The Twisted Sword: A Novel of Cornwall 1815

by Winston Graham

  There was not much to eat in the apartment, but he found a flûte of bread, some butter and a piece of Brie, and began to wolf them down. The bread, being yesterday’s, had lost all that crisp lightness which makes it the best bread in the world to eat new, but the cheese was just coming ripe and beginning to run. A bottle of red wine was unopened, and he drank it in thirsty gulps.

  He thought again of the undeserved importance people had tried to thrust upon him. They had tried to persuade him to become a magistrate years and years ago. That chap Ralph-Allen Daniel at Trelissick, back in about ’94. He had refused – one of the few sensible decisions of his life: said he wasn’t prepared to sit in judgement on his fellow men – so they’d given the job to George Warleggan, who had relished it, no doubt still did. Sending lads to be transported for stealing a rabbit. It suited him.

  Then no sooner had he turned that down than they were inviting him to stand for Parliament. First Sir Francis Basset, then Lord Falmouth. Falmouth hadn’t chosen him for his high abilities or beautiful nature. It had suited his book because in a petty revolution in the rotten borough of Truro George Warleggan had succeeded in ousting his candidate, and Falmouth, bent on the earliest possible retaliations, had seen Ross as the only man with sufficient popularity among the twenty electors likely to succeed in regaining the seat.

  So, that was one side. (Ross drank the last of the wine and reached for a half-used bottle on the next table.) The other side was, having refused to be made a JP, why had he been willing to be elected an MP? Chiefly because of Demelza’s defection, her infatuation with the young sailor-poet Hugh Armitage, her unfaithfulness in thought – and he suspected deed – her straying away from him in sympathy and understanding and compassion and love. God, how it had hurt at the time! It had burned in him like an acid, corroding the linings of his stomach and heart. The effects of it, even after Hugh’s death, had gone on for years.

  Perhaps it had been salutary in a way to discover how much, among all the thousands of women in the world, he depended upon one woman for his happiness – and she something he had picked up casually as a starving brat, barefoot and ragged and with lice in her hair, to work in his house and kitchen. And for so long the other shadow on their lives had been the existence of his first love, Elizabeth, to whom once he had been deeply, it seemed irretrievably, attached. Now she was indeed a shadow, a shade, like Hugh Armitage, long gone, long dead; yet thoughts of them both still brought pain, a dull reminiscent glow among the ashes.

  He finished the cheese and looked around. There was nothing more. He yawned, with a terrible sense of lassitude. If he left now, where would he go? He did not feel like another night in a cottage with his purse wedged under his arm. At least Demelza and the children must now be safely out of Paris and therefore out of any danger from civil war or Bonaparte’s malice. He could not help them by following, because he could only guess at their route. The sun rose about six. Day would be breaking soon after five. If he slept now, rose at four, it would give his nag a longer rest as well as himself. There was no knowing how scarce horses would be on the routes to Calais, but if this animal were cosseted and conserved it might even see him all the way. Once Napoleon was in command of Paris his first task would be to appoint a cabinet, and it would take days to draw up the new Constitution he had promised. Then there would be plenty of provincial problems to deal with. Bordeaux was traditionally royalist, and others of the smaller cities. North of Paris, apart from Lille to the east, there was no town of importance, certainly nothing to demand his early attention.

  Ross went into their bedroom and took off his clothes for the first time for two days. They had been wet and had dried and been wet and had dried again. He put on an old dressing-gown and lay down on the bed.

  For a few moments his thoughts continued on the lines they had been following over supper. After he became an MP he had gone on a number of overseas missions, some of minor importance, some, it seemed to him in retrospect, of no importance at all. He had neglected his mines and his farm, and to some extent his wife and family. Had he stayed in Cornwall all the time, with his banking and mining connections, he would by now have been a rich man. Finally – or finally so far – he had been over-cajoled into taking a title he didn’t want and didn’t deserve.

  What would his father have said? ‘What are you taking that for, boy? Poldarks don’t need handles. We’re as good as any just as we are.’

  And his mother? His beloved, dark-haired mother who had died so young that even his memory of her face had faded. She might have said different. Like Demelza, she might have been glad he had taken it. But women, as Caroline had said, were like that.

  But now, finally, his mission, though it had been developing well, had been aborted by events. Who wanted to know the temper and inclinations of the French army when in three weeks they had made their temper and their inclinations brilliantly, abundantly clear?

  Suppose he went to see Prinny and said: ‘The purposes for which I accepted this title just haven’t come to any good, Your Highness. How about taking it back?’

  At this stage he went to sleep.

  II

  He was normally a good but a very light sleeper. If he set himself to sleep for five or six hours he would waken easily within the time. But he had reckoned without the long dragging fatigue of the last few days and the effect of a bottle and a half of wine.

  When he woke it was full daylight and someone was knocking on the door.

  He got up, stopped to pull on his breeches and a shirt, redonned his dressing-gown and went to the door.

  Two gendarmes stood there and behind them a man in a civilian suit.

  ‘Sir Ross Poldark?’ this man said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘May we enter?’ This in English.

  Ross stood aside without comment. He was afraid it was something to do with Demelza. They came in.

  Then the civilian produced a document. ‘We have a warrant for your arrest.’

  There was another man on the landing but he was holding back.

  Ross looked out of the window. It was a fine day, with a hint of cold sun.

  ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘On spying for the Bourbon cause.’

  ‘This is nonsense. I am an English soldier attached to the Embassy.’

  ‘I know, sir, what you pretend to be. If we are wrong no doubt there will be a full apology for our mistake. But that can all come out before an examining magistrate.’

  Ross rubbed his chin, which had not been shaved for two days.

  ‘I am attached to the Embassy. I claim diplomatic immunity.’

  ‘Well, sir, if you were in the Embassy it would be an arguable case. But here you are on French soil.’

  Ross cursed his own lack of sense in yielding to fatigue last night. But this could not be much. An attendance in some court – the matter would soon be disposed of.

  ‘Allow me to dress.’

  ‘Certainly, sir.’

  There was another step at the door. It was the fourth man. Jean-Lambert Tallien. In the morning light he looked as yellow as a well-worn guinea. He had taken off his eye-patch, and the defective eye looked downcast at the floor.

  ‘Good morning, Sir Ross.’

  ‘M Tallien.’

  ‘I am sorry to find you in this situation.’

  ‘I am sorry that I had forgotten you,’ said Ross.

  ‘Yes.’ Tallien nodded. ‘Quite so. To forget me was not wisely done.’

  BOOK TWO

  Chapter One

  I

  April is a wayward month – so often all the burgeoning blossoming greenery is savaged by cold and angry winds – but April 1815 turned out to be a pleasant gentle time in Cornwall, with sighing breezes and rare warm showers. All the countryside was benign. Most of the trees were still black, unwilling to expose their foliage before it was safe, but the hedgerows were rampant. The Cornish hedge which was going to surround the new Carrington house was multi-coloured with tiny flowers,
and the fields were yellow with celandines and dandelions.

  The house was to be built of granite and killas and roofed with Delabole slate. It was to be of an unusual shape, worked out between Clowance and Stephen with Mr Jago’s co-operation. You would go in at the side, through a porch with granite pillars and a slate roof, into a longish hall with stairs leading up to the bedrooms. Off to the left would be two doors, to the parlour and to the dining-room; both of these would be square lofty rooms with bow windows, so that from both rooms you had the best possible view over the sloping fields and the clustered elms to Falmouth Bay. When they could afford it they would have a terrace built with a balustrade so that on fine evenings they could stroll out and watch the gulls circling and the ships dressing and undressing their sails.

  In the fine weather Clowance divided her time between the house, which was now waist high, and the boats. With three vessels in service, there was nearly always one in the harbour, loading or unloading or receiving orders or in for some minor repair. In April she had gone across twice with Stephen in the Adolphus with a cargo of slate to Dieppe, and as the summer advanced she was looking forward to more such trips, which were exciting and stimulating. Like her mother, she had never been to France before, and like her mother had begun taking lessons in French. This was so much more fun than the social life of Penryn and Flushing, sewing and needlework, quadrille parties, or reading a borrowed copy of the Spectator.

  But events had taken an ugly turn. In mid-March Harriet had shown her a leader in The Times which began: ‘Early yesterday morning we received by express from Dover the important but lamentable intelligence of a civil war having again been kindled in France by that wretch Bonaparte, whose life was so impolitically spared by the Allied sovereigns. It now appears that the hypocritical villain, who, at the time of his cowardly abdication, affected an aversion to the shedding of blood in a civil warfare, has been employed during the whole time of his residence at Elba, in carrying on secret and treasonable intrigues to facilitate his own escape and return to claim the Empire that once was his.’

  Local papers soon became more explicit, and Clowance began to worry about the safety of her family. The Enyses, she knew, had gone also. It was not until mid-April that a letter from her mother reached her.

  Dearest Clowance,

  Alas I have poor news for you. As you will know, Napoleon took over Paris and most of France on the 20th and 21st of March. Your father was visiting an army camp in Auxerre and appears to have been taken prisoner by the French, though on what pretext we know not. I left Paris, very reluctant, but because of Bella and Harry. I was offered a lift in one of the last coaches to leave, all the ladies had left the embassy a week before and it was nigh impossible to find horses. I thought my coach, which belonged to Mlle de la Blache – I suppose you will remember us speaking of Charles de Sombreuil, they were engaged to marry at one time. But I thought she was going to Calais, and I was intending to wait for your father in London. Instead, after many scares and trials, we have reached Brussels, and I write from there now.

  Jeremy and Cuby have been real good and for the first night we all five slept in their tiny apartment. Now we are staying at the Hotel des Anglais. I wrote to the Cornish Bank and they will send a draft.

  I know nothing of your father – where he is or how he fares, and you may understand how worried to death I am. Jeremy and Cuby have been trying to encourage me to go out with them and mix in some of their society – it is a lot English – but I have not the heart. Bella sometimes goes.

  The Duke of Wellington is expected here shortly; I think next Tuesday or Wednesday. We have seen nothing of Jeremy for the last three days as he has been away at a place called Ninove, where some of the army is stationed. It is said that the Duke of Wellington does not think there will be a war – instead a sort of compromise – is that the word? – since Bonaparte has come back preaching peace and liberalism. Pray Heaven his liberalism will result in him releasing your father.

  I have not heard of Dwight and Caroline and their children, I do not know if they had already reached France before the change of government, it was a sorry Easter, when it should have been such a happy one. At least I have seen Jeremy and got to know Cuby better. That, at least, is something that has gone well. They live for each other, and they are both worth living for.

  The Bourbons are not at all popular in Belgium, nor is their new ruler, the Prince of Orange. Jeremy says many of them would prefer to be under the rub of the French!

  Next week we shall leave for London. I feel I shall hear any news more quickly there, and I can knock on Lord Liverpool’s door and ask him how he can get a prisoner released!

  My dearest love to you both from Jeremy, Cuby, Isabella-Rose, Henry, and your loving Mother, D. Love from Mrs Kemp too. She has been stalwart and steadfast in all things.

  PS Monday. Have just heard from Lord Fitzroy Somerset, who was not permitted to leave Paris until the 26th. He writes me from Ostend on the 30th to say that news of your father reached him through the Duke of Otranto, who says he is being ‘temporarily detained and questioned’, but that he is not in prison, simply in ‘guarded custody’. I hope for the best but the Duke is an evil man whom your father did not hide his dislike of, and he is now the Chief of Police. But your father has done nothing wrong, and I do not see on what grounds they can hold him.

  PPS Can you send this letter to Nampara so that the Gimletts may see it? Or go yourself if that is convenient. I am writing to them separately in a day or so, but my pen runs quickly dry on such a subject.

  When she put it to Stephen he said: ‘Go if ye have the mind. Why not?’

  ‘Tomorrow, then? I’ll see there’s plenty of food in before I leave.’

  ‘’Tis of no consequence. I can eat at the inn.’ Stephen was in a good mood because he had just contracted for a cargo of clay to be shipped from Par to Oslo in the Chasse Marée. It had been a coup to make the deal, and resented by some of his competitors; he had pared his profit to the bone to break into a useful market. Moreover, he hoped the return cargo, which was mainly to be timber, would contain some high-quality pine for the floors of the new house. But his mood did not prevent him saying: ‘Don’t you see anything of that Ben Carter, will you.’

  ‘Stephen,’ said Clowance; ‘I am married to you. However, if you do not trust me I will not go. Your son can carry the letter.’

  Stephen winced. ‘I know, dear heart. I’m sorry. It was half in jest. Soon we shall be able to joke about it all.’ Later he added: ‘I’m not sure I like ye riding all that way on your own. You are crossing lonely moors and the tin mining of Gwennap and St Day. The Enyses would not let you return on your own in February.’

  ‘That was because of the snow. And although there are lonely moors you are never out of sight of a house in Cornwall. So long as it is daylight there is no risk. But if you feel anxious for me, why do you not come too?’

  ‘I’m off to Truro. I’m seeing the bank again. They want to see me.’ Stephen hitched his coat. ‘Anyway I do not take kindly to Nampara. It recalls things I better prefer to forget. Chiefly my fight wi’ Ben – but other things too. Y’know…’

  ‘So be it,’ said Clowance. ‘I’ll leave tomorrow and be back on Friday.’

  On the way over she made a detour to pass through Grambler village and call on Jud and Prudie. It was pretty certain that in the nature of things Jud would shortly topple off his stool for the last time, calling down the wrath of God on everybody as he did so; but it hadn’t happened yet. He seemed to have achieved a condition of stasis in which there was virtually no sign of progression or regression from one year to the next. He could still smoke his pipe – which he did continually – and drink his gin – which he did continually – so that one imagined his organs as continuing to function though black with nicotine and pickled in alcohol. His voice was still strong so that his complaints could be heard far beyond the confines of his cottage. His pessimism was unimpaired. His dislike of his wife did
not waver. His legs, he said, were like jelly. If anyone was patient enough to listen he would describe the condition of his legs. The bones, he said, were festerated. His kneecaps were diseased and soggy and burned all the time like apple-ginger jam. His feet, he said – well, his feet were petrified puddings of swollen matter best chopped off and had done with. Best chopped off with a carving knife and wooden feet fitted so that he could have some peace and comfort in his last days.

  Under the strain of keeping up with Jud’s drinking, glass for glass, Prudie had aged noticeably, and the lank black hair which had stayed well into her sixties was now a white horse’s tail that has been stained with tar. Her face was as red as ever, her nose as often as ever adrip. But under the competition of Jud’s trumpeted complaints she said less about her own feet than in the days when she had worked at Nampara. Perhaps it was because she was on them so seldom. She now occupied permanently the one comfortable chair in the cottage and apart from stirring to prepare a sparse meal or to go for another jar of gin, she stayed there all day.

  It crossed her mind not infrequently to think that her lamentations on Jud’s apparent death twenty-five years ago had been much overdone, and when it crossed her mind she told him about it. However, having climbed unaided out of a coffin once, Jud was in no hurry to be lifted into another one.

  In spite of their complaints, and the dirt and the smell when she visited them, Clowance had inherited some of Demelza’s sense of responsibility towards them, and when she went on her way, drawing deep clean breaths of air into her lungs, she felt a sense of duty fulfilled.

  Nampara was woefully empty. The Gimletts were glad to see her but upset by her news. She had dinner all on her own in the dining-room, feeling like an old lady. After dinner she walked up to Wheal Leisure and found Ben. His grim face lit up when he saw her, his eyes glancing swiftly behind her to see that Stephen was not there, then focussing gratefully on her face and what she had to say. Like the Gimletts he was sorry to hear of her father’s imprisonment but his faith in ‘Cap’n Poldark’s’ ability to get himself out of tight corners was such that Clowance was cheered by his reaction. In the purser’s office, which was no more than a large lean-to shed with a few chairs and a table, he unfurled and spread out a plan of the mine workings and explained to her where development was taking place and how the lodes were yielding.