The Twisted Sword

by Winston Graham

‘A leaky ship and the anchor’s down. Hurrah me lads, hurrah.’ Stephen was trying to sing.

  ‘Hush, my dear, do not tire yourself.’

  He was quiet for a minute or so, then he said: ‘I reckon twelve pounds for a spring be too much. Why I can take it Plymouth and get it done for less. I reckon ’is always the way; your local port’ll try to charge too much. In dry dock, ye say? I’m poxed if she needs dry dock.’ Then a little later: ‘Swedish pitch at eleven shillings a hundredweight and Russian tar at twenty shillings a barrel. Can ye match that?’

  Friday the 13th. Clowance was not superstitious but the day had the lowering look of the end of summer, the end of hope. From this window she could see a corner of the cottage roof next door, a piece of sky with clouds as dark as coal smoke shredding across it, and a lip of the harbour curling with spiteful little waves. She was filled with dread for the future; all the warm hopes of last year were gone and she lived in a spider’s web of sadness and suspicion. Everywhere where there had been certainty there were shifting sands. She had never felt so much alone in an alien world.

  ‘What I want,’ said Stephen, addressing someone outside the room, ‘is a smart little cabin for the master, bulkheads half panelled in maple and teak. And then in the corner a fine settee upholstered in crimson plush, see? A neat fireplace and maybe a tiled surround wi’ a brass mantelshelf.’ Now he turned his head suddenly: ‘That suit ye, Clowance? Care to come wi’ me across to Brittany? What shall we name her, eh? Now we’ve got a Lady Clowance, maybe we could call her the Lady Carrington? The flagship of the Carrington line!’

  ‘I’d love to come,’ said Clowance, ‘when she’s built. Get well first.’

  ‘Oh, I’m coming along fine. Where’s Jason?’

  ‘Just gone out to fetch me something.’

  ‘Reckon she’ll carry a crew of eight, the Lady Carrington. That is about the style . . . Frame shall be of English oak planks; deck, I reckon, of Quebec yellow pine. Very even and hard wearing. The oak can be got from the Tamar River and shipped from Plymouth. Masts of Canadian red pine; yards, topmasts, jib-boom the same. Diameter? I can’t tell ye that till we’ve got the full plan! Where’s Jason?’

  ‘He’ll be back soon.’

  Stephen looked at her with a strange expression in his eyes. ‘Tell him to hurry.’

  ‘I will, I will.’

  ‘She shall be laid down in Falmouth,’ he said. ‘Bennett’s is a better yard than Carne’s in Looe, bigger. Sorry, for your father has a money share in Carne’s.’

  ‘No matter.’

  ‘Will ye hold my hand,’ he said.

  She drew her chair nearer to the bed and took his hand, which was moist and had no strength in the grip.

  ‘That Frenchie,’ he said, with a chuckle that rustled in his throat. ‘Ye should’ve seen his face when the musket did not fire. I stabbed him through the chest. Blade went in so far I could not withdraw the knife. Biggest killing I’ve ever done, yet folk praise me for that. Don’t make sense. Clowance, ye’re a rare good wife. Where’s . . . young . . . Jason?’

  His head sank back on the pillows and his breathing became heavy and irregular. When Jason came back with Dr Mather, Stephen was unconscious. It was a long fight then; a man, still young, whose powerful body struggled against the forces of disintegration that attacked it. The hours passed and the night passed in this tremendous contest while the passionate need to live was slowly eroded by a relentless escape of blood. Dawn broke before it was over.

  BOOK FOUR

  Chapter One

  I

  Letter from Jeremy Poldark to his mother, handed to her by Cuby Poldark the day Cuby returned to Caerhays.

  Brussels, 1st June 1815

  Dearest Mother,

  I do not suppose you will ever receive this letter – certainly I trust you shall not! – but just in case I thought to leave it in safer hands than mine.

  In January 1812 I indulged in an adventurous caper that I feel by some alchemy of your own you have already partly apprehended. I will not go into details, for whatever I said your apprehension would never become comprehension. For I do not altogether understand it myself. A serious law was broke by three persons, of whom I was one. I will say no more except to make it clear – and this is one of the purposes of this letter – that I was not unduly influenced by the other two. If anything I was rather the motivating force, and I worked out the plan that was carried out. If you suspect who the others might be, do not consider them more to blame than I and indeed rather the less.

  Nor should adverse circumstances be held to carry any more than a small load of responsibility. Of course I was disturbed and restless and unhappy. But that was only a scattering of gunpowder on the floor: there was no need to scrape it together and light a fuse! I wish I were able to explain it better than that – I cannot. Did I have an ancestor who ended up as a highwayman dangling at the end of a rope?

  One thing is certain. You are in no way at all to blame, nor is my father. I had a splendid childhood and a carefree youth-time. Any worm in the bud existed before the fruit was set.

  That is all – let us not be pompous about it. If, as I trust, I return with Cuby to set up house together near you, you will never see this – though perhaps it assuages something in me merely to write it down, believing that it will never be read by the Person to whom it is addressed. But then, on my return to Nampara, and at an early stage, I shall reclaim from you a little Loving Cup that you say you found one day on the beach; and I shall look on it as a cup of good fortune and keep it somewhere safe in my own home. If you should read this letter, then perhaps it has rather been a cup of Ill-Fortune, and, since you say you picked it from the sea, to the sea it should be returned.

  By the way, last Christmas Valentine was asking me about installing an engine for his new mine, Wheal Elizabeth. If I am not about, tell him to approach Arthur Wolff, who is really the first man nowadays. Tell Valentine on no account to put in a plunger poll engine; they work excellent to begin but the exposure of the whole piston to the atmosphere at every stroke is unsound practice and will lead to excessive wear.

  Well, this is about all I have to say! It is my usual custom to end my letters on a jolly note, but clearly this cannot be so in a letter which, if jollity prevail, you will never see! So may I just end with a charge to you and Father to care for Cuby and for our child? I know you will do this without any request from me, so pray take any more as said. Cuby is a wonderful girl and a wonderful wife – there could be no better – who is only just coming into her own. I would not want her to regress under any Influence her elder brother might exert. You, Mama, I think, would be the greatest influence – after me! – in inducing her not to do so.

  Love, love, love to you all.

  Jeremy

  II

  Letter to Sir Ross Poldark from George Canning.

  Caldas, Portugal, 25th September 1815

  My dear Friend,

  Thank you for your letter in reply to mine of the 8th July. In expressing our sympathy to you and your wife and family over your grievous loss we were only joining in the chorus of loving friends who must have written in the same vein to try to support and comfort you all. Though I have met none of your family – except briefly your beautiful daughter at the Duchess of Gordon’s Ball – I feel that you have always been a close and loving entity, and the loss of your eldest son will be a sword thrust that will wound you to the heart.

  But my dear friend, this second letter of yours grieves me in another way because it speaks of your intended withdrawal from public life and your decision to live henceforward in your Cornish home seeing to your own affairs. In large – at least in part – I can only commend such a decision – for what else have I done? – and I know of your long formulated intention to leave Parliament at the successful conclusion of the French wars. That is as it should be. You are not the political animal I am.

  But you have so much to bring to public life in some form – a strength of character, a
rare integrity, a thinking brain which does not allow itself to be diverted from its true concerns, a passionate belief in freedom and justice, a resolution in all good things: these are in such rare supply today that they cannot, shall not, I hope, be altogether lost to those of us who inhabit the world of affairs.

  Peace, I have no more to say, except to ask you in due time, in God’s good time, to think carefully on what I write. As for myself, what you may imagine am I doing with my own life to preach to a better man? The answer is little enough. At the end of June I wrote to the Government offering my resignation as Ambassador here, and a month later they accepted it. Now that the menace of Napoleon has finally been removed there is no need to keep such a large embassy in being in Lisbon, so they are going to scale it down and leave it to a chargé d’affaires. And I have become a private citizen!

  One of my main reasons for accepting the post in Portugal in the first place was on account of George’s delicate health, and in the hope that the warmth should suit him. It does. So I have brought him to Caldas to the warm baths. You will understand – and forgive me for – such a preoccupation with our eldest son. Here it is even hotter than Lisbon, and Joan and the little ones have fled to Cintra where the sea breezes blow. But George prospers in the heat, so I shall stay as long as he is happy here.

  For the future? Of course I must return to England, temporarily or permanently, in the new year, if only to assuage my Liverpool constituents, who have seen nothing of me all this time! I do not yet feel ready to resume my political career (nor is there any inducement to do so), so probably I shall return to Portugal and then we shall travel into other parts of Europe – Madrid, Rome, Naples, Florence. Do you know you are luckier in one respect than I am, for I have never been to Paris.

  But one day early next year I may of a sudden arrive in Falmouth – on my own, the family will stay here – and I do not know how far your home is from that port but in so narrow a county it can hardly be farther than a day’s ride.

  By then, my dear friend, I trust you and your wife will have come through the worst of your tragic bereavement. At least let us talk, and if you are adamant in your decision I shall henceforward hold my peace.

  Believe me, with all sympathy and much admiration,

  your Sincere Friend,

  George Canning

  PS I am sure you will take great satisfaction from the news that Fouché has now fallen – disgraced, I hear – and Tallien with him. So the stables are being cleaned at last!

  III

  Stephen Carrington was buried at St Gluvias Parish Church on the 19th October, the Reverend John Francis Howell officiating. A great many people turned out. In his short time in Penryn Stephen had become widely known, and on the whole well liked. Falmouth and Penryn, being ports, were more used to the abrupt arrival and departure of strangers and therefore were less clannish, at least on a superficial level. Stephen had had a ‘way’ with him, had been free with his money, talked with high and low alike, had put business in the way of the towns, and most recently had achieved a remarkable privateering success which had enriched both those who had put money into his adventure and the men who sailed with him.

  There were also mourners from Truro, and Andrew and Verity Blamey, and a large north-coast contingent which included Ross and Demelza and Isabella-Rose, Dwight and Caroline Enys, Will and Char Nanfan. There were a few of his gambling and hunting friends – Anthony Trefusis and Percy Hill and George and Thomasine Trevethan. His nephew, Jason Carrington, stood beside Clowance all the time, tears running unchecked down his cheeks. On the edge of things, sidling into a corner of the church and keeping her distance at the graveside, was Lottie Kempthorne. Neither George nor Harriet was there, but a slim nervous lawyer called Hector Trembath had come to represent them.

  Clowance went through it all with a white, drawn face but tearless eyes. When it was over the Trevethans, whose large house was near the church, invited relatives and friends to a light meal, then everyone dispersed. Clowance had been staying with Verity: she said she would ride back with her father and mother that night and stay two or three days at Nampara, then she would return to Penryn where there was much to see to. Demelza said: ‘Let your father do it; he will willingly do it; there is no reason for you to return at all, except to pack a few belongings.’

  ‘I want to see to things myself, Mama. There is so much to think about; I haven’t decided what to do about anything yet. Anything.’

  She stayed three nights and then rode home. She had an open invitation from Verity but she decided for the time being to live at the cottage at Penryn. Demelza persuaded her to take Betsy Maria Martin with her, a solution Clowance said she willingly accepted of. She liked Betsy Maria, and another woman for company was welcome. She told her mother that she would stay at Penryn at least until after Christmas.

  Demelza said to Ross: ‘I think she may be stopping away because of Cuby.’ Cuby was returning to Nampara in November.

  ‘It is not so simple as that,’ Ross said. ‘I know there is this little bitterness on Clowance’s part. But Clowance has suffered two of the hardest blows a woman can receive – the loss of a brother and the loss of a husband – within a bare four months. She’s a very brave, honest person, and I think she just wishes to face it alone.’

  ‘Cuby too has lost a brother and a husband,’ said Demelza. ‘She is more hurt than she shows, Ross.’

  ‘The child may help her – it must help her.’

  Demelza sighed. ‘We are a sorry lot. Thank God for our children – what is left of ’em . . . Bella continues to bubble – she has quite recovered her spirits. And little Henry is a joy. One day, maybe, we shall learn to be happy with the blessings that are left.’

  IV

  In November the weather turned foul; there were storms up and down the coast, accompanied by the usual shipwrecks. A barque was wrecked off the Lizard with a loss of eight lives; she carried woollens and worsteds and refined sugar. Another vessel foundered near Padstow, with Indian spices, ivory, tea and sandalwood. A third with timber ran on the rocks at Basset’s Cove. Hendrawna, wide open though it was to accept suitable offerings, only received some of the flotsam from ships lost elsewhere.

  Katie and Music were to be married on Saturday the 11th November, which was Martinmas. When the news leaked out that Katie had relented and was taking Music from choice and not from necessity, the neighbourhood heard it first with derision and then with resignation. Sentiment is as changeable as the wind, and apart from a few of the girls and youths who had taunted Music, the general feeling swung in his support. The lad must have something about him for Katie to show him this favour. Maybe he’d proved a thing or two to Katie that we don’t know nothing about. Maybe she’d best make sure of her man this time before something really turns up!

  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 h
im 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.’