Once in a Blue Moon

by Penelope Williamson

  The next entrant had started to fire up its boiler, and steam rose white in the still air with a whistling sigh. It was odd, Clarence thought, but there seemed to be a tingle in the air, like a hot summer's day after a lightning storm. A part of him couldn't help being caught up in the excitement, the way he had been caught up that summer when he and McCady had built the locomotive to run on his father's tramway. He remembered those long afternoons in the Penzance ironworks, McCady putting the engine together and he mostly watching. And listening as McCady talked and spun dreams in the air. He had wanted to believe in those dreams, yet he had not wanted to believe. And in the end he had been glad of McCady's failure.

  Today the Falcon carried sandbags packed into the carts that were hitched one after the other behind her like a cranberry string. But suddenly Clarence could picture the way it would be if the carts were filled with coal and bales of hay. And carriages hooked up, too, carriages with wheels made to go on rails, all filled with people. He could see it just the way McCady had described it that summer, and a bittersweet ache filled his chest. He wanted to go back and live again those afternoons in the ironworks, with the blast furnace making the sweat pour off their chests, and the hammers battering their ears. And McCady talking and spinning dreams and flashing that devil-be-damned smile.

  Those afternoons before Jessalyn had come between them.

  He knew she was here today, and his gaze sought her out, although he would not go to her yet. That was for later, when she would need him, need his comforting arms, his soothing words. For now he only wanted to look.

  She was easy to find, a tall woman with hair the color of autumn leaves. She was no different, and somehow that surprised him. He would have thought that it would show on her face—all those nights in a Trelawny's bed. Yet she was the same girl, a girl with too-bright hair and a too-wide mouth and a leggy way of moving that always reminded him ol an unbroken colt. The same Jessalyn whom he had kissed before the Midsummer's Eve bonfire six years ago.

  As he watched her, a vivid look came over her face, and her whole body seemed to shimmer with breathless excitement. For a moment Clarence thought that she had seen him, that the wide, laughing smile was for him. He actually started toward her. But then McCady Trelawny came out the swinging door of the Crooked Staff, sauntering toward her.

  She hurried to meet him at a little tripping run. He said something that made her laugh, and the joyous, raucous sound of it rose like whistling steam into the air. McCady slid a possessive arm around her waist and pulled her against him, and Jessalyn stood at his side, smiling, as if she belonged there.

  A man with shaggy hair and pock-mottled skin sat with his back pressed against a high stone hedge. He was gnawing on a hunk of bread and cheese and swilling it down with a pail of ale. On the ground next to him were a burning candle in a dish and an opened canister of fulminating powder. From time to time he peered through a crack in the hedge and looked down the gently sloped gully toward the mouth of a tunnel newly hewn through a hillside of yellow granite.

  Jacky Stout finished his dinner, mopping the sweat off his face with a filthy rag that left behind smears of black powder. His gaze dropped down to the spalling hammer in his lap, then quickly jerked away. He couldn't look at the hammer anymore without feeling a bit queasy in his innards.

  God, the boy had screamed.

  Squawked like a chicken right before its throat is cut. But the sound the hammer had made was even worse—a horrible scrunching sound, like stepping on one of those big black beetles that live down in the mines. Blood had spurted everywhere, and the bones had pierced through the bruised flesh, jagged and white. Jacky was sobbing as loudly as the boy when he had raised the hammer high again.

  He hadn't told the guv'nor that part, though. That he hadn't been able to bring the hammer down a second time. That he'd done only the one hand.

  This was why it was important that he do this job right. He had planted enough black powder in the railbed to make a bang loud enough to rattle the pewter in the kitchens all the way up in London Town. Enough powder to blow a hundred loco-whatsits into nails and kindling.

  A chill roached up Jacky's spine, and he whipped around, peering into the copse of trees behind him. A pair of jackdaws sat on a tree branch, cawing at each other. A rabbit bounded off into the gorse, its white tail flying. Jacky rubbed his ripe nose and shrugged. He was hearing things only because his nerves were on edge. This was private land, patrolled by dogs and guards to keep the curious away, needed especially today what with all the crowds drawn to watch the trials of the loco-whatsits. No, there was no need to worry about anyone sneaking up on ol' Jacky Stout unawares. The guv'nor owned this land; that was why Jacky Stout was here, good and alone, with a burning candle and enough black powder to make one bleedin' hell of a bang.

  The guv'nor had said the loco-whatsit would be coming through the tunnel at about four o'clock. Jacky pulled a gold-plated repeater's watch out of his coat pocket. The guv'nor had given it to him, a little token of appreciation for taking care of the boy's hands... hand. Jacky cast another look at the spalling hammer and shivered. He squinted at the black numerals on the watch face. He hadn't dared tell the guv'nor that he didn't know how to tell time.

  He heard it first, a huffing sound like a teakettle simmering on a trivet over a hot fire. Steam billowed out the mouth of the tunnel in thick white puffs. Swearing, Jacky flung the hammer out of his lap, snatched up the candle dish, and climbed, clawing and scrambling, over the hedge. A fire-breathing iron monster on wheels came hurtling out the tunnel, a red and blue monster.

  "Bleedin' Christ!" Jacky exclaimed. Red and blue!

  He skidded to a halt, the sweat streaming down his face, his chest heaving. Red and blue, bleedin' hell! The loco-whatsit he wanted was supposed to be yellow and green.

  As he trudged back to his lookout behind the hedge, Jacky Stout went over the guv'nor's instructions one more time. The moment the green and yellow loco-whatsit came out of the tunnel, he was to light the fuse. He had already marked off the 450 paces from the mouth of tunnel and set the charge in the rock bed that supported the rails. He'd done it just the way he'd set that charge down in Wheal Patience. He had drilled a hole in the rock with a steel borer and dropped a case of black powder in the hole. He'd pushed an iron nail into the powder and packed clay around it. Then he'd pulled out the nail, leaving a thin hole in the clay. Through this he had threaded a hollow reed filled with fulminating powder for the fuse.

  "You see the nose of her coming out of the tunnel, you light the fuse," the guv'nor had said, and he had drawn a lot of scriggly lines on a piece of paper and babbled nonsense about loco-whatsits traveling at such and such a speed and taking such and such amount of time to go such and such a distance. Jacky hadn't understood a word of it, and he didn't have to. He knew what he had to know: powder at 450 paces from the mouth of the tunnel; set the fuse when the green and yellow loco-whatsit came out.

  But no one had warned him how bleedin' difficult it was going to be to see colors when the bleedin' thing was coming out a black hole into bright sunlight and wreathed in steam and smoke.

  The muscles of McCady's arms bunched and strained as he slung a shovelful of coal into the firebox. Sweat stung his eyes. A whiff of primroses drifted past his nose.

  He flung the hair out of his face with a toss of his head as he swung around and thrust the shovel blade into the pile of coal. But his gaze was on the tall, slender girl in a wine-colored riding habit. A yellow straw bonnet covered hair the color of a sunrise at sea, but enough sunshine had found its way beneath the wide brim to tint her cheeks a gold-flecked pink. She looked delectable.

  With him on the footplate and her standing on the ground, the top of her head came to the middle of his chest. She leaned forward, as if to speak to him, and slid her hand inside the gaping, unbuttoned neck of his shirt. Soft fingers slid over his sweat-slick flesh, pulling gently on his chest hair and lightly scraping across one nipple. A quick, sensual, secret c
aress that no one had seen, and that sent an immediate fire to his groin hotter than anything he had going in the belly of the Comet.

  "The carrier pigeons have just come in with the Essex Lightning's time," she said, shouting a little to be heard over the hissing, simmering boiler. "Seventy-two minutes."

  Dammit, that's fast. McCady thought. He grunted as he hefted another shovelful of coal. According to the rules, each entrant had to start with the water in his boiler cold and no fuel inside the firebox. Every minute it was now taking him to build up a head of steam was already being counted against his time. The boiler hissed and sucked. Seventy-two minutes. Bloody hell. He wanted to win so badly he could taste the wanting in his mouth, rusty and salty, like blood. He wanted to do it for her.

  He had the fire stoked good and hot now. He thrust the shovel straight up into the coal pile and looked down at his wife. His whole body stilled as a feeling that was piercing and sweet shot through him. She was a rare woman, his Jessalyn. He knew that he was nothing without her. Yet because of her, he had the moon and the stars within his grasp.

  Jessalyn, his wife, put her fists on her hips and threw back her head to lance his heart with her wide, shining smile. "I should like to come along with you, Lord Caerhays."

  He leaned over, offered her his hand, and pulled her up onto the footplate beside him. He thought of that first locomotive ride that long-ago summer: the way she had kept brushing against him, breathing on his neck as she asked her questions in that excited little-girl way, and the purity and innocence about her, the laughing joy. He had wanted her then as he had wanted nothing else in his life before. He still wanted her in that same way.

  Now, just as he had done that summer, he put his hands around her slender waist and lifted her into the tender, where she would ride with the coal baskets and water butt. "This one isn't to going explode now, is it?" she teased, and he knew that her thoughts moved along with his, in tandem with memories. Memories that now tasted only sweet.

  He leaned over and kissed her mouth, soft and gentle. "We're going to win this, Jessalyn."

  She looked at him with eyes that were gray and enduring, like the cliffs of Cornwall. "Make her go fast, McCady. Neck or nothing."

  Flashing her a devil-be-damned smile, he turned around and depressed the pedal, while deftly working the two small valve handles in proper unison until the engine began to move, scorching, as always, the backs of his knuckles on the firebox. Valves and cranks and spindles all began to move so fast he would have lost a finger or two if he hadn't done this a thousand times before.

  The locomotive clanked and rattled and coughed as it chugged into motion, slowly at first; then it began to pick up speed. Spent steam puffed into the air, carried back to them by the breeze, dampening their faces and smelling of coal soot. They left the Crooked Staff behind them, but crowds of people lined the tracks, cheering and whistling, beating on drums and blowing on horns. Jessalyn laughed and waved and called out to an enormous woman wearing trousers, who tossed what looked like a big yellow onion into her lap.

  It all turned into a blur of color and noise, though, as the Comet started to fly. The first part of the course was on a downhill slope, and soon they were singing along the rails. Well, perhaps singing was not quite the word. Even with the spring suspension he'd invented, the Comet moved with a rollicking up-and-down thrust, like a galloping hunter. He would have to work on that, McCady thought. He wanted her rocking like a baby in a cradle.

  The wind pulled at his hair and whipped at his shirtsleeves. He could feel the throbbing power of the engine vibrating through the soles in his boots, the pulsating throb-thump, throb-thump that always seemed to him to be mimicking the heartbeat of life. A thatched cottage was there, out the corner of his eye, and then gone in the time it took to blink. Running along the rails through a deep cutting in the earth, then out across an open field stubbled with newly cut hay. Over a three-arched wooden viaduct, looking down into a brambly gill and a trickle of silver water. Ahead of them a hole in the face of a hill, like a wide-open mouth, yawning bigger and bigger, like the maw of a cannon.

  I built this, McCady thought, with a sudden rush of pride. A Trelawny has actually built something. Something that would last.

  They plunged into the tunnel, and the sudden, dense blackness after the bright light was startling. At first McCady could see nothing, and the noise of the engine sounded louder than the inside of a thunderstorm. Then his eyes picked out the glow leaking around the door of the firebox and sparks shooting out of the smokestack. The black world filled with smoke and steam and the rebounding echoes of his wife's lusty laughter.

  They burst out of the darkness into sunshine. He blinked back a rush of tears that came from the suddenness of the bright light. And the sight of his darling Jessalyn with her head thrown back, still laughing.

  And suddenly, in that moment, he believed. He believed that the shining light would never die in her eyes, that the passion they shared would last forever. Even if he failed today, even if he faced poverty and disgrace, he would never lose her. Always she would be his Jessalyn, his wife. He believed this, was as certain of it as he was certain of his next breath. He believed that they would have children and grow old together, living dreams and disappointments, tragedy and joy. But together, always together.

  They had the rest of their lives.

  Green and yellow. Jacky Stout scrambled over the hedge and ran down the incline, leaping in and out between the cover of the rocks, like a bounding hare. He paused behind the trunk of a lone hawthorn, then dashed to the railbed Green and yellow, green and yellow—

  Bleedin' hell.

  Dashing like that had nearly put out his candle. He took his hat off and gently flapped the brim at the smoking wick until it flickered into a flame. He put the flame to the reed fuse. It caught with a spit and a hiss.

  After whipping around, he ran at a crouch, making for the hedge. He leaped over it and slid to the ground, his shoulders pressing against the stones, his legs thrust straight out, his big belly and chest heaving and huffing.

  He peered through the crack. There it was, green and yellow, and about in line with the hawthorn tree. Four hundred and fifty paces. He started to laugh. Any second now, any second and bang. Green and yellow, green and yellow... Bang! Green and...

  Something behind him. A scrape of leather on rock. His skin prickled all over as if he'd just brushed up against a wasp's nest, and he whirled, shading his eyes with his hands against the glare of the sun. He saw the black, blunted end of the spalling hammer....

  And then he saw nothing.

  Clarence's stomach churned. He took out his watch, glanced at the time, then stuffed it back into his pocket. The Comet would just be hitting the tunnel right about now.

  "He's a right un, is his nibs."

  Clarence looked up into the hooked-nose face of the biggest woman he had ever seen in his life. At least he thought it was a woman, although her sex was open to some debate. Clarence pulled out his handkerchief and held it up to his nose. The woman reeked of onions.

  "A hell-born babe, but with a soft heart underneath for all that."

  Clarence drew in a careful breath through his handkerchief before he took his nose out. "I beg your pardon?"

  "His nibs. Caerhays. A navvy now, he knows his woman can swing a pick good as any man. But fancy a gentleman thinkin' such a thing—cor! 'Tis rare for a nob to honor his woman like his nibs's just done, bringing her along with him to run his iron horse as if she 'twere his equal. A soft heart underneath for all that, eh?"

  All the blood seemed to rush from Clarence's head, and for a moment he swayed dizzily. He gripped the woman's iron-hard forearm. "Are you telling me Lady Caerhays is on the Comet?"

  "Ais. Right 'longside up there with him, as if she 'twere his equal. And a right pretty picture she made, too. Lookin' like a queen."

  "But he couldn't have. He couldn't have."

  The woman opened her mouth...

  And the world
exploded into a great, coughing roar.

  CHAPTER 28

  He'd killed her. Oh, God, he had killed her.

  Clarence Tiltwell sat in the fading light of late afternoon, behind a scarred and ink-spotted desk in his room at the Crooked Staff Inn. His eyes burned with unshed tears, and sobs kept welling in his throat. He'd open his mouth, trying to let them out, but they wouldn't come. Over and over he'd do that, open his mouth and gulp at the air, like a drowning man.

  He stood up, heavy and stiff, as if his legs had turned to stone. He went to his portmanteau and took out the ivory inlaid case of French flintlock dueling pistols he always carried when traveling. A man couldn't be too careful, he thought, as he lifted one of the deadly weapons from its slot in the velvet-lined case. Not too careful, oh, no, not with highwaymen and footpads allowed to roam loose around the countryside and do their murderous deeds.

  He rubbed his thumb over the pistol's engraved silver mounts. It was of a hunting scene, a man on horseback following the pack, tallyhoing as he jumped a fence. Clarence always felt a pang in his chest when he looked at the scene, for it made him think of his father. Not Tiltwell, of course. Henry had always hated hunting. No, his father... Caerhays.

  He brought the pistol and its case back to the desk with him and lit the candles in the pewter branch to see better what he was doing. He stroked the smooth, cool barrel. He turned the wooden stock over in his hand and pointed the pistol at his face.

  Once, when he was a boy, he had gone swimming off Crookneck Cove, and for a few horrifying moments he had been caught in the current. That day he had felt a terror as black as the bowels of hell, a terror made all the more horrible by his utter helplessness in the face of it. He had wanted to explain how it was all a mistake, that he hadn't really meant to go swimming, that he would never, ever do it again, that forever and ever he would always be a good boy if only this once, this one time, he would be spared the punishment he deserved. But the current hadn't cared about little Clarence Tiltwell. The current would have drowned him in spite of all his pleas and promises.