‘I have several friends,’ Caroline said, ‘in the Western Squadron, and one or two I believe were on the Arethusa or her accompanying ships. Do you know the names of the accompanying ships?’
Unwin finished his brandy. ‘I heard. They were mentioned more than once. But it is hard to remember. The name of one ship is so much like another.’
The sun was out now, shining on wet slate and bough and flagstone. Under them, in the stable directly below this room, they heard a horse whinny and snort.
‘Wait,’ said Unwin. ‘I have it. One was the Travail, under Captain Harrington; the other was the Mermaid, but I don’t recall the captain’s name. Banks, was it? I’m not sure.’
‘And which was wrecked?’
‘The Travail, I think. Yes, that must be it, because Harrington was killed in the action, and Mermaid hazarded herself trying to pick up survivors . . . My dear Caroline; was there someone well known to you on board? I trust I have not upset you?’
‘No, no,’ said Caroline thoughtfully, after a long moment. ‘I believe it was just someone walking over my grave.’
In her small porticoed house at the end of the main street of Falmouth overlooking the open mouth of the bay, Verity Blamey, née Poldark, was putting her child to bed when there was a knock at her front door. The sun had recently dipped and flared behind the land and a night wrack of cloud had gathered over St Mawes. The water had lost all its colour and glittered like a tarnished pewter dish. Lights were beginning to wink in windows and at mastheads.
Mrs Stevens had popped out to see a neighbour, so Verity was alone in the house. Before going downstairs she peered through the parlour window and saw that her caller was a tall young woman leading a horse. She thought she recognized the colour of the hair. She went down and opened the door.
‘Mrs Andrew Blamey?’
‘Miss Penvenen, isn’t it? What is wrong? Are you unwell?’
‘May I come in? My horse will be safe here?’
‘Yes, yes. Do come in, please.’
The tall girl followed Verity up the stairs and into the parlour. There were pink spots in her cheeks which made Verity think at first that she had an inflammatory fever.
‘We’ve not met,’ said Caroline bluntly and without preliminary. ‘All these years. Although we have so many friends. I need help. So I thought I would come to you. Isn’t that strange?’
‘Of course not. You have been such a friend to Ross. Anything I can do. First sit down, and then some refreshment.’
‘No.’ Caroline stood by the window holding her riding crop. ‘What I want to know – I don’t know if you can help me. I have just ridden from Killewarren.’
‘From Killewarren? Unaccompanied?’
‘Oh, that.’ She dismissed it. ‘Have we ever met? Officially, I mean. You seemed to know who I was.’
‘I have seen you twice. The first time was in Bodmin four years ago.’
‘But you know of me, as I know of you. Ross will have talked of me and of my friendship with Dwight Enys.’
‘Yes. Oh, yes.’
‘Has he told you that at Christmas I became engaged to marry Dwight?’
Verity buttoned the neck of her plain linen frock. She did not know quite what distressed Caroline but the sudden arrival of this brightly coloured, elegant young woman made her feel dowdy, as if a butterfly had come in and was beating its wings beside a brown moth. She knew Caroline’s reputation for unconventional behaviour, for dramatic actions, and she wondered in what way she was to be concerned in this latest move.
‘I have not seen Ross or any others of the family since Christmas. Demelza has written twice but she did not say anything.’
‘Well, it was to be kept secret from my uncle who does not approve – and who is mortally sick. It was to be kept from him until Dwight came home and we were to see him together. Because of me, because of the – difficulties which arose, Dwight joined the Navy.’ Caroline seemed out of breath.
Verity went to a sidetable and picked up a decanter. Liquid bobbled in a glass, which Caroline took with a nod, though she still did not drink.
Verity said: ‘I knew he was in the Navy. Not the reason.’
‘He sailed just after Christmas, and I have had two letters from him. He is in the Channel patrol, part of the Western Squadron under Sir Edward Pellew. He is in a frigate under Sir Edward Pellew.’
Verity stared at her. ‘Yes? Oh . . . Do you mean he has been in this latest action?’
‘I do not know for sure. But someone called on me this morning. I was told of the action. I was told that one English ship was sunk. Do you know its name?’
‘I think . . . Wait a minute – I have a news sheet.’ Verity went across the room and fumbled among some woollen things. ‘This is it. Yes, the Travail.’ She looked up. ‘It was lost off the French coast. Miss Penvenen, don’t tell me that . . .’
Caroline sat down on the nearest chair, and a little brandy spilled on the carpet. Verity ran to her, put her arm round her.
‘Well, my dear,’ Caroline said, ‘it is very embarrassing for me, I assure you, for I have only known you five minutes, but I feel rather sick.’
‘Do you know I do not believe I was meant to be a sailor’s wife. You must know more of it than I, Verity, how one should behave.’
‘Drink this. Just a little. It will do you good.’
‘Yet I was never one to collapse as a blushing maiden. My old nurse did not encourage it. “Young ladies,” she used to say, “is meant to be strong, not grow up like lent lilies.” So I rarely if ever faint as a pastime.’
‘Put your head back now. You will be better soon.’
‘Oh, I am better. Who am I to complain? It is the others who are not better.’
‘The ship was wrecked, not sunk by the French. It all took place in a gale. There will have been many survivors.’
Caroline lay back for a while, drawing in slow breaths. ‘Do you know, all the way across here, I was saying, that stupid man Unwin Trevaunance has made a mistake! When I get there I shall find that I am being deceived by this irritating custom of the Admiralty for naming so many ships so nearly alike. It will not be just that one. It will not be the Travail. I will find it is the Turmoil or the Terror or the Trident. All the way here I kept saying to myself . . .’
‘You should not be too upset, my dear. Anything may have happened. He might be safe and well.’
‘I thought, I must go and see Ross’s cousin. I will pay her a social call. There is really no one else. Of course I could have gone to Susan Pellew herself; we have met once; or to Mary Trefusis, or to one of the other people whom I have some acquaintance with; but it seemed – I felt it more natural to call upon Ross’s cousin whom I had never met!’
‘It was right. How I wish Andrew were here . . . And James, Andrew’s son, is at sea too. But I must think . . .’
‘Are there no details in the news sheet?’
‘Nothing. Just repeating a dispatch from Captain Pellew, who is still at sea. It simply says about the Travail that she took the ground in the – in the Bay of Audierne and that the Mermaid when attempting rescue work narrowly escaped shipwreck herself.’
‘Where can we ask – Is there anyone who will know more?’
‘That is what I have been thinking. I think the news was brought in by a naval sloop. Because of Andrew I am well known in the Packet Office. Ben Pender is usually there until eight. If anyone would know, he would. I’ll come with you, of course. I think I hear Mrs Stevens has returned, so I can leave little Andrew with her. Do you feel able, to walk?’
‘Oh, yes. Oh, yes. My knees are growing stronger minute by minute.’
‘It is a quarter of a mile down the street. I’ll get my cape. You will, of course, stay the night.’
‘I don’t think I can. My uncle is ill. When I heard this news I went in to him, told him what I was going to do. I fear it upset him for, although he knew no more than I told him, my somewhat obvious desire to know the truth about Dwight must
have given my feelings away. When I have what news there is I can ride back.’
‘Three hours in the dark? There are too many starving men abroad. You must stay. I’ll tell Mrs Stevens to prepare a room.’
Ten minutes later they went out and made their way over the cobbles and the mud and threaded among the people crowding the narrow street. Shops were still open, the ale houses busy, drunks lay in corners, children played and screamed, blind men and lame men begged, old soldiers stood and gossiped, sailors three abreast sang lewd songs, house-holders stood at open doors, dogs barked and fought and seagulls screamed over all. It was a fine evening and warm for April after the rain. But for Caroline it was a scene without savour, without warmth, without light. These were not human beings who crowded around her but grey and white shadows impeding her progress towards an inevitable end.
At the packet office Ben Pender, a tired little man in an old-fashioned wig and snuff-brown suit, was talking to a packet captain in blue and braid, who at once got up and bowed over Verity’s hand. Verity introduced them to Caroline and explained her mission.
The captain said: ‘Unfortunately, ma’am, we only have the message passed on by the sloop, which came in with the news and left by the next tide. Pellew and his ships are still at sea. But here the message is in full – for what it is. Sir Edward Pellew reports having first sighted the two Frenchmen, the Héros and the Palmier, the Héros being a 74-gun two decker, at 3 p.m. on Thursday afternoon in thick weather some fifty leagues south-west of Ushant. The wind was blowing hard from the westward and sail was made in chase. At three quarters past five the Nymphe and the Travail came up with the French ships.’ He looked at the paper Ben Pender had put before him and hooked a pair of spectacles round his ears. ‘According to this account a running fight then took place lasting about ten hours in a steadily increasing gale, first under lowering clouds and rain, then with furious squally showers by the light of a half moon. During this the Mermaid also became engaged and the five ships drifted towards the French coast. By the time the Brest peninsula was sighted in the half dark the Héros was disabled and the Palmier, the Nymphe and the Travailhad suffered considerable damage. Both Frenchmen tried to make the Brest estuary but in their damaged condition could not do so. The Palmier struck a rock by the Isle de Sein and sank, the Héros drifted into the Bay of Audierne and ran aground in heavy seas. The Travail also could not withstand the force of the gale and was wrecked near the Héros. The Nymphe, though almost in shoal water, succeeded in weathering the Pointe de Penmarche and making the open sea. The Mermaid, which had suffered the least of the five ships, attempted to close in to help the wrecked ships but was forced to turn away to save herself. Casualties in the Nymphe were sixteen killed and fifty-seven wounded. In the Mermaid five killed and thirty-five wounded. Captain Harrington of the Travail was killed early in the action.’ The captain unlatched his spectacles from behind his ears. ‘That is the end of the dispatch, ma’am.’
A clerk came in with a lighted lantern to add to the one on the desk. It helped to show up the charts, the drawings of ships, the yellow bills of lading, the scales, the inkpot and quill, the mahogany furnishings, the brass rails, the tiled floor.
Caroline said: ‘Did you see anyone from the sloop; personally, I mean?’
‘I had some words with the captain But you’ll understand he was not in the action. He simply bore the tidings.’
‘Did you – discuss the Travail at all?’
The captain hesitated. ‘A few words, ma’am. But from my own experience I can tell you that survival in a shipwreck is much a matter of good or ill fortune. If the frigate came in upon a beach there must be a very good chance of a large number being saved. That I’m afraid we shall not be likely to know for a little while, for such survivors as there are will necessarily be prisoners of the French.’
Chapter Four
May came in windy and wet, and stayed so. It seemed long years to Demelza since they had had one of those idyllic Mays of brilliant sunshine and gentle breezes when the whole peninsula had swum out into the calm blue sea of summer, when the flowers had bloomed unharassed and the warmth of the day had been on your back wherever you went. Last year had been the same as this; rain and wind almost all the time, with a break in the middle of dull quiet cool weather – the time she had gone to Werry House to the ball. (A vile memory – she could not bear to think of it.) The May before there had been that party at the Trevaunances at which everyone had expected Unwin to announce his engagement to Caroline Penvenen, and he had not done so. All the time then the weather had been grey and cold.
The year before that Ross and Francis had taken the decision to reopen Wheal Grace, and Ross had met George Warleggan at the Red Lion Hotel and they had had words and Ross had thrown George over the banisters . . . And she had been carrying Jeremy . . . She remembered the endless blustering winds.
Now she was pregnant again, though so far she had no difficulty in keeping the fact a secret from everyone but Ross. And now they were passing rich and could afford as much coal on the fires as they pleased. And the old gaunt library where she had first learned to play a few notes on the spinet was going to be repaired. And her younger brother, Drake, was to work on it, being a handy man with his plane and saw. And Sam was down the mine – not as a tributer but as a tutworker: that was to say he broke the ground at so much a fathom: he stood neither to gain nor lose by the quality of the ground he spent. It was not so profitable as tributing but neither was it so much a gamble, and it was a livelihood, steady work for steady pay. One could feed one’s body and have time to consider one’s soul.
Sam and Drake, offered a room in old Aunt Betsy Triggs’, had asked instead if they might repair and occupy Reath Cottage just over the hill – the little cob-walled cottage Mark Daniel had built with his own hands for his pretty young wife – before he killed her with the same hands a few months later. The roof had long since fallen in, and much of the rest, built in such haste, had not stood the test of wind and weather. The people of Mellin and Marasanvose would not go near the place after dusk: they said that the little moonflower face of Keren could be seen any time lolling out of the window, its tongue swollen and its bloodshot eyes staring. But the Carnes were made of sterner stuff. As Sam put it, no hurt or harm could come to the souls of men who had been saved from the toils of Satan by the perfect love of Jesus.
So in their spare time they hammered and sawed and patched and chiselled, and the stuff that came out of the old library was often useful to Drake to carry across to their cottage. That their choice of a cottage of their own, however ruinous, in preference to a share with Aunt Betsy had any secondary intent did not occur to Demelza until early in May when she heard that Sam was hoping to extend the lower room of Reath Cottage, and that he had already held a small prayer meeting there.
Indeed, Samuel considered that there was no time to waste. Methodism in most counties went up and down in popularity and enthusiasm with the years; but this was especially so in Cornwall where the population was more volatile in temperament and the distances always furthest from the enlightened control and guidance of its founders. The great Wesley himself while still alive had scarcely ever dared to leave his Cornish converts alone for more than a year at a time. Although there were strong and earnest groups in some of the towns and villages who never wavered in their faith and their prayer, there was constant backsliding in other parts and a falling from grace. Sawle with Grambler had long since fallen from grace, as indeed had all the surrounding district as far as St Michael one way and St Ann’s the other.
Sam found it a sad and a barren sight. There was a small meeting house at Grambler which had been put up by subscription and by the miners themselves in the prosperous sixties, but since the mine closed and the people had drifted away the meeting house was neglected and in bad repair. Some still kept to the old principles, without however meeting together or renewing their faith in communal prayer.
Sam met with resentment here and there, f
or a stranger from as far afield as Illuggan was no better than a foreigner; and the general feeling was that the only way such an intruder could be tolerated was by his being seen and not heard. Sam was not content to be quiet, and sour looks came his way; but his relationship with the Poldarks saved him from worse trouble. So the little nucleus of the converted who in the years of neglect had not lost grace altogether began to meet each Sunday evening in Reath Cottage. Sunday morning or afternoon Sam led them to church, proper.
There were four churches within walking distance. St Sawle, Grambler-with-Sawle, was the nearest, then came St Minver, Marasanvose. A little further off were St Ann’s, at St Ann’s, and St Paul’s on the way to St Michael. But in the bad storm of May, ’88, the roof of St Paul’s had fallen in, and no one had had money to repair it, so services had been indefinitely suspended. At St Ann’s, the vicar lived in London and had never yet visited the church, so that services were held there at rare intervals, when a locum could be found. Parishioners wishing to get married could seldom have the banns called, so they had to afford to buy licences or do without the blessings of the church, and parents had to carry their children to Sawle for christening.
St Sawle, Grambler-with-Sawle, with its two chancels, its leaky roofs, its side-slanting tower and over-filled graveyard, was looked after by the Reverend Clarence Odgers, a cleric who received £40 a year from the incumbent, who lived in Penzance. Odgers, having a wife and a brood of children to keep, eked out his living by growing vegetables and fruit. The church was neglected but had a fair congregation, a noisy rather than tuneful choir and, of course, the patronage of Trenwith House.
The nearest big house to St Minver, Marasanvose, was Werry House, but the Bodrugans only went to church twice a year, and the vicar, Mr Faber, doubled with another church near Ladock and was a fox-hunting man. St Minver was a small church, and the first time Sam and Drake went there were only five others in the congregation. Of these, two were men who talked all through about the price of corn; of the three women two were mending shirts and the third, who was the caretaker, was asleep. After the service there was a christening to be done, and the caretaker had forgotten to get water for the font, so the vicar spat in his hand and anointed the child with his spittle in the name of Christ. Sam and Drake came out in time to see him mount his broad old mare and clatter off down the rocky track.