Busy with his own thoughts about the remainder of the day, Rowan Rover left the group alone to doze or enjoy the scenery from Princetown to Tavistock, and for most of the way up to Launceston, where they would pick up the A30 that led all the way through the Cornish countryside to their destination in St. Ives. Just after Dunterton, though, when the road crossed the River Tamar, Rowan Rover’s sectarian feelings for his home province won out over his preoccupation with his personal plans and he felt compelled to infuse the group with enthusiasm about his native Cornwall.
“Cornwall has always been a place apart,” he began. “It is surrounded on three sides by the sea and cut off from neighboring Devon by the River Tamar, which we just crossed. But the separateness is more than mere geography. Until the eighteenth century, the people of Cornwall spoke another language as well. Old Cornish is a Celtic tongue, akin to Welsh and Breton.”
Susan Cohen rolled her eyes. “Oh, God! We’re going someplace where they don’t speak English?”
“On the contrary,” said Rowan Rover, holding in his temper with a deep breath. “English is all they speak. The Cornish language died out two hundred years ago. However, other traces of the ancient culture do survive. There are dolmens and great stone circles dotting the landscape. Holy wells, remnants of a pre-Christian faith, are found all over the countryside, and in the place names and the oral tradition, you can find the remnants of the old legends. One of the legends is the tale of King Arthur.”
“Let us not forget
“What are wreckers?” asked Frances, scanning the road for hot-rodders.
“Ship wreckers,” Rowan explained. “Back in the old days, any goods washed ashore from wrecks were considered common property, so a foundering ship would bring the entire village out to congregate on the beach, awaiting the storm-tossed booty. It was inevitable that sooner or later someone got the idea of
“Nag’s Head,” murmured Elizabeth MacPherson. “That’s the name of a beach off the North Carolina coast. Apparently, the custom went to the colonies with the Cornish immigrants.”
Susan laughed. “So you’re descended from crooks?”
“Times were hard in those days,” said Rowan, ignoring the jibe. “Smugglers and wreckers made a better living than fishermen or those poor sods who worked in the Cornish tin mines. Anyhow, today we shall visit Jamaica Inn, a fabled haunt of these outlaws, and, although it isn’t on the schedule, I thought I might take you into some actual smugglers’ caves tomorrow.”
The mystery tourists looked doubtfully at each other. “Caves?” said Frances Coles.
Rowan gave her a magnanimous smile. “Yes. Won’t it be exciting?” Ignoring their uneasy glances, he went on. “Besides the tales of saints and giants, we have a few great villains as well.”
Alice MacKenzie raised her hand. “About these smugglers. Are there any precautions we ought to take?”
“They don’t do it anymore,” sighed Rowan, wondering if there were anything Americans wouldn’t believe. “That was in the eighteenth century. There aren’t any more robbers around here.”
From the driver’s seat came Bernard’s hearty laugh. “I dunno, Rowan. Have you seen the prices some of these places charge tourists?”
“I stand corrected,” said Rowan. “You will be robbed, but you will participate voluntarily, and to show for it you will have: postcards, cheaply turned-out horse brasses, souvenir key chains, and imitation shrimping nets, suitable for wall decoration.”
A few miles farther on, the scenery changed from tree-lined hills and lush green valleys to a treeless open moorland of gorse and bracken: Bodmin Moor. Bernard pulled the coach into a gravel parking lot next to a two-story gray building with a stone courtyard in front of it. “Jamaica Inn,” he announced. “Go and have lunch in the Smugglers’ Bar.” Turning to Elizabeth, he whispered, “The gift shop is right next door.”
“Oh, goody!” said Elizabeth, snatching up her purse.
“That’s right,” snapped Rowan. “Go and buy some horse brasses and Old Cornish tea towels!”
Elizabeth made a face at him. “I like shopping.”
“Well, don’t be too long about it,” said Rowan to the rest of the group. “After lunch, if anyone fancies a walk, I’ll take you to Dozmary Pool, and tell you the story of Jan Tregeagle.”
The tour members were delighted with the white-lettered inscription painted above the doorway to the old coaching inn: THROUGH THESE PORTALS PASSED SMUGGLERS, WRECKERS, VILLAINS, AND MURDERERS. BUT REST EASY… T’WAS MANY YEARS AGO.
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” muttered Rowan Rover, as he watched his charges taking each other’s pictures beneath the inscription.
He allowed them half an hour in the red-carpeted Smugglers’ Bar, with its ancient wooden tables and exposed beams hung with kettles and old pewter tankards. The group ate ploughmen’s lunches of bread, cheese, and pickles, or Cornish pasties, washed down with ale. Rowan himself wolfed down a pasty and a pint of bitter before escaping outside to smoke in the cobblestone yard. He savored a quarter of an hour’s solitude, before routing the group out for the afternoon hike.
Susan squinted at the bright noonday sunlight in the inn yard. “How far is it to this stupid pond?” she demanded. “I bought some postcards and I need to get them written.”
“Oh, perhaps a mile,” said Rowan, halving the actual figure on the theory that distance is a state of mind. “There is a connection between this pool and our next stop, Roche Rock. Incidentally, according to legend, Dozmary Pool is the home of the Lady of the Lake, and it is from there that King Arthur received the sword Excalibur.”
“Let’s go,” said Maud Marsh, swinging her cardigan over her shoulder. Thus shamed into obedience, the little group trudged off behind her.
As they crossed the busy A30 to the narrow lane that led to the pool, Rowan Rover began his tale of Cornwall’s legendary villain. “Bodmin Moor is haunted, ladies and Charles, by the spirit of Jan Tregeagle. Whether or not he sold his soul to the devil, I cannot say, but it is beyond question that a local magistrate of that name actually existed in the early seventeenth century. They say he murdered his family and seized the estates of defenseless orphans, but he took pains to bribe the local priests and got himself buried in consecrated ground. Not that it did him much good.” Rowan Rover paused, thinking of his own recent promises to the Deity. He put the parallel firmly from his mind.
“Was he murdered?” asked Elizabeth hopefully.
“No, but after the life he led, he hadn’t a hope of heaven. Anyhow, they say he was called back from the dead to testify in a court case that he had participated in when he was alive. He sat there in court with the smell of the charnel house clinging to his shrunken features and he testified that he had swindled the litigants in the case. The judge decided the matter and dismissed the participants, but Tregeagle remained in court. The man who summoned the ghost said that he considered Tregeagle a problem for the court. And he left.”
“I suppose they summoned an exorcist?” said Kate, who was reminded of yet another movie moment.
Rowan glanced around at the party. They all seemed to be keeping up reasonably well. No one seemed out of breath. Still, he slowed his pace, knowing that there was more than a mile to go. “They called in the clergy,” he said. “And those learned gentlemen decided that their duty was to save Jan Tregeagle from Hell, and that the only way to accomplish that was to give his ghost a task that would keep him occupied for all eternity. They gave him a broken shell and commanded him to empty Dozmary Pool. In order to keep him at his task, they set a pack of demon hounds to watch over him, ready to attack if he stopped bailing.”
“But the pool is still there?” asked Charles, smiling. “Has old Jan emptied much of it?”
“No. Legend has it that a great storm frightened him one night, and he took off across Bodmin Moor, with the devil hounds in hot pursuit. He made it to Roche Rock, a holy place about seven miles west of here. We shall be going there next. They say that he got his head into the window of the clifftop chapel, but his body would not fit through, and the hounds tore at him constantly.”
“There’s a mystery by Mary Stewart called
