Free Coromandel! by John Masters

found an hour to come here. He had asked her to bring a book and teach him to read. She had, and had shown him the letters of the alphabet. Then she had read aloud to him from the book, but haltingly, for the words were long and strange. It was a book about a man’s travels in foreign countries, and as he lay listening he thought: When we marry we’ll have to go away to escape Sir Tristram’s anger. He saw her standing on the deck of the ship, her lips parted and her pale red hair streaming out behind her in the wind. They would search over the rim of the world for all marvels, for whales, cachalots, and dolphins, for flying fish and the magic lights turning in the waves under the ship.
    But she stopped reading soon, and, when he began to talk longingly of those voyages as if they were reality, she shook her head impatiently and wanted to be told about ferrets and fitchews and how to set a snare, and she told him that he smelled of the farm, and reminded him that she could marry anyone she chose, even the King’s son, because she was Jane Pennel--but before the reading, when they first saw each other under the trees, she hadn’t thought of how he smelled or what he wore, but only ran breathlessly into his arms. The making love ended her love, but began his.
    He came to the edge of the pasture, where he had killed the fox. The manor hedge was fifty yards ahead in the darkness, and the rain dripped off the homespun hood he wore on his head. The hounds knew him, because each time she came to the spinney she had pretended to be walking two of them, and--they’d cocked their big heads and whimpered while he kissed her.
    He crossed the field, slipped through the hedge, and worked past the outhouses until he stood under the wall of the manor. He’d been here once or twice, but at the side door, waiting with a basket of eggs or a ham that the Pennels had bought from his father. The house was built all of new small bricks, and the windows had many leaded glass panes. It looked new, raw, and ungainly, but he thought it must be comfortable inside. Once, when Jenny the serving maid opened the door to him, he had seen only the big kitchen. Another time the door beyond the kitchen had been open, and through there it was different from anything he had ever seen. There was oak panelling in big carved squares from floor to ceiling, and tapestries hanging, and a whiff of beeswax polish coming out over the smell of cooking in the kitchen, and he had seen a table with carved legs, and two big globes standing on it, and through there the floor was made of little oblong wooden blocks. Then Jenny gave him a saucy remark and he had to slap her round buttocks, and someone shut the inner door.
    He found the small window open, as Jane had promised, and climbed through it. Now he had to remember what she had told him. The staircase was on his right, and directly opposite him the great hall and fireplace. On his left there was a passage with two rooms leading off it. That passage ended in the door he’d seen from the kitchen. One of the two rooms was a store chamber, and the other a room full of books.
    He was a little early. Perhaps Jane wouldn’t be expecting him yet. Perhaps her tirewoman was still hanging round before going through the upstairs door which divided the Pennels’ rooms from the servants’.
    Thousands of books, she’d said.
    He turned left and carefully opened the second door. A faint beam of light fanned out in the widening gap as he opened it, and in fright he held his hand steady. Hugo might be in there--but Hugo didn’t do much reading, and Sir Tristram was visiting Lord Henry in Admiral. He peered cautiously round the door. The room was empty. The light was coming in through the windows from the carriage lantern that hung over the front door of the manor. He slipped into the room and closed the door behind him.
    There were the books. His heart bumped loudly. There was a smell of paper and leather, and the rows of leather