Penhallow Amid Passing Things by Iona Datt Sharma

Author:Iona Datt Sharma [Sharma, Iona Datt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Iona Datt Sharma

(This is where Penhallow lives: in the town that bears her name, yes, and in a house maintained by its rents and tithes. But simple, nevertheless. It’s a fine name with much to recommend it, but its finery is not in the stripped-wood beams, the ewers and plain cloths. It is in its antiquity, and its hospitality. Because—as Penhallow will have to explain to Merryn in due course—this is not the first time the Revenue have been invited under this roof. They have taken the bread and ale due to them as an honourable foe, and come and gone in peace.

That, Merryn will say, is quite a different thing.)

Penhallow is climbing the wooden stairs with a lantern held in both hands. At the top, in a darkened room, Trevelyan turns from the window with a smuggler’s moon high and proud behind her.

A hush descends, though there is no silence here that is not underscored by the sound of the sea.

“I hear you take orders, Trevelyan,” Pen says. “Take off your coat.”

Trevelyan steps away from the diamond panes. The brushed, heavy wool lands on the bed.

“And your boots.”

A thump, then another.

Next, the undone cuffs; the shirt and the buttons; breeches; everything beneath. The dagger. Her throat and wrists are bare without the insignia of the Crown. When only moonlight remains, Pen sets the lantern by her feet so the shadows are enormous. Trevelyan stands upright, always—through this as everything.

For a moment, Penhallow wants to make her kneel. She’s played that game with other women, women she’s liked, who would have laughed and done it. But for Trevelyan it would be an obscenity to countenance.

(She could have saved Jackie on her own account. She could have chosen not to see what she saw, three nights ago; she could have made a promise to Pen, to make in her turn to Goody Nanskevel; and the two of them might somehow have brought the gifted boy back to his own shores, to decide for himself what might be wrought by his power. But she did not, and Pen did not ask. Trevelyan does not bend and she does not break.)

“Get on the bed,” Penhallow says. Still crisp, to be obeyed. “And make it pretty for us.”

It takes Trevelyan a moment to understand, the instant of confusion more softening to her features than any sweet nothing would be. And then they’re awash with tiny glittering lights, like fireflies at midsummer, and for all it’s a party trick it’s the loveliest thing Pen has ever seen. More so then Trevelyan herself, whose body is bones and sharp edges against Pen’s sheets, to be investigated with care for fear of being cut.

But this is what Pen wants. She checks again that it’s what Trevelyan wants. And it seems the firefly lights have a little extra magic in them; they brighten and dim in rhythm with their maker’s pitch of breathing, and Pen laughs with delight as they all go out.

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