by Gloria Cook
‘Don’t fall for his lies, Sarah. Get off the bed and come to me. Don’t be afraid,’ Tempest said.
‘You’ve no right to interfere, Mama,’ Titus said. ‘Sarah loves me.’
‘Do you love him that much, Sarah?’
Sarah gazed at her mother-in-law. For all that had just happened she still loved Titus. She couldn’t simply turn off her feelings. He was holding her, caressing her arm. ‘Sorry, my darling,’ he whispered.
‘Sarah, he was hurting you. Don’t let him hurt you again.’ Tempest kept the shotgun steady.
‘I’m not worried about myself,’ Sarah said. ‘Titus, I need to breathe. Let me get up.’
‘Then we’ll talk? You’ll stay with me. We’ll sort this all out?’ His words purred as if with affection and promise.
Sarah nodded. He let her go. She got up and pushed the tangled hair from her face, holding her bodice to cover herself.
‘You heard her, Mama. Put the gun down.’ His tone had changed, he was gloating now.
‘Sarah . . .’ Tempest’s voice was steeped in disappointment. ‘If I hadn’t come upstairs when I did he might have killed you.’
‘He planned to.’
‘And you’ve forgiven him?’
‘Yes.’
‘See, Mama?’ Titus crowed, standing up, tall and strident. ‘You’ve no power over me. You can’t hurt me with curses or ill-wishes. You won’t go against what my dear little wife wants. You’re just another weak foolish woman.’
‘I can forgive anything you do to me, Titus,’ Sarah said. ‘I know it’s ridiculous and it’s pathetic and most people wouldn’t understand it. But I won’t allow you to hurt Tamsyn. I’ve always vowed to protect her and I always will. Don’t let go of the gun, Mama Tempest. I’m leaving. I’ll go far away where he will never find me.’
‘That won’t ever be far enough, you rotten bitch!’ Titus bawled in fury. He made a dash at his mother and managed to snatch the gun from her hands. ‘Get over beside her, Mama!’
Tempest moved to Sarah and stood in front of her. ‘What are you going to do now, Titus. Kill us both?’
‘Yes. You deserve to die too, you’ve never given me a mother’s love.’
‘That’s because I saw right into your heart the day you were born and saw nothing but darkness and evil. The gun has only one cartridge in it.’ Tempest stared into his eyes. ‘You can kill me, but someone from downstairs will hear before you can reload. Sarah will be safe, and you’ll get what you deserve. No one will bother to save you from a hangman’s noose.’ She pushed Sarah away so she wouldn’t be hit in the blast.
Her steady sight on Titus angered him. ‘Don’t try your tricks on me. You can’t hurt me.’ But when Tempest started muttering it unnerved him. ‘Stop it!’
‘A curse on you, Titus.’
‘No!’ He aimed the gun at her.
‘Titus, don’t!’ Sarah screamed.
He looked from her terror to Tempest’s calm resignation. His mother didn’t mind dying as long as she could protect others. She loathed him and he hated her for it. She deserved to be punished and he knew how to do it in the way that would hurt her most. ‘I’m not going to hurt you, Mama, but . . .’
He hurtled out of the room and headed for the stairs. ‘Is he leaving?’ Sarah asked shakily.
Tempest was on to her son’s next dire move. ‘No. Sol!’ She raced after him.
The music was loud, the party in full sway when Titus charged into the room. He had the shotgun hanging from his hand, and at first no one realized he had it with him, but his ugly expression as he pushed through the revellers to where Sol and Amy were, waiting for Tempest to return for the speeches, made his family and the villagers shy away from him and become still and to stare, worried what he’d do. Then the shotgun was seen, followed quickly by cries of horror and calls for the music to stop.
As an unearthly hush fell in the room, Sol saw the danger and he stepped away from Amy. ‘What’s this about, Father?’
‘About many things,’ Titus snarled. ‘Lack of respect from you, a lifetime of rejection from my rotten mother. Revenge. She’s always said you were the one thing that made her life worth living, now let’s see how she goes on without you.’ Titus lifted the shotgun and took aim at Sol’s forehead.
‘No!’ Amy screamed. ‘You can’t really mean to kill your own son.’
‘Watch me.’ Titus’s finger moved to the trigger. A look of disbelief and horror flooded Sol’s face. His life with Amy was to be over before it had really begun.
‘Titus!’ It was Tempest. ‘Stop or it will be you who dies this day.’
‘You don’t frighten me any more, Mama.’ He made to squeeze the trigger, but as he did a terrible pain shot up his left arm and his finger wouldn’t work. He broke out into a burning sweat and he felt dizzy. The room started to spin and he felt sick. As he wavered Sol hurtled forward and yanked the shotgun out of his hands. Titus fell to his knees, his hands shooting to his chest as he was gripped by the most excruciating pains. ‘Mama, don’t! Mama, stop it! I’m sorry.’
Sarah crept up to him and stared down on him from blank eyes. Titus could just make her out. ‘Sarah, help me.’ She had seen many things in her husband’s eyes, confidence and arrogance, and cruelty and hatred in latter days, but now she saw only fear. She saw right into his dark soul and it horrified her. ‘Sarah . . . you’re my wife . . . you have to help me.’
Titus had a circle of observers. He peered up from stricken eyes, screaming again and again as agony gripped his chest. Family or villagers, no one was going to help him. No one cared. He couldn’t breathe. He panicked. ‘Help me! Mama!’ She came immediately in front of him. She had given him life and now she was taking it away.
‘Titus, you can’t fight fate, and Sol’s is to have a long life with Amy.’
Hers was the last face Titus saw. On his back, gripping his chest, his body twisted as the pains contorted him, he breathed his last. Dying all alone.
For several moments no one spoke. Then Godley Greep said, without the reverence usually reserved for the dead, ‘Classic case of heart failure, I’d say.’
Tempest knelt and closed her son’s eyes. She wiped away a single tear from her own eye. Sol and Amy came to her side. Tempest said, ‘He can be taken to his room. I’m sure the coroner will agree with Mr Greep’s deliberation. Then he can be buried next to his father. I’m sure everyone will understand if we all quietly disperse and carry on with the celebration another time.’ She went to Sarah. ‘You can share the children’s room tonight and you can all rest easy here from now on.’
‘I didn’t bring the children with me,’ Sarah said, with a tone of cool maturity. The last hour had seen to it that all her illusions were thrown off, and all her hopes gone, except for one. Now she knew where she really belonged. ‘They’re with Aunty Molly. She said if I come to my senses I can live with her too. Well, I have, and not just because Titus is dead. I should have accepted my lot in life like the other bal-maidens who support their families with pride and without complaint. If I can get work back at the mine it’s what I shall do.’
‘But you don’t have to go back to that, Sarah. I understand why you don’t want to live here but let me help you move away and start again.’
‘No, thank you,’ Sarah said firmly. ‘I know you mean well, but I’ll never take anything again from a Kivell.’
‘Good for you, Sarah,’ Godley Greep’s voice boomed praise. ‘You can come back to my tributer team, and if anyone doesn’t like it they’ll have me to answer to.’ A murmur of agreement ran through the villagers present. Sarah had shown pride and repentance in her decision and she had their unanimous approval. ‘I’ll take you to your aunty’s now.’
It was dawn and Sol was up on the hill outside Chy-Henver. Amy went to him. They clung together, gazing over the silent landscape.
‘I don’t think any of us got much sleep last night. Will your grandmama be all right?’ She pressed her face in to his shoulder.
&
nbsp; ‘She’ll grieve for my father in her own way.’
‘And you, darling?’
‘I’ll be fine.’ It was a typical male answer of understatement. Amy had got close to Sol, as two people in love do, but she was certain he would never disclose how he felt about his father’s attempt to kill him and his subsequent death. He leaned round and kissed her lips. ‘We’ll be fine.’
‘I know.’ She snuggled into him. Content to be here quietly with him for now. Looking forward to learning more about him. Already on the next stage of life’s journey with him.
Read on for an exclusive extract from the next book in Gloria Cook’s riveting Meryen series:
A CORNISH GIRL
Coming soon from Ebury Press
One
Two figures were hunched over the stone fireplace in the little rough dwelling on the downs. An odd pairing, and as always, they were quiet, keeping to their own thoughts. Sarah Kivell, just twenty-one, had been a widow for the last four years, and for most of that time she had lodged with an elderly spinster, Tabbie Sawle, the herbwife of the village. If not for Tabbie, Sarah would be homeless. It was of no concern to her that Sarah had lived with the much older Titus Kivell, the criminal head of a once disorderly clan, before their disastrous marriage. She knew all about Sarah, but she never offered information about her past and Sarah asked her no questions.
It suited Sarah to live in relative isolation. They could only be reached from Meryen by a series of narrow tracks hacked through straggly banks of gorse, bramble and scrubby willow, off a slightly wider thoroughfare that the villagers called Tabbie’s Lane. A lane it wasn’t, its length being no more than a thousand yards and wouldn’t accommodate even a small dog cart. The abode – it could hardly be termed a house – was built against a formation of high granite, which made up the back wall and incorporated the fireplace, which was set in a low shelf of rock. Against the wall, hunks and thereafter fist-sized stones made up the tapering chimney piece. The carefully chosen slabs and boulders of the other three walls made the place like a fortress. The roof, of timber and sheets of corrugated iron, slanted gently down from the back wall and was waterproofed by pitch. The door was formed from spliced young tree trunks and barred inside with metal of an arm’s breadth threaded through huge iron staples. The floor was stamped earth but covered from end to end by layers of rush mats and a once fine piece of carpet. The two square apertures that served as windows had metal gratings and were covered against the cold by wooden shutters. In all, it was a dark and airless place; to many it would seem claustrophobic, but it was furnished with the gathered curiosities of Tabbie’s lifetime and was not without embellishment and comfort, and here, among the dark blue and claret drapes and cushions, the velvets and damasks that sparkled with gold thread, all booty from shipwrecks, Sarah was pleased to be shut off from the world she wanted no part of.
It was rare to be disturbed in Tabbie’s Shack, and usually only then by some desperate soul seeking, as a last resort, advantage of the old woman’s remedies or fortune-telling abilities. Tabbie was considered by the uncharitable to be a witch. The superstitious feared she could read minds, look into souls and successfully ill-wish anyone she took against. Another reason for the solitude was that Tabbie was an alarming sight. It was known she had been strong in her youth – it was she who had single-handedly built her home and brought its trappings home on a hand barrow – but her height was now bent with age and her joints contorted by arthritis. Her wrinkled flesh, sallow from decades of peat and furze smoke, appeared desiccated, and flakes of skin were always scattered about her shoulders. Her shoulders had fashioned themselves into a hump and her head flopped down to her hollow chest. Her darting eyes, however, remained sharp and clear and her hearing had not waned; it was rumoured fearfully that she could hear a whisper from any distance. No one could recall exactly when she had set up her home, supposedly having done so with the help of demons, and her age was speculated as being between eighty and over a century. Always in black, with her bonnet ribbons flapping loose, Tabbie was not unlike some monstrous rook chewing on two fat dangling worms. A gruesome-looking companion, but she was a woman whose heart was big enough to take in a ‘fallen woman’. Sarah was shunned by most, and the few who had taken pity on her at her husband’s death were disappointed over her refusal to denounce Titus Kivell despite his evil deeds.
Sarah accepted the contempt, it did not hurt her. Titus’s brutality and the terrible things he had done to her, and the fact he had tried to murder his grown-up son, had robbed her of all need to fit in. She had been left without hope. She existed, that was all, and cared not if that existence came to an end at any moment. She felt tainted and beyond redemption, for the dreadful thing was she had loved Titus deeply and part of her still did and grieved for him. She wasn’t fit to be near good and ordinary folk. Isolation she prized and that was what she got, even at work as a bal-maiden at the Cam Croft copper mine. Few people spoke to her and she never made an opening comment, and with her bowed and shut-off manner she was as she intended to be: easy to overlook. There was one thing for which she drew admiration, and jealousy: her remarkable, raven-haired beauty that had led to her downfall, made all the more appealing to men by her unreachable aloofness and the echoes of her sorrow.
When the thick walls of the stuffy shack were heated by the fire the atmosphere could become overbearing. Her throat parchment dry, Sarah rose from the high tapestry stool and went to the pearlware harvest jug on the bench table. She sipped the water, which she collected every day from a former wine cask, fed by a chute underneath a little trickling waterfall off nearby rocks. She moved the chute away from the cask each night so there would be no overflow.
‘Would you like a drink of water, Tabbie? Or I could make you some cocoa. Then I think I’ll slip outside for a breath of air. It’s stopped raining and the wind has dropped at last.’ The stormy weather of the last two days had meant no surface work on the ore-dressing floors at the mine. It meant added hardship, especially for families, for if there was no work there were no wages. ‘I know it’s bitter cold but I’ll be sure to wrap up well.’ It was nice that Tabbie tended to mother her, and tried to convince her she was as worthy as anyone else; the latter fell on deaf ears. Sarah had nursed her own brain-damaged mother until her death; the rest of her family, an aunt and a younger brother and sister, had deserted her after Titus’s death, moving three miles away to Redruth with the help of money offered by her rich mother-in-law, Tempest Kivell. Sarah had refused the same proposal to make a fresh start. She’d rather starve than take charity from a Kivell, even though Tempest maintained the Kivells held a lifelong responsibility to her.
Tabbie did not reply. Sarah had not looked at her for some time and did so now. Chills trailed up her spine. Tabbie was not apt to answer quickly but she had not heard Sarah at all. Her head was thrown back as far as it would go, and her gaze, usually shrewd and watchful, was on nothing. She was in a trance and seemed to be in the grip of some awful vision. From the contortion of her hawkish features it was likely a calamitous premonition for someone. Sarah had witnessed this before. Tabbie would never recount what she saw, offering only a vague or enigmatic statement. One time it had been ‘Pestilence is abroad. A just punishment, some would say.’ Sarah had assumed there would be an outbreak of typhoid or cholera, or animal death – perhaps a dishonest farmer and his family, the victims. However, forty-eight hours later, talk had spread that Squire Nankervis, who had a passion for exotic plants, spending hundreds of pounds on new discoveries from overseas, had mysteriously lost all the contents of his hothouses and many a fine specimen in his gardens. Joshua Nankervis did little for the villagers, leaving charitable works to his young wife, Tara, with whom Sarah had once been loosely acquainted, but he was not a wicked man. The punishment Tabbie had predicted must have referred to the estate’s head gardener, the strange and daunting Laketon Kivell.
Tabbie’s amber eyes glittered as if in anguish. She was surely seeing something drea
dful. Please don’t let it be a disaster at the mine. Sarah never doubted Tabbie’s powers. Could it be that she was seeing her own death? She had remarked she didn’t fear it, but if she was now being faced by a terrible end . . .
Minutes dragged by like hours. Sarah returned to the stool and watched anxiously. At last Tabbie emitted a tremendous sigh and her head fell forward and flopped down. She seemed to have trouble wresting herself to full consciousness.
Sarah was about to fetch some water when the old woman turned her beady eyes on her. Her expression was often fathomless but Sarah had never seen her intense and harrowed like this.
Tabbie shuddered, as if she couldn’t shake off the horrors of what she’d just seen.
‘You must heed me well, Sarah, for I need to prepare you for something,’ she delivered in her reverberating husky tones, pointing a tremulous gnarled finger. I can tell you were mindful of me being here only in body this past hour. I was out on the downs, with all my limbs working as in my prime. The winds were howling all around me. It was as dark as pitch and the boulders were throwing long, long shadows all around. I knew there was all manner of terrifying things in those shadows and that if I stepped into them I’d never come out alive but be doomed to stay there a prisoner in torment forever.’
Tabbie’s eyes grew wide and potent. Sarah, mesmerized, drew in a sharp breath. Tabbie never went in for melodrama; what she had to say she said. She reached for Sarah’s hand. With apprehension, Sarah placed her fingers in Tabbie’s bony paw. She was about to be prepared for whatever the fearsome vision represented, perhaps Tabbie’s imminent death. Pray God, not that, she didn’t want to be all alone in the world.