Mermaid of Penperro Read online

  He escaped into the hallway and dashed into his office at the front of the house, slamming the door behind him and barely stopping himself from wedging a chair under its handle as final protection. Mrs. Toley would stuff him from daybreak to midnight if he let her. At the end of her first month in his employ he’d had only one pair of old breeches that still fit, and he’d had to restrict his food severely for several months afterward to return to his regular size. There was something unbalanced in her obsession with feeding him, as if somehow the other losses in her life could be made up for by pouring gravies down his throat.

  He slid into his heavy oak desk chair and tried to calm his beating heart, the oversize mass of the desk sitting before him with all its pigeonholes, drawers, slots, and trays, its papers and account books and correspondence. He always did his best thinking here, where the organization of his desk provided a model of mental order to the hundreds of thoughts and concerns flashing through his mind.

  His eye lit on the Failes family ledger. Jeremy Failes was a minor baronet, and the owner of a vast estate. Tom had been put in charge of that family’s accounts, and he had, he hoped, saved it from bankruptcy. In the next week he should pay the children’s boarding school fees.

  His eyes flitted to the ten-pound note sitting atop a stack of papers, a note that he had issued himself against his own bank. Within the month he would have to have more of them printed. His private bank was doing well, the farmers and fisherfolk of Penperro taking his advice to save what money they could in hopes of buying the land beneath their rented homes if the opportunity arose.

  On a shelf near his desk were the ledger books where he kept track of his seagoing barges, which sailed from Plymouth. He dealt in coal, linen, seed, corn, pilchards, and timber, his barges traveling to the coasts of Ireland and, when breaks in the war with France allowed, Italy. There had been no such breaks for a year now, and the fishermen of Penperro suffered for the lack of the Italian market.

  And then as well there were the books for the smugglers.

  He himself did not sail a smuggler’s craft, although he invested in several, and in their trade. His true role in the smuggling was that of manager and, to some extent, caretaker. When a local smuggler landed in jail, Tom hired a lawyer and sent money. When a Guernsey trader doubted a smuggler’s trustworthiness, Tom vouched for him. When smuggled goods were sold, Tom forwarded the money to those awaiting their share. He hired horses and workers to come down to the beach caves and haul goods inland in the dead of night. He arranged for safe hiding places in the town and countryside. He found buyers for the goods. Many of the smuggling details remained in his head alone, never set to paper. He enjoyed organizing and planning, and balancing hundreds of pieces of information at once. The risks and challenges of his work made him feel alive, and knowing that others benefited from his efforts gave his work a sense of meaning.

  Apparently he had been a little too good at his work with the smugglers, though, if it had brought the Preventive Water Guard to their harbor. There had been revenue men in Penperro since the beginning of the fifteenth century, but they had always been men like the present agent, Edward Stephens, who was happy to take the king’s taxes from the goods brought through town in daylight, and leave the nighttime goods to the locals. In this way Stephens secured for himself both a cellar filled with brandy and the high regard of his neighbors.

  It was a great pity that Foweather could not be so easily persuaded. Attempts at bribery had been made, subtly at first, then with increasing boldness as it became apparent then he was oblivious to innuendo. Matt had even made the man a blunt offer, although it was unclear if Foweather realized the vicar was not speaking hypothetically. In any case, Foweather had made it plain that he did not simply earn a living as an officer in the Preventive Water Guard Service: he was the Guard, a living embodiment of all for which it stood.

  The man had all the wit of a dead pilchard, but that very dullness allowed him to pursue his ends with a methodicalness that would drive a more intelligent person insane. One of his superiors had apparently told him to search out the caves the smugglers used. When they were not out in their sloop patrolling the waters, that was what he and his men did. Inch by inch of coastline, they searched and scrambled and pried. When they had covered every rock and shadowed indentation and wave-echoing crevice within their range, they started over.

  Fortunately for the people of Penperro, Foweather’s men grew more easily bored than he, and had begun to show a greater interest in local women and drink than in seaweed-slimed caves. He could almost feel sorry for the men, as Penperro’s young women met their advances with stony glares and curled lips. No girl would dare bring a Preventive man home to her family. The rebellion of youth was one thing, but the girls relied on the smuggling trade for many of their own creature comforts.

  Even if Foweather did manage to find all the caves and the half-hidden coves where the smugglers landed, he could not patrol them at all hours, and he would run himself ragged if he tried to search them every day. The thought was a small consolation. All the smugglers really needed to keep themselves out of jail was a way in which to predict or control Foweather’s presence, both on land and at sea. The obvious solution of spreading false rumors of where and when boats were to come ashore had backfired the one time they had tried it, as Foweather had called for reinforcements from Fowey, and the entire coast for two miles on either side of the harbor had been crawling with revenue officers and militia.

  Tom nibbled on a hangnail, and his mind clicked through the possible remedies for the Foweather situation.

  Chapter Three

  “Enough. You are sweating like a goat,” Hilde said in German, taking the stiff-bristled brush away from Konstanze. “Go rest. Get some fresh air.”

  “I should do more,” she protested, gesturing around her at the kitchen, where there were several tasks yet to be completed. The stone sink in front of her still held several pots that had to be scrubbed clean before either she or Hilde would be willing to cook from them. There were linens to be washed, trunks to be unpacked, furniture to be polished, windows to be cleaned.

  “Let me work in peace! Go!” Hilde commanded, shooing her out the door to the back garden.

  Konstanze gave up and let herself be shooed, pausing only to unpin her apron from her dress, which was a white cotton sprigged with tiny green clusters of lily of the valley. She admitted privately that she was glad enough to be done with chores for the day. She had grown soft living her stationary life on the sofas of Bugg House, and had forgotten the stamina required to care for a home. Her muscles ached, and the skin of her fingers felt raw from soap and cold water, her knuckles stiff.

  She glanced back through the open door to the kitchen, and saw that Hilde was inspecting Konstanze’s pots and shaking her sandy blond head in dissatisfaction. Hilde was a firm believer in the adage that if you wanted a job done well, you did it yourself. While the maid never disobeyed a direct order, she nevertheless mothered Konstanze and did not hesitate to tell her young mistress, in her abrupt Austrian manner, what she thought was best.

  The day was sunny and warm, and whenever the gusting breeze stopped fresh perspiration broke out over her skin, only to be cooled by the next brush of air. Konstanze felt as though she had been outdoors more in the past two days than she had in the entire two years of living with Bugg.

  Between the privy, the unoccupied chicken house, the well house, and the overgrown patch where vegetables had once grown, the back garden was far from lovely to look upon. It was not too late to grow some of their own vegetables, although Konstanze did not relish the thought of putting hand to spade and overturning that tangled growth of weeds. There was also a decrepit barn that she had yet to investigate. Her great-uncle had been a farmer, one of the few fortunate enough to own the land he worked. Konstanze spared a passing thought of wonder that he could make a living from this small acreage.

  She set her feet in the direction of the headlands and began to wa
rm her voice with a series of scales, then arpeggios, feeling cheerful and carefree. She slipped from chest voice to head voice, and on the passage after that her voice went even higher and purer, taking on the character of a flute. Her mother had found work mainly as a lyric soprano, singing the sweet melodies of the innocent heroine, her head and chest voices often mixed. Konstanze herself was more fitted for the coloratura soprano roles, her voice at its best when at the highest reaches of human sound, bouncing or sliding agilely between notes.

  The ocean came in sight over the next rise, its waters close to shore an intense turquoise green, speaking of currents warmer than those to be found anywhere else in England. The waves sloshed lethargically up against the dark gray rocks of the shore, the waters today calm. She picked her way carefully down the sloping green to the drop-off where the rocks began, looking down at the short cove some twenty feet below.

  She had found the cove yesterday, its beige sands stretching only thirty feet or so between rocky arms. It took a bit of care to descend to it without harm, and she did so now after taking a brief glance around the deserted countryside behind her. As yesterday, there was not another soul to be seen. She and Hilde had not, in fact, laid eyes upon another human being since Mr. Mogridge had delivered them to the cottage.

  “Ev’ry sight these eyes behold does a different charm unfold,” she began to sing.

  It was the aria sung by the Queen of Sheba upon arriving in Solomon’s court, in Handel’s Solomon. It was not a coloratura piece, but had enough drama to satisfy her, and the words suited her mood. To her eyes, the lovely cove was as wonderful as any palace shining with gems.

  She slipped her shoes and stockings off when she reached the sand, tucking them neatly into a cleft of rock near where she had climbed down. She could tell by the narrow strip of wet upon the sand that the tide was coming in, and did not want to risk her shoes floating away while she dawdled amongst the rocks.

  “Does a different charm unfold; flashing gems and sculptured gold,” she sang.

  The water was frigid upon her toes at first touch, but a few seconds later the coolness was pleasant, not half so startling. She lifted her hem and waded to the west end of the cove, the water splashing up her legs with each step, the energy she had thought drained by chores coming back full-force now that there was play at hand.

  She cast a glance over her shoulder, up to the top of the rocks. There was no one there, and likely there would not be anyone there all of today, and tomorrow too. Though she knew there were footpaths across the green downs, she had seen none anywhere between her great-uncle’s cottage and this cove. No one had reason to come this way, and even if someone should cross the land above, they would have to come to the very edge of the low cliff to see her here down below.

  The weather was sunny and warm.

  The water was pleasant.

  She was in need of a bath.

  She was as alone as she could ever hope to be.

  It was a perfect chance for a swim. She felt an anxious, excited rush at the thought. Did she dare?

  Her grandfather had taught her to swim when she was a small child, telling her that it was a foolish thing for anyone who lived near the water to be unable to save himself should he have the misfortune to fall in, and that went for little girls, too.

  Grandmother had protested, fretting at the shoreline as Grandfather led her into the water, her chemise billowing around her thighs as the water deepened. She had been frightened at first, scared to put her face into the water, but Grandfather had gruffly told her to do it, to quit her fretting, and done it she had.

  By the end of that first lesson she had learned how to float on her back, arms spread like a starfish, her potbelly a small island in the waves. With the knowledge that all she ever had to do was flip onto her back to be safe, the water had quickly lost its terrors.

  Poor Grandfather. She had caused him endless grief from Grandmother, for as a young girl she had not completely understood the dangers of currents, undertows, jagged rocks, or the cold that robbed the body of its heat and life. She had been, however, an obedient child, and had kept her swimming to coves that her grandparents deemed safe.

  All that had been close to twenty years past, and when her mother had directed her to be sent to boarding school in Switzerland at the age of ten, her swimming days had ended.

  Konstanze waded out of the water and put her hands to the buttons at the front of her high-waisted gown, hesitating as she looked up again at the unvisited ledges above her. Logic argued that no one would see her, but still she was nervous about disrobing outdoors. There were but a few minutes in the day when she was not covered shoulder to ankle by clothing, and those minutes were within the privacy of home.

  She remembered again her grandfather ordering her to put her face in the water, never mind her fear. He had known there was no danger, just as her logic told her there was none now. She teetered a moment longer on a point of indecision, just long enough to grow tired of her own waffling and to toss her worries to the wind.

  She slipped the buttons through their holes and unfastened the inner, built-in panels of the gown that supported her breasts. Up, over the head and off, and after a moment of contemplation her chemise went, too. She rolled them into a neat little log and put them on top of her shoes in the crevice, safe from wind and tide. She pulled the pins from her hair and tucked those up there, too, as her heavy mahogany hair fell from its coiffure to hang around her body in thick, snakelike locks.

  She was Medusa! She was Judith! She was Circe! She ran down the sand and splashed into the water, the chill against her skin only half as shocking as the feel of her bare skin in the open air, her breasts bouncing as she ran. She was Aphrodite, born in the waves, and wondering where her clothes were. But no, above all she was Konstanze Crécy, the Bugg-free woman of Cornwall!

  She dove into the low waves, the water a cool massaging caress down her body, her hair dragging as she glided underwater. She kicked and pulled, going farther and farther until her breath gave out, and then she came to the surface with a gasp. She stood on the sandy bottom, the undulations of the water’s surface rising and falling over her breasts, which had gone tight with the cold. Her hair floated and swayed around her like fronds of seaweed, its touch against her bare sides both tentative and intimate.

  She swam out into slightly deeper water and lolled on her back. She dove and surfaced and dove again, and when she tired she swam over to the end of one of the out-thrusts of rock that surrounded her cove. The weight of her body was heavy on her arms as she pulled herself up out of the salt water. She sat on a low rock, her legs still half submerged, and looked out at the sea.

  She dug her fingers into her hair, making them a crude comb as she worked at the worst of the snarls. Bugg would have a fit if he could see her now, preening nude on a rock. The thought brought her a wicked delight. The emotion begged for expression, something vengeful and impassioned.

  In her head she heard the violent, crashing introduction as an orchestra hurled itself into the opening bars of a furious Mozart aria. She flung out her hands and raised her head in an arrogant, queenly gesture as she gathered a deep breath.

  “Der Holle Rache Kocht in meinem Herzen,” she belted out, startling a small flock of seagulls into flight. “Tod und Verzweiflung flammet um mich her!”

  She threw all her soul into the song, feeling it in a way she never had before. She was singing the part of the Queen of the Night from The Magic Flute. The queen was singing, “Hellish revenge boils in my heart/Death and desperation are flaming around me!” as she tried to persuade her daughter to murder her father, Sarastro.

  The aria was a favorite of Konstanze’s, its passages some of the most difficult in the repertoire. The highest notes of the piece were produced by air moving across motionless vocal cords, much as a flute was played, and the result was eerily inhuman.

  “A a a a a aaaaaaaaaaa,” she sang nearly three octaves above middle C, the notes rising, falling, and r
ising again in steps to ethereal levels and then finally doing a frantic dance of ascension to the high F.

  She was at the end of the second major run of such notes when she heard a shout behind her. She jerked her head over her shoulder, and to her horror saw a man in a blue coat and white trousers gaping at her from back on the grassy shore. In panic she flung herself into the water.

  She heard him shout again as she came back to the surface. She had to hide, and quickly! Horror upon horrors, to be caught like this.

  There was nowhere on the rock outcropping to secrete herself. She swam around the rock arm, beyond sight of the cove, thankful that the waves were calm enough that she would not risk being battered against the rocks. The land rose higher in this direction, the shoreline irregular. The man was out of sight for the moment, so if she could just find a place to hide before he appeared again…

  There! A dark, upright shadow in the next headland bespoke a cave, the opening all but hidden by a tall rock before it. She swam desperately for the opening, and with the help of an incoming wave slid easily inside. She clung to the slick rocks of the wall as the wave retreated, leaving her waist-deep in the water, in a passage no more than three feet across.

  Where she perched the rocks beneath her feet were jagged, so she lowered herself back into the water to take her weight off them. With the next wave she allowed herself to be carried farther inside, seeking a more comfortable resting place. The water sloshed and echoed weirdly in the confines of the crevice, the sound almost metallic.

  She clung to the rocks again as the wave retreated and water drained out of the cave, leaving her this time in only a foot of water, lying atop slightly smoother stones. Looking back over her shoulder showed that she was ten feet or so from the opening, probably deep enough in the darkness that she could not be seen from outside.

  Ahead the passage continued, darkening as it went. The next wave carried her just a few inches farther, but when it receded she froze in place. In the center of the darkness before her there had appeared a narrow sliver of light.