Chapter One
Morvoren: Cornish compound name meaning mermaid or sea-maiden
Morvoren n.f morvoronyon n.pl – mermaid
The Present Day
Morvoren
Why, oh, why had she agreed to accompany Josh on this tourist seafishing trip out from Penzance? What’s more, to do it on the very last day of their holiday, when she could have been topping up her tan in the tiny garden of their holiday cottage with a good book. Not only was she feeling seasick, thanks to the little fishing boat’s diesel fumes and the strong stench of fish, but her poor heart kept doing a wild lurch every time the vessel bucked on the waves. And on top of that, she hadn’t been able to locate any lifejackets.
She’d turned to Josh on the quayside as he held his hand out to help her on board. “Where are the lifejackets? I want to be wearing one. You know how I feel about water.”
He’d laughed in his irritating way, as though she were an idiot for wanting one. “They’ll be stored down below. This is a fishing trip, not the Titanic’s maiden voyage – you’re not going to need one.” After a week of being laughed at, Morvoren was beginning to think their relationship doomed. Dumping him once they were safely home was something she was looking forward to.
Impervious to her suffering, the captain of the little fishing boat nodded his grizzled head towards the line of towering cliffs in the distance. The eyes of every shorts-clad tourist on the boat followed his pointing finger. “We’ll head inland, now. You often get small shoals of mackerel near the cliffs. It’ll be a bit rocky with this swell, but it’ll be worth it.”
Would it? Morvoren doubted it very much.
She’d only agreed to this trip because Josh had begrudgingly come on that pony trek with her. “I went riding with you, didn’t I?” he’d wheedled. “I put up with getting a sore bum on that flipping horse, just so you could live your dream and ride on a beach. You owe me big time.”
Backed into a corner, she’d said yes in a moment of foolhardy gratitude, when what she should have said wasn’t repeatable.
Not content with her agreement, he’d rubbed in his victory. “You need to face your fears, Morvoren. You’ll really love fishing and won’t even notice the water.” And his crowning argument. “Your mother named you after a mermaid, after all, and you kind of look like one, being so pretty and with all that long blonde hair.” Something he’d repeated several times already this morning as though flattery would get him places.
Ha, bloody ha.
For the hundredth time that morning, Morvoren scanned the deck and wheelhouse, searching for a locker she could fish a lifejacket out of in an emergency. Like right now. The way the little fishing boat was heaving on the considerable swell smacked her as worthy of emergency measures. Although the other half-dozen fishing tourists, who’d joined them on board an hour ago, seemed oblivious to the imminent danger of sinking. And Josh was totally ignoring her, chatting to a big bloke in a floral shirt about how to attach their smelly bait to the hooks.
What would happen if the boat capsized and sank? She, for one, would drown, because she couldn’t swim. And the reason she couldn’t swim was because water had always terrified her. So much so that she never went farther into the surf than ankle deep and suspected all waves of either harboring sharks or threatening to wash her out to sea.
Josh caught her looking at him, where he was busy unhooking a wriggling mackerel from his line, and gave her a condescending grin. “See. I told you it’d be fine. You just had to face your fear to get over it. Like those people did in that TV programme. You’re missing out on the fun just sitting there at the back on your own. Why don’t you come over here with us, and I’ll bait you a line? I told you it’d be easy to get over your silly little fears.”
Really? She’d like to have seen him have to face up to a genuine phobia.
She forced a smile onto her face. “No, thank you. I’m fine here.” Where she could hang on tight.
The engine note changed down to a gentle hum as the captain let it idle. With his sea-booted mate, he emerged from the small wheelhouse, ready to help everyone set up their lines again. They already had a good few iridescent, silvery-blue mackerel flip-flopping in the locker down the center of the boat.
“See this here cove.” He raised his deep, gravelly voice above the mingled sounds of the engine, the crashing of the waves at the cliffs’ feet, and the screech of greedy gulls overhead, eager to partake of the catch. “There’s a story about this cove. It’s been called Smuggler’s Cove for a good two hundred years, but before that, it were just Nanpean Cove.” He had everyone’s attention, even Josh’s. For a moment.
“’Tis said it’s haunted by the ghosts of the smugglers who was caught by the soldiers and revenue men an’ hanged in Bodmin gaol back in 1811. Some of them was even killed right there on that beach.” He pointed at the thin crescent of silver sand. “It were part of a county-wide clamp down on what were known back then as ‘free trade’. And this here were the biggest catch o’ free traders the revenue men ever had around these parts, with a man from ev’ry family in Nanpean village involved. A man from ev’ry family hanged.”
Only yesterday Morvoren had been in Penzance’s little museum while Josh fished off the harbor wall, and seen a whole display about smuggling. Part of it had covered this particular story, so it was fresh in her mind. Hadn’t it said twenty men had hanged and three or four were killed on the beach, with a copy of an old portrait of one of them? To take her mind off her fears, she concentrated on remembering the details.
Up close to the wheelhouse, Josh scowled in annoyance at the delay to his fishing. He hadn’t been interested in going to the museum with her yesterday, and she’d realized early in their holiday that while he was near water, unless the talk was about fish, he had the attention span of one of their brethren – a goldfish.
The captain smacked his lips in relish at the tragedy of the story. “Local legend do say there were an informer amongst the smuggler’s own ranks, and he were the only man not hanged. The local villagers rumbled him, though, and chucked him off that cliff up there on the right.” He pointed a gnarled finger. “Folks around here have never forgot their dead, an’ ’tis said the smugglers’ ghosts do walk the path up from the beach onto the moor ev’ry moonless night, the sound of their ponies’ muffled hooves an’ their quiet whispers all you’ll hear.”
“Like anyone cares,” Josh said, rather too audibly.
Ignoring his rudeness, Morvoren stared into the cove. How inviting that curve of sand looked, where it lay between the cliffs and the narrow valley up which those long-ago smugglers had been intending to lead their ponies. How quiet and peaceful. If only she were on that beach instead of here in this unstable fishing boat.
Fil Reid - Author 