Read Online Blood on the Wood by Gillian Linscott - Free Book Online Page B

looks he could have married nearly any girl in England and here he was, in front of everybody, getting engaged to that … And this was where they hit difficulties. They didn’t know what to make of Daisy Smith. None of them, folk enthusiasts included, had known of her existence until she turned up at the camp. Simply, a brilliant traditional fiddler who had all the dances in her head better than any of them had dropped like a gift from the skies. Both gift and gifted, musically speaking, the ones who cared about folk had no doubt about that. What they couldn’t understand was why nobody had heard of her before. But it was perfectly understandable that a musical man like Daniel should be interested in her. Politically, it was right too. From her voice and her attitude she was clearly one of the working class and Daniel was putting his theories into practice instead of, as one of them said, ‘scuttling back home to the bourgeoisie as soon as there’s a whiff of wedding cake in the air’. But another woman wasn’t so impressed: ‘Touch of the King Cophetuas, if you ask me.’
    â€˜King whats?’
    â€˜Didn’t they teach you your Tennyson? “Cophetua sware a royal oath: This beggar maid shall be my queen!”’
    â€˜She’s not a beggar, is she?’
    â€˜Janet didn’t mean it literally. I see what she means, though. It was a bit, well … a bit stagey, as if he’d got carried away by the dancing and so on.’
    â€˜You mean he might be regretting it in the morning?’
    â€˜Too bad if he does. He said it in front of witnesses.’
    I took no part in the debate because the thing I knew and they didn’t would have been gunpowder on a bonfire. As far as Tennyson told it, when King Cophetua stepped down from his throne and took the hand of the beautiful beggar girl, he didn’t have another fiancée stored away in his castle up the hill. So far, there weren’t many people who knew that Daniel Venn had equipped himself with two prospective wives. If the decision had been as impulsive as it looked, it was possible that Daniel and I were the only ones. Normally I’d have been angry with him and concerned for the two women, but I have to admit that my reaction was a more selfish one – with the row that seemed certain to break out in the next few hours in the Venn household, how in the world could I get anybody to listen to sense about our picture?
    *   *   *
    We slept after a fashion but it wasn’t a restful night, what with the hardness of the benches, the scratchiness of the blankets and patterings and scufflings around the floor that might have been rats, cockroaches or both. It was a tribute to the other women’s strength of mind that after a morning wash in cold water from an old milk churn and a breakfast of dry bread and strong tea they were ready for another day of debating and resolution making. But we all knew that the first big question of the day was the one posed the night before – would Daniel have second thoughts in the morning? Then somebody spotted two figures walking along the cart track towards us, a little space between them. The man had dark curly hair and a red and white neckcloth. The woman was thin and young, with red hair scraped back from her face and a cloth-wrapped object in her hand. Daniel Venn and Daisy Smith.
    When they reached the gateway at the back of the dairy yard he held it open for her. She glanced up at him and walked through, eyes on the ground. We murmured good morning to her, uneasy. By firelight with her swaying body and her flaring red hair she’d looked as exotic as a tropical moth. Now she looked as sad as that same moth pinned out in a collector’s cabinet. Her face was the blue-white of skimmed milk, lips pale, her hair, partially tamed into a thick and untidy pigtail, the glowing red of a wire held in a bunsen flame. Sticking out from the