The Twisted Sword (43 page)

Music and Katie went to church through a deserted village. No young men or girls waited by the wayside to douse them in liquid manure. They were married in an almost empty church, the only people present being Parson Odgers and Mrs Odgers to remind him not to read the burial service in error - Jinny and Whitehead Scoble, Dr Enys, Mrs Zacky Martin, Char Nanfan, and a half-dozen old women who were too infirm to rush down for the pickings in Nampara Cove. In the cove itself a fair element of chaos reigned, for the haul was bigger than it first seemed. A freak of tide had carried the cargo of the wrecked Kinseale out of Basset's Cove and deposited it several miles north. The way was narrow and people were trooping down and back, some with mules, some with wheelbarrows, some with boxes and sacks - anything that would carry or contain more than a pair of hands. Often they plunged into the water to grab some item of flotsam, often there were arguments, sometimes fights. Everybody came peaceable, but not everybody could contain their greed. After appropriating for himself two or three nice lengths of wood, Ross left the villagers and his farm labourers to it. Let them have their fun while the going was good. It was doubtful if Vercoe would have hastened to put in an appearance if he had been well; as he was not, there was no risk at all. Cuby went with Demelza and IsabellaRose to the edge of Damsel Point to watch. Just for half an hour there was the risk of the crowd getting out of control, but Ross said: 'Let them be. There's no liquor. They'll have cleared everything as clean as a whistle by nightfall.' And they had. Demelza wrinkled her nose at what she expected she would find trampled down in the muddy track of her special cove when she went to look in the morning. Meantime Music and Katie had returned to their cottage, changed out of their Sunday clothes and walked to Place House to resume their duties. Katie was normally a living-in maid, but as master and mistress were away had been given permission to sleep out for a few nights. So in due course, which was late in the afternoon, they returned to the cottage together, tramping unspeaking through the windy dark. An hour before they returned, unknown to them, the lads and girls, tired out with a day of collecting timber and pieces of panelling and rope ends and paint brushes and a roll of calico and a man's jacket and other odds and ends, had bethought themselves of their old malice and decided - coming giggling out of a kiddley that, well, they might just so well dump the pig shit as waste it, and they would be passing the cottage anyway on their way home. But they were thwarted by the startling and unexpected presence of Constable Vage, who happened to be taking a stroll in Grambler village at that time. It was the first time he had been in Grambler for a month. Ross, not being a magistrate, had no authority to call him out, but a discreet guinea sent over by Matthew Mark Martin had been enough, and he had whiled away the time talking and drinking with the Paynters until the drunken laughter of the lads alerted him afresh to Ross's request. So the happy couple slept undisturbed, Katie in the upstairs room once occupied by the three brothers, Music stretched out below in front of the dying fire. He was perfectly, perfectly happy. She was his wife. She was upstairs in his house, along of him. If it never came to no more than that, he would be content. If it someday came to the as-yet-unthinkable he would be enraptured. But for the time being he was perfectly, blissfully satisfied with the simple fact that they were wed. Beyond that his patience stretched away into the illimitable distance.

Chapter Two

Lady Harriet Warleggan was brought to bed on the evening of Wednesday, the 12th December, and her labour continued into the morning of the 13th. Things had not been easy between Harriet and George. Harriet was tetchy all the time, plagued by thoughts of the accident and made more angry by George's reactions to it. He seemed to take it as a breach of convention, even an insult to himself, that his wife and this upstart he disliked so much and whom Harriet well knew he disliked so much, who had been guilty of highway robbery against him - that they should have been defiantly and openly riding together; and that she had put their son at risk for the sake of some stupid and high-spirited gallop across hunting country ... It never quite emerged whether Harriet had challenged Stephen or Stephen Harriet, but there had been some sort of competitiveness involved, of that George was sure. And he was not at all certain that there had not been some sexual undertones. Indeed he had nurtured a number of suspicions ever since Harriet had virtually blackmailed him into withdrawing his bankruptcy notice. Her overt reason, because Clowance had rescued her dog, had never convinced George. Being a man who disliked dogs and only tolerated hounds because they contributed to a national sport, he was unable to fathom the feelings of a woman who felt as Harriet did. Stephen was a personable man - if you liked the braggart type - and he had made a fuss of Harriet. She clearly had a soft spot for him, and had blown up her obligation to Clowance to hide her real feelings. The fact that they had gone riding - galloping! - together was proof enough that something had been afoot. Well, serve them both right if he'd broken his damned back. It was a miracle that she hadn't fallen too and taken with her his hopes of an heir. George had mixed feelings about Stephen's death. It was good riddance, of course, and it wiped the slate clean. All the same it would have been better if he could have somehow been arrested for the crime he had committed and ended his life dangling from a noose. Now he had escaped. And with him had gone any hope there might have been of tracking down his two accomplices. The chapter was over and done with. Only Clowance was left on whom he might vent his spleen. But that George had no intention of doing. Ross Poldark was winged by the loss of his eldest son. His eldest daughter - yes, there was another one; that one with the raucous voice -- seemed bent on continuing to live in Penryn for the time being; and George thought he might well make some gesture to befriend her. Although she was a Poldark with her share of Poldark arrogance, he had always been attracted by her, ever since they had first met at Trenwith when she had wandered barefoot into the great hall, blatantly trespassing. Indeed it might be said that it was his encounter with the fresh young Clowance, carrying her bouquet of stolen foxgloves, which had first aroused him to recover his appreciation of women in general, a process which had led to his courtship of Lady Harriet Carter and their eventual marriage.

Of course, apart from a salacious look or two, George had not the least serious sexual intent towards the young widow; but if he did find a way of befriending her it would, he thought, make his old rival irritable and suspicious and might even raise a tremor of annoyance and jealousy in his own wife. During the period of waiting that dark December night George paced the wide drawing-room of Cardew and nursed his hopes and his grievances and listened for noises from upstairs. His latest grievance was but an hour old. When Dr Charteris had arrived to join Dr Behenna, who was already in attendance, George had gone into the bedroom with them for a moment or two. There had been sweat on his wife's brow, and the midwife was holding her hand. Looking up and seeing him, Harriet had said between her teeth: 'Get out of my sight!'

He had at once retreated, fuming at her rudeness. Very well, it was a painful business and women suffered a great deal and sometimes they were driven to unwarranted comment; and of course as a woman of blue blood Harriet was accustomed to expressing herself coarsely; but it was inexcusable for her to address him thus in front of both surgeons and the midwife! Over the years he had become a man of whom all those with whom he mixed were wary and respectful; even a man like Behenna, who was used to riding roughshod over his patients, deferred to Sir George. Only his wife, his lady wife, could ever have dared to speak to him in this way, and he felt insulted and demeaned by her.

He passed little Ursula's bedroom. Little Ursula was not there, being at school, and was no longer little, being a hefty, heavy-legged, tight-busted girl of sixteen. It had been her birthday last Sunday, and they had given her a party despite the imminence of her stepmother's 'time'. A select group, carefully chosen from among the best in the county; some had stayed overnight because of the distances involved. A pity Ursula was not a more becoming girl, with the blonde hair, frailty and long slender legs of her mother. Instead she was like her paternal grandmother in looks, and sadly looks counted for so much in a girl. She was a chip off the old Warleggan block. But fortunately not at all like her paternal grandmother in a practical or sagacious sense. George's mother, born a miller's daughter with simple beliefs and a country understanding, had never quite moved into the world of opulence her husband had made for her, had always preferred making jam and baking bread to riding in a carriage with two postilions or entertaining on a grand scale. Such matters would not be likely to worry Ursula. If not intellectual - and who wanted her to be? - she was sharply intelligent and fascinated by commerce and money. An ideal child from George's point of view, if only she had been a son. And, being a girl, it were better had she been more prepossessing. All the same, he thought, it would really only be a matter of arrangement when the time came. An heiress would have plenty of suitors. It would be a question of his picking the right one; they'd all fall over themselves. It did not occur to him to recap that the one chink in his own personal chain-armour of self-help had been his weakness for a pretty face. Yet he expected that Ursula would find the ideal husband chiefly on the strength of an enormous dowry, just as he had expected his son to match with a Trevanion in order to secure the land and the castle. And there had certainly been no lack of looks on the Trevanion side! Instead Valentine had maliciously and wantonly married a pretty widow ten years older than himself without his father's knowledge or consent. George had made sure that not a penny of his money or property should ever go to Valentine. He had written him out of his will and out of his life. Now, upstairs at this moment, another life was beginning and if, pray God, it was a son he could begin to reshape his plans all over again. Indeed he had already begun to reshape them. The boy should be called Nicholas after his father. Then he could be called anything Harriet fancied, some favourite family name of her own. Perhaps Thomas, after the first Duke. Nicholas Thomas Osborne Warleggan, that would do well enough. The house was dark and cold at 2.15 on a December morning. Fires roared upstairs, especially in The Room, and fires roared downstairs, but the house was still draughty; if you crouched within the periphery of one of the fires it was warm enough, even scorching. But if you were too tensed up to remain in one position for any length of time you quickly became aware of the draughts and the dark. Even the candles guttered. It was a time of night when spirits were low and human nature at its lowest ebb. As he paced about, George recollected that when he had last been in this situation, in December '99, both his own parents had been alive and both Elizabeth's. Now all were gone. Sixteen years spanned so much of his own life, which was fast slipping away. He would soon be fifty-seven. Many men died at such an age. He was filled with a sense of the impermanence of life, with a premonition of disaster. Trenwith was no longer his, had gone back to the Poldarks. This great house which he had bought and repaired and refurnished and extended a quarter of a century ago was now the centre of his life. How long would it remain in Warleggan hands after he was gone? The renegade Valentine was established on the north coast with his own rich widow and his two stepdaughters. Ursula might marry and live here. Perhaps, who knew, if he found the right sort of husband for her, he could persuade the young man for a consideration to take not only the Warleggan daughter but the Warleggan name. But all that would be unnecessary if Harriet tonight produced a healthy son. A Warleggan who could come into everything he did not set expressly aside for Ursula, and who would, in addition to being the son of Sir George Warleggan, be also a grandson of the Duke of Leeds! It was a dazzling prospect. True, by the time he was eighteen he, George, would be seventy-five. But - rejecting the dark thoughts of a moment ago - he recalled that the Warleggans were a long-lived family; both his parents had been around eighty, and old Uncle Cary at seventy-six showed no signs at all of closing his last ledger. Tock-tock went the clock in the hall. It wanted twenty minutes to three. This damned waiting seemed worse even than last time. Elizabeth had never been in labour long. That had never been the trouble. Harriet of course was thirty-four. It was late for a first child. How old had Elizabeth been when she bore Ursula? He could not remember. Thirty-five, was it? But Ursula had been her third.

The candles bobbed and ducked like courtiers. It was a fine night but windy, a big cold empty night with a scattering of stars among the clouds. Half his staff was abed, but the other half was alert for the slightest pull of a bell. At the moment Nankivell was making up the fires.

'Sur, can I get you something?'

'No.' He had drunk enough brandy, and there was a half-glass unfinished on the end of the mantelshelf. He sat down at his desk, took some papers out of a drawer and irritably pulled a candelabrum nearer so that he could see. It was on a matter to do with his pocket borough of St Michael. Years ago he had reduced the number of voters in the borough from forty to thirty by the simple but drastic expedient of moving ten of them out of their derelict cottages and rehousing them two miles away in much better property which he had had restored especially to receive them. They could not plead hardship, since their new housing was much better than the old; but they were deprived of their sinecure living by no longer having to be bribed to vote. Their vote was gone, and so was their means of sustenance. As George had dryly observed at the time, some of them might even have to work. Since then gradually over the years the remaining number had been reduced to twenty-five, of whom six were members of one family. Mr Tankard, George's legal steward, had called in at the beginning of the month to say that this family was now applying for a loan of three hundred pounds. It was supposed to be to erect a bakery, but everyone knew it was intended to tide them over until the next election, when they would expect the loan to be conveniently forgotten. George had no intention of submitting to this blackmail, in spite of the advice of his friend Sir Christopher Hawkins that he should do so. Hawkins had said: 'It is the price you pay, my friend. Think nothing of it. Think rather of the benefits of having two members in the House to do your bidding.' But George would have none of it. He was not to be held to ransom by a festering family of down-at-heel good-for-nothings, and he was determined to make them pay for their insolence. He felt very strongly about it, and this was why he had dragged out the correspondence, with Tankard's notes, tonight. If anything would take his mind off events upstairs . . . He pored over it for a minute or so, fumbling for his glasses and feeling the stirrings of old anger; but then he flung the papers down and got to his feet. Even this-- And then he heard a sound, it was a terrible sound, like a wail, like a howl, almost more animal than human. Sweat broke out on him. Supposing Harriet were to die. That would not matter quite so much if the boy lived. But they might both die. George found himself confronting a great loneliness which opened up before him like a mining adit. In spite of Harriet's infuriating habits she was a remarkable personality, whose very abrasiveness he would bitterly miss. And if the child were to go ... He strode out into the hall and stopped to listen. All was silent now. A log of wood crashed in the hearth and the resultant flames lit up the sombre room where many times there had been so much gaiety and light. Where Harriet and Valentine had organized that great party to celebrate Napoleon's retreat from Moscow; where only a few days ago Ursula's friends-- The same sound again but more muffled. He took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow, started up the stairs toward the sound, then stopped, puzzled, angry, horrified, his heart thumping. A groom crossed the hall, seemed to be coming this way.

'Smallwood.'

'Sur?'

'Where are you going?'

'Up the stairs, sur, beggin' your permission. Lady Harriet said as I was--'

'Never mind what she said, you've no damned business above stairs.'

'No, sur. It was just that she did say I was to look to--'

That terrible sound again, loud now. George's hair prickled.

'Get out!' he snarled.

'Yes, sur. I just had the thought that the dogs making that noise might be disturbing to her ladyship--'

'Dogs? What dogs?'

'Castor and Pollux, sur. Her ladyship give me orders that they was to be lodged in the blue bedroom while she was - while she was in labour, as you might say. Her ladyship didn't wish for them to be roaming the 'ouse while she was poorly and she thought they'd be best out of your - out of the way. I was to lock them in the blue bedroom and see they was kept fed and watered. That is why I was venturing--'

'That noise, that howling,' George said. 'It was the dogs howling?'

'Yes, sur. I thought I'd just go see--'

'Go and see to them!' George shouted. 'Stop their damned mouths, stop their throats even if you have to cut them! Give them poison so long as you keep them quiet!'

'Yes, sur.' In fright Smallwood slid past his master and rushed stumbling up the rest of the stairs, then with anxious backward glances retreated down the passage towards the blue bedroom. George went back slowly down, breathing out rage and relief, and more indignation with every breath. An outrageous thing to happen! Putting the dogs in a bedroom! He'd wondered where they had gone to - how typical of Harriet's arrogance and thoughtlessness for him! He would tell her exactly how he viewed such a ridiculous act. Almighty God, for a moment - for some minutes - he had thought, he had feared ... A step behind him. He swung round. Dr Behenna. Sleeves rolled up. Black waistcoat with gold chain. Grey hair en brosse. A silly look on his face.

'Well?'

'I am happy to tell you that her ladyship has been safely delivered of twins.'

'Whatd'yousay?'

'I had thought this likely since before ten o'clock last evening, but did not wish to raise your hopes. Mother and babies are all doing well. There have been no complications. My sincere congratulations, Sir George.'

George stared at the doctor with astonishment and such a concentration of anxiety and anger as to disconcert him.

'The second child is slightly smaller but in excellent condition,' Behenna hastened on. 'She was born half an hour after her sister.'

'Sister? said George. "You mean .. .?'

'You have two fine daughters, Sir George. I am sure you will be vastly proud of them. Lady Harriet has been very brave, and I will give her a further opiate as soon as you have seen them.'