The Pirate's Duty (Regent's Revenge #3)(7)
Old Bailey had traveled from Camborne through tempest and sunshine to join her this night. His legendary knowledge of the old ways and the days of the Druids was heralded from west of the Tamar River to Land’s End. And anyone within ten miles who’d heard Old Bailey was back had flocked to the Roost to hear him speak, play the fiddle, and sing old folk songs.
Oriana glanced over the crowd as Old Bailey began to tell the Legend of Tamara.
“A bad-tempered troll lived high on the moors with his beautiful daughter Tamara,” Old Bailey began. “Hatin’ the light, the troll slept by day and prowled by night, forbiddin’ Tamara to go out into daylight. But obedient daughters can be independent, curious, adventurous maidens.” He scanned the crowd slowly, pausing to get a reaction.
“One day, while her father slept, Tamara was lured outside by the bright-blue sky, the sun’s brilliant rays, the rich green moors with their silver streams, and the shimmerin’ sea,” Old Bailey continued. “There, on a hillside, two friendly young giants wrestled. She joined them on there, enjoying their company, and the next day, and the next, until she began to fall in love with the giants and the sunshine. One day, while Tamara laughed gaily with the giants, a howl of rage burst from the cave, and Tamara found her father standin’ at its mouth.
“The old troll ordered Tamara to return to the darkness. Sitting beneath the bright sun with the two handsome giants, she wept with fear, refusing to return. Her father’s anger mounted. He screamed curses no one but Tamara understood. Her blood ran cold, her limbs stiffened, and within moments, she turned into a weepin’ stone.”
Oriana scrubbed the bar counter, swallowing back a sob. Had she been cursed the way Tamara had? Her father certainly fit the troll’s description. And Oriana had been hardened like porous limestone and wept her share of tears. Like Old Bailey and Samuel, she believed in the old ways, in mermaids and sea monsters like the Morgawr off Falmouth Bay, Cornish giants, ghosts, ghouls, goblins, Old Nick, and piskies, creatures of the Druids. The bedrock beneath her feet was steeped with Celtic origins. To ignore legends and lore was the purest folly, especially when sickness hovered near and poverty and starvation were but a meal away.
Her pulse quickened. There was a lesson to be learned from Tamara’s story: those who lived in darkness could only change if they desired it. She glanced over at each of the nearly thirty men in the Roost, as well as a couple who’d arrived on the most recent jingle—a carriage that took travelers across the moors—as Old Bailey finished his tale.
“Desiring not to be parted from Tamara, the two giants willingly joined her eternal fate. Three curses. Three great granite weepin’ stones that formed Cornwall’s borders, their tears turnin’ to streams and rivers that flow all the way to the Channel.”
Among her regular customers, there were those who frequented other establishments in Looe and Polperro, three of the Seaton brothers, fishermen celebrating a successful yield, tinners who’d abandoned the mine’s dark abyss for encouraging light, and mariners who frequented the Roost to sample the prize-winning ale she brewed in the cellar. The age-old agreement between her and the fishermen present meant that she’d have fresh pilchard pies to sell and serve, and sailors would soon have pickled fish to trade.
“Another round of ale,” shouted one of her regulars. “And be quick about it!”
She put her hands on her hips and narrowed her gaze on Dobby Benellack. “You’ll get your ale when I’m good and ready to carry it over to ye and not before.”
She knew how to run the Roost. It was hers. Each rugged, twisted beam hewed from aged wood had been distorted by seawater and rock, stockpiled in the caverns below with timber that had been washed ashore from wrecked ships. Every salvaged wooden surface harbored a secret, making her yearn to be similarly saved from her past, nourished, and cherished by a man who’d pick her out of the sea and love her just as much as she loved this unholiest of places.
She picked up a rag and attacked the counter once more, wiping it down as if she could erase her family’s evil deeds by doing so.
The die has been cast. I was born a Thorpe and will always be one.
How long would it be until she didn’t have to fear who would be on the other side of a door, in a shadowed hallway, or hiding in her bedchamber? If not for Reverend Pickering and his wife, who ran Talland Church, Oriana feared what she might have become.
Without any children to call her own, Mrs. Pickering had opened a school for orphans similar to the Dame School for Girls and the Castle Street School for Boys in Looe. The school was a joint effort patronized by the Earl of Pendrim and his family, the Seatons, near Porthallow. It was there that Mrs. Pickering had latched on to Oriana, teaching her reading and mathematics.
“Oriana!” Laughter reverberated from the front of the inn as her name was called out again.
“Comin’!” She flashed a grin at Girard and O’Malley, who raised their tankards in salute, alerting her that they were ready and waiting if she needed them to intervene.
Grateful for her avenging angels, Oriana put her cynicism and wariness aside as Old Bailey and Samuel lifted their fiddles to their chins. Necks and scrolls gyrating in rhythm, the old crowder and Samuel played in harmony, forming dueling scales, parrying and redoubling as they strummed and sang “Come to My Window.”
“Begone, begone, my Willie, my Billy,