Chapter 1

The dirty sod! The rotten bastard! It was him. Taking what was not his. Taking she and her mam and all the other overworked and underpaid women in the gang had broken their backs to earn in the past week. Pocketing the profits himself, naturally, for it was he who agreed the price with the farmer for his gang's labour but taking a few pence more from the wages of each labourers. Whilst they were scarcely able to stand, let alone count what he put into their hands, he was cheating them, replying on the fact that though most of them could recognize and calculate the coins whilst sober, drunk they could not.

Vini watched the gang master as he furtively divided out the money on the alehouse counter. His dirt ingrained fingers were deft, moving so quickly and smoothly they were no more than a blur in the poor light from the candles. The sounds of coin striking against coin could scarcely be heard, drowned out as it was by the shrieks of bawdy laughter which came from the women at the far end of the room, and Vini doubted if any of those who revel there, and who were about to be paid for the week's work they had completed, were on any fit state to notice should this man slip away taking their wages with him.

Vini had known no life other than that with the gang master. For ten years she and her mom and the rest of the women had roamed the farmlands of Cumbria from Old hall farm to Bardsea Alpacas, from Branhil donkeys retreat to Wastewater Alpaca, working in the fields of all great land owners, including Lord Woods of lake land and Lord Arthur of Hawkshead farm the wealthiest of them all. She and her companions were employed in stone-picking, hoeing, and any other casual work the gang master could get for them.

Vini could just remember being placed in the shade between two bundles of corn in an angle of the harvest field, fastened with other unemployed infants to a gate post with a length of twine and fed from her mother's breasts during a brief interval in the gleaning. Warm breezes on her bare brown legs and her mother's careless hug before she returns to work. The days of thin drizzle and cold mist when she and the other children too young to work had huddled together beneath the shelter of the dripping leaves of the oak tree were hazy, hidden with other, less pleasant memories in her short life.

Two dozen women and children then, for the gang master would never employ men or boys. It was only disabled men, brought low by illness or infirmity, who would consider such menial work, since they could get no other, or or young lads with no home or parents, escapees from institutions such as the poorhouse or a cotton mill.

They had finished the gleaning that day. The last sheaf had been removed from the last field on Alfred Packer's place, a tenant farmer renting half of Hawkshead farm on Lord Arthur's land. Alfred Packer himself had given a huge amount of dollars to the gang masters and Vini heard him say that he would see them next year, a hand shake to seal the bargain.

"We'll have us a sup to wet our whistle, my lasses" he said genially, "and then we'll be on way. I request we find us some work, picking tomatoes and and mangold wurzel for a week or two, I heard tell. So it looks as though it might have to be Old Hall Farm if we're to eat this winter".

They all groaned at soon as heard Old Hall Farm because of all the coal mines there but they moved off amiably enough for had they not a whole day before them in which to do nothing but recover from the gin they had promised themselves tonight? Their wages for the week would be in their hand by the end of the day, the weather was still fine and warm, they were all comparatively healthy and well fed after a summer.

They had laughed and shouted obscenities at each other as they entered the village, shocking the decent villagers with their loud and coarse conversation, not at ashamed of their great thick boots, not the tattered and stained petti-coats which they wore tucked up between their bare legs, just as they had in the fields from which they had come .

The gang master stood up and stretched himself to his considerable height, then turned and the golden brown eyes of Vini met his. She said nothing. She was ten years old and what could she do against the power and the might of the man who was her owner, her father for all she knew since he had sired many of the children in the gang? He had them all, women and children, in his cruel grasp, a hard master who would not hesitate to rid himself in any careless way he thought fit of anyone who interfered with his self-made way of life. Cross him and troublesome baggage which no longer have service. But all the same she'd not be cheated, not by him or any man. She'd let him see she knew his game and if he clouted her one, which wouldn't be the first time by any means, what did it matter as long as she got her full money? She had bruises even now on her fine young flesh, not just put there by him but by her Mom when she was in on of her drunken rages, but she was used to that.

She stepped forward boldly, tossing back the matted curtains of her curling hair, meaning to do no more than stare pointedly at the pouch of dollars in the gang masters hand then let her eyes fall to the pocket in which he had put the stolen dollars, but her sense of injustice and resentment at the theft of the few dollars, so hard to earn, overcame her caution.