The Black Moon

by Winston Graham

  Today she temporarily sank other concerns in this pleasure, and when Polly took him again she was dishevelled in appearance but more relaxed and ordered in her mind than she had been. So after a few minutes in her own room to put on some lip-salve and to dab her cheeks with scented powder, she went down to take tea with George.

  Sam was on the night core again. He spent it working, digging, hammering, in a half daze, preoccupied with things that he knew he should not be preoccupied with.

  Almost against his will before he came down, and at the little prayer meeting a few of them had had, he had offered up prayers for Drake’s safety – his physical safety, at that. To him communion with God was a matter of spiritual welfare, not material. He worked to live and urged all others to do likewise, but that done it should be enough. The perils of this life lay in the temptations of the devil not in the hazards of mining, the risks of disease or the oppression of greedy landowners. What was of overall importance was keeping the well of living water continually springing up within the soul. Faith and hope brought joy beyond the reach of any material ill.

  But his brother, not yet twenty years old, was in mortal peril of his life. Men had been hanged for less. It seemed then an occasion when an exception must be made and help asked of a bountiful God to preserve Drake a while longer in this carnal world, if it so pleased Him to extend His mercy. The plea was the more urgent – and the more legitimate – because Drake had so come to live in neglect of his soul that if he were to die now, without grace, he would have little prospect of coming into full communion with God and His blessed spirits hereafter.

  So he prayed, and so he went down the bal, and so he worked through eight hours of the night. He and his mate were now shoring up one of the exploratory 60-fathom levels that four other men were driving south from the main lode in the hope of discovering new ground for the future. It was one of Ross’s ‘investments’, a device to employ more men at this time, and so far, like the others, it had yielded nothing of value. Jack Greet, Sam’s mate, jokingly remarked they’d be coming up under the new meeting house at Wheal Maiden soon.

  When the bells rang at six Sam stretched his long back and put his tools over his shoulders, stooped and crawled his way back to the main shaft, and climbed the three hundred-odd rungs of the various ladders up to grass and blinked in the white mist of the morning. He stayed only long enough to make arrangements for a bible meeting that afternoon, then he walked home over the hill. The cottage was cold and dank, and he lit sticks to make himself tea, cut a hunk of bread and munched it thoughtfully before climbing on to his bed. There he lay for a while with wide-open eyes, thinking of Drake and the last revival, whose blessed infection he had hoped to bring back with him from Gwennap.

  Somehow it had a little drained out of him. Somehow Drake’s arrest had contaminated his mind and drawn his own soul away from purity and grace. He must examine his own conscience afresh to discover the weakness and the sinfulness within him which had allowed this to happen. Sleep was coming on him now but he would not permit it yet. He climbed off the bed and sank on his knees and stayed there for half an hour, often in silent contemplation but sometimes praying aloud. Then at last, rested in his heart, he lay down and quietly drifted off into a dreamless slumber.

  So he slept for three hours and was wakened just before eleven by someone moving quietly about the cottage. He half sat up, rubbing his eyes in the bright light and for a moment wondered if he was now dreaming.

  ‘Drake! Is it you?’

  ‘Yes, brother. I tried not to wake ee.’

  Sam rolled out on to the floor and stood up. ‘Drake! They’ve left you free?’

  ‘Yes, brother. They’ve left me free.’

  ‘Blessed God be thanked! So the justices acknowledged the truth when they heard it. What a mercy God has wrought!’

  ‘Amen to that. But the justices haven’t met yet. Twas withdrawn. The charge was withdrawn. The Trenwith folk withdrew the charge. It is all over.’

  Sam said: ‘I’ll make tea. Do you sit down and rest. It has been a sore time.’ Drake, he thought, did not look uplifted or elevated for his escape. He was so drawn and his eyes shadowed. He was normally shaved twice a week, but this dark stubble of beard was heavier than it had ever been before.

  ‘How did it happen? Was ye just left to go free by the jailer? Did no one see ee before ee left?’

  ‘I seen no one, Sam. But the jailer telled me they’d been around earlier. Cap’n Poldark’s had to do wi’ this. I know not what, but he helped to turn their minds into leaving me go free. Sam.’

  ‘Yes, brother?’

  ‘When you’ve made that tea, go you to sleep again. I regret t’ve waked you. I’ll take a bite t’eat and then I’ll go down Nampara to see Cap’n Poldark.’

  Ross said: ‘Well, it is finished. Forget it. Don’t waste your breath in thanks. Just avoid any such pitfall in the future.’

  ‘I spoke only truth,’ said Drake. ‘That bible was truly give to me. But what you done you done t’elp me, and I have to say thank you. And I say’n from my heart.’

  They were up in the Long Field. After riding in to St Ann’s at nine to meet the lawyer who was coming from Truro, a nasty but clever young man called Kingsley who was now working in association with Nat Pearce, Ross had discovered that the charge against Drake had been withdrawn. He had therefore paid off Kingsley and, having watched from a distance to see Drake emerge from his foetid charge room, he had turned his mare homewards without having been seen by the boy. He had not spent a restful night, for he had staked what might well have been his whole future and the future happiness and prosperity of his family upon intimidating George; and he felt it too high a price to pay, or to have risked paying, in order to redeem a thoughtless, presumptuous boy from a mess which was at least partly of his own making.

  He had resented having to do it, and he had bitterly disliked the necessity of such an interview with George – which had rubbed up all their enmity afresh, like an abrasive stone on a sore place – and, because Drake was Demelza’s brother and he was taking these actions for her sake, some of the discomfort, the odium, the displeasure that he felt devolved on her. So having achieved his end and before any relief at the outcome could percolate through, he had ridden straight home, brusquely told her that her brother was free and as brusquely cut short her delighted and loving thanks. Up in the Long Field he went to inspect the hay and to consider whether it should be cut this week or left a while longer. On this arrived Drake, pallid, gaunt, lean, attractively boyish, dislikeable as the cause of all the trouble, hesitating, standing before him, following him awkwardly as he moved about the field.

  ‘I feel I done wrong in this,’ said Drake, ‘causing trouble betwixt your house and Trenwith. Twas not my wish to do so.’

  Evidently he had seen Demelza before he came up here.

  ‘There was trouble before you ever came. The only wrong you did was to allow yourself to become involved with a young woman of an entirely different station in life – and that was more her fault than yours.’

  ‘Oh, no. Twas no fault of hers. Begging your pardon; but she never behaved no way but as a lady should.’

  ‘Perhaps we may have different opinions on that,’ Ross said.

  ‘No, Cap’n Poldark. No. Tis hard that she should suffer.’

  It was mid-June, Ross thought. Late enough anyhow. But a week’s gentle rain followed by sun would bring the hay up another nine inches. It was miserably short. But once this fine spell broke one might well get three weeks’ rain. And wind with it. Then the stuff would be lying all over the place like a drunkard’s hair newly roused from sleep.

  Sourly he said: ‘Well, now you will be able to give your full attention to your religion again. Your brother has been worried. He thought you were backsliding. The meeting house still wants its roof.’

  Drake said: ‘I’m going away.’

  ‘. . . Oh? Where?’

  ‘I don’t rightly know. I been thinking. But I cause
d trouble here, and twas not seemly of me.’

  ‘Back to Illuggan?’

  ‘No . . .’

  ‘I think your brother will be disappointed. To say nothing of your sister.’

  The boy kicked at a stone among the grass. ‘I got to go away for a while, Cap’n Poldark. T’ease my own mind.’

  ‘Well, have a care where you go. Work is hard to come by, even for a tradesman, and a parish will not accept you as a charge upon it unless it is your own.’

  ‘Yes, I d’know that.’

  ‘To become a vagrant is a lost life indeed. I saw a group recently being driven up the fore street of Redruth. They had done no ill except that they did not belong to the town and so must be whipped on to the next. And there one may presume they would receive the same treatment.’

  ‘To tell truth,’ Drake said, ‘I don’t think it worry me what do happen. So long as I can forget . . .’

  Ross eyed the boy. Dramatics? The agony of shattered calf-love. In a few months he would have forgotten all about it and all the damned trouble he had caused and would be larking and whistling about the place as if nothing had happened.

  Possibly. But all first love was not shallow. His own had persisted over many years. Demelza’s had never changed. This boy was too like his sister.

  He said: ‘D’you think this hay should be cut now or wait a couple of weeks?’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘This field. Should it be cut now?’

  Drake stared at the field so long that Ross thought he was never going to reply.

  ‘What will you do after?’

  ‘With the field? Use it for grazing.’

  ‘Then there’s no haste, is there? Hay don’t spoil by being left. Not like corn.’

  They began to walk slowly back towards the house.

  ‘I’d best be going,’ Drake said as they drew near the gate. ‘I don’t wish for to be in the way just now.’

  ‘Would you like to come to France with me?’ Ross said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m going to France. Would you like to come?’

  ‘To – to France?’

  ‘Yes. There are seven or eight going from this district. We are taking part in a French landing.’

  ‘I – when would you be going?’

  ‘Sunday or Monday. We sail from Falmouth.’

  Drake walked along for a time in silence.

  ‘It was just a thought,’ said Ross, with a sense of relief. ‘Forget it.’

  ‘Yes . . .’ said Drake. ‘I’d like to come.’

  ‘It will not be a religious experience, I would warn you. The French are very – unconvertible. And so would be most of your companions.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Drake. ‘I’ll come.’

  Chapter Six

  They sailed from Falmouth on the Tuesday morning tide, in an Admiralty cutter, a yawl and a three-masted lugger, totalling about two hundred men. Of these one hundred and forty were French, the rest crew, or Englishmen like Ross joining the expedition for reasons of conviction, adventure or friendship. They rendezvoused with the main fleet off the Lizard on the Wednesday evening and proceeded south in convoy. De Maresi and de Sombreuil were transferred from the cutter to the flagship Pomone, and because of his friendship with them Ross went too. His following remained aboard the Energetic.

  It had been a curious leave-taking. That from Demelza had been muted – not in any way ungenuine, but set about with so many cross-currents that the main stream of her anxiety was not as clear as it had been last October. For one thing, she was not with child and was able to hide her fears better. For another, his saving of Drake from a prison sentence had created a sort of quid pro quo in her emotions. Although he had never told her what he had done or said on his visit to George, she knew he could only have achieved his ends by means of a threat, or bargain, which must have entailed some kind of risk to them all. So it seemed that his having courted one danger on her behalf left him freer to engage in another. Or it left her less able to protest. There was a sense of fatalism in her mind too, in that she perceived more clearly than he thought that she had married a man for whom an occasional adventure came as second nature. She liked the idea of it no more for that but saw it as something unavoidable.

  He had said nothing definite about return, for this was clearly out of his hands. He might be away two weeks, or it might be six. But he kissed her cool lips and stroked her face and said he would write if it was to be more than four.

  ‘Very well, Ross,’ she said, eyes looking clearly into his. ‘I shall be waiting. And Clowance will have two more teeth.’

  ‘Have a good care for them. And for yourself, love. I’ll bring you back a special piece of silk.’

  ‘Bring me back yourself.’

  So he left. Little had been said against Drake accompanying him, for the alternative seemed to be to allow him to cut adrift from all his friends. But again Demelza felt that, having preserved him from one hazard they were now putting him in the way of another.

  A call at Killewarren to say good-bye to Caroline.

  She said: ‘The female of the species has a quite detestable role to play at these times. She offers her house, her time and her money for the planning of a high adventure, and then when it comes to be implemented she is set aside on a shelf like a dusty ornament and left bobbing away there until it is done.’

  ‘I cannot think you would enjoy bobbing away for two weeks in small boats in the company of four thousand seasick men. I suspect the high adventure will be packed into a short space of time and the rest will be dull slogging either at sea or ashore.’

  ‘For a man of good sense, Ross, that is a foolish evasion.’

  He smiled and sipped the sherry she had pressed on him. ‘Well . . . I cannot alter it for you – and perhaps would not if I could. There is a nasty brutish sweat about war, however it may be dressed up, and I prefer the women I care for to be preserved from it.’

  ‘I prefer the men I care for to be similarly preserved, but one way or another they embroil themselves. I trust this may be the last time.’

  ‘Amen.’

  He was turning away, but she said: ‘Ross.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I have the discomfortable feeling that it is all my fault.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Your going. Dwight’s being there: that certainly is. So have a care, please, if not for your own skin then for my conscience.’

  ‘I’ll have a special care for your conscience.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She put one hand on either side of his face and kissed him on the mouth. It took several seconds. ‘Well,’ she said, releasing him, ‘I have been wanting to do that for a long time.’

  ‘It is a mistake to restrict oneself in one’s pleasures,’ Ross said. ‘One should never risk being thought a Puritan.’

  They smiled at each other, and he left.

  He also saw Verity before sailing from Falmouth, and they had two meals together talking of old times.

  He thought of all these leave-takings and of many other things during that first week on board the Pomone – not least of George’s capitulation which, while it had greatly relieved him, had at the last rather surprised him. It showed him that his estimate of George’s character had been correct; but it also showed George up to be a reasonable man. No doubt he had bowed resentfully to an uncivilized threat, but that he had done so proved him to be a person more easy to endure as a neighbour. Perhaps sooner than one ever supposed it might be possible to come to some accommodation in the district so that they could all live in peace.

  The weather was fair that week, with an easterly breeze, and each morning when dawn broke, red-smeared and smoky, a wonderful sight was to be seen. To the south of the Pomone the ships of the Channel Fleet rode like great sea birds that had settled on the water but held their wings still unfolded. The Royal George and the Queen Charlotte, both of 100 guns. The Queen, the London, the Prince of Wales, the Prince, the Barfleur, the Prince George, all 98s
. An 80, the Sans Pareil, and five 74s, the Valiant, the Orion, the Irresistible, the Russel and the Colossus. And all around the Pomone were the rest of Sir John Borlase Warren’s squadron: three line-of-battle ships, five frigates and the forty or fifty sail carrying the French troops and their supplies. It was a great fleet, sufficient to put heart into the faintest doubter.

  But there were no pessimists in those early days, and the evening meals in the aft cabin of the Pomone were cheerful, noisy, confident, conducted haphazardly in two languages, sometimes both spoken together. Charles de Sombreuil was outstanding in the company both as a conversationalist and as a strategist.

  Yet even in those very early days Ross was aware of dissension between the leading Frenchmen. It appeared that the Comte Joseph de Puisaye had never previously met the Comte d’Hervilly, his second in command. Attempts which had been made to bring them together in London had failed, d’Hervilly always being too busy with his regiment. Seeing them at the same table one realized why. De Puisaye was a huge, stout, powerful man, a Breton himself, and one-time leader of the Chouans, those Bretons who had banded themselves together and carried on a desultory war against the Revolution ever since the King’s execution. Though a count himself, his nobility, like his accent, was a provincial one, and he had the further disability in the eyes of many people of having been a Girondist in the early years of the Revolution, before he turned against it. D’Hervilly, on the other hand, was a colonel of one of the best regiments of France, the Royal-Louis. His aristocracy was unimpeachable, his relationship with the exiled Bourbons of the closest, and his contempt for M. de Puisaye and his half-peasant following barely concealed. It was an unfortunate beginning to the adventure.