The House on the Strand

CHAPTER NINETEEN

IT WAS SNOWING. The soft flakes fell upon my head and my hands, and the world all about me was suddenly white, no lush green summer grass, no line of trees, and the snow fell steadily, blotting the hills from sight. There were no farm-buildings anywhere near me — nothing but the black river, about twenty foot broad where I was standing, and the snow, which had drifted high on either bank, only to slither into the water as the mass caved in from the weight, revealing the muddied earth beneath. It was bitter cold; not the swift, cutting blast that sweeps across high ground, but the dank chill of a valley where winter sunshine does not penetrate, nor cleansing wind. The silence was the more deadly, for the river rippled past me without sound, and the stunted willows and alder growing beside it looked like mutes with outstretched arms, grotesquely shapeless because of the burden of snow they bore upon their limbs. And all the while the soft flakes fell, descending from a pall of sky that merged with the white land beneath.

My mind, usually clear when I had taken the drug, was stupefied, baffled; I had expected something akin to the autumn day that I remembered from the previous time, when Bodrugan had been drowned, and Roger carried the dripping body in his arms towards Isolda. Now I was alone, without a guide; only the river at my feet told me I was in the valley. I followed its course upstream, groping like a blind man, knowing by instinct that if I kept the river on my left I must be moving north, and that somewhere the strip of water would narrow, the banks would close, and I should find a bridge or ford to take me to the other side. I had never felt more helpless or lost. Time, in this other world, had hitherto been calculated by the height of the sun in the sky, or, as when I traversed the Lampetho valley at night, by the stars overhead; but now, in this silence and beneath the falling snow, there was no means of gauging whether it was morning or afternoon. I was lost, not in the present, with familiar landmarks close at hand, the reassuring presence of the car, but in the past.

The first sound broke the silence, a splash in the river ahead, and moving swiftly I saw an otter dive from the further bank and swim his way upstream. As he did so a dog followed him, and then a second, and immediately there were some half-dozen of them yelping and crying at the river's brink, splashing their way into the water in chase of the otter. Someone shouted, the shout taken up by another, and a group of men came running towards the river through the falling snow, shouting, laughing, encouraging the dogs, and I saw they were coming from a belt of trees just beyond me, where the river curved. Two of them scrambled down the bank into the water, thrashing it with their sticks, and a third, holding a long whip, cracked it in the alr, stinging the ear of one of the dogs still crouching on the bank, which plunged after its companions.

I drew nearer, to watch them, and saw how the river narrowed a hundred yards or so beyond, while on the left, at the entrance to a copse of trees, the land fell away and the stream formed a sheet of water like a miniature lake, a film of ice upon its surface. Somehow the men and the dogs, between them, drove the hunted otter into the gulley that fed the lake, and in a moment they were upon him, the dogs crying, the men thrashing with their sticks. The dogs floundered as the ice cracked, the surface crimsoned, and blood spattered the film of white above black water as the otter, seized between snapping jaws, was dragged from the hole he sought, and torn to pieces where the ice held firm. The lake can have held little depth, for the men, hallooing and calling to the dogs, strode forward on to it, careless of the crack appearing suddenly from one end to the other. Foremost among them was the man with the long whip, who stood out from his fellows because of his height, and his dress as well, a padded surcoat buttoned to the throat and a high beaver hat upon his head, shaped like a cone. "Drive them clear," he shouted, to the bank on the further side. "I'd as soon lose the lot of you as one of these," and bending suddenly, amongst the pack of yelping hounds, he lifted what remained of the otter from the midst of them and flung it across the lake to the snow-covered verge. The dogs, baulked of their prey, struggled and slid across the ice to retrieve it where it now lay, while the men, less nimble than the animals, and hampered by their clothing, floundered and splashed in the breaking ice, shouting, cursing, jerkins and hoods caked white with the falling snowflakes.

The scene was part brutal, part macabre, for the man with the conical hat, once he knew his hounds were safe, turned his attention, laughing, to his companions in misfortune. While he himself was wet now to the thigh, he at least had boots to protect his feet, while his attendants, as I supposed they were, had some of them lost their shoes when the ice broke, and were thrashing about with frozen hands in useless search of them. Their master, laughing still, regained the bank, and, lifting his conical hat a moment, shook the snowflakes clear before replacing it once more. I recognised the ruddy face and the long jaw, although he was some twenty feet away. It was Oliver Carminowe. He was staring hard in my direction, and although reason told me he could not see me, and I had no part in his world, the way he stood there, motionless, his head turned towards me, disregarding his grumbling attendants, gave me a strange feeling of unease, almost of fear. "If you want to have speech with me, come across and say so," he called suddenly. The shock of what I thought discovery sent me forward to the lake's edge, and then, with relief I saw Roger standing beside me to become, as it were, my spokesman and my cover. How long he had been there I did not know. He must have walked behind me along the river bank.

"Greetings to you, Sir Oliver!" he cried. "The drifts are shoulder-high above Treesmill, and your side of the valley too, so Rob Rosgof's widow told me at the ferry. I wondered how you fared, and the lady Isolda too."

"We fare well enough," answered the other, "with food enough to last a siege of several weeks, which God forbid. The wind may change within a day or two and bring us rain. Then, if the road does not flood, we shall leave for Carminowe. As to my lady, she stays in her chamber half the day sulking, and gives me little of her company." He spoke contemptuously, watching Roger all the while, who moved nearer to the river bank. "Whether she follows me to Carminowe is her concern," he continued. "My daughters are obedient to my will, if she is not. Joanna is already promised to John Petyt of Ardeva, and, although a child still, prinks and preens before the glass as if she were already a bride of fourteen years and ripe for her strapping husband. You may tell her godmother Lady Champernoune so, with my respects. She may wish a like fortune for herself before many years have passed." He burst out laughing, and then, pointing to the hounds scavenging beneath the trees, said, "If you have no fear of fording the river where the plank has rotted, I will find an otter's paw which you may present to Lady Champernoune with my compliments. It may remind her of her brother Otto, being wet and bloody, and she can nail it on the walls of Trelawn as a memento to his name. The other paw I will deliver to my own lady for a similar purpose, unless the dogs have swallowed it." He turned his back and walked towards the trees, calling to his hounds, while Roger, moving forward up the river bank, and I beside him, came to a rough bridge, made out of lengths of log bound together, the whole slippery with the fallen snow, and partly sagging in the water. Oliver Carminowe and his attendants stood watching as Roger set foot upon the rotting bridge, and when it collapsed beneath his weight and he slipped and fell, soaking himself above his thighs, they roared in unison, expecting to see him turn again and claw the bank. But he strode on, the water coming nearly to his waist, and reached the other side, while I, dry-shod, followed in his wake. He walked directly to the edge of the copse where Carminowe stood, whip in hand, and said, "I will deliver the otter's paw, if you will give it to me."

I thought he would receive a lash from the whip across his face, and I believe he expected the same himself, but Carminowe, smiling, his whip raised, lashed suddenly amongst the dogs instead, and whipping them from the torn body of the otter took the knife from his belt, and cut off two of the remaining paws.

"You have more stomach than my steward at Carminowe," he said. "I respect you for that, if for nothing else. Here, take the paw, and hang it in your kitchen at Kylmerth, amongst the silver pots and platters you have doubtless stolen from the Priory. But first walk up the hill with us and pay your respects to Lady Carminowe in person. She may prefer a man, once in a while, to the tame squirrel she occupies her days with."

Roger took the paw from him and put it in his pouch, saying nothing, and we entered the copse and began threading our way through the snow-laden trees, walking steadily uphill, but whether to right or left I had no idea, having lost all sense of direction, knowing only that the river was behind us and the snow was falling still. A track packed high with snow on either side led to a stone-built house, tucked snugly against the hill; and, while Carminowe's attendants still straggled in our rear, he himself kicked open the door before us and we entered a square hall, to be greeted at once by the house-dogs, fawning upon him, and the two children, Joanna and Margaret, whom I had last seen riding their ponies across the Treesmill ford on a summer's afternoon. A third, somewhat older than the others, about sixteen, whom I took for one of Carminowe's daughters by his first marriage, stood smiling by the hearth, nor did she embrace him, but pouted with a sort of petulant grace when she saw he was not alone.

"My ward, Sybell, who seeks to teach my children better manners than their mother," Carminowe said.

The steward bowed and turned to the two children, who, after having kissed their father, came to welcome him. The elder, Joanna, had grown, and showed some sign of dawning self-consciousness, as her father had said, by blushing, and tossing her long hair out of her eyes, and giggling, but the younger, with still some years to go before she too ripened for the marriage-market, struck out her small hand to Roger and smote him on the knee.

"You promised me a new pony when last we met," she said, "and a whip like your brother Robbie's. I'll have no truck with a man who fails to keep his word."

"The pony awaits you, and the whip too," answered Roger gravely, "if Alice will bring you across the valley when the snow melts."

"Alice has left us," replied the child. "We have her to mind us now," and she pointed a disdainful finger at the ward Sybell, "and she's too grand to ride pillion behind you or Robbie."

She looked so much like her mother as she spoke that I loved her for it, and Roger must have seen the likeness too, for he smiled and touched her hair, but her father, irritated, told the child sharply to hold her tongue or he would send her supperless to bed.

"Here, dry yourself by the fire," he said abruptly, kicking the dogs out of the way, "and you, Joanna, warn your mother the steward has crossed the valley from Tywardreath and has a message from his mistress, if she cares to receive him." He took the remaining otter's paw from his surcoat and dangled it in front of Sybell. "Shall we give it to Isolda, or will you wear it to keep you warm?" he teased. "It will soon dry, furry and soft, inside your kirtle, the nearest thing to a man's hand on a cold night."

She shrieked in affectation and backed away, while he pursued her, laughing, and I saw by the expression in Roger's eyes that he had fully grasped the relationship between guardian and ward. The snow might remain upon the hills for days or weeks; there was little at the moment to tempt the master of this establishment back to Carminowe.

"My mother will see you, Roger," said Joanna, returning to the hall, and we crossed a passage-way into the room beyond. Isolda was standing by the window, watching the falling snow, while a small red squirrel, a bell around its neck, squatted upon its haunches at her feet, pawing at her gown. As we entered she turned and stared, and although to my prejudiced eyes she looked as beautiful as ever I realised, shocked, that she had become much thinner, paler, and there was a white streak in the front of her golden hair.

"I am glad to see you, Roger," she said. "There have been few encounters between our households of late, and we are seldom here at Tregest these days, as you know well. How is my cousin? You have a message from her?" Her voice that I remembered, clear and hard, defiant, almost, had become flat, toneless. Then, sensing that Roger wished to speak to her in private, she told her daughter Joanna to leave them alone.

"I bear no message, my lady," said Roger quietly. "The family are at Trelawn, or were, when I last had word. I came out of respect for you, Rob Rosgof's widow having told me you were here, and were not well."

"I'm as well as I ever shall be," she answered, "and whether here or at Carminowe the days are much the same."

"That's ill-spoken, my lady," said Roger. "You showed more spirit once."

"Once, yes," she replied, "but I was younger then… I came and went as I pleased, for Sir Oliver was more frequently at Westminster. Now, whether from malice through not obtaining Sir John's position as Keeper of the King's forests and parks in Cornwall, as he hoped, he wastes his days keeping women instead. The present fancy is hardly more than a child. You have seen Sybell?"

"I have, my lady."

"It's true she is his ward. If I should die it would be convenient to both of them, for he could marry her and instal her at Carminowe in all legality."

She stooped to pick up the pet squirrel at her feet, and, smiling for the first time since we had come into the small room, which was as sparsely furnished as a nun's cell, she said, "This is my confidante now. He takes hazel nuts from my hand and regards me wisely all the while with his bright eyes." Then, serious once more, she added, "I am kept prisoner, you know, both here and when we are at Carminowe. I am prevented even from sending word to my brother Sir William Ferrers at Bere, who is told by his wife that I have gone out of my mind and am therefore dangerous. They all believe it. Sick in body, indeed, I have been, and in pain, but so far it has not sent me mad."

Roger moved silently to the door, opened it, and listened. There was still the sound of laughter from the hall: the otter's paw continued to cause diversion. He closed the door again.

"Whether Sir William believes it or not I cannot say," he said, "but talk of your illness there has been, and for some months. That is why I have come, my lady, to prove it a lie for myself, and now I know it to be so."

Isolda, with the squirrel in her arms, might have been her small daughter Margaret as she looked at the steward steadily, weighing in the balance his trustworthiness.

"I did not like you once," she said. "You had too shrewd an eye, casting about you for your own advantage, and, because it suited you to serve a woman rather than a man, you let my cousin Sir Henry Champernoune die.

"My lady," said Roger, "he was mortally sick. He would have died anyway within a few weeks."

"Perhaps, but the way he went showed undue haste. It taught me one thing — to beware of potions brewed by a French monk. Sir Oliver will seek to rid himself of me by other methods, a dagger's thrust or strangulation. He won't wait for nature to put an end to me." She dropped the squirrel on the floor and, moving to the window, looked out once more at the still falling snow. "Before he does," she said, "I'll rather take myself outdoors and perish. With the country covered as it is today I'd freeze the sooner. How about it, Roger? Carry me in a sack upon your back and cast me somewhere at the cliff's edge? I'd thank you for it."

She meant it as a joke, if somewhat twisted, but crossing to the window beside her he stared up at the pall of sky and pursed his lips in a soundless whistle.

"It could be done, my lady," he said, "if you had the courage."

"I have the courage if you have the means," she replied. They stared at one another, an idea suddenly taking root in both their minds, and she said swiftly, "If I went from here, and thence to my brother's at Bere, Sir Oliver would not dare to follow me, for he could never sustain his lies about my sick mind. But in this weather the roads would be impassable. I could not reach Devon."

"Not immediately," he said, "but once the roads are fit it could be done."

"Where would you hide me?" she asked. "He has only to cross the valley to search the Champernoune demesne above Treesmill."

"Let him do so," answered Roger. "He would find it barred and empty, with my lady at Trelawn. There are other hiding-places, if you cared to trust yourself to me."

"Such as where?"

"My own house, Kylmerth. Robbie is there, and my sister Bess. It's nothing but a rough farm, but you are welcome to it, until the weather mends."

She said nothing for a moment, and I could see, by the expression in her eyes, that she still had some lingering doubt of his intent.

"It's a question of choice," she said. "To stay here a prisoner, at the mercy of my husband's whim, who can hardly wait to rid himself of a wife who is a lasting reproach, and an encumbrance too, or throw myself on your hospitality, which you may deny when it pleases you to do so."

"It will not please me," he answered, "nor will it ever be denied, until you say the word yourself."

She looked out once again at the falling snow and the slowly darkening sky, which foretold not only worsening weather to come but the approach of evening and all the hazards of a winter's night.

"I am ready," she said, and throwing open a chest against the wall drew out a hooded cloak, a woollen kirtle, and a pair of leather shoes that must surely never have seen service out of doors except thrust into a covering bag when she rode side-saddle. kirtleMy own daughter Joanna, who overtops me now, climbed from this same window a week ago," she said, "after a wager with Margaret that she had grown too fat. I am thin enough, in all conscience. What do you say? Do I lack spirit now?"

"You never lacked it, my lady," he answered, "only the spur to prick you to endeavour. You know the wood below your pasture-land?"

"I should," she said. "I rode in it most days when I was free to do so."

"Then lock your door, after I have left the room, climb from the window, and make your way to it. I will see that the track is deserted and the household all within, and will tell Sir Oliver that you dismissed me and wish to be alone."

"And the children? Joanna will be aping Sybell, as she has done continually these past weeks, but Margaret…" she paused, her courage ebbing. "Once I lose Margaret, there is nothing left."

"Only your will to live," he said. "If you keep that, you keep all things. And your children too."

"Go quickly", she said, "before I change my mind."

As we left the room I heard her lock the door, and looking at Roger I wondered if he knew what he had done, urging her to risk her life and her future in an escapade that must surely fail. The house had grown silent. We walked along the passage to the hall and found it empty, except for the two children and the dogs. Joanna was pirouetting before the looking-glass, her long hair dressed in braids with a ribbon threaded through it which had, a short time before, been on Sybell's head; while Margaret sat astride a bench, her father's conical hat upon her head and his long whip in her hand. She looked at Roger severely when he entered.

"Observe now," she said, "I am obliged to make do with a bench for a horse and borrowed plumage for equipment. I'll not remind you of your failings again, my master."

"Nor shall you have to," he told her. "I know my duty. Where is your father?"

"He's above," answered the child. "He cut his finger severing the otter's paw, and Sybell is dressing it for him."

"He'll not thank you to disturb him," said Joanna. "He likes to sleep before he dines, and Sybell sings to him. It makes him drop off the sooner and wake with better appetite. Or so he says."

"I do not doubt it," replied Roger. "In that event, please thank Sir Oliver for me and bid him goodnight. Your mother is tired and does not wish to see anyone. Perhaps you will tell him so?"

"I may," said Joanna, "if I remember."

"I'll tell him," said Margaret, "and wake him too, if he does not descend by six o'clock. Last night we dined at seven, and I can't abide late hours."

Roger wished them both goodnight and, opening the hall-door, stepped outside, closing it softly behind him. He stole round to the back of the house and listened. There were sounds coming from the kitchen quarters, but windows and doors were fastened tight, and the shutters barred. The hounds were yelping from outbuildings in the rear. It would be dark within half an hour or even less; already the copse below the field was dim, shrouded by the pall of snow, and the opposite hills were bleak and bare under the grey sky. The tracks we had made ascending to the house were almost blotted out by the fresh-fallen snow, but beside them were new prints, closer together, like those of a child who, hurrying for shelter, runs like a dancer upon her toes. Roger covered them with his own long stride, disturbing the ground, kicking the snow in front of him as he walked rapidly downhill towards the copse; and now if anyone should venture forth before darkness came they would see nothing but the tracks he had made himself, and those would be blotted too within the hour.

She was waiting for us by the entrance to the wood, carrying her pet squirrel, her cloak drawn close around her and her hood fastened under her chin. But her long gown, which she had tried to fasten up under the belted cloak, had slipped down again below her ankles and hung about her feet like a dripping valance. She was smiling, the smile her daughter Margaret would have worn had she too set forth on some adventure, with the promise of a pony at the end of it instead of a bleak unknown.

"I dressed my pillow in my night-attire", she said, "and heaped the covers over it. It may fool them for a while, should they break down the door."

"Give me your hand," he said. "Disregard your skirts and let them trail. Bess will find warm clothes for you at home."

She laughed and put her hand in his, and as she did so I felt as if it were in mine as well, and that the pair of us were lifting, dragging her through the fallen snow, and he was no longer a steward bound in the service of another woman and I a phantom from a later world, but both of us were men sharing a common purpose and a common love that neither of us, in his time or mine, would ever dare make plain.

When we came to the river and the rotten bridge that lay half-broken in mid-stream he said to her, "You must trust me once again and let me carry you across, as I would your daughter."

"But if you let me fall", she answered, "I will not clout you about the head, as Margaret would."

He laughed, and bore her safely to the other side, once more soaking himself nearly to the waist. We went on walking through the little line of stunted, shrouded trees, the silence all about us no longer ominous, as it had been when I walked alone, but hushed with a sort of magic, and a strange excitement too.

"The snow will be thicker in the valley around Treverran," he said, "and if Ric Treverran should see us he might not hold his tongue. Have you breath enough left to strike out into the open and climb the hill to the track above? Robbie awaits me there with the ponies. You shall choose which of us you please to ride behind. I am the more cautious."

"Then I choose Robbie," she said. "Tonight I bid farewell to caution, and for ever."

We turned left and began to climb the hill out of the valley, the river behind us, the snow reaching above the knees of my companions with every step, making progress laborious and slow.

"Wait," he said, letting go her hand, "there may be a drift ahead before we strike the path," and he plunged upwards, sweeping the snow aside with both his hands, so that for a moment, as he walked on alone to higher ground, I was left with her, and could stare for a brief instant at the small, pale, resolute face beneath the hood.

"All's well," he called. "The snow is firmer here. I'll come and fetch you." I watched him turn and advance, half-sliding down the slope towards her, and it seemed to me suddenly that two men were moving there, not one, and both of them were holding out their hands to help her climb. It must be Robbie, having heard his brother's voice, who had come down from the track above.

Some instinct warned me not to move, not to climb, but to let her go alone and grasp their hands. She went from me and I lost sight of her, and of Roger, and of the third shadowy figure too, in a sudden great pall of snow that blotted all of them from sight. I stood there, shaking, the strands of wire between me and the line, and it was not snow that blanketed the opposite hills and the high bank, but the grey canvas hangings looped to the wagons of the goods-train as it rattled and lumbered through the tunnel.