The Twisted Sword: A Novel of Cornwall 1815

by Winston Graham

  The only actual resentment came from Bradley Stevens, Joe Stevens’s father, and some of the girls. Joe Stevens still had dizzy spells and Bert Bice’s ribs were mending slowly. The week before the wedding, when the banns had been called for the third time, they got together in a group after church and thought out how best they might disrupt the wedding. They could create a disturbance in church, but Parson Odgers was so much in his dotage he would hardly notice, and anyway Music would only grin feebly and Katie glower; the ceremony would be carried on even in a pandemonium. Also it was rumoured that Dr Enys was going to be present, and although he was not a magistrate he knew all the magistrates. You didn’t if possible tangle with the gentry. After the ceremony as they came out of church you could pelt them with mud, of which there was plenty after last week’s storms, but again Dr Enys might be there and receive an ill-directed volley. Before the ceremony offered the better chances. Katie had to walk up from Sawle with her mother and her step-father (supposing they agreed to accompany her – Ben would certainly not be there); Music had a much shorter distance to come and might come alone (it was rumoured he’d had hard words with his brothers). They could get some liquid manure ready in pails and swamp him as he came up the hill. Then when he’d gone into church all sodden and stinking they’d barrow in a dozen loads of pig shit and dump it all over his cottage. This plan, the brain-child of Mary Billing, was acclaimed by all.

  The day before, Ross had ridden over to the Blowing House near Truro, in which he had a substantial share. He had dinner with two of the other partners and then met Dwight Enys at the Red Lion and they rode home together.

  Dwight said: ‘From the beginning there was nothing any surgeon could do for Stephen except wait. If a man is injured in the head, one may attempt a trepan, if one of the limbs, at worst one can amputate; for the spine there is virtually nothing. In his case – though neither Mather nor I thought it suitable to ask that we might open the body – we were both certain it was internal bleeding which led to his death.’

  ‘Clowance was devoted to him,’ Ross said, ‘and they were happy together. He was a brave man and was becoming a successful one. After all his adventures and risky enterprises it is a cynical tragedy he should die in this useless and silly way.’

  ‘I understand from Caroline that Harriet was much upset by the accident and has been more or less confined to the house since, not by infirmity but by George’s edict. He is putting much store on the birth of this new baby.’

  ‘They tell me he made a fortune out of Waterloo,’ Ross said drily.

  ‘“Dost thou laugh to see how fools are vex’d to add to golden numbers golden numbers?”’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Something I was reading last night.’

  ‘Isn’t there a verse in the Bible about the ungodly flourishing like a green bay tree?’

  Dwight smiled. ‘We all must learn to flourish as best we can, I suppose. And it’s good to be able to survive, even in a more modest fashion, as we both do, with somewhat clearer consciences than George must have.’

  ‘I do not suppose that George’s conscience ever caused him the loss of a moment’s sleep. What would cause him loss of sleep would be if he felt he had paid half a guinea too much for a horse he was buying from a starving farmer.’

  The track separated them. The mid-afternoon was frowning towards evening, and it would be dark before they reached home.

  When they came together again Dwight said: ‘You will have heard that Music Thomas is to marry Katie Carter tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I hope it may turn out well. I think it might. For Katie to marry Music willingly makes an altogether better prospect of it.’

  ‘Ben does not feel so.’

  ‘It was about that that I wanted to speak to you, Ross. I know you’ve long had an interest in the Carter family, as indeed I have. We both remember our visit to Launceston gaol.’

  ‘I often think’, said Ross, ‘it is due to your ministrations that Zacky is still alive.’

  ‘Zacky is alive because he has a constitution which will not give way; my medicaments are no more than a useful prop. But I think Katie will be grieved if no one of her family – except her mother, and she reluctantly – comes to the church … I suppose Ben is unrelenting … and I doubt if Zacky could walk that distance. But Mrs Zacky is a devout Wesleyan and goes regularly to church. Do you have any leverage you could exercise?’

  ‘Only persuasion. Which I will exercise since it is you that asks. Betsy Maria is in Penryn with Clowance, but there are a half-dozen uncles and aunts – some of them younger than Katie – who might be willing to go. And of course there are the Nanfans. I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I don’t recall having seen Music for a couple of years, and then he was still very much the village fool.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt that if you were to call to see him now, he would be so overcome with embarrassment that you’d think him no better. And I rather fear that the excitement of the wedding may tip his balance tomorrow. But not only has he improved, he is still improving. Rather than being mentally retarded, as we all thought, I am convinced he is just a very slow developer, whose development has been much held back by the part he learned to play and what the village expected of him. I think with Katie’s understanding and companionship he may become at least as normal and intelligent as most of those who taunt him.’

  By the time they separated the night’s cloak had been drawn over the sky with just a scarf of daylight reaching into the sea. Ross made a short detour to Mellin and knocked at the Martin cottage. So he had come one morning thirty years ago in search of cheap labour to work his neglected fields, and so had met Jinny for the first time and become involved in the fortunes of the whole Martin family.

  All those years ago Zacky Martin had been a small, tough, wrinkled man – wrinkled far before his time; now with real age and the long struggle against miners’ tissick he had become tiny: a cashew nut instead of a brazil. Somehow Dwight kept him alive, mixing hot vapours for him to inhale at bad times, or potions of nux vomica and strychnine as a tonic for good ones.

  This was a good one, and Ross, stooping into the small living room, greeted them both and sat down. Mrs Zacky, who had delivered Demelza of Julia and helped at the births of Jeremy and Clowance, and who had had eight children of her own, had not shrivelled with the years: she was a stout, white-haired, bespectacled, flat-faced, rubicund, vigorous seventy-one. In the room, as it happened, were Gabby and Thomas, now both married and living at Marasanvose. They had been collecting driftwood (which Ross had stumbled over in the dark outside). The wrecks around the coast were breaking up and distributing their flotsam. Fortunately – from their point of view – old Vercoe, the Customs Officer at St Ann’s, was known to be laid up with an ulcer on his leg.

  Mrs Zacky said: ‘Well, I ’ad thought to go, an’ then I thought not. Katie be very wilful; always ’ave been, will not be told. She’ve never even brought ’im round to see us. I mind ’im in church, o’ course but he never come to no prayer meetings.’

  ‘She’m shamed of ’im,’ said Thomas. ‘That be the truth and no two ways o’ looking ’pon it.’

  ‘I aren’t so sartin he’s so dead’n alive,’ said Gabby. ‘He’s a treat wi’ horses. An’ I seen him quick ’nough ’pon times.’

  Zacky said: ‘Katie be wilful but she have her head screwed on. Maybe ’twill turn for the best.’

  There had been many improvements in the cottage since those early days: a good smooth planchen laid over the earth floor, and rugs on that; three comfortable upholstered chairs, a dark oak table, a mirror, a new fireplace; the ovens moved into the scullery. Zacky had prospered with his master. Ross had pressed him to move into a place less cramped for size, but as their family had grown and gone and his own active life became restricted Zacky had been less and less inclined to move.

  Gabby relit his pipe. ‘I ’ear tell there’s like to be troubl
e.’

  ‘Trouble?’

  ‘’Twas only a whisper I picked up but they d’say them lads that was always baiting Music, they d’plan to upset the wedden.’

  ‘Upset it? How?’

  ‘Dunno. There’s three or four lads, half a dozen girls, mischief bent, ye might say.’

  ‘What time is the wedding?’

  ‘Nine o’clock,’ said Zacky. ‘After it they go back to work at Place House.’

  Mrs Zacky clicked her knitting needles. ‘Reckon I’ll maybe go up to the church, if ’tis your wish, Cap’n Ross.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll come along wi’ ee, mam,’ said Gabby. ‘’Tis slack time an’ I can steal a hour.’

  ‘We’d best not be late leaving this eve,’ said Thomas. ‘There’s a couple loads wood outside. If we can have the lend of your handcart, Father?’

  ‘Anything of value come in?’ Ross asked.

  ‘Two spars o’ good timber, sur, looks like black spruce or some such. Naught else you’d say of value.’

  ‘Think you they’ve come from the Kinseale?’

  ‘They’re small pieces, ten foot long, but there may be better on the morning tide.’

  ‘What time is high water? Ten or a little after? Well, it’s worth keeping an eye open.’

  His mission accomplished, Ross led his horse home. He found Demelza seated before the fire reading to Henry; Bella and Cuby heads together over a piece of needlework; their latest cat, Hebe, licking a delicate back leg at Demelza’s feet and Farquhar, nose in paws, drowsing in the steady candlelight.

  When he came in all was commotion, movement, talk. Demelza went off immediately to see that supper should soon be served. She still hadn’t learned the ability to delegate.

  Against the probabilities, her relationship with Cuby had ripened into an easy friendship. There had been some moment of crisis, Ross sensed, soon after Cuby arrived, but that had passed. This peculiarly fraught, uneasy situation could so easily have failed because of the special tensions that operated within both women; and it was a testimony to Cuby, he thought, as well as to Demelza, that they spoke understandingly and affectionately to each other, considerate but not over-polite; they even sometimes differed on things, even shared a joke.

  Next Monday Demelza was to go to Penryn to spend a few days with Clowance, and he knew she would try to persuade her to spend Christmas with them. Ross’s instinct was against it, but he did not utter a word. The second loss, coming so hard on the heels of the first, had left a raw edge that couldn’t yet begin to heal. It was twisting the sword in the wound to attempt to keep up Christmas in any way whatever. If Clowance came she might find it hard to reconcile herself to the prospect of a new baby in the house and a sister-in-law about whom she still had resentful reservations. Dwight said he thought Cuby’s child would be likely to be born in mid-January. As soon as possible then Cuby would want to show the baby to her mother. That would be the time to press Clowance to come to Nampara. The longer the girls were kept apart while the first wounds healed, the better chance there was of their finding harmony and understanding.

  V

  Day came up about seven, with angry clouds which seemed to be a residue of some quarrel of the night. Ross took his spyglass to the window of his bedroom but the sea and beach were calm and unencumbered.

  They breakfasted at 7.30, when Bella was full of some rhyme or jingle she had learned, supposing it to be the sounds a nightingale made when in full song. At eight Ross strolled out of the house as if going to Wheal Leisure, but instead walked up the Long Field and its promontory of rocks at Damsel Point which divided Hendrawna Beach from Nampara Cove. The unbroken sand of Hendrawna Beach was a creamy white as the sun broke through, the placid sea, so wild a few days ago, turning gently over at its edge, playful wavelets bearing no visible cargo. The two Martin men had got the best last night.

  He wondered how Katie’s wedding would go. He hoped the village lads, who could be spiteful enough, would not interrupt the ceremony, or turn the evening into some sort of a noisy riot. He turned to go back to the house and then stopped to stare into Nampara Cove. By the freak of the tides practically all wreckage was washed up along the great beach, the cove scarcely ever gathered anything of note. Today the position was reversed. The cove was choked with wood.

  He clambered down the side of the gorse-grown cliff and came out on the small beach, part sand, part pebbles, bisected by the Mellingey Stream. It took no time to recognize the wood as being good quality timber, more black spruce, red and yellow pine, oak and probably beech. There were also tar barrels and bales of rope and oakum floating around.

  He touched nothing but began to limp quickly up the narrow green valley to the house. There were a half-dozen able-bodied men about the farm. They would be mainly in the fields by now. And Sephus Billing. Sephus Billing was this morning repairing the fowl house. He was a fair carpenter but his intellectual attainments would not have put Music to shame. And he was a member of the Billing clan who pullulated in one of the larger cottages of Grambler village.

  ‘Sephus!’ Ross called as he came into the yard.

  ‘Ais, sur?’

  ‘There’s a lot of good timber washing in in Nampara Cove. Go and tell the other men, I want them to stop work and go down to see what they can salvage.’

  A gleam lit up Sephus’s dull eyes. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘Ais, sur, that I’ll do.’ He put down his hammer. You never had to tell a Cornishman twice to down tools if there was booty to be had.

  ‘And Sephus!’ as he made for the gate.

  ‘Sur?’

  ‘When you have told the men you may go on to Grambler and tell your family of it. There should be a little bounty for all.’

  Ross walked to the gate and shut it after the fleeing man. With an ironical gaze he saw Sephus running in the direction of Cal Trevail, who was pulling carrots in the field beyond Demelza’s garden. Soon there would be plenty of willing helpers. All Sephus had to do then was alert the village of Grambler.

  VI

  Music and Katie went to church through a deserted village. No young men or girls waited by the wayside to douse them in liquid manure. They were married in an almost empty church, the only people present being Parson Odgers – and Mrs Odgers to remind him not to read the burial service in error – Jinny and Whitehead Scoble, Dr Enys, Mrs Zacky Martin, Char Nanfan, and a half-dozen old women who were too infirm to rush down for the pickings in Nampara Cove.

  In the cove itself a fair element of chaos reigned, for the haul was bigger than it first seemed. A freak of tide had carried the cargo of the wrecked Kinseale out of Basset’s Cove and deposited it several miles north. The way was narrow and people were trooping down and back, some with mules, some with wheelbarrows, some with boxes and sacks – anything that would carry or contain more than a pair of hands. Often they plunged into the water to grab some item of flotsam, often there were arguments, sometimes fights. Everybody came peaceable, but not everybody could contain their greed.

  After appropriating for himself two or three nice lengths of wood, Ross left the villagers and his farm labourers to it. Let them have their fun while the going was good. It was doubtful if Vercoe would have hastened to put in an appearance if he had been well; as he was not, there was no risk at all. Cuby went with Demelza and Isabella-Rose to the edge of Damsel Point to watch. Just for half an hour there was the risk of the crowd getting out of control, but Ross said: ‘Let them be. There’s no liquor. They’ll have cleared everything as clean as a whistle by nightfall.’ And they had. Demelza wrinkled her nose at what she expected she would find trampled down in the muddy track of her special cove when she went to look in the morning.

  Meantime Music and Katie had returned to their cottage, changed out of their Sunday clothes and walked to Place House to resume their duties. Katie was normally a living-in maid, but as master and mistress were away had been given permission to sleep out for a few nights. So in due course, which was late in the afternoon, the
y returned to the cottage together, tramping unspeaking through the windy dark. An hour before they returned, unknown to them, the lads and girls, tired out with a day of collecting timber and pieces of panelling and rope ends and paint brushes and a roll of calico and a man’s jacket and other odds and ends, had bethought themselves of their old malice and decided – coming giggling out of a kiddley – that, well, they might just so well dump the pig shit as waste it, and they would be passing the cottage anyway on their way home. But they were thwarted by the startling and unexpected presence of Constable Vage, who happened to be taking a stroll in Grambler village at that time. It was the first time he had been in Grambler for a month. Ross, not being a magistrate, had no authority to call him out, but a discreet guinea sent over by Matthew Mark Martin had been enough, and he had whiled away the time talking and drinking with the Paynters until the drunken laughter of the lads alerted him afresh to Ross’s request.

  So the happy couple slept undisturbed, Katie in the upstairs room once occupied by the three brothers, Music stretched out below in front of the dying fire.

  He was perfectly, perfectly happy. She was his wife. She was upstairs in his house, along of him.

  If it never came to no more than that, he would be content. If it someday came to the as-yet-unthinkable he would be enraptured. But for the time being he was perfectly, blissfully satisfied with the simple fact that they were wed. Beyond that his patience stretched away into the illimitable distance.

  Chapter Two

  Lady Harriet Warleggan was brought to bed on the evening of Wednesday, the 12th December, and her labour continued into the morning of the 13th.

  Things had not been easy between Harriet and George. Harriet was tetchy all the time, plagued by thoughts of the accident and made more angry by George’s reactions to it. He seemed to take it as a breach of convention, even an insult to himself, that his wife and this upstart he disliked so much and whom Harriet well knew he disliked so much, who had been guilty of highway robbery against him – that they should have been defiantly and openly riding together; and that she had put their son at risk for the sake of some stupid and high-spirited gallop across hunting country … It never quite emerged whether Harriet had challenged Stephen or Stephen Harriet, but there had been some sort of competitiveness involved, of that George was sure. And he was not at all certain that there had not been some sexual undertones.