Coromandel! by John Masters Page B

damned old fool! He was helpless. Perhaps he’d never been to London or seen the sea, and didn’t know what a sailor was any more than Jason himself did! But that didn’t mean the map was useless! There were plenty of ways a man like Voy could come into possession of a real, true map. But the man himself was no good. Jason had depended on him and told himself he could do nothing without Voy’s help. But he’d have to.
    He said abruptly, ‘Thank you. I’ll find my way. Good-bye.’ Old Voy sighed and pressed a sack into his hands. It was the one he always wore over his shoulder. ‘Take it,’ he said, ‘and when you fill it with the treasure of Meru, remember old Speranza Voy.’
    Jason crept out under the branches and ran full tilt down the slope towards his father’s farm.
    Time was passing, but he hardly thought about that. Had the hue and cry been at his heels, he could not have left out one of these last visits. He scrambled quickly in through his window, gathered his sling, his book, his map, and his last few shillings, and stuffed them all into the sack Voy had given him. Now he had two books, one full of writing and one full of pictures. He had found the first muddied in the road, and the second he had just stolen from Pennel Manor. Perhaps it would be all right to think Jane had given it to him.
    He went silently into Molly’s room and bent over to awaken her. She had heard him and was awake. For the third time he said, ‘I’ve killed Hugo Pennel. I’m going to London to take ship for Coromandel.’
    Molly was calm, but that did not surprise him. He had expected her to be. She said, ‘Can I come with you? Are they after you yet?’
    He said roughly, ‘No,’ and, ‘No,’ and, ‘Good-bye, Moll.’ For a moment they clung together like lovers. (But there must be a woman in the world for him who was not his sister.) He broke away.
    As he reached the door she said, ‘Wait! Which way are you going to London?’
    He had no idea. He said, ‘Pewsey, I suppose.’
    She said, ‘That’s the straight road. They’ll be looking for you there. Don’t go that way. Go across the Plain to Amesbury and up from there. As soon as you’ve gone I’ll put on some of your clothes, take the mare, and ride through Pewsey, and on until I’m caught.’
    Jason said, ‘But they’ll say--‘
    She leaped out of bed and whispered furiously, ‘Will you go away and do what you’re told, you helpless booby? And as soon as I can, I’ll run away too. I told you I would. Oh, Jason!’ Again she clung to him, then broke away with a violent jerk and turned her back.
    All that she had said, both then and all their lives, stayed a long time with him as he hurried south through the rain.
    For a time he would be safe on the open Plain, especially in this darkness. He climbed fast and did not look back until he was near the crest, where the hummocked circle of Shrewford Ring dominated the slope. His father’s farm was the nearest building to him then, and he saw a faint point of light in that direction, and knew that Sir Tristram’s men had reached the farm to look for him. He watched the light for a minute and wondered whether he ought to be thinking of his father, and whether Molly had got away to carry out her plan. The rain was only a thin spatter now, and, because he knew it so well, he could see the vale spread out below him like a quilt, and fit each field into its place, and name each pouring copse, and hear the rain on every roof, all known, all unseen. He turned again.
    He stretched his legs and swung on with long strides. There were no hedges or ditches to worry about on the Plain, only the rabbit holes, and usually you could see them by the whitish blur of the chalk the rabbits threw out in digging them. The wind veered steadily from west to north-west, the rain stopped, and it became colder. Clouds hurried close above, low over the long roll of the Plain, and the wet grass shimmered like a mist about his feet. Some