Page 9 of The Cornish Inheritance

Chapter Five

At the Coach and Horses on Kennegy Downs, just outside Penzance, Nat descended from the stagecoach and stretched his long limbs. Stiffness ached down his back and into his hips. Was he getting too old for such long journeys by uncomfortable, rattly old stagecoach? He could have bought a horse and ridden down in his own time, but a hankering to see the blue Cornish skies and the wild green ocean of his childhood had spurred him on. Not enough to hazard the mail coach though.

Lockhart and Talbot had left the coach at Whitchurch, thank goodness. Despite his attempts to feign sleep, Lockhart, with his slight claim to knowing Nat, had attempted on several occasions to engage him in a conversation he did not want to participate in. Nat and the other passengers took rooms overnight at the White Hart, and, after a substantial breakfast of beef and porter, were on their way again early the next morning.

Nat, his stomach full, had leaned back in his corner, his head resting on the upholstered back of his seat, and managed to snatch a few extra hours sleep. This latter was not helped in any way by the guard blowing his post horn with far too much enthusiasm as they approached each and every tollgate. Nor was the noise created by the changing of their four horses every two hours supportable. His sleep was, perforce, of the interrupted type, and not conducive of good temper.

The farmer parted company with the coach at Salisbury, where their stop was at the Red Lion in Milford Street for the midday meal. A dour looking elderly gentleman, with a strong reek of tobacco about him, took his place.

Nat paid little attention to the towns and villages the road passed through until they reached Bridport and stopped for the second night at the Bull on East Street. The following morning, the driver, who no doubt would find himself dismissed if he were late, was keen for them to be on their way, so breakfast was a rushed affair guaranteed to be detrimental to the digestion. Nat contented himself with a quickly fried steak and a cup of strong black coffee. And then it was on again. It was to be another two full days of traveling before his goal was reached.

But now he was here, and, of course, no one knew he had arrived, so no transport had been sent. As the coach rattled back out onto the road, he shouldered his valise and turned toward the inn. Would old Zack Chenoweth still be there in his accustomed place behind the bar?

Pushing the door open, he ducked his head under its low lintel and entered the gloomy taproom, the smell of old soot, tobacco, and ale strong. Yes, much as he remembered it from his boyhood at Treloar Court. Along one side of the room ran a plank-topped bar with a variety of pewter tankards hanging from hooks on the substantial beam above it. A few snugly private booths lay along a second side, and a motley collection of wooden chairs and tables lay scattered across the slate-slabbed floor. All empty but for two old men playing drafts near the empty hearth, and a large dog sprawled in the patch of sunlight streaming in through the leaded front window.

As Nat entered, the dog, a shaggy beast that might have been a wolfhound, raised its head and eyed him, before deciding he merited no interest and dropping his head to the floor again. Could that be one of old Captain’s pups? Captain himself couldn’t still be alive, surely? Not after eleven years.

Nat set his valise on one of the tables and approached the bar, aware of the close scrutiny of the two old men. No doubt eyeing up his scar, which was enough to render him unrecognizable to those who’d known him as a boy. He knocked on the wood. “Hello? Landlord? Anyone there?”

Footsteps sounded and a sturdy young man of about his own age emerged from the rear of the inn, wiping his hands on a cloth. “Yes, sir? What can I do for you?”

Nat stared. “Jacka?”

The young man also stared. “Nat?” Then he seemed to recover himself. “I mean, Mr. Treloar. Or should I say Cap’n Treloar?”

Nat held out his hand. “Don’t Mr. Treloar me, Jacka. Surely I’ve not been away so long that you’ve forgotten the pranks we used to get up to together? And it’s major now, anyway.” Somehow, seeing his boyhood friend again after all these years had loosened his long-tethered tongue. He managed a smile, the skin on the right side of his face tightening and pulling at the scar. “But what’s put you behind the bar here?”

The two old men were now openly listening, and even the dog had bestirred himself to lift his head again.

Jacka took Nat’s hand, and they shook like the old friends they were. “I’ve been landlord here since I wed Old Zack’s granddaughter, my Delen.” He grinned. “Last I heared of you, you was off fightin’ them Frenchies. I’d not ha’ known you ’til you spoke.” Jacka’s honest eyes ran over Nat’s face, and for once Nat felt none of his usual self-consciousness. He didn’t mind Jacka seeing what war had done to him.

Jacka grinned. “Make a good pirate now, you would.” As boys, they’d played at being pirates, shipwrecked sailors, and smugglers on the beach and in the woods around Roskilly House.

“It’s all over now,” Nat said, his hand going to his scar, but not, for once, to hide it. “All done and dusted, with Boney a prisoner on Elba and fat old Louis on the throne.” He grinned, conscious of how the scar tissue pulled one side of his mouth down as though he’d suffered an apoplexy. “Though how secure those arrangements are, I’ve no idea. But I shan’t think about that. I’ve resigned my commission and come home to let Cornwall work its magic on me. Nothing will drag me back into the army.”

Jacka grinned wider still and fished a bottle of brandy out from beneath his counter. “You’ll take a glass with me? For old times?”

Nat eyed the bottle. “I will indeed, but I won’t ask you where it came from.”

With an elaborate wink, Jacka filled two glasses with generous measures and they toasted one another before knocking back the fiery liquid. “Ah,” Nat sighed. “Nothing like a tot of something that’s paid no duty.”

Jacka chuckled. “Ask no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies.” He refilled the glasses.

This time, Nat left his on the bar. “Steady on, or I’ll not find my way back to Roskilly, or if I do, my sainted mother will see fit to box my ears for drunkenness.”

They exchanged glances, faces for a moment serious, then Nat chuckled. “But I’d like to see her try, now I’m no longer a boy.”

Jacka downed his brandy. “Aye, ’tis a man grown I see before me today. A warrior returned, by the look o’ you. I won’t ask, and you don’t have to ever tell me, lessen you want to, that is.” He poured himself a third measure. “That’s good stuff, if I ses it myself. Nothing like stoppin’ work for a quick pick-me-up. You’ll be staying at Roskilly, then?”

Nat nodded. “I think I can put up with it. I imagine things will have changed since I was last here, as that was more than three years ago. By luck, my regiment was back in England when my aunt’s husband died, or I wouldn’t have been able to attend the funeral. But I stayed with her at Bodilly House then, not Roskilly, and only went there to pay my respects to my grandfather who was thought too frail to attend the funeral.” He rubbed his nose. “I’d be staying there now, with my aunt, if she hadn’t closed it up after my uncle died and gone off to Oxford to stay with my cousin Ewella.”

Jacka’s brow furrowed. “You’ll not have heard about the old man, then?”

A chill hand closed around Nat’s heart. “No. What about my grandfather?”

“Over two year ago now, it were. Sir Hugh were struck down with an apoplexy. Rumor had it, he were at death’s door, but rumor were wrong, and I hear as he’s confined to his bed but determined to cling onto life.”

Nat digested this disturbing information. An apoplexy was a serious calamity that should, perhaps, have carried his grandfather off, and yet, the old man still seemed to be alive. Two years was a long time to continue confined to a bed. “Does he have his faculties still?”