In the Blood (22 page)

“You’re not taking it?” Davy said.
 

Jowan strolled back to the pontoon.
 
“Why not?”

Davy gave no answer.
 
He stood there like he was trying to think of a reason, but none came.

“No one saw us arrive,” Jowan said when Davy caught up with him.
 
“And no one will see us leave - unless you count that horse.”
 
He opened the ferry lantern and the wind blew the flame out before he had chance to.
 
“It’s perfect.
 
Like we were never here at all.”
 
He jumped onto the raft and untied the rope, eager to get back into the gloom on the river.

Davy pushed off, beaming like a fool.
 
“Easy money then,” he said.
 
“Easy money...”

Lying quietly at the waterline, a black shadow rested like a rock.
 
He’d seen everything, watching as Jowan took the haversack from the cart, cursing them under his breath.
 
The one thing he’d gone there for had slipped away from him.
 
As the raft left the pontoon, the dark figure rolled quietly away from the lifeless body beneath him and loosened the ligature from his victim’s neck.
 
The noise from the inn grew louder as a door opened and a silver crucifix that hung around Mawgan’s neck reflected the light.
 
The dark figure grabbed it, extinguishing the reflection as easily as he’d extinguished Mawgan’s life.
 
Then he was still again - a rock once more.

Jowan and Davy were quick to tie off the ferry for the night when they got back across the river to Helford Point.
 
It hadn’t occurred to either of them until they pulled up alongside the pontoon that they might be seen bringing the ferry back - then someone would know that they had crossed.
 
But the weather had not let up.
 
The wind was just as strong, the sky as dark, and the rain as hard as it had been when they first crossed to Helford Passage.
 
No one was out by the river when they landed.

Long strides took Davy away from the ferry and off the pontoon, and he didn’t slow until he was up on the village path.
 
“We’ll be needing another drink then, Jowan?”

“We will Davy.
 
A big one.”

Jowan felt the bulging purse through his shabby trouser pocket and quickened his pace as the Shipwrights Arms came into view beside the creek.
 
It sounded as lively as ever and before they entered he took off his coat and wrapped it around the haversack to conceal it.
 
The bundle was hard edged but it looked like an armful of wet rags by the time he’d finished.

Jenna Fox looked surprised to see them back so soon.
 
She stood behind the bar with her hands on her hips, waving her chest at them as they approached.
 
“Can’t get enough of me, eh boys?”

“Never for a minute,” Jowan said, leaning in across the bar at their usual place by the fire.
 
“Not even if I was stuck in this very moment for the rest of my sorry days.”

Jenna laughed.
 
Then she must have caught Davy eyeing her cleavage.
 
She reached across and shook his cheek, pulling his face closer until his nose sunk into her bosom.

Davy was blushing when he came out again.

“The usual?” Jenna said, reaching for their tankards.

“And the smoothest rum in the house to chase it down,” Jowan replied.

Jenna winked at him.
 
“I like a man who can take his drink,” she teased.

Jowan grinned.
 
“One for yourself, then?”

To their left sat a man Jowan and Davy knew from the village.
 
“Jago, can I get you a drink while I’m about it?”

At the sound of his name the man looked up from his pipe.
 
He looked grim as the weather.
 
“What’s the occasion?”

Jowan and Davy stared at one another while they tried to think of one.
 
“It’s my birthday!” Jowan lied, and they both laughed.

“No trade then?” Jenna asked when she returned with their ale.
 
She set them down and poured out three measures of rum.

Davy was quick to answer.
 
“There was no one out there,” he said.

Jenna laughed.
 
“I’m not surprised!”

“That’s right,” Jowan added.
 
“Not a soul on this foul night, so we waited a while then came running back to you.”
 
He flashed his eyes playfully, studying her mouth as she teased a sip of rum through her cherry-red lips.
 

“We didn’t even go across,” Davy said.
 
He picked up his tankard and his ale was half finished before he put it down again.

Jowan knew he needed to change the subject.
 
“Sorry, Jago,” he said.
 
He turned to Jenna.
 
“Get this fine man whatever he’s drinking would you, my love.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

V
oices at the entrance to the exhibition distracted Tayte.
 
The display stands blocked his view, but he recognised the voice of the woman who had sold him his admission ticket.
 
The other was a man; another customer he supposed.
 
Late, though...
 
He checked his watch: ‘16:50’.
 
He hadn’t noticed what time the exhibition closed, but he thought it must be soon.

The talking stopped.
 
Then Tayte heard quick steps beyond the displays, hurrying through the exhibition.
 
His curiosity followed the sound until it ended abruptly and the room fell silent again.
 
He thought the visitor must have come to view something specific, as he had.
 
Maybe they knew they didn’t have long before the museum closed and were in a rush to get around.

He went back to the case notes reading an account from Mawgan Hendry’s mother, Tegan, about the items her son had with him the day he was murdered, items that were missing from his cart, presumed stolen: his haversack and the day’s takings from market.
 
The verse book was recovered and Tayte wondered if that was one of the items missing from the display cases.
 
As he read on, he learnt of other items described by Tegan Hendry that had belonged to Mawgan - items that had later proven crucial to the prosecution.

On Wednesday, May 18th, 1803, the morning after Mawgan Hendry was murdered, a crowd had gathered by the ferry pontoon at Helford Point.
 
Jowan and Davy were late, which was nothing unusual.
 
They drank hard the night before, even by their measure, almost emptying their ill gotten purse.
 
And they had slept hard.
 
What
was
unusual that morning was the size of the crowd and the gossip that was spreading fast.

Jowan’s head thumped to the beat of his footsteps as he marched ahead of Davy down the lane to the ferry.
 
The ground was sodden from yesterday’s storm and today the sky was lighter, but remained grey, like collared-dove feathers.
 
The rain had lessened to a soaking mist that veiled the entrance to the Helford River.

Jowan knew they were pushing their luck.
 
He could hear the hum of the crowd long before he could see it and when they arrived their appearance went strangely unnoticed.
 
A few glances; nothing of the usual angry discourse.
 
The crowd seemed excited and busy with their own conversations as the two ferrymen pushed through towards the pontoon, snatching words and sentences from one conversation then another.

“They found him caught up on the rocks last night,” one voice said.

“Did you know him?” a woman asked.

Davy didn’t seem to have twigged, but Jowan’s concern was growing.

“Shocking!” someone said.
 
“His poor mother...”
 

“They started the search after the inn turned out,” one man said.
 
“Saw the empty cart on the track.
 
Well, it didn’t belong to anyone there so it was clear something was amiss.”

“And what a night for it,” another man said.

Jowan heard ‘cart’ and his stomach knotted.
 
The next thing he heard left him in no doubt.

“Been robbed and strangled they said.
 
Horrible marks cut into his neck.”

“Nearly took his head off!
 
That’s what I heard.”

Jowan stopped short of the pontoon at the edge of the crowd.
 
He was thinking fast now.
 
He caught hold of Davy and pulled him close.

“Davy?” he whispered.
 

Davy looked distant, like he hadn’t heard a word of the circulating gossip.

Jowan shook him.
 
“Listen.
 
There’s trouble, Davy.”

“What trouble?”

“Be quiet, Davy.”
 
Jowan edged his friend out from the crowd and stared into his eyes.
 
“Get back to the house.”
 
His voice was barely audible.
 
“You must hide the bag ... from last night!”

Davy looked confused.

“I’ll explain later,” Jowan said.
 
“Just go.”
 
He spun Davy around and whispered in his ear, “You know where to put it.”

The words, ‘trouble’ and ‘bag’ seemed to register at last and Davy nodded, wide-eyed as Jowan pushed him back into the crowd.

Later that evening, two men were talking; low voices in the muted corner of a poorly lit room that was damp and heavy with the decayed odour of rotting leaves.
 
Their shadows were cast on the wall, one larger than the other, yet both shared a similar, brutish form.
 
The lantern on the floor in the centre of the room was blackened on all sides and what light it gave from its opening was directed into the room, away from an entrance overgrown with ivy and rose thorns.

The soft glow revealed hard stone edges and a dusty, bug infested floor that ran to a wall of recessed chambers.
 
An angel looked down on the room from those chambers, her features uncharacteristically malevolent in the dim up-light.
 
To the side walls, grey headstones that were just visible stabbed out from the ground like dagger points, bearing obscured inscriptions that were impossible to read.

“It was not there,” one voice said - the larger of the two.
 
He spoke firmly, slowly, reiterating what he had already said.
  

“It has to be,” said the other, unable to believe otherwise.
 
You did not look hard enough!”

“You should have let me do it my own way,” the larger man said.

“Like the farmer!?”

“I would have made Davy Fenton talk first!”

The smaller of the two men became animated.
 
“A simple robbery.
 
That’s all you had to do.
 
Just enough to get the box back.
 
Now there will be an enquiry - imagine the attention that will bring!”
 
He sank his head into his hands.
 
When he looked up again, he said, “And what of the crucifix?”

The larger man nodded.

“Good.”
 
The other took a scroll of paper from his coat.
 
“Deliver this to the church warden.
 
And make sure you are not seen.
 
He collected the lantern from the floor and extinguished it.
 
Darkness was absolute.
 
“We must hope for now that the box remains hidden.”
 
He reached for the door and a bright bead of silver moonlight cracked at the edges.
 
“Once the note is delivered we will have all the time we need to search Ferryman Cottage.”

A troubled mind had kept Jowan Penhale awake that night.
 
He and Davy had spent the entire evening huddled around a candle considering their predicament until Jowan had at last concluded that they were in the clear.
 
He was sure no one had seen them the previous night when they came upon Hendry’s cart, and he knew the stolen haversack was hidden as well as anything so incriminating could be hidden.
 
Having left Davy downstairs in a state of rum induced narcosis, he was finally starting to drift himself when the peace of the early morning was violated.

He heard several sounds at once, all combining to overpower the silence.
 
Crows caw-cawed as wood splintered and glass fell crashing to a quarry-tiled floor.
 
Then raised voices, angry voices that echoed beneath the floorboards, sent an unmistakable message to the occupants of Ferryman Cottage, contradicting Jowan’s earlier conclusions.