That night I slept so badly I was truly in danger of getting a headache. As I lay watching the sky gradually lighten I wished I could have been on my way already, but I had decided that the best course for a good start was to wait until daylight, and until I had established with the household that I would have to remain in my room all day. There was more risk of my being seen leaving, of course, but I thought I could manage it if I was careful and chose my time well.
When Charlotte came into my room shortly after eight to see if I was awake, I play-acted in a manner that would not have shamed the troupe of travelling players Tom had taken me to see.
‘Oh, Charlotte, I am so sorry,’ I moaned, covering my eyes with my kerchief. ‘Will you be happy playing with your cousins today without me?’
‘I’ll be riding Moonlight!’ she replied promptly. ‘I wouldn’t have time to spend with you anyway!’ And then, ashamed of her frankness, she asked solicitously: ‘Is there anything I can get for you, Charity?’
‘Maybe just a posset…’
I needed an adult member of the household to see me, needed to tell them I would prefer not to be disturbed again.
Anne brought me the posset herself, a measure of her concern for me. I thanked her, asked her to draw the curtains because the light was hurting my eyes, and promised that if I needed anything I would ring the bell, but that it was unlikely I would do anything other than doze fitfully all day. Then, when I was alone again, I got up and dressed myself in a warm gown and boots, arranged the pillows to look like a huddled figure under the blankets in case anyone should look into my room during the day and waited impatiently for my opportunity.
It came when the family were at breakfast. I slipped down the back stairs, out through the deserted kitchen, and, heart beating very fast with the fear of being seen, into the grove of trees at the rear of the house. How I was going to get back in unnoticed I did not know, but I could not worry about that now. With any luck, if Jem acted quickly, the whole nightmare would be over by nightfall. All I had to do now was make my way across country.
The walk took a good deal longer than I had expected. The lanes were rutted and mired deeply for winter; by the time I had covered a few miles my legs were aching, my boots caked with mud, and the hem of my gown filthy. But I hurried on, barely stopping to draw breath.
I had no real idea how long the walk had taken me when I saw the first shacks that marked the outskirts of town. I only knew that my feet, covered in blisters, felt as if they were on fire, and there was an empty protesting hole where my stomach should have been. But I pressed on unrelenting into the town, looking for the buildings where Jem had his office.
A gig was coming towards me along the road, a fine gig drawn by a matched pair of chestnuts and driven by a young man who sat tall and straight in his seat. I stared in utter disbelief, thinking that exhaustion must be causing me to hallucinate. It couldn’t be, surely…
But as the gig approached I grew even more certain that I was not mistaken and I saw that the driver was staring at me too, as if he were unable to believe the evidence of his own eyes, and reining the horses to a halt.
‘Charity!’
I felt a great wave of gratitude that fate seemed to be favouring me and I ran towards him. I had come in search of Jem, and I had found him with no effort at all.
‘Charity – what on earth are you doing here?’ he asked, sounding staggered. ‘And the state of you! What have you been doing?’
‘Oh, Jem!’ Weak tears of relief were pricking my eyelids. ‘Oh, Jem, I need your help desperately! Oh, please – you will help me, won’t you?’
He looked with something like distaste at my face, grimy and damp with sweat, and my muddy clothes and boots. Then he shook his head and grinned at me.
‘You’d better climb up,’ he said.
* * *
I told him everything, the words tumbling out one on the other as we sat there side by side in the gig. Occasionally he interrupted me with a question but mostly he sat in silence, letting me talk, his face growing darker with every word I uttered. Then, without a word, he flicked the reins.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked.
‘Firstly, to get you something to eat. If you have had nothing all day, and you’ve walked all the way from Penallack, you must be famished.’
‘Oh, thank you!’ I said, thinking how I had misjudged Jem all these years. But then of course he was no longer a rather self-obsessed boy but a man – and a well set-up one, judging by the cut of his clothes, the breeding of his horses and the fine gig he was driving. As Joshua had said, for someone who had started out as a mere clerk, Jem had done very well for himself.
‘No need to thank me,’ Jem said wryly. ‘It’s for my benefit too that we should get some food inside you. I don’t want you swooning from hunger. I know the landlord of an inn not far from here. He’ll provide you with sustenance.’
‘I don’t want to tarry too long,’ I said anxiously. ‘Time is of the essence. I could be missed at any moment and the alarm raised.’
‘We’ll waste no time, never fear,’ Jem said grimly. ‘I’m as anxious as you to bring this matter to a conclusion.’
I nodded, grateful that at last I had someone strong and resourceful on whose shoulders I could lay all my anxieties. Then I sat back in my seat, watching how skilfully he handled the reins and how the horses leaped to do his bidding. The hedges raced past, the clop of the hooves and the swish of the wheels mesmerised me. I was very tired. After a few minutes I closed my eyes and I think I might even have dozed a little.
The gig jolting to a halt brought me fully awake again. We had pulled on to the forecourt of an inn, a low grey building with a creaking inn sign which read the Tinners’ Arms. I frowned. We seemed to have come a good way, for there were no other houses or indeed buildings of any kind in sight.
Before I could ask any questions, however, Jem had leaped down from the gig and tossed the reins round a hitching post.
‘Wait there. I won’t be long.’
I stared at the inn feeling oddly uncomfortable. It was as if, in my doze, I had had a bad dream I could no longer remember, but the aura of it had spilled into wakefulness, imbuing this place with an atmosphere I did not care for.
I did not like it, though I could not say why, except that in its own way it had something of the same air of menace as Morwennan House.
I looked at the small dark windows, at the door so low that Jem had to dip his head to go through it, and at the inn sign creaking mournfully in the cold wind, and I shuddered unaccountably. It did not look like a place of merriment, and indeed, so far from civilisation, I could not imagine who would make up its clientele. But it was on the road, so perhaps the coaches stopped here to change the horses and obtain refreshment for the passengers, though I could see no signs of that either.
With some relief I saw Jem emerge from the doorway with something in his hand. The landlord followed him out – a short, squat man with a greasy apron tied around his muscular frame. I did not like the look of him either. Jem stood talking to him for a few minutes and I felt the landlord’s eyes on me. Uncomfortable, I turned away.
Jem returned to the gig and handed me a pasty and a flagon of ale.
‘Eat this, Charity.’
Then he unhooked the reins, climbed up into the gig, and clicked the horses. We moved off, and I knew the landlord was watching us go.
‘What a strange place,’ I said, my mouth full of pasty.
‘Yes, but the food is good,’ Jem said.
It was – or certainly it tasted so to me, famished as I was. The pastry, though not as light as Mrs Durbin’s or Mama Mary’s, was fresh enough, and there were good big chunks of meat amongst the potato and swede turnip that filled it right to its thickly crimped edges.
‘Is it a coaching inn?’ I asked.
‘I suppose so,’ Jem said non-committally.
I finished my pasty in silence, content to leave things in Jem’s hands, and washed it down
with some of the ale. I think I might have drowsed a little again, for when I next became fully aware it seemed to me there was something familiar about the landscape, grey and barren as it was in the fading afternoon light.
‘Where are we?’ I asked, puzzled and a little uneasy.
‘Don’t you know?’ Jem replied.
‘But it looks like… Where are we going, Jem?’
He flicked the reins; the horses raced faster.
‘Why, to Morwennan, of course!’ he replied.
* * *
My heart gave a great frightened leap.
‘To Morwennan?’ I repeated stupidly.
‘Certainly. To Morwennan. From what you tell me there is no time to lose.’
He flicked the reins again; the horses galloped even faster.
‘But Jem – we can’t go there alone!’ I cried in alarm. ‘First we need to summon assistance! I thought you would go to the authorities – call in the military! It’s far too dangerous for us to go alone! We shall achieve nothing!’
‘Oh, stop worrying, Charity! Leave everything to me.’ There was a faint smile on Jem’s face; I rather thought that he was enjoying this.
I was reminded of the boy who used to lead our expeditions, especially the ones to places where Dr John and Mama Mary had forbidden us to go. But, for some reason I could not explain, the memory was of no comfort to me.
‘But Jem – I’ll be missed at Penallack!’ I said. ‘The alarm will be raised. For all I know I’ve been missed already.’
He cast a quick narrow look at me.
‘They know nothing of this at Penallack, do they?’
‘Oh no! I’m sure they don’t.’
‘Then they will just think you have run away,’ he said. ‘With some young man. This Tom, perhaps.’
‘Perhaps so…’ I bit on my lip. Charlotte was going to be so upset. ‘But Charlotte knows that Tom is out of the district.’
Jem glanced at me again. Perhaps it was the wind in his face that made his eyes look so narrowed…
‘Where is it he’s gone, did you say?’
‘I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me. All I know is that it’s to see someone who used to be part of the gang before he fell out with them and became an honest man. Someone who told Tom’s brother Roger about the existence of the bell, and its significance.’
‘Jud Falconer,’ Jem said, almost to himself.
I scarcely heard him. I was too fearful for Tom’s safety.
‘Oh, Jem, I’m so worried about him! You don’t think, do you, that some terrible fate has befallen him, such as happened to his brother? These people are so dangerous. They’ll stop at nothing. Life to them is cheap.’
‘He knew the risks, no doubt,’ Jem said grimly. ‘He embarked on his crusade with his eyes wide open.’
‘Yes – yes, he did. But if something has happened to him… Oh Jem, I don’t think I could bear it!’
‘You know the risks too,’ Jem went on. ‘Are you telling me, Charity, that you want to change your mind – walk away from all this, go back to Penwyn and forget it ever happened?’
‘I couldn’t do that!’ I cried passionately. ‘My mother is a prisoner at Morwennan and the man responsible for my father’s death is her gaoler! I couldn’t walk away from that, much less forget it!’
‘Well then,’ he said. ‘You will just have to face up to the consequences.’
‘I know.’ I gnawed on a fingernail, terrified at the thought of what lay ahead, but resolute as ever.
We were very close now to Morwennan. Jem slowed the horses to turn into the steep decline under the trees.
‘What are you going to do?’ I asked, my voice shaking with nervousness. ‘What are you going to say?’
Jem made no reply. He pulled the horses up outside the coach house. For the first time it occurred to me that he had seemed to know the road to Morwennan very well. Not once had he asked me for directions. And stopping here too, at exactly the point where the Morwennan carriages always stopped – it was almost as if he was familiar with it, as if he had been here before…
The door of the house was open; Francis stood there. He must have seen our approach from his study window. His face was like a thundercloud.
‘What are you doing here?’ he said.
I thought he was speaking to me. Then, with a sense of shock, I realised it was Jem he was addressing.
Jem’s hand was beneath my elbow, holding it firmly, propelling me towards the house.
‘She knows,’ he said, and there was a hard edge to his voice. ‘She knows everything.’
Twenty-Four
For a brief horrified moment I simply could not take it in. My mouth dropped open, I glanced at Jem, shocked and confused, and saw for the first time the ruthlessness written all over his handsome face. I tried to speak; no words would come.
‘She knows everything,’ he said again. ‘I thought it best to bring her here so that we can decide how to deal with the situation.
Francis looked at me as if he were disappointed in me. ‘Oh, Charity, Charity…’ And to Jem he said: ‘You had better come inside. You did the right thing, Jeremiah.’
I understood then. My numbed brain grasped what it had been so reluctant to accept. I had not been mistaken when I had thought I had seen him with Francis on the day of the fair. Jem was one of them. I had gone to him for help and run straight into the hands of my enemy.
All the blood seemed to drain from my body; I thought I might swoon. But Jem’s hand was beneath my elbow, propelling me into the house, and somehow my legs were still working.
The heavy door slammed shut after us like the door of a prison cell. Francis called out Selena’s name; she appeared in the parlour doorway, looking more than ever like a bird of prey with her hooked nose like a powerful beak and her beady eyes sharp on me.
‘Charity? Why are you here? I thought you were at Penallack with Charlotte. And Jeremiah too… What is going on?’
‘We have a problem,’ Francis said. ‘Charity knows our secrets.’
‘All of them,’ Jem said. ‘She came to me for assistance. She wanted to go to the authorities, I’m afraid.’
‘But Jem had the presence of mind to bring her straight here,’ Francis said. ‘We have to talk about what’s best to do.’
And: ‘Let us go into the parlour,’ Selena said, for all the world as if she were greeting visitors socially.
We did as she bid. Jem pushed me down on to the chaise and sat himself down beside me, legs comfortably outstretched now that he had relieved himself of responsibility. I inched away from him; I could not bear to touch him, this honorary brother who had betrayed me. Francis took his own comfortable chair. Only Selena remained standing and I realised with a little shock that it was she who was taking charge of the proceedings.
‘So, Charity,’ she said, fixing me with that beady stare. ‘What is all this about?’
Terrified though I was, I was determined not to be cowed.
‘You know very well!’ I said with all the dignity I could muster. ‘I know that Julia, my mother, is not dead, but incarcerated in the attic. I found her there and I have been visiting and talking with her. I know too that this house is the headquarters of a gang of smugglers – and worse.’ I drew a deep breath. ‘Not only smugglers – but wreckers too. The very wreckers who caused the death of my father and all his crew twenty years ago.’
Selena looked at me steadily. ‘Julia told you this? She cannot be believed, I’m afraid. She is quite mad.’
‘She is not mad!’ I flashed. ‘She is as sane as you or I – surprisingly so, after her years of solitary confinement! But in any case, she was only confirming what I already knew. I found the bell, you see. In your room. The bell from the Guinevere.’
Francis half-rose. ‘You fool, Selena! I told you it was a mistake to keep that damned bell! But you wanted to gloat over it, did you not? You wanted it to remind you of your victory over Julia!’
‘Oh be quiet!’ Selena said, her vo
ice low but so icy it could have cut glass. ‘Don’t talk to me of mistakes. You were guilty of the biggest one, falling in love with the stupid woman in the first place, marrying her against her will and remaining besotted with her ever since. You should have left her to die on that beach, and Charity too. Then we would have none of this trouble.’
‘I know your opinions only too well, Selena,’ Francis snapped back. ‘If it had been you there that night instead of me you’d have done just that, no doubt. You’d have delighted in making damned sure they died, both of them. Just as you have delighted in planning the wreckings down the years. You have a cruel streak, Selena.’
I was angry suddenly, so angry that momentarily I forgot my fear. And they, for their part, seemed to have momentarily forgotten I was there, accusing one another, quarrelling as they so often did, the deep-rooted resentment, hatred even, that they seemed to bear one another, in spite of that unspeakable bond between them, blinding them to all else. Oh, but their relationship was incestuous in more ways than one – Selena’s jealousy of Francis’s obsession with Julia, Francis oddly dependent on his sister – it was there, laid bare. And they had no conscience, either of them, no shred of remorse for the lives they had wrecked, the misery they had caused.
And Selena was in this as deep as Francis – deeper, perhaps. The wreckings you have planned down the years, he had said, and I could well believe he was speaking the truth. Selena was the one with the brains here. Selena was the one who dictated, Francis the figurehead for the benefit of the gang, but her lapdog none the less.
‘You admit it then,’ I said. ‘You admit to wrecking.’
But so intent were they upon their quarrel they seemed not to hear me.
‘I would have made sure they both died, certainly. I’d have held that damned woman under the water myself until she drowned,’ Selena said. Her hands were working in the folds of her gown as if even now she could carry out the evil task. ‘As for the child… how could you bring yourself to save the child she bore by another man? For that’s what you did, Francis, is it not? You had to bring your precious Julia home with you, and you couldn’t bring yourself to leave her child to die. You arranged for her to be brought up as a foundling, didn’t you? And you never had the courage to tell me.’
Morwennan House Page 27