Chapter Three

A longside Will, Jack strode up the steep track towards Bessie’s Kiddley, where it squatted on the clifftop overlooking the tiny cove. Even though it still bore its old name, after the woman who’d established it, and who now presided over the taproom from a big armchair by the fire, by rights the kiddley should have been known as Lovey’s.

Lovey Bussow was the wife of Jack’s bo’sun, Daniel, himself a nephew of old John Carter and therefore cousin to Will’s wife, Eliza. They believed in keeping it in the family here in the Cove. She’d been a barmaid in the kiddley for several years before she’d snared Daniel, helped by the fact she’d been expecting his child.

Old Bessie, ten years younger back then and still a force to be reckoned with behind the bar, had insisted Daniel make an honest woman of the girl and give a name to the babe, despite his protestations that anyone could have been the father. Cado, who luckily happened to be the image of Daniel, had been born six months after the wedding, and little Rosanna two years later. Jack had to admit that the childless Bessie had chosen Lovey as her successor well, and perhaps the forced wedding had been for an altogether different reason than making Lovey and her baby respectable. For Lovey was cut from the same piece of cloth as Bessie herself, and there’d never been any drama in the kiddley.

At the cliff edge, Jack peered over until he spotted The Fly bobbing a little further out, where she was in no danger of running aground when the tide went out. A reassuring sight he couldn’t resist checking on.

“No doubt your crew’ll be coming ashore to whet their whiskers in the kiddley before they’re off to Penzance and the law-abiding job of carrying fish,” Will said, with a grin.

Jack nodded. They would leave the ship’s boy, young Clemo, who was only thirteen, on board to check the anchor didn’t drag. Came of being the youngest on a ship—you always got the worst jobs. He’d been in that situation himself as a boy, as had Will in his time, and Daniel and Harry. He’d best make sure his men weren’t too long in the kiddley, though, or they’d be sailing into Penzance drunk and in near darkness in his precious new lugger.

The kiddley was a long, low building, perfectly constructed to withstand any gales that blew in off the sea, which they often did in winter. She clung to her position a little set back from the cliffs like a limpet on a rock, a cluster of barns, stables, salthouses and fish presses sheltering behind her where the rising land made a nook for them around a cobbled yard.

He pushed open the solid oak front door and went into the room that served as taproom. Behind a couple of barrels topped by silvered wooden planks, Lovey Bussell herself, a generously proportioned young woman whose cheery expression hid an inner core of solid Cornish granite, was already holding out two glasses of brandy. “Cap’n Trevelyan. Cap’n Will. Good to see you.”

Tables made economically from driftwood found in the cove sat higgledy-piggledy everywhere, a few grizzled locals already occupying one or two, nursing their own drinks. By the fire, also of driftwood, Bessie’s bulk, increased rather than diminished by age, took up a solid ladder backed rocking chair, a clay pipe clamped between her toothless gums and her gimlet eyes on Will and Jack. “Ye’re back, I see.” Her loose lips smacked together as she spoke, and the pipe didn’t so much as budge.

“Good evening to you, Bessie.” Jack touched his forehead in salute, something he’d done ever since he’d first met her as a boy, on his first sortie into her kiddley with his friends Kit Carlyon and Nat Treloar. Brave boys they’d been, back then, determined to act like the men they weren’t, buoyed up by the false entitlement their positions in society had given them. She’d soon put them straight on that.

The peat fire smoldering in the grate, mingled with the aroma of the tobacco smoke, served to fill the room with a thick fug and render it even gloomier, but the old matriarch seemed unaffected by it.

Jack took one of the glasses, raised it in Bessie’s direction, and Lovey handed the other to Will. From somewhere at the back of the kiddley came the bump and bang of unloading. Probably a barrel or two going into the kiddley cellars to supply Lovey’s customers.

Will knocked back his brandy. “No revenue man’ll be showing his nose here to look for our goods. They don’t dare. ’Tis more’n their lives’re worth.”

Lovey refilled his glass. “You never did speak a truer word, my luvver.” She chuckled. “D’ye remember when that revenue sloop chased the King o’ Prussia’s lugger into our cove and he saw it off with those guns he had set up on the headland?”

Will laughed. “Do I remember? I was there, girl, fighting them off.”

Jack held out his own glass for a refill. He’d heard this story many times before, but it was one retold, with a few embellishments, almost every time they brought in a cargo of contraband.

One of the grizzled old locals looked up from by the fire. “I were there too. Best day o’ my life, sendin’ them revenue men off wi’ their tails between their legs.”

His companion nodded, his head shaking a little as though he had the palsy. “Pity the old King had to tek down those guns. Should’ve kept ’em. I can still see the face o’ that soldier-man when the King telled him they was in case the Frenchies tried to invade and all perfickly legal.” He went off into a wheezing laugh that ended in a coughing fit, then spat copiously into the fireplace.

Will joined in the laughter. “They came back the next morning but there weren’t nothing they could do. Nothing for them to find, neither.”

Jack smiled. “I wish I’d seen that.”

He’d knocked back a second and third glass of brandy before his men began to drift in, and Lovey set to serving them. He could have stayed a while longer with them, which they’d have liked, but he needed to be elsewhere. Setting his glass down on the makeshift counter, he turned to Lovey. “Can you get Amram to bring my horse round from the barn?”

With a swift nod, she ducked her head through the low door behind her and shouted to the hitherto invisible Amram to “get the captain’s horse saddled quick now.”

Jack slapped a few of his crew on the back in greeting, and headed for the door. Outside, the sun had sunk low in the sky by now, over in the general direction of Penzance, with a few pink clouds scudding across the sea’s distant, hazy horizon, betokening a good day to follow. A breeze blew up from the cove, ruffling his overly-long dark hair, as his eyes of their own volition swiveled towards the cove’s westerly headland, where he’d seen the girl as they came into the cove. Nothing there now but a few stunted hawthorn bushes. Maybe she had been a pisky, after all. Stranger things happened.

Shod hooves clattered on cobbles, and young Amram emerged from behind the kiddley. A rather scrawny specimen of youthful masculinity, he had a narrow, pinched face and too close together eyes that immediately gave the unfortunate impression of untrustworthiness, but so far, his service with the Cove Boys had been uneventful. Jack would just have to overcome his natural inclination not to like the boy.

He was leading Jack’s fine black gelding, a horse he’d bred himself and had cut late, a decision that had given the animal all the attributes of being a stallion, with none of the problems where in season mares were concerned. Shadow was a lively ride, but sweet as a nut and nothing Jack couldn’t cope with.

He took Shadow’s reins from Amram and vaulted into the saddle without risking using the stirrup, settling himself comfortably as the big horse fidgeted under him, eager to be off. He’d been cooped in the kiddley stables all the while Jack had been over in Roscoff and must no doubt be keen to stretch his legs.

Amram stepped away from where Shadow’s agitated hooves were sparking on the cobbles, a hint of fear in his eyes. Although his main job was the stables, a job which mostly involved hiding pack ponies, Jack knew the boy preferred to feel a ship’s deck under him to dealing with the unpredictability of a horse. Not that a ship wasn’t unpredictable of course—just that the boy probably had little imagination about what could go wrong at sea, whereas he could see for himself how dangerous a horse could be.

Jack nodded his thanks to Amram and threw him a coin, then turned Shadow up the track that edged the cliffs, keeping a tight rein on the horse. He had no desire for them to end up smashed on the rocks below. Over, just to the left of straight ahead, Tummel’s decrepit cottage showed where it sat on the track west around the headland, and to the right of that, huddled amongst a few low trees and bushes, sat Keynvor Cottage… which should have been empty. Was that smoke coming out of its chimney? He did a double take, shading his eyes against the westering sun. Yes. It was. Someone must have taken the cottage. Didn’t it belong to an old widow woman from Penzance? Its being occupied could prove to be a nuisance but also might answer the question about who the girl on the cliffs had been.

As the path wound away from the cliff edge, Jack let Shadow trot, although what the horse really wanted was a good old gallop. Not yet. He glanced back at Keynvor. Whoever had taken that on was in for a bit of a shock. They must be desperate, as the place had fallen into disrepair since Brewinney had gone over the cliffs. Probably someone’s newly employed farmworker who’d just be glad of a roof over his head and would turn an obliging blind eye on the goings on in the cove.

Passing the end of the track that led down to Keynvor, Jack gave Shadow a looser rein, and the horse sprang forward into a canter as they headed inland. He was almost home when he had to haul hard and bring his horse to a halt. Up ahead of him, trundling along the track in the direction of the cliffs, was a precariously loaded wagon. And walking by the head of the horse pulling it was none other than the gigantic figure of Locky Massen, one of his own servants. Riding on the seat and driving the wagon was Mrs. Keneder, his housekeeper, beside Bronnen, his housemaid. What on earth were all his servants doing out here?

The wagon ground to a halt in front of him, mainly because the track was too narrow to let it pass unless he moved Shadow right up against the hedge. None of his employees looked a whit embarrassed that they’d been caught out apparently absconding with a load of his furniture and what looked like a heap of firewood and a large basket piled with food from his pantry.

Jack frowned at them. “Well? Is anyone going to tell me what’s going on?”

Locky tugged his sparse forelock, a knitted hat hiding his balding pate. “’Tis on the orders of the Mistress… Sir.” The sir sounded like a bit of an afterthought. These servants of his were inclined to regard his mother as their employer even though she wasn’t the one who paid their wages. He wasn’t helped by the fact most of them had known him since he’d been in petticoats, when his mother had been the one in charge.

Jack sighed and raised an eloquent eyebrow. “What orders would those be?”

Mrs. Keneder leaned forward in her seat. “We’re to take all this to Keynvor Cottage on account of a fine lady in straitened circumstances having come to live there, Sir. Your mother, she walked down to see them a while back and met the lady. We’s to deliver this and help with the clean up.” She wrinkled her nose. “Being as you don’t mind, that is.” Also an afterthought. When had any of them bothered about what he minded?

Jack sighed again. His mother would only grumble at him if he turned them around, and in his experience, it was best to mollify her sometimes strange whims. “Very well.” He guided Shadow into the hedge with a touch of his leg. “You’d best do as she’s told you then.” He fixed Mrs. Keneder with a stern frown. “I suppose it’s cold cuts for me tonight then?”

Mrs. Keneder, whom he knew full well to be fond of him, allowed her face to crinkle into a wide smile. “All set ready for Abigail to serve when you’re home, Sir.” She clicked to the horse, and Jack watched his furniture and food rumble past, before turning Shadow back for home. He’d have to think about this. An actual lady living at Keynvor Cottage was an entirely different prospect to some local farmhand and his family, who knew to keep their mouths shut about his and Will’s smuggling runs.