Coromandel! (8 page)

Pennel church clock clanged loud and close, the cracked bell notes shaking the glass panes in the window and thudding to silence among the leather books. Jason started and stared nervously around him. What was he doing here? Jane Pennel.

The back of the chair was damp where he had been sitting in his wet jerkin. He slipped out of the room, taking the book with him. He crept up the wide staircase. The third door on the left. He made a little scratching on it with his fingernail and waited. He heard a stir in the room and stepped to one side, in case it might after all be the wrong room that he had come to. The door opened an inch and, used now to the dark--ness, he saw a slice of Jane’s face. She opened the door, let him in, and shut it quickly behind him.

She whispered, ‘Where have you been? Why are you so late?’

He said, ‘I was looking at this book, Jane. It’s full of pictures. Look.’ He opened the book at random and said excitedly, ‘Look at that!’

She whispered furiously, ‘I don’t want to look at pictures. You gave me a terrible fright!’ She was trembling as she stood beside him. He began to explain that the book was like a key to heaven, but she said, ‘You’re wet. You smell of cow dung.’

Jason sniffed carefully. He did smell strong. The rain always did that, and the smell seemed even more powerful in this faintly scented bedroom. He took her in his arms and kissed her. That was what she had wanted most from him, ever since the Oak and Horn. She was dressed only in her shift, and she pressed her spiced mouth against his. He opened his eyes to look past her head through the window as they kissed. The first leaves were beginning to fall; they looked like flying tiny ships of air as they sailed down in the light of the outside lantern. He ought to have told Mary he couldn’t marry her; but he hadn’t seen her since the harvest fair.

He stood back from the girl and whispered, ‘Jane, we must go away. We’ll go to Aleppo and see all the animals in the book.’ He picked up the book and opened it.

For a moment she stood watching his face. Already he was absorbed in the book, and she standing here in her shift trembling for him--and she her father’s only daughter. And he--he did smell of cow dung. But she ought not to have said that just now. It was cruel. He couldn’t help it. She couldn’t help what she was doing, either, because his eyes sparkled when he looked at her, and she had felt the same helpless weakness years ago when she was only a little girl and hadn’t then really known the difference between a Pennel and a Savage. So because he had been her first love then, and she had not dared to tell him, she was here and he was here.

She was wicked, and Hugo would kill her if he knew. But Jason would protect her. He had a short knife, and his arms were sinewy and sunburned. The line of his jaw lay hard against the light from outside.

She took the book gently out of his hands and put it down on the bed behind her. She sat down on the edge of the bed and, as he turned, put up her arms and her face to him and closed her eyes.

She felt his breath by her ear, and then his whisper. ‘Will you marry me, Jane? If you will, we’ll go away, and then we can discover everything together.’

Not now, not now, don’t talk of it now when I am helpless, because now I must listen lovingly to everything you say, and it seems good and wonderful, but I know it isn’t. Talk of it later, when this is done and you have assuaged me, and then I will know it is madness and I will tell you again that you smell of the farm.

She whispered, ‘Jason, Jason!’

He forced her gently back on the bed, and she sighed, but he sat down beside her and said again, ‘Will you marry me, Jane? We’ll find men who know the way, and we’ll go with them to Coromandel. Old Voy told me that’s the best thing to do. I will make you happy all your life if you will.’

The dim yellow light, diffuse and rain-blurred, washed his dark face as he leaned over her. He said quietly, ‘It’s no use just lying together every time you want to forget that I am a farmer’s son, dear Jane. Do you love me, Jane?’

Because he had held off she was helpless against the truth. She did love him, but, oh, it was wicked and impossible. She muttered, ‘I do love you, Jason.’

She heard her own words and faced them. The memory of every time she had ever seen him came upon her, all at once and together, and swept aside the obstinate remnants of her pride. If her father could be made to agree to the marriage he would give them land and send them to London for Jason to be made into a gentleman. Hugo would be furious--but she didn’t like Hugo. She was afraid of him, that was all.

She said, ‘I’ll marry you, if my father will agree.’

She felt herself shaking with relief and anxiety. She had found the truth at last, and now it became the most important thing in the world that Jason should agree and somehow find a way to make her father agree.

Ah, she could have married anyone, but she would marry Jason. They couldn’t live in Wiltshire, but her father owned land in Dorset too. They would go there when Jason had learned to be a squire. He’d be a small farmer-squire, like Master Yeoford and Master Ingle here in the Vale. It would be all right, and she and he would He had gone limp beside her, and a sudden access of panic sent her arm jerking out to seize his elbow. ‘What is it, what’s the matter?’

Surely he couldn’t refuse now, to go and follow his crazy dreams, his mad books. He only wanted to go away because he was not treated as he deserved, but that would all change when he was a squire in Dorset. What more would he want or expect?

‘What is it?’ she whispered.

The door opened, and light flooded the room; light sparkled on the sheets and the high canopy and the red Turkey carpet and the stone walls, and on her clothes in the open wardrobe, and on the book beside her white legs. She rolled over and up with a cry, her hands pressed to her face. Jason jumped to his feet and turned. It was her brother Hugo.

Hugo put down his lantern on the table, and the light from it flashed down the long blade of the rapier in his hand. He was fully dressed--crumpled riding boots and spurs, silk breeches, red doublet, wide white ruff, his head bare, long hair wet on his shoulders, empty scabbard swinging against his legs as he stepped forward, the sword drawn back.

She cried, ‘Oh, no, Hugo, no! I love him. We’re going to be married!’

Her brother looked only at Jason and muttered, ‘You whoreson knave,’ and lunged out.

The rapier slid down the light, the sparks slid up the blade, and the point flickered past Jason’s side as he bent and jumped in. The men met, breast to breast, in the centre of her bedroom, their left hands locked above their heads, the rapier snaking back and back, but it was too long. She felt the night air cold in her teeth and saw the poacher’s knife in Jason’s hand, and saw it strike down into her brother’s back. Hugo’s eyes widened, and Jason caught him and eased him to the floor. What was the matter with him? But Jason’s hand glowed red as nightshade berries, and the blade of his knife dripped red on to the red carpet, and the pool of red widened under her brother’s back, and his eyes stared, amazed, at the carved ceiling.

Jason bent and put his hand on Hugo’s heart. He straightened up and said, ‘I’ve killed him.’ Then, slowly: ‘Better him than you. Did I have to kill him?’

He shut the door with care. She said, ‘Hugo, my brother.’ She knelt down and looked into his face, and put out her hand to touch him, but dared not. It was her fault too that he lay dead on her carpet, because she had been wicked enough to fall in love with Jason and to wish that Jason would protect her against Hugo’s anger.

She felt wild, deep breaths of air fighting down into her lungs, and the room and Jason’s face and Hugo’s dead eyes blurred together. Then Jason’s hands were on her wrists. He said, ‘Be still, darling Jane. We can reach my father’s farm in twenty minutes. Molly will help, and we can get the horses ready in ten more. By morning we can be past Salisbury if we ride hard. If you have any money, get it. Dress quickly, my dear love. We’ll take the first ship.’

How could he speak of that now? Everything was changed, and her hopes lying as dead as Hugo at her feet. She saw the poverty of Jason’s clothes, and behind him the silk dresses in her wardrobe. She blurted, ‘Jason, please, please don’t tell them I asked you here.’ She burst into a passion of tears.

She heard Jason speaking gently, insistently, to her, as though she were a child who had not understood. ‘We’re going to get married as soon as we can. But we must go away quickly now.’

Slowly she collected herself. Being almost numb with shock, she spoke her thoughts clearly and simply. She said, ‘I don’t want to go away with you. I love you, but I don’t want to live under a hedge all my life.’

Jason was silent for a long time, still holding her wrists.

There was blood on her now, but she could not pull her hand away. She watched him, and he seemed to be looking round her room--into the wardrobe, aglitter with the fold and drape of brocade; out of the window, where, hidden in the night, her father’s land lay wide under the rain. At last he said, ‘Would I give up this for Coromandel? When you said you’d marry me if your father agreed, I felt suddenly as though you’d given me a heavy weight to carry. Then Hugo came in--and I murdered him.’

She found her eyes fixed now on Hugo’s face. She said, ‘Not murder. He was trying to kill you.’

Jason said, ‘I could have disarmed him, wounded him. But I killed him--as I nearly killed you. So now I have to go. Am I mad to think it happened like that?’

She looked up, startled, and he said quickly, ‘Give me an hour. Then scream and tell them Hugo found me robbing your room. Tell them it was a fair fight, though.’

She felt his lips on her eyelids, then watched as he picked up the wonderful picture book, opened the door, and left her.

She sat down slowly on the bed and looked at her brother. Even now she could go with Jason into the rainy world if she had the courage. His eyes glowed before her, the fire of his strange enthusiasms warmed her, his lips searched hers. Even now . . . She rolled over on her face and began to cry deep in her chest--the tears of a woman, not of a girl.

Jason thought briefly of Hugo. He was sorry he had killed him, but the deed did not seem so terrible as the thought of Jane’s unhappiness. Had he caused that too? He could not think of it now.

He must go now to Mary, because she had been kind to him. He ran quickly down the lane beside the churchyard wall in the rain. He came to the Bowchers’ cottage, grasped the ivy firmly--on the left-hand side--and began to climb. He flung himself headlong across the gap, easily reached her window, and climbed in. He moved strongly and felt more alive than ever before. He had made no sound, and now he bent over the bed and shook her by the shoulder.

She awoke slowly, stertorously, unafraid. No one was going to harm her in her cottage, or ever had. She was different on the Plain or in an unknown place. Then she’d jump and scream if thistledown came on the wind to touch her cheek.

She said, ‘Who is it?’

‘Jason.’

She said, ‘Jason! You never said you were coming tonight.’

He said, ‘I’ve killed Hugo Pennel. They’ll be after me soon. I’m going to Coromandel. Will you come with me?’

After a time, when she sat quiet in the darkness, she said, ‘I can’t marry you now, Jason. I promised myself to George Denning--this very day. I Waited for you, and--I did right, didn’t I, Jason?’

Jason said, ‘Yes.’

She’d be happy. George Denning was a good man, a slow, bull-like fellow a year or two older than Jason. Everyone had thought Mary was surely going to marry him until she ran off after Jason. George had just waited.

She was sitting up in the little bed, and the warmth in her strong fingers steadied him. She said, ‘How will you get to-- that place?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but I will. I’ll go and ask Voy. He said I had to take a ship from London. I must go, Mary.’

She stood up and took him in her arms with an extra--ordinary strength of longing, and he hugged her in a passion of affection. ‘Good-bye,’ he muttered. ‘Remember me.’

He slipped over the sill and down the ivy. Looking up for the last time, he could see nothing in the dark and the rain, nothing at all.

He headed east, a little higher up the hill than would lead directly to the farm. Old Voy was living these days in Bellman’s Hollow, a clump of small firs that filled a round dip in the downward slope of the Plain.

At the edge of the wood Jason softly called Voy’s name. There was no light, no sound but the drip of the rain, and Jason had a sudden moment of panic lest Voy should not be here. He had to see Voy; Voy had sold him the map; Voy knew about ships and sailors and Aleppo and Rome. Without Voy’s help now, it was hopeless to think he could reach Coromandel.

But Voy answered quietly from close by, and they went together under the dripping boughs into the tiny shelter that Voy had made himself among the firs.

Jason said, ‘I was with Jane Pennel, and I killed Hugo. I’m going to Coromandel. You said the ships go to Coromandel from London. Tell me quick, where are the ships in London? How can I get passage on one, without money? I’m not a sailor.’

Voy was rummaging about in his larder. He lived like a shrike, and Jason knew there were bits of smoked ham there in the forks of the trees, and pigeons cooked in clay and left like that till wanted, and roasted rabbit legs skewered on sharp pine twigs.

‘Tell me,’ Jason repeated impatiently.

‘In a minute. Jason, are you sure you can’t stay here? Suppose that map was no good--through nobody’s fault, mind? Then you’d have no reason to go. Could you stay? And marry Jane? I saw you in the spinney with her Tuesday.’

For a moment Jason thought he should heed the hint in Old Voy’s voice and ask point-blank whether the map was true or false. It might still be just possible for him to go back and tell Sir Tristram the whole truth and perhaps marry Jane--but only if the beacon of Coromandel could go out for ever.

He said, ‘No, I can’t go back. I can’t stay. Tell me how I can find a ship in London.’

Old Voy said, ‘London, now? At the docks, boy. That’s where the ships are.’