TESSA CLAIBORNE

TESSA CLAIBORNE

A

Novel

by Smcallis


This is a work of fiction. No similarities between any person living or dead is intended, and any such similarity is purely coincidental. All characters © 2007 by Smcallis.


For David, (1954-2007)


"Four things greater than all things are, Women and Horses, and Power and War."

―Rudyard Kipling

Chapter 1

ROOTS and CABBAGES

THEY SAY THAT WAR is the purest expression of Nation- hood. I never knew for sure whether that was true or not. What I do know is that I’ve seen war; I’ve seen men stand in line, grim faced, shoulder to shoulder and die in battle. I can only think that there must be a higher calling, a more profound sense of purpose, not to be confused with Nationhood, God or Country that keeps a man standing there, in line shoulder to shoulder with his brother. It is his sense of duty, camaraderie, and his obligation to the man standing next to him that causes a person to stand fast in a firing line amidst the swirl of confusion, black powder and death. I’ve been there, in war, in the thin red line of Red Coats. I know this, I was only thirteen.

I should tell my story. I was born April 20th 1865 in Glamorgan, Wales, to a poor family, in a three room wooden shack tucked in the hills not far from the great coalfields of Cardiff. My Papa, he worked those mines; the hardest purest blackest coal in the world came from Cardiff. In 1865, the world awakened to the great industrial revolution thanks to the invention of Watts and his infernal machine the steam engine, and the colonies, and their cotton and Ely Whitney and his gin. All the industrial might of the empire was hungry for black coal to feed the factories, furnaces, and the steam ships that brought raw goods from far away places in the Americas, India and China.

In America, the great Civil war was drawing to a close. General Robert E. Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox and their President Lincoln was assassinated. My Papa, First Sergeant Robert Chard Claiborne, fought at Balaclava, in the Crimea, the 24th Regiment of Foot under Lieutenant-Colonel James Webster. You might remember the battle of Balaclava, from a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson and the Charge of the Light Brigade. Well, I can tell you second hand that on that December day there were plenty of cannon, to the right, to the left and everywhere else. A fragment from a cannon ball took out Papa’s left eye. All this happened in 1854. Papa drew a military pension of two shillings nine pence a month; this was never enough to feed his family, by the time I was born, sixth of what was later to be nine children Papa took a job, the only job a man could do in Glamorganshire, laboring deep in the bowels of the coalmines of Cardiff.

I can still remember Papa coming home at night, his face black with coal dust, like minstrel player. The wick of his candle flame on his felt hat still burning. He was hungry and tired, but he always had time for his family. Papa told stories, he often told stories of battle at Belaclava, and that fateful day when the Light Brigade charged. His 1853 Enfield rifled musket still hung over the door way. I only saw him fire it once, at a stray dog. It misfired.

I was baptized Theresa Elizabeth, but at home, I was never called Theresa, I was always called Tessa. Oh, my was I called. I was the only girl imagine that! I had quite the rough and tumble life growing up with eight brothers and no sisters, in the shantytowns at the foothills of the coal mines. I don’t think I even knew I was a girl until I was ten going on eleven. With five older brothers, all took their place in the mines, and three younger brothers, as the only girl, in a family of nine, it fell to me to do all the cleaning, the washing-up, make the beds, sweep the floor and help Mama with the laundry and keep the fire in the hearth.

Woman’s work, I hated it. I was every bit as strong as any boy in the county, I could run, climb, spit, every bit as well as any boy, but because I had a cunny, I was branded a girl, I was relegated to wash’n up work. I was a servant, and I didn’t like it one bit. There wasn’t a lot of opportunity to go to school, growing up amidst the shacks and shantytowns in the middle decades of the 19th century. Papa did encourage all of us to learn to read, and he let us go to winter term when there wasn’t so much work on the farm. It was a five-mile walk; I had to carry the dinner pail because I was the girl.

I don’t think we really knew how poor we were. We never wore shoes from May to October. I don’t think I ever had a new pair of shoes in my whole life, (not at least until I joined the army, but that’s the rest of our story). Thomas, my brother . . . of course he was my brother, I only had brothers! Thomas was a year and five months older than I was, his shoes always fit. When he out grew his, they came to me. Boy’s shoes, boy pants, boy shirts. As I said, I don’t think I even knew the difference between boys and girls until I turned eleven.

Life on a hardscrabble shanty farm was work. It wasn’t as if we went hungry, at least not most of the time. We raised vegetables in the garden, there was “Worthless” the old dairy cow, we had butter and cream. Papa, he always kept a few sheep. Papa’s sheep that was probably the one great joy in my life, the sheep, how I loved to go to the pasture lay on my back in the sweet smelling grass and dream. I played there with the sheep and my dog Jack, broad in the chest, with a bright fox face, short legs and no tail, there was never a dog like Jack. How Jack could heard those sheep. Sometimes there was mutton on Sunday when the Vicar came to dinner. During the rest of the week, there was cabbage. Always Cabbage, rutabagas and leeks, I think I must have turned mostly green by the time of my ninth birthday from all the cabbages I ate. Papa worked hard in the mines and gave Mama every penny, well not exactly every pence, Papa did like to share a pint or two at the pub, but Mama never grudged him.

We kids, we worked hard. One of our main jobs, the little kids, of which I was the oldest, was to hunt along the harbor way collecting any stray bits of rope and twine. In the mid-nineteenth century, all ships used hemp for rigging, when it got wet or worn; it was discarded often in the most casual way. Twisted bits of old hemp rope may not seem very valuable, but it was gold to us. I should tell you that picking oakum is very tedious work and hard on the fingers, my fingers got so stiff and sore, I used to cry, from the long hours spent unraveling those tough hemp ropes down to base fibers. It was hard work for very little money. A buyer in Cardiff paid two and quarter pence a pound for clean rope fiber.

Sometimes when the weather was fair, more often when it was wet and rainy. I took my brothers and we walked along the railroad tracks to pick up coal. It may seem funny, with Papa being a coal miner; we never seemed to have coal for our own stove. I knew how to find coal. The railroads, were so wasteful, if a little coal spilled out as the trains made the sharp bend at Tresimwn, nobody seemed to care. This became our family's main source of coal. My brothers and I could walk the rail bed and pick up half a peck of coal; if we got an early start, we walked half way to Cowbridge and back. At least then we knew we’d have a hot supper. More boiled cabbage.

By 1874, things in Glamorganshire went from bad to worse. By that time my three younger brothers were born. More mouths to feed, my two middle brothers, Wallace and Dewey were killed in a mine collapse. By this time, Papa couldn’t work anymore; he was laid up in bed, dying of what we called back then the consumption. Later, I read in America they called it the “black lung disease.” Papa died in 1875.

That was the year Mr. Squeers came ‘round. Mr. Wallace Squeers of Wallace Squeers, Pierce, Fenner and Smith Esq., in his black coat and tall top hat, his long sharp whip, Squeers came thundering into Glamorgan in a fine lacquered buggy and matching chestnut driving horses. Mr. Squeers, he came around to all the villages and towns of Cardiff offering money to families with young girls. Mr. Squeers told Mama that there was work; work in the great mills in London, textile mills that needed young girls, Mr. Squeers said he could offer her five pounds, and the promise of five shillings a month for young nimble fingers.

Everything about Mr. Squeers was oily and black. Compared to him, I was a dirty disheveled little nothing. I knew something was up, and it was no good. At first, I don’t think he knew for sure whether I was a boy or a girl. He examined me as if he was buying a horse, looking at my teeth, while he talked to Mama; his sneaky hand stole a quick feel under my shirt.

“She seems very skinny, will she work?” Squeers ask, he shoved the saucer further away with a disdainful air. My face burned hot, I knew there was only a little tea left in the tin, and tea was such a luxury! Mama offered Mr. Squeers tea in her best china, the tea sat untouched. He sat there haggling as if I were a stack of chord wood, he puffed on a ten-penny cigar, while great aromatic plumes of smoke circled the room, his mustache quivered.

I coughed, Jack growled.

“She’s strong as a French pony.” My mother assured him; she twisted my ear and shoved me forward.

“Four pounds, five shillings, that’s my best offer.”

Four pounds, nine shillings, that was the final selling price. That was how it was in 1875, ten years after the great Civil war in the Americas, I, a ten-year-old girl, going on eleven, a sovereign subject of the crown, was sold into indentured servitude to a Mr. Squeers of London, a Mr. Squeers of the Great Quadrangle Mercantile and Shirtwaist factory of London.