When Sophie awoke the next morning and threw back her curtains she found herself looking at a brilliant January day. Gone was the damp, creeping fog. The sky was a cloudless blue and the polished pewter of the sea, gleaming in the sunlight, reached to a horizon marked with the faintest fluff of white. Sophie went down to the morning room, but found it empty and breakfasted alone. She saw no one as she returned to her bedroom, and changed into her riding habit. She had made her decision; she would ride out to Tremose and visit Mrs Slater. When she was dressed she tucked the letters into her pocket. She didn’t know if Nan Slater could read, but she wanted to have something with her to demonstrate her right to some answers.
Not wishing to encounter Charles or answer any questions as to where she was going, Sophie went out through the back door to the stable yard. As she passed through the kitchen, she asked for a loaf of bread and a wedge of cheese to take with her. Mrs Paxton packed them into a basket, and then added a pottery jar with a cork lid.
‘Broth,’ she said, ‘if you’re going visiting. Only made this morning.’
Sophie smiled at her. ‘Thank you, Mrs Paxton,’ she said. ‘I’m sure Mrs Slater will enjoy that broth. It smells delicious.’
Sophie took the basket and went out into the yard, where she asked Ned to saddle up Millie.
‘Are you riding out alone, Miss Sophie?’ he asked anxiously as he led the horse to the mounting block.
‘Indeed I am, Ned,’ replied Sophie sharply as she handed him the basket to hold while she mounted, ‘if it’s any concern of yours.’
Ned accepted the rebuke and said no more, simply placing the basket in her saddlebag, but when Sophie had ridden out of the yard and up onto the lane, he went and knocked on the study door to tell Charles.
‘Thank you, Ned,’ Charles said, ‘but I don’t think you need to worry about Miss Sophie. I’m sure she’s only riding out for some fresh air and exercise and won’t go far.’
He tried to sound unconcerned, but Charles himself was worried. Was she going out to meet Nicholas Bryan? As far as he knew the doctor had not called on Sophie since the reading of the will, and Charles tried to tell himself that anyway, it was no business of his if he had. It was no business of his if they had an assignation, but he did worry about Sophie riding out alone. The sea mist which had covered the cliff the previous night had dispersed and the weather looked fair, but he had seen the fluff of low cloud on the horizon. Though he and Sophie had ridden out together on several occasions, he wondered if she would know her way home if the mist returned.
Entirely unaware of Charles’s concern, Sophie followed the track across the cliff top and then took the lane they had followed on the day she had driven to Tremose with Nicholas. Once or twice she stopped to get her bearings, but it wasn’t long before she recognized the little hamlet, its few houses clustered round the inn. She dismounted outside Mrs Slater’s cottage and hitched Millie’s reins to the stone wall. She looked about her, but there was no one in sight, the dust-covered village street was empty, so she took her basket from the saddlebag and walked up to the heavy wooden front door.
At first there was no reply to her knock and she was about to knock again, more loudly, when she heard a croaky voice from inside. ‘Come in. It’s on the latch.’
Sophie pushed open the door and stepped inside. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the gloom of the kitchen, but as they did she saw Mrs Slater sitting in her rocking chair at the fireside. She was wrapped in a shawl, wearing fingerless mittens and a crocheted cap set on her thinning grey hair. The room was cold, the fire in the grate little more than a flicker of warmth, and Sophie closed the door quickly behind her to keep in what heat there was.
‘Mrs Slater,’ she said. ‘It’s me, Sophie Ross. I visited you before with Dr Bryan.’
‘I know who you are,’ wheezed the old woman. ‘You said you’d come back again.’
‘I did,’ agreed Sophie, coming further in to the room, ‘and here I am. I’ve brought you some things for your larder.’ She moved to the table and unpacked the basket. ‘Mrs Paxton sent you a pot of broth. Would you like some now?’
Mrs Slater smiled her gappy smile. ‘Is it hot?’ she asked eagerly.
‘Still quite warm,’ Sophie said.
‘Then I will have a drop,’ said Mrs Slater. ‘Just a drop, mind, I’ll keep the rest for tomorrow.’ She started to haul herself to her feet, but Sophie put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t get up, Mrs Slater. I’ll pour you some.’
The old woman pointed to a bowl on the shelf. Reaching it down, Sophie uncorked the crock, poured a little of the broth into the bowl and passed it across. Mrs Slater grasped it with both hands and tilted it to her mouth.
When she’d finished, she handed the bowl back to Sophie. ‘More?’ Sophie asked.
Mrs Slater shook her head. ‘Saving it,’ she said. ‘Sit you down.’ She waved to the chair at the kitchen table and Sophie drew it towards the fire and sat.
At first neither of them knew what to say, but as Sophie, feeling she must introduce the subject of Jocelyn and Cassie carefully, was about to ask a general question about Jocelyn, Mrs Slater said, ‘I thank you for the food you’ve brought. It was kind of you.’ She fixed Sophie with a gimlet eye and added, ‘Now, tell me really why you’ve come after so long.’
‘I would have come before,’ Sophie said a little mendaciously, ‘but I went back to London for a while and only returned to Cornwall just before Christmas.’ She sighed. ‘And a lot’s happened since then.’
‘I heard about your granfer,’ said Mrs Slater, ‘passing on Christmas Day.’
‘Did you? Word gets about, I suppose.’
‘My son, Edmund, is still away at sea or he’d have come to the funeral,’ Mrs Slater said. ‘To show respect. Church was full, so I heard. So,’ she looked across at Sophie with decidedly sharp eyes, ‘why you come a-visiting when there’s so much to trouble you at home?’
Sophie took a deep breath and putting her hand in her pocket, drew out the bundle of letters and put them on the table.
Mrs Slater eyed them suspiciously. ‘What’s all that then?’
‘Letters,’ replied Sophie. ‘Letters from Jocelyn to my mother, in London.’
‘Letters?’
‘Letters I found in my mother’s bureau. In one of them Jocelyn mentions you.’
‘Me?’ Mrs Slater sounded shocked. ‘Why would Jocelyn Penvarrow mention me in a letter to your mother? I hardly knew the man.’
‘Didn’t you?’ Sophie let the question hang in the air, but when the old woman didn’t reply she went on, ‘I think you knew him very well. I think you knew Cassie well too. Probably far better than you knew Joss.’
‘Cassie? Cassie, who’s that then?’
‘Cassie Drew,’ said Sophie, ‘and I’m sure she was your friend. Let me read you something.’ She picked up the letter from Joss to her mother and finding the place, read: ‘Cassie’s sister and her husband have taken Cassie in and though her brother-in-law is not happy with the situation, her sister, Henrietta, has talked him round. Poor Cassie is shut away and allowed no contact with me, but we have managed to correspond through her friend Nan Slater, so she knows that I haven’t abandoned her.’
Sophie tilted her head interrogatively. ‘That’s you, Nan, isn’t it? You passed letters from my Uncle Jocelyn to his Cassie.’
Nan Slater looked at Sophie for a long minute and then said, ‘More than one Nan Slater.’
‘I’m sure there is, but I think this one is you. You knew Jocelyn; you told me so. When Cassie found she was expecting and was thrown out by her father, she took refuge with her sister, Henrietta, in Truro. That’s not far from here. You,’ Sophie went on, ‘were Cassie’s friend, so you agreed to carry letters between them. You must have known they planned to marry and to marry well before the baby was due to be born.’ Still Nan Slater made no response and after a pause, Sophie went on, ‘What happened, Nan? What happened that Jocelyn gave up all his plans and committed suicide?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Nan said.
‘Oh, I think you do. You were Cassie’s confidante and their go-between. Something must have happened for Joss to throw himself over that cliff. What was it, Nan? Did Cassie change her mind about marrying him?’ And then, answering her own question, Sophie went on, ‘No, he’d never have done that. So, Nan, if it wasn’t suicide and it wasn’t an accident, what was it?’
For a long moment, Nan didn’t answer. Then she said, ‘I don’t know.’ She spoke firmly, but Sophie felt certain that she did know, just wasn’t prepared to tell. She left those questions for now and went back to the letters.
‘But it was you who carried the letters between them, wasn’t it? You were Cassie’s friend and Henrietta was sorry for her, shut away in their house. She let you visit because she didn’t realize you knew Joss as well. Poor Cassie, not allowed to leave the house, made to stay upstairs when anyone called.’
‘What makes you say all this?’ demanded Nan.
Sophie picked up the letter again and read: ‘Albert is not happy with the situation (I am not allowed out of the house or even out of my room if there is company), but he has agreed to let me stay until my confinement, after which, I understand, the baby will be given away. She was only there on sufferance, Nan, and was afraid of losing her baby.’ Sophie continued to read: ‘I had thought it would be better for him... or her, do you mind which? to be born here among family rather than in lodgings somewhere, so I’ve been behaving as Albert and Hetty require, but, as I have now learned their plan, dear Joss, do come and fetch me as soon as you can. I will not – the not is underlined three times, Nan – give up our child to strangers. I am determined that we three shall be together as a family. Surely your father will eventually come round to our marriage, but if not, well, you will be of age in November, and I am already cast out by my father, so we should be able to marry before the child is born without anyone gainsaying us. Is that the letter to make a man commit suicide, Nan?’
Nan made no reply, so Sophie went on, ‘And finally, a letter that Cassie never received.’ Sophie picked up the half-finished letter she had found in the drawer of Jocelyn’s desk, and began to read the part explaining that Mary had offered them a home and a place for the baby to be born, and the final sentence, ‘I shall come and fetch you from Truro as soon as I am twenty-one and can obtain a special licence for our marriage. What a wonderful day that will be. I think...
‘Cassie never received that letter because Jocelyn never sent it,’ Sophie said. ‘It was unfinished, indeed, as you hear, he must have been interrupted for he broke off mid-sentence.’
‘So, where did you get it?’ demanded Nan.
‘I found it in the drawer of Jocelyn’s desk.’
‘You found it? After nearly thirty years?’
‘Yes.’
‘And why wasn’t it found before?’
‘Because,’ Sophie said, ‘when Jocelyn died, his father had his room sealed up and no one has been allowed into it since the night Jocelyn left it.’
‘No one?’ Nan sounded incredulous.
‘No one,’ repeated Sophie firmly.
‘So, how did you get into it?’ Nan’s tone was still aggressive.
‘I have the adjoining room,’ Sophie said. ‘I found a key to the connecting door.’ No need, she decided, to go into explanations about moving the wardrobe. ‘And as I said, the other letters were in my mother’s bureau, so I have managed to piece together much of the correspondence.’
Nan looked at her and seemed to reach some sort of decision. ‘Why do you want to know all this now? Why dig it all up again? They’re all dead, even your grandfather, who probably is as much to blame in this as anyone. There’s nothing to be gained by raking it all over again.’
‘But they’re not all dead,’ Sophie replied. ‘What about Cassie? What about the baby?’
‘Cassie died in childbirth,’ Nan said flatly.
‘Cassie died?’
‘The baby come early... and that was my fault.’
‘Your fault?’
‘When the news of Jocelyn’s death reached me I knew I had to be the one to break the news to Cassie. The only other person they allowed near her was her brother, Edwin. Nasty piece of work, he was. I didn’t want him telling her, nor any of her other family neither. Triumphant, they’d be, pleased he was dead, and serve ’im right. That’s what they’d have told her.’
‘So you went to tell her.’
‘Yes. At first she thought I’d brought another letter, probably the one you found in his desk, telling her what he’d arranged and when he’d be coming to fetch her. She was so pleased to see me and then she realized there was something wrong, and I had to tell her.’ Nan’s voice broke at the memory of that day. ‘I had to tell her he wouldn’t be coming for her, ever; that he was dead. She collapsed into a swoon and though the baby wasn’t due for another four weeks or so, she went into early labour.’
‘And she died?’ murmured Sophie.
‘The baby was the wrong way round. At first her sister’s husband wouldn’t let them send for a doctor. He didn’t want it to be known that he had given shelter to an unmarried woman about to give birth. I was there, and Henrietta and I struggled to help Cassie for hours, but it was no good. When at last Henrietta went against her husband and sent a maid for the doctor, it was too late. Cassie was exhausted from her struggle and her pain. She had lost a lot of blood. The baby was finally born and though very small, seemed healthy enough, but Cassie never recovered. She developed a fever and died a day later.’
‘But that wasn’t your fault!’ exclaimed Sophie. ‘That was the fault of her brother-in-law who wouldn’t let Henrietta send for the doctor. Why wouldn’t he?’
‘He was muttering that the difficult delivery was God’s punishment to Cassie for having the baby in the first place. I heard later that her own father said the same.’
‘But that is dreadful,’ cried Sophie, appalled. ‘Was there no Christian charity?’
‘They gave her a Christian burial,’ Nan replied bleakly. ‘That was all.’
‘And the baby, what about the baby?’
‘He stayed with the family. Henrietta was barren and didn’t have no children, and she begged her husband that they should keep the baby as their own. She loved him, but Albert only tolerated him. They moved from Truro to Plymouth, where no one would know them or know that the child was not theirs. He grew up and went to school there. As soon as he was old enough to fend for himself, Albert sent him away to learn a trade to keep him.’
‘But where is he now? Do his parents know?’
‘His parents are dead. They were caught in a flu epidemic that swept through Plymouth some years ago. I heard he went to London, but after the birth and Cassie’s death, I was forbidden to set foot in their house. I knew too much about them all and I’ve never seen them since.’
‘But if they had carried through their plans, Cassie and Jocelyn, they’d have been married before the child was born. He would not have been illegitimate and,’ Sophie’s eyes widened as the thought struck her, ‘and my grandfather would have had a legitimate grandson and a male heir.’
‘As to that,’ Nan said wearily, ‘who knows what that old bugger would have done?’
Sophie felt exhausted, too. ‘I don’t know what to think,’ she admitted. ‘It’s going to take time to come to terms with all this. Do you think my grandfather knew that Cassie was delivered of a boy?’
Nan shrugged. ‘Who knows,’ she said again.
‘Maybe he did,’ Sophie said. ‘Maybe that’s why he sealed up Jocelyn’s room. Because he thought Joss had killed himself and Thomas knew he shared some of the blame.’
A silence fell round them. The last piece of wood slipped into the fire with a shower of sparks and Sophie suddenly realized how dark it had become outside. It was still only the middle of the day, but the sun had disappeared and a chilly wind was rattling the single kitchen window.
‘I must go,’ she said, starting to her feet. ‘I must get back.’
‘Have you got what you came for?’ Nan asked, the aggression creeping back in her voice. ‘Are you satisfied with what you’ve heard? It’s all such a long time ago, I hope you’ll leave it alone now, and leave the dead to bury the dead.’
‘I suppose we’ll never know what really happened to Jocelyn,’ Sophie said. ‘Perhaps, after all, the Penvarrows were right and it was simply a terrible accident.’
‘That’s probably it,’ Nan agreed, but she didn’t meet Sophie’s eye. Sophie thought there was more to tell, but she knew she had to go or risk being caught in the incoming mist. ‘May I come and see you again?’ she asked.
‘If you must,’ Nan said ungraciously. ‘And you can bring me some wood. Food I can manage, but I’ve nothing for the fire ’cept for the sticks the innkeeper’s lad collects me from the wood on the hill an’ I’m always cold.’
As Sophie rode away, Nan watched her from the cottage door. There were times as she’d been speaking when Sophie could have been Jocelyn, not just in looks, but in the turn of her head, and the flash of her eyes, the directness of her speech. Nan closed the door and returned to her rocking chair. She had kept faith. She had told the story of Jocelyn and Cassie, but today she too had learned something she hadn’t known before. She had been the go-between, but she had never read any of the letters she carried. She might have been tempted to do so, but she’d only had minimum schooling and could scarcely read and write her own name. She had never seen Cassie read one of the letters she brought. Cassie had always tucked them away safely to read when she knew she wouldn’t be disturbed and discovered. Nan delivered Cassie’s letters to Joss and for every one she brought he gave her a half-sovereign. Nan had never been so well off, and though she had never truly believed that Jocelyn would marry Cassie, she continued to carry their letters. She had been the one to bring the news of Jocelyn’s death, but by the time she had learned the truth of it from Edwin, Cassie was dying and Nan had not told her.
As she sat rocking herself before the embers in the grate, Nan wished Sophie had never come, bringing the letters with her and opening old wounds. If Sophie called again, Nan decided, she would say no more.