sake.”
“Sabrina, is it?” he asked, moving away from the barn. A big man, taller even than Captain Barclay, broad of chest and shoulders, he added, “Have you seen the boy?”
“He was asleep,” I said. “But I was told he had his father’s eyes.”
The elder Morton digested that. “That would be my wife’s,” he said after a moment. “Pale as winter ice.”
His own were hazel, his hair still fair but thickly interlaced with gray. There must have been some English blood in the Morton family, because the Welsh were as a rule dark.
“I never met your son,” I said. “But I’ve known Sabrina since she was a child.”
He ignored me. “Will’s son ought to be brought up here, where he belongs. Not in England. I told his mother that. I offered her a home as well. My wife died in the Spanish flu, there’s no one to do for us. It would be a kindness to come and take her place.”
I could see what he meant, that there was no one to feed the chickens or cook the meals or do the family’s washing, mending, or marketing. I couldn’t imagine Sabrina fitting into this world. I could understand why she had chosen Fowey instead.
But I could also understand this man’s needs. He had a farm to keep going without his sons, and the house needed a woman in it.
I said, “Are your other sons married?”
“My namesake, Ross, had a wife. She died of childbed fever, and the babe with her. A pretty little thing, but with no strength to live.”
“Where is Ross now?”
“Drowned off the coast of Ireland when his ship went down. The Huns never tried to save the men. The surprise was, they didn’t machine-gun them in the water. It’s done, I’m told. Will’s dead, but you know that, if you saw Sabrina. David’s lost a leg and sits in his room, staring at nothing. The girl he was to marry didn’t want a cripple. The twins are in France somewhere, and they write when they can. But I never know from day to day if they’re alive or dead. Llewellyn’s in hospital in Suffolk and not right in his head, nor ever will be, they’re saying. Shell shock. Only Will has a son. And this farm once had seven.”
I’d been counting with my fingers behind my back. Ross, the elder, the namesake. Will. David who lost his leg. The twins. Llewellyn in Suffolk. That made six.
“You had seven sons?” I asked gently. “Is the last also among the dead?”
Ross Morton shifted. “That’s Hugh,” he said. “Nine months younger than Will and a hothead into the bargain. The image of his mother’s own Da. The one who went down the mines and lived to tell about it. A fighter he was. Mary’s father. I never quite got my mind around that boy. I couldn’t see how he could be so much like his grandda, and so unlike me.”
You could almost imagine him questioning the boy’s paternity, something he must have done a thousand times over the years. And yet somehow I had a feeling he’d never doubted his wife.
“A changeling,” he said, finally, as if in echo of my own thoughts. “They used to talk about that. The old ones. I never put much stock in it, until Hugh. And then I knew it could be true enough. I just don’t know how he got to be in the Morton cradle.”
“But you said-Hugh’s alive still? Along with David and the twins and Llewellyn?”
Morton took a deep breath. “They tell me he’s missing. There was the telegram saying at first that he was dead. And then a letter from his commanding officer to say he was among the missing after a push that was repelled. I don’t understand why they couldn’t find him. Do you?” He swung around to stare at Captain Barclay, as if he were to blame for the confusion. “Hugh wouldn’t be easy to kill. And he wouldn’t care to be penned up behind a fence in a prison camp. It would drive him mad. He was always a roamer, Hugh was, and I can’t see the Army changing that. Why haven’t they found my son?”
I could hear again the little boy telling us that his father had lost his head and had been buried without it.
The Captain was saying, “It’s not so easy. There’s shelling before an assault, and then there’s the attack across No Man’s Land. Men die, they’re shot, they’re blown apart, they’re wounded and fall into a shell hole where the body may not be found for days. No certainty, you see. The sergeant calls the roll and no one answers. And no one saw him fall. If he hasn’t already been taken behind the lines to be treated for wounds, they can only wait and see if he turns up. He could even be a prisoner. If he is, word comes back after a time, and his status is changed. I’m sorry. But that’s how it is.”
“A damned poor way to run a war, if you don’t know where your own men are,” Morton said contemptuously. “While families sit and wait for news, and none comes. At least not any good news.”
He turned back to me. “Do you think Sabrina might want to come and bring up the boy here? For Will’s sake?”
“I don’t know,” I said, wishing fervently that I hadn’t raised false hopes with my invented reason for coming here. “Perhaps if you write to her again?”
“I wrote once. I’m not likely to write again.” I could hear the stiff-necked pride in his voice. He’d offered his home and all he had to Will’s widow. There was nothing more to say.
He couldn’t understand as I could that Sabrina had been brought up in a very different world. She would break here, on this farm, cooking and cleaning and washing for the men of the house. With no hope of escape, no chance for a life of her own. And yet I could see that a boy could run wild here when not at his lessons or doing the everyday tasks assigned to him, and grow up as his uncles did. Compared to that narrow little hotel in Fowey where no one came on holiday now because of the war, with the danger of drowning not far from the door, it offered much.
I said, “I think perhaps your son’s death is still a shock to her. To Sabrina.”
“She has a son to care for,” he said stubbornly. “My grandson. He may be too young to know or care now, but one day he’ll want to see where his father came from, and it’s likely there’ll be none of us left to tell him. If this war goes on for much longer and they’re all dead, I won’t see any reason to stay.”
He nodded toward his cows. “I have them to milk and feed. I don’t have time to give over to wishful thinking. I’ll bid you good day, Sister. Captain.”
And he walked past us, calling to his cows. They formed a line as tidy as any drawn with a rule, and followed him into the barn.
Captain Barclay nodded to me and I turned the motorcar to drive away.
As I did so, I happened to see, in an upper window of the farmhouse, the thin, drawn face of the son who’d lost his leg.
I’d seen too many like him to have high hopes for his survival. If there was no gun in the house, there was always the shallow stream or any of a number of ways to end the pain.
I was torn between wishing Hugh Morton was not a murderer and would come home to his father, and thinking that if Hugh took after his mother, as Will did, then he too had those pale, pale eyes.
Captain Barclay said as we once more drove over the narrow little bridge, “Hugh’s alive. His father doesn’t want to hope. And there’ve been no letters. But he believes Hugh is too much like his grandfather to have been killed so easily by the Germans.”
And I had, reluctantly, to agree with him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THAT EVENING, AFTER the motorcar had been returned to its proper place and I’d thanked Dr. Gaines for the use of it, I went up to my room and began a letter home to my mother.
It was very simple, my letter.
I told her that Simon was steadily improving and that meanwhile I’d enjoyed a picnic with Captain Barclay.
I never mentioned going to Wales. I wrote that it was sad to hear that Will’s brother was missing and that there was still no news of him all these weeks since it was reported.
It would suffice to inform my father of what I had discovered.
After I’d set my letter in the basket for the morning post, I went back to my room and sat by the window, looking out into the night. There were three people dead. All I could be certain of was that the same man had killed
