He thought back to the night, eyes squeezed into gashes. “You were with my sister. Your mother had instructed her to come and get you. For your own safety, she said.”
“You see, I recall the argument between my mother and father that evening. I shrank into a corner, fearful, as if I could hide from it all. And through their shouting I made out the trouble my father was in. Tears. I remember tears,” he said, his finger going to his cheek. “My mother crying, in rage, in sadness, stepping over to the crib, taking my sister in her arms, holding her tight to her breast. Then father storming out, to his meeting at the Hendra house.”
He remembered the door crashing into its frame but not closing properly, swinging back open and letting in a cold dash of air. His mother, a sobbing baby clasped to her shoulder, strode quickly to the doorway, stood out on the street staring after her husband. Someone spoke to her, a woman, and she screamed in return, “None of your bloody business!” and came back inside, shutting the cold night out.
They sat in silence at the table picking at a meagre supper, a candle in a candlestick guttering between them. She soothed the child but he sensed it was impossible for her to do the same for herself. Incalculable slabs of time passed, and he felt her rising agitation as she put the sleeping baby back into its crib, a number of times going over to the door, looking down the street. Eventually, with a heartfelt sigh, she rose, grabbed a shawl and wrapped it around her shoulders, told him to watch the child. She did not say where she was going. She did not smile, scarce looked him in the eye. The door closing after her was the last he would ever see of his mother.
He checked on his sister, picked up a piece of coal and put it on the fire, conscious that they could not afford to burn too much but wanting the house to be warm for his parent’s return. He lay on his bed on the floor, looking at the candlestick on the table and the tiny, comforting sun-like flame.
The door opening caused him to wake from his sleep. At first he thought they had returned and in his small mind all was mended and well. The unfamiliar form ghosted over to him and spoke.
“Young Jowan, come with me.”
“Widow Carbis?” he said, mauling the sleep from his eyes.
“Come with me, at once.”
“I am waiting for my mother,” he said, resisting her hand which folded around his wrist. “I am taking care of my sister.”
“It is your mother that sends for you,” she said. “Please come at once. Your sister will be well. It is for your own good, young man.”
He allowed himself to be led away from the house, away from a life to which he would never return, and down the hill to Mrs Carbis’ cottage. He was given a warm drink, something to eat, which he devoured quickly as they had so little food at home, and afterwards he sat in a chair by the fire, defending himself against encroaching sleep as Mrs Carbis watched him, her round and gentle face curiously sad.
“When next I woke it was morning and both my mother and father were dead,” said Jowan. “How convenient that I was out of the way when it happened.”
“You were spared seeing something terrible happen, Jowan,” said Tunny. “Your mother knew what your father was like. But even she was not fully aware of what his temper could do.”
“Except, as I lay in your sister’s house that night, a man came. It must have been early in the morning. She called him John. I knew this man. It was her brother-in-law. He asked if I had come peacefully enough and she said yes. He said that something terrible had happened and that on no account must she speak of him coming on Mr Hendra’s behalf.”
“You lie. You drag Mr Hendra’s name into this now? What reason had he to remove you from the cottage? It was your mother’s instruction, not his.”
“You need only ask your sister,” he returned. Jowan turned back to stare out of the window. Beyond, headed down the path towards the cottage, was a group of four men and a woman. He knew they were coming for him. “Why were you sent to my father as a messenger from Hendra? He knew you two despised each other with a vengeance. Did you not think it a strange choice?”
Tunny frowned. He remembered relishing the opportunity to lay down the ultimatum at Connoch’s feet, Hendra’s message like a sweet bullet he’d fire from the gun of his hatred. But he had never once considered why he was tasked with it.
“It is but talk, Connoch. It cannot bring back your mother or undo the harm your father did,” he said, but inside he felt the squirming of a worm of doubt.
The men were all but upon them. “What is the Jacobite Bolt, Tunny?”
“What fresh nonsense do you speak of?”
He turned to face the old man again. Took a step towards him. “What is the Jacobite Bolt?”
“You babble. I have never heard of such a thing!”
Jowan lifted a chair and Tunny flinched. Taking it over to the door he lodged it firmly under the latch.
“The sailor I spoke of, the one in Liverpool. He left me a letter. In it he insisted that my father was innocent. He also told me that he was the one who had been sent to urge your sister to remove me from the house on the night of the murder. That the secret to my father’s innocence was tied up with something called the Jacobite Bolt. And everything is centred on the house of Hendra.”
Tunny rose from his chair, enraged. “You accuse Mr Hendra of being involved in murder? Are you mad? Where is this letter? Who is this man?”
“The thugs you sent against me, in doling out their beating last night, knocked my bag containing the letter over the edge of Baccan’s Maw.”
He laughed hollowly. “How convenient! So, I would say a creature more of your imagination than anything in the real world, Connoch!”
The young man put a hand to his neck and revealed a long black key suspended on a piece of string. “Fortunately I still have this as evidence that the man was no ghost. The key to the Jacobite Bolt. As for his name, he said he had assumed many different names since leaving Porthgarrow, looking to escape – to forget – his part in the affairs of thirteen years ago. He is already lost in another ship’s company, bound for some unknown place in the world, under yet another false identity. But, before he adopted this life of nameless nomad, he was, he said, known as John Carbis. Your sister’s brother-in-law.”
There was a loud commotion outside and the door lurched as shoulders were planted squarely against it, but the chair held for now. Clamouring voices, raised in concern, shouted after Tunny’s safety. The dog jumped to its feet and barked furiously.
“You lie, Connoch,” Tunny said, but it lacked conviction.
At that moment the door crashed open and sent the broken chair rattling across the room. The men burst in and were on Jowan in an instant. The old dog lunged for one of them but it was kicked yelping to the floor and two men set about it until it ran, tail between its legs, from the cottage.
“Watch his knife!” shouted Keziah from the doorway. “He threatened to kill me with it!”
The men pinned Jowan’s arms.
“Are you alright, Tunny?” one of the men said. “What has he done to you?”
“More thugs, Tunny?” Jowan said as he lost his footing and was dragged to the door, boots scraping on the floor. “Twice in as many days. My father was right about you.” He was hit in the stomach and doubled up in pain.
“Don’t harm him!” Tunny said. “Just get him away from here. Get him away!”
Keziah closed the door after them. There were sounds of scuffling, angry voices, from outside.
“Your neck, Tunny. It’s bleeding,” Keziah said.
But he paid her no heed. He was recalling something that had remained submerged and all but forgotten until Jowan had forced him to recount the story of that terrible night.
It was the moment he stepped out onto the street after discovering Connoch’s dead wife, rubbing his pained face where Jowan had struck it. The moment those three men emerged from the shadows and asked of him where the murderer was, and he had sent them scuttling after Jowan.
He had n
ever really thought about it before, because he had never had cause to doubt what had happened.
“Where has the murderer gone?” one of them had said.
But how did they know there had been a murder?
How could they have known that?
* * * *
10
The Land of the Dead
He was roused rudely from his leaden slumber by the loud clamour of voices and footsteps from beyond his window. He cursed and turned over in his uncomfortable bed. A sharp rapping at his door chased away the last remaining dregs of sleep, much to his annoyance.
“What?” he shouted.
“Mr Denning, sir, the wetting of the keels – the launching – you’ll miss it. Shall I enter and prepare your breakfast?”
“No you shall not!” he retorted. He sighed heavily and noticed the thin cloud of his breath. Why was it so damn cold? “Please go away, Mrs Carbis. I’ll be there presently.”
By the time he had shaved and dressed and made his way down to the beach the Reverend Biddle was concluding his business, being helped down from a large, upturned wooden box that had obviously served as his makeshift pulpit from which he’d addressed the considerable crowd of people.
There was an air of excitement about the place, children running around like packs of dogs, women dressed in their Sunday bonnets and dresses, a group of fiddlers at once striking up a jolly tune as men scattered eagerly from the crowd, racing across the beach to their boats. Biddle saw Denning and smiled. He was clearly taken with the occasion. He beckoned Denning come over. Having little option he scored a path through the throng of people to reach him.
He raised his hat. “A fine morning, Mr Denning!” he said, his spectacles flashing in the weak sunlight.
“An early morning,” he observed.
Biddle put his hat back on. “They have been here since well before dawn. It is a significant occasion for them. The launch. You have just missed Mr Hendra and his daughter. I believe Gerran has gone over to the palace to supervise preparations.”
“I hope the queen is in residence,” he remarked tiredly. Above an insubstantial smile Biddle’s eyes burnt cold in response. “I will find them in due course.”
Teams of men had gathered around each boat, levering them onto wooden rollers, some taking the strain of thickly coiled, sinewy ropes, others putting their broad backs against blackened prows. Men began barking orders.
“The men who stretch their lungs are the Launchers,” Biddle explained. “Their task is to guide the men in their work. And see the others in their high-pole hats? They are the Head Launchers – a role not unlike that of a conductor in an orchestra.”
The teams began to chant: “Haul away, heave away! Heave away, haul away! Bear up, bear away, heave away my lads!”
The large black seine boats, each weighing many tons, began to grind slowly down the beach. Shouting young women, with chiming laughs, darted between the men, clambered into the boats, helping others to do the same. They yelled down in encouragement, as if they were in a race and they were willing their teams on, the many faces of the labourers pinched with gravity, concentration and exertion. The Head Launchers stepped this way and that, keeping a watchful eye on each of their numerous charges , occasionally having to bound across and remove a young boy from out of the way of the men who fed the rollers beneath the massive, crushing keels, but at no point did they put their hands to the ropes or the moving of the boats.
Denning noticed a familiar-looking man standing at the edge of the beach watching the unfolding scene. He tried to place the mean, pinched features, the sunken eyes. Then it came to him. It was the undertaker from Penleith, the one he saw leading the cortege. The one called Doble, or something liked that. He wondered what he found of interest here in Porthgarrow. Potential new business perhaps?
“Did you ever see such a noble sight?” exclaimed Biddle. Denning didn’t reply. He’d left off looking at the undertaker to scour the buildings for a glimpse of Jenna. “Mr Wilkinson was here earlier,” said the Reverend.
“Really.”
“Making sketches of the boats. A man truly dedicated to his craft, to be abroad so early as to require a lamp to light his sketchbook.”
“A martyr to the cause,” he said dryly. He nodded to the boats being lumbered down to the sea. “They make such a fuss over so ordinary a task.”
“Ordinary to city eyes, Mr Denning.” He left it at that. “Tell me, if it is not too presumptuous, or too obvious a question: why are you here?”
He gestured with a loose sweep of the hand. “To see – this.”
“Forgive me. I meant, why are you here in Porthgarrow?”
“To paint, of course. What else?”
The lenses of Biddle’s spectacles magnified his quick, darting eyes. “To paint…” He let the words hang in the air. He watched as the first of the boats touched the water and annoyed little waves drummed silently at the hull. A small explosive cheer went up, and women abandoned the boat, landing joyously into the cold water and running up the beach to find another berth. Men leapt aboard, oars rising like the trunks of denuded trees before dipping into the sea and dragging the craft out into the harbour.
“You see, for the people of Porthgarrow their lives hang in the balance, for whether they go hungry or have plenty depends upon what the sea delivers unto them. These marvellous craft are more than mere wood, nails and tar; and this ‘fuss’ is more than taking a boat down to the sea. It is a ritual of life over death.”
Consider yourself rebuked, thought Denning.
“Would you care to walk with me, Mr Denning? I have something I would like to discuss with you.”
“I rather hoped I would speak with Mr Hendra and his daughter. I need to make certain arrangements.”
“They are busy tending to the urgent affairs of the launch, and they are going nowhere. You have time a-plenty. Please?” Hardly disguising his reluctance, Denning agreed. “Let us watch proceedings from up there, in the Huer’s hut.” He indicated the building high on the headland. “We will have a fine, uninterrupted view.”
“I am told it is a frequent haunt of yours,” Denning said.
“I am sure you have been told many things, but you must learn not to trust everything you hear.”
The sounds of the crowd faded as they left the beach and took the path up the headland.
Biddle pointed. “From the hut yonder the Huer keeps watch for the shoals. An extraordinary but enigmatic sight to behold. They first appear as a discolouration in the water, far out to sea. As the shoal comes closer the Huer will cry out ‘Hevva!’ and directs the boats onto the fish through a combination of signals, both hand-held and hoisted onto the beam there.”
“Ah, the gallows,” mused Denning. “Or so they appeared.”
“Gallows?” echoed Biddle. “Yes, I can see the resemblance. Each body of craft, for the seine boat is accompanied by others in its task, will stay within its stem – the position allotted to it by the Registrar – and following the directions of the Huer will bear down on the shoal and shoot their nets into it.”
“Fascinating,” said Denning evenly as they reached the grassy summit.
Standing outside the stone-built hut was a middle-aged man, staring fixedly out to sea. He barely acknowledged the two visitors. They stepped onto a wooden balcony edged with wooden rails, and Biddle indicated two chairs placed conveniently at one end. They sat with clear views over the entire cove. Many more boats were in the sea now, looking like tiny black water beetles on a pond. A whirl of distant laughter wafted over to them on a mocking breeze.
Biddle reached into his coat pocket and took out a pipe, tamped the contents of the bowl with his thumb and planted the stem between his lips, a tiny click of bone on clay.
The churchman became aware of Denning studying him cautiously. “It is not what you think it is,” he said, striking a match, the flame being sucked into the bowl. “You’ll soon learn that stories tend to grow, here in Porthgarrow, beginning
with but two or three flakes of words, fast becoming a rumour that gathers size like a snowball with every turn, until it is a veritable avalanche of untruths and conjecture. Opium, or indeed any other form of narcotic, it most assuredly is not.” He held out the pipe. “Care to see for yourself?”
He smiled uneasily and waved it away.
Biddle pointed with the stem of the pipe to the sea. “They will land pilchards, as their ancestors did, and thousands of hogsheads will be shipped out to Italy, who will eat the fish over Lent. Strange, is it not, a Protestant feeding a Catholic? Two worlds for hundreds of years distrustful of each other coming together over a common little fish.” He blew out a satisfying billow of blue-grey smoke. “As the city meets the humble village, eh, Mr Denning? Rich meets poor. Intellect meets brawn. Culture meets the ignorant.”
“You said you wished to ask me something, Revered Biddle?”
Biddle looked over to the Huer. He was too absorbed in his task to pay the two men any attention. “Do you believe in spirits, Mr Denning?”
“Ghosts?” He was faintly taken aback by the question, at which he smirked.
“Call them what you will. A restless, tortured soul, chained to earth, unable to pass on.”
“Bread and butter to a man of the church like you, surely.” He sighed his resistance but the silence defeated him. “No, I do not believe in ghosts, or the ludicrous notion of eternal life after death, for that matter.”
“Your forthrightness does you credit, if your lack of faith does not. But we all have our weaknesses. Mine is curiosity. I warrant Kenver was quick to relate to you what happened in the house you rent? His tongue runs like a gurgling stream when he has a willing audience and a lurid tale to tell.”
Denning admitted he had a troubled night because of it, but that daybreak revealed it for what it was – yet another tall tale that stretched credulity. “I am already getting used to it,” he said.
He sucked hard, forcing the tobacco to glow. “Alas it is not such a tall tale. Jowan Connoch murdered his wife, and he threw himself from the cliffs beyond the spit of land yonder.” His eyes traced the line of the cliffs from grassy top to scummy sea. “People to this day have sworn they hear his moaning, or that of Baccan, carried on the wind.”
The House of the Wicked (a psychological thriller combining mystery, murder, crime and suspense) Page 15