Coromandel! by John Masters Page A

came to the Bowchers’ cottage, grasped the ivy firmly--on the left-hand side--and began to climb. He flung himself headlong across the gap, easily reached her window, and climbed in. He moved strongly and felt more alive than ever before. He had made no sound, and now he bent over the bed and shook her by the shoulder.
    She awoke slowly, stertorously, unafraid. No one was going to harm her in her cottage, or ever had. She was different on the Plain or in an unknown place. Then she’d jump and scream if thistledown came on the wind to touch her cheek.
    She said, ‘Who is it?’
    ‘Jason.’
    She said, ‘Jason! You never said you were coming tonight.’
    He said, ‘I’ve killed Hugo Pennel. They’ll be after me soon. I’m going to Coromandel. Will you come with me?’
    After a time, when she sat quiet in the darkness, she said, ‘I can’t marry you now, Jason. I promised myself to George Denning--this very day. I Waited for you, and--I did right, didn’t I, Jason?’
    Jason said, ‘Yes.’
    She’d be happy. George Denning was a good man, a slow, bull-like fellow a year or two older than Jason. Everyone had thought Mary was surely going to marry him until she ran off after Jason. George had just waited.
    She was sitting up in the little bed, and the warmth in her strong fingers steadied him. She said, ‘How will you get to-- that place?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but I will. I’ll go and ask Voy. He said I had to take a ship from London. I must go, Mary.’
    She stood up and took him in her arms with an extra--ordinary strength of longing, and he hugged her in a passion of affection. ‘Good-bye,’ he muttered. ‘Remember me.’
    He slipped over the sill and down the ivy. Looking up for the last time, he could see nothing in the dark and the rain, nothing at all.
    He headed east, a little higher up the hill than would lead directly to the farm. Old Voy was living these days in Bellman’s Hollow, a clump of small firs that filled a round dip in the downward slope of the Plain.
    At the edge of the wood Jason softly called Voy’s name. There was no light, no sound but the drip of the rain, and Jason had a sudden moment of panic lest Voy should not be here. He had to see Voy; Voy had sold him the map; Voy knew about ships and sailors and Aleppo and Rome. Without Voy’s help now, it was hopeless to think he could reach Coromandel.
    But Voy answered quietly from close by, and they went together under the dripping boughs into the tiny shelter that Voy had made himself among the firs.
    Jason said, ‘I was with Jane Pennel, and I killed Hugo. I’m going to Coromandel. You said the ships go to Coromandel from London. Tell me quick, where are the ships in London? How can I get passage on one, without money? I’m not a sailor.’
    Voy was rummaging about in his larder. He lived like a shrike, and Jason knew there were bits of smoked ham there in the forks of the trees, and pigeons cooked in clay and left like that till wanted, and roasted rabbit legs skewered on sharp pine twigs.
    ‘Tell me,’ Jason repeated impatiently.
    ‘In a minute. Jason, are you sure you can’t stay here? Suppose that map was no good--through nobody’s fault, mind? Then you’d have no reason to go. Could you stay? And marry Jane? I saw you in the spinney with her Tuesday.’
    For a moment Jason thought he should heed the hint in Old Voy’s voice and ask point-blank whether the map was true or false. It might still be just possible for him to go back and tell Sir Tristram the whole truth and perhaps marry Jane--but only if the beacon of Coromandel could go out for ever.
    He said, ‘No, I can’t go back. I can’t stay. Tell me how I can find a ship in London.’
    Old Voy said, ‘London, now? At the docks, boy. That’s where the ships are.’
    ‘But how can I get on board? Will they take me as a sailor?’ Old Voy said, ‘Take you as a sailor? Why, I don’t know. It depends, Jason.’
    Jason’s fingers tightened. The