Morwennan House Read online

  Morwennan House

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Next in Series

  Copyright

  If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet,

  Don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street,

  Them that asks no questions isn’t told a lie.

  Watch the wall, my darling, while the

  Gentlemen go by!

  Five and twenty ponies

  Trotting through the dark –

  Brandy for the Parson,

  ’Baccy for the Clerk;

  Laces for a lady, letters for a spy,

  And watch the wall, my darling, while the

  Gentlemen go by!

  Rudyard Kipling

  A Smuggler’s Song

  The night was black as Hades. No stars shone through the blanket of storm cloud, no sliver of moon lit the narrow path through the gorse and bracken that grew thick but stunted and windswept on the sweep of headland. But for all that, the man strode out with confidence. He knew every inch of the cliff tops like the back of his hand, just as he knew every narrow gully that led to the hidden coves below, every rocky outcrop, every sea-sculpted cave. The gusting wind made him draw his cape tightly round him and bend low as he walked, and he could taste the salt, like sea spray, in the drizzling rain.

  At the point where the headland jutted furthest into the sea he stopped and raised his head, listening. Far beneath him the sea roared like a wild and hungry beast. It slapped against the rocks, broke on the shoreline and dragged at the shingle in a ceaseless cycle. The wind moaned and whistled like a soul in torment. But above it he could hear no other sound – not the sound for which he was listening. The bell buoy was silent. Tonight there was no eerie clanging amidst the cacophony of the sea.

  The man’s jaw tightened. He knew all too well what the silence of the bell-buoy meant. Mournful the sound it made might be, but to the crew of a ship looking for safe passage it could mean the difference between living and dying. The bell-buoy marked the treacherous rocks on which they could all too easily founder, the rocks that could tear the heart out of their vessel, turn it turtle, toss them like toys into the foaming sea. Even in thick fog or on a night as dark as this one it tolled a warning that every mariner understood, and it had saved many from a watery grave. But when it was silent there was a reason for that silence. A reason as black as the night and even more hellish, for whilst the storm was the dark side of nature, the silence of the bell-buoy was due to the wilful wickedness of evil men. Men corrupted by greed, who had fallen so low that their very humanity had been lost, and to describe them as animals would be to insult the animal kingdom.

  His heart sank at the absence of the mournful clang of the bell-buoy, his stomach clenched, yet still he found himself hoping he might be wrong.

  And then, as he watched, he saw the first lantern light appear on the rocky outcrop at the far side of the cove below him. A light that danced and flickered, a light that should have meant a friendly beacon to guide a ship to safe haven. Any mariner would aim for that light. They had no way of knowing that it was as false as the hearts of the men who had lit it, a will o’ the wisp that would lead them to certain destruction on the rocks of this unforgiving coastline. And he knew he could no longer doubt what in his heart he already knew.

  They still walked the quiet lanes of Cornwall, those who plied this evil trade. They still holed up on moonlit nights and gathered with the storm cloud when a gale brewed out at sea. They hid in the thick sea mists, and danced on the watery graves of the sailors whose lives they took; they fought over the spoils of their wickedness.

  The wreckers.

  Fierce determination hardened within him, his only answer to the despair and outrage in his heart. If he could, he would have killed them, every last one, with his bare hands. But that was not possible, and even if it had been, it would do no good in the long run.

  They had a leader, far cleverer than any of them. Without him they would have made a bad mistake long before now and in their debauched madness put a rope around their own necks. And as long as that leader was free, no matter how many of his disciples were caught and hanged, there would be others greedy enough to take their places.

  It was this leader he wanted, and his mind was made up. He would see him brought to justice. A justice that would avenge the poor souls who had died already and ensure a safe passage for those who came this way in the years to come.

  Looking at the false winking light, listening in vain for the mournful clang of the bell-buoy, he vowed it.

  Smuggling was one thing. It was carried out the length and breadth of Cornwall and far beyond, and the worst that could be said of it was that it was illegal, and that it sometimes gave rise to the greed that spawned this other, evil business. He would never be able to eradicate smuggling, nor did he much want to. But he was determined to identify the leader of the wreckers and see him hanged.

  If it cost him his own life, so be it. Whoever else was hurt in the process, so be it. The price would be worth the paying.

  One

  I am an old woman now. Sometimes I think how strange it is that I was young when the last century was old, and aged through the fresh, vibrant, hopeful years of the new century. In my lifetime I have seen so much change – now, for example, there is gas lighting where once it was all candles and rushlights. But though the story I shall tell you happened a long time ago, every detail is as clear in my mind as it was then. I shall never forget… How could I?

  The story is my story, but it is also Julia’s story. A good deal of what happened to her was not known to me until much, much later. But I shall tell it to you as I now know it, little by little, so that you can make sense of the incredible events that took place.

  Where to begin? Well, I suppose, at the beginning. And for me the beginning was the dream.

  From the time of my earliest memory there was the dream, and it was always the same.

  There was a house, a great house, built of Cornish granite, with creeper covering the walls between the tall narrow windows and shuttered attic rooms. It faced the sea, a rocky cove where the waves tugged ceaselessly at the shingle. But on every other side and above it the thickly wooded valley closed in so that even when the sun shone it was in deep twilight, a dark green world where no birds sang.

  There were no people in my dream, just the house, and a terrible feeling of oppression. I was trapped, always trapped, and I did not know why. The door was ajar, there were no bars at the windows, no pack of snarling hounds between me and my freedom. But whenever I tried to leave the house and make for the patch of sunlight over the bay my feet seemed to be sinking into quicksand. And the feeling of oppression would close in like a thick blanket of sea mist, clammy and cold, suffocating me.

  Once in the dream I found myself looking into a mirror. A large mirror, the size and shape of a portrait, hanging on the wall. I saw my familiar face looking back at me and yet strangely I felt it was not my face. Not me at all. And the feeling of being trapped was stronger than ever, as
if it came from within those eyes that were not my eyes.

  When I woke from the dream the trapped feeling would remain and I would lie wretchedly in my narrow bed, hugging myself with my arms and squeezing my eyes tight shut against the hot threatening tears. Crying would do no good. I could expect no comfort or sympathy from the Reverend John Palfrey or Mary, his wife, who were the closest thing to parents I had ever had. Nor did I want any. From the time I was quite small I somehow knew that no one could help me or take away the trapped feeling that came from the dream. It was something I had to bear alone, something that was a part of my life. My strange, mysterious life that was full of unanswered questions.

  For I was a child with no family of my own. A child who might have been anyone, but belonged nowhere. A child who must count herself lucky to have been taken in and given a home by the Palfreys, who were, though dry and emotionless, good honest people.

  They called me a foundling, and that covered a multitude of possibilities, for the Palfreys would never go into details of where I had come from or how I had fallen into their care.

  ‘God sent you to us,’ was all they would say. ‘He has entrusted us with your keeping.’

  And I would nod, not daring to ask more for fear they would think I was not grateful to them for putting a roof over my head and food in my mouth.

  ‘Remember to thank the Lord in your prayers, for He is the Good Shepherd and He guided you to the safety of our little flock. Consider yourself fortunate, child, and contain your curiosity.’

  They spoke as if curiosity was a sin, and indeed to them I think it was. Unquestioning belief and acceptance of the will of God were the tenets they lived by.

  And I was fortunate, I knew. Compared with a great many of the poor ragged village children I led a charmed life. We never went hungry when the harvest failed. We did not have to watch the head of our household sail away on a fishing boat and wonder if he would ever come home again, or see him exhausted and broken by long hours working in the tin mines. We lived in a good solid house, not a shack built of wattle or turf. There was always food on the table and wine in the decanter, and we ate from china plates and drank from china cups rather than the pewter or tin that so many folk used and which left a bitter taste in the mouth. But there was precious little love or even affection in the rectory. Precious little time for any of us children – small wonder, since there were seven of us, six of the Palfrey’s own (and three who had not survived infancy and were buried beneath the yew trees in the churchyard) and me.

  To their credit the Palfreys did not treat me so very differently to their own children. Like me they wore hand-me-downs, like me they were strictly disciplined and treated with the same cool indifference. Dr John, the rector, was an imposing figure, clever and well read, but distant. Too clever, I think, to be satisfied with the living of Penwyn. He tried his best to bring succour and comfort to his parishioners, both spiritually and with the hardships of their everyday lives, but his efforts were doomed to failure because he could never quite manage to love any of them.

  Mary, his wife, was a pale, earnest woman, worn down by her frequent pregnancies and childbirth as well as the constant hard work that came from having such a large family to care for, and looking back I think she was afraid to allow herself to care too deeply for any of her children in case they, like the three who lay in the churchyard, should be snatched from her. Yet, for all that they were almost as starved of affection as I was, I could never quite forget that whilst they had every right to be here I was an outsider, taken on sufferance.

  The girls, Patience and Hope in particular, as they giggled and gossiped together, never let me forget. They were not really unkind but there was a bond between them that excluded me. They looked alike, with their mousy brown hair and blue eyes, whereas I had thick copper-coloured curls and hazel eyes that were almost green. They thought alike and enjoyed the same things, whilst I…

  Perhaps, on reflection, the gulf was partly of my own making, for I was all too aware that whilst Palfrey blood ran in their veins and they could see the gravestones of their ancestors beneath the shadow of the church tower, I had not the faintest idea of who I was or where I hailed from, and the questions were always there, tormenting me.

  Why, if I had been born hereabouts, did no one ever claim me? Why, when I was old enough to notice these things, did I never hear any whispers? No woman of about the right age to be my mother ever followed me longingly with her eyes, no man ever glared with the self-righteous anger that comes of guilty knowledge, no crones huddled in doorways put their heads together and nodded knowingly when I passed by.

  I was simply Charity, named, no doubt, because that was how I must live – on the charity of the parish. I belonged to no one, I had no history. And if sometimes in the night I thought I remembered a gentle touch, a haunting perfume, a sweet voice that sang to me softly, I knew it was just wishful thinking.

  I was a foundling. Mary Palfrey was the only mother I had ever known. And her tired eyes skittered over me as if they scarcely saw me and her voice when she sang – which was only in Church – was dry and tuneless.

  In her own way she did her best for me though.

  ‘Try to behave as a lady should, Charity,’ she would say to me. ‘It does not come easily to you, I know, but you really must try or no one will ever want you for his wife.’ Then she would purse her lips and turn away and I knew what she was thinking. Who would want me for his wife when I had no dowry to bring? When he could never know what family traits might be passed on to his children?

  ‘You are too big to be out playing with the boys in the fields,’ she would say, her tight voice revealing how she despaired of me. ‘You must work at your embroidery. You have not touched it for days.’

  And I would frown, despairing too. I did not want to touch my embroidery. I did not care if I never touched it again. However hard I tried I could never sew neatly as Patience and Hope did. I was much happier out in the open from dawn till dusk, tagging along behind the boys as they hunted for birds’ nests or caught minnows in the stream. I loved the feel of the sun and the rain on my face and the taste of salt in my throat when the wind came from the sea. I loved to see the baby lambs and the calves on the smallholdings and rub the noses of the gentle, curious cattle and feed handfuls of choice grass to the goats in their pen at the end of the lane. My knees were always scraped like the boys’ and my skirts covered with grass stains and my boots thick with mud.

  There were four Palfrey boys. Jeremiah – known to us children, though never to his parents, as Jem – was the oldest, then followed Bartholomew,Thomas and Joshua. And it was Joshua, closest in age to me, who was my hero. He was a tall boy for his age but whippy thin, with a shock of fair hair bleached from the family mousy-brown by the sun. Until it broke he had the voice of an angel and when he sang solo in the Church choir he looked like an angel too, his face cherubic above his ruff and that golden hair glowing in the candlelight so that it might have been a halo. I tagged along behind Joshua like a shadow and he was always kind to me, unlike Jem, who tormented me mercilessly and thought me a dreadful nuisance.

  Once, I remember, when I had followed them on the long trek down to the coast, he played a particularly nasty trick on me.

  It was a long hot summer day when the sea was calm and blue and the only clouds in the sky were like white feathers on a lady’s sapphire silk gown. The boys had run on ahead of me, even Joshua had forgotten me in his rush to reach the sea. When I panted up to the spot where the steep path ran along the cliff edge I could see them already on the shingly beach far below me, whooping and laughing and hurling pebbles that skimmed over the waves.

  There were two or three fishermen’s huts along the path, old and weatherbeaten but still strong, their roofs neat with new thatch. As I passed them I noticed the door of one was ajar and, curious to see inside, I pushed it open and peeped into the dim interior. The smell of fish was strong. I wrinkled my nose but went in anyway. I could see the dark sh
apes of creels lined up against the walls. I ventured further, brushing the windswept curls off my face and lifting my skirt in case there was something unpleasant I could not see on the floor.

  Suddenly there was a screech that made me jump out of my skin and a dark figure rushed past me. For a moment I saw Jem silhouetted against the bright sky. I had not noticed he was not with the others on the beach; like me he must have been investigating the fisherman’s hut.

  ‘You beast!’ I cried.

  Then the door slammed shut and I was in pitch darkness.

  ‘Oh!’ I ran to the door, trying to pull it open, but it was shut fast. I could not budge it by so much as a fraction.

  ‘Jem!’ I screamed. ‘Jem – let me out!’

  For answer there was only a laugh.

  ‘See what you get for following us all the time, Charity!’

  ‘Let me out! Let me out!’ I was beating on the door with my hands. But there was only silence.

  Panic overtook me. The smell of the fish was making me feel nauseous, the darkness closed in on me. In that moment I thought I was living my dream. The feeling was exactly the same. Trapped. Trapped for ever. I began to shake uncontrollably, tears stung my eyes, and my voice rose hysterically as I battered wildly at the door.

  ‘Let me out! Jeremiah! Let me out!’

  My knees gave way; I crumpled to the floor, clawed myself up again, beating on the wood, still screaming to be let out.

  A lifetime passed, it seemed, before I heard their voices. I was gibbering, crying with fear. My voice, when I called to them, was just a croak, scraped out through a dry throat and trembling lips. They would never hear me. They would go home without me. I tried again.

  The bolt, on the outside to prevent the wind from blowing the door open I suppose, not for any reason of security, scraped back. The door opened and I fell through it, blinded by the bright sun. I must have looked a wreck, my face dirt streaked and tear-stained, my fingernails torn and bleeding from scraping uselessly at the stone and timber. I neither knew nor cared. I began to run blindly along the cliff path away from my prison, my knees gave way again, and I stumbled into a heap, grazing my hands on the scratchy gorse and shingle.