The Blooding of Jack Absolute (3 page)

With movement as swift as his previous had been slow, Jack snatched the glass from the floor and dashed the contents into
Craster’s face.

The wine-turned-vinegar had its instant effect. Craster shrieked and spun away, heels of hands pressed into his eye sockets.
As Jack ran past him, his cousin made a grab for his legs. Jack twisted from the grasp, kicked back, catching Craster on the
shoulder. Another howl pursued Jack as he took the stairs two at a time.

The cellar door was a small one set into the mansion’s main staircase. Accompanied by the shrieking from below, now resolutely
high-pitched, Jack burst out into the entrance hall … and straight into the voluminous folds of a dress.

‘Lawks!’ yelled Morwenna, tumbling backwards, landing with a thump, Jack on top, the empty beer jugs launched from her hands.
One dropped beside her, bounced, didn’t break; the other skittered and slid backwards to thump and smash into the half-open
door of the parlour. The force of it knocked that entranceway open and Jack, spluttering up from the skirt, looked through
the gap. Half a dozen men, with red faces, yawning jaws and sagging jowls, looked back; and the reddest one there, once the
glazed eyes had focused, began to bellow, ‘The whidden! Young whelp bastard! Where’s ’ee to? And where’s my Craster?’

Behind him, Jack heard his cousin’s slipping footsteps on the cellar stair, his voice alternating pain and fury. Before him,
red-faced men were struggling up, Duncan throwing back his chair, using the table to rise. Jack’s weakened arms did not seem
able to push him out of the engulfing folds of the dress and his toes scrabbled for purchase on the polished floor.

‘Jack!’ hissed Morwenna. ‘Kitchen.’

He turned to it. The door there was ajar and past the flames of the range, the steaming pots, the chickens on their spits,
Jack saw something more enticing than the food his stomach craved. He saw freedom; for the back door of the Hall was open
and beyond the yard were the fields he knew so well.

He heaved himself to his knees. His uncle, still roaring, was shoving aside a bulky man in the cloth of a cleric who squawked
and fell against the table. Behind, Craster had just
gained the top of the cellar stair. Pushing himself off the floor, Jack began to run, his legs weak at first, gaining strength
with every step. By the time he was halfway across the kitchen’s flagstones, he was flying.

The roar built behind him, a discordant sing-song of question and response, Duncan’s bass harmonizing poorly with Craster’s
erratic alto. It faded as Jack rushed through the door and into the yard, then built again as he sprinted across its cobbles.
He was vaulting over the gate when his uncle’s voice came clear again.

‘My hunter! Whip out my hounds!’

If Jack had discovered before that fear could weaken the legs, he learnt now that it could also do the reverse. He raced the
three hundred yards up the pitted Hall lane to where it intersected with the road. To the right led to Zennor; to the left
to St Ives. Houses, with places perhaps to hide, but both a fair way and if he could move fast on a roadway, horses and dogs
could move faster. He could turn part back on himself and sprint for the cliffs, to the path down to his beach. But since
there was just that one way onto and off it, he’d be trapped down there.

As he hesitated, the yelping of the pack, the clatter of hooves on cobbles, carried clearly. He had to decide! Ahead were
fields, bisected by streams and little stands of bush, crisscrossed by walls of piled stone, all Absolute land. Even if there
was a slim hope the horses would tire from the jumping, he knew the dogs would not. They would not hurt him, for he knew them
all by name, but they’d lick him to death when they caught him, and hold him with their pressing bodies.

He scrambled over the first of the walls. This field was long, full four hundred paces across, sloping sharply down. He took
it at speed. The stream at the bottom was swollen by the early autumn rains and he had to run up it a little way to find a
point where he could leap, his foot plunging into mud on the far bank. As he drew it out, the sucking sound was topped by
a shout.

‘There! There’s the whelp! Get ’un!’

Glancing back for the briefest of moments, he saw Craster peering over the wall. His uncle’s grooms rushed to the gate, flung
it open. Dog, horse and man charged through it.

The field beyond was the reverse slope of the valley and steep. Jack’s breath came hard as he struggled up it but he was pushed
on by the ‘Halloos’, the hounds giving tongue, the snort of horses. Someone had brought a bugle and played it now off-key.
Craster probably, his musicianship as unsettled as his voice. The memory of his cousin from the cellar, the legacy of his
dead arms, the thought of his gloating spurred Jack as he neared the summit of the hill.

I may be a bastard, he thought, but I’m a bastard that can run!

He gained the summit. At his feet three fields lay like a spread fan. One was filled by a small copse; hard for riders, yet
riders could dismount and the hounds would pen him in. The second was full of after-grass, not yet gathered, swept up in drams,
long piles that curled like snakes from wall to wall. About half Jack’s height, he could burrow into them, remain hidden for
a while. And he could see coneys hopping between the rows, sight and sniff to distract any dog. He nearly ran into one … until
he glanced into the third and largest field to his right. This looked different from when he’d last been there and it took
him a moment to realize why. When he did, he immediately began sprinting towards it.

This third field was pitted with new shafts. This was where they’d found the keenly lode of tin, which would make the family
rich again. These were test shafts and they’d be deep. Horses and dogs could not go down ’em and men would little want to.
Jack could, would, for he’d played down such holes all his life despite the prohibitions. He’d get in a deep one and worry
about getting out of it later.

His dally had let the pursuit gain. Jack glanced back. Hounds flowed over the wall behind him and, amongst them, hunters jumped,
five at least, Duncan and Craster prominent
at their head. The look back cost him. He stepped into a divot, one of thousands in that chopped-up ground, tumbled, rolled,
was up and sprinting in a moment. But the fall had been seen and the yelling behind him doubled in volume.

He was not going to make it! They were closing fast and the nearest mine head was still a hundred paces off. Suddenly, he
jerked to a stop. The land was cleft before him, a jagged rent in the earth where someone had begun to dig, then abandoned
the effort. It had been a while before as the grass had grown over it again. If he hadn’t been looking he’d have plunged down.
The rent only went for six feet in length and a dozen across, maybe as deep. He ran its edge, straightening to head for the
shaft again. Maybe there was a chance still, maybe if he ran flat out, maybe he could beat them there. He knew it was a faint
hope; but he’d not surrender until all his hope was gone. There was no mercy to be expected from his relations. He was a fox
now; and Craster would be blooded.

The first dog ran by him, nipped playfully at his hand –Demelza, a favourite and fastest of bitches. The others would not
be far behind. She leapt before him, blocked him, happy with the game. He could only slow, fifty yards from his hope. It was
over. Then he heard different sounds. An animal shriek of terror, followed by a human one.

‘Christ!’ screamed Duncan Absolute, and the scream was still in the air as Jack turned to see his uncle and his mount arrive
at the concealed gash in the ground. The stallion must have seen it late, its forelegs were scrabbling in the grass, gouging
trails as it sought for purchase. The suddenness of its attempt to halt had shot its rider forward. Duncan’s feet were out
of the stirrups, his hands still clutching the reins but under his stomach now, his body halfway along the horse’s neck. The
animal’s eyes were wide and white, its ears at the alert. They proved no obstacle to the man as he slid over them, down the
long nose. His feet jerked, his hands came free, reached, found nothing but air as the animal’s rear legs, scrabbling furiously,
countered the slide for a brief moment,
while the man’s momentum propelled him ever faster and finally into a fall.

Duncan Absolute tumbled screaming into the earth. One moment he was there, the next vanished. The horse he’d left, lightened
in its load, looked as if it had won its fight against the drop until its rear legs slipped from under it on the mud at the
hole’s edge. Its rear came down hard, its front legs whipped out. With a shriek almost indistinguishable from its master’s,
it followed him into the pit.

The wail that came from below was swiftly cut off and replaced by the hideous screeching of an animal in agony.

Jack, frozen by the sight for those extended seconds, now reacted to the sound. He ran back, through the pack of hounds that
surrounded him. The other horsemen were struggling with their mounts who were whirling, heads jerking, huge-eyed. One turned
and bolted, the rider unable to halt him as he galloped straight back up the field, clearing the stone wall there in a jump.
As it disappeared, another shape came over the stones. It was Lutie Tregonning, who ran down towards them, followed by half
a dozen hands from the farm.

As Jack reached the lip of earth, so his cousin managed to regain control of his mount. Immediately he hurled himself off
it, staggered the few yards to the hole, dropped to his knees. The two boys stared down.

Into horror. The pit was not that deep but it was narrow and there was nowhere for the stallion to move. Besides, Jack could
tell in the instant that at least one of the beast’s legs was broken. Above ground, a horse would go still when that happened
but its situation would not let it here. Not when it was lying on a human body.

Back and forth the beast rolled, Duncan Absolute rolling beneath it.

‘Father! Father!’ Craster cried, his hands reaching down towards the crumpled figure. Then they went up in vain effort to
block out the terrible animal screams.

Lutie Tregonning ran up, looked down, cursed, then turned
back to a horseman, one of Duncan’s cronies, only now bringing his mount under control. ‘Your gun. Quick, man.’

The man fumbled the pistol from his saddle holster. Checking that the pan was primed, Lutie lowered himself into the pit.
‘Hoke, hoke, hoke,’ he called to the stallion, as he would to cattle in the fields. But the animal was lost, in its agony,
in terror. With a grimace, Lutie pulled the hammer to full cock, placed the muzzle right between the beast’s eyes, fired.
With a last jerk, the stallion reared up, then collapsed, its limbs twitching.

The sudden silence was somehow as awful as the noise that had preceded it. The acrid tang of powder filled Jack’s nostrils
while his sight was half-obscured by smoke. When he could see clearly again, he watched Lutie reach beyond the dead horse’s
neck to the man’s. Fingers pressed there for a long moment; then he looked up at the curate and shook his head.

‘The Lord have mercy,’ said the man of God.

Jack found his legs would no longer hold him and he sank down like his cousin, directly opposite him on the pit’s edge. Lutie’s
son, Treve, Jack’s sometime playmate, now ran up, with several of the servants from the Hall. ‘Treve,’ said his father in
a voice suddenly calm, ‘take the boys over to that shaft. There’s a small derrick there, do ’ee see it? Dismantle it and fetch
it here.’

Craster, pushing himself up, nearly slipped into the pit, staggered back. ‘That’s right, Lutie. Father’s fine. Needs a doctor,
is all. Hoist that beast off ’un. He’ll be fine.’

Lutie looked away, glanced back to the curate, who stepped up to the boy, dropped a hand onto his shoulder. ‘I’m afraid …
Craster … I’m sad to tell ’ee …’

‘No!’ Craster shrugged the hand off, stepped away, eyes wide and glaring. ‘Father’s alive. He’s hurt, but he’ll be proper
when we get Thunderer off ’un.’ He looked down into the pit in desperate appeal. ‘Tell ’em, Lutie. Tell ’em.’

Lutie’s voice was soft but clear. ‘ ’Ee’s dead, Craster. I be sorry. But that’s God’s truth. Gone to a finer place, ’ee has.’

‘No!’ Craster’s eyes were now ranging all round, settling on faces that bore it for a moment then turned away. All except
one. When his cousin’s gaze reached him, Jack held it.

‘I’m sorry. So sorry.’

He meant it as condolence, nothing more. But Craster took it as something else.

‘ ’Ee done it,’ he yelled, a quavering hand raised to point. ‘Jack killed ’un.’

Lutie had heaved himself from the pit. He went to Craster now. ‘No, boy. T’was accident, nothing more.’

Craster shoved aside the hand that reached out to calm. ‘No! He killed my father. Led ’un to this field deliberate, led ’un
to this pit to die.’ The quavering voice rose to a shriek. ‘Seize ’un! I’ll swear a warrant and you’ll be witnesses, every
one.’ As no one moved, he screamed, ‘If Father’s dead, then I’m Master of Absolute Hall and all your livings come from me.
I’ll turn each out of their cottage and your families can starve this winter. Seize ’un! Get a gun and hold ’un.’ When no
one moved still, Craster turned and ran to where the horses were held. There was a second pistol in a saddle holster there.

Lutie turned to Jack, gazing at him across the pit. ‘Will ’ee come, boy?’ he said softly. ‘All know that such a charge won’t
hold. You’ll only be kept awhile. And …’ here he coloured, ‘ ’ee could be our new master.’

One of the other men, hearing Lutie’s words, began to step around the pit. ‘Ess, boy,’ he said, ‘you’ll only bide a time.’

Craster had fumbled the gun out of the saddle. ‘We’ll hold him for the magistrate. Take him. Take him to the cellar.’

Until then, Jack had been almost too numb to think. Tired too, and scared, and wanted nothing more than to be back with Morwenna
in the kitchen eating soup and curling up before the fire. And he didn’t want to cause any trouble for his friends, Lutie
and Treve and the rest. But as soon as his cousin named the place where they must take him, he knew he couldn’t go. He’d bided
in that cellar once and had just
escaped a terrible thrashing. He knew that what faced him there now would be far worse.