Read Online Coromandel! by John Masters - Free Book Online

books all round her and could sit in a high chair reading them, because . . . Mary was afraid of him--afraid, rather, of the future with him. He felt it in her big strong hand. She was trying now to pretend that all was well between them. There must be some way out of this, he and she being so affectionate to each other, but not truly in love.
    At last Jane Pennel’s restless, wandering glances met his stare. For a moment she looked at him, then she lowered her head and seemed to speak at random to her brother lounging beside her.
    ‘Mistress Jane is beautiful, isn’t she?’ Mary said, sighing. ‘Look at her lovely shoes. Seeing them makes me want to throw mine away. But what’s the use? I don’t have her little feet.’
    ‘She’s not beautiful,’ Jason said hoarsely, cut by a sharp edge of shame at hearing his Mary so downcast. Mary hugged his arm, and that was worse.
    The Oak and Horn began with a ruffle and a double stamp.
    He watched and became absorbed, because he saw that, as they danced, the men became like him in his dream journeys. They were no longer here in Shrewford Pennel, King Charles was not their lord, they were not farmers. They kicked their feet, and the head masks spun. The bull nodded and lifted his heavy horns. The white crossed garters on their legs snapped and spun, the feet of the watchers jigged on the grass, the men’s eyes bulged, the women’s lips drooped wet. The dancers waved their boughs of oak, and the bull a peeled oak yard. Check and spin, stamp and spin--there were Roman helmets watching, amazed, under the oak tree where the Pennels sat. Head down, head up--kick, kick, kick, they danced under the three harsh stones on the Plain, round and round inside the earthen banks agleam with spears. It was dark on the Plain, and the wind whistled. Men in the skins of animals danced, their stone axe-heads catching the firelight. (But here were the tight-drawn eyes and the smell of cider and trampled grass, and the church clock’s warning: Sin! Sin! Sin!) Parson’s reading was no armour now, fear quivered in his chops; and the Pennels stood close-knit as Romans, watching; but for the dancers the lark burst up spiralling, ascending, climbing into the sun’s eye.
    Jason held Jane’s eye steady, the bull prancing between them. In her vacant, stunned submission to his stare, in the reaching out from his loins to her, the Oak and Horn overthrew them.
    He turned away, Mary following him. He had to get out of Jane’s presence and control himself. As soon as the pipe and tabor stopped, the spell began to fade. He told himself the Oak and Horn was only a harvest dance, and Jane was a Pennel. In the black pit of his belly it made no difference. They were overthrown. Meantime--he didn’t want to talk to anybody.
    ‘Let’s go and listen to Speranza Voy,’ he said. ‘He’s always worth hearing. And you can watch him selling useless medicines to fools. But I shall have another mug of cider first.’
    The crowd round Voy was as thick as ever. As they came close they heard him. ‘You’ll not regret it, master. Here, put it away; don’t show it to your friends, even. You don’t want anyone else to find the treasure, do you?’ Jason saw Voy hand a piece of folded paper to a gawky youth from Shrewford Admiral. At the same time Voy saw Jason, and his voice faltered, but he hurried on. ‘Hide--hide it till you can fit out your own ship. Of course you’ll find the gold where it’s marked on there. . . .’
    Jason felt sick with a sickness of disgust, a hopeless, dead nausea. Voy was, after all, only the agent of those who feared him. At Voy’s hands they had set a bowl of cold, rotting tripes before him, and now watched to see him eat it.
    The crowd drifted away. Jason said bitterly, ‘I thought you were my friend.’
    Old Voy looked at him for a while, as if trying to find words. Jason thought: He is mean and weak. He pretends to himself that he’s a gentleman-adventurer, but he’s only a