Blake's Reach

by Catherine Gaskin

  ‘If Charles dies and you inherit Blake’s Reach, Jane, there is something beyond the value of this house and land which will be yours.’

  ‘Something …? What?’

  ‘There’s a ring … a black pearl set in a ring. The Blakes have always called it the King’s Pearl.’

  She gasped, and turned a little pale. ‘A black pearl …!’

  ‘Yes …’ he said. He spoke with faint reluctance. ‘It is reckoned to be worth a considerable sum of money.’

  ‘But why didn’t you tell me! This could make such a difference!’ She drew in a long breath. ‘The pearl could be sold, couldn’t it, Mr. Turnbull? It would fetch some money! … it could set things right here!’

  ‘I would not like to see you sell the pearl if it were yours.’

  ‘Why not? There’s so much needing here that it would buy …’

  He pursed his lips. ‘What do you suppose kept Spencer from selling it? ‒ only a tradition stronger than his need for money, his passion for gambling. Like all the Blakes he venerated it because more than a hundred years ago it was the personal gift of a king.’

  Her face sobered. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’ve heard about the Great Rebellion ‒ the time when Cromwell took over and His Majesty, King Charles the First, was beheaded?’

  She nodded. ‘There were families in Hampstead who talked about it as if it were yesterday, and they had all ridden with Cromwell … or the King. They still hated each other for what happened all that time ago …’

  ‘A country in civil war isn’t an easy thing to forget … some gained by it, and some lost, Jane. The Blakes were Royalist, and Henry Blake fought by the King’s side. He almost went into captivity with him. One of the last acts His Majesty did was to take from his finger the Black Pearl, and entrust it to Henry for safe delivery to Queen Henrietta. Henry nearly lost his life attempting to reach France with it, but eventually he put it in the Queen’s hands, and helped her find a buyer for it. The King’s widow and children were very short of money …’

  Jane was leaning forward. ‘And Henry …?’

  ‘He went to Amsterdam, and worked for a Dutch merchant. Blake’s Reach and the estate were confiscated. His family fled into exile with him. Like all the other Royalists they were very poor. At the Restoration they came back, of course … and eventually Blake’s Reach was theirs again. King Charles the Second was a vain and pleasure-loving man, Jane … but people do say that he never forgot a kindness, and he was the most generous soul alive. He was hard-pressed for money himself, and there were demands on all sides, but Henry was eventually called to Whitehall, and another Black Pearl was given him. Not as fine a one as the first, but still worth a good deal of money. Charles gave it to him as a remembrance of loyalty, and his service to the Queen. Henry cherished it above everything he owned, and the Blakes have always felt their luck rests in the Black Pearl. They feel that if it is sold, their luck will go.’

  He watched the struggle in her face between pride in the tradition, and the practicalities of her upbringing. At last she tossed her head.

  ‘Luck! As if the Blakes’ luck hadn’t flown out the window long ago. Is it lucky to keep the pearl, and lose Blake’s Reach?’

  ‘Well … and what would you do if you had the Pearl Jane?’

  ‘Sell it!’ she said without hesitation. ‘The luck of the Blakes couldn’t be any worse than it is at the moment ‒ and perhaps Henry meant it to be kept for just such a time. I think he’d forgive me!’

  ‘What would you do with the money?’

  ‘I’d set this place back on its feet. I haven’t lived among farm people all my life without learning a thing or two. I’d buy rams, and I’d grow enough feed to hand feed the cattle through the winter, and they’d go fat to market. I’d get land wherever it was going hereabouts. I’d mend the roof and weed the drive. I’d plant new roses, and sit in a silk gown and wait for the gentry to come calling.’ She laughed as she spoke the last words.

  ‘Wait for the gentry …! Why?’

  She looked at him very pointedly. ‘Are there none about here to marry, Mr. Turnbull? Are there no eldest sons that haven’t been snapped up? It’s true I have no fortune, but I have the Blake name … and if it were mine, Blake’s Reach itself would soon be no inconsiderable trifle.’

  ‘You mean … you mean you want to marry here? You want to marry some squire’s son?’ He looked at her in wonderment. ‘But you’d be like Anne ‒ you’d die of boredom within a year!’

  ‘I expect boredom, Mr. Turnbull ‒ and it’s not likely to kill me! You forget that I’ve lived as a servant, and I didn’t care for that. I’ve also seen how Anne lived, and I could do without the excitement of the gambling table. If I have to die of boredom, it will be with a full stomach, and in peace and security.’

  Then she added: ‘What energies I have would be well spent on Blake’s Reach. Will I die of boredom if I have this? … it would be a game of patience to get back the acres Spencer lost. The man who married me wouldn’t be getting a bad bargain. I would be ambitious for his good as much as my own.’

  He considered her carefully. It was amazing how right she was … it was a proposition as shrewd and calculating as anything he had heard, and yet, he believed that she would be honest in her bargain. She would give fair value ‒ and more. He didn’t believe that she would cheat. The audacity of the plan was its strength … she just might be lucky enough to pull it off. He looked at her as dispassionately as he was able. She had beauty, and a certain brash confidence which made it noticeable; he took in the rounded, elegantly provocative figure, and the modish clothes, and found himself comparing her with the rather solid ladies of indifferent charm whose families held the wealth of the Marsh. Beside most of them she would have the sharpness of a new flavour. He knew she possessed none of the accomplishments ladies thought so desirable, and which, in the end, bored men. The women, he thought, would see through her quickly enough ‒ but all the men were likely to see was the graceful curve of her neck, and the way she moved her hips. She was clever, more clever than Anne had been; she had prudence and an eye to what side her bread was buttered on. It was possible … mad as it seemed now, it was all possible. She might pull it off.

  He looked at her and smiled. Suddenly he wanted to see it happen. He wanted Anne’s child living here on the Marsh, doing successfully what Anne had refused to do; he wanted to see a former serving-girl from The Feathers come and make fools of all the families who prided themselves on their birth and who said the Blakes were finished. This was a descendant that old John Blake, Marlborough’s general, would have delighted in ‒ the best the family had produced in nearly a hundred years. He savoured and relished the thought.

  She was encouraged by his smile.

  ‘Give me time! Give me a little money to begin with, and I’ll put Blake’s Reach back where it should be. I could do it, Mr. Turnbull! I could do it!’

  Now he smiled more broadly. ‘You could do it! Yes! … I believe you could do it!’

  He took a step towards her. ‘If Blake’s Reach becomes yours, you shall have all the help I can give ‒ in whatever way I can give it. And here’s my hand on it!’

  But even as his hand gripped hers he felt again the familiar sense of loss. For the second time in his life he was bidding good-bye to Anne Blake … the first time money and position had defeated him, and now, when he had accumulated money and when the Blakes could no longer bargain for titles or power, the years were against him. He studied the young face before him, and for a second wondered if, even now, it were too late.

  She had reached eagerly for his outstretched hand, then abruptly the triumph and the glow was wiped from her face. Her hand dropped limply back into her lap.

  ‘I’d forgotten,’ she said dully. ‘It isn’t mine, is it? ‒ it isn’t mine yet.’ She looked at him distracted … ‘To wish a man dead ‒ God save us, that’s murder! But I want Blake’s Reach, and before it’s mine, Charlie must die!’

&nb
sp; Unconsciously she had used her mother’s name for him; she had called him Charlie.

  IV

  The hired boy, Jed, had brought Robert’s horse to the front door. The hinges creaked as it swung stiffly open. Kate put up her hand to shield the candle flame from the wind that ripped in from the sea, and flung itself against the house. Outside the night was black; there was nothing to see, there was only the sensation of low thick clouds scudding across the sky. The rain had stopped.

  Robert looked at Kate.

  ‘Miss Jane will be staying here at Blake’s Reach, Kate. She will be staying … until Master Charles comes back!’ He leaned nearer the old woman. ‘Care for her, Kate.’

  Then he went swiftly and mounted the horse. The boy backed away respectfully.

  As she saw him mounted, and about to turn towards Rye, Jane had a terrifying sense of her aloneness. She was here, with this great echoing house behind her, and the vastness of the Marsh lost in the black night; she had spoken brave and defiant words, but now she felt small, and a little afraid. Impulsively she went to Turnbull’s side, her hand gripping the saddle.

  ‘You’ll come again?’ she said urgently.

  He nodded. ‘I’ll come this way from time to time. You’ll find it strange at first, Jane. These are seafaring people, as well as farmers, and there are those with a touch of wildness. But many of them knew and loved Anne ‒ they’ll welcome you back. I have only this to say to you …’

  He broke off, looking about him to see where Jed had gone. The boy had vanished into the darkness; Kate still stood by the door.

  ‘Yes …?’ Jane urged.

  He leaned down, and spoke softly in her ear. ‘Take no notice of what seems strange to you in these parts, Jane. Close your eyes to what you had best not see. Those who mind their own affairs come to no harm.’

  She looked up at him, startled. ‘In heaven’s name, what are you saying?’

  He answered her as quietly and calmly as before. ‘This is a seafaring race, Jane. These men have gone to sea for hundreds of years, and … well, times are hard, and a smuggler is paid a great deal for one night’s work.’

  ‘Smu‒!’ She clamped her lips down before the word was fully out. She glanced back at Kate anxiously, but the old woman appeared to have heard nothing. The wind blew her hair into her eyes; she strained on tiptoe to be closer to Turnbull.

  ‘Anne told me a little ‒ I’d forgotten what she said. She hated it. She seemed to be afraid of it.’

  ‘Well ‒ there have been foul crimes done in the name of smuggling … murder among them. But that happens only when folk get too talkative or too inquisitive of other folk’s business. But mostly it flourishes without hindrance because there don’t begin to be enough Customs men or ships to check it seriously. And the art of bribery is not subtle when practised by determined men, Jane. Even when a known smuggler is caught the magistrates don’t convict, either from fear for their own skins, or because there’s no one can be got who will give evidence against them.’

  He straightened a little in the saddle. ‘This is their land, Jane ‒ and never forget it! Deal, Dover, Rye ‒ all along the coast as far as Cornwall they rule the roost. It would be safe to bet that there’s hardly a fisherman along the coast that hasn’t run a cargo in his time ‒ when weather and moon is right. When it’s done on a big scale, it can make men rich. And the rights and wrongs of it don’t seem to matter against that. The Marsh is sheep country, and when the Government clap their stupid tax on the export of wool, and farmers are threatened with ruin, do you think they won’t run their bales to Flanders, and be glad to take a contraband cargo in return? And for the labourers ‒ they earn in one night what they’d get for six weeks work in the fields. So there isn’t any use expecting them to see it in any other light but as bread in their children’s mouths, and boots on their feet.’

  He looked towards Kate, who was staring at them curiously, her neck craned to try to catch the gist of that low-toned conversation. Then once again he bent closer to Jane’s ear.

  ‘Don’t stand out against it, Jane. And don’t talk of it ‒ don’t even see it! You’ll find the whole countryside with the smugglers, and their hand against the excise men. And it isn’t only the small people ‒ there are rich and powerful men in these parts, Jane, who’ve grown fat on the profits they’ve had, who are always looking the other way when the Customs man asks for help. And as for the Church ‒ well, every parson within miles of the coast enjoys his contraband brandy and tea, and the only price he pays for it is silence, and a blind eye. At least that’s what the wiser ones do. Otherwise there’s trouble in the parish, and in turn trouble with the Bishop …’

  She nodded quickly, her teeth beginning to chatter in the cold wind, and the nameless chill that Turnbull’s words had brought out. Now the blackness of the Marsh was a hostile thing that screened what she must never see or talk of. She remembered Adam Thomas who openly said that he had left the Marsh to avoid the Customs men; and there was Kate, standing there and perhaps guessing what it was they talked of so quietly. These people were your friends so long as you stood on their side, and closed your door to the riding-officers. Between the two the line was clearly marked.

  She drew back a little, and her hand slipped off the bridle. ‘I understand, Mr. Turnbull. I understand.’

  He raised his hat, and then she stood and listened to the sound of the hooves growing fainter, and finally ceasing. Then she went back to where Kate stood waiting patiently.

  The old woman looked at her with happy eyes as she shot the bolts in the heavy door. The candle flickered wildly for a second in the draught, and then grew still.

  ‘It’s a happy day for us that you’ve come back, Miss Anne.’

  Jane glanced at her, startled, and then realized that Kate’s memory had slipped, and that for the moment it seemed that it really was Anne who had come back to Blake’s Reach.

  She reached and took a second candle from the chest, and lighting it from Kate’s was a formal little ceremony.

  ‘I’ll light you to your chamber, Mistress.’

  Three

  It wasn’t, after all, Anne’s room to which Kate led her.

  ‘I’ve put Master William in the chamber beside yours, Mistress, and you’ll be sleeping in Charlie’s old chamber until I can get Miss Anne’s room aired and ready. Tis smaller here, and the fire heats the place quicker than in that other great chamber.’ She opened the door and stood aside. ‘You’ll be snug here, Mistress, and little Charlie won’t mind you havin’ his bed these few nights.’

  Jane held the candle high, and looked about her. The room was still strewn with the things that Charles had left, his lesson books with the battered covers, the model ships he had sailed on the dykes, some dusty butterflies pinned to a sheet of paper, a riding whip with a broken handle. A row of seashells was arranged carefully along the mantel. The four-poster bed took up most of the space; the bed curtains were limp and frayed. Charles’s room was in the old part of the house, where the ceilings were lower, and laced with black oak beams. There was a knowledge of loneliness here, as if the walls had listened too frequently to a child’s weeping, short cries that were choked back in shame and in fear that they might be heard.

  Jane turned quickly to Kate. ‘I will do very well here, Kate, until my mother’s chamber is ready. Good night!’

  ‘Good night, Mistress. Rest well.’

  She listened to the old woman’s footsteps moving carefully down the passage. This room would not do very well for her; she would be out of it by to-morrow. She looked around again, shaking her head. Her lips were grim as she tentatively touched the bed Charles had slept on, and the table he had used for his lessons. She opened the great oak cupboard, and there were his clothes, painfully worn, and smelling of dampness and rot. With a stirring of pity she fingered them, picturing the long, thin wrists that had shot out from the cuffs. She didn’t want to feel any more pity for Charles; she didn’t want to think of him again. Almost certainly Ch
arles would die. At this moment his life stood between her and her possession of Blake’s Reach; she did not want to feel anything at all about him. Yet here the presence of the child he had been was a real thing ‒ something she could touch as she now touched his coat. Nervous and angry suddenly, she slammed the door shut. She set down the candle, and began to undress with cold clumsy fingers.

  Kate had laid her nightgown across the pillow. She felt the scratch of the rough bed linen against her, then her feet touched the hot bricks Kate had put there. Raised on her elbow, she blew out the flame.

  The moving light of the fire filled the room ‒ a warm, intimate light that played on the carved surfaces of the bed posts, and gave a ruddy beauty to a little mirror hanging crookedly on the wall.

  Jane lay and watched the glow on the bed canopy. The room was peaceful. She turned her face wearily on the pillow, and then with a detached wonder, she heard herself murmur, ‘Good night, Charlie! Good night!’

  II

  The sound that woke Jane was almost lost in a sudden high shriek of the wind. She lay quietly, struggling against sleep, but becoming aware of the stillness and peace in the room with her, and more certain that the sound had come from outside the house. She sat up, listening; there were red embers in the fireplace still, and she guessed that it couldn’t be more than an hour since she had fallen asleep. It had begun raining again. She could hear no other noise, nothing to account for her waking, but she slipped from underneath the blankets, shivering as the chill of the night struck her. The casement was fastened tightly against the rain; she pressed her face against it, but could see nothing. There was no light from any of the windows below, nor in the wing of the house which jutted at right angles.

  It came again ‒ but this time a familiar and recognizable noise. It was the sound of horses’ hooves on the driveway which led past the house and round the back to the stables. Quietly she opened the casement and leaned out; light needles of rain fell on her. In the blackness there was nothing to see, but the horses and their riders were now almost directly below her. She guessed that there were perhaps four of them. She waited for them to stop by the front door. But they swept straight on, moving at a quick trot. Then the sound diminished and changed as they rode through the gates, and started down the hill to the Marsh.