Crossed Bones (13 page)

As the trap drew along the seafront road, she gazed across the cloud-filled bay. St Michael’s Mount made its presence felt only as a vague, massy shadow. The tide was in, but nothing stirred on the sea; the boats were moored up for the day of rest, and even the seabirds had tucked their heads under their wings. Cat played with a loose thread on her sleeve. Normally she would have addressed the repair with alacrity, darning in the escaped thread with stitches so neat and fine none but she would have noticed the mend, but, truth be told, she found she had neither the energy nor the will to begin the task. With her fate laid out straight before her and no apparent chance of escape, she felt as shadowy and indistinct as the castle on the isle: an empty, lifeless thing trapped in a restless sea.

The road ran around the harbour, along the quay, past the warehouses and the fish sheds and St Anthony’s Well, and then rose steeply up Quay Street to the chapel of Our Lady on the headland. They passed a stream of worshippers toiling up the hill, all no doubt eager to hear the new preacher speak. He was a Puritan come all the way from Liskeard, Cat had heard, which had made her heart sink further: her uncle was a recent convert and as head of the family was determined that they should all follow his example. Many of those who made their way to the chapel wore simple garb; and not all of them, Cat suspected, because they were poor folk. Indeed, she recognized fat old Alderman Polglaze and his equally large wife, Elizabeth, huffing and puffing along all in plain black relieved only by white lace collars and cuffs. The irony was, she thought, that some decades back they’d have looked just like the Spanish Catholics they so despised, give or take a ruff or two. They passed the Constable, Jim Carew, and old Thomas Ellys and his wife, Alice, the boatbuilder Andrew Pengelly and his son Ephraim, Thomas Samuels and his sister Anne, the Hoskens family from Market-Jew and old Henry Johns, who had the big house up near Lescudjack. It looked as if the preacher would have a very fair turnout. Then someone called out to them, and Cat turned to see Jack Kellynch grinning like a shark on the other side of the street.

‘Hoy there in the coach! You look like a gentleman born, Rob Bolitho, trotting by with your soon-to-be lady wife at your side; but, oh, poor Matty all alone in the back!’ And with that, he ran across the road, caught hold of the side of the trap with both hands, swung himself up over the wheel and vaulted into the back seat alongside the blushing housemaid.

Cat turned to regard him solemnly, though inwardly she seethed at his description. ‘I’m surprised to see you on your way to Preacher Truran, Mister Kellynch. I’d have thought, with your upbringing and sinning ways, the confession box would be more to your taste than listening to some old tub-thumper.’

Jack laughed. ‘Don’t you let my old man hear you talk like that or he’ll put you over his knee and beat some godfearing ways into you,
Mistress
Catherine. Even my ma can’t talk him out of his passion for the minister. Ah, look, there they are now: wave to them, Matty, like a real queen!’

Near the top of Quay Street came Isacke Kellynch, followed by his little dark wife, Maria, their second son, Jordie, and daughter, Henrietta, whom everyone called Chicken. Matty, red as a beetroot now, raised a feeble hand. For a moment Isacke Kellynch stared at the passing carriage, then his bright blue eyes bulged. ‘Get down out of that fancy wagon,’ he bellowed at his son, ‘and use your two legs as the good God gave you.’ But Jack just threw back his head and laughed.

At the top of the hill Robert drew the horses to a halt, got down and handed Cat out of the trap. He waited, holding her elbow, until Jack and Matty had passed into the crowd. Cat pulled her arm away crossly. ‘Now Matty has gone in without me and everyone will tease her about Jack, and you know she is sweet on him, and he’s just dallying with her, it means nothing to him and she’ll get her heart broken,’ she said, all in a rush.

Rob gave her a queer look. ‘You don’t know much about Jack Kellynch, do you?’

‘I know that he’s a brigand and a buccaneer, a rare nighthawk with a girl in every port.’ And far too flash and handsome for a turnip like Matty, she thought, but did not say.

‘You’re wrong,’ Rob said, shaking his head. ‘You’re always so obdurate in your opinions, Catherine, that sometimes you can’t see what’s right before your eyes.’

‘If it’s not bad enough that I’ve come to hear the boring old preacher sermonize, now I have to listen to you too!’

‘If you don’t want me here, then I will go. But Jack will make Matty his wife before the year is out: mark my words.’ He dug in his pocket and brought out a little package wrapped tightly in a piece of blue silk. ‘Here: I want you to have this. You can open it later, in the presence of your family; or privately if you prefer.’

Her fingers closed on it. Inside the silk the hidden object was small and dense and hard. ‘What is it?’

‘A token of our betrothal. It was my mother’s,’ he said shortly. ‘She would have liked you, even though you do not care for me one whit.’ His jaw was set; it had cost him dear to say what he knew to be the truth, but if Sunday was not the day for speaking what was in his heart, then he knew not when else he might do so. They were so rarely alone, especially now that she avoided his company.

Cat stared at him in dismay. ‘It is not you, Robert; not alone. It is here – Kenegie, Cornwall, this life. It is not what I planned for myself. Not what I dreamed of.’ Her fingertips investigated further, discovering that the heart of the object was absent. A ring. A betrothal ring. She pressed the little parcel back into his hand. ‘Do not give it to me now, Robert. Wait for a better time, when there are not harsh words between us.’

He looked at her so piercingly that she felt sure he could see right into the core of her. At last he nodded. After a pause which indicated a hard internal wrangle, he said, ‘Perhaps I can find work elsewhere in the world. I would not have you give up your dreams, Catherine.’

And then he turned and walked away, leaving her breathless and confused.

‘Catherine!’

She turned to find her uncle bearing down upon her. Edward Coode was a tall man, as bald as a snake, and with about as much warmth. Beside him, his wife, Mary, was the picture of florid health, her vast bosom barely confined by the boning of her corset. Their two small sons ran along the churchyard wall, hitting one another with sticks, until old Annie Badcock the witch turned her evil eye upon them and they went to hide their faces in their mother’s skirts.

‘You will sit in our family pew with us today, Catherine,’ her uncle said severely, thus putting paid to her hopes of sitting with Matty at the back of the church, where she could write her notes in privacy and avoid the gaze of Nell Chigwine. She carried her book, writing stick and a little knife for sharpening its lead in the little bag she wore at her waist. Her journal entries had become too personal to allow for others to happen on them, and, even though she knew neither Polly nor Nell could read, she suspected that if either found the book they would render it up to Lady Harris – the one out of well-meaning intent, thinking it misplaced, the other out of sheer spite. The idea of their mistress, or anyone else for that matter, perusing her words made her stomach lurch in horror.

‘Good day, daughter.’

Jane Tregenna had not succumbed to her Puritan brother’s plain ways. She wore a deep blue robe with silver inlay in its bodice and at the wrists, and a collar of fine lace.

‘For goodness’ sake take off that dreadful coif!’ And before Cat could unstring the cap, her mother had yanked it from her head. ‘Your hair is your crowning glory; do not hide it away. And, oh, that threadbare old gown!’ she declared, under the disapproving eye of her brother. She tucked her arm through Cat’s and marched her towards the church. ‘I am not entirely happy about this matter with Master Bolitho, Catherine; but Ned has overruled me. Lady Harris assures me Robert will have a good living at Kenegie and succeed Parsons as the steward, which is not a bad position, I suppose.’ She sucked her teeth, so that all the little lines of discontent around her thin lips deepened to crevasses. ‘But I have to confess myself a little disappointed; I had thought you might catch one of the Harris boys.’

‘You make them sound like fish, Mother, there for the taking.’

‘They say a cunning fisherman can land a whale, if he’s so minded.’

‘Well, even if I were so minded, Margaret Harris is not. She watches me like a hawk and keeps her lads well away from me, all the time throwing Rob in my path. But what’s done is done; this is not a subject I much wish to discuss.’

Her mother pursed her lips. ‘I’m sure your uncle will have more to say at dinner. He is most delighted that you are to be settled.’

At that moment the sun struck through the mist and the spire of the chapel gleamed in golden light.

‘God is smiling on us.’

This was intoned by a tall, weathered-looking man with an eagle’s beak of a nose, a bald pate and a froth of white beard, who now continued: ‘From Heaven the Lord looks down on the Earth and all the nations shall revere His name, and all the kings of Earth His glory.’

He turned his fierce gaze upon the crowd, one by one; and one by one they scuttled inside. At last his glance came to rest on Annie Badcock, standing on the other side of the churchyard wall. A curious expression played across a face as wrinkled as a withered apple, an expression made grotesque by the old woman’s mismatched eyes: the blind one stared right back at him, but the sighted one looked out over the misty bay.

‘Won’t you come in, goodwife, and offer your heart to the Lord?’

Old Annie Badcock raised up her face and grinned her gummy grin, the one that gave small children nightmares. ‘Nay, bless thee, Preacher. I’ve never been nobody’s wife; nor good neither! I’ll stay out here like the old sinner I am and save my own soul.’

‘None but the Lord can save thy soul, old woman.’

‘Be that as it may, I’m off to my cot, Walter Truran.’ And then she swivelled her good eye in Cat’s direction. ‘If thee has the sense the good God gave thee, ye’ll get back in the carriage with thy young man and lay down in his arms. Mark what I say: ye’ll regret it if ye don’t.’

Some of the listeners laughed at Cat’s discomfiture, but her uncle was furious. ‘Get away with you, you foul beldame, and stop talking such blather. Shoo! Shoo, now!’

For a moment the old woman held Cat’s eye, then she threw her shawl up over her head and was gone.

Jane Tregenna clicked her tongue. ‘It really is time Penzance had a madhouse like Bodmin wherein we can sweep up all such leavings.’

‘That’s not very Christian of you, Mother,’ Cat said crossly. What could the old besom mean? Did she know Rob; indeed, had he put her up to it? With these thoughts in her head, she followed her uncle into the chapel of Our Lady and took her seat on the outside of the family pew.

‘I will show you the eight particular properties of a man without Christ!’ the preacher roared suddenly, and a hush fell throughout the congregation.

This was what they had come to witness, this was what they wanted: a proper bible-thumper, all hellfire and damnation.

‘First, every man without Jesus Christ is a base man. Though you are born of the blood of nobles, and though you are of the offspring of princes, yet if you have not the royal blood of Jesus Christ running in your veins, you are a base man.’

And he transfixed them all with his bright blue eyes.

‘Second, a man without Christ is a bond man. This it says in John 8:36: if the Son shall make you free, then are you free indeed, for if you do not have an interest in Christ to free you from the slavery of sin and Satan, you are slaves: slaves to sin, to the Devil and to the law!’

A woman in the middle row began to rock and moan, a raw, ragged sound that went on and on. It was Nell Chigwine. Cat sighed. The Reverend Veale never subjected his congregation to such fierce words; he adjured them to treat one another with Christian charity and took them gently through the parables and the psalms. She wished she was sitting with the Kenegie household in her usual place in Gulval Church, where she could peruse her little book…

The preacher’s balled fist hammered on the pulpit and Cat came to herself with a start.

‘Fifth, he is a deformed man. A man without Christ is like a body full of sores and blotches. He is like a dark house without light and a body without a head, and such a man must be a deformed man.’

The preacher’s voice lowered, and he gazed out at them sorrowfully, as if they were all already lost to hope. ‘Sixth, he is a most disconsolate man. Without an interest in Christ, all your comforts are but crosses, and all your mercies are but miseries.

‘Seventh, he is a dead man! Take away Christ from a man and you take away his life, and take away life from a man and he is a dead lump of flesh!’

The echo of his words rang around the rafters, and one of the small children in the front row burst into noisy tears and had to be shushed by its mother. Into the small pause caused by this disturbance came a roar and a crash. The heavy wooden door at the back of the chapel rebounded off the stone wall.

Preacher Truran glared at the latecomer. His chest swelled as if he was about to deliver a bellow of outrage at such rudeness. Then his eyes bulged in disbelief and his jaw dropped.

One by one, the congregation turned to see who had reduced their fire and brimstone preacher to such unlikely silence. Cat craned her neck, and at that moment a gang of men burst into the church, howling like banshees. They wore long, dark robes, their heads were shaved, and they brandished curved, wicked-looking swords. Swords just like the one she had glimpsed on the table in Kenegie’s parlour; like the one discovered in the wood of the abandoned fishing boat
Constance
. Their skin was as dark as the gypsy woman’s, the whites of their eyes brilliant by contrast. A dozen ran down the nave, crying, ‘
Allah akbar
!’

Pirates, thought Cat, barely able to breathe. Her heart hammered against her breastbone like a trapped bird’s. Turkish pirates.