Page 10 of A Castaway in Cornwall
“Well.” She huffed. “I hope you and Miss Chegwin can manage it yourselves, Laura, for I am going to bed. And I don’t want Eseld in here either. Don’t enlist her aid in nursing a strange man. Understood?”
Mrs. Bray turned to go but tossed over her shoulder, “For all we know he might be dangerous.”
Seeing there was nothing else they could do for the man presently, Laura sent Miss Chegwin home to sleep, and asked Newlyn to sit with the patient while she helped her uncle lay out the bodies for burial. She promised to relieve the girl in a few hours’ time.
Newlyn reluctantly agreed but moved the chair near the fire and far from the man, eyeing him warily, as though at any moment he might leap up and grab her by the throat.
Upon reaching the beach, her uncle paid the sexton and afew local men to carry the bodies to his cart and deliver the morbid load to St. Enodoc.
The small chapel was one of three churches in the parish and the nearest to the wreck site. It had become partially buried by sand dunes over the years and was no longer regularly used for divine services. Burials, however, continued. To enter the churchyard, one passed through a roof-covered lych-gate with its solitary slab or “coffin rest,” used to lay out a single body before burial. But in cases like a shipwreck, with many sailors to be buried, they carried the bodies to the sexton’s shed beyond the west hedge instead.
Reaching the shed, they hung a lantern high on a hook to illuminate the space and aid them in their work, and then laid the poor souls on the floor. Some of the victims had been badly battered by the rocks, while others looked as though they were simply asleep. Several had lost their shoes and coats or had them taken by wreckers.
Years ago, when she’d first seen a woman pulling boots from a drowned man, she’d been shocked and offended. Her uncle had calmed her, saying, “He won’t need them where he’s going. And she has six growing sons and not enough money to keep one well shod, let alone a half dozen.”
But Uncle Matthew had been the one surprised when Laura offered to help after a wreck. Overworked as he always was, he’d agreed. She found the experience sad but not devastating. Perhaps it was because she was a physician’s daughter who had seen the injured and dead on many occasions in her childhood, or possibly because she felt she could be of service to her uncle and, in a small way, to the recently departed.
Even though she knew anything of value had probably already been taken from them, she always looked for any identifying possession or mark that might remain. If there weresurvivors who could identify the dead, she recorded their names—her uncle was a horrid speller. And if there were no survivors, she wrote down brief descriptions of each victim, in case some loved one came to inquire after the bodies had been buried.
On naval ships, officers could often be identified by their uniforms. Even on a merchantman, the captain might wear a distinctive coat with epaulets. But the mates, carpenters, and ordinary seamen were far more difficult to classify.
Now she knelt beside each man, once again looking inside garments and pockets and writing descriptions:
Man aged 40–45. Grey hair. Green eyes. Rotund. Still wearing apron.The cook?
Man aged 25–30. Black hair. Browneyes. Strawberry birthmark on his left brow. Initials T.O. inside his waistband and the collar of his shirt.
Laura paused.T.O.?The letters struck a chord. Were they his initials or something else? The answer tickled at the back of her mind. Surely it didn’t signify what she thought it might. She tucked the suspicion away for later and moved on.
Boy aged 13–15. Red hair. Blue eyes. Freckles.
Tears blurred her vision as she wrote the words. So young. Thinking of his mother, wherever she was, Laura’s heart ached, and she tenderly closed the boy’s eyes.
When she had finished the list, Laura rose and handed it to her uncle.
“Thank you, my dear.” He prayed over the men, asking God to have mercy on their souls, and then they spread a cloth over each body. They kept the cloths in the sexton’s shed for just this purpose and, sadly, had used them several times.
“Eight men and one boy.” Two less than she’d seen on the ship, though she might have miscounted.
He nodded. “The shroud maker shall be busy tomorrow.”
He locked the shed behind them, to protect the bodies from further harassment, and the two started home together.
Driving away from St. Enodoc, Laura thought back to her first Sunday in the parish. She recalled her amazement at seeing her uncle lowered through the roof of the partially buried church, and her disapproval of the boisterous behavior of those gathered on the nearby mound. It had certainly not been the reverent atmosphere of a divine service she had come to expect. Mrs. Bray had accused her of looking as if she’d eaten a sour Italian lemon and cautioned her against criticizing traditions she knew nothing about. Eseld, however, had taken her hand and gently defended the strange custom, explaining that the vicar was required to conduct a service there at least once a year to maintain tithing rights and consecration.
Now, as they traveled back in the cart, Laura felt a little embarrassed to think of how naïve, and yes, judgmental, she had been as a sheltered youth. She still struggled to understand her Cornish neighbors, but she had grown rather fond of many of them. Even though her uncle had been new to the parish of St. Minver too, he had been born and raised in Cornwall, and so was not seen as an incomer. He had endured the strange new experiences with his usual patient stoicism. Dear Uncle Matthew. Always so kind and patient with her as well. At the thought, a wave of affection washed over Laura, and she laid her head on his shoulder for the rest of the journey.
When they reached Fern Haven, a vaguely familiar man came riding up the road. “You go in, Laura,” her uncle said. “I’ll just have a quick word with Mr. Hicks first.”
Laura nodded, too tired to argue.
Returning to her room physically and emotionally exhausted, she stripped off her damp pelisse, unpinned her front-fasteninggown, and wriggled it off her hips. Then she loosened and stepped from her damp petticoat, removed her half boots, and yanked off her sodden stockings. Finally, dressed in her mostly dry shift and stays, she washed her hands, wrapped her dressing gown around herself, and tiptoed to the guest room to ask Newlyn to unlace her stays, and to see how their patient fared.
Quietly opening the door, she found Newlyn asleep, slumped in the chair, and the fire burned to embers. The man, she quickly saw, was shivering again, his lips blue by candlelight.
She pulled the cold warming pan from under the bedclothes and carried it to the fire, quickly filling it with smoldering embers. She wrapped it in the flannel and slipped it between sheet and blankets, safely away from the man’s legs. Then she bent to add more fuel to the fire, poking it back to life.
“Newlyn,” she whispered, gently shaking the girl’s shoulder.
