The Tenth Gift (3 page)

C
ATHERINE

June 1625

M
ATTY WOKE HER JUST AFTER DAWN
. “C
OME
down to the parlor,” she said. “Jack Kellynch is down there, with Thom Samuels and your cousin Rob.”

“Robert?” Cat blinked, still half asleep, and struggled upright. Pale light was forcing its way past the curtains she had made from an old petticoat to hang over the drafty attic window. “What is Rob doing here with those rogues?”

Matty made a face. “Don’t say that, they’re good lads.”

The Kellynch brothers ran a pilchard boat out of Market-Jew, sometimes joining the seiners and coming back in with the tuck-net full of fish, but more often disappearing for weeks on end, no one knew where, and turning up again much richer, with sly grins and winks for the girls, flashing foreign gold. Matty sighed over Jack; Cat thought him a blackguard and a fool, if a handsome one. Thom Samuels had not even that advantage; he boasted but a single eyebrow, black and lowering, right across his forehead. She laughed. “Smugglers and brigands, the pair of them.”

But Matty was already out of the door. Cat heard her footsteps, heavy on the creaking boards outside, then thundering down the stairs. Sir Arthur and Lady Harris had their quarters in the quiet west wing of the house; the servants were in the east, where the noise from the adjacent farm was loudest: If Matty hadn’t woken her, then the dogs and cockerel would. She slipped out of bed. Her stiff dark-green working dress and corset were arranged over the back of the single
chair, her linen stockings lying over them like a pair of empty legs. No time for all that lacing and strapping: She straightened her shift and grabbed up her shawl—a vanity, for it was her best, hand-embroidered with a crosshatch of briar roses in fine wool.

Why was Robert here, and at such an hour? She knew that Margaret Harris had a soft spot for her cousin, and encouraged him to come to the house far more than his duties about the farm might require. With his tangled yellow hair and bright blue eyes, Rob towered over the mistress by a good fifteen inches. He towered over most folk; Lady Harris teased him that he was descended from the giants of Carn Brea, who had dragged their captives up the hill and sacrificed them on the great flat rocks there, before stripping them of their gold and jewels, which they hid deep in the granite caves beneath. But Cat could never imagine her gentle cousin taking anyone captive, let alone beating their brains out on the stones. It was quite strange enough that he should appear in the company of Kellynch and Samuels, and at a time when the mistress was still abed.

Curiosity piqued, she slipped her bare feet into her cold boots and headed for the stairs. She found Matty and the dairymaid, Big Grace, peering furtively through the crack in the parlor door. Male voices drifted out into the passageway, along with the sharp smell of small beer and a fug of smoke from the kitchen fire. In low tones, one of the lads said something Cat could not quite catch. The girls listened intently, straining for every word of the hushed conversation within. Grace squeezed Matty’s hand and the two girls exchanged a horrified glance. Cat grinned and tiptoed across the flagstones, laying a hand on Matty’s shoulder for balance so that she, too, could peer into the parlor. Matty made a high-pitched yelp like a rabbit taken by a fox.

Jack Kellynch wrenched the door open. Small-boned and dark, he had the brown skin and bright eyes of the Spaniard his mother was reputed to be—taken, it was said, off a merchantman wrecked on the Manacles, along with a cargo of fortified wine, a chest of gold and silver plate, and bales of Orient silk bound for the old Queen. The silk and most of the plate had made its way to Her Majesty, but
the wine had most mysteriously vanished, along with the Spanish merchant’s daughter.

“Well, now, Matty,” he said, giving her a hard look, “you should know no good comes to those who listen where they shouldn’t.”

Matty flushed a powerful red and looked at her feet, unable to frame a sentence. For her part, Big Grace could only grip Matty’s arm, her eyes round and awed, her mouth hanging open. She was only thirteen, a touch simple, and tiny despite her familiar name.

Cat strode forward. “What are you doing here, Jack Kellynch? Matty and Grace have reason, being honestly employed in this house, but you, as far as I know, are honestly employed by no man and have no business in our parlor at break of day.”

Kellynch regarded her sardonically. “My business is my own and not something that should concern a Danish wench.”

Cat tossed the tawny hair that had earned her this inaccurate insult and stepped past him into the parlor, ready to berate her cousin Robert for allowing such an invasion of ne’er-do-wells. In the smoky, fire-lit room beyond, however, were three figures: not only Robert Bolitho and Thomas Samuels, as she had expected, who sat at the table, but a third man standing in the shadowed corner, leaning against the wall. He wore a dusty traveling cloak, and his boots were muddy. It was only when he took a step forward and the lantern’s light fell upon him that she realized it was the master, Sir Arthur Harris himself, his expression grim.

“These men are here at my invitation, Catherine, bringing me information.”

Cat dropped a desperate curtsy, head spinning. “I beg your pardon, sir, I thought you were at the Mount—”

“And that gives you license to appear half-dressed in company?”

There was nothing she could say to that, so wisely she said nothing, dropping her regard just in time to catch Robert nudging a discarded hat to conceal an object that shone silver against the dark and pitted oak of the table.

When she lifted her puzzled gaze to his face, Robert gave her a
fiercely eloquent look.
Go away
, the blue eyes blazed at her. For a moment she stood her ground; then, “Excuse me, sir,” she muttered, and fled the room.

She felt Jack Kellynch’s eyes on her back, and worse, all the way up the stairs.

“N
OW, THEN
, C
ATHERINE
,” Margaret Harris said as firmly as she could, “my husband tells me you were indecorous this morning, appearing in full view of his companions in little more than a chemise. He has asked me to have a word with you. We want no scandal here at Kenegie, and I promised your mother that I would be as a mother to you in her stead.”

Cat’s head came up at the mention of her mother. Her father, John, a militiaman for Sir Arthur in the garrison on St. Michael’s Mount, had been taken by the plague that swept through the region two years previously, leaving Jane Tregenna and her daughter without income. It was generally whispered that Mistress Tregenna had been cursed by spriggans, for since the birth of Catherine there had been no other children; Cat herself suspected there had been little love lost between her parents. Margaret Harris had offered them both positions at the house, but Jane Tregenna regarded herself as far too much a lady to be a servant again. Instead, she had taken herself off to her brother Edward’s well-appointed home in Penzance, leaving Catherine to be taken under the Mistress of Kenegie’s wing, whereby she was generously offered not only the income of a bodyservant, but more education and encouragement than any girl of her upbringing had ever been bred for. Cat knew her mother harbored wild ambitions for her; she probably had her eye on one of the Harris boys. If she lost her position at the manor, she knew she would never hear the last of Jane Tregenna’s bitter tongue.

“My pardon, ma’am. I had not meant to give offense. Matty … I heard a disturbance below and was concerned that there might be intruders.”

“Going half-naked downstairs to investigate does not seem to me the wisest course of action. Had there been ruffians down there, you would have endangered yourself and placed me, as your guardian, in a most difficult position. Do you understand that?”

Cat nodded slowly. “But my lady, I was not ‘half-naked’ I held a shawl over my shift to guard my modesty, I swear.”

The Mistress of Kenegie smiled. “And would that have been your best shawl, Catherine, bearing the crewel roses?”

Cat had the grace to blush. “It was.”

Margaret Harris appraised the girl silently. Cat was nineteen now and comely, even though her hair was that unfortunate golden-red. Her mother, Jane Tregenna, was small and dark, worn out by life’s disappointments; her dead husband had been a crabbed, brown-haired man with the small, close features of the Lizard villages (where it was well known they had gone on all fours till the crew of a foreign vessel wrecked on the coast had settled among them and improved their stature and physical development). An unlikely marriage that had been, and one that hinted at compromises made under pressure: Jane was a Coode, a proper old Cornish family—reputable, deep-rooted, well-respected. The Tregennas were farmers from Veryan and Tregeare; John had been a third son without even a land-living to fall back on, which was why he had signed himself up as a militiaman. Not the best prospect for a pretty girl from a decent family, and certainly there was no clue in that parentage to the provenance of Catherine’s fox-red hair and long, straight limbs. Nineteen was a dangerous age: The girl herself should be married, and soon. She had seen how her sons William and Thomas watched Catherine as she moved around the house.

“You saw your cousin this morning?”

Cat frowned. “Yes, madam.”

Margaret Harris smoothed her skirt. “He is a good worker, Robert. Sir Arthur has often said as much. It would not surprise me if he were to offer him the position of steward when George Parsons retires.” She watched the girl’s face for a reaction. “Of course, he
would be more likely to progress thus were he settled, with a family,” she pressed.

“Oh, Robert has a great many family hereabouts,” Cat said airily. “There are Bolithos and Johns in every hamlet and farmstead from Gulval and Badger’s Cross to Alverton and Paul. Hell never leave the area: He has not that type of ambition.”

“That’s not quite what I meant,” the lady said quietly. “He is a gentle and an able young man—not to put too fine a point on it, quite a catch for a country lass.” She fixed Cat with her lucent gray eyes until her meaning came clear.

“Oh.” Cat stared at the patterned rug that stretched between them—the Turkey rug, her mistress called it. It was brightly woven with gorgeously dyed motifs in cream and crimson and umber, and it glowed like a living thing among the dull earth hues of the rest of the room: the wood-paneled walls, the granite floor; the heavy, dark walnut and mahogany furniture. Cat would give her eyeteeth for wool like that to work with. How beautiful the tapestries and embroideries of the Orient must be; how she would love to see them, but likely she would never be closer to such work than she was at this very moment, standing on “the Turkey rug.” She raised her head and looked the other woman steadily in the eye. “My cousin is a good man, and I am as fond of him as if he were my brother,” she said firmly.

Lady Harris decided that it was not yet the right moment to pursue the subject, but she was determined that before the summer was out, Catherine Tregenna would be Catherine Bolitho.

R
OBERT CAME TO
find her later that day. “Will you take a walk with me, Cat?” he asked.

It was four in the afternoon. Lady Harris had taken her daughters, Margaret and Alice, over to Trevailor to visit the Reverend and Mrs. Veale and, smiling, made it clear to her servant that she would
have no specific duties for her to perform until they returned after dinner that evening.

Cat shaded her eyes, looking past him across the knot garden and the courtyard toward the open country beyond. Sun spangled the waters of the distant bay and made a fairy-tale castle of the Mount. High up above the hills toward Lescudjack a kestrel hovered, drifting lazily on a current of warm air in desultory pursuit of rabbit or vole. Mares’ tails were strewn across the summer sky: The weather boded fair for another day, and a soft breeze shimmered in the bright leaves of the sycamores and oaks that clothed Rosemorran’s valley. She could find no reason to refuse his offer, nor did she wish to. In truth, she found the house stifling on these hot summer days, and Robert was handsome company. She had no wish to wed him, but it did her pride no harm to be seen walking out with him. Besides, she was keen to discover exactly what it was that had been discussed in so secretive a fashion in the parlor that morning.

She transferred her gaze to her cousin. Robert was watching her much as the kestrel had been watching for its rabbit: hungrily, his keen blue eyes searching her face for every reaction. “Thank you, Robert,” she said at last, drawing out the moment. “That would be most kind. Pray wait for me here while I change.”

There was a small window halfway up the main staircase. Cat glanced out of it as she passed, only to see her cousin twisting his hat in his big hands, as if he were wringing a chicken’s neck. He jammed it on his head, took it off, stuck it in his pocket, then wiped his forehead with a large colored kerchief.

Nervous, she thought, satisfied. And well he might be, for she would never say him yea.