NOEL O’REILLY was a student on the New Writing South Advanced writing course. He has worked as a journalist and editor at the international business media company RBI, and is now a freelance writer. This is his first novel. He lives in Brighton with his wife and children.

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

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First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Noel O’Reilly 2018

Noel O’Reilly asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © July 2018 ISBN: 9780008274535

‘God moves in a mysterious way

His wonders to perform;

He plants his footsteps in the sea,

And rides upon the storm.’

William Cowper, Hymn (1773)

‘Myreugh orth an vorvoren, hanter pysk ha hanter den.

Y vos Dew ha den, yn-lan dhe’n keth uta-na crygyans ren.’

‘Look at the mermaid, half fish and half human. That

He is God and man, to that same fact let us entirely give credence.’

Louis T. Stanley, Journey Through Cornwall (1958)

To Sally

PENWITH, CORNWALL

TEN YEARS AFTER THE FRENCH WARS OR THEREABOUTS

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

I: BUDDING TIME

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

II: WHITSUNTIDE

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

III: HARVEST TIDE

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

I

BUDDING TIME

1

I got to the beach too late to find anything of real worth. The gale had moved inland, leaving an icy breeze in its wake, and there was a sea stench as if the ocean bed and all its secrets had been torn out overnight and dumped on the strand. All about me the dead from shipwrecks past muttered and moaned in the tongues of their own lands. Having shaken themselves free of their unblessed graves, they shuffled about in search of some lost thing. Look upon them too long, and they’d fade into the mist that sailed across the strand.

A dead wreck it was, all hands drowned. Sounds of hacking and wrenching floated over to me on the gusts, as my neighbours took the ship apart, plank by plank. All that was left was the bare ribs of the hull, stuck between Jack and Jill, two rocks that stood like monsters’ teeth at the western end of the cove. The ship’s bottom was torn out and her timbers lay in piles. Alongside, casks and boxes waited, and ponies and carts laden with plunder filed from the ship up the steep track to the headland. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a ship picked clean in a single tide.

I rubbed the grit of sleep from my eyes and tied back my hair, casting my gaze all about me to make sure I was alone. On the sand a few passengers lay among the dead, but my neighbours had already stripped the corpses for the most part. Among the bodies lay cabin furniture and fittings, lengths of pipe, a binnacle and other nautical instruments of some use unknown to me. Jellyfish lay all over, like plates of glass with the grey sky trembling inside them. Queerest of all were the hundreds of oranges scattered among the corpses as if they’d rained down from the heavens. They were all the more vivid in a world grey and tired as an old garment with the colour washed out. I took my kerchief from my shoulders and scooped as many as I could carry into it.

A few yards away I saw a human hand lying palm down on the sand. Thinking it might crawl towards me and grab my ankle, I hurried off. Nearby was a severed foot still in its shoe and such other gobbets of human flesh as could hardly be named. Dogs’ barks pierced the air off to the east where hounds were mauling a corpse. My best hope was to move out towards the ebbing tide, where I might find a body freshly washed ashore. As luck would have it, down where the sand was still wet and glistening I found a fine-looking man stretched out. I wove a path towards him, willing myself to touch every corpse I passed for luck. The gentleman wore a dark suit, so sombre he must have had an inkling he was on the way to his funeral when he dressed himself. A well-built fellow he was. If you stood him up he’d be head and shoulders above any man in the village, apart from the giant, Pentecost. I wondered how long he’d struggled in the cold water.

It grew lighter by the minute. Pale lichen showed on the rocks, pink crystal glinted in the seams of the cliffs and the rising sun lit the dead man’s face. His dark hair lay across his cheek, covered in a slick pale rime. There was a gash down one cheek and a shadow of stubble on his chin. There was no smell off him yet, fresh out of the sea as he was. I crossed myself to show contrition before digging into his sodden trouser pockets, searching his wrists and inside his jacket, but I found only a pocket book, the pages stuck together, which I threw aside, and a watch on a silver chain which was full of sea water. Time had stopped and God had turned his back on the world.

When I was done with the man, I rose to my feet and moved through the mist, almost stepping upon a child’s body that lay like a sixpenny doll on the sand. The little thing’s face was turned away, which was a mercy. I went further down towards where the tide was washing out, but was stopped in my tracks by the sight of two pretty boots poking out from under the hem of a woman’s skirt. Though the boots were soaked, I saw they were of the softest tan leather, laced before, with the tops reaching only just above the ankle. It was a fashion new to me. On one toe hung a little rose cut out of leather, but its twin was missing on the other boot. The woman’s feet were daintier than mine, but I would gladly have put up with a bit of pinching around the toes for the chance to be seen in a pair of boots such as those.

I got down on my knees and set about working the boots off the lady’s feet. The first came away easy enough but the other was the devil’s own work. I tugged at the laces, but they were tightly knotted and wet, and in any case my blood was turning to ice and my fingers, usually so strong, were losing their grip. Almost crying with vexation, I pulled with all my might, but the dead woman’s ankle was swollen with water and the boot wouldn’t shift. If only I’d come out with a knife. By now my fingers were so numb I could barely move them, but I gave that boot one last tug and off it flew, so sudden that I hit myself in the mouth with it, and fell backwards onto my ass. For a moment I sat there, winded, my mouth stinging from the blow.

When I got my breath back I put the boots in my kerchief and knotted it. Wasting no time, I got to work searching the rest of the woman’s body. Her frock had been stripped from her and her shift clung to her limbs, cambric silk by the feel of it but rent beyond repair. There was nothing else on her of any value.

A tooth was dangling from the lady’s bottom lip on a pink thread of flesh, so I pulled it out, a charm I might use to cure my Mamm’s windpipe of the chronic. Although it shamed me to look for long at the faces of the dead, I couldn’t help but gaze at this woman. Her dainty upturned nose, black as if charred, stood out against her face that was all the paler for being encrusted with salt. Her eyes were black seams with just the whites showing between them. White sand covered her hair like a hoar frost, and there was a streak of gleaming red on a lock that fell over her ear. Looking closer, I gasped with horror to find her ear lobe had been chewed off. It was the same on the other side, the jagged edges still wet with fresh blood. For a long moment, I shut my eyes, breathing deeply to keep down the hot bile rising in my throat.

As I put the tooth in my apron pocket, I heard a noise, a low moan, more beast than human. Did the woman yet breathe? Had I jolted her back to life by drawing the tooth out of her jaw? Her eyes and mouth seemed to move, but they might have only trembled in the wind. Bubbles rose between her lips, and then – that sound again, part moan and part belch, her bosom rising and falling, and at the last only the hiss of air between her lips. Her soul was fleeing her body, and the thought gave me such a fright I screamed, which set the gulls shrieking overhead letting the whole world know what I was about. I would have fled, but right then I heard footsteps, and a crone in black widow’s weeds loomed out of the fog, planting her crook in the sand at each step, her back-basket a hump on her shoulder and her shawl fluttering behind her. It was Marget Maddern, known to all in the cove as Aunt Madgie. She was the very last person I wanted to see at that moment. The old woman drew up by me and leant on her crook, panting as she looked me up and down, her creased brow crowned by a white mob cap.

‘Was that you screaming just now, Mary Blight?’

I nodded. ‘I had a fearful shock – seeing what some devil have done to this poor lady’s ears.’

Aunt Madgie leant over the woman and looked her up and down, before fixing her gaze on the ragged frills of crimson where the earlobes had been chewed off. She turned and peered at me through narrowed eyes. ‘I hadn’t thought you so faint-hearted,’ she said. ‘I see that for all your tender feelings, you were still able to fill your kerchief.’ She leant closer towards me, looking into my face. ‘What happened to your mouth?’

‘My mouth?’

‘It’s bleeding.’

I put a hand to my lips and saw blood on my fingertips. ‘I bumped into something in the mist and cut my mouth, that’s all,’ I said.

She gazed at the woman’s ears again. ‘Do you swear this is not your doing, Mary Blight?’

‘I do.’ She gave me such a damning stare, I had to look away. I could outstare anyone but her.

‘And yet I found you crouched over the body, and with blood on your lips?’

‘Oh wisht! I confess that I did take the woman’s boots off, and in so doing hit my face with them. I didn’t tell you at first, for I was all of a tremble when I saw you. But it’s the truth, as God’s my witness. Some other devil got here before me and did the rest.’

She gave me a still keener look. ‘And she was dead when you came upon her?’

‘I swear to God.’

‘Take care with these oaths, lest they prove false. Perhaps you thought that while there was still life in the woman, you had no natural rights to take those boots. Maybe you helped her soul on its way?’

‘Never! I am no murderer.’

‘I’d be more inclined to take your word for it, were you less renowned for stripping clothes and jewels off dead women.’

‘I’m not alone in that.’

‘Aye, ’tis true, but we must not cross the bounds of decency, or the cove will be infested with Preventive Men.’ A crow swooped low over our heads and croaked to harry us away from the corpse. ‘It doesn’t belong to you to go sneaking about like this after the hard work is done, Mary Blight. I know your ways, looking for pickings from the last few bodies that drift ashore. And all for vanity. When will you learn that it’s One and All in this cove and always has been? What else have you found this morning? Sovereigns? Spanish dollars? Let me see.’

‘Only some oranges.’ I swayed the heavy kerchief in front of her. ‘And I found this on a man a little way off. A watch that be full of water.’ Fumbling in my apron pocket, I brought the watch out and handed it to her.

‘Maybe we can get it fixed in Penzance,’ she said. ‘Whoever owned this won’t need to tell the time where they’re gone.’

At last, she slowly turned and hobbled away. But before she was gone more than a few yards, she stopped and spoke, her back still turned to me. ‘I’ll have my eye on you, Mary Blight. Take heed.’

With Aunt Madgie gone, I got up and threw my kerchief over my shoulder. The mist had cleared to show a mass of broken clouds flung across the heavens from the east to the west, glowing with the sun’s red fire. But the pale round moon still tarried in the sky, knowing the work of the night was not yet over.

A wreck is a queer purging, when compass reckonings go awry and Nature shakes the world out of order and time out of joint. My first harvest had been in my fifth or sixth year and since then perhaps a hundred ships had broken their backs upon the western rocks. Every time I was left with an unease for days to come. That morning after Aunt Madgie had come upon me on the beach, I could find no peace. My nerves were frayed as it was, having seen the drowned woman’s soul bubble up out of her throat. And then to find myself called to account by the old lady and made to suffer her dark looks! I couldn’t rid my mind of the fear she might accuse me of stealing the noblewoman’s earrings. To put my mind at rest, I went down to the harbour to find out how things stood.

On the slipway a fine chestnut horse with mud-spattered saddle bags was tethered to a post outside a warehouse. Its flanks foamed with sweat and its head hung low as if it had been ridden hard. The beast snorted and scraped a hoof on the stone slabs as I passed. All that was left of the wreckage was a broken old cabinet propped against a barn wall, and a couple of hogsheads with staved-in sides and spoilt cargo. No doubt, the rest was hidden away, safe from the eyes of the Preventive Man, on farms on the moor or down in tunnels, or sunk out at sea waiting to be recovered.

A huddle of men was gathered by the wall of the quayside. I was about to pass when they moved aside to let two fellows through. They were carrying something heavy in a sack, one at each end, and I knew by the way the load sagged between them that it was a body. The sight of it fixed me to the spot. Not one of the men in the group gave me more than a glance, which calmed my nerves a little. The two men bearing the carcass took it to a low black shed on the slipway, where the bodies were kept before they were taken up to the graveyard.

A tall fellow stood in the midst of the men, a foreigner in a long brown cloth coat. It must have been his horse I’d seen. I knew his face from other wrecks. He was an outlier in Penzance for the wrecked ship’s insurer, a loss adjuster. His trousers were streaked with mud, and his shoes covered in sand. A group of men from the village answered his questions while he looked down his nose at them and noted things in a black pocket book. The men shuffled further along the harbour wall and I moved along with them, keeping out of the way. For the briefest moment before the men hid them from view, I saw two bodies laid out on the cold, rough stone, a woman in a tattered and grubby shift and a child of perhaps four or five years old. I crossed my arms and held myself tight to stop myself from shaking.

The loss adjuster looked around at the men in his lofty way, an eyebrow raised, and spoke. ‘So, you’d have me believe that not a single one of you was anywhere near the wreck last night?’ he said. ‘That a five-hundred-ton vessel like The Constant Service could be plundered of every last scrap of its cargo and its timbers broken up while all of you slept, unknowing, in your beds.’ The men shook their heads and tugged at their beards. None would meet his eye. ‘My client Lord S— owned the greater portion of the cargo, but this loss will be as nothing compared to this outrage,’ he said, looking down at where the bodies lay, and scratching out some more notes in his black book. ‘Mark my words, this is not the end of the matter.’ I wanted to slope away, but feared it would seem like I had something to hide.

‘It is the very woman I’m looking for, without a doubt,’ the loss adjuster said. ‘Her face is well known in Society, that is to say the civilised world far beyond this shore. This is a foul crime, and His Lordship will not sleep easy until justice is seen to be done.’ His head jerked to let the men know they should remove the body. Two big fellows stooped to lift the woman up and lay her on a sheet of sacking. It was then I saw her face, and the frills of dried, blackened blood where her earlobes had been chewed off, her jewels pilfered. The child lying alongside her was surely her own. It was lucky I stood by a barn and could lean against the wall, for my legs were going from under me. But the men took no notice, just moved along the wall to look at another victim of the wreck.

My mind raced, thinking of the loss adjuster’s words about a great lord wanting justice, and seeing in my mind’s eye the pretty boots I’d left drying on the hearth in our cottage. I looked away as the two men passed me with their burden slung between them. All that was left of the woman was a wet patch on the stone where she’d lain.

I fled that place and turned up the lane towards home, but after a few paces I felt a feeling like a shadow passing over me, so I stopped and looked about. I found myself at the end of Back Street, the very place Aunt Madgie lived. And there she was, the old devil, as I knew in my bones she would be, standing between the two posts that stood before her ancient house, clad in her black dress as always, one gnarled hand clutching her crook and the other holding an ancient china chamber pot. When our eyes met, she shook her head slowly, before emptying the pot in the lane, making sure to throw it towards where I was standing. As she turned back to the house, she gave me an evil look before doddering inside.

2

The following evening a feast was held to give thanks to Providence. I’d been stricken with sudden qualms all through the day and was sure Aunt Madgie was ill-wishing me, but still I meant to go to the feast. I wanted to see if there was any hint that the old dame had been about among my neighbours spreading lies concerning what she’d seen. If so, it was better to know and be able to fend off the slander.

I got ready for the feast in Mamm’s old room that she hadn’t used since she went wrong in her lungs, preferring to sleep in her armchair by the fire. My younger sister, Tegen, was sat in the straight-backed chair in a royal sulk, watching me. I brushed my red hair, turning this way and that to see myself in the oval looking glass that hung over the rickety linen chest. The glass was cracked and covered in blotches that no amount of rubbing could remove. The mirror was engraved and had once been fine. In my mind’s eye I pictured it standing in a rich woman’s chamber, but when I’d found it on the strand there was a crack running from one side to the other. Now I looked at myself in the glass, cut in two where the surface was split.

A frock and petticoat were hung on rusty nails against the damp wall to let the creases fall out. The garments looked gaudy against the faded lime wash. I dropped a white shift over my head, before putting on a petticoat and a scarlet dress. Of a sudden I remembered the scarlet chemisette I kept in the closet to stop it fading. It was of the same vividness as the dress, and only a little frayed and moth-eaten. The cloth was chill against my skin, and I shuddered, remembering how I’d come by it.

‘Well now, don’t you look a picture in all your finery,’ said Tegen, with a sour pout.

‘I’ll send one of the children up with meat and drink for you and Mamm later,’ I said, pinning a white winter lily in my hair, which I was wearing loose. The bloom gave off such a perfume it made a body near swoon. ‘You’re better off at home, Teg. You’ll only get teased.’

‘I don’t mind a bit of teasing,’ she said, which I knew wasn’t true. ‘But I’d as soon stay at home. The revels is all wrong in my eyes, celebrating when so many poor souls perished. A young child among them.’

‘Well now, someone’s pissed upon a nettle!’ I said, as I went downstairs. Tegen followed me and watched, arms folded, as I went to the hearth to fetch my new boots. They were almost dry and the leather only slightly stained with salt water. I sat down to lace them, then stood up to see how they looked on my feet.

‘It’ll be like dancing on that poor woman’s grave,’ said Tegen.

I pretended to take no notice, and rushed out the door. It was almost dark. My boot heels clacked on the wooden doors of the fish cellars in our little courtyard, which stank on account of Aunty Merryn’s leaky old cat. I slipped through the narrow alleyway, and headed down the steep lane to the harbour. The further I went, the more those boots pinched my toes.

The quay was lit by a row of lanterns that smoked from the fish oil that burnt inside them. Even the savoury pig on the spit had a fishy smell, having been fattened on fish offal. Every bit of the pig would get eaten, all but the squeal. Planks had been laid out across barrels to make a long table. My neighbours had become dear old friends for once, and it was one of those rare times when men and women come together as though it were the most natural thing in the world. The bettermost from the finer cottages on Fore Street sat preening themselves in a little row at the far end of the table. I saw, with a fearful start, that Aunt Madgie was among them. But none gave me a reproving look, so I took my place at the other end between Cissie Olds and the Widow Chegwidden. The first sip of rum burnt my gullet, but soon my blood slowed and a soothing feeling came over me. Cissie piled my plate with fried swine offal chopped up with onion. But I had no stomach for meat, and the sight of stargazy pie made me queasy, with the pilchards poking their noses through the pastry. It seemed that no word of my misdeeds had reached Cissie Olds or the others who sat around me. I downed one rum and then another and before long lost all count. The world swam about me, and I grew reckless.

The children had grown boisterous and little lads kept sneaking over to the table for a nip of rum when their parents’ backs were turned. It was time for their big sisters and brothers to take them to bed. Soon after there was banging at the far end of the table and a hush came over the company. Aunt Madgie stood up to raise the toast ‘One and all’ and everyone but me roared in hearty accord. ‘Now, neighbours, if you’ll excuse me, I shall take to my bed,’ she said, and they all cheered. The old dame knew the dancing would start soon and didn’t want to witness any improper goings-on. Once she’d gone, a weight lifted from me.

Ephraim Lavin, the blind fiddler, was called on to scrape out a few jigs and hornpipes. His son, the little scarper, sat alongside him, thumping out a rhythm on a tub. The dancing began soberly enough. The men took their places in the left file and the women in the right and the shouter numbered us into couples. I had to start with Lean Jack Bodilley, but I took it in good part. When the tune was counted in, Jack took my hand and raised it and we got through the steps without tripping one another up. At each verse we changed partners, and soon my turn with Johnenry Roscorla came about. I remembered the days when Johnenry and me had walked out together and I had a sudden, fierce longing to have him back. I knew he felt the same about me because when we came face to face he was rooted to the spot, gazing into my eyes. He swayed before me and the harbour swayed along with him. He was the most handsome man on earth in the fairy light of the lanterns. I gave him a look to make his knees buckle. Then the other dancers bashed into us and we reeled in a circle with the rest, elbows locking and the men sending their partners spinning into the next man. We women held up our skirts so as not to trip on them as we stamped up and down the line, while the older folk and the lame clapped their hands to urge us on from the benches. It hardly seemed to matter what would happen tomorrow with the smears of light wheeling round my head and Johnenry’s face forever looming up at me and growing more handsome as the night wore on. The men grew rough and hurled us about, some taking liberties, grabbing our waists or clutching at our behinds.

Time passed too quickly. The music petered out and the left-overs of the feast lay spoiling, fit only for flies. Men lay with their heads on the table, snoring amongst the upturned rum pots. Others were laid out on the quay. My feet were sore and my toes crushed after stomping about in those ill-fitting boots. Johnenry and I fell against a harbour post and I was glad of something to prop me up. But the post soon seemed to leave its moorings and began swaying about too. Loveday Skewes stood against another post further along with a face like a whipped dog. She had a habit of nibbling at her fingernails, and she was doing it that moment. Somewhere in my muzzy head I remembered that Johnenry was courting Loveday, and had been a long while since. I shut my eyes to think clearer, but it made my head spin even more. Down along the quay, one or two scolding wives were trying to drag their husbands home, but most people had already taken to their beds. I saw the lily from my hair lying on the stone slabs of the quay, crushed underfoot. I didn’t want to go to my bed. I didn’t want the night to be over and to wake up the next day with that dark and fretful feeling that haunted me, and a pounding headache to boot.

The bettermost women were gathered on the quay. Millie Hicks piped up in her pious wheedling voice. ‘It’s time for we ladies to bestir ourselves, I seem. It don’t belong to women to be abroad at such an hour.’ I always thought of her as a tall bird, a heron perhaps, with her long, thin neck and pointed beak poking forever into places where it had no business.

Millie linked arms with Grace Skewes, Loveday’s mother and the topmost woman in the village, unless you counted Aunt Madgie. ‘It don’t belong to women to drink strong liquor, neither,’ said Grace. Her little group of followers clucked in agreement, as they picked up their baskets, ready for the off. ‘One cup alone do fairly maze a body,’ said Grace, and I thought her eyes swept over me as she said it. It was all because she was sore about Johnenry preferring me to her Loveday.

Nancy Spargo, a big plain woman from the tinners’ cottages on Uplong Row, wandered over from the table where she’d been larking about with some of her mates. ‘Well, it might belong to the bettermost to take to they beds but I be thirsty as a gull and plan on staying out a while longer,’ she said. She bent forward, her breasts almost spilling out of her bodice, screwed up her face and passed wind like a trumpet major. ‘Begging your pardon, ladies, I been fartin’ like a steer all night,’ she said, in a mock lady-like way. ‘Better out nor in, eh?’ She grinned, showing the gaps between her teeth.

I staggered up the steps to the quay. Seeing how linking arms was all the fashion that night, I went over to Nancy and went arm in arm with her. ‘We work as hard as the men, so why shouldn’t we enjoy ourselves along with they?’ I said, stumbling. I would have fallen if Nancy hadn’t held me up.

‘I be only thinking of what is seemly,’ said Millie Hicks, rubbing her long neck the way she did when she was about to bad-mouth a neighbour. ‘Others may look to their own reputations. Come along, Zenobia.’ She pulled her daughter away with her. The girl was her match in piety.

Loveday came over from where she’d been sulking by a harbour post. She was being mollified by her friend, Betsy Stoddern, who had stuck by Loveday and fought all her battles for her since they were little. ‘Some of we still care what folks think of we,’ Loveday muttered, glancing at me.

I wasn’t going to let this pass. I let go of Nancy and walked towards her. ‘What’s she saying of? Say it to my face if you got something to say, Loveday,’ I said. But someone had taken a grip of my arm and was leading me away. I tried to fight them off, but then I saw it was Johnenry, so I went along with him. He had a cup of brandy in his hand. He pulled me down from the slipway and led me out onto the beach.

‘Look, you’ve given me the hiccups,’ I said, slapping him. He pulled me deeper into the night. ‘Wait! Let me take off these boots. They’re fair killing me.’ Johnenry took the boots out of my hand and slipped his arm around my waist. I wondered if anybody was spying on us from the dark windows in Fore Street.

‘You’re all hot and greasy, let go o’ me,’ I said.

‘I worked up a power of sweat jigging with you, that’s why.’

We moved further out to where the tide could be heard lazily washing in, some ways off. We leant against the damp hull of one of the boats, out of the breeze. The cold sand soothed my aching feet. Johnenry put the brandy to my lips, but I turned my head away. The storm that had brought the ship onto the rocks the day before had swept every cloud away, and untold numbers of stars were scattered across the night sky.

‘Some pretty, ain’t it, the sky?’ I said. I spoke softly, but my voice was loud out there on so still a night. Johnenry took off his jacket and threw it on the ground so I could lie on it, then he lay down by me. We lay on our backs looking up at the heavens a while without speaking. A white streak bled across the sky.

‘A shooting star!’ he said. ‘I made a wish. Did you?’

I sighed. I knew full well what his wish was, but I didn’t want to hear it right then. ‘Funny to think there were dead people lying all over the strand yesterday,’ I said, shivering. ‘When you see them lying there in their fine clothes, do you ever wonder how they must have lived before they were drowned? Don’t you wish you could see inside their houses? And wardrobes? Don’t you want a life like that?’

‘No use hankering after what you can’t have. It don’t belong to us.’

‘Well, I’m tired of the same old life every day, even if you ain’t. You be happy with too little, I seem.’

‘I have a dream.’

‘And what dream would that be?’ I propped my head up on my hand to look at him.

‘You know the old law that says anyone who builds a house in one night can claim the freehold?’

‘You couldn’t build a chicken coop in one night.’

‘I got some mates lined up to help. And I found the spot for it. A patch of wasteland just down from Uplong Row. There be enough ground for a one-room house and a pig sty, and a rick for furze. I been putting things by for a while, clay and poles for the walls, straw for the thatch. One night I’ll build that house and the next day I’ll carry my wife across the threshold.’

‘That’s your dream, is it? A one-room hovel and a pig sty?’

He took hold of me and nuzzled his chin against my neck, chafing me. I pushed him away.

‘You’re strong,’ he said. I smelt the liquor on his breath.

‘Not surprising I’m strong, slaving day in and day out,’ I said.

‘You start housekeeping with me and you’ll live like a princess, I promise.’

I rolled on top of him. I had a coming-on sort of feeling, so I kissed him with open mouth. ‘I won’t tell nobody if you don’t,’ I said, in a whisper.

‘I been waiting so long for this I thought I’d die,’ he said. He stroked my hair and kissed every inch of my face until I took a hunk of his own hair in my grip and pulled his head away so I could look right into his eyes. ‘It’s loving I need now, Johnenry,’ I said.

That was all the coaxing he needed. He lifted my skirts and let his hands roam wherever they pleased. I pulled my skirts down again so no neighbour would peer out the window and see the moonlight shining on my ass. I rolled on top of him, and he ground into me like gritty sugar. I wanted to lose myself in it, forget the rest of my life had ever happened. When he was about to come to the boil, I lay quiet on him a while and put my mouth to his ear, telling him to hold off a little longer.

Afterwards he said, ‘I have to make an honest woman of you now, I seem,’ as the cold breeze blew up my skirts and tickled my tender parts. A sudden sharp pain in my temple brought me to my senses. ‘Let go o’ me, I be about to puke,’ I said, getting up off him. I staggered away with the drunken stars reeling around my head, and the beach pitching and rolling under my feet.

‘We be as good as man and wife,’ he said, catching up with me, as I staggered towards the quay.

I leant against the side of a boat, waves of seasickness building inside me. Dropping to my knees, I grasped the heavy chain that connected the boat to the quay. ‘You got me then,’ I said. ‘Go and have the banns read out, if you like, but leave me be. Right now all I want to do is urge.’

With that I fell forward, the chain rattling in my grip. I retched, and the first of my spew splattered onto the sand.

I was in Mamm’s old room, which smelt of damp and neglect after so many weeks left empty. She’d been sleeping in the kitchen since her breath had grown too short for her to get up the stairs. I climbed onto a chair and reached up to the rafters where I kept my secrets. The chair wobbled as I reached up to fetch an old stocking swollen with coins, jewellery and other trinkets. When I’d taken it down, I sat on the bed with the stocking in my lap. It was wrapped in yellowed newspaper that I had read so many times the print was worn off the pages. I blew away the dust and cobwebs, upsetting a black beetle that fell to the floor and scuttled a little way before I squashed it underfoot. I untied the string around the frayed worsted, then felt deep inside the stocking for the rag that covered my greatest prize. When the cloth was unwrapped, I gazed upon the hair pin and the butterfly that clung to it, more finely wrought than any lace. I’d taken it from a fine lady who’d breathed her last after a shipwreck a few years past and had never been able to bring myself to part with it, however scat I’d been. When I’d had my fill of staring upon the pin, I went over to stand before the oval mirror above the chest.

With trembling hands I put the pin in the back of my hair and turned my head to see it glimmer in the dusty shaft of light that lay aslant the glass. My face frowned at me, every blemish and line showing. The long winter had taken its toll. My hair was coarse under my fingers. It was both a blessing and a curse, that hair, a flaming beacon to draw the eye and set me apart from the common run of mouse-haired women. I would use my share from the wreck to buy vinegar and make it shine again. A lone white hair was threaded among the darker ones. A trick of the light, I hoped. I plucked it and found it to be silver as the hair pin.

My thoughts kept going back to the wreck, to Aunt Madgie and Loveday Skewes. At least my time of the month had passed since I’d gone with Johnenry, so that was one worry I could put behind me. To escape such dark thoughts, I let my mind drift to the man I’d seen on the beach after the wreck, the one whose watch I’d filched. If only a fellow like that were to wash ashore still alive. If not a land man, then at least a merryman. One like those who take human form on midsummer’s eve and swim ashore buck-naked after dark to mate with a woman who waits on the shore in a rage of longing, only to depart from her at dawn to return to his own kind, leaving his milt stirring inside her to grow into an infant that’s as much fish as human, and oh! how breathless I had become, carried along by such fancies. I’d forgotten I still had the pin in my hair, and before anyone caught me I hid it in the stocking and put it back in its hiding place.

When I felt calmer, I brought out the tinder box from under the bed, sat on the chair and took out my small ration of shag, a mix of baccie and hemp I had dried on the hearth. It was mixed with a rare kind of mushroom that has a soothing effect on the nerves and brings on curious whimsies. Such herbs can be depended on to unlock dreams and let a person glimpse the other world that is only a feather’s breadth from the one we know. I took a few quick pulls on my pipe to get it smoking, releasing its incense into the air. Soon the smoke was swirling about the room and my thoughts were unfurling in its coils. The idol was at my feet, a limbless woman of stone with huge hips and breasts. I picked her up and held her in my lap. Tegen always said the idol was no more than a misshapen rock, but I knew she was an ancient goddess passed down the generations.

Weaving patterns shifted across the idol’s face like light on water. Without speaking aloud, I asked the idol if I was wrong to keep my treasures hidden in an old stocking when I might buy medicine for Mamm. Was it wicked to indulge in idle fancies, to imagine myself as one of the fine ladies who wash up on the beach after wrecks? My heart raced at the thought of the liberties and luxuries such women enjoyed. How would I ever be rid of my lowly life in the cove, with ill wishers all about me?

I looked down into the idol’s face. She seemed to say, ‘Take care, Mary Blight.’

In my mind, I answered, ‘What’s strong in the heart must out some way.’

‘Do not overstep thyself,’ the idol warned.

But the wreaths of smoke about me told another story. A man’s pale naked body was slowly taking form. He groped blindly in a sea of shifting shadows while fatal currents drew him to my embrace. I put the idol on the floor, her face to the wall, and sat back in the chair in a kind of fit, letting my hands fall into my lap.

3

The very next day I was down on the strand, raking at the tide wrack with the poorer sort of women, those forced to scavenge, just as the gulls do. A ragged line of us stretched out across the strand in the swirling haze. The work was slow, my collar stiff with sweat, my scalp itching in the close heat. With an aching back and arms, I twisted the heavy sea blooms around the end of my pole, then hoisted it and shook the seaweed onto the pile, ready for the squire’s farms up on the headland. Clouds of lazy flies hovered over the seaweed, which grew more rank as it dried.

At last the mist lifted and the sun came out. I pushed my damp hair from my brow with my forearm and looked about me. Two women were approaching, black shapes against the light. As they drew nearer, I saw it was Loveday Skewes and Betsy Stoddern, both in nice, clean frocks. They had come to gloat at us poor working women.

‘Here be trouble,’ said Tegen, at my side.

The pair of them passed the spot where we laboured. ‘Some people has no shame,’ said that big ox Betsy. ‘Showing her face abroad after stealing another woman’s man.’

Tegen gave me a look to make me keep my mouth shut.

‘Never mind, I don’t want him now,’ said Loveday. ‘Spoilt goods.’ She gathered her shawl round her with a peevish shrug.

Betsy wasn’t ready to let it rest. ‘Her sort only ever look out for themselves.’

I wasn’t going to let that pass. ‘It be One and All in this village, don’t it, ladies?’ I said, digging the pole into the seaweed and twisting it fiercely. ‘But some get a better share than others, I seem. There’s a reason why some in this village has whacks of money and others be scat.’

‘There’s none that’s poor that don’t deserve to be,’ said Loveday.

I shook the weed off the pole so that it landed right at their feet. ‘If you could see yourself, Loveday,’ I said. ‘Puffed up like a bladder of lard.’ Tegen took my arm and tried to pull me away from them.

‘That carrot-topped varmint have shown her colours again today,’ said Betsy.

‘No father to take her in hand, that’s why,’ said Loveday, as they wandered towards the eastern end of the beach.

‘Keep your pert sayings to yourselves,’ I muttered to myself when they were gone.

‘You shouldn’t rise to it,’ said Tegen. ‘Hold your temper. Of late, you be like a river fit to burst its banks. I swear you enjoy vexing people.’ She stooped to gather driftwood.

‘So you want to keep me in my place, as well?’

‘You know I always take your side, Mary,’ she said. A strand of frizzy, red hair fell across her face.

‘I do know it,’ I answered. And to show I meant well, I went over and looped the loose lock of hair behind her ear, and hugged her.

Someone signalled to touch pipe. I didn’t want to sit with the other women and feel their silence so full of meaning, so I went down to the crab pools, and ate my crust and cheese alone. The sea stretched to the ends of the earth and I foresaw an empty future ahead of me, an endless round of packing pilchards, of laundry and baking days. When I’d finished eating, I slipped behind a big boulder where I couldn’t be spied upon and hoisted up my skirts. I pressed my bare ass against the cold stone and let the earth’s slow heartbeat throb through my flesh for a long moment. It would bring me luck. Seeing a sharp stone by my feet, I took it up and gouged a limpet from the rock and split it open. What a pang it always gave me when the sea juices spilled over my tongue.

I walked across the shingle to where the wash rolled forward in rapid shelves. The water was icy around my ankles and the foam rushed past me up the beach, sucking sand from under my toes. It was as though the land was moving towards the sea and not the other way round. I remembered the feeling from my childhood, but instead of the old giddy enchantment, I feared the outhaul would pull me into the ocean’s depths.

From out in the water there was a groan, a seal perhaps. I opened my eyes and could make out a shape bobbing on the waves no more than thirty feet away. But it was only a barrel, perhaps one from the ship that had struck the rocks so recently. Something made me keep an eye on the barrel, though. A new current got under it and set it turning slowly, until I saw a dark shape show against the side. Something was strapped to the tub – no, someone, a man, his head lying on top. Maybe he saw me, for at that moment he looked up wearily and turned his face in my direction. His face was drawn and harrowed, and the sight of this soul in torment put me in mind of the Jesu and how he might have looked if he had turned towards you on the climb up to Calvary.

The swell was pushing the barrel towards the Zarn, the great black cave where smugglers unloaded their goods. If nobody helped the man he would be broken up on the rocks, and the barrel with him. I tried to call for Tegen but my words got stuck in my throat. I ran towards where the women were sat, a hundred yards off to the east, huddled together behind a great boulder for shelter. I cried out again, more lustily, cupping my hands to my mouth, ‘Over here!’ But there was no sign that they heard me. I called again, so loud I tore my throat and then I saw Tegen’s dumpy form as she got to her feet and peered over at me.

‘Quick, Teg, there be someone in the water! A man near drowned. He be heading for they rocks. In God’s name help me,’ I shouted. She lifted her skirts and began running across the strand. I was already wading out towards the barrel, the freezing water rising under my skirts and taking my breath away. Tegen wasn’t far behind. The barrel pitched in the swell, showing itself one minute and vanishing the next. The water rose above my waist and each new surge covered my shoulders and slapped my face. My skirts were soaked through and the cloth weighed me down. Being only a woman, I’d never learnt to swim, and I was fearful of being pulled out of my depth. As I got nearer to the man I saw there was an oar under each of his armpits and the oars were tied to the barrel. I had to stay clear of those oars or they would dash out my brains, so I waited for a safe moment, dived in between them, and threw my arms around the barrel on the other side to where the man was tied. The side of my head hit the barrel as I did so. Then I pushed the barrel towards the beach with all my might, but the best I could do was slow its advance towards the Zarn.

Tegen’s body slammed into my back. A powerful swell climbed over us, covering our heads and lifting my feet off the sand. My sister had a powerful pair of arms and between the two of us we inched the barrel towards the beach, straining with all our might. The incoming tide was behind us but a wayward current wanted to drive us into the Zarn. We were soon almost done for, but Nancy Spargo arrived and put her broad back into it as well. In time we reached the shallows and the barrel scudded onto wet sand. Women appeared and helped us untie the foreigner from the barrel and haul him up the beach.

I lay flat out on my back trying to catch my breath. The world seemed to throb around me, the sounds now loud, now soft. When I lifted my head I saw stark shapes against the sky, and at first took them for angels in Heaven, but it was only a crowd down from the village. White clouds floated by above me while the strand rolled underneath me. The pounding in my forehead where the barrel had struck me was like a hole made of light, and the brightness hurt me the way it does if you stare too long at the sun. I turned my head and saw a world strangely aslant, a dream that might melt away at any moment, and it was then I had my first proper look at the man. He lay with his head in Nancy Spargo’s lap, and what I would have given to take her place! Such a long straight nose he had, and dark eyelashes trembling on his cheeks. His wet locks were black as tar, clinging to his neck and collar. He was a big fellow, broad-shouldered and tall with it, going by how his limbs stretched out on the sand. Dazed as I was, I believed my own fancy had charmed him out of the sea.

‘Should we fetch a priest to give him his rites?’ said Nancy. Her voice was from another world.

‘A doctor more like,’ said another woman.

I sat up, not able yet to get to my feet. Of a sudden, there was two of everybody and I didn’t know which one to look at. Jake Spargo, Nancy’s husband, was down on his knees trying to make the foreigner drink from a cup of liquor. ‘This be the best medicine for him,’ Jake said. The foreigner’s head lolled this way and that, as if the smell of the drink upset him. ‘Take a drop of that to warm ’ee,’ said Jake, tipping the rum between his lips. The man choked and groaned, his features twisting in pain, as if poison were being forced down his throat instead of prime Jamaican rum. His hand flapped about feebly, trying to swat the cup away, and the liquor rolled over his chin.

‘Poor fellow, who have done such a thing to he?’ said Nancy, her shoulders damp from her dripping hair.

‘Whoever lashed this fellow to the barrel meant to save his life and not to hurt him,’ said Jake. ‘I seen the like afore now.’

‘Someone should take the foreigner indoors to thaw out,’ said another woman.

‘We’ll give the man house room,’ I said quickly, standing up, and reeling. ‘He can rest up there till the doctor be fetched from Newlyn.’

Tegen whispered in my ear. ‘Whatever do you be saying of?’ She took a firm grip of my arm. ‘It don’t belong to us two maidens to take in a man. That bang on the head have knocked all the sense out of you.’

I took no notice of her. ‘We need a hand to get him up the hill,’ I called out. I was close to swooning, but tried to hide it, and in no mood to let anyone take the man from me now. Two lads came forward, keen perhaps to show their strength to the wenches round about. One caught the big fellow under his knees and the other under his armpits, and they lifted him up. It was hard work lugging him up the beach and down the quay, and then up the steep lane. The lads had to stop every so often at cottages, and take a drop of water.

It was a good while before we reached the alley into our little courtyard, which was barely wide enough to squeeze through. Mamm looked on aghast as the foreigner was carried upstairs. They laid him out on the bed. Tegen came to the doorway, not wanting to enter a room with a man lying in it.

‘We durstn’t leave him in these wet clothes,’ I said. I kept my voice steady as I could. ‘It will be the death of him.’

‘But we can’t take the clothes off him! Are you mazed?’ said Tegen. She was scarlet to the tips of her ears. I ignored her and went to the chest, pulling a drawer open and taking out some of Dad’s old things.

‘We can dry him with this,’ I said, throwing a shirt onto the bed. ‘And we can dress him in another of Dad’s old shirts till his own be dry.’ I leant over the foreigner and began tugging the cloth up over his body. I called Tegen over. ‘Come here and help me lift him. Look how he’s shivering, we must be quick about it.’ She came over to help, looking away so she wouldn’t see the man’s white skin as the wet clothes were peeled off him.

‘Think of what folk will say,’ she said.

‘Let their tongues wag. Have you forgot the Good Samaritan?’

‘This ain’t a hospital.’

‘You sure? You forget about Mamm, I seem.’

‘The man is a stranger. What is he to you? I don’t follow you at all.’

‘Providence have brought him here. It were me that saw him first. It’s meant.’

We lifted him up, and with difficulty pulled the dry shirt down over his head and shoulders.

‘Who, I wonder, is to do all our work if we have to nurse this man?’ said Tegen.

‘Don’t you pity him at all?’

Tegen looked on him, but there was more of shame than pity in her face.

My head ached and all about me was a fog. I put my palm on the foreigner’s brow. His skin was warm. My hands were ice cold so I rubbed the palms together before touching him again. ‘He has a fever,’ I said. I poured some water into a cup and tried to make him drink, but most spilled down his chin. Tegen left me to it and went downstairs.

I dropped into my chair and let the room turn slowly around me for a little while before it settled. I closed my eyes and was almost gone, but a sudden groan from the bed startled me.

‘Is it come?’ the fellow shouted. ‘Is this the reckoning? Dear Lord, have mercy on my soul!’

I went to the bedside. ‘Forgive you?’ I whispered. ‘Why? What has you done?’

He squinted at me, and I stared into those eyes for the first time, so dark and deep and hard to fathom. His face shook and he let out a strangled cry: ‘Pitiless devil! Leave me in peace, for Heaven’s sake. Why do you still torment me, Molly?’ His strength failed and his head fell back.

‘You are mistaken, Mister, I am not Molly,’ I said.

He moaned pitifully. ‘I have beaten you, Molly. God forgive me, I have hurt you, your face . . .’ My fingers reached up to where his gaze was fixed, and I felt the tender and throbbing bruise on my temple where the barrel had struck me. The foreigner’s eyes closed and he fell into a sleeping fit.

While the man was lying a-bed, I set off up the headland to buy a charm. I picked my way through the copse where Old Jinny lived. Bare winter branches creaked in the breeze, and birds pierced the cold air with their cries, warning me off. Sometimes in the night the old woman was known to take flight and soar over the village herself, not on a broomstick but with her gown open and spread out around her like crow wings. I followed the scent of wood smoke and soon I reached the passage between thickets of needle-sharp briers that led to her door.

It was dark inside, with all manner of objects dangling from the rafters and turning slowly in the draught that followed me into the cottage: dried herbs, tiny bones tied in bundles, wooden dolls, pewter pots and pans. As my eyes got used to the gloom, I saw a jumble of wicker cages piled about, and along one wall a blue dresser, the paint cracked and peeling. A fire hissed in a small hearth and a large warming pan hung over it.

Old Jinny sat in the corner on a high-backed chair with great hawks carved on the arm rests, a little wheel for spinning thread at her side. I jumped at a sudden frantic flapping of wings as a black shape ripped past me to alight in the old crone’s lap. It was a jackdaw and she took it in her hands, stroking it with long twisted fingers that had dirt under every fingernail. The bird cocked its head this way and that to judge me from all sides. I had the curious notion that the bird was Jinny’s own child.

‘Friend or foe?’ the old crone asked in a voice as light as a whistle and reedy as a child’s. ‘What brings you across my threshold?’ The sound seemed not to come from her at all but from elsewhere in the hovel. There was spittle in the corners of her whiskery mouth, and beneath her grubby lace cap her hair clung loose about her neck and shoulders. It was matted and dusty as the cobwebs that were draped in thick layers in the corners of the room. Her nose was hooked and pointed like a bird’s. She wore a gown of faded blue silk, streaked with bird shit like everything else in that place. It was open at the front to show a stained quilted petticoat of faded satin, and over that an apron which looked to have been embroidered with her own needle. On it were dozens of birds – wrens, robins, snipes and choughs. Her sleeves ended in lace ruffles, stray threads hanging from them, which reached almost down to the filthy floor of beaten earth.

Seeing how dazed I was, she laughed, a piercing sound that set my teeth on edge. It was plain the woman was mad as a snake.

‘Don’t boggle at me, girl. Tell me, what is your business here?’ She spoke grandly, like a true snot. She ruffled the pale feathers at the back of the jackdaw’s head with the back of her hand, making the bird shiver.

I swallowed hard, took a deep breath. ‘I need a charm to cure a man in a fever, short of breath. He was at sea a long while, lashed to a barrel. He is asleep mostly, but has bad dreams and sees things before him that aren’t there.’

‘Perhaps he sees things that are there, but which you cannot see? An old man or a young? Big and strong or a weakling?’

‘Not young or old. But big and strong, for sure.’

She opened her hands to let the jackdaw fly free, and clapped in glee. ‘I know the remedy you need!’ She got to her feet, stiffly. She was no taller standing up than she was sitting down, and all the smaller for being so stooped. She put her hand out for payment. ‘Two shillings,’ she said.

‘Two shillings!’ I was dumbfounded.

She nodded, briskly.

I had just enough on me. I counted out the coins and stooped to put them in her hand. She bit each one in turn to see if it was true before putting it in her apron pocket. When she was finished she left the hovel with a queer hopping gait and went to fetch the charm from out the back. A stink of stale sweat and piss hung about after she was gone, and the jackdaw hopped and flapped all about me, shitting on everything, including my hair. Its croak was loud in that little place and had me all of a jitter. The bird could talk, too, but in strange riddles of which I could make no sense.

I waited so long that I wondered if the old woman had died out there. Through a rip in the sacking over the window I saw the hut where she kept the captive birds. Their fretful twittering could be heard all over the wood. Round about me in the shadows of the room were all manner of nasty-looking instruments among the cages. I didn’t care to wonder at their use.

At last Old Jinny came back with one of the poor creatures in her hands, wrapped in a bloody cloth. It made a fearsome racket and set the jackdaw hopping and flapping about in a frenzy. My nerves were frayed.

‘I be thinking I shan’t go through with this matter, after all,’ I shouted above the din.

She burst into shrill giggles. ‘’Tis too late,’ she said, holding the little bundle out to me. ‘I’ve already plucked her.’

‘Plucked her? What do you mean, plucked her?’

‘The bird has to be plucked, my girl, if you want the charm to work.’

‘That be the wickedest thing I ever heard!’

‘I can’t stick the feathers back into the creature, can I?’ she said.

What was I to do? I had already paid her two shillings, a king’s ransom. And the bird would die now, anyhow. I let her put the creature in my shaking hands, and nearly dropped it when I felt its warmth and how it wriggled inside the grubby cloth.

‘A song thrush. A hen for a man, a cock for a woman,’ said Old Jinny, leering at me. ‘Tie it to the rafters in the bed-lier’s room. Twenty-four hours should do it. It might take longer if there is no rash on the man. Once the fever has been spirited from the human to the fowl, the bird will turn black and bloated. And then it will expire.’

I made sure nobody saw me on the way back, which was not easy because the creature was making a din fit to wake the dead. It fair pecked my hands and wrists to pieces. When I got home, Tegen wouldn’t help me so I had to tie it to the beam by myself. I knew the best knot to bind its legs but it was a dreadful fiddle with only one hand spare and the little creature raging to break free of me. Once the thing was tied and hanging, it went madder still, spinning in a flurry, its feeble plucked wings flapping furiously and its screeches deafening me and echoing around the room as it tangled itself in the string. I was overcome with the horror of it then, but it was too late to turn back. The foreigner groaned in his sick bed, disturbed by the noise. When the bird had tired itself, it hung there a moment twitching, its eyes bulging and unnatural, its grey wrinkled flesh covered in bloody pinpricks.

I couldn’t bear staying in the room with the wretched creature, so I fled down the stairs to the kitchen. I sat at the table and took deep breaths, waiting for my heart to slow to its usual beat. Mamm looked away from me and Tegen scowled.

‘Stop looking at me like that,’ I said. ‘It’s only for a day or two. A man’s soul matters more to the Creator than a bird’s.’

Later, on the way back from the well, I passed Johnenry in the lane. He blocked my path.

‘I be in a hurry,’ I said, nodding at the pails of water in my hands. He stood his ground.

‘I suppose you’re in a hurry to get back to that big fellow you fished out of the cove?’ he said.

‘It were only Christian to give him house room until he be better. The fellow was close to death.’

‘You be the last woman I ever thought would turn nurse maid.’

‘It fell to me, as I were the first that saw him.’

‘Well, don’t expect me to carry him to the graveyard when he breathes his last. You be trying my patience, Mary. Think about how things stand, now. You need to make up your mind. A man can keep on fathering children until they nail him in his coffin but a woman’s got to squeeze the beggars out while she still can.’

‘So these be the sweet wooing words you use now you’ve had your way with me?’

‘I used up all my sweet words the other night. And you seemed to like them enough then, the way you was rolling underneath me.’

‘Wash your dirty mouth out.’

‘Let’s not be enemies, Mary,’ he said, more mildly. ‘It heats my blood to think of the way some of they be slanderin’ you, and I want to take care of you, that’s all. To protect you.’

‘I got by fine without a man to protect me all these years, so why would I need one now?’

He stepped toward me as if a hornet had stung his ass. ‘I ain’t got the patience of Job. ’Tis meant, you and me, even if you won’t admit it. Why can’t you lean more to the common way?’

‘Maybe I don’t care to. And you ain’t the master of me, Johnenry. So let me pass.’

He took my arm, twisting it and hurting me, a nasty look in his eyes. ‘What in God’s name be wrong with you?’ he said. ‘Is you sickening?’

I pulled my arm free and half a pail of water slopped over his trousers. I left him standing in the lane looking like he’d pissed himself.

All that night I sat in my chair and kept vigil on the foreigner in the sickly glow of the smoking tallow. On the chest was a pot of herbs that the Widow Chegwidden had given me. Earlier, I had mixed the brew with a little milk and spooned it between the foreigner’s lips. The smell of the potion mingled with the odour of sickness in the room.

My head throbbed fearfully from the blow I’d taken from the barrel. Perhaps some of the sense had been knocked out of me. I thought about Johnenry and what he’d said when I met him. Why had I taken a strange man into the house and risked the mud-slinging that would follow? Perhaps I was sickening after something, as Johnenry said. But I couldn’t help myself. My heart went out to the man, thinking how he’d been thrown this way and that at the mercy of the waves, lashed to that barrel. And my woman’s nature stirred at the notion of this big, dark fellow, at once so strong and yet so helpless. It did trouble me, I own, the hold the foreigner had on me. I consulted with the stone idol, but her face was set in a sulk so I put her on the floor, facing away from the sick bed.

The man’s breathing was quick and fretful. While he slept the bird hung quietly, twitching every so often on its string. Whenever the man roused himself with a groan and twisted in his narrow cot, the bird thrashed around as if crazed, taking on the pains of the man. The foreigner drew the life out of the bird’s body and into his own, and the bird grew more and more sickly as it took on the man’s contagion. I prayed for the bird to breathe its last and there were times when I almost went to fetch a pair of stones to brain the poor creature and bring its misery to an end. But I saw how the man in the bed was repairing, so I gripped the seat of my chair tight, to hold me at my post. Every so often I went over and wiped sweat from his brow with a cloth dipped in cool water. Time passed and the man’s strength returned little by little while the bird’s ebbed away.

In the dead of night such a hush was over the world that the wings of a moth flitting about the flame were loud as sheets snapping in the wind on laundry day. The cottages in our lane were huddled together so close that I could hear the snores of all the neighbours throbbing through the walls. At closing time the footsteps of the men staggering home from the kiddlywink – where men of the worst sort spent their time drinking and gambling – echoed out in the lane, with snatches of song, a quarrel and much profanity. The drunkards disturbed the gulls in their slumber and they made a row of their own over the rooftops.

By the time the first hint of daylight showed in the window, the man lay in a deep and settled sleep. Seeing he was lost in his dreams, I went and knelt at the bedside and took his hand in my own. He had long fine fingers, despite his bulk, soft hands that had never known hard labour. I stayed there a long while, thinking that I would never tire of looking at his face. His strong jaw was dark with stubble now, and his black locks spread out over the pillow. Without warning, his eyes opened and he stared at me.

‘What devil are you?’ he cried, hoarsely. I tried to shush him, fearful he would bring the whole village rushing to the door. ‘Why are you poisoning me? What harm have I done you?’

‘Quiet now, don’t be upsetting yourself, you’re poorly,’ I whispered, my face close to his.

But he shouted again, as loud as before: ‘The boy! Scarcely more than a child, God help him. Is he saved?’

His shouts upset the bird, which began frantically flapping its little bald wings. The foreigner peered into the gloom, searching for whatever was making the sound. Then he gazed at my face as if to find out what manner of fiend had taken him capture. His breath came fast.

‘If you have a single Christian bone in your body, then I beg you to get word to my wife that I am saved,’ he said. ‘Do it quickly to spare her more anxiety.’

‘We has sent for the doctor,’ I said. ‘He shall no doubt speak with your wife.’

He was quiet again. I sat there by the bed in a slump. For a long while my thoughts were at a standstill. In the end, with a great heaviness upon me, I got up and went to my own room, where I belonged.

4

The next day Dr Vyvyan came to see the foreigner. He knew us Blights, because in the months since Mamm had got the chronic he’d dropped in and looked her over whenever he was on his rounds. He spent a little time with her that day, too, before I led him up the stairs. He kept glancing at the yellow swelling on my temple and my bloodshot eye.

I hadn’t expected the doctor to come so soon and hadn’t removed the bird from where it hung in the sick room. I made sure to go in first and stand in front of the poor thing so the doctor wouldn’t see it. The room was dark and close. It smelt of sweat and musty plaster, and stewed herbs. But above all there was the sour rankness of the bird, all but dead on the end of its string. I saw then how it would look to the doctor’s eyes, a pitiful, suffering thing, blackened and covered in weeping boils. The doctor’s nose wrinkled as he stepped into the room. Behind my back, I heard the bird twitching.

‘You are hiding something,’ he said right away, brushing me aside with a movement of his hand. When I was out of the way, he looked upon the bird with utmost horror, and then glared at me. He took a pocket handkerchief from his jacket and covered his nose with it.

‘A barbaric custom,’ he said, his voice muffled by the handkerchief. ‘The bird is clinging to life but already in the first stage of decomposition. This abomination is to be removed. It is undoubtedly carrying mites and I am sure it is distressing my patient.’

‘It’s taken the fever out of him, look. He’s better than before,’ I said. We both looked at the foreigner, lying peaceful enough on the bed.

‘Barbarous nonsense, a rustic superstition to the effect that the infection can be transferred from the man to the bird.’ He went to the bedside and got down on his knees, taking some instruments from his case. ‘What are we to do with these people?’ he said, smiling at the foreigner. His name was Gideon Stone, and it turned out that Dr Vyvyan knew him. He spoke to him now, as if I wasn’t there.

‘I thank you from the bottom of my heart for making this visit, Jonathan,’ said the foreigner. ‘How is Ellie? I know I can count on you to look after her.’

‘She is doing as well as can be hoped.’

‘Let her know I’m better now, much better. Tell her I have a guardian angel who has tended me the whole while I have lain here.’ He looked at me and my face grew hot. The doctor frowned. I don’t suppose I looked much like an angel to him.

‘Whatever possessed you to get into a leaky little boat with two men and a boy in the first place?’ asked Dr Vyvyan.

‘Have you had news of the men who were on the boat with me?’ the foreigner asked Dr Vyvyan. ‘Please tell me they have been saved.’

‘It’s assumed they have perished, I’m afraid,’ said the doctor. ‘What happened to you that day?’

‘I knew Hell. There was just myself, and a man and his son and an old fellow known to them. I wanted to see this place with my own eyes after the recent infamous reports, and see what good I might do here. But when we reached the cove the boat began turning in tight circles. Something was stirring the water from below, I was sure of it, the sea was so lumpy, so slippery.’ His breath grew thicker and faster as he spoke. ‘The current ran in opposite directions on either side of the boat. Unnatural! I swear that something twitched at the boat from underneath. And suddenly tearing, grinding, and a fount bubbling in the hull.’

‘This is enough for now. Save your energies. You can tell us the whole story when you’re home again,’ said Dr Vyvyan. But the foreigner seemed not to hear him. In his fancy he was back on the boat again.

‘The skipper asked me if the Maker would forgive him a life of mendacity if he repented at the last. I told him it was never too late. But it was the boy he wanted to save. The boy was his own son, you see? And I could do naught to save the lad. My prayers went unanswered. Before I could stop them, the pair of them had the barrel slammed into my gut. The father held me while his son coiled the rope about me and tied me fast.’ He fell back on to his pillow, and closed his eyes.

When his breathing steadied itself, Dr Vyvyan spoke to him again. ‘Well, at least you are still with us,’ he said. ‘A less robust specimen wouldn’t have survived. You are the talk of Newlyn, you know. Ellie has had a visit from a correspondent of the Sherborne Mercury, no less. Everybody wants to know how the Methodist minister came to be washed ashore lashed to a barrel.’

The doctor took out a kind of trumpet and put the bell end to his mouth to warm it with his breath. He bid the foreigner to lie on his side, and began to lift his shirt. At that, I fled the room, and waited on the stairs where I could listen to them through the half open door. It was quiet for a time while the doctor took his soundings with the trumpet. Then the bird went into a frenzy of noisy flapping.

‘Will you please remove that hideous item,’ Dr Vyvyan shouted. With a start, I realised he was talking to me.

I went and fetched a rag from below stairs and took it up to the room. The bird was hanging limp on its string. I untied it from the rafter and wrapped it in the cloth. It seemed to weigh nothing at all in my hands. I brought the tiny bundle downstairs and out of the house, leaving it in the courtyard for Aunty Merryn’s stinking cat to maul, before returning to my station on the stairs.

The foreigner was telling the doctor about his ailments. ‘I thought I had passed from this world into another,’ he said. ‘I was tied on some great wheel and flying demons like Furies pushed hot pokers between my ribs. Their huge wings rustled in the darkness and brushed against me.’

‘You have been in a violent delirium brought on by the fever, that’s all,’ Dr Vyvyan replied. ‘There is congestion in the right lung, but the other appears to be clear, which is very fortunate for us. You have pneumonia, I would say. You caught a chill in the sea that made you susceptible to the infection which was carried on the unhealthy vapours of this cove.’ He cleared his throat. ‘May I speak plainly?’

‘You may.’

‘Well then, as soon as I heard about your reckless voyage and miraculous rescue, I cancelled my appointments, at no little inconvenience, and made arrangements to travel here.’

‘I am eternally indebted to you.’

‘As a Penwith man, I know the necessity of hiring a pilot born and bred in this accursed cove to mitigate the hazards. The very reason why this village is so isolated and barbarous is the cove’s unsuitability as a harbour.’

‘I have learned as much, to my cost.’

‘Your tour of benevolence has put your wife under considerable strain, and as you know I hold her in the highest esteem. If I may venture an opinion, your Bible thumping and extravagant religiosity are not the medicine these poor souls need. What is required is a dose of moral reform, attached to material help.’ The doctor’s tone changed as he called out in a loud voice, ‘You can come in now, madam, from wherever you’re lurking.’

It vexed me that he knew I’d been eavesdropping on them, and I didn’t like the way he spoke to me. Especially given that it was me who had saved his patient and not his stupid trumpet. I took a deep breath to cool my temper and stepped back into the room.

‘I am afraid we’re going to have to impose on your hospitality for another couple of days,’ Dr Vyvyan said. ‘I will leave money so you can pay for any purchases you make on my patient’s behalf. A warm meal wouldn’t go amiss. I’ll return in two days, weather permitting, and I’m hopeful I’ll be able to take Mr Stone off your hands and return him to his wife in Newlyn. But before I go, I think I should take a look at that bruise of yours.’

‘Don’t trouble yourself,’ I said, turning to leave the room.

‘Did you hear that?’ the doctor said to the foreigner. ‘Impertinent creature!’

I rushed back from the Widow Chegwidden’s with more herbs for the foreigner, running straight up the stairs. But when I went into the room I found the bed was empty, only the old creased sheet on the bed, the clothes I’d freshly laundered gone from the chair. The house was quiet and still, abandoned. I ran back down the stairs so quick I almost tumbled, saving myself with my hand on the damp wall.

I shook Mamm to wake her up. ‘Where is he, the foreigner?’

‘The foreigner? Oh, my pet, I told him he shouldn’t be up, he’s still bad.’ She tried to push herself out of her chair.

‘Did they come and take him away?’

‘Oh no, he came down stairs and took himself off.’

‘Where is he, Mamm? Which way did he go?’

‘He wants to try his strength, he says. “You sure you be strong enough?” I said. “Rest up another day. Let me fit you a cup of tea.” But no, he says. Can you believe that – no to a cup of tea? Why, tisn’t in a man’s nature to go without tea!’

‘Which way, Mamm?’

‘Down the lane, I should think. He dursn’t try going uphill in his state.’

I ran across the courtyard, through the alley and onto Downlong Row. It was fearful close, that morning, with lazy clouds of flies hovering over the fish slurry in the gulley down the lane. I was glad to get to the quay where some little breeze blew off the sea, and that’s where I caught up with the foreigner. He leant against a granite mooring post covered in slimy green moss. His face shone with sweat, and his breathing was fast and shallow. He looked up at me and I was sorry I hadn’t tidied up my hair before rushing out. I put the pin in my mouth for a moment, while I pushed the tangled locks into place as best I could.

‘You are better?’ I asked, cross with him for running off like that in his state.

I glanced up at the quay and saw the giant Pentecost having a smoke with Jake Spargo, Ethan Carbis and Davey Combelleck. Knowing they were watching me, I kept clear of the foreigner and leant against the next post along from him, my arms folded.

‘I’m glad we have met,’ the foreigner said. ‘I wanted to speak with you. I owe you a profound debt of gratitude that I can’t hope to ever repay. I believe it was you who hauled me out of the sea. You cannot have achieved my rescue without putting yourself at considerable risk. I will not forget that. But you needn’t let me keep you from your work.’

‘Where was you heading when you nearly drowned yourself?’ I said.

‘I was coming here. I wanted to see this benighted cove with my own eyes. Porthmorvoren has achieved considerable notoriety of late.’

‘Porthmorvoren?’

‘This is Porthmorvoren, is it not? Or have I washed ashore in another village by mistake?’

‘You can call it that, if you please.’

‘Don’t you call it that?’

I shook my head.

‘Then I really am in the wrong village.’

‘You be in the right place. This be Porthmorvoren, right enough, though I ain’t heard no soul hereabouts call it that in years.’

‘You must call your village something?’

‘Hereabouts. That’s all the name we need.’

‘I see. And every place else is thereabouts, I suppose. Or uplong?’

‘Uplong, that be about right,’ I said. ‘Scarcely another village lies between here and the Land’s End.’

‘It’s the ends of the earth, then. It truly is,’ he said. ‘A place where demons lurk in the currents of the harbour, where the inhabitants continue to trust in savage pagan nostrums such as plucked birds strung up in sick rooms.’ He looked at me closely, so I turned away. ‘And, above all, this is the home of the dreaded Porthmorvoren Cannibal.’

‘Cannibal! What say you?’

‘Have newspapers still to reach this shore? All of Penwith is talking about the depraved fiend who chewed off a lady’s ears to steal her earrings.’

A hot, prickly flush came over me. I knew what this man would have to say if he’d known I’d filched the boots from this very same woman as she lay dead on the strand. To hide my face, I took off across the shingle. I picked up a pebble, looking it over as if to make sure it was smooth and flat. Then I leant back and sent the stone skimming across the water. It bounced half a dozen times before it sank. I wiped my hands on my apron, and went and leant against another post, further away this time.

‘You’re worried about those men,’ he said, glancing up at them. I said naught. ‘Good Samaritan that you are, you took it upon yourself to help me. But it concerns me that this good deed could be misunderstood by your neighbours.’

‘The doctor said you be one of they Methodies?’

‘I am a Methodist minister, indeed.’ His chin fell, and his legs looked like they might go from under him. I moved to help him but remembered the men up on the quay and held back.

‘’Twill take more than a Methody to stop the men round here from drinking and cock fighting and stanking on their wives,’ I said, low enough that Pentecost and his mates wouldn’t hear. ‘We had a Methody here once before, but he ran off. I weren’t no more nor a child. He wanted to build a chapel but left it half-finished at the top of the hill. The air in these parts don’t suit all constitutions.’

The foreigner pushed himself away from the post and squinted up the hill. ‘A chapel, you say? I should like to see that.’

‘You’re weak still, and the lane is steep.’

‘Calvary hill was steep too, no doubt,’ he muttered to himself. He turned to me. ‘Can I trouble you to show me the way to the chapel? Perhaps the air in this cove will suit my constitution better than it did the previous minister’s.’

5

I knew the foreigner would be back. He came roundabout Lady Day, when the green catkins dangled from the branches and the magnolia blooms opened to bask in the sunlight. A season when even a foreigner was capable of finding the winding livestock track on the moor that leads to the cove. The mating season was upon us, and the gulls mounted each other on the harbour walls. Likewise, the women of Porthmorvoren fussed about the tall dark stranger in their midst. Work began anew on the chapel after more than ten years, and the sounds of hammering and sawing filled the air. Boatloads of bricks were brought into the harbour, and women carried baskets of pebbles up from the strand for the mortar.

Since the first minister had taken sick and fled the cove ten years ago, the bettermost and a few others had kept the faith, but most had gone back to their old ways. Before he went, the old minister had got Aunt Madgie to set up a Sunday school and that was when I learnt to read. The school came to an end, but we still had a Bible in our home and I’d spent many a summer evening reading the wondrous tales in those pages.

Now we were to have a new minister. Meetings were held in Grace Skewes’ house, and the bettermost were paying towards the works on the chapel. I had no part to play in any of this. It seemed that even though Gideon owed his life to me, I was cast out into darkness. But what was I to do? We Blights could hardly pay towards his chapel – we had barely enough money to feed ourselves. And what else had I to offer?

The first prayer meeting was held one night in an abandoned storeroom down by the quay. That night, when I set off down the lane, Tegen chased me and tried to hold me back. ‘If you go into that place tonight, it will remind all and sundry that we took that man into our house. To think of it – two unwed women! At least wait until the next meeting.’

‘Let them talk,’ I said, freeing my arm of her grip.

She lowered her voice. ‘Loveday’s already after your blood. You know Johnenry jilted her after that night when you and he . . .’

‘Loveday can go hang.’

‘I’m telling you to stay at home for your own sake.’

‘No, you ain’t. You’re frightened of what folk might say about us.’

‘Oh, how can I talk some sense into you? Your head’s been turned by this fellow and it can only go to the bad.’

We came to a standstill and stood in the lane a moment, face to face. ‘Stay at home, Teg, if that’s what you want, but I’m going along tonight. Nothing like this have ever happened in the village, and I ain’t missing out just to keep Loveday Skewes happy.’ I went on down the lane.

‘If you mean to go there in spite of all, then I’m coming too,’ she said, catching up with me.

A minute later, we’d reached the old storeroom. We stepped into the dark and were almost deafened by the clamour of women’s voices. They were packed in like pilchards in a basket and I feared we would never find a place. The only light was the bilious glow of the smoking tapers hanging on the walls all around the barn. The pews were no more than planks laid across tubs, with a rough pulpit at the front and a makeshift Communion rail. On the men’s side, no more than half a dozen fellows had come. I elbowed Tegen in the ribs to get her to look at old Thomas, who was kneeling on his handkerchief in a great show of sanctity, his hands clutched under his chin in prayer.

I knew without needing to look that heads were turning towards me. The pecking order was clear enough, with Millie Hicks and Grace Skewes in the front row and Loveday Skewes sitting primly alongside her mother in a brand-new bonnet of virginal white. Soon enough, a hush came over us and down the aisle marched Gideon in his black greatcoat. I only dared glimpse as he swept past, nodding at one or two hearers who caught his eye. All that could be heard were his footsteps on the mud, the hiss of the tapers and the odd creak of a bench. He stepped up to the pulpit and fiddled with his papers, bowing his head in silent prayer before resting his forehead on a huge Bible. I saw that the Ten Commandments had been pinned to the wall behind him. Eventually he lifted his head and put his hands before him as if groping for some hidden object in the air. His shoulders shook with strong emotion. I glanced at the women down my row and saw a row of mouths hanging open.

Gideon began his prayer, his voice deep, his words filling the space up to the rafters. I took in hardly a word of it as my gaze was fixed on his flailing hands, which told me more of his passion than the dour words flying from his lips. When he was done praying, he took up a great hymn book and drew it towards him. He called out the hymn number and asked for Sister Skewes to come forward and line out the verses. Loveday Skewes stepped meek as a lamb up to the pulpit. This was the same Loveday who liked to blacken my name at every chance. There she stood, angelic, with her flaxen curls teased forward so they wriggled out from under her new bonnet. Being a dainty little thing, all that could be seen of her behind the lectern was the top of that white bonnet bobbing up and down. I noticed the minx wasn’t so worldly as to wear bows of ribbons in it.

She read aloud the first two lines, tripping over every word, for the sake of them who weren’t able to read. This was the greater number of the hearers, although they tried to hide it by gazing at the roll of paper over the Communion rail where the words were shown. The minister tapped a tuning fork against the pulpit and it hummed for a moment before Loveday led the singing. She soon went off key, so that those of us with a better ear were left to steer the tune back to the proper pitch. The hymn spoke of God’s mercy but any who heard it were like to abandon all hope, with its endless shambling repeats, and wailing, and the lack of aught you would take for a tune. How I longed to let my voice surge above the throng, to adorn those dismal verses with a few pretty lilts. To make matters worse, the congregation had to halt after every two lines while Sister Skewes, in her brazen little bonnet, stuttered out the next couple of lines.

When we were at last put out of our misery, the minister opened the Holy Book and began a reading on the Prodigal Son. His dark fringe fell over his face whenever he grew passionate, and he swept it back with his beautiful hand. Every woman’s rapt gaze was on the handsome stranger. I was afraid of catching his eye so I cast my gaze about until it alighted on the seamstress and scandal-monger, Millie Hicks, who sat on the end of the front row. She’d turned aside to face the pulpit, and I could see the garment spread over her lap, and how she set the stitches in it, turning the fray under her thumb as she made a seam of perfect straightness. When she heard that the Prodigal Son had realised the error of his ways, she shouted ‘Hallelujah!’ without missing a stitch.

When, at last, the sermon was done, the fattened calf slaughtered and the Prodigal Son back at his father’s breast, the preacher invited others to exhort, to unburden their souls of whatever pressed heavily upon them. The first to stand was Abraham Isbell, who said that now he was under conviction he was so taken up with worship that he no longer had time to do any work. The minister got out of him that he had a family of twelve to feed, and advised him to temper his enthusiasm with due paternal duty. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in stifling a laugh. Abe had always been an idle gadabout.

I was itching to get up and speak, but Tegen took hold of my arm. ‘Don’t you dare, now,’ she whispered.

The next to testify was that old windbag, Henry Cutler, who all dreaded meeting in the lane for fear they would never make it home in time for dinner. He told of how he had awoken with a sudden conviction of his own sin. It happened about eleven o’clock at night on 1st April, and he would never forget that happy hour. By quarter past the hour he had gained a fearful understanding of the damning nature of sin and his many slights against God and was surprised the earth did not open up and swallow him. Alongside me, Tegen put her hand over her mouth to hide her yawn, and it must have been catching because half the women on the bench did the same.

Henry droned on. The following day, he said, he wrestled with his soul from the moment he rose and knelt to pray, at just after five in the morning until dusk at just before seven-thirty. He pondered the Redeemer’s merits and saw that he must be eternally undone unless he took them to his heart, and this could only be obtained by faith in Christ. At about nine o’clock last night, Christ appeared within him and pardoned every last one of his sins, so that now he stood before us, his soul at liberty. He spoke of a great many other trifling matters besides, and each one was marked by the time of day or night that it took place as if he were more clock than man. Next the foolish dolt set about confessing each and every private shame he could recall, including at least one that did not bear repeating in mixed company. I would have died sooner than reveal the least of my own secret vices.

‘Glory, glory, glory!’ shouted old Thomas, whose knees must have been on fire by now after kneeling so long on his handkerchief.

Next to speak was dear old Aunty Merryn. She told the minister she had been in the world sixty-two years last Michaelmas and had never yet been saved. Having left it so long, she was now afeard the Redeemer would not hearken to her.

‘It is never too late to petition for the Lord’s mercy, sister, if we have faith and are fervent in prayer,’ said the minister, looking down on her in a kindly way. He told her to consider the Prodigal Son’s example. Any fool could see the old woman was afraid of dying, and only trying to comfort herself by pretending to a faith in her Saviour she did not feel in her heart. It seemed to me that the Prodigal Son was a bad example to some, for he was sure to embolden the blackest of sinners to try to make up for a lifetime’s sin by repenting at their last breath.

But I was shocked out of this reverie by the sound of hands clapping and looked up to see Abe standing on the bench with his arms raised. He had completely forgotten himself in the emotion of it all, and I had to hold onto the bench for fear of the madness taking hold of me too. Others were standing and hugging their neighbours, or shaking hands, even with their worst enemies.

The minister began his sermon, recounting in pitiful terms the great sacrifice our Redeemer had made for our salvation, coming down from his heavenly throne and letting himself be denounced, spat on, mocked with a crown of thorns, beaten senseless with a knotted rope and finally, when the human frame could surely withstand no more, nailed by his hands and feet to a cross on Calvary Hill to slowly die in agony. Every hearer was sniffling and wiping their eyes by the time he was done, grown men included. Next, the minister rounded on all of us, as if we’d been there in the crowd that called for Barabbas to be freed instead of the Jesu. He asked how we had repaid Christ’s sufferings. Nobody dared to raise their head and answer him. The minister denounced the pleasures of this world, sports, revels, idle songs, card playing and dancing, in other words every little comfort that made life bearable. His creed was as hard as the bench on which I sat and the longer he went on the harder the wood ground into the bones of my backside, which no amount of squirming could relieve. I saw then why some of the bettermost had brought cushions with them. On and on the minister went, renouncing gambling, games, fairs, drunkenness, tea drinking, tobacco, wrestling, fornication and failure to observe the Sabbath. It seemed he’d learnt a lot about us in his short visit here.

Finally, he stopped for a long moment, his head bowed, his chest heaving. I watched as a drop of sweat rolled from the tip of his fine straight nose and fell onto the Bible that lay before him. We all trembled, thinking he might point the finger of blame right at us, or that he had found out our inmost secret shame.

‘Now I come to the heart of the matter,’ he said, looking out at his hearers. ‘The very reason why I have come here to found a chapel in this cove.’ He brandished a newspaper over his head, the Sherborne Mercury, before throwing it down on the lectern. ‘This journal carries an account of the infamous crimes committed in this cove after the sinking of The Constant Service, just a few weeks ago.’ I glanced around and saw the heads of my neighbours hanging in shame. ‘As a result of the depravity and lawlessness of that night, the name of Porthmorvoren is now reviled throughout this land. And there is one heinous act which has come to represent the darkest depths of human nature, when greed prevails over all sense of decency. Do you know that of which I speak?’

I was rigid, afraid any movement might give me away.

‘Perhaps the individual responsible is among us today?’ said the minister.

I knew he was talking of the stolen earrings, and all for that I was blameless of the crime, I broke into a prickly sweat. I was thankful Aunt Madgie was not in the congregation that night and able to turn on me with accusing eyes.

‘Let me refresh your memory by reading from the newspaper’s editorial page: Yet even the depredations so far described are as nothing in comparison to the actions of the aptly named “Porthmorvoren Cannibal”, a wretch who violated the corpse of Lady S— in order to steal trinkets whose value the vicious culprit could hardly have appreciated. Let me tell you, brothers and sisters, that it was this outrage that convinced me I must visit this outpost of civilisation and see what could be done to bring you under conviction. My intention is to finish the build of the chapel on the hill above the village. Together, we will light a beacon of hope where before there has been darkness. You are all God’s children, even the most prodigal amongst you. You have been neglected too long. If you repent and submit to the holy fire your sins will be forgiven when you stand before the Throne of Mercy. I promise you I will work with every fibre of my being to uproot your age-old customs and plant the Holy Cross in this stony ground.

‘It is late. When next we meet I will tell you about Perfect Love. About the joys that await you in the next life if you turn away from sin in this one and open your hearts to salvation. Now, who among you will offer a last prayer this night?’

Without thinking, I drew myself up from my knees onto my feet. Tegen’s hand flew up and clutched my skirts to hold me back, almost sending me headlong into the row in front of us. Every face turned towards me, some with puzzlement and some with disbelief, others with purest outrage. What made me do it? Fear of hellfire or something else? I was so scared I could hardly draw breath. I had a queer urge to burst out laughing, but was able to check myself, thank the Lord. Some strange litany I had read, or overheard or perhaps only imagined, floated into my mind and I spoke out.

‘Good Lord, deliver us by Thine agony and bloody sweat, by Thy cross and passion.’ My voice gathered its usual force. ‘By the crown of thorns piercing Thy brow . . .’ I swallowed and looked right at the minister while he glowered at me in such a manner that my knees trembled under my skirts. It was so silent that when a hearer coughed it sounded like a thunder clap. ‘Dear Jesus, when I come before Thee in the final hour, if it please Thee, Heavenly Father, pray do let me know it is truly Thyself, perhaps by a sign . . .’ I’d lost my way, of course, but there was no turning back. ‘Maybe by the nail prints in Thy hands, so that . . .’ I lost my thread and stood there, seeing the open mouths of Grace Skewes and Loveday, and a whole row of other foes who had turned their heads to gawp at me. Loveday’s mate Betsy Stoddern stared at me with bulging eyes as if it was all she could do to stop herself marching over and giving me a smack in the mouth right there and then.

‘I offer up this prayer to thee, my . . . my . . .’ I couldn’t find the right word.

‘My Saviour,’ Tegen hissed, at my side.

‘My Saviour,’ I said, and dropped onto the bench with a muttered ‘Amen’.

Murmurs of outrage passed along the front row where the bettermost sat, and then there was a coarse shout behind me. It was the voice of Nancy Spargo.

‘Praise be to God!’ she hollered, and suddenly the air was full of cries of ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘Amen to that’. I was saved.

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