Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Joseph was thirteen, and his sister was a pest.
He’d been at his Latin homework for hours, and he wanted to be outside.
The bitter cold that had clutched the countryside from Christmas to the end of January had at last broken, and it would be pleasant to go out of doors.
They’d had a day of snow that hadn’t completely melted, and Joseph was far more interested in what Prudence Lovedy might be doing than he was interested in his lessons.
Prudence’s parents worked at Rosecraddoc Manor, and Prudence had long hair the color of ripe wheat and, as of a few months ago, breasts swelling the front of her prim wool gown.
“Stellam is the declension for the accusative case, if it’s singular.”
Amaranthe, as usual, was looking at Joseph’s work while she copied over pages of the manuscript their father was working on.
At ten years of age she already had a neat, steady hand, transforming their father’s crossed and crumpled pages into tidy script, and she’d been correcting Joseph’s work since she was six. She was entirely exasperating.
“And stellarum for the plural gentitive,” she added. “Since it is an a-stem declension.”
“I know that.” In trying to hide his paper from her scrutiny, he smeared the fresh ink. Joseph clenched his teeth. “Don’t you have your own work to concern you?”
“Papa’s book on folklore and ancient monuments.” She nodded. “It’s coming along nicely. He has such exciting ideas, Joseph. He’s at the chapter speculating that the Lady of the Lake of the Arthurian stories lived by Dozmary Pool, up by—”
“I know where it is. Thanks to Papa, I know every stone circle, carn, and fougou within fifty kilometers of St. Cleer. There’s not a thing you can tell me about The Hurlers, the Cheesewring, or Trethevy Quoit.”
With a yank, Joseph pulled a sheet of paper toward him and began a fresh list of declensions.
Amaranthe scowled at him but shut her mouth on the protest. Paper being expensive, Joseph was supposed to use his sheets to the very margins, then turn them sidewise and write across the existing text when he could.
Amaranthe got the fresh paper because she was making a neat copy of his work that Papa could share with other folklore enthusiasts and from them gain stories to add to his compendium of Cornish history, which he meant to be comprehensive.
Amaranthe always got the better things because she was the baby, because she was the girl, and Joseph, older and more experienced, was expected to concede her everything. The older she grew, the nosier she became, until he had nothing of his own any longer.
He sharpened his pen with too much force and growled when he broke the nib of the quill.
He pushed away from the table, the legs of his ladderback chair screeching along the wooden floor of the parlor. “I’m going outside.”
Immediately Amaranthe set down her pen, though he knew she loved writing more than anything else except saffron cakes. “Me too.”
“God’s hooks, Anth, do you have to do everything I do?”
Her eyes widened and she pressed her mouth into a solemn line. “You’re not supposed to swear.”
“God’s wounds, you’re a numpty. God’s teeth, I wish you wouldn’t clack at me all of the time.”
“I’m telling Mam.” She hurried after him as he strode into the narrow hallway and grabbed the greatcoat and a wool cap hanging on their pegs.
There was a jacket that his father wore when working around the yard, but Joseph couldn’t take the chance that Prudence Lovedy might see him in the attire of a sailor or common laborer.
Amaranthe struggled to tie the strings of her cloak and find a cap to cover her thick pile of curls.
She wouldn’t tattle on him, or at least, not at this moment.
Mam was in the kitchen helping Cook, and if Amaranthe pulled her aside for stories, she might delay the hot dinner that would be waiting when they returned.
Also, Mam would insist Joseph explain himself, and that might ruin the outing for both of them.
“Joseph! Wait. Where are we going?”
“I am going to the Well. You can go to Hades.”
“Joseph!”
He knew he was being unkind, but he couldn’t seem to tame the irritation that soared up within him so quickly of late.
He felt hot and itchy under his skin, and his limbs ached in the bones.
He’d outgrown all his clothes in a month’s time and had to wait while his mother replaced them piece by piece, weaving and knitting and making what she could, buying what she could not.
Walter Robings of Rosecraddoc Manor had a new suit every time he came to service at St. Clarus, with rows of shiny buttons at his hems and cuffs, the like which Joseph would never possess. Prudence Lovedy thought Walter cut a marvelous figure, and she didn’t know Joseph existed.
He set up off Well Lane, skirting the cemetery, the quiet peace of which always accused him for being too quick to anger, unlike his father, who rarely riled at anything.
His father was the son of a baronet, for heaven’s sake, and there was no one so high hereabouts; not even the Robings of Rosecraddoc could claim titles among their relations.
But instead of making something of himself, his scholarly father was content to be vicar of the rural and quiet St. Clarus, which could boast less than a thousand souls within the parish.
Callington, where his uncle the baronet lived on his estate of Penwellen, was not all that much larger, but was situated on a road that went somewhere. The village of St. Cleer perched on the edge of the vast rough outcropping that was Bodwin Moor, inhabited by nothing but rocks and sheep.
If his uncle cared, Joseph could be living in the grand house of Penwellen with Reuben and taking lessons with a real tutor rather than a down-at-heels friend of his father’s who had made even less of himself since Oxford than Joseph’s father had.
Joseph could be wearing velvet coats like his cousin, Reuben, and sitting down to dinners in fine parlors decorated with hand-painted paper and furniture bought from London warehouses.
He could be learning the manners of a gentleman and losing the bits of Cornish dialect that crept into his speech.
He would be free of his pestilent sister, whose quick mind and quiet studiousness was applauded by their father and whose tidy, demure manner was lauded by all the women of the parish as being a credit to her mother, which made Amaranthe glow with smug pride.
“Why’d you want to see the old Well anyway?
” Amaranthe panted, catching up as Joseph paused before the granite enclosure housing the spring that flowed with its sacred bounty year round.
A fine sheen of ice covered the contents of the basin where visitors were known to dip hands, heads, or ailing parts of their body for which they sought a cure.
In medieval times, it was said, the well had been used as a ducking pool to try to shock sense back into the witless, or douse the evil in a witch.
In a carved niche at the back of the porch with its medieval arched columns and vaulted roof stood the stubby statue of St. Clarus, who had come to preach the true religion and built the ancient church over which Joseph’s father presided.
Legend ran that a local chieftainess had been so ardently enflamed by Clarus’s cause that she attempted to compel him to break his vow of celibacy to marry her, and when he refused and fled her advances, she had him hunted down and murdered.
Joseph could not imagine Prudence Lovedy becoming so impassioned she hunted down anyone. However, he could, and frequently did, imagine her giving Joseph license to touch her breasts and perhaps even kiss her.
“I’m at the well to make a wish, you ninny,” Joseph said with irritation. “A wish that you’d go away and give me a moment of peace.”
Amaranthe took off her mitten and dipped her fingers into the cold, clear water of the well.
“I hope Miss Rebecca’s cough goes away,” she said, naming one of the spinster sisters who lived on a farm nearby and who, after their brother’s death, subsisted mostly on the kindness of strangers who helped them reap the wheat that could pay their tithe, dropped gifts of food at their doorstep, and, in the case of Joseph’s mother, brewed her special remedies whenever one or another of the sisters took ill, which it seemed they were always doing.
Amaranthe had been allowed that summer to help their mother collect honey from the beehives in their small garden, and it was just like Amaranthe to use her wish for the benefit of the coughing elder for whom she’d been making honey drops all winter and not for the benefit of herself.
Joseph felt he would burst from the aggravation.
“We can’t cross Diggory’s Field!” Amaranthe called as he cut east with angry strides. “You’ll anger the rams.”
“I’m not crossing Diggory’s Field,” Joseph tossed over his shoulder.
He knew that Mrs. Lovedy frequently visited Rowan Cottage in Tremar Coombe, and he could take the much-used Well Lane to circle about, or he could take a shortcut through the Penhale farm and possibly discourage Amaranthe enough that she would go home.
The shorn fields and hedges lay tucked under a white brim of frost, and his boots left satisfying prints as he strode along, as if he were finally leaving a mark on something. It felt overdue.
He forgot, and so did Amaranthe, that the Penhales had recently found china clay on their land and had constructed a clay pit nearby, which was used to separate the richer deposits from the mud by suspending them in water.
Jocko Penhale thought it would be great fun to keep the pond and stock it with ruffe and loach, and provide the family with stargazy pie the year round.