I was very interested in Mrs. Fenny. I liked to see her sitting with her Bible on her lap tracing the lines with her finger and moving her lips. I wondered why she did this for I knew she could not read.

I loved to sit on a pile of rope with its tang of seaweed and listen to the waves while I looked out to sea and I would think of the men who had gone off into the unknown to explore the world … men like Drake and Raleigh. I would imagine the sails fluttering in the breeze and the bare-footed sailors running hither and thither while I strode the sloping decks, shouting orders. I imagined Spanish galleons, full of treasure; sending out raiding parties, bringing them in and taking the treasure back to England. I was constantly losing myself in daydreams. I was often Raleigh or Drake. Those dreams were difficult because I had to change my sex; but there were others in which I indulged with even greater frequency. I would be Good Queen Bess knighting these men. That was better. I could see myself very well as the great Queen. Three thousand dresses and a red wig and power … glorious power. Sometimes I was Mary Queen of Scots, going to her execution. I made touching speeches on the scaffold and there was not a dry eye near me. The executioner was so touched that he refused to cut off my head. One of my ladies, who worshiped me, insisted on taking my place. We tried to stop her but she insisted. And then … I pretended to be her … until some gallant man came and rescued me. We lived in happy security to a great age and no one ever discovered that I was the Queen because everyone thought I had been executed in Fotheringay Castle.

Such dreams were more real to me than what was happening about me. This was before that terrible time in St Branok Pool. After that I changed. I dared not indulge in daydreams then in case they led me back to the pool.

Cador was about a quarter of a mile out of the two towns of Poldorey. We were on a hill looking out to sea. It was very splendid with its towers and turrets and its gray stone walls which had stood against the sea and the weather for hundreds of years—a fortress if ever there was one. One could lie in bed at night and listen to the wind playing about those stone walls—sometimes shrieking like a madman, sometimes whining like an animal in distress; sometimes shrill, sometimes melancholy. It had always fascinated me before that encounter; after that I hated the sound of the wind. It was like a warning.

There was a richness about life in those days. I was vitally interested in everything about me. “Miss Angel’s nose b’ain’t what you’d call a big ’un,” was Mrs. Penlock’s verdict, “but it be into everything.”

I loved the little cottages with their whitewashed cob walls all huddled together on the quay. If ever I had a chance to get inside I seized it. I would go visiting with my mother at Christmas when we took gifts to the cottage folk in accordance with the custom of years. Those homes of the poor consisted of two dark rooms divided by a partition not as high as the roof which I understood was to allow the air to circulate. Some of the cottages had a talfat, a sort of shelf close to the ceiling, and here the young would sleep, climbing up by means of a rope ladder. The only light was what they called the Stonen Chill—an earthenware lamp in the shape of a candlestick having a socket in which they would pour oil before inserting the purvan, the local name for the wick.

The woman of the house would dust a chair for my mother to sit on, and I would stand beside her, eyes wide, noting everything and listening to the talk about how our Jenny was getting on as maid up at the rectory or when our Jim was expected home from sea. My mother knew their business. It was part of the duties of the lady of the big house.

There was always a smell of food in the cottages. They kept the fires going with the wood they picked up from the beach. I loved the blue flames which they said was due to the salt in the wood and betrayed the fact that it had been salvaged from the sea. Most of them had cloam ovens in which they did their baking, while a kettle, black with soot, hung on a chain over the flames.

They had a different language from ours, I often thought, but I learned it. They ate different foods such as quillet which was a mixture of ground peas rather like a porridge and there was pillas, a kind of oatmeal which they boiled into a mixture called gurts. My mother told me that in the last century when these people were very poor they used to pick the grass and roll it in a pastry made of barley and bake it under the ashes.

They were more prosperous now. My mother frequently pointed out to me that my father was a good man who looked on it as his duty to see that no one in his neighborhood should starve.

The poor fishermen depended so much on the weather, and the winds on our coast could be violent. A certain melancholy descended on the Poldoreys when the knowledgeable predicted fierce winds and storms which would keep the boats idle. Of course, sometimes these appeared without warning and that was what fishermen and their families dreaded most. I heard one fisherman’s wife say: “He do go out and I never knows as whether he’ll be coming back.” I thought that was very sad. It was the reason why they were so superstitious. They certainly looked all the time for signs and portents—mostly evil ones.

The members of the mining community were the same. The moor began about two miles from the town and close to the moor was Poldorey’s tin mine. It was affectionately known as the old “Scat Bal” which meant useless, worked-out old has-been. It was far from that for it had brought prosperity to the community. We were on visiting terms with the Pencarrons who lived in a pleasant house close by, called Pencarron Manor. They had come to the district some years ago, bought the place and started working the mine.

The superstitious miners used to leave a didjan, which was a piece of their lunch, in the mine for the knackers in order to placate them and stop their wreaking some mischief which was very easy to do in the mine. There had been some fearful accidents and there were several widows and orphans who had lost their breadwinner to the old Scat Bal. They, like the fishermen, took notice of signs. They could not afford to ignore them.

“They are naturally fearful,” said my mother. “One understands it. And if it means giving up a little of their lunch in order to buy safety this is a small price to pay for it.”

I was very curious to hear more of the knackers. They were said to be dwarves—spirits of those Jews who had crucified Christ. My mother did not believe in them. It was easy for her. She did not have to go down the mine. But she was very interested in superstitions.

She said: “How they would laugh at us in London. But here in Cornwall they do seem to fit sometimes. It’s the place for spirits and strange happenings. Look at the legends there are … all the wells that give special qualities … all the stories of the piskies and the unexplained mysteries. And then, of course, there is Branok Pool.”

“Oh yes,” I said, round-eyed and eager, “tell me about Branok Pool.”

“You must be careful when you go there. You must always have Miss Prentiss or someone with you. The ground’s a bit marshy round the pool. It could be unpleasant.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It’s an old story. I think some of the people round here actually believe it. They’d believe anything.”

“What do they believe?”

“That they hear the bells.”

“Bells? What bells?”

“The bells that are supposed to be down there.”

“Where? Under the water?”

She nodded. “It’s a ridiculous story. Some say that the pool is bottomless. In that case, where could the bells get to? They can’t have it both ways.”

“Tell me the story of the bells, Mama.”

“What a child you are! You always want to know everything.”

“Well, you said that people should try to learn as much as they can.”

“Of the right things.”

“Well, this is one of them. This is history.”

“I’d hardly call it that.” She laughed and put a lock of my hair behind my ear for it had fallen out of the grip of the ribbon which was meant to be holding it back. “Long ago, it is said, there was an abbey there.”

“What! In the water?”

“Not in the water then. That came after. At first when they built the Abbey they were all very good men, very religious; they spent their time praying and doing good works. It was when St Augustine brought Christianity to Britain.”

“Oh yes,” I urged, fearing it was going to stray into a history lesson.

“People came from far and wide to visit the Abbey and they brought gifts with them. Gold and silver, wines and rich foods, so that instead of being poor the monks all became rich. And then they took to evil practices.”

“What were those?”

“They loved their food. They drank too much; they had wild parties; they danced and did all sorts of things which they had never done before. Then one day a stranger came to the Abbey. He brought them no rich gifts. He just went into their church and preached to them; he told them that God was displeased. They had turned their beautiful Abbey, built to serve Him, into a den of iniquity, and they must repent. But the monks by this time were too much in love with their way of life to give it up, and they hated the stranger for warning them. They told him to leave without delay and if he did not go they would drive him away. He would not go and they brought out whips and sticks which in the past they had used to chastise themselves which was supposed to make them holier—though I could never see why. They turned on him and beat him, but the blows just glanced off his body and did not harm him at all. Then suddenly a great light surrounded him. He lifted his hands and cursed St Branok’s. He said: ‘Once this place was considered holy, but now it is accursed. Soon it shall be as though it never existed. Floods shall carry it away from human sight. Your bells will be silenced … save when they shall proclaim some mighty disaster.’ And with that he disappeared.”