Wrecker Page 24

  The one who spoke for Gideon, shouted back in a deep and fruity voice, ‘This will be a Lovefeast you won’t forget, I promise you, Sister.’ Then Gideon began chasing ‘Mary’ up and down the quay, while she squealed or beckoned him with a sultry moan. The drunken crowd laughed their heads off, among them the ruffians who spent their time loafing in the kiddlywink, and the miners from Uplong and their wives, and some of the children I used to teach the gospels to. High up on its pole, my effigy leapt to escape the hand of Gideon groping for her rump, and every time he managed to touch her there was a trumpet blast.

  Nancy Spargo stepped into the place cleared for the players, her plump arms swinging at her sides. She berated the crowd. ‘What are you devils doing by the woman?’ she bawled.

  ‘What’s the matter with you, missus, get away with you,’ a ruffian shouted at her.

  ‘Look at the poor soul!’ said Nancy, pointing at me. ‘You may depend she got trouble enough to bear already. ’Tisn’t for we to punish her.’ The mob jeered, but Nancy took no heed, tramping over to me to help me off the cart. When my feet touched the ground, my legs trembled so much I could hardly stand, but Nancy held me in her arms.

  Just then I heard Tegen’s voice. ‘This isn’t justice,’ she was yelling. ‘You should know better. Where is your Christian mercy?’

  ‘Hark at her, little Tegen Blight,’ someone shouted, and the rest jeered or bellowed with laughter.

  Hearing my sister’s voice, I searched her out among the people surrounding the Mummers and soon saw her weaving her way through the crowd towards me. When she reached me I fell into her arms. All was forgiven between us without a word needed. We held each other close for a long moment but – too soon – Betsty Stoddern pulled us apart.

  ‘You two can pet each other later. We ain’t finished here yet.’

  ‘You have no right to treat my sister this way, as God’s in Heaven,’ said Tegen, standing between me and Betsy.

  ‘This be how we do things hereabouts, and always has done,’ said Betsy. ‘It’s meant. She’ll get a little fright and mend her ways. Now, you run off home, Tegen, if you ain’t got the stomach for it.’

  ‘You’re not getting away with this, Betsy, you big ape!’ cried another voice. It was Cissie Olds. She had several other women alongside her.

  ‘It’s all out of envy of Mary,’ said Cissie to Betsy. ‘Where is that Loveday? Come on, step out here, Loveday Skewes, and stand up for yourself this once.’

  I realised the Mummers had put a stop to their play, and all eyes were on us. There was a flurry of jostling as the mob turned to one another to ask about Loveday’s whereabouts. In a moment, someone flushed her out from where she’d been lurking at the back of the crowd. Cissie and another woman ran over and bundled Loveday to the front. She sidled up to Betsy, with her nose in the air, making sure not to look me in the eye.

  ‘So this is your idea of One and All, is it, Loveday?’ said Tegen.

  ‘What is you saying of?’ said Loveday. ‘None of this is my doing,’

  ‘And where is that mother of yours?’ asked Cissie. ‘And Millie Hicks, and all the other schemers behind this Riding?’

  Loveday bit her lip, all of a tremble like the little coward she was.

  Betsy took her part, squaring up to Cissie. ‘Mrs Skewes and Mrs Hicks be at home like the God-fearing, upright people they is,’ she said.

  Nancy Spargo came over to Betsy, rolling her shoulders like a wrestler loosening up for a bout. When Betsy turned to face her, Nancy pulled up her sleeves and looked up into her eyes. ‘You leave Mary alone now, Betsy. If you want to pick a fight, I’m your woman,’ she said, poking her own chest with her thumb. ‘I be pig ugly already so a smack in the mouth means naught to me.’ Some of the men shouted at the women, hoping to see them slug it out in public. I looked around for Loveday, but she’d taken her chance to slip away while the crowd’s eyes were turned from her.

  At that moment, a fellow in a long coat stepped out of the crowd towards us. There was a huge cheer at the sight. It was Ethan Carbis and he wore a mop on his head that was meant to be a judge’s wig. He stopped a few feet in front of me and the rabble gathered behind him. Carbis opened a roll of paper he had in his hand. He began to read in the voice of a landed gent, while the crowd howled with laughter.

  ‘My Lord Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen, and poor honest country people,

  ‘I hereby charge Mary Blight of this parish with the following offences:

  ‘Stealing another woman’s betrothed out of envy . . .’

  The crowd bayed to show their reproof.

  ‘Teasing young Pasco Hurrel until he threw himself off Tombstone Point . . .’

  ‘Shame on her!’ someone shouted.

  ‘Having improper relations with the minister, Gideon Stone . . .’

  They hissed and hooted, and with each new charge the catcalls got louder.

  ‘Committing sacrilege in God’s holy church . . .

  ‘Striking a devout and respectable old lady of this parish, Marget Maddern, with intent to cause injury;

  ‘Chewing off a woman’s ears to steal her earrings, and thereby bringing a plague of Preventive Men to this cove and disrupting the trade of respectable people.’

  When he’d finished, he waited for the riotous shouting to end before looking down at me and saying, ‘Have you anything to say in your defence, Miss Blight?’

  ‘Aye, I have something to say. The most of it is lies, and the rest is no worse than others here have done.’

  Betsy shouted me down. ‘If you showed any shame and admitted you’d done wrong we’d go easier on you,’ she said. ‘You has brought all this on yourself. Why can’t you ever lean to the common way?’

  ‘Let me hear an “Aye” from all those who say she is guilty,’ called Carbis, looking round at the crowd behind him. There was a great blood-thirsty roar of ‘Ayes’. ‘And a “No” from those who say she is innocent.’ Some answered on my behalf, but they were few.

  ‘Guilty as charged then! I sentence you to be taken from this place . . .’

  Carbis was cut short by the sound of loud drumming at the eastern end of the quay. The mob fell silent at the sight of a lone, tall, dark figure standing there in the flickering light of the bonfire flames, smoke trailing past him. He looked more like a spirit than a flesh and blood man. In one hand he held a big frying pan and in the other a stout wooden club. He began to walk slowly through billows of smoke towards the crowd, his stride slow and stiff. As he drew closer, I saw that it was Gideon Stone. His face was unshaven, his coat caked with mud.

  But before he could reach the rabble, that great oaf Pentecost stepped out from the midst of them and lumbered towards him, his great arms swinging at his sides. Gideon drew to a stop and waited. Of a sudden, the mob began whistling and hooting. They had seen Martha Tregaskis stagger into the open and go rushing towards her husband, holding her skirts up so as not to trip over them. Pentecost turned and scowled at Martha, the little black holes of his eyes peering out from under his brow. She drew up to him and seized his arm in both hands.

  ‘I won’t have this!’ she yelled, trying to pull him away, like a woman possessed. ‘I can’t bear no more of this wickedness. I can’t!’

  ‘Will you never learn your place?’ said Pentecost. ‘Take your hands off me and get out of my sight.’

  ‘I won’t go. You’ll have to kill me first!’ she cried. But Pentecost only sneered, and took her by the scruff of the neck. He lifted her as if she were a cloth doll, and flung her to the ground, where she landed with a dull thud and lay there groaning.

  Next, Pentecost stepped towards Gideon until the two men stood face to face, a yard apart. ‘So you want another wrestling lesson, do you, parson?’ he said.

  But as the words left the brute’s lips, Gideon swung the frying pan he held in his hand and fetched a bone-crunching wallop to the side of Pentecost’s head. For a long moment, Pentecost stood his ground, and I feared it was the end for Gideon. But then t
he giant’s head began to roll on his shoulders, his legs went from under him and he fell heavily. There were gasps all around at the sight of the big man lying there, out cold.

  Gideon threw down the pan and it clattered on the stone. He walked over to Carbis and stood before him, glaring.

  ‘That’s enough playing the fool for one night, fellow,’ he said. Carbis cowered and stood aside, taking the mop off his head. ‘I see my work in this cove is not yet done,’ Gideon said to the rabble, his voice hoarse. ‘I demand in God’s name that you put a stop to this outrage immediately. Did we not build a chapel to God up on that hill yonder? And yet I return here to find you reduced to a condition of pagan savagery, a baying mob meting out a punishment to a defenceless woman.’

  ‘He’s come for his strumpet,’ shouted a man in the crowd.

  ‘He’ve had a bellyful. See how he sways from side to side,’ said a woman at the front of the crowd, mimicking Gideon by swaying herself.

  ‘Repent and atone for your sins before it is too late!’ he bellowed, his voice echoing all over the harbour. ‘You who have sinned know who you are.’ He looked around at them, his face gleaming with sweat, the veins standing out on his neck. Few would meet his gaze.

  ‘Listen hard to what I am about to say – you will learn no more important lesson than this,’ he cried. ‘Do not believe that when it is all too late, when your life is passed and you are no longer able to come and kneel in the house of God, do not think that at that moment when you stand before the Almighty, and are found wanting, and your bodies are fit only as food for worms, and your souls are damned to burn in torment in Hell’s fires, forever without end, do not think, I warn you, as you cry pitifully, imploring the Lord to permit you to repent and mend the errors of your ways, do not dare to suppose that God our Saviour will hearken to you and admit your soul among the ranks of the saved. Do not think it. For it will be too late.’

  People fell to their knees and bowed their heads in prayer. Others shuffled away, muttering darkly to one another.

  ‘When you have breathed your last, and you stand before God, and know you have squandered every minute and every hour when you might have mended your ways, when you beg forgiveness of the Redeemer, do not think that by kneeling at that late hour as some of you do now, in abject terror, asking the Almighty to pardon your sins, that you will be forgiven. You will not. You will be past forgiveness. Your own tormented cries and those of your neighbours will ring forever in your ears as the molten rocks fall around you through all eternity and the fiends of Hell torment you. Your cries will go unheard by God, and even the blessed in Heaven who mourn your fate will not be able to help you, for you will be damned for all eternity, you who would not be saved.’

  A scuffle broke out, neighbour turning on neighbour, and wives tried to move their husbands out of harm’s way. I took my chance and slipped away along the quay. Gideon followed me.

  ‘Mary, I must speak with you.’

  I turned on him. He took a step backwards when he saw the look on my face.

  ‘Such a ranting spirit you have!’ I said. ‘I hope you go to hell with the rest of them. How can you stand there, shameless, when you left me waiting in the church all those hours?’

  ‘I am here now.’

  ‘What use are you at this late hour?’

  I turned up Downlong Row, blind to where I was going. Down in the harbour, the mob had all but forgotten me as they set about each other.

  ‘You have good cause to be angry, but I beg you to hear me out,’ said Gideon, following close behind. ‘I must warn you that my wife has been to see the Magistrate. The Customs Officer will be here at dawn. You must prepare yourself.’

  ‘I know it. If you’d come when you were supposed to, I’d have got on a coach at Bodmin hours ago.’

  ‘It was no easy matter to walk out on my wife. I came as soon as I could, walking across that moor in the dark at great peril to myself.’

  ‘Aye, but only after a spell in the alehouse. You can go back to Newlyn, for all I care. I want no more sermons out of you. I’ve had my fill of perfect love in the next life and sober self-reliance. To think you have the gall to turn up here, half drunk!’

  ‘I’ll do my utmost to help you. I will stand by you in these times of trial. Mary, I beg you to put your trust in Divine Providence.’

  ‘To hell with Providence! You weren’t on that cart being spat on.’

  We reached the door of Gideon’s chapel. The building seemed no more than a humble barn set apart from the villagers’ homes. Gideon felt in his pocket and took out the keys. He went inside and I followed him. I could smell the liquor on him, mingling with the scent of sawdust and freshly sawn timber. In the moonlight, I saw two rows of backless benches facing the pulpit, which was almost lost in shadow.

  ‘I have waited all these months to enter this place,’ he said, walking down the aisle. ‘I had hoped for more, a manifestation of the Holy Fire, a consuming flame within. Not this emptiness.’

  We passed the front pews with their high backs, and I was filled with fury as I thought of the Skews and Hicks families and those of their ilk sitting there out of the draught. Gideon knelt at the Communion rail, clutching his hands before him.

  ‘We must endeavour to believe without signs or miracles,’ he said. ‘Perhaps the Redeemer wants me to see that this is no more than a building meant for worship, and nothing on this earth is permanent.’

  ‘Such a picture of piety you make, kneeling there with your hands in prayer,’ I said. ‘If I were you, I’d pray forgiveness for what you’ve done to me, and to those other women. Or will that count for nothing on Judgement Day?’

  ‘Think of what I have lost – my calling, all my work over ten long years come to naught. This chapel . . . Do you know what that means to a man like me? I must do what is right in God’s eyes . . . The balance of my mind . . . I came here this night to do my duty by you. I will stay with you until the constable arrives so you won’t have to endure the wait alone. And I’ll do all in my power thereafter to save you.’

  ‘Do your duty by me? Save me? Have you forgotten it was I who saved you? I wish I’d left you to drown. The truth is, Gideon Stone, you’re either drunk on holiness or drunk on liquor. You put yourself above me, always the master, too puffed up with male pride to think ill of yourself. You will save me, you say, but it isn’t you who will do hard labour, or feel the noose about your neck. And to think I once thought you halfway to being an angel!’ My anger gave way at last to tears. ‘I thought you knew me, for myself, as no man had done before,’ I sobbed. ‘In your arms that day I felt blessed, and I’m not ashamed of it. I thought that God must have dearly loved his children to have given them that secret gift.’

  He stood up and faced me. I saw he was moved by my words. He opened his mouth to speak, but the chapel door swung open and someone stepped into the church.

  ‘They are here!’ I cried. ‘They’ve come for me.’

  ‘Mary, is that you?’ said the newcomer.

  It was a voice I knew well. ‘Nathaniel!’ I shouted. I ran to him and threw my arms around him.

  ‘I’ve just now sailed from Marazion,’ he said. ‘I saw the flames from across the bay and feared the village was burning down. What in God’s name has occurred this night?’

  ‘The King’s Men are coming at day break, Nat,’ I said, wiping away my tears on my apron. ‘They mean to put me in gaol. Aunt Madgie told them I’m the cannibal. She said she’d seen me do it.’

  ‘You’re no cannibal, Mary,’ said Nathaniel. ‘I’ve known you long enough to be sure of that.’

  ‘What am I to do?’’

  ‘Is there somewhere you can go?’

  ‘I have an aunt in Looe.’

  ‘Then we need to stir ourselves. We’ll take my boat.’

  As he spoke, I saw Gideon leave the chapel.

  After fetching my basket, and bidding a tearful farewell to Tegen, I rushed down the lane, frantic to flee the cove before the Preventive Men
could catch me. But soon I heard footsteps behind me, and quickened my pace. My pursuer called my name, a woman’s voice. When I turned, I was shocked to find Martha Tregaskis limping behind me, clutching her side and wincing. She stank of liquor. I let her come alongside me.

  ‘Forgive me, Mary,’ she said.

  ‘This isn’t the time, Martha. I’ve got troubles enough without taking on yours.’

  ‘I can’t bear it on my conscience no longer,’ she whined.

  I pushed on, leaving her behind, but after I’d taken a few more steps, her meaning struck home and brought me up short.

  ‘It was you that morning. You did it!’ I said. ‘You’re the cannibal.’

  She snivelled, and stared at the ground. The side of her face was swollen from where she’d landed after Pentecost had thrown her to the ground earlier. ‘My hands were cold,’ she whimpered. ‘I could barely move my fingers. And after all, the lady had passed away. What use were those jewels to her?’

  ‘Do you have them still?’ I snapped, thinking there might yet be a reprieve for me.

  ‘Sold! And the money long gone. Pentecost stints on the housekeeping and I’ve eight mouths to feed. If there’s no food on the table I get a beating.’ She lifted trembling fingers to her eye, which was no more than a slit in the bulging flesh of her eyelid.

  ‘How could you stand by tonight and say nothing?’ I said. ‘Shame on you! When the Preventive Man gets here you must tell him it was you that did it. They’ll show more mercy, I seem, with you a married woman and a mother.’

  She backed away, looking about her as if afeard the constable might show up right then. ‘But who’s to take care of my children?’ she whimpered.

  I took hold of her and shook her hard. ‘You must do what’s right, do you hear?’

  ‘No! I can’t. Pentecost swears he’ll break every bone in my body if I breathe a word of it – and bury me on the moor.’ She broke free of me and went hobbling back up the lane, rubbing her sore hip.

  ‘Wait!’ I called, chasing after her and gripping her fiercely by the arm. ‘Did anyone see you that morning? Tell the truth now.’