The Fleethaven Trilogy by Margaret Dickinson

could have done for him, not even if I had come earlier.’
    ‘Is he in any pain?’ Esther wanted to know.
    The doctor shook his head. ‘Not that I can find out. But his breathing’s bad – very bad – and will get worse, my dear, before the end.’ He met Esther’s steady gaze. ‘But you let me know, and I’ll do what I can to help him.’
    Esther nodded and said hoarsely, ‘Thank you, sir.’
    Doctor Blair gave her shoulder a friendly squeeze. ‘Your being here makes his passing a lot easier, my dear. A lot easier than if he were still living on his own. Just remember that.’
    ‘Why?’ she asked candidly. ‘I seem to be able to do so little.’
    ‘You being here means he can die in his own home, on the land he has always loved. Otherwise . . .’ He paused and took a deep breath. ‘I would have had to take him away.’
    Esther’s eyes widened and her lips parted in a gasp. Grim tales of being sent to the workhouse had been hurled at her by her aunt so often as a threat that she understood at once what the doctor meant. She wasn’t sure that it was still a reality that unwanted children, the destitute, the old and the sick actually ended up in the workhouse, but the fear itself was enough.
    ‘I’ll look after him, mester – I mean, doctor,’ she said in a voice that was none too steady.
    ‘Yes, my dear, I believe you will,’ he said, with a final pat of encouragement and understanding.
    As the doctor turned to leave, she was surprised to feel a lump in her throat and a prickle of unaccustomed tears. She realized suddenly just how fond she had become of the grumpy old man.

    With the news that Sam Brumby was so very ill, and mindful of her promise to care for him until the end, Esther decided to move out of the attic boxroom above the kitchen for it had no direct access to the upper floor of the house. She needed to be nearer Sam.
    Stepping into the room on the opposite side of the small landing to Sam’s room, Esther found what appeared to have once been a nursery. Pushed into the corner was an assortment of children’s toys – a battered rocking horse, a dolls house, a high chair, a doll with a china face and cloth body and in another corner a full-sized baby’s cot.
    Esther wondered if all these things had belonged to the sweet-faced girl in the faded picture in Sam’s bedroom. Perhaps he could not bear to throw anything away; maybe a lot of the old man’s memories of happier days were stored away in this room with these toys. Esther could almost see the little girl with her long hair flowing as she rocked to and fro on the wooden horse; could almost hear her childish laughter . . .
    Esther shook herself; her worry over Sam was making her fanciful and morbid. She must concentrate on practical matters, she told herself firmly.
    Another door led into a long narrow room with a sloping ceiling, beneath which there was just enough room for the iron bedstead to stand. At one end of the room there was a small chest of drawers and a basin and jug stood on a wash-stand. Although the whole place needed scrubbing out and the bedlinen washing, the room was luxurious compared with the attic boxroom. This room had obviously been the nurserymaid’s, but Esther chose it in preference to the larger nursery for it seemed warmer. If she left the two intervening doors open, she would still be able to hear if Sam needed help in the night.
    Three nights later, when the room was clean, the bedlinen freshly laundered and the dust banged from the mattress with a carpet beater, Esther moved in. For the first time in her life, she was sleeping in a real bedroom and on a proper bed.
    Yet, as she lay awake listening to the rasping, laboured sound of Sam’s breathing, she wished she was back in the quiet solitude of the cramped boxroom.

    Sam Brumby lived to know that another harvest had been gathered but he had not been well enough to take any active part in the work. Just once, when she was returning from the fields,