And therefore, Drake felt, it was worth doing just once more.
The frogs and toads were in full voice tonight. This sort of weather suited them: fresh and damp though still chilly. Drake set down his two baskets and went about his task. He hardly had to get his feet wet. They croaked and bubbled and snored all around him in the half dark, and although silent at his approach were easily caught as they hopped away. As before he was careful not to net all the noisiest ones, otherwise he would have a bag of males who, finding themselves bereft of their opposite numbers, would see no cause to continue their love songs.
When they were full he tied a piece of hessian over the tops of the baskets, then hid the net in the fork of a tree and began his laden walk. His captives, quietly tumbled together in the bottoms of the baskets, were themselves quiet.
It was nearly three miles to Trenwith land, and he edged himself over the gate not far from the copse where he had first spoken to Morwenna and Geoffrey Charles. Now he went more carefully, avoiding dead sticks and watching for the unexplained shadow. He thought it likely that someone would be watching tonight; but if they did it would be near the fringes of the pool.
The pool itself was bordered on two sides by lawns, on a third by a piece of open land well trodden by cattle in the old days; and with the farm buildings near. The fourth, where the pool was at its narrowest and where the tiny stream that fed it trickled in a narrow pebbled gully, was grown about with hawthorn, gorse and a few wind-harried pines; and it was from this angle that he had approached before to let his captives plop gently one by one into the freedom of the reedy grass at the pond’s edge. This time he took the precaution of setting his baskets down about thirty yards back against the side of an isolated shed and making a preliminary circuit.
It was after midnight and the house was in darkness except for a single gleam in an upper room that Drake had not seen used before. He made his way to the left and saw that there were no lights at the side of the house or over the stables where the servants slept. A thin dry night-wind rustled the grasses, a wind still without comfort to the struggling spring. The rain of yesterday made the going soft and spongy, so that there was less chance of stepping on a brittle twig. In the far distance the sea reverberated.
He saw the first man almost at once: a figure leaning against the nearest stable door. The man was too far away to be at his most effective, but had probably retreated there to get out of the chill wind. It wouldn’t be difficult to deposit the frogs without disturbing him. But did gamekeepers keep watch alone? Usually, like pigeons, they came in pairs.
The second man might be more conscientious than his companion. Or each might be taking it in turn to keep the closer watch. Now if one sheltered by the stable door, the other would be likely to be somewhere in his range of vision, so that a pre-arranged signal . . . Drake went carefully over the few places of concealment that were available. Tree, wall, bush, stone pillar, tree, tree, cart, wall, shed, bush, ah . . . He saw him. The other man was sitting quite near the pool, so that his head was not above the level of the bush that hid him. He had been very still, and it was only a momentary movement of his head that betrayed him.
This was going to be more difficult. He could not possibly put the toads in the lake without being seen. All he could now do would be to approach under cover of the bushes and slip them quietly into the stream, hoping they would in the natural course of things make their way to the pool by following the stream down.
Drake turned sharply and bumped into a man.
‘Got you!’ growled a voice, and a hand grasped at his arm.
That sharp movement, which had been made without any apprehension of danger, just saved him from immediate capture. He wrenched his arm away, coat sleeve tearing; a great stick whistled past his ear to glance off his forearms, clattered into the wall. He ducked and fell, scrambled on hands and knees, half running, half falling towards the house. Another man suddenly in his way; he swerved just in time. The place alive with men. Gamekeepers, he saw rather late, did not always hunt only in pairs.
He was now in the main drive, plain for all to see; they were converging on him from different sides. He turned at right angles, darted for the low wall beyond the flower beds. Two of the men ran to cut him off, but fear and his long legs beat them: he was over the wall and in open country, running for his life across the first of two fields that led to the copse where he had first met Morwenna. They had no dogs; for that he had to be thankful.
But he was not out of the wood yet – nor even in it – for another figure broke into the field from the direction of the main drive – on horseback, and riding to cut him off from his best way of escape. Drake veered for the far corner where the ground fell sharply away. Here was the ruin of an old windmill, long untended and scarred sometime by fire. Lack of shelter anywhere in this direction, but temporarily, after he had scrambled over the low stone wall he was approaching, he would not be seen. The windmill ruin an obvious hiding place, but beyond it the land undulated away towards St Ann’s, fenced off for the first time in living memory, ploughed and sown with spring wheat.
This old Cornish wall was not more than three feet high; it ran in broken patches back towards the farm buildings. He somehow fell over it, turned right, and scrambled along on hands and knees, cutting them on stones and sharp stumps of cut-back gorse. It was a frenzied crawl, which had to be not only rapid but quiet. Had the horseman jumped the wall his efforts would have failed. But the man clearly did not like putting his pony at it in the dark; he jumped off and then climbed over the wall, followed by two running panting men who had now caught him up.
As they came over Drake lay flat among the gorse and the stones, rationing his breathless lungs, only now conscious of the pain in his forearm where he had been struck.
‘This way, I reckon . . .’
‘Bastard’s in mill, I don’t wonder . . .’
‘We’d best split.’
‘Got a knife ’as ’e? Rats when they’re cornered.’
‘Tom, take the mill. And you, Jack. I’ll ride down, see whether there’s sign or sight . . .’
They were splitting, but only into two. They’d no fancy for a fight in the ruin, one against one. A respite. But only for a couple of minutes.
While their feet were clattering he moved. It was just luck: he could not see which way their faces were turned. But no shout came.
He went on, bent double now. He was trying to work out how many men were out. Five or six at least. Three were temporarily accounted for. But almost certainly the horse rider when he could find no trace of him towards the copse would realize he could not have gone so far and come back. Where were the others? Still by the house?
Temporarily silence had fallen on the scene. As his lungs slowed, his arm throbbed more. He reached the end of the wall. If he cut away from here and reached the stables there were, as far as he remembered, two orchards behind the house, then another couple of fields climbing to the moorland which gave on to the cliffs.
He stared at the dark stables. A horse whinnied and an owl fluttered from one of the roofs, otherwise quiet. If they were waiting for him they were waiting for him. In a few minutes the other men would be back. He glanced behind. The horseman was not yet on his tail. He looked up at the house. From here he could not see whether the single light still glimmered. Which was Morwenna’s room? He had never seen it, never knew where she slept. Geoffrey Charles’s looked over the back of the house. Strange, his friendship with the boy – never just a cloak for the other thing.
He moved, but not now towards the stables. At the front of the house the light had gone out. He slid across towards the pond, target for a musket or another pursuit. But they were all away, chasing him in another direction.
Past the pool and up the stream. His two baskets were where he had left them, but there was movement inside. The inhabitants were losing their fear and becoming restless. He picked up the baskets and carried them to the pool, removed the hessian, plopped the to
ads into the shallow water at the edge. One croaked almost as soon as it was set free.
With a basket on each arm he began cautiously a half-circuit of the house, and having completed it he moved off towards the cliffs.
By morning his forearm was black, but he went in to the library as usual and managed somehow to carry on. There was in fact little to do now until Ross came to some decision. When the roof was taken off it had been discovered, contrary to all expectation, that although the walls of the library were granite-faced they were in fact not solid granite at all but were made of rubble stone. This was wall building of a more primitive kind: stones built up into a rough double wall about two feet six inches apart, mortared over and the space between filled with anything that came to hand: stone chippings, clay, subsoil and the attle from the local mine. The result was strong enough but there was some hesitation as to whether to use it to support a second storey. It had been irritating to Ross to discover that the engine house of Wheal Maiden had been built of the best granite . . .
However, Drake was able to employ himself and would have passed unnoticed if it had not happened to be the day for his once-weekly lesson in reading and writing. Though he managed the first half successfully, the second half defeated him.
‘You’re holding your arm too stiff,’ said Demelza. ‘Is your arm stiff? What have you been doing?’
‘I slipped and fell,’ he said. ‘Tis nothing but a bruise, but it d’make it hard to form the letters.’
‘Let me see.’ She waved aside his protests and made him take his jacket off. ‘Oh . . . Well, that is a rare old bruise to get from a fall. Let me . . . it is not broke?’
‘Ugh . . . No. Just a bruise. It is just coming out, that’s why tis so dark coloured.’
‘You should bind it up. Else you’ll scrow the skin, and if it breaks you’d have a sore place. I’ll find a piece of cloth and some basil ointment.’
When it was done she said: ‘Well, you cannot write today. We shall have to do some more reading.’
They spent the weekly hour of study in the parlour, and it was a time they had both come to find pleasure in. During the winter months brother and sister had come closer together. Often they saw things in the same way. Though men in those districts matured early, he was still in some respects very young. His fresh, carefree male vitality appealed to her. She hated the thought of his coming up against the Warleggans in a fruitless and unequal struggle yet had never said anything, for it seemed to her so futile. Now, quite on impulse, she broke her silence. It was too late. But it always had been too late.
‘Are you still seeing Morwenna Chynoweth?’
He looked up, startled. ‘Who told you?’
‘Sam.’
‘Oh . . . Sam.’ He breathed out his relief, then his face closed up. ‘Yes.’
She waited but he did not speak. He had picked up the book he had been reading earlier and was paging through it. She said: ‘It is a pity it has happened.’
‘Maybe . . . Maybe that’s what most folk would say.’
‘Drake, I don’t believe any good can come of it.’
‘What’s good?’ he said. ‘I wonder sometimes.’
‘Good for either of you. Is she fond of you?’
‘Oh, yes.’
She said: ‘I’ve often thought to say something. But though I’m your sister perhaps it isn’t for me to interfere.’
‘Not yours. Not Sam’s.’
‘But don’t take it amiss.’
‘No, I’d not do that. You wish well.’
‘I wish well. But I wish much it had been someone from some other household. Who knows, some accommodation might have been come to. But – not with the Warleggans.’
‘Morwenna is not a Warleggan. No more ’m I a Poldark.’
‘But related, that’s the misfortune.’
‘Feuds are wicked things, sister. I do not know the rights nor wrongs of this one, but they should play no part in the life of someone dedicated to Christ.’
‘Yet Sam himself feels this – this friendship is an unfortunate one.’
‘He d’think it unfortunate because he believe it to be carnal and so thrusts God into second place. And he d’think it unfortunate because Morwenna aren’t of the connexion and not saved and therefore might lead me away.’
‘And might she?’
Drake shook his head. ‘We’ve scarce thought o’ that. But there be more’n one way of serving God. I d’believe two people – a man and a woman – in perfect harmony can give more to the world and to God than either of ’em can do separate.’
Demelza looked at him with a gentle eye. What he said was so much in line with her beliefs and with her experience that she had no amendment to make.
‘Morwenna Chynoweth is a dean’s daughter. Would she be willing . . . can she accept a life . . .’
‘Oh, don’t ask me, sister. Tis more’n I yet know. I know I have naught t’offer her – naught. Tis a hard bitter thing for me. As yet – so far – we can plan no more’n the next meeting. And oft-times not even that. What should be so good betwixt us – God given, I b’lieve – is all stained up wi’ forethoughts and afterthoughts and the prohibitions of this world . . .’
He had got up, still holding the book, walked to the window.
Demelza said: ‘Only one other thing, Drake. If you meet, we cannot stop you. It is between the both of you and no other. But where you meet, that is another thing. It should not be on the Trenwith estate now Mr Warleggan is back. He has many servants, and violence has twice been offered to Captain Poldark when he has gone there. If Mr Warleggan knew you were coming to meet his cousin, then you might get even bigger bruises than the one now on your arm.’
Drake half turned. ‘What happened to Captain Poldark?’
‘He – returned the violence. I do not think there was a victor, but blood was shed.’
‘I’ll bet twas . . .’
Demelza had come up behind him and took his sound arm. ‘If I do not want it for my husband, neither do I want it for my brother. And you would not be in so strong a position as he was to resist . . . So have a care, for my sake – and perhaps for Morwenna’s . . . Now, what page had we reached? Twenty-two, wasn’t it? We had just turned over.’
Drake walked back to Reath Cottage about four. Demelza said he could not work with one arm and must go home and rest it. But his body was without rest or wish for rest, so he thought he would make a pot of tea and then go for a long walk across the beach. He had been so preoccupied with other things that he had not even put his feet in the sea since last November. Sam would not be home from the mine until late.
He scraped a light and put it to a few sticks piled in the hearth. Mark Daniell when he built this cottage had not had much skill in design, nor even care for it, so that the single fireplace and chimney was so sited that when the fire was lit in the winter it seemed to create extra draughts from every direction: door, window and roof. If in the interests of warmth and comfort one gradually stopped up the draughts, a point was reached when the warmth in the house suddenly increased. It was at this point that the fire always began to smoke.
There was a pitcher half full of water that Drake had drawn from the well in Mellin that morning, and he eked two cupfuls carefully into a pan and put it on the crackling sticks. Just then someone knocked on the open door, and he turned to see Geoffrey Charles standing there.
The boy ran into his arms. Trying not to wince under his embrace, Drake laughed and hugged him in return, his eyes eagerly looking through the doorway for another figure.
‘Is this a surprise? Is it, Drake? Were you surprised? I stole out. No one knows. Mon cher, I’m near on eleven. Isn’t it time I rode abroad—’
‘Miss Morwenna?’
‘She is helping Mama to make cowslip wine. I ordered Santa to be saddled and Keigwin said, where are you going, shall I ride with you, and I answered, oh no, just so far as the copse near the gates; so then I mounted and just rode through!’
‘But
did ye know where to find me any’ow? I work – normal days I’m not from work till six—’
‘I asked. And I took the chance you might be here. It’s luck, you see. My lucky day.’
‘Mine,’ said Drake. ‘Mine to be in to bid ye welcome. I’m making a dish of tea. Join me, will ee?’
The boy said he’d be delighted, and they chattered about this and that while the pan boiled. To cover up his disappointment that his visitor was alone, Drake told him the problems of the draught and the fire and laughed about their efforts in the winter to stay warm and yet continue to breathe. Geoffrey Charles was looking round.
‘It is like a chapel, Drake. It is more like a chapel than a house. I do not believe I would like to live in a house arranged this way. But about the fire, why do you not dig up the floor?’
Drake sprinkled a few leaves from a tin box into each cup and poured the hot water on it. ‘What then?’
‘The ground falls away from the front door, so you could lay a drain pipe all the way to the fireplace. Cover it and beat it down. Then put a grid – a fine grid it would have to be – where you build the fire. Then the air would come in from outside and blow up the chimney. Drake, did you come again last night?’
‘Come again? I’ve no milk, Geoffrey. Will ee drink’n without?’
‘There were more toads! This morning there were dozens more! And making an enormous and extraordinary loud noise! Uncle George was beside himself!’
‘That’s a rare good idea ’bout the hearth. Are ye going to be an engineer, boy? But all the ash would fall through the grid and block the drain, I reckon. How ’bout that?’
‘You’d have to clean it out, like cleaning soot from a chimney. Did you come?’
‘I reckoned them clouds was bad last night. I says to myself, I says, afore ever cocklight comes twill be raining toads, and then what’ll Master Geoffrey say?’
The boy gurgled with delight, and accepted his cup and stirred it. ‘You’re teasing me! It was you, wasn’t it! There was such a to-do this morning: servants running, terriers barking, gamekeepers sploshing about in the pond! Oh, it went on for hours! Uncle George was so angry! I went up to my room and hid my face in the pillow with un access de fou rire! Dear Drake, how did you manage it without getting caught? I heard that they had been up all night watching for a trespasser – and had near caught one! Did they near catch you? Do you fly in the air? Have you witch’s wings?’
The Black Moon Page 29