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Back Plough the Furrow
Chapters (53)
  1. Cover
  2. Title page
  3. Dedication page
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-one
  25. Twenty-two
  26. Twenty-three
  27. Twenty-four
  28. Twenty-five
  29. Twenty-six
  30. Twenty-seven
  31. Twenty-eight
  32. Twenty-nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty-one
  35. Thirty-two
  36. Thirty-three
  37. Thirty-four
  38. Thirty-five
  39. Thirty-six
  40. Thirty-seven
  41. Thirty-eight
  42. Thirty-nine
  43. Forty
  44. Forty-one
  45. Forty-two
  46. Forty-three
  47. Forty-four
  48. Sow the Seed
  49. Reap the Harvest
  50. About the Author
  51. ALSO BY MARGARET DICKINSON
  52. Acknowledgements
  53. Copyright page

Without Jonathan, her world, the land she had once loved so fiercely and fought so hard to win, had become a desolate and melancholy place.

Now she watched for the postboy, praying that Jonathan would write to her. Was he missing her as much as she missed him?

No word came. As the days passed she found resentment against him growing. He hadn’t loved her. He couldn’t have done – or else he would have written. He would have found some way to send word to her – to let her know he was safe, to tell her he loved her still.

She heard nothing.

What had happened to him when he reported back to his unit? Maybe he was safe, she tried to tell herself, in prison for his wrongdoing, but safe. But in her heart she knew that even if he faced charges, eventually they would send him back out to the war front.

Why, oh, why, hadn’t he written to her? He didn’t love her, not really, she tormented herself. Already he had forgotten all about her. Letters and cards came through from the front. Even if he had been sent out to France again, he should still have been able to write to her. Then cold fear would clutch at her heart. He hadn’t written because he couldn’t – because he’d been killed. And here she was hating him for deserting her so coldly, whilst he was lying dead on some battlefield.

Yet she could not, would not, believe that she would never see him again, that he was gone from her for ever. It was the only shred of hope she had and she clung to it with all the tenacity that was in her nature.

One November night about a month after Jonathan had left, a night so calm and still that the sound of the sea drifted in clearly over the land, Esther came wearily down the stairs from seeing Kate into bed when she heard the strangest noise, faint at first, then growing louder. A cacophony of banging and clattering, like copper pans being beaten, rattling pots and whistles and horns. Nearer it came. She stepped outside her back door and saw lights bobbing in the lane outside the gate to her farmyard. Then, distinctly in the black stillness of the night, she heard the sound of chanting voices:

‘Her husband’s gone to war,

‘So she becomes a whore.

‘She leaves her work, she leaves her child

‘Her husband’s name she has defiled.

‘Her sins to the world we’ll tell,

‘Come out, come out, you Jezebel!’