So this had been his father’s home? The once anarchic community he had lived in and governed, under his mother’s matriarchal influence, until his death at the age of forty-six. Heart failure had claimed Titus Kivell’s life, and according to the information, he, Kit Woodburne, had gleaned, Titus’s heart had been corrupted by drink, bitterness and hatred. Kit understood how a heart of such darkness could betray and kill a relatively young man; his half-brother, Charles Howarth, who had only recently come to know of his existence, had warned him that he was in peril of succumbing to the very same thing. He cared not about that.
Burnt Oak was set off Bell Lane in a large plunging valley, with the land behind supporting a farm. Sitting astride a mount from the property he was renting in the nearby prosperous copper-mining parish of Gwennap, Kit was spying on the Kivell holdings. Through the hawthorn bushes on top of the rambling hedgerow, he watched the activity below of the quiet, industrious sort as men, women and children went about their enterprise in the several workshops, the forge and the farmyard: people content in the knowledge they belonged to generations of a strong and formidable family; cosy scenes which even the bleak frosty weather did nothing to dispel. No doubt down there were fathers teaching their sons their given craft or trade. Kit made a pained expression.
The property was flung amid the far-reaching estate of Poltraze, and no doubt was an open wound to the Nankervises. There was an ancient reason why the ten-acre Kivell land was bracketed within the squire’s territory. In the time of the Norman Conquest a Nankervis and a Kivell knight had ridden for the prize of the manor. The Kivell had lost, taking a fall from his horse, and had grudgingly had to make do with the smaller lot. He had gone on to form a remote clan that had married into undesirables, becoming troublesome, until a few years ago when it suited them to break out into the expanding world of business. Kit was here to cause trouble for the clan, more than that, pandemonium, if he could, and for one Kivell in particular.
A few nights ago, thinking how different things would have been if the original Kivell had won that race – for one thing Kit would probably never have been born – he had been led to spy out the squire’s despoiled grounds rather than coming here as he’d first intended. The wits and cunning he’d developed during his appalling childhood had enabled him to slip among the blackened hulks that had once been prestigious camellia shrubs and the like, but he had not gone unseen. The lovely young woman – who had to be the squire’s sadly neglected wife – peering out of a bedroom window made him chance a closer look at her. The lamplight had given her an aura of enchantment. He could have stared up at her for hours. He would engineer the pleasure of gazing at her in close quarters. A woman like Mrs Joshua Nankervis should not be allowed to be neglected by male company. A little earlier he had followed the squire’s departure, finding him soon to be met by another man – a Kivell, indeed – who had taken him into an intimate embrace. The squire being of that sexual persuasion was interesting. Finally he had returned to his secluded house. His manservant, the only person he had ever trusted, had seen to it he was provided with diverting and experienced female company, and opium. A prolonged drugged daze had delayed his visit here to Burnt Oak.
Half a dozen large and attractive dwellings, thatched or slate-roofed, were also part of Burnt Oak and all were protectively encased inside a fortress square of granite walls. It was both something of a tribal arrangement and a medieval court, with, Kit’s good sight made out, dashes of ostentation in the new Victorian manner. There was the added sheltering of a few proud oaks. All in all, it was a marvel and an outlandish curiosity, with the strangeness of a graveyard at its far end. For generations Kivells had been buried in the grounds and somewhere down in that unsanctified sod were his father’s remains.
What would it feel like to stand over Titus Kivell’s decaying bones? The man who had been as corrupt as his now putrefied flesh? Kit could not suppress a fierce, angry shudder and next came the hated and all too familiar sick hollowing out in his gut. Would his hatred of that scurrilous individual burn even more intensely than it had for the main of his twenty-seven years? It would be hard not to dance on and foul the grave of the man who by force had sired his existence, imparting to him a life that had been wretched and blighted in its almost every moment.
Down there in the grandest house of the pack, sweetly named Morn O’ May, dwelt his grandmother, Tempest Kivell, the she-witch who was the original source of his distress and desolation. Kit hated her with a passion that sometimes sacrificed his reason. He knew all about her. She was a lady by birth, and she was a murderess who had never been brought to the law. Her heart was good and kind to some, dark and heartless towards others, the latter towards his father. From a wealthy Quaker family, she had been ravished by Garth Kivell and forced into marriage, kept practically a prisoner until Garth’s death at her own calculating hand. She had turned much from the Bible, yet still followed parts of it.
‘Well, here’s a verse from the Good Book for you, Grandmother,’ he hissed between clenched teeth, making his darkest of dark eyes fragment and burn, ‘Jeremiah, chapter twenty, verse fourteen. “Cursed be the day wherein I was born.” That sums up my life and my heartfelt feelings, Tempest Kivell. Now your turn has come to say the same thing.’
On resolute feet, Sarah was heading for Burnt Oak, passing through the village on her way rather than skirting around it over the soggy downs. She no longer hid herself away. She had been a victim of her circumstances, not the instigator of them. She would be a victim no more and she had the worth and the right to wander where she might. She took her time, head up ready to meet any curious gaze. Her change of heart about her dead husband had brought much comment, some haughty and unforgiving, ‘It’s about time!’ ‘Doesn’t mean she’s no better than she ought to be.’ Some, like the two women she had walked with to the mine that day, were genuinely pleased. The truly God-believing had rejoiced, the Bible Christians exhorting her to forgive Titus and fully repent her ways. She would change when and how she chose to.
It was Sunday, and the journey through the straggling slopes and dells of Meryen led her past her old family home, tiny Moor Cottage, next to the Nankervis Arms, one of the four drinking establishments. Further on was the Anglican church in its usual subdued voice. Most notable were the new villas, here, there and everywhere, beautifully crafted but pieces of blaring showiness by their Kivell business owners. They employed servants from the village, a reason for envy and resentment, the workers seen by some as turncoats. The two Methodist chapels, at suitable distances from the church, one in the main thoroughfare, the other cutting off down a little side street, were singing their hymns more stridently. Louder than the three congregations put together, at the far end of the village the Bible Christians were ‘being happy’. Jeb Bray had kindly invited her to join his family in the new sturdy chapel, rendered much by his own hands and funded by him and fellow miners and some interested better-off Quakers from Gwennap. The pleasantries Sarah had been offered had fed her desire to better her lot at last. Why shouldn’t she live well and have nice things? There was no need to go on denying herself. She had never deserved Titus Kivell to come into her life. Tempest Kivell had entreated her to come to her for help at any time, but as Titus’s widow she had the moral right to have part of what had been his anyway. So she was off to her marital home, without telling Tabbie where she was going, knowing her friend would implore her not to go, but to perhaps write to Tempest Kivell instead; she had learned to read and write during the short time she had lived at Burnt Oak. She wanted her due and she wanted it as soon as possible. She had already wasted too much of her life. Then, as someone of means, she could approach old Aunt Molly and Arthur and Tamsyn. She yearned to see her family again. She had left them hurt and bewildered by refusing to accompany them to their new home at Redruth. Her five-year silence must also have caused them pain. How could she have forsaken her only family? She would plead to them for forgiveness. She wouldn’t simply pack up and leave Tabbie, but it would be wonderful, after Tabbie’s death, if she could live again with her family. A better future was beckoning.
She was nearly there. A couple of bends, a long, roughly straight stretch of winter-desolate hedgerow, then she’d reach the wide iron gate before the trek down the dipping muddy cart track to the community. She smoothed at her centre-parted hair where it emerged at the front of her best bonnet, a ruche-trimmed, second-hand affair. Her two-piece dress and Tabbie’s cloak were both well worn but she hoped she looked good. After years of not caring about her appearance it was important again.
She sighed in impatience to discover a man, a gentleman by his appearance, of tall, broad and a slightly stooped stature, about to lead a horse through the open gate. She came to a sharp halt.
‘Mama, why are you peeping out of the window? It’s good to see you out of bed again but I can see you’re all tense. You should be resting. What are you looking at?’
Tempest Kivell did not turn round to her only daughter. The knuckles of her shapely fingers were white from gripping the sill, but not from fear of her unsteadiness. ‘Come and see for yourself, Eula. Be careful he doesn’t see you. It’s him.’ The voice that had once flowed like honey was dry and feeble. The once-proud shoulders sagged. ‘He’s arrived at last.’
‘Who has? You don’t mean him? He’s really here?’ A doughty mother of seven, and living under her mother’s roof, Eula, still a Kivell, having wed a cousin, did not doubt her mother’s breathless statement, and she whispered fearfully, ‘Oh no.’
Several days ago her mother had been seized by a terrifying vision. ‘We’re all in great danger,’ she had declared in frenzy at the end of it. It had been unknown for Tempest, normally so regal and calm, to be in hysterics, and Eula and the rest of the community had been alarmed. Her account of Titus’s imminent return from the netherworld, hell-bent on retribution, had been rapidly followed by a loss of all Tempest’s strength, and until now she had been too weak to lift a foot out of bed.
‘It can’t be Titus, Mama. That’s impossible.’ Eula had tried to renounce the vision at the time, but she had found it hard and had crept about in trepidation. Her mother’s powers were unshakably accurate.
‘I know that,’ Tempest had gasped in mortification. ‘But someone of Kivell blood is coming for us. Even people beyond our boundaries won’t be safe.’
Tempest could also not be moved from the belief that the end of her life was not far off, but she kept that to herself. She feared for her soul, having deliberately shot her violent husband to death, but it was the anxiety for her loved ones and innocents outside Burnt Oak that had filled her with dark horrors and sapped her strength.
Eula joined her at the cross-leaded window, staying concealed behind the jade-green tabby silk curtains. ‘See him, up there behind the hedge?’ Tempest croaked. ‘He’s been watching us for some time. I don’t need a spyglass to know he’s a young man, just as I saw in my dream. And he looks very much like your brother did.’
Having the better eyesight, Eula related that the stranger was clad in fine apparel. ‘A Kivell, yet not a Kivell. How very strange.’ She could not bring herself to offer more than that.
‘Strange?’ Tempest’s voice was a mere rusty echo. ‘We have much more than strangeness ahead of us. We must not drop our guard for a moment. Eula, help me get dressed. I will receive this individual in my sitting room.’
‘Mama, you will not even make it down the stairs,’ Eula cautioned.
‘Then I will be carried down!’
‘Let me get the men together,’ Eula pleaded. ‘They can see him off.’
‘No! That sort of strength and unity is not the way. He wants to see inside my soul. It’s something I must allow. It is our only hope.’
Kit heard light steps approaching from the direction of the village. Was a relative of his arriving home? The old woman herself? No, she never walked the lanes. She was a sprightly sixty-year-old but saw herself as too grand to go anywhere on foot. He swung round, straightening his back and holding his loftiness at his most intimidating. He beheld a most pleasing sight but retained his belligerence.
Sarah almost dropped to the hard hostile ground from sheer alarm. She couldn’t have been more shocked if she was facing Old Nick himself. Tabbie’s vision had been absolutely and chillingly correct. Titus was back from the dead and had been returned to his youth. The brute in him was whole and evident. She stared at him, horribly expecting his next move to be an attempt on her.
Kit was bemused by this gorgeous creature of splendid midnight and dull autumn colouring being so troubled by him. She was near panic yet something mysterious was preventing her from taking flight. Her crystal-dark eyes never wavered from his face and were saucer-like and threatening to swell from their sockets. She was in a state of utter disbelief. Despite the barrier of her cloak, he could tell her chest was rising and falling in over-breathing. She must be tingling from head to foot and surely would soon faint. He was pretty sure he knew why she was in a frightened stupor, and in fact, who she must be. Sarah Kivell, née Hichens, his widowed young stepmother, the foolish mine girl who irrationally glorified his father’s sordid memory. And she was as superstitious as most of the Celtic breed that inhabited this bleak and lowly county of Cornwall, and right now she was imprisoned by the belief he was actually her dead husband. The stupid little thing …
‘Don’t you know it’s rude to stare at one such as I am, girl,’ he snapped.
Sarah came to with a cruel start which sent her gasping for breath and fighting to keep her balance. She threw out a hand and received only the harsh comfort of the winter-ravaged hedge. She had been caught in the echoes of her dream but her senses cleared and her mind was sharp. This wasn’t Titus. How could she have thought he could raise himself from the dead? Only the Good Lord could do that and He no longer had business with Titus. This stranger had the stamp of Titus about him, more so than any other Kivell, apart from Sol, but she should have seen the dissimilarities. There was the tendency to stoop, while Titus had stood stock straight. A far paler skin tone, a softer jaw, blue eyes and not black, the lack of scars on his more refined face. One thing he did share with Titus was his sense of menace. Could this man be a ‘turn of a blanket’? Titus had sired many children by his first wife and two common-law wives and he’d boasted he had many more brats scattered about. The most striking difference was the man’s cultured tones, unnerving in their low, supple delivery. Titus had spoken with a deep gravelly burr, as common as he had been.
Suddenly she felt the talisman hanging about her throat, as if the silver and topaz itself was reminding her of its protective presence. It topped up her courage and new higher self-esteem and she formed a sense of outrage. Whoever this man was she wasn’t going to meekly bow to his higher station and animosity. ‘I don’t care to be spoken to like that,’ she fired the words at him, the creamy skin around her eyes and mouth drawn tight. ‘You might be togged up but I don’t take you for a gentleman.’ She turned on her heel and went back the way she had come. She would knock on her mother-in-law’s door another day.
Amusement and deeper interest were Kit’s reactions. The girl had some grit in her after all. ‘Sarah Kivell!’ he called at her fast diminishing back. Rough and ordinary she might be but she walked with a grace beyond her humble status.
Burning with ire, Sarah stamped back to him. ‘I do not acknowledge that name. I am Sarah Hichens. I hope never to chance upon you again, but if I do, and you choose to speak to me, address me as such.’ She made to march off again.
While marvelling that she could speak so well, Kit was overtly curious about this. ‘I beg your pardon, Miss Hichens. So you no longer wish to use the Kivell name?’
‘No, and I wish I’d never had the cruel misfortune to have taken it.’ She was baffled by the turn in his stance, and the almost melodic variance in his voice, but she was struck again by the fact that he must be the man in Tabbie’s vision. Fear pricked her nerves but she was determined not to be overwhelmed by him. She demanded, ‘Are you one? A Kivell?’
‘I do not have the Kivell name but I do happen to have Kivell blood.’ Kit was careful, almost confidential in his answer. He saw a possible ally here. For some reason the girl had a worthy amount of bitterness in her concerning Titus Kivell. Such a tremendous change of heart usually led to the sort of bitterness that was apt to seek revenge. She could be useful to him. Good, now a look of perplexity was marking her exquisite features. Nature had kindly bypassed the jadedness it usually endowed on one steeped in much hardship and sorrow.
Rather than give in to natural inquisitiveness, Sarah retained her senses. ‘I do not really wish to know who you are, sir.’ She was foolish to have come here and it would be foolish to remain with this man. She must hasten back to Tabbie.
Kit tapped his well-barbered chin with his knuckles. What had caused the girl’s enormous turn against the devil Titus? At some time he would press to learn all there was to know about the delectable Sarah Hichens-Kivell. But now, to pay his respects to his grandmother.