“What a pity you didn’t come earlier,” he said. “You could have taken part in the ceremony of Midsummer Eve when we gather here at midnight and light our bonfires to welcome the summer. We dance round them; we become merry and a little wild and perhaps like our prehistoric forefathers. To dance round the bonfire is a precaution against witchcraft, and if you scorch your clothes that means you will be well protected. Ah, you should have been here for Midsummer’s Eve. I can see you dancing, with your hair wild—a real Tressidor.”
He showed me a disused tin mine and told me of the days when tin mining had made the Duchy prosperous.
“That’s what we call an old scat ball,” he said, “a disused mine. It’s said to be unlucky. The miners of Cornwall were the most superstitious people in the world—apart perhaps from the Cornish fishermen. Their lives were full of hazards, so they looked for signs of good and evil. I suppose we should all be the same. Do you know, they used to leave food at the mine head for the knackers who could wreak evil on those who offended them. The knackers were supposed to be the spirits of Jews who had crucified Christ and could not rest. Why they should have travelled to Cornwall was never explained—nor how there could be so many of them. But do you know, there were miners who swore they’d seen a knacker—a little wizened thing, the size of a sixpenny doll, but dressed like one of the old tinners—that means an old miner. What do the knackers do now that so many mines are closed, I wonder. Perhaps they go back to where they belong. Now this particular shaft is said to be specially unlucky. You must not go near the edge. Who knows, some knacker might take a fancy to you and decide to take you with him wherever he belongs.”
I loved to listen to him and urged him to tell me more, so I heard of the wassailing at Christmas when the great families provided spiced ale from which everyone drank. “Waes Hael,” said Jago. “That’s Saxon and means ‘to your health.’ Lots of our customs go back before Christianity came here, which explains why we are such a pagan lot.”
He told me how they danced up at the big houses at Christmas, how the carol singers—called Curl Singers by the local people—came and joined in the merriment; how the guise dancers appeared on twelfth night, masked and disguised, dressed as historical characters and frolicked out of doors and in and out of houses. Then there was Shrove Tuesday when it was permissible to rob the gardens of the rich, and how May Day was as important as Christmas and Midsummer’s Eve, when all ages assembled in the streets of the towns with fiddles and drums.
They danced and feasted and set out to gather in the May, cutting branches of the sycamore trees and making them into whistles which sent out shrill sounds as they danced into the country and brought home the May. There was the Furry Dance, which was performed ceremoniously in Helston every year, and as fervently, if less orderly, all over Cornwall.
I had a notion that he was trying to show me how exciting life was here, and that he was pleased that I had come, and this made him very happy.
He loved to talk and I was a willing listener. He succeeded in making me feel that I wanted to witness for myself some of the customs about which he talked so enthusiastically.
But it began to dawn on me that often his gaiety was forced and I guessed that something was worrying him. When I asked him he shrugged it aside; but there came a time when he told me what was on his mind.
We had ridden past an empty farmhouse on the edge of the Landower estate. He said: “The Malloy family lived here for generations. There was only one son and daughter left and they had no feeling for farming. The man went to Plymouth and became some sort of builder. He took his sister with him. So the farmhouse is vacant.”
“It’s a very pleasant house,” I said.
“H’m.”
“I’d like to look at it. Could we go in?”
“Not now,” he said firmly, and turned his horse away as though he could not bear to look at the place.
Later I discovered why. We had taken our horses onto the moor. It was invigorating there. I sat stretched out on the grass propped up by a boulder. Jago sat beside me.
I said: “What’s wrong? Why don’t you tell me?”
He was silent for a few moments. Then he said: “You know that farmhouse I showed you?”
“Yes.”
“That may be our home soon.”
“What do you mean?”
“We may have to sell Landower.”
“Sell Landower! What do you mean? Your family has been there since the beginning of time.”
“I’m serious, Caroline. We can’t afford to live there. The place is almost falling about our heads and a fortune needs to be spent on it and soon … if it is going to survive.”
“Oh, I am sorry, Jago. I know how you feel.”
“Paul is frantic, but he can’t get any help. He’s staying in Plymouth now … seeing lawyers and bankers … trying to raise money. He won’t give up, though they say it is hopeless and nothing can be done but let the house go. Paul thinks he’ll do something … somehow. He’s like that. If he makes up his mind he won’t let go. He keeps saying he’ll find a way. But you see we need a fortune to spend on the structure and to save the roof. Everything has been neglected too long, they say. You think that because a house has stood for four hundred years it is going to stand forever. It would … if we could save it. But we can’t, Caroline, and that’s all there is to it.”
“What will you do?”
“They’ve come to the conclusion that we shall have to sell.”
“Oh no!”
“Yes. The lawyers say it’s the only thing. My father is deeply in debt. Creditors are pressing. He has to find money somehow. We’re lucky, the lawyers say, to have the farmhouse to go to.”
“How awful for you. And all those ancestors …”
“There’s only one hope.”
“What’s that?”
He burst out laughing. “That nobody will buy it.”
I laughed with him. I was sure he was joking. He liked to tease me. Which was why I was never sure how much he was making up when he told me of the customs of the people.
Now I felt sure that he did not mean what he said. There was no danger of Landower’s passing into other hands. How could it?
I raced him home. He waved a merry goodbye, saying: “Same time tomorrow.”
I was sure all was well at Landower, or at least it wasn’t half as bad as he had said it was.
A few days later I was going for a walk and as I came to the lodge Jamie McGill appeared.
“Good afternoon, Miss Caroline,” he said.
“Good afternoon. It’s rather sultry today. Do the bees know that?”
His expression changed. “They do indeed, Miss Caroline. They know about the weather all right. They know fast enough when a storm’s coming.”
“Do they really? They are fascinating, I know. I’ve always been interested in bees.”
“Have ye now?”
“Oh yes. I’d love to know more about them.”
“They’re worth knowing.” A bee flew over his head and he laughed. “He knows I’m talking about him.”
“Does he really?”
“Lazy old thing.”
“Oh, is he a drone?”
“Yes, he is. He does nothing but enjoy himself while the workers go about collecting the nectar and the queen’s in the hive laying the eggs. His day will come though. When the queen’s off on her hymeneal flight.”