Page 73 of The Cornish Mermaid

“You can’t ride anywhere looking like that,” he said.

“Oh yes we can,” Ysella said. “It’s a matter of life and death, so we can. And you’re not stopping us. Come, let’s get the horses and set off.”

Morvoren held up her hand and turned to the girl. “We need hats to hide the fact we’re girls.” She nodded to a row of hooks on the far side of the room where she could clearly see at least one hat, an old tricorn. “We’ll pay you well if you can find us two hats.” She turned to Sam. “How much do we have left?”

He shook a purse that still sounded satisfyingly full, not looking at all enthusiastic at having to part with some of it in order to get two ancient hats.

“A guinea,” Morvoren said, poking about in his purse. “Give them a guinea per hat.”

The girl was at the hooks in a flash and back with the tricorn and a sort of woolen beanie hat. She held out her hand for the money, her eyes alight with excitement. Clearly a guinea for an old hat was overpricing them, but Morvoren didn’t care.

She put on the tricorn and Ysella jammed the wooly hat down over her ears. The hat turned her from a girl in boy’s clothing into a real boy. Sam handed over the two guineas with some reluctance, and they hurried out of the house and back to James and John at the carriage.

The three men unhitched the sorry horses from the shafts and removed their harness, stacking it all beside the road, then Sam gave Morvoren a leg up onto one of the horses and Ysella onto a second. Luckily, despite Morvoren’s doubts as to whether anyone had ever ridden them before, neither horse made any objection. Quite a relief.

“You two must stay here and guard the carriage and harness until we get back,” Sam said to James and John. “The family in the first cottage appear helpful so here’s another guinea so you can beg food and lodging for you and the lame horse. Ask them, too, for somewhere to stash the harness out of harm’s way. We’ll try not to be long. Good luck.” He sprang up onto his own horse, a bony old nag, and they turned the beasts up the hill.

They were certainly not schooled as riding horses, nor even much as driving horses, but their responses to being kicked in the ribs did imply that they had at one point been ridden, and none of them made any attempt to dispose of their riders. Either that or they were just too tired to try it.

They couldn’t push them hard though, or they’d have foundered like their fourth member. As they plodded westwards, Morvoren couldn’t help but think that they might, in fact, have been faster if they’d been on foot themselves. A map would have been helpful too, but none of them had thought of that. They had to keep stopping to ask the way, and that, along with taking numerous wrong turns, slowed them down a lot. They didn’t arrive at Carlyon Court until the sun was disappearing over the western horizon.

A pair of tall, iron gates opened onto a wide gravel drive in decidedly better condition than the roads they’d been traveling. An ornamental pond, on which the flowers of the decorative lilies had all folded up for the night, occupied the center of the drive and, beyond, an old Elizabethan brick and timber house stretched away to left and right, gilded by the last rays of the dying sun.

They’d made it so far. Surely they could make it the last bit?

Chapter Thirty-One

Morvoren

Morvoren and Ysella remained mounted while Sam pushed open one side of the wrought iron gates and led his exhausted horse up the gravel drive. They passed the pond and came to a halt in front of the studded, silvery-grey, oak front door. As Morvoren and Ysella slithered to the ground, Sam rapped smartly on the door then pulled the bell rope hanging beside it for good measure.

They stood awkwardly in the evening twilight, Morvoren shifting from one foot to the other, hoping Kit would be here as Sam and Ysella expected. Somehow, she couldn’t be sure they were correct. She’d only ever seen him at Nanpean, where he seemed to have a room and a supply of clothing. Was it his habit to stay here at Carlyon Court, as he had when he’d brought Sam? Or was he more likely to bunk down at Nanpean with his uncle for his solo visits to Cornwall? Which seemed more likely? If only she knew him better.

Sam was just reaching out to ring the bell again when the door creaked open and a wrinkled old face wearing a lace cap peeped out. “Yes?” a quavery voice snapped.

Sam stood up a little straighter. “Let us inside, if you please. We are here to see Lord Ormonde.” He gestured at Ysella. “His sister, Miss Carlyon, has come to visit him.”

Rheumy old eyes surveyed Ysella who, with the wooly hat on, made a convincing if girlish boy. “Thass norra lady,” the owner of the lace cap mumbled. “Thassa lad.”

Ysella pulled off her hat letting her dark curls fall about her face. “I am most certainly a lady,” she said with some asperity. “And this is my brother’s house, so you will let us in straightaway or he’ll hear about it.” She gave the door a shove and it swung open revealing their interrogator to be a little old woman in a drab, homespun dress and an apron that might have been meant to be white.

“Where is my brother?” Ysella asked as she marched into a wide, flagstone hallway, gloomy and unlit as yet. “I need to see him now.”

Sam and Morvoren abandoned their horses to their own devices and followed her inside.

“Ain’t here,” the old lady said, sucking toothless gums.

“Then kindly tell us where he is,” Sam said. “It’s imperative that we see him immediately.”

“Dunno,” the old lady mumbled. “Don’t know why yer think I sh’d know. He ain’t here, and I ain’t his keeper.”

Not a people person.

“Please,” Morvoren said, grasping her hand. It felt like a bundle of old twigs wrapped in dry skin. “It’s vital we find him. A matter of life and death. His life. We need you to help us.”

She was so small and bent, she had to tilt her head back to look up, a difficult task as her back was bowed in a dowager’s hump. But her corrugated face softened a little. “I do b’lieve,” she said, her faded eyes fixed on Morvoren’s. “I do b’lieve that when he come down here, he stays at Nanpean. He don’t trouble us none here, ’cept when he have someone with him.” She fixed her eyes on Sam, who perhaps she recognized. “House ain’t bin opened up proper in quite a while. Not since Master Kit brung you down last.” She nodded her head. “That’ll be it. He’ll be down Nanpean with his uncle. Thass where he’ll be. Like he usually is.”

Morvoren glared at Sam and Ysella, but managed not to say, “I told you so.”