Grove of Eagles

CHAPTER ONE

A man at the centre of great events can often at the time see only the small ones which surround him and oppress him with their personal demands. Even an awareness that events have moved past him and left him behind perhaps to his danger or detriment can become sunk in a cushion of fatigue which prevents urgency and anxiety from coming to the front of the mind.

Looking back I cannot believe that the whole week I spent with my cousins the Treffrys at Fowey was passed in a state of mental abeyance. There must have been times when I made some effort to learn from them what was happening, and even to get up and go. But all memory is of a sense of being home again after sixteen months away, of dry blankets after the exposure and the sea, of gulping hot drink to combat the cold, of fresh food and good food, of sudden overwhelming collapse after months of tension and alarm. I was alive. I existed. I ate and drank and slept and breathed deep.

So it was days before I knew what had happened in England, and some of it I learned only weeks later of the panic in Westminster when the news was brought by an exhausted messenger from Plymouth that the whole Spanish Armada was off the Lizard, of the immediate proroguing of Parliament, of the hasty appointment of a new commander for the Channel squadron, of the orders which flew for the commissioning of the remaining ships at Chatham, of orders recalling all English troops abroad, wherever they might be, of the mustering of all land forces for the defence of the exposed counties.

In the midst of this emergency rumours of a sea battle off Rame Head vied with others of a Spanish landing on the north Devon coast. Fishermen from the Scillies came in with a report of another fleet assembled there and about to strike. No one had any word of the English fleet from the Azores. No one knew if it had even started for home.

Then, within a few days of the first alarm, four galleons appeared off Plymouth. Soldiers rushed to the fortifications, guns were run out, the people prepared to barricade their houses and fight as the Spanish had done at Cadiz; and not even the English flags at the mastheads could reassure them until the ships were recognised by name. They were the first four of the Azores fleet under Lord Mountjoy, who had commanded the land forces of the fleet. He reported a great storm which had damaged and dispersed the English fleet, but thought that the rest of the ships if they had survived should not be far away. By some chance in the wild waters of the Channel he had seen nothing of the Spanish; but he immediately assumed command of the port and ordered his four ships to prepare for battle.

Soon after this Sir Walter Ralegh with remnants of his own squadron was blown into St Ives, and, hearing the alarm, landed and hurried overland to command the defences of Cornwall. Another English ship or two drifted in at the south coast ports of Devon; then Lord Thomas Howard at Plymouth, and finally Essex himself with the rest of the fleet.

None had seen the whole Armada, but some at the height of the gale had seen groups of enemy ships near the Scillies and off the Lizard.

All the English were exhausted with the storm, and Essex and his squadron sailed straight up the Catwater where they were pinned down by the wind and unable to go out again, even had they been in a fit condition to do so.

In the meantime feverish preparations went on while the country waited. The Queen wrote a letter to Lord Essex which years later’ I was privileged to see. It ended: “Seeing already by your late leaving the coast upon an uncertain probability that no army would come forth from Ferrol until March, you have given the enemy leisure and courage to attempt us. Now take heed according to your duty and allegiance that you do not in any case upon any probability or light advertisements again adventure to leave our own coast whereby our own kingdom may lie open to serious dangers; but that you proceed in this great affair according to the rules of advised deliberation as well as affection of zeal and diligence. For treasure, for victual, and what may be fit for us to send, you shall find that you serve a prince neither void of care nor judgment what to do that is fit in cases of this consequence.”

Now reports began to come in of wrecks on the north Devon coast, and three Spanish ureas in great distress put into the Bristol ports for shelter and their crews were imprisoned. A large Spanish flyboat, leaking and part dismasted by the storm, appeared off Dodman Point with a crew of eighty, of which half were veteran troops. Here it was attacked and captured by a Plymouth vessel and brought back in triumph.

On the last day of October I borrowed a horse and servant and rode to Arwenack. By starting early I arrived before dark. I did not know what to expect; I had no idea. Presumably the Spanish had not yet landed; but MrWilliam Treffry and his family had no detailed news, and I could not press for it except in the vaguest terms. Until I saw my father under arrest and led out, I must affect to know nothing of treason or betrayal.

There were a few soldiers about in Truro, but as I rode through Penryn it seemed as if nothing here had changed. No sense of emergency seemed to exist. The place looked exactly the same as when Belemus had been courting Sibylla Kendall and we had been pursued out of the town.

It was a sunny day, but bright only with that autumnal brightness which seems to have no warmth or happiness in it. After the storm the month was going out peaceably, like some old man who has wrought havoc in his manhood and now in age assumes an amiability quite out of character. Only the oaks retained their leaves, the rest of the trees had been stripped by the wild and vicious winds.

As we neared the palisades I felt it was not so long after all since I had been home; the flying visit before the Cadiz em pedition, the visit to Sue; those for the moment seemed to have all the objective reality I could apprehend; the fierce and bloody sixteen months in between existed only in my mind as a barely accepted dream staining the memory with the colours of nightmare. I was not aware this time of any overwhelming emotional sensation such as I had felt when stumbling over the wet grass and through the bracken towards home in 1594. I was younger then. Or perhaps it was that circumstances made it no longer possible to see home as something unequivocal, clear-cut, safe, a symbol of what was to be desired. My bedroom with its narrow walls and long bright window would no longer offer me protection from the dangers and complexities of the world. Wherever I went now, until the day I died, I carried those dangers and complexities within me.

Simon Cook was on the gate. His presence was a reassurance that neither of the worst eventualities could yet have happened. He was astonished, delighted, wished to come with me to the house, but I said no, we’d go on alone.

It was not until we were almost at the house that I saw the tents. They were spread all around the foot of the hill leading to the castle. It was a light in one of them in the growing dusk that first caught the eye. Figures moved about them. They were soldiers.

I came to the house as supper was about to begin.

My father was there, my stepmother, many half brothers and sisters, Belemus, Henry Knyvett, Mistress Wolverstone, Aunt Mary Killigrew, Rosewarne, two officers I did not know. The children greeted me wildly, with great affection and relief. They were full of the danger they were in but excited by it rather than frightened; they clamoured to know how I had come home. My father got up smiling and knuckling his moustache and saying By God, I had changed, I looked 30 if a day, what I must have been through, and now by God’s providence restored to the family, this was a night to celebrate. By what chance of war and shipwreck … Captain Alexander and Lieutenant Guildford, this was his eldest son base son but greatly esteemed by all home from Spain, shipwrecked, did you say, Maugan? aboard the Spanish fleet off our coasts. Come, we must all be happy tonight, eh, Dorothy? Eh, Henry? Wilkey, fetch a bottle of the best canary; we must break it out.

Never had he been so pleased to see me; I should have been warmed and heartened. But if I had changed, he had changed more. He must have been the heavier by 15 lbs. and this had spread him without adding solidity or strength. His skin was blotched and flabby; there were sacks under his eyes, and the lack of feeling in them had spread to the whole of his face. He had always drunk much but seldom before had stumbled over his words.

The two officers were studiously correct but little more. They had arrived only two days ago in charge of 500 levies thrown into Pendennis by Ralegh. The men were soldiers disembarked from the English fleet, musters from the inland towns, some regular levies and a few sailors to make the number.

It seemed that my arrival was an embarrassment to my father, so his welcome was the warmer to deceive others. It was an embarrassment to have anybody arrive from Spain, even an escaped prisoner.

The two officers did not personally question me through the meal but they attended carefully to what was said. So for my part I weighed each word before it was uttered, and found this not so difficult as once would have been the case. The habit of deceit grows.

The great hall had grown shabbier in sixteen months. Two window panes were broken and were boarded waiting proper repair. The rushes on the floor could hardly have been changed in two weeks. The fire had been badly built and was smoking; a thin fog of grey smoke hung around the beams. The candles “uttered and stank; the rabbit pie was half cold and the beef tough and over-salt. Servants looked slovenly and dispirited.

At last I was able to divert attention by saying: “And … grandmother? “

“Oh, she’s with us still,” said Mr Killigrew. “Tenacious as ever; though much of the time gasping like a landed fish. She keeps her room these days.”

“And John? With his new wife?”

“They’re on a visit to her father. They’ve been gone a month, so I’m hoping to have word of them before long.”

Captain Alexander and Lieutenant Guildford correctly and formally excused themselves from a game of dice and went off to the castle. I thought my father would want to speak to me alone, but he tramped off to his private chamber and was not seen again. Mrs Killigrew now had another daughter, christened Dorothy after herself. A baker’s dozen of children had only cost her her figure and her teeth; but in the last twelve months something had taken a new toll.

After supper Belemus made a gesture to me and I was able to detach myself from the children and join him on the ragged lawn before the house.

“So … the bad penny. And never more welcome than now. I had thought you were done for. But what a change hollow cheeks, burning eyes: did they put you to the torture?”

“No … But a Spanish prison is no place for lent-lilies.”

He looked at me keenly. “There is much that has been going on here that I don’t follow, and your coming seems a part of it. I know you too well, Maugan. All you say smacks of evasion. What have you been up to?”

“Nothing that I was not compelled to.”

“Ah. That tells a lot. And “

“And what has been going on here that you can’t follow?”

He bent and eased the buckle of his shoe. “Ah, there again, evasion. You see the house, poverty-stricken, you see your father, bloated and hag-ridden; there has fallen on us all a conspiracy of whispers. Things are decided without reason and acted on without notice. This crisis, for instance. Ever since the beginning of September your father has been like a fox when the hounds are out. I do not know if he had some presentiment of it, but one might well think so. As you know he could always pour the wine down his throat; but this month he has not been sober … In September he was at great pains to send John and Jane off to Northampton, though they had no seeming wish to go. One would have thought, I say, of some presentiment; but if so he has made no attempt to prepare against attack. Carminow had not enough powder to ward away one determined assault. At the worst moment Foster was sent off to Launceston Castle to negotiate the purchase of a demi-cannon; as if we had the money to buy it. I think he will be in trouble for it.”

“What trouble?”

“Ralegh was here a brief tempest and then gone again but these men, these soldiers have all but taken control of the castle and the fortifications. Decisions are made without consultation of Mr Killigrew; placement of the troops, plans for defence, victualling, arming, powder; we might be in occupied territory. Your father has accepted all this, it seems, without protest. Unlike him. A few years ago he’d have fought a pitched battle sooner than be turned out of his proper office.”

We walked to the edge of the lawn which was ankle deep in wet and tufted grass, and peered across at the black bulk of the castle.

“His debts are no easier!”

“Ha! Look around you.”

“And Jane? “

“Jane, dear Maugan, is the wonder of the age.”

“How so?”

“If your father had combed the highways of England he could not have found a more unsuitable mate for sober John. A she-wolf! She might be Lady Killigrew’s daughter by Captain Elliot!”

“Where is her dowry? My father wrote me something.”

“I doubt if we’ll ever see it here. But she seems to have some source of funds beyond this mere œ200 a year. She is having a boat built in Penryn Penryn of all places and plans to go into business, as she calls it, as a trader around the coasts: this at 181”

“Maybe she’ll have a family soon and that will tone her down.”

“There’s no issue yet, and they’ve been married a year. For her part it cannot be for want of trying.”

“What d’you mean?”

“She had not been in the house three months before she invited me to a couplement with her. It’s a small matter hard on a man, and no augury for the future.”

I hesitated but had to have it out. “You refused?”

“Against the grain. She’s no Hebe, but would, I fancy, be entertaining. However, I have my reservations, as I told her, and one is against coupling with my cousin’s bride before even the shine is off the wedding ring.”

We paced along in silence. I said: “Susan Reskymer?”

“I heard her husband was sick.”

“He was sick before I left.”

“Some old men hang on ignobly.”

Stars were winking in a cloudless night sky. They were a purer light than the yellow stars winking on the shoulder of the castle hill.

He said: “I leave here next month.”

“Oh? Why? What are you doing?”

He shrugged. “For two years now I have worked on the farm here and acted as esquire to your father. Now through my uncle the one who is not in prison I have a commission under Norris. I think maybe I was cut out to be a soldier of fortune.”

“You spoke of Elliot,” I said.

“Oh, Dolphin’s been in and out, the last time eight or nine days ago. They had been illused by the storm. There were the usual secret conferences and mutterings behind closed doors. As soon as news came that the Spaniards might be landing he left. Not that I blame him. It would not be a happy position to be caught between two fires.”

I could not get over a sense of unreality that my home and everything around it should have changed so little. During those desperate sixteen months, while I had seen and done and suffered so much, life had gone on here almost unaltered. Always downhill, yet day by day the same routine. Cows had been milked, sheep sheared, fields tilled, apples pressed, in the unchanging pattern of existence. I and my family had lived in different worlds. It seemed almost as if for them time had not passed. All my nerves had been strung up to a tautness which now would not relax. Egoism in me demanded some greater change in them.

While I was away Meg Stable had had a baby boy, and this or some change had softened her towards me; she seemed no longer to bear resentment for our affair. This was the happiest circumstance of my homecoming; it rejoiced me to be able to talk to her again.

Mr Killigrew did not appear the following day and let it be known that he was unwell. In the afternoon he sent for me to his bed chamber. I found him up, sitting before a hissing log fire in a bed-gown which had once been emerald green but was now so faded that it looked as if it had been dipped in sea water. He had a bad cold in the head. All the servants were coughing with an autumn chill that had gone around.

“You haven’t yet been to see your grandmother, Maugan. She has complained of it to me.”

“I’m sorry. I was busy this morning and expected to see her at dinner.”

He was in one of his persecution moods, when he was friendless and alone, and even inanimate things combined to do him ill. The wood on the fire, by being green, would not burn to warm him. His favourite slippers had split only yesterday.

The jug at his elbow contained, he said, an old remedy, feverfew boiled with wine, but I thought the wine predominated. The room was close and horrid.

“Well, boy, it’s good to have you back; but you had my letter, so you know all that has gone amiss with us here since you left. A deeper abyss than ever, the Fermors playing their dastardly trick over the dowry, now even my office usurped by these military. It’s no pretty picture to come home to! “

“Did Sir Walter order these men to take command of the castle? “

“No one commands the castle except myself; but they control the forces to defend it! There’s the rub. For years I have petitioned for money and men, they have not come. Now in an emergency men are flung in, powder and shot lavishly provided, but control of the levies passes to an army commander. It’s grossly unfair.”

“You will, of course, complain to the Privy Council.”

He coughed and snuffled and wiped his moustache on a baby’s sock. “So I will, so I certainly will. But I’m not a fit man. The anxiety, the tension of this time; you have no idea what I have been through for a week or more before these soldiers came, struggling to gather the musters together, preparing to defend the castle with my own few servants and two trained gunners, constantly back and forth between castle and house, writing despatches, expecting my wife and children any day to be dragged out and raped and murdered. It has been a period of great strain, and no thanks for any of it, no thanks; no one cares what I have been through. I’m not at all well; I have been on and off the night-nobby constantly since yesterday. It’s very lowering.”

“I saw Captain Elliot,” I said.

My father glanced at me for only the second time since I came into the room.

“When he delivered my letter to you?”

“Since then.”

“Ah, I shall have less to do with him in the future. He’s very much of a turncoat, and as such must be kept at a distance.”

“He seemed to me something of a go-between,” I said.

Silence fell in the room.

Mr Killigrew picked at the frayed sleeve of his bed-gown.

I said: “I saw Elliot at Cadiz and at El Ferrol. Then later still I saw him off the Scillies little more than two weeks ago.”

“When you were with the Spanish fleet?”

“When I was with the Spanish fleet.”

“You must tell me all about that sometime … You were ill-treated? “

“No. Had favours. They expected me to be of use to them when they reached England.”

“Ah … They did, eh? Never got over the idea that they might be able to buy us. These Spaniards don’t understand the Killigrews.”

“I could not appear unwilling to help or I should not have survived. It was a matter of life and death.”

“Ah, a matter of life and death. People outside do not realise the stresses they have no idea. It is necessary to to trim one’s sails to the storm. I quite agree, son, with what you did. Now, praise Christ, you are restored to us and no one the worse for your little deception.”

“I trust no one will be the worse at all for any deception.”

My father stared with despondent bloodshot eyes out of the window.

I said: “It was thought in some parts of the Spanish fleet it was thought that when they landed this castle might be favourably disposed towards them. What they thought, or think, is not important if, as seems possible now, they do not attempt to land at all … But it would be a serious matter if the rumour spread further and was believed in any English quarters.”

“Why should it be? Why should it be? No one woula dare “

“I was only thinking, father,” I interrupted something I would not have dared to do a year ago “that I trust there has been no loose talk in this house, no action which could be falsely construed, no letters written or received, which would give any substance to such a rumour …”

I stopped and waited. I think at last my father understood what I was trying to do to help if it became necessary without demanding dangerous confidences in return.

“For instance,” I said, “I hope there’s no one here Carminow or Foster, for example who could testify in any way if called on to do so that “

“There is nothing to testify.”

“Nor letters received which have not been burned.”

“Nor no letters have been received.” He sneezed. “I caught this cold, I believe, through washing my legs and feet last Friday. It is a bad thing to do in the winter, but it was the first time since August, and the weather was unusual mild … Look, Maugan …”

“Yes? “

“You are more inward in this matter than anyone else. You were a party to it to begin and, it seems, have been so to the end. Well, if this is the end then let it be so and no more said. No more will be said by me, I assure you. We’ve all to gain and nothing to lose by silence. Sometimes there’s a virtue in it, as you’ll appreciate when you grow older.”

“I appreciate it now, father. I was concerned only to know whether silence could be preserved.”

I got up to go, but he waved me back to my seat. “Now that we have agreed, there’s no haste to be gone, is there? Bring the table over, and we can dice for a while.”

I stayed close by the house all that week and the next. If the Spanish still came I wanted to be here. With such forces camped about the castle they would surely be thrown back, and in any event there was no risk of my father attempting to fulfil his promises; but I felt he might yet come to some sort of quarrel with the military over his rights, and I wanted to be on hand to restrain him. Accepting their authority when they arrived was one of the few sensible things he had done.

But as November advanced all England began to breathe again. Mobilisation at Chatham was stopped, the recall of overseas troops suspended, Essex and Ralegh and Howard were summoned to Court to give an account of their mistakes Parliament met again, the emergency was seen to be over. Two hundred of the musters at Pendennis were allowed to go home, but the trained soldiers stayed and Captain Alexander showed no signs of relinquishing his authority.

I did not know then or for some years after any true or certain facts from the Spanish side. But seven years later, in 1604, peace having been signed and Killigrew fortunes being still at a low ebb, arrangements were made that my halfbrother Peter ever the favoured one should complete his education in Spain under the care of the Earl of Bristol, and I was sent to escort him and so saw some whom I knew, and heard what had happened to the rest of the fleet in that October storm.

The advance force had suffered the most, and of the twenty ships that sailed under Captain Quesada only nine returned to Spain. The second part of this squadron under Admiral Brochero had been struck scarcely less severely, and the galleon San Pedro with Don Diego Brochero himself on board had been dismasted and blown back into a Biscayan port where it needed five weeks’ repair to render it seaworthy again. Admiral Brochero had at once transferred to a flyboat and put to sea again, but at the vital moment the most aggressive spirit in the fleet was absent and his exclusively Spanish squadron scattered far and wide. In the meantime the Adelantado, a half day behind with the bulk of the fleet, had been met by the storm a little east of the Scillies. There he had fought it out for three days while first one and then another of his great ships was broken and had to run before the storm. When at length it abated his fleet as such no longer existed. He had beside him four other ships only, two of them damaged and his own leaking. He put back to Spain.

In the meantime the remnants of Brochero’s squadron, a dozen assorted vessels, had rendezvoused off Falmouth, but being without further orders and themselves exhausted by the storm, they waited only twelve hours and then put back to Brittany. Except for individual vessels which turned up here and there and gave fight or caused alarm over the next several weeks, that was the end. By the middle of November all the Armada which survived was back in El Perrol.

I was through Penzance by one o’clock and took the coast track, skirting the edge of the cliff. Much was already rebuilding. Up the hill to the church. Copley was tired and I got off and led him, almost pulled him.

The church was still far from complete but the house had been rebuilt. Two horses were standing in the garden in charge of a liveried groom.

The servant who came to the door knew me. As I was shown in I heard a self-important male voice issuing from the principal chamber, and I knew it at once for that of Mr Henry Arundell of Truthall. By chance we had coincided again. I could tell from the way of speaking that his words were addressed to Sue. Then I heard her exclaim at the news the servant brought. I was not shown in: Sue came out.

She was in widow’s weeds.

CHAPTER TWO

She came two steps, held out her hands, ran and then stopped, moved up to me more slowly. “Maugan! Oh, this is a blessed day! Thank God! I hardly dared to hope that for a second time …” “I should come back? There have been doubts from time to time. This meeting…”

She kissed me, but withdrew slightly because of a footstep in the room behind.

“Oh, Maugan, your letter reached me … I have prayed … You are changed, older you’ve been through so much?”

“It’s already a dream. This is the reality … Tell me, I didn’t know your husband?”

“In September.” She took a deep breath. “Died as he lived, nobly …” She turned. “You remember Mr Henry Arundell? I think once before …”

The stout man had come out of the room and nodded to me. “Of course. This is a pleasant chance. We had almost given you up, Killigrew.”

They led me into the room they had come from and plied me with questions. Black suited Sue, as in truth almost everything did. She looked well, a little less thin and pale, warm towards me but constrained in Arundell’s presence. I thought he, though superficially affable, welcomed me less than he seemed. I was myself distrait, stunned by the news that Sue was a widow; I had thought it a matter of years. I asked about him, and was told. Afterwards I remembered nothing of it; it was perhaps something in my mind trying to fence off and separate pleasure at Sue’s freedom from pleasure at a man’s death.

I itched for Henry Arundell to go but he was in no hurry. It seemed that when a new incumbent to this living was appointed, Sue would move out to a small house in Helston which had been the property of her husband. She would then, said Mr Arundell complacently, be much nearer Truthall, and he looked forward to the day when they would become neighbours. Anything he could do for the relict lady of his late beloved friend he would do with the utmost pleasure and satisfaction. Puffing through his red lips, he looked at Sue with a benevolence I at once suspected.

She turned to me, hair and eyelashes glinting in the lattice light. “Maugan, my dear, after you called last time I took the liberty of speaking to Mr Arundell about you. As you know, he was seeking a steward of personality and education who could take over the day to day care of his estate. I told him about you, how gifted you were, your experience already gained as a secretary.”

I stared at her. One low-cut slipper of black satin was tapping gently on the green oblong of carpet.

“Unhappily, because you were so long a captive, Mr Arundell has been compelled to find someone else, so alas the opportunity is gone.”

Henry Arundell grunted. “Good man I’ve got. Of course he’s married with a considerable family much older than you, Killigrew. Difficult to know if you would have been able to command the authority.”

I moistened my lips, and looked again at Sue, who was smoothing one of the ribbons of her girdle.

“But also,” Sue went on, “at the same time when we were talking over this I did ask Mr Arundell if, supposing he felt you were too young for the stewardship, he would intervene on your behalf with his cousins in London. His cousins the Howards. And he promised he would do this. Can I still rely on you for this kindness, Henry?”

There was a long silence in the room.

“That Ill do for you, Susanna. I have little or no influence with Lord Thomas the sailor. But Lord Henry I know well, and a letter of commendation from me would do much. He has many interests: in art, in letters, in learning, in public charities.” Mr Arundell blew through his lips. “He is often on the look-out for likely young men. I have no doubt he would find you some employment, Killigrew.”

As I opened my mouth to speak Sue interrupted me with her thanks. Every word she said seemed to please Arundell the more. It occurred to me that I had seen Ralegh himself politic and hypocritical on more than one occasion. If I rejected this out of hand and to his face I might mortally offend Sue, who was acting with what she conceived to be my interests at heart. I could afford to be politic. Now that she was a widow my life would begin for the first time.

“Thank you, sir,” I said. “I’m greatly obliged.”

Mr Arundell then made a move to go, but Sue persuaded him to stay on a while, and before he left she not only had the letter to Lord Henry Howard written for me to present but the promise that a further letter should leave Truthall tomorrow to be sent direct to his Lordship, commending his attention to Mr Maugan Killigrew when Mr Maugan Killigrew called.

Mr Arundell invited me to spend the night with him. On my declining he was careful to ascertain that I should spend it at Godolphin. I felt that his care for her proprieties was greater than need be.

When we had seen him off and the outer door was shut but two of the servants were present she said to me formally; “You will sup here, Maugan?”

“Gladly, thank you.”

She linked her arm in mine and led me into the drawing-room. The companion seemed about to follow but Sue said smiling: “I’ll ring for you, Florence.”

Back against the door as the door closed, my lips against her neck. Black taffeta rustled; the slight figure seemed to melt even though stiffened by the whale-bone bodice, scent of sandalwood, her fingers smoothing my hair. My lips moved to hers. In two years I had thought I had become cynical, hardened. Not so. I drowned in her, had no conscious life outside this. I muttered wild endearments, unremembered as soon as spoken, trying to give words to wordless passion.

At length she moved to be free, lowering her head, shaking one hand as if it hurt. I looked after her as she walked to the window. She was trying hard to be composed.

“Sue … it seems a century …”

“Is nearly. So much has happened. When you came in today I could hardly believe … I’ve so often prayed.”

“Perhaps that saved me. Thinking of you often saved my reason. In prison I used to make up conversations, go over old ones, picture the way you looked...”

“When I heard you were captured again, I thought, This was what I was afraid of. I felt it that time you came, you remember I didn’t want you to go ! Then your letter. Nothing since your letter … Oh, Maugan.”

I followed her, put my arm about her. We stayed like that for a long time. From this window you could see a mason working on the church tower.

“Tell me what happened. Tell me everything.”

“No, later. When will that woman come in?”

“Wait a little, Maugan. I’m a widow only by seven weeks.99

“Is he buried here?”

“No, at the family church near Reskymer.”

“Tell me about that.”

She told me. I heard, but again remember nothing. I think she said he had died suddenly. All I know was that I could feel her breathing, watch movements of her hands and lips and eyelids.

We sat down to supper. The woman Florence was there. I used the time to tell Sue of what had happened in Spain again omitting the murder of Buarcos, the pact with de Prada my conversion to the Catholic faith. It seemed to run well enough without these things.

There were differences in Sue, noticed in embryo on an earlier visit. The enchanting person I remembered, without losing any of her enchantment, had come by a quiet maturity and a quiet authority. Servants were at her beck and call, she gave orders smilingly but without hesitation or shyness. Three years of modest affluence. Three years of change. Other people though living more quietly than I, had lived too.

After supper the woman Florence stayed on, but at length Sue dismissed her. It was now seven, and if I was to reach Godolphin before they all were abed I must leave soon.

I said: “Sue, when can we marry? “

“Maugan, not yet … Sometime next year, I don’t know when.”

“Next year. Early next year.”

“Yes. But there has to be a little time.99

“And until then?”

“Now it’s so near, my dear, let’s not snatch at it. Secret, stolen meetings would spoil what we feel for each other.”

“Sue, you still feel the same?”

“Can you doubt it?”

“I need you so much that I’m afraid. You seem to look on the prospect of delay with a greater composure than I can.”

“Perhaps it’s my nature to. The way I have lived has made me so. But what we have waited four years for will not sour with waiting four months. In the first place it will be more seemly. In the second I must settle up Philip’s affairs. In the third you’ll have the opportunity to see Lord Henry Howard and know if he can propose anything.”

“Ah, that I couldn’t understand. Last time we met we went into that, and I said I was promised to Ralegh and wished to remain so.”

“But that was when you were about to sail. That was a loyalty I could understand. But now you’re back, after all this time, you’re bound to no one. You’ve gained nothing from the voyage except much suffering. It’s the usual experience for those who follow Ralegh.”

“Yet I feel about him as I ever did. If he wants me, I’m his man.”

She made a little gesture of distaste. “What has he ever offered you, Maugan? A post as a junior secretary. An opportunity to die in battle or rot in a Spanish prison.”

“What will Henry Howard offer me?”

“I don’t know. But at least you might go and see.”

My last question was a mistake because her answer put me in a position where I must seem unreasonable.

She went on: “When we marry we must have some position. How else can we live? If you wanted to remain unmarried, then you could stay on as Ralegh’s under-secretary or sail to Guiana or do whatever he asked you to do. But we may have a family. There has to be a home.”

I got up and stared across at the books of devotion on the desk, I felt I was still on enemy territory.

She said: “When I married Philip I did not look for money, except the security from want that he offered. But he was a man of some property. In case you wonder “

“I won’t touch his money. “

“In case you wonder, most of his property was entailed by his father, and as he died without issue it now passes to his younger brother. I shall have some money, enough to live on quietly, but no estate.”

“That’s not important “

“Oh, it is, for I would have liked “

“Sue, I don’t know what to say to make you see how I feel. I may have said it last time; I don’t know. I have spent nine months or more in Ralegh’s service, and it leaves a mark. Over and above that there is a question of loyalty. Sir Walter and the Howards, although they tolerate each other, are fundamentally opposed. If I now took service with one of the Howards I should feel I was was moving into an enemy camp.”

She was hearing but not accepting. “But you want to marry met “

“… It’s the one thing above all other.”

“Then don’t you feel any loyalty to me?”

“Loyalty! You have all my “

“Yes, then. Well, if we marry next April, perhaps. I have a small competence. It win be helpful. But as a scrivener to Ralegh “

“He may offer me something more.”

“He may. But he’s not rich. And what will happen to him when the Queen dies? He owes everything to her. The Howards are perhaps the most powerful family in the country, and with both Protestants and Catholics in their numbers they can hardly fail to prosper, whoever succeeds.”

I was watching her. “This is a very practical point of view.”

“I am practical. I’ve had to be.”

“Yes, but I think you’ve been a pupil of others.”

“I have talked of it with Henry Arundell. He’s very wise on worldly matters, and I seek help where it is most freely offered.”

I sat down-again near her. “Sue, take care for him, won’t you? I think he always envied Philip Reskymer his wife.”

She thoughtfully moved the ornate wedding ring round on her finger. “Yes, ~ think so.”

“Then you should see less of him.”

Her eyes were black fringed against the delicate skin of cheek and temple. “Ever since my father died, I’ve had to take care for myself. Accepting the company of someone who wants me honourably is not the worst risk I’ve run.”

“The risk is that he may think you’ll take him seriously.”

“He’s a wise and willing friend. I have few enough.”

Jealousy began to claw at me. “Perhaps if I hadn’t returned he would have had more to hope for.”

She shook her head. “If you hadn’t returned I don’t know what then.”

“Oh, Sue,” I said, “forgive me. Whenever I see you I’m torn all ways. The only happiness will be in possessing you.”

She smiled slightly. “Are you sure? Perhaps possession is never what we expect it to be.”

“My dear, you’ve lived too long in the company of old men … When can I see you again?”

“When you please. So long as it’s not unreasonably often until the new year. Come on Monday, can you?”

“Gladly … Sue, I still can’t get over it. No one can rejoice that such a good man as Philip Reskymer has died, but the outcome is there and I’m still hardly able to sit here and talk with you soberly of it. That you are free again this for me is like coming into sudden sunshine after so many dark years J “

She put her hand on mine. “And I can rejoice with you with a whole heart. Now we can start together for the first time.”

One day I walked up with Belemus to the castle, but a sentry would not allow us in. The soldiers had dug trenches and thrown up rough parapets all round the hillside on which the castle stood. Captain Alexander, while paying lip service to the Governor of the castle, continued to take much on himself. The soldiers cut down twelve fine elms; on complaint it was claimed that they obstructed the view landward; in effect they needed wood for their fires and this was the easy way. Except for occasional visits to the house for official reasons, the officers now quartered themselves entirely at the castle.

On the Saturday we younger ones had a party of farewell for Belemus who was to leave on the following day. There were twelve of us at it, and in the absence of John, Thomas was the eldest true Killigrew present. At 17 he was a highly accomplished player on the lute, his touch not so golden as Victor Hardwicke’s but his range wider. His greatest pleasure was to wander off from the house with his lute and pick up songs and casual dances from the villages round; sometimes he was away for three days. He claimed he knew sixty different tunes in his head. He had grown little and was only an inch or so over five feet, yet good looking in a square-set way. Affected in his manner, quick tempered but generous, he had no interest in girls and had reacted violently to my father’s attempts to pair him off in the county. He was in no way interested in this house or the estate or its prosperity or continuance. He was awaiting a summons from his uncle William to go up to the Court, and lived only for that day.

Odelia at 16 was already quite a beauty, slender and tall with clear blue eyes like a mermaid’s, sloping shoulders, and vigorous slightly ungraceful movements. Somewhere in her growing up she had lost the warm impulsive ways of childhood and not found anything as good in its place. She no longer confided.

Henry already looked the miser he was going to become. His thin face was like a bird’s that watched the earth and the sky for food or bright things. He had a sharp tongue and could lash some of the younger children into screaming frenzies of rage. Yet he adored animals and was never without some wounded mongrel at his heels.

Below him the gap. Maria was 9, her fat face reddening with an early adolescence, her fat strong legs bruising together when she ran, her voice never silent, crowing and caressing or raised in high-pitched angry protest. Peter was 6 but a fair match for Maria in everything except brute strength; and in adroitness and quickness of mind he outdid them all. Elizabeth was 5 and Simon 3, and only Dorothy grizzling in her cradle was absent from the party. The others here today were Oliver Gwyther, who was now betrothed to Annora Job, and two of the younger Knyvetts from Rosemerryn.

After it was over I said to Belemus: “This is a bad parting the break up of an old association; I don’t like it.”

“No more a break up than your flying off to be Ralegh’s scrivener. It’s just the boot on the other foot, that’s all.”

“Is it because of Jane you’re going?”

“No woman ever made me run away nor ever will. But T confess I would have been happier these twelve months with her out of the house. It goes against the grain to refuse invitations of that nature, and following the refusal an air blows around one as if one had left the window open on a winter’s night … No, witless, I’ve been here too long and go to make my fortune or to wield a blow or two in search of it. I hope you don’t liken me to the rat deserting the sinking ship.”

“Rather to the brave man diving off in order to lighten the boat.”

He patted me on the shoulder. “Well said. Watch for me coming aboard again laden with plunder from the wars!”

On the Tuesday I went to see my father and told him I wished to be married.

“What? This is quick since you came home. Who is it? Someone in the house?”

“Philip Reskymer died in September. I want to marry his widow, who was Susanna Farnaby.”

He had been startled out of his dejection, and you could see him thinking if there would be any advantage in this for him. “Philip Reskymer’s widow? Hm … Well, you could do much worse for yourself. She’ll be a woman of some property. Now if “

“Most of it was entailed.”

“Hm. But she’ll be no pauper. Well, boy, there’s no harm in being wed. It’s a proper state for man. You can live here and pay some small sum. There’s room in plenty now, and she’d be company for my daughter-in-law. That way you can be a greater help and support.”

“Father, I’m sorry, but I want to make my own way. It’s not unnatural.”

“Have you suggested she should live here?”

“I know she would not be willing.”

“She’ll have some property. Look after that. Why go into the hurry-burly of up-country life?”

“We both want to.”

He sat in offended silence for a while. It was in keeping with his mood that even his base son whom he had befriended so often and so freely should now turn against him. I could see him thinking it: this is gratitude.

“I’m sorry, father.”

“Well … I can help you not at all. When do you intend to go? “

“Oh, it’s not decided. We cannot marry until next year. I must see the Raleghs and tell them how their cousin died.”

“Ah, well, he’s the man to be in with. He has the ear of the Queen now, just like in the old days. And even friendly with Essex! God knows, that’s not likely to last!”

“I hope it will. Sir Walter and Lord Essex have a generosity under their seeming arrogance that could very well keep them friends.”

“In my view, boy, nothing will keep them friends, for they are on two different ends of a see-saw. One or other must be up or down.”

“And Cecil?”

“Ah … He is at the centre and so moves little. The Killigrews are hitched to him, and should continue to prosper. It’s only I, isolated down here, neglected in times of security, blamed in times of peril, it’s only I who suffer. Never was greater injustice done to a man than by these upstart military strutting like cockerels over my land, acting out sham heroics in my castle, now that the danger is over when I have borne the brunt of the true peril for so many years alone quite alonel”

“Father,” I said, “I’m glad the Armada failed.”

He sniffed and eased himself in his chair to let a notch out of his sword belt. “Well, of course, who is not? For I should have been in the forefront of the battle and one of the first to fall. With the fleet away and her coasts unguarded, England would have been overrun. That great storm was a signal mercy.”

“It is better in every way that the Armada failed, father. It truly is, for it saved a a final decision that I should not have liked you to make.”

For a while he did not speak, breathing heavily with relief that his stomach now had more liberty. “Whatever decision was made was made long before, Maugan. But’s all dead and forgotten now. Whatever might have been is dead and forgotten.”

The following day my father received a letter from the Privy Council. It summoned him to Westminster to appear before them on the 27th November to account for his stewardship of Pendennis Castle.

CHAPTER THREE

Those who were less inward than I to the events of that time must have wondered at Mr Killigrew’s attitude before he left for Westminster. He made a new will. He wrote at once to his uncles Henry and William, telling them that he had been sum moned to Court and that, since his affairs were in great dis order and his family in distress, he proposed to bring up with him his two sons Thomas and Henry to place in their keeping forthwith. He wrote to John telling him to return to Ar wenack in all haste and to take charge of the house and estate. He told me to prepare to go with him so that I could accom pany him to the Council meeting and be on hand if needed. He wrote to Ralegh asking him what grievous and unwitting wrong he had committed in his eyes that Ralegh’s report should have been so unfavourable. He wrote to Cecil giving an account of his exertions over the last two years in the cause of military defence. He fondled his younger children in a way that frightened them and delivered homilies to Mrs Killigrew that frightened her. He summoned the ramshackle Henry Knyvett from Rosemerryn and for long periods was closeted with him in Lady Killigrew’s chamber.

There were some days before we need leave, so I saw Sue again. I told her as much as possible but could say nothing on the larger issues. She said this was the ideal time to present Mr Arundell’s letter to Lord Henry Howard. I said my first duty was with Mr Killigrew, but if we stayed long enough I would call. She said: “You must, Maugan. It’s only fair to us both. Please.”

While there I met the Reverend John Tremearne, who was to take over the living of Paul next week. He was a blackcoated, serious man, though not of the class of Reskymer. When we were alone he asked me with interest about the Inquisition and Spain’s own attitude towards it. It seemed an opportunity to air a matter that had been much concerning me.

“While in Ferrol, Mr Tremearne, I met two Englishmen who had accepted the Catholic faith in order to save their lives. How would you regard such people?”

He stared at me angrily, as if surprised at the question. “As traitors to Christ, Mr Killigrew. Men who have sold their immortal souls for a brief lengthening of mortal existence. How else could they accept the teachings and doctrines of the the latrine called Rome?”

“Yes … Yes, I see. One of these men was much troubled, but the other took it lightly. He was of the opinion that oaths and dedications made under duress were of no importance.”

“Denials of God must be important, Mr Killigrew or words and deeds have no meaning left at all. Do you not suppose that almost all the glorious martyrs of old were not so tempted and did not so resist? Latimer and Ridley among them. They rejected these evil excremental fumes from the bog of Roman Catholic Europe. What shall it profit a man if he gaineth the whole world and loses his soul?”

“The other man,” I said, “the one who was troubled, reasoned that God, who understood all things, would forgive all things and resolved when he returned to England to return to the new faith. Do you suppose he could do that?”

“He should go to his bishop and ask advice of him. Legally, of course, there would be no problem. If he attends the services of our reformed church and communicates, that is all required of him by the Crown. Spiritually, he must surely spend hours on his knees every day asking the forgiveness of Christ for his betrayal. Peter was forgiven. Possibly he would be if he applied himself to his prayers perseveringly and in all humility.”

I could hear Sue’s footsteps. My mind turned back gratefully and perhaps not altogether irreligiously to her. In three months we should be married. Not any of the subtle problems of conscience, not the decay and deterioration at Arwenack, could touch that exalting thought.

We left on Thursday morning the 17th, a party of six, there being Mr Killigrew and Thomas and Henry and myself, and Thomas Rosewarne and Stephen Wilkey.

Our parting was not attended by any ceremonial good-byes. Four of the children and a handful of servants saw us off on a blustering day that lifted tail-coats and clutched at hats and made hairy spray of the horses’ tails. We supped the second night at Penheale, but very late and none too welcome, for the last time he had been that way Mr Killigrew had borrowed money from his host. So into Devon and Dorset. Monday night at a posting inn at Yeovil, and on Tuesday morning we clattered up the long stony drive into the estate at Sherborne. My father had hopes of this meeting, that in some way Sir Walter would be able to give him some indication of what awaited him at Westminster; but here he was disappointed and I too. Sir Walter had been unwell since he came home and imagined he was threatened with a stone, so he had been given leave from his defence duties and he and Lady Ralegh were in Bath taking the waters. Only George Chapman was there and Matthew Royden and little Wat and his nurse and the servants. It felt like coming home. I asked George Chapman if Sir Walter had any new Guiana plans. Chapman said that since the two voyages of ‘96, the first under Keymis, the second under Captain Berry at the end of the year, Sir Walter had mounted nothing more; but the purpose was there, it only waited a favourable moment.

While my father and the others were dining I borrowed a fresh horse and galloped to Cerne Abbas. It was a miserable task but had to be performed. Kate Churcher was a tall slender young woman, not pretty but distinguished, with long hands and a soft Dorset voice. On a pretext of buying a pair of gloves I was able to speak to her, and fortunately her husband was called out of the shop for a few minutes. When she heard my mission she burst into tears which were the more agonised for being half suppressed. I muttered a little of how Victor had died and gave her his message. While I spoke she looked as if I were cutting her heart out. Talking to her brought up all my own deep feeling for Victor. The meeting was even worse than I had feared, and I galloped back to Sherborne with a swollen throat.

We spent the night at Shaftesbury and another at Andover and Thursday night at Hartley. Late Friday we arrived in London and put up at ‘The French Lily’ in Mark Lane, where four of us slept in a bed of swans’ down eight feet wide.

In the morning we breakfasted off fresh salmon caught last evening in the river and served in small pewter bowls. Thomas and Henry had not been to London before, and after breakfast we went out for a half-hour until Mr Killigrew, who said he had slept ill, was down.

We walked down the narrow overhanging street to the river. At the bottom the whole congestion of the city opened out. A dozen boatmen bobbed at the steps asking our custom; upholstered wherries, some open, some covered in, with velvet and satin cushions waited for hire. The river was full of shipping. To our left was the squat shape of the Tower, black against the smoky sky, sombre with the history of imprisoned princes. Cranes stood on the wharves around it, and behind were the towers of churches. Down river was the bridge with its houses hiding the roadway. Just then the tide was flowing and the water mounted against the arches as if it would push them down. All about the boats and in the free spaces, like tufts of snow thrown down by a painter, were the swans.

We were due at Lothbury to dine with Sir Henry and Lady Killigrew at eleven, so we made our way back and found Mr Killigrew struggling to squeeze his swollen belly into last year’s russet satin doublet while Wilkey knelt to fit the kidskin shoes.

It was not far to the Killigrew house but the way was uneven and the cobbles stiff with dried mud. The house was a tall narrow imposing structure built of brick and wood in a block with three others. The William Killigrews lived farther down the same street but they were away. Sir Henry said he would take charge of Thomas as well as Henry until they returned.

So dinner. With it a nervous steering away from personal relationships. (Debts do not matter, they are tiresome but bearable; even rogues can be borne if blood relationship demands it; but what rumour has spread that this is something more?) The near success of the Armada was scarcely mentioned. Ralegh,said Sir Henry, was once more always at the Queen’s side, tall, magnificent, all the more impressive for his limp. Essex, much out of favour anyhow for having taken his fleet to the Azores and left England exposed to invasion, had himself now taken great offence that the Lord Admiral Howard’s earldom had placed him in precedence over all other earls, and had retired sulking to Wanstead. Sir Robert Cecil was shortly to leave England on a visit to Henry IV of France, to try to persuade him not to sign a separate peace with Spain.

Irish affairs were giving their usual trouble. It was difficult to know whom to send to deal with this insoluble problem. And conditions in England itself were moving from bad to worse: wild and wet summers, long and dark winters, harvests had failed, prices rose, want and distress stalked the countryside. The Queen, thank God, remained in good health. There were many rumours in Court that she had secretly named her successor.

So dinner. When it was over the two young men, Thomas and Henry, were shown the room they would occupy, and we took leave of them. Only then, when Mr Killigrew under some latent fatherly impulse had gone upstairs with them and Lady Jael was engaged with the servants, Sir Henry said to me in a rapid undertone:

“Maugan, your father is to appear before the Privy Council, I hear. How much is there in these unsavoury rumours that are spread about?”

“What rumours are those, sir?”

He peered at me keenly. “I think you must be more in his confidence than that or you would not have accompanied him. Shall you return to Cornwall if your father does not?”

That had an ominous ring about it. “Temporarily … But if there is the opportunity I shall try to find some permanent position in London or Westminster. John should be back at Arwenack by now, and if anything should happen to my father he will be the new master. Besides, I want to marry and am looking for some recommendation for preferment in or near London.”

His cautious legalistic mind seemed to take each word separately and examine it on its merits.

“As to preferment, as you see, Maugan, I have my hands full with two young men in my charge. And on tomorrow’s Council may depend by how much I am able to help them. It’s an unpropitious time. Have you letters?”

“One, that I don’t wish to use.”

“Why? May I inquire who …”

“It’s to Lord Henry Howard.”

“A coming man despite his age. You should present it.”

“Yet you look distasteful.”

“Well … privately I consider him ambiguous. More so than the other Howards, with whom, on occasion, I have been able to work in amity.”

“In what way ambiguous?”

“He has great talent and a real feel for literature and the arts. It is rather in the private springs of his nature that one suspects some duality of religion and of the life of the senses.”

My father came downstairs and we talked no more, but as we left Sir Henry said to me: “We have a chamber here. That at least I can offer when you need it.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The next morning, which was Sunday, was gusty with an occasional flurry of rain. We had to attend at Whitehall at nine. For this Mr Killigrew hired a wherry from the steps at the foot of Mark Lane and we were oared up river on a nearly full tide, passing under the great bridge beneath the second of its twenty arches, where the water was now calm, as through a tunnel. At one end of the bridge were some knobs on spikes which were the heads of executed traitors. I trusted my father had not noticed them and was relieved when one of the rowers, anxious to earn something extra, began to point the other landmarks, the tall chapel of St Thomas on the bridge and St Mary Overy’s tower on the other bank; then the tower of St Paul’s on our right and all the serried buildings of the great city crowding down to the river. The rower said the wonderful spire of the cathedral, 500 feet in height, had never been rebuilt since the lightning destroyed it. Then we saw the Bishop of Ely’s palace with its hall and chapel and gardens.

My father had been silent ever since we got in the wherry. The dejection and the resentment with which he had set out from Arwenack had stayed with him scarcely broken for eleven days. Only twice had it lifted temporarily: once when he had found Someone to play Gleek with him at the inn at Shaftesbury, and once when a chambermaid with a large ripe bust and a low cut frock had leaned over him at Hartley.

Now he cleared his throat and said: “I don’t know what’s afoot this morning, Maugan. I don’t know what I shall be accused of, what praise or blame will be meted out. All I’ve wind of from the tone of the summons is that my enemies have gathered to do me what hurt they can.”

“I trust it will be small.”

He grunted and coughed and spat over the side. “God’s life rumour is a dangerous thing; it can magnify and distort the most innocent action. That’s what we have to beware of, boy.”

“We? You think I’ll be permitted entry?”

“As a witness, yes. A material witness. For if some talk of my having truck with Spain should come up, you can testify on my behalf.”

Now we were passing between green banks on either hand, but whereas that on our left was dotted with grazing sheep, to our right the grass appeared to be part of the gardens of the great houses looking on the river from a distance.

“Indeed, I think, Maugan, if it comes to this worst danger of my being so accused, you could very greatly help me.”

“How? “

He shifted and glanced around to observe Thomas Rosewarne and Stephen Wilkey following in our wake. “I have done much for you, boy, you know that. But for me you would not have lived at all. Instead you have been treated as my own son, with all the privileges and honour. Through me everything has come to you, learning, the life of a gentleman, service with Ralegh. But for me “

“Yes. I understand all that and am grateful.”

“Well I have been thinking in the night I was thinking it over. If this charge this worst charge against me should by mischance happen to be made, it could well be argued or you could argue that you alone, in error, were responsible for it. That being captured and in Spain you were forced in order to survive to treat with them, and this you did in my name and without my knowledge. Elliot and Burley, you could say, were your friends, and they so advised you. You might even say that some large sum of money was offered you to land with the Spanish advance forces, and that you accepted it “

“In short that I alone played traitor?”

“There is no need to use that word in the case of a boy such as yourself. No need at all. You were misguided, frightened and carried away. That’s all. We’re of the same name Killigrew, and so it was thought I might be involved. You being so young, have little to fear …”

“Except hanging may be.”

“Oh, no, no, no. I would not permit it. They would treat a boy very lightly. The error in you would be so much less than if they thought it mine…”

By now we must have passed Durham House where I had stayed with Sir Walter, for we were turning in towards Whitehall Stairs.

I said slowly: “Father, I admit my debt to you. Indeed I acknowledge it gladly. But there are some sacrifices, some payments, which outweigh the debt. You’re asking me too much. Besides, the target is out of range: I could not convince them even if I would.”

“If you said “

“But I would not try. Be content that I’ll try all else. You know I will support you in any other way you want.”

We came into the steps and willing hands caught the wherry, offered help in alighting, brushed off imaginary spray from our cloaks, all hoping for the tossed coin. Mr KiHigrew paid the boatman and slowly we began to mount the broad flight of steps. The second wherry was grounding behind us.

“Take heart,” I said, “I don’t see how the Privy Council may know anything of this matter.”

“The Privy Council has many ears and eyes, spies abroad in all countries. You never know what they may know or what they may invent if they are determined on a man’s ruin.”

We reached the top of the stairs and waited for Rosewarne and Wilkey. It was blowing and my father drew his cloak around him. The brassy daylight showed up the coarseness of his skin, where a once high clear complexion had become pitted and rusty. His eyelids dipped a little at each side like tiny pouting lips. He had wool in one ear against the cold. He looked an old man.

CHAPTER FOUR

We waited in a large room adjoining the Queen’s Presence chamber. It was an ornate room, with a gallery at one end and crystal candelabra like inverted pyramids hanging from the ceiling. Pages and men in varied livery came through from bme to time, but no others waited. We had not been searched, though our swords were left at the door. Wilkey and Rosewarne had remained outside. At the entrance door to the Presence chamber were four enormous men in red, with roses embroidered in gold on back and breast. The floor of this impressive ante-room was strewn with some sort of sweet herb that emitted a pungent smell.

I was vividly reminded of waiting with Burley and Alazar in the palace in Madrid. Only here were no crowds; those who crossed the room did so with a leisurely thoughtful air. It would all have been reassuring if we had been in the mood to feel reassured.

When men left the Presence chamber they did so backwards bowing low. I did not know if Her Majesty attended all or many of her Council meetings, but it seemed she was here today.

Nine became ten and ten eleven. Ever and again a strange and unnerving sound could be heard from the garden outside like a devil in shrill torment. Peacocks screeching on the lawns.

There was a bustle and two men exited bowing. Following them came a chamberlain, who beckoned to my father. I rose to accompany him, and after a brief hesitation the chamberlain let me pass.

The room we came into was smaller than the ante-room. Light fell from the three tall windows upon a narrow table down the centre of the room. A big fireplace with a fire glowing; tapestries depicting battle scenes on the wall; six of the red-clad guard; at the table were about a dozen men in robes of office; at the head a woman.

Near the foot of the table was a bench, with a lower padded bench before it. On this we knelt. While we took up our positions there was complete silence at the table. So we knelt there watched by the twelve greatest men in the land. But not by the greatest woman. She was examining the diamond bracelet on her wrist.

Beside her, on her left, was a small man in black with a humped back: I took him to be Sir Robert Cecil. In the shadows behind his chair were four clerks at a desk writing. It was impossible to know all the other men, but the Archbishop of Canterbury was on the Queen’s right, and I recognised the Earl of Nottingham, who had been Lord Admiral Howard. Among the others were the Lord Chamberlain, the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, the Earl Marshal, the Lord Treasurer, the Lord Chief Justice and the Controller of the Queen’s Household.

So we remained while Her Majesty attended to her bracelet. Silence was not broken until she looked up and nodded.

The Lord Archbishop said: “Mr Killigrew, we have many times in the past had bad reports of you. It would seem that the position of honour entrusted to you by Her Gracious Majesty has not unseldom been used for your private profit. Not two years ago a Commission was appointed to inquire into these abuses. Their report was far from favourable, but Her Majesty saw fit to overlook these lapses, preferring to believe your constant assurances that in all matters touching the safety of the Realm you had no other thought but to serve her…”

At first sight the Queen looked like a young woman; one felt some miracle of preservation had kept her as a maid of 30. But when she turned her head towards the window one could see the lines under the talcum and the borax. She was wearing a dark auburn wig, and her gown of white silk embroidered with great pearls was cut low, showing as much white bosom as Lady Jael ever did. Two pearls in the ears, a necklace which glinted fire at every move, a small becoming crown.

“Nevertheless, in the month now past, when the Realm was in perhaps the greatest peril of all the perils of Her Majesty’s reign, your service to her was wanting. Captain Alexander has reported on arriving at Pendennis on the 31st October that there was not half a barrel of powder in the castle, that all fortifications were neglected, the guns in poor condition, the musters unsummoned. Further that your deputy captain was away and such servants as you spared for the defence of the fort were in liquor. What say you to all this?”

My father began a long and rambling defence, which was part justification, part denial. He referred to the many letters he had sent to the Privy Council asking for more arms. He spoke of the difficulties and jealousies he had had to contend with nearer home, when others in their reports and in their positions were judged to be before him. He would have gone on much longer but suddenly stopped. A white gloved hand at the top of the table had been raised.

“What is this young man doing here, Mr Killigrew?”

“He is my eldest son, your majesty. A base son but one I esteem. I ventured to ask him here so that in some part his words might be accepted as bearing out my own. If it so “

“Go on, my Lord Archbishop.”

The archbishop turned over a parchment. For a few moments I had met the eyes of the Queen.

“A second charge. Two weeks ago today at Dartmouth, in the examination of one Nicholas Franklin before George Carey of Cockington and Thomas Holland, mayor of Dartmouth, Franklin being aboard the Bear of Amsterdam, one of the Spanish navy forced in by stress of weather and interned … Franklin, a mariner, testified to hearing one Captain Elliot talking with officers, Captain Elliot being a known traitor and a long partner with the Spaniards. Witness says Captain Elliot said in June of last year, he being with his ship in Falmouth haven and much in the company and confidence of one John Killigrew, captain of the castle, was there surprised by one of the Queen’s ships Crane and escaped up river. Whereon Mr Killigrew suborned Captain Jonas, commander of Crane, with the gift of œ100 to sail out of the haven and so give Elliot time to escape. This money Captain Elliot repaid to Mr Killigrew, and this Mr Killigrew accepted, knowing it to be gold from Spain …”

The peacocks were screaming. The new Earl of Nottingham brushed the end of his pen lightly over his beard.

“Your majesty,” Mr Killigrew said, “my lords, this is an outrage l This is infamy ~ You, madam, who have honoured me with your confidence for so long, can you accept such a calumny? I, who have laboured all these years …”

“Mr Killigrew,” said the Queen gently. “Do not protest. Say if you did or if you did not.”

“I did not! On my immortal soul and on my hopes of its redemption through the love of Christ, I swear I did notl”

The Lord Treasurer said: “I think you have admitted on some former occasion to an acquaintance with this man.”

“Indeed, yes. My river is an open haven. It is not discriminate in whom it gives protection to. But I was no more inward with Captain Elliot than with a hundred other mariners who from time to time have come to the harbour and dropped anchor there.”

Lord Bathurst said: “Could we not have Captain Jonas called? “

Sir Robert Cecil said: “Captain Jonas has already been examined … Not unnaturally he denies all knowledge of this. There is some corroborative testimony from a Coxswain Lloyd who was aboard Crane at the time mentioned. But Lloyd, it must be said in fairness, is not an entirely trustworthy witness.” Cecil had a delicate voice, careful and low, but every word could be heard.

There was a pause. The Queen glanced at the clock and then turned again to the Archbishop.

“There is a third charge,” said the Archbishop. “This is contained in an examination of one, William Love, of Weymouth, lately hanged for piracy. Love’s statement asserts ‘that in the Armada lately sent against us, Captain Elliot, Captain Burley, Captain Lambert, were pilots royal of Spain, all with instructions to land and deal with John Killigrew of Pendennis and Arwenack, with whom they are close acquainted. And in this as in all other respects Killigrew without doubt was faulty and in the payment of Spain’.”

I stared down along the surface of the table at the hands and the pens and the paper and the wax.

The Queen said: “It seems, my lords, that in this some excess of zeal has robbed us of a valuable witness.” You could see the ironical lift of an eyebrow.

Mr Killigrew said: “Your majesty, my lords, this too is calumny without truth! If this is how I am regarded, then I regret that some few of the enemy did not land so that Icould give the lie and my blood to this base slander. Your majesty, this my son was aboard one of the Spanish ships, having been taken prisoner after Cadiz. He spoke with Elliot and others and can bear witness that my name was never spoken by them except as an enemy of Spain to be overcome on landing never as a traitor, never as a traitor I “

They were waiting for me. This might be the crux of it all. I moistened lips suddenly very dry.

“Your majesty, because I speak Spanish I was used on this voyage to interpret between the Spanish and some Irish volunteers. I was aboard the San Bartolomeo galleon and I was one of the few survivors when she foundered in the storm. I saw Captain Elliot three times. He knew me for a Killigrew and used me the worse for it. He did not regard my father as a friend of the Spaniards but as their first enemy to be overcome on landing. Before the Armada sailed I was kept in prison for many months in conditions in which many of my companions died. Later I was in solitary confinement and for a time lost my reason. This would not be the treatment given to the son of someone they counted as their friend.”

A gleam of sunlight filtered through the windows and fell on a dark auburn wig.

One man said: “Of what value is a son’s testimony on behalf of his fathers I would have lied to save my father’s head.”

“Some sons,” said the Queen, “would lie to see their fathers looped. It does not follow, my lord North.”

The Archbishop folded his hands on the parchment. “This is not the court of the Star Chamber, Mr Killigrew, and we permit ourselves only to deal in summary justice. Now we have before us three charges, the first proven, the latter two disputable; but all taken together there is a heavy inference of treason. We have heard your defence, your denials, but “

A page came quietly across and whispered in the Queen’s ear. She looked up, her narrow lips pursed. “Yes, he may come in.”

We all waited. She made no attempt to explain to her Council who asked permission to enter. There was a heavy clanking step that I recognised before I saw the man bending over the Queen’s hand.

“Sir Walter,” she said. “We gave you leave to take the waters.”

“Your precious majesty.” His eyes travelled over her face. “I had urgent business in London so returned briefly.”

“You are recovered?”

“More in two minutes for the refreshment of this reception than for all the time in Bath.”

She smiled. Some youthfulness clung to her manner under his admiring gaze. For a few moments they continued to talk together as if no one else were in the room. So far Sir Walter had not even bothered to greet the most powerful council in the land of which he was not even a member. One could understand how he made himself disliked. It was the Queen who, becoming aware of her dignity, said:

“And this visit to our audience chamber? What is your business, Waters?”

Ralegh looked down the table. “My lords. Chancing to hear that matters appertaining to my lieutenancy of Cornwall were toward, I ventured to request an audience. Your majesty, if by so greatly presuming I have in any small part given you to think I have exceeded my position or duty, I beg you to say so and I will at once leave.”

“No, no. Pray go on.”

“You will remember that in the great storm that scattered the Spanish fleet, a part of my squadron, including Warspite, was blown into St Ives for shelter. There, hearing of the emergency for the first time, I took horse and galloped overland to Falmouth Haven, reaching there on the 29th October in the afternoon. There, finding forces totally inadequate to meet this great threat, I caused 500 men, some from my ships, some gathered in haste on the way, to be thrown in to the defence of the castle and haven. And left them there. Captain Alexander was appointed to take charge of them. So being in those parts two days before any other officers I am in a position to tell you what I found better than he. I found the defences lax, ill manned, under-gunned, with scarcely powder to keep a single company of Spanish at bay.”

“This confirms what Captain Alexander reports,” the Archbishop said dryly.

“Agreed, my lord. What he did not say, because he did not know, was that your lordships have persistently denied Mr Killigrew money and supplies, though by constant letter and by attendance at Court he had besought you for them. Her gracious majesty by making me Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall has appointed me to take charge of the defences of that county. With respect I refer you to my letters of August, September and November 1595, January and February 1596, March, April and May of this year, all assessing the problem of defence and all arguing that greater forces should be available to the isolated castles of St Mary’s, St Michael’s, Pendennis, St Mawes, and others, to repel surprise attack. We are a small country, my lords, and face great enemies. Our resources are often stretched to the limits of endurance. But when our scant forces are shown up as such, it is not meet that a solitary commander on the spot should be accused of treason because of it.”

The Queen had not liked this. “You appoint yourself defendant of Mr Killigrew? You applaud what he has done?”

“By no means, your majesty. I think he has been lax and deserves censure. But ~

“Laxness alone in some circumstances can be treason, Sir Walter. Give us leave to decide that.”

“None can decide better, madam. If I “

“But then there are these other charges, of which you may not have heard. Tell Sir Walter the other charges.”

Grudgingly the Archbishop told him. My father and I were again required to answer in defence. While I was speaking Sir Walter looked at me but gave no sign of recognition.

“Your majesty, such charges as these grow for the asking wherever suspicion rests. A man has only to be known to be down for the jackals of rumour to set to work. The tattle of seaports makes free of many great names. A noose round the neck is a great spur to reminiscence and invention. John Killigrew has served his country long. Is it likely that he would sell it now?”

“John Killigrew is grievously in debt,” said Lord North. “We all know that. A lack of money has corrupted many men.”

‘It is true also, is it not,” said the Earl of Nottingham, speaking for the first time, “that the prisoner and Sir Walter are related and have long been close friends?”

“The relationship is of the most distant, my lord; and I have counted John Killigrew as one link among many in the defence of these islands. In my official journeys through Cornwall most of them taken at the behest of this council I have spent a night at his home from time to time. But the implication is scurrilous … I would not speak for my own brother if I thought him guilty of treason ~ “

The Queen nodded. Perhaps she did not approve of the contemptuous way the captain of her guard addressed the most illustrious nobles in the land, but the sentiment was good.

“Time passes, my lords. We have other business today, and dinner must be taken soon. A decision must be come to on this man’s future … Sir Walter, we thank you for your valued assistance. You have our permission to withdraw.”

“Having feasted my eyes this morning, your majesty, I do so with a new heart.”

He kissed her wrist, and contrived it where the short glove ended. Some of the council noticed this and were displeased, but the Queen was not.

After he had gone a silence fell. Sir Robert Cecil broke it. “My lords, what is your conclusion as to the behaviour of John Killigrew? Might I request a vote. First: that it is treasonable.”

Five hands were raised. The Archbishop, the Earl of Nottingham, Lord North and two others.

“That it has been negligent but not to the degree of treason.”

Five hands were raised.

“That he is guiltless of the charges brought.”

No hands were raised. Sir Robert Cecil and one other had not voted.

Sir Robert said: “Would your majesty graciously favour us with an opinion?”

“That I would, little man, for we are all hungry. Mr Killigrew, you have been accused of negligence in your duties towards me and towards the safety of this realm. We do not consider you have proved yourself innocent. You have been accused of treasonable correspondence with Spain and some willingness to treat with them. You have not shown yourself to be innocent of those charges either.”

My father bowed his head, and his straw-gray hair fell over his eyes.

“Nevertheless on these latter accusations the testimony against you is inconclusive and fragmentary. So we are disposed to overlook this most gravest charge. My lords, we would think justice would best be served here by acting on a proven negligence. Would any wish to dispute that?”

No one spoke.

“Mr Secretary, it would seem necessary to deprive Mr Killigrew of his Governorship of Pendennis Castle. Let us have in the next weeks some suitable names from which we may choose a successor.”

“Your majesty,” said my father, “I wish to thank you for this clemency. So long as I “

“Do not mistake this clemency, Mr Killigrew, as any sign of approval. A bad servant is often worse than no servant at all. Your negligence could have betrayed England. Mr Secretary, I understand that Mr Killigrew is in debt to the Crown.”

“Yes, your majesty. For œ2,000.”

“See that it is collected.”

“Your majesty ” my father began in unwise protest, but he was waved into silence. The Queen had risen from her brocaded chair. Gathering around her a mantle of black silk shot with silver threads, she turned and walked briskly from the room. Two pages just had time to dart forward to gather her train.

As soon as she was gone the members of the Privy Council sat down again, talking among themselves; but two of the yeomen tapped our shoulders and we were led out through the ante-room into the palace yard.

There Rosewarne and Wilkey were patiently waiting. They started forward on seeing us, clearly relieved.

My father said: “Let us go back at once. There are certain dispositions I wish to make and that cannot be done too soon.”

He was arrested at nine o’clock next morning on the suit of Mr Reynolds of the Queen’s Exchequer. He was taken to the Gatehouse Prison at Westminster, a gloomy building leading into New Palace Yard. It served the purpose of both a prison and a guard house for all who would approach Westminster Hall.

He had given me what money he had, and his watch and the diamond buckles off his shoes, and his two rings and a gold chain.

“Sell an for what you can get. There is a man called Fulbright in Old Jewry who’s as honest as such knaves go. Save only the gold ring, which was my father’s before me. Pawn that, for who knows, we may redeem it some day. Though, God’s life, I’ve little personal hope. I’m finished, done for, shall be left here to rot. This is what all my service “

“You’ve been arrested before.”

“On private suit, yes. But this is different. There can be no intervention, even if any were willing to attempt it. I am at the Queen’s mercy.”

“Which may be forthcoming. I don’t think she is a vindictive woman.”

“Pray God. I’ve known her nourish grudges before now. As to finding œ2,000 … Nor will it only be that. Watch the jackals pounce …”

Anslowe, the jailer, was a stout dog-faced man with stiff redgrey hair and a stench about him. He demanded at once œ3 as Garnish money, and said 20s. a week would ensure my father a bed and a ground floor chamber which he would share with five others. If less, his new prisoner went into the Common Ward. On the way in we had passed the gratings through which came cries for bread and meat, and some thin talons stretching through the bars. All the inside of the jail, which was small, was dark and stinking, and the only hope of survival seemed to be to live where some air would penetrate and one could see out at the carriages and people passing through the Gate House. My father grabbed money from me and gave it to Anslowe, and he was then taken into a dark foul room in which already were three men squatting in rags by the single long window waiting to shout their appeals to any passer-by. They glowered at the newcomer, and Anslowe jerked with his thumb at some boards and a sheet “There’s yet bed” then waited for me to go. This I did with a heavy heart, leaving Mr Killigrew standing like a stout, sick bird in a circle of vultures.

Ralegh said: “So, Maugan, when we had thought you gone … The news only reached me in your father’s letter. What an adventure you have had! “

It was a splendid welcome, full of goodwill and esteem; yet I fancied I had chosen the wrong time, for Bell was with him, and a new secretary, and he was preparing to return to Bath. And as always, when he was with others, even servants, he was less personally approachable. There were so many Walter Raleghs: the vigorous enthusiast, the thinker, the subtle politician, the unpretentious friend, the ambitious statesman, the poet, the strategist, the man of affairs. Today he was nearest this last.

“Poor Victor … It was a bad day when I sent you both home. When I sought to preserve his life I lost it. By the living God, how we exist by chance! “

His complexion was sallow and his face lined; the stick was beside his desk, though he did not use it to move about the room.

“I came to bring my thanks, Sir Walter and my father’s. Without your help he might have fared much worse.”

“Ah, the Privy Council. I should be on it, but Her Majesty knows if I were I should be ruling all the rest. Was there ever such nonsense as suspecting John Killigrew of treating with the enemy!”

I could not speak then.

He said: “Oh, I know he has been no angel. I do not applaud what he does, and some new blood to captain the castle will be a good thing: its condition when I reached it last month was lamentable. But to confuse that with treason is to misuse the meaning of words.”

His secretary was requesting his attention to some document just signed. While he attended to it I went to the window. A passenger vessel with seven sails was sweeping down river at a fine pace.

The secretary went out, and only Bell remained. The moment was still not a favourable one, but I must have some answer before he left for Bath.

“Sir, my duty takes me back to Arwenack, to see what can be done to help the family. But my halfbrother John will soon be home and he must take over this duty. As soon as he does, I “

“Ah, your father has a young brood, but one or two are old enough to be of value at this time. I would young Wat were of an age.” Sir Walter picked up a book and slipped the end of a pen in it to keep the place. “Pack this, Bell, I have other things for tonight … Perhaps in due course you’ll be in a position to return into my service, boy “

“That’s what I wished to ask you about “

The door had opened behind me. “Sir, Lord Cobham has called.”

“Ask him into the gallery. I’ll be there as soon as he.”

The secretary withdrew. I said: “May I take it that you can still offer me a post, sir?”

“Of course. Lady Ralegh was much taken with you. At Sherborne there is much to see to, and there is more than a likelihood that Irish affairs will occupy me for some time. I believe a revolt is brewing, and command of our forces must be given to a soldier of experience and resource … I wonder what Cobham wants now.”

“Sir, I have to thank you again for your intervention for my father. It could well have saved his head.”

“It was the least I could do when appealed to. Now make yourself at home in the quarters below. I have business on hand.”

“Can you spare me one minute more?”

At the door he stopped, his eyes distant and preoccupied. “Two if you have need of them. But Lord Cobham is below.”

“Sir, I wish to marry.”

“Do you need my sanction? If so you have it.”

“If I am married I need a position, Sir Walter. While personally I should be happy and honoured to act as a scrivener or in any other capacity you desired, the need to maintain a wife and later a family “

“There’s room enough at Sherborne. Bring your wife. You can make her happy there.”

My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, for I agreed with him. “Gladly. Thank you. Thank you … But perhaps I might ask you for the favour of some preferment or some recommendation. When when one marries one becomes ambitious.”

He twirled his stick impatiently. “Oh … ambitious. Ambition is the lodestone that leads us all. Bring your wife to Sherborne, Maugan, if you wish to. Preferment will come later. I am not one to forget my friends.”

CHAPTER FIVE

I sold my horse, keeping Mr Killigrew’s, and sold or pawned the jewellery and other trinkets he had given me. Most of this money I gave to Thomas Rosewarne, who was determined to stay in Westminster and take work as a clerk in order to be on hand. He thought that some legal aid might yet be brought to contrive my father out of jail; but personally I wondered whether even a full discharge of his debts to the Queen would set him free again. There was even the risk that new evidence would yet come to light and he would be removed from the Gatehouse to the Tower. How far would the Spanish keep their plans secret now they had gone awry? What if Captain Elliot or Richard Burley were caught?

I saw Mr Killigrew again the following morning. He had spent a restless night and had been badly bitten by bugs. He was very cold, so I left him two extra coats. The covering for his board was rotten, he said, and there was nothing but filthy straw for a pillow. The food he had paid to have cooked in the jail kitchen had come in blackened to cinders. Anslowe had denied him even the liberty of the prison, saying it was against the orders he had been given.

“Go tell Mrs Killigrew how I am situated. Do not spare the description, for there is still some money coming into the house from time to time and the first claim on it must now be mine. If I cannot obtain releasement leave me alone, manl I have nothing for you!” This to one of the ragged skeletons who had been importuning him as he spoke to me through the bars. I threw the wretch a penny. “And curb your generosity, Maugan! When you are rich you may use your money as you please. Not now! “

“Sleep in these extra coats, father. Otherwise you’ll get them stolen in the night. D’you want for books or a chess-board?”

“I’ve pen and paper, that’s more important. Already I’ve written to Cecil. Tomorrow it will be the Queen. And I have my dice … But none of these vile creatures are fit to play with! “

“I trust soon you may be moved.”

“When you see John and Jane make out a strong case to them. She has the money or could get it. And if John can see his father so languish he has a heart of flint. Get them both to understand my plight. It’s a matter of urgency, for with my cough I may not see the winter through I “

“I’ll do everything I can. But take heart, for the case could have been a worse one.”

He blinked at me with bloodshot eyes. “Those old men. Many of them had grievances against me old grievances. But Cecil! I would not have thought it of him to sit by like a little frog hearing everything and saying nothing. And the Queen! She’s getting old, Maugan, that’s what’s wrong. She forgets her old friends and makes up with new ones. It’s a common complaint of age. Alas, alas … You leave for home tomorrow? Hasten, for the sooner I am out of this the better.”

The fish market outside was full of bustle and shouting; beyond, near the clutter of shacks around St Margaret’s church, two women were fighting in the centre of a jeering crowd. With a sense of depression and with a sensation of guilt that in some way I should have been able to help my father more, I turned into one of the many ale houses and drank a tankard of beer.

Perhaps the sensation of guilt arose from the feeling of pure contentment which ran willy-nilly all the time at the back of my thoughts. The anxiety of those dark days, the fear of worse to come, was all the time illumined for me by the thought of Sue. If in two or three months I married her the world could be what colour it chose, my own life would be pitched to a new happiness. Whoever was bankrupt, I would be rich. Almost every morning when I woke this thought of her was a shock, a stimulus, a vivid flood of excitement breaking into sleep, as if someone entered a dark room and flung back the curtains.

So now if I was to play fair with her the last move had to be made.

It was a narrow house, not far from Durham House. A supercilious boy with long fair hair took my letter and left me waiting at the door. I waited while my feet grew cold, then he took me in.

“Lord Henry will see you when he is free.”

I stood on a handsome marble floor in a high narrow entrance hall. In the distance someone was playing the lute. It was a tune I did not know.

The impudent boy came through the hall again and stared at me. I stared him down.

“Lord Henry will see you.”

We went upstairs and into a big room lined with books. A fire burned in an open hearth, and near it, squatting on a rug, another handsome boy was fingering the lute.

In an armchair with a book open on his knee was an elderly man in a fur-trimmed jacket. Although his face was much lined, his hair was black and drawn across the crown to hide his baldness. He had a long nose and sensuous lips. My letter was open on the table. A heavy scent of violets hung in the room.

We waited until the next verse was overt

“Beauty sat bathing by a spring Where fairest shades did hide her; The wind blew calm, the birds did sing, The cool streams ran beside her.”

With two fingers the elderly man suppressed a yawn. “Poke the fire, Claude, it waxes cold.”

The young lutist dug at the fire with an iron rod. “We have a visitor, my lord.”

“That I know. Master Maugan Killigrew.” Lord Henry picked up the letter, glanced through it and for the first time glanced at me. “Master Maugan Killigrew, come here.”

I came and stood beside the table.

“I have had word about you from my friend Henry Arundell.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“He tells me you are a young man of parts. One of the Killigrews who proliferate about the Court. Do you know Court life?”

“No, my lord. My experience, such as it is, has been in Cornwall and in Spain.”

“Ah, in Spain. Just so. I believe Mr Arundell mentions that. You were a captive but escaped. How did you find the Spanish? “

“Fierce in battle, my lord. Fanatical in religion. Charming in personal contact.”

He looked me over. “Ah. A talent for summary, I see. Hasn’t he a talent for s~nmary, Claude?”

The boy shrugged and began to pluck at his lute.

“My wanton thoughts enticed mine eye To see what was forbidden; But better memory said, fief So vain desire was chidden.”

“A foolish conclusion to a pretty song,” said Lord Henry. “Do you play, Killigrew?”

“Indifferently, my lord.”

“All young men should learn with their alphabet. My tutor would not permit me, he being a puritan. Until the regime changed and he was dismissed. I always say I learned under Mary.”

“Learned under Mary,” said Claude, “suffered under Elizabeth, was pensioned, dead and buried. The third day “

“Claude,” said Lord Henry, “take your blasphemies off and give Herbert and Arthur the benefit of them.”

The boy pushed out his lower lip but did not move.

Lord Henry took up another letter and read it carefully through. “This is the one from Mr Arundell. I learn from it that you have seen service with Sir Walter Ralegh.”

“Yes, my lord. I worked as a secretary in his household for six months.”

“Why have you left?”

“As you say, I was a prisoner in Spain.”

“And now you are no longer welcome?”

“Oh, yes. But it is the same position. I seek something better.”

“Ah, something better. I doubt if I can offer you anything better. I am quite without influence, unwelcome at Court, living in this small style … Claude, I told you, you may go.”

The boy sulkily left the room.

“A disobedient youth but engaging … I see Mr Arundell says he is hoping to marry.”

“Oh? …”

“A strange ambition in a man nearing fifty. And one whose tastes have always rather been …” Lord Henry’s eyes trembled with malice. “However … that should not detain

us.”

I swallowed and stared at a sacred painting hung between the bookshelves.

“You write and speak Spanish, Killigrew?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“That is not a common attribute. It could earn you some interesting post.”

“Less of an attribute seeing we are at war with Spain, my lord.”

“Commerce and art do not stop at the dictation of princes. Have you any other qualifications?”

“I know something of war.”

“I think that will be a diminishing asset, for we are all weary of it. Do you understand diplomacy?”

He said it in such a way that much more than a single word was conveyed.

“I have had some experience.”

“No doubt it runs in the family. Your relatives are supporters of Cecil, are they not?”

“I think, my lord, they prefer to see themselves as servants of the Queen.”

“But who does not? Who does not? Our noble Elizabeth whom God preserve we all worship and serve. But under her great men sometimes differ as to how she may best be served. I … now I am an adherent of Essex.”

“Indeed.”

“My friends, Francis and Anthony Bacon, and I, we support his lordship when and how we may. Yet am I on happy terms with Sir Robert Cecil and his father too.”

Until now I have not consciously brought to mind Ralegh’s conversation in the cabin of Warspite that June night on our way to Cadiz. ‘Oil and water,’ he said. ‘But Thomas Howard is much to be preferred to his uncle, Lord Henry. If you ever meet him I commend him to your study.’

Suddenly in the middle of a serious of questions Lord Henry said something to me I could hardly credit. I stared at him stupidly, certain I must have misheard.

He repeated: “I gather you are a Catholic, Killigrew.”

“No, sir! I cannot imagine where you have how that miss understanding can have arisen! “

He unfastened two buttons of his jacket, dusted a little snuff off the fur. His vigorous malicious face was flushed with the heat. “In a country such as ours, my dear Killigrew, misunderstandings are always arising. Consider how they have affected my family. My father, the Earl of Surrey he came to have a misunderstanding in the matter of religion and the regency in the time of the last Henry, so he lost his head. I was 18 at the time. A little younger than you.”

“If you ”

“And then there was my brother, the Duke of Norfolk. There was misunderstanding about him too, some rumour that he might marry Mary Queen of Scots. He lost his head. I was 33 at the time.”

I did not interrupt again. Lord Henry settled his slippered feet on the footstool. “Then there was my nephew, the Earl of Arundell, who misunderstood our Queen so grievously as to become a Catholic and not to hide his views. He died in prison two years ago. All these mistakes could perhaps have been avoided by wiser men such as we.”

He dusted his jacket again.

I said: “Henry Arundell can know nothing of my religion. All that “

“Oh, he doesn’t. He does not mention it.”

“Then in what way “

“I have heard that you were converted while in Spain.”

I still struggled to understand this thing. “What one does in an enemy country is done under duress. There can be no “

“Under duress?” He raised his eyebrows ironically. “But of course. All decisions are made under duress. That is an axiom of life. In the winter weather I suffer from an affection of the kidneys. Warmth and a dry air prevent it, so I wrap myself about and keep a fire which I see you find too great. I act under duress. In Rome and Florence, which I visited some twelve years ago, the day’s warmth was such that one needed no other heat at all … So with religion, my dear Killigrew. In England I am a confirmed Protestant. So I trust are you. Only a fool shivers when the cold draughts blow.”

I did not like this man but I could not but be aware of the subtlety of the intelligence probing mine. He appeared quite open, indeed to be forthcoming in the history of his family, but by nuances, delicately calculated pauses, sardonic expressions, he was all the time challenging my responses.

“I wonder, my lord, how you came to have such information about me.”

“Does it matter?”

“It well could.”

“I am a peaceful man, Killigrew, and pursue peaceful ends. Leave it at that. The value of the incident lies not in itself but in the light it sheds on character. One is given to suppose that you are a politic person.”

“My lord, I seek preferment.”

“Ah. You flatter me with that original confidence … I have no preferment for you as such. But there could be employment.”

“Tell me of it, my lord.”

“Hold hard. Let nothing be done in haste. All young men are the same.”

A log fell and blazed. The light in the room by now was fading, and the fire sent dim and secret coloursleaping over books and tables and chairs: purple, ochre and green. Like the conversation the firelight obscured as much as it revealed

“Sit down, Killigrew. You have certain ductile qualities which I believe could be useful to me. But I sense inflexibilities too, which would have to be plumbed before we proceeded far. A limb will move, but only according to its joints. Mental anatomy needs just as careful study.”

I pulled forward a chair of black carved oak. The wood seat had been worked to represent the naked Greek figure of Mercury.

“You go too deep, my lord.”

“Oh, no, I assure you, there is no depth in what I say, only a little caution. Tell me, do you admire your uncle?”

“My uncle?”

“Sir Henry Killigrew.”

“Why, yes …”

“Do you have his qualities?”

“What do you consider them?”

“An ability above all for secret negotiation, for loyalty to his master.”

Lord Henry was watching me with half-closed lids. It was impossible to tell how much he was in earnest.

“Sir Henry is older than I am, my lord. No doubt those qualities grow.”

“Not unless they are firmly there at the start. When do you leave for Cornwall?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Ah … All this is premature. Again haste when haste is unprofitable. I take it you have no further connections with Ralegh? “

I did not know what to answer. “We are going straight home, my lord. My father is in prison for bankruptcy, and my stepmother may need me to help. Once that is done then it is done. Two weeks, three weeks perhaps.”

Lord Henry still had the book open on his knee. “Do you know that old Latin precept: ‘There is a time for saying nothing and a time for saying something, but there is no time in which all things should be said’.”

“No, my lord.”

“Perhaps this is a time for saying something, but a little only. As I have told you, the most I can offer could be called maybe a gainful employment. As a secretary, you understand. A secretary and if necessary a messenger. Consider it while you are riding home. Now you may go.”

CHAPTER SIX

We rode back to Cornwall, Wilkey and I, in a succession of days of blinding rain. The farther west we went the more sodden the sky and the more waterlogged the tracks. Rain seemed to become so complete a part of nature that to end a day not soaked to the skin would have been unfamiliar and remarkable. And each day the wind grew stronger as if determined to hold us back.

We got as far as Launceston and then Stephen Wilkey, who had taken a chill early, gave up and said he could travel no farther. We were again spending the night at Penheale. The Grenvilles suggested I might well stay a day or two more until the weather improved, but I said no, I would go on. So I left Wilkey in their charge to follow at will and went on across the wild moors alone.

Such was the gale here that I could not make fair progress and so slept at Bodmin in a tiny cavern, while the storm howled round the shoulder of the hill and every thatch seemed about to lift off the roof. Next morning even Trudy was loth to start, but we were away soon after daybreak. My mind was pricked on by its own uncomfortable spurs.

Over the Goss Moors, at last into the shelter of the Ladock valley, a bite to eat in Truro; the short day would soon be drawing in; but one was too near home now to halt at the Bonythons’. Set in a cleft of the green hills, Penryn came quicker than expected. Sensing the end of it all, Trudy had quickened her step. Past the old mill, and the sun was flaring over the hill.

The gate was open. That was the first thing wrong. Never in my lifetime open and unguarded.

The long chestnut avenue to the house was rutted deep with mud and water, as if more wagons or coaches than usual had been over it. The tents were still on the hillside. The wind was breaking at last into lost eddies and vicious squalls that grew less frequent with every hour.

At the back entrance by the kitchens were three carts. Two of them were piled with furniture and cloths. I had no need to tether the mare, she was already walking towards the stables as I ran into the house. The first person was Meg.

“Maugan! ” she said, forgetting herself. “Dear life, I’m that glad to see you! ” And put her arms round my neck.

I kissed her on the mouth, sweet memories in spite of all. “Dear Meg. Is all well?”

“Well? All’s ill. Dear life, tis a nightmare. Two days gone a sheriff’s officer come and served an order distraint or some such for a Mr Coswarth. There was none here to stay ‘im so in ‘e come. Tis rumoured Mr Killigrew’s in a debtors’ prison and all London pressing for payment is it true, Maugan? So afore cockfight yesterday a halfdozen bailiffs was here waving papers in their ‘ends bonds or some such and asking for payment.”

“Oh, Meg …”

“And none here to deny ‘em. So in they come and begin seizing on this, that and th’ other as part of their debt. All yesterday and today they been carting things away. It’s been like a war men shouting and fighting. They even tore the curtains pulling betwixt themI”

I went through the kitchens, past a couple of servants, into the great hall. Gone was the Pavia tapestry, the plush chairs on which Mr Killigrew and the special guests sat, the stools, the curtains, the fire-irons. Ash was scattered well away from the fire as if it had been blown about by the gale.

“Young Mr John Killigrew?”

“No sight of ‘im.”

“Where is Mrs Killigrew?”

“In her chamber, sick.”

At the foot of the stairs, two men were carrying down a chest. One was a tall shabby man in black, the other a foxfaced fellow with a big wart on the side of his nose.

They headed towards me and could get no farther; the tall man grunted at me to move. I did not.

“By what right, gentlemen, d’you shift my father’s furniture? “

They lowered the chest. “By what right? This no longer belongs to you nor to none of yours. Out of the way!“

“What’s your name, man?”

“Who are you?”

“Maugan Killigrew. A son of John Killigrew.”

The tall man wiped his forehead on his sleeve. “Oh, I’ve heard tell of you. Well, there’s naught for you to do here. The law of England’s took over, and that’s ten years later ‘n it should have. Your father’s a bankrupt and that’s all there’s to it.”

“What’s your name?”

“Ratcliffe. He’s Challenor. Money’s been owing_ n

“Where’s your proof?”

Ratcliffe stared at me. “We shown it when we was admitted.”

“I’ll see it again.”

“Here.” Challenor came round the end of the chest and thrust a piece of paper at me. “See this. Here be your father’s bond. œ300. Due August ‘95! Not defeasanced ~ Not renewed! Nor no interest neither I Two years it been owing since due and not a penny paid!“

“In time,” I said, “you’ll be paid in full. But not when you come like vultures like carrion. What d’you hope to make out of it? A few score “

“We’ll make what we can, by God! ” shouted Challenor.

“Get out,” I said.

“By God, those days are over, young man, and don’t you forget it! I mind the time when your rascally father and his father! would ride abroad “

“Get out,” I said.

“Oh, no you don’t. We’ve the law on our side “

I took out my short dagger and pointed it at Challenor’s throat. He bumped back against the chest, slid round it.

“Here, none of that! If you “

“Two minutes to be out of this house both of you. If you’re not, law or no law I’ll let some of the wind out of you.”

“You can’t do this, Killigrew!” Ratcliffe shouted. “There’s sheriff’s officers and bailiffs, aye and justices too, will stay your nonsense “

“Out of this house and out of these grounds before dark. That gives you ten minutes.”

Ratcliffe opened his mouth to protest again, but I went at him with the dagger. He drew sharply back, the two men bumping together; then they turned and went out, leaving the chest at the foot of the stairs. I followed them. Meg was in the hall.

“Bring lightsl ” This bawled angrily at a couple of shadowy servants lurking in a doorway. Then to Meg: “Where’s Job? And Bewse? And Dick?”

“Maugan, you can’t rightly blame them. They’re not schooled or “

“Who talks of blame? Where are they?”

“In the stables.”

I went out, across, kicked open a door. Dick was wiping Trudy, a halfdozen others stood round in dejection, shoulders hunched, dirty and unkempt. With various expressions they said my name. I cut them short.

“Listen. You’d stand by while these jackals rob us? Where’s your pride “

“Tis the law,” said Jael Job. “We don’t like to go ‘gainst that. If a man be broken for debt “

“But if I say different, you’d follow me, law or not?”

“Well, maybe. There’s many a time we’ve set the rules aside “

“Let’s have these men out, then.”

I turned and waited for them to follow me. Challenor and Ratcliffe were standing arguing by one of the carts.

“Unload that stuff.”

In five minutes the furnishings were inside the house again.

“Bewse, and you Dick, see these men off our land. And shut the gate behind them.”

The rest of us tramped through to the bottom of the stairs and then up. At the top a man was struggling with some bedding and a roll of sailcloth. Long Peter, encouraged now and ready for anything, snatched the cloth away from him and thrust him down the stairs so that he fell half the length. There were two more men at the end of the passage, just coming out of one of the bedrooms.

“Get them outl”

But these, instead of being debtors personally trying to collect their dues, were sheriff’s officers and not to be intimidated. There was a short fight in the half dark, a bunch of candles wobbling and dripping from a sconce, grey half-iPumined dusk falling through a casement, the rest shadow. In a while we had them pinioned, bruised and a little blood from knuckle and tooth.

“Get them outl”

“Stay. Is that you, Maugan? Yes, it is, I’d a feelin’ you were home! But, lad, that’s not sense, what you’re coin’ now.”

The voice, the tall lean figure, the long black hair … I was a child again knocking at an old mill door. Spittles of spite came into my mouth: some gland of fear had released them. “I might have known you’d be here, Mistress Footmarker.”

“Yes, well, I’m glad to see you, there’s need of a man. This house is in dire distress. I told you years ago it would happen. There’s evil like a cloud “

“If there’s evil you bring it nearer. Job, take those two men “

“No, lad.” She came along the passage and I noticed the servants break away as she passed. “You can’t fight the law. Your father tried; look where it’s landed him. This is not a “

“You and your damned meddling! Who brought you here! “

Her narrow face was a mask between the long tresses, eyes darker than blue with a kindling anger; often now we seemed to act so on each other; there was no mean, either we were in sympathy or, as now, sparked like flint on tinder.

“As much right as you, ladl Your stepmother, Mrs Killigrew “

“Oh, she’s so dominated by you that … Look woman “

“Listen.” She put a hand on my arm and I shook it off. “Listen! What’s wrong with you! Have ears to reason! Leave these men be, else you’ll end in jail. Your grandmother wished to resist, to keep these men outside the palisades, but it can’t be. I told her so, and Mrs Killigrew the same “

“By God!” I said. “Now I see it. Not only do you predict the ruin of this house; you see to it personal! … Peter, take this woman. If she has a nag put her on it and see her off our land! “

Job and another man began to hustle the two bailiffs along the passage to the stairs. Long Peter was so tall he could not stand upright in this part of the house; he was a man almost without fear, but he hesitated about touching the woman. He licked his lips and glanced at Dick Stable and Penrudduck, the others remaining.

Footmarker said: “Touch me and you’ll grow worms in your bowels a yard long. Your eyestll rot out and your tongue’ll swell till it bursts your mouth.”

Peter blinked and spat on the palms of his hands and made no other move.

She turned to me: “Maugan, you’re blind with anger now and full of some spleen. All right, let us not have further words until this mood has passed. There’s much to be done. Your grandmother “

Perhaps in my own feeling was a microcosm of all that men feel when they burn witches: anger trying to hide fear. It was as if I had a sort of love for her turned inside out so that one yearned to destroy it. One yearned to tear out one’s own beginnings as a frail human being. I grasped her by the shoulder. She shook me off; that old strange scent of hay; I grabbed her arm and turned it behind her; she clawed with her other hand at my face; scratches and blood beginning to drip; I twisted her arm and grasped the other.

As I pushed her struggling down the passage Mrs Killigrew came out.

“Maugan!” I rushed past her. “Maugan, leave her be, she’s here because we need her!”

Down the stairs, she tried to kick but her feet were in soft shoes that did not hurt; I felt sick and cold, anger like disease, a dysentery of the mind.

“Damn you, Maugan! If you put me out this’ll be the last of me; I’ll never come back again; never again; you’ll regret this it’ll be on your soul all the rest of your life.”

We were down without falling. Meg at the bottom, shrinking against the wall. There was nothing special in this struggling woman different from any other; panting breath and heaving lungs and reluctant halting feet; she was still talking, but the sentences were muttered and broken; I tried not to hear, still fearful of a curse.

In the hall and through it to the kitchens; out into the cobbled yard at the back; a lantern burned at the stable door; I released her with a final push; she nearly fell but caught the door.

“Get your horse or mule if you have one. If you’re on foot take a pony. That’ll be payment for what you may have done. Take it and go.”

She leaned on the door looking at me. “I never thought to see this day. That’s one thing I never did think to see.”

Now that I was free of her I wanted to shiver.

“Take a pony,” I said, “and go.”

It was like assuming command of a part-conquered fortress. The enemy had been driven out; now to re-organise the forces within.

Most of the curtains had gone, all the best furniture, even some of the beds. The house was like a cold echoing barn. Mrs Killigrew had been in bed with a return of the jaundice and had hardly realised the extent of the loss; she had in any case lacked the courage for open defiance. But she was angry with me for driving out Katherine Footmarker. This I had expected; the woman had grown to have an ascendancy over Dorothy Killigrew which amounted almost to a possession, and it was this more than anything else which I had felt to be dangerous in her continuing here. But what did startle me was to find that Footmarker had been openly treating my grandmother too.

So bad was Lady Killigrew’s breathing now that only immobility enabled her to live at all. To move from one side of the bed to the other was sufficient to cause her to gasp and clutch at the air with her mouth. It was a terrible thing to watch, and almost more terrible to see, trapped inescapably in this useless body, the same penetrating acidulous mind I had known all my life. It had in no way been affected by illness or disease. It watched resentfully the people who moved round her bed ministering to her wants. Kate Penruddock, Parson Merther, Ida and Sarah Keast, none of them escaped.

When I went in she set on me with a torrent of invective. What business had I to command this house, a nameless bastard brought up here out of mistaken kindness? God, to what depths had the Killigrews and the Wolverstones come? When I said I was only too willing to give up any ordering of this house to John as soon as he arrived home, she said he could not come too soon for her. In the meantime how did I propose to keep her alive, now that I had driven out the one woman who could help?

The servants, of whom there were only fourteen left, rallied round me well and soon the place was cleared up, such furniture as was left made the best of, the gate at the palisade guarded. There was one other risk that had to be considered, for we could not fight an army.

The next morning I went up to the castle and asked to see Captain Alexander. He saw me in the gun room overlooking the harbour. Much had been changed since I was last here, it was like a general’s tent in time of battle, with maps and charts on the walls.

“Captain Alexander, you may have heard that my father has stayed behind in London, having been arrested on a suit for debt. I have no doubt that his release will be arranged before long, but for the time being he cannot be here to help you in his position as Governor of the Castle. I thought I should tell you this.”

. “I obey orders here, Mr Killigrew. My orders have been to bring this castle to a state of preparedness. So the Governor has not concerned me greatly, my instructions having come from a higher authority. I don’t think your father’s private misfortunes are likely to concern us here.”

“Debtors have attempted to ransack Arwenack. I have driven them out.”

“That must be your own affair, Mr Killigrew.”

“I am glad you see it in that light.”

“Certainly. Unless I receive orders to the contrary.”

Having got what I came for, there seemed no virtue in prolonging the interview. He was clearly waiting for me to go.

“Do you intend to spend the winter here, Captain Alexander? You and all the men?”

He shrugged. “That will be decided at a meeting next week.”

“Held here?”

“Held here. Sir Nicholas Parker, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and Paul Ivey the fortifications expert, will confer here and decisions will then be made. It could perhaps be a convenience if you could accommodate them in your house. As you will appreciate, our quarters here are very full.”

“I’ll make arrangements.”

As I walked back to the house I wondered if enough beds were left and whether we could find food. But the effort was worth making. Alexander was slightly more gracious when I left. His goodwill could be of value.

When she left her last words had not been curses. She had shouted after me as I went back into the house: “Shame on yourself! Shame on you, Maugan, for turning away your only friendl All your life you’ll regret this dayl”

When I got in I had been violently sick, as if vomiting up buried urges.

My only friend? That evening when the early dark had been upon the house for nearly two hours I sat and discussed the future with another friend who had already forgiven me for my highhandedness of yesterday.

Dorothy Killigrew said: “I am happy for you, Maugan. When she was here for that Christmas I thought her a sweet girl. Pretty and elegant and of a sunny temperament. How lucky for you it has turned out so. I do pray you will be happy.”

“Thank you.”

“You know I have come to love you as one of my own children, and I shall hope you write to me from time to time. This is a house to leave. I tremble to think what will become of us.”

“I don’t think Father will stay in prison long. He has so many friends.”

“Friends who have been alienated, Maugan. If the Queen has gone against him then there is little hope of an early release.”

“John will soon be home.”

Little Dorothy was grizzling, so her mother turned her over in her cradle.

“I pray we could all take more easily to Jane. She is very very female, yet strangely unfeminine without the graces. And hostile to her new relatives. Perhaps bme will change her.”

“She needs an heir.”

Mrs Killigrew sighed. “I am with child again, Maugan. Your father, even in despair, has not abated his demands. With nine children living and four dead, this has at last become a burden on me. Perhaps in wealth and comfort it would not seem so great. But as we are now set, scarcely knowing how to feed ourselves, I am a prey to despondency. Even the consolation of my faith wears thin...”

I patted her hand. “My dear, take heart. Perhaps this is the darkest hour.” I could not explain to her by how much it might have been darker … “All the same, I shall be uneasy at leaving you here.”

“You must seek your own fortune. This is John’s house now. He must redeem it as best he can.”

I awoke in the dark of the night thinking that Katherine Pootmarker was in the room. Then that it was Sue. In some inexplicable and frightening way I could not for a time disentangle the two. They were one woman springing from one well of love and hate. It seemed to me that it was Sue I had thrust down the stairs and flung out of the house and that it was she who said: “All your life you’ll regret this day.”

Then in asking her forgiveness I was mouthing again the terrible oaths of Seville. “I do solemnly declare that the Church of England is not a church but rather the synagogue of the Devil, and in her and all her opinions and ceremonies lies the soul’s perdition; and I detest and abominate them …”

I sat up in bed in that long narrow room, brushing my face to clear away the cobwebs of nightmare. Streaks of dawn were in the sky like a woman’s grey hair. I got up and dressed and was downstairs by the time Dick Stable, yawning vastly, was raking over the ashes of the fire in the great hall. Dogs fawned about me as I ate breakfast. Soon after sunrise I was on my way to Helston.

I found her house after two inquiries; at the door a stupid servant met me. No, Mistress Reskymer was from home. Two days gone she had left in some haste, taking Florence and Jones with her. She had received a letter and had departed for Tolverne, the Arundells’ home.

It was beginning to rain. Sometimes the weather by its persistence wears away courage and resolution. The nearest house was Truthall. I did not fancy dining with Henry Arundell. Sooner than ride home hungry and wet it seemed good sense to go a little out of the way to be warm and fed.

At Godolphin Lady Godolphin said Sir Francis was expected back within the hour. Had I come to see him on business, or was it the tragedy at Tolverne which had brought me?

“Oh, but I see you don’t know. It has been a great sorrow to us. Jonathan died last week.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

He had been taken with a sudden heart seizure. He was 31. Over dinner we talked of how the tragedy would affect poor Gertrude, a widow at 20, and Lady Arundell, bereft of her elder son, and Elizabeth, the Catholic, and Thomas, now heir to it all.

I did not speak of Sue, thinking they did not know her, and it was by chance that Lady Godolphin mentioned Mark Reskymer, the head of the family, whose seat was a few miles south of Truthall.

She said: “Oh, I’m pleased for you, Maugan. She is a pretty girl, and still so young. You are lucky to get her too, for she’ll be a prosperous widow.”

“Far from prosperous,” I said. “Nearly all Mr Reskymer’s estate was entailed.”

Lady Godolphin said: “I think you are more fortunate than that, Maugan. It happens that Mark Reskymer mentioned to us that little was entailed. It meant, he said, that because of Philip Reskymer’s late third marriage much of the property would go out of the family.”

Sir Francis said: “I don’t know how Gertrude will be left. The Tolverne Arundells are not a wealthy family, and Thomas must maintain the house.”

I said: “It wasn’t what I heard about the Reskymers, I mean. Perhaps I have later news. Or perhaps you have.”

“Yes. Yes of course. The proving of a will is always complicated. No doubt the lawyers will have their own say.”

I could tell from the tone of Lady Godolphin’s voice that she thought she had the right of it. The unease at the back of my mind was always finding some new food. I borrowed a fresh horse and left for Tolverne.

It was seven before we were safely over the ferry, and the night was then so dark that I led my horse up the steep overgrown slope to the house. I thought of Jonathan dancing with Gertrude at our Christmas festivities that happy year. I thought of Gertrude, flushed and happy, pretending to be Sue when I mistook her. I thought of Sue.

There were lights in the hall, none elsewhere. Their supper was late; I was in time for it; Lady Arundell and Elizabeth and Thomas and Gertrude and Sue and five other relatives whom I do not remember and never knew.

Human nature is such that it can stand but so much grief, and I imagine that the depths of unhappiness and sorrow had been plumbed by them all. For more than a week there had been no end to grieving. A new arrival broke the chrysalis of sorrow. Minds turned with relief to look outwards for a time. We talked of war and Mr Killigrew, and the Queen, and the distress in the country and of Jack Arundell of Trerice’s betrothal to Mary Carey of Clovelly.

It was clear that Sue had told no one here of our engagement to marry. This was not perhaps surprising: coming to a bereaved household one does not immediately advertise one’s own happiness. Her black slightly damp-looking hair hung over the narrow lovely bones of temple and upper cheek, the eyes with their green-gray liquid brilliance moved reflectively from face to face as others spoke; she sat a little in shadow, sad and rather vulnerable because of the sadness about her, yet in perfect repose. When her eyes met mine, which was seldom, they warmed and searched at the same time.

Through the talk Thomas ate apples, biting with strong white teeth which lacked two middle ones, munching slowly; his face was broad and flabby, yet within it like a hammer under a cloak was brute determination, power and stamina, things his elder brother had so sadly lacked. Through the talk Gertrude, the young widow, watched and listened, sometimes speaking a word or two, and then falling to stare so fixedly at the candles that yellow flames burned in her eyes.

No one asked why I had come. At last I was able to speak with Sue.

“Can we get away somewhere?”

“I’ll go out in a moment.”

We met in the sewing room. I kissed her face, the grey silk of her dress, the lace at her throat.

One candle only in this room: it was behind the spinning wheel, and the spokes of the wheel made bars of shadow on the ceiling. Our own shadows were one, as soon we should be. We were a strange amorphous shape on the wall.

She broke from me breathlessly. “Someone may come.”

“Does it matter?”

“A week ago Jonathan was lying dead in the room above us.”

I took a deep breath. “So be it … I’m as grieved as you. But life in me in us is strong … to express it is no disrespect. Jonathan would not begrudge us what he has lost, nor Gertrude if she knew.”

“She will know, Maugan, I promise. But just a little time …” She fingered her black fringe away. “Tell me about London.”

I spoke of the meeting with Sir Henry Killigrew and his view that, though he wished me well, he could not at present offer me anything. I spoke of meeting Ralegh and his suggestion that I could go back to Sherborne and take my bride with me.

“He suggests nothing more at the moment, but I’m entirely sure that within twelve months he’ll find a means to advance me. Let everything be said against Sir Walter, Sue, and not his greatest opponent could ever say he was unmindful of his friends.”

“And Lord Henry Howard?”

“Oh, impossible! I could not work for such a man.” I told her of the interview. “In effect he offered less than Sir Walter. Not a secretaryship but some sort of an irregular employment for unknown purposes. To write letters in Spanish. To convey other letters though not, I think, to Spain; to … I think he said to Scotland. It was all so veiled, so indirect. I only know that I was asked to be a party to some conniving, though he wouldn’t say in what direction that conniving was pointed.”

“He was suggesting something dishonest?”

“I don’t know. It was hard to say. Clearly he was testing me, trying out the way I responded … But even if his offer were better, I could not take it.”

“Why? “

“He is Ralegh’s bitterest enemy.”

“Ralegh has many enemies. They are not all bad men because of it.”

“Also he has some sort of contact with Spain that I dislike and distrust. He had heard of something events which had happened to me in Spain that no one, I thought, in England could know. It may not be a treasonable connection but it must be illicit.”

“The Earl of Essex has his own informants all over Europe. It could well be so with Lord Henry and his cousins.”

I got up restlessly. “You should see him. He’s surrounded by long-haired boys. I grant he has taste and learning, but they are so smeared over with a kind of personal corrosive that they seem to impair what they touch …”

“What was the outcome of it all? Did you refuse what he offered? “

“It was easier just to come away. I’ll just not write to him.”

“He asked you to write?”

“If I was interested I was to write in January. There was no hurry, he said. I thought in the meantime he might try to find out more about me.”

She was folding and refolding a pleat in her dress. After a time I said: “Don’t you see how impossible it would have been, Sue? To have accepted any position under this man. Yet there was no position at all, only a promise of intermittent em

- ployment. What is more, there would not even be accommoda tion in his house. We should have to live in lodgings or a house of our own. What he would pay me would be useless, to maintain us in such a way.”

“In that perhaps I could have helped.”

“Do you mean you’ve inherited more than you thought?”

“What I have, little as it is, would maintain us a year. To be at the centre, at the heart of things, as you would be there, that would be the great advantage.”

“This man is repulsive to me, Sue.”

She got up. “Darling Maugan, are you sure that part of the dislike is not prejudice because you so admire Ralegh? Even before you met Lord Henry, were you not taking the other side?”

“It is not only that. Believe me.”

“Then we are back at nothing, where we began?”

“Not at nothing, if we love each other.”

She sighed.

“What is it?” I asked.

“You know I love you, Maugan …”

“I believe that you do.”

“But life has made me practical. Love flourishes where man and wife flourish. If I say more of this now you’ll think me mean and calculating “

“No! “

“Which in a sense will be true. So let us leave it for the time … You can stay a day or two?”

“Until John returns I’m needed at Arwenack. But I can come back. Sue, why is it not possible to take Sir Walter’s offer? There’s nothing equivocal about that “

“And live with the servants?”

That stopped me. I looked at her. “I’m not treated as a menial. I eat with them. At nights I sit with them except when there is some exceptional guest. Lady Ralegh is a remarkable person; I know she would take to you. There’s nothing truly menial about the position … But even if there were … Sir Walter stands at the Queen’s right hand. A word from him can find me much greater preferment than I can ever get from the half-Catholic Howards “

“And how long will he be at the Queen’s right hand, Maugan? And how long will the Queen live, Maugan? Everything that he has and is comes from her … In any case, as I have said before, Sir Walter and his friends live a strange life. There is no settled way for his followers, no stability; they for ever adventure in strange lands, or soldier in Ireland, or fight battles at sea. Look at those who have already died.”

“There’s no sureness in the world. All I want is to serve a man, someone not side-sexed, someone “

She put her fingers on my lips and I stopped to kiss them. “Maugan, we shall never see this the same. But it’s stupid to quarrel. We must find a way. Let’s sleep on it tonight.”

“Sue, there was one other thing. Lord Henry had Henry Arundell’s letter before him. From it, or in some way, he had gathered that Mr Arundell had hopes of marriage. I hope it was not marriage to you.”

She smiled slightly. “Yes.”

“He asked you to marry him? What did you say?”

“What could I say7 No, of course.”

“Oh, God, I am so deeply in love with you that the smallest danger looms like a cliff … Did you tell him about me?”

“No. It was unnecessary. At present he entertains feelings of friendship for you. Let that go on as long as it can.”

I kissed her again. “Little schemer.”

She stared at me soberly.

“Yes, Maugan. Yes.”

I stayed all the next day just to be in her company.

In the afternoon I had word alone with Thomas who had been out hawking with a halfdozen servants and came out from the stables breathing steam into the still December air.

“You know, do you, that I am thinking of betrothing Bridget Mobun of Hall?”

“I’d heard something of it.”

“They’re a good family, the Mohuns, no hysteria about them, well set with property, and protestant of temperament. Bridget’s a fine handsome girl. Good firm breasts and round thighs; I like plenty. Though God knows once on a time I’d have thrown it all away for that strip Susanna Reskymer. Bridget’s got the figure and the money too. Her father came in for much of the property forfeited by these recusants.”

“I’m happy for you.”

He stared at me. “I doubt if you’d ever be happy for me in any good fortune … However we won’t press that. I used to think you had eyes for Susanna yourself in the old days. D’you still fancy her?”

“She’s almost too recently a widow for the thought to have arisen.”

“Well, you’d be lucky if you got her now. I must say I’ve given her one or two backward glances myself. She’s not as well found as Bridget but she’s pretty warm with all these holdings in west Cornwall and on the Devon border.”

“Most of the property is entailed.”

“Who told you that?”

“She did.”

“Ah, well, that’s a little female delicacy; take it with a pinch of salt. I think from the sound of it you’ve lost her, Maugan. If you want her, I hope you have.”

One of the grooms came to take the hooded hawk from his wrist.

“I own all this now,” Thomas said. “I told you I should; Jonathan never had the makings of an old man. I told you there was a curse on us. But by God it’s missed me, and I’m going to step away from under it so soon as ever I can. Within five years the Arundells’ll be out of Tolverne even if I have to burn it down! “

“And your family?”

“Gertrude will marry again, no doubt of it; Jonathan has not squeezed all the juice out of her, and her father has money and connections. Elizabeth … I would not be astonished if she went to France or Italy and entered a convent. As for my mother she can go back and live at Godolphin. Or no doubt if she chooses we can find room for her when I found my own line … But not these other old wrecks who drift in and out of the house, hangers-on: aunts and cousins and bastards and the like.”

I was no longer simple enough to take up this insult.

We went in. “What’s it like at Arwenack these days?” he asked, peering at me with his broad white grin. “Not quite the usual robber’s lair? Your father has had his wings clipped at last. Are you another doomed house?”

I took my lead from Sue that day and talked of other things. She talked of the rebuilding of Paul Church, of Philip’s sister, Amelia, who had invited her to stay with her in Pancras near London, of her mother who was not happy in her secor!d marriage.

I was to leave the following morning at ten. We broke our fast while light was still pushing through the thick spears of the cypress trees. The day was fine with a wintry sunlight, and after I had been to see that my horse was ready I walked back to the house and met Sue coming out to look for me. We walked down to the river.

Thus in silence until we came out on the small stone quay where I and the Killigrew children had tied up that day nearly six years ago when this had all begun. I brushed soil off the stone bench and we sat on it looking out over the river. She was wearing a violet-coloured cloak with the hood thrown back.

She said: “Maugan …”

“Yes?”

“You truly believe that I love you?”

“It’s a never ceasing joy to realise it.”

“Then that gives me a right a different right from anyone else to ask favours of you?”

“Yes.”

“I have thought so much of what you told me of London.

If we are to be married in February, then somehow our lives at least to begin must be based on one of those interviews.”

“There might be other ways.”

“Not well. You could stay at Arwenack, but that is hardly feasible if we married. Henry Arundell might find some employment for you, but the stewardship is gone, and knowing how he feels about me I can hardly ask him more favours for you.”

“No, I grant that. Then “

“If we go to London without any prospect or recommendation I think we should quickly fail. So that leaves Sir Walter’s offer and Lord Henry’s.”

“If you put it that way.”

“How else can I put it? And here is the problem. You want to accept Sir Walter’s offer which I see as menial and unworthy of your gifts. I want you to accept Lord Henry’s, which you greatly despise.”

I stared at her. “You really wish me to work for such a man?”

“I want you to accept his offer. He must have taken a very great liking to you or he would not have made it. I’ve heard he is a shrewd judge of character. There are not lacking likely young men anxious to be taken up by the most powerful family in England. Must one’s personal feeling come into this? Must you necessarily admire whom you serve?”

“Not admire. But surely respect, else one loses one’s self respect. Henry Howard is a dangerous man. No good could come of being at his beck and call.”

“Try it and see. Such a steadfast person as you is hardly likely to be contaminated in a matter of months. You would come to know many men other opportunities would arise.”

I looked out over the river, which was a deep oily green. The mass of trees on both banks grew so low that at high tide many of the branches dipped in the water. The undergrowth was dense and few men penetrated it.

“I could not, Sue. You ask me not to go back to Ralegh. Well, I can agree to that if you’re set against it. I can agree not to follow Ralegh. But I cannot go from him to one of his bitterest enemies. That would be a betrayal.”

She got up. “Have we not really got to the truth of it now, Maugan? Isn’t that really why you will not work for Henry Howard? Ralegh has you under a spell, and you carmot or win not break away.”

I wondered at the tone of her voice; there was such feeling in it.

“For you I’ll break away from Ralegh; I’ve said so; but I will not be an instrument for attacking him.”

“Who says he’ll be attacked? And if attacked, who says the Howards will do it? What of Essex? What of Cecil? What of a hundred others? Don’t you know how he’s thought of in London and at Court? He’s the best hated man in England.”

“Yet among his own people he excites hero worship.”

“Which is what has happened to you ~ “

“Oh, no. I don’t see him as a hero … He has many faults but also a greatness t I would not follow him blindly. But for me he stands above other men.”

The sun was obscured by a cloud shaped like a dog. The water darkened and a breeze moved over it, ruffling the surface.

“Do you mean you will serve no other but him?”

“Of course not. It is only Henry Howard I’ll not serve.”

“Not even for me?”

“I don’t believe you will ask me.”

“I have asked you.”

“Then I must say no.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

All the way home I puzzled over Sue’s hostility towards Ralegh. It exceeded logic, and in her was therefore to be wondered at. All the rest was reasonable enough, no doubt, if looked on from her point of view. She saw the Howards as the vastly influential family that they were, Sir Walter as an upstart who sooner or later might come to no good. But I could not understand the tone of her voice. That was not logic.

There had been no reconciliation between us before I left, nor any promise of a further meeting. There must be some compromise which could be reached, but just at present we were both too heated to give way.

The gate was well guarded today. Long Peter gave me the news that John and his bride were home.

I had it out with them in the big withdrawing chamber that night.

The room was without carpet; the good chairs had gone and been replaced by stools from the kitchens. The table remained because it was so heavy. Candles burned in cheap sticks, a fire flickered with green logs.

Young Jane Killigrew occupied the one good chair and warmed her hands at the fire. She wore a carnation-coloured dress of figured velvet, with over it a cloak of fine watered chamlet. It had cost a deal of money. Her jet black hair hung like curtains beside a stage, and the stage was a milk-white face coloured with two dabs of red ochre, small fierce eyes, a precise well-shaped mouth, all attention as I talked.

“Let’s not waste time in recrimination. I was back in time to save something, but the house is as you see it. In another day they’d have been in Mrs Killigrew’s and Lady Killigrew’s bedrooms. These and four others which Meg Stable had the forethought to lock were the only rooms untouched. Even the old aunts have lost some things. They snatched a bracelet from Miss Wolverstone’s wrist and took Aunt Mary’s clock and outdoor shoes.”

“A bag of mine is gone,” said Jane. “It contained a penknife, a bodkin and my seal. The servants must be whipped for ever permitting it.”

“The servants have more respect for the law than we have. They couldn’t interfere. What right had I to? Only the right of a sword.”

“And a temper,” said Jane. “One of these days it will lead you into trouble, brotherin-law.”

“There’ll be trouble now unless we move to prevent it.”

“How?” said John.

“Why should we move to prevent your trouble, brother-inlaw? “

“Because it is yours too, sister-in-law. Don’t think I’m bearing the burden of this house further than I need. It’s John’s and yours. So long as my father is in prison John is master of this house, and the privilege bears the responsibilities along with it. John “

“Yes, Maugan, I know,” he said irritably. “But there’s little I can do beyond what you have done “

“There’s something your wife can do.”

“Ah,” said Jane. “I thought brotherin-law might soon come to that.”

“It can’t be avoided. Examine the situation for yourself.”

John got up and sat on the edge of the table. Even so short a time of marriage had greatly matured him, but it had not given him resilience. “What do you want us to do?”

“Well, if we do nothing the creditors will come back. I shall be in the greatest trouble for putting them out the first time; but don’t consider that. Consider only that what is left in the house will be taken, our fields and barns stripped. Expect no quarter from any of them, for your father gave none when he had the whip hand. All will go, sister-in-law. You may be able to defend your own gowns and jewels, but I wouldn’t rely on it. We are fortunate to have been given this breathing space of a few days.”

“Well,” said Jane. “What do you want me to do?”

“It may not be too late to buy them off.”

“I doubt it.”

“Most creditors will withhold from snatching goods worth a tenth of their debt if they are offered cash of a value of a fifth, with some promise of later payment.”

“And what do you suppose this will cost?”

“Perhaps a thousand pounds.”

Jane watched me with narrowed, concentrated eyes. Then she laughed once, harshly, and got up to kick at a log. “You must be a fool, brotherin-law.”

“Well, that’s as you think. You might stave off the most importunate with eight hundred.”

“I haven’t eight hundred shillings.”

“Your father has. It’s yours in a year or two.”

“Damn the logs: why don’t they split ‘em! We always have ‘em split: it gives a face for the fire to eat at … My father will not waste my dowry on salvaging the debts of old men who should have known better.”

“I would not offer comment on that. Except to say, he must have had some notion of John Killigrew’s debts when he contracted the marriage. After all, he traded did he not an ancient name for a newer name with gold to it.”

“That is insolence, brotherin-law. Offensive insolence.”

“Well, express it how you will, that’s what it adds up to. However, the money we are considering now is not to salvage your father-in-law from prison. It is to keep your own home with some sticks of furniture in it and food and wine in the kitchen. If you begrudge that then you must let the creditors rampage, and learn to live in the loft over the barn.”

“Your voice spills as much contempt as fermenting beer in a cask.” She picked up her pipe from the table beside the fireplace and began to fill it from a linen bag. “I don’t know. I will have to consider the matter. After all…”

“After all what?” said John.

“These debtors have no rights over our personal property yours and mine. And since the only property I have here is personal I should lose nothing. Bucklan and Skinner would stand guard and he would be a bold man who passed them.”

“My mother is likely to be stripped of everything.”

“And she is pregnant again,” I said.

A twitch of distaste went over Jane’s face; almost the first true emotion I had seen there this evening. She stared down at the pipe, her big fingers turning it round and round.

“And you expect my father to protect ten Killigrews for the sake of cushioning me? It’s a notion he is not likely to be delighted with.”

“It’s a notion I think you should put to him.”

She glanced at John. “And you, husband?”

He shrugged. “You know that I would like it.”

I said: “To send a message to your father and back will take the better part of two weeks. We are unlikely to be undisturbed that long. Is there any money you have which would keep these men at bay until then?”

“D’you think I have a gold mine in my pocket? Or what do you think?”

“That a boat is being built for you in Penryn. That you may have resources we know nothing of.”

It was a remark made at random, without any pre-knowledge, so I was surprised to see her look at me with a darting suspicion. “I’ve some small money of my own, fellow. Not enough to satisfy you or these creditors … Very well, I will write to my father.”

She turned the bole of the pipe over towards a candle flame and drew at the stem; she moved back as the pipe caught, inhaled, and let a column of smoke escape from pursed lips. “If I renew some of these miserable bills, it will be on condition that I have more to say in the ordering of this house.”

John said in a controlled voice: “This is not a market where bargains are struck. There have been too many such already.”

“Well, this is another, whether or no. First of all, I want a half of these mongrel curs destroyed. They breed and interbreed and stink out the house … Then I want a different system of feeding in the hall, so that we no longer have the servants slopping porridge into their own mouths while pretending to wait on us … And I want your grandmother out of her bedroom, which is the only one with space to live and windows looking two ways … And I want the children to dine at another hour so that one’s ears are not assaulted with the whine of babies and the chatter of others who should long ago have been taught silence … And I want Parson Merther’s endless prayers cut by the half … And I want …” She paused and looked at the bole of her pipe to see that it was glowing. “But you see … they are but modest demands.”

I waited for John to speak. He had slid off the corner of the table and was picking at some grease which had fallen from a candle. “I cannot turn my grandmother out of her room.”

“Give her ours. That will be a sensible exchange.”

“She she is near death. If we waited, it’s unlikely that we should have long to wait.”

“I understand she has been near death for five years. Surely her breathing will develop a worse turn if the debt collectors burst in and carry away her handsome rugs.” Jane smiled at me. “This is real tobacco, not wound-won. Now that I am out of Papa’s hands I have money enough at least for that.”

“They were talking in London,” I said, “of a man who smoked so much that after his death he was opened, and his lungs and veins were covered with soot like a chimney.”

John was walking up and down. “Jane, please consider; it would be the mortal insult you would offer to an old lady. She didn’t even give up that room to my mother. She must have used it for fifty years.”

“Well, have it as you please. I will not help without some satisfaction from the help. Really, John, you cannot expect me to.”

I said: “She who pays the piper calls the tune.”

“Yes, brotherin-law. I’m happy you agree.”

“I did not say I agreed. I’m only thankful that there are some among us who do not have to dance.”

Often it was hard to tell whether little Jane Killigrew was smiling or whether she was baring her teeth.

On Friday the three distinguished visitors arrived with an escort of servants: Sir Nicholas Parker, a handsome man in his forties; Sir Ferdinando Gorges, just turned 30, tall and full-coloured with a west-country voice reminiscent of Ralegh’s; Paul Ivey, spectacled, narrow shouldered. The first two men were distinguished soldiers, Sir Nicholas having been master of Ordnance for the forces in France, Sir Ferdinando captain and keeper of the castle and fort at Plymouth.

While we were supping I saw Jane eyeing Sir Nicholas Parker appreciatively. More than once when he spoke her metallic little laugh rang out, and before the end of the meal his deference to her was marked with a cynical regard. Henry Knyvett had come over from Rosemerryn, but he had already drunk much when he arrived; his long, loose-pointed, knock-kneed figure, the skull cap over the long grey hair, the increasing deafness, were no help to any party, and the task of entertaining the three guests fell on John and on me.

It was Gorges’s ship Maybird which had narrowly escaped capture when Peter of Anchusen was lost, and he took a great interest in my stay in Spanish prisons, for at the age of 21 he had himself been captured by one of the ships of the first Armada and had spent a year in captivity before being ransomed. A relative of Ralegh’s and as passionately interested in the idea of founding settlements overseas, he differed as to method being an advocate of a feudal type of rule in a colony, as against Ralegh’s belief in the equality of all men. Early on he had parted company from Sir Walter and chosen to follow Essex.

Before we left the table Sir Nicholas Parker fumbled in his cloak, which he had worn all through supper because of the draughts, and took out a sheet of parchment.

“This is something to your interest. It’s an order from the Privy Council which I’m commanded to deliver you.” He passed it to me.

The order appointed Sir Nicholas Parker governor and captain of Pendennis Castle in succession to J. Killigrew. Further, all J. Killigrew’s personal possessions and habiliment, if any, were to be removed from the castle and taken into his house of Arwenack, and thenceforward neither he nor his representatives were to have access to the castle or its defences.

When I had read it I passed it to John, who by right should have had it first. He read it slowly with Jane frowning ‘over his shoulder and trying to spell out the words. When he had done he got up and handed the parchment back across the table.

“You come on no friendly mission, Sir Nicholas.”

“I come as a servant of the Crown. I obey orders, Mr Killigrew.”

“Then we must do the same.” He bowed but continued to stand. The other men one by one had to stand also, Sir Nicholas Parker the last, and the supper broke up icily.

The next morning John and I and Carminow and Foster went up to the castle to receive from the officer such posses signs as Mr Killigrew had left and we could lay claim to. Paul Ivey was already at work, spectacled and earnest, taking measurements and levels. Soon teams of horses and gangs of men would be at work tearing up the rocks and the trees and putting into effect his designs for reconstruction. We walked back in silence, each one of us perhaps reflecting on the end of an era nearly sixty years of Killigrew governance. Sic transit…

I went in to Truro to collect a debt that my father had told me was owing from Chudleigh Michell’s brother. On the way, out of curiosity, I passed Katherine Footmarker’s cottage and was startled to see it no longer there, instead a black patch on the grass, the two trees burned half way up their gnarled trunks. John Michell said:

“She was drove out in September. She had an evil eye. She went west, towards Penryn. Then two weeks since she come back … When twas spread about, this news, there was a nasty feeling in the town. A score of men and women went for her wi’ sticks and stones. She was just away in time, black dog an’ all. She must have been hit but she outdistanced ‘em. They set fire to the house, thinking twas the safest way of securing themselves against ill.”

I licked my lips. “Which way did she go this time?”

“She was seen in St Erme, heading east. I reckon she’ve left for good, and that’s as it should be. I haven’t the strong feelings Chudleigh has for such as she, but there’s much palsy and scrofula about, and who knows where it d’ come from.”

Before I left Truro I called on another old woman whom Footmarker had named as a friend. The woman could tell me little, except that Footmarker had often spoken of a niece in Bristol. No doubt she was now making for Bristol. But it was a bad time of year.

The river at Truro is so forked that except by a great detour there is no way to Tolverne except by crossing the ferry …

Sue was with Lady Arundell when I arrived. It took me half an hour to get her alone. Then wisely I did not try to take her in my arms but sat talking quietly, telling her of what had passed since we last met.

I could feel her restraint going. In another ten minutes we were just as close as we had ever been. I told her about Katherine Footmarker; for there was a sense of guilt and disarray in my emotions now. What seemed a justifiable act in expolling her from the house had become magnified and out of shape.

Presently a long silence fell. It would have been restful for me if I had not felt something still tense in her manner.

“Maugan, I have some news for you.”

“Tell me.”

“You know I have been invited to go and stay with Philip’s sister near London. I’ve decided to accept.”

“You mentioned it. It will be a good experience. But will you be away long?”

“It rather depends on you.”

“Then let it be as short as possible.”

“But I thought you might come to London in January too … We could if we wanted be married there.”

“Oh, my dear, gladly! If that’s your news … We seem to have been separated for a lifetime “

“No, that’s not my news. But perhaps I need not ever tell it you. Maugan, what I plan is that I shall stay with Amelia Reskymer. I could have the banns called in that parish. If you if you felt you could take the position Henry Howard offers you I could advance you sufficient money to set up in some small house, and we could be married in middle February. It might be necessary later in the year to return here to settle up Philip’s estate, but we could look on London as our permanent home.”

It was queer that one came to her full of determination to sweep away all petty divisions. But the nature of our love seemed to emphasise it, as the sun will a chasm.

“Darling Sue, I know how you feel. But let me put another suggestion. Have you enough money to maintain us for six months? “

“Without your earning? Perhaps.”

“Lady Godolphin told me that Philip had left you very substantial property.”

She fingered back her black fringe. “I’ve told you. Almost all was entailed.”

“Lady Godolphin said Mr Mark Reskymer was complaining that it was not.”

“Mark would always complain, even if one cottage went out of the family. But do you prefer to believe Lady Godolphin’s word to mine?”

I met a gaze suddenly glinting. “Of course not. In any case whatever you have is yours to do with as you will. My suggestion is that if you could support us for six months without consuming all the money you have, it would give me an opportunity to look about before committing myself.”

She smiled. “You would have committed yourself in February by marrying me.”

“I commit myself only to marrying the woman I love. Not to serving a man I despise.”

“Would not one compensate you for the other?”

“To marry you I’d scavenge in the waste-bins of Bedlam. And be happy to do it. I only ask that our first months of marriage should not be be tainted by a feeling that I have had to to compromise, to counterfeit … It’s a feeling of buying what is most precious with what is debased.”

I got up, angry again, part with her, part with myself. In the middle of speaking I had been seized with the realisation of all the submissions I had made in Spain merely to stay alive. Now I was straining at this less important one. Fundamentally, what had I got against Lord Henry Howard? What was the objection except sheer obstinacy? He was intelligent, able, subtle, artistic. Was it my repugnance which was really counterfeit?

Yet the earlier compromises I had made in Spain, instead of making this more easy, got in the way of it, hurting and tormenting and pushing me towards a defensive anger. And was this one less important? Before I had been prepared to bargain with the enemy. It was much harder to bargain with the girl I loved.

She had stood up too.

I said: “What was the news you had for me?”

“You’ll not like it, Maugan. Thomas has asked me to marry him.”

This window looked over the back of the house, and in the yard outside a servant was splitting logs with a beetle and a wedge. It was a monotonous but irregular sound and hollow, like a spade on a coffin.

“And you said?”

“I said I would give him my answer in January.”

“You said you told him nothing about us?”

“Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“It seemed better. There was no hurry.”

“Better? Better for whom? … Sue, this confounds me. I I …”

“I’m sorry.”

The room had become short of air. “Thomas … the man you have always avoided, disliked. This doesn’t make sense. He’s almost committed to Bridget Mobun.”

“He’ll betroth her next month if I refuse him.”

“If you refuse him? God in Heaven! Sue, look at me: what are you saying? What are you doing to me?”

But she kept her head averted. “I thought first I should not tell you. But then …”

“Sue, do you love me?”

“You know I do.”

“But this you must mean something else by love than I do … Do you mean you haven’t yet decided anything? That all this talk of …”

“No, I mean it all, but I’ll not go into marriage with you, Maugan, unless you can offer me some security, some hope of advancement. I’ve told you often before that my life at home has left me with some moral scar. The penury, the anxiety, the drudgery, the hand-to-mouth living, the illnesses … All these have made me resolve … My life with Philip, instead of making me bolder, has made me more afraid. Sometimes I think I’m not the right wife for you. You need someone with greater strength of purpose, who’ll not shrink from hardship or ”

“I need you. No one else.”

“You need me because you love me. It does not follow that my temperament is right for yours. Or my character “

“Sue, I can’t understand this. I’m sorry. I thought you hated Thomas l “

“I never hated him. He has become a more mature person of late. I don’t love him “

“But you’d marry him?”

“How many marriages are based on love? Do they all fail? I am under some pressure …”

“Pressure! What in God’s name do you mean by that?”

“Perhaps it’s the wrong word. Mark Reskymer has tried to persuade me to it because the Reskymers and the Arundells have been linked once before, and the property would stay within the family. And of course, though I don’t love Thomas, I’m bound by ties of affection to Elizabeth and Gertrude, and also to Lady Arundell. This for long has been my second home. I know it and love it.”

“And you would trade that for a marriage with someone …” I shook my head to try to clear it. “Does Lady Arundell know of this?”

“Not yet.”

“You said years ago that she’d never allow Thomas to marry you because you were penniless. I suppose that no longer follows.”

“Of course I’d be a less good match for him than Bridget Mohun. But we’re both older now. She could not stop Thomas if he wanted to marry me. I don’t think she would wish to.”

“So what is your price? What are your terms?”

I stared at her with a sheer hostility that it was impossible to hide. For the first time she flushed.

“Well,” she said, “now you see me as I am. Last time you were here you called me a schemer and I did not deny it. I scheme for everything for my comfort, my happiness and yours.”

“Mine ~ “

“Yes, for it’s better to break with me now than to leave this discovery until too late. I’m not a monster as you clearly think; but I am logical … and determined. In all things I weigh one thing against another and then decide. Even in marriage. Even in love. If that revolts you as it clearly does then it is better to leave me and go.”

My fist kept clenching and unclenching until it hurt.

“What is your price?”

“Do you mean on what conditions will I agree to marry you? But do you still want me to?” Tears were glinting in her eyes.

“At least permit me to know the terms.”

“You make it sound at its worst … I’ll marry you, Maugan, if you undertake to accept employment with Lord Henry Howard for at least one year and at the end of that time allow me to decide if it shall be for a second.”

“Anything else?”

“Nothing else.”

“Are you not better advised to play safe with an Arundell?”

“Yes. But I’ll take that chance.”

“The eldest son of the house now. He’s not rich, I know, but his father was knighted. He may well be. And you have a better home than I could ever provide.”

“Who knows what you can yet provide?”

“Some day possibly you’ll be Lady Arundell. Better than a marriage to a base son of the Killigrews, who as a family are in any event bankrupt and destitute. You must be logical enough to realise you’d be ill-advised even to consider me.”

She blinked away the tears on her lashes. “But there is logic in considering you, Maugan. First, I want to marry you, not Thomas. There is logic in considering one’s own wishes … Second, I believe that if you have the opportunity you will travel farther than he will.”

In the silence I licked my lips. “Oh, Sue, I came to this meeting in such joy and hope. Now there’s a taste to it all that makes me want to retch.”

She turned away. “If that’s how you feel, I can say nothing more.”

“What more can you say?”

“Perhaps T can say, don’t decide now. Especially if it’s against me. Think it over. Go away, spend Christmas at Arwenack, come and tell me before I leave for London. It will not be until after Twelfth Night.”

The man outside had loaded a wheelbarrow with the split wood and was wheeling it towards the shed. A sleek grey boarhound came to lick at his heels and he impatiently kicked it away; but in so doing he upset his barrow so that half the wood rolled on the cobbles. Was there some wry metaphor in this for me?

Sue had picked up an old doll with a grey dusty face and was turning it over, smoothing out the crumpled musty skirt. I stared at her unbelieving. I felt like one of the men I had stabbed at Cadiz surprised, incredulous. Was this his warm blood?

Whatever I did or said now, my relationship with Sue would never be the same again.

She looked up through her lashes. “You have no further use for me?”

“No. Not that.”

“Will you think it over, Maugan? Think if it is so much that I ask.”

“Not that.” What we had disputed over seemed small and unimportant now. What she threatened. the fact that she was prepared to threaten, cast an immense shadow over all else.

“You will think it over?”

“I’ll think it over,” I said.

Before I left next morning I had agreed to her terms. But I had made one condition of my own. If I agreed, we were to be married by early February, no later.

I no longer trusted her to keep the bargain.

CHAPTER NINE

I told Dorothy Killigrew about Katherine Footmarker, and she shed a tear at the thought of not ever seeing her again. She had never looked on Footmarker as a witch but only as a friend gifted in healing. She had never feared her as stronger characters had feared her. She felt for her only the attraction I felt, untainted by the superstitious dread that in my case went with it.

In this new century of which I have now seen too much, with its rabid laws against witchcraft since the Stuartscame, and thousands at the very least a thousand persons every year burned, drowned or hanged on the flimsiest of suspicions, Dorothy Killigrew’s tolerance towards Katherine Footmarker stands out like a harbour light in a storm.

While I had been away the transfer of authority over the castle had been completed and the three men had moved from the house. Captain Alexander remained the serving officer under Sir Nicholas Parker, but a hundred more of the troops were sent back to Plymouth. Ratcliffe and Challenor had returned together with two sheriff’s officers, determined to force an entry; but Jane had seen them and had paid them something to arrange for a forbearance of the bills. Where she had found the money no one knew least of all her husband but it had saved the day. Her threat of rearranging the household still hung over us.

Christmas Day passed misty and damp. Most of each day and night, under the ordinary business of living and sleeping, I thought of Sue. Sometimes I persuaded myself that her threat had been an idle one, that she had used it out of a mistaken determination to help me, yet with no intention of ever carrying it through. At others, I weighed the alternatives as she might weigh them and saw that if it were not that she preferred me if it could be put no higher than that Thomas Arundell was likely to be an easy winner. Then, suddenly coming out in a sweat, I would want to ride to Tolverne right away to be sure she would still have me.

I pondered much on her character, which had opened new petals or was it thorns? to me since our last meeting. One thing was quite clear, however much she might deny it: Philip Reskymer had left her a wealthy woman. Though Thomas might prefer to marry Susanna Reskymer, he would never have considered throwing away an alliance with the powerful Mohuns for a penniless widow. Sue had been confident too that Lady Arundell would raise no great objection.

Why then had she repeatedly lied to me? Because she wanted still to have the excuses of poverty for marrying Thomas? Because she could not allow me to feel independent of money lest I put up an even greater resistance to accepting the offer of Lord Henry Howard?

What was behind her insistence on my taking this employment? A chance connection with the family endorsed by childhood memories? The singleness of mind of a person far distant from London and knowing only one important name, having only one recommendation? An obsession with security, a determination to build from a known foundation?

Perhaps I was reading too much calculation into what she thought and did. Perhaps instinct and feminine illogicality warred with her cool objective brain so that, seeking her reasons from the outside, one over-simplified them, seeing them as single lines where they should be as complex as a Hariot equation.

Yet, whatever motives were sought or excuses found, she emerged as a formidable character, intent with the sweet reasonableness of an unyielding determination on moulding her own life as she chose and if I consented moulding mine with it. She loved me after some fashion she had confidence in my abilities, she believed in me, and was willing to link her life with mine at a price. She was willing to trade her body, which I had possessed once and therefore could desire the more, for my compliance in occupation and direction. Sometimes I wondered if the fierce little animal my stepbrother had married was in fact less formidable for being so much more obvious.

On St Stephen’s Day Sir Ferdinando Gorges came down and over supper began to talk about Ralegh and the one brilliant action of the otherwise futile Azores voyage. Landing at Fayal with two hundred and fifty men under a murderous fire from twice that number of Spaniards, he had led an attack personally through the surf and captured the beach, then when his men held back from attempting the heavily defended fortress town, he had led the way staff in hand and wearing no armour but his gorges. Accompanied by one officer and followed by only ten men, he had limped without haste a mile up the rocky slope, while bullets tore his clothing, the other officer was wounded and two men lost their heads. When he reached the fort the rest of his troops, seeing him still alive, took heart and followed, and in an hour the town was taken.

I had been quite unable to understand Sue’s animosity towards Sir Walter; but in the light of her ultimatum certain suspicions began to take root while Gorges talked. Sir Walter was the only person who competed with her in my deepest admiration and in influence. It did not matter that the competition should be of a different kind. She wanted a clear field.

The next morning I received a letter from her brought down the river by a fisherman. It said:

“My love,

You have promised to marry me, on my terms, but I know think harshly of me for it. I have never claimed to be a good person or an admirable one, and if you have thought me so it has grown out of the goodness of your own thoughts. So I will still release you if you wish.

But remember this, Maugan: I want only your welfare; I love only you, and if we marry I will be faithful to you and a true wife until death us do part.

Susanna.”

That day, in a revulsion of feeling, I wrote to Lord Henry Howard telling him I would be happy to accept the employment he had so graciously offered, and I would be in London by mid-January, when I hoped I might have the honour of waiting upon him.

I remained his humble and obedient servant, Maugan Killigrew.

Thanks to Gorges I was able to send the letter in the military bag. I also wrote to Sue telling her what I had done.

Dorothy Killigrew, given the information that I would be leaving in early January to marry Sue in London, said would I escort my sister Odelia as far as Totnes when I left?

“She is the last of the older children, Maugan, and it is hardly right that she should be left here at this time; the rest are all so young that they will grow up together and not notice the change. At Totnes your father’s sister, Lady Billingsley, has offered to take her. It will be good for her to get away.”

At nights I woke and thought of Sue in the same house as Thomas. Not that she was in any physical danger from him I realised now how capable she was of caring for herself but the material temptation was there. How long would she allow her head to be swayed by her heart?

… Yet at a price she was still faithful to me. All through she had been, after her own fashion. If I took her down off the pedestal on which my idealism had placed her, and saw her as a human being, fallible and errant, could I not learn to be grateful for this fidelity? By how much did I deserve more?

On Innocents’ Day two more creditors arrived and were again bought off by Jane Killigrew. Afterwards she said to me: “You will be seeing your father at Westminster?”

“I think so.”

“Then let me warn you, brotherin-law. I am paying some money here to buy in my own and John’s convenience. Let it not be supposed by you or your father or any of your ilk that I’m proposing to meet the generality of his debts. I am giving it out to his creditors here that he has been seized by his London creditors and will never return to these parts to the end of his days. So far it has served. But if your father lets it be known there is money to be had down here, I swear to you he will kill the goose that lays even this small egg for him.”

“I’II not tell him.”

“In the meantime my man Bucklan has been going through the details of John’s estate here “

“Of Mr Killigrew’s estate, you mean.”

“Yes, well, but prisons are not long-lived places … there is, it seems, in spite of your father’s extravagances about œ1,000 a year left to this estate. It will be necessary for him to give John a warrant of attorney, which he should have done before he went to London. Will you see to that?”

“I’ll see that is put to him.”

“Be sure he looks at it in the proper light. He can never be clear of debt, but many of his debts will die with him. If his children are not to starve in the gutter, the little money coming in to him must be conserved in some way and not altogether thrown after the rest.”

“I’ll not quarrel with that. But would you do me a favour, Jane? “

She raised pencilled eyebrows. “What could you want from me? “

“I learn that your demand for Lady Killigrew’s bedroom is to be delayed a week or two. May I ask that your reduction in the number of our dogs be also left until after I’m gone?”

“You have a weak stomach? I should never have guessed it.” “Oh, I agree that the house is overrun. But most of the dogs I know by name and I’d prefer not to see old friends slaughtered.”

“Not slaughtered, I think to put them in the harbour and see if they can swim to St Mawes.”

She had turned the curtains of her hair to me, so that now I could see little of her face.

“Perhaps you would like to do that with the children also.”

She laughed gently. “What a monster you think me, brotherin-law …”

“In jest of course.”

She nodded. “Naturally. In jest. But it would be pleasant to live with a man who has no illusions even in jest.”

I said: “There’s always someone towards whom we are blind.”

That night Lady Killigrew struggled miraculously down to supper. The occasion was the visit of Hannibal Vyvyan from St Mawes Castle. He still remained in control there, and had come over uneasily to consult with Sir Nicholas Parker on the new arming of Pendennis. Night fell before he could leave, so he supped and would sleep with us. Hannibal Vyvyan had long been a friend of Lady Killigrew and was always very gallant towards her.

She had been so long dying that there seemed something uncanny in her appearance tonight, as if a ghost supped with us. Yet, emaciated and haggard as she was, and huddled in a great white cloak, she could temporarily breathe and a very mordant breath it was.

We ate a Banbury cheese towards the end of supper; it was one that Vyvyan himself had brought; and he said he had carried a similar one up to the castle, where it had been well received.

“So it would be,” said Lady Killigrew. “They lack up there all the refinements of life and ride roughshod over our rights and privileges.”

Parson Merther said: “I don’t know if it has been noticed but the rough soldiers passing our gate tower this forenoon flung mud all across our coat-of-arms. It stuck and dried but has not fallen off. I would have gone out to report them but knew my mission useless.”

‘Q‘11 go up in the morning,” said John. “It’s intolerable that we should be so insulted I ”

Lady Killigrew said: “It may be that the soldiers were saluting the disgrace that has come on our house. We should not quarrel with them for expressing what we all know!“

“Oh, come, my lady,” said Vyvyan. “It is not so bad as that. We all suffer misfortune from time to time. In the end the strong and steadfast will prevail.”

Lady Killigrew took a trembling gulp of canary. “Strong and steadfast, Mr Vyvyan? These are commodities which do not exist in the Killigrew family. Or have not among the men in the fifty years I have known them. Strong it may be in seeking their own pleasure, steadfast perhaps in ignoring all else. Well … this is where it has led us ~ “

“Your son has been unfortunate, madam …” Mr Vyvyan began to mutter polite excuses, but his voice was swept away in the flood of the old woman’s bitterness.

“All is lost now yet it has not been lost by too strict adherence to a set of principles. Oh, no. Oh, dear no. Some great families have risen and fallen for a cause. The only cause we have held to has been self-interest and we have fallen just the same, but the more ignobly because of it. I tell you there has never been a Killigrew who had not been willing to trim his sails to the latest breeze, to turn his coat if another were more in favour … But for all, it has done us no good. No good at all. There is a weak, self-indulgent streak in us, my friend, and not my blood, nor little Dorothy’s, nor that termagant who has just left the room, can stiffen it to fight or die for any principles at all not religion, not family, not Queen, not country ~ “

An embarrassed silence fell. She hunched her cloak against the cold airs and looked like an old white cormorant waiting for the fish to rise.

“Mary, I think you will upset yourself,” said old Mistress Wolverstone. “You should retire to bed.”

“Retire? I will retire to my grave soon enough to rest beside my husband, who was perhaps the best of a poor litter. Not that his brothers haven’t done better than he did. They have stuck close to the Queen and forever said: ‘Yes, your majesty.’ ~No, your majesty,’ and run at her beck and call. So they have big houses in London and are excused their debts.”

“Ah, perhaps soon she will forbear towards your son, ma’am. No doubt she has been ill-advised “

“Killigrew.” said my grandmother broodingly. “Know you what the name means, Mr Vyvyan? The Grove of Eagles. A two-headed eagle is our crest. Where are the eagles, I ask you! My son has bred as fertile as a parson, but I see no eagles among his breed. This bastard of his has more spread of wing than any of the true ones.”

It might have been appropriate to thank her for this compliment had she not been looking at me with such obvious dislike.

I said: “I think you expect too much too soon, grandmother. Because I am not true born I have had more liberty. Give them time.”

“Time is a commodity in which I am getting low. Deeds are of today. Promises are as fickle as next year’s harvest.” She crooked a finger like a talon at the parson down the table. “Merther, I will go up now. Give me your hand …”

When she had gone and the others had risen I walked out on my own for a breath of air before bed.

An unfair estimate, that of an old and sick woman whose temperament for years had leaned towards the melancholic. Killigrews had fought for the Lancastrian cause; they had had difficult times under Mary and one at least had lived in exile during her reign. Yet there was a ring of truth about a part of her accusation. Most of them lived on the surface of life, like fish snapping at passing flies. And when they got hooked they were deeply injured men, harshly done to by the world.

Illegitimacy had not saved me from this prevailing flaw.

On the steps below the gate-tower leading to our quay a man was fishing; it was Dick Stable. I sat with him for a while. It was a chill night but my cloak was proof against the light easterly wind. Dick had caught five mackerel and an eel. He told me he and Meg were thinking of looking for something in Penryn. There was a vacancy in the granite quarries, and she might work on a farm nearby.

“Quarry work is heavy work, Dick. Go slow on your decisions. Why must you leave here?”

“We may well get turned off, Master Maugan. We b’lieve the new Mrs Killigrew have no taking for the old servants; she d’ want new ones like the two she brought, see.”

“It’s not nice to feel you might go. Enough of my old friends have already left.”

“Well, you be leavin’ yourself, Master Maugan. There’ll be few enough to care whether we stay or go.”

I had no answer for that, so we sat a while in silence.

“You be leavin’ to marry, I’m told?”

There had always been a slight constraint between us, ever since he had challenged me about Meg, and although they seemed happy enough now I fancied there were little glances of anxiety from Dick whenever he saw me talking to his wife.

“Yes … Next month. Then for a while at least we shall live in London. It is Mistress Susanna Reskymer Farnaby that was. She came here once. I don’t suppose you will remember her.”

“Oh, yes, but I rightly do! Twas the Christmas of all the festivities, when I was Lord of Misrule.” He sighed. “Dear life, that seem a long time pastl How many year? Yes, I remember Mistress Farnaby slim she is, wi’ black hair and bright eyes. I trust, sur, you’ll be very ‘appy.”

“Thank you, Dick, I pray so.”

He put his line down and gathered the mackerel together. They glinted in the faint starlight like serpentine rock.

“Yes, I remember, twas the July twelvemonth following that I seen Mistress Farnaby in Truro. Twas the day after you come back from Spain when we’d all give ee up for dead. She were that glad to know different; that’s the last time I seer her. What year’d that be? Twould be ‘94. Dear life, tis nigl on four years I been married to Meg!”

The boat which had brought Hannibal Vyvyan across we. bobbing gently at the jetty below us. The water made little sibilant sounds like fish whispering.

I said: “You have your dates wrong there. It was July ‘94 when I came back.”

“Yes, sur, that’s what I said.”

“Then it could not have been July 1594 when you saw Mistress Farnaby.”

“Yes. Yes, twas. See. You came back on a Sunday eve. I mind it well. I been sharpening the scythes for the hay-making on the morrow. Then I went bed and twas Meg woke me to tell me you was in the ‘all safe and sound. Then the next day twas wet again you mind what a summer that was so Thomas Rosewarne he says, go you into Truro along wi’ Rose and get the axle pins for the old cart that broke down Saturday. So we went for the axle pins and in the end for a pile of other things the ladies wished for. When we come Truro the rain were lifting off a bit and I seen Mistress Farnaby stepping out o’ that little mercer’s there used to be alongside of the church. She were by herself, so, presumin’ as you might say, I takes off me cap and tells her you come horde safe and well the night aforel”

The last light went out in the fort across the river mouth.

All the coastline opposite was black. A cloud had moved up and only a faintest glimmer showed on the water.

“What did she say?”

“Oh, she were fair pleased. Quite overcome at first, I mind well, she was that startled, like. Then she were fair joyful to ‘ear you was back.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you’d met her?”

“Why, sir, I never thought. We was telling everyone! “

“Yes. I suppose you were.” I got up. There were lights in the house behind me, but I did not count them. “I think you must have made a mistake, Dick.”

“Please? “

“A mistake in identity …” I licked my lips. “Or someone has made a mistake. Let us not talk about it any more.”

CHAPTER TEN

I went by river to Tolverne but she had just left for London. I did not see Thomas, who was out hunting.

Gertrude said: “She’ll be sorry to have missed you, Maugan, but you did not say you were coming, did you? I thought the understanding was that you were to meet in London.”

“Yes. Yes it was.”

“Is something wrong? Can I help in any way?”

“No … No, nothing’s wrong, Gertrude, thank you. I just came to see her.”

“Maugan, dear, I’m very happy for you both. She told me in confidence before she left.”

“Oh, she told you.”

“Yes. Should she not have?”

“No … But I thought she might not have.”

“You know did you know? that Thomas also asked her to marry him.”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad she chose as she did. But I don’t think there was any doubt, was there?”

“Who can say? Thomas has property and an assured position.”

“Oh. I think he’ll do big things; but he has not made an ideal brotherin-law and I would not wish to be his wife.”

“What shall you do now, Gertrude?”

“Stay here with Lady Arundell and Elizabeth until the spring. Then I shall go home for the summer. After that …” She shrugged.

“You’ll marry again, no doubt.”

“Oh … perhaps, some day. Marriage is such a lottery, Maugan.”

“Yes,” I said.

At Arwenack preparations now to leave quickly while there was still no room for second thoughts. To leave before the clash occurred between Jane and Lady Killigrew, before more creditors came with more legal sanctions, before the dogs were drowned. I was ready by the 10th but Odelia delayed and it was the 13th before we left.

I was glad of the preoccupation of having Odelia to look after. In leaving home she seemed as cool as the easterly wind that blew, but later in the day I saw tears on her cheeks. So at Totnes I spent an extra day with the Billingsleys in order that she should not feel too strange with them.

Thence to Sherborne no company but my own, no thoughts but my own. Grey thoughts they were, with a thread of scarlet.

I had come to see Sir Walter, but he was in London on some committee in Parliament. I supped and slept there, uncomfortable in answering Elizabeth Ralegh’s questions. George Chapman was there and Carew Ralegh and Lawrence Keymis. Keymis told me that although his voyage to Guiana in ‘96 had not yielded what he had hoped, he now had better information as to the whereabouts of the great city of Manoa and Lake Parima with its extensive gold mines. Unfortunately, now that Sir Walter had been re-appointed to his old position as Captain of the Queen’s Guard, it seemed unlikely that he would be able to get away. It was even possible that Sir Walter might be appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland in succession to Lord Borough.

This is the man, I thought, Sue will not let me follow because he is a waning star. (Or one of such magnitude that hers is outshone? )

I stayed with my uncle Sir Henry, and the first morning went to see my father. He was still in the same cell though his companions had changed; he was thinner and his clothes were torn and infested with vermin; his hair and moustache had not been cut; he stank foully. He complained bitterly of his treatment and the closeness of his confinement. The cold and cough he had brought with him from Cornwall was still troubling him and he was convinced he was developing his mother’s asthma. He had written to the Queen and six times to Cecil but so far without response.

The faithful Rosewarne came each day bringing a few pence and perhaps an item or two of food; but Mr Killigrew was bitter that his two sons Thomas and Henry had only been to see him twice since November.

He eagerly read the letter that I brought from his wife and expressed a sudden desire to see her again. Could it not be arranged that Mrs Killigrew should come to London?

Before I left I saw Thomas Rosewarne, and tried to understand and help unravel the tangled skein of my father’s financial affairs. Rosewarne had drawn up an account of his present position, but all was now so involved with cross claims and petitions that I could see no way out of it all. His largest creditor after the Queen was Henry Lok, the mercer, who had advanced Mr Killigrew several thousand pounds on the flimsiest security. Now Henry Lok had himself been attached by other creditors for having underwritten bonds issued by Mr Killigrew. Lok, for his part, was petitioning for some land in Devonshire belonging to my father which the Queen had now seized, and a Nicholas Athol was cross-petitioning and applying for a lease. Other land and property was the subject of suits in the Court of Wards. In all it seemed likely that my father’s true indebtedness would be upward of œ20,000.

Years after so many that it is hard to think of them all I came across some old papers of that time; among them letters of my father to Sir Robert Cecil complaining grievously of his treatment; and one from my stepmother to Mr Killigrew written in April of that year. Since then through many vicissitudes I have kept this letter by me, wrinkled and yellow with age and stained and almost falling apart.

“Dear Husband,

I received your letters by Thomas Rosewarne, wherein you spoke of your want of money. Sorry indeed I am, but help you more I cannot. I have sent to your tenants according to your directions, but none will come near me, neither do I know by what means to get you any money. For I have passed all that I ever had or can make shift for. Good Mr Killigrew, know how poor you left me.

But nevertheless I have taken order by this bearer that you shall receive ten pounds. My extremities are many, but I will use the best means I may and send you what I can glean I have written to you of all your business, and now, as for my coming, I am not able because of my greatness with child; therefore I must content myself with my misfortunes. I pray for your early release. From Arwenack, 18th April, 1598.

Dorothy Kylygreue.”

Old letters always have a pathos; seeing these after so many years brings back that time with poignancy. Perhaps not so much for my father whose fate was not exceeded by his deserts, but for poor Dorothy Killigrew and for all that time of youth and striving and the stress of a life now gone for ever.

I had Sue’s address in Pancras but at first could not bring myself to go. I spent most of each day with Thomas, who had found other lute players to his taste, and often they would meet in the upper room of an inn and talk and play together. I went with him there and closed my mind.

After a week I addressed a letter to Mistress Amelia Reskymer, asking if I might call. I felt this the moment for formality. Then at last I waited on Lord Henry Howard.

He received me in the same room as before. With him was another man, younger but pale and thin with a long face and narrow clever mouth turning down to meet declivities in the shaven cheeks. No page boy with a lute, but the room was again heavy with scent.

“Ah,” said Lord Henry, “this is the young Killigrew I spoke of. I think I may come to employ him.”

“Why?” said the other, and began to polish his nails. He wore soft Spanish leather boots and more jewels on his hands than the Queen.

“Why? ” said Lord Henry, seeming a trifle nonplussed by the inquiry.

“Yes. I always believe in asking myself that question. It sharpens the reason … Killigrew. We may be distantly related. My formidable but saintly mother is the sister of Sir Henry Killigrew’s first wife.”

“Indeed, sir.” For a moment I had looked into pale hazel eyes quite like a snake’s. Not unfriendly, not unlively, but slightly unhurnan.

“Why may I employ him?” said Lord Henry. “Because he has a knowledge of Spanish and war and diplomacy. And he has a sharp and ready wit.”

“Wit Lord Henry says you have. Is that true?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Wit, Killigrew, is like a surgeon’s knife: it cuts away illhumours, but a shade heavy handed and the patient bleeds to death.”

Lord Henry chuckled and offered snuff; the other refused. “I believe,” said Lord Henry, “that I took some fancy to employ this young man because I detect in him qualities I find in myself. I had your letter, Killigrew. I take it you can attend on me if need be from now on?”

“Yes, my lord. I have some business to see to, but that can be adjusted to your demands.”

“Well, leave your address. You have rooms?”

“I am staying with my uncle this month but I shall be seeking other accommodation as I am shortly to be married.”

The younger man winced fastidiously.

Lord Henry said: “Does the word offend you, Francis?”

“Only in retrospect, my dear friend. Last year as you know, by a margin as narrow as a bootlace, I missed that El Dorado of all men’s dreams. Since when regret and relief have walked constantly beside me, the first by day and the second by night … Dolor decrescit ubi quo crescat non habet.”

Lord Henry snickered. “I had not thought you so full of sentiment.”

“Well, marriage would have cured my greatest illness, which is a deep consumption of the purse.” The snake eyes glanced a second time at me, not to see if I were amused but to search suddenly into my brain and thoughts. “But, then, I have resolved not to regret, for the sting and remorse of a mind accusing itself of failure doubles all adversity. Even penury has its compensations.”

“My lord,” I said, “I’ll not intrude further. Will you give me a time to wait on you, or will you send a message to Lothbury? ‘

“Monday,” said Lord Henry. “Next Monday there is an opportunity to write some letters for me. After that daily unless warned otherwise. Pull the cord beside you. Claude will see you out.”

As I went down the stairs in the company of the insolent Claude I said: “He who was with Lord Henry. May I ask his name? “

“Mr Bacon. A member of Parliament and a lawyer.” The boy gave his hair a toss in a way I have only seen women do before. “If you come to this house you will see him much. Are you coming to this house?”

“Daily I think.” “For what purpose?” “That has to be decided.”

“Oh, among the secrets, eh? There are all manner of secrets here, but one by one I split them open. It is a hobby I have.” “I wish you fortune,” I said as I left.

At home was a letters “My beloved,

I send this by your returning messenger so that no more time be lost. My sister-in-law asks me to invite you for tomorrow at ten in the morning. If we do not hear to the contrary we shall expect you. I long to see you.

All my love, Sue.”

Pancras is a hamlet about three miles from London and straddles the road to Northampton where it runs beside the Fleet Ditch. Miss Reskymer owned a farm and was a small active person unlike her brother. She greeted me and then discreetly left me alone with Sue.

Well, the desire for a woman is not altered by one’s suspicions of a kind of betrayal, by discoveries about her character, by reservations as to the sort of marriage one may be going into. Desire for a particular woman is a fundamental physical sensation, born of one’s animal nature, and so the Puritans would tell us to be despised; but it is no less potent for that, no less alluring for that. After I had kissed her I looked at her closely thinking, why these eyes? I have seen more beautiful, though none brighter why these lips? Mariana’s were fuller, Meg’s more innocent why this hair, lank and uncurling?; the bone structure of cheek and neck? there are better. But to me these are infinitely, carnally desirable. If men are admired for risking their lives for a woman, why should they not risk the imponderables of principle and conscience?

“You were delayed, Maugan? I expected you last week.”

“Yes. There was some delay …” “You have seen Lord Henry Howard!”

“Yes. It is all arranged.”

“I with waiting so long and nothing to do I have been looking at rooms in London. There’s a very pleasant apartment in Great Carter Lane by St Paul’s Churchyard. It’s more costly than I had thought of, but everything in London is so. It would be in the heart of things but perhaps noisy. Could we see it together?”

“Yes … we can do that.”

“I have had the banns called two weeks in St Pancras in the Fields. Next Sunday will be the third. Did I do right?”

“Of course.”

“You’ve the certificate from Mr Garrock? You had the banns called at Budock?”

“Yes.”

“You’re very quiet. Is anything amiss?‘9

“No, nothing at all.”

“Let us sit down and talk of the arrangements, then. I shall be married from here. Amelia’s cousin Robert will give me away. Do you think your brothers would escort me to the church? “

“I think they would.”

“Maugan, it was you who made it a condition that the wedding should be in early February. I hope I don’t hasten it unduly or seem unwomanly to you in my arrangements?”

“No. No, not at all.”

So we talked on for a half-hour. Gradually as this proceeded, our conversation melted the ice which for three weeks had been round my heart. I began to make plans with a new interest. Whatever else, I thought, she will be my wife. God in heaven, what more do I demand?

She was talking on, making more light conversation than I had ever known her do before. “Did you come by the Fields? Yes, then you’d cross Battle Bridge. It’s where Boadicea fought the Romans … The conduit runs for 2,000 yards to Snow Hill. All these fields abound in springs … Maugan, I think you’re not listening.”

“Oh, yes I am, I assure you. Sue …” It had to come.

“Yes? “

“All that time you were married to Philip Reskymer I mean before we met at the landing of the Spanish at Mousehole it was nearly a year after I came home; did you never hear that I was alive?”

She looked at me with slightly narrowed eyes. “What makes you ask that now?”

“Well, I’ve often thought when we met that day outside the burning church, you looked as if you’d seen a ghost. Yet we only lived what? thirty miles apart. Did you hear nothing of my return at all?”

There was a grinding grumbling of cart wheels in the lane outside. “My dear, it was not necessary that I should still think you dead to act as if I’d seen a ghost. It was the first time we’d met. How do you suppose I felt? I’m not made of stone.”

“Then when did you first know I was alive?”

“What’s wrong, Maugan? Why is this important to you now? “

I looked down into the crevasse I had approached and sheered away from it. “Sometimes one wonders these things. You did not write.”

“You did not write to me. And I felt that by my marriage I’d forfeited any claim on your love.”

“It doesn’t happen that way.”

“I’m glad. I hope you are.”

“Yes …”

Silence fell between us. The man outside was calling to his horses.

She said: “I heard first from my aunt. When I went to call on her about two months after my marriage she told me you’d come to see me.”

“Oh … I thought you might have heard earlier than that. D’you remember Dick Stable?”

“No? “

“He was Lord of Misrule during the twelve days of Christmas.”

“Oh, yes. A tall thin boy with a big nose.”

“Yes. He said he met you in Truro one day and told you about my return. He said that was soon after I got back.”

“It couldn’t have been. I wasn’t in Truro for several months after my marriage.” She leant and stirred the charcoal dying in the grate. “But what is the point of this? You haven’t told me. Is it of any value to go over any of that sad time? Aren’t we alive and well and in love? What else is of importance?”

“It has some importance, Sue. Do you remember meeting Dick? “

She frowned into the fire. “Yes … But it was later after Christmas. March, I think. Yes, it would be March. I went with Philip to call on the Robartes; we spent a night there. I bought some gloves one morning and Dick what is it? Stable was passing with another man. He recognized me and I stopped and spoke. He told me you were safely home. Perhaps I may have seemed startled to him, but every mention of your name at that time was like a knell in my ears. I couldn’t bear to hear you spoken of, to think what I had done.” She looked up through fringed lashes. “Does that please you? Are you satisfied now, or have I to sit in the pillory and be stoned?”

“No, my love. No one will throw stones.” As she straightened up I put my arms under her arms and kissed her. These were the lips.

March was the month when Dick had been dangerously ill with the wound in the head after being set on in Penryn.

One of them was wrong. Which, perhaps, I should never know.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

During the next two weeks I saw her only twice. Something kept me away, and she did not press. We saw and took the apartment in Great Carter Lane. It was a good district and the rooms were well appointed. They were better than I would ever have expected, but she would not say what they cost; she said the twelve months’ lease must be regarded as a wedding present.

I went a dozen times to Henry Howard’s, and the work seemed without special portent. The letters I wrote in Spanish dealt with matters of commerce which seemed quite innocent. If they were in a code I could not detect it.

I wondered if Lord Henry in one sentence had not summed up the whole reason of my distaste for him. He said he had taken a fancy to employ me because he detected in me qualities he found in himself. Underneath ordinary reason which vehemently rejected any similarity the likenesses might be there. Not fortunately in any ambivalence towards sex on my part, but in the old ductile qualities of the Killigrews. The twoheaded eagle again.

I had had contact with Spain; I had had contact with Catholicism; and neither had left me as single-minded as before. Nor had the compromises left me unchanged. Nor would the one I was going to make in respect of Sue.

I went about town with Thomas. We sat and drank in the taverns and ale houses, sampling the ales, the Gascoigne wines, the Malmsey, the sack, and eating the soft saffron cakes sweetened with raisins. Sometimes, for the first time in, my life, I got drunk and Thomas had to help me home. We went to the menagerie near the Tower and saw the lions and the tiger, the lynx, the porcupine, the eagle. We visited the bear pits and saw the great brown bears baited, four dogs to a bear and the dogs often getting the worst of it. We saw a halfdozen men hanged at Bridewell, one for rape, one for murder, one for stealing a hat valued 2s. They were sat each one in turn in a cart with a rope round their necks and the cart driven away; then their friends pulled on their twitching legs to help them die the quicker.

So time passed and our wedding day drew near. It was to be February 9th.

We were to be married at noon. I was up at dawn, and for once Thomas was in his element. He liked dressing in fine clothes, he loved music and he loved ceremonial when he was not the centre of the ceremony. In these weeks in London we had accorded better than ever at home where he had been overshadowed by John and Belemus, and I was touched when after breaking our fast he gave me a bunch of rosemary tied with yellow ribbons which I was to wear through the ceremony. Rosemary, representing the manly qualities, was a customary gift, but I had not thought of it.

Since I came to London I had had a wedding ring made, an enamelled hoop with small diamonds surrounding the Killigrew double-headed eagle. Sir Henry had lent me the money for these necessary expenses, but he could not be at the wedding because he was attending on the Queen who was that morning moving to Greenwich. Lady Jael was to come, also my uncle Simon who, to my surprise, seemed sufficiently interested to wish me well, and his son Stephen was to be my bridegroom man.

I went to take my leave of Sir Henry about eight. He smiled on seeing me and said:

“Well, Maugan, this is a happy day for you and a fine one. All is in order?”

“All is in order, thanks to you, sir.”

“I wish I could remember your bride. You say we met some years ago?”

“Yes. But now, living where we shall be living …”

“Of course … And how is your work for Lord Henry? Well enough?”

“Well enough.”

“It could be a good attachment, Lord Henry himself being attached to the Earl of Essex, and Essex riding high. Since he was made Earl Marshal of England six weeks ago my lord of Essex is back in the but of spirits.” My great-uncle frowned. “I wish I knew...”

“Knew what, sir?”

“The mind of the Queen. Lord Essex is now almost in a position to dominate her. Slowly she has given ground slowly he has won it. Often in such cash the brilliant young man seems to hold complete sway over the ageing woman … And yet, no one, no man or woman on earth has ever dominated the Queen since she came to the throne forty years ago. She has such inborn greatness that if he is not careful he’ll ride himself to ruin … In that case have a care you’re not involved in the fall.”

“Lord Henry is also very close with Sir Robert Cecil thwe days. He has written a letter to him every day this week.”

Sir Henry tied the points of his doublet. “On what, may I ask?”

“I think sir, if I am employed by him I must keep his counsel “

“Yw … yw, that’s true. I should not have asked you.”

“Much is to do with Scotland. I can only tell you that.”

“Affairs in Scotland?”

“Affairs in Scotland. Nothing of apparent consequence.”

“What is or is not of consequence depends on the writer and the reader, Maugan. With the Queen in her sixties we all walk a rope drawn across a chasm. She is much racked with rheumatism and with headaches. Any day anything may ham pen.”

“I pray it will not.”

“All men pray it will not.”

Sir Henry straightened his patted velvet hose over his thin shanks. “But it’s not for you to be concerned with that now, Maugan. This is your wedding day … I remember well when your father it only seems yesterday came first to Court as young and as eager as you. His father, my elder brother, brought him up, and we all thought him a handsome young man. Our Queen was then in her thirties, and some hoped he would catch her eye and be advanced, as Leicester and Ralegh and Essex have been. But it did not happen. Perhaps he lacked the stature…”

I said: “Did you ever know my mother?”

“What? ” Sir Henry scratched his beard. “What? Your mother? Well, yes, I did.”

I stared at him. The question had been put casually, without any expectation of this answer.

He said: “I think I was the only one who met her in our family. Your father as happens with handsome and well bred young men new to Court life had a number of interesting affairs. None of them was serious, and your grandfather and grandmother, having regard to their great debts, were making inquiries to see what suitable heiress he might be betrothed to. Then he met your mother, and, it seemed, fell in love with her. She was a Londoner of no distinction of family but some personal charm, and I believe your father even contemplated marriage. However, this was forbidden particularly by your grandmother, whom you will still know as a woman of forceful character and the attachment was broken off. I really believe,” Sir Henry finished dryly, “that it is the only time in his life your father was in love with somebody other than himself.”

“What was her name?”

“Maugan, the same as yours. You were given her surname as your first name. The plague was rampant soon after you were born it had lingered on as it sometimes does from the preViOUS year and an the Maugan family fell in with it. Much against the wishes of his parents your father went down to the Thames side where they lived and took you away. He hired a wet nurse and bore you down to Cornwall. Lady Killigrew was vastly annoyed, for this was just at the time when a betrothal party had been arranged at Arwenack for the Moncks, whose daughter your father married later that year.” Sir Henry smiled as he tucked a handkerchief into his pocket. “During the celebrations attending the betrothal you were kept in the kitchen and passed off as the son of Sarah Amble who was then caring for you! But I believe that Dorothy Monck, after her marriage, never took exception to your presence; indeed, you could hard y have had a more affectionate stepmother.”

‘

“To look at? Tall, a trifle big boned for a woman. Blue eyed; dark haired. You take after her somewhat. I met her only once but was impressed by her appearance,”