Once in a Blue Moon (13 page)

They had left Prudence, hobbled, to graze among the moor heather. Jessalyn had her foot in the stirrup and was about to haul herself up into the saddle when she suddenly hopped down and took off running back to the mine.

The primrose bonnet lay on the windowsill where she had left it, a splash of yellow on the gray stone. The sight of it did something to her chest, and she felt it again—that cracking and tearing away within her, as if pieces of her heart were breaking off.
What happens to you,
she wondered,
when you need someone and they need you not at all?
She snatched up the hat and ran from the enginehouse as if she were fleeing it and not the fear within herself.

She ran toward him, trying to tie the bonnet on her head at the same time. But its big brim kept falling over her eyes, and she was laughing by the time she came up to him. Her laughter trailed off like a squeaky wheel when her gaze settled on his taut mouth. "What's the matter?"

"Just get on the bloody horse."

She got on the horse. He handed the baby up to her, then mounted behind her. His arms came around her to take the reins. She breathed, and her breast pressed against his arm. So she stopped breathing altogether, then sucked in a draft of air with a sharp gasp. He urged Prudence into a trot, and her breast bounced against him, and she went rigid.

"Where are we going with the brat?" he asked, the words warm and moist against her ear.

She breathed. She could feel the heat of his arm now through her clothes and his. "We're taking her to Mousehole, back to her mother," she said.

"Won't her mother just throw her away again?"

She breathed. And her nipples hardened, rubbing almost painfully against her cotton shift. Her breasts had never felt this way before. Not even when the Gypsy boy had touched her. There was such a squeezing tightness in her chest that suddenly she couldn't bear it. She squirmed, and he shifted, breaking the contact, and she was sorry afterward that she had moved.

"I think it was probably her father, Salome Stout's father, who threw the baby away," she said. "She has to be Salome's baby, you see, because Salome is the only one in these parts who's been preg—in a delicate condition. They say the man who did it to her, who gave her the baby, was a sailor out of Falmouth, and he couldn't marry her because he has a wife already. I suppose Jacky Stout tried to get rid of the baby because he didn't want another mouth to feed. It couldn't have been shame that drove him to it. Jacky Stout knows no shame."

Jessalyn had always held a particular aversion for the fisherman ever since she had caught him tying a tin plate to a dog's tail. Her jaw clenched with anger as she thought of this man who would dump his own grandchild, by-blow or not, down a bal. "Just wait until I get my hands on that Jacky Stout. He won't be abandoning any more babies. I will put the fear of God into him, and I heard that dubious snort, Lieutenant."

She felt him smile against her neck, and she shivered. "I assure you, Miss Letty, that I have never uttered such an uncivilized sound as a snort, dubious or otherwise, in my entire life."

"Hunh."

"Now hear who's snorting."

The sun was setting by the time they arrived in Mousehole. Granite and slate cottages tumbled like a child's spilled blocks down a hillside and into a horseshoe-shaped harbor. But it was picturesque only from a distance. Rotting lobster baskets, tangled coils of rope, and pieces of broken spar littered the uneven stones of the old quay. The place stank of decaying fish, and the steady thump and clatter of the tin stamp battered their ears.

They passed no one along the way, except for an old man who sat on his front stoop, mending a sail. He lifted his head and stared at them, his toothless mouth falling open as if his jaw had come unhinged. Jessalyn pointed out the broken-down cottage where Jacky Stout lived with his two grown daughters, Bathsheba and Salome. There had been a Magdalene, but she had died two years ago of the spotted fever.

Like the rest of the Mousehole cottages, the Stout home had steep stone steps that led to an upper floor where the family lived. Below was the fish cellar, where every year pilchards were packed in rows and left for a month or so to allow the blood and oil to drain. Although the season was still a couple weeks away, the reek of rotting pilchards was so strong Jessalyn had to breathe through her mouth to keep from gagging.

Lieutenant Trelawny kicked aside a pile of sacks and smelly fishing tackle that blocked the front door. Waving a gust of gnats away from her face, Jessalyn knocked.

The man who flung open the door had a thick face badly pitted by the pox, like a frostbitten leaf. His belly, stout as an ale barrel, was covered by a smock frock that was smeared with fish scales and reached as far as a pair of leather gaiters and hobnailed boots. He was unshaven and slightly drunk.

"What d' ye want..." Jacky Stout began. Then his snake gray eyes caught sight of the lieutenant, and he tried on an obsequious smile. "Sur."

"We want to see Salome," Jessalyn said.

"That ye can't, Miss Letty. Proper sick, she be."

He started to shut the door, but Jessalyn put her foot across the threshold. "Don't you try to gammon me, Jacky Stout. Salome isn't sick. She's just had a baby. This baby."

Jacky's gaze, which had wandered everywhere else, had yet to alight upon the bundle in Jessalyn's arms. He licked his lips. "That can't be hers. Salome's baby died. Died last night. Born dead, she be. He be. 'Twere a boy. Born dead."

Jessalyn raised her brows in mock surprise. "Why, what a strange coincidence. Salome's baby born dead last night, and here this afternoon I find another baby tossed down an adit at Wheal Patience like so much unwanted rubbish. They say coincidences come in bunches, did you know that, Mr. Stout? I'm wondering what the magistrates would say if they knew the bird in your Sunday pot isn't always chicken, but one of Squire Babbage's prime pheasants. What do you suppose the magistrates would make of that coincidence, Mr. Stout? A man could get transported for poaching, so they say. A man could even hang. Just like a man could hang for trying to murder a helpless baby—"

The door was snatched from Jacky's hands, and a girl with a mane of wild, tangled black hair stood, swaying, on the threshold. She wore only a thin, tattered shift, and her eyes were like two bruises on her bleached face.

"Me baby!" she cried, holding out pale, trembling arms. "Ye've brought back me baby. Oh, please, give 'er to me."

The look of tear-filled joy on the girl's face more than convinced Jessalyn that she'd had nothing to do with the abandonment of her child. Jessalyn gave the baby to her mother, helping her inside. The girl stumbled over to a sagging, straw-filled pallet and collapsed upon the edge of it, moaning and weeping and stroking the baby's face again and again.

She lifted eyes full of horror and hatred and searched the room until she found her father. "Ye told me she had died."

"'Tes what ye get, ye slut, for gettin' yer belly knocked up. An' who's got t' feed it now, eh?" Jacky Stout threw a baleful look at Jessalyn, then turned his back on her and poured gin down his throat from a stone jug.

The cottage smelled of fish and moldering roof thatch. Besides the single pallet, the only other furniture was a rough table tacked together from flotsam washed up from the sea and several mismatched stools. The single window was stuffed with rags, the only light coming from a tallow candle stuck in a turnip and a smoky dung fire.

A humped shadow by the fire stirred and became a girl sitting on a stool. She got up and came toward them, walking as if her hips were connected to swivels. Bathsheba Stout had a pointed, fey face, soot black hair, and slanted tawny eyes. Of the two sisters, Jessalyn would have thought Bathsheba more likely to be the one to bear a child out of wedlock. But then perhaps she was too experienced to get caught.

The baby was suckling at her mother's breast now, and Jessalyn couldn't help staring. Salome's breast was large and veined, like a cantaloupe. The baby's mouth pulled hard at the brown, distended nipple; Jessalyn wondered what it felt like, if it hurt. Her gaze moved up to the girl's white face, which wore a mixture of fear, anguish, and a stubborn pride.

"Ye won't peach to the magistrates, will ee, about what me da tried t' do? Please, miss, he won't do nothin' else t' harm the babe now that ye're on to him. Sheba and us, we'd starve without Da, without what he brings in from the fishin'. There bain't any work for the likes of us."

Jessalyn's hand fell on the girl's shoulder. She could feel the sharpness of bone beneath the thin shift. "I overheard the Reverend Mrs. Troutbeck mentioning last Sunday after evensong that she has need of a new scullery girl. I could put in a word for you."

"Oh, miss, ee are ever so kind," Salome said, but the fear did not leave her eyes. She pulled the baby tighter to her breast. "But what about me da?"

"I won't go to the magistrates," Jessalyn said. If the Stout daughters closed ranks to protect their father, there would be little proof anyway. "But if he ever threatens you or the child again, you must promise to come to me."

Bathsheba, taking advantage of Jessalyn's preoccupation with her sister, had sidled up to Lieutenant Trelawny. Her amber gaze traveled the length of him before settling on his face. "I hope ee don't think I'd nothin' do with dumpin' the poor l'il un down an old bal. I thought she'd died, same as Salome."

The lieutenant looked her over, slow and easy. "You seem to have borne up well under the tragedy, Miss Stout." Jessalyn snorted.

Bathsheba gave Jessalyn a baleful look that was a mirror of her father's, then turned back to the lieutenant wearing a butter-wouldn't-melt smile. "I think of ye livin' up there in that gret big house, all by yerself, wit'out no one t' turn a hand. I could come do fer ee, sur. From time t' time, like. Mebbe bring ee some fresh mackerel when me da gets hisself a netload."

The lieutenant produced one of his rare and dazzling smiles. "I have always been partial to fish."

Jessalyn snorted again, louder.
Do for him.
Oh, Sheba Stout would
do
for him all right. And nine months hence there would be more fodder for the bals.

He could stay and flirt with Bathsheba the rest of the day; Jessalyn had better things to do. She issued a final warning to Jacky Stout, who kept his pride by ignoring her, then started for the door.

But the lieutenant's hand fell on her arm, holding her back. "Stout," he said, and there was the sharp crack of command from the parade field in his voice, "you will acknowledge Miss Letty when she speaks to you."

Jacky Stout's back jerked. He turned slowly, wiping his mouth with his wrist. "Sur?" The surliness was gone from his face, leaving fear.

"Henceforth, when Miss Letty addresses you, you will doff your cap in respect. And you will remember, too, that what is found on Caerhays land belongs to the Trelawnys and what is ours, we protect. I would pray, were I you, that the babe has a long and healthy life."

A warmth suffused Jessalyn at his words. No one had ever done that for her before; no one had ever stood as her champion. For a moment she allowed herself to wonder what it would be like to have him there always. At her side.

But once outside, when she was about to mount Prudence and she felt his hands, warm and strong, pressing into her flesh, she said, "You will kindly remove your hands from around my waist, Lieutenant."

He lifted her into the saddle and stood grinning up at her. "This sudden and totally female behavior on your part wouldn't by chance have anything to do with Miss Bathsheba Stout?"

"You preened and ruffled your tail feathers like a strutting turkey cock. While she looked at you as if she were a hungry black-backed gull all set to pounce."

His grin deepened. "Actually she puts me more in mind of a plump and succulent little pouter pigeon."

Jessalyn jerked Prudence's head around and drove the mare into a trot. If he was going to be that way, he could walk home. His laugh followed her into the dusk, a laugh that was almost all breath, low and husky.

She heard the clatter of boots on stone. She turned around and nearly screamed as he vaulted up behind her onto the mare's back in a trick worthy of the Gypsy boy. His arms clutched her waist and his breath stirred the hair at her neck. "Don't be a silly goose, Miss Letty."

Jessalyn opened her eyes and nearly screamed.

Becka Poole's round muffin face stared at her from above a flickering candle flame and beneath a droopy red bed cap, so that her head seemed to be floating, disembodied, in the darkness. "Are ee awake, Miss Jessalyn?"

Jessalyn flopped onto her stomach and pulled a pillow Over her ears. "No, Becka. It is the middle of the night, and I am sound asleep."

"'Tes no time for jesting, miss. There be ghosts out on Crookneck Cove this night. Ghosts, I tell ee. I near died of heart stroke. 'Tes a wonder I ain't laid out cold in me coffer, the immoral scare I did have."

Jessalyn threw off the pillow, sitting up. "Are you sure you didn't just have a nightmare, a hilla?"

"That's what I, too, thinks at first, miss. That I be hillaridden 'cause of them dough cakes what I ate for supper last night, which sat like stones in me belly afterward and gave me indignity something fierce. I thought maybe I was only dreamin' that I got up to look out the window. But then I says to meself:
Cor, Becka girl, yer eyes be
open.
'Tesn't no hilla ye be havin'. 'Tes ghosts ye see. Real live ghosts!"

Jessalyn got up to see the ghosts. It was a foggy night—thick as lamb's wool in some places; in others, thin as a lace veil. Through the drifting curtains of white mist, she saw
a
light flicker on top of the cliffs that overlooked Crookneck Cove.

"See, miss. They be corpse lights, ee mark my words." Becka spit on her right index finger and drew a cross between her eyes. "Listen. Ee can hear their dead voices a hailing their own names."

"That's the wind you are hearing." Sometimes the bodies of dead sailors would be washed onto the beach by the tide, and they were often buried where they were found. But Jessalyn didn't believe in ghosts or corpse lights. "It's
a
wicked night," she said. "Perhaps a ship got caught on the Devil's Jawbone."

Her Cornish blood quickened at the thought that there might be a wreck. When times were bad, folk often prayed for treacherous weather, for a wreck was a gift of God, a spoil of the sea, as surely as a shoal of fish. The survivors would be seen to first, of course. But a vessel cast upon the shore was as good as a harvest, there for the gleaning.

Moving quickly, she thrust her feet into a pair of pattens and threw her red wool cloak over her night rail. All the while Becka bewailed the fate that was sure to be hers if she ventured out in the dark of a foggy night to tangle with ghosts.

To light her way, Jessalyn took a chill—a thin earthenware lamp that burned pilchard oil. At the door Becka stopped her to press a hagstone into her hand. It was a flint with a hole in it that had been threaded through with
a
leather thong and was supposed to be a safeguard against ghosts and witches. It was one of the girl's most prized possessions.

Smiling, Jessalyn slipped the hagstone over her head. "Thank you, Becka. I shall only be borrowing it, just in case. And please, while I'm gone, get out the extra blankets and heat up some hot water—and try not to wake Gram."

Becka flapped her hand and giggled. "Gis along wi' ee, miss. Ghosts ain't got no corpus bodies. For what would they be wantin' blankets and hot water?"

Jessalyn's rusty laughter floated off into the thick night. "Not for the ghosts, Becka. For the survivors, in case it's a wreck."

The Sarn't Major was not in his room above the stables, and Jessalyn hoped he wasn't spending the night in a kiddley again. All was quiet, too quiet. If there had been a wreck, she would have heard shouts by now and feet pounding down the cliff path. A bonfire would be blazing as a warning to other ships and to warm up those survivors dragged in from the sea. But even the small flickering light she'd seen earlier had vanished.

She wondered then if the mysterious light had something to do with Lieutenant Trelawny. She hadn't seen him for over a week, since that day they had found Salome Stout's baby. It hurt that he could so easily stay away from her, because she could hardly bear to be apart from him.

She couldn't understand this obsession she seemed to have developed for a man she was not sure she even liked. Yet she felt driven to be with him every waking moment, and when they were apart, she spent all her hours remembering the times they were together and planning the moments when they would be together again. Worse, she had allowed him to steal her pride. For when he did not come to call, she had haunted the beach and the moors in the hope that she would cross his path. One day she had even ventured as far as the gatehouse. She had tried to peer through the grimy windows, even tested the door latch, but it was locked. Her blood had been pumping hard and fast in her throat, with fear that he would discover her, with even more fear that he would not. A terrible sickness had squeezed her chest, an actual ache in her heart, that if she did not see him, see him that very day, that very next minute, she wouldn't be able to bear it, she would surely die from it.

But she hadn't seen him and she hadn't died, and she had thought perhaps this sickness, this obsession would pass. Yet now she found herself running toward the sea cliffs, her heart and breath once again suspended in that otherworld of joy and terror at the thought that he would be there, that she would see him again.

Tonight the fog was as thick as pease porridge along the beach. Foamy fingers of seawater clawed at the sand, then disappeared. The air was wet and heavy, smelling of decaying seaweed and something else, something suspiciously like...

A scream started to rise in her throat just as an arm encased in wool wrapped around her neck, a rough hand clamping down hard over her mouth. The chill fell from her fingers and rolled across the sand, but did not go out. It cast light in a small arc through the shrouding mist onto the bottom of her red cloak and the booted legs of her attacker. His other arm wrapped around her in a bear hug, squeezing all the air out her lungs. The palm that smothered her mouth reeked so strongly of brandy the fumes made her head reel. She rammed her elbow backward into his belly and heard such a satisfactory grunt that she did it again.

Hot breath blew against her ear. "Christ, have you got spikes for elbows? I'm not going to ravish you, except in your dreams."

Jessalyn's heart turned over, and she went still in his arms. He kicked sand over the chill, dousing the flame and plunging them into darkness. "Will you scream?" he growled in her ear. "Have a fit of the vapors? Lose your scattered nerves?" Jessalyn shook her head and gasped muffled words against his hand. "Peach on us to the gaugers, collect the reward, and dance beneath the gibbet when we hang?" She started choking on her laughter, and at last he let go of her mouth.

"Lieutenant!" she exclaimed on a deep intake of breath. She nearly threw herself into his arms, only stopping herself just in time. He bent over and picked up something from beside him in the sand. It was too dark to see his face.

"Why, if it isn't Miss Letty—regular as a cuckoo out of a clock," he said. "I might have known you'd make an appearance. A perilous occasion such as this, when the least little thing is apt to go wrong at any moment, would hardly be complete without your presence."

Metal scraped against metal, and suddenly a narrow beam of light shot through the fog from the bull's-eye lantern in his hands. He closed the shutter, then opened it again. For a moment there was a break in the white clouds, like a rip in a curtain, and Jessalyn thought she saw a flotilla of longboats and the four-cornered sails of a lugger rounding the point.

"You've been smuggling!"

"And here I thought we were merely having a midnight picnic on the beach." He laughed and took her arm, pulling her with him back toward the underside of the cliffs.

There was a wild excitement about him tonight that was infectious. Her heart tripped in a light, quick dance. "Why didn't you tell me you were going smuggling?"

"For the same reason that I didn't take out a notice in the
Times.
And I prefer to call it free trading. Smuggling has such nasty, illegal connotations that make one think of magistrates and gaol and penal colonies."

As they drew closer to the cliffs, Jessalyn heard the crunch of footsteps on stone and a low murmur of voices. Again the fog parted for a moment, and she was shocked to see a gaping hole in the ragged face of the rock where there had never been a hole before. A large boulder had been pushed to one side. All the days she had walked this beach and she hadn't known of the cave's existence.

He let go of her hand, and his voice floated out of the darkness. "Wait here, and please try, no matter what the temptation, not to make any trouble."

Jessalyn resented his remark and would have told him so, but his footsteps had already receded. She tilted her head, trying to peer upward through the fog. This part of the bluff was not sheer but rather tumbled down to the beach in rocky steps, like a child's blocks. He had told her to wait; he'd said nothing about not looking inside the cave.

Gathering up the trailing folds of her cloak, she climbed up the rocks until the entrance was at eye level. The cave was about the size of a small parlor and dimly lit by a tarred lantern. Two men carrying ankers of brandy beneath each arm disappeared down a narrow passage that no doubt led to the fish cellars of Mousehole or more likely the wine cellars of Caerhays Hall. Two other men hovered closer to the entrance. One turned toward her, and Jessalyn got a glimpse of the pitted face of Jacky Stout.

"Fetch the glim o'er here," he growled. "'Tes dark as a bloody sack."

The other man passed the lantern forward. Then he, too, turned, and his hair glinted like a gold sovereign in the dim light. "Jessalyn!" he exclaimed. "What the deuce are you doing here?"

Jessalyn stepped back, more shocked at finding Clarence Tiltwell here than at the chill of his welcome. It was understandable why Lieutenant Trelawny would engage in smuggling—for the money and love of the game. But Clarence always had to be prodded into taking risks, and the reward of such a venture would hardly be worth it to him. The share-out of a run to France couldn't be more than a month's or two's worth of the allowance he got from his father.

Clarence jumped down beside her. Seizing her arm, he jerked her away from the cave, practically dragging her down the rocks and back onto the beach. His lips were drawn tight against his teeth, and a tic pulsed beneath his right eye. It suddenly occurred to her that if she could see his face so well, the fog must be lifting.

His fingers clenched, digging into her flesh and hurting her. "You've got to get back to End Cottage this instant—"

"Gaugers, sur! Coming this way!"

A man pelted full speed down the cliff path, a tarred lantern swinging from one hand, an empty coat sleeve flapping where the other hand should be. Lieutenant Trelawny appeared from behind some dunes, intercepting him. Jessalyn was shocked to see that the man with the lantern was the Sarn't Major,
her
Sarn't Major, who had never wanted anything to do with anything before, except horses. She stared openmouthed as Lieutenant Trelawny had a quick, low-voiced conversation with the Welshman that consisted of an exchange of several long and convoluted sentences.

Clarence stirred beside her. His face was pale as a wraith's in the disintegrating mist. "What rotten luck that they would be patrolling this stretch of coast tonight of all nights," he said, his voice sounding queer and tight.

"Luck had nothing to do with it," Lieutenant Trelawny said, striding up to them. "Clarey, you see the last of our cargo through the tunnel and get it sealed up. I'll try to delay the preventive men long enough for you to get it all safely stowed."

He took Jessalyn's arm, hauling her after him down the beach. She was beginning to feel like a dog on a leash, tugged this way and that, and she would likely have a score of bruises come morning. "That was the Sarn't Major," she said, panting slightly, for he was walking fast, though limping badly. "You were talking to the Sarn't Major."

"The man's not deaf."

"I know, but you were
talking
with him." He stopped before a pile of driftwood, a fire that had been laid into the lee shelter of a heap of rocks and marram-covered dunes. He took a flask out the pocket of his greatcoat, which he wore carelessly unbuttoned to the cold, and splashed liquid onto the wood. Her nostrils pinched at the sudden pungent odor of spilled brandy. "What..." she began as he pushed her down onto a shelf of sand and grass. He yanked the hood of her cloak so far over her head it covered her eyes. She pushed it back a bit. "What are you doing?"

"Just sit there, and no matter what happens, keep your hood pulled close around your face."

Jessalyn heard the scrape of a flint, and the driftwood burst into blue flames. She shut her eyes against the sudden blaze of light. He dropped down onto a rock beside her. She leaned toward the fire, wrapping her arms around her bent knees. "Do you think there was an informer?" She would have put her money on Jacky Stout. "Hold your clack, girl."

"Who do you think it is—the informer, I mean?"

"If you don't shut your mouth, I will shut it for you."

She shut her mouth. The fire spit and hissed like a cat, and the sea whispered across the sand. She stole a glance at him. The flames glinted red in his damp hair and glazed the flaring bones of his cheeks, casting deep shadows in the hollows beneath. He looked like the devil come straight up from hell.