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  The loose talk stopped when they saw me come into Aunt Madgie’s kitchen. I shuddered in that chill room, the feel of the old days flooding back to me. And who did I first set eyes on but Aunt Madgie herself, sitting grim as death in her yellowed mob cap at the head of the able. Up and down the sides of the table were all the ladies in Grace Skewes’ clique, the bettermost of the village.

  A seat had been left for me at the other end of the table which meant I must look straight down at Aunt Madgie’s unflinching gaze. I might as well have been brought before the Magistrate. To one side of Aunt Madgie sat her daughter Grace Skewes and next to her Grace’s daughter Loveday, with Betsy Stoddern alongside Loveday as always. Dolly was next in line, then Millie Hicks, her sewing in her lap and her thimble on her thumb, her daughter Zenobia beside her. Aunt Madgie aside, they were all smiles, which only went to prove they’d been catting about me.

  ‘How is your Mamm keeping, Mary? She must be a worry for you and your sister?’ said Grace.

  ‘As well as can be hoped,’ I muttered, taking my seat.

  ‘’Tis always hard when there’s a bed-lier at home,’ said Millie Hicks, looking up from her stitching. ‘You and Tegen must be forced to take on all work to earn your meat.’ She rubbed her long thin neck, slyly.

  I was tongue-tied, for once, twirling a strand of hair in my fingers, a childish habit that came upon me when jittery.

  ‘You look ever so pretty, even so,’ said Grace, with her creamy smile. ‘Don’t she, ladies?’ A few of them nodded. ‘That dress you’ve taken to wearing suits you fine – the black linen against that pale and delicate skin of yours, not to mention all that red hair!’ She looked about her at the other women, and some smiled.

  ‘Enough to turn any man’s head,’ said Loveday under her breath, to her mate, Betsy.

  ‘And it’s not long since she went to the feast with a huge flower in her back hair,’ Betsy muttered back. Grace gave them a sharp look.

  ‘Why have you called me here, Grace?’ I asked. ‘I’ve heaps of work to do, as you say.’

  ‘Oh ’tis only that we mean to talk Society business and, with you being a Band member now, we could hardly leave you out. I just wanted to say how pleasing it is to see the change that’s come over you of late, Mary. We’re quite taken aback.’

  ‘I’m under conviction,’ I said.

  ‘Of course you are, my dear heart,’ said Grace, looking down her nose at me, her eyes narrowed. ‘And of course there’s a place for you here in the Society. We trust your conversion is sincere, but we mustn’t throw all reason to the wind now, must we?’

  ‘What are you saying of?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m talking about what came about yesterday, of course. What a rum turn of events! How are we to put things right?’

  So that was it! I saw the rotten black-flies had sent for me because they meant to stop me being Sunday school mistress.

  ‘We’re only thinking of you, Mary,’ said Millie. ‘What a fright you must have got when the minister asked you to become school mistress. You, of all people! He must have taken leave of his senses.’

  A few women sniggered, and my face was on fire. They made me feel a fool to think I could ever truly become school mistress.

  ‘I’m sure Mr Stone means well,’ said Grace. ‘It’s just that he don’t know the neighbourhood. He can’t see how hard it would be on you if this madness came to pass.’

  ‘I made a promise to the minister,’ I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. ‘He put his trust . . .’

  Grace cut me off. ‘The minister means well and has done right by us women,’ she said. ‘He has brought us together, given us a haven in that old barn, but he don’t know people hereabouts.’

  Millie backed her up. ‘A shrewd woman like you, Mary,’ she said, ‘lettered as you are, and always so fine and fond of reading, surely you must see that right-minded people won’t want you teaching their children.’

  ‘I know the Bible better than any here!’ I said. ‘I know I’m no angel . . .’

  ‘Far from it,’ said Betsy.

  ‘Hold your tongue, Betsy,’ snapped her mother.

  ‘Remember the Prodigal Son,’ I said. ‘He had a change of heart and his father forgave him . . .’

  ‘I never heard tell of any Prodigal Daughter in the scriptures,’ said Loveday.

  ‘Hearken to me now, Mary,’ said Grace, folding her arms. ‘It is already decided. All here agree that Loveday should be school mistress. It don’t belong to you to do it.’

  ‘Because I’m poor?’

  ‘Because you put people’s backs up, stealing their men and . . .’ snapped Loveday.

  ‘Quiet now, Loveday!’ said Grace, before turning to me. ‘Now, Mary, listen well to what I have to say. You don’t have the standing in this cove to be Sunday school mistress, and well you know it. You must ask your conscience if you have the cleanness of heart for such a task. Then you must tell the minister you mean to stand down. It must come from you.’

  I was sick of the whole parcel of them. ‘Cleanness of heart?’ I said, fixing my gaze on Loveday. ‘I could name a good few in this parish who are no cleaner of heart than me. Half the women hereabouts are with child when they go to the altar, and none here can gainsay it.’

  ‘You never once thought to become a Methodist until the minister arrived!’ cried Millie. ‘Some of us have kept the faith these ten years.’

  ‘As long as the minister thinks me fit to be school mistress, I will stand firm,’ I said.

  ‘Very well. Be it on your own head,’ said Grace, her smile gone. ‘I must inform you that the Sunday school classes are to take place here, in my mother’s house.’

  ‘Here? Why not in the old barn?’ I cried.

  ‘The barn ain’t safe for children, and it’s too cold,’ said Grace. ‘This kitchen is the only room in the village big enough to hold the class until the new chapel is built. And it means Mamm can keep an eye on things. So, you’ll promise to tell the minister you’re standing down then?’.

  I shook my head. There were gasps around the table.

  ‘Is that a yay or a nay?’ said Grace.

  ‘I will be teacher. The minister chose me.’

  A sudden loud grating sound at the other end of the table set my hair on end. It was Aunt Madgie pushing her chair back, the legs scraping over the stone floor. She got to her feet and stood, laying her palms down on the table to support her, the crooked fingers and swollen knuckles spread out, the black veins bulging on the back of her hands.

  ‘Blood of the lamb, fire of hell which goes not out!’ she snarled. ‘I have heard enough. This varmint will never yield, unless made to.’ She gazed hard at me and pointed a shaking finger at me. ‘As for you, I rue the day I taught you your alphabet. If I’d known your wanton ways back along, I’d never have given you the Holy Bible so you could use it to charm a weak and doltish preacher into thinking you virtuous. You’d better think upon what has passed between us lately, Mary Blight, and think hard!’

  ‘Naught has passed between us!’ I cried.

  ‘What is this, Mamm?’ said Grace. ‘If you have some sway over her, then you must use it.’

  ‘All in good time,’ said Aunt Madgie, putting out her hand for her crutch, which Grace gave her. I waited for the old woman to dodder out of the room, before I got up and hurried out of the house.

  I was lost to all around me as I dashed up and down the lanes afterwards. When my anger abated, I began to fret over Aunt Madgie’s dark threat. Would she tell the Preventive Men that she’d seen me steal the earrings? It was a black lie, but the hateful look in her eyes made me more than uneasy. Hadn’t she seen me leaning over the noblewoman’s body, a picture of guilt? It was my word against hers, and she was of a good family, while my word wasn’t worth the squeak of a pressed pilchard. If she lied and snitched on me, I’d be hauled before the Justice, sure as time and tax. I was in a beggar of a hole and there was no getting out of it.

  But then again, I thought,
if there was no other proof, her word might not be enough to send me to gaol. And in any case, nobody in the cove had ever informed on a neighbour. It was One and All, and Aunt Madgie, of all people, never missed a chance to tell us so. We might stank on our own, but we didn’t hand them over to uplongers. And if her false word did send me to gaol, she’d surely go to hell twice over. So, in the end I told myself she’d made the threat idly, to frighten me into standing aside for Loveday.

  The truth of the matter was that nothing, not even a hurricane, could have kept me from going to Newlyn with Gideon Stone when the time came.

  II

  WHITSUNTIDE

  8

  As soon as we got up the slope onto the moor Gideon started his sermonising. He barely gave me time to get my breath back, or to let my ears pop after the climb, and he wasn’t gallant enough to walk at an easy pace, but set off briskly, so I had to work up a sweat to keep up with him. The hot sun glared in a sky that was clear apart from a few scattered clouds, and my scalp itched under my bonnet. I wore the boots that I’d taken from the woman who’d been washed ashore lifeless in the winter wreck. They were too small for me and pinched my toes. I carried my basket with two dresses inside, as sober and as seemly as I could find.

  We tramped in single file between the stone hedges, following the miners’ mule track that wound up and down the moor. Sometimes we rounded a bend and startled some sheep so that they scrambled off in panic. Gideon wove a long and twisting lesson as I followed him along that narrow path.

  ‘There are many ways that a man can judge whether he is a true child of God or only deceives himself,’ he said. ‘Some men lead themselves to believe they are witness to the true and genuine testimony of the Spirit, but they mistake their own pride for God’s grace.’

  ‘Then how can we know for sure that we do God’s work?’ I asked.

  ‘That is not easily answered. Even Wesley could not find words to describe “the deep things of God”. The Spirit is like the wind, which you can feel without knowing from whence it came or wither it will go.’ As he spoke, leaves rustled in a hawthorn bough beyond the hedge.

  ‘So we cannot tell if we truly act in God’s grace?’

  ‘To know His grace is akin to a change from darkness to light, a passing from death into life,’ he said. A dark cloud must have passed and hid the sun because a shadow fell over the moor and I felt a sudden chill. ‘The Scriptures laid down clear and obvious marks for the children of God,’ he said. I kept my thoughts to myself as we listed these marks for God’s children.

  ‘We are to keep His commandments, and love our neighbour as ourselves.’

  I smiled to myself at that.

  ‘We are to honour the Sabbath day,’ he said.

  ‘What, and starve?’ I thought.

  ‘We are to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.’

  So if a neighbour blackened your name and tried to keep you low, was it fair to do the same to them?

  ‘One must possess one’s body in sanctification and honour.’

  Too late for that, I thought, recalling my spree with Johnenry.

  ‘Be temperate in eating and drinking.’

  Chance would be a fine thing!

  ‘And do all to the glory of God.’

  Well, Amen to that, at least.

  We reached a place where the old pannier lane took off in a different direction, and we walked out across open moorland. All the while Gideon spoke, I heard a skylark overhead urging its endless stream of song from its throat, toiling high in the air as it chased after flies, as tireless as the minister in his preachifying. My mind wandered and I found myself lost and drowning in a sweet reverie where I groped my way through a huge draper’s store, like the ones with big plate glass windows in Penzance. Almost swooning, my feet scarcely touching the ground, I swam among armies of dresses stretching away in rows forever and swaying softly and slowly, beckoning me into their midst. At either side of me were great billowing puffed gigot sleeves, and embroidered collars, and high-waisted full skirts with twisted satin hoops around them so that they seemed to twirl, and the hems high enough to show the dainty ankles and feet of the ghostly forms that moved underneath the cloth. My hands reached out to stroke the folds of muslin, satin gauze and silk, the heavy cotton and calico, all tingling under my fingertips. All about me were garments drifting upwards towards a queer, misty light high above, wide-brimmed bonnets, gloves, parasols, sashes, ribbons and bows, while below me on the sandy ocean bed lay great oak chests, the tops flung open and dazzling jewellery of every kind you could desire spilling over the sides.

  I heard a man’s voice and realised he was speaking to me. ‘Sister Blight? Are you sick? You are pale and seem to stagger.’ Jolted out of my stupor, I grew mindful of the bleating of sheep, the smell of sheep dung, the wind buffeting my ears and the skylark’s song still pouring forth overhead. I felt the hot pain of my poor toes cruelly crushed together, as if the dead woman’s spirit was punishing me for taking her boots. On the brow of the hill I saw the minister, a brooding shadow against the light so that I couldn’t know for sure what look he had upon his face.

  I hobbled up the hill to join him and caught a glimpse of soft blue sea, which lifted my spirits a little. Another time I would have filled a basket with the thrift that grew in the boulders, the blue dog-violets clinging to the stone hedges, and all the other glories of high summer that blushed in a bed of rose and purple heather: devil’s buttons, lady’s smock and the pink ling that was only just opening.

  ‘’Tis pretty, the view from here,’ I said, more to myself than to him.

  ‘When I enjoy a vista such as this I am filled with wonder at God’s creation, and how we can see His glory in all things,’ he said, without troubling to look at anything at all. He stood there stubborn and rooted as an ancient oak, and as empty of feeling. I wished that the fat bumble bee that was buzzing around the minister would see fit to sting his ass.

  ‘Why must you turn everything in creation into a cold sermon?’ I asked. My sore feet were making me bad-tempered and I risked getting above myself, but I’d had my fill of the minister for one day.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said, looking at me askance.

  ‘Can’t I look at a pretty view and enjoy it without thinking Bible thoughts? You can pick a leaf off any tree and wonder at its colour and shape, at the veins that run through it, so like those on the backs of our hands. The Maker lets the skylark soar and sing her heart out in any way she pleases, so why must we cage our feelings and not let them out. This land lives in me, is in my soul.’

  He stared at me for a moment. I was afraid I might have troubled him so much he’d change his mind about making me teacher.

  ‘Sister Blight, you have good qualities and I have put my trust in you,’ he said, at last. ‘If you are to assume the responsibilities I have in mind, you must attempt to rein in this propensity for . . . for what I might call unbridled sensual arousal. You must learn to channel your feelings into worship of the Almighty.’

  ‘Didn’t God make us the way we are? I know you have feelings too. I see it when you stand in the pulpit. How strong you are up there – strong here in the heart.’ I gave my breast a thump.

  ‘But that is not the same. When I preach the gospel, the Almighty works through me. What I was referring to is self-seeking lust for the pleasures of this world. It leads us to the worst excesses of Fallen Man’s corrupted nature, to intemperance, abandonment, darkness . . .’ He broke off for a moment, frowning at the distant patch of sea. When he spoke again, it was more softly. ‘What is the love of Nature but a form of pagan idolatry? Without an awareness of God, we are lost. We must learn to know Him in all things. I have chosen you, Sister Blight. I have come to see you as a beacon of hope in that poor benighted village of yours. Pray, do not disappoint me.’

  ‘Well, I will try my best – as long as I can be permitted a few little comforts.’

  He nodded, smiling. ‘Perhaps, weariness has made us both i
ll-tempered. I only wish I could show you the higher joy awaiting us in the next life. Let’s rest awhile on these boulders.’ He pointed at some rocks that giants had thrown down in far-off days.

  Grateful to set my rump down on the stone, I could at last let the cool air soothe my feet. I peeled the first crippling boot off, and recalled with a shudder the instant that same boot had come off the noblewoman’s foot on the strand. It came upon me so strong I smelt the seaweed and heard the wash of the tide, and was lost to the world around me a long moment. When I came out of it, I looked down at my poor swollen ankles, and the great white blisters blooming on my heels and soles. The blisters were tender to the touch, even more so now I’d stopped walking. I looked about me for dock that would ease the smarting. The minister sat with his back to me, looking out over the moor, having seen nothing of my unease.

  When I’d soothed my feet with a cool leaf, I took my crust of bread and cheese out of my basket. The minister ate naught, perhaps God’s grace alone was enough to sustain him. He passed me his water flask and I drank deeply from it. As I chewed the dry crust, I thought about all the minister had said as we’d walked along. The Scriptures commanded the children of God to show a soft, yielding spirit, to be all mildness and sweetness and long-suffering. All around me were stunted trees that bent to the prevailing wind, just as I must bend to a higher will. I remembered the minister saying that a true child of God was saved from the pain of proud wrath, but I was in no mood for mildness at that moment. Would the Maker save me from the pain of blistered feet? Or a guilty conscience?

  Gideon stood up and gazed this way and that, then stood overlooking the vale beneath us, as if he bestrode the world. ‘This is the way, I believe,’ he said, pointing down across the moor.

  ‘That is the wrong way,’ I said.

  ‘I think you are mistaken. That coppice over yonder is familiar to me.’

  ‘My feet are badly blistered and I don’t want to walk any further than I must.’