‘I’ve found Luke Knotte’s college trunk!’ he called down to Alex.
‘Do you want me to come up?’
‘I don’t think the floor will support two people. Keep an eye on the road, just in case Knotte decides to visit tonight.’ He undid the straps securing the box and lifted the lid. A neatly ordered personal library of six books and a stack of notebooks and papers lay within. It was going to take a while to read everything, so Jacob decided to get a feel for the man first by seeing the kind of thing he was writing. He picked up the topmost.
Poems of Places, by Luke Knotte, 1812.
This must be the master copy of the work he’d sent out to the publishers. Jacob scanned the titles of the poems, all taken from local landmarks. Cockermouth School. Bridge House, Ambleside. Elter Holme, Esthwaite Water. Brathay Hall, Windermere. Slate Cave, Rydal Water. Chapel Holm. Latterbarrow. And so the list went on. Using Wordsworth as his pattern, Knotte set an encounter with a colourful character– a beggar, or a pedlar, or a soldier on half-pay– in each of these locations; the narrator Knotte imagined as a thoughtful shepherd lad with a book of verse in his pocket and crook in hand, a barely disguised self-portrait.
Jacob read a few lines:
Not seldom do I stray about the fields
O’er powered by a desire to meet the dawn
With my woolly flock of faithful followers…
It was a pale imitation of Wordsworthian blank verse, spoiled by hackneyed epithets. ‘Not seldom’ was a poetic tic that Jacob recognised from the older man’s poems. He was overly fond of it and terms like ‘oft’ which grew annoying once you noticed them, but unlike the Grasmere man, Knotte just wasn’t a very good poet. ‘Woolly flock’ felt like something from the previous century, not the new. Jacob had half expected an insane rant, something that showed a volatile person who could erupt into murderous acts of violence; instead, he found mediocrity. Knotte would never amount to much unless he moved beyond imitation to find his own voice. He scanned other notebooks and found more of the same. What a tragic waste of Knotte’s talents. Anyone who had encouraged him to think he was something special when it came to literature had done him a disservice.
He next looked at the books. In his things at Barton’s cottage, Knotte carriedRobinson Crusoewith him, a treasured childhood tome. Also in his possession here was a copy ofParadise Lost, Volney’sRuins of Empire, Burns’Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, Dr Johnson’sRasselasand Scott’sMarmion. The last made Jacob smile grimly. At least Knotte did his fellow poet the courtesy of reading his poem before dismissing it in favour of Wordsworth. Dora said he also had a copy ofLyrical Balladswith him when she went with him to Michael’s Fold. Seven books: that was a decent collection for an impoverished man. Most households only had the Bible andThe Pilgrim’s Progressif they were lucky.
Yet neither could it be considered a collection of revolutionary works. There was no Voltaire, no Rousseau, no Tom Paine. Jacob’s own library was far more radical than this collection– not that he would tell Moss this. Volney was the most extreme, criticising all established forms of governments and advocating their abolition, but he was French and philosophical, so no one took that seriously as a threat.
Replacing the books and papers as he found them, Jacob closed the lid of the trunk. Tempting though it was to take them back with him for closer scrutiny, he couldn’t justify it. Their suspicions were only that– an idea that Knotte might be guilty of something terrible and no proof of such. If all he had in the world was this trunk and its contents, who was Jacob to deprive him of that?
Picking up his lantern, he careful negotiated the creaking stairs.
‘Anything?’ asked Alex.
‘Evidence that he’s a bad poet but that’s not a crime.’
Alex climbed onto the sink and jumped out the window. He turned to help Jacob by taking the lantern from him. ‘Maybe not, but sometimes I wish it were.’
* * *
Stowing Alex in a guest room, Jacob slipped into bed beside Dora. Drowsily, she turned to snuggle up to him. She’d stayed up to see them safely back but had been yawning so he’d sent her on to bed while he made up the spare room.
He put his arms around her and delighted in her scent for a few deep breaths. What had he done to deserve such a fine woman in his life?
‘You’re thinking,’ she murmured.
‘I am.’
‘You should stop that if you want to sleep.’
‘I should but it’s hard to turn off my thoughts. Do you want to distract me from them?’ It was bad of him to encourage her to wake up when she was already on the slide to sleep.
‘I could.’ She kissed his chest. ‘If you like.’
‘I always like.’
She raised her hand to caress his scratchy jaw.
‘Do you want me to shave?’
‘Now? Too much bother. Besides, I quite like it like this. You look like a pirate.’
He chuckled at the ridiculous image. ‘I’ll be careful.’
