The Magpie #2
A few minutes later, Mrs. Moyle joined me with a pot and two cups. We sat quietly, me with my book and her with the customer’s newspaper, until I realized the room was growing dim.
“Heavens,” I said, starting up. “I better get on before I’m walking home in the dark.”
“I quite lost track of the time myself,” replied my employer, also rising.
She picked up a basket from a nearby table and held it out to me. Under the linen cover, I knew I’d find scones left from the day’s business. Jack had come to take them for granted and was vexed when there weren’t any for his supper.
“I’ll see you in the morning, dear,” she said. “Keep safe on your way home.”
I went to the kitchen for my bonnet and shawl and slipped out the back door. The path through the garden led me between rows of tall sunflowers, nearly spent, their heavy brown heads drooping like a congregation in prayer.
At the path’s end, a low white gate with crooked slats opened onto the road that ran alongside the old Tregarrick estate, with its dark moorstone chapel (which everyone just called Roche Rock).
It was an unnaturally quiet old place. People said there’d once been a manor house as well, but it had burned down a long time ago.
The cottage I lived in with Jack lay just beyond the estate, in the hamlet of Carbis.
At this hour, and with the close of the grain harvest, the road seemed almost as still as the graveyard. One lonely hay cart passed before I was left to haunt the twilight alone in the gathering mist.
A thick hedge, going to golds and yellows now, mostly blocked my view of the estate until I was closer to home.
But a narrow gap showed a path climbing toward Roche Rock, first rounding the edge of an oak wood on the right, then winding up through overgrown grasses, clumps of heather, and large stones.
One of the family still lived here, in the chapel itself.
I’d never been anywhere close to the old, dark tower, nor known anyone who had, but sometimes I crossed the heath that spread below it down toward Carbis.
I always paused to study the high moorstone ridge and its fortress, black against the green of the hilly grounds.
Sometimes I fancied a face looked out at me through a window, though it was too far to see such a thing.
On my way to and from work, I often wondered about the master of Roche Rock.
I’d never glimpsed him, nor any of his relations or servants.
I’d never learned his Christian name. I didn’t know how old he might be, though I’d pictured him wrinkled and gray, wearing fine, outdated clothing, like some of the paintings in the tearoom.
No one else seemed to know anything about him, either, but when people mentioned Roche Rock, they crossed themselves.
Though the place made me uneasy, especially after dark, it also made me curious. My mother had always said the heath belonged to the fairies, and that was why the estate had gone to ruin. It had no business being built there.
About halfway to the cluster of whitewashed miners’ cottages, the hedgerow ended and an old tumbledown stone wall took over, running along the heath toward the estate’s eastern boundary.
No animals were kept on the property, and no person was ever seen tending it.
Other folk besides me ignored the boundary, hopping the low wall and crossing the heath on the way to the holy well at Coldvreath.
I’d often seen boys collecting rabbit traps from a silver birch coppice on the estate’s southern edge.
Poachers, to be sure, but no one ever made any trouble about them.
Could be that the master of Roche Rock was both old and infirm.
As I reached the spot where hedge gave way to wall, a small movement caused me to stop, and I spotted a yellowhammer in the brambly tangle.
The hedges were always thick with birds in early autumn, feasting on the haws, brambleberries, and hazelnuts.
They usually kept quiet and out of sight at twilight, when I’d seen many a fox skulking about.
The bird gave a few short, high chirps and dove deeper into the hedge.
I was starting toward home again when another movement—this time just the other side of the wall—caught my eye. There was a kind of hollow here and the mist was thicker, but I thought I’d glimpsed something slipping from wall to hedgerow. Something like antlers, so probably I’d startled a deer.
As I strained my eyes in the fading light, the mist shifted, and I noticed an unfamiliar shape on my side of the wall. It looked like nothing more than a low pile of stones—plentiful on the estate—but I’d passed this hollow many times and hadn’t seen it before. Curious, I stepped off the road.
A tingling sensation traveled up the middle of my back as I drew closer. It was almost dark, and I knew I should hurry home. I could satisfy my curiosity in the morning on my way to work. But I was nearly there already, and maybe the thing wouldn’t be there tomorrow.
Likely a dropped cloak or coat, nosy miss.
When I was within a couple of yards of the thing, the almost-full moon peeped its bright face out from the clouds.
My heart bounded up and nearly out of my body.
Not a cloak, but a man lying there. Still as stones.