Grove of Eagles

CHAPTER ONE

It was the 25th of February, 1594. The small and shabby cavalcade was dwarfed by the mountains that raised their shattered tips into an ultramarine sky. Leading the party on foot was a tall peasant called Bartolomeo. He took long steady strides, using his crooked stick as if to divine the way. On his almost shaven head he wore a wide brimmed black hat with a broad strap under the chin, and his great black cloak was wrapped tight around him against the wind.

I wished I had such a cloak for protection. The wind had blown for four days. Although the snow was ankle deep where we walked, and clutched crisply at every step with a fine powdery film misting up to our knees, most of the peaks far above us were bare. They had-been blown bare.

There were two carts in our procession, carts drawn by mules whose high wooden collars were painted with flowers, and whose shabby harness, held together with hemp and cord, was decorated with tiny bells and rosettes of vivid coloured wool. But I did not ride in them. The second cart carried produce necessary for our survival from day to day. The first carried Captain Richard Burley and Captain Juan Rodrigo Alazar, a Portuguese gentleman I had met while still at sea.

It was the 25th February, and my sixteenth birthday.

We were near Madrid.

I have never been able to remember the details of the time at sea. The ship was not Neptune as I had at one time thought but Santa Ana, a Portuguese vessel under the command of Captain Alazar, with Richard Burley acting as navigator. Captain Burley explained to me that Neptune had foundered with her prize at the time when Captain Elliot and his crew had reached Arwenack, and, needs must when the devil drives, Richard Burley had since found employment where it offered. Beggars, he said, could not be choosers. He was as full of saws as an old wife, but empty of explanation as to why they had chosen to seize me.

All the rest was plain Spain would pay well for a first-class navigator who knew the rivers and harbours of England: such were not easy to come by. Captain Alazar, a freebooter of some note and anxious to please his Spanish masters, had asked permission of them that he should be allowed to raid Pendennis. Permission was given and three engineers and twelve barrels of gunpowder were supplied to blow it up.

The attempt had failed. From the look of things on the night of my capture I did not think that the attack had been pressed home with any enthusiasm or vigour. Burley said that as well as damaging the fort they had struck across the peninsular and fired Arwenack, but from the way he told it I knew he was lying. The details were not true: this was sop to please his new masters.

I could not see that taking me back with him to rot in some dungeon or die in the galleys would ingratiate him further. I wondered if he had done it out of spite; he never spoke of my father without a gleam of venom in his eye, but he knew I was not a legitimate child and my death was not likely to bring my father in sorrow to his grave.

I had been two and a half weeks in prison in Lisbon but had been given a cell to myself and supplied with passable food and English books. Captain Alazar had visited me but had refused to comment on what my fate was to be. Then one day I was released to join this cavalcade bound for Madrid, and Burley was of the party.

We had been two weeks on the way, twice snowbound in tiny villages, huddling in a single hut and crouching about a smoky brazier for warmth. Last night we had left Talavera, and tomorrow they said we should be in Madrid.

Presently Bartolomeo called a halt and the half dozen walking peasants and the two tartanas drew in at the side of the truck in the shelter of a great rock where the wind could only stab spitefully in back eddies from the other cliff face. Here we ate a frugal midday meal, though the sun was well on its way down. And here both Burley and Alazar sat beside me eating in silence. When I had finished I took off a shoe to look at the raw blister on my heel.

Alazar said: “In Madrid you will have new boots. Those are of poor leather, they do not wear well.”

It was not his practice to say anything to me at all. I said: “Why are you taking me there?”

I certainly expected nothing in return, for I had asked the question before, but this time Alazar shrugged and glanced at Burley and said: ~

“Because, boy, you happen to be a proof of the success of our raid on Falmouth Haven. You or another would have done. But having got you, we now see you as a piece of merchandise to be disposed of in the most favourable market. See? “

“No. I don’t see …”

“For you for the galleys I could get a few reals, less than a seaman, since you are too thin and too young to last. But it has occurred to us that you may have a small value of another sort. Being who you are. It depends ...”

“On what?”

“A little on yourself. To be of value at all you must help a little. Do you wish to die?”

“Na.”

Captain Alazar took a long drink of red wine. “Well, to stay alive you must help a little.”

“What does that mean?”

He put the goblet down. “Spain and England are at war, yes? As countries, as nations. But every person is not at war with every other person. That is for the person to decide. If you have nothing but enmity in your heart for Spain and show it you will rot in a prison quick enough, and I shall wish I had left you to the overseer’s lash. But if you will take life as it comes if you will see Spain and the people in it as just people like yourself, among whom you must live and work, then it will be of more value to me, and you may not go to prison or the galleys at all. But it is for you to decide.”

I said nothing for a long time. Bartolomeo was already on his feet again, for there were only a few hours of daylight left.

“Well?” said Burley in an aggressive voice.

I said: “I have no wish to die.”

“Good. Good.”

“But I don’t know what you expect. I don’t know what you are suggesting.”

Burley’s narrow savage face quickly clouded, but Captain Alazar got up and patted me on the shoulder. “We have a proverb: ‘If you run too fast you may trip over nothing.’ Be content to greet each day with an open mind judge it as it comes. That way we all make progress.”

We reached Madrid late the next day almost as dusk was fall ing and lodged at a shabby crowded inn in the centre of the city. Five of us, including Bartolomeo, slept in a room under the eaves. Bartolomeo had still to be paid for the hire of his cart, and the next morning there was a violent and ugly argument over payment. Then there was another quarrel with the keeper of the inn. After Bartolomeo and his companions left, still grumbling and unsatisfied, Captain Alazar went out. I kept the attic all day, and Richard Burley was my companion. He seldom spoke but lay all day on one of the pallet beds picking his teeth add taking snuff and dozing. Twice he sent down for food. The first tim,e a black-eyed barefoot girl with silk bows in her hair brought it, but Burley looked at her so lewdly that she put the food down and fled, and the second time it was the innkeeper himself.

I could see very little from the tiny window. A slope of roof hid most of the narrow street, and opposite a taller building was just going up so that it cut off any view there might have been over the city. All day, except in the afternoon, there was the clank and hammer of the workmen, and somewhere below the rumble of carts and the shouts and laughter of people in the inn.

Captain Alazar came back an hour after sundown and the two men went downstairs together. I gathered that he had been trying to gain an audience with somebody and had failed.

He tried the next day and the next, and the third long vigil was lucky, for he came back heartened by his meeting, and the following morning I was taken out into a handsome square near the inn, and cloth was bought to replace my tattered suit. There were churches all round the square, and all the bells were ringing and the open space was thronged with people. Black-clad friars moved among them, and soldiers in full armour and splendid grandees. Beggars crouched at every corner and water carriers rang their own bells as counterpoint to the churches. Bargaining and argument went on over the purchase of the cloth, for Captain Alazar had no money to pay for it but only a promise of money for the morrow. As soon as the measurements were taken I was hustled back to the inn; but by evening the suit, of blue worsted yarn with a thick blue duffel for a cloak, was at the inn and I was being fitted.

The next morning was a Saturday, and the tensions between the two men showed that this was a highly important day for them.

We set off at eight, the three of us only, passed through two smaller squares, in both of which the houses were still being built, reached a third which had at its opposite side a building like a Turkish palace. The great doors were guarded by soldiers in armour, and the flanking sides of the square were given over to armouries and stables. Captain Alazar pushed his way through a crowd of sightseers and suppliants and went up to a man dressed in black velvet, who glanced at the parchment we carried and then passed it over to a guard.

Inside the palace was gloomy after the brilliant sunshine. Here and there torches burned to give light in the corridors. Passing along I got glimpses through open doors of chapels with candles burning, of soldiers eating, of monks sitting writing at a table, now and then we came out into a courtyard or passed along a gallery which had one arcaded side looking out over a fountain or a garden with statues. The guard led us into an ante-chamber hung with paintings of battle scenes, and here were a dozen other people already waiting.

We too settled to wait. We waited from a quarter before nine until a quarter after twelve. Nobody else in that time was attended to, only the number in attendance grew. Then a liveried servant came through the farther door and passed through the stirring expectant throng until he reached us. He spoke to Alazar and we followed him.

Beyond was another ante-chamber in which a man sat writing at a desk. He was tall and middle aged and his face was square and bony and discreet like a carefully closed fist. Two young pages with long black hair stood at his elbows.

Alazar said in English: “Excellency, this is the boy.”

Eyes like olives dipped in water made a very careful scrutiny of all that I was and wore. “He speaks Spanish?”

“No, your Excellency.”

“What is your name?” he asked in a harsh, accented English.

“Maugan Killigrew.”

“Whence come you?”

“Arwenack House, beside Pendennis Castle, in Cornwall.”

“You are the natural son of John Killigrew, governor of the castle? “

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell me the names of his other children.”

“His my …” I stared a moment. “The the eldest is John, who is now fourteen. Then comes Thomas, who is thirteen, then Odelia, who is who will soon be twelve. Henry is ten, will be eleven in June. Maria is four, Peter nearly three, Elizabeth is a few months old … That is all.”

“What is your mother’s Christian name?”

“I do not know, sir. I never knew who she was.”

An impatient gesture. “Your second mother. How do you put it? Stepmother.”

“Oh. Dorothy. Her maiden name was Dorothy Monck.-

The Spaniard rubbed the sleeve of his crimson velvet jacket. As he got up the pages jumped to draw back his chair. He left the room by a tiny door let into the tapestry. The pages came across to me, and their hands searched impersonally for hidden weapons.

“Who was that?”

“Senor Andres Prada:’

“Who is he?”

“Quiet, boy.”

SefSor Prada came back; I was to go with him. Alazar wanted to accompany us but the Spaniard brushed this contemptuously aside.

We went into a small room with a long window looking across the city towards the snow peaks thirty miles distant. Another man, whom I took to be a junior secretary, sat writing at a desk piled high with papers. When we had stopped moving there was no sound in the room but the scratching of his quill. He was in black; an elderly man with pale redrimmed eyes, a drawn ascetic face with a heavy under-jaw which a grey beard did not disguise. Altogether he looked less Spanish than any other I had recently seen.

I had expected he might have jumped to his feet but it was Sehor Prada who made the obeisance. I think he said: ‘This is the boy.’ One grew used to the sound of a sentence.

The elderly man said in a very good English: “You think he is bona fide?”

“Yes, sire.”

“Come here, boy.”

I took two cautious steps nearer the table.

“Know you who I am?”

“No, sir.”

The elderly man put his pen down and rubbed his knuckles together as if he was cold. The papers on his desk were elaborate lists and statistical tables, many of them annotated. “He is certainly English. It is a type I well knew once . I. Are you a Luterano, boy?”

“Sir? “

“Are you an apostate? … What they call a Protestant?”

“Yes, sir.”

A glint came into the tired eyes. “If you are to stay here that must be changed. It must be changed, Prada.”

“Yes, sire.”

“You come from a western county which, alas, I never visited but one which I always held in esteem. You are Celts and have affinities with the Irish. A sturdy, faithful stock among whom fidelity to the religion of Christ dies hard.”

“We too ” I began and stopped.

“We too?”

“No, sir,” I said, seeing danger in argument.

“Throughout England,” he said, “good and saintly people groan under the yoke. It may be that, God guiding and strengthening our hands, they shall need to wait but a short time now.”

A brilliant band of sunlight lit up the Hapsburg coat of arms on the carpet by my feet. Was this the man Ralegh had spoken about at Arwenack last Christmas twelvemonth, this quiet, clerkly, dedicated, elderly person?

“There is much unrest in England,” he went on. “Oh, I know that, boy, everyone is agreed on it. She is shaken by religious feuds to the point that many parts are on the verge of revolt. There is pestilence and other internal troubles, too. It is a judgment …”

“Your Majesty ” Prada began.

The knuckles cracked. “Tell me, boy, where is Drake, now? We have seen nothing of him these later years.”

“I think he lives near Plymouth, sir.”

“You are right. He superintends its fortifications. He works on schemes for improving its supply of water. He has been out of favour with the Queen. He grows old as we all grow old. If he came forth he would fare less well.”

“Yes, sir.” I was startled by his sharpness and his detailed knowledge.

“Yet I have information that he still yearns for adventure. I have information that the Queen is regarding him more kindly again. Knew you that?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, let him beware if he comes forth again. He will fare less well. He will find our fleets greatly changed.”

“Your Majesty,” Prada said, “the two men who brought this boy are in the next chamber and ask some reward for his capture.”

The King picked up a sheet of parchment and held it in hands of the same colour. “is it true, boy, what they say here, that they fired your castle?”

“Yes, sir,” I said after a moment. “Yes, it was the explosions that brought me from the house. Of course I do not know what damage was caused.”

“In due course we shall have word on that. Is your castle well prepared to resist invasion?”

“Yes, sir.”

“My information is that it is not. My information is that your father neglects his defences, selling the powder and shot where best he can … Prada, can you use this boy?”

“I think, sire, he may be of some value.”

The King turned the parchment over and over in his thin fingers. “Give this Portuguese a gold chain of a fair weight and quality. And grant him an annual pension of 50 ducats … The Englishman … give him 100 ducats and some employment with the fleet. He can continue to be useful in other ways.”

“Yes, sire.”

The King extended his hand, it seemed for me to kiss, and then withdrew it. There were little beads of saliva at the corners of his mouth.

“You will keep this boy in your service, Prada?”

“Yes, sire. So long as we can see use for him.”

“Then attend to his soul. At that age a course of instruction may do all that is necessary … But whatever is necessary, let it be done …”

Before we left the room the pen was scratching on the paper again.

I separated from Alazar and Burley in the middle of the following week.

Whatever the value of the reward, they were not unsatisfied with it. Alazar’s gold chain was one for which he said he could get 200 ducats anywhere. Their interest in me finished from that day. They were to hand me over on the Tuesday to Sehor Prada; I had to be there and I had to be alive, that was all. Burley was drunk all Sunday.

On the Monday while Alazar was out Burley brought back a woman and made love to her, with me in the room. It confused and frightened and troubled me as nothing else could have. This grabbing, tittering, grunting struggle between two half naked human beings almost made me sick. No one could have grown up in Arwenack ignorant of sex, but I had never seen it happen before. That this was all part of the same tender feeling that I had for Sue Farnaby, as it were the other side of a coin, seemed to darken and poison what I had thought of as true and good. The woman was stout and her flesh was white and flabby, her breasts heavy and sagging, her thighs colouredlike the underside of dead fish. They made bttle attempt to hide themselves from me, and at last I turned to stare out of the window trembling and breathless. What made the whole hour worse than insupportable was that while with part of myself I wanted to bludgeon them both to death, obliterate them as one does a disgusting slug turned up under a stone, another part of me was curious and lustful and fascinated.

I reabsed that day what the Puritans meant when they spoke of lust as an abomination and a secret blasphemy, a lechery put in men’s minds by Satan himself.

So on the Tuesday I was glad to be rid of them. Whatever the future, I was glad to see them go.

Señor Andres Prada had a small house at the corner of the great square with all the churches, the Puerta del Sol. I was put in the charge of a young man called Rodez who spoke English and I was given a garret room at the top of the house, but mercifully was to have it to myself. During the first weeks I used to look out of the window and think, well, this is one way, there is just room for me to squeeze through, and so long as I do not land on something that breaks my fall I shall die.

I learned much from Rodez; we talked much, and while he improved his English I began to pick lip a smattering of Spanish. Rodez was a nephew of Prada and was attached to the court as a page.

Prada was one of the two chief secretaries to the king. It seemed possible, Rodez said, that in time I too would become a page at the court. When I asked him why, he shrugged and said that had been decided, why should I quarrel? Would I rather have my bones stretched by the Inquisitor?

Prada spent most of his time at the Palace or escorting the King on long journeys of religious penance to the royal monastery of St Lawrence of the Escorial, a giant mausoleum to house his father’s remains which the King had just built on a spur of rock among the mountains 50 kilometres distant so Prada maintained but a small household for himself. Señora Prada was much younger than he, a tall dark, bold woman with a wanton way of speaking and dressing. Rodez also had two sisters in the household, Isabella, and Mariana, young women of twentyodd who aped Señora Prada in their manners. I had thought of Spanish women as strictly brought up, carefully chaperoned, discreet and demure. These were not; Mariana, the younger, in particular had a wild way of talking and looking and seemed to care nothing for convention or accepted behaviour. Even Father Rafael, the priest who lived with us, was unable or unwilling to curb her.

One day he called me into his little room on the second floor, which was half a study and half a cell, and began to question me as to my religious beliefs, but his English was too bad for us to make progress. After two hours, he gave me some books written in English which he said I must read and study within the week. He did not seem interested in his task, which was a relief. At table he ate and drank as heartily as the rest, and his clothes were of the finest.

Not so another priest who came three days later from the Holy Office. A man with a face like a vulture, his grimed hands folded behind him, sandals of hide-thong on bare grey feet, and smelling of decay, all the house even Mariana fell silent on his coming and remained so until he left. He too spoke little English, but I heard him questioning Rodez about me. His small rodent eyes kept looking me up and down. When he had gone I asked what he had said.

Rodez smiled quietly. “He says it is a dangerous heresy on our part to keep company with a Lutheran, even at the King’s command. So I would have you look to your soul’s wellbeing before others do it for you.”

“And if I do not, Rodez?”

“Our friend says you will burn everlastingly in hell.”

“Do you believe that?”

“Of course. But what I am more concerned for is that you should not burn temporarily on earth. Have you ever seen a man at the stake? It is an interesting sight. I believe there will be an auto de ye some time this spring. If you are still with us I will take you.”

Every morning I would be wakened at five by the sound of the city stirring to life in the great square. Often the first noises would be the clop-clop of tiny hooves as the first donkeys went past below driven on by the harsh “arre” of the drivers. Sometimes their loads brushwood or straw or piled crops would scrape and whisper against the sides of the house as they went by. Then the bells of the churches would begin. There was the church of Buen Suceso on the far corner between two streets, near it was the Convent of Victory. Opposite was the church of Our Lady of Solitude and the foundling hospital of La Inclusa, and, nearest to my bedroom and out of sight from it, the new church of San Felipe el Real.

The bells would start the tethered goats bleating; carts would begin to rumble in, and soon the whole square would hum with life and noise, while the first rays of the sun struck fire from the windows opposite.

We rose at six and washed in the icy water from the well; at seven we ate bread and syrup and drank steaming bowls of coffee, and so the day began.

For a week Mariana never spoke to me. She was a tall girl with a lovely skin; over-plump from eating too many sweetmeats, but attractively so. The heavy spectacles she put on and off at intervals were the fashion and did not indicate that she needed them to see though for a week she might have been blind where I was concerned. Then one day I came into the room where we dined and found her squatting cross-legged on the carpet telling her beads and muttering her prayers. Many women in Spain sat in this fashion. I was turning to go out when she said:

“Do not run away, pincho.”

I was startled at her English; until now I had thought only Rodez spoke it.

“I am sorry. I thought “

“That I was saying my prayers?” She tossed the long string of beads back so that they rattled against each other. “So I was. Do you dislike that?”

“No …”

“Spanish girls we tell them at many times. It is just as we fancy. We tell them for luck when we play at Ombre. We finger them for the ennui. We tell them even while we make love.”

I said: “I did not know you spoke English.”

“You think we are barbarians in Madrid? How old are you? “

“Sixteen.”

She whistled. “Digs mio. And very sick for home, eh? Why have they brought you here?”

“That is what I want to know.”

“My uncle will tell you in good time. All things he arranges in good time. No doubt he may find you useful.”

“You can come with me shopping and carry my basket. That is a beginning.”

“They will allow that?”

“Who is to stop us? You’ll not run away?”

“No.”

When we went out I did indeed carry her basket, but as her negro slave went with us, together with her usual duenna, this seemed an excuse. It was the height of the morning, and along our side of the square were rows of little booths where every trifle and foolish luxury could be bought. Gallants in rich clothes moved among cripples and beggars squatting on the uneven cobbles in poverty and squalor. Beyond was a long wall where painters were exhibiting their pictures. Small shops and coffee houses abounded.

Mariana bought a fan, a blue cravat, a bundle of white candles, two boxes of sweetmeats. As we turned to go home a shabby man of about fifty carrying some rolls of cloth stopped and spoke to her. A sardonic handsome man with gray-brown hair, a big moustache and a withered hand. Mariana bought a piece of the cloth and moved on.

“My uncle is much in demand with old friends,” she said curtly. “They remember their schooldays when they have favours to ask.”

“Who was that?”

“An old soldier who escaped three times from the Turks and was three times recaptured. He lives now by writing ballads for blind beggars to sing.”

A man went past in a brown cassock carrying on his back a great cross that seemed too heavy for him to bear. There was a mask across his face.

“A penitent,” said Mariana impatiently. “His confessor has imposed this on him, and since he is a person of quality, he does not wish to be recognised. Come, pincho, you’ve seen enough for one morning.”

“Why do you call me that?”

“Assuredly it is just a fancy.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means a louse.”

When we got back to the door of our house I opened it for her to go in. She looked me up and down with her brilliant eyes. It was like standing under a shower of cold spray.

“Do you like the name?”

“No.”

“Perhaps one day you will prove it is not true.”

“Perhaps.”

“Have you ever had an americebada?”

“What is that?”

“What would you guess?”

“Something to eat?”

She laughed. “Let us go in.”

That night Señor Andres Prada returned, and the following morning he sent for me. He was sipping chocolate in the study he used above the patio, and wore a gold embroidered morning gown. With him were two other men, one much younger with dark copper hair and the eyes of a zealot, whom I later learned was called Pedro Lopez de Solo; and a stiff-haired, cautious faced, stout man called Estaban de Ibarra.

“This is the boy Killigrew.”

Both men spoke halting English. They began to question me.

All the questions related to England and many of them to my father.

Some of them seemed designed to trap me, as if they were privately testing the accuracy of what I said against information of their own. They spoke of our neighbours, of Hannibal Vyvyan: how often did he keep the fort at St Mawes, and when he was away who took his place? Then they worked up the river to the Trefusises, the Enyses, the Arundells. It was fascinating how much these men knew already, and in what detail. But sometimes their interpretation was quite wrong, and I was careful not to correct them.

After a while they broke off and began to talk among themselves. Although I could not follow all they said, five weeks of careful listening had given me a smattering of Spanish.

I was dismissed and went down into the patio itself, which was tiled in blue and green, with a tiny fountain playing. Vines and other plants climbed up the walls and across the trellis which almost cut out the sky. Rodez was there idly eating a green walnut, and Father Rafael sat in the rocking chair reading his breviary.

I found my hands and knees were trembling.

“Mariana has been telling that you walked out with her yesterday,” Rodez said.

“Round the square, yes.”

“Mariana has a taking for you. Have a care.”

“I do not think so, or she would not call me el pincho.”

“Why not?”

I was still thinking of the three men upstairs. “Well, it means a louse.”

Rodez laughed. “Never believe it. El piojo is the louse. This is Mariana’s amusement.”

“What does el pincho mean, then?”

“It means the Handsome One.”

“Oh,” I said, surprise for a moment gaining over apprehension. “And what is an amencebada?”

“Now I know she has the fancy for you! Perhaps I should not say take care, for perhaps it is already too late!“

“Rodez.” The voice came from the balcony above, cutting through Rodez’s laughter like a knife through tallow.

“Sir?”

“I want you.”

When Rodez had disappeared I stood for a minute or two watching the goldfish moving lazily in the pond beneath the fountain. I heard a page of the breviary turned. Father Rafael, no doubt, was keeping an eye on me as well as on his prayers, but I felt unequal to the task of addressing him.

Señora Prada came into the patio and asked Father Rafael a question. Their Spanish was quick and colloquial, but I gathered that she asked where Andres was, and he told her he was upstairs and the names of his callers. She said, was he going to the Palace tonight and Father Rafael said, yes, there was to be a meeting of the junta de Noche. She said, oh, that was good. More passed between them that I could not follow at all; but because I could not I had more time to notice the intimacy of their conversation.

Rodez came down again and I heard Señor Prada showing his visitors out.

“Who were they?” I said to him. “Who were those men?”

He shrugged. “Two who order this country, my friend. Like my uncle: behind the stage.”

“Yes, but what did they want with me?”

“We Spaniards do not fail for lacking the attention to detail. You? You are just one of the details.”

“Details of what?”

“Who knows? The information you give us is filed away. If-it is ever needed, then it will be used. See?”

“What is the junta de Noche?”

“A committee, an inner council, which works under the King.”

“Are they do they belong to it?”

“The young one, Captain de Soto, does not. He is an outsider, but is secretary to the Adelantado. The Adelantado of Castile is the highest military officer of the crown. Does that satisfy you?”

“And the other?”

“Estaban de Ibarra? He, with my uncle, is joint secretary of the Junta de Noche.”

I said: “I do not understand. I am a boy of sixteen. In England I could not, would not, be interviewed by by Sir Robert Cecil, by the Earl of Essex, nor even by his secretary. I am a nobody. What is my value here?”

“Little enough, assuredly. But be thankful for your own sake that it is something.”

CHAPTER TWO

That night I dreamt of Sue Farnaby. She kept crying: “Maugan, Maugan!” her voice lost and hoarse. I began to cry out: “Sue, Sue, Sue! ” in reply, panting each word in effort and in agony. When I woke some sound was ringing in my ears, and I think I must have been crying the name aloud. I was soaked with sweat and for minutes could not shake free of the dream.

It was dark in the room but a light was flickering from the square, three wavering bars on the ceiling. I got up and went to the lattice. There were no lights in the houses opposite but there was a lantern glimmering on the cobbles below. Yesterday an old mule struggling to drag a load of gravel had died there and the body had been left where it fell. Now two beggars were hacking at the carcase for what they could take away.

Sue’s cries were still ringing in my ears. I could not stay in this house any longer letting time and opportunity slip away: there must be some escape.

First, first I must improve my Spanish, at least to the point of understanding and being understood. Second, I must lay hold on some money, for in any country there were people who would give their services or hold their tongues for gold. Third, I must plan a way back.

I had to begin to make plans now. Madrid was right in the centre of Spain, impossibly situated for a fugitive, but it would be better to die on the way than to stay on here in weak luxury until one’s uses were done.

The beggars below snatched up their lantern and their knives and faded into the gabled shadows. Two men were crossing the square; they were monks walking silently, hoods up, arms folded in sleeves; they went into a building beside La Inclusa; the clang of the door echoed across the square.

It was cold, and I went back and sat on the bed, then on impulse pulled on my stockings and went to the door and opened it. The house was built round the patio and some light came in through the passage window as I went down the first flight of stairs.

My only thought tonight was to see how easy or how difficult it might be to leave this house when the time came one did not know what would be bolted and barred or whether any guard was kept; but when I reached the first floor where the two main bedrooms and the living-room were I heard the murmur of voices and saw a light under the door of the Prada bedroom. I had time only to squeeze into the shadow of a heavy Cuban mahogany chest when the door opened and Father Rafael came out. A woman’s hand came through the door; he bent and kissed it, then strode away, the only sound being the scuff of his sandal heels and the rustle of a silk robe. Immediately he had disappeared the light under the door went out and I was alone and could almost have been persuaded that this was a part of the earlier dream.

I leaned on the stone balustrade and looked down into the patio. I had found these Spanish people far kinder than I had ever supposed them to be; for all the danger and the unspoken menaces that surrounded me I had not lacked for casual friendship; I had even wondered what Catholicism meant that men should fight it so bitterly. Now in this moment I remembered again the words of the Puritans at home.

I was about to go down the last flight when somebody moved in the patio. It was Sebastiano, the negro who often guarded the door. He had been squatting beside the fountain, and if I had gone down he would have caught me. His keys were rattling as he moved to the great door and presently he opened it and Senor Prada came in followed by his personal servant carrying a lantern. There was a conversation, Prada sounded tired and irritable. To stay on the balcony would be to invite discovery, so I stole back up the stone flight and then up the creaking wooden flight to bed.

Over the next week I worked day-long at Spanish. When Rodez tired I went to Mariana.

Mariana had beautiful teeth, and it was not hard to make her laugh. Always she called me at pincho, but I never challenged her translation, knowing well enough that if I did she would shrug it off or somehow turn the point against me.

I went again to the palace; once to help Rodez with moving and arranging some English books. But on the second occasion I was confronted by the terrible priest with the face like a vulture and spent two chilling hours in his company being instructed in the tenets of the faith. I wished fervently that I had the true learning of a Protestant. I lacked the knowledge to confound his specious reasoning, yet instinctively knew it must be evil and corrupt; I had been brought up on the evils of Rome. That night I prayed for guidance and courage. There must come a moment soon when I must refuse to hear any more of his sly and perverted arguments; to listen to them was almost as much of a blasphemy as to heed. Yet to stand up and tell him he was an agent of the Devil needed a cold courage, a desperate faith that was hard to come by.

The third time at the palace I was called in, again with Rodez, to wait at the table of Captain Lopez de Soto, the copper-haired young fanatic who was secretary to the Adelantado of Castik. De Soto was entertaining some dozen guests in a party recently arrived from Italy. Three were priests and five were Genoese naval officers, members of the entourage of Prince Giovanni Andrea Doria, who had just arrived in Madrid. Talk was sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in Italian and for the most it was of naval power and the Spanish building programme and the prospects of an early attack on England.

After it, one of the civilians called me to him. “They tell me you are a Killigrew.”

A narrow sun-tanned face, a mop of brown hair; the eyes were blue, eccentric, slightly squinting; it was a different face from any seen of late.

“Yes, sir.”

“And a prisoner, I’m told. Fresh out of England. The trees will be budding there soon.”

“You are English I “

“Much better than that, boy.-Do they still dance the Halan-tow at Helston?”

I stared. “You’re … from Cornwall?”

“Yes. Though it’s more than 13 years since I was there. I think sometimes of the preached alleys, the primroses, the violets. How is your father?”

“You know him?”

“As a young man. I was born at Tolverne up the river from your place.”

I choked with delight and relief at seeing a friendly face. The three months away from home might have been three years. As I grasped his hand I remembered what young Thomas Arundell had said that night at Tolverne. ‘And Uncle Thomas who went on a pilgrimage to Rome thirteen years ago and never returned.’

“This means much to me …”

“Oh, aye, I well know. I was 30 when I left, not a boy in his teens, and I stayed away from choice not because I had to; but the old place still has its pull. Always, always I’ve promised myself a sight of it again. But that nasty old woman lives too long.”

“I saw your family, sir, just before Christmas. I was coming from Truro and spent the night at Tolverne.”

“Ah … My brother’s family, you mean. And how fares Sir Anthony? Now that Hell is nearer I suspicion he is making efforts to avoid it.”

I told him about his nephew Jonathan’s wedding and all the family news. Even though my pleasure drained off a little as I realised this man had cast in his lot with the enemy, just knowing he was a kinsman was an encouragement to hope.

I said: “Do you know what they intend with me here?”

“I? Nay, I’ve just arrived. But there are many English scattered through Italy and Spain. You may take heart.”

“Protestant English?”

He gave me a look. “You must change that. Oh, I know the Killigrews have always been on the side of the reformed Church, but I can tell you why: it was for what they got out of it, not from religious fervour. Three quarters of Killigrew land was Church land. I do not suppose many of your ancestors would cling to a faith that it was not in their interest to cling to and I’d advise you to change while this Spanish forbearance lasts.”

I said: “What did you mean, sir, by saying that Sir Anthony was nearer Hell?”

“As all heretics are when they grow older and nearer death. But if there is God’s justice he’ll not escape by amending his ways now.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Ah, boy, you’re too young to remember. There was a saintly Jesuit priest called Cuthbert Mayne arrested in Cornwall just before I left. He was hanged, drawn and quartered at Launceston. My brother was on the jury that tried him. An Arundell, by God! To bring such shame on the name! By Christ, all the saints in Heaven must have turned away their faces!“

I stared across at a picture of the Virgin; she had a strange wide-awake expression like some newly opened flower, and she seemed to be listening.

I said: “Mr Arundell, can you help me?”

“What in?”

“I want no part in in religion or in war. I only want to go home.”

His face hardened. “Then it is time you grew up. No one now, of a surety no one with your name, can draw aside from the greatest issue of the age. Are you for Christ or AntiChrist? Is that not important enough to kill indifference? There’s no choice in between, and I cannot help you to one.”

I said curiously: “But sometime don’t you hope to come home? “

“I have told you yes, and sometime soon! But not as a suppliant. I have not lived all these years in exile to creep back under the festering cloak of Calvin. In England there are hundreds of thousands who would rise tomorrow if they received the calll One day it will come.”

Rodez was waiting for me impatiently by the door.

“Sir,” I said, “where are you lodged in Madrid? If I’m permitted may I wait on you sometime?”

“Your friend has my address. I shall be here for some weeks. I have spent much of my exile painting and there is an artist living in Toledo whom I wish to see.”

As I walked away down the long passage with Rodez he said cynically: “A relative?”

“… Distant. I had never met him before.”

“Spain has a good sprinkling of them English who have clung to the faith. But they are not popular. We are never sure if one or other of them will turn out to be a spy.”

“Who is Captain de Soto?” I asked. “Why does he entertain in this way?”

“I have told you: he is the secretary of Don Martin de Padilla, the Adelantado of Castile.”

“And what has the Adelantado to do with naval matters?”

“He is the supreme commander of our fleet. A seasoned veteran, not a weakling like Medina Sidonia who commanded in ‘88.”

“He is assembling another Armada?”

“Ah,” said Rodez,“have a care you do not ask too much or we may take you for a spy.”

That night Señor Prada was called again to the palace and sent word back that he would not be home. Rodez had gone with him; and Señora Prada went off to the theatre with a gallant. Father Rafael retired early to his room, and Isabella, who was in love with a young officer who had been posted to Valladolid, spent the evening in the patio plucking moodily at her guitar.

That left Mariana and me, and of course her duenna sitting cross-legged in a corner. We spent an hour on our language, but Mariana soon grew tired of it for she had less to learn than I and less incentive. Because of our lessons our friendship had ripened. In the course of work she had told me much about Spain and about herself; I had told her of England and Cornwall and my own life. But with an understandable reticence I had never mentioned Sue Farnaby.

Now she suddenly said: “Have you ever been in love, pincho? “

I hesitated. “… In a way.”

“In what way is that?”

“Well, yes … I have been in love.”

“With whom? Tell me now. A little girl of sixteen? a big girl of twenty? a married woman?”

I said: “Oh …” and laughed self-consciously.

“And this girl you have loved her?”

“I said so.”

“But there is different si, claro … depende … If you love perhaps like Isabella down below you swoon and sigh, you worship, you adore; very beautiful, but it is in the heart, no more. Or you may love make love, is that it? with the body, with the senses you are in passion. That is fierce, the thing itself. Which was yours?”

“The first.”

“Ah … so I should have think.”

We said no more for a time. Then she said:’

“Do you know what an amencebada is?”

“You know I do not.”

“In Spain, boys when they are twelve or thirteen are given a concubine mistress who teaches them about love. That is what such a woman is called.”

It was the first warm evening, and the gentle plucking of the guitar was sonorous and sad, punctuating the faint plash of water from the fountain. Mariana stood up and leaned over the balcony. She called something in a harsh voice to her sister and the playing stopped. She turned to me with gleaming eyes.

“Muy bien. If you will have the goodness to watch.”

Her black hair was parted in the middle, tied at the back with a ribbon and wrapped up in a carnation coloured taffeta scarf. She unwrapped the scarf. While she was doing it Isabella began to play again, but this time differently, fiercely: a strange music that I had heard before but only in the distance coming from lighted taverns or from a group of gypsies around a fire: a trembling passionate music full of sadness and sliding semi-tones. Mariana stood by the balcony’s edge, eyes closed, with a hand clasped to her face as if in torment; and she began to dance.

She had no castanets, no high heels. She danced on a tiny piece of tiled floor, twisting round, holding her hands on high and clicking her fingers. Even in sandals she was able to make a rhythmic rattling with her heels. She shook and swayed as she danced. She writhed like a serpent, weaving her hips as if round an invisible rope. She used her hair like a Gorgon’s till it came alive and turned me to stone.

The music stopped and she stopped and hung over the balcony looking down at her sister. You could not see her face for the cloud of hair. And in the corner her duenna sat quietly sewing.

“That is what I show you, Maugan. That assuredly is what is meant by love.”

“It’s a different thing.”

“It is the real thing.”

“I don’t know.”

“Ya se lo he dicho.”

“Yes …”

She took up the scarf in which her.hair had been bound and wiped her forehead and face with it. Then she began to wind up her hair in its ribbon.

Isabella began idly to pluck at the strings again. One of the black slaves came along the balcony on some errand but he did not glance at us; servants in Spain are well trained. Mariana gathered up her books, her gold embroidery on which she seldom worked and brushed past me. Her sandals slip-slapped away and I heard them going up to the next floor. In a few moments the old woman in the corner also got up and followed quietly after.

I tried to read but could not. Three images were in my mind: Sue; and Captain Burley; and Mariana. Were they all different sides of the same cube? I did not know. To me they were as different as pure air, foul water and fire. Every time I looked at the book, I saw Mariana. At last I decided to go to bed.

On the next floor I had to pass several doors to reach the wooden stairs to the attic. One door was open and Mariana was sitting in front of a mirror braiding her hair.

I went in. She laughed gently.

I whispered: “Where is … ?”

“Tartara? Dismissed, as she should be. I thought you would come.”

“T ,, A …

“Wait.” Mariana rose and shut the door behind me. Then she stood against it, her hands behind her waist, still quietly, cynically smiling. I went nearer to her. She took a step from the door and put her arms round my neck and kissed me, her breasts against my rough shirt. She was the same height as I was. Her mouth sought out mine.

I ran my hands up and down her back feeling the warmth and liveness of her through the satin, then slipped them round and grasped her breasts. But while we clung to each other in a voluptuous hunger that drowned my free will, a strange thing happened. I found I wished to escape from what I had seemed most to desire.

I remembered Sue Farnaby; I was hers not any other woman’s and I wanted no other. And I only wished to go at my own speed in love, not be dragged along down an ever steeper slope.

I jerked my head up and tried to unloose her arms.

“What is it? There is no one.”

“Mariana, it was someone, I’m sure.” She had given me the only possible excuse.

“No one will come in here.”

“No. Mariana. It is not just that. It it would bring disgrace on you “

I at last got free of her and went to the door. I did not dare look back, for I knew if I looked at her again I was lost.

“Maugan ! ” she said.

I went out.

For days after that I was a swimmer in cross currents too strong for me. Much of the time I was glad of what I had done, glad of a fidelity to Sue Farnaby and to an ideal of love more important than a hot groping passion in a shadowy bedroom. But ever and again I would be swept with a feeling of shame, as if by denying Mariana I had denied my new manhood.

I knew too that by turning away from her I had done my hopes of escape a mortal disservice. If any one could have helped me it would have been she if she were my lover, she had just the generous reckless nature not to count the risk to herself.

As the days passed dissatisfaction and self-criticism grew. Could I have been slightly less fastidious, slightly more calculating, I would have had the best of all worlds.

Thomas Arundell was staying in the square in front of the palace, and I went to see him with Rodez to keep me company. I found him admiring several pictures he had bought, and for a time he seemed reluctant to drag himself away from them.

“So, Maugan. You are going to the auto de fe next week?”

“I do not know.”

“Yes, he is,” said Rodez.

“As a spectacle,” said Mr Arundell dryly, “it may be interesting. But in Rome they gave up such displays about a thousand years ago.”

“Sir,” said Rodez, “this is a solemn act of faith not a vulgar wild beast show.”

Arundell went across to the easel in the corner of the room. “There are blues and greens here which defy analysis, which seem to come of a supernatural commingling of colour. I have seen such colours again and again this week on the canvases of the painter, Dominica Teotocopoli. They are a revelation. D’you know anything of painting, young man?”

“No, sir.”

“A pity. Some of the Killigrews have a turn for art. And piracy, of course. A strange family. Nearly as strange as the Arundells, and we, God knows, are devious enough. Passionate in all things, even in wrong-headedness. You think my brother is serious in his reconversion?”

“He risks his freedom for it.”

“Well … well. You seem widely informed in some matters. Do you know my sister Alice?”

“No, sir.”

“She lives now, I’m told, in seclusion in Tregony, having like me never wavered in her faith. The family split, young man, she and I true, Anthony and Henry turncoats. I am glad Anthony is trying to save his soul even if so late in the day; not so Henry, I’ll warrant, a damned stubborn dyed-in-the-wool heretic if ever I saw one. Alice was my favourite she’s still unmarried I’ll wager, like the rest of us. I’d like you to take this letter to her if you return.”

“If I “

Mr Arundell glanced at Rodez. “No, well, it’s no more than a rumour but there’s a rumour abroad that you may be sent home.”

“Sent home?”

“Oh, I know nothing of it. There was talk of an exchange of a prisoner or something of the sort. Of course that may well come to nothing. But if it should, then I want you to take this letter, for I have had no word from Alice for five years.”

“Gladly.” My mind was in some sort of leap-frog.

Mr Arundell went on talking; he was a great talker and I stayed for nearly an hour. For a time I was in a half world of my own, yet ever and again I would make a desperate effort to attend to what he said, lest some further hint might be dropped. For the most part he talked about painting, which seemed to be the subject nearest to his heart. I wondered if he would ever come back to England, as he clearly hoped, and if he came whether it would seem too grey and cold to him after so many years in the southern sun.

I ventured at last to interrupt him again with a question, and he said:

“Come back to your true religion, boy; that’s the important thing, and if you’re a good Catholic the Spaniards will be far more likely to release you, since they’ll be sending home a Christian and not a heretic. Tis only a matter of time, boy, before this secession of the northern countries comes to an end: there is no wisdom or reverence in it: they fight for the devil. Have you had instruction since you came to Madrid?”

“Someone I don’t know his name from the Holy Office has seen me several “

“Oh, they are far from being the best teachers. They’re auxiliaries of the King of Spain saving your presence, Mister Rodez. Get you a good Jesuit, who draws his spiritual message straight from the Vicar of Christ in Rome. You will find such a man infinitely persuasive and infinitely comforting. Ask Seitor Prada, he’ll know such a one.”

“We have a Benedictine in our household,” said Rodez sullenly.

Mr Arundell had picked up a small painting. “See this, Maugan Killigrew. Done by the same artist in Toledo. Observe the slender elongated figure of Christ. Do you not get from it an impression of a supernatural being, an earthly form transcended by the Holy Spirit? It is supreme painting, such as I have never seen before. Some day I will hang it in my own house in my own country, when religion is preached there once again! May it be soon, for I grow no younger. My father died at twenty-nine, and we come not of a long-lived stock.”

On the way home I pestered Rodez to explain what Thomas Arundell meant, but Rodez said he had heard nothing of my going home. Rodez was in a sulky mood for he had not liked Mr Arundell’s outspoken words on things Spanish. I asked Rodez about the auto de ye, and Rodez said, yes, it was to be in honour of the 1 6th birthday of Prince Philip the heir to the throne and the King’s only surviving son.

As we came to the door of the house the old soldier with the withered hand who had spoken to Mariana was waiting there. Rodez told him brusquely that Senor Prada was not in and would not be in; if he wished to see him he must come again in the morning, and be here early. The old soldier muttered: “It is all very well, but my employment has ended. Hunger drives talents to do things which are not on the map.” He slouched away.

I had been only three months in Spain, less than two in Madrid, but by now I was fully understanding the language; it had come suddenly in the last two weeks as a result of all the concentrated effort.

When we got in we found the house in a great commotion. Mariana storming through the kitchen in one of her moods had upset a pan of boiling water and scalded her foot and leg. Maids and servants were still running with unguents and smelling salts, and two apothecaries were in attendance.

I did not sleep well that night. With Mariana in pain servants were kept at the stretch, and I heard footsteps on and off until dawn. But what really kept me awake was another dawn that of hope. Even now one hardly dared to speculate lest it was some trap set to weaken resistance. Supposing 1 was now confronted by the gray-faced priest: would I be right in dissembling one more time? Whatever happened, he must be avoided now.

For some days I was not allowed to see Mariana, for she kept her room and apothecaries visited her almost hourly. On the fourth morning after her accident, Rodez going in, I followed him and was startled by her pallor and evident pain. No one had told me if the scald was severe or slight, and I had felt that Mariana, being Mariana, would have made a commotion in either case; but I saw that she was feverish and ill. Rodez going to one side of the bed, I approached the other where her duenna sat stitching, but when Mariana saw me she turned on her side and began to talk brightly to Rodez of the week’s entertainments that she was missing. When at last there was a pause I said:

“I am sorry you have had such an accident, Mariana.”

She said to Rodez: “How is it the little piojo is in my room? Did he creep under the door?”

I said: “Last summer I was shown how to make a salve to cure burns. I was shown it by a witch.”

Mariana said: “And no doubt cured the Queen of England with it when she burned her fingers on a candle snuffer.”

“No, I have not seen it in use. But she was a wise woman who taught me.”

“Well,” said Rodez, “it could do little worse than these apothecaries have done.”

“I swore never to tell the ingredients. But I do not think you have them all here.”

“Digs me perdone,” said Mariana. “You can work magic but not nowl”

“I could try. Is the scald healing?”

“Hahl Healingl” said Rodez.

Mariana said: “Tell the little piojo to go away; he makes my head to ache.”

“Let me see the scald,” I said.

They looked at me as if I had said something indecent.

“See it?” said Mariana. “It is on my leg.”

Considering what I had seen of her in this candle-lit bedroom a few nights ago, I thought her modesty a small matter over-done.

Rodez said: “They poultice and poultice and it grows worse. Maugan has sisters of his own.”

“Don’t let him touch me,” said Mariana. “I could not bear ill “

“If part is on the foot,” I said, “suffer me to see the foot.”

“A child of your age,” she said contemptuously over her shoulder. “What have you had to do with witches?”

“Does flax grow in this country? And bog moss? And indigo? I don’t know if I could find the ingredients.”

For the first time they seem impressed.

“There are a dozen quacks selling their nostrums every morning in the square,” said Rodez.“I do not know if they have anything you want or would sell it. See tomorrow. Mariana, do not be a stupid pig; if Maugan knows something you can hardly be worse off to try it.”

“Let him mix it first,” she said. “Then I will decide for myself. Now go away; his voice makes my head to ache.”

It was lucky that I did not see the burn then or I might have been afraid to try. Even so I wonder at the courage. But youth is reckless and confident; something of my own faith in Katherine Footmarker gave me faith in myself. The next morning I was out early with Rodez. Often I could not be sure; the names were different and I was no expert at knowing herbs on sight or smell.

We came home with a dozen things: oil from the flax, lime water, powdered bark of the red elm. I diluted and sprinkled and mixed them with a salve which had a white soap from Flanders as its basis. When it was done it was a pungent un-assimilated mess very different from what She had given me in a box for the Michell child. But I spread it on moss I had bought and that all on a white cloth and carried it upstairs.

She was less vituperative this morning after another feverish night, and allowed me a sight of her leg as far as the highest burn which was on her calf. The blisters had long since been pulled off the burns and left festering sores, rank and raw and almost bleeding. They were still discoloured with the dressings of the latest apothecary, and Footmarker would have said this had first to be cleansed away; but a look at Mariana’s bottom lip told me that if once she was put in more pain she would refuse to be touched. So I cut the poultice into two parts and put one on her foot and the other on her leg. She muttered something under her breath, and the tears which came into her eyes she shook away. I waited for an explosion but none came, so was in haste to tie a light bandage around each burn to keep the salve in place.

Later that morning there was an angry commotion in the bedroom when one of the apothecaries came and protested against his not being allowed to see the wound. Supported by the duenna, he warned Mariana and Señora Prada of the dire risks they were running in allowing a heretic and a child heretic at that to meddle in such matters. They were imperilling not merely Mariana’s life but her soul. It was well known that the Devil used such people as one of his most favourite instruments.

But Mariana, once set on her way, would not be moved. They had had their throw, she said; now, by good Jesu, let another be given the chance.

In the evening she sent word down that I was to prepare another such poultice for the morrow. I heard privately that the morning application had brought some relief, and that no doubt had fortified her in my favour.

So for three days it went on. Each day another mixture never, I thought, quite the same as the last, and each day I put it on a leg and foot that were growing cooler and less inflamed.

So was she. She took now to calling me, ‘Doctor Leech’, with that irony of voice which absolved her of any risk of being thought serious. Yet others in the house knew of her improvement, and both Rodez and Isabella used me with greater consideration. Looking back now, I am in wonderment that I was not more surprised. Perhaps I have not ever been as surprised or as grateful for this gift as I should be.

On the day before the auto de fe she hobbled downstairs and I told her she had no more need of ointment.

She said: “But the best apothecaries never finish. Siempre seras bien recibido.”

Rodez and I went to the auto de fe alone. He was by nature late for everything, so when we got to the Plaza Mayor just after dawn two or three thousand people were already there, as well as hundreds crowding the balconies of the four-storey houses. At one side of the square was the King’s balcony, and opposite on a raised dais two cages in which about sixteen prisoners were housed. I could see all this plainly, but the floor of the square was cut off from my view by the heads and shoulders of the people in front of me, and the wooden stands which had been built for the occasion were swarming with people who clung to them like flies to a meat bone.

About seven a.m. the King and Queen and Prince Philip and a number of people of the court began to take their seats, and towards eight the procession began. Peering through heads I could see perhaps 100 charcoal men carrying muskets and pikes, and two or three hundred Dominican monks with banners, led by a man on a white horse carrying the standard of the Holy Office, red with a silver sword in a crown of laurel.

Then there were halberdiers and grandeesand three men bearing a crucifix wrapped in black crepe. The crucifix and the standard were fixed on the altar and prayers began, led by the Grand Inquisitor.

I stood back on my heels and stared at the crowd, listened to the great murmur of voices, the chanting. In the centre were solid ranks of glittering soldiery, the massed squares of monks. This was the generative core of a nation far richer and more populous and more famous in arms than ours. If England were ever conquered scenes such as this would take place every week in London, and there would be no lack of fuel for the fires.

After another parade the Grand Inquisitor began to preach. It had been cold in the square in the early morning, but as the sun rose the heat grew until the air was foetid and stifling From here it was impossible to hear what was said and the patient crowd began to shuffle and fidget. Some took out rolls of bread and began to eat them with garlic and leeks. Stallholders had set up trestles at the foot of the stands, and they did a good trade selling cups of cordial and bowls of broth. A monk with the strange hood of a capuchin was collecting maravedis and gifts in kind for the poor.

It was past noon before the Grand Inquisitor finished. The King rose to reply. Although the voice was dry and thin there was a quiet passion and fervour in it; several times he roused his listeners to murmurs of approval, and once there was a grumbling roar when he said something of reconversion by fire and the sword. As soon as he had finished the royal party went inside to eat and to rest. Most of the ordinary spectators squatted where they were, trying to take their siestas in the hot sunshine. Monks were still chanting and singing, and lesser penitents made endless processions round the square.

As the afternoon wore on the shadows of the houses formed new geometries across the crowded square. About five the royal party reappeared. A procession of monks made a circuit of the amphitheatre bearing statues and effigies of saints and a dozen coffins with flames painted round them. These, Rodez said, held the bones of heretics who had recently died in prison.

Now the prisoners were brought forward one by one and their crimes read out. I could not hear the sentences, but one of the four women prisoners and five of the thirteen men were condemned to death; the others went to the galleys, to imp prisonment or to be scourged. A fight broke out in the crowd near by us: a woman with a man had looked at another man, and knives were out; people surged and pushed; we were trampled and moved five or six yards before the pressure eased.

Mass was celebrated in the growing dark; then people settled to eat again. Litter and dirt were everywhere, and even though the chill was returning it did not take away the smell. Bags of wine were passed.round, and I drank deeply. The scene was like the Day of judgment, the flambeaux smoking, the Inquisitor on his dais. The King had not gone in; it seemed he could wait to dine until the ceremony was over. Already it had lasted more than twelve hours.

I was tired now and ready to go. My legs were tired with standing, and there was nothing but stale warm air to breathe. Rodez muttered something and I said: “What is it?”

“Four of them and that includes the woman have said they prefer to die in the Christian faith. That leaves two to face the fire alive. Ah, well, it’s not an ordeal I would relish myself, even for a seat in Heaven; and for them, who merely make more certain their descent into Hell …”

The crowd surged forward and we with it as the prisoners were bound to stakes in the middle of the square. Faggots and charcoal were piled around them by blackcoated burners and priests of the Holy Office. Heads bobbed in my way; someone was coughing and spitting; two women in front of me were arguing about the price of wool. Columns of charcoal men with lighted torches were in procession to make obeisance to the King.

Now the flag with the white cross was leading them back to the six pyres. One of the prisoners was shouting at the top of his voice; in a quiet that had fallen it was easy to hear the words, but they were in a strange tongue: German or Dutch perhaps. It looked as if a priest were counselling each of the prisoners, advising them; but the shouting man would have none of it.

“He has gone off his head,” said Rodez. “I see they are to be merciful to him.”

A man was trying to get his little boy of eight through to see more clearly. Most were willing to move aside, but a woman complained angrily that the boy was standing on her dress; a torrent of angry argument broke out; in the arena charcoal men were passing cords round the necks of four prisoners who had recanted; the one was still shouting, another was reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Latin. A long brass trumpet reared its mouth and a shrill blast was blown; it silenced the quarrellers beside me as the charcoal men pulled on the cords and the cursing and praying of the prisoners ended in a strangled coughing. Soon ad were dead.

The people sighed; a monk’s high voice intoned a prayer.

The trumpet blew again, torches were raised where I could see them clearly, and then plunged. People pushed me forward against the people in front, straining to see, an wanting to see the two living victims as the flames licked round their feet. It seemed that they were not yet to be deserted by the monks of the Holy Office, who risked burns in order to hear any recantations that might fall from their lips. One of the prisoners was dressed in tattered black slops, and as these caught fire he began to scream in a high-pitched almost whistling voice like a horse I had once heard being clumsily slaughtered. The other made no sound, but as the flames licked up him blisters rose and burst quickly on his skin like bubbles in a boiling pot. Then as they burst, so blood poured from them, and also from his nose.

As life left them, their bodies twisted and crouched against the wire thongs as if they were wrestlers in some game. The four who had been strangled before burning had taken on the same contorted attitude of defiance.

The screams of the last living man came to an end, and then the only thing was the hissing as blood and fat ran down into the flames.

Pressure slowly eased; breath came back; people stretched and yawned; there was room and time to feel one’s aching feet; but it was nine or after before the last prayers were said and we were free to go. Noisily, sweatily, untidily, like people coming from a cockpit or a bear-baiting we made our way out. At one of the entrances to the square there was a great crush as more tried to pass through than there was room for; women screamed, blows were struck. Rodez and I were like sticks in a current, one minute idly moving, the next caught tight in a log jam, inching forward a half step at a time. I thought, if anyone should block this crowd at the other end there would be no need of the judgment of the Holy Office for me or for a hundred others.

Suddenly we were through and walking back towards the Puerta del Sol in a laughing, talking, jostling company.

CHAPTER THREE

When we got back Andres Prada was at home and with him was the old soldier with the withered hand who had at last insinuated himself into the house. Father Rafael was there also, and the three men were sitting at a table in the largest of the living-rooms drinking wine. After the hot day the night had turned sharply cold and a brasero bowl was under the table warming their legs and feet. The soldier had a rough duffel cloak thrown around his shoulders.

“Well,” laid Señor Prada to us, “so it is over? I confess I find the ceremony tedious these days. How His Majesty a man suffering from gout and ulcers can endure the long day I know not.”

He was speaking in Spanish as Rodez and I took seats on cushions on the floor and were given wine to drink by one of the servants.

“For my part,” said the old soldier, who was called Miguel, “I have never seen one through. I witnessed a part of one in Seville when two English soldiers were to perish for their heresy, but to melt a man slowly away like a candle lit at the wrong end has always seemed to me a poor testimony of Christian charity, so I came away before the flames were lit.”

“This boy is English,” said Prada.

“Ah … Yes, he looks it. Yet twas my colouring when I was young: fair haired; and he’s not unlike I was, thin and lively and strong, with wide awake eyes not short of a glint of mischief. You remember me as I was then, Andrew?

“It is a long time since.”

“And you were ever a dark-skinned boy for contrast. And prone to sickness. The years have advanced you and retarded me … This English boy, now why do you keep him here?”

“He was brought in by two sea-rovers who kidnapped him as proof of a raid they made on the English coast. But it so happens that they have laid hold of the base son of this man who guards a key fortress on the coast of England…”

“Have a care, sir,” said Rodez, “he follows Spanish now.”

“He’s much as I was then,” mused Miguel, plucking at a hole in his slops, “but scarcely as I am now after a lifetime of soldiery and five years a slave to the Turks. My hand shot through at Lepanto; a prey to feverish agues that rack the bones I have left. Thirty years of honourable service for my country. It is no employment for such a one to hawk cloth from door to door or to write doggerel for broadsides. That is why I petition you and through you His Majesty for some honourable commission “

“You have had them in the past “

“Pittances, Andres, pittances of the most degrading kind, illpaid and often unpaid, as you must know. A Naval Commissary is expected to live off his peculations and I will not do that, Andres. I still believe in the ideals of patriotism and honesty, however much in this age they have become empty words.”

The door opened and Sebora Prada came in. When she saw the company she seemed likely to turn and go away again at once.

Her husband made a half irritable gesture. “Oh, my love, I am not sure if you have met Miguel de Cervantes, a playmate of mine in student days. A distinguished soldier, who has also turned his hand to plays and poems “

Miguel rose to his feet and gave her a bow, which she barely acknowledged. “My Lady, I knew your husband, as he says, in the days of his youth, and I come to pay a call long overdue “

“Oh, you have called before,” said the lady. “Twas you, was it not, who escaped three times from the Turks and was thrice recaptured; but that is old news. Andres, this is the second time I have come home and Sebastiano is not at the door to hand me down! I think in the morning he should be beaten.”

“I’ll see to it, my love,” said Prada cynically. “No doubt you found the auto de ye tiring. There is wine and food laid in the next chamber.”

“I am going out again,” she said. “I came but to change after the day. Don Diego will be calling for me within the hour.”

She left the room and an awkward silence fell, in which I thought the old man would take his leave. But clearly he was used to being treated as of no account; perhaps his condition had long been too desperate for him to be too tender of his honour. Yet as he sat down again I saw that he had not lost his bearing or his dignity.

“I say to you, Andres, I still believe in the old ideals, rarely though they emerge in the present palace and court. From what I have seen of it since I came to Madrid from Andalusia.”

“Oh, it is a superficial blemish that you exaggerate,” Prada said impatiently. “The King could scarcely be more holy “

“Oh, the King, yes indeed, he turns his court into a monastery. But under the assumed piety of the religious form every sort of immorality and corruption exists. Spanish ladies, once a model for the world, are loose and immodest in their lives. The behaviour even of many of those men who have taken the vows of a priestly life, the behaviour of many such is licentious and evil.”

“Senor,” said Father Rafael gently, “you speak harsh words which would be dangerous outside this house. Even in it they give offense.””

“As for you, father,” said Miguel, “if I speak ill of your cloth I mean no personal slight. But many others say as I do. The Treasury is empty, and the riches of the Indies flow into it and then out to enrich the peculators in Spain and the Bankers and Jews in other lands. Under the cloak of the church the state decaysI”

He reached for the buckskin bag containing the wine, and poured himself some and drank it. Then he wiped his long moustache with his withered hand.

“And if you were in my position,” said de Prada, “you would contrive to change it all?”

“Nay, friend, I have no easy remedy; do not mistake me. But I think no country can prosper while corruption is so widespread, while the worst poverty and the most lavish luxury are separated by a street’s width. I think no country can fight a just war while it is being bled white from within; and while it is dominated by 22,000 spies in the habit of the Holy Office! We have many wars on our hands. The Netherlands remain a cockpit. Henry of Navarre has entered Paris by a ruse and our troops forced out. Did you hear he stood upon a balcony of Porte St Denis and saluted them as they marched away, calling, ‘Commend me to your master but never come back’? He’ll be at war with us ere long, you mark my words … And as for England every preparation for the Second Armada is hampered by lack of money, lack of supplies. You know that, Andres, without my telling you...”

“I know, Miguel, without you telling me.”

Prada’s cold voice at last made an impression on the other man’s eloquence. “Aye, well, you should be far better informed than any of us … No doubt I talk out of place. Did I not see Lopez de Soto leaving here the other day? If so, you will know all about the naval preparations.”

“You did and I do. Captain de Soto says it is due to the corruption of minor officials such as yourself that the Armada is not more ready to sail.”

Miguel de Cervantes’ face went a deep colour like the faces of the burning men; an old scar whitened on his cheek. “Of many it is true; I have said so. That way they live. Because I would not so tarnish my good name I am reduced to beggary and to supplicating help from old friends! As you know I have been in prison, but never for any act injurious to my honour!”

“Well, I will help you if I can,” said Prada. “But perhaps I cannot.” He rose. “You must excuse me now.”

“When may I see you again?”

“I will let you know. Have you no other friends?”

“None so close to the court. While men like Lope de Vega strut in society I am destitute.”

“Tut, tut, we’ll meet again, no doubt. But I’m not the King, you know.”

The old soldier was edged towards the door. As I also rose Señor Prada spoke sharply in English.

“I wish to see you, boy.”

“Now, sir?”

“Yes. Wait there. You may go, Rodez.”

Father Rafael picked up his rosary and followed Rodez from the room. I was left to wait alone.

Andres Prada’s face was irritable as he sat down again at the table. He took up a palm leaf and fanned the brasero bowl to make the charcoal glow. He coughed as the smoke caught his throat.

“What would you say, boy, if I offered you your freedom?”

I stared at him. “I would thank you from my heartl”

“There would be conditions.”

“What conditions?”

“You would be required to convey a message back to England.”

“Gladly ” then I stopped. “Where would I have to take it? “

“That matters?”

“Yes, sir. If …”

He put the palm leaf down. “The message would be to your father.”

“To my ~

“Would you carry a message to him?”

“Willingly … To my father?”

“Yes. Verbally.”

“If yes, I think so.”

“There would be other conditions concerned with the message.”

The charcoal had died again, being nearly burned through, and the chill of the night seemed to come out of the white plaster walls.

Senor Prada said dryly: “We thought to convert you to Christ before offering you freedom. The King was unwilling to make any move to restore you to your family until you had come to see your error. But I prevailed upon him otherwise.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I win be plain with you, boy. I did not intervene on your behalf out of love for you. Those freebooters who brought you here hoping for a reward, got it because you were of some small use coming fresh from England, and that part of England, for the information you gave us. But there is this second use to which you may now be put. Have you been well treated here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Fed, clothed, used as a guest?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Put in chains, beaten, starved, stretched on the rack?”

“No, sir.”

“An attempt has been made to persuade you to reaccept the old religion. That failing, has coercion been used?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, remember those things. If God sees fit to favour us in war, and we take England, there will be clemency and justice shown as well as the rigour of holy law. Remember that and tell your father.”

“Was that what you wished me to tell him?”

“Not that alone.” He paused, biting his finger thoughtfully. “Answer this, boy, I know little of your Calvinist religion. Do you still use the Bible of Christ?”

“Yes … It is in all our churches.”

“So that an oath sworn on it would be binding upon you as we should swear upon holy relics?”

“Yes.”

He peered hard at me as if trying to assure himself.

“Tomorrow then we will see if a way can be found.”

“What are you asking me to swear, sehor?”

“To secrecy in the message you carry.”

“To my father?”

“Yes, it must be learned by heart and must go to him only and must never be spoken of again.”

Sleep for less than an hour. The pageant of the day, with its ponderous, tedious progression to the blind automatic spectacle of the end, was of the stuff of nightmare. Mingling with all this were sudden wakings, full of panic hopes and fears, and long minutes when everything was clear with the feverish clarity of illness.

About eleven that morning Mariana limped down the steps to the patio.

“So, Maugan, I hear you are to leave us?”

“There is no certainty of it yet.”

“Perhaps you will be returning to your girl, and you can say to her, ‘Ay de mi, those Spanish women, how I despised them ~ ‘ “

“If I say anything to anyone in England it will be that Spanish women have courage and beauty … and one, among them that I knew, more than any of the others.”

She looked surprised. “Sweet Jesu, you are becoming a courtier. Perhaps it is after all true that you have uncles close to the Queen.”

All that day I waited, but it was not until six in the evening that the summons came. Rodez arrhed to say we were to attend at the palace at once.

There was no ceremony to being admitted, no waiting, no ante-chambers crowded with favour-seekers. We entered the palace by the side door through which the pages came and went, crossed the width of the building by musty passages most of them below ground, here and there coming out level with little green courtyards.

I was led into a chapel with savage stained glass in its Gothic windows. At the back of the chapel was a writing table, and seated at the table were three men: a priest I had never seen before he had been chosen because he spoke English; Senor Prada; and Don Juan de Idiaquez, whom I had seen once before and whom I knew to be, after the King, the most important member of the Junta de Noche. Rodez withdrew and left me with the three men. The light from one of the windows threw a bloody streak across the table and across the well-kept hands of Idiaquez.

“You will sit here, Maugan Killigrew,” said Andres Prada. “Father Vasco will read to you the message you are to learn by heart. When you have learned it he will take your oath, then you will be free to go.”

CHAPTER FOUR

It was July before I saw Cornwall. I travelled back to Lisbon in the company of two couriers and there waited four weeks. A provision ship carrying supplies for the army in Brittany at length gave me passage, but three days out we were struck with a great storm which after a week drove us back, a battered leaking wreck, into Coruna at the Groyne. More weeks passed in repairs and we did not reach Blavet until early June. Then began the most contrary wait of all, with only 200 miles of sea between myself and home. Great gales blew across the Bay with rain and biting winds. Enormous waves dashed against the mole and damp powdery-balls of spume tottered through the narrow streets. I had been given some money but this ran low, and I worked in a shipyard for three weeks unloading planks.

In the end a man I knew brought me home in the sort of secrecy in which he always seemed to move and have his life, a secrecy of which his thin whispering nasal voice seemed an essential part. Captain Elliot said:

“I’ll run you as far as Helford, put you ashore there

Dolph~n’s bound for Plymouth but twill be no great way off course. I’m never above doing a favour for an old friend, and your father has long been a well-wisher of mine.”

“Taken by Burley, was you?” shouted William Love, laughing heartily. “He’s turned his hand to many things, has Richard Burley, but child snatching is a new one and not, you’d ha’ thought, so richly profitable. One day he’ll find his neck in a loop o’ rope, and then he’ll dance to someone else’s measure.”

“Seen him?” said Captain Elliot. “No, young man, we have not seen Captain Burley since just before that time we visited you. You remember that time when we came on you late and you roused the house, and we stayed with you four or five days.”

“Aye,” said William Love, “and there was some fever in the house among the servants that more’n one of our hearty lads took. I wished we’d never come.”

“But that “

“What,” whispered Captain Elliot, “what was the name of the one that died of it? We buried him off Gyllyngvase. Mark Jarvis, that was it … Nay, I have not seen Captain Burley since we parted off the Land’s End the day before we made Helford. And then I had no time to bid him good day for I was afraid any minute to feel the Runnelstones under my keel. His prize foundered, you say? I thought we all should have. How long ago is all that, William?”

“thigh on two year. September or October ‘92. The boy’s grown since then. He’s already taller ‘n his father.”

“Ye’ve grown since I seen ye last,” said Justinian Kilter, “but I mind you well. You was ever interfering twixt me and that girl, what’s her name, Meg something. But last time we called you wasn’t there to thrust in your oar so I made free with her to my heart’s content.”

“Dick Stable would see you did not.”

“Ah, that’s his name, that skim-milk of a man. I never can mind whether he be Dick Harp the stable boy or Dick Stable th’ harpist. Poh, he could not protect a lent lily from a bumble bee. Meg had her fill o’ me last time I was there. I should not wonder if I’ve fathered a brat on her.”

“Muscle?” said Aristotle Totle. “Why ye’ve no muscle yet, you should be ashamed at 16; why at your age I could lift two grown men. ‘Ere, feel my arms no, not there, ‘ore. There’s stren’th for ‘ee. I’ve killed twenty men in my time wi’ my bare ‘ends. Twenty or twenty-one, I lose the count.”

“How is her Ladyship your grandmother?” asked Captain Elliot. “I’ll be bound she’ll be glad to see you back. You’re a lucky young man, Maugan Killigrew, being sent home like this. Many will say, how did he accomplish it? What special service did he render to receive such special favour? Like as not, you’ll be asked that, and then what will you say?”

“The truth. That it was because of an exchange.”

“Ah, but what exchange? they’ll say. Did we release some Spaniard? Did we?”

“I think so.”

“I’ll hold a penny Richard Burley plays some eor.hr,uir.g part in this,” shouted William Love. “He’s a deep fish and contrives much to his own profit. We must seek him out.”

“No,” said Captain Elliot. “Burley now has truck with the Spaniards, and that is treasonable work. Eh, young man? Who sups with the devil … Let us have no thought for Burley and his evil ways.”

We sighted the Lizard about four-thirty on a wet and gusty Sunday afternoon. After the towering Sierras the dark coastline looked low and unimposing, but a lump rose in my throat and for a half-hour it would not be swallowed down. Though the sea had little vicious heads on it and the wind was shifting and backing treacherously Dolphin reefed her sails and made scarcely any headway towards the shelter of the land.

“We’ll slip in as the day wanes,” said Captain Elliot. “Twould not do to rouse an alarm, for there’s been much nervousness all summer on account of a Spanish attack.”

I could not wait to get off this ship, and there was more than homesickness to it. For one reason or another they were all lying to me. Whatever element of truth escaped them was by accident and not design. They even contradicted each other. Totle boasted of impossible prowess; Kilter spoke so of Meg to goad me; Elliot untruthfully disowned Burley; Love, perhaps most dangerously of all, twisted his own memory.

We dropped anchor after dark in the deeper water above Durgan. Two men rowed me to the bank of the river. It was raining still, a Cornish rain, an English rain, different in feel and taste and smell from what fell in Madrid or Lisbon. I thanked the men and scrambled ashore knee wet, pushing aside the branches of an overhanging tree, scarcely looking back. In moments the sound of their rowlocks and the plash of water was blanketed off by the dripping wood.

I began to run. It is about five miles, through woods, across moorland and along narrow tracks from Durgan to Arwenack. I ran all the way. When within sight of the palisade I lay down nuder a tree in the long wet grass trying to get back lost breath. The grass smelt sweeter than it had ever smelt before. After seven or eight minutes I went to the gate of the palisade and hammered on it. There was no reply, and I knew that one might knock there all night.

But you don’t keep a boy out of his own home however carefully you guard it. I followed the palisade down to the river’s edge, then lowered myself carefully into the water and by clinging to the ends of the last poles I swung under the great fence and crawled up the other side on to the grassy sward that led to Arwenack House.

They were astounded to see me, aghast, frightened. To appear after six months dripping water in the hall, dirty and emaciated, out at elbow and knee, with sores round the mouth, swollen feet and blue marks like bruises on my legs, was perhaps sufficient to startle anyone. They had given me up for dead, so some came near to thinking it was a ghost.

It is the only time in my life that I remember my father’s eyes lighting up on sight of me those eyes in which a light so seldom showed. The children were all abed, but the older ones were wakened and came tumbling down clustering round and showering excited questions. In no time I was surrounded by forty-odd people, a mixture of family and servants, while dogs licked my feet and leapt up at my face and others barked and quarrelled and urinated among the rushes.

The only absentee was Mrs Killigrew who was in bed with another child born a week ago, named Simon and already christened, for they thought him determined to slip away.

After the first clamour had subsided, the voice of Lady Killigrew could be heard. She had not moved from her chair when I went to kiss her, but now she looked down her long prehensile nose and said, enough of greetings, the boy must be fed and washed, he stinks of bilge water and looks as if he’s lived on nothing else for a week. She set the servants running and continued to stare at me with her cold blue eyes while others did the questioning.

It was a rich homecoming. I fell on the food when it came and wolfed it, still talking, answering, laughing and half crying, joking, trying to explain.

Not Only were they astounded, they were vastly impressed at the story. Even my father was impressed that I had been received at Court. In among all the happy conversation there was a questioning note. And I had to keep a guard on my tongue and its explanations.

It was midnight before anyone thought of bed and nearer two before I found myself again in~that long narrow room I knew so well with its tall window overlooking the river’s mouth and the security of it and the constriction. I was back in my mother’s arms, in my mother’s womb, held firm where none could attack, protected, supported, confined. Every board, every panel, every stair, every creak of bed and crack of wall and squeak of shutter were familiar and friendly, part of an eternity of childhood which belonged to me for ever.

But happy as I was there was something to ask my halfbrother before his chatter stopped in sleep.

“John, have you seen the Arundells of Tolverne?”

“No, scarce anything. Why?”

“You remember Sue Farnaby? She was staying with them in December when I called there.”

“Ah … Is that how the wind blows? Well, she’s pretty enough, I grant you, if only she had money. But she has none and you’d do well to think on that. Maybe it’s less important for you; but Father never fails to impress on me the need to marry an heiress. I believe he can scarcely wait until I am old enough.”

“Have you seen anything of her?”

“Of Sue Farnaby? No. Of course, being near fifteen, I am now old enough … It’s not pleasant to think one has to wed for duty. Grandmother once told me she saw her first husband only twice before they were betrothed, and she then but thirteen. And Uncle Henry to cap it says that’s nought, he knows of a boy of six who was carried to the altar and coaxed to say his vows so that after he might go and play. D’you think that’s true?”

“Have you seen Jonathan arid Gertrude Arundell? Have they issue yet?”

“I’ve seen no one but Thomas. Thomas came down the river all on his own one day in May. He has grown so gross, Maugan. But so strong with it. While he was visiting us the tide fell and his boat was caught in the mud. Sawna and Penrudduck went to draw it into the water but the mud was deep and they could not stir it. Down goes Thomas and by himself lifts the boat bodily and thrusts it into the water. I’ll vow you could not knock him down and break his teeth now.”

“What did he want?”

“It was some business to do with his father who he says is softening in the head. You know Sir Anthony was a ward of Grandfather, and it was some legal business, I believe.”

“Then why did Jonathan not come? He is the eldest and next head of the family.”

“That I don’t know. I don’t think Thomas has much respect for his brother.”

“I don’t think Thomas has much respect for anyone,” I said, and after I had spoken wished I had not, for it brought old apprehensions to the surface.

Next morning my father went out early seeing to the shearing of the lambs. Belemus was still away, and I found myself depending on my halfbrother for all the news. John said it had been another unnatural summer: the hay had been cut but would not dry, sheep were dying of the murrain, oats and corn were flattened by the rain and wind. This was true throughout the country and there would be great distress. There was also great fear of a Spanish invasion. Uncle Simon and his family were coming next week; there was plague in London though not nearly as bad as last year. Odeliahad had a quinsy in May and had been lanced by Glapthorne of Penryn. She had been tedious sick and Mother had saved her by riding into Truro and bringing back some draught. Penn, the falconer, had died in March: he had cut his finger and the poison had run through his body like quicksilver. Stevens was promoted in his place. Oliver Gwyther of Three Farthings House was paying court to Annora Job. Meg Levant was married to Dick Stable these three months. Yes, said John, Dolphin had called in in April, but after the trouble last time only Captain Elliot and William Love had come ashore.

So he talked on and on about the everyday things of life at Arwenack just as if I had only been away working in Truro; he talked about life as I had known it for sixteen years, while the familiar sounds and smells and sights seeped in. A girl in the laundry was starching and blueing my grandmother’s ruffs; another carried a wooden iron-bound pail full of buttermilk; in the yard Long Peter was tending a sick dog; Parson Merther led the younger children upstairs for an hour’s Greek; seagulls wheeled and cried in a sky of washed blue and broken cloud; the wind blew sweet off the sea; I was home and in a few days it was going to be hard to believe that the six foreign months had ever happened except in a vanishing dream.

Yet there was one intimidating task still to be undertaken.

At eleven my father came into the house with Rosewarne and Job and five dogs, and they all went into his study. I hung about outside and after twenty minutes the two servants left.

The last time I had been in this room was nearly two years ago when fever was rife in the house and Paul Knyvett had died and Mr Knyvett had left all the account books open on the table.

Mr Killigrew was sharpening one of his quills; he glanced up briefly and nodded me to a seat. His waist had increased this year and his fine complexion had become higher toned and a trifle blotchy. His thick fair hair was losing its colour and becoming an indeterminate shade of pale straw-brown.

“Well, boy, so you’re home again, by the mercy of Christ. Or by the mercy of King Philip. I thought you were dead. We all gave you up for dead. I’m graveUed at this honour done a son of mine.”

“It was not exactly honour, father. I spent the first three weeks in a Lisbon jail.”

“I call it honour not to be sent to the galleys but to be received at Court and well treated, to be later released and sent home in comfort. The Spanish respect the name of Killigrew more than I thought. D’you know who was released on our side by exchange?”

“No one was, father. That was an excuse to avoid the need to explain.”

“To explain what?”

“My coming home.”

He laid down his pen. “There is more to this than your coming home?”

“Yes, sir. I was charged with a message.”

“To whom? God’s face, what sort of a conspiracy is this?”

“A message to you, father.”

“What d’you mean, to me? Who could wish to send a message to me? n

“The Spanish Council of War. Andres Prada, Don Juan de Idiaquez, Estaban de Ibarra and others.”

“Well, well, I never thought to hear a cub of mine so pat with Spanish names! You’re telling me they released you in order to carry a message to me?”

“I was required to learn the message by heart and to repeat it. Then I was required to take an oath on the Bible that I would repeat it to you only and to no other. This I swore.”

Mr Killigrew unfastened a button of his jerkin and began to scratch inside; his heavy lids came down once or twice as if the light were too strong for him. All the dogs sighed together.

“And this message? You have written it down?”

“No, sir. It was a condition that it should not be.” I moistened my lips. “I am required to to deliver to my father, John Killigrew Esq., of Arwenack House, Governor of Pendennis Castle, the following message from the Junta de Noche, supreme War Council of his Imperial Majesty Philip the Second. Render up to Spain, at a time to be later assigned, the Castle of Pendennis, the river mouth and bay and all defences under your charge. Raise no arms, assemble no musters, give all aid to the landing forces as and when required to do so. For reward, on success of the mission, œ10,000 in gold, a knighthood, and a grant of the lands and properties of Godolphin, Erisey and Trelowarren, Epys and Trefusis.”

I stopped speaking. Mr Killigrew still had his belt knife in his hand, and his thumb was absently testing the sharpness of it. He got up and walked to the window. His thick figure was silhouetted against the diamond panes, with the rain trickling crossways down them.

“Brother of Christ,” he said, “that I should be so insulted I “

I did not speak, but let out a slow breath.

“Sometimes I think I’ve slips low in the respect of my friends. I did not know I was esteemed so low by my enemies! ” He laughed lightly. “For three and a half centuries the Killigrews have served England and her Kings as soldiers, as diplomats, as poets, as courtiers. We fought for the House of Lancaster and have never wavered for the Tudors except when Mary took to her papist ways, which served her right, shrew that she was. I and my father and my grandfather have beggared ourselves in the service of her sister. And we’re for her reformed church, every one of us not a backslider in five litters. Yet a halfdozen powdered strutting grandees from Castile suppose they can buy me and my fidelity as if I was a strumpet set up for sale to the highest bidder! No wonder they treated you well, boy! Did you tell them I was in debt?”

“No, father. They already knew.”

“Ah, their system’s got its spies. How did you consent to bring this pretty message? Did you think I should be interested? “

“Oh, no! But I wished to come home!”

He turned at last from the window. “Well, it was a way of coming. It was a way of coming! A knighthood, indeed! That would not be outside my deserts … They know their geography, too, it seems … Godolphin, Erisey and Trelowarren, Enys and Trefusis. And how much money? œ10,000? They knew their finances. But they did not know their man. That was their failing, boy, they did not know John Killigrew of Arwenack! “

“No, father.”

“Ralegh shall hear of this: we’ll laugh over it together! And Cecil. It will show how high my position and responsibility is rated by Spain.” He hesitated a moment, sat again in his chair, which creaked a welcome to the familiar weight. “No, well, we’ll think of that … In the meantime breathe no word of this outside.”

“I am sworn not to.”

“For see, Maugan, I have malicious enemies whose tongues given taste of this offer, might wag to bad effect. So have a guard on yourself.” He laughed again, again lightly, but the timbre was metallic. “It is as well if Godolphin does not hear of it or he might have some fear for his estates. And Hannibal Vyvyan …”

I said: “There is one more thing I was charged-to do. It was to give you this.”

“What have you there an amulet?”

“No, it is a ring with a seal on it of the Spanish royal arms. I was told to give it to you and to ask you to return it with your reply. This will prove that it comes from you.”

“So they expect an answer? And who’s to carry it?”

“That they would not say. I was afraid for my life they would wish me to carry it back, in which case I should have been no better off for the journey. But they did not. They would send a messenger when the time comes.”

“When the time comes … From that I’d gather they mean no attempt on England this year. Or perhaps it is a trap to lure us to sleep as in ‘88 when the news was spread deliberate that they had given up the attempt, just as they set out.”

“It will come,” I said. “They are all set on it. It is the one thought in their minds.”

“Ah. As Ralegh said. Unless they can be stopped. The forward party at Court presses for a preventive raid on the Spanish ports such as Drake performed seven years ago. But whether it will come to fruit I don’t know. Cecil plays for time and peace. Essex breathes fire and would fight the world. Ralegh brings up his new-born son and plants trees at Sherborne. We shall see.”

“Yes, sir.”

“A knighthood, indeed,” said my father. “Godolphin and Trelowarren, Enys and Trefusis …”

Now that the message was out I felt immensely lighter and relieved. And the relief, though in part because the message was safely delivered, had also to do with its reception. I would not have admitted it then in so many words, for to be a traitor is unthinkable. So one did not think of it. All one thought of was the many men in financial straits or torn by conflicts of conscience who would not have flung such an offer contemptuously away. And although Mr Killigrew never suffered with his conscience, there was no question but that he was in straits. More servants had gone since Christmas and meals were the poorer by half.

Of course, having been myself in straits often since, I can see now that his economies were half-hearted and without method. He had the true attitude of the aristocrat towards money: he was never really able to learn to see his wants as governed by his means; it was always his means which had to be adapted to his wants. He would buy an expensive horse or a jewel that took his fancy or dice with anyone who called. Only the best wines passed his lips. I soon discovered that he was involved in another complicated affair of the heart with a Mistress Margaret Jolly of Tregarden and spent much time and money in her pursuit. These were activities he made little effort to curb. Yet his smaller economies cut into the comfort of the house, and there is no doubt that he intended them to save more than they did.

“Yes,” said Meg Levant. “We all thought you was dead. Drowned or killed or put to the galleys which is death deferred. I cannot b’lieve tis you safe, unharmed by all they foreigners. Did you get to know the Spanish girls?”

“Some. They seemed much the same as ourselves.”

“Fancy. And how you’ve “rowed! And how thin yore. I mind tis no time since you was below my shoulder. Now I’m beneath yours.”

“There’s been times, Meg, when I’ve wished you were.”

“Naughty. But twas always your way to put on some mock.”

“It is not all mock. So you’re wed to Dick after all, eh?”

“What d’you mean, after all? We was pledged at Christmas and wed proper in Church St George’s Day. There’s no after all ‘bout that!”

“Dear Meg, it was but a turn of speech. He is away today?”

“The old wagon broke Saturday, so he’s gone to Truro with Tom Rose to buy some new axle pins. He’ll be ‘ome ‘night.”

“He’s a fine fellow, Dick. I’m sure he’ll make you a good spouse.”

“Ah, hark at the old man ~ Give me your blessing, will you, Maugan? Dear life, I mind you since you toddled and you was always old-fashioned. This Spanish time has not changed you. But then all our babies be growing up.”

Ever since I first knew her, Meg would retreat behind a superiority of age if I took liberties. Yet today there was a shrillness in her voice as if she meant it or wanted to mean it as if she were willing herself to draw away from me. Now she was married there could never be the same easy comradeship again. Something in her look today gave the impression that all was not well about the withdrawal, or as if perhaps she was not quite at ease with her new life. Dick was very likeable, but perhaps the vein of buffoonery in him took the romance out of his love making. Meg was a romantic girl, living when her endless duties allowed in a world of knight errants and fair maidens imprisoned in castle keeps. If a story-teller came to the house she was always the first to listen.

“All our babies are growing up.” I saw this on the next Sunday, a week after my return, when we walked to church. John was already as tall as his father. Thomas, a year younger, was square-shouldered and squat with his father’s cleft chin and a rolling bandy walk, a musical boy who played the lute well and sang; Odelia, auburn-haired and frail-looking yet in fact a tomboy pretty with dimples and a wide bewitching smile; Henry, aged 11, had eyes so thin-set over a hawk nose that he looked sinister and sometimes the oldest of the lot. Then came Maria, just six, bulging with puppy-fat that squeezed up round her eyes and swamped her pudgy nose; no-body could detect the beauty she was going to be. The last to walk in the procession was Peter, not quite 4, and he cried because it was so far, but as his mother was not there no one took notice of him until I set him on my shoulders, and then Father glowered. Perhaps he knew that Peter cried often and got his way. Perhaps he foresaw that Peter in some measure would always get his way. The two youngest of all, Elizabeth and Simon, were permitted to stay home.

I wonder now what my father would have thought if he could have seen into the future that Sunday morning as he strode vigorously along followed by his clutch of young eagles. Would he have been surprised and pleased to know that three of his sons would receive the knighthood which he had missed, and whose missing he so much resented? And would he have guessed which? Stiff, sober, formal John for whose betrothal he was already scheming? The morose but artistic Thomas, half doer and half dreamer? The acquisitive Henry, old before his time and full of claws? The sinewy Peter, slender and quick and noisy as a weasel? Simon, now attached to life so insecurely but later to be the fighter? William yet unborn?

Perhaps he could more easily have foreseen his own shabby end.

CHAPTER FIVE

Directly after church I told my father about the letter I carried for Thomas Arundell’s sister and asked permission to deliver it. Mr Killigrew was then much occupied with a Baltic hulk which had just been brought in by a Plymouth flyboat. The hulk was carrying pitch, tar, wood and cordage, these being contraband of war were subject to seizure, and my father was in haste to go down in case there might be some pickings for us, so he nodded impatiently to my request.

Mrs Killigrew, down for the first time since the birth of her eleventh child, said I might borrow Copley, her favourite pony. I was at the ferry by six, but the ferryman, a blackbearded dwarf with hands like squids, at first refused to get the larger boat out. We wrangled but when I had paid him fourpence he pulled the boat away from the side and I led Copley trembling into the box at the back. Then I had to help row, for the tide was strong.

The sun was sunk into the trees before the thatched roof of Tolverne showed. The last hundred yards of the path was much overgrown with brambles as if it had been scarcely used this summer, and Copley was nervous as small animals stirred in the undergrowth and birds twittered in the low branches above his head. Even though there had been no rain today the track was miry, and ferns and weeds were rank with moisture. In the yard of the house the cobbles were slippery with mud, and a great pool submerged the half of it. As I jumped down Jonathan Arundell ran out. When he saw me he stopped and looked nonplussed, but by now I was used to this greeting.

“Maugan! But we took you for dead. You were taken by pirates or Spaniards!” He peered past me. “This is a happy surprise. Since when are you home?”

“Seven days ago. You see I’ve not waited long to call.”

“No …” He looked past me again as he patted my shoulder. “This is good news. Come in, come in. Did you come by the ferry? You saw no one on the way?”

“Except the ferryman who scowled like a murderer. You were expecting visitors?”

“Yes. My uncle. And Thomas. They should be here before night falls. What brought you safely home?”

I told him as he led the way in. The house was dark and seemed empty, but while talking I hoped and prayed Sue would suddenly step from some doorway. He stopped to call a servant, who came with a lighted candle and began to light others. Jonathan looked thin and ill. In the galleried hall the remains of a meal were on the table. The candles stained the graying daylight, and portraits grimaced on the panelled walls.

“Is Sue here?” I said, breaking into his tank because I could wait no longer.

“Sue?” He frowned and rubbed a hand over his forehead.

“Sue Farnaby.”

“Oh … No. She left. She left in May. Maugan, there is much to explain, and since you must lie here the night I shad try to explain it. Throw your bag on that chair. Sit down. You’ve eaten?”

“Not since dinner. But I can take something later. Why did she leave? What is wrong?”

“All is wrong, Maugan. Our lives have been sliding downhill for two years. You remember how Sir Anthony was at Christmas when you were here. Well, it has gone from bad to worse. Thomas swears he is mad, but that’s not true; my father is torn apart in conscience and belief, and his struggle has become our struggle so that we as a family are torn also, brother against brother, sister against sister-in-law!”

“It is all to do with religion? What had Sue “

“As a young man my father was as staunch a Protestant as any Killigrew; but as the years have passed the old religion has attacked him like a canker, creeping upon him and upon us.” Jonathan twisted his face. “For my part, Maugan, I cannot seem to feel religion that deep if the truth were told I do not find myself hostile to some of the old forms and beliefs: for me they have a beauty that the new way of worship lacks … But I would not live or die for either. Perhaps it’s a weakness of mine. Thomas thinks so. All I’m concerned for is a happy home, especially for Gertrude, my wife, who has the feelings of her father. So …” He shrugged. “So it went on for a time, a smouldering pot sending up the occasional bubble of steam. As Thomas has grown to manhood he has hated all the things my father is now devoting his life to. A sterner Protestant than Thomas never drew breath … Oh, he has some reason on his side. Sir Anthony has become less cautious; people have talked; it’s a matter of time before he comes into conflict with the sheriff’s officers … Thomas has lived on tenterhooks, says it should not be left to a sick man to lead his family into disgrace. My mother … well you can see how she is torn. Then in January a Godfrey Brett came to stay. He is still here and pretends to be my father’s secretary. I trust I can tell you this without fear of its being repeated?”

“Of course.”

“He came, and well one has to acknowledge that he is a fine man, and little Elizabeth has been much influenced. Her father naturally encourages it. So that is the way of it. Gertrude at loggerheads with my sister. I with my brother. He with my father. Oh, I tell you, it is a picture of a united family that I draw for you, Maugan! “

“And in all this,” I said, “why did Sue Farnaby leave?”

“Her aunt at Malpas was ill, and she went to nurse her. But I think she wasn’t happy here. Who would be?”

“And she is there now?”

“I don’t know. Maugan, things have come to the boil this week. Thomas has become more and more restive, and yesterday he made some discoveries which set him blazing. He stormed off to Uncle Francis with the idea of having Sir AnthQny put under restraint. It’s an impossible position for us all, Maugan! In a manner I agree that Thomas is acting in the best interests of the family; yet it is not his place to do it! Neither mother nor I will move; but Thomas has no love or respect for anyone except himself. Sometimes I feel I would rather go to prison with my father than prosper in Thomas’s company …”

A servant came in. “There are horses coming, sir.”

“It will be them, I imagine. Stay here, Maugan, I’ll go and greet my uncle.”

I had not seen Sir Francis Godolphin since he came to Arwenack with Mr Trefusis. With him was Thomas, grown almost as tall as I and half as broad again, Thomas of the round soft face and the bland eyes and the hard mouth. They exclaimed at sight of me, and then when the ladies came downstairs there were more cries of surprise and pleasure. At least, give Thomas his due, he put on no presence of being pleased to see me; I think he had no feelings either way; there was other business on hand.

All the women looked haggard. Gertrude was still not with child: it was going to be perhaps as Thomas had predicted. Elizabeth’s eyes were red, and her mother’s too. Lady Arundell, although she must have borne the brunt of all this trouble, greeted her brother with composure, indeed rather coolly. It became clear that Sir Francis was here at his young nephew’s invitation not at hers. After their first congratulations to me there was an awkward silence which was broken by an offer of food and wine, which Sir Francis refused until he had seen his brotherin-law.

“Oh, Anthony?” said Lady Arundell, as if her husband had been far from her thoughts; “He is upstairs. He’s well, though he was not quite in the best of spirits when my my son rode for you yesterday. Yes, he’s well enough. You shall see him presently.”

“Thomas brings me sombre tales. It is true, is it that Godfrey Brett is still here? He must be taken, Anne. It’s no longer safe to house such creatures, as you must know …”

He stopped at the sound of a foot on the stairs. Sir Anthony in a long blue silk housecoat led the way, and behind him, stepping on his shadow, was a tall thin man of about forty in the correct black milan fustian of a secretary. Sir Anthony walked with a stick now and in some obvious difficulty, but he would accept no help and greeted his brotherin-law in a composed and controlled way.

“Maugan, too? But I thought you were lost to us. Well, happy that you’re not. Let Thomas take your cloak, Francis; you must be tired after so long a ride. I trust all’s well with you.” To a servant: “Cover the table, Banbury, and bring food and wine, and water for washing.”

We talked a few minutes, and they all found some outlet in questioning me, until two servants returned with a basin and ewer and towels. In this Sir Francis washed, and after him Thomas and I, while the table was set. Presently we sat down to eat, while the others stayed at the table talking to us. In all this Godfrey Brett sat politely at Sir Anthony’s elbow, not speaking but discreetly present.

It was not until I mentioned that I had met Thomas Arundell in Madrid and had a message for his sister that Sir Anthony showed any signs of stress.

“Ah, so Thomas is well. We parted in anger many years ago. Perhaps now we should see things more as one.”

“It is on that subject that I come to talk to you, brother,” Sir Francis said. “Later when the meal is over we should retire together and talk it over.”

“Talk now if you wish,” said Sir Anthony. “I have no secrets from my family. Maugan Killigrew is the grandson of my guardian. Godfrey Brett is my close confidant.”

“Too close,” Thomas muttered, but Godfrey Brett, though N he must have heard, did not even raise his eyes.

“Thomas,” said Sir Anthony, “though yet 18, thinks to grasp the reins I hold though if they were to drop from my hands they would go to Jonathan. Thomas affects to believe that the stresses I have been under have affected my judgment. Oh, do not deny it. boy, I’m not blind yet, nor deaf.”

“I don’t deny it, father,” said Thomas grimly. “It is why I went for Uncle Francis.”

Sir Francis Godolphin stroked his grey beard. “I think, Anthony, in spite of what you say, that we would do better to talk of this in private.”

“It will not be without Brett, that I can tell you.”

The servants had gone from the room. Elizabeth was breathing sharply as if she had been running.

“Then so be it,” Sir Francis acknowledged patiently. “But since it must be in front of Brett, then I have to tell you that for the sake of your family you must be rid of him.”

“You presume to dictate whom I shall employ as my secretary? “

“Oh, come, brother. You know he is more than that.”

I saw Sir Anthony’s hand begin to tremble on the stick he still held. “What passes between Brett and me is the concern only of ourselves.”

“There you err. In these days it cannot be. To rid yourself and your household of his his tutelage must be the first step.”

“A first step to what? To eternal damnation?”

“I’m not expert at theological argument; but I know, as you do, the laws of this land. We know what happened to Tregian when he was found harbouring a papist priest.”

“Whom I helped to condemn,” said Sir Anthony.

“All the more reason why you should not condemn yourself.”

“All the more reason why I should, if that’s what you call condemnation.”

Sir Francis gave a slight shrug, and glanced round the table. Is this, his glance said, a man incapable of ordering his own affairs?

“Father,” Thomas said, “you’ve no right to imperil the inheritance of your children. We have our own lives to live. Look at the Tregians, the Beckets, the Tremaynes and all the rest beggared and imprisoned, their estates seized and their prospects ruined. That’s well enough if they’re all of one mind. We are not.”

“Nor are we all of yours, Thomas i” Elizabeth burst out shrilly.

“Ah, well, you have been influenced, bewitched by all these priests “

“Silence!” said Lady Arundell suddenly. “I will not have my children talk in such a way! Francis … Thomas has presumed on an over-kindly upbringing to disgrace himself by speaking against his father. He exceeded his rights by sending for you. You are welcome, of course, but...”

“I think Thomas has some right on his side,” said Sir Francis quietly. “I would disown a son who behaved as he has done, but I pray I should never give him such reason. Is it true, Anthony, that you have been disposing of lands and farms to give the money to the priests that pass this way?”

That word had been spoken again and this time not by an angry boy.

“The money is my own to do,with as I will.”

“Some must be held in jointure with my sister. She brought you property worth œ1,000 a year.”

“It has not been touched. My mother, who was Margaret Chamond of Launcells, left each of her children personal property, and it is that which I have sold.”

Elizabeth was opposite me. She was not a pretty girl but she had grown quickly to womanhood in the last year. She was wearing a severe frock of brown velvet with a doublet like a man’s but with much longer points. It was suddenly as if her bodice was too tight. She put her hand up to her throat, trying to loose the standing collar. She wrenched it open and pulled out the chain about her throat. On its end was a gold crucifix.

She said in a loud broken voice: “Holy Mary, Blessed Virgin, Blessed Mother of Christ, pray for me! ” and burst into tears. Then she pushed back her chair and ran from the room.

Both Sir Anthony and Godfrey Brett crossed themselves at her words. You could hear her feet clattering down the stone passage towards the other stairs. A servant came in bringing more claret wine. We all waited in silence until he had gone.

As the door closed Thomas began to speak, but this time it was Sir Francis who waved him impatiently to silence.

“My brother for so you have been by marriage for twentyeight years my brother, your life is your own to do with as you will, and I have long held you in esteem. But there is a point at which it is the duty of every Englishman to take issue with you. It is especially my duty as a Deputy Lieutenant of the county. In harbouring Jesuit priests from Rheims and Douai you are guilty of a treachery against the realm. By receiving them, by sheltering them, by dispensing money to them, you are furthering the interests of Spain and making more possible the conquest of this country with all that would follow. Whatever you may feel, I must arrest this man and deliver him in custody to the Sheriff.”

Sir Anthony made some convulsive movement as if trying to stand up, but all he did was upset a goblet which rolled across the table spilling the dregs of red wine on the cloth.

“So that’s it, eh? That’s why you come to call attended by no fewer than four personal servants. And do you intend to arrest me also?”

“This man is your secretary, no more, you say so yourself. Culpable fault need not attach to you. You were mistaken in the man, that’s all.”

“And, having discovered my mistake, I am to denounce him? Oh, no, Francis. The spirit of Cuthbert Mayne, the first martyr in this holy war, will see that I don’t do that. I will go in chains with Brett, make no mistake. Even to the rack.”

“You need denounce no one,” said Sir Francis, “only keep silent for the sake of your family.”

With unsteady hands Lady Arundell picked up the overturned goblet. She did not look at her husband.

“Sir,” said Godfrey Brett, “I have a suggestion to make.”

Everyone looked suddenly at him, at his narrow ascetic face, at his deep-set unyielding eyes. He too was now fingering a crucifix.

“Well?”

“I think you are reckoning without me. That would be a mistake.”

“We are reckoning that you will soon have lost your power to harm, to corrupt, to subvert. That is the important thing.”

“I have not lost my power to harm this household, though it is the last thing I would wish to do. Others have passed through Tolverne before me. One at least Humphry Petersen was caught and put to the question. He gave away no secrets even to the end. It would be unwise to suppose that I would be so brave.”

Sir Francis Godolphin pushed aside a candlestick so that he could see the other man more clearly. “Explain yourself.”

“I have a mission, Sir Francis. You have a mission. We meet, by misfortune, under the roof of a common friend. That constrains us both. If I am caught here or hereabouts I shall necessarily implicate Tolverne and those in it. Sir Anthony, as you see, will not deny his part, so you cannot help but cause his family’s ruin.”

“And your suggestion?”

“My suggestion is that I leave tomorrow unimpeded by you. Twentyfour hours afterwards you come to seek me. By then I shall be well away from here; if I am caught there will be no need even to mention the name of Arundell.”

The grease had spilled with the movement of the candlestick and was running down the brass base. Sir Francis turned to his brotherin-law.

“You see, Anthony, how your secretary thinks first of his own skin.”

“That is untrue,” said Godfrey Brett. “We all come prepared for martyrdom, but only as a final resort. It is our duty to do our utmost to avoid it especially when it would involve others of the true faith. It’s a simple bargain I’m offering you.”

“Bargain!” shouted Thomas. “D’you think we should “

“Silence!” said Sir Francis. “… And how do we know that if you are caught later you will not betray your patron when put to the question?”

“I cannot promise you that,” said Brett; “for we none of us know our own endurance. But I can promise you that I would rather die. Therefore that way you have much to gain. If I am taken here you are lost already.”

“And if you evade us, as you clearly hope to, then another spy remains in England to spread blasphemy and treason and perhaps assassination!”

Brett inclined his head. “It is a risk. You must weigh the advantages of one course against another.”

Sir Anthony said gently: “Godfrey, I don’t like this talk. I’m not afraid of prison or shackles or disgrace. Our blessed Lord suffered more than we ever shall. It is an hpnour to follow in His footsteps. Let us be taken together.”

Brett patted his hand. It was a gesture very out of place in a secretary. “We have not only ourselves to think of, sir. We have to consider our loved ones, our cause, the greater good. It is only considering the greater good that constrains me to make this bargain with my enemies.”

Sir Francis poured himself a half glass of wine. It was a first sign of a lessening tension. “Are you an Oxford man?” he asked.

Brett inclined his head. “Yes, sir.”

“You argue like one. And seem to have given my brother a like disease.” Sir Francis carefully ignored Thomas and looked over his head at Lady Arundell. “1 exceed my duty if I agree to this, Anne, I do indeed. No doubt there are hot-heads here who are for immediate action; but I think this proposition should be considered. It might well be considered until the morning.”

CHAPTER SIX

I awoke thinking at first that I had dreamed the noise, that someone was slamming a door in my face. Then I heard voices, someone screaming for help.

I was afoot at once, struggling into my slops, and had passed through Thomas’s room while he was still shaking the sleep out of his eyes.

On the front landing was a light. The wide banisters of the stairs threw bars on the panelled walls from the single candle burning in the well of the hall. Elizabeth was down there, fully dressed, bending over a crumpled cloak. As I slithered down, bare feet slipping on the polished oak, I saw that beside her was the fallen figure of Sir Anthony.

When she saw me she stopped calling and trying to raise him. “Mauganl He felll I think he’s … Maugan, he fell from half way up. I I was behind him but I could not catch him ,,

Sir Anthony was still breathing but in the flickering light his face was soap-grey and very old. As I tried to drag him into a better position others of the family came including servants, and presently he was lifted and carried back to his chamber. There he lay stertorous, a trickle of saliva damping the corner of his mouth, while talk and argument eddied over him.

Elizabeth’s story was that she had been awakened by her father who had told her to dress and come downstairs, as he had a message for her to take. It was only when Thomas pointed out that Godfrey Brett was not roused and they went to his chamber and found the bed empty that she burst into tears and told the truth. Sir Anthony had not fallen on the way downstairs: he had fallen backwards as he was going up after seeing Godfrey on his best horse and away.

“So!” shouted Thomas. “The rat’s gone! By morning he’ll be, be half across Cornwall! But if he’s taken Hilary she’s a distinctive mare and maybe we can trace him. Come, Uncle, what did I say? If we leave now we might even catch up with him before he leaves the woods!”

“No,” said Sir Francis. “Leave him go.”

“But “

“Leave him go. The bargain that he made still stands. But I did not expect that he would run tonight. I thought his courage would have stuck till morning.”

“It was not that way,” said Elizabeth, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “It was my father who insisted he should go at once. It was against his own wishes that Godfrey Brett left.”

As they discussed it I stepped back, feeling myself an intruder in this scene. I pictured Godfrey Brett spurring towards Truro, looking for the next family who would hide him. There were others, no doubt, and plenty.

Old Henry, one of the ostlers, was brought in and stared helplessly at the sick man. He fingered the livid bruise at the side of Sir Anthony’s neck and said in a whining voice that he would draw off blood to give the Master some easement.

Gertrude Arundell, Jonathan’s wife, came to stand beside me as he began. She too had gone thinner this summer; at sixteen she looked mature. Then I saw her glance towards the door and draw in a sharp breath; Godfrey Brett was standing beside Elizabeth.

The only sound for some moments was the drip of blood into the bowl.

Sir Francis straightened up. “Well, sir, did your horse go lame? “

“Yes,” said Brett, and came into the room. “Yes, sir, it was lamed by the sound of a fall as I was crossing the yard to the stables. So it never started. I have been waiting in Sir Anthony’s study until Miss Elizabeth brought me word. It seems that my old friend is mortal sick.”

“I think he has had an apoplexy.”

“Then he will need me.”

“You came back at your own peril.”

“We do all things, sir, at our own peril. It is man’s privilege and destiny.” He walked to the bed.

By the morning Sir Anthony had come round, but he could not speak and lay listlessly, eyes dulled under the white brows; but now and then a gleam of intelligence showed, like some one coming to a window and peering through the shutter. Lady Arundell and Godfrey Brett never left him.

Towards evening the sick man recovered enough to know what was being said to him and to nod emphatically when Brett asked if he should administer extreme unction. Only Lady Arundell stayed in the room while the anointing was performed; later when others went in it was possible to see a dampness round Sir Anthony’s eyelids. Shortly afterwards he relapsed into a state of coma. When you passed the door of his room you could hear the slow heavy snore of a dying man.

He lasted through the night. I half expected Brett to make good his escape this time, now that all that could be done had been done, but he was still there when dawn broke.

It was a warm heavy day. The trees had encroached on the house in the last two years; the gardens were neglected and flies hovered over rotted branches and damp ferns. Foxgloves and nettles and brambles fought for light and sun under the silent trees. When one opened the window there was no fresh air, only a smell of dank vegetation and the buzzing of flies and bees. It had rained again in the night.

About seven the family was called to the bedroom. Sir Anthony’s eyes were open and he had stopped snoring. Godfrey Brett stood by the bed holding a crucifix for him to see. Thomas stood by the window, his faint shadow darkening the floor.

After a while the dying man moved his head an inch to take in the people about him. Brett was intoning in Latin. Sir Anthony raised a hand and made a gesture which might have been the sign of the cross. Outside rooks cawed in the tall cypress trees. The hand came slowly to rest and the mouth slowly opened, the lips parting reluctantly as if stuck with glue; the head rolled.

Thomas uttered a strange noise at the window. I do not know if it was grief, or if it was satisfaction at being one step nearer his inheritance.

To arrest Godfrey Brett at once was now the obvious course, since Sir Anthony would no longer suffer from the disclosure. Thomas was all for seeing it done. Sir Francis hesitated.

Thomas said they now had nothing to fear from an inquiry; his father had not been in his right mind when employing this man; no one could prove otherwise; no one else was to blame; Brett could hurt no one. Thomas further argued that there was now more danger in letting him go since, if he was later caught, he could accuse not Sir Anthony but Sir Francis Godolphin of abetting his entry into the kingdom. What high officer responsible to the Queen would dare to give such a man his freedom? Or suppose Brett got clear away,‘how would everyone feel then? Sir Francis rubbed his grey beard.

I do not know if consideration for Brett’s decision to stay and be with Sir Anthony to the end had any bearing on Sir Francis’s doubt. Largely I think it was still consideration for the house of Tolverne. If an inquiry were ever held, the house and its occupants, even if cleared, would remain under a cloud. And Jonathan, now head of it, was not a man to bear up stoutly under disgrace. There was a frailty in him, a lack of conviction, which would stand him in ill stead before a court of inquiry. Then there was Elizabeth, a convinced Catholic now and in a hysterical frame of mind. Even Lady Arundell, with her attachment for her late husband and in early bereavement, might not stand up well.

Because there was no further excuse to stay, I left before a decision was come to. But I learned later that Sir Francis with typical discretion had found a middle way. He kept Brett under house arrest for four days until after the funeral, and in the meantime set afoot discreet inquiries in Truro. Two days after Sir Anthony was borne to his last resting place in Philleigh Church, where he still lies, a Breton vessel, the Violette, of 40 tons, bound from Truro to Dieppe with a cargo of uncoloured woollen cloth, took in sail at Tolverne Pool just long enough for a row boat, which had been loitering in her path, to put aboard one tall black-clad Catholic who temporarily was to be allowed to be neither missionary nor martyr. I understand that Brett took it calmly, as he took most things calmly in his dedicated life. It was no policy of the Counter-Reformation to sacrifice its sons without good cause.

Mistress Alice Arundell now lived at Tregony, so it was scarcely out of my way to call first at the farm in the hills behind St Clement’s Point. It was raining hard and blowing, on the first of August, 1594. As I rode Copley up the last ridge to the farm, his hooves were squelching in brown mud. The trees on the other side of the river near Malpas were hung with a widow’s veil of rain. I had passed field after field in which the corn was beaten flat; sheep huddled for protection under dripping and waving trees; cattle hung their heads; here and there men and women worked about the barns, sacks over shoulders and tied round legs; it rained as if it would never stop.

At the first gate a dog barked savagely and Copley reared, but I made peace with the mongrel and we plodded together up the squelching track to the front door of the farm. I knocked and waited. My heart was thumping. Water dripped off my hat, off the thatch above the door, off Copley’s saddle, off the mongrel’s slimy muzzle.

A woman came to the door wiping her floury hands. It was exactly what she had done last time I had called.

“Mistress Maris? You remember me? I came to see you a year last May. I have caned to see Sue. My name is Maugan KiUigrew.”

I forgot that the last time I had not told her that. But the name seemed to convey nothing to her.

“Sue? She’s not here. She’s in Paul.”

“In Paul? Near Penzance?”

“Yes.”

Mrs Maris was of a sudden involved in keeping the mongrel out of the house. It had tried to slip in unobserved but she saw it and blocked it first with her foot and then with her hand. There was a struggle, and then she grabbed the animal by the tail and turned it and thrust it out. It slunk off down the path, and Mrs Maris, breathing hard, straightened up to regard me again. She did not ask me in.

“Why has she gone to Paul?” I asked.

“Why not? That’s where she lives now. She’s wed. Did you not know?”

So I saw the inside of the Maris farm after all. She was not unkind when she saw I was in and took me in and gave me a cup of buttermilk.

It was a small poor room with a low ceiling heavy-beamed so that one could barely stand upright, and on this dark day and with the small windows overgrown it was twilight at noon.

“Aye,” she said, “it was last Wednesday. A week since today, so perhaps it’s not surprising that everyone does not yet know. The betrothal was very short. She was wed at St Clement, down the valley from here. You take the turning by the old stables that Richard Robartes has just now bought and follow the trees down the hill. Her uncle, my man, stood for her, since her mother has but recently herself wed again and could not travel. I loaned her my own gown that I’d had since

I better days. The silk was turned yellow a smaU degree, but it fitted her, and it became her well. Mrs Glubb who’s quick with her fingers, made her cap and gloves. It was all done very handsome as you’ve a right to suppose.”

There were signs of a faded gentility about the room: goblets on an oak dresser, a cupboard cloth of Venice work, brass pans well scoured and polished, two brazil armchairs.

“I saw how it was directly he came to call. And I saw it was a chance for her. She was always a bright child, quick as silver, sharp as a needle, and lively company, and she’ll make a good wife. When she came home from Tolverne she was listless and lacking spirit; but when he called all that was changed. I saw how it was going to be, and how fortunate she was.”

I sipped the buttermilk but could hardly get my throat to swallow.

“Oh, it is a good match for her. Mind, he’s not so young as he was, but there’s money and land and connections. He’s not one of these shiftless paupers who eke out their living as best they may. And he’s a godly man, not a drunkard or a dicer, as many are. As I said to her: you’re alone in the world now your mother’s wed again, and you’ve no dowry nor no hope of one. Here’s the chance of a fine house though I’ve not seen it and a horse to ride; and he says he keeps five servants he never came but with one beside him; and a fine old name like Reskymer. Mind, no one ever pressed her. When my man thought she was over-long in answering he said, does she know what she’s about keeping him waiting like this? There’s many a maid would leap at the chance. But I said, go to, it is part of a woman’s way to hesitate; it does not do to be too eager, lest you be taken for granted ever after. A matter of a few days’ patience. And sure enough it was.”

A heavy patch of damp on two of the low beams, the room smelt of mildew and rot; afterwards that smell would recall to me the darkness in my soul.

“I believe he’s a Reskymer of Merthen, a cousin of the main family, that is. There’s always been Reskymers in the church. He says he met Susanna at the Arundells two years back when she was fourteen. He was then a widower by some ten years but he had no thought for Sue, thinking her then a child. Since then he has seen her three times; but the last of these, chancing to call at Tolverne in May, he was much struck by her beauty and called there again last month only to find her gone. So he pursued her here, and so it fell out. If you have a thought to see them they live in the rectory at Paul, near Penzance, which I’m told is a handsome house quite worthy of his position and name.”

I could not sit here for ever. If I could get out into the rain again, mount the pony, just the effort and the buffeting of the wind …

“Thank you, ma’am. If you write to Susanna, give her my respectful regard.”

Copley welcomed me with a snort and a shake of his bridle. The mongrel dog was sniffing at a piece of bone on the edge of a muddy pool of water. A man was in sight coming over the fields driving a pair of oxen before him. The rain blew in fresh clouds over the dripping trees. Nothing in the landscape had changed. Only I had changed. And I had changed for ever.