“They un’s ain’t no herd, them be a family,” his mother had said. This was a bit too much for Gilly to take in. Besides, the four Manfield girls were indeed a mizzuble little herd to him, and that was that! Gilly did not like them anyway, living up at that great fancy house, dressing up like prize horses for fairtime, all those ribbons and folderols. They rode about in a painted coach, forever stuffing their greedy mouths with candies and sweetmeats. Like his brothers and sisters, Gilly went barefoot in all weathers, dressed in cast-off rags and sacking. As for food, Gilly’s family ate much the same as the Squire’s animals: turnips, cabbage, carrots, whatever happened to be growing from the ground at the time.
Gilly had watched the Manfield girls eating sugar sticks and other confections. They slurped, licked, fought and crunched like four young porkers let loose in the orchard to eat windfall apples and pears. Gilly longed to taste sweetmeats, almond fingers, fruit truffles, toffee apples, vanilla pastilles, candied dates, and above all, sugar sticks. He imagined they would taste sweeter than the apple he had once stolen from Squire’s orchard. His father had caught him and belted him black and blue for thieving from their benefactor, punctuating each word with a slap as he lectured his son on the error of his ways.
“Apples is for gentlefolk, ‘cepting those as falls to the ground. They’s for pigs and ‘orses, not for the likes of you. Them apples be so sweet they’re like to drive us ‘n’s mad, Squire says. He’d be well within his rights to ‘ang you, Gilly, a thievin’ from his fine orchard like that.”
However, it did not alter Gilly Bodkin’s resolution, if sweetmeats were sweeter than apples then he must taste one for himself.
It was coming up to Michaelmas. Squire Manfield was due to take his wife, children and body servants to the town. The only one of the Bodkin family who had ever been to a town was Gilly’s father, and he had never fully recovered from the shock.
“On my oath, town be full of folk! Great herds of ‘em, and ‘ouses too, some builded one against t’other, like so many ‘orses teamed up in line. Even the floors be covered with stones. The coaches made such a clatter and a din, I thought I’d lose my senses with all the great noise!”
Giles Bodkin was an honest man, not given to untruths. The family marveled at the idea of such a place, as they sat around the fire on the earth floor of their meager hovel. Who would have thought it, all those houses and coaches and horses and stone floors too!
From the side of the path Gilly watched Squire Manfield’s coach draw near as it began the annual journey to town. Though he was greatly feared of horses, the lad stood his ground. With a creaking and rumbling of woodwork and harness the swaying carriage jolted its way along the uneven path, the driver whistling and snapping the reins along the coach-horses’ broad backs. Squire Manfield followed behind, jogging grandly along on his huge white stallion. Inside the coach Lady Manfield and two maidservants sat facing the four little girls. She sighed regretfully: Manfield would have given half his estate for a son and heir. The four girls fought and argued petulantly as they ravaged the contents of a basket full of sweetmeats.
“Mamma, Mamma, Agnes has taken my sugar stick!”
“Liar! I did not. You’ve already had one.”
“Leave that toffee apple alone. It’s mine, Lucy!”
“Greedy greedy pig. Fattie!”
“Ooh, Mamma, did you hear that? Jessie called me fattie!”
Gilly ran alongside the coach, jumping up and down to catch sight of Squire’s mizzuble little herd, gorging on sweetmeats. He caught glimpses of them, their fat little faces never still, munching, crunching and sucking furiously, each worrying that the other might get more than her share. What made him do it Gilly never knew, but he suddenly found himself shouting to them.
“Hoi there, missies, I be Gilly Bodkin. I ain’t never tasted sweetmeats. Do you feel free to toss some out to me?”
Agnes stared from the coach window, her piggy eyes agape at the insolent boy shouting at them.
“If I owned sweetmeats I’d give some to thee,” the boy went on. “Go on, throw some to Gilly. You uns got a basket of ‘em in there.”
Agnes took the sugar stick from her mouth only long enough to spit at the cheeky ragamuffin. Gilly ducked, though he had no need to. The wind drove the sticky saliva back into Agnes’s face; it dribbled over her chin as she stuck the sugar stick firmly back into her mouth. Lady Manfield grimaced with distaste as she addressed her maidservant. “Bessy, wipe Agnes’s chin and tell that silly boy to go away.”
The young maidservant plucked the sugar stick from Agnes’s mouth. She set about wiping the child’s chin on the corner of her apron. Still holding the sugar stick gingerly she enquired of her mistress, “What am I to do with this, Marm?”
Lady Manfield sniffed. “Throw it away. She’s had quite enough.”
“Waaah, I want my sugar stick, Mamma!”
“I said throw it away, Bessy, this instant!”
The sugar stick sailed out of the coach window into the air. Still pelting barefoot alongside the coach, Gilly could not believe his luck. They were actually throwing him sweetmeats from the coach. He leapt high, yelling with delight, trying to catch the sugar stick before it hit the muddy path as the coach rolled by. Squire Manfield’s stallion was skittish; it shied up on its hind legs, throwing the Squire from his saddle. The horse’s steel-shod hooves came down fast and hard, right on the skull of Gilly Bodkin. The last thing he saw before the stallion’s hooves snuffed his life out was the sugar stick, as it landed upright in the mud like a small javelin. Gilly’s hand reached out for it as he died.
The coach driver and the manservant sitting beside him leaped down from their seats, to assist the Squire as the coach ground to a halt. Gilly’s father came running over from the fields, a billhook in one hand, a half cut turnip in the other, fearful of the Squire’s wrath. In high bad temper Squire Manfield allowed the two men to assist him to his feet. He shoved them angrily from him, waving his riding crop at Giles Bodkin.
“Devil take the silly little rip! Leaping and yelling like that in front of me stallion. What was it all about?”
Giles touched a grimy but respectful finger to his forehead.
“I’m afeared I don’t know. Be you ‘urted, Squire, Sir?”
“No, Bodkin, though me velveteen coat’s covered in mud, look at it. I think me stallion knocked a bit of sense into that brat of yours though. That’ll teach him a lesson he won’t forget, eh.”
The coach driver stirred Gilly’s limp form with his boot. “The life’s gone from him, Squire. Lookit that great welt alongside his temple, Sir. He be dead as a post, I’m certain.”
Stiffly the Squire remounted. He sat looking at the dead Gilly as his stallion picked up the discarded sugar stick in its huge teeth and swallowed it in a single crunch.
“Hmm, it was the boy’s own stupid fault, Bodkin.”
Giles rubbed his hands together nervously.
“O that it were, Squire Sir. Now don’t you worry your ‘ead none over Gilly, he be gone an’ that be that. We still got a great many mouths left t’feed beside missus an’ me. ‘T weren’t your fault, Sir.”
Squire Manfield wiped mud from his waistcoat. “Hmph! I should say it wasn’t. Y’can count yourself lucky I wasn’t injured; the fall would’ve killed a lesser man. I’ll have to get me good riding coat and britches cleaned specially when we reach town. You can do a week’s work at the stables, that should cover the cost.”
Giles Bodkin bowed respectfully. “Yes, Sir, thankee, Sir.”
Lady Manfield was irritated at the delay.
“Rupert, what is going on back there? We’ll never get to town at this rate.”