The Cornish Heiress (9 page)

In the excitement of the fight he had acted as circumstance
dictated, but the sight of that limp, helpless thing that had once been a man
bumping along on the road brought home to him what he had done. He sat
trembling, wishing it undone, blaming himself for aiming for the head rather than
the shoulder. It was no good now telling himself that the man had been a spy,
perhaps had been planning to kill him. When he was in France, he would be the
spy. How was he different from the man he had killed? All he could see was that
pathetic body being dragged along by a terrified horse as it rounded the curve in
the road.

Philip fought back the lunch that was rising in his throat, wondering
whether he should try to pursue the horse so that the body could be… Could be
what? Philip knew he dared not permit himself to be embroiled with the authorities
over this shooting. He was not afraid of being accused of murder. The mask on
the corpse’s face and the fired pistols, one of which was lying on the road and
the other probably in the man’s pocket, would tell their own story; however,
Philip would have to identify himself and explain what he was doing in the
area.

That was impossible. Probably he would need to remain in Exeter
until proof of his identity could be obtained—and that would be vastly
complicated by the false French identity papers he was carrying. That he had killed
a French agent would be no compensation for the lost time. What England needed
to know was whether or not invasion was imminent. Surely that was the important
thing. Philip bitterly regretted what he had done, but it could not be undone
by involving himself in endless delays and explanations.

Just as he reached that conclusion he heard shouts and the
jingle of carriage harness that an abrupt change of pace causes. Philip wheeled
Spite and spurred him into a headlong gallop. Whatever was left of the man he had
killed would be taken care of by whomever was coming down the road. He could do
nothing more than they would. He knew nothing about the man, except that he was
a French agent, and now that he was dead perhaps that was better left unsaid. He
had sounded English when he called to Philip to halt; perhaps he had a wife and
children. Even if the wife knew her husband’s profession, it was unlikely she
was involved, and the children certainly should not be branded as traitors.

It was only later, after Philip had stopped for the night in
a miserable inn in Okehampton, that it occurred to him that any agent’s
confederates should be ferreted out. It was too late to go back now, and the
other arguments for staying clear of the business were still good. The best
move under the circumstances would be to write to his father and report the
whole affair. Roger could inform the Foreign Office, and they could work
through the local authorities without giving away his own part in the matter.

Philip slept uneasily, disturbed by dreams of flying horses
dragging bodies with only half a head. The only comfort he had when he wakened,
shuddering, was that he no longer needed to listen for an invasion of his room
in the night. Although his basic premise was wrong, his conclusion happened to
be correct. Temporarily he had rid himself of his pursuers. In swerving to
avoid the highwayman’s frantic mare, Jean had lost control of his own horses;
the traces had become entangled, one horse had stumbled, pushing against the
other, which swerved still farther, so that the carriage had ended in the ditch
with a broken wheel.

Neither Jean nor Henri was much hurt, but both were bruised
and shaken, and when they had finally disentangled the frightened horses and
ridden them, most uncomfortably bareback, back to Exeter, they encountered a small
crowd gaping interestedly while the town constables made ready to carry their
accomplice’s body away. Here they learned that the highwayman had been killed
by a shot in the head. Henri almost fainted, and for the first time Jean became
seriously worried about the spirit and abilities of their opponent. It had
never occurred to Jean that Philip would resist the highwayman. One look at
Henri underlined the fact that he would be little help. Jean would simply have
abandoned his companion in Exeter, except that Philip knew him and did not know
Henri. He could still be useful in watching the quarry.

It was easier for Jean to make that decision than to
convince Henri to go along with it. When Jean threatened to abandon him, Henri
received the information with enthusiasm, promising to return immediately to
London or find a convenient house party to attend and swearing that he would
say nothing, absolutely nothing, about this venture. This innocent remark
opened a whole new vista of horrors to Jean, since he was quite certain now
that Henri was totally incapable of keeping any secret for long, particularly
one that he could use to make himself seem mysterious and heroic.

Jean’s next idea was to kill his companion, but he realized
he would be suspect at once. He would have to wait before silencing Henri for
good. He set himself to convince his unwilling companion that graver and more
horrible results than anything Philip could do would follow failure to
accomplish their mission. Furthermore, he said, he did not wish to be shot
either. They would not themselves come in contact with Philip. They would be
more careful, hire a group rather than one man. In fact, they would wait until
he had made his contact with the shipmaster whose name they were to discover
and accomplish both purposes at one time.

Eventually Henri agreed; but between his resistance and the
dilatory ways of those who went to bring the carriage back to Exeter and the
wheelwright who repaired it, they were many days behind Philip. Jean was
furious. The only point that they were certain Philip would touch was Bodmin.
After that he could go either north or south on any of hundreds of cart tracks
that led to the numerous if tiny fishing villages and smugglers’ ports of call.
In any of those villages Philip would stick out like a sore thumb, but it would
take weeks or months, possibly even years, to investigate them all. Long before
they found the village, Philip would have made his contact and departed for
France.

It was not a cheerful prospect, and Jean did think briefly
of abandoning the quest. However there was still a substantial sum remaining of
what d’Ursine had given him, and he was not yet ready to give up the even more
liberal payment promised if he brought back the papers and the name of captain
and ship. There would be no harm in inquiring along the road running west from
Bodmin. If Philip’s goal was near Land’s End, the number of villages he could
aim for would be drastically reduced. They might even find him before he left
for France.

On the night Philip wrote to his father to describe his
encounter with the highwayman, Megaera set out to meet Pierre at The Mousehole
to pay for the cargo he had delivered. She put on the coarse clothing of the
Red Meg persona, but she did not bother to dirty her face and hair. There was
no chance, in her opinion, that Pierre would ever meet Mrs. Edward Devoran and
recognize her as Red Meg. It was thus silly to have to wash her hair, which
hung nearly to her knees and was no light task.

She passed down the chimney stairs, John preceding her with
the lamp, and through the passage. When she had first threaded her way through
the branching tunnels, she had had to lead John. Now he knew the way from the
house to the main cave by heart. He still got confused when the kegs needed to
be moved to the subsidiary outlets, but he was learning and soon would be able
to do all the transferring alone. That would be very convenient, since John
could sleep all day if necessary. Megaera could not do that without causing anxiety
among her servants.

That anxiety, unfortunately, would not be confined to her
own staff. Many servants in the local “big houses” were related, and even more
of them were acquainted with each other. Since gossip about their masters and
mistresses was the main staple of conversation among them, and since that
gossip moved up the social ladder as well as down, any peculiar behavior on
Megaera’s part would all too soon be known all over the neighborhood. Thus
Megaera found herself very short on sleep for about two weeks out of every
month over the normal delivery period, and just now, when Pierre was showing up
more frequently than usual, she was nearly staggering with weariness.

At least, she thought as she mechanically followed John,
there would be no deliveries to make this time. The kegs Pierre had delivered
would merely be stored. They would come to no harm in the cool, dark caves
waiting until the bad weather made crossing the channel and unloading the
Bonne
Lucie
too dangerous. Then she would still have stock to deliver Meg was
proud of her forethought; her customers would be pleased with her service.
Often now, when payment was left in the agreed-on place or when the money was
handed over in person at the time the kegs or bottles were delivered, there
would be a note or word of mouth request that she deliver to a new customer.

Business was expanding both because her deliveries were
regular and dependable and also because there were none of the petty
depredations that sometimes accompanied deliveries by other smuggling bands.
Since Megaera made all the deliveries herself with John’s help, she could be
sure that nothing would be damaged or stolen. She had the advantage of a
completely safe hiding place, so that she was in no hurry to rid herself of the
cargo. Deliveries could be made a few at a time instead of all in one night.

The men who brought the cargo from the ship to the main cave
had no idea that there were subsidiary caves in the hillside. All they knew was
that Megaera paid them as they unloaded the cargo into the cave and sent them
away. This, as well as the strict rules about not annoying the villagers, was a
cause of dissatisfaction to some of the men. But most did not mind, knowing
that their job was the least dangerous part and glad to be free of making the
deliveries. By and large these men were decent fishermen and farmers who merely
wanted to increase their pathetically small livelihoods.

There was, however a more lawless group. These men had been
accustomed, under Black Bart’s management, to taking a woman here and there, a
chicken or piglet or two, sometimes even things of greater value. They had also
been accustomed to holding back a few kegs of brandy to be broached and drunk.
Red Meg paid a little more than Bart had, it was true, but she had taken most
of the fun out of the work and they resented it.

Megaera had never noticed the resentment. She had the
prejudices of her class in full measure and assumed that all the lower orders
would have the same attitude toward her as her own servants and the tenant
farmers that lived on her land. Because she paid them fairly she assumed they
were satisfied and dismissed them from her mind. She was not surprised, of
course, when she found evidence several times that some men had returned to
search the main cave. It was natural, she had thought, that such creatures
should want to steal a few kegs for their own pleasure or to sell privately to
increase their profit.

The evidence had merely proved to Megaera that she had been
very wise to remove the temptation from their path. Obviously if they had to
pay for their drink, they were much less likely to overindulge to their own,
their wives, and their children’s detriment. Besides, the extra keg or two were
that many more coins toward the redeeming of the mortgages on Bolliet Manor.
Megaera would not spare a penny from that purpose for anything.

If it had been possible for John and herself to unload the
Bonne
Lucie
alone, she would have dismissed the gang entirely to save what she
paid them, but that really was beyond her ability. She was not strong enough to
handle kegs, and John could not manage a boat. The men were necessary. The only
expenditure Megaera really resented was the extra share she paid Black Bart. He
did nothing except complain, and she suspected that the two men who had tried
to become familiar with her had done so on his instigation.

After the first had approached her and been felled by John,
Megaera had found her father’s pistols and taught herself how to use them. By
the time the next cargo came, she was wearing them ostentatiously. She had
drawn on the man who had grabbed and tried to kiss her. John had broken his arm
before she nerved herself to fire, but she had pretended that was an act of
mercy—and the men had believed it.

There had been no further trouble, and Megaera’s sense of
fairness had prohibited any attempt on her part to get rid of Black Bart, even
though he was totally unnecessary to her now. After all, he had introduced her
to Pierre and originally assembled the band of men she employed. That she did
not like him and would prefer to deal with Thomas Helston, a stolid, solid
farmer from Treen—who could be trusted to get the men together as well or
better than Bart and whose large industrious family would benefit from the
extra share—was not reason enough to cut Bart out.

Nonetheless the idea occurred to her continually. Black Bart
made her nervous. He never did or said anything obvious enough to merit John’s
attentions, but there was a look in his eyes, a shade in his speech and manner
that disturbed Megaera very much. Recently she had even begun to consider
paying only the interest on the mortgages and collecting a large enough sum to
offer Bart as a final payoff. If she could clear her conscience that way, it
would be worthwhile to remain in debt a few months longer.

The trouble was, she did not really believe she could rid
herself of the man that way. Either he would lay an information with the
revenuers or far more likely, would try to raid her group and steal their
cargo. It would be possible, Megaera supposed, to fight him off, but she knew
the tales about the smuggling gang wars in the seventies and eighties of the
last century, and she shrank from the bloodshed and violence. To her mind she
was doing no one any harm by her current enterprise. She would rather endure
Black Bart and the uneasiness he aroused in her than begin the bad old days
again.

For the hundredth or thousandth time Megaera was searching
through her mind to find a method she could use without violating her notion of
what was just and would still keep Bart from troubling her after she paid him
off. She knew one way of course. She could identify him as the man who had
murdered her husband. That would be terribly unfair. For one thing, Megaera was
not really sure it had been Bart, although she did not think, now that she knew
them, that any of the other men customarily carried pistols. Stout cudgels,
which could also be used in helping them climb the steep path from the cove to
the cave, were the men’s customary weapons. For another thing, Megaera was
grateful to the person, who had removed Edward from her life. She did not want
anyone punished for that.

Down the ladder from the high opening John and Megaera came
out into the small area she had screened off from the wide expanse of the cave
as her “living place”. John lit a candle from the lantern and then moved toward
the front of the cave where he had tethered a sturdy pony earlier in the day.
By the light of the candle Megaera emptied the dried scraps of food from a
plate on the table into a bucket and put some fresh “remains”, which she had
bought from the house, onto the greasy, unwashed plate. She shuddered slightly
at the thought of living in such squalor—not the damp dark of the cave but the
idea that she would not wash the dishes if she should be reduced to such a
condition. However, the point of her disguise was that Red Meg was a sloven. If
the men searched the cave, it must seem that she did live there, and in
conditions that matched her filthy person.

While she was arranging evidence that the cave was lived in,
John saddled the pony, then set down the lantern and went outside. When he was
sure that no one was riding in the immediate area—a most unlikely accident, but
Megaera insisted on caution—he led the pony outside. He did not remain near the
opening of the cave but moved east about a hundred feet and stood holding the
lantern. It was not likely that anyone would see the light, but Megaera did not
want to take the chance that a shepherd or late home-goer would notice and thus
become aware of the cave entrance.

A few minutes later Megaera came to the mouth of the cave.
The moon had not yet risen, and after she had blown out the candle and stuck it
in a convenient niche to be relit on her return, she could barely see enough in
the faint luminous skyglow not to trip. Cautiously she made her way out,
feeling for stable footing on the rough ground as she turned right, to where
John waited. All her attention was directed to her goal and her footing. She
never saw a shadow rise from where a man had lain concealed by the dark and the
low growth of brush.

There was a single snap of a dry branch, a brief rustle
enough to warn Megaera. She ducked and darted forward, avoiding the blow that
had been intended to stun her. However, she had no time to turn or draw a
pistol before she was seized. Black Bart cursed viciously, furious at missing
his chance to subdue Meg without fuss or trouble. Rage and terror had flooded
Megaera, giving her more strength than would be expected from her slender
fragility. She twisted and writhed like a wildcat, clawing and kicking, while
Bart tried to swing his pistol so that the butt would stun her.

He missed her head again, striking her shoulder so that she
screamed—but the pain apparently only gave her more impetus. A violent kick
from her boot heel caught Bart right on the shin, and it was his turn to howl
with pain. Now Bart regretted that he had not tried to shoot her, but he had
been afraid he would miss in the dark. Then she could have darted back into the
cave. He could just about enter one without failing apart, but he knew he could
not follow her inside.

Even as he had attacked her, Bart had not been sure what he
would do after he stunned Meg. He would rob her and rape her—of that he was
certain—but whether he would have killed her at once or kept her prisoner until
he had tamed her he could not decide. Now he knew he would kill her. A wildcat
like this would never tame. She was not whimpering in pain but screaming with
rage, fighting him harder even as he tightened his grip and struck at her
again.

Megaera hardly felt the blows that hit her. In fact,
although Bart was bringing the gun down as hard as he could, the barrel of a
pistol was not weighted properly for striking. In addition she was moving so
violently that many of the blows missed and the others only glanced off her arm
and back, except for the first which had bruised her shoulder. She struggled
like a madwoman, knowing her only hope was to break free and run to John.

It did not occur to either Bart or Megaera that John could
notice what was going on. Since he was deaf, no sound could reach him, since he
carried the lantern so that Megaera could find him and the pony, he would be
blinded, by the dark. Thus, as frantically as Megaera struggled to free
herself, Bart struggled to hold her. If she got loose, he would be finished in
this area in the smuggling business or any other. Most of the men would stand
up for her, and the dummy would kill him on sight.

What neither Megaera nor Bart realized was that John was not
totally unaware that something was wrong. He had noticed Megaera come to the
cave entrance because he saw the brief glow of the candle before she blew it
out. Instinctively he knew how long it should take his mistress to reach him,
and she had not come. At first he thought she had paused for some reason—often
he did not understand the things she did—and he waited.

However, Megaera was the focus of John’s whole existence.
She was the one who had saved him when he was bound and left to die; she was
the only person with whom he could communicate; most important of all, she made
him feel useful and important. Without any sexual overtones, of which he was
incapable, John loved Megaera with his whole heart and soul. He adored her as a
goddess. He had no other deity—even his mother could not communicate abstract
ideas to him in dumb show. Megaera was John’s everything, and the few seconds’
delay stretched to minutes and hours in his anxious mind.

He stared toward the cave, seeking her shadowy form
advancing toward him. He knew the ground was rough and began to fear that she
had tripped and fallen. As soon as that thought occurred to him, he would have
run back, but he was constrained by what he was supposed to do. Never, never had
he ever disobeyed or deviated from what he knew Megaera expected of him. Still,
the notion that she had hurt herself grew with each passing second. Surely if
she were hurt, he must disobey the order to hold the pony and wait. John’s mind
moved slowly and, although he was no physical coward, he was utterly and
completely terrified of Megaera’s disapproval.