The Black Moon

  He put the log back, but inefficiently, so that an end of it sent a thin spiral of smoke up into the room. He would have rung for a servant to correct this, but he let it smoke in the hope that it would irritate Agatha’s chest.

  ‘That surgeon,’ said Agatha. ‘Great numbskull of a fellow, tying up the poor little crim so tight against the convulsions. There’s better ways than that to protect against convulsions. I’d have’n freed this eve if I had the ordering of it.’

  ‘You do not have the ordering of it,’ said Mr Warleggan.

  ‘Eh, what’s that? What’s that you say? Speak up!’

  He might have shouted something in return, but a door opened then and George came in. At times, perhaps most when not in company and therefore both were relaxed, the similarity between the two men was marked. A little shorter than his tall father, George had the same heavy build, the same strong neck, the same deliberate in-toed walk. They were both good-looking men in their formidable way. George’s face was the broader, with the bottom lip drawn up in the middle and jutting to create shadow. There were small lumps on his forehead between the eyebrows. If his hair had been cut in short tight curls he would have looked like the Emperor Vespasian.

  ‘A pretty sight,’ he said, as he neared the fire. ‘My own father in conversation with the original Witch of Endor. How does it go? “I saw Gods ascending out of the earth. An old man cometh up and he is covered with a mantle.”’

  Mr Warleggan at last put the poker back. ‘You should not let your mother hear you speak in that way. She has no fancy for supernatural talk even in jest.’

  ‘I’m not sure it is in jest,’ said George. ‘In better days this old twitching decayed carcase would have been helped on its way by a suitable ducking or a witch’s bridle. We should not have to suffer it in a civilized household.’

  The kitten, to Agatha’s pleasure, had arched its back and spat at the new arrival.

  ‘Well, George,’ she said. ‘I trust you feel a bigger man now you’re father of an eight-month brat. What’s he to be called, eh? There’s too many Georges about, with all these kings. I mind the time . . .’ She coughed. ‘Fire’s smeeching. Mr Warleggan’s scat it all asunder.’

  ‘If I were you I should have the creature confined to her room,’ Nicholas said. ‘She should be guarded there.’

  ‘If I had my way,’ George said, ‘she would be thrown on the midden tomorrow – and perhaps others with her.’

  ‘Well, whose way do you have?’ asked Nicholas, knowing very well.

  George looked at him speculatively. ‘The way of a man in possession of a fair city. When the citadel has been won the stews can wait awhile.’

  ‘You could name him Robert,’ came the thin voice from the armchair. ‘Him with the crooked back. First of the name that we know. Or Ross. What’d you say to Ross?’ The wheezing which broke out might have been caused by the smoke but more probably it was the result of an old frame trying to accommodate malicious laughter.

  George turned his back and strolled to the window and looked out. Although the hall was warm near the fire, cold airs stirred as soon as one moved out of its range. ‘I trust,’ he said, ‘that soon this old creature will swell up into a great tumour and burst.’

  ‘Amen . . . But touching on names, George. I conject that you and Elizabeth will already have some thoughts on the matter. We own some good ones within the family—’

  ‘I have already decided. I decided before he was born.’

  ‘Before he was born? Oh, but how could you do that? If it were a girl—’

  ‘This accident to Elizabeth,’ said George. ‘It might have been fatal to them both, but now it has not been so I feel some heavy finger of providence in it – as if it were pointing a time and a place and date. Having regard to the date, as soon as I knew the child would be born on that day, I chose the name. If it were a girl, the same.’

  Mr Warleggan waited. ‘What is it, then?’

  ‘Valentine.’

  ‘Or Joshua,’ said Aunt Agatha. ‘We’ve had three in the family to my knowledge, though the last was a bad boy if ever there was one.’

  Nicholas hopefully watched the thin smoke from the fire curling round the old woman’s chair. ‘Valentine. Valentine Warleggan. It matches well, is easy on the tongue. But there is no one in either family of that name.’

  ‘There will be nobody in either family like my son. History does not have to repeat itself.’

  ‘Yes, yes. I will ask your mother how it appeals to her. Is this Elizabeth’s choice too?’

  ‘Elizabeth does not know it yet.’

  Nicholas raised his eyebrows. ‘But you are sure she will like it?’

  ‘I am sure she will agree. We are in accord in so many things, many more than I expected. She will agree that this union of her and me is a rare one – the oldest gentry and the newest – and that the fruit of such a union should not look to the past but to the future. A quite new name is what we must have.’

  Nicholas coughed and moved out of range of the smoke. ‘You will not get away from the name Warleggan, George.’

  ‘I shall never have the least desire to get away from it Father. Already it is respected – and feared.’

  ‘As you say . . . The respect is what we must build on, the fear is what we must dissipate.’

  ‘Uncle Cary would not agree.’

  ‘You pay too much attention to Cary. What was your business with him last week?’

  ‘Routine affairs. But I believe you draw too fine a line, Father, between respect and fear. One merges with the other and back again. You cannot separate two emotions of such similar colour.’

  ‘Probity in business induces the first.’

  ‘And improbity the second? Oh, come—’

  ‘Not improbity, perhaps, but the misuse of power. In a moment you will be telling me I read you a lecture. But Cary and I have never seen eye to eye on this. I ask you, whose name do you wish your son to bear?’

  ‘Yours and mine,’ said George evenly. ‘That is the one he will bear. And where I have walked on your shoulders, he shall walk on mine.’

  Nicholas went back to the fire and replaced the smoking log where the smoke could go up the chimney.

  ‘That’s better, my son,’ said Agatha, waking from a doze. ‘You don’t want the fire floshed all about the hearth.’

  ‘God alive, I believe that old woman’s stench has drifted over here!’ In irritation George went over and pulled the tasselled bell. Mr Warleggan continued to cough. The smoke, although now dispersing, had settled on his chest and he could not clear it. Without speaking they waited until the servant came.

  ‘Fetch the Harry brothers,’ George said.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Take a glass of canary,’ George said to his father.

  ‘Thank you, no. It’s of no moment . . .’

  He spat in the hearth.

  ‘Comfrey and liquorice,’ said Aunt Agatha. ‘I had a sister died of the lungs, and naught would soothe her but comfrey and liquorice.’

  Presently Harry Harry hulked in the doorway, followed by his younger brother Tom. ‘Sur?’

  George said: ‘Remove Miss Poldark to her room. When you are there ring for Miss Pipe and tell her that Miss Poldark is not to come down again today.’

  The two big men brought up a smaller chair and lifted Aunt Agatha protesting into it. Clutching the mewing kitten to her breast, she croaked: ‘There be one thing amiss with your little son, George. Good seldom comes to a child born under a black moon. I only know two and they both came to bad ends!’

  Nicholas Warleggan’s face was purple. His son went across to the table, poured wine into a glass and brought it impatiently back.

  ‘No . . . it is the . . . Oh, well, a sip will help perhaps.’

  ‘Elizabeth’ll hear ’bout this!’ said Aunt Agatha. ‘Carried out of me own hall like a spar o’ driftwood . . . Ninety year I known this hall. Ninety year . . .’ Her frail complaints disappeared behind Tom Harry’s broad
back as she was carried up the stairs.

  ‘We should have had Elizabeth at Cardew for the lying in,’ said Mr Warleggan between coughs and sips, ‘then we should have been spared these irritations.’

  ‘I think it not inappropriate that our first child should have been born here.’

  ‘But shall you stay? I mean to make it your home?’

  A wary look crossed George’s face. ‘I am not sure. We have not yet decided. This has been Elizabeth’s home, you understand. I do not fancy selling it. Nor do I fancy maintaining it solely for the convenience of the Chynoweths and the residue of the Poldarks. And I have already spent money, as you can see.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Nicholas wiped his eyes and put away his handkerchief. He eyed his son. ‘There is one other Poldark to be considered, George.’

  ‘Geoffrey Charles? Yes. I have nothing against him. I have promised to Elizabeth that his education shall be as expensive as she desires.’

  ‘It is not just that. It is the fact of his being so firmly attached to his mother’s apron strings. I hope your son – this new baby – will distract Elizabeth from her preoccupation with him, but it would seem necessary—’

  ‘I know exactly what would seem necessary, Father. Give me leave to manage my own household.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I had thought simply to suggest . . .’

  George frowned down at a stain on his cuff. The matter of Geoffrey Charles’s future had been one of the few points of difference with Elizabeth these last months.

  ‘Geoffrey Charles is to have a governess.’

  ‘Ah . . . Good . . . But at ten—’

  ‘He would be better with a tutor or to go away. I agree. Some good school near London. Or Bath. That we – have not been able to arrange yet.’

  ‘Ah.’

  After a pause, while Nicholas read between the lines, George added, ‘For a year or so, at least until he is eleven, he will stay here. We have found a suitable person to look after him.’

  ‘A local person?’

  ‘Bodmin. You will remember the Reverend Hubert Chynoweth, who was the Dean there. He was Jonathan’s cousin.’

  ‘Did he die?’

  ‘Last year. Like all the Chynoweths he had no private money, and his family is poorly off. The eldest girl is seventeen. She is genteel – like all the Chynoweths – and has had some education. It will please Elizabeth to receive her.’

  Mr Warleggan grunted. ‘I would have thought there were enough Chynoweths about the place. But if it suits you . . . You’ve seen her?’

  ‘Elizabeth knew her as a child. But a dean’s daughter as a governess should be no social detriment.’

  ‘Yes, I see that. And she will know how to behave. The question is whether she will be able to make Master Geoffrey Charles behave. He has been greatly spoiled and needs a firm hand.’

  ‘That in due course he shall have,’ George said. ‘This is an interim measure. An experiment. We must see how it works.’

  Mr Warleggan mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. ‘My cough has gone now that old woman has gone. D’you know I believe she wished it on me.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense.’

  ‘What was that – what was that she said about the child being born under a black moon?’

  ‘There was an eclipse on Friday, a total eclipse, at the time of his birth. You didn’t notice?’

  ‘No. I was too preoccupied.’

  ‘So was I. But the Sherborne paper mentioned it. And I did notice the animals, and some of the servants, were restless.’

  ‘Your mother is coming down for supper?’

  ‘I assume so. We shall go in in ten minutes.’

  ‘Then . . .’ Nicholas Warleggan shrugged uncomfortably. ‘If I were you, do not mention that old woman’s nonsense to her.’

  ‘I had no intention of doing so.’

  ‘Well, you know how she is – a little wayward in matters of superstition. She has always paid too much attention to signs and portents. It is better not to worry her with such things.’

  Chapter Two

  In the mid morning of a windy March day two young men were tramping along the mule track which led past the engine house and the derelict buildings of Grambler Mine. It was a day of lowering clouds and flurries of rain, the wind westerly, booming and blundering. Glimpses of the sea showed it to be licked white and untidy; where there were rocks a mist of spray drifted.

  A dozen or so cottages straggled beside the mine. These were still occupied though in poor repair; the mine buildings themselves – those not built of stone – were already in ruin; but much of the headgear and the three engine houses remained. Grambler – on which the prosperity of the senior Poldarks had depended, to say nothing of three hundred miners and spallers and bal-maidens – had been closed now for six years and the prospects of its ever opening again were remote. It was a depressing sight.

  ‘’Tis the same all the way, Drake,’ said the elder one. ‘One mine smoking twixt here and Illuggan. It is a dire picture. But we must not sink into the sin of ingratitude. A merciful God has ordained it so for our chastisement.’

  ‘We’re on the right way?’ asked Drake. ‘I never been afore. Did I come? I don’t mind it.’

  ‘No, you was too small.’

  ‘How much farther then?’

  ‘Three or four mile. I don’t recollect too well.’

  They turned and went on, both tall young men not immediately recognizable as brothers. Sam, the elder by four years, looked more than twenty-two. He had big shoulders, an ungainly walk, a thin, deeply furrowed face, which looked sombre as if it bore all the sorrows of the world, until he smiled, when the sorrowful lines broke up into benign and affable creases. Drake was equally tall but of slighter build and notably good-looking, with a fine skin unmarked by the pox; a mischievous face; he looked as if he enjoyed poking fun. It was a propensity he had had to keep on a leash when in the vicinity of his father. They were both poorly but respectably dressed – in dark blue barragan trousers with low quartered shoes, waistcoats and jackets over coarse shirts. Sam wore an old hat, Drake a pink striped neckcloth. Both carried small bundles and sticks.

  They crossed the Mellingey stream by a footbridge that nearly gave way under them, then climbed to a coppice of pine trees, with beyond it the next ruined mine, Wheal Maiden, which had been silent half a century and looked it. Stones lay where they had fallen. Anything of use had long since been carried away. The rooks rose and made a commotion at being disturbed.

  But now in the shallow valley they were entering they could see smoke. On a quiet day they would have seen it earlier. Both walked a little slower as they neared the end of their journey, as if hesitant to end it. As they went down the high hedged lane they could peer between the ferns and the brambles, the hawthorn and the wild nut trees, and could see the engine house – not a new one, it looked as if it had been rebuilt – but the headgear was all new, the huts that clustered around were new and in obvious use; the Mellingey stream, which curled back into this valley, had been dammed and they could hear the thump and clatter of the waterdriven tin stamps; all the noises had been held back by the wind; a dozen women worked on a washing floor; farther down the water activated a sweep which rotated awkwardly round and round helping to separate the ore. A train of mules with panniers on were being driven up the opposite slope of the valley. At the foot of the valley, with a small lawn and a few bushes only separating it from all the industry, was a low granite-built house, part slate roof, part thatch, bigger and grander than a farm house, with its outbuildings, its squat chimneys, its straggling wing and its mullioned windows, yet hardly of the distinction to be called a gentleman’s residence. Behind the house the land rose again in a ploughed field running up to a headland; beyond scrubland to the right was a beach with a scarf of slaty sea.

  ‘’Twasn’t no lie,’ said Drake.

  ‘Reckon you’re right. It look different from when I came afore.’

  ‘This work is all new?’

  ‘’
S I reckon. Nanfan said it had not been started more’n two year.’

  Drake ran a hand through his shock of black hair. ‘Tis a handsome house. Though not near so great as Tehidy.’

  ‘The Poldarks is small gentry, not big.’

  ‘Big enough for we,’ said Drake with a nervous laugh.

  ‘All men are alike in the sight of the eternal Jehovah,’ said Sam.

  ‘Mebbe so, but it isn’t Jehovah we got to deal with.’

  ‘No, brother. But all people are set at liberty by the blood of Christ.’

  They went on and recrossed the stream and came up to the house. Disturbed, some seagulls blew up from the lawn like white clothes flapping in the wind.

  The two young men were saved the necessity of knocking because the front door opened and a small plump brown-haired middle-aged woman came out carrying a basket. When she saw them she stopped and rubbed her free hand down her apron.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If ye please, ma’am,’ said Sam. ‘We’d like to see your mistress.’

  ‘Just tell her two friends has called.’

  ‘Friends?’ Jane Gimlett eyed them and hesitated, but she was not sufficiently the well-trained servant to stare them down. ‘Wait here,’ she said, and turned back into the house. She found her mistress in the kitchen bathing one of Jeremy’s knees where he had scuffed it climbing a wall. A large hairy dog of anonymous breed lay at her feet. ‘There’s two young men at the door, ma’am, want to see ee. Miners or the like, I’d say.’

  ‘Miners? From our mine?’

  ‘Nay. Strangers. From a distance, I’d say.’

  Demelza looped up a curl of hair and straightened. ‘Stay there, my handsome,’ she said to Jeremy, and walked along the passage to the front door, frowning in the brighter light At first she did not recognize either of them.

  ‘We came to see ye, sister,’ said Sam. ‘Tis six years since we met. D’you recall me? I’m Sam, the second one. I mind you well. This is Drake, the youngest. He were seven when you left home.’