He kissed her full on the mouth then sat back on his heels.
Kerensa put the back of her hand against her lips and looked up at him under her eyelashes.
‘Now you look even more like a little girl,’ he said, laughing softly. ‘Want to slap my face?’
‘Not for kissing me,’ she told him huffily, kneeling up to face him. ‘But for laughing at me, I could beat you willingly.’
‘I’m not laughing at you, my little sweet,’ he said, smiling at her.
‘My little sweet… you always called me that, Clem,’ her anger swiftly dying.
‘Yes, I did, didn’t I? You will always be that to me.’
Kerensa returned his smile. ‘Are you in a better mood now?’
‘Yes. Shall we start again? Pretend I’ve only just found you in the river?’
‘Only if you tell me you won’t have me thrown in gaol for trespassing,’ she teased.
‘You are Trecath-en’s honoured guest,’ he said, in the same humour.
Exchanging a friendly hug they sat down again, Kerensa massaging her foot above her sore toes while Clem threw stones and bits of grass into the sparkling water as they talked.
‘I hope you do get a kitten for Alice,’ Kerensa said. ‘There aren’t any cats at the Manor. Oliver comes out in a rash and gets runny eyes if they’re about.’
‘Does he?’ Clem gave a short mocking laugh, tossing away a last stone and sinking to his side to rest on an elbow. ‘He’s not as perfect as he likes to think he is, then.’
‘I don’t think he does believe he’s perfect.’
‘Do you, Kerensa?’
‘Oh, he’s hardly that, Clem… but he’s not quite as bad as he would have people believe. He’s had a different upbringing to us, has different expectations, a different way of looking at life.’
Kerensa was surprised at Clem’s next question. ‘Do you like him?’
She was careful how she answered. ‘Most of the time.’ She didn’t want to hurt him by what she might say so turned the conversation round. ‘Do you like Alice?’
Clem thought for a moment, plucking a blade of grass and biting it between his front teeth. ‘Silly, isn’t it? It’s not crossed my mind before to wonder if I like Alice or not… yes, I think I do. I suppose if I hadn’t been obliged to marry her I might have gone mad.’
‘I’m pleased you like her. Alice is the only friend I can really turn to.’ She reached out and stroked his cheek. ‘Don’t hurt her, Clem, please.’
They stayed still, looking at one another without talking for a long time, happy just to have been given one unexpected secret hour together. They got up at the same moment, Clem taking Kerensa’s arm to help her along so she could keep the weight off her sore foot, and stooping to pick up her shoes on the way. On reaching the patch of stinging nettles he retrieved her hat, then fetched Kernick and handed her the pony’s reins. Then, with a whispered ‘Goodbye’, he kissed her cheek, turned and walked away from her.
When she reached the top of the valley Kerensa looked back and watched Clem moving further and further away, his fair head standing out clearly against the dull landscape, but not upright and proud as it had been. A feeling of guilt and longing welled up painfully inside her and she wiped away the threat of tears. She had no desire to go to Ker-an-Mor now and rode off in the direction of home.
* * *
Daylight was fading when the harvesters on Ker-an-Mor Farm had finished washing themselves down at the pump in the farmyard and were ready to call the hard day’s work finally at an end.
Oliver clamped his hand on Jack’s scrawny shoulder, the boy almost asleep on his feet.
‘You’ve put in a good day’s work again today, Jack. Here,’ he said, taking a coin of large denomination from his pocket, ‘treat yourself the next time you’re in Marazion.’
‘Phew, thank ’ee, sir,’ Jack said brightly, before his eyelids drooped again.
Nathan came over to them, neatly tucking his shirt into his breeches.
‘I’ll be off then, if that’s all right with you, sir.’
‘Thank you for your help, Nat. Make sure Jack gets back to the Manor all right, will you, please?’
‘Aye, sir, that I will,’ Nat said, sweeping back his thick hair with both hands. ‘Come on, Jack, don’t hang about,’ he threw at the sleepy boy.
‘Nat in a hurry, is he, sir?’ Adam Renfree asked at Oliver’s side. ‘He can’t get the boy on that horse fast enough.’
‘I think he wanted to pay a call at Orchard Hill first, Adam,’ Oliver grinned broadly, a wicked glint in his eye.
‘How’s that then, sir?’
‘A certain woman happens to be paying her cousin a visit there today.’
‘On Orchard Hill? Oh! Polly Berryman, Daniel’s cousin, is that what you’re on about?’ Adam’s grin was wider than Oliver’s. ‘So that’s the way the wind’s blowing, is it? Well, I never. I thought O’Flynn had time only for his trees and pheasants.’
When all the farmhands, and the hired help of rovers looking for casual work, miners working before and after their cores, and those without work at all like the men who were too old and those with lung diseases making them too sick to go down the mines but who missed the company of working men, had all gone home, Oliver and Adam relaxed their aching backs in the farmhouse over a glass of mead.
Settled comfortably in the parlour with his pipe, and his feet raised on a stool, Adam relaxed. ‘Thought to see your wife here today, sir.’
‘I thought she would ride over myself, Adam,’ Oliver agreed with him, ‘but it’s hardly surprising, with you making it so plain you don’t approve of women in the fields unless they’re working hard or bringing food and ale and leaving again at once.’
‘Some of them get in the way and distract the men,’ Adam said, unrepentant. ‘Besides which, it’s no place for a lady.’
‘Kerensa comes from working-class people, Adam. She doesn’t mind getting her hands dirty.’
‘Maybe so, but surely you wouldn’t approve of her ladyship pulling sheaves together, sir?’
‘Of course not, but she likes to feel useful,’ Oliver asserted, ‘and I like for her to be content.’
Adam thoughtfully moved his pipe to the other side of his mouth. ‘She’s done a lot to help the Richards and it’s a shame they don’t appreciate it. They have no idea how to keep anything clean. You’ll not find a dirtier family, or a less efficient farmer than Rudd Richards, I do reckon. It’s only a matter of time before they lose some of they children to one of the fevers.’
‘I’ll agree with you there, Adam. They will be affected far worse than the rest of us by the poor harvest.’ Oliver eased himself back in his chair and massaged the areas of stiffness in his neck, arms, and shoulders. He not only liked to work as hard as the other men, he drove them on in their labours at a fearsome rate.
‘There will be hardship this winter,’ he went on. ‘The price of grain will soar well beyond the ordinary man’s pocket. Make sure there’s plenty left in the fields for the labourers and locals to glean, Adam. It will provide a little more in their larders for the winter ahead.’
‘I’ll see to that, sir. I’m afraid the ricks won’t be so high and round. The grain flailed on the barn floor’ll be paltry compared to last year. Still, it’s better than the old days now we’re growing more clover, sainfoin, lucerne and turnips for animal fodder to see us through.’
Oliver sighed and swallowed a mouthful of mead. ‘I suppose you’re right, Adam, but fewer crops means more reliance on salted food and I hate to see the cereals so dry and brittle, the potatoes green and bitter.’
‘Tis a crying shame, sir,’ Adam said, leaning forward to pull stubborn corn stalks out of his stockings. ‘I’ve never known a summer like it. My grandmother used to say you can’t get too much rain before mid-summer or too little after. Well, we haven’t had any rain since mid-summer, but we could’ve done with plenty before it… even the storms we had were only thunder and lightning, wit
h barely a drop of rain to be seen or smelled.’
‘Yes,’ Oliver said, getting to his feet and walking towards a small built-in cupboard in the wall and taking a small key from a pocket to unlock it. ‘Beatrice keeps on saying, “There be evil abroad, me ’an’some, evil. Jus’ ’ee wait an’ see.”’
Adam chuckled at Oliver’s excellent imitation of Beatrice’s words and mannerisms and watched with keen interest as his master took a small, but longish box out from behind some papers in the cupboard and brought it over to him.
‘Take a look at this, Adam. Tell me what you think of it.’
The box contained a pearl necklace, consisting of three strands with a larger pearl set in the centre, and a tiny diamond-encrusted clasp.
‘Well, I don’t know much about jewellery and the like, sir,’ Adam said, rubbing his stubbly chin, ‘but it’s a fine-looking piece, right enough.’
‘It’s for Kerensa,’ Oliver said, ‘to mark her birthday today. Do you think she will like it?’
‘Aye. It’s not too big or fussy for the little maid’s taste, I do reckon.’ Adam looked up quickly at Oliver but couldn’t help smiling. ‘Sorry, sir, no disrespect meant, but her ladyship don’t seem much older than a young’un at times, begging your pardon.’
‘No offence taken,’ Oliver said. ‘I didn’t want to wake her early this morning when I left her before dawn, so I brought it with me, thinking I could give it to her sometime during the day. Well, I’ll be on my way home so she can have the necklace before the day is over.’
‘She’ll like that, right enough,’ Adam said, pointing to the box as Oliver picked it up.
‘I hope you’re right,’ he said, as he put the box carefully inside his shirt for the ride home. ‘Goodnight to you, Adam.’
Chapter 22
Peter Blake sat at the foot of the cairn, playing a game from his childhood of making out shapes of animals, ships and faces in the scudding clouds, while he waited for Rosina. They had now met several times, either there beside the tall ferns or one of the other secret places Rosina had taken him to. Varying the location for their meetings each time, they approached from different directions to afford less chance of their association being discovered.
A slowly passing half hour went by and Blake pulled open the hamper of food and drink he’d brought with him and took a long draught from a bottle of white wine. He wasn’t unduly concerned over Rosina’s non-appearance yet, she came when she could and stayed as long as she was able, but as always he was longing to see her.
She limped towards him when he was busy replacing the wine bottle. He looked up, and the smile he had ready for her vanished in an instant. He saw the pain that etched its presence in her features and dulled the radiance of her face. He hurried to meet her.
‘What’s wrong, Rosina?’ As he lightly touched her shoulder the girl winced. ‘Have you hurt yourself?’ he asked her. ‘Or has that brother of yours been beating you again?’ His face was coloured with concern for her and anger at Colly Pearce.
‘Please, Peter,’ she said wearily, ‘could I just have a drink of water?’
Blake led her to where he was sitting and gave her water from the hamper in a small pewter tankard. Her hands were trembling and he held the tankard steady for her to sip from.
‘Enough?’ he said, when she pushed the tankard away.
She nodded, staring out across the still, now ominously silent, scenery.
Turning her face round to his, he said quietly, ‘It was Colly, wasn’t it?’
Her tears fell heavily and without warning and she leaned against him, wrapping her arms around his neck. Blake held her close. He had wanted to take her in his arms so many times but had not dared to, fearing he would drive her away from him. He closed his eyes, drinking in her warmth and softness, glorying in her trust, but shocked at her frailty.
‘I can’t bear to see you like this any more, Rosina,’ he said, ‘you must come back with me. I’ll take you to my sister’s house where Josephine and I can look after you.’
‘I can’t do that,’ she said in a small voice.
‘If you’re worried about not being accepted, Rosina, I can set your mind at rest. Josephine has always adored me and I’m the only family she has. Whatever I like, she likes. Whatever I’ve wanted, all through my life, she’s gone out of her way to obtain it for me. She’ll like you very much, Rosina, she’ll only be too pleased to have you stay with her, and I’ll see you every day.’
‘It’s not that. I wish I could come with you, Peter,’ she said, wiping away her tears, ‘but I have to go home. I can’t leave Colly. He needs me.’
‘But I can’t allow you to go back and receive more of this brutality, Rosina. I fear for your life,’ he said, in all seriousness. ‘I know what it’s like… the pain… the humiliation…’
Brushing aside her long hair as he held her he pulled her dress away from her back, grimacing at the ugly, purple bruises discolouring her skin. She looked up at him, blinking away more tears and revealing further bruises under her chin and down her throat. Blake glanced down at her arms, bare between elbow and wrist. There were bruises of the same ilk there, too.
‘Colly doesn’t mean to harm me, he’s always sorry afterwards.’
‘That’s no comfort to me, Rosina, seeing you beaten, starved, and so unhappy.’
‘He wasn’t always like this,’ she informed Blake. ‘Colly loved me dearly once… a long time ago.’
Blake wasn’t convinced. ‘So what happened to change him into a monster?’
She took a deep breath. ‘Colly’s a lot older than me, and while our parents doted on me, he could never seem to do anything right for them. Poor Colly, he tried so hard to please them, but he was clumsy, always breaking things and getting into trouble.’
‘And presumably beaten?’
‘Yes, he was. When I was old enough I used to cover up for him and say it was me who broke things, or did all the other things that upset our parents. Colly and I loved each other so much, we’d spend hours holding hands just wandering over the downs. I was all he had.’ She stopped talking for a moment and pressed her face into Blake’s chest.
‘Then one day, when clearing a patch of ground our father wanted Colly to dig over to make a garden, he dropped a large block of granite on my foot. It wasn’t Colly’s fault,’ she said, her voice rising, ‘I’d run up behind him and tapped him on the back in play. He turned around in surprise, dropping the rock…’
‘On your foot,’ Blake finished for her, ‘and that is why you are lame?’
‘Yes. I was about five at the time and my right foot was badly broken. Colly could hardly bear the guilt he felt and Father beat him until he could no longer stand up. He couldn’t go down the mine for a week and that caused more arguments. They just wouldn’t leave him alone, Mother or Father. They shouted at him day and night about his loss of wages… about his clumsiness… telling him he was ugly and useless and hopeless.’ Rosina looked up at Blake imploringly. ‘But he wasn’t, Peter, honestly he wasn’t.’
‘I know, I know,’ he said soothingly. ‘What happened after that?’
‘At the end of the week our father was killed and Mother blamed Colly for the accident. Father fell off the ladder on the way down the mine and she said it was because he wasn’t concentrating, because Colly had upset him too much. Dear Colly, he had all that to bear, and as my foot didn’t heal properly it was a constant reminder to him… Oh! it’s not fair!’ she cried, pressing yet closer to Blake for comfort. ‘It was me who tapped him on the back, it was my fault, not his. After that he became more and more remote from me, resenting every kind word Mother gave me and blaming me for every angry word to him. Colly took to drinking, refusing to go to church any more with us, and getting himself into fights and terrible rages.’
‘It seems to me that it was your mother who shouldn’t have gone to church, not your brother,’ Blake commented. ‘Do you know why they hated him so much, your parents?’
‘I often
asked my mother but she’d only say I wouldn’t understand. When she died, Colly told me in one of his rages one day that he had a different father to me.’
‘Well, that would account for your father’s hatred of him, but what about your mother’s?’
‘While my parents seemed to love me, they were cool to one another. Perhaps my mother resented Colly because my father wouldn’t let her forget he wasn’t the first man in her life… something like that.’ Rosina looked at Blake to see if he could answer his own question.
He nodded. ‘Yes, it sounds likely.’
‘When our mother died three years ago,’ she continued, ‘I hoped Colly and I would be close again, but it was too late. He’d been bitter for too long to change. He… he first hit me the day of her funeral… and…’ She couldn’t go on.
‘And he’s been hitting you ever since,’ Blake said grimly, ‘only now he’s become dangerous, too dangerous for you to go home again, Rosina, my dear.’
She bowed her head. ‘Can we talk about something else now? I want to enjoy being with you, Peter.’
‘Yes, of course,’ he said, suddenly becoming enthusiastic. ‘I’ve got something for you, Rosina.’
She sat up straight while he pulled a folded piece of silk out of a corner of the hamper. ‘You’re always giving me things,’ she protested.
‘That’s only food and stuff. This is for you to keep,’ he said, taking her hand and putting the piece of silk into it.
Rosina glanced at Blake and gave him a simple, ‘Thank you.’ She carefully pulled each fold of the deep red material apart until she came to a delicate piece of jewellery, a tiny piece of circular granite with a perfect white cross in its centre formed from crystals of felspar.
‘Peter! It’s beautiful!’
‘I’m pleased you like it,’ he said, glad to have been responsible for causing her radiant smile to appear. ‘I bought it from an old man in the market and had it put in a setting and on a chain for you.’
‘I’ve never been given anything like this in my whole life,’ she breathed. ‘It’s very rare to find the Cross, you know. It’s highly prized, and people search for it for years and never come across it.’
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