The Sleight of Heart

By Benjamin Parsons

In the middle of a quaint Cornish folk festival, Davey sees the beautiful Artemisia Parnell and immediately falls in love ...but her bullying husband stands between them. Davey defies his rival's violent threats to try to rescue his beloved, but soon discovers that rash oaths of love and revenge are more binding and dangerous than he expects. Part of the collection The Sleight of Heart and Other Stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Benjamin Parsons
• Release date: Mar 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476133379

Benjamin Parsons

I am a writer and artist from the Westcountry of England now living in London. I write and illustrate stories about love, hate, ambition, revenge, beauty, and the supernatural.

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The Sleight of Heart

by Benjamin Parsons

Copyright 2023 Benjamin Parsons. First published in 2010.

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I forgot to tell you that on the coast of Cornwall there is another little fishing town, which sports a strange but lovely curiosity. Just at the quayside, on the very edge, where the froth and scum lap against the massive stones that form the harbour for the fleet, there stands a figure, looking out over the water.

This piece of statuary has been the cause of many a misunderstanding. When dusk falls, or the sea-mists roll in, and the obscurity makes it difficult to distinguish the living from the inanimate, passing strangers have often asked the figure for directions, supposing it to be a real person; or, imagining it is about to spring into the waves, have tried to arrest it— only to discover their error on touching the adamantly cold form.

Merrymakers too, stumbling out of the public house on the front, have regularly addressed the statue, and regaled it with taunts or cheers. Some amorous drunks have made to woo it; athletic drunks have tried to climb on its back; aggressive drunks have assailed it with their fists or other weapons, and of course acquisitive drunks have attempted to steal it. But nevertheless it remains, impassive to them— and on occasion has had a sort of revenge, on just such misty evenings as I have described— once or twice an inebriated wayfarer has mistaken it for a pedestrian, and inferring that the pavement must lie that way, has staggered trustingly off the kerb into the bilge-water below.

Some say (and I suppose we must conclude that these aforementioned drinkers are chiefly responsible for the testimony) that the figure moves; others that it speaks; others that it weeps, winks, whistles, wakes up— really, there is almost no end to the talents attributed to this stationary image— and all these marks of animation are said to occur at specific times, such as sunrise, and when the tide is high, and a storm is coming.

I will not pretend to say I know for sure whether this little landmark possesses some or all of the properties ascribed to it— but I do know how it came to get there in the first place, and this you shall hear.

The town is more generally famed for something other than its harbourside monument: most people visit the place to see and enjoy the May Day festival, which is held every year and fills the narrow lanes with hordes of tourists and locals alike. The festival is a celebration of the spring, originating, perhaps, in some pagan rite; and while the modern-day tributes to the season principally involve libations of cider, lager and spirits, there yet survive a few