regain control.

  "Get out of here!" someone shouted hoarsely. "Bakers got a whole bloody army in the house. Run! He's comin'!"

  "All the fires ain't set!"

  "You set them!"

  Hesitating, then running, their masked leader lit a dry branch and threw it into the nearest unfired rick. The dry hay sparked, snapping and smoking; then a yellow flame shot up. Incautiously the leader grabbed a handful of burning hav and tossed it onto the next rick. He was joined bv Peter and two other men. Racing against time and Roger Baker, they ran through the field, throwing the burning hav.

  The field lit up, glowing gold in the cold misty night, as Roger Baker and the three men who had been his dinner guests ran from the house. Baker, a rotund little barrel of a man, brandished a saber nearly as long as he was tall. The other men were better armed, two with swords and the third with a pistol.