The Rope Carrier Read Online Free

rivers. They call them canals.”
    â€œWhat?” said Annie. “What the devil are they doing that for?”
    â€œThey make ’em so as to carry heavy loads along in boats. Right into the big towns the boats go, all loaded up with I don’t know what.”
    â€œThey’ve no business doing that,” Annie insisted. “Rivers should be where God puts ’em, that’s what I say, like our river. God put it here and we use it, that’s how it should be.”
    â€œI thought it were the devil made your river, Annie,” Queenie cracked out, laughing.
    â€œI think ’twere neither god nor devil made our river. ’Twere someone much older . . . the earth herself.”
    â€œAye,” Queenie nodded, her voice soft with reverence. “The earth herself. That is something the gypsies have always known. Why else would we come?”
    Minnie listened wide-eyed and silent to these two fierce women who feared neither god nor devil.
    Queenie told of the great buildings she had seen being built close to the rivers to house the new spinning and weaving machines. They’d heard that someone had made a weaving loom that did not even need a man or woman to work it. Soon there’d be no work for weavers or spinners who did their work at home. Folk would have to get up early and set off to thesegreat buildings, these enormous factories, to serve the new machines. Minnie looked over at Marcus the weaver who sat with his loom pulled up to the fire, close enough for some warmth and a little light. Though close enough, too, to hear what was being said, he never paused in his work, just smiled sadly, swaying gently in time to the clack of his treadles.
    The gypsies had seen other things, dreadful things. Some of the places they’d travelled through were suffering from famine. What food there was had become expensive, so that the poorest people couldn’t buy it.
    Minnie listened, fascinated, promising herself silently that she would one day leave the cave and the small town which was all she knew, and go away to see for herself the amazing things that Queenie had seen. Perhaps she would go off with the gypsies. Yes, that’s what she would do! She would hide herself in Queenie’s wagon and only show herself when they’d gone many miles from Castleton.
    The day that the gypsies left was freezing cold and the top of Mam Tor, the mother mountain, was hidden in mist. Minnie decided that she’d stow away with Queenie another year. She’d put up with the dreary round of work and the dampness of the cave a little longer to stay by the fireside and her sisters’ warm bed.

Chapter Five
    AT LAST, SHARP spring sunlight came creeping into the cave. Thin pointers of dust-filled light pierced the dark corners of the underground village. Fetching the firewood was a pleasure, and Minnie went even more eagerly, glad of a good excuse to get into the warm sunlight. The younger children were sent out to take the pigs to graze.
    Easter came and the children were given a holiday from their work. They went rushing around the village, searching for bottles which they scrubbed and cleaned. When all the containers were ready, they climbed the hillside beneath the castle to fill them with clear, cold water from Russet Well. Then there was the fuss and excitement of “the shaking”. Each door in the village must be knocked on as the children begged little bits of liquorice and sugar to add to their bottles. Slowly the mixtures got stronger and sweeter. The bottles were shaken vigorously all the time, and even taken into the church on Easter Sunday, ready for the delicious drinking which happened when the service was over.
    Minnie looked forward to the end of May for it was then that the celebration of the Castleton Garland took place. The Whittingham boys were already practising their dance steps with solemn concentration on the ropewalk below, while Minnie and Sally smirked and