Bella Poldark (48 page)

He grunted his alarm and stood up and beat his chest. His big voice trumpeted and roared, and he wanted to escape from what he had done. It would be safely dark in the other cellars and dark in the big room upstairs, where the fire burned behind bars and was not angry. He fled to the broken metal door, squeezed round it, glared back into his underground lair and saw it with bright hot lights leaping up and down all the way along the wall. And the black smoke made him cough. He went through the door and with many a grunt and snuffle fumbled his way towards the wine cellar.

The first sign in the house itself had been oily-looking smoke curling idly round the open spaces of the dining room. But Mrs Craddock, who had been outside with one of the tweenies for ten minutes, did not notice it until she returned, when, after a little hesitation, she ran out into the long hall to give the alarm. By then the basement was alight.

They streamed out of the big parlour to find the main house already half full of smoke and a sinister roaring from the direction of the kitchen. Wisps of smoke were curling up the stairs. Valentine shouted: 'Ross, get everyone out! David, come with me.' He took the first flight of stairs three at a time, coughed at the top and hesitated, and was joined by David. Three at a time they made the second flight. Polly Stevens opened the door. 'I was just acoming to see - my dear body!'

Valentine ducked past her into the room, scooped Georgie under one arm and made back for the door. Polly had gone back for something, but David grabbed her and pushed her towards the door. She stumbled as he hustled her along the passage to the main staircase. As if the whole house had been primed to go up like a bonfire, the flames, fuelled by a cellar half full of straw, and helped by the strong breeze, followed on the heels of the smoke like a pack of wolves. Built in the main of sedimentary killas rock, much woodwork had been used in the interiors of the house and this was not oak but soft wood which in a hundred years had dried and shrunk and was quick to ignite. They brought Georgie and Polly into the hall, and joined the others in a moist fog outside the house. After the sudden heat the chill was welcome. The horses had taken fright at the outpouring of shouting people, and half of them had broken their reins or uprooted their tethering pegs and were stamping and whinnying in the misty distance.

Ross said to Valentine: 'Are they all out?'

Valentine looked around, counting. 'Yes, I think so.'

Ross glanced at George, who was sitting on the corner of a garden seat struggling into the coat that Blencowe had somehow managed to get him. Georgie, reunited at last, was holding his mother's hand but was calling out: 'Dodie, Dodie!' Cook was patting sooty sparks out of Polly's flimsy dress and telling her how it had all happened.

'Water,' Ross said.

'There's a well at the back but only one bucket. Nearest is the mine. There's water there, but--'

'The miners,' Ross said. 'How many will be above ground, eight, ten? We could form a chain.'

Valentine said: 'Well, they've buckets enough, but--'. Ross was gone. Once he almost blundered down a side track, but a lift in the fog saved him. By luck the first man he saw was Trebethick, who was standing hand to eyes, peering. In a few words Ross told him, and Trebethick, with a voice that belonged to a male voice choir, was bellowing the alarm and calling on men by name who should be within earshot. Water was gushing out of the adit and there were buckets in the new engine house. Ross shouted that he would go on and pray would they follow, filled a bucket and started off.

The mine had always been far too near the house for Selina's pleasure, but even so it was not adjacent, and Ross soon realized his first idea of having a chain of men passing one bucket to the next would never do. It would need a hundred or more. The best device would be if perhaps thirty men each ran ten yards before passing the bucket and taking an empty one back. Then as he broke through the fog he saw that this was probably too late. There was no flame to be seen, but the thickest of sulphur-black smoke was pouring in great columns from every chimney, open window and cellar grid. There seemed to be fewer people about. Having tipped his water into the front hall, Ross went up to his old enemy, who was looking shrivelled and elderly.

'Where are the others?'

George jerked his head. 'Round the side.'

Ross ran round. Several men were grouped about a tall window, which he recognized as belonging to the side parlour where they had been meeting. There was a trickle of smoke from the top of this window, which had had the glass smashed. But compared to most of the house it was fairly clear. David Lake, the two male servants, Hector Trembath. As Ross came up they looked at him, but no one spoke.

'What is it?'

Lake shrugged his shoulders. 'I tried to stop him.'

'Who?'

'Valentine.'

'What the devil--?'

'He has gone in to find Butto.'

David said: 'I did my utmost to stop him. But you know what Valentine is like when he makes up his mind. This side of the house is not yet so bad -- though personally I wouldn't put a leg over the windowsill.'

'When did he go?'

'Oh, about three minutes ago.'

'Five,' said Hector Trembath. Ross went to the window and peered in. 'Valentine!' he shouted. 'Valentine!'

He could see to the other side of the room, could see the glasses on the side tables, and two trays upset where the linen cloths had been snatched to provide primitive breathing masks.'There's a well at the back of the house somewhere,'

Ross said to David, who was just behind him.

'Yes, just round that corner.'

More glass tinkled as Ross stepped into the room.

'Hey, come back!' David shouted. Ross stepped out again. 'Show me where this well is.'

'Look, don't throw good money after bad. Valentine may be back any time.'

'The well, man!'

Ross had grabbed two more linen cloths from the trays. Then he followed Lake round the corner, found the well, worked the handle until the water gushed, soaked the cloths so that they were running with water.

'If you go in,' Lake said, 'I shall have to follow.'

'Don't be a damned fool, man.'

'Then don't you be a damned fool! It's suicide!'

As they came round the corner Ross beckoned to the two menservants. 'If I go into this room, as I shall if Mr Valentine does not show up, I order you to prevent Lieutenant Lake from following. Understood?'

They hesitated. 'Yes, sur

'That is an order. See you obey it.'

Compared to that part of the house over the kitchens, where the dining room had been rapidly involved, this side was yet troubled only by thin spirals of choking fog, though a few ominous sparks seemed to flutter up through the floorboards. He had no knowledge of the design of the house. There must be cellars, but he hadn't the least idea as to their location or extent. He looked at the moulded ceiling of this room, which still seemed sound, then walked cautiously across to the door, through which ten minutes ago they had all exited. He opened it and a great whoof of heat and smoke greeted him. Some of the wood on the other side of the door was smouldering, but a broken window allowed a wind to come in and temporarily, as well as fanning the flames, it was serving to clear the smoke. From this hall there was a passageway which led to the rear of the house and presumably the kitchens, and there were four other doors, only one of them ajar. He went towards this, stumbling across a piece of debris which apparently had fallen from the second-floor staircase. He shouted: 'Valentine! Where are you?'

There was such a noise in the house that a cry might not be heard. He thought he heard something in the room with the door ajar, and he pushed it open and peered in. It was the sewing room-cum-music room, where Selina had once berated Katie. A half-completed tapestry on a frame, four chairs around a table and a pack of cards, a harpsichord in the corner with a bowl of faded flowers. Dark in here from the darkness of the day. Outside you could just see a sapling sycamore bending in the wind. No human being. He came out, stared round the hall. His retreat would soon be cut off. He tried the next door and found a service room. A kettle was singing on a Cornish hob. Onions tied on a string a bit like washing on a clothes line. A bucket half full of potatoes. A Welsh dresser. A black cat stared at him from beside the hob with sleepy, startled eyes. He strode to the window, screeched it up, grabbed the cat, which scratched him. He put his head out and dropped the cat six feet to the safety of the gravel path. So escape was still easy from here. He only had to jump. But where in Heaven and Hell was Valentine? The cloth across his face was dry now and he dampened it again in a jug of milk, retied it, returned to the hall. Three more doors. He shouted again. From the passage the blackest of the smoke was how issuing A studded green door had been propped open with a wedge. Valentine might well have gone looking for Butto in the kitchens. But could he follow? If Valentine had gone that way he was surely lost. He entered the dark cavern of the passage. An unlighted candelabra stood on a table in an alcove. Shelves on one side of the passage were lined with ornamental china, some of it broken. The heat was intense and Ross felt a wave of dizziness sweep over him. He steadied himself against one of the shelves and the wood was hot to his touch. He stopped, trying to get his breath, trying not to cough. His eyes were smarting and running with tears. He could not get a proper breath. He was suffocating. He could not walk into a furnace. He stagged back into the hall and a burning lath fell at his feet. He tried to stamp it out, but one of his riding boots began to blister.

'Valentine!' he shouted, and choked. There was something that sounded like an answering cry. He turned in its direction, took a few steps, stumbled over a chair and fell, bringing some curtains down on top of him and breaking the fall.

'Father, you should not have followed me. I came out the other way. I found Butto. He's dead.'

Then a hail of plaster rained down on them, followed by one of the supporting beams, then half the ceiling collapsed as they were being dragged out.

Voices near; hands on his ankles, hauling him back, hands under his shoulders, Valentine was kneeling beside him. They were back in the big parlour. 'Father!' he said.

They took Ross to Trenwith, the nearest of the big houses and about equidistant from the nearest cottage of St Ann's. They made an improvised stretcher of an old door, and he lay on a blanket and covered by a blanket. Amadora, confronted by the emergency, in all ignorance put him in the very bedroom where he had taken Elizabeth against her will twenty-seven or more years ago, and so had started all this trouble, which had gone on so relentlessly and for so long. Dwight caught up with the procession just as it reached Trenwith, so followed the four men carrying the door upstairs.

They laid him on the same bed and Dwight bent over him. There was a bruise turning blue on his forehead, one shoe had been burned and had fallen off, part of his jacket was in black tatters, there were bruises coming up on his shoulder and arm. But the most alarming symptom was his breathing, noisy and laboured and uncertain.

'Twas the smoke,' said Trebethick. 'At first when we got him out he could not seem to breathe at all. I thought he was a goner. Then twas like a corncrake. We dashed water

'pon him. I hope we done right.'

Dwight was listening to Ross's heart. It was fast but not unsteady. He might have run a mile. Dwight did not at all like the breathing: it resembled that of some of his patients when they were dying: it might go on for hours before it finally ceased. Concussion and shock. The bruise on his forehead was spreading and a trickle of blood oozed. On the way here Trebethick had told Dwight what had happened, and one of the boys had been sent running to tell Demelza. Ross gave a huge sigh, and his eyelids fluttered but did not open. Then after a dangerously long pause the breathing began again. Demelza came riding bareback, a habit she had developed as a girl, slid off the mare, leaving her untethered, was met by Amadora and led swiftly up the stairs. Into the room, and hand to mouth she stared wide-eyed at her husband, then sharply at Dwight, who said: 'My dear, there has been an accident at Place House - a fire, and Ross was caught in it.' He tailed off because he saw Demelza was not listening.

She went to the bed and bent over Ross, peering, deeply peering. A lock of her hair, loosened in the gallop, fell over and touched his injured shoulder. She pulled it out of the way, then looked again at Dwight.

'It is concussion and shock, I believe,' Dwight said. 'The burns are not serious. Bone should be here any minute with bandages and salve. I don't see any signs of internal injuries.'

'Could you?' These were the first words she had spoken since entering.

'Could I? Not altogether. But internal injuries betray symptoms, and I see no such symptoms.'

'Did he fall?'

Dwight looked at Trebethick, who said: 'Not that I know, ma'am. I was not on the spot, d'ye see, but I been told he went back into the house to bring someone else out, and the ceiling gave way over his head.' There was a long silence, eventually broken by Demelza.

'Were there others - injured?'

Neither man spoke. Then Trebethick said: 'I believe twas the ape that caused it. So Cook said. He broke out of his compound and upset something. There was more than usual folk in the house, but I b'lieve they all - or most got clear away.'

'Have you seen it, Dwight?'

'Not yet. I've heard of no more casualties, but I met the men carrying Ross and thought this must be my first case.'

Demelza knelt beside the bed. 'Ross!' she whispered. She looked up: 'His eyelids flickered.'

'They have done before. It is a good sign.'

A tap at the door, and Bone put his head round. 'I brought what you asked for, sur.'

'Come in. Demelza, get Amadora to make you some tea or give you a glass of wine. I'll just make Ross as comfortable as I can.'

'I'll help you,' she said. 'I want to stay here.'

Darkness had fallen on the fog before Ross began to come round. Two candles flickered, and a dark slender woman sat before a fire burning low. He could not at all think who he was, where he was, what time it was. There were items of furniture which he partly recognized, but they seemed to belong to a distant past. He could not understand it at all. His memory knew the brown draped velvet curtains held back by a knotted cord. And there was a gilt-framed mirror over a walnut dressing table. He could picture a face reflected in the mirror. But it was not the face of the woman who crouched before the fire. It was Elizabeth. Merciful Christ, but Elizabeth had been dead twenty years. Knowledge flooded upon him, memory came back; all of it encompassing the fullest remembrance of today. He sat up and his head opened and shut, and he sank back on the pillow with a gasp of pain. The dark woman was beside him, staring, staring.

'Demelza,' he said.

'Oh, thank God!'

'Where are we? What time is it?'

'Seven, I think. Or maybe eight.'

'Did someone bring me here - to Trenwith?'

She did not remark his knowledge of something he had just questioned. 'You were dragged from the fire at Place House. Dwight has been.'

He looked down painfully at himself. 'So I see. God! That smoke!'

'Your breathing is better. For a time I--'

'I could do with a drink.'

She hastily crossed the room, took up a cup and a pitcher and brought it back. 'Can you sit up a little? I'm afraid...'

He edged himself up by his elbows, grimacing with pain. She pushed the pillow up to support him, and with one forearm round the back of his head helped him to sip the water.

He swallowed two or three mouthfuls and then indicated he had had enough. He began to cough, heavily. Huskily. Then he stopped and half-smiled up into his wife's anxious face. 'I'm all right now.'

'Well . . . better, thank God.'

'It was incredible how quick the fire spread. Is everyone safe?'

'Geoffrey Charles has just gone to be sure. He was away in Camborne -- and so knew nothing about it until he returned for supper about half an hour since. He put his head in the door, but you were still -- still sleeping, so he said he would go at once and get the latest news.'

Ross brooded. Then he looked about the room, noticing uneasily that his first impression had been mistaken. This was certainly Elizabeth's old bedroom but the dressing table was not, as he had supposed, the same. The curtains were maroon instead of brown. Perhaps the gilt mirror was here. For the rest he must have had an hallucination.

'I believe that ape started it. When I reached the house - I could hear him screaming - something must have upset him. We were - all assembled in the drawing room when one of the servants burst in to say the house - was on fire. By then, by the time we streamed out into the hall - the the house was - full of smoke.'

'Try not to talk about it. Just lie still for a while. Or would you like something to eat?'

'Not yet, thank you. Is Valentine injured?'

She hesitated. 'I don't rightly know.'

'Did the others come here? I suppose this is the nearest big house, but the Crown at St Ann's has rooms.'

Outside a cow was lowing in the dark. Ross said: 'How long before we leave for London?'

She was startled. 'Twas supposed to be tomorrow week, but you will surely not have recovered sufficient.'

'It's hard. I'm trying to relate one thing with another.'

'You surprise me, Ross. Half an hour ago you looked at death's door.'

'I feel none too far away yet. But these feel like superficial burns, and the beam that fell on me was only a glancing blow.'

'We shall have to see. And wait to know what Dwight says.'

He took another drink, and while he held the cup there was a tap at the door. Geoffrey Charles came in, his face very white. He smiled brightly enough at Ross and expressed his joy at the improvement. He was still in his riding clothes.

'The fire is pretty well over now, the house mostly gone. They have saved a few things from the west side, and the stables and the horses are intact. It will be much easier taking a detailed look when tomorrow comes. Lanterns cast as many shadows as they cast light. Ross, you were lucky. They say you went back in again to rescue Valentine.'

'Is he injured?'

'I'm afraid he's dead.'

'He was found in the dining room. The big ape was lying beside him.'

'How can that be?' Ross said harshly. 'I went back into the room where we had been meeting. Through the window, of course. Valentine had gone in but five minutes before, looking for Butto. When I got in I heard - or thought I heard - a cry from the hall. I opened the door. The hall was almost impossible - but I went in to see if I could find him - I looked in three rooms and then gave up. On my way back through the hall something fell on me - I was dragged out. Valentine was beside me. He said he had come out through another door. He told me Butto was dead.'

There was a horrible silence. Geoffrey Charles's face was mottled with shock. He said grimly. 'I was not there, of course. I can only go on what I have been told.' 'Who told you?'

'At first just the captain of the mine, Trebethick. But three of the servants were also there, and they did not contradict his version. Apparently about six o'clock George Warleggan and his lawyer friends left to ride home. His daughter-in-law, Selina, is staying at the Crown in St Ann's with her cousin and little George. Apparently there was some dissension because old George wanted them all to return with him, and Selina became hysterical. Then I met Sam.'

'Sam? Our Sam?'

'Yes. His forge is not so far away, you know, and he heard of the fire from some tinker who was passing. It was he, I gather, with two of the miners, who first got into the dining room and found the bodies.'

'The last thing I remember,' Ross whispered, 'before the beam knocked me out - was Valentine kneeling beside me and telling me that Butto was dead, but that he had got out by a side door.'

The cow was lowing again in the misty dark. Geoffrey Charles said: 'Valentine built a sort of den in one of the cellars so that Butto could keep warm in the winter. In the cellar, Cook told me, there were bales of straw and blankets and sacks. Somehow Butto got out and accidentally set fire to his den. Thank God it was not at night.'

Demelza had been very quiet. 'Where is Valentine now?'

'At Sam's insistence they have taken him to the church. Sam has borrowed some candles from the mine and is going to sit with him all night.'