Grove of Eagles

CHAPTER ONE

There is no proportion in memory. Months of happiness or misery can suffer an ellipsis which no effort may fill; yet moments or single days linger in the mind from a choice that seems not one’s own and have an endurance beyond their worth. So it is in my recollection of the next twelve months. Selection is as difficult as sequence because one’s memory has already acted.

I know there has never in my life been a time of greater misery and resentment. A young man of finer fibre might have permitted himself to feel only sorrow, but I have never been one to take adversity well. One always feels most for the first illusion lost, but this was more than illusion; it was the linch-pin of my faith in life. Belief in Sue Farnaby and our love for each other had become for me in a few short months the constant around which everything else revolved. That destroyed, there was no centre for any loving kindness to attach to. I was lost, groping in the dark of my own nature, clumsy with pain, and liable to break anything with which I came in contact.

The attitude of many people at Arwenack changed towards me during that year, and this can only have been reflecting the change that was in me. I quarrelled violently with Belemus when he returned, and we fought it out in the wood behind the house. I was uncouth and unpleasant to my halfbrothers and sisters. If my grandmother had been about there is no doubt I should have been sent away again to Truro, but the damp weather did not suit her and she spent most of each day in her chamber coughing.

Yet I fared altogether better with my father. I was inches taller than he now and tireless, filling out a little but still very thin. He set me to work about the house or in the fields or to ride with him on one of his dubious outings, and my new mood only made him smile derisively. He never asked about the change or why all the world had suddenly become my enemy; Dorothy Killigrew of course did, but I returned her evasive answers and presently she gave up.

Perhaps my mood found a responding chord in Mr Killigrew; I know he forbade any inquisition when Belemus and I came to the table with our features puffed and scarred. I have since thought though I did not perceive it then that my father was a man who was himself lost and without beliefs in a world that seemed to him full of enemies. He had grown up in an age when lawlessness was near to a patriotic duty, when armed retainers were the accepted instrument of

privilege, when one lived by force at home and by bribery at Court. But time had caught him up and passed him by. He was in a bog of his own and my grandfather’s devising, and casual efforts to struggle free only sent him the deeper. To thwart his enemies he went to shifts that created more enemies. Godolphin was a greater power in the land, but Godolphin never rode abroad followed by a half score of armed men of his own. Nor did Sir Reginald Mohun nor did a Grenville nor a Basset nor a Boscawen. Their only armed forces were the musters they gathered for the defence of England.

Times were changing. My father’s way of life stood out in a dangerous prominence. And he was not prepared to change it. Creditors were pressing, but his need of Mistress Margaret Jolly pressed harder. His debts demanded close personal attention, but it would not always be such good hawking weather. A number of his fields were fallow for lack of farm help, but he saved with having fewer servants to feed and so could spend more on the occasional feast.

I began to know all he did. The expulsion of the Farnabys was not an isolated act. When he rode abroad to collect his rents there was no nonsense tolerated, and I was the witness of three scenes in which tenants were turned out without ceremony and without mercy. Twice I was in brushes with bailiffs who sought to put a distraint on property. I learned to carry pistols and to practice the use of them. Sometimes Belemus came with us and then we would ride together immediately behind my father.

Belemus’s father was still in prison and his lands under seizure by the crown, so that he too was a young man without proper restraint. After our fight we became closer friends and took part in ventures of our own.

At the end of that summer Belemus fell in love with a girl called Sibylla who was the daughter of Otho Kendall, a burgher of Penryn. In the town Killigrews were never popular, but Belemus and I took to frequenting Cox’s Tavern which was hard by the harbour and next to the Kendall house. This way he could sometimes catch a glimpse of Sibylla as she came and went, and presently he found a wall which he could climb on, from which he could carry on a whispered conversation with her out of her bedroom window.

It was all fraught with a good deal of hazard. The local quarryworkers and townsfolk knew who we were and resented our being there. Otho Kendall was a fiery man, and his father Sebastian Kendall was an old sailor, beringed and one-eyed, whose reputation for violence had not lapsed with age.

Sibylla was a slender black-eyed girl, more beautiful perhaps than pretty, and she wore her hair under its cap in long black braids. But there was nothing demure about her eyes when she raised them, and Belemus was afire with passion.

It must have been one afternoon in early September when, sitting in the tavern, we saw the girl leave her home alone and walk up the hill carrying a basket. She had gone no more than a dozen yards before we followed her. The sun was shining after a morning of heavy rain, the tide was out, and the town drowsed in the warmth as if deserted. But once or twice I thought there were faces quietly withdrawn from windows as we passed.

They were bell-ringing in St Gluvias church across the narrow creek: they had been at it all afternoon, practicing or just for the sport.

We followed Sibylla until at the first thicket out of the town she stopped to pick the blackberries which glistened still with the drops of rain on them. Belemus gave me a nudge to stay where I was and went over to speak to her.

At eighteen Belemus had grown into a powerful and personable young man. His buff leather jerkin with its brass buttons showed the breadth of his chest. He had grown a short black beard and a tiny wisp of moustache which he kept carefully trimmed and which softened the wide flat angles of his mouth and cheeks. He walked with the swagger of a man who hardly knows his own strength. He gave the girl a great bow, his long hair as he uncovered blowing in the breeze. She turned her head away and continued to pick blackberries. I could not hear what they said for they spoke in low tones, but every now and then she would break into a shrill excited laugh. The church was a few hundred yards away across the muddy creek and up the hill, and the bells clashed and clanged ever more violently as if themselves agitated by some compulsion of excitement.

Belemus was trying to persuade Sibylla to take a walk with him as far as the hill above the town. It seemed an innocent invitation, but she knew that the paths through the hazel and nut trees were narrow and winding and one might easily stray. Others had done it before, and the bold and the brazen walked up there of a summer evening hand in hand. All the same, something in her manner suggested that sooner or later she would yield; it might not be today, but a persistent courtship would have its reward.

The bells at last stopped with a final clang, and in the echoing sunny silence the only sound was the crying of the gulls as they fought and flapped about refuse which had been thrown in the mud for the next tide to carry away. I glanced back and saw two figures coming up the narrow cobbled street. One was limping and had a black patch over his eye.

Belemus scowled at me as I came up. “What’s amiss? Leave us be.”

“There’s others who’ll not.”

“Who’s that, man?”

“Miss Sibylla’s father and grandfather will walk with you right away. They’re equipped for climbing, for they carry sticks.”

The colour fell out of the girl’s flushed cheeks. “God save us, go away, Belemus! Hide yourself, you and your friend. Go, go quick, leave me to my berries!” She turned sharply and began to clutch at the fruit; ripe and unripe went into her basket together.

“It would take more than a couple of such to flight me,” said Belemus, pulling at his beard. “A damned old miser and a limping one-eyed lobster-catcher. Why “

“Come, man, you’ll only make it worse for the girl. Come away while there’s time.”

I pulled at him, but by now the two men were near enough to see us. As we moved farther up the hill putting distance between us and Sibylla, the roar of Otho Kendall came after us.

“Hi! You! Killigrew trash, I’d have a word wi’ ye!”

Belemus stopped and fingered the short knife in his belt. “If I were a Killigrew I should feel some choler at that.”

I said: “You are included.”

We waited until the two old men had come up with the girl. We were then some twenty yards away. The sun, already watery for the morrow, glinted on the three gold rings on old Sebastian Kendall’s gouty fingers, on the earrings trembling under his grey wig. He had been hard put to it to keep up with his son.

“Killigrew dung!” shouted Otho Kendall, and spat. “Keep off of my dattur! “

“We were not on her, old man,” said Belemus.

“Filthy whorers! Keep out of Penryn. Go back to your own midden over th’ hill. Come nigh us again and we’ll tear yer tripes out.”

“Old man,” said Belemus, “old man, when I choose to come to your scabby little town, I shall come and not you nor any of your smutty fellows shall stop me.”

At this moment Sibylla unwisely made some movement, and her father swung round and hit her on the side of the head. She collapsed in a sudden wailing heap, bonnet going one way, basket the other.

“Bravo,” said Belemus, “strike your womenl It’s common, I know, among offal such as you!”

Old Sebastian could restrain himself no longer and came up the hill his great stick swinging and murder in his eye. Otho at once followed. We should have had our skulls laid open before ever we could get near them, so we turned and went up the hill.

And there stopped. The eight bell-ringers had come out of the church and while we were exchanging insults with the Kendalls had surrounded us. Except for two who carried sticks they were not armed, but four or five were grabbing up stones.

“Hold ‘em, boysl” shouted Otho. “We’ll give ‘em a rare cooling this time!”

A stone struck me on the shoulder. Behind us the two old men would be on us within a count of five. Together we rushed uphill towards the two men who chiefly barred the way home. Another stone struck me on the back of the head, and a great shower sprayed over Belemus. Faced by us both charging them with drawn knives the two men backed away. One swung at Belemus’s shin with a stick as we went past. He stumbled but I grabbed his arm and we were through.

But though we ran we did not outdistance thern. It was close on two miles to the palisades, and each time when we thought we were clear they would catch us again with another shower of stones.

When we got to the gate of Arwenack and the shouts and yells of our pursuers had at last died away, I was bruised in a dozen places and bleeding at the back of the neck. As Belemus leaned against the gate gulping for breath he bared his teeth and said:

“They think to drive us away, the rogues.”

“And so they have.”

“But not for long, dear Maugan, not for long.”

“Well,” I said, “I do not fancy your love affair will prosper, but let me know what you have in mind.”

That night we went back with a halfdozen armed servants. We walked along the little cobbled main street. Cottagers at their doors watched us resentfully, and mothers called their children in, but no one blocked the way. We went into Cox’s tavern and stayed drinking for an hour. Then Belemus went out and hammered on the door of the Kendalls’ house. The windows were shuttered and no one came. Belemus thought to break down the door but I counselled that this would not endear him to Sibylla, however she might be suffering at the hands of her parents. So we came away.

Thus the affair simmered for two or three weeks. Then we began to revisit the tavern, though not without rapiers in our belts. Sometimes Belemus would get a word with the girl, but she was close guarded. Then came another day when, leaving as darkness fell, we were stoned again.

Belemus said: “These rats need a lesson.”

We went back that night and broke open the door of the church. I climbed up in the belfry and cut the four bell ropes so that but one strand of each remained. Some of the ringers would likely fall on their scuts at the next practice.

We splashed lime-wash on the walls, carried out the pews and chairs and dropped them in the mud of the river. We rounded up a flock of sheep, drove them into the church and shut the door on them. Then we dug a pit outside the door and went home.

A scandal there was, but none could bring the fault home to a Killigrew. We continued to go into Penryn twice a week. Sometimes Belemus would get a word with Sibylla but most often not. Then one day we met her by chance on St Thomas’s Bridge and it all fell into place. He came home exultant but at first would not satisfy my curiosity. Two days later he took a private chamber at Cox’s tavern and spent the night there. Then I knew’it’ had happened but not how. The next time we went together he showed me the window of the chamber he had hired. It looked directly into Sibylla’s window. There was a high wall between the two buildings, but if you were already on a level with it it could be used as a stepping stone between.

So for three weeks he took the room at Cox’s Tavern, selling two of his rings to pay for it. His absences did not go unremarked at Arwenack, but he was eighteen and thought able to look out for himself.

Then one day he was not back to help with the reaping, and since it was the first fine day of the week my father was angry. I went up to my chamber about noon and found Belemus lying on the bed.

He said: “Ah, well, Maugan, I had a little trouble,” and moved. The bed was soaked with blood.

On his way home he had been set on by two men in the wood above the town. He had a knife wound in his ribs and a purple cut on his head. He did not know either man had barely seen them but he had been left, perhaps for dead, and had not come round until the sun was high. Then he had crawled down towards Three Farthings House, and Paul Gwyther had brought him home in his cart.

He was weak from loss of blood and the knife had gone deep, but he had not bled from his mouth, and I thought he was not wounded to death.

There was a rough and ready treatment followed at Arwenack for injuries of all sorts, but I thought of what Katherine Footmarker had told me and used first a strong solution of salt and water, at which he complained greatly; then I put on a plaster and hoped for the best.

He said, would I keep it quiet from my father, so I went down to dinner and told a story that Belemus was staying the day with the Arundells; but I did not think the deception would work long, for too many servants were in the secret. Belemus spent the night in my chamber, while I slept on the floor and John squeezed in next door. Belemus had a fever, but all his cursings and ravings were of a quite logical turn, on the theme that Sibylla would be expecting him and he would not be there.

The following day he was hardly able to move, but he crawled down to dinner somehow and told how he had fallen from a horse. It was clear that any prospect of visiting Sibylla was remote for at least a week. I said, well, I would go and tell her.

He said: “Go after dark. And take Long Peter. He is the roughest man I know when it comes to an ambush or a tavern brawl.”

“Are you in love with Sibylla, Belemus?”

He stared. “Of course. I worship the ground she steps on. She is like Thisbe walking in a woodland glade! She is so beautiful I lose my breath every time I look at her “

“Yes, yes, I understand. And does she love you?”

“Mother of God, how could you doubt it? D’you think she’s a whore? D’you think she would have given herself to me otherwise “

“And shall you wed her?”

He tried to catch his moustache with his bottom teeth. “I think it is possible, Maugan. I think it is likely. But with my father in prison a deal may depend on my marriage. I’m not as free as you. But I would wish to; I would certainly wish to.”

“She will have little money and no position. It is something to think of.”

“Oh … That is in the future we are both young. I love her, and she loves me, that’s all there’s to it now. If things go wrong betwixt us I shall wed her, you can be assured of that. You were always one to look on the black side.”

I patted him gently on his unsore shoulder and said: “It’s all very plain now. I will give her your message and your love.”

The nights were drawing in, and when supper was over it was dark. I did not ask Long Peter to go with me; I thought he might be in the way.

I walked to Penryn and Cox’s Tavern. Only four men were in the taproom, and they were all fishermen, of a harmless sort, not toadies or bullies. I drank a pint of small beer. Cox had a heady ale known as ‘lift leg’, but the business tonight demanded clear thinking. After an hour I asked for the chamber which my cousin Belemus had reserved. With some side glances I was shown up into a tiny room, so low-beamed that you could not stand upright. The window was already shuttered, and the pot boy who showed me up set down the candle on the chest by the door and quickly left.

I shot the rude bolt on the door, unlatched belt and sword and put it on the pallet, then beside it I set my leather jerkin. The situation was as Belemus had described it: a shuttered window opposite, with a wall between which came no higher than the sill.

Most people were now abed, but there was a chink of light showing through the shutters opposite. Below all was silent and black. I set the candle down so that the light was entirely shaded from the window; then climbed out, stepped on to the wall, and redistributed my weight so that instead of leaning back against the wall of the tavern I was leaning forward against the wall of the Kendalls’ house; then gently tapped.

The light went out. Now except for the reflected light from the candle in my room it was pitch dark.

The shutters parted. I could see an arm. I put one foot up and swung myself in. In a moment not one arm but two were round me. I put my hands about Sibylla. She was wearing only a night smock. After a little pleasant groping in the dark I found her face and kissed her.

She began to scream; but my fingers on her mouth and her quick mind stopped her.

“Do not be alarmed. I had no time to grow a beard.”

“Maugan! … Tis you! Where is Belemus?”

“Abed with a knife wound in his ribs, got by being set on in the woods. Shall we be heard?”

She drew herself away. “Nay … Nay, not if we whisper. Love-a-duck, you give me a scare! Is he serious sick?”

“Not serious, but he’ll be laid away for some days. It was some of your tribe who set on him?”

‘How should I know? Theyd’ know naught of this “

“It cannot be unknown that Belemus still comes to the Tavern, even if Cox keeps his mouth tight ova the hiring of the chamber.”

“And and why’ve you come?”

“To bring word from Belemus. Have you a light? It is pitch in here.”

She moved, and a cupboard door opened to show that she had not put out the rushlight but had only hidden it. She looked nice in her thin smock with her long black hair over her shoulders.

“Give me the message.” Conscious of my look, she picked up a shawl and wrapped it about her.

“You have the message: that he’s wounded and cannot come. He sends his love.”

“And also his friend. Did he tell you to climb in here and make yourself free?”

“How else could I give the message?”

“By writing it and throwing it up.”

“Can you read?”

She hesitated. “Well, I would ha’ guessed what twas! You’d no right to give me such a fright. I’ll tell Belemus of ee.”

“If you tell him so much he’ll think the more. He says you’re a passionate girl.”

“How dare he speak of it! “

“We are close friends. We share many things.”

“Ah, but there’s some things you cannot share, and I’m one of ‘em, Maugan Killigrew.”

“Well, a kiss more or less is no killing matter.”

She eyed me up and down, but I think the rushlight was too frail to show up my uncertainty. A draught from the window made the flame lurch and I pulled the shutter to with my hand.

“Well, saucy,” she said. “Grow a beard an’ I’ll think about it. Why, you’re half a boy yet!”

I knew then. “Oh,” I said, “that’s dangerous talk.”

“I don’t see.”

“It would be easy to prove different. And you could scarcely scream.”

She backed away. “If I screamed I’d be for trouble, but not like you. Love-a-duck, they’d kill you! Nay, quiet: they’ll hear you movie’; that board d’ creak!”

I had followed her. “I’ll confess to you it was no hardship to come.”

We talked for some minutes in whispers. I persuading, she refusing, yet each refusal on slightly weaker ground than the last. Presently by little degrees l was able to put my hands on hers and then to kiss her, she still protesting. However, I remained so, brushing her face with my lips, and thus got my arms about her. For a first time it all, I think, had a fair appearance of expertness.

“Ah,” she whispered, “what a scoundrel y’are. Have you no loyalty to Belemus, oh?” But she did not now move much in my grasp.

We sank back on the bed. It was of stout planking and did not creak. My hands began to caress her through her night smock. “Nay,” she whispered, “wait. Untie me this knot.”

I did as she said, and she began to kiss me in return. Then I felt her body stiffen in my arms.

“What is it?”

“Listen …”

“Oh, it’s the wind “

“Nay! Listen …”

The shutter of the window was not properly caught. I heard someone cough.

She got up from the bed and reached for the rushlight. Then we were in the dark.

“it’s someone outside,” T whispered, “some passing fisherman. It is of no import “

“Oh, yes it is. I think at least, I fear … Wait.”

She slipped away from beside me, and I heard a board creak as she stepped on it. Then her shadow showed by the slit in the shutter. She was there some time.

Her breathing was very quick when she came back. “There’s two of ‘eml Tis Lawson, the sexton, and my Uncle Reynoldl They’ll be armed!”

“And what makes you think they’re concerned for us?”

“Because I know now! Father yesterday dropped hints that I didn’t follow ! Maugan, they’ll beat me half to death and they’ll kill you! I know it! I know it! “

“Ssh, ssh, quietly does it. Let’s think. We’re not found yet.” But for all my show I was beginning to sweat. I had left my sword in the tavern. In the pockets of my slops there was a folding knife: that was all.

From this window the shaded candle in my own chamber opposite was the only light. The shutter swung loose, no doubt telling its tale. Almost directly below, two men were standing. I went back to the bed.

“They’ll get tired waiting there until the dawn comes.”

“Nay, Maugan, nay.” She put her hand on my knee. “They’ll wait and wait. And if the light breaks it will go the worse for you. But I been thinking.”

“Tell me.”

“I been thinking … Outside this door tis but ten steps down and then a front door bolted only at the top, the bottom bolt be broke … They’ll think to surprise you as you come out of the window if they know you be in but they’ll not think you’ve the sauce to come out of the door. Tis like to be unguarded.”

I hesitated, frustrated, wildly angry, but the anger was a defence against fear. So long as I could be angry I could see myself as a disappointed seducer, still as the hot spark who had begun the evening, not as a boy surrounded by dangerous men and in hazard of his life.

She said: “Shall I open the door and see if the way be clear? “

“No, wait a while.”

But after waiting I agreed, seeing no better way. She described the small house, assured me there were no turnings: it was straight down and out.

So she went to the door. I unfolded my knife and followed. One moment there was her soft warmth beside me. The next I was in the passage outside listening in the silence.

Someone was snoring. It was the comforting sound of a house harmless and asleep. But there was another sound, nearer, less harmless, though at first I could not name it. Then I knew it for someone’s breathing. And whoever was so breathing was awake. And near me.

Whoever was so breathing must know that I had come out of Sibylla’s room and must be waiting for me to make the next move before pouncing.

I did not move but stared in a sickly fashion into the shadows. Some faint reflection of light there was, and I made out what looked to be the head of the stairs. I suddenly went down on hands and knees and crawled towards it.

At once there was a thunderous clatter over my head, as if someone had swung a club and hit only wall; then a figure fellacross mine. A groping hand caught my foot and when I kicked free the body twisted itself and fingers tore at my face. I stabbed with the knife. There was a grunt: I kicked clear and half ran, half fell down the stairs.

Grope for the door; there seemed only hinges. The wounded man was crawling down the stairs. I turned into the next room, this was all there was to the house. The shutters were poor here; they fell apart; I jumped into the yard. After the dark of the house the night was clear. On a bin, I pulled myself over the wall.

A lane. Away from the town; away too, it must be at first, from Arwenack. Panting like a hound at the end of a chase, I went up the hill, leaping from cobble to cobble and slipping and sliding in the muddy pools.

At the top I stayed long enough to swallow and look back. Three were coming. I ran on then, making for the mill where Katherine Footmarker had lived; but before I got there they had lost me.

CHAPTER TWO

Soon after this my father left for London. His affair with Mistress Margaret Jolly had prospered, and, so prospering, had come to die a natural death. His visit to London was to be a routine one to see his friends and to attend at Court. So he said. But in fact everyone knew that he was to meet a Sir George Fermor of Northampton, and that Sir George, an army man, had a daughter called Jane. Jane was 15 and an heiress. John, my halfbrother, was now 15.

By the time Mr Killigrew left the scratches on my face were forming scabs, and by the time he returned they had healed. But after all these years there is still a white mark where finger nails went deep.

The man I had wounded was Sibylla’s father, Otho. There was much whispered talk about it all, but the justices were not invoked. The Kendalls were not people to go to law, being too cautious to risk a case against one of the great landlords. They would have their own revenge in their own way and in their own time.

We never saw Sibylla again. We heard she was beaten with a wooden rod until she bled, then was packed off to an aunt in St Austell, and very soon we heard she was wed to a cousin there. It was the safest way for them of covering up the scandal.

I took all the blame and notoriety, Belemus none. He was amused, and although he bore Sibylla’s loss ill for a few days he soon re-won his spirits. He had not been so deeply involved.

My father said to me: “Well, boy, we all have our rigs and sprees, and I’m the last one to be stopping you in your youthful pastimes; but you could have chosen a better place to play the turkey than Penryn and among those Kendalls. Awkward rogues, every one of them. Lucky to escape as you did.”

I muttered something.

“And watch your step when away from this estate. All Penryn men have long memories. I don’t want more trouble just at the present they have ways of running to Westminster and telling tales behind my back. Were you a party to this prank in the church too?”

“Sheep are always straying where they don’t belong, sir.”

“Yes, well, you’ve done enough now. What was the girl like? “

I looked up and saw him watching me with a speculative, envious gaze. I felt myself flushing. “Why … like most girls, father.”

“God’s breath, you’ve had so many that you lump ‘em all together? You must have been active in Spain!”

“No, I “

“Well, I see, it’s just an evasion. I agree she was a pretty little sweetmeat. I saw her or I think it was she with the nets when they were being mended after the Easter gales. I thought to myself: there’s a catch forename fisherman; but I never thought to think it would be youl You hadn’t thoughts of marriage, I hope?”

“No, father.”

“I should think not. You’re only half a Killigrew. but a half of one should look for something better than a SibyHa Kendall. Before ever you went away Mrs Killigrew said you had thoughts for the Farnaby girl. Is that true?”

“She’s wed now. To a man called Reskymer, who’s rector of Paul.”

“What, Philip Reskymer? That tall thin man with the sad yellow face? If that’s so he’s a kidnapper, for he must be fifty if he’s a day. She’s gone for a safe place no doubt the Farnabys were ever a shiftless timid lot and Philip Reskymer has lands and money in a small insignificant way.”

“They say he was married before,” I said, turning the knife.

“Oh, yes, twice I believe. The flowers sicken quickly when planted in his bed.”

My father waited until he had seen all the corn, such as it was, stocked and dried and gathered in. The week the thrashing began he left, and Thomas Rosewarne rode with him. This left three who might give orders in the house: Lady Killigrew, Henry Knyvett, and Mrs Killigrew. But Lady Killigrew was still confined to her chamber with bronchitis; Henry Knyvett, having come to some temporary remission with his wife, was at Rosemerryn when sober and unsober when at Arwenack; and Mrs Killigrew although not at the moment sick with her usual complaint, was much concerned for her two youngest who ailed often.

That left me. Mr Killigrew had said nothing but he had implied much by the confidences he had reposed in me over the last two months. After all, Belemus was not of the family, and John, however valuable as a pawn on the marriage board, was still too young for authority. I would soon be seventeen …

I liked thrashing, and this year it fitted with my wild restless mood. All the time we were doing it the rain came down. The great barn where we worked was open at one end, but when the gales grew too strong the doors were closed and we thrashed in semi-darkness. We used handstaffs of pliable ash about five feet long so that we could work standing up. Tied to the end of the handstaffs with leather thongs were the short clubs which struck the corn. We worked, twenty of us at a time, standing over the corn spread on the floor, worked to a regular rhythm, a blow, a pause and then a blow. Sometimes we sang songs together. We sang ‘Over the mountains. And over the waves, Under the fountains And under the graves’. And ‘Why does your sword so drip with blood, Edward, Edward?’

We laughed and joked and told tales. Dick Stable told the story of the miser of Market Jew who met the devil and was granted three privileges: to sit in his own light, to sit next to the parson, and if he saw a pig in a gutter he might turn it out and take its place. Dick was always one for comic stories, but I did not think his new wife Meg laughed so heartily as the rest.

When enough of the grain had been beaten the straw was raked away; but the gale outside persisted so high that we could not let it do the winnowing: if we had opened the doors it would have taken the roof off. So we made our own draught with goose wings on long poles and then gathered up the corn into baskets before carrying it to store.

I worked for a time beside Meg, and thought she went at the corn much as I did, as if it served to work off an inner hurt. Out of the corner of my eyes I watched her movements as she swung her staff: her slight yet comely figure, the breasts raised under her grogram shirt each time she lifted her freckled arms; what caught my eye most was the slimness of her stomach and waist. Now and then her dark auburn hair would fall over her brow and she would shake it back impatiently; it was hot working in the closed barn, and there was a dampness of sweat on her forehead and on her upper lip. The sight of her was something I could not ignore.

The gales abated as the thrashing was completed but it stayed dark weather with flurries of rain, and clouds hanging low on the river. The autumn killing of cattle began, and the salting of the beef to see us through the long winter months. We ate our fill at this time for there would be no more fresh meat until the spring.

Having been helping with the cutting up and salting of a carcase, I washed my hands and arms at the pump outside and went through the house to my room. On the stairs I met Katherine Footmarker.

In the half dark I thought she was some illusion of the raindripping windows.

“So, Maugan Killigrew! … Well, lad, you’re back. I’m glad. Truly glad.” She spoke as if I were the visitor here.

“Yes. How is it “

“You’ve not been to see me since you came safe home.”

“It is only three months. What brings you here?”

She laughed gently. “Your stepmother thinks I’ve a skill or two that’s useful.”

“Mrs Killigrew invites you?”

“She sent for me first when your sister Odelia had the quinsies, but I would not come on account your father was here. So I sent a syrup which I’m told gave her ease. Then after, I came when Mrs Killigrew had an ailment, and again to see little Peter. It surprises you?”

I did not know what to say.

“Peter’s sick again,” she said. “He has the autumn fever. But I tell Mrs Killigrew to save her fears for others. He shivers and quivers, in every wind, but he’s like to out-see you all.”

It was on my tongue to tell her of the salve I had made for Mariana’s scald.

“Does my father know you come?”

She shrugged. “There’s servants here who rail at me comin’, and one or another may drop the word. It’s no concern of mine.”

“But you would not come when he’s here?”

“I don’t like your father’s ways. I believe the Killigrews have no good destiny here, and he is sealin’ it. Each time I come it’s like a clenched fist over this house. It slopes, Maugan. The whole house slopes towards the pill “

She seemed herself a part of what she prophesied, a bird of ill-omen flapping its wings in the dark.

“Take care for yourself,” she said. “I told you there was blood on your hands.”

I stared down stupidly, thinking for a moment she meant from the carcass of the animal we had just slaughtered.

“There’s blood on each hand,” she said, “and I’m none too sure Otho Kendall’s is marked on either. But it’s a warning. Follow not your father, lad. You’ve better things in you than to become one of his bullies. And as for women, the way for your happiness is not to pull down any maid within reach of your fingers, as your father did and I hear you’re coin’, but to live for one or two. Each bauble you seize and throw off tarnishes and debases what you can feel for the others. Love is like gold, it should be spent in sum and not frittered away.”

That she was talking in such ignorance of the truth set all my anger alight. “I’ve a life to live, and how I spend it’s of concern only to me! I’m part Killigrew and I owe all to my father! If I can give him some service I shall do it. As for women … that’s my concern too, isn’t it?”

She swung her scarlet stringed bag gently back and forth. “Well, I see there’s been a change in you, Maugan, and that in less than a year.”

“Don’t come here again. If you’re against my father you’re against us all.”

`‘That’s not true, boy. I’m not against your father. I’m ‘against’ no one. I see trouble comin’ to this house as rain comes with a cloud. That don’t mean I shout welcome to it. I speak warnin’. If you’ve no time or patience to heed it, more’s the pity.”

“There’ll be less trouble with you out of it.”

She put her hand on my arm; I tried to shake it off but it had a firm grip.

“In Truro we were friends. Who’s slid poison in your veins?” She peered more closely. “Ah … I remember. You were sighin’ for that girl … How’s she done you ill?”

I shook her hand off at last.

She said: “I’ve many cures, but not for the one that ails you now. Time only can help. But remember that if one man robs you it don’t make all the world a thief. Nor one woman neither.”

“Keep your advice.”

I saw she was suddenly angry.

“As for me staying away from Arwenack,” she said, “I’ll see you damned ere I do that! So long as your stepmother calls me, I’ll come. I have a finger in this house, lad, and not you nor your father shall root it out. I give you warning of it! “

She brushed past me. I almost laid hands on her, but something held me back, some old awe. I watched her till she was out of sight. Then I went on clumsily, noisily, up the stairs.

I began to want Meg Levant. I wanted her not out of love, not at first wholly from desire, but out of seething black-minded misery and frustration. Because of loyalty to Sue I’d rejected Mariana, because the alarm was raised I had been robbed of Sibylla. I had no hard thoughts for Dick Stable; everyone liked him; but I was in the mood to ignore the feelings of others. If he could not keep a pretty girl content for six months of marriage then he should not be surprised if another tried.

With some cunning I changed my attitude to Meg. I began to use her with a respect which I saw she at once appreciated.

I did not hurry; there was time. I contrived to meet her once by the castle steps when she was coming back from an errand there, so we walked home together. I was carrying a copy of The Noble Birth and Gallant Achievements of Robin Hood it was Katherine Footmarker’s book which had never been returned and on the way I suggested we sat on the stile and she could listen to the first of the twelve adventures. She sat very quiet all through the reading. A week later I did the same again; and when this was over suggested she should try to find an errand to come this way each Wednesday to listen to the rest. She looked at me out of her long hazel eyes, but did not say either yes or no.

The next Wednesday she was not there, but I said nothing when we met in the house. I kept to my new civility and left things to simmer. The following Wednesday she was there, and, as it was raining we sheltered in the granite look-out which was at the narrowest part of the land. When the third chapter was finished she stretched as if coming out of a dream.

“Laws, tis all very strange. Is it all true, d’ye think, all this trade about Friar Tuck and Maid Marion and the rest? Did they ever live?”

“Surely they lived. Doesn’t it speak of King John?”

‘q wish I was like Maid Marion,” she said, pulling at a thread in her skirt. “I wish I was a man or could dress like a man …”

“You did once.”

“When?” she looked at me. “Oh … that were in a play, in jest. Tedn the same ‘tall.”

“Meg,” I said, “what did you do with the stockings?”

“Those? Oh, I still have ‘em. But I wore them last Christmas and tared a hole in ‘em. They’re mended, but I couldn’t get the right colour o’ wool.”

“I never gave you a wedding gift. When next I’m in Truro I’ll buy you another pair.”

For a few long seconds she looked through the rain towards the house. “Can’t you get a good view from herel Tis as good or betterer’n from your father’s window.”

“Would you like that?”

“I might like it but Dick might not.”

“Dick would never know. He does not see all Swear.”

She giggled slightly. “Aye, that’s true.”

“Meg, I’ll buy you two pair, one red pair, one green on a condition.”

“What? “

“That you let me put ‘em on for you.”

She went a sudden blushing scarlet. “Really, Mauganl” She stood up. “What d’ye think I am a common queen? Well … my life … tis too insulting of you. I thought you’d mended your ways “

“So I have.”

“So you have not ~

“I’ve mended my ways because I don’t joke with you, Meg. It’s dead serious.”

“Then all the more shame! “

“D’you truly think so? But I’ve a great taking for you, Meg. I mean it~not rudely but as a compliment.”

She stared down at me, angry and flushed of face. Then, as usual with Meg, she saw the comic side of it and burst out laughing.

“Well, you’re some caution, boy. My blessed angels! Is this how you went on in Spain?”

“No. For I saw no one there I liked so much as you.”

“Then you learned it from that rig, Sibylla Kendall.”

“No, I did not, I learned it from no one and have never asked it of no one else in my life.”

“Oh!” She swung away, her hair shaking loose under its coil. “I’ll leave you here wi’ your lewd thoughts. I believe twas all a put-on to mock me.”

“No mocking. Think it over, Meg.”

“That I shall not,” she said, and left me.

The next day it came on to blow from the southwest. There were those in the house who said the sea had been calling for three days. It blew a gale out of the southwest, piling the sea up in mountains on the rocks, scattering twigs and branches over our roofs and plucking thatches off the barns. Two fishing boats which should have come back to Penryn never came back, and a barque was blown on the rocks of Pennance Point and was lost with all hands. As soon as the news of this came a party of us went to see if we could help, but although the point was sheltered from the worst of the gale, there was little to be done. The bay was tossing and seething with a tangle of rigging and spars, and all the sea rolled yellow with the cargo of corn. As the tide fell we picked up a dead sailor on the sand, then two lifting and falling in a pool stained red and still encroached on by the sea; then found one so wedged under a rock that no leverage would release him. A dozen spars, an old chest and a few lengths of sailcloth were worth salvaging, but it was uncomfortable work, for the wind was shifting north and the rain fell continuously and ever colder. When we reached home, soaked and tired and ready for a swig of brandy, we heard that another ship, an Irish ketch called Kinsale, had run for shelter into the Fal, both her masts spent and her captain lost. The mate, a man called Garvie, had already come up to Arwenack and was full of his woes and a good deal of usquebah. Temporary repairs, he said, would take ten days, and he might have to sell some of the cargo to pay for them. The ketch, he said, was the property of two brothers called Ferguson who lived in Dublin, but until he reached there he must act on his own authority.

When he had gone grumbling off, mopping his flat face with a red kerchief, I said to Belemus: “What did he say she carried?”

“You heard. Unsweetened wine, with some Holland cloth and silks and perfume, from Bordeaux to Dublin. She is sailing under French letters of marque, which I find a little strange. I have a thought she may be doing a little privateering on the side.”

“I have thought we might think so.”

Belemus looked at me. “Were you in mind to interfere?”

“Not with the wine.”

Belemus always opened his mouth wide to laugh. “I believe the Spaniards changed your soul while you were out there and sent you back with another man’s. The Maugan of other years is still languishing in some Friar’s prison in Madrid.”

“He died,” I said, but did not specify when.

That evening after supper we took Long Peter and Tom Bewse, the head falconer, and Dick Stable, and set out in the small Killigrew pinnace for Penryn. Even the river had choppy waves on it, but it took us only a few minutes to reach the shelter of Penryn Creek. There we soon picked out the Kinsale, a vessel of maybe 80 tons. She was in a sorry state, but so far as could be seen there was no one aboard her as she creaked gently at her ropes. Laughter and loud voices echoed along the quay from Piper’s Tavern, and no doubt Cox’s round the corner was busy too.

A rat was nosing among the nets at the end of the pier. Lights from the cottages showed pools of water among the great uneven slabs of granite which made up the quay. We shipped our oars and rubbed up against the side of the Kinsale as gently as a cat making friends.

Altogether we took out 16 bolts of Holland cloth, 19 bales of silk and twelve boxes of perfume. This was all the cargo we could get at without taking the ship apart. We had not the space or the time to unload the wine, and in any case the bulk was too great to handle unless we stole the ship as well.

So in two hours we rowed slowly and heavily home.

None of our booty, I decided, should go into the house. As it was unloaded from the pinnace the stuff was piled in the grass in front of the tower facing the harbour. There Long Peter and Tom Bewse had mules and horses assembled. The cloths, the silks, the scents were slung over the withers of the animals and by the early hours of the morning a train had left for Truro. Belemus went with it. I stayed behind. I did not know what the outcome would be, and I was curious to discover it.

CHAPTER THREE

Three days later my grandmother sent for me.

I seldom went or was invited into her chamber, which was the finest in the house because she had refused to vacate it in favour of her son when my grandfather died. Each time I went in I was impressed by the richness of the bed hangings, by the arras with the scenes of the Nativity and the Passion wrought upon it, by the Turkey carpet beside the bed. She once told me that these were things she had brought with her marriage portion, but so unblemished were they that I could hardly believe it. What gave credence to such a claim was my grandmother’s intense care of anything personal to herself. She used as expendable anything in the house except those things which were actually her own.

When I went in this November day in 1594 I remember being impressed by something else for the first time: the close disagreeable smell of an old woman near to her term, and the noise of her breathing which sang its own tuneless swan-song.

But there was no sign of any change in Lady Killigrew’s outlook on life. She knew all she wanted and wanted all she knew.

“Maugan, I hear of another robbery in Penryn Creek.”

“Yes, ma’am. Two or three nights gone it happened. A ketch had run in for succour.”

“Do you know who robbed it?” 207

“I think it better not to guess, ma’am.”

Lady Killigrew coughed. “Silk was stolen, they say, and cloth and perfume. Where is it now?”

“What, ma’am?”

“Do not fence with me, boy. What have you done with the stuff? “

I glanced at the door. “It is all with it is all in safe hands.”

“Where? “

“In Truro with John Michell.”

Diamonds winked as she fumbled restlessly with the sheet, for she was never without her rings in bed. “What have you kept here?”

“Nothing, ma’am.”

“Nothing! How dare you! Was it good perfume? And silk too? I “

“Who told you, ma’am?”

“God damn you, boy, think you I have no eyes or ears?” She paused to get her breath. “Who instructed you to convey it to Michell with such speed?”

“No one, ma’am. It was a precaution. What is not in this house can never be connected with this house.”

She stared at me with utter contempt. “Think you Arwenack could be searched?”

It came to me then that, just as my father clung to habits and attitudes now going out of date, my grandmother lived even more firmly in a world that was past. Mr Killigrew on his feckless course had intimations enough of danger; from time to time he lifted his head and looked uneasily about. But Lady Killigrew, perhaps because she was of a generation earlier, never questioned the grandeur and safety of her position and name. What she said was of course still true: Arwenack could not be searched. It never had been. But with open defiance of the law the risk would grow. To me the solution was a simple one. Defiance of the law could well continue but it must be more carefully contrived.

I realised she was shouting at me. “You’d neither right nor leave to order this to be done! Who gave you leave?”

“The mate of the Kinsale has already been here complaining,” I said sulkily. “There is commotion in Penryn. Nothing now could be moved. But there is no need: it was all gone before the alarm was raised.”

“In future, Maugan, come to me before you take decisions on yourself. My sister and I always have first pick of any cloths or jewellery that come in.”

She began to cough again, and this time could not stop. Her long pale face crimsoned with the strain, the old veins bunched at temple and at neck; she sat up and shook convulsively. As the spasm went on she became less the tall lean fierce woman I had known all my life and instead was just an animal fighting for life and breath. Her eyes ran, her bottom lip Stuck out quivering, her long broken teeth were parted in a snarl.

I patted her on the back, I brought water for her to sip. It seemed that no human frame, especially an old one, could endure the strain, and I thought she would die.

But at length the spasm began to subside, and finally nothing was left but the old tired wheezing of the lungs. She looked up at me with no more favour in her eye than before the attack began.

She said: “When I die, boy when I die, then you shall draw the shroud over me as you will. But so long as I occupy this bed, this room, this house, then direction as to the affairs of the house come from me they do not originate in your mind. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She wiped her cheeks with a square of silk. “l shall tell your father and ask him to punish you … But perhaps you do not care. You are young. Anything can be borne when you are young; nothing when you are old.”

“May I go now, ma’am?”

“Nothing when you are old, Mauganl D’you hear me?” She was shouting again.

“Yes, I do.”

“But you do not understand! You don’t listen! Why should you even try? … People talk of the consolations of age … They do not exist.” Her fingers went slowly along the sheet, creasing it into a ridge, the nails leaving a line on the linen. “They do not exist. It is not just illness, infirmity, loss of husband and old friends, loneliness, the contempt of younger generations it is not just these things.” She coughed again but this time checked it. “Age does not only take away the things one prizes, one by one; it takes away the sweet taste of life itself. Understand: the sweet taste. When you are young all sensations have savour, all the fruits are for plucking. In age one by one the fruits begin to lose relish. At first that does not matter; there are always new ones to try but quickly, oh so quickly, the new ones pall and fade and turn pulpy like the others. The flowers droop as soon as picked. Are you listening? “

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You’re listening but you’re only waiting to go; you think, here is an old woman, in her grey hairs, drooling nonsense that does not concern me … But it Will. Mark me, if you live long enough it will. Pray each night, boy, to die at forty. It is better to lose the world while it is worth losing. That way your last thoughts can be regret.”

“And religion, grandmother? Does that not bring you consolation? “

“Do not be insolent … In a week or so your father will be home. I will tell him of your disobedience.” She narrowed her eyes moodily at the candle flame. The heavy gold brocade of the bed curtains was dark with age where they merged into the shadows of the beamed ceiling; they made a canopy over her as if she were riding in a litter or a royal chair. “It will be an important day for the Killigrews when he returns for he will bring back with him the future mistress of Arwenack.”

“Oh … I didn’t know that.”

“You don’t know everything, young man.”

“It is settled, then?”

“It will be settled.”

“Jane Fermor … When are they to be married?”

“Not yet, but soon; within the year. It’s time, and I want to see the succession.”

“I trust she will be pretty.” I got up to go.

“Pretty?” She spoke the word with distaste. “There belongs more to marriage than two pair of bare legs. She has been carefully chosen. She will bring money and influence. That is what matters.”

“Perhaps, grandmother, John will think otherwise.”

“I wonder how she will feel coming to this house. I remember how I felt as if it were yesterday. I was a widow of twentythree with a child of four. We had rid all day over rough moors, and darkness was falling. Our escort of six seemed scarcely enough … When we reached this house I thought in the dark that it was in ruin … Your great grandfather and great grandmother were at the door to meet us. I recollect how they were dressed … Yes, how they were dressed. He had a curled moustache like your father’s but was a bigger man and wore a gold chain to his knees. She had golden yellow hair and a gown of tawny velvet. After the bleakness of our journey the elegance of their living was a great comfort to behold.”

“But the house was in ruin?”

“Ah, no. In the morning I saw it was still building. This room was complete and all this wing; but the north wing was not above shoulder level. And the great hall was not finished for many years, not until your father was thirteen …”

I went to the door. “You have memories to look back on, grandmother. Why should you have wished to cut them short?”

She was a long time answering and she seemed to have forgotten me. But as I took the door latch she said:

“Perhaps that is not so … Perhaps it would be better never to have been born. For what has the effort been worth? Memories or no memories, what has it all been worth?” She lifted an unsteady hand. “A few needs met, a few ambitions gratified, a few pains suffered … Food and wine and the coarser appetites. A leap from the womb and a plunge into the grave … Then well, then it is gone and there is nothing to show, nothing worth showing, nothing to leave, nothing worth leaving, only the only the carved stone in the church, a stale Latin tag, bones mouldering, and the end of a life which need never have begun I”

I could hear her begin to talk again after I had closed the door.

We had all waited with a sense of anticipation to see Jane Fermor, this girl who had been chosen by my father for his eldest son I in particular, for except for an accident of birth the girl would have been chosen for me. Yet when she came I was out hawking and the first intimation was extra horses in the stables and strange servants in the hall.

Supper was almost ready, and Sir George Fermor came down first in company with my father. Sir George was an erect fierce man of around five and forty, with the tight mouth and bowed legs of a captain of horse. He was a man, you would think, who would regard an enemy pikeman, a wild boar or an unleapable fence with the same haughty and fearless stare. His voice was harsh and made itself heard above everything like a carpenter’s saw; his footsteps clanked as if with the echo of spurs.

Behind him in a few minutes, accompanied by Mrs Killigrew, came his fifteen-year-old only child. She wore a gown of silver lace with puff sleeves of white taffeta, and had a carcanet of seed pearls round her hair. Everything she wore was expensive but nothing she wore could disguise her thick figure, her big feet and hands, the solidity of her stride. Nor was she pretty, being very pale with little dabs of red ochre on her cheeks. Her hair was jet black and fell down either side of her face like curtains through which her ears peeped. Her eyes were blue, small, but bright and magnetic. Her skin was milky and fine. She spoke little through supper and seemed indifferent to the embarrassed boy, a month younger than herself, who sat at her side. But I saw her eyes move assessingly about the hall, taking in the livery of the servants, the~Pavia tapestry, the quality of the plate we used, the sprawling dogs like a breathing undulating rug before the fire.

Lady Killigrew had somehow contrived to control her ailment and was at the table in her best gown. She had uncanny powers of recuperation and a will of the same order. She and Mr Killigrew engaged Sir George Fermor in conversation through supper, but even they were talked down by the rasping voice. When it chose to utter, which was frequent, nothing could live with it. In the main it indulged in self-congratulation, but sometimes it dealt with the sloth and evil nature of servants. Thrashing was the only thing good enough for most of ‘em, he said; all his servants were thrashed regular whether they’d offended or not; it kept them up to the mark. While he so spoke he stared meaningly around, leaving no doubt as to his thoughts.

The betrothal was celebrated next morning in the presence of Parson Garrock of St Budock and Parson Merther. The two young people stood in the centre of the hall, with Mr Killigrew on one side of them and Sir George Fermor on the other. Young John was required to speak first, and this he did, faltering over the words:

“I, John Killigrew, do willingly promise to marry thee, Jane Fermor, if God will and I live, whenever our parents think good and meet, till which time I take thee for my only betrothed wife and thereto plight thee my troth. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. So be it.”

Having said this he put a gold ring on the girl’s right hand. Then it was her turn to speak the oath which she did in a deep voice and to give him a ring in return. This done, they kissed and the union was celebrated in rhenish wine. My father was in great spirits, and even Sir George weighed light upon him. Jane, in a tight laced bodice with a green kirtle and a red petticoat edged with lace, looked as dumpy as before. After the plighting she began to talk with the children, not animated still but sober, almost fierce like her father, and Odelia and Thomas were listening to her open mouthed. I drew nearer, thinking what if I were being asked to marry this girl, how would I feel? And I suddenly met her gaze.

She said in her deep voice: “Who are you, fellow?”

I stared back at her, and before I could think what to reply, little Odelia said: “This is our brother, Maugan.”

“Brother?” She looked me over. “If he be not older than John then I’ll eat all the dam’ dogs in this hall.”

“I am older,” I said. “However, your inheritance is safe. My father was not married at the time.”

“My father has seven by-blows to my knowledge, but they’re not kept in the house, fellow.”

“This is a special occasion, girl,” I said, “for which they have let me out of the kennels. If treated well I seldom bite.”

Her smile showed very white, very even, teeth and small hard dimples. “More’s the pity … And this? Another of the same? “

Belemus had come up. “No, I am a cousin, cousin and neither illegitimate nor safe.”

We talked for a few minutes, she over-towered by us both but in no way out of countenance. I had never met a girl of 15 like her. She had a self-possession beyond measure and a determination and vigour in all things.

My father pressed them to stay for the Christmas festivities, but Sir George could not and Mr Killigrew breathed out his relief in private. The money that had come to us from my raid on the Kinsale had helped him to order this week with all the old flamboyance and extravagance, but it could hardly have lasted through the twelve days of Christmas.

On the morning before they left I came on Jane Fermor walking with her maid on the edge of the woods behind the house. I would have avoided her but she beckoned.

“Your name’s Maugan, isn’t it, fellow?”

“Yes, girl.” I suddenly saw that behind her back she held a pipe which she had been smoking.

“Then tell me. I want to know. How many fallow-deer have you on this estate?”

“Two score maybe. And the same of red.”

“A poor number. They should be bred up.”

“No doubt.”

“And shall be. Tell me something more, what are those woods on the hill?”

“Just woods. They lead towards Budock and Constantine.”

“Are there any wild boar or wolves?”

“We have few such animals m Cornwall.”

“No?” She brought her hand round to the front and glanced up with a smile to see if I had noticed. To be quite certain she put the pipe in her mouth and drew on it. “Nor have we many wild animals in Northampton; but sometimes Sir George, my father, purchases a boar and sets it free for the sport. We have woods much taller than these. All these trees are so stunted.”

It was on my tongue to refer to the height of human beings

“We have bear-baiting too,” she said. “With bulldogs most times; but the latest craze is greyhounds. It gives the bear more chance. I’m disappointed not to have seen none here. Do you not ever have it?”

“My father is too fond of his dogs.”

She wrinkled her nose. “So I should think from the stink of ‘em. I’d have half of ‘em thrown in the sea.”

I did not speak.

“You’re a rude sort of fellow, aren’t you?” she said.

“We know little of your polished manners in Cornwall.”

“Have you ever been to London?”

“No.”

“It’s an education which would profit you. I was there last month. I go regular.”

“That must be profitable.”

“Last month I saw a woman scourged naked. Next I’m waiting to see a man.”

“I once,” I said, “saw the entrails of a dead sheep being fought over by seagulls.”

She drew at her pipe and puffed smoke thoughtfully in my face. “Maugan Killigrew. Who was your mother?”

“A woman. Like any other.”

“Maybe she too was scourged naked at Bridewell as a whore.”

“If you go four miles up the river you will find a boy with no front teeth. He lost them for saying less than that.”

“But you can’t do it to me?” She laughed and put a hand on my arm. “But perhaps he meant it while I did not. I was seeking a chink in your armour.”

I moved enough to let her hand fall away.

She said: “When a boy is as hostile as you it’s natural to probe. A girl is not strong enough to wield a sword, so she must use a pin.”

“Oh, you make a great mistake,” I said. “I am not hostile.”

“But you do not approve of me, eh? Do you smoke?”

“No.”

“You should try it sometimes. It soothes the temper.” She patted my arm lightly. “Or perhaps you don’t like seeing a woman to smoke? Sir George, my father, does not, so I must take it out of doors. This is wound-won, of course. Smell it.” She wafted the pipe under my nose. “I cannot afford tobacco at 3s. an ounce while my father holds the purse-strings.”

I muttered something, more embarrassed now by a friendliness that cloyed.

In spite of her crude abrupt way of talking she gave the impression of being greatly concerned what men thought of her; and in spite of her thick figure and big hands and feet she was not without attraction. That surprised me but it was true; and not only for me. I saw Belemus looking at her. John did not seem awakened to those ideas as yet, and he parried all questions about her with an uneasy smile.

The day after they left I went into my father’s study and found him still in good spirits. He roped up the map he had been looking at and tapped me on the shoulder with it.

“Well, Sir Maugan, our troubles are at an intermission perhaps altogether over. At least we shall need to look at this no longer.” He tossed the map into a corner and made the dogs bark.

“What is that, sir?”

“Tell me, what d’you think of our guests?”

“… They are rich?”

He laughed. “The wedding’s to be here next May, and she brings as her dowry œ12,000 in gold. In gold, Maugan! It’s a commodity we’ve seen little of this decade. I’ve been tempted to have my ring and snuff box melted down just to see the plain virgin colour of the stuff once more before I die!”

“John will still lack a few months of sixteen then.”

“Yes, and she the same. D’you like her, Maugan? D’you think she’ll be a worthy mistress of this great house when I am gone?”

In the last months our relationship had been cordial and frank to a degree I had never imagined possible; but this was a delicate matter.

“She I think she may be inclined...”

“No, talk plain. I give you leave.”

“I think she’ll be a holy terror.”

He grunted, not pleased with my frankness now he had it. “She’s raw now. She’ll weather. Life’ll give her a few hard knocks and the cornerstll be less sharp. Mind …” He stopped and smoothed his moustache. “Mind, I think John’s scarcely man enough to handle her yet. But boys grow up more slower than girls. It will work out all right. Why look at yourself.”

“Myself? “

“Yes. Twelve months ago you were no more than a child though often an awkward child, I’ll grant. Now well, now you’re a man. You could manage her. I believe that.”

“I believe I should not want to, father.”

“Oh, we’ll find you a wife soon, boy. God’s lungs, I wish you were legitimate. I’d put you to good use within this yearl We’ve still need of all our assess i”

“Perhaps I can help in other ways.”

“Perhaps you can. So you have. But a word of warning to you on this Irish boat: I can afford no scandal.”

“I’ll have a care.”

“I mean it. No more adventures when I am away. I can afford nothing that will damage my credit with the Privy Council. My debts put me on a tightrope; and until this marriage I must take great care not to fall.”

“I’ll remember.”

He was turning over the pages on his desk. “You know, I’d have liked to link you with Jane Fermor.” He smiled sardonically. “I’d have sat back then and watched the storm. John I’m a trifle afraid for. But he’ll grow to his tasks!”

When I left the room I was still wondering what map it was he had thrown in the corner.

I remember nothing of Christmas that year except that I bought Meg Stable two pairs of stockings, one green, one red, and that she refused to accept them on my conditions. It was a cold January, with ice on the swan pool and everyone keeping as much as possible indoors. The house became oppressive and stank more than usual of dogs and wood smoke. Each morning the windows were steamed over so that one seemed to live in a world of fog; in the afternoon moisture ran down them and down the walls. Everyone wore two or three coats, but even this could not keep out the cold airs which moved everywhere just out of reach of the fires. It was a time when mischief brewed, when old feuds among servants sparked into life again, when jealousies and lustful fancies had their freest rein.

In February I rode into Truro and went to call on Katherine Footmarker.

It was strange how far behind my stay with Chudleigh Michell had fallen. It was as if some lost forgotten boy had served a year in my place. I found Katherine sitting at the back of her cottage caring for an adder which had been beaten with a stick and left for dead. Her greeting was very cold and unfriendly, as I could but have expected, and it took some time to come to the purpose of my visit.

“That harsh and evil woman,” she said. “Why should I help her if I could?”

“She is my grandmother. If she has to die I’d prefer her to do it in some less distressful way.”

“See his tongue? ” she said. “He does not open his mouth to flick it out, but pushes it through a slit in his lip. Hearin’, smell, taste, he does it all with that tongue.”

I had taken a seat on a tree stump at a respectful distance. “Are you not afraid of being stung?”

“Bitten? No. Birds, animals, reptiles, they all know their friends. Which is more than humans do. It’s more than Maugan Killigrew does.”

“I’m often perplexed as to that. I’m often perplexed, for instance, as to my feelings for the woman Katherine Footmarker.”

“What are your feelin’s for her?”

“I am drawn to her and repelled. There’s no middle way, no mean of feeling.”

“See how he touches ground with his jaw. It’s said snakes can’t hear, but I suspicion they touch the ground to feel the vibrations travellin’ through and over the earth. You could never come on him from behind without him knowin’.”

“Nor could one come on you.”

“Still a sharp word in your mouth? You’re like a young goat trying his strength for the first time and hitting his head against everythin’. Do you love your grandmother?”

“… No.”

“Then why ask this?”

“I have a fancy to help her breathe if I can. You’re helping a snake.”

“Ah,” she said. “But I’ve a fondness for this poor snake who I doubt did no wrong in all his life. Let me see … bronchitis and tissick. That would not be so easy.”

She stretched her long back and went into the cottage. Presently she came out again carrying two bottles but at first she would not give them to me.

“This one, a simple remedy of horehound and comfrey, is to be taken durin’ the day. This second at night. But I warn you this second is like to make her sleepy and I can promise no cure.”

“She can be hardly harmed by it or be worse and live. What is it?”

“A diacodium. I give them you both on a condition that she never knows where you got them. It’s a fancy I have.”

I agreed, but when I offered to pay she laughed harshly. “You and I have a running account, Maugan. First one pays something and then th’ other. The time to strike a balance is not now.”

There had been a small frosty sun just after midday, and now on the way home shafts of it broke through the clouds and fell like dipped lances over the moors. By the time the woods above Penryn were reached the day had closed in and the light was moist and grey. The church bell was tolling; the breeze bore the sound up the hill; someone was dead.

Just past the ruined monastery buildings I came up with two men on foot, one helping the other who seemed ill. One was Timothy Carpenter and the other Dick Stable. Dick had a great cut across his head and was spitting blood. Timothy, though in better shape, limped at each step.

I put Dick on my horse and walked beside Timothy. They had been to Penryn on business for my father and had stopped for a drink at Piper’s Tavern. There they had heard that old Sebastian Kendall was dead. Three or four Penryn quarry men had been in the tavern and one had shouted it was that virgin-thief Maugan Killigrew who had really killed the old man.

So the result. When we got in Dick was found to be bleeding at the mouth only for lost teeth, but the cut on his head went deep as a crater, and they had both been hard used. I took the story to my father and suggested I went with ten men to Penryn that night to teach them a lesson.

He shook his head.

When I looked put out he shouted: “I’ve told you before! I do not fall over only for two reasons: the forbearance of the Queen which Uncle Henry sees to; and a similar forbearance on the part of the Privy Council, Cecil chief among them. But I have had my warnings. They’ll not abide mischief. The war’s too tense. So Penryn must go unpunished. Let them be.”

“Give me leave to do something in private.”

“You could not, for nothing ever stays private where the Killigrews are concerned. When this wedding’s through things will be different. Once you start to defeasance your bonds, your creditors become no longer pressing for payment! It’s a sorry paradox. Have patience. May will soon be here.”

I took this message back to Belemus who pulled his little beard. “Well, that’s that, I suppose. It all goes much against the grain.”

“Imagine Sebastian Kendall being dead. I wonder if it was I who killed him.”

“Nonsense, he died of a tumour, that happens whether or not. I wonder if they buried him with his gold rings.”

“Well, they could hardly get them off short of filing them; his knuckles were too great.”

“Filing through gold is a long business,” said Belemus, “and disrespectful to the dead. The Kendalls had a great veneration for the old ruffian.”

“Which we have not,” I said.

“Walk so far as the point with me,” Belemus said. “I think we should talk.”

CHAPTER FOUR

By the sea night is seldom so black as inland; it is as if some reflection of the long sunk sun glimmers in the sky. But this night was perversely an exception, and the churchyard of St Gluvias was an unwelcoming place when we reached it. Our horses had been nervous all the way and had had to be urged forward into the dark. I had calculated that a third-quarter moon would rise about three, and that if we arrived at two much of the spade work would already be done by the time the moon got up. In fact it must have taken us fifteen minutes longer than calculated to cover the short journey, and then, stumbling over headstones and groping among tall grasses, it was another ten before we certainly located the grave.

We worked for a while in silence although the thud of our digging, the rattle of the stony earth as we shovelled it out seemed to fill the night around. Once or twice Belemus’s mattock struck sparks off stones, and to us they looked bright enough to raise an alarm.

There was no house or cottage within a quarter mile, and our most likely discoverer was some tin streamer returning from Carnon or a rogue marauding for himself and unlikely to make his presence known.

Imperceptibly as we worked the graveyard grew lighter.

Delicately by fine balances the weights grew less heavy on our eyes. I found it possible to see Belemus, up to his knees in the hole we had dug, to notice the gnarled elm leaning askew like a tired witch across a view of the town. An owl which had been out all night with shrill melancholy cries was no longer in” visible. Then as my spade struck on something which gave off no sound, the clouds broke over the east and a gibbous moon peered across the river.

It could hardly have been better timed, but now we had to go slow, for though I was not squeamish I had no wish to impale old Kendall on the mattock or the spade.

Eventually we cleared enough round the cloth-wrapped figure to try to lever it up, but stones and earth kept showering down, and the corpse was as limp as a dead rabbit. So we had to dig more, and then distastefully brush the clay and earth off the wrappings with our fingers.

I had remembered Sebastian Kendall as a gnarled, powerfully-built old man with straggling grey hair. This stinking mummy seemed half the size; the face as the dirt fell away looked withered and grey, the eyes peeped out of slit lids.

“Faugh!” said Belemus. “Have you a knife?”

I fumbled in my belt. The owl fluttered round again, his wings black against the upturned moon.

I passed the knife to Belemus who was now standing in the grave. He got to work, and the foul stench of decay rose into the night. He at last sawed through the cloth and reached the corpse’s arms, which were folded across the chest. We were able to see both hands together, and Belemus lifted one of them. “Look.”

Before being buried Sebastian Kendall had been deprived of his fingers and left only with the stumps. It seemed that whatever veneration the Kendalls might have for their grandfather it did not extend so far as we had supposed.

The next morning early my uncle Simon Killigrew arrived, having slept with the Arundells at Trerice. His coming was unexpected and not welcome to my father, who knew that he seldom saw his brother when Simon was in funds, and who, as he said to me, had enough hungry mouths to feed without another and one of extravagant tastes added to his board.

Simon was interesting for the news he brought. Ralegh had at last obtained a patent for further adventure and only last Thursday had left Plymouth in command of five ships, bound no one knew whither. Accompanying him were seven score gentlemen adventurers, among them many from the west country including John Grenville, Sir Richard’s younger son, a cousin of Ralegh’s called Butshead Gorges, and Ralegh’s nephew John Gilbert. There was a rumour they had gone in search of El Dorado.

Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins were also known to be fitting out an expedition which was to seek plunder in the West Indies. All this filled me with an intense restlessness. I would have done anything to sail with Drake. The Spanish would be in terror if they knew he was out.

Much was feared at Court, Simon, said, of the situation in France. Although Henry of Navarre, now undisputed King, had declared war on Spain, as he had undertaken to do, he was not prosecuting the struggle with any vigour. Indeed in the last weeks he had signed local truces with the Spanish in Brittany, in Normandy and elsewhere. At any time such truces might culminate in a treaty of peace which would take France out of the war altogether. The Pope, it was said, was only too willing to mediate.

Moreover the Archduke Albert, now the first soldier of Spain, had been sent to take over the government of the Netherlands. And the remaining English troops in Brittany were being withdrawn, leaving the way clear for the Spanish sea-raiders to prowl the narrow seas. All this pointed to increased danger for the exposed counties of the SouthWest.

Fresh money was being voted, Simon said, for the further fortification of the Scillies. The fort, half completed on St Mary’s, was to be hastened forward and two sconces added. Another œ400 was to be granted out of the customs of Plymouth and Cornwall to help towards the cost. (My father sneered on hearing this and said, why was it Godolphin got all the concessions? Whose ear did he have access to that he should always be treated with such priority over the legitimate and more pressing needs of others, such as the Killigrews of Pendennis? )

In the middle of this interchange Parson Merther came in with terrible news of happenings in Penryn. An old man buried yesterday had been dug out of his grave and his fingers cut off for the rings he wore. What was worse the corpse had been carried out of its grave and left in a sitting position in one of the front pews of the church where a woman this morning had found it, almost to the loss of her reason. This act, said Parson Merther, would of course be a hanging matter if the culprits were ever found. My father, on being told that the old man’s name was Kendall, raised a fish-like eye in my direction, but such was the offence that he did not dare ask if I had had any part in it.

The news Uncle Simon had brought of the withdrawal of the English troops from Brittany was a great blow to the west. That evening after supper Hannibal Vyvyan came hastily from over the water, and we talked long into the night. My father said it would have served better if Ralegh and Drake and Hawkins were at home at this time instead of jaunting off in search of the plunder of the Indies. Hannibal Vyvyan, a gaunt high-nosed man, had not seen me since my return, and I was subject of a cross-fire of questions from him and from Simon on what I had seen and heard in Spain. It was agreed about midnight that a joint letter signed by my father and Hannibal Vyvyan should be sent to the Privy Council urging that money, new levies and better armaments should be alloted for the defence of Falmouth Haven.

The next day Dick Stable was taken ill of the blow he had received, which was more grievous than we had supposed. Each time he got up his senses swam and he shivered and shook and had to lie down. I tried my hand with him, though where the brain is damaged there is little that medicaments can do. About this time died the falconer, Corbett, who had been injured in the head at the time of the fight in the hall in 1592. It made us all anxious about Dick for fear he might go the same way.

Lady Killigrew was sleeping better and, imperceptible as the rising of a tide, vitality began to creep back. She wrote letters again and talked of visiting her daughter Lady Billingsley in Devon. She plagued her elder and unmarried daughter Mary with proposals that they should go to Westminster together. She took a new interest in terrorising the servants with threats of dismissal.

She continued to pick at me. When the bottle she had been taking was done I fetched her another and another from Mistress Footmarker, saying to my grandmother there was a new herbalist in Truro. Mrs Dorothy Killigrew guessed different; and a conspiracy grew up between her and me that when someone was ill in the house I should ride and describe the symptoms to Katherine Footmarker and bring back her salves or balsams or simples. It helped me to understand more about sickness and its cures.

When Uncle Simon left, my father rode with him, taking Stephen Wilkey and Thomas Rosewarne. While he was away Belemus and l were up to one wild prank after another. Nothing was too rash for us to attempt, and no questions of morality troubled our sleep. I persuaded myself I was enjoying this new and unfettered life; but instead of allowing experience to happen to me I pursued it with the feverish joyless energy of someone seeing his days foreshortening and anxious to savour them,while there is still time. I persuaded myself I had forgotten Sue Farnaby, with as much success as comes to a man who tries to ignore a knife in his guts.

It was the first day of May, and the last day of a spell of weather which had brought summer too soon. If you could get out of the south-east wind, in a valley or behind a rock, it was warmer than many a July. In the haven white waveless danced a coranto all the way from St Anthony Point to Arwenack steps.

In the morning I had been with three men scattering wood ash on the meadows, the wind doing much of the work for us; and then in the middle of the day instead of returning to the house I ate a rabbit pasty and walked out to see how the sheep were faring which had been set to summer early on the moor between Pennance and St Budock. On the way home near Mongleath I heard quarrelling voices and came on Meg Levant, very fiery but very terrified while two beggars menaced her for money she had not got. They were sturdy men and armed with sticks, but I had the advantage of being more ready to fight, so after a short set to they turned and fled.

“Well,” I said, breathless, “so this is how you behave so soon as my back’s turned!”

Her hair had come loose, and the wind blew it in tails across her face.

“Oh, Maugan! That grab-thief wi’ the beard … I been over to Menehay to get a moonstone they say’s good for the dizziness. Old Sarah Pound has loaned it me for a week to try on Dick.”

“You have it now?”

“Aye, I was afraid they might steal it, though they’d he’ had to take mortal liberties to find it.”

“Show it me.”

“Turn your back then.”

I looked across at the sea and listened to rustling clothes behind me.

“There.”

I turned it over, a glistening bauble, worth a rose noble perhaps but unlikely to have curative value. “Why, it’s warml”

“Well, I wanted to carry it safe!”

“You’re not afraid of my stealing it, then?”

“Nay, I’m not afraid o’ that.”

We began to walk home. I realised that the event which had just taken place could hardly have occurred more favourable for me. All her romantic instincts would be gratified.

I looked sidelong at her as we walked. Her breasts were high and her stomach slender; her blunt freckled face was distinguished by the fine long eyes. We sat on a bank that looked towards the sea, while the warm wind streamed past us. I wondered if honesty might pay the best result.

“Meg, would you believe something to be true if I told you it was true?”

“Ah … that depends.”

“Would you believe at least that I’m not joking?”

She frowned and pushed hair away from her eyes. “What is it?”

“I have never made love to a woman.”

She stared at me for several seconds. Then she burst out laughing. “Who-ee! What d’ye take me for one of the lambs up there? Baaaal”

“It is truer”

“And Sibylla Kendall? No doubt you played Primero on the bed wi’ she! “

“Sibylla was Belemus’s girl. The night I was surprised with her, Belemus had been wounded and I’d gone to tell her of it.”

Meg continued to laugh, though I could see a flicker of interest somewhere at the back of her eyes. I took calculated offense..

“Very well, then. You can find me of use when set on by thieves but in the next breath you call me a liar, which is cousin to a thief and hardly better. Take your stone and find your own way home! “

I threw the stone in her lap and went off. She called “Maugan! ” but I took no notice. However, I strode not so fast as I might have done and could hear her after me. On the right was a thicket of white hawthorn which I knew well, and I plunged into it, made for the glade in the centre of it and flung myself down. She caught me up.

“I’m sorry, Maugan, twas not meant as an offense.. Truly I thought you was joking. Truly I thought that. Is it strange that I thought it? You was in Spain a six month, and then everyone believes you was Sibylla’s lover, that’s believed by all! If you say twas not so I believe you, but I always thought it, and so I thought you was joking.”

I did not answer.

After a silence she breathed out. “I fancy I ha’n’t been here before. Look at all they bluebells! And the may blossom! Tis like a wedding.”

Within fifty yards the open moorland began again, but here you might have been in a forest. Sheaves of bluebells fisted up among the trees, and the hawthorns were white with blossom which was falling as constant as snow. The wind whistled through the trees like wind in the rigging of ships. Even here in the centre of the glade Meg’s hair was blowing over her face; but it was a filtered wind, sifted of its violence and warm. The sun beat down.

“Maugan, I believe you.”

I said: “When I was on my way home with Captain Elliot, Justinian Kilter was aboard. He said he had made free with you on his last visit.”

“Who? That fair man that was ‘ere afore the fever outbreak? I never seen him since! If he was aboard when the Neptune last called he never showed his face at Arwenack I What wickedness to say such a thing! “

“He said you have a mole on your left breast.”

“Oh, what lewdness! Well, I have not, and you can tell ‘im so next time you see him! “

“I have to believe you now?”

“Yes ~ “

“Seeing’s believing.”

A shower of petals floated down between us. “That’s lewd talk from you again, Maugan Killigrew.”

“I don’t think it so.”

“Well, it is so.”

“Is love ugly, then?”

“I didn’t say twas.”

“Then is it lewd?”

She plucked a bluebell and put it against her nose and smelt it. I moved to her and took her hand. She pulled it away, so I took the other which was holding the bluebell. She looked at me, less certain of herself than was usual in Meg.

“Tell me,” I said, “what is it like?”

“What’s what like?”

“Making love with a woman.”

“Maugan, it’s not nice to speak of it so, in broad daylight, in the sunshine, in the open air.”

“Then it is ugly?”

She pulled her hand away again. “Oh, poh, you’re joking now. As if you’re s’ innocent as all that! I’m not the only girl you’ve kissed an’ fondled.”

“I never said so. But love doesn’t end there.”

“No, it does not.”

“Well ? “

She put both hands up to push her hair away from her forehead. “Oh, it’s nothing special nothing to get excited about. The best part is the kissing and fondling.”

“Not everyone says that.”

“There, I tell you, and straightway you contradict! “

I said: “Meg, perhaps it is loving the right person. Like kissing the right person. For instance if I kiss you I take much pleasure of it. But if I kiss well … if I was to kiss Annora Job, who is a pretty girl, just as pretty as you, it would not pleasure me at all. Why not? I don’t know. But that’s the way it is. Now perhaps that is the way it is with love “

“Are you telling me I don’t love Dick?”

“I’m not saying anything. I don’t know. Perhaps you don’t know. But might it not be part true? That you love him one way and perhaps not another?”

“No, it is not! ‘Ow dare ye say such things, Mauganl I only said`… oh, tis no use talking! I’ll go.”

As she got up I got up. As she turned to pad away on angry sandalled feet I caught her arm and pulled her round.

“Meg.”

“Leave me go

I kissed her a few times, not well, for she struggled, but on the eyebrow, on the ear, on the lip. “Now you’re no better than they thieves!” she said breathlessly.

“Stay awhile,” I pleaded. “Please stay. No one’ll miss us for an hour.”

She looked at me, again uncertain, but there was a glint of kindness in her eyes. “If you promise not to be lickerish.”

“1 promise.”

We lay there lazily for ten minutes in the sun. I sucked a piece of grass and looked up at two choughs planing into the wind. The sun was gilding their black wings, transforming them. I wished it would gild ours.

Meg went across and gathered a sheaf of bluebells, then came to sit beside me again.

“A pity you hasn’t your book, Maugan. Then you could read to me again.”

“There’s nothing so good in books as there is in life.

“Such as love I suppose.”

“Such as love, you rightly suppose.”

“Which you, never ‘aving’ad it, d’know all about.

“I’ll know if you’ll teach me.”

“Hoh, some teaching you’d need.”

“I’ll be a quick learner.”

“Quick learner! I reckon in no time you’d be trying to give me lessons!”

“Maybe we could both learn.”

“Oh, Maugan, change the talk. It’s carnality so to go on all the time.”

“I don’t think so. I’m asking a favour of you, that’s all.”

“A favour! My dear life! “

“Well, wouldn’t it be?”

She stared at me with compressed lips, breathing deep. But she could not keep up her exasperation and began to laugh. I leaned over and kissed her teeth.

She stopped quick at that. “Maugan, please, what’re ye trying to do? I’m married. Do that mean naught? Have ye no thought for Dick? Have you no “

“Maybe I shall have thought for him sometime later. Not now. I’m sorry, but not now. I want you, Meg. I’m asking you. Truly, meekly, as a great favour.”

She put her fingers on my mouth. “Don’t speak so. Twouldn’t be fair. And” she glanced round “you can’t mean here?”

“Here. Safer than any dark corner of Arwenack. There’s no one in a mile, and no one ever comes here for no one knows of it, except Belemus and me, and he’s in Fowey visiting the Treffrys. Here in the warm wind where it’s light and clean … Prove to me love’s not ugly.”

She stared at me and for the first time I could see temptation and indecision in her eyes. It almost staggered me, now that she was so near yielding, that I had got so far. I waited, not taking even a deep breath.

The temptation faded. “No, Maugan, what can I be even thinking of? No!”

She began to get up and I caught her shoulders and pulled her down. She struggled and then was still. We lay there looking at each other, while the wind thrust through the trees and the may blossom drifted down. I began to smother her face with kisses, and then, with some instinct that at the last she would rebuff me in this open place, half pulled her, half caressed her into moving under the branches of an old elm where there was privacy and shade. The young bracken was crushed with our weight. At the last when I knew I had almost won there was a horrible fumbling with clothes which might even then have brought hesitation and self doubt back. She turned towards me and tried to speak but I said: “Sweet Meg, now I know Kilter lied. Oh Meg, let me love you. Sweet Meg, don’t deny me now.”

And she did not. In later years I was to learn that a woman’s attitude to love is only an extension of her attitude to life; and Meg was never one in ordinary dealings to measure or grudge a gift.

When my father came home next day he was in a black mood that found fault with everything and everyone. I was at a loss to account for it.

Now he took me really to task for having laid hands on the Irish vessel. It seemed that she belonged to Sir Denison Ferguson, who had been raising Cain to have a commission appointed to investigate the robbery, and it was only by strenuous efforts that he, Mr Killigrew, had blocked the appointment. He had done this by accepting the task of opening up an inquiry himself, jointly with Mr Hannibal Vyvyan, to discover the culprits. This was going to be a delicate matter and a tedious one, for there were people in Penryn, he had heard, who were prepared to stand up and swear that the raid was the work of his bastard son. They had no proof, of course, but the accusation would look bad. Care must be taken so to arrange the inquiry that the trouble-makers should not be called. A report must be in the hands of the Privy Council by July, or they would send Sir Ferdinando Gorges from Plymouth to complete the inquiry. Gorges, being a creature of Essex, must not be allowed to come.

However, the full and real cause of his angry mood emerged later, when he told me that Sir George Fermor had postponed the wedding. Sir George, he said, had come to the conclusion that John and Jane were yet too young for marriage let them wait another six months. He would reconsider the matter in August when Jane was 16.

“There is some deep device behind the postponement that I like not. It was all arranged for next month, and I went up there expressly to discuss the details. This was a thunderstroke.”

“D’you think it is the money, sir? It’s a vast amount to find, and all in gold.”

“I think not. I made the carefullest inquiries before ever proposing the match. He is very wealthy.”

“D’you think it may be that he has heard we are in debt?”

“I told him as much but not of course the extent. No one knows the extent, for my debtors are well scattered and unknown to each other. That is what preserves me at all! … Anyway, it will add acutely to our problems through the summer … Perhaps by August the Spaniards will have landed, and then we shall have no debts, nor no life neither ~ “

Loving a woman is not an act in isolation. No fences of the mind or body screen its effects from everyday life. Meg and I lived in the same house, ate in the same room, could meet by accident three or four times daily. Yet while we were often near each other there was little chance of true conversation and no privacy for anything more. May brought in the rain and no further meetings were possible in the whitethorn glade.

For ten days she kept me in ignorance of her true feelings. With greater experience perhaps I would have known, but I did not then. For ten days she kept out of arm’s reach. Then one evening I was sitting reading by the fire in the big drawingroom chamber. My grandmother and Mrs Killigrew were there, the latter working a sampler, Lady Killigrew poring over a letter which had come by the wool stapler that evening. Supper had been done an hour and dusk was falling. Someone came into the room with a branch of candles, and I knew it was Meg. Without looking up I heard her move to put the candles on the side table where they usually stood and then for a few seconds she did not move to go out. I glanced at the mirror on the wall and saw she was looking at me. I turned my head and she quickly lowered hers and went out.

That old room at the end of the north wing where we had dressed up for the junketings of three Christmasses ago. In the old days servants had slept there, under the eaves where a man could not stand. But now because we were the fewer to house the room was empty. I wandered up and looked it over. I remembered it vividly with Sue standing in front of the looking-glass tucking in a strand of hair. She had just taken the burnt cork off her face and one smear had remained under her ear. I had wiped it away. Now the room was empty except for some old sacks and a sea chest. Green timber had been used up here when the house was built, and the door was warped. The window, having been shut with difficulty in 1590, had never been open since. One of the beams had got beetle. It all smelt of sacking and cobwebs and dust. But it was an empty room.

There was special danger in all this if my grandmother ever learned of it we should both be turned out of the house without hesitation and at first Meg would have nothing of the idea. Indeed she was so hostile that if it had not been for that betraying look I would have thought it hopeless to press her. Then suddenly she gave way. Embarrassment, shyness, hostility, desire, they were all there in her eyes as she nodded and said maybe, in the hour after supper, in the long hour of twilight, in the hour of dusk. I was to go first. She would perhaps be able to slip away. But, mind, I wasn’t to wait at least, not long.

I went up. I said I was going out and instead turned up the stairs. The maids were washing dishes, scouring pans; I tried to walk quietly but tension made me clumsy; I seemed to have four feet and hobnailed boots. I reached the room out of breath and lay there on the floor gazing out at a fleece of cloud moving over the grey slit of the sky. I lay there, my heart thumping, my body alive, my mind full of concupiscence. So she came, and instead of young bracken and the wind and the high sun, I laid her on the sacking, and her small body was the warmer and the softer and the more vivid for the contrast with the dust and the dirt.

I do not know even to this day how much I was truly loving Meg and how much the memory of Sue. At least, although there was still much bitterness in my heart towards Sue and in a sense towards all women, none of it escaped upon Meg. Perhaps I too, like Meg, was a romantic, and this emotion transmuted what might have been a shabby coupling with a maidservant. Surely inner experience is all. The gold and the dross exist together in the same ground; it depends which you find.

In those days I knew myself to be changed, and wondered that others did not remark it. I looked at all women with new eyes. Confidence and imagination had grown overnight. I was stabilised, more content. I was not happy but so much less unhappy than before that it passed muster. And some of the wildness had gone.

All this time Dick Stable had been making a slow mend and when one day he asked for his harp we knew him to be truly in recovery.

Then Belemus came home and at once perceived what others had not. “Well, what’s to do with you? You look wide-awake. Have you been conquesting over some woman?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’d lay a curse you know well. Is it Meg Levant you’ve spurred? I’ve thought for some time “

“You’ve thought! With what? There’s nothing in your head but dried blood and crow droppings. Just because “

“But soft. He who denies most roundly accuses himself. What if you have been tampering with some wench? Is it a matter for anger between friends? If you will tell me nothing well and good; I shall know in quick time. You admit you can keep nothing from me. Come, I tell you all my adventures. To share ‘em makes ‘em live again.”

“I’m sorry, Belemus, you’re mistaken this time.”

He looked at me cynically, pulling at his beard. “I thought you’d changed, I thought you’d left your other soul in Madrid. But now and then it pokes out as if begrudging your better self free play. How does it profit man to take things serious? You were like death after Sue Farnaby had married elsewhere. I tell you, there is only one philosophy in love: to kiss and fly. Take your pick this morning and tomorrow start over again. It’s the one solution, boy. Love is fun. Don’t tie it up in all manner of tedious ribbons labelled faithfulness and truth and honour. You’ll weigh it down and sink it. And what’s true of love is just as true of life. Spit in its eye before it spits in yours. It’s spring for us, witless, and we must make the most of it. It lasts no time. We’ll be gouty and palsied soon enough! “

“You’re preaching to the converted,” I said. “I’ve no time to waste, no more than you.”

CHAPTER FIVE

That day a Spanish shallop appeared in daylight cruising along the shore of Falmouth Bay. She carried lug sails on both masts and in spite of her ungainly build had a turn of speed. From what we could see her full complement must have been more than forty, perhaps half of them soldiers. She came close in but when our demiculverin fired twice at about 600 yards, which was near the limit for accuracy, she turned sharp about and made away. Carminow cursed his own precipitancy then, for if one of the 9 lb. shot had struck her it might have disabled her.

Instead we had to stand and watch the Spaniard chase and overhaul a fishing vessel which had come inshore unsuspecting. Foster said he thought the smack was from St Keverne. She was boarded and her crew of six taken off. Then the shallop shook out her-sails again and moved away with the empty smack in tow.

My father, who had come hastily from the house, said that with the Spaniards so close Sir Francis Godolphin should be warned, so Belemus and I left for Godolphin. It was a twelve mile ride, and to reach it we passed over high and desolate moorland from which it was possible to see the distant prospect of Mount’s Bay glittering like a dish in the slanting sun. Over there, I thought, across the other side, just beyond Penzance, is the church of Paul on the hill and there lives a girl called Susanna Reskymer.

Godolphin was a mansion built around a square courtyard with gardens surrounding it on three sides. On the fourth side and shadowing it from the late sun was the hill on which some 300 tin miners were employed and from which the family derived its wealth and stability; and I wished that the Killigrews could have had some similar source so that, irrespective of personal extravagance and royal favour, there would be a steady replenishment of resources to pay off old debts and to guarantee new ones.

Sir Francis greeted us graciously enough and we spent the night there. He had the news, which we had not heard, that the new master of Tolverne, Jonathan Arundell, was sick and was more often confined to his bed than managing his estate. When Belemus was not there Sir Francis said he thought Jonathan was still suffering from the effects of the crisis at the time of his father’s death; Jonathan was a sensitive man, and humiliation and melancholy of that time had bit deep. I thought of Thomas’s prophecies, and asked about him.

“Grows fat and ever more vocal. When a younger son is so strident it is good for all that he should leave home early.”

“Does he propose to do that, sir?”

“Not as yet. I advise his mother, but she seems set on an early marriage for him to Bridget Mohun. Marriage may tame him.”

I got up to go but he said: “Stay a while, Maugan. Tanking of taming...”

“Yes, sir?”

“This Belemus is a wild spark, and I hear rumour that you are outvying him.”

“… Sometimes we ride together.”

Sir Francis pulled his beard. “Your father lives the life he does perhaps of necessity now. He is in a tide race and must swim with it. But it is a pity if his sons should become so committed.”

“Is not a son committed to sustain his father?”

“Not in activities outside the law.”

“The law is hard to come by in these parts, sir. Sometimes one has to assert one’s rights.”

“It is the distinction between right and wrong that I draw your attention to, Maugan. Have a care for it, for a happy life and the hangman’s noose are closer together than some realise.” When I did not speak he went on: “But this is a bad time for differences. With the Spanish so close all men of goodwill should draw together. If they do not they will be lost.”

“You think there will be an invasion this summer?”

“What will stop them? Only perhaps the fear of Drake and Hawkins. The command of the narrow seas is no longer ours. You who have been in Spain must feel the same. Were they not preparing even last year?”

With June there were several false alarms round our coast, and during the month at least four fishing vessels disappeared. Then a great to-do was caused by the return of the crew of the St Keverne smack which had been taken in Falmouth Bay. One man, a gunner, had not been released, but the others were sent back in their own boat. They were examined before Godolphin and Sir Anthony Rowse with other deputy-lieutenants present.

It seemed that the Spaniards had captured them only to press them for news of Drake’s fleet now almost ready to sail from Plymouth. They had told what they could but knew nothing fortunately of Drake’s objective. (Few did.) So they had been set free again, and themselves brought back valuable information, namely that there were 11 Spanish galleys and 20 ships of war in Blavet alone.

In late June two Lizard fishermen came in with reports that there was 60 sails just off the Manacles. They swore the exact position and approximate number, but whether it was true or not the fleet disappeared into the summer mists.

One night I plucked up courage to ask my father whether anyone had yet called at Arwenack for his answer to the message I had brought.

He looked at me out of swimmy, prominent eyes and said: “Well, what do you think, boy?”

“I think you’d have told me. But if they bothered to release me with the message they surely must sooner or later send for your reply.”

“Well, when they do their messenger will receive an answer as plain as the nose on his face.”

“D’you not think, then, that that shows the Spanish mean no invasion this summer?”

“Oh, I’d reason nothing from it. Maybe they thought they’d try you out with this message to see if you’d deign to carry it. Maybe they had no thought except to mock us.”

I knew this had been an offer made in deadly earnest, and I thought from an expression on my father’s face, as he bent to pick up a puppy, that he too was not deceived either. Sooner or later someone would come.

Sometimes in the night, especially during those long fair nights of late June, I would lie awake and think of the elderly, scholarly, grey faced fanatic in the Escorial, with his tiny junta of powerful, clever, dedicated men around him; and I would think of the milling crowds in Madrid, and especially of the crowd gathered for the auto de ye; and I would think of the warships lying at anchor in Lisbon waiting for the word to sail.

All through June and early July I was making love to Meg. Meetings were difficult, sometimes hurried, and the more difficult as the nights grew lighter and as Dick recovered his health and spirits. One night, the last of June, we were able to meet out of doors at nearly midnight in the woods behind the house. It was not dark, it was never dark those nights, with a pale blue reflected light over the northern horizon blending into an ultramarine sky in which the stars were never bright. We lay and made love in the long dew-damp grass, and afterwards walked across to the headland looking over towards France. I had never tried to fathom her feelings for Dick, but I knew that, whatever it had been at the beginning, now she was in love with me. We talked little. When we met there was the need for each other which grew no less with indulgence. I do not think we either of us thought much of the future. She was the stableman’s wife; that could not be altered. I was in love with her because she was pretty and kind, because she was my first woman, because I needed love, because at that age there is no other way to be. Perhaps she wanted it like this always; but if I wanted it as a permanence it was lime that I wanted to stand still; a perpetual summer when I was 17; when everything is new and crisp and soft and brilliant; when the boy’s eye and the poet’s eye have the same vision. If time moved on, then that created other vistas. Soon or late, I was prepared to move with it.

On the way home that night, climbing the palisade, she fell and turned her ankle; so I picked her up and carried her the rest of the way.

“How strong y’are, Maugan,” she whispered, and I enjoyed my own strength and the feel of her firm thighs, and her warm arms round my neck. We got in somehow limping and conspiratori~al and giggling in the dark. When I tip-toed to my room John woke but he did not ask where I’d been; and I lay for a long time beside him in a delicious, healthy, uplifted lassitude of muscle and mind until as dawn crept in sleep came with it.

In early July my father, burying his differences in the emergency, went over to Godolphin and there conferred with Sir Francis, together with Bernard Grenville, Sir Richard’s eldest son, and Jack Arundell of Trerice, Sir Anthony Rowse, Hannibal Vyvyan and others. As a result Sir Francis addressed a letter to Lord Essex asking for more men to be sent into the West Country. “I still rest of the same mind,” he wrote, “that a stronger garrison be needed for all these parts, for the gathering of the Spaniards seems as a cloud that is like to fall shortly in some part of her Majesty’s dominions.”

In the middle of the following week, before any reply could be got, galleys appeared off the north coast of the country, near St Eval. They came in close on that forbidding coast in the calm clear weather, making their soundings as they edged nearer the black and emerald rocks, but they had been seen and watched from early morning, and by the time they were within reach of shore Bernard Grenville and Jack Arundell had mustered a group of ill-assorted and ill-armed men to oppose the landing, if landing had been in the Spaniards’ minds. So the galleys sheered off.

Thereafter no more alarms. The weather broke and the emergency passed. Haymaking began, and all set to get the meadows cut before the gusty dust-raising wind turned to rain. When the hay had all been cut and been left to dry and turned with pitchforks from day to day and then gathered and finally built into ricks, there was a night of carousing and celebration. Most of the men and boys, including all the Killigrew boys old enough to work, had been out all day and every day, having had food brought to them to save returning to the house; so now all was noise and laughter, with jokes and lewd banter and traditional songs. The girls were put into two carts and dragged by the half-drunken men round and round the yards, while Dick Stable preceded them on an ass, plucking unsteadily on his harp and singing:

“With Hal-an-tow! Rum below!

For we are up as soon as any day,

O! And for to fetch the summer home

The summer and the May, O!“

My father was pleased with the hay, but his oats and wheat were thin because of the dry weather and because the land had not rested enough. We needed rain, he said, not this damnation wind.

I remember on the 21st the weather set fine again, because it was the day I rode into Truro for more medicines for my grandmother. Every time I went to see Mistress Footmarker I stayed an hour or two learning fresh things about herbs and their mixtures and administrations; but she never let me see her mix the diacodium. She was so generous of her secrets that I sought for some other reason, and thought that she found satisfaction in doling out bottle by bottle the physic which did so much good for the woman she disliked. That way Lady Killigrew remained beholden to her, even though she might not know it. That way at any time, perhaps, the remedy could be withdrawn.

At dawn on the 22nd three shallops, easily identifiable as Spanish, were in Falmouth Bay. They never came close enough to be fired on and after a morning of tension turned away and disappeared towards the southwest. Towards evening, in accordance with the agreement of two weeks ago, my father sent Belemus to Jack Arundell and me to tell Sir Francis.

At Godolphin all was quiet. Lady Godolphin was unwell with an attack of the stone. For that she had been prescribed in London to take saxifrage root steeped in the blood of a hare, and she esteemed this as a remedy. My great aunt Margaret had been dead some years and I did not know Sir Francis’s second wife well enough to query her cure; nor did I know Katherine Footmarker’s though I remembered it had something to do with a prolonged diet of goat’s milk. Sir Francis had as yet received no answer from Essex.

At Godolphin the family supped in one room and the servants afterwards in another. Sir Francis himself when busy with his papers ate frugally and alone. My father said he was mean, to eat so sparsely when so rich. That night we had a lonely meal, for Lady Godolphin was upstairs, his daughter was long since married, while his sons were all away, one still soldiering in Ireland, one commanding in the Scillies, a third at Westminster.

Sir Francis said before I returned home tomorrow he would show me the tin works on Godolphin Hill, and so we went early to bed. I slept dreamlessly and was wakened by a thunderous knocking shortly after six. I thought I had overslept and pulled back the bed curtains as a servant came in.

“Begging your pardon, sir. Sir Francis’s compliments and the Spanish have landed! “

“What? Is it true? Where? How many?”

“Tis thought about a thousand in the first landings. They come in by first light and captured the village of Mousehole. Word come five minutes gone! “

I turned to claw into my clothes. Every button, every tie took twice the length of an ordinary day. Mousehole. I had never been there but I knew it as a fishing village horseshoed around a tiny harbour. And just above it, on the hill above it, was the twin village of Paul.

We were not above ten miles distant here. An hour’s gallop on a good horse … I bolted downstairs, found Sir Francis fastening his doublet while a servant buckled on his sword.

“Ah, Maugan, you slept well? You have heard the news? So it has come at last. I have a commission for you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ride and tell your father what is happening. Tell him to raise the alarm throughout his district and to gather his musters for instant use. Then I shall be obliged to him “

“Sir,” I said, “I ask to be excused from carrying such a message.” He looked at me straightly from under his level brows. “Let one of your servants carry it. It will not matter who bears the tidings. I wish to ride in the other direction.”

Sir Francis looked down at his sword and lifted the hilt an inch to be sure it was free in its sheath. His face was grey with a tension that he did not allow to show in his words or speech. “That is the way I am riding.”

“Yes, sir, so I thought.”

“It is more important that the country should be raised than that the invasion should be at once resisted.”

“How many soldiers have you at call, sir?”

“Soldiers? None. Nor any relatives of combat age in this house. I shall take eight of my best servants, and I have sent to St Aubyn at Clowance, who is my nearest neighbour; there will be others coming across country as they hear.”

“What arms will you have?”

“Arms? Oh, we shall have some shot. And there will be billhooks a-plenty.”

“I shall be more useful accompanying you than spreading the alarm. Another sword may not be unwelcome, and if you have pistols I can shoot.”

Lady Godolphin came in. “Do not go, Francis, wait until the alarm has been generally raised. What can you do against the best soldiers in Europe?”

“Oppress them by weight of numbers.”

“You have no numbers. And what if the invasion spreads along the coast as the day goes on there may be other landings it is perhaps planned to take the whole of West Cornwall. Who is to guard this house?”

Sir Francis put his gloved hand on his wife’s arm. “I like the choice no more than you, my love … But we are five miles from the nearest coast. And the miners with their pickaxes and shovels would be a stumbling block at the last.”

“Oh, Francis, have care for yourself. You are not so young but that you must lead all the charges.”

“I am not so old that I can stay behind.” He kissed her. “Be rid of your fears by the time I return. I’ll bring you a Spanish helmet for a cooking pot. Come, Maugan.”

There was Sir Francis and myself and a yeoman farmer called Rame and eight servants. At the hamlet of Relubbas we overtook John St Aubyn who was going at half speed until we caught him up; with him were four servants, and presently we met Thomas Chiverton, who had fled his property at the first alarm but now took courage in our presence. Thereafter we picked up no more reinforcements while we circled Mount’s Bay.

It was a splendid morning with a low fur of white fog hiding some of the sea. As we rode the three gentlemen talked in urgent tones. Mr St Aubyn was a rosy-faced, white moustached man of fifty, and he looked anything but a soldier. Sir Francis before setting out had sent off five messengers: one to Sir Anthony Rowse, one to Bernard Grenville, one to my father, one to the Privy Council in Whitehall and one to Drake and Hawkins in Plymouth, asking for immediate action to save the country.

As we skirted Market Jew we found the first people fleeing in terror; women leading small children, old men hobbling and young men too, just as intent on getting away. Sir Francis spoke sharply to some of these latter, and a few turned about. But most pressed past us without pause. The Spaniards, they said, were pillaging and burning whatever they found and putting women and children to the sword. The dreadful fate of Antwerp where 7,000 had been slaughtered in a night was in everyone’s mind.

Smoke was rising round the bend of the bay. I jumped off my horse and caught one straggler urgently by the arm. “How are the Spaniards heading? Are they set this way?”

“Aye, master, they’m comin’ this way and every way. There’s thousands of ‘em landing! They come in a dozen great ships! There were no wind at dawn an’ they oared in under cover of the fog. They was on us afore we could gather our wits! “

“Are they going inland towards Paul?”

“They’m gain’ all ways, master.” The man shook himself free.

I caught the others up where they had stopped on the slope into Penzance and were talking to a group of a dozen men headed by a constable called Veysey. Veysey was plainly a level-headed fellow. He said the Spanish had landed several hundred men to begin and had thrown forward a slow moving and slow expanding semicircle of picked troops, with pikes and guns. Behind them, behind the screen thus formed, came a second force which appeared in truth to be burning and pillaging everything it found. Lacking officers or gentlemen to command, the group of Cornishmen forming round Veysey had accepted him as their leader, and the numbers swelled to about fifty men while information was being exchanged.

Sir Francis wanted to organise a defence about the market place but a dozen of Veysey’s followers shouted their dissent; these were men of Mousehole who knew that all they possessed in the world was being destroyed. They had fled to save their lives but now that they were reinforced they wanted to return and fight.

Sir Francis by right should have taken command, but I could see that he was swayed by the general mood and by the bold manner of Veysey. For my own ends I edged my horse nearer.

“They’re fighting for their homes, sir. If they are left three hours to cool in the market place waiting for an attack they may go too cold to resist at all.”

“What do you think, St Aubyn?”

“We might do one as well as the other. I don’t see neither is likely to stay an army.”

What swayed the choice was the arrival of some thirty more men, a half of this number armed with old guns and eager to come to grips with the enemy. Like new water in a stream blocked with twigs, all suddenly gave way; and we began to move towards Mousehole.

It was an unorderly throng, sixty or seventy afoot, with about a score of horsemen, mostly centred in the middle around Sir Francis, but a few like myself edging forward after Veysey who knew and led the way.

And it was a strange march too, for we traversed the open green which skirted the sea, and the fog, capricious as always, had come down in a sudden cloud on the water so that we could not see fifty yards from shore. As always with fog the world seemed the quieter, and here were no stragglers nor fleeing women. Our march was deadened by the grass; seventy men scuffled across it, twenty horses clumped into the turf; there was only the sound of creaking leather and shaking bits, the occasional clank of a pike or the rattle of a caliver.

When to save time we cut off a corner and tramped across the shingle, the sudden noise of stones, of tramping feet, of slipping and clattering hooves was like an outbreak of giant hailstones. We reached the other side and tramped into silence again.

The carpet of fog lifted its corner off the sea and we could see some of the invading fleet.

They were four long black galleys, their masts stark, their oars out like the feelers of sea animals. On the foremast of each vessel a red and yellow flag hung. Small boats were ferrying soldiers ashore.

An acrid smell of burning. We were still two miles from Mousehole; between us and it the fishing hamlet of Newlyn was in flames. The nearest of the boats was putting down its load a quarter of a mile away. As the soldiers jumped out they fell quickly into line, the thin sun glinting on their breastplates.

Veysey came spurring back to Godolphin. “Sir, our way’s barred. If we’re to go on at all we’d best take to the ‘ills and make a circle.”

Sir Francis said: “No … We’ll deploy here. We may hold them for a while.”

As he spoke there was a puff of smoke in the prow of the leading galley, then the clap of a gun and a ball whistled overhead. We had been seen and saluted.

Just as the press to go forward had been a common choice, so now was the halt. These galleys would carry 20 to 30 cast pieces each, and if they began to fire them on us we should be disposed of very quick. A marching body of men is a fine target for a 51b. shot.

This must have occurred to everyone at the same time, for there was now a general move to retreat. The gentlemen did their best to stop this, shouting Godolphin’s order. But just at the wrong moment a second ball whistled over, and this was a more cogent argument than any we had. In a body the men gave way.

But as they moved, two of the galleys began to move also, fifteen oars a side propelling the long hulls through the water, more than ever like sea animals after a prey.

And the prey was us. They used their main armament no more. Perhaps with the prospect of a sea battle against Drake and Hawkins within the next few days they felt they could not afford to waste shot, but small arm fire flew after us and there was always the greater threat in reserve.

Being on horseback, all Godolphin and the other riders could do was keep pace with the retreating men. Just before we turned the corner of the bay I stopped and looked back and could see the Spanish soldiers slowly advancing in two lines about fifty paces apart. Over to the right a glint of armour betrayed where a party on reconnaissance were climbing the hill from which they might discover ambushes and overlook Penzance.

At that moment Constable Veysey was shot from his horse beside me and rolled over in the grass. That finished his followers; they broke and began to run in all directions away from the enemy. Sir Francis swore and drew his sword and sat his rearing horse shouting at them, but apart from his own few an fled.

Veysey was unconscious but not dead, and we could find no wound nor bleeding; we rolled him over and saw the back of his leather jerkin torn in three places by the impact of spent bullets; we got him slung over the saddle and followed in pursuit of the flying men.

By the time we came into the market place the retreating force had melted away. A few stragglers, late arriving for the advance, had assembled in the square, but they were almost all armed only with pikes and pickaxes and a few carried bows and arrows.

It was now ten o’clock and the hot sun was beating down out of a cloudless sky, though the secretive fog still limited the horizon. There was no time as yet for any but the most neighbouring of lieutenants to bring succour. We could certainly expect nothing from Pendennis, since they would have to hold their musters in readiness for an attack on the harbour.

Sir Francis stared at the clusters of houses, now mainly empty but one or two with women or elderly people peering anxiously from between part closed shutters.

“Thus are we prepared,” he said to St Aubyn bitterly. “Scarcely better so, if at all, than when the first Armada came. If they have the force they can cut off the peninsula and be in command of all Penwith by nightfall.”

“There’s nothing we can do to stop ‘em,” said St Aubyn. “Nothing till help comes.”

An old woman came out of a house pushing a barrow. On it were loaded her personal possessions: some pewter, a calico quilt, a candlestick, a brass chafing dish. She scarcely looked at us as she pushed her burden steadily out of the town.

One of the Godolphin servants came up. “If ee please, sur, the Spanish be advancin’ now. They be at the foot of thtill, no moretn half a mile away.”

“In what numbers?”

“Oh, I should say, three, four ‘undred of ‘em. They be carrying a banner, and moron half of ‘em’s in mail.”

Sir Francis looked at Chiverton and at St Aubyn, then sheathed his sword.

“We must abandon the town. See that no one stays, you Parker, and you Crinnis. We’ll go by slow stages and keep to the higher ground by Gulval. That way we may have the enemy in sight “

“Sir,” I said, “in that case I ask leave to be excused.” When he looked at me in surprise I said: “I have a friend in Paul. I don’t know in what peril she stands; I must go and see.”

“The way is barred, Maugan. That must be plain to you.”

“Not by a circuitous inland route. It must be possible to approach the village from the north or west.”

“If the Spaniards take Penwith they will take you, and this time your release may not be so well come by.”

“It’s a risk I must run.”

Sir Francis pulled his horse round. “I don’t know what your father will say to me, but I cannot stop you if you wish to go.”

“Thank you, sir.”

So as the Spanish closed in on Penzance from two sides, Godolphin and his small group retreated reluctantly by another. I left by the fourth, striking due north and then turning west as soon as I was out of sight of the town.

CHAPTER 6

The larks were singing. High up in the attenuated sky they fluttered, beating out excited messages that paid no heed to me or to my sweating horse. The first time I stopped to give my horse a breather after the long rough climb Penzance was still in sight, and it was possible to see curls of black smoke beginning to rise from some of the outlying cottages. The second time it was all hid by the brow of the hill.

Penwith is a strange secretive land, full of unexpected rocks bearded grey with lichen. I saw only one man in the first hour and he was in rags, crouched on his haunches setting a trap for a hare. I asked my way of him and was told it with an accent which showed his native language was Cornish and that he spoke English only with resentment. I did not tell him that we were being invaded by the Spanish; perhaps it was wrong but I felt that at best he would only dimly comprehend. His way of life was nearer to the hare he was trying to trap.

From this height it was hard to tell one’s distances, but as I dropped down into the first wild valley full of nut trees and scrub oak, I dismounted and led my horse, feeling that that way one was less likely to blunder upon the invaders unawares. I had eaten and drunk nothing since yesterday, so stopped at the first stream that we might both drink; but there was no food except for the abounding wild life which there was no means of snaring.

This yalley led down to the coast and to a deserted bay. The sea here was emerald and turquoise, the rocks a terra cotta brown and square fashioned as if worked by a sculptor. We had come too far west and I led my horse up the hill which would divide this from the next cove. Almost as soon as we reached the top the strong smell of burning wafted through the trees.

I tethered the horse and went on foot. It wasn’t far to go. A rutted cart track led through a field in which the scent of the growing barley was overhung by the smell of smoke. Black specks floated in the sunlight, and here and there scraps of burnt paper and rags hung in the trees.

At the other side of the field was a broken iron gate ajar, and beyond a wider track with a cottage on either side of it. Both cottages were burnt out, the cob walls standing but roofs and windows gone. There was no sign of life and now little burning, only a wisp of smoke came from them.

But there was something bigger afire. Passing two chickens picking unconcernedly in the tufted grass, I turned the corner and came at once upon what, until recently, had been Paul Church. The tower had collapsed, breaking down the chancel wall; windows had fallen in, a black column of smoke and flame still came from the interior.

I made a cautious circuit of the building. No one was about; only the dead in their graves were here for witness.

The pall of smoke obscuring the sun moved away on a chance breeze, and then I saw that a substantial square-built house across from the churchyard was also blazing. I ran over the graves and came to a Iych gate, panting, though not from running. A charred door lay across the front steps; the heat from inside made entry impossible; I ran round the back. The kitchens and still room, stone built and cool, had survived the flames. Even the timbers of the roof were only charred. Thrust open the door.

“Sue! … Sue! …”

The sound echoed in the silence. A smock hung over a chair, and beside it lay a scythe. On the table was a bowl full of cold pottage and a spoon. I tried to push open the next door. It resisted and then broke off its upper hinge and leaned inwards.

Beyond was a hall, blocked by a fallen beam. The movement of the door disturbed two or three charred pieces of panelling, and they fell to the floor so that the flames leapt again and an eddy of smoke blew across my face.

“Sue! Sue ~ “

Somewhere outside a dog was howling.

Back through the kitchen and out into the yard. The stables were empty, the dog was farther on yet. A coppice of trees came near the yard, the two closest had been scorched by the heat. I thrust through the tangle of brambles to another cottage which had not been fired. A cross-bred hound sat on its haunches beside a body which lay sprawled in front of the door.

It was a man, I saw with relief, a labourer. He lay on his back, eyes staring wildly at the sky, a gaping pike-wound in his throat. One hand still grasped a pitchfork.

I patted the hound and tried to comfort him, then returned to the front of the rectory and stared about in the smoke. From here you could see where the Spaniards had dragged things out of the house in their search for valuables. But these piles, like the house, had been fired, and only a wisp of curtain, the handle of a warming pan, the charred pages of a book remained.

The village of Paul was a few smoking cottages, a tavern with ale trickling from an upturned barrel, feathers scattered in the road, a broken stool beside a tin-washing keeve, a dead horse.

The hill down into the village of Mousehole is very steep, and I climbed a hedge to get a view through the smoke and the sea mist.

The harbour was empty except for four fishing boats which swung at anchor on the full tide. All the houses round the harbour had been gutted. Three or four of the houses climbing the hill were still alight. No sign of life. Sword out I went down the hill.

It looked as if the Spaniards had moved on, directing their main drive along the coast to Penzance. There were no warships within visibility, which now stretched to maybe a mile.

I had reached the first cottages before I saw another dead man in the street, sprawling much as the other had sprawled. Voices.

Between the cottages was a narrow passage choked with charred embers. I slid into it, feeling the heat on my boots, crouched in the buttress of a chimney.

Three Spanish officers.

The sight of these Spaniards walking in full armour down the street of a conquered English town, brought home to me as nothing else had not the flight of the inhabitants, not the burning villages, not the galleys, not even the two corpses the reality of this invasion of our land. In the year of the First Armada not one Spaniard had set foot on English soil except as a prisoner or as a shipwrecked mariner begging for succour.

But now it was here. The second Armada had landed its soldiers almost without opposition. There would be bitter fighting no doubt, and perhaps another sea battle as fateful as the one off Gravelines. Drake would accept this challenge with all his old fire and brilliance. And, although Ralegh was away, Essex or another would lead an army against this invading force. But from now on the long bitter war would reach a new pitch.

As they reached the harbour wall a strange thing happened. A man in a shabby laced jacket with blue velvet slops and a large black-hilled back sword, came from behind the wall, and I expected them to draw on him. Instead they talked for a moment and then all four turned and walked off together. I saw his face. It was Captain Richard Burley.

I went back up the hill.

At the last cottage a loaf of bread was lying in the road, and I grabbed it and ate half. At the church the fire still burned too fiercely to get inside. I sat on a vault trying to decide what to do. One could only continue to search.

So I went on for two hours, trying to trace a pattern around the village. The Spanish had not penetrated inland more than a mile beyond Paul. I found four cottages all clearly deserted in haste but unburned.

By five I had returned to the church. The sensible thing was to abandon the search and rejoin Sir Francis, if I could make a way back through the invading army. The mongrel hound which had continued to howl intermittently beside the dead body of his master suddenly changed his note to an angry bark. I went round to the scorched coppice and through the brambles.

“Down, Snuffler, down,” said a man’s voice. “Quiet, boy! Oh! Now have a care, boy … that’s very well. That’s very well. Good dog … Let me move him, that’s very well …”

A man in clerical black was kneeling over the corpse, straightening its twisted limbs. Two other men in rough clothes were near by, pikes in hands. Beside them stood Mrs Susanna Reskymer, looking just as she had always been in my memory, tallish and slight, with gray-green eyes and black hair cut short over the forehead and ears, and the clearest of pale skins made paler now by what she was staring at, and a lip caught between her teeth and a wrinkle of horror twisting her forehead.

I said: “Sue …” before I could stop, and at once the two servants lifted their pikes.

The man in black also moved, and then Sue saw me. The pallor at seeing a murdered neighbour was nothing to the pallor that came to her face now.

“Maugan I …”

I stumbled out of the bushes. “I came to look . . ~ Are you safe? I’ve been searching since this morning.”

“We hid in the quarry. There’s a cave…”

“I found the church burning.”

“Yes, it’s all gone.”

“Is that your house, just there?”

“Yes. That’s gone too.”

“I was afraid …”

“We just got out in time.”

The thin man was standing opposite me.

“This is my husband,” Sue said. “Mr Reskymer. This is Mr Maugan Killigrew from Arwenack.”

Someone put out a hand. I had to change hands with my sword.

“This is a tragic time for us,” he said. “Have you seen aught of the Spaniards?”

“I saw some at noon in Mousehole. Not since.”

“You went dowel into Mousehole?”

“Not all the way.”

“Were there many dead or wounded?”

“One man was all I saw.”

“And this one, alas, our faithful Pieton. We tried to persuade him to leave but he would not. No doubt he died as he would have wished, defending his home.”

Philip Reskymer looked all of his fifty years, having lined cheeks and grey hair and the narrow shoulders of a scholar. But his eyes were alert and candid and penetrating. This was the man she had chosen, to whom she had given all that she had promised me, in the terrible intimacy of marriage. This old man was the man who had possessed her. He owned her; she lived with him, slept with him, was breathed upon and kissed and caressed by him. Utterly unchanged to look at, she was fundamentally changed within. She was Mrs Reskymer.

I heard myself explaining how I came to be here, what I had done since morning, why I was seeking them, and, now that I had found them, how I hoped they would let me see them to some safer district.

Philip Reskymer said softly: “It is kind of you, Mr Killigrew, but where does safety lie? We don’t know that, but we know where duty lies, and mine is here by my ruined church to help any of my parishioners who may need me. As dark falls I fancy they will come drifting back.”

“And your wife?”

“Ah, there is another matter. I’d gladly see her out of this if I knew such a way.”

“I don’t think any of you safe here,” I said. “If the Spanish intend to take Penwith, the only real safety is to make our way east before they seal it off. I was near enough this afternoon to hear three officers talking, and they were debating the holding of Penzance. I don’t know the numbers that have landed, but the neck of Penwith between St Ives and Penzance is not above a few miles. If they can defend that they have a foothold in England from which they’ll take some dislodging.”

Sue had not spoken since uttering my name.

“You speak Spanish, sir?” Reskymer asked.

“I was their prisoner for six months.”

“And were badly treated?”

“Not badly. But I am not a woman.”

He winced. “I could wish some solution. What do you suggest? “

“That we all leave as quick as possible. Have you horses?”

“There are two in the cave. But my place is here.”

“Will it benefit your flock if you are murdered and your wife raped?”

“I . . But if you are a soldier do you desert your regiment

to protect your family? No more can I leave.”

“Then let your wife leave with these two servants. There’s some hours of daylight left. It will give them the chance to make a few miles, and then they can wait for nightfall before trying to slip through the net.”

Sue spoke for the first time. “I cannot desert you, Philip.” Listening to her say that was like poison.

“Oh, yes, you can, if I can be sure that you’ll be safer leaving. But is it so?” Reskymer bent to close the staring eyes of the dead man. The cross-bred hound watched him suspiciously. “Poor John Pieton must be buried. There will be others. Susanne, I’m torn both ways.”

One of the servants came forward, and together they carried the dead man into his cottage. Sue got up from her stone and went with the other servant into the back of the cottage. There a woman servant was boiling some stew on a fire. We were all faint from hunger, and in twenty minutes we sat down together round the table and ate the hot stew with bread. From the unburned kitchen of the Reskymers’ house had been salvaged an Angelot cheese and a cherry tart; these made the meal.

Philip Reskymer wore a white band round his neck in the manner of the puritans. His hands were veined and nervous and seemed to have a life of their own, like sensitive antennae. He ate little while he told of their awakening that morning with the Spaniards already rampant in the village at the foot of the hill. Jenkin Kiegwin, he said, who owned much of the property in Mousehole, and whose house was the one substantial one in the town, had been surprised before he could flee and killed at his own front door. His wife and son had fled and were thought to be safe, but the fate of a second son was unknown. Most of the villagers, he thought, had got away in time. I watched Philip Reskymer while he talked, and he seemed to me in no way well favoured, even for a man of his age. I could not conceit what Sue had seen in him, except as an escape from penury. My flesh crawled at the thought of those veined hands touching her body. Hate which has come out of love burns the brighter for what it is consuming. I could have killed her and wept over her in the same breath.

One of the servants came back with an old woman who had been hiding all day in the bushes above Mousehole. She could tell us nothing of value, being half crazed with fear. Reskymer took her into the unburned house and Sue ministered to her.

“I am concerned for old Mrs Lavelis,” muttered Reskymer. “Arthur Lavelis is away, and the three servants are new and unreliable. Then there are the Lanyons, but they are better able to fend for themselves …”

“Shall I go to Trewoofe and see?” Sue asked.

“It will not be safe.”

“It’s not safe to wait here,” I said. “I ask you to leave while there is time.”

“How can I ? ” said Reskymer. “Already we’ve old Aunt Betty Coswarth to care for. There win be others. If the Spanish find us “

“And your wife?”

His long hands took the bowl of hot milk from Sue and he carried it to the old woman. “I think he’s right, Susanna. I cannot expose you to this risk if “

“I’m already exposed to it. There’s no proof that I shall be safer elsewhere.”

“There’s every reason to suppose it,” I said.

Sue stood up with her back to her husband. Her eyes were brimming with tears. “I’m sorry, Maugan, this is my home.”

Furious, hurt, miserable, I wanted to turn on my heel and leave the girl to her beloved husband and her invited fate, but I could not make the first move. I just stared back at her, knowing myself lost and defeated.

“Your home is in ashes,” I said. “I’ve seen me?’ burnt too. But of course it’s as you please.” The words scarcely meant anything; I had to say something to release the pressure in my throat.

Just then a young woman with a child appeared and almost fainted with relief when she saw Sue at the door. This woman too was taken into the kitchen and fed. She had been crouching in a disused tunnel for thirteen hours. She had seen two Spanish soldiers about an hour ago on the quay.

Philip Reskymer walked across to the ruins of his church and we tried to get inside, but the heat was still too great and some of the roof timbers had not fallen but were smouldering and liable to collapse. Even the great stone pillars had broken apart.

“This is the first church in England ever to be lit by a Spanish torch,” he said. “I fear it will not be the last. Do I understand, Mr Killigrew, that you saw an auto de ye’?”

“Yes. Human beings burn too.”

“Tolerance is a rare commodity.”

“We do not burn our captives.”

“Not of late. We stretch them on the rack.”

“I think,” said Sue, “I think I will see if old Mrs Lavelis is safe. It’s thirty minutes mounted, and since she’s half blind

“Then take Tamblyn with you. He has a strong arm and a stout heart.”

“If your wife wishes to visit this Mrs Lavelis,” I said, “I shall be pleased to go instead of your servant.”

“Thank you, Maugan, no,” Sue said.

“But why do you not all go?” Philip Reskymer suggested. “If the Spanish come in force, none of us will survive. But if they stray singly, then Tamblyn and young Mr Killigrew are as good a protection as you are likely to get. You have a horse, Mr Killigrew?”

“In the next field.”

It was half an hour before we left.

We rode three abreast to begin, and then as the track narrowed Tamblyn fell behind. But he was still too close for private conversation between us. The sun had gone down into a blood red haze which looked like a record of the day and a portent for tomorrow. We came upon a stone-built square house mercifully unburnt, with narrow mullioned windows and an iron-studded front door. We rang for a time and had no response, then knocked, then tried the latch and walked in.

We were in a hall with a handsome hammerbeam roof. It was dark and cluttered with heavy furniture, and I bumped into a table.

“Who’s there?” quavered a voice.

“Mrs Lavelis?” called Sue. “Where are you?”

“Who’s that? Tell me at once.”

“Susanne Reskymer with two friends. We came to see if you lacked anything.”

“Company, yes. You’ll find tinder on the big table. Light a candle.”

Eventually light began to grow, flickering and dying and then creeping up. A plump old lady was sitting on one of a flight of broad stairs, holding a musket across her knees.

“So you are real,” she said. “I was beginning to doubt.”

At the first scare the servants had fled, leaving the old woman of eighty-four to face the enemy alone. So she had stayed all day, though her sight was bad, sitting on the stairs gun in hand.

We helped her to a comfortable chair, prepared some food for her. In the reaction she was suddenly frail; we could not leave her tonight. But Sue was concerned about her husband. She asked me to go and tell him. I said my first duty was to her; Tamblyn must go.

She did not like this, argued that if I would not go alone she would stay here herself; I said where she was there I would stay.

Sue helped the old lady up the stairs to bed. Mrs Lavelis said the bedroom next to hers was prepared and usable; if Sue would take it she would sleep more soundly; the two men could sleep in the room next the hall. Before we closed the door Mrs Lavelis was breathing quietly.

At dusk Sue told Tamblyn to go and explain to Mr Reskymer that she would not be back tonight. Then she told Tamblyn to return here with all speed.

When he had gone she stood with her back to the great front door looking at me with liquid resentful eyes.

I leaned across and lit two more candles. “I am real. Even though at first you may have doubted it.”

“Oh I’m glacl, Maugan. I only wished it hadn’t happened this way!”

“The choice was yours.”

She came slowly to the table, on which were still the remains of supper. “Was I to know?”

“You thought I was dead1”

“Yes! “

“If you had been my widow your haste would have seemed indecent.”

She flushed. “It’s a long story.”

“It will be a long night.”

She began to pick up the trencher plates, the knives, the spoons.

“Leave that,” I said.

She stopped. “What do you want me to say? What is there to say? However long I tried I could never persuade you that what I did seemed at the time to be right.”

“Oh, Sue …”

She put her hands to her face. I got up but she said: “No, don’t touch me!“

“Sue, why did you ever do this?”

She went to one of the long narrow windows and peered out at the darkening drive.

“Is it safe to have light? Might it not attract the Spanish?”

“They’ll not be concerned with us tonight. Also it will help Tamblyn to find his way back.”

“Yes, it will help Tamblyn to find his way back.” She suddenly went on in a choked voice: “Why did I marry Philip Reskymer? I’ll tell you. Because I’m a weakling and a coward! … They told me you were dead. Can you understand? They told me you were dead. I could not even grieve openly. You were supposed to be nothing to me! Only Elizabeth Arundell guessed …” She turned. “I couldn’t stay on at Tolverne not an everlasting companion to Elizabeth in a gloom-filled house, for ever and ever. There was just an eternity before me of life without purpose. Philip Reskymer came twice to see Lady Arundell, to whom he’s related, and I saw he liked my company, but that was all. When I left I thought I should never see him again. I never wanted to see any of them. I wanted to get right away...”

“But you changed your opinion.”

“He found me at my aunt’s farm and asked me to marry him. He put it to me in such terms that I couldn’t refuse outright. He said he would come back in a week for an answer. It was in those days of waiting that I knew my true weakness.”

The tears were brimming on her lashes. “Philip is such a kind man: that was my undoing. Above all I needed kindness and some sort of comfort. Can you understand? Philip asked me to help him in his work, he asked me to be his companion and helpmate and friend. That appealed, for I felt if I could have some object in life … He told me of his work, and it seemed saintly there are so few like him.”

“Also he was rich.”

She stopped and then nodded her head, so that a shower of tears fell. “Yes. That counted. I’ll not pretend otherwise. He had a house, servants, who would tend on me. That may be nothing fresh for you, Maugan, but it has been fresh for me. Ever since I can remember we’ve been in dire straits. My father was always particular to keep up a standard of manners and behaviour I was brought up to act like a lady but at what cost behind the stage! The meals we had with only parsnips and carrots! The endless grubbing in the fields! That had already begun again while living with my aunt. How was I to know that if I refused his offer it might not continue for the rest of my life?”

“Have you never looked at yourself in the glass?”

“Oh, no doubt I should do as well as the rest if I had a home and money for a dowry. But who wants a penniless girl? Nearly all marriages are a question of money … And don’t you see? Philip was not taking your place; he was taking some other place, which perhaps my father had once held or which perhaps had never been filled beforel Do you understand that?”

“Do you love him?”

She made a rapid impatient gesture, and took out a handkerchief to wipe her eyes. “What is love? Two or three diverse things. I don’t love him as I as I … But I love him in the sense that he is worthy of respect, of admiration, of help, of service. Until now I have found satisfaction, a new sort of life, in helping him, in being beside him while he worked.”

“Did it never occur to you that I might still be alive?”

“When I first heard, the news was that you were dead. It was not until later that I heard how you had disappeared. By then I couldn’t bring myself even to hope. That too is a weakness, I know. I have this fault of seeing things blackly. Often in my life I have hoped and prayed and the hope has never come.”

“Does your husband know about us?”

“No. He thinks I’m just of a melancholic nature which may be true but not to the extent that he thinks.”

“And what are we to do now?”

“What is there to do? I’m married.”

“If we told him the truth, would he not understand?”

“Maugan, I could not. I entered into my marriage in good faith as he did.”

“You still love me?”

She passed near a candle and the flame eddied in the air with the movement her body made. I felt I was like that candle, as much subject to her, as little capable of stability when she was near.

“I must go and see if Mrs Lavelis needs met’

“She’s asleep.”

“The old are always dozing and waking. Come with me. From her bedroom you can see across the fields. It might be as well to look once more before darkness falls.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Tamblyn returned about eleven. He said the master was safe more villagers had drifted back but none had ventured down into Mousehole.

Sue slept in the guest bedroom next to that of Mrs Lavelis. Tamblyn and I took it in turns to keep watch from a little turret room which commanded an excellent view to south and east. Tamblyn took the first watch from twelve until three, while I slept on one of the beds in the room next to the hall. In spite of everything I went to sleep quickly and being wakened at three was like being dragged out of a pit.

I went up, took the rug still warm from Tamblyn and wrapped it round. The chair gave a view from both windows and I settled down in it. The stars had disappeared, and a Spanish army could creep up on such a night.

I sat there holding Mrs Lavelis’s musket and began to think about Sue.

My heart was sick and my mind full of fancies. I sat there for a full hour thinking about her, with sleep pricking at my eyelids and my will not quite in control. It was the deepest part of the night when dying men die and the living have their darkest thoughts.

I suppose it must have been near four when I found myself beginning to wake up. There was no longer any struggle with lids or limbs. Yet though I woke I woke not from my thoughts.

I thought of Sue.

I got up and peered out of the windows. A low wind was sighing in the trees. I went downstairs and opened the door into the room beside the hall. Tamblyn’s deep regular breathing greeted me.

I went upstairs again, passed Mrs Lavelis’s door and listened. There was no sound. I went on to Sue’s door and gently opened it. There was no sound here either, and it was not until I was half way to the bed that I caught her quiet breathing.

She was sleeping with the bed curtains drawn back and woke the instant I touched her hand.

“Who is it?”

“Maugan. I thought to see if you were safe.”

“Is there anything wrong? What time is it?”

“Near four. No, all’s quiet.”

“Then …”

“I came to be with you.”

“Maugan, you should not!”

“Should I not? Have I not that right?”

“Oh, between ourselves, perhaps; but “

“It’s only between ourselves.”

“That can’t be, my love.”

“You’d call me that and yet deny me?”

“I’m sorry … I shouldn’t have said it. It’s the shock of waking like this. You surprise words out of me.”

“Love is the only word I have surprised …”

I sat there for a time beside her without speaking. In the accustomed dark my eyes could see the oval of her face, and the shape of her shoulders. She had reared up from the pillows but now lay back, only her head lifted. I took her hand. It was warm and a little moist. I turned it up and kissed the palm.

The hand contracted, tried to free itself, though not violently.

I said: “To whom did you first swear your love?”

“To you.”

“That oath to me was binding, a betrothal. For it I forsook all others.”

“I thought you were dead! I’ve told you, Maugan!”

“If a woman marries a man and then, mistakenly thinking him dead, marries a second man, to whom is she rightly married? “

“Oh, yes, I know. But we were not married. It was a “

“It was a betrothal, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Yes but “

“A betrothal is as binding as a marriage ceremony, Ask any one.”

“Oh, no, it isn’t so now in law.”

“Can you be more cruel than that?”

She sat up again. “Maugan, what can I say to you? When I saw you yesterday I thought my heart would stop. Since then I have tried, tried so hard! “

“You have tried so hard to defeat your true feelings. You say you’re weak. I think I am weak. You are far too strong

We looked at each other and I put my hand up to her neck. I pulled her towards me. She resisted, pushing at my chest, but it was the resistance of one far gone in some illness or trial of strength. It was as if she had burned herself up inwardly during the day and now had no reserves left.

I think if it had not been for my experiences with Meg I should not have gone into Sue’s room that night. Yet to say that the knowledge of one woman breeds confidence with the next is to state a truism that puts too base a value on it. I was not going from one light creature to another but from a simple romantic scullery maid with whom I had learned all I knew to the girl who should have been my wife.

The first dawn light picking out the gap in the bed curtains showed up Sue’s face pale and drowned against my arm. Her hair lay like seaweed over the pillow.

I said: “But I don’t understand …”

Her eyes flickered but she did not open them.

“You have been married how long?” I said. “If “

She said sulkily: “It is not that sort of a marriage. I tried to explain.”

“Then what sort in God’s name “

“Before we married, Philip made it clear he sought nothing of me but companionship. He feels that a relationship of the body between a man of fifty and a girl of seventeen is unnatural and wrong. I believe he loves me. I know he does in the fullest way, but he’s a principled man and has never attempted to amend his views as we have grown closer in friendship … So you have found me as I am.”

I drew her closer to me. Her body was slighter than Meg’s, less rounded, the bones small but more noticeable. I was enamoured and enraptured with her out of my senses. We lay for a time unspeaking.

At last she said: “It’s getting light.”

I reached up and pulled the curtains closer.

“Maugan, you must go.”

I stopped her mouth in the only way. And in that way our rational minds ceased to work. I knew that first light was the most likely time to be surprised by the Spaniards. I knew that Tamblyn might get up and find me no longer in the turret room and raise the alarm. It was possible that Philip Reskymer might come over at dawn. But my brain was submerged; nothing mattered.

But however narrow the slit in the curtains, daylight crept through and was suddenly in possession of our dark fortress, and the curtains were high walls against the world no longer.

She sat up: “I think I hear something.”

“No, it’s the wind.”

She listened intently. Eventually she gave way to the pull on her arm and lay down. She tried to push her hair back from her brow.

A bird was cheeping under the eaves; it was an alarmed sound as if a cat were stalking him. There was a scraping on the roof above us made by a crow or a chough as he edged along the thatch. Far away a cow was lowing.

I said: “We must make plans.”

“How can you make plans to defeat fate?”

“Not defeat it perhaps but circumvent it. Sue, you can’t go on living this unnatural life for ever. If we survive this invasion, then some way must be found to free you of an impossible tie. It will poison and distort Reskymer’s life as well as yours and mine.”

“In whatever we do we must go slow.”

“I have a feeling that if he loves you as you say he does he’ll not be able to keep to his principles much longer. Look at you? Would any man?”

“He doesn’t see me like this.”

“No, but one day he may. Have you separate rooms?”

“Of course.”

“With a connecting door?”

“Maugan, don’t torture yourself I Accept my assurance that nothing …” She stopped.

“What is it?”

“Listen.”

I listened.

Outside a horse neighed, and there was the jingle of harness. I leapt out of the bed and began to claw into my shirt and doublet and slops and shoes. Half clad I hobbled to the window. It was broad day. Some men on horses were disappearing round to the front of the house. I grabbed the musket from where I had propped it and fumblingly primed it with powder.

“Who is it?” Sue whispered.

“Men. I don’t know them. Dress but wait here.”

This room led on to a landing looking down into the hall. It was still gloomy here, but light fell in from the open front door. Three men were already in the hall.

“Halt!” I shouted.

They stayed there motionless, but two men coming in the door raised guns.

“Hold! ” said the man in front. “Who the devil calls? I don’t recognise the voice.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Since this is my home I’ve a better right to ask you that.” I lowered my gun. “Your home?”

“It was when I went away.”

Arthur Lavelis had been on his way back from Exeter when the news reached him of the Spanish landings. He had ridden through the night, collecting as he went a dozen other riders so that the number now in the courtyard of Trewoofe was twenty. As they rode rumours had flown to meet them that a second Armada twice as great as the first was on our shores and landing soldiery by the thousand, that all Penwith had already been burned and put to the sword.

Coming closer he had had official word with Godolphin, who last night had encamped on the hills above Market Jew.

Four or five hundred men, Lavelis said, had by now flocked to Godolphin’s standard, and numbers were increasing hourly and breeding greater courage. All the same they were an undisciplined company to meet any concerted attack. Skirting the embers of Penzance, Lavelis had come home without falling foul of invaders. It remained to be seen he said, what sights the day would bring.

By now Sue, utterly calm and possessed, was out on the landing, and Tamblyn rubbing his eyes had come into the hall. Old Mrs Lavelis was sleeping peacefully so she was not disturbed.

We breakfasted at once. Lavelis said if he ever found his three servants again he would hang them. A blustering moustached bachelor of forty with a roving eye that lighted with appreciation on Sue, he held a council of war over his cold mutton and galantine sauce. With him was a regular soldier called Captain Poor who had ridden from Liskeard overnight. Poor said Drake and Hawkins had been on the point of leaving for their expedition to the West Indies, with seasoned troops standing by to go aboard at the last minute. These troops under Sir Thomas Baskerville, Colonel General of Drake’s soldiers, would probably now be thrown into Cornwall to meet the attack while Drake and Hawkins sailed to take the Spaniards at sea. Until the full weight of the invasion was known no one could do more.

Poor said that as soon as he had broken his fast he would ride back to try to rejoin Godolphin. That way he would be performing a valuable reconnaissance and at the same time reinforcing the main army of resistance. He suggested that the force at present at Trewoofe should split, ten remaining to guard the house and the women, but the younger and the more active to go with him.

I knew then I must part from Sue. I had no claim to a special concern for her; her husband was near, and if I made an excuse I should look a coward.

Before we left I tried to get private word with her, but she was much with Mrs Lavelis and avoided conversation with me. I think she was still unawake from the heady drugs of the night and trying to find some balance within herself. That also was true of me I wanted talk with her, yet if I had got it it would have seemed superfluous. What had happened had happened and nothing would ever be the same again; but nothing was solved by it, rather greater problems made. One’s mind needed time to absorb them.

Just as we were leaving I went to her in front of the old lady and said: “I must go, Sue. If this is over soon, I shall be back. In case if I am alive I’ll come back. Remember that this time.”

She looked sidelong at me. “I’ll remember.”

We rode away, Lavelis with us. The weather had changed, and it was a grey lowering day with a stiff south-easterly wind blowing off the sea. Landing from small boats would be less easy than yesterday.

We came round a sharp shoulder of rock, and the whole of the Mount’s Bay was visible. The town of Penzance was in ruins; you could see the roofless walls, but there was no sign of life about it, either English or foreign. The top of the great rock of St Michael’s Mount was shrouded in misty rain; in front of it, in the green plain of Marazion, was a large body of men perhaps five hundred strong, scattered irregularly in groups with here and there a tent and a wagon. Close in to the Mount rode four Spanish galleys. The rest of the sea to the low horizon was empty.

Captain Poor said: “It’s hard to tell if the battle is over or not yet joined. At least let us go down and bury either them or ourselves.”

But I had seen too much of Spanish discipline to suppose that a landed army would be in the casual array of the groups of Marazion Green. This was Godolphin’s mixed assembly.

We found Sir Francis in better spirits. The forces of the Spanish had been exaggerated, and at worst this was not yet a large scale invasion. Indeed, although other vessels had been reported off the coast, it was from these four galleys only that the landings had been made. Yesterday the Spanish troops had burned Penzance and then had attended a mass celebrated by three priests on the hill above the town. As darkness was falling, and perhaps fearing a counter-attack during the night, the bulk of the force had retired to the safety of their galleys, and there they still were. No one knew if garrisons had been left ashore, but Godolphin would not spare any part of his force to discover this. He saw it as the best strategy to keep his men together to watch the galleys and if need be to follow them and try to prevent any repetition of yesterday.

One or two seamen in our army were watching the weather with experienced eyes. The galleys were mobile so far as oaring took them, but this dead on-shore wind would make it difficult for them to get clear away. If it strengthened they would be pinned within the bay and if any English force appeered to windward of them they would be trapped. But of course no one knew what superior Spanish forces hovered below the horizon: if Drake suddenly appeared and engaged the galleys he might himself be trapped in turn.

Meantime to wait. We camped on the grass, making the best of the thin driving rain and the lack of food and shelter. Twenty women who had come in were sent to scour the countryside for bread and bare necessities. In the evening some sheep and chicken were slaughtered and roasted over spits, and enough ale was found to keep the damp at bay.

About seven with the fine rain still falling and the wind coming firmly out of the south-east, the leading galley was seen to move. Its oars lapped the water and it turned its snout towards the shore west of us where the inlet of Penzance lay. At once the near-finished meal was abandoned, men cried to each other, horses were saddled, calivers and muskets and pikes were shouldered, swords buckled. The galley slid through the water followed by its three lesser creatures, and the motley band of men kept company with them along the shore.

Short of the Penzance inlet the first galley turned inshore. The pinnaces were lowered. At that moment Captain Poor on the flank and Sir Francis Godolphin on the other gave the order to open fire. There was an intermittent rattle of guns, and some of the men on the first ship retreated from the rail to less exposed positions. The galley replied with small arms fire. We could see a consultation going on on the poop. If the galleys employed their cast pieces they could of course clear the shore while the first wave of troops were landed. It all depended whether they considered they could spare the powder and shot.

In the meantime the halfdozen men ashore who were armed with modern muskets continued to fire, and another halfdozen with long bows climbed down on a projecting point and strove to outdo the musketeers.

While this issue was in the balance I noticed an old man and an old woman a hundred yards farther along the beach. He was digging in the sand for bait and she was shovelling seaweed into a basket. I do not know if they were unaware of the imminent conflict or if they were deaf to the sound of gunfire but it seemed they were indifferent to both. They reminded me of the man of whom I had asked the way yesterday. The struggle to exist had reduced them so low that they cared nothing for larger and more general dangers. They had no enemy greater than hunger, no fear beyond an empty belly.

The wind was strengthening and waveless were breaking all along the shore. Then a man in the crowded bows of the first ship crumpled and fell among his fellows. It was one of the bowmen who had made his mark. Within five minutes of the soldier’s fall the galleys began to move away out of range.

A straggling cheer broke out and ran along the groups of defenders.

“They’d best go if they be going,” said the man next to me. “Tis blowin’ up dirty.”

But once out of range the four ships anchored again in line astern. They were not giving up.

We posted sentries along the beaches, and the main body retired to the grassy slopes behind. Dark fell and two bonfires were set upon the beaches, to give light and comfort. I dozed off for a time leaning back against a dank and mossy boulder. I dreamed about Sue, nothing else, not Spaniards, nor war, nor burning churches, just Sue. The strength of my desire for her kept waking me and I would start up and shake myself, trying to throw off the fancies. I do not know what alchemy gets to work in a man that one woman’s face and lips and hands and body alone will satisfy him and no other. Beauty is an ingredient but not the main one.

In the middle of the night I went along to the tent where Sir Francis Godolphin sat writing a despatch. After two nights without sleep he was looking his sixty-odd years. I offered to write the despatch for him, and this he agreed to and leaned back in a chair speaking the rest to me. It was a straightforward account of his actions and of the movements of the enemy, destined for the Privy Council at Westminster. Added was a calm appraisal of the future. I realised as I wrote why the Privy Council set more store by the counsel of Sir Francis Godolphin than that of Mr John Killigrew.

We had finished and he had sealed the report when there were shouts in the distance, and one of his servants came running across the grass with news that it was reinforcements from Plymouth at last.

Into the tent came a tall vigorous young man called Sir Nicholas Clifford. He brought with him, he said, 200 troopers under the command of two experienced captains, and reassurances from Drake that a portion of his fleet would be off the Lizard by dawn. It remained only to concert action here to meet any emergency which the day would bring.

“Captain Poor was wakened, and the two new captains came into the tent for a counsel of war. Because I had been in the tent when they arrived they did not question my presence.

Nicholas Clifford’s plan was different from Francis Godolphin’s: it was a strategy stemming from strength instead of weakness. If the force of the enemy were no more than four galleys, they should be encouraged to land not prevented. Although they had got fresh water on Wednesday, they had had none since and might now be in need of more. The whole camp should be moved in the night.

By three we were in transit. By five we were in our new positions. About thirty men armed with pikes and bows guarded the beaches on which the Spanish had tried to land yesterday, the remaining seven hundred of us, including the mounted troopers who had arrived overnight, were out of sight in the valleys of Gulval and Ludgvan. If the enemy landed they could land almost unimpeded. If they ventured into the green country behind the beaches they would be attacked from all sides.

Clifford reckoned that Drake’s fleet would be in Mount’s Bay by noon or soon after. Seven hours to go.

From a vantage point in the hills we watched the four black smears offshore grow into the warships we now knew so well. The sky was lightening with more than the dawn. It was to be a better day.

For a time there was no movement apparent, then the longest galley shook out a sail or two as if trying them against the wind. They were quickly furled. Except by oar, the four warships were incapable of moving out of Mount’s Bay, and unless the slaves were flogged until they died, they would not make open water at all.

No fires were lighted in our camps, but we saw the men left on the beaches gathering round their fires, and though the morning was not cold we munched bread and cheese and shivered in the wind.

About eight three small companies which had been sent out to test conditions to the west of us reported that no Spanish remained at Penzance or Mousehole and that the inhabitants were drifting back. Because they had fled at the first alarm casualties had been few.

By now the day was bright and I watched the sky suspiciously. In this sea-surrounded peninsula changes of weather can be rapid. The wind which had blown from the south-east for twenty-six hours was still strong but was becoming hesitant, lifting and falling in gusts. Broken blue sky let through a fitful sun. The horizon, which had been misty from one cause or another ever since the invasion began, was showing as a hard rim. Complete surprise was now impossible, but if the wind would only hold, the Spaniards were still caught.

At nine Clifford and Lavelis and four others of whom I was one, rode down the valley to within half a mile of the beach. Where we stopped it was sheltered and Clifford transferred his attention from the galleys to the horizon. Just then I felt a breath of wind on the back of my neck.

The others must have noticed it a few minutes later for they all looked up, and then Clifford spurred his horse away from the shelter of the trees. The south-east wind had quite dropped and a breeze was springing up from the north-west.

We galloped cursing to the sea, Clifford near bringing his horse down in his annoyance. By the time we reached the sand three of the galleys were already unfurling their sails. The fourth, the leader, put out its oars and began to nose in towards the land.

“By God! ” muttered Lavelis, “don’t tell me our luck is yet in! “

The warship came within musket shot. Men were in her bows and one or two of our defenders took aim at them but Clifford sharply held up his hand.

“Do not for pity’s sake discourage them.”

The galley swung round and shook out her sails. As she did so about a dozen men dived off her bows and began to swim for shore. Clifford still refused the order to fire, and by the time the first man stumbled shouting upon dry land, the galley was moving out to sea in the freshening breeze. The voices that called to us were English and besought us not to fire. The Spanish captain had chosen to jettison some of his captives, seamen and others taken on his cruise and judged of no further value.

Their joy on being released was the only reward we had. By eleven all four Spanish ships were hull down on the horizon. It was not until an hour later that the first sail of Drake’s fleet showed.

CHAPTER EIGHT

From then on the weather set in foul. Through devious sources we heard of the further adventures of the raiding galleys. In mid-channel they came on a fleet of seventy unescorted ketches, boys and cargo vessels freighting towards Plymouth, and ran amok, scattering the little ships all ways. But one galley which caught five found that even ketches have teeth when cornered, and a bitter fight ensued. Three of the ketches were sunk but the galley was so mauled that as the weather grew steadily worse she was glad to call off the fight and limp away into the mist of the next squall. As night fell her condition grew worse and by morning she was sinking. Her crew were taken off and only three warships returned to Blavet.

The shock of the landings were great through the country. My father received weekly letters from the Privy Council directing his energies to the training and better equipping of his musters. Drake and Hawkins had word from the Queen that their new adventure must wait until the risk of invasion was past.

My father and Hannibal Vyvyan jointly replied to the Privy Council that whatever they might do with their musters, such force as they constituted would be little use without powder and shot, and Hannibal Vyvyan went to the length of demanding a new culverin, four demi-culverin and three sakers. He did not get them, but in early August a supply of new muskets arrived together with some powder and ball, and these were sparingly shared out. Then there was a great parade held in one of the fields above Arwenack at which some 250 men, the levies of five parishes, appeared. A motley band, a quarter of them unarmed, the rest no better than those who had met the Spaniards at Penzance. My father was in a fine temper. He had words with Hannibal Vyvyan, and then blew off like a powder magazine at a group of four Penryn burghers who came to complain that his musters were stripping their parish of any defence at all.

That evening Meg said to me: “I’ve scarce seen you since you come home, Maugan. Does the war fret you s’much?”

“Enough.”

“There would I think there’d be a chance tomorrow. Dick’ll be gone till midnight. If you’ve the mind …”

“It’s not possible tomorrow, Meg. I must be beside my father all day.”

She looked at me searchingly. “You’re not tired of me? Tell me if it be so.”

“No. No, of course not. Perhaps Saturday. Is Saturday a chance? “

“I believe Dick’ll be around, but I’ll see.”

In the end I avoided her until one howling stormy night a week later when, with the thatch nearly lifting over our heads and the tiny window rattling in its socket, I took her in the old upstairs room where we most often met.

When it was over she said: “I asked if you was tired of me. Maybe I should’ve asked if you hated me.”

“Hated you? Dear Meg, how could I ever hate you?”

“Well, what else d’you mean by this sort of love? Tisn’t love with tenderness. Tis love with anger in your heart.” She began to weep.

I hugged her to me, trying not to weep myself, for all the pleasure I had had with her had turned to ashes because between one meeting and another I had known the girl I loved. I had tried to hide the change in my feelings for Meg by forcing them to a greater intensity, and the outcome had only been to show her the more clearly that my pleasure in her was gone.

We sat there long, dangerously long, while with all the desperate hypocrisy of someone who is trying to avoid hurting a person they care for, I comforted and cozened her and talked her into half-believing that nothing had changed. Perhaps it would have been kinder over all to have told the truth, to have made a clean break; instead I exerted all the wiles of a professional seducer to save her pride and her love. In the end I all but persuaded myself into believing it.

But the following day I took horse and rode back to Paul.

“You shouldn’t have come, Maugan. How did you know where to find me?”

“You couldn’t live in the shell of your own house: my next call was Trewoofe. Where is your husband now?”

“In the village. Most of the villagers have nowhere to live, though some are finding shelter at the Keigwins’, whose house was not burned. Jenkin Keigwin, as you know, was killed but his wife and two sons are safe. The rest of the villagers are in tents or in cottages farther afield.”

“And Arthur Lavelis?”

“He is from home most days helping to dispense relief.”

“But you can stay and talk?”

“For a few minutes.”

“Why are you so defensive?”

“Only because I’m afraid.”

“Of me?”

She touched my hand. “Of what you’re going to ask.”

We took a few steps down the grass lawn. At the end was a yew hedge which would hide us from the windows of the house. Before we reached it, she stopped.

“Maugan, what are you going to ask?”

“For you.”

Her eyes in the bright windy sunlight were a cat’s green. “You know that can’t be.”

“Even after what happened two weeks ago?”

“That was oh, it was something neither of us could fight against! It took hold before we were aware. But now we are aware.”

“I’m only aware that I love you more and more.”

“But I can’t betray the vows I made.”

“You already have.”

“I have said that was something out of control in the deepest part of the night.” When I made to speak she hastened on: “Well, what are you suggesting?”

“We could go away together. You were willing to agree to that two years ago.”

“But then I was unmarried. We can’t marry now. We could live together, but you would lose whatever hope you have of preferment at home or at court.”

‘~I can make my own way. Others have. I am a bastard; my children would be no less.”

“And I, Maugan? I have made vows to be the wife of Philip Reskymer.”

I pulled her round the corner of the yew hedge but she would not come into my arms. There was a surprising strength in her taut frame.

“Wait, Maugan,” she said. “Wait. Wait.”

“For what?”

“For time to help us.”

“Do you mean wait for your husband to die?”

She winced. “No … Or yes … I don’t know. All I know is that at this time I can’t let him down.”

“As you did me.”

“I thought you were dead! He is not ~ He is working eighteen hours in the day trying to aid the people here. He is working all day, and the work on top of the shock of the raid has made him ill. Not serious ill, but sick and in need of help himself.”

I let go of her hand and sat slowly on the stone parapet. “Sue, I can’t exist without you. If I’m not sick of body I’m sick of soul. Every night I lie awake thinking of you. Before I met you this time I was living a life which passed for contentment it was no more but it passed. Now all that’s gone.”

We stayed thus for a time and were so still that a blackbird hopped along the stone path watching us with a bootbutton eye. Then Sue moved and he fluttered away with a chatter of alarm.

“I don’t know what to answer, Maugan. Not yet. Not yet. In a year or two “

“What difference will that make?”

“He’ll not need me so much. And you will surely have some profession...”

I put my arms round her. “Did our one night mean so little to you that you can postpone its repetition for years?”

“But this is the only way. The only way now! Don’t you see I “

I began to kiss her. At first she seemed to be going under, her hands against me to be weakening their pressure, but of a sudden she thrust me away.

“No, Maugan! Not nowI”

I said: “If you’ll not leave him, then let us at least be lovers. I can ride over. It’ll not be easy but it can be done. You say he’s often away...”

She groped her way back to the wall and sat down, taking breaths. “And if I have a child?”

“Then it will be time for you to leave him, for everyone to know of our love … Don’t shake your head, Sue. Please don’t. Please.”

“But I must I”

“Why? Why? Why?”

She did not answer. Every now and then there was a spatter of rain in the wind.

I said: “All this we have been talking of it’s unreal. This is the wrong time, that is the right time … If we love each other and you don’t love him all else is wasted words … Look at me, Sue. Tell me if it isn’t true.”

But she would not look at me. I knelt beside her, stroked her hand. The lace of her sleeve fell over both our hands and covered them.

I said: “Do you love him?”

“No! I have said so! “

“Yet you will stay with him?”

“For the time. Go away, Maugan, for a few months, a year. Forget me for a year. Think about making your fortune, making a place in the world. Remember now, I’m quite safe much safer than I was at Tolverne.”

“How do I know that? If he loves you he won’t be able to keep aloof from you for ever. If you consider it your duty to stay with him now, you may then consider it your duty to submit!“

“He will never press me.”

“He isn’t pressing you to stay now. You consider you must! “

“Darling, darling, there is so much difference.” She put up a hand to my face, but now a raw anger was bleeding inside me.

“In this house now there is this emergency do you have a separate bedroom from him?”

She hesitated. “Not a separate bedroom. A separate bed. He sleeps each night “

“So each night he sees you undress, sees you unbind your hair, sees you half naked how long can that go on?”

“Maugan!” She stood up. “It isn’t so! You’re tormenting yourself without cause. While our own house is rebuilding, it is like this, but only until then. We preserve a decency there is nothing of what you think.”

“Whatever you say I don’t believe a man and a woman may share a room for weeks without intimacy growing It’s a matter of time, Sue! It’s just the other way from what you say. Time is not on our side, it’s against us! It’s on his! Come away today, I beseech you. Let us go as we are. It’s of no importance where, so that we’re together. Once you said you would. You promised that before ever you met him. Mine is the prior claim.”

She got up and put her fingers to my lips. I struck them away, almost insane with distress. She went very pale.

“Maugan, please don’t let us part like this.”

“We must part like this or not part at all!”

She shook her head with sudden tightened decision. “I will not come with you. Not now. I think my reasons are the right ones. God forgive me for making you unhappy. Come back in six months or a year.”

“I think,” I said, “it would be better not to come back at all.”

The weather was wild and wet all through August. According to my uncles, Cecil’s spies all reported that no big Armada was assembling to attack England that year, so the Queen reluctantly re-granted permission for Drake and Hawkins to sail. But such permission was only given on the undertaking that they were back by next May.

Thus freed, they now found themselves land bound by rough seas and contrary winds, but at last on the 19th August a brief lull enabled them to get away.

All Plymouth turned out, we were told, to see the great men off, church bells ringing, bands playing, flags fluttering in the breeze. We waited for a glimpse of them at Falmouth but they kept well clear. Harold Tregwin swore he had caught sight of their sails glinting in the sunset when he was casting out his lines off St Anthony Point.

That day my father came in from a brush with the law, two bailiffs having attempted to serve processes upon him while he was in Truro, and he having laid about him with his whip and only just regaining his horse in time. One bailiff was thought to be hurt.

I said: “You should not go out without someone of your family who can issue orders and more easily take the blame. This news will travel far.”

“I can’t skulk behind my palisade all day long. If they come near me again they’ll suffer worse.”

He turned to kick one of the dogs, which was snoring.

“I have heard further from Sir George Fermor this week, and he has seen fit to postpone his daughter’s marriage to John for a further six months. If as I suspect he means the time to run from the end of the first postponement, it will mean no wedding until May of next yearl”

“I wish I could help.”

“Short of selling the stones of the house and the timber of the jetties there’s no way. I have some manors left, including Rosemerryn where my stepbrother drinks his guts rotten, but each manor is pledged to the hilt. If I sold them I should do no more than discharge the debt on them and have the price of a few packs of cloth over. I hope Fermor will burn in hell for this!”

“Can you find no other match for John? There must be other rich men.”

“Few who would give that sort of dowry. And we might get land or property which all takes time to raise money on. Gold in hand, I’m altogether stronger placed. Not that I should throw it to my creditors like meat to hungry wolves, the way my father did with your stepmother’s dote. In three years he had cleared all his debts, œ10,000 of them, and we’d nothing left except leave to borrow anew! I have no such intent. This money shall be meted out, a bit here, a morsel there. Let my creditors once see the colour of gold and they’ll rest content with small commons. But I have to have some soon or we shall all perish!”

“What of Thomas? He’s now fifteen.”

“I saw your uncles about it when I stayed with them in May. But there’s little prospect for a younger son. What has he to offer but a famous name? It may well be different in a few years when, through our connections at court, he may have prospects of his own. But you can’t marry off a boy of that age with any profit unless he’s the eldest and will come into the estate.”

“Still less,” I said, “if he’s a bastard with no prospects at all.”

Mr Killigrew went to the old square looking-glass and began tenderly to trim his moustache with a pair of needlework scissors. “Yes, well, that’s true, you’re small value to me soci-ally, but you stay at my side. That’s use of another sort.”

“I would gladly try to make my own way in the world.”

“You didn’t enjoy your time with Chudleigh MicheH. What other employment is there?”

“Can I be found something with one of my uncles in Westminster or London? You have given me your name. That should be of value: I can work, I’m not without aptitude.”

My father put down the scissors and dabbed some pomade on his moustache. “There’s something to be said for your idea, especially at this time. I did my best to clear up the fuss about the Irish ship, but no one’s satisfied and they’re still threatening me with Ferdinando Gorges. If he comes it would be of benefit if you were far away. These Penryn prattlers can do much less harm if the object of their prattle is not to be found.”

“I’d like to go soon, sir.”

He turned. “Why, what’s pricking you? Have you been up to some new prank?”

“No, sir, I assure you.”

“God help you if you have, for I’ll stand for no more.”

I spent the afternoon duck shooting with Belemus beyond the swan pool, and after we came home I lingered in one of the barns helping to bale the wool ready for the Webster, and so hoping to avoid Meg. I was the last to go in, and suddenly Dick Stable was in the doorway waiting for me. I greeted him casually but he did not answer, then abruptly he began to talk to me in such a stumbling voice that only a sentence here and there was audible.

Some one had dropped a word or else he had grown suspicious himself; this was the outcome; half minatory, half supplicant; Dick had scarcely ever quarrelled with anyone in his life, and he was vastly aware of the difference in our station. The break of laughter never absent from his voice when he spoke was still there, but it was the laughter of a child which is hurt; sometimes near tears and sometimes near rage. His voice and manner deferred while his words accused.

I was oppressed suddenly with a bitter rage in which the hopeless futility and wrongness of everything in the world choked me. I got up from among the bales, and Dick moved suddenly as if he thought he was to be hit.

“What old wife,” I said, “has been pouring her evil thoughts in your ear? I thought you’d recovered from your cracked head.”

He laughed nervously. “Nay, the story’s abroad for all to hear as will. Maybe as always it carries last to ‘im as it most consarns. If ye “

I put my hand on his shoulder and spun him round. Again he half lifted his hands in defence. “Listen, dolt. You were sick, out of your senses for weeks, months. Meg was halfcrazed herself with worry. We thought you’d maybe sit whittling sticks on your stool for ten or fifteen years. Who was to know? We tried everything. I went to the Footmarker witch in Truro; Meg went to old Sarah Pound at Menehay and borrowed her moonstone; it was under your pallet for a week; are those the acts of a wife and friend behaving lewdly together while your mind is closed?”

“Aye, but “

“Hear me out. I have seen much of Meg: I admit it. So I did before ever you married her. We used to kiss and be a thought familiar before I was 15. But that’s different from what you are now vilely thinking. You don’t realise what a splendid wife you have in Meg. You do not. I’m telling you.

She was that worried for you, that rejoiced when you began to recover. While you were sick I saw much of her, I agree; we spent much time together as I have said, contriving how you might be aided back to health. Sometimes she would be deeply worried and in need of comfort. If I essayed to comfort her you need not entertain lewd thoughts on that account.”

“I’m told you was seen creeping up to one of they attic rooms “

“Listen again! I do not creep anywhere. If I go I go openly. Show me the man or woman who told you that!”

“Nay, I wouldn’t listen t’every tale. But twas common thought “

“All right, it was common thought. And common thought has erred. D’you understand me?”

He blinked and then stared into my eyes. “Aye, I understand, Master Maugan. I’ve no wish to offend ye. If so be I’ve mistook it all then I ask pardon. But Meg ‘erself, Meg ‘erself do appear different, changed. I think maybe she be no longer a-love with me.”

Hating the world, I put my arm round his shoulders. “Listen once again, Dick, and this time most careful. I’ve known Meg longer even than you, and I tell you she cares for you deeply. But she is a romantic girl, none more so, and love to her is something serious and romantical, not to be laughed at or jested over. Beware of your laughter. Suppress it. Take her serious, be moved by love, be moved by her. She’s a comely girl, Dick, young and full of spirit. I have not stole her from you, but another may if you don’t take care. Woo her. It’s not so tedious a thing to do. Nor is it so hard. Don’t imagine that you are foolish to gentle and flatter her; think of the prize. Her love. Her surrender.”

He nodded his head, taking in perhaps one word in three but taking, I prayed to God, the general meaning. We walked together, lover and cuckold, towards the house like old friends.

That night two ships anchored in Falmouth Haven. We knew they were English by their build and signs. My father said it was likely to be a part of the Drake and Hawkins fleet: they had no doubt suffered from the general adverse winds and been scattered, so were returning for shelter and rest. We watched them carefully through the night lest this should be a trick and they were roving Spaniards in disguise. Presently there came up one of those rare jewelled dawns which made the

blue light on the river seem like some new and magic sky, and we were able to study in more detail the high poop of the larger vessel.

When a little pinnacebrought its master ashore we found it was Ralegh back from his trip to El Dorado.

CHAPTER NINE

He was as thin as a board, his handsome velvet suit hanging on him, his skin burned Indian brown by tropical suns. But he was well and abounding with vigour. So were his crews, such as were left; they brought no sickness, only tales of wondrous things.

Many had died, most in combat, including John Grenville, the great Sir Richard’s second son, Captain Calfield, the senior naval officer, and Captain Thynne, commander of another barque. It was thought that about eighty were left of the seven score gentlemen volunteers, and crews overall had been reduced by a third. It was not possible to be certain, for this arrival in Falmouth constituted only half the force.

But their worst losses were six weeks behind them, they had had fair winds home and now were happy to be back. Sir Walter’s first act on reaching Arwenack was to write to his wife and send it post telling her of his safety. He wanted to rest here with his crews for two days to recover, then he would ride overland to Sherborne and let the captains bring the barques to Portsmouth.

My father made him and his gentlemen welcome. As many of the crews as could lie under his roof were also welcome the rest must stay aboard or be put up at the only other house near by, the Gwythers at Three Farthings House, at the mouth of Penryn Creek. (One never asked favours of Penryn town.)

My father was all agog for news of prizes they had taken he clearly had thoughts of another Madre de Dios capture and himself being the first to benefit but on this Ralegh was disappointing. They had taken no prizes, no prizes which would rank as such; they had gained no great naval victory; they had on the way home raided and destroyed three Spanish settlements it was here that nearly all the casualties had come on them. But all this paled before the significance of their attempt and near success in finding El Dorado.

On the first night after supper in the big withdrawing chamber a select company listened in silence while he spoke about it. With him was a bespectacled young man with close-cropped hair called Laurence Keymis in whom Sir Walter greatly confided, John Gilbert, Ralegh’s nephew, and Ralegh’s cousin, Butshead Gorges.

Having left England in February they had reached Trinidad in six weeks and in attacking Port of Spain had captured Don Antonio de Berrio, the Governor of the island. Him they had treated like an honoured guest and from him they had received more news of Dorado, or the city of Manao, which lay some four or five hundred miles up the River Orinoco. Leaving Berrio a captive on board and a garrison to guard his four ships, Ralegh had embarked with a hundred volunteers in five small boats, had crossed a sea as wide as the Straits of Dover with a great tempest blowing, and had attempted to find a way among the maze of great rushing rivers and small treacherous streams which made up the hundred square miles of the Orinoco delta.

Making friends wherever they could of the Indians, who found this marvellous after the cruelty of the Spanish, they had worked their way upstream. Often lost, sometimes stranded for hours and despairing of refloating their boats, short of food and water, unable to land at night because of the dense thickets and forced to sleep in the boats in heavy dews with no shelter, rowing for days against violent currents, menaced by serpents and crocodiles, by whom one of the crew was eaten, they had reached the Caroni, a major tributary of the Orinoco. There they had seen a wonderland of green grass, abounding waterfalls, rich plains, vivid birds and fine fruits, and had met Indians who promised gold and silver in the city of Manao only another 100 miles upstream.

But by now the rains had begun, the great rivers were swollen. All efforts to row against the current had failed even with eight oars aside. Lashed with storms of rain ten times a day, in rags, already adventuring for a month, and 300 miles from the safety of their ships, the men had begun once more to lose heart, and this time Ralegh had yielded to them. At the village of Morequito he had made a friend of the chief, Topiawari, who had told him that if he could return next year with a larger force the Indians would join him in driving out the Spaniards and would acknowledge Queen Ezrabeta as their rightful ruler. Above the tributary river called Cumana, hearing of a gold mine in the interior, Ralegh had sent Laurence Keymis to discover it, and although Keymis had not seen the mine, he had come back with samples of its ore.

So, through storm and flood, landing on islands, seeking and finding new friends among the local tribes, resting a day here and there to dry off and get news of the Spaniards, who were in strength not far away, they neared the mouth of the river again. There, in their tiny boats, they were caught like twigs in a flood and swept the last 100 miles to the sea in a single day. In another violent storm they had sailed the thirty miles back to regain their ships at Trinidad, carrying with them treasures and souvenirs of all sorts, gifts from the Indians, idols in gold, jacynths, loadstones, necklaces.

And so home.

If they had sailed direct they would have come short only of a few men. But Sir Walter had obligations to those who had helped him finance this expedition, the Cecils and the Howards and others, and the venture had brought no big prize. Hence the costly raids on Cumana, Santa Martha and Rio de la Hacha. From the way Sir Walter looked when my father questioned him about them it seemed likely that there was little profit to show for them after all of it. And John Grenville lost; that troubled Sir Walter most of all.

Ralegh’s plans now? To obtain an audience of the Queen and to gain her support for the fitting out of a far larger expedition next spring. Everything was in its favour, Sir Walter said. Here was the prime opportunity for setting the English flag in the most desirable part of South America, for counter-balancing Spain’s power by settling Englishmen abroad in a country where they were bound to prosper. But, he said, he was already himself beggared with the financing of this one trip. He could not set up a second and larger expedition.

It must be an enterprise of state.

“One day I believe Guiana will become an English nation,” he said, “equal to Virginia in beauty and in value. And it could be to England what Peru has been to Spain.”

While he was here my father prevailed on Ralegh to try to stop the further inquisition which was being pressed in the matter of the robbery on the Irish ship. I do not know what was said between them but the next time Sir Walter saw me he looked at me with a new interest and a new frown.

All through the second day the interchange of news went on, for Sir Walter was as ignorant of events in England as we had been of his adventures. He questioned my father closely on the strength of the fleet with which Drake and Hawkins had sailed.

“Garland and Foresight? They served me well in ‘93 off the Azores. None better. Defiance, Bonaventure, Hope? They’re good. And Adventurer? She’s new, likely. That is all except for light craft?” He shook his head. “It’s a handy force and with such leaders may achieve anything. But I have fears. Conditions have changed in the last six years while Francis has been kept on a leading chain. The Spanish have learned by their mistakes, and no objective comes easy now, as it would have done after the sea battle of ‘88. Their ships are better found and better led. Their towns in the West Indies are protected by massive and well-armed forts as we found to our great cost at Cumana. What is worse, they know of Drake’s coming and are prepared. His old genius may lead him to some splendid victory; but I shall not rest easy on his behalf.”

The two barques were to sail on the morning tide and at the same time Sir Walter was leaving overland. On his way he had the sad task of calling at Stowe and telling Lady Mary Grenville that her young son had fallen in battle.

After supper on the evening before he left he was walking with Laurence Keymis on the green sward that led down to the main jetty of Arwenack. It was a fine still evening, and the smoke from their pipes wavered little as it went upward. A dozen seagulls were stalking cautiously across the stonework beyond the lawn trying to reach some scraps of food but constantly put off by the pacing men who, as soon as they were nearly far enough away, turned and came back. Behind this scene was the wide mouth of the river which tonight was the colour of old silk, with the two barques riding silent at anchor on it, and the squat fort and gentle creek of St Mawes beyond.

I was desperate and there was no other time. I went up to the two men and said:

“Sir, may I speak with you?”

Sir Walter stopped in mid-sentence, plainly displeased. “That you are now doing.”

“Sir, I am venturing to ask that, if you go to Guiana again next year, I may come with you.”

“In what capacity?”

“Any that is available.”

“Are you a sailor?”

“Only of small boats. But I could quickly learn.”

“Why are you unsatisfied with your home?”

“It is not just that, sir. I’m seventeen and a base son. It’s time I tried to make my own way.”

“And you think to make your fortune with me?”

“I would hope to be of use, sir; that’s the main thing.”

“Can you shoot?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Read and write?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Cook and mend and wash your own clothes?”

“All of these a little.”

“Have you ever been under fire?”

“No, sir. Except once only in the recent Spanish landing, and that was little.”

“By the time I was your age I had already seen bitter fighting at Jarnac and at Moncontour.”

“Had you, by God,” said Keymis. “I had not realised you was so young at that time, Walter.”

“I wish I was so young again and purged of the accretions of the world … Why d’you suppose, Killigrew, that I am in need of fellows such as you?”

“I do not suppose it, sir, but I hope it.”

“Which with most of us is the same thing. Listen. There’s two kinds of men who hunger for adventure overseas. One goes for what he can get, what he can steal, what he can destroy. Are you such a one?”

“I do not think so.”

“Even though there’s a suspicion you put unwanted fingers into the hold of the Irish boat and pulled out the best of the cargo? What’s the truth of that?”

“I think it has all been greatly exaggerated, sir.”

Sir Walter put the end of his long pipe in his mouth and drew on it. “You have the Killigrew tongue, I see. The other type of adventurer is he who goes as friend and settler to make a home and marry and raise a family and till the soil and draw richness not by rapine and the sword but from the fruits of the land he farms. Are you such a one?”

“I think so. I hope so.”

“The second time you have used the word hope, which is one I distrust, for it lacks a sense of individual purpose. If I go out next year I shall choose 200 volunteers as I did in Virginia and apportion a piece of land perhaps 500 acres to each. For that it will be necessary for each to share towards the cost of the voyage. Have you money for that?”

I looked out across the bay. “No, sir.”

“Not even from the proceeds of your robbery?”

“I do not admit to robbery, sir, and I have no money from that or any other source.” I knew now he was jibing at me.

“Ah, well, then your chances of becoming a settler are small. As to being a sailor, I need trained men.”

The gulls were taking advantage of our stillness.

Keymis said: “The boy can write. Maybe we could make some use of him as a clerk.”

“He does not look the clerkly type. More the pirate I would say. All Killigrews are pirates or poets at heart, and this generation has run to the former. I’ll think of your request, boy. Next year when I am recruiting men remind me of it.”

“Thank you, sir.” I turned away, repelled by his sour and arrogant tone. There was little hope of anything now. Next year when Sir Walter was recruiting men he would be at Chatham or at Portsmouth.

I stood out after they had gone in, long after the light left and the glinting silks of the river estuaries had faded and become threadbare. I felt lost and alone, without future and without hope. Two days ago I had had another quarrel with Meg in which she had accused me of caring nothing for her any more. I had told her of my talk with Dick and used this as an excuse; but whereas a few months ago such a revelation of Dick’s suspicions would have horrified her, now she was willing to take the risk almost casually, almost coldly.

Whatever I did I could not get Sue out of my mind and so was no company for anyone. Perhaps Belemus guessed something of this, for yesterday he had drawn my attention to a book of poems Ralegh had brought and pointed out a verse which ran: “To love and to be wise, To rage with good advice; Now thus, now then, so goes the game, Uncertain is the dice. There is no man, I say, that can Both love and to be wise.”

But wisdom was not what I sought, only release from the pain …

I wandered into the house. As darkness did not come until well on in the evening only a solitary candle was lighted in the great hall. Distantly one could hear laughter and talk in the kitchens. There was a light under the withdrawing chamber door and another under that of Mr Killigrew’s private study, but I sat on the stool by the great empty fireplace of the hall feeding a halfdozen mixed dogs which had followed me in.

Presently the door of my father’s study opened and Sir Walter and Laurence Keymis came out, talking together. They did not see me as they passed but went upstairs to bed. Keymis carried a candle, Ralegh a book and a pen and horn of ink.

I went into the kitchens. Most of the servants would normally have been abed, but instead a round dozen of them were laughing and joking and drinking ale with an equal number of Ralegh’s sailors. A brief silence fell when I came in, so I walked on not wishing to dampen their fun. In the closet off the hall Kate Penruddock was dusting the shelves with wormwood. Here spare bedding was kept, and when it was taken out for Ralegh and his officers it had been found to be infested with fleas. Not, as Kate said, that anyone minded a few, but it would ill-flatter the house if great men were unduly bitten during their stay.

I found myself back in the hall and suddenly confronted with Thomas Rosewarne.

“Ah, I was looking for you, Mr Maugan. Your father wants you in his chamber.”

I went along and tapped at the door, speculating whether some minor misdeed had come home to roost. There seemed none. Since parting from Sue I had not even had the incentive to break out.

My father said: “I have news for you, boy. Ralegh wishes you to ride with him tomorrow. He has offered you a post as a secretary in his household.”