‘Yes?’ he questioned.
‘I mean,’ she said, turning back to him, ‘a store like this is a splendid one. You ought to be willing to pay handsomely for it.’
‘I’ll pay what I paid your grandfather ‒ ten guineas on the first of each month.’
‘Ten guineas …’ She considered this carefully. ‘Ten guineas … But after all, that’s only your word.’
‘There are no written contracts in our sort of business. Ten guineas was what we agreed upon.’
She shrugged. ‘My grandfather’s death ends all agreements and contracts he made. I have taken over now, and the new price is …’ She paused, and considered. ‘The new price is fifteen guinea pieces, to be paid on the first day of each month.’
He answered without hesitation. ‘I won’t pay it!’
‘And that, sir, will undoubtedly be your loss. This place suits you very well. The village is nearly a mile away, and the vicar a little farther. A service is held only one Sunday in three, and the rest of the time everything’s securely locked against Preventive Officers, who can’t break into a church. It takes time ‒ valuable time to you ‒ for them to get permission to enter here. Oh, yes ‒ all this is worth paying for.’
‘But not worth what you seem to think. Spencer Blake was paid that much money only out of deference to his position. “Manorial Rights” I suppose you’d call it That sum of money doesn’t bear any relation to the value of the store.’
‘Then if you’re not prepared to pay what I ask, you must find some other place for your cargoes.’
He leaned towards her again, and spoke quietly and sharply. ‘It distresses me to have to remind you of the fact, Miss Howard. But has it occurred to you that Blake’s Reach can’t afford to let go even the despised ten guineas?’
She shook her head. ‘You’re very wrong, Mr. Fletcher. Blake’s Reach needs money so badly that the miserable hundred and twenty guineas a year you offer is hardly worth thinking about.’ With the tip of her finger she began idly to trace the grooves in the carving on the pew. ‘Don’t you see that once a certain stage of need is reached, a little money does practically nothing? Will a few extra pounds put a new roof on? Or buy a new flock? It wouldn’t save Blake’s Reach ‒ it wouldn’t even begin to patch it up!’
She was watching him carefully now, trying to feel how far she could go with the bluff. ‘It’s really very simple if you look at it my way. I can afford to do without your money because it’s such a small part of what I need.’
His eyebrows had lifted a little ‒ in amusement, Jane thought. ‘Then why press for more if this is a matter of indifference to you? Why not give it freely … let’s say, as a generous gift of the Manor? They say the poor are always the most gracious givers.’
‘It’s a virtue I’m not very practised in,’ she retorted sharply. ‘I’m asking a higher price because I don’t like to be undervalued.’
He laughed outright. ‘Undervalued! I’ve never known a woman more conscious of her price!’
‘Price isn’t value, Mr. Fletcher.’
His expression grew sober, and he shook his head. ‘I hope for your own sake, Jane Howard, that, in all you’re getting yourself involved with here, you’ll still be able to distinguish value from price. I mean, to know how much is worth … what!’
‘I understand very well what you mean.’ She tapped her nail against the edge of the pew. ‘What I want to know is will you pay what I’m asking?’
He shrugged, losing his air of seriousness and concern, becoming flippant again.
‘How can I say?’ Reaching behind him he caught his coat tails and spread them out for her inspection. ‘Do I look like the man who owns that cargo? You surely must know the difference between a prosperous smuggler and his hireling? It’s not for me to settle what shall be paid. I’ll carry your message, of course …’
Jane pursed her lips. ‘I thought a man of your … talents, Mr. Fletcher, would hardly be content to labour for another man. I see you as a leader …’
‘Of course you do,’ he said, blandly ignoring her tones. ‘Talents I undoubtedly have, but it takes time to acquire your own lugger. I left the Navy ten months ago.’
‘The Navy regretted it?’ Jane prompted.
‘It would be idle to pretend they did ‒ with a line of men ahead of me for promotion that would stretch from here to Rye. Too slow for me ‒ too slow. What’s the use of being made a Vice-Admiral the year you die of old age?’ He shook his head. ‘It was divorce by mutual consent. I can’t really think the Navy grieves the loss of Lieutenant Paul Fletcher.’
‘So … you’re not rich enough to own the cargo? Then who does?’
‘I’m paid so that that gentleman doesn’t have to soil his hands with the illegal business of smuggling. The dirty nights waiting for the boats are not for him ‒ or the unpleasant thought that you might have to kill a Preventive Officer to save the cargo. No, that’s not for him at all! One of the many nice things about being rich is that when you want to break the law, you pay someone to do it for you.’
‘You’re not going to tell me his name?’
‘I not only won’t tell you ‒ I’ll even warn you it’s not a question that’s safely asked on the Marsh.’
She felt the coldness of his words touch her like ice. She wished she needn’t be constantly reminded that this was a world of suspicion and chase, of quick and savage revenge on the informer. It was all much better when smuggling was made to seem a fairly light-hearted business of keeping out of the way of the Revenue men. She stirred restlessly, wanting to be free of the thought. All she had wanted was a few extra pounds from this bounty in which the whole sea coast appeared to share, but Paul Fletcher wanted her to feel the darkest fears of any of the men who walked the roads with contraband at night, or who sold information to the Excisemen, and spent the gold with terror in their hearts.
‘You make the Marsh an evil place,’ she said in a low tone. ‘I’m afraid …’
His features relaxed. He was almost tender when he spoke. ‘There’s no need to fear when you belong to the Marsh as the Blakes do. They have been here as long as men have been recording its history. They belong here ‒ not like the Fletchers, who were small farmers and new-comers hardly more than a hundred years ago. The Blakes …’
He stood up abruptly. ‘Come with me!’
He held out his hand to her, and she took it without a thought, caught up in his force and energy. He led her back to the door, and stood aside to let her pass. They stepped out again into the sunlit world, and the damp smells of the church were gone. The light was so brilliant and solid-seeming that Jane wanted to put out her hands and feel it, like a living thing. The green miles of the Marsh were there, the flat shores, the sea like a blinding mirror.
Impatiently he pulled her around to the other side of the church, where the sweep of the view was much greater.
‘Shade your eyes! Now look down there. That great dyke down there ‒ in the break between the hills towards Rye ‒ that used to be a tidal river, when the Marsh was still a Marsh, and half covered with water in every high tide. And the smaller dyke branching from it ‒ do you see where it goes? It runs from there right along here beside Blake’s Reach!’
‘Yes ‒ I see.’ And then impatiently. ‘But what …?’
‘Wait! Try to think of a time, hundreds of years ago, when the river found its way out to the sea through mud-flats, and this dyke was a small creek flowing into it. A man called Blake came to settle on a reach of this creek, and gave it its name. Not an important man ‒ just a very obscure cousin of a family who were prominent ship owners and merchants. In fact, they were barons of the Cinque Ports, and that was a title to be proud of in those days.
‘This Blake,’ he said, nodding towards the dyke and the house, ‘had his chance when the Rother changed its course after a great storm some time, they say, about the 13th century. Then this side of the Marsh was flooded only at exceptionally high tides. The reclaiming of the Marsh had been
going on since the Romans came to England, and after the river changed its course, the time was right to start on this part. The Blakes began making their innings ‒ reclaiming, ditching and draining, and the acres of pasture for their sheep grew with each generation.’
He laughed suddenly, in amusement. ‘As your grandfather told the story, one day the Blakes stopped working for a moment to draw breath, and found themselves rich ‒ and bearing the title of Lords Proprietors of the Romney Marsh, to boot! And they weren’t humble folk any longer.’
‘That’s a good story,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘I don’t care if it isn’t exactly true ‒ it’s still a good story. But what became of the other ones ‒ the ship owners?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Died out, I suppose ‒ or lost in poverty. This used to be a great sea trading area, but as the reclaiming of the Marsh went on, the harbours began to silt up. New Romney’s a mile and a half from the sea now, and Rye harbour is a mile from the town itself. When the trade left the Ports, I imagine the ship owning Blakes went with it.’
‘It seems to me,’ she said coolly, ‘that you’ve too much information about the Blakes. How much of it have you made up?’
He laughed. ‘None! I swear to you ‒ none! I’ve heard it from your grandfather when he wished to impress on me the inferiority of the Fletchers by comparison to the Blakes.’
‘You hated him, didn’t you?’
‘Hate him? Why should I? He was an old man, full of drink and despair. He was shamed, too, by the thought that he and his father had brought nothing but disaster to their family. At one time, he told me, the Blake land stretched to the great dyke in the south, and touched the fringe of Appledore.’
‘And now,’ Jane said, ‘there’s only a few fields, and hardly enough sheep to keep them cropped. Don’t tell me, Mr. Fletcher ‒ I know.’
‘There are ways to get land,’ he said quietly. ‘When times are bad, small farmers grow less careful of their inheritance. It needs patience …’
She broke in roughly. ‘And money! Where do you think the money would come from?’
‘The King’s Pearl! Everyone knows that Spencer never sold the King’s Pearl.’
‘The Pearl belongs to Charles.’ She pointed towards the house. ‘Down there we’re all waiting for Charles to come back.’ Her voice shook with a scarcely controlled anger. ‘I’ve been here less than a day, and already I’ve fallen into the pattern. This hour, or maybe the next hour, he might come back.’ She looked away. ‘No ‒ the King’s Pearl is not mine to sell.’
‘Charlie Blake is as good as dead ‒ if he’s not dead already! You’ll be mistress of Blake’s Reach, and free to do what you please with the King’s Pearl.’
She stood silently, fighting hope and enthusiasm, not wanting Paul Fletcher to see them, but wanting to hear him say again that she would be mistress of Blake’s Reach. Once again she wanted to hear that land could be won with money and patience. She struggled to keep the excitement from her face and eyes, and it wasn’t possible. Paul Fletcher knew as well as she did what thoughts were hers, how the fate of an unknown man in a Paris prison could seem so little beside what lay under her hand. With a little money she could live with dignity and honour at Blake’s Reach ‒ so that by degrees she stepped completely and forever across the line that had separated her from this family, so that there would come a time on the Marsh when she and no one else would symbolize the Blake family, when the memory of old scandals would die … Paul Fletcher’s voice, sure and firm, broke into her thoughts.
‘And I know what you’ll do. You’ll put every penny you can lay hands on into Blake’s Reach ‒ as careful and saving and industrious as any of the first Blakes who settled on this creek. You’ll make a dull marriage to further your plans, and not to anyone who will take you from this place. You’ll sacrifice everything to it ‒ and it’ll be wrong! It will take everything, too ‒ your youth and all the good years there should be for you. It will take your beauty, Jane.’
Vaguely she was aware that he had called her by her name, and she didn’t turn to rebuke him. Nor did she attempt a denial of his words. ‘You don’t like the Marsh, Paul Fletcher,’ was all she said.
‘I’m unwilling to give my life to it! It’s worked over ‒ there’s nothing but these eternal sheep and the blasted winds. Its society and people are stagnant, like all of England. I’ll leave it behind when I can.’
‘Where will you go?’
‘When I’ve gathered enough money from cheating the King’s Revenue I’ll go and trade more or less honestly in the West Indies. I’m a seaman. Not a porter of other men’s brandy.’
‘Why the West Indies? ‒ why not one of the English ports?’
‘Because I want to go where there’s air to breathe, and sun on your bones, and rum for the asking. Money isn’t so important … I could live like a king there for what I’d earn on the profit from a single sloop. And if a man cares to exert himself, if he’s got wits and guts, and will take a risk, then he can be rich. I said money wasn’t important ‒ well, it is! To me it’s important. I like money … and sunshine, and women who smile easily, and laugh. I’m sick in my belly with these stiff-necked dames who wouldn’t unbend to pass the time of day with disreputable Paul Fletcher.’
‘Are you disreputable?’
‘Never mind that,’ he answered shortly. ‘Ten years from now it won’t matter.’
Suddenly he touched her arm.
‘Think of it! Ten years from now you’ll still be living here ‒ working and scrimping for the honour of a name. And I’ll be free of it all, in a place where names don’t count.’
Her body stiffened, and she drew away from him. ‘Why do you talk like this? What can it matter to either of us what the other does?’
‘Of course I talk out of turn ‒ I always have! I’m saying this because I think you’re making a mistake, and it’s a damn shame! You’ve come here out of the blue, and now you’ve seen Blake’s Reach, and you think you want to be part of it. You don’t understand that it’s finished, and that someone like yourself can’t be walled up in a tomb for the sake of a tradition which seems dazzling in its fashion, but will drain the life from you.’
She stirred, opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her short.
‘Believe me, it isn’t worth it, Jane,’ he said. ‘Get away before you’re caught up in it all ‒ before you forget there are such things as being young, and laughing whenever you feel like laughing. You’re trading your youth and freedom for the empty game of playing a lady with a penny in your pocket. You don’t know all the difficulties yet. But even in the few hours you’ve been here you must have felt doubts … You’re even breaking the law. You’re throwing your hand in with a bunch of dirty smugglers. And what for? You’re doing it for a crumbling old ruin and its debts that aren’t worth a thought in a young girl’s head. Get away from it, Jane!’
There was no response in her face ‒ the obstinate, stubborn Blake face, immobile with anger and wounded vanity and pride. He felt saddened as he watched its unchanging stare.
‘Since when, Paul Fletcher, have women been able to decide which way their lives will go? Do you think I have any choice? You fool! ‒ it’s Blake’s Reach, or nothing!’
She turned swiftly and walked away from him, the hem of her dusty blue gown swishing against the long grass. Her slight body was rigid, as if her anger and scorn were barely confined by good sense. When she reached the gravel path she looked back briefly.
‘I’ll expect you with the answer about the money to-morrow evening. Without fail!’
Only during his naval service had Paul Fletcher remained silent under a tone like this. He was moved to protest, and then dismissed the thought, shrugging. When a woman looked like Jane Howard you allowed her to say such things, especially when the sun was like fire in her red hair.
Five
Jane walked swiftly down the road to Blake’s Reach, her mood savage and tinged with bitterness and disenchantment. She examined t
he house critically in the light of Paul Fletcher’s words, and now she saw only the broken roof tiles, and the rusted iron gates. Abruptly her plans became like a bright, romantic dream that had fallen in pieces at her feet.
Her feelings softened instantly she turned into the drive, and her shoes crunched on the raked, weedless gravel. The vines were cut away from the shining windows, and they were open to the April sun. The boys had attacked the hedges too eagerly ‒ they were cut unevenly and too low. The effect was drastic, but at least clean. The nettles and dead leaves had been piled ready for burning. The tangled rose garden would be the next thing to set in order, she thought. It seemed suddenly very desirable to grow a rose that would be her own … roses were such beautiful, useless things. She wondered if the orchard was past bearing fruit, and if it would be possible to set out daffodils between the trees in time for next spring’s blooming. She knew nothing of growing flowers ‒ at The Feathers there had been a thriving vegetable garden, but nothing so frivolous as a flower. Daffodils, she remembered, multiplied of themselves, and five years from now … She checked her thoughts, and turned to go indoors.
The whole place smelled of soap and fresh wax polish. From the direction of the kitchen came the sound of many voices, and an occasional burst of riotous laughter ‒ she had no doubt that the Appledore women appreciated Patrick’s sallies, and his liberal hand with the ale. There was also the smell of broth and new baked bread.
Patrick had already started in to clean what had been Spencer’s sitting-room. It was still untidy, scattered with his books and the piles of old papers she would have to read and sort through. But the floor and windows shone; the curtains had been brushed and shaken. Patrick had lighted a small fire in the cleanly-swept hearth. The fire tools were polished. The table was set with two places ‒ clean silver and glasses laid on a fine damask cloth that had belonged to Anne. Patrick’s sense of the dramatic had led him to withdraw himself and his helpers, leaving the room ordered and waiting for Jane’s return.
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