By: Pranavan Ganeshalingam
Middlefield C.I.

It was a normal day like any other, a small village district with carts, horsemen and carriages sprinkled like sprinkles on a sprinkled donut, across the winding turnpike road made of compacted stones.  Gentlemen and fair ladies walked the roads, attending to their daily business.

Gabrielle Earnestine was a beautiful girl, tall and slim, with murky eyes and black hair. Her hair was perhaps too straight; her mouth too large and talkative; her nose too delicately shaped.  Her expression, as a whole, was very attractive nonetheless.

She had lost her mother when she was sixteen and had neither a brother nor a sister.  With no one at home to do the chores, Gabrielle had to go out every Saturday afternoon to pick up some produce from the local market square.


“Ye ought t' have gone t' tha market by now, Gab,” her papa hollered.

“Yes papa,” she said, “I shall leave very soon. I am going t’ finish sewing this here silk collar and hem up these fitted panels to the banana shaped sleeves.”
Gabrielle exited her house and headed to the main street, singing;        
To market, to market
To buy a fat pig.
Home again, home again,
Jiggety-jig.

As Gabrielle approached the end of the drawn out passageway leading out towards the main street, a classy stagecoach came riding by.

“Hey lookie there!  It Henry Cole and his slutty mistress headin’ that away towards the Crystal Palace in Albertopolis,” Gabrielle thought to herself in extreme dislike.   

 “Why could these wealthy folks not bestow some of their riches to the deprived?” she questioned herself with utter anger raging inside.   

Gabrielle headed down the dual carriageway and as she entered the central market square, the true centre for trade of Chipping Sodbury was revealed.  The locomotive crossroad was to the left, coming in from Liverpool and Framlingham castle was up on the peak of the hill ahead.  The parish church was straight in front, the town hall was just to the right and the post office was just behind.  Not to forget the numerous shops and hotels strewn throughout the centre of the town, all strategically placed like pieces on a chest board, encompassing the centre cross, marking the presence of the lord in this spiritual little town.

She strolled about searching for a good bargain when she noticed a small produce stand stacked with heaps of fresh cabbage and lettuce, picked clean from the land.  She inched over to the stall when a faint roar of a lady provoked Gabrielle to turn around to see a mid-sized lad dressed in black attire snatch a handful of horse radishes from the lady grocer.  The lady, with her palms pinned to her cheeks, screeched out a melody of fright as the bandit slowly escaped amidst the blundering crowd and dashed, very quickly, out of sight.

    Once again after a flash of utter turmoil, the town returned to its everyday practice.  Gabrielle went back to her other interest of sealing a fine deal with the merchant; to show her papa that she too could buy intelligently, ‘making sure that one gets a lot for a little’.  
“I’ll grant you a shilling and twelve pence for this head of lettuce, three herrings and five kippers,” Gabrielle offered nicely, holding out the wealth in front of the greedy merchant’s face.   

“Ye have a deal my fair lady!” the merchant responded with utter delight as if she had never seen the sight of riches in all her one hundred years of life.  

Suddenly, a disoriented man crashed right into her as she was walking towards home.  To her befuddled surprise it was that scoundrel of a crook trying to flee.  

“Thief!” she howled, when he immediately rejected her voice by enveloping her mouth with his massive, strangely creamed hands.  During all the commotion, Gabrielle somehow managed to confiscate the mask that he was wearing.       

“Wha tha blunder!?” she questioned out of utter disbelief.

The masked convict happened to be her much-loved cousin.

“Ye're a bad, sinful fellow,” she cursed out of resentment.
“Nay, hold on, let me explain” he exclaimed, as Gabrielle struggled to push past him, anxious to go home.  “My fellow chaps back there provoked me into doing all this nonsense.”

“Don’t ye give me some lame excuses, Tony!” Gabrielle warned, as she pointed her index figure right towards him.

“Here's a couple shillings to get ye ta keep your mouth fastened,” Tony offered with the anticipation that she would accept charitably.

“Pardon me, but I reckon this will not suffice. Nothing that you can give me, no offerings of that description, can compensate for the trouble the likes of you are in.  If you had all the wealth and rank of the greatest lord in the land, it would count as nothing in such a scale,” she lectured.   She snatched the riches and chucked it keenly, scattering the fragments across the dusty, white road.
“Ye cussed, unreasonable fool!” he exploded out angrily.

“Let me pass, I’ve not more t'say!” she exclaimed.

“Nay, I'll not part in this fashion,” he insisted as he furiously pinned her sleek body backwards against the stone wall of the Gothic Revival styled cottage.

 “Loose me, ye coward,” she gasped, striving to free herself.

Holding her firm, he objected, “Come Gab, can we not part as friends?”

“Part as friends, indeed,” she thought in sweet sarcasm.

“Friends with the likes of you? What do ye take me for?” Gabrielle responded with anger, as she escaped the clutches of the bandit and went about her usual shopping.

*     *     *

After a whole hour of shopping around, Gabrielle couldn’t take the weight of lugging around a huge sac of groceries all the way home so she employed a carriage to help her.

Meanwhile, Gabrielle’s papa’s mistress was worried sick about Gabrielle’s whereabouts. “Gab’s not at home!” she gasped. “When will she be back home?”

“I fancy she won't be long. She went out an hour or two ago and she has an appointment with her dressmaker at five,” he replied. “Do not worry my dear, she’ll be coming just around the corner by now,” Gabrielle’s father responded in assurance.

On Gabrielle’s way home, she wished to look towards the lord at a time of contemplation so she decided to stop by the old Parish church.   

The cathedral melody rolled through the dark, empty church like fog bleeding into the sky above a little town. The last, overcast flicker of daylight glistened in through the pointed windows.  Beyond the level rows of shadowy benches, there was a litter of prayer-books, two flickering candles that revealed an organ pipe and a young girl's swaying stature.

 “Who's that?” she cried in a loud, frightened voice as she heard the faint footsteps of someone approaching her swiftly.

A man's uneasy laugh answered her, “It's only me, Gab. I didna' think t' scare ye. I've bin lookin’ for ye, this hour past.”  “I am very sorry,” he said in a voice that matched the evening; it was so quiet and soft.
“But it was exceedingly dim-witted of you to sneak up on me, from behind, like that,” Gabrielle said in annoyance.  “Ah, you are a fool. You do not know the value of your own wealth.”

“True, I’ve been a fool. I was hoodwinking to a think that one coming from such a life as you could be won over with wealth,” replied Tony guiltily.

“I must depart now as my papa and his mistress will be questioning my whereabouts,” Gabrielle said in excuse to get away from this absolute bamboozle.  “I reckon it ain't much use tryin’ to get through t’ tha likes of you, but remember this; wealth is no benefit in the game of life.”

Gabrielle quickly scurried back to the carriage where the horseman was patiently waiting for the past couple of minutes. Before she knew it, they arrived home and Gabrielle quickly got out with a couple of bags.

“Where've ye bin, Gab?” the mistress questioned anxiously, as she sped out the front gates, running towards Gabrielle.

“I went out t’ tha market square,” Gabrielle answered back, while she continued to unload the packages and carried them mechanically one by one into the house. Each time, when she reappeared, he was standing by the steaming horse, across the main street, studying her every move.

© Copyright 2008