The Wreckers Read online

  “It’s my fault,” said Mary. “If we’d come here instead of going to the cromlech—Oh, John, he couldn’t even call for help.”

  A few pieces of hay clung to his lips, and I plucked them off. I expected a coldness at my fingers, but instead felt warmth. I pressed my hand against his neck.

  “Bring water,” I said.

  Mary looked at me. I said, “He’s alive.” In the folds of aged skin, I could feel a beating of blood.

  Mary laughed. She laughed and she cried, and she wiped at her face with the backs of her hands. Then she ran to the water trough and came back with a little bucket sloshing full. She dipped her fingers in it, and touched them to Eli’s lips.

  “More,” I said. And we both scooped palmfuls of the water, and let them trickle on his forehead and cheeks. Then his face twitched, and his eyes sprang open.

  His arms swung up, pushing at us. A ghastly cry gurgled in his throat, and I saw the stump of his tongue throbbing like a warted toad.

  “Eli,” said Mary. “Eli, it’s me.”

  She took his hands. She held him and soothed him until he lay flat again, and the blood oozed from his shirt as he breathed.

  Simon Mawgan came back. He had a folded blanket in his hand, and he stopped at the stable door to take a shovel from the wall. “Best we do this now,” he said. “There’s going to be a howl of wind tonight. Rain such as Noah never saw.” The shovel clanged like a funeral bell.

  Eli opened his eyes but didn’t move at all. Mary crouched over him. “He’s alive,” she said.

  “That can’t be,” said Mawgan. “I pulled the fork from his ribs myself.” In four steps he traveled the length of the stable. Then he grunted. “So he is.”

  But only just. Eli lay white and still, like a huge cocoon. His breath had a wheeze in it, and each rising of his chest pumped new blood from the holes.

  “Help me,” said Mary.

  Simon Mawgan tossed the shovel onto the heap of straw. He knelt down and stretched the blanket from Eli’s feet to his neck. He slid his arms underneath and picked up his brother from the floor. “Get a fire going in the cottage,” he said to Mary.

  “No,” she said. “Take him to the house.”

  Mawgan shuddered. “I think the cottage might be best,” he said.

  “Uncle, please.” She looked up at him, nearly crying. “Please,” she said again. “Put him in my bed.”

  Mawgan did what she asked. He took Eli up in his arms and he carried him, swiftly and easily, out from the stable. And for the first time in his life, Eli passed through the door of his brother’s home.

  Mawgan put him on the bed as gently as a baby. But with that done, he held his hands out from his sides as though he’d soiled them with dirt. “Listen,” he said. “You’ll have to keep pressure on those wounds until the bleeding stops.” He touched one of his huge hands to Eli’s forehead. “And he’s got the fever. So keep him covered and light a fire.” Then he left the room.

  “Is there no doctor?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Not for Eli. There’s not a man in Pendennis who would come out here to help him.”

  The nursing would be Mary’s task alone.

  Chapter 14

  A TERRIFYING DECISION

  Simon Mawgan was right about the weather. The glass fell by the minute, and within the hour the sky was covered with clouds as black and ragged as witches’ robes. Mary did all she could for Eli; she filled stone jars with hot water and placed them in the bed; she sponged his forehead and moistened his lips. I stoked a fire in the room’s little hearth. But still Eli lay shaking and weak.

  When the hour had passed, Mawgan came back to the room. He stood in the doorway, puffing on his pipe. He pointed a finger at me. “The packet stops at Polruan tomorrow,” he said. “We’re leaving here at dawn.”

  “At dawn?” I asked.

  “That’s right. The packet comes but once a month. And if you run off again, I’m done with you. Understand?” Then his eyes shifted to Mary. “The bleeding stop?”

  “Not quite,” she said.

  “Have you washed his feet?”

  “Uncle, of course I have.”

  “Yes. Silly of me.” Mawgan stepped out to the hall. “Soon as he comes to his senses, you’ll want to have him back in the cottage.”

  When we heard Mawgan walking through the kitchen, Mary got up and moved a kettle onto the fire. She turned to me with a worried frown. “Do you know that whoever did this to Eli was looking for you?”

  “Yes.” I’d thought the same thing.

  “What will you do?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” said I. “Do you think I should leave on the packet?”

  “Is that what you want?” asked Mary.

  It was, though I was ashamed to face it. I wanted to get on the packet and go as far and as fast as I could from this place. I was more frightened than I’d ever been, and I wished—I ached—that Mary would tell me to go.

  But all she said was “Watch him a minute,” and left the room.

  I could hardly bear the thought of going back to Pendennis, back to that drain full of rats. Someone would wait for me there. The sound of his boots would stalk me down those lonely cobblestoned streets, and then—from a corner, from a doorway—he would leap from the darkness. No, I decided; I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t possibly do it. I would wait until morning and then go off with Simon Mawgan, over the empty moors, and—

  I couldn’t do that either. I thought of Mawgan with his hands covered in blood, ready to scrape out a hole and bury his brother with no more thought than he’d give to planting potatoes. Alone on the moor, anything could happen. He could toss me down a mine shaft, then come back to Galilee and say to Mary, “Well, that’s the boy gone.” And it wouldn’t matter how I screamed for help; I would die alone under the ground, swimming in a pit of rain and muck until I could swim no longer.

  I shuddered as I thought of this. It was the same fate my father faced, as though it was meant to be. We would die together, miles apart, calling for each other.

  Mary came back with a few yards of muslin and a bowl full of oatmeal. She went to the fire and took the lid from the kettle.

  I said, “Mary, what should I do?”

  “It edn’t fair to ask me that.” She ladled water into the bowl, and the steam came up, smelling of oats. “You have to do whatever seems best.”

  “But I don’t know what that is.”

  Mary stirred the oats into a paste. She used her fingers, and they clotted with it. “What would your father tell you to do?”

  I could see him in my mind, lying cold and scared in the drain, begging me to help him. But I had no doubt what he would tell me to do. “Go home on the packet,” I said.

  “Well, is that what you want?” Mary dabbed at her forehead with the back of her hand. “Do you want to be home, and safe, in London?”

  I closed my eyes and thought of the city, of its wonderful streets full of carriages and people, its buildings and docks. I saw myself on the bank of the Thames; I breathed the smells and heard the noises. And yes, that was what I wanted. I wanted it badly.

  “You shouldn’t blame yourself for what’s become of your father,” said Mary. “Surely he wouldn’t want you to lose your life for him.” She brought the bowl to the bed. I stood to pull back the covers, and she started laying the poultice over Eli’s chest. She talked to me with her head down, busy with her work. “He might die happily if he thought you were home in London, tending to his business.”

  His business. I thought of this and nearly cried, though for myself or Father I could not say. I didn’t want to be a businessman, sitting at a desk and sorting ledgers for all my years to come. But this I would have to do, haunted forever by that last image of my father fettered in the darkness. He had called to me to help him.

  Mary patted down the muslin, and the oats welled up between her fingers. She looked sad and solemn. “Oh, John,” she said, “I fear for you. If you go back there, you hav
e to go alone.”

  “Alone?” I asked.

  “I can’t leave Eli now. Not like this.” She wiped her fingers on the edge of the bowl, then spread a towel across the poultice. “Caleb might be waiting for you. The others too. There’s the rising tide and the cromlech curse and—”

  “I don’t believe in that,” I said. “It was a story your uncle made up to scare you away.”

  “I’m not so sure,” said Mary.

  “Well, I am,” said I. “All this time he’s been lying to you. He’s been plotting and wrecking and—”

  “Stop it!” cried Mary. And then, in a whisper, “He’ll hear you.”

  We stood in silence then, listening to Simon Mawgan move through the house. His heavy steps came toward us, and then went away again. And I too lowered my voice to a whisper. “I’m going to go,” I said. “I have to go.”

  Mary sighed. “I thought you would.” She drew the covers up to Eli’s neck and tucked them gently around him. “I know you’re very brave.”

  In truth, I was terrified. But my mind was made up, and I had to go through with it.

  “Listen,” Mary said. She squeezed my wrist. “There’s a file in the stable. On the shelf by the door. There’s a hammer there also, and a few other tools.” She spoke quickly. Urgently. “Take my pony; it’s faster, and it will carry you both. But you must not pass a single soul. No one must see you. No one at all.”

  “And no one will,” said I. “Is there a road direct to Pendennis?”

  “There is,” said Mary. “But not for you. You’ll have to go across the moor. The night will be black—no stars to help you. Keep the wind on your cheek, and ride for your life.”

  “Yes,” I said, and stepped toward the door. My legs were wobbly, but they held me. “Well, goodbye, Mary.”

  Mary nearly laughed. “Not yet,” she said, and pulled me back. “You can’t ride through Pendennis in the daylight. And Uncle would never let you go off by yourself. You’ll have to wait until nightfall. When he goes to bed, then you can slip away.”

  There were hours to wait. And the waiting was the hardest of all. I thought of Caleb Stratton and the grinning man. I thought of my father chained to the tunnel wall, of the rats that gnawed at his feet. Simon Mawgan kept looming in my mind, friendly one moment, almost vicious the next. I’ll deal with that damned bay in my own way, he’d said. You’re no more a man than the crabs that crawl on the beach. The clouds thickened, and the rain came tapping at the window, and every moment I dreaded a little more the coming of night.

  Mary tended to Eli with great fondness and care. When he sweated, she cooled him with water and sponge. When he shivered, she drew the blankets tight round him. She kept touching him, her fingers leaving no marks on that skin that seemed older than it was. But as the hours passed, there was no change in the man; he lay not asleep but not awake, and his breath bubbled on his lips.

  I sat by the window, willing the sun to hurry on its westing. But behind the clouds, it crawled. The rain grew heavy. It streamed down the pane and rattled on the roof; it flowed from the eaves in a solid sheet. And soon there was a sound out there, deep with sorrow, a moan of lonely voices.

  “That’s the wind in the cromlech,” said Mary. “When it talks like that, the ships come ashore.”

  We saw nothing of Simon Mawgan until early evening, when he came tramping upstairs to the doorway. “How is he?”

  “The same,” said Mary.

  Mawgan spread his arms across the door. “So do you think he might hang on long enough for you to make my supper?”

  I was left to watch over Eli. His eyes were not quite closed, and I could see the whites like crescent moons. Now and then his fingers twitched, or the muscles tightened in that awful turtle’s neck.

  The wind whispered and moaned. The house creaked and the rain scratched at the windows. And I sat alone with a dying man, hearing taunting words in the wind. Never doooo it. Dooomed. You’re doooooomed.

  Then Eli’s head jerked from the pillow. His eyes popped open, and he stared up with a wild horror at something that wasn’t there. And he fell back, slipping again into his eerie sleep.

  By the time Mary came in with a tray full of food and steaming tea, the room had darkened. She brought a lamp, and the shadows drew back as she passed, then crept in behind her. Hidden by row after row of jagged clouds, the sun at last was setting.

  “Do you hear it?” asked Mary.

  “What?”

  “The surf.”

  I hadn’t. But I knew then that it had been there all the time, slowly building, slowly gaining in fury. And for a moment I could hear nothing else but the muffled blasts, as though whole navies were trading broadsides out in the Channel.

  Mary put down her tray. “Uncle Simon’s just sitting by the fire. I think he means to spend the night in his chair.”

  “How will I get out?” I asked.

  “You’ll have to wait.” She sat down on the bed and passed me a sausage. “But he sleeps like a log.”

  With the sun down, darkness came soon after. It filled the room as swiftly and coldly as water in a holed ship. And still I had to wait. Eli twitched on the bed. Once he cried out in his sleep, as though caught in a nightmare.

  “Mary?” I asked. “Why does your uncle keep Eli out of the house?”

  “He doesn’t,” said Mary. “It’s Eli who won’t come in.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, really.” She sponged his forehead and his neck; she fussed at the poultice. “Eli never had a wife or child, and I think he would have liked to raise me himself after the Rose of Sharon was wrecked. But he was poor as dirt, and Uncle Simon had so much; it had to be Uncle Simon. Poor Eh sat down and cried the day Uncle Simon took me away. And all I can think is that Eh never forgave him for that.”

  “But why did your uncle hit him?”

  Mary looked at me, then back at Eli. “Uncle Simon has an awful anger inside him,” she said. “It comes out against Eli more than anyone. But I think most of all he’s angry at himself. I don’t know why, but that’s what I think.”

  And that was the last she would say of her uncles. The lamp flickered in the darkness, and I thought again of the moor; I dreaded going out there. Mary told me to sleep, but I couldn’t. “Tell me of London,” she said, but I couldn’t think of anything I hadn’t told her before. And so we sat—and Eli wheezed and shook—until Simon Mawgan fell asleep and the sounds of his snoring rasped through the house.

  Mary stood up. It was time to go.

  From a table she fetched a candle and a tinderbox. “You’ll need a light to work by,” she said.

  My hands were trembling as I took them from her.

  “Remember,” she said. “Stay off the roads. And watch for yourself, John.”

  She came round the bed, and I took her hands. I said, “I won’t see you again.”

  “You might. We can never tell.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “For everything.”

  She hugged me fiercely. “I think Peter must have been like you,” she said. Then she stepped back, and she wiped her eyes. “No more talking. If Uncle wakes, it’s over.”

  Mary went before me, holding the lamp at her waist. She’d kept the house dark, and we moved in a pool of light, through the dining hall and into the parlor.

  Simon Mawgan was sprawled in a huge chair, his feet splayed on the hearth, hands in his lap. His head rested on his left shoulder, and his jowls quivered as he breathed huge snoring breaths. And we crept right past him with the floorboards crying like mice.

  At the door Mary took a coat from its peg and gave it to me. Mawgan breathed and snored. I slipped the candle and tinder into a pocket; then Mary pressed the lamp into my hands. She cupped a palm over the lamp’s chimney and warned me with her eyes to guard the flame against the wind. I imagined the glass was vibrating with her uncle’s snore.

  “Be careful,” she said. Then she raised the latch and cracked open the door.

  A cold d
raft came in, wet with rain. Mawgan stirred in his chair; the snoring stopped, then started.

  “Godspeed,” said Mary, and ushered me out.

  Chapter 15

  ACROSS THE MOOR

  I threw the coat across my shoulders and plunged down into the darkness and the rain. Before I’d even reached the stable, I was wet to the skin. I found the shelf, and on it a file. It was a good one, the teeth so sharp they glinted silver and gray. I took a chisel and a stout hammer. And I put all of these into a leather pouch.

  The ponies shied away from the lamp, but Mawgan’s black horse whinnied and stomped. So it was used to the light, I thought, to the glow of a lantern. It was eager to go on whatever business a lantern might lead it to. But I took Mary’s pony instead, blew out the lamp, and headed off for the village.

  I passed through the hedgerows and climbed up on the moor. The wind raged across the open ground, hurling the rain in stinging blasts. I put my head down and urged the pony on.

  Like a ship at sea, I used the wind to guide me. From a trot to a canter to a full gallop, the little pony carried me along. When the house disappeared behind, I rode over an empty land. And I lay along the pony’s back, my cheek pressed against its neck, watching the ground rush darkly past its feet.

  Faster. Faster still. Hooves barely touched the ground. A single thump, all four at once flinging water, and we bounded over scrub grass and dunes.

  And then I was falling.

  The pony pitched forward, and I flew over its head, tumbling onto the wet earth. The pony tried to rise but couldn’t. It was slipping backward, clawing with one hoof as it vanished into the ground.

  A mine shaft. We’d stumbled right on top of it, crashing through the covering of rotted boards. As the pony struggled, the wood broke away like river ice.

  I grabbed the reins and wrapped them round my hand. I braced my feet. The pony thrashed at the planks, flinging up splinters that spun off on the wind. Its belly cracked through the wood, and I fell face first. The reins cinched on my fist and pulled me over the slick ground. Then the platform caved in, and with a nearly human cry, the pony fell backward into the hole.