**** Chapter Five - Henry has an idea

I couldn't count on the others coming through the orchard proper, but I knew that they'd have to use the stone bridge to get over the rill. Shillingworth Magna usually had more than its share of summer storms - or so my papa said - and this year had been no exception. The rill was nearly a full-fledged stream and crossing without the bridge until mid-winter would be impossible. If I waited at the bridge, I'd catch them before they went to Jules' cottage and hopefully miss Passepartout. Somehow, I knew he'd try to stop us from doing . . . whatever we were going to do.

By running from the orchard to the bridge, I caught Henry and Peter just as they came up to it; Robbie had already chased Cherry Louise across. They waved when they saw me, but when they really saw me they ran to meet me. I stopped and rested my hands on my knees, half-bent over and breathless when they approached.

"Pol, what's up? What's happened?" asked Peter, patting me on the back as if that would help.

"Leave 'er be," called Henry, a step or two behind him. "Have you come from Jules? Is he sick?"

Cherry Louise let out an alarmed squeak at Henry's words. I had enough sense in me to shake my head, even as Robbie added, "We can run back and fetch some cordial if he's taken a chill. My mama's got the best - even the doctor said so, last time Cherry took a cough."

"J-J-Jules--" I sputtered, and that was enough to stop them all -"Jules is going away. He's leaving - Shillingworth Magna."

I looked up to see the shock on their faces. Henry shook his head and frowned at me, as if he was certain I was lying. "Perhaps so, Polly, but he'll come back--"

"He's not coming back. Ever." I swallowed, watching Henry's face grow red. "He told me. He's never coming back."

I wasn't ready - Henry launched himself at me and before I knew it he'd knocked me to the ground. I was all knees and flailing arms, trying to push him off me as he shouted, "What did you do? What did you do to make him leave?"

It was Peter who pulled him off. Robbie helped me to my feet and Cherry Louise was crying.

"I didn't do anything!" I would have hit Henry, but Robbie held onto my arm, just as Peter kept pushing Henry back. "Jules says he wants to stay with us, but he can't. They're making him leave the cottage. The squire's son is coming tonight to turn him out and take him away!"

It took some time for the words to sink in, but I knew Henry understood as soon as he stopped fighting Peter. Robbie let go of me and Cherry Louise had ceased sobbing and was down to sniffles. We stood there, staring at each other, knowing just what those words meant.

No one would ever take a hand against the land agent - it was unthinkable. There were stories about other places where such a thing had happened and people had been run off the land, burned out, some even jailed or killed. The squire - or his son - well, he was second to the Queen, God Bless Her. You'd as sooner hit the bishop as even think about standing up against the squire.

Or his son.

"We have to do something," pleaded Cherry Louise. She looked from me, to Henry, and back to me again. "We can't let him turn Jules out. We can't!"

Her voice ended in a wail. Robbie put his arms around her and hugged her. Henry, Peter, and I just looked at each other. She was still a little girl, she didn't understand.

"What can we do?" asked Peter.

There was a note of hope in his voice, like he thought I might have an answer. But he hadn't said the whole question - what could we do . . . that wouldn't hurt our families? Anything we did might lead to the squire's son and the land agent turning our people out from their cottages.

My stomach twisted and my insides got cold. What would mama and papa do? What would they say? And poor Em! With winter coming on, where could they go? The workhouse might take them, but they'd make papa go to one place and mama to another. If Em and me were lucky, the parish orphanage would care for us . . . but we'd never see mama and papa again.

"There's room in our cottage," said Peter. "Jules could live with us. 'da wouldn't mind, 'specially if they took Jules on as the new schoolmaster."

Henry shot Peter a scornful look. "If they took him on as the new schoolmaster, they'd give him a place to live or let him board in Shillingworth proper, same as Mr. Dickey had done."

I just looked away; Peter's cottage was empty because of his mama's passing and Peter's 'da wasn't in the best of moods at times. "Besides," I shook my head, thinking aloud, "the squire's son isn't sending the land agent - he's coming personally. And I think . . . I think there's been bad blood between him and Jules. Don't know what it's about," I said quickly, seeing the question already in Henry's expression, "but I half think Jules is more leaving because he doesn't want to deal with the squire's son."

"It's probably a woman," said Robbie. When I stared at him, he said defensively, "It's what my 'da would say. And that time would heal it, cause there's always another woman come along."

"But we don't have time," I protested. "We've only got till evening, then the squire's son is coming for him."

"What if we stop the squire's son from taking Jules?" asked Henry.

It was as if lightning had struck among us. I looked down at the ground and shifted my feet; the thought scared me and I didn't want to look at the others.

There was a word the parson had used at service - I'd asked Mr. Dickey about it when he was still schoolmaster - and that's what this sounded like, at least likewise the way the parson had tried to tell me about 'heresy.' Heresy was a sin, talking against the teachings of the church, and it was just as bad as being a traitor, when you talked against the Queen. What Henry had said sounded like both at once.

"Well, what if?" pressed Henry, in such a loud voice that I was forced to look up at him.

"We'd be turned out," answered Peter. "Henry, you know that. All of us and our families would get turned out for sure!"

"At harvest?"

Henry's voice sounded the same as when Peter tried to tell him there was a ghost in the orchard - sure that he was speaking the truth. And, when I thought about it, I began to see some sense in his thinking. "Henry . . . might be right," I said slowly, considering the situation. "I've never heard of anybody being turned out at harvest. And anything that happened right before harvest - being nobody was killed or there wasn't rent missing or fire - usually gets forgotten after, or not seen to be so big. Like Robbie's 'da says, time would heal it."

"We'd still get a wailing," said Robbie. "Us boys, anyway. I don't know if they'd switch you girls." And he studied Cherry, as if trying to decide whether or not that was fair.

"Oh, we'll get smacked, all right," I promised, but was immediately sorry when I saw Cherry's eyes begin to fill with tears.

"I don't want to get smacked," she cried.

"Do you want the squire's son to turn Jules out? Do you?"

With Henry staring at her, Cherry Louise could do nothing but pick up the corner of her smock, showing her drawers while she wiped her eyes, until Robbie pulled the edge of the smock from her and pulled it down.

"Right," said Henry, as if we had all decided on something. "The problem is, how do we stop him from turning out Jules?"

Peter looked at me, as if waiting for me to tell Henry that he was crazy. When I remained quiet, he screwed up his nose like he did when he had important things to think about. "Well . . . maybe we could hide Jules."

I hiked myself up on the edge of the stone bridge and sat there, as did the others. "No, Jules wouldn't do that. Like I said, I think he'd leave to miss seeing the squire's son."

"So what if the squire's son couldn't see him?" said Robbie, as he tried to help Cherry Louise sit up on the wall. He grabbed her waist, but it took Peter's help to lift her up beside me. "If he couldn't get to the cottage--" he waved toward the orchard, "he couldn't turn Jules out."

I looked back the way Robbie had pointed - he was right. The rill had swollen enough so that the only way through the orchard and up to the cottage was the bridge.

"He'd have to have a wagon to take out Jules' things," said Peter.

I was still staring at the orchard, then looked back to the road that ran to the bridge. "I don't think those things belong to Jules," I said softly. "He's not a rich man, Passepartout said so. I think those things belong to the squire's son."

"So he'd come with a carriage," said Peter, as if he were thinking aloud. "Or on a horse. I've only seen the squire's son once or twice and he's always been on a horse. He'd have to bring two horses, one for him and one for Jules."

"Either way, he has to come through here." Henry jumped from the wall and walked the length of the stone bridge. The arch spanned the width of the rill . . . and the rains had swelled the water to lap at the upper edge of the earth banks. "Here's where we'll build the barricade."

I started to laugh, then realized he was serious. "A barricade? Henry, we can't build a barricade!"

"Why not?"

"We don't have a carriage or a wagon like the people in Paris," said Robbie.

"Or paving stones," Cherry was quick to add. Then she tilted her head and said slowly, "But there's a bit of loose stone near the quarry. Peter could lift them. And Robbie and me could pull the hand wagon."

"We're not supposed to go near the quarry," said Robbie, eyes wide. "Cherry, you know that!"

She met his stare and put her hands on her hips. "Are you a yellow coward or what? We have to save Jules!"

"She's right," said Henry, in a soft voice. "Because if we won't help him, who will?"

"We can use the handcart as the base, once we have everything here. Peter, if you and Henry can gather some of the branches from the orchard - there's sure to be some trees broken by the last storm - we can stack them over the handcart and around it." I jumped off the wall and stood in the center of the bridge. "We only have to fill it across here. He can't jump the rill, not with an extra horse or a carriage. The squire's son would have to stop."

Peter placed his elbows on the bridge and his chin in his hands. "No use - he'd just come get my 'da and Robbie's 'da and the land agent to help him shift everything."

"Not if we were here to stop him."

My heart fluttered in my chest and that word, 'heresy,' whispered somewhere in the back of my mind, but I tried to ignore it. "I thought we'd build the barricade, then hide to watch what happens."

"That's not how it's done, Pol," said Henry. "You heard what Jules said, even about the Miserables-people. If we build it, we have to man the barricade. We have to keep the squire's son away and make him go home, at least for tonight. If harvest starts tomorrow, like Papa says it will, the squire's son won't care about Jules."

It meant staying out at night, way past time to go in. We'd all be getting caned, even Cherry and me. "You mean . . . we have to keep him away from the barricade, like they do in the story, throw rocks or something."

"Apples." Robbie suddenly brightened. "We've tons of half-rotted apples. They don't hurt; they just make a mess, that's all."

The thought of throwing rotten apples made me feel better than throwing rocks. Until I realized we'd be throwing them at the squire's son.

"I have to get Em," I remembered. "I forgot when I heard about Jules leaving! Mama asked me to take her to lessons after noon. I can tell her that Jules asked us all to stay for a late lesson and that he had supper for us."

Henry grinned. "Good thinking, Pol. They won't start looking for us to be home until past twilight. Maybe the squire's son would have given up by then."

I nodded, as if agreeing, but all I could think was that maybe the squire's son would have turned us all out of our cottages by then.

Yep, we were all getting caned. If not worse.

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End of Chapter Five

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