The Wreckers Page 6

  The ponies crowded at me, pushing me in.

  Mawgan lowered the riding crop and tapped it on his knee. “Where have you been?” he said.

  “We went riding,” I told him.

  “Where?” he barked.

  “Across the moor,” said I.

  “I’ll ask once more.” He took a step toward me. The ponies clomped through the stable and went each to its stall. “Where have you been?”

  “The Tombstones,” I said.

  “The Tombstones.” The crop tap-tapped against his leg. “I didn’t say you could go gallivanting across the countryside.”

  I said, “I didn’t know I was a prisoner.”

  Maybe my boldness surprised him. More likely, he saw through it to the fear inside. He laughed heartily. “A prisoner, you say? No, no, my lad. I was worried about you, is all. I suppose it was Mary’s idea, was it? ’Course it was. Headstrong girl, that one.”

  Then, without turning, he spoke to the man in the stall. “Get up from there. Give the boy a hand with the ponies.”

  It was Eli, the shriveled old man with no tongue. He came out cautiously, like a weasel from its den. But from the way he held his arms, I could see that the riding crop had done him no harm.

  “You’ve run those ponies hard,” said Mawgan. “Put blankets on them, John, then come to the house.” He left without another word.

  Eli fetched blankets and a comb, all the time watching the door. I held my hand out for a blanket, looking not at him but at the ponies. Mawgan was right; they were starting to tremble with cold sweats. And suddenly Eli clutched my arm.

  There were bits of straw stuck in his hair, another piece lying aslant across his shoulder. His face was shrunken and cracked like old mud. And the sounds he made, from deep in his throat, were the croakings of a frog.

  I pulled away from him; I couldn’t bear his touch. But he came at me again, bent and shuffling, and grabbed my sleeve with a hand that was more like a claw, the skin stretched over talon fingers. He made the sounds again, the awful groans and warbles, and cast another frightened glance at the door.

  I dropped to my knees and hauled him down beside me. I swept a bit of dirt clear of old straw and scratched words with my finger: “Show me.”

  He yanked on my arm, and yanked again, until I looked up at his face. He shook his head so violently that bits of straw flew like arrows from his hair.

  “You can’t read?” I said. “You can’t write?”

  Again he shook his head. And then, as slowly and as carefully as he could, he spoke three words. But they were mere sounds, with no more sense than the grunting of a Pig.

  I said, “I don’t know what you’re telling me.”

  He nearly howled with frustration. Then he swept the dirt clear of my writing, and with a finger long and bony he drew a stick figure.

  It was bent forward, running furiously. Eli added a round head, a gaping mouth and startled, widened eyes. He jabbed his finger at the running man, then poked me in the ribs. And he spoke again, those horrible groans. Three words.

  “Run for it?” I asked. “Run for it?”

  Eli shook his head even more violently than before. He brushed away his picture and started over.

  And a shadow fell across us.

  “He has pudding for brains,” said Simon Mawgan, standing square in the doorway. “You won’t get anywhere with him.”

  Eli fell back as though the words had struck him like cannonballs. He groveled for the blankets and at the same time erased the picture on the ground.

  “Come up to the house,” said Mawgan to me. “You’re only wasting time in here.”

  I followed behind him, leaving Eli alone with the ponies.

  We sat at opposite ends of the big table, and Mawgan glared down at his hands. Mary came in from the kitchen and set down three plates. Mawgan drummed his fingers in the silence.

  Mary brought forks and knives. She gave me a little, secret smile, then slipped out again.

  I coughed. “Thank you for the clothes. They fit well.”

  Mawgan grunted.

  “I’ll give them back,” I said, “when mine—”

  “Keep them.” He kept his head lowered. “The fellow before you has no need of them now.”

  I knew what that meant, and I looked at him as he sat quietly thinking, his face stern, his brow wrinkled. Was he really so kindly as Mary thought? His big hands fiddled with his plate, but he kept silent, and the only sounds came from Mary in the kitchen. I heard her lift the lid of the firebox, the little clang as she moved it aside. I even heard the crackle of flames inside, the slither of coals as she dropped in another scoop.

  “Do you know what a sinkhole is?” asked Mawgan suddenly. “ ’Course you do. The land around here is riddled with them, John. Sinkholes and mine shafts.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Fall in one of those and you break your pony’s leg. Likely your own neck as well.”

  “Oh, Uncle,” said Mary. She poked her head around the door. “I was with him all the time. I know where the holes are.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Mawgan. “You stay on the roads from now on. You hear me?”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “And no more racing across the moor. Your mother would turn in her grave if she saw the way you carry on.”

  “Yes, Uncle,” said Mary. With a wink at me, she slipped back to the kitchen.

  Mawgan joined his hands and rested them on the table edge. And he sat like that, silent as a stone, until Mary arrived—beaming ear to ear—with a covered dish that she put with a flourish in the middle of the table.

  “And what’s this?” asked Mawgan.

  “It’s”—she lifted the lid—“starry-gazy!”

  There were even more pilchards than last time, their poor blackened heads poking from the crust, watching me balefully with round, dead eyes. And I thought right away of Tommy Colwyn, caught on the moor with a spade in his hands and a row of bodies not quite buried.

  “Prettiest thing I’ve ever seen,” said Mawgan. “But look at that, then: You’re giving half the pie to young John.”

  “Oh, there’s plenty for you,” said Mary, her whole face turning scarlet.

  I couldn’t have eaten a bite of that pie if it hadn’t been for Mary. She sat and watched me tackle each mouthful, smiling and nodding as though I was a baby she was feeding. While I choked down my share a swallow at a time, Simon Mawgan worked at his like a coal miner wielding shovel and pick.

  When we were finished, Mawgan took a pipe to one of the big captain’s chairs. He arranged himself in the last of the evening sun and filled his pipe with pinches of shredded tobacco. Then he looked up to see if I was watching, and from a bowl at his elbow he took a small piece of glass. He held it up in his fingers.

  “Have you seen one of these, John?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. It was a tube of thin glass, the width of a pencil and closed at both ends. The bowl was full of them—little cylinders with rolls of paper inside.

  “Look close, then,” said Mawgan, and I leaned forward. “Closer, lad.”

  With a flourish, Mawgan rapped the tube on the edge of the table. It shattered, scattering glass. And in the instant, the thing burst into flame.

  I pulled back—it had nearly set my hair alight—and Mawgan laughed delightedly. It was the paper burning, with a furious flame and a stench of sulfur. He held it to the bowl of his pipe, puffing smoke like a dragon.

  “A phosphorus candle.” He held it until the flame dwindled, then tossed it into a brass pot on the floor. It fell with a tinkle of glass. “Straight from France, that is, and the first to reach England, I daresay. Take one, lad. Take one.”

  I stepped forward and helped myself from the bowl. The floor around him was gritty with tiny bits of glass.

  “The paper’s coated with phosphorus,” said Mawgan. “Burns like the devil and nothing puts it out. But the best thing about them”—he tapped the pipestem on his teeth—“is the f
act that they float, you see.”

  Mary brought a candle and walked through the room lighting lamps and tallow dips. The faint, fizzly smell of the phosphorus vanished in a reek of fish oil. Nowhere had I seen so many lamps. There was no need to carry one from room to room, as I would in London; they filled the house with a glow of yellow light.

  Mawgan laughed. He was in a fine humor now. “Everything should float,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be all the easier, hmmm, if gold could float?” Then he sat back, blowing smoke rings that floated like wreaths to the ceiling. He took the pipe from his lips and picked off a piece of tobacco.

  “So,” he said to me. “What’s this I hear about your father?” I must have blanched, and he laughed. “Don’t look so shocked, lad. Mary told me everything.”

  I saw her shoulders twitch, but she didn’t look back. She was carrying her candle from one light to the next, guarding the flame with her hand.

  “So he’s alive, is he?” asked Mawgan.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Yet you told me there was nobody else. I asked you outright, and you said it straight to my face.”

  “I told you there was no one I saw.” I blushed at this, the weakness of it.

  “So,” said Mawgan. He tamped the tobacco in his pipe. “You were going to let your father perish in some lonely prison rather than worry yourself about it?”

  I turned the match end over end in my hands. “That’s not the way it was.”

  “Oh, but that’s just how it was. You lied to me, John.”

  “I had to,” I said. “Stumps—”

  “That won’t do, my son. I give you safety, clothing, I give you food and shelter. Yet you repay me with lies. Why, boy? Why?”

  It was Mary who answered. “He didn’t know that he could trust you, Uncle. And is that such a wonder?” She snuffed the candle between her fingers. “His shipmates are dead, his father’s a prisoner, and how should he know whom to trust?”

  Mawgan blew a perfect ring of smoke that drifted up and hovered over him like a halo. He nodded. “Right you are, Mary. Right you are.”

  I found it hard to believe that this was the same man I’d seen only hours before, livid with rage as he lashed at Eli with a riding crop. Now he sat like a saint, with a charming smile. And I still didn’t know whether to trust him or not. He seemed quite harmless, yet every man in Pendennis obeyed his commands.

  Mary blew out her candle. “I thought you could help him,” she said. “Or I would have kept quiet.”

  “I understand,” said Mawgan. “But you haven’t told anyone else, have you?”

  “Of course not,” said Mary.

  “No one at all?”

  “Uncle, please.”

  “ ’Course you haven’t.” Mawgan smiled his gentle smile. “But the problem, you see, is what can I do?”

  “Why, ride to Polruan,” said Mary. “Bring the coast guard. Bring the excise men.”

  “Oh, I wish I could, Mary.” Mawgan turned to me, and his smile was gone. “But it’s not so simple as that, is it then, John?”

  “It’s not?” I said.

  His face turned dark and angry. “Don’t play me for a fool, my boy; I’m not a Bristol boatsman. This is your father we’re speaking about.”

  “Really,” I said. “I don’t know—”

  “Lies, lies, lies. You’re just full of them, aren’t you?”

  “Uncle!” cried Mary.

  Mawgan tapped out his pipe on his palm. There was still redness in the ashes, but he ground them between his hands. “Tell her,” he said. “Tell her what you had in those barrels on the Isle of Skye.”

  “Wine,” I said.

  “Liar!” Mawgan slammed his fist on the table. “Don’t tell me your traveler’s tales. Do you think I don’t know?”

  “What, then?” said Mary, with the same shrill of anger.

  “Watch your tongue, girl.”

  Mawgan sat in his chair like a crouched lion, breathing softly and watching me with eyes that had the yellow glow of the lamps in them. “Tell us,” he said, and his voice was soft, but barely so, like porridge about to boil. “Tell us about the night you loaded this wine.”

  Chapter 8

  THE MYSTERY OF THE BARRELS

  “We anchored after dark,” I said. “In a little cove. When we lowered the boats, and the men clambered into them, Father held me aside. He told me to stay on the ship.”

  Mawgan narrowed his eyes. “And you didn’t wonder at that?”

  “I had no reason to wonder,” I said. “He told me to help stow the barrels below.”

  “Fair enough,” said Mawgan. “Go on, then.”

  He leaned forward, Mary beside him, and I told them as carefully as I could every detail of our strange midnight visit to Spain.

  My first glimpse of the shore had come at dawn. Through the morning we bore down on it. And then, a league or so from land, Father had the ship heave to. He went below with the captain and old Cridge, and when he sent for me an hour later to bring them a bottle and glasses, they were huddled around the table, over a chart I couldn’t see. “Why are we waiting?” I asked. The men looked at each other. Captain Stafford had his arms crossed. He didn’t look happy at all; he sat there like a bulk of timber. And then Father said, “For nightfall, of course. They’ll light a beacon for us, to show us the way.” “Aye,” said Cridge. “That’s right.” Then he’d sent me off with a wink.

  Simon Mawgan frowned. “And that didn’t sound odd?” he asked.

  “Not to me,” I said. “Remember, this was all new to me. I’d never been to sea before.”

  As the sun was setting, we’d backed the jibs and swung back toward the land. There was a breeze warmed by the desert, and the men worked bare-chested to set the topsails. That was all, only the topsails. And we ghosted down as the night thickened around us. It was a black night in the dark of the moon, but we showed no lights. I did wonder at that; it was because of pirates, said Father—“The waters here are thick with pirates.” But he sent me aloft, up to the foretop with a hooded lantern. And he said, “When I give you the word, show the light at the shore. Count to five and then close it. Do that twice, you understand?” I told him I did. “That’s our signal,” he said. “So they know we’ve come on honest business.” And up I’d gone into the rigging.

  This time it was Mary who scowled. “Even I would have been suspicious at that,” she said.

  “So I was,” I told her.

  But it all had been so wonderfully mysterious. The brig slipped through the water in total silence, charged with a sense of danger that tingled in the air like a lightning storm. I watched for pirates, and saw them on every quarter—dark shadows of boats that changed, every one, to wave tops and ripples when I looked more closely. Then, straight ahead and low on the water, I saw a flare of bright light. And Father called up, “Show the lantern!” I opened the shutters, and everything around me—the mast and the stays, the swell of the topsail—glared with a golden glow. The shutters clicked shut, opened again, and when I hooded the lamp for the last time, I could still see the ropes and the rigging burning and moving in my eyes. “Let go!” called a voice, and the anchor fell with a splash, the chain rumbling out. The sound echoed back from a shore I couldn’t see as the Isle of Skye turned slowly, head to wind. And the topmen—poor Danny Riggins leading them all—came swarming up to furl the sails. Then the boats were swung out and lowered, and I watched them carry my father into the night.

  “Did you hear voices?” asked Mawgan. “Any sounds from shore?”

  “No,” I said. “We must have been at least half a mile off. It took the boats nearly an hour to come back.”

  We’d listened for them. Every man remaining on the ship stood at the rail, watching and waiting. We were a little world in the darkness, the ship silent, the foresails lying in heaps at the foot of the stays. Old Cridge judged his time by the stars; he kept glancing up. Then we heard it, very faint, the creaking of oars. “Show your light,” said Cridge, an
d I cracked open the shutters. The boats came sliding out of the gloom, each weighted to the gunwales with a stack of barrels. The men in them were grim and quiet, not at all the usual thing when sailors and wine are sitting so close. The barrels came aboard; the boats went off again. And they made four trips before the work was done.

  Mawgan nodded. “Forty barrels in all. More or less.”

  Each in its turn, the boats were hooked onto the tackles and brought aboard. The topsails were unfurled and sheeted home, the foresails raised. They flapped in the wind, and the topsails bellied back against the masts. In silence, the men tramped round the capstan; no chanteys were sung as we left that place. The anchor came up streaming mud and weeds. We made sternway with the helm over; then Cridge ordered the topsail yards braced around, the jibs sheeted home, and we slewed off onto a starboard tack. At the first sign of dawn, we were farther off than we’d been at dusk.

  “Is that all that happened?” asked Mawgan.

  “It is.”

  He took a breath. It reminded me of the way the wind lulled before a furious gust. He rapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. They sounded like soldiers marching.

  “Now I’ll ask you again,” he said. “And for the very last time. What exactly did you bring in those barrels, boy?”

  “Wine,” said I.

  Mawgan snorted. “Oh, there was wine in them, true enough. Yes, and nothing but wine in a third of them. Maybe a flagon or two in each of the rest!”

  “A flagon?” I said.

  “Aye. Quite enough to satisfy any curious guardsman who tapped a bung, wasn’t it? And under the false bottom, packed in sawdust so it wouldn’t knock about, was a bar of gold, perhaps? A packet of diamonds?”

  “No!” I said.

  Simon Mawgan leapt to his feet. He toppled that big, heavy chair as easily as a bottle. He meant to hit me—I was sure of it—but Mary ran between us.

  “Look at him,” she said, her hands on his chest. “Just look at him, Uncle. You can see he edn’t lying.”

  I must have stood there ghastly white, my fingers fiddling with the little glass match that Mawgan had given me. Suddenly it all made sense: a mysterious night on a dark shore; sawdust in the bilge of the Skye; the wreckers’ obsession with a few broken barrels. There seemed to be only one explanation, and Mawgan had led me to it step by step. But still I couldn’t believe it.